Podcasts about Buildium

Send us a textIn this episode of the Investing RN Podcast, Josh and Colin take you inside the messy, chaotic, and crucial early stages of building a real estate portfolio.Starting with just 11 crummy multi-family units, they learned the hard way that good management beats good deals — and that lesson helped them scale to nearly 250 doors.They share everything they wish they knew earlier about managing small properties, raising rents without losing tenants, preparing for $8K surprise repairs, and why every “bad” deal is actually a training ground for success.If you're serious about real estate investing, this is the real talk nobody else is giving you.

As a property manager, you're familiar with the uncomfortable shuffle when trying to ensure utilities are set up correctly at move-in. What if you could make the whole process easier? In this episode of the Property Management Growth Show, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with the founder of Utility Profit, Zac Maurais, to discuss wires, pipes, and signals: Everything you wish you knew about home utilities. You'll Learn [01:48] How Zac Built a $100 Million Business [07:38] Solving Utility Challenges with a Streamlined Tool [15:54] Using Utility Profit to Make Extra Profit [23:26] Integrations and Frequently Asked Questions [30:20] Take Action on The Things You're Avoiding! Quotables “I think the secret to being smart is just being willing to look stupid.” “Done is better than perfect.” “Have a bias for action. Get your hands dirty. Do it yourself.” “ Whatever it is that you think that's holding you back, just start trying to do it.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript [00:00:00] Zac: It's almost like we're like taking the Yellow Pages and then putting it online or something. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a wacky problem that we're solving there.  [00:00:08] Jason: So you're single handedly bringing the utility space into the future. So, All right. [00:00:16] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Property Managers to the Property Management Growth Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur and you want to add doors, you want to make a difference, you want to increase revenue, you want to help others, you want to 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 property manager and you just don't know it. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. [00:00:47] Jason: 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. [00:01:13] Jason: I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show and I'm hanging out today with Zac Maurais. Did I say it right?  [00:01:25] Jason: That's right, yes.  [00:01:26] Jason: Hey. All right, cool. It's great to have you on the show. So Zac we're going to be chatting today about wires, pipes, and signals, everything you wish you knew about home utilities. [00:01:38] Jason: I think this will be interesting to our listeners because, you know, we get into this stuff as property management people. So, so Zac before we get into that though, give us a little backstory on you. How'd you get into being an entrepreneur? When did you first figure that out, that you maybe were one and then we can get into why you started this business so that you've got going and tell us, tell everybody about it. [00:01:58] Jason: Cool.  [00:02:00] Zac: Let's do it. Yeah. So, quick intro myself, I live here in Austin, Texas. I've been an entrepreneur now for better part of a decade and a half. Right out of college I started a business it was actually a food delivery business called Favor. We ended up scaling that business to having 50,000 delivery drivers in the state of Texas. [00:02:22] Zac: So it was the second largest employer in the state. And over the course of building it up over a couple of years, we were doing over a hundred million dollars of food sales a year. So sizable company and we sold that to HEB grocery and yeah.  [00:02:38] Jason: And if people don't know, HEB I'm in the Austin area, I'm up in Round Rock. [00:02:41] Jason: But if people don't know HEB. HEB consistently wins the best grocery store awards like in America every year. Like it's always winning.  [00:02:51] Zac: It's kind of amazing. I mean, they are an institution. There's so many small towns across Texas where the only show in town, I would kind of say it's akin to like a Walmart or something like that for a national brand that people would be more familiar with. [00:03:04] Zac: Family run business, been around for a hundred years. So it's cool that it had joined forces with Favor. And learned a lot from doing that company. I mean, at the time that we sold it, we had over 140 corporate employees, designers and software engineers and business intelligence people and salespeople. [00:03:24] Zac: So I'm right there with you, Jason, where I like growth. I like growing things and learning about business and learning about new categories. So as I sold it, I was looking for the next thing to do.  [00:03:35] Jason: So people are clear, Favor, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but Favor competes with like Instacart and like some of these, it's like a delivery service. [00:03:44] Zac: That's right. So the way that the service worked was, it was like an on demand. It was part of the on demand delivery kind of thing that was happening. The gig economy, you know, people will probably remember Lyft coming out and Uber. There wasn't one for delivery of kind of like fast casual food or groceries yet. [00:04:02] Zac: And we brought that into the market. We had first mover.  [00:04:05] Jason: Oh yeah. So yeah, it's kind of like Uber Eats and, you know, these kind of things.  [00:04:08] Zac: Exactly. So you could tap a button, request a Favor, and then someone would go shopping for you, go pick up some tacos or yeah, run at the grocery store or something like that and bring it to you in 45 minutes or less. [00:04:20] Jason: Got it. And is Favor just a Texas thing?  [00:04:23] Zac: At one point in time we tried to go national expansion, but it was a bit of a wartime thing that was going on. Yeah. A lot of VC dollars getting put in. And we had a very strong Texas brand. We had over a million people in Texas using it. [00:04:37] Zac: Yes. So we said we just doubled down on home base.  [00:04:40] Jason: I mean, Texas is like its own little universe. We've got Favor, we've got HEB, we've got, you know, there's all these things that are just specifically Texas. So if y'all come to Texas, you got to like experience the whole Texas deal. You got to go to an HEB, you got to go to Bucky's, you got to go to all these things, right? [00:04:56] Zac: So yeah, right. When you're here in town for Jason's event, go get yourself some Yeti swag.  [00:05:02] Jason: Yes.  [00:05:02] Zac: And then order yourself a Favor.  [00:05:04] Jason: Yes. There you go. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, and people get really religious about their, you know, things like Yeti. It's like Yeti Mecca. Like people, like my brother-in-law comes into town. He is like, "I got to go to the Yeti store." He's like, just like starry-eyed in there. And I'm like, "why? Why?" Coolers, thermases? I don't know. Cool drinks. Yeah. Yeah. It's a thing. So he like collects them, and then sometimes he's flipping them too. Like there's limited edition things, so. My brother-in-law's name is Jason also, so he might listen to this. [00:05:36] Jason: So Jason, I mentioned you on my podcast, so, all right.  [00:05:39] Jason: Shout out to Jason.  [00:05:41] Jason: Shout out to Jason. So, cool. So Zac, I mean, that's a pretty impressive thing. Not many people can say they built a hundred million dollar, you know, business or had an exit or something like that. So, and then what did you do next? [00:05:55] Jason: Like, you sell this thing, did you lose all meaning and purpose in life and decide to start a new business or what happened?  [00:06:01] Zac: I think that happens with some people, right? You sell it, you have somebody, you're like, "what am I going to do with my life now?" I'm going to take a good thing and somehow it becomes a bad thing. [00:06:09] Zac: But I just, I really like building. And I like the process of entrepreneurship where you talk to people, you try to find a problem and you like go hit a whiteboard, you sketch, it becomes more tangible, and then all of a sudden you can partner with an engineer and make it and then bring it back to the customer. [00:06:26] Zac: And I just like that. It kind of just scratches something in my brain, I think. And something else that's been cool for me on my entrepreneurship journey. I had mentioned that I've been doing it now for a decade and a half and the entire time that I've been working and doing startups, I've been doing it with like my best friend Ben from growing up together. [00:06:45] Zac: We  [00:06:46] Jason: best friend Ben.  [00:06:46] Zac: wen to school in New Hampshire. And it's fun to be able to go on that journey with someone like that.  [00:06:52] Jason: Yeah. That's cool. So you and Ben are still doing stuff together then.  [00:06:55] Zac: Right.  [00:06:56] Jason: Yeah. Third company.  [00:06:57] Zac: Third company now, so.  [00:06:59] Jason: Yeah. Dynamic duo. All right. And so I imagine that you have some complimentary sort of skill sets and challenge each other a bit. [00:07:08] Zac: Yeah, I think our brains have kind of been swapped and became more of the same brain. But the way that I explained it originally was like Ben was the left brain engineer, right? He is going to build out the backend database. He was a civil engineer, so he was just constantly doing math. And then I was more of the, you can kind of see there's some paintings behind me, like I was the artist.  [00:07:30] Jason: The right brain guy. Yeah. Got it.  [00:07:32] Zac: But now it just kind of became one, somewhere between now. He kind of went a little bit more right. I went more left, so.  [00:07:38] Jason: Cool. So bring us up towards the present day. So like, what are you and Ben, you know, getting together and working on? [00:07:45] Zac: Yeah, so I guess the way that we got into the property management industry was we were trying to build some leasing automation tech over the last few years. We had something called Sunroom Leasing, and it was like a platform that would help. With self showings, with different things related to collecting some data from renters about the home. [00:08:05] Zac: We had at one point in time, around 8,000 homes that were leasing across the country for some real estate investment trusts and some large scale property managers. And it kind of turned us on to this like, it had some challenges I think of that scale. And so we ended up realizing that's not what we want to do long term. [00:08:26] Zac: And something that it was like a good ride, but I think we were onto something that could be more scalable and a more acute problem to solve.  [00:08:35] Jason: Yeah, this was like a tuition business. You're learning and paying the price of tuition. Yeah. So you got familiar with the property management industry a bit through that. [00:08:44] Jason: That's right. Figured out kind of your target audience and you probably started to see some different problems you like started scheming with your whiteboard on, so.  [00:08:52] Zac: Yeah, and the problem that we zoomed into was around utility setup. And what we thought was kind of a silly thing was, here it is, it's 2024. [00:09:01] Zac: This was last year that we had launched it. We realized that there wasn't like a Google Maps of utilities. We thought it was silly that you couldn't just type in an address online and then see what's the water, what's the electric, what's the gas, what's the internet? There was no transparency for that. [00:09:20] Zac: And when we looked closer, there's like, you zoom in on water, there's over 20,000 water providers and they have really weird setups, you know, or it could be down just by the neighborhood or the zip code or the, you know, it's just wacky the way that the mapping works. And we thought if we could build out the whole mapping infrastructure, that would be a valuable thing, both for owners of the property that just want to have a more streamlined process, property managers that are doing it every day, and then renters. If you kind of think of this problem of setting up utilities while it's annoying and they have to Google around and make a bunch of phone calls, this is just one problem within a whole, you know, iceberg of other things. It's just the tip, small thing that they're doing a ton of things related to the move. We thought that if we could streamline this, then it could have a broad appeal and be something that we could do nationally and do at a big scale. So, over the last year, what we've done is we've built out that infrastructure to be able to do mapping at scale. [00:10:21] Zac: And we have built a platform that streamlines the process of turning on utilities. We're trying to make the utility on switch and it's a cool tool because the property managers using it can get confirmation that utilities have been set up correctly. And this is helpful for them because, you know, if you don't turn on the electricity and it's the dead of winter, you're probably going to have some problems on your hands with pipes bursting, you know, and things like that. [00:10:48] Zac: So, it's a useful tool in the process.  [00:10:51] Jason: So let's talk about this problem, right? This is super annoying. Like everybody that's moved has had to figure out this weird, you know, puzzle to like, which utility providers are available here? Which internet provider can I use? What are my options? Can I get this cool fiber, you know, thing, can I get this? Is there..? Like what's available? Then they're trying to figure out like water, electric. You're maybe trying to find out from the previous owner or somebody and you're trying to like negotiate all this and then like getting things switched and then the timelines like it's a mess. [00:11:25] Jason: Like it's really annoying and yeah, it's like why do we just deal with this and put up with this? We're living in the age of AI and this AI revolution now and. Why isn't there a better solution to this? It seems like it's just like chaos and confusion. Yeah, so.  [00:11:45] Zac: It is chaos and confusion. Yeah. And people waste so much time doing it and oh god. [00:11:50] Zac: Yeah. And I think as a result, like sometimes people will just make sacrifices where they'll be like, well, I was on this telecom company before. Maybe I'll just go back to them. And then I might miss out on being able to be like, well, I could have had faster internet or a better plan that's cheaper or something If they had just...  [00:12:07] Jason: sure. Yeah.  [00:12:07] Zac: ...known that they had options.  [00:12:10] Jason: Right. You're like, man, I'm still using dial up. And I didn't realize Google Fiber was available here. Yeah, right.  [00:12:15] Zac: Throwing that in an old AOL like.  [00:12:18] Jason: Yes, I remember those days. I was such a nerd. Alright, so yeah, and people may maybe get impatient and they just make some quick decisions. [00:12:27] Jason: You know, and all these companies try to give them incentives like, Hey, if you move, like we'll move it and help you get it set up. And they try to make it seamless, but because they're trying to retain their, you know, the customer, but that might not be in the best interest of the customer.  [00:12:41] Zac: Totally. Yeah. So this we're in the spirit of trying to add transparency into the process, make it more streamlined. And and have a really lightweight tool like, you know, not another app you have to download, but just something that seamlessly fits in the move in process. Okay. [00:12:55] Zac: Integrates really well with the tools that the property manager is already using, you know, just is able to sync, in real time, figure out what are the addresses coming up, and then give the property manager a way to both communicate what the utilities are and then check that they've been turned on. [00:13:16] Zac: And then interestingly, there's a lot of places in the US where these telecom companies are competing. And they spent a lot of money to lay down these fiber optic lines, you know, or copper lines, and they're trying to recoup some of that cost. Yeah. And so they'll pay money for more customers. [00:13:35] Zac: And so we're able to generate revenue and then share that with property managers as an incentive to use the tool.  [00:13:43] Jason: Okay, cool. So what's the name of the tool or this service?  [00:13:46] Zac: It's called Utility Profit.  [00:13:48] Jason: Utility profit. Okay. All right. And it's P-R-O-F-I-T I would assume? Yep, exactly. Not like you're prophesying. [00:13:57] Jason: All right, got it. So Utility Profit, and so this really is solving that challenge to just streamline all that, and there's a financial incentive or benefit for the property manager helping to get these things connected.  [00:14:11] Zac: That's right. That's right. Yeah. And one of the...  [00:14:14] Jason: Win, win, win all the way around win. [00:14:15] Zac: Yeah, exactly. And that's the best type of tool. You know, something that it doesn't just benefit one party, but all the people involved. Yeah. And so, you know, it's exciting there. Now there's people across the entire United States using it. We've been helping thousands of renters per month. [00:14:32] Zac: Just in the last year there's been, I think over 750 property managers using it. Some really big ones with thousands of properties all the way down to people that just have a couple homes in the portfolio. I think the average has about 400 homes and, you know, it's really kind of empowering that we bring something to the world and that fast that many people are using it. [00:14:55] Zac: It's cool to see.  [00:14:56] Jason: Yeah. Cool. So. And Ben's leading the nerds on the team making this all work.  [00:15:02] Zac: Yeah, we're both working closely with engineers and, I mean, it's been a big lift. I mean, we've had to do all sorts of wacky things to be able to like get this data because like I said, it didn't exist. [00:15:12] Zac: I imagine. [00:15:13] Zac: We have to like literally go and draw service maps, you know, that were PDFs on old websites and then, you know, turn them into a structured database. Right. I, you know, pull it up correctly. Yeah.  [00:15:26] Jason: You're just doing this ground level legwork to like get... it's almost like you're transferring old records into a digital format. [00:15:35] Jason: You know? Yeah. So that people could play their MP3s or something. Yeah.  [00:15:38] Zac: It kind of feels like that. It's almost like we're like taking the Yellow Pages and then putting it online or something. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a wacky problem that we're solving there.  [00:15:48] Jason: So you're single handedly bringing the utility space into the future, so.  [00:15:54] Zac: Yeah. And one thing that we've we've been doing over the last couple months that I think is pretty cool is that there's this whole industry that exists for the multifamily apartment space related to what they call as like fiber as an amenity or fiber to the home. [00:16:11] Zac: Yeah. And so the way it would work on multifamily would be, you know, these big telecoms would say, "Hey, we'll sell you a thousand units of internet and then we'll give you a discount for doing so. And then you can either kind of keep that for yourself or you can, you know, share that with your tenants as a way to help your apartments stand out from other apartments." [00:16:33] Zac: The apartments are i identifiable and also you know, easier for the telecoms to spot. The hard thing about homes is it's this long tail of properties and there hasn't been a good way to aggregate them. I think over the last few years there's been some, you know, real estate investment trusts that have got to scale. [00:16:54] Zac: And so it kind of got these telecom companies thinking, "Hey, maybe I should go you know, sell into this market, see if we can apply the same principles of this program from apartments to single family." But it hasn't yet been done at any sort of significant scale. It's kind of a new concept. Now that we have hundreds of thousands of homes, that we are effectively the on switch for, we're helping to source these deals. [00:17:20] Zac: And we're able to bring, you know, significant discount from retail pricing to property managers and consumers. So we we're adding that as a new program that we're doing. We're calling it like Fiber Ready Homes. So it's a cool thing because we can help property managers identify what portion of their portfolio has the underlying technology at the home to have, you know, hyper fast internet speeds. [00:17:47] Zac: Yeah. And then do all of the enrollment process and the billing process to be able to offer a program like this. And and it's pretty gnarly. Like the average property manager that will turn on this program can make tens of thousands of dollars a year. It's roughly $10 per month per door. [00:18:04] Zac: So if you're a 300 door property manager, this is about $18,000. 18,000 per year that you'd be able to generate. And just, you know, kind of free cash flows for enabling something that the renters want.  [00:18:18] Jason: Right. Just making more money and yeah, I mean, high speed internet also being able to bring that to your units. [00:18:26] Jason: It creates a bigger incentive for people to rent it. I mean, it's definitely something I research before I buy a home or move anywhere. I'm always like, what Internet's available there because my life is going to be happening through this. And a lot of more people working from home, especially since Covid. [00:18:41] Zac: True. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I think a lot of renters see internet more important than running water in some ways. I mean, it's like everyone's on Netflix and doing work from home calls. You know, it's just, it's super important for renters.  [00:18:55] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's interesting. And it sucks though when you like if you rent somewhere and that you only have one option and it's not the option that you really want in that area because sometimes they've negotiated like, oh, it's Comcast cable or something like this, and it's low speed or whatever. [00:19:11] Zac: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Sometimes you're kind of limited by what lines have been laid, and sometimes there's limited options, but it's cool because now we have these two programs. We have one, which is that one I just explained, and then we have a second one. We call it like a marketplace. So it'll truly show you everything that's available, every single company, every single speed all the details of it and help to facilitate just being able to turn it on a lot easier. [00:19:34] Jason: Got it. How does this work? Like a property manager gets set up in your system, they've got their properties, you know, in this, and then they can figure out the tenants when they're onboarding a new tenant, they're like, "Hey, before we give you keys and move you in, we want to make sure utilities are getting moved over." [00:19:49] Jason: So you help streamline this?  [00:19:51] Zac: That's right. Yeah. So it will connect seamlessly with property managers, property management software. Pull in the active listings that they have, and then it will have triggers around the move in date. So once someone's been approved and you have a move in date that's approaching. [00:20:08] Zac: It will send reminders and say, Hey, you know, you're moving in end of the month, like before you move in, please show that you've turned the electric on so that there's not going to be bill back problems and things like that.  [00:20:20] Zac: So, it handles the communication and then what's pretty cool about the tool too, is it's all white labeled. Utility Profit, it's not, you know, like a tenant friendly name, you know? Yeah. It's really for the property manager. And so, okay. We're just helping to facilitate these things. So it's got the property manager's logo, you know, we're more just the underlying technology, which I think is good because like a renter in the process doesn't want to get handed off to another third party. [00:20:48] Zac: They just want to... [00:20:49] Jason: yeah, "Who are these guys? Why should I trust them? I trust you. I'm working with you," but yeah. Got it. No, I think that's really smart. And so your business model then, your growth strategy really is to leverage and support the property managers.  [00:21:02] Zac: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We're trying to partner with all the property managers in the single family rental space. [00:21:08] Zac: And you know, last I checked, you know, there's at least five to 10 million homes that are managed by third party property managers. And we want to become the main place where where people used to turn on utilities. And you know, we talked about entrepreneurs and having a big vision earlier in the call. [00:21:26] Zac: You know, I think we're solving an important problem by building this Google Maps of Utilities and also just making a better experience. I think anytime we start a business though, you're kind of thinking about like, okay, "Well if I'm able to pull this off, how could this even be even more significant long term?" [00:21:42] Zac: And one of the things that I've been just thinking about as I've been doing it is you know, today we are helping to connect the dots between these things, but I bet in the not too distant future, maybe a few years out, we'll be responsible for millions of homes in helping to turn on these utilities. [00:21:59] Jason: Yeah.  [00:22:00] Zac: We'll probably want to go down the stack of utilities, you know, instead of just directing you to be going to, you know, XYZ local power source. Maybe they get directed to a company that, similar to how we're able to get discounts on internet because we have so much scale, we could buy energy contracts in deregulated markets and, you know,  [00:22:22] Jason: okay. [00:22:22] Zac: Inch down becoming a utility.  [00:22:24] Zac: Okay.  [00:22:24] Zac: And so, I think it's a, it's an interesting thing.  [00:22:27] Jason: So you're saying maybe there's a potential the property manager could be the utility?  [00:22:32] Zac: We'll be able to help the property manager earn more money... [00:22:35] Zac: yeah. [00:22:35] Zac: ...on this process because we...  [00:22:38] Zac: just more margin [00:22:38] Zac: ...want to direct them to like a utility that we own. And we're able to help them monetize these other things like natural gas and electricity.  [00:22:49] Jason: Got it. Love it. Yeah. You're passing the benefit onto the property manager. So, yeah. That gives them quite an incentive to help you grow this. [00:22:55] Jason: Right. So I love it. So, I mean, this really gives property managers a strong competitive advantage over self-management then. [00:23:03] Zac: Yeah, I think so. You know, I think property managers, they have so many things that they're doing and this is one of those set it and forget it types of tools. You know, it's not something you have to have mastery over and like learn another thing, this is like you get on, you set the thing up, you get the logo added and get it synced to your PM software and then you're done with it and it just kind of is happening in the background and then just notifies you. [00:23:26] Jason: Got it. So the setup is pretty easy and then it makes it a lot easier for the property management team to make sure utilities are getting set up correctly. There's visibility into seeing what's been set up and what hasn't, it sounds like. And you mentioned integrations with property management software, and I know everybody listening's like, "but what about my software? The one I'm using?" Yeah. So what integrations do you guys have set up already?  [00:23:49] Zac: It's all the major ones. So what we find is like AppFolio is popular. Rentvine is becoming more and more popular. You know, Propertyware is another one. Buildium's one that we you know, have in the works too, but yeah, I think most people... [00:24:04] Zac: Rent manager? [00:24:05] Zac: Rent manager, yeah. That's one that we work with too. Yeah. I know there's a lot of options for property managers there, but yeah. [00:24:11] Jason: Very cool. Yeah. So everybody listening there. There you go. So they're like, "oh, he mentioned mine. I'm okay."  [00:24:17] Zac: Yeah, that's right. Yeah it's cool that it, you know, just works in a broad way like that. And it's kind of interesting too that the tool even is able to work you know, even if you don't even have a property management software to figure out some ways to you know, even work in that use case. [00:24:32] Jason: Sure.  [00:24:32] Zac: But most people have software.  [00:24:34] Jason: So as long as you can get the properties like into your system, then...?  [00:24:38] Jason: That's right.  [00:24:38] Jason: Got it. Okay, cool. But if they have those then and you have that connection, then it's, yeah, it'll just streamline things. Makes it even more turnkey.  [00:24:47] Zac: That's right.  [00:24:48] Jason: Got it. Cool. So, all right, so you, what else should people know about this? [00:24:52] Jason: Like what are the big questions property managers have been asking you?  [00:24:55] Zac: I think one question is, you know, how much money I earn from this? You know? Okay.  [00:24:59] Jason: They like, they want to know about the money. Let's talk about the money.  [00:25:03] Zac: So the average property manager will, it's a range of 25 to $40 per move that, that happens. [00:25:10] Zac: It ends up being about 25 to, to $30 on average is what we're seeing across the country. And so I think it's one of those things where it's like nice gravy. What we find is that the average property manager, they're like, "this is nice. I can make some extra money from it." But I think it's like, you know, not enough to go, you know, it just adds to the bottom line a little bit. [00:25:32] Zac: Every little thing. Sure. So the main reason why people use it is the time savings, you know? Absolutely. It's just one last thing to have to worry about. So that's that's what we're seeing as we talk to people.  [00:25:44] Jason: Yeah. Yeah, because I mean, just the amount of time you're paying a team member, if they're like 25 to $35 an hour, for example you know, they might be spending an hour or two here or there just calling, trying to negotiate back and forth with the tenant, get these things set up so. [00:25:59] Zac: Property management some days feels like death by a thousand mosquitoes.  [00:26:04] Jason: Oh yeah. I often joke it's, it can be death by a thousand cuts or it can be a really well oiled systemizable machine, but yeah. [00:26:12] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, it offsets a little bit at the move in cost and then just the time savings. You're not having to pay your team to do all this communication. And you know, speed in onboarding is a real challenge for a lot of companies that are really in a high growth sort of state. [00:26:28] Jason: Like small companies might have a hard time just onboarding 10 units in a month, you know? Yeah. And larger companies, it can be pretty hairy if things aren't well dialed in.  [00:26:36] Zac: Yeah, I think that's a good point. It's all about having the systems in place. So that they scale.  [00:26:40] Jason: Very cool. [00:26:41] Jason: Well, is there anything else you think people should know about utility profit? And then we can get into like, how can they connect and get something like this going?  [00:26:50] Zac: Yeah. So the website's, utilityprofit.com.  [00:26:53] Jason: Okay.  [00:26:53] Zac: And it has some more information about how it works and has has some videos of the actual product. [00:26:59] Zac: You can see what it looks like from the renter's perspective, from your perspective and the dashboard that gives transparency. And and it kind of just walks you through everything about the product. And then there's a way on the website to be able to either book a demo if you have any questions about how something works. [00:27:17] Zac: And then, what we do is we'll just help you do like an onboarding call where we have people connect their PM software, upload a logo, invite their team members, really simple, straightforward process and then and then it's kind of good to go. So it's very streamlined thing. People typically will do it and it'll be live same day. [00:27:38] Zac: It's not like some big heavy lift or something. You just kind of go through this 15 minute process. We help you get it all synced up and then it's good to go.  [00:27:45] Jason: So, there's competition out there, right? Like this is a new thing in the space, but previously there's all these companies that try to, you know, negotiate and be able to pull in money and by being the person that gets people on a certain internet service or gets people and they get these kickbacks from the companies and that's how they make their money. [00:28:03] Jason: How do you feel like utility profits sort of stands out from those and I mean, my guess is you have the database, you have the data, like your ability to streamline. You're not having to go and start doing research and that you're just much faster.  [00:28:17] Zac: Yeah, I think that's exactly it. So there's been this whole category over the last couple years that's called a home concierge. [00:28:25] Zac: Yeah. And it's historically been like a call center model. Yeah. Where a rep will get the address and they'll, on your behalf, Google around, make some calls, you know, go try to set things up. And I think that was a helpful first step, and it seems like the natural thing that, that the industry would've been doing. [00:28:43] Zac: But this is just the natural progression of it, you know, building that database out, making it something that is like, you know, a true streamlined tool for everybody. And and just digitizing it a lot more.  [00:28:57] Jason: This is the future. This is the future. It's the next step. You're going to be a sponsor at DoorGrow Live. [00:29:02] Jason: So make sure, you know, everybody come to DoorGrow Live this year. Our theme this year is innovating the future of property management. And so we're going to be sharing innovative stuff. Innovative new models of pricing, not doing it the same way everybody else has been doing it, like percentage or flat fee. There's a lot of innovation and that's our goal at DoorGrow. We're always trying to figure out what are the most innovative stuff? We've got AI maintenance coordinators, we've got all sorts of stuff that are going to be showcased at this event. So if you don't want to be behind the times and have your lunch eaten by competitors and startups that are savvier and more focused on the future, make sure you come to DoorGrow Live. You're going to want to be there because the people that are at DoorGrow Live are going to be the ones that are getting a head start on these really effective cost, saving new tools, these ideas, they're going to help you have more profit in your business. [00:29:54] Jason: And so, Zac, we appreciate you being a sponsor. We're excited to showcase you and some other tools at our event, so.  [00:30:00] Zac: It's going to be fun. It'll be here right around the corner, so. [00:30:03] Jason: Check it out at doorgrowlive.com, and make sure you get your tickets. And we're going to be talking a little bit more in the future, probably on our podcast here. And just online about some of the cool things that you will get or learn if you come to DoorGrow Live this year in May at the Kalahari Resort in Round Rock, Texas. [00:30:20] Jason: So, cool. Well, Zac, is there anything else you want to share before you go? Parting word of wisdom for entrepreneurs out there that haven't had a hundred million dollar exits and built big giant things and they're just struggling to build their little machine, what would you say to them?  [00:30:36] Zac: I would just say like, whatever it is that you think that's holding you back, just start trying to do it. [00:30:43] Zac: You know? I think a lot of times you build up whatever it is in your head. And you think, "well, I would do it if I had this. Or what if I have to hire this person? Or, you know, I need to have this figured out, or I don't know how this works. Like I'm going to just say no to it." I would just say, just start doing it. [00:31:02] Zac: It doesn't have to be perfect to start. And the more you just take that first step it will become more clear and sometimes, it's harder to see the next 10 steps in front of you, but it's pretty easy to take that first step. So I'd say, have a bias for action. Get your hands dirty. Do it yourself. You have mentioned a lot of these things about AI and how the best companies are using ai. [00:31:25] Zac: We're really leaning into that as an organization. It doesn't matter what people's role is, we're saying. You know, download, ChatGPT three and talk to it. Ask it questions like, you know, there's so many cool resources today. It's the best time to figure things out and do things and and take that first step. [00:31:44] Jason: Yeah. GPT 4.5, we're getting clues of that's dropping and going to be out for everybody soon. And then Grok 3, I've been really geeking out on Grok 3, so it's pretty next level, so, but yeah. Cool. I love the idea. Done is better than perfect. I love the idea of rapid iteration. You know, so many times for those of you that are in the earlier stages of entrepreneurs listening to this, this is great advice because I've seen inside a lot of businesses, a lot of small businesses, and one of the biggest mistakes a lot of them make is they try to make everything perfect before they ship it, before they launch it. "I want to get all my processes dialed in," and they're trying to solve problems they don't even have yet. [00:32:20] Jason: They're trying to solve future problems instead of their current problem. And so rapid iteration really is the secret to growing a business quickly because you learn very fast what does and doesn't work. Just start trying shit. Just do it. Break stuff and you're going to learn way faster and everything's figureoutable, so.  [00:32:39] Zac: Yeah. And in that spirit, it doesn't matter what the thing is, you can always get feedback from it, even if it's not totally built yet, like it can be on a napkin, you know, or it could be the next level of that. But go build the thing in whatever low fidelity way. Yeah. [00:32:55] Zac: And then go talk to your customers about it. And this is going to have different applications for different types of business. because you're going to talk about different things. But you know, maybe you have a new program that you're thinking property owners might want to see, like get their feedback on it. [00:33:10] Zac: Or maybe you want to launch a new website or a new logo or whatever it is. I would just say, it doesn't have to be perfect, bring it but you have to get feedback on it. So definitely go and partner with who it is that is going to see it, and then just talk to them about it and say, "Well, how could this be better? What is this missing? What would be the next thing to do? If you could do anything with this, what would you do?" And, you know, people love to share advice. I mean, I think that's the other thing. Yeah. It's like over the last couple years since I've been doing entrepreneurship, I've been kind of amazed at how many people have been willing to share their time and their advice. [00:33:46] Zac: Yeah. And especially if you get an intro to someone from something. Yeah. You know, I think there's this huge thing of maybe you're afraid to ask for that intro or, you know, have that conversation because it's not perfect yet. I would say, you know, find the ideal person that you want to talk to and then figure out how to work backwards and how to get an intro to them and then have that conversation. [00:34:08] Zac: You know, I think you have to be vulnerable in it because you are going to come across dumb sometimes. You know, people are going to say like, "how did you not know this? Everyone knows this," but like, just lose your ego in that. Be okay with not being okay. And then you're going to feel a lot better because on the other side of it, you're going to learn so much. [00:34:27] Jason: Yeah, I think the secret to being smart is just being willing to look stupid. So, I mean, for sure. Ask the dumb question that you're afraid to ask because you're going to learn way faster. And I really think proximity is power. Like just another reason people should come to DoorGrow Live is I think we attract the most growth oriented property management, business owners in the industry and just being in proximity to all these sort of change makers and people trying new stuff and people experimenting, people willing to invest in themselves and to pay like coaches, like DoorGrow. And then I use all my clients as a mass rapid iteration sort of project. [00:35:05] Jason: Like we're always figuring out more and more stuff and I'm gathering these ideas and so we've got systems in place to just allow us to innovate in this industry a lot faster. And so we're really excited about bringing these kind of things to DoorGrow Live and showcasing it. [00:35:19] Jason: So if you're not part of our program, you're not one of our clients. Come check out the magic at DoorGrow Live. Connect with some of the people there and you might realize you found a home, so yeah, your family might be there. So yeah, entrepreneurs we're different breed of people. We, you know, we take risks, we're willing to try new things, and we're not focused primarily on safety and security. [00:35:39] Jason: We're focused more on fulfillment and freedom and contribution. And so this natural offshoot, entrepreneurs are the most helpful people, especially the healthy ones. When you're in a healthy growth-minded state, you want to benefit and help everybody. You're not gatekeeping information like people are sharing stuff and so yeah, I found the same thing to be true in the high level masterminds, coaches that I work with. [00:36:00] Jason: Like just being around the people in these programs has been probably the biggest benefit more than even learning from the guru or whoever that is sharing stuff sometimes. And so, yeah, proximity.  [00:36:11] Zac: Yeah, I think that's well said. You kind of become an average of the people that you spend most time with. [00:36:15] Zac: So if you're around, you know, someone who's going to be pessimistic about everything, then chances are, not going to try things as much. I mean, that, that was like one of the reasons why I had originally moved from, you know, where I was growing up in New Hampshire. I remember when I was pitching Favor when I was 20 something people were like, "ah, no one's going to pay five bucks for something like that. And how do you know how? You don't know how to code. You can't figure that out. Right? Go get a job like everybody else." And then I kind of moved and found my tribe you know, and in Silicon Valley area and then in Austin, Texas. And then next thing you know, I'm actually doing the thing.  [00:36:53] Jason: I think even if people just come to DoorGrow Live to connect with somebody like you and they can create a relationship with somebody like you or any of the change makers or players that we attract at our event. [00:37:05] Jason: I mean, you've done things that a lot of people would dream of being able to do in business, right. And so come make those connections, come to DoorGrow Live and make some connections because it's going to change your life for sure. So, well Zac, I appreciate you coming on the show. People can connect with your company at utilityprofit.com. [00:37:22] Jason: Do a demo. And it's been great having you here.  [00:37:26] Zac: Hey, thanks so much for having me on Jason.  [00:37:28] Jason: All right, so everybody, if you are struggling to grow your business or you're struggling to deal with operations, reach out to us. Check us out at DoorGrow.com. We would love to have a conversation, see if we might be able to help you with something. [00:37:39] Jason: And that's what we do all day long and we care about our clients. We really want to make sure that everybody succeeds. We only win if you're winning. And so until next time, everybody to our mutual growth, let's all win. Bye everyone. 

Even with all of the property management software and tools breaking onto the scene lately, it seems that some entrepreneurs are still identifying gaps they could potentially fill… In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Eric Nelsen of Walkthroo to talk about a new maintenance solution in development for property managers and vendors. You'll Learn [03:36] What is Walkthroo? [08:43] Developing Software and Utilizing AI [16:52] Getting Time Back with User-Friendly Tools [23:02] Get in Touch with Walkthroo Tweetables  ” It's a lot easier to make changes to software when you're smaller and you're getting things started and you're doing it in the right way.” “ Time is probably the biggest benefit we provide.” “ Vendors in a lot of situations end up being the eyes, ears and hands for the property manager.” “ User experience is a big deal when designing software.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: It's a lot easier to make changes to software when you're smaller and you're getting things started and you're doing it in the right way. Once it turns into a giant beast and it's old, then it's really difficult.  [00:00:11] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:52] 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. [00:01:12] Now let's get into the show. And today I'm hanging out with Eric Nelson of Walkthroo. Eric, welcome to the DoorGrow Show.  [00:01:21] Eric: Thanks, Jason. Glad to be here.  [00:01:23] Jason: So Eric I would love to first get into your background. And my wife's chiming in saying I need to remember to promote DoorGrow live today, so I'll just do that right now real quick, and then we'll get to you, Eric. So if you are a property manager and you're watching this make sure you get tickets to DoorGrow Live like this is the most contribution focused, holistic property management conference in the industry. [00:01:44] We do things very differently. "There's heart" is kind of the feedback we get from others. People cry at our events. Like it's really awesome. It's going to be at the Kalahari resort here in Round Rock, Texas. And get your tickets right now. They go up in price over time. So head on over to DoorGrowLive.Com and get your tickets and be there. We've got sponsors. We've got cool speakers. It's going to be awesome. And DoorGrow magic is there. You're going to learn about growing your business from Sarah and myself and we'll help you out. All right, cool. Shameless plug inserted. [00:02:20] Now, Eric, I would love to get into your background. [00:02:23] You know, we hung out briefly in in Austin you came out and got to know each other a little bit, but I want my audience to get to know you share a little bit about How you kind of got into entrepreneurism, how you got into this. So tell us a little bit about your background.  [00:02:37] Eric: Yeah, sure. Sure. I grew up in Houston, Texas kind of came up through the finance world. So I spent about 10, 15 years in finance, went to grad school at Rice in Houston, and I just couldn't walk down the finance hallway. I saw the entrepreneurial professors down a different hallway, really wanted to kind of do my own thing. [00:02:55] So you know, stayed in finance for a couple more years and got into the pharmacy business. And through that business, I got exposed to IT technology and building software to kind of run our pharmacies and improve our ops and, and run those companies. And then a good friend of mine in Shreveport Springs, Texas was is a general contractor and said he works with these property managers and they, he does a lot of maintenance for rentals. [00:03:20] And he said, "yeah, Eric, I want to take on more business, but I can't keep track. There's so many little jobs. There's so much communication going on, text, emails, phone calls. You've got a software background. Can you help me?" And so that's, what's really exposed me to the property management industry and kind of started me on this path. [00:03:36] Got it. All right. So let's get into talking a little bit about Walkthroo and what it is. And it's, it's "walk T-H-R-O-O. So tell us a little bit about Walkthroo and what is it? What does it do?  [00:03:52] Yeah. So Walkthroo is, it's a really kind of a mindset and approach to the business and the underlying core is as much as accounting and tenant screening and even inspections, that software, those tools have grown, you know, with technological advances and whatnot. [00:04:13] If you really look at what we think is one of the four main pillars of property management is the maintenance, that hasn't grown. I mean, if you look back 10 years ago you really couldn't get multiple bids to do any work. If you look back 10 years ago, you couldn't pull up on your screen and compare two different bids. [00:04:29] 10 years ago, you couldn't split charges on an invoice between a tenant and owner. And you look today, fast forward 10 years, and I would say You know, 90- 95 percent of the platforms, you still cannot do those things. Well, when my partner brought me into this, you know, first he wanted me to help him with his, you know, just his construction company, but we quickly realized the problem wasn't him. [00:04:52] It was the property managers he was working with and the inefficiencies that came with the way they handle maintenance. So right out of the gate within a month. We switched that mantra. We're going to work to help property managers. And so that's really been what Walkthroo's focus has been the last three years. [00:05:09] And we really just, again, within the first three months we can get multiple bidders, we can split charges. And so it just showed me right away that it's not for a lack of technology or, you know, lack of know how even. It's just when you look at these software platforms and these operating systems, they just have bigger fish to fry. [00:05:27] They, you know, they all agree we should be able to hire multiple bidders with a couple clicks, but we're going to spend time doing X. So I can't explain it, but again, within the first six months, we had all these features built. And so now we're coming up on three years. We're really looking to round out the platform and keep growing. [00:05:45] Jason: Okay. So besides doing multiple bids and splitting charges, what would you say Walkthroo is? Like, what is, what does it accomplish?  [00:05:53] Eric: So we're going to be a full operating system for property managers. We started backwards. I spoke with the former CEO of Buildium post sale to real page. [00:06:03] And he told me flat out, "we did a lot of great things." I think they were in 19 countries at the time. He's like, "but I'll be honest here. We never figured out maintenance. And so if that's where you're starting, you know, good on you. Good luck." And so we started with maintenance and we built our platform around maintenance. [00:06:18] We've recently added inspections. And so we'll keep growing. So Walkthroo will be A full suite of operating suite for property managers. Currently, we're not there yet, I'm going to go through a couple of rounds of raising money. Currently, we're a maintenance tool. People can use our platform. And we also provide maintenance services still. [00:06:39] So that's, that's, that's kind of what we do today. And the third leg, which just launched, is, and this is probably the most unique feature of what we're building, every other maintenance tool or platform or operating platform out there has property manager and they invite people in and the people have to learn how to use your system and whatnot. We actually sell our software straight to contractors. [00:07:02] So they're using it independent of property management They're using it to paint houses, do handyman jobs around around their cities, and so we're building this network where property managers will be on Walkthroo, the contractors are on Walkthroo, and it's just a simple connection and you don't have, you know, the training and, you know, as a vendor ourselves the last few years, I've been through some trainings to use different systems and I can imagine. It's can like a painter, you know, in downtown Austin that has two employees trying to figure out all these platforms and how to work with these clients. So we're, our goal is to really simplify all that for all the stakeholders.  [00:07:39] Jason: Got it. So it sounds like Walkthroo, you're building this from the ground up. [00:07:43] You're building it as a tool to support and help based on what business owners actually need in property management. You started with one of the biggest challenges, which is maintenance. You're now adding inspections, you're adding other things. And the goal, the roadmap is to make it a full suite that helps maybe a better property management back office or software solution. [00:08:05] So the next big piece is then I'm sure on the roadmap somewhere is accounting and, tenant portals, owner portals, so they can see statements and submit the maintenance request, maybe like all of this kind of stuff. And so yeah, and I don't, I think that there's, there hasn't been a lot of innovation. [00:08:23] We've seen Rentvine come out recently. And it was born kind of out of a lot of complaints people were having about Appfolio. Appfolio was kind of born out of a lot of complaints people were having about maybe Buildium and Propertyware. Right. Right. And so, you know, when software is born out of complaints, you know, of different tools, yeah, it's going to be better than that tool, but it is interesting to start from the ground up building around the needs of and supporting the property manager and the work that they're doing. It'll be very interesting to see where you guys end up and what's kind of the timeline for all of this? [00:08:55] Eric: Well, you know, it depends on fundraising, right? So it's expensive, especially, you get into the accounting engines and a lot of that. There's a lot of costs involved. So we're hoping in the next You know, 12 to 18 months, we'd have a product out of, you know, for small property managers to run their business off our platform. [00:09:12] Jason: That's pretty fast. That's really the goal right now. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Yeah. And it sounds like you guys move quickly. You know. It's a lot easier to make changes to software when you're smaller and you're getting things started and you're doing it in the right way. Once it turns into a giant beast and it's old, then it's really difficult. [00:09:30] Like some of the older maintenance software companies I'm sure they're toying with the idea. Like, should we just rebuild from scratch or throw all this away? Or do we just work this until this horse dies, you know? And so that's always the challenge with software. [00:09:46] And then adoption is always a big challenge. So getting people to use something new or to change to something else. And a lot of times it's easier to get the smaller guys and the smaller companies to make changes. And the big companies are usually watching the little guys make all the mistakes or test stuff out or see. [00:10:04] And then they stand back to wait to see who the winners are. So...  [00:10:08] Eric: yeah, yeah. And thankfully I've got some experience on our side. My partner, Travis, he before he got into construction, him and his dad ran a small microscope specialized software company they sell it to universities. I don't know the ins and outs of it, but they could like take a laser and look into this, you know, the elemental makeup of a molecule. [00:10:26] It was really, really specialized, but that was exactly where he came from. He's like, yeah, you could go with Hitachi or a big Japanese brand, but you can't get them on the phone. You know, like you said, they've, they've done good. They've built so big, but now that's a hindrance. And we're in the same path. [00:10:40] You know, we didn't have splitting the owner and tenant charges, but you know, after talking to a few clients and a few property managers, that was just a common, very common thing. And I said, "well, let's just build it." Well, we're small or nimble, you know, we can, we can get away with that. [00:10:53] So we're going to take that same approach as we go through the accounting side of things, you know, and just interviewing property managers and listening to the industry and saying, Hey, my background is finance and operations. And so, you know, when I met you, something you brought up a lot was transforming lives and, you know, kind of making people enjoy their work and that's something I don't see. When we launched this tool. We decided to launch it internally two years ago. So we haven't really been selling Walkthroo, we've been using it ourselves. We currently manage Over 250 jobs in nine states. And so I talked to more maintenance coordinators and property managers every day and a lot of them could be happier. [00:11:35] So as we build this out, we want these tools to allow some sort of automation and allow people to focus on growing doors and, you know, and doing other things that are more beneficial versus banging their head against walls.  [00:11:49] Jason: Sure. Yeah. I know property management business owners would much rather spend their time focusing on scaling their business than dealing with all the the nitty gritty day to day challenges and difficulty in all the tools that they're dealing with. [00:12:04] So Eric, we're in the middle of this AI revolution and you're like right in the middle of building this tool as we're coming into this new AI revolution where there's just tons of software just coming out. And people can create tools and software a lot more easily and their AI is helping them. [00:12:22] And then everyone's trying to integrate AI. And then you see all these companies that are dinosaurs. They're trying to strap chat GPT on the side of their crazy rollercoaster. And like, you know, say now we have AI. And so how's AI kind of tie into you guys, you know, getting Walkthroo built out? [00:12:43] Eric: Yeah, great question. We've got a roadmap for it. We don't have anything integrated yet. I think it's, it's too early, but you know, my background is really improving operations efficiencies. And so once we have this tool built out, then we will again, deploy AI where it makes sense. Like you said, it's a buzzword. [00:13:03] People will say everything is aI generated. It's like, no, that's just a search function, but call it AI. And so we, you know, we know most of the data. I'm not well tuned on the accounting yet, but definitely on the maintenance side, we know what data and what decisions are being made every day because again, we've lived that life and we're living it now we're doing jobs. [00:13:24] And so we will bring in AI kind of as we roll out the full suite, you know, I'm not sure to be perfectly honest. I don't know if it's going to be a heavy lift. I mean, again, it really comes down to the operations of the business and work and we see efficiencies and you know, there's some decisions you want eyes on, you know, you want, you want human interaction and others are a little more mundane task. [00:13:45] And so we, we are definitely have that in the playbook but I, at this point, you know, our plan is not to have this fully automated AI, you know, software, it's going to be just a much cleaner, easier tool to use and AI will be obviously just a natural component of that. [00:14:01] Jason: Got it. I mean, I think that makes sense. A lot of people start, you know, thinking, Oh, let's make AI do everything. But I think, I think it probably does make a lot more sense to make sure that the tools and systems are working for humans and they're working the right way first. And then AI create some leverage now that this is working well. [00:14:21] And I think that goes for how business owners should implement technology in general is you first do the process manually, and then you start to look for points of leverage and where can I leverage tech, where could a tool like Walkthroo facilitate what I'm doing now or help move things forward? So who's your current target audience? [00:14:39] Like, who are the people listening to this podcast that you think should reach out to Walkthroo to get an assessment on their current maintenance situation?  [00:14:49] Eric: Yeah. I mean, we've talked to everyone from PMI to sole proprietors to self managers. So I would say our sweet spot is probably property managers with, you know, 200 to 500 doors. [00:15:02] Seems to be small enough where the data is not overwhelming. They're doing a lot of work, I feel from what I've seen personally, and so working with Walkthroo helps some of that. And people can work with us in different ways. We some people just use our software. You know, we, If we can, if we can manage jobs across nine states, truly, you know, we know people can manage jobs in their own town or their own state and some of them just hire us as a, they just have us on their preferred vendor list, you know, we obviously I don't have staff in nine states, so I use my tool to manage jobs and manage vendors and the third way people can access and partner with us Is we come on as your maintenance coordinator, you know, we'll use their vendors, their top vendors, let us manage it. [00:15:43] One question I always ask property managers, not surprisingly, the answer is usually similar is, you know, "have you ever logged in as a vendor to whatever system are you using?" [00:15:51] " Well, why would I do that?" It's like, well, yeah, you probably wouldn't think of it, but I recommend it because you know, it's, it's one of those tasks. It's important, but it's also been done since the dawn of property management, I give someone a job, they go do it. But if you, if you're using tools, I recommend logging in as that contractor and seeing what they're seeing. And, oh, this is why it's hard to communicate because I can't upload anything or I can't text or, you know, whatever, whatever it may be. [00:16:20] So the maintenance coordinator role is something we've been taking on more and more where it's like, yeah, you give us your favorite painters and handyman, and we'll either API into your system, or you just send your tenants our way. You know, we structured any way that works best for our clients and the, let us do the dispatching, you know, all the status checks. [00:16:39] I mean, you know, it's just a constant barrage of phone calls every Monday morning on where we're at. And of course, Sunday night we send out reports so we don't have to get those calls. Those are the three ways that property managers can work with us currently.  [00:16:52] Jason: What, what are the results that people that start working will Walkthroo tend to notice or what sort of the changes that you're creating for these business owners.  [00:17:02] Eric: It's time. Time is probably the biggest benefit we provide. You know most I just mentioned the Monday check ins or daily check ins most maintenance tools that I've seen in, by the way, the other way that we know our, our tool is is well built, it's acting and being a vendor for the last three years. [00:17:21] I've logged into all the other tools. You know, when a property manager sees Walkthroo, yeah, they say Oh, Eric, yeah, we're always looking for a new painter. Here's our login to our system. Great. So immediately we take notes and, and figure out what's, what's wrong, but the time component I would say is probably the, the most we hear back on, on the biggest benefit and then most systems will have status indicators, maybe something's in progress. [00:17:44] We've got over 20 statuses. Are we waiting on the contractor to finish the work? Are we waiting on the tenant to accept the schedule and confirm it? Are we waiting on the after pictures to come in. I mean, there's all these nuanced steps that I think historically again, bigger companies are busy, but coming from at it from fresh from outside the industry, it was like, well, this is important to know if I know that I'm waiting on the tenant to confirm a schedule, I don't need to waste my time calling the contractor, ask what's going on. [00:18:14] And so those, that's a little microcosm of. How we built our system and also just a, again, just the workflow. I mean, I was shocked. None of the systems I've used since I've been in property management, offer me a way to do a change order. Very simple, very common request. And I have to like make a phone call or send an email. [00:18:32] And it's just time, time, time. So we make all that click, click, click.  [00:18:37] Jason: For the listeners. Explain a typical change order sort of situation.  [00:18:41] Eric: Leaky faucet. We've got a leaky faucet. We want somebody to go check it out. Contractor shows up on site, looks at a leaky faucet, and says, yeah, this faucet's leaking here. [00:18:51] I can fix that. But also, it created mold and damage all behind it. All under the counter. We've got to rip all these counters out. Well, that's not what the contractor was there sent to do. It's definitely not approved without, you know, anyone signing off on that. So he's got to communicate back to the property manager, "Hey, there's a much bigger issue here." [00:19:11] And so in the industry, it's, you know, typically referred to as a change order. And so now the contractor usually sits and waits and says, okay, I'll, I'll wait for the property manager to talk to the owner. And see if they want me to rip off this cabinet and do all this extra work. You know, I'm just, you know, I'm just a contractor. [00:19:28] Can I explain what I see? So now we're in a waiting game, right? So a week later, property manager boss comes in and says, "what's going on on one, two, three Smith street?"  [00:19:36] Jason: Yeah.  [00:19:37] Eric: "Oh, well, there was a problem."  [00:19:38] "Okay. What's going on now?" [00:19:40] "I don't know. Oh, it looks like, I think we're waiting for the owner to give us the green light to do the new repairs" [00:19:46] and so you can, you can step back and realize how that can. And you add that times 50 jobs or 100 jobs and it starts, it really adds up. So again, the way we built our system was to really eliminate a lot of that excess time. And where are we in this maintenance process? And just put it on the dashboard. [00:20:03] Just like, you know, many other things in life now. Put it in front of my face, so I know where all my jobs are and all my maintenance tasks are located.  [00:20:11] Jason: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm sure that's a challenge, like people discovering new work when they go out to do work. And there's also the issue a vendor goes out to do work and then they notice other stuff they think the property manager should be aware of. [00:20:25] And yeah, I mean, vendors in a lot of situations end up being the eyes, ears and hands for the property manager, so.  [00:20:32] Eric: Yeah, actually that's, that's why we built our own inspection tool. You know, we see everything else that's out there, but a lot of it's not connected. It's, you know, it's separate tools. So I've got a system that does this and does that. [00:20:45] So we tell our contractors, it's in our app, which I think there might be two or three other maintenance platforms, but not many that actually have an app in the app store for the vendor. So again, I challenged property managers to log into whatever system they're using as a vendor. And you'll probably see it's not the easiest thing to use or communicate with. [00:21:05] Well, we turned that upside down and. We've got an app live in the app store. Contractors can download it. So when they're doing work for us, it's super easy. They're on their phone. So we added an inspection tool and said we're going to require you to do, if it's vacant, to do a full inspection. And we just provide that as a free service, like, hey, in case, in case you or the owner missed something, we happen to notice these other 10 items that you didn't want us to fix, but here's some pictures and a report, and so again, like, just to your point, we know we're the eyes and ears a lot of time, you know, at the property, so anything we can do to capture all that data and get it back to the property manager. [00:21:43] We think so it's a win for everyone.  [00:21:45] Jason: Yeah, I love that So, I mean historically that's been a big complaint about some of the property management maintenance coordination tools out there is that the getting vendors to use it the adoption of vendors has been like real difficult and maybe it's Just your from your experience. [00:22:02] Maybe they're just not very good for the vendors through for their experience. It's just not a great experience. So user experience is a big deal when designing software. And it sounds like you guys have kind of designed this from the ground up to make sure that the vendors are going to have a good experience using it. [00:22:17] Eric: Absolutely. You know, again, we, you know, we're, we're signed on as preferred vendor across, across nine states. And so it's, you know, it's our insurance, our butts on the line if the jobs aren't getting done. So we figured out very quickly, we cannot make this difficult for this contractor in Florida that doesn't know Eric from Dripping Springs, Texas. [00:22:36] So let's make the tool super easy. And that's exactly what we did. And so we've had... oh, I would say over three years, I think maybe three or four times we've had to coach somebody through how to use our maintenance tool.  [00:22:48] Jason: Really? Sometimes vendors are old school. [00:22:49] They're not the most tech savvy. They're, they're using physical tools, you know, but yeah. And so that says a lot that it's pretty intuitive or easy for them to figure out.  [00:22:59] Eric: Yeah, that was a big focus for us right out of the gate.  [00:23:02] Jason: Got it. Okay, cool. Well, for those that are, like, hearing about this, or a little bit interested in this, is there anything else they usually have questions about that we didn't touch on, or that they should know about Walkthroo? [00:23:14] Eric: Let's see, not really. I mean, I think we covered most of it. Again, our goal is to really provide more time. I just, we see so much wasted time, you know, in the maintenance process. Obviously, we're going to carry that on through the rest of the modules and operating software, but our goal is to eliminate that time and give it back to property managers and really allow them to, like you said, I know they'd much rather growing doors and making connections and using their time more wisely. [00:23:39] So, yeah. If we can save them hours a week that's really, really our goal.  [00:23:45] Jason: Got it. Okay. Well, it sounds like you guys focus on simplicity. You focus on making these work. How can people get in touch with Walkthroo?  [00:23:55] Eric: Yeah, you can go to our website. It's www.walkthroo.com . You can also send an email over directly to me or my team. My email is eric@thewalkthroo.com and if you want to just send it to our team, it's work orders@thewalkthroo.com.  [00:24:21] Jason: Got it. So it's 'the Walkthroo' and through is T-H-R-O-O. Okay. All right. Everyone listening, go check that out. [00:24:30] Eric, appreciate you being here on the DoorGrow show and hanging out with us. And I'm looking forward. We'll have to have you come back on once you guys have added some new features and it sounds like you guys are pretty aggressive at doing that.  [00:24:44] Eric: Absolutely. Thanks, Jason. Appreciate the time. Good seeing you.  [00:24:46] Jason: Good seeing you too. [00:24:47] All right. For those of you that are looking to grow your property management business or you're struggling, check us out at doorgrow. com. We would love to help you. We are getting amazing results with our clients. And so if you want to get from 0 to 100 doors, from maybe 100 to 200 doors, or you wanted to go from 200 to 500 doors, Or from 500 doors to a thousand doors, we can help you at each of these stages and each of these sticking points to grow and scale your business rapidly and to get the right stress free ops and systems in place so that you are able to do this without making your life worse personally. [00:25:21] And so check us out at doorgrow. com. And until next time everybody to our mutual growth, bye everybody. [00:25:28] 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!  [00:25:54] 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.

Connie Lee is the Founder of Reffie, a centralized leasing platform designed to help Multifamily operators streamline their leasing processes and lease units faster. Reffie helps automate the 'boring', so real estate operators can focus on closing more renters. Before launching Reffie, she served as Strategy & Operations at Mosaic.tech and also managed Finance and Business Operations at ZipRecruiter. Connie is also a Real Estate investor in Los Angeles and an angel investor in various startups.(02:40) - Connie's entrepreneurial journey to Founding Reffie(05:49) - Challenges in Multifamily Leasing(07:24) - Leveraging AI in Real Estate(15:11) - Feature | Berkadia's BeEngaged - Learn more: Ecosystem of founders, industry professionals, and capital providers dedicated to redefining the Commercial Real Estate space.(16:47) - Reffie's Business Model(28:50) - State of the Housing Market(33:52) - Feature | CREtech NY Conference & Expo - Sign Up: Tangent listeners get a 20% discount using code PARTNERTANGENT20 at checkout.(35:24) - Rental Trends & Amenities(39:07) - Collaboration Superpower: Taylor Swift

Remen Okoruwa is a former strategy consultant and product manager, and now Co-founder and CEO at Propexo. His company helps property owners, operators, and proptech companies deliver better resident experiences through the power of data. Propexo provides tools for connecting property management software with other technology in a streamlined way. Propexo is a customer-centric organization that focuses on data strategies that delight residents, improve NOI, and make Multifamily real estate a better place for everyone.(2:06) - Remen's & Propexo's origin story(4:47) - Building the Plaid for Proptech(8:32) - State of Propexo today(12:02) - Propexo's model & ROI in Multifamily(16:04) - Serving diverse use cases & customer base(17:22) - Feature | Berkadia's BeEngaged - Learn more: Ecosystem of founders, industry professionals, and capital providers dedicated to redefining the commercial real estate space.(18:59) - How Proptech VC looks at integratability(24:26) - Building a collaborative & customer-centric product road map(26:54) - RealPage v. US Justice Department(29:27) - Feature | CREtech NY Conference & Expo - Sign Up: Tangent listeners get a 20% discount using code PARTNERTANGENT20 at checkout.(33:42) - Collaboration Superpower: Cyrus the Great (Wiki)

It's been 6 years since we've had TenantCloud join us on the podcast, and a lot has changed since then! In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull welcomes Mark DeHaan from TenantCloud to talk about how it can help property managers collect payments, advertise properties, and screen potential tenants. You'll Learn [03:03] TenantCloud update!  [06:46] How does TenantCloud compare? [09:34] TenantCloud integrations  [12:20] Scaling with your software  [15:56] Starting strong with Rentler  Tweetables “A lot of times when you get into rental real estate… you log into a property management system and you're like, "holy smokes, this is so overwhelming like I can't figure this out.” “A lot of property managers have all of these different tools. They kind of build their own Swiss army knife or stack of different tools and software.” “A lot of property managers have a challenge with financials and accounting.” “We love the rental real estate industry and helping people grow and make passive income and that's what we're all about.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Mark: A lot of times when you log into a property management system and you're like, "holy smokes, this is so overwhelming, like I can't figure this out." [00:00:07] And that's, I think the differentiator that we tried to solve.   [00:00:11] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:29] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners, and their businesses. 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. [00:01:10] Now, let's get into the show. And my guest today is Mark DeHaan of TenantCloud. So Mark, welcome to the show. Good to have you.  [00:01:19] Mark: Yeah. Thanks Jason. Nice to meet you. Appreciate it.  [00:01:22] Jason: So we haven't had TenantCloud on the show for like six years. Back then, Joe Edgar was CEO. I had to look it up because I'm like, "I know, that they've been on the show before." [00:01:32] So I'm guessing a little bit's changed since then. So why don't we start by getting into a little bit about Mark. Tell us, tell everybody like, who are you and how'd you get into your entrepreneurial journey and then what led you to being at TenantCloud?  [00:01:46] Mark: Yeah, great. Yeah. So I'm based here just outside of Salt Lake city, Utah. [00:01:50] And I was a co founder of Rentler. And we partnered with TenantCloud, merged with them about five years ago with Joe. And when he exited, I ended up taking over as a CEO and running both Rentler and TenantCloud. And it's been a big journey by then, but yeah, my history was rental real estate. [00:02:13] And being an entrepreneur and really sacrificing and so forth. And it's been really exciting, and I love your audience because I think they can relate to, you know, being an entrepreneur and trying to grow in the real estate business.  [00:02:25] Jason: So for sure. I'm looking up Rentler right now, cause I don't know what it is. [00:02:30] What's Rentler? [00:02:31] Mark: So Rentler primarily focuses on listings and filling vacancies for landlords, small mom and pop landlords. Yeah. It does some payments and screenings and a few other tools and syndicates out your leads. And then TenantCloud is a lot more robust. It does the accounting, the maintenance, a ton of things that you can track with service professionals and your owners and reporting. [00:02:53] And so they came, they come together really nicely. And we just try to really focus on. landlords and property managers and using technology to make their lives easier.  [00:03:03] Jason: Got it. So what's what's been going on at TenantCloud since in the last six years? Like what what are you guys doing lately? [00:03:12] And you know, why should people use TenantCloud? Like, let's get into it.  [00:03:17] Mark: Yeah. So the last bit we've been growing tremendously. We're processing over a billion dollars in rent payments a year. Well over that. And TenantCloud really as its core is to help the rental life cycle and help owners, service professionals, tenants, and landlords really come together and leverage technology to run the business and the way we built it was with that in mind to really make things seamless and easy. And you can pay your rent with, you know, ACH, credit, debit, Apple Pay, Google Pay. We have a lot of things that we're working on to just make life easier there. We do screenings, have a ton of different bundles, options for you to do screenings and to protect your investment. And that's been really good to help people with income verification and criminal and background checks and of that nature. [00:04:11] Yeah and we do a lot of accounting. We will even file your Schedule E for you automatically. So the cool thing about TenantCloud is you don't have to have a degree in accounting. You can really log into our software and we're, we'll lead you along that process. And we'll do a lot of the tax reporting team management and you know...  [00:04:33] Jason: Can you explain what a schedule E is for those that might not be familiar with it. [00:04:38] Mark: Yeah, absolutely. So schedule E is you know, to report income or loss on your rental real estate. And that's one thing that you'll have to do. You'll get a 1040 form and, you know, the government will want you to file that. And sometimes that can be tough to do, but with our system we will track all of your expenses and all your income and so forth and help you file that form on your behalf.  [00:05:05] Jason: So for property managers, they're doing this third party for owners, this then becomes a resource for the owners that they're managing properties for. It will do it for them as well? [00:05:15] Mark: Yes, and we do have like an owner portal. So what's great is you can have your owners log in instead of having that back and forth. [00:05:24] We give them a login where they can have some view access to see their portfolio as well. So it just makes it easy for those property managers to work with their owners.  [00:05:35] Jason: Got it. Okay. Now what's different between a property manager using this tool or like owners just going direct and getting TenantCloud and bypassing the property manager? [00:05:46] Mark: Well, yeah, I mean, some owners can do that, but I mean, then they have to deal with a lot of the heavy lifting with the maintenance and managing all the units. And so with the property manager using our system, we make it easy for the owners to have access and you can send your distributions to them and so forth. [00:06:05] But it really comes down to the ease of use and being able to manage all your leads. Manage, you know, all your contracts, all your communications with your tenants and with it, it's such a affordable option. Like our lowest plan is 17 bucks a month and we don't do a lot of unit restrictions like other competitors where you can add a bunch of units on the system. And really make it affordable for you as a property manager. So, yeah, hopefully that answers your question there.  [00:06:36] Jason: Got it. Okay. So you would say TenantCloud's probably a lot more affordable than some of the competition that exists for property managers out there. So how would you say TenantCloud kind of compares to some of the big names in the industry like Appfolio, Propertyware, there's a bunch of these You know, and then I know Bodia just came out with RentVine and then Rent Manager, you know, these tools. So we've got clients using all these different tools. [00:07:03] So how does TenantCloud sort of fit into the mix and how do you kind of stand out among all these different tools because there's so many of them now.  [00:07:11] Mark: Yeah. So we started with the end user in mind where it was more of a business to consumer platform where you didn't have to do a heavy integration and you could just quickly create an account and more of a self service where it would be really intuitive. [00:07:28] If you were, you know, if you had one property up to, you know, 50 units, you could easily log in. And it was way more affordable than those bigger players. They have monthly minimums, and you'd have to spend months to integrate your stuff. Everything we built was to make it so, boom, within a couple days, you could get set up, and we would help you add your accounts, add your units, add your tenants data. And so we really tried to make it cutting edge where we used a lot of the technology to help you get set up a lot quicker. And so one thing that people really, they come over to us is. You know, they're like, "man, your platform is a lot easier to use because of the way you built it. It's just really quick to get it. I don't have to hire an accountant or get an implementation manager to help me use your software" because a lot of times when you get into rental real estate, you're an entrepreneur or you have a day job and then you log into a property management system and you're like, "holy smokes, this is so overwhelming, like I can't figure this out." [00:08:35] And that's, I think the differentiator that we tried to solve is that you don't have to have a professional help you use our software. You can just go ahead and get started and it will help you from day one.  [00:08:46] Jason: So basically, you're kind of one of your unique differentiators is since you started with the consumer in mind, instead of maybe a property manager in mind, you focus really on maybe the tenant and the property owner's experience being you know, really great, which once you started focusing on property managers, probably made a lot easier for the property managers. They're probably getting less questions. Maybe the reports are a little more clear. It's a little bit easier for them to figure out what they need, which has been a frustration. I've heard from a lot of software, you know, the owners find it confusing. They find their statements confusing. The tenants are like feeling things are confusing. Now a lot of property managers have all of these different tools. They kind of build their own Swiss army knife or stack of different tools and software. [00:09:34] How are integrations with TenantCloud or which things do you guys do really well that they might not need? You know, some of our clients might, for example, be using TenantTurner, even though they use Appfolio in order to get properties leased out and, or they might be, or to do self showings, or they might be using we've got a lot of clients getting going on this new AI maintenance coordinator called Vendoroo, or in the past, they might use PropertyMeld, you know, for maintenance coordination. [00:10:01] So they're stacking all these different tools because usually there's better stuff than what the property management software has internally. How does TenantCloud sort of go with this?  [00:10:11] Mark: Yeah, that's a great question. So TenantTurner is an awesome company and we have an integration with them. [00:10:18] Jason: Okay.  [00:10:18] Mark: And so we feel like we're a platform and we're doing more and more integrations with companies like you mentioned with maintenance. There's others out there that solve that problem. I mean, we have a maintenance portal, but we love to integrate other tools and make it so it's seamless and easy that you can do a show in coordination like a TenantTurner and so forth. [00:10:39] And so, yeah, that's a big thing for our users and we love to work nicely with other companies that will help benefit them.  [00:10:47] Jason: Great. So, TenantCloud has an open API that some of these companies can connect with? Yeah. Okay. Awesome.  [00:10:54] Mark: Absolutely. I mean, we have a partnerships team and they can reach out and we can, you know, when our users request certain things, we say, you know, that makes sense. [00:11:04] So absolutely. We love that.  [00:11:06] Jason: Is there a scenario or a situation in which you think. TenantCloud' s maybe not a good fit for certain property managers or certain types of management.  [00:11:18] Mark: Yeah, that is sometimes like multifamily or you're getting really a ton of units. You're going to probably need something a little bit more robust. [00:11:27] Now, we just launched reconciliation and some other features more reporting tools to help as we move up market because primarily we were focused on ones that, you know, had under 10 units and then we started growing. Now we have people that use us that have a few hundred doors and they love it. [00:11:46] They love the ease of use. They love the cost. They love that it's not restrictive, but some of that trade off is like, "Hey, you don't have some of these other customizations that you know, maybe a Yardi or some of these bigger players have." And so I would say if that's the case, you know, you'd have to wait a little bit as we continue to add more of those robust features for the upmarket bigger players. [00:12:08] Jason: It sounds like TenantCloud is a great place for a property manager. And it's small to start, especially when they're getting pushed back from places like Appfolio or Buildium, saying you have to have a 200 door minimum stuff like this. Is TenantCloud something that can scale with them up to maybe a thousand doors? Are they going to run into some capacity issue or some challenges if they continue? Because switching software is hard.  [00:12:31] Mark: Yeah, it is. And we do have some that have a thousand doors and some bigger ones and they love it. And I think it's just the way you approach your business and how you can adapt. [00:12:41] I mean, you'd save a ton of money and the way that every property manager is different. You know, I wish there was a standard in how accounting worked in the industry and how things did with money in, money out and so forth. But so sometimes people say, "well, I'm just so used to how these older systems work," and that's fine. [00:12:59] But if you want to be more innovative and more customer facing and adopt, you know, the latest technologies on how payments are being transferred and so forth, then I think you'll fit in really good, you know, with what we have going on.  [00:13:13] Jason: Got it. Yeah. I know that's been an industry issue for a long time is they're not being sort of a standard in accounting and NARPM then released the NARPM sort of chart of accounts and the NARPM accounting standard that hopefully is starting to get people a little more on the same page. [00:13:30] It has kind of been an adoption challenge, I think, and some people are starting to get going on it. And then there's definitely some businesses that have been capitalizing on it financially to like help businesses get that dialed in and get their QuickBooks like mapped out. Related to that, a lot of property managers have a challenge with financials and accounting. [00:13:51] They've got the accounting they've got to do for the client, right? Which is usually done by their property management software. But then there's their internal accounting, their own books. And some of them try to run that through their software, which I think is a little crazy. Or some of them tried, like, will have QuickBooks or something else. [00:14:07] I've noticed this it is a common problem in the industry is like people having this accounting mess and not being focused on it. Some outsource it and I've had clients come to me that say they found out their bookkeeper or accountant wasn't doing things right for like three years. And then one of my clients was suing their accountant and won and like, but it's still a mess that has to be cleaned up. [00:14:31] And so, maybe you could touch on TenantCloud. I know you help with the owners and their properties and the accounting. I'm sure. How do they help with their business accounting? Is there any connection to like maybe quickBooks, or is this something that the tool helps with or how would this work? [00:14:50] Mark: Yeah. So we have an integration with QuickBooks and that helps. And then everything we do with the reporting and with all your financials, we just try to make it really easy between the owners and the property managers so that, you know, it's seamless, but I do feel like, you know, QuickBooks could help. [00:15:09] And, you know, primarily we're trying to do property management software. But you know, personal finance is a big part of that. We just are launching a cool product with our banking partner where we can now loan some capital to folks that want to grow some doors. And so with our payment system and our banking partner, people can quickly get a loan directly through our system and they could use it to then go buy their next rental property. So we're looking at more innovative ways. That just kind of reminded me on the personal finance, like, "Hey, I really want to go buy this next door, but I don't have some money." We can help loan that money to help you grow your business. [00:15:51] And that's going to be coming out here at the end of this year.  [00:15:54] Jason: Cool. Very cool. So how does how does this relationship with Rentler and TenantCloud benefit, maybe property managers that are looking to use your software. And this, your shirt has on it. So then you've got this relationship going there. [00:16:08] So how did these kind of work together? I'm curious.  [00:16:11] Mark: Yeah. So Rentler doesn't have a subscription. It's free to use. And so if you're just like one unit. And you're just barely getting in. Let's say you're moving and you just need to rent out your basement apartment or you just have one property, you can use our payment system, do screenings and you can list your property, syndicate, get your leads, fill vacancies. And it's like super light. I mean, it would probably be very similar to like a Cozy back in the day, or like a Zillow Rent Manager just something there to just boom, do that. And then as you graduate, as you go, "Hey, I really want to do more accounting or actually property management software." [00:16:51] Then you graduate up to TenantCloud and when you list with TenantCloud, it will post on Rentler, but Rentler was primarily, you know, a listings and filling vacancy. So that's how that works.  [00:17:02] Jason: Is there an easy upgrade path from Rentler to TenantCloud or?  [00:17:06] Mark: Absolutely. Yeah, there is. [00:17:07] Yeah, we have a fantastic support system. Pretty much 24 seven support. We have chat, we have people you can call and we'll help you. Most all of our support have been in property management and ran their own property management companies. And so they're really helpful to. to guide you and what you need for your business. [00:17:26] Jason: Got it. Okay. Very cool. So, well, this is very helpful. Anything else that people should know about TenantCloud if they're working on making this decision right now between all these different software that exist out there?  [00:17:38] Mark: Yeah, I'd say we have a free trial and give us a shot and there's a lot of great things coming down the pipe. [00:17:44] So just ask our team, you know, Hey, if we don't have something that we probably will have it coming soon, but yeah, give us a go and you'll love it and we'll make your life a lot easier.  [00:17:56] Jason: Very cool. Awesome. Well, Mark, how can people find out more about TenantCloud? How can they get in touch with y'all? [00:18:04] Mark: Yeah, they can log on TenantCloud. com. We do a webinar every Thursday and they can learn about our system. And they can sign up for that on our website, TenantCloud. com. They can reach out. We have a great sales team, account management team that will give you a demo. You know, We'll do a consult free consultation on your business and help you out with that. [00:18:25] So we're happy to help we love the rental real estate industry and helping people grow and make passive income and that's what we're all about.  [00:18:34] Jason: Awesome mark. Thanks for coming on the DoorGrow show giving us an update on TenantCloud and everybody check them out at TenantCloud. com. Thanks for coming, Mark. [00:18:43] Mark: All right. Thank you, Jason. Appreciate it.  [00:18:45] Jason: You bet. All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur and you are either struggling to get leads or to add doors to your property management business, reach out to DoorGrow. We might be able to help you and we've been able to help lots of our clients add hundreds of doors to their portfolios to help them scale their businesses. [00:19:09] And we would love to see if we might be a fit for you to help you scale as well. So check us out at doorgrow.Com. And if you are a fan of the podcast or you follow us on YouTube. Make sure to like, and subscribe and make sure you're plugged in and make sure to join our free Facebook community by going to DoorGrow club. com. If you go to doorgrowclub.Com, it will redirect you to our Facebook group so that you can join. Make sure you answer the questions clearly because we're really careful about who we let in. We reject 60 to 70 percent of the people that apply to join that group every month. It's for property management, entrepreneurs, property management business owners. [00:19:54] That includes those of you that are starting a property management business, just let us know that in the questions. So answer the questions. Join that and make sure you're asking questions inside the group and you'll by joining the group. We will also send you a series of free gifts to benefit you including a fee bible and some other resources that I think would be really useful to your business. [00:20:18] And you can also then schedule a call with our team. So check that out doorgrowclub.com. Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Have an awesome week. Bye everyone [00:20:28] 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!  [00:20:54] 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.

When hiring a new team member in your property management business, one common mistake can cause you to lose out on potentially the best candidates. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss why having experience in property management is not a necessary qualification for the people you hire. You'll Learn [01:11] The Myth of Needing Experience [04:19] More Important Than Experience: Culture Fit [13:59] You Need a Better Hiring System [19:17] What to do if You Struggle with Hiring Tweetables “If you don't even know what your culture is, how are you going to figure out if they match that?” “If they're not the right culture fit for sure you're overpaying or they're underperforming, either way, you're overpaying.” “Even if you hire based off of experience, you still have to train that person. That does not forego the training.” “If people are only loyal to a dollar, then yeah, you're at risk of losing those people pretty easily.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: If they're not the right culture fit for sure you're overpaying or they're underperforming or either way you're overpaying.  [00:00:06] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:45] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, and Sarah Hull, co owner and COO of DoorGrow. [00:01:06] Now let's get Into the show.  [00:01:08] All right. What are we talking about today, Sarah?  [00:01:11] Sarah: I wanted to talk about this thing that keeps coming up and I've seen it two times in the last week is hiring on experience.  [00:01:21] Jason: Oh. [00:01:22] Sarah: Everyone goes, "Oh yeah, I would love somebody who's experienced and they already know the industry and they already know my systems and they know how to do things. And that would be fantastic." [00:01:32] Jason: People listening are going to go, "well, yeah, of course you want people with experience. It would be dumb to have people with zero experience, right?"  [00:01:38] Sarah: Wrong!  [00:01:39] Jason: Okay. Okay. So let's explain this. What are you talking about? [00:01:43] Sarah: All right, so the first thing that I'm going to say, as soon as I say it, it'll click right? If we are lucky to hire someone who's already familiar with the industry, who's working in the industry. Maybe they understand some of your tools, your software, perhaps some of your processes. You're narrowing your candidate pool to such a tiny little minutiae of a candidate pool. How many people do you think there are that have experience in property management that are now in the job market?. Right? Like, "Oh, I'm only going to hire somebody if they have experience in property management, or I'm only going to hire somebody if they understand how to use Appfolio." All right. So we went from here to here, tiny little segment of the market. [00:02:33] The other thing I'll say about this is if you find someone who has experience in the property management industry, and perhaps even in your software and your processes. Why is it that they're looking for a job? If they were so great, would someone not have snatched them up already?  [00:02:49] Jason: What if they get them to come from another company? [00:02:52] Like they convinced them? [00:02:53] Sarah: Let's talk about that. I'm glad you brought that up. I'm so glad. It was like this morning, we were having a conversation and I had mentioned this to one of our clients who's currently trying to hire people based off of experience. So here's the other problem, and we've seen this a couple of times, businesses stealing other businesses' team members and employees. There's one case that I'm thinking of in particular that kind of getting a little nasty. The two competitors are trying to take what they can, clients, team members, whatever they can, market share. They're just trying to take anything that they can from the other one. And one of them snatched the operator, which is really. [00:03:33] Not a good person to lose in your business.  [00:03:36] Jason: Yeah. No.  [00:03:36] Sarah: Why was that able to happen though? She had experience, right? So the new company is like, "Oh, this is perfect. She understands property management. She's got experience. She knows how to do this." [00:03:46] Jason: I mean, most entrepreneurs would think it's just about money because entrepreneurs always look through the lens of money. So they'll think, "well, she probably just got a better offer."  [00:03:54] Sarah: And in this case, I bet she did.  [00:03:56] Jason: Okay.  [00:03:56] Sarah: And the problem that we're overlooking here is we're skipping the most important part, which is looking to see if they're a culture fit. [00:04:06] And then the second most important part is looking to see, are they the right personality fit for the role. And then and only then do we want to look at their skill set and experience and do they have the intelligence level to be able to learn that particular task.  [00:04:18] Jason: Right? This is one of our frameworks, the three fits, culture fit, skill fit, personality fit, and culture fit, most important. [00:04:26] So, yeah, I agree. If people are not the right culture fit, then by default, you're overpaying for your team members, period. Because either they're underperforming because they don't really believe in your business or buy in. So their secret goal really is just to get paid as much as possible and probably do as little work as possible would be their ideal, right? [00:04:48] And so that's if they're not a culture fit. If they're a culture fit, they buy into the vision, they believe in you, they're excited to work for you. They want to have an impact. They have a motive besides just getting paid. And so, yeah, they're not a culture fit, it's guaranteed you're overpaying for that team member. [00:05:03] Because either they're crappy or you're having to like compensate them a bunch of money in order to keep them on board at your business because they really don't enjoy being there. So then you end up overpaying in order to keep them. And if people are only loyal to a dollar, then yeah, you're at risk of losing those people pretty easily. [00:05:22] Sarah: Absolutely. And that is why this particular operator was able to be swayed. So if you've got people who are a culture fit, if you've got people who really believe in the company, in you as the business owner, in the vision and the mission, where you are wanting to go and what you are wanting to build, if people are truly bought in and on board with that, that makes all the difference in everything that they do. [00:05:52] So can you hire somebody with experience who understands how to use Buildium or Propertyware or your phone system, whatever it is, and your ticket system? Yeah. And they can come in and they can do the job and it would be a night and day difference If you had somebody who truly believed in your company and you had to just train them to do those things and then they were able to do that, they're going to outperform the person who only has the experience every day of the week. [00:06:22] Jason: Okay. So can you share an example? Because you, you mentioned some clients were having issues with this. So like, let's tie this in with maybe a story.  [00:06:31] Sarah: Yeah. So it was just last week I was talking with Andrew and he had recently hired a couple of team members. I think he hired a BDM and an admin and there was maybe someone for maintenance. [00:06:43] I don't remember who the third one was. So he had recently hired these people. Already he's looking to replace them because either they're not working out or they're moving on. So his BDM, she is a real estate agent as well. And she's like, "Oh, well, I'm just actually going to go focus on real estate. I don't think I'm going to do all of this." [00:07:02] And it's been under maybe two months, maybe three months. So not a very long time. And he had mentioned to me, "yeah, so I've got this one person in mind and their experience." And as soon as he said experience, I went, "uh oh, okay. He's hiring the wrong way. He's hiring completely the wrong way." [00:07:20] So I had asked him, I said, "all right, so just out of curiosity, when you're talking with people, when you're looking at resumes and your screening candidates, what are the things that you're looking at? Like, what do you look at first?" And he's like, "well, I look to see, do they have experience in the industry? [00:07:35] And specifically, do they already know how to use my tools?"  [00:07:37] Jason: Yeah. So that's first. Yeah. That's a big red flag. And a lot of people listening might not get that, but that's a red flag.  [00:07:43] Sarah: Huge.  [00:07:44] Jason: Okay.  [00:07:44] Sarah: So aside from the fact that, like I said, your Canada pool is so tiny. I mean, if there is a person I would love to meet you, who, when you were in, you know, kindergarten and elementary who said, "Oh! When I grew up, I want to be a property manager. When I grew up, I want to be a leasing agent for a property management company. I would love to do that. That's my dream job."  [00:08:06] Jason: Right?  [00:08:07] Sarah: Who? That doesn't happen. Right? So people kind of work their way into property management, but it's not the dream that you typically have when you're a child trying to choose your career path. [00:08:20] Jason: Yeah. And that's because the industry as a whole has an awareness problem. There's not a lot of people aware of property management and there's plenty of roles in property management that different personality types would enjoy doing or would thrive in. But people are not thinking of the industry. [00:08:36] And so, yeah, looking for people with experience, I think would be really limiting,  [00:08:40] Sarah: yes, very challenging. So you need to find somebody who has experience in the industry that already will be hard. And then, even if they have experience in the industry, then you're going to say, "Oh, and they need to have experience with my specific tools and software that I use." [00:08:57] That becomes harder.  [00:08:58] Jason: Right. [00:08:59] Sarah: So I had said to him, I said, "well, all right, I have experience as a leasing agent. Would you hire me?" Because I might know how to do leasing. I do. I do know how to do leasing, right? But I know how to do leasing my way because when I was running my company, I knew how I did leasing. [00:09:17] But that doesn't mean I know how to do leasing your way. So even if you hire based off of experience, you still have to train that person. That does not forego the training. And a lot of times I think this is what happens is people go, "Oh, I would love to make my life easier and hire somebody, and then maybe I don't have to spend a whole lot of time training them on a tool or a system or how we do things because they already know how to do it." Even if they know the tool, they still don't know your processes. They don't know your way of doing things. So you will still have to train them. Now, it is possible that the training is easier if you don't have to explain how to use the tool, if they already know how to do it. [00:10:04] use it and they're familiar with it. Yes, that part of training becomes easier. It does not mean though that training will not still be a one to three month process, experience or not.  [00:10:17] Jason: Right. So, yeah, so you're saying a lot of people will try and hire somebody based on experience because they're trying to avoid having to take the time to train somebody. [00:10:27] Sarah: You can hire me. I can come into your business. And I can screw it up just as well as somebody who doesn't know what they're doing can. Why? Because even if I know how to use that tool, I know how to do it the way that I did it. I don't know how to do it the way that you do it yet. [00:10:45] I don't know your processes. I only know how I did leasing, and how I did leasing might be very different than how you do leasing. I know how I did sales, but that might be very different from how you do sales. I know how I onboarded clients, but that might be very different. I might do your leasing and you would go, "Sarah, what the hell? Why did this happen?" [00:11:09] "Well, I don't know. That's just how I used to do it." So if you hire someone who has the experience and has the knowledge, you still have to train them.  [00:11:18] Jason: Yeah.  [00:11:18] Sarah: And training is the most important thing that you can do when hiring. If you hire anybody and you completely forget or just choose not to train them. [00:11:30] It is going to be a train wreck.  [00:11:32] Jason: I think a lot of times as entrepreneurs we're in the mode of like doing things quickly and we're impatient. And so we get lazy sometimes when it comes to onboarding team members. We're like, "yeah, just, here you go. We throw them to the wolves." [00:11:45] Sarah: Baptism by fire. Yeah, figure it out. [00:11:47] Jason: Yeah. And lazy onboarding is not, a great strategy, right? It's going to take work regardless of the person that you bring on. And there's advantages when they don't have the skill or the experience in that you can make sure that they're doing it the way that you value and the way that you like. [00:12:05] So there can be a benefit.  [00:12:07] I think for sure if they're not the right culture fit for sure you're overpaying or they're underperforming or either way you're overpaying. If they're not the right personality fit for that particular role you'll just constantly be frustrated and training them and trying to onboard them will just be a demoralizing experience for you because it's impossible. [00:12:26] Like you'll be trying so hard to get them up to speed. And I think this is where people have experienced this and they're like, "well, I just need to go find someone with experience." But the real problem is they're not the right personality to do the job well. If somebody is the right personality, they would naturally be good at it. [00:12:41] They would be inclined towards doing it. You wouldn't have to motivate them or inspire them to do it. They would want to because they love doing it. It's aligned with who they are. And otherwise there's always going to be some serious friction. Culture and personality are off, there's going to be lots of friction. [00:12:57] And then even related to skill fit, if they're not intelligent enough to do the job, because some jobs require a little bit more Intelligence, right? You know, like the best team members are usually the best at problem solving. That's an intelligence challenge. You can give them all the skill, like here's the processes, et cetera. [00:13:15] But if they can't problem solve because they're an idiot, like then it becomes a real problem because you have to then do all the thinking. You need intelligent people. And so that's part of the skill fit. So you need all three. What's interesting about this. And we've talked about the three fits before on the podcast is you can't create culture, personality, or skill and intelligence. [00:13:37] Like you can't really create those. You have to go find it. You have to find somebody that has all three and just finding somebody that has one of the three is not going to be a fit. They have to be all three, or they can't be in your business. Or they're just going to be screwing things up and there's going to be so much friction so much waste. You're going to be spending way too much money. You're going to be spending way too much time trying to onboard them and it's going to be a mess. [00:13:59] Sarah: I agree.  [00:13:59] Jason: Cool So, in seeing these clients and people dealing with hiring, how do we solve that? How do we solve  [00:14:05] Sarah: this?  [00:14:05] You have to take the hiring process and flip it backwards. So the first thing you have to do is you have to determine if they're a culture fit for your business. But in order for that to happen, you have to know what your culture is and it has to be defined, which is why, and this is where people fight me, is when they want to implement DoorGrow hiring, they're like, "I desperately need to hire somebody. I need somebody like, please help me with hiring." Right.  [00:14:29] "Send me your cultural documents." [00:14:32] " Oh, I don't have those." [00:14:33] Sarah: "Then I can't help you find a good hire. I can't do it because it's Russian roulette." So if you don't have your culture defined, meaning I need your company core values. I need a decision making guide. [00:14:47] I need a client centric mission statement. I need your personal why, and I need your business why. Without those things, I cannot help you find someone who's going to be great because I will never know, nor will you, are they a good culture fit? If you don't even know what your culture is, how are you going to figure out if they match that? [00:15:06] Jason: So what you're saying is people need a better system. They need a hiring system. And most don't really have a good system. I guess everybody has a hiring system, it's just usually a pretty crappy one. Building intentionally a really intelligently designed hiring system, which is what we do with DoorGrow hiring is a game changer for a business because hiring is one of the biggest challenges I've seen even in multimillion dollar companies with friends. And this is something we've gotten really well dialed in a DoorGrow, but this is a constant challenge for most businesses. And until they figure it out... I was talking with one of our clients yesterday ,and he added like 114 doors in like the last month or so. And so he's just like, his business is growing crazily. [00:15:49] And he's this amazing client because he does everything we tell him to do. He's got an operator. Now they're using DoorGrow OS, like they're crushing it. And I was talking with him and his big challenge right now is maintenance technicians. He had four, he lost two. So he's now trying to hire and In having a conversation with him, I had to shift his mindset that he's no longer right now, a property management company. [00:16:14] That's the business he thinks he's in. And because he thinks he's a property management company, he doesn't want to focus as much on the hiring piece. That's not the business that he's in, but I had to help him see right now, the business that he's in, is in order to scale, this is his biggest constraint is he's going to consistently need to be bringing in more maintenance techs into his business. [00:16:36] And so I said to him, I said, "your business for right now, until you get this solved, your business is not a property management company. Your business is a maintenance technician talent acquisition company. That's the business you're in." And until he accepts that he can't solve this problem. And so most businesses, this is a big constraint. [00:16:55] And for him right now, it's the constraint. And once he gets this solved, once he gets this dialed in. So that he becomes good at hiring and onboarding and getting up to speed with maintenance technicians. And he was planning on just trying to replace the two. In coaching, and we were talking about, you need to bring on probably four. [00:17:13] You need at least four in order to find one, maybe two that are going to be good and give them a working interview where you have them do some work to see if they can perform. And this means he needs an engine where he's consistently every month bringing in a good amount of maintenance technicians and has a system for doing this. [00:17:31] And so. Businesses need if you're wanting to scale and grow quickly, you have to have systems in place. And one of the key ones is a really solid hiring system that allows you to get culture, personality, and skill. And that's what we've developed with DoorGrow hiring and DoorGrow ATS, our applicant tracking system. [00:17:49] And we talked about optimizing the ATS just for those particular candidates because they don't want to go through a more lengthy application process like we do with some candidates, you know, these maintenance techs and then vetting them through our AI assessments and stuff like this afterwards to assess them for problem solving because that's his biggest challenge. [00:18:06] He says, "my best maintenance techs are the problem solvers." I'm like, "that's an intelligence problem." So we have to figure out a way without doing illegal things, you know, or that you're not supposed to do you have to figure out a way to assess or figure out that they're intelligent. [00:18:21] And one way would be a working interview. Another way would be, you know, the AI assessment tool that can assess cognitive ability, you know, stuff like this. And that would come after he does a culture interview with them first. He was looking for skill and that's the challenge. [00:18:35] So it was good. Super common. Everybody always goes, Oh, I need skill. I need experience.  [00:18:41] Yes, and you do want people that have some experience would be great, but having people that have the intelligence level to absorb information quickly and to learn and the problem solve is way better than having somebody that has a ton of experience, but is terrible at adapting and is dumb. [00:18:59] Any day of the week. And so they will get up to speed and supersede somebody with a decade of experience if they're slow and not able to learn anytime. So, all right. This is a good topic. Anything else we should say about this?  [00:19:14] Sarah: That's what I got.  [00:19:14] Jason: All right, cool. Hopefully this was helpful for those of you listening. [00:19:17] If you're struggling with hiring. A lot of you have made these mistakes, right? You've hired, you've had people churn out. You're like, "it's hard to find good people." These are the excuses we hear from people that have a crappy hiring system. "There's no good people out there. It's tough in my market. We can't find good people. Millennials don't want to work," you know, but whatever, right? "I just pay people, why won't they just do what I f*cking tell them to do?" You know, whatever it might be. So, that's just a sign that you have a bad hiring system or that you just have terrible culture or you have bad onboarding. [00:19:50] Sarah: Or no culture.  [00:19:51] Jason: No culture to find. No culture. Yeah. And so, we need to get these things cleaned up in your business or your business is constantly going to be a prison for you. It's going to be really hard until you get a really good team and you have really good culture in your business defined, business is hard. [00:20:07] And this is where I see a lot of people get stuck between two to 400 units where they have an entire team and they're the most frustrated and usually the least profitable per unit they've ever been because it's the team and they can't see it. They're like, "I have a good team." You have a team that are willing to take your money, but are they a great team? [00:20:25] Super easy way to know... if you have an entire team and you've got two to 400 units or more, and you have been unable to scale it past 600 doors for the last three to five years, you've been kind of stuck there and you are still wearing hats that you do not want to be wearing. [00:20:43] And you're sometimes asking, "why won't my team think for themselves?" You're the problem. This is the problem. You are showing up as the wrong person in the business and you have bad culture and a bad hiring system. And if you want to get that solved, reach out to us at DoorGrow. This is very simple to solve. [00:21:00] It's not too difficult. And we can probably get most of that mess cleaned up in like a single quarter, like 90 days. So reach out to us. We'd love to help you out. You can check us out at DoorGrow.com. And if you're wanting more, if you stumble across this, maybe on YouTube or somewhere else, make sure to like, and subscribe and join our free Facebook community DoorGrowclub.Com. You can get to it by going to DoorGrowclub.Com. And until next time to our mutual growth by everyone. [00:21:26] 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!  [00:21:52] 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.

Maintenance is often the most challenging area in a property management business. What if you could automate your maintenance workflow with an in-house, expert AI maintenance coordinator? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with David from Vendoroo (formally Tulu) to talk about AI maintenance coordination and how it could revolutionize the property management industry. You'll Learn [05:25] The AI Revolution [10:51] What can AI Maintenance Coordination Do? [20:58] How Vendoroo Handles Work Orders [27:56] Why You Should Have in-House Maintenance [37:30] Where do Humans Step in? [41:37] Handling Worst-Case Scenarios Tweetables “Property management is a very human business. It's a very relationship-driven business.” “Is it scalable? Is it burning you out? Is it pulling you away from other duties that you need to be? Are you spreading yourself too thin? Great questions to ask if you have growth objectives.” “Residents don't want to talk to a computer. They want to feel that they have a connection to their property manager.” “The first offense creates a little crack between the relationship. The second one, you're losing trust with your owner.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] David: Even people who had in house maintenance coordinators or VAs, good ones, always still feel that they needed to second check all the work. And now when they're seeing the justification and they're seeing the education behind it, they get this sense of like, I can let go. You know why? Because this system is doing maintenance exactly the way that I'm asking it to do maintenance. And they feel that now they're actually back in control.  [00:00:24] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Property Managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high, trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:01:05] 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. [00:01:25] And now let's get into the show. All right. So today I'm hanging out with David Normand and Reza Keshavarzi. Did I say your last name right?  [00:01:36] David: We always say it sounds like the great sauce that you would put on a steak. Keshavari. So delicious. [00:01:41] Jason: All right.  [00:01:41] David: Yes. Cool.  [00:01:43] Jason: So David and Reza are from a company called Tulu, which we'll be getting into, which I think are probably revolutionizing maintenance related to AI and our topic today, we're going to be talking about AI and maintenance coordination, maybe getting into some of the current maintenance challenges, what AI could help with, what should be automated, what shouldn't be automated because I think that's a very important thing to cover and how to turn maintenance into a profit center. Before we get into that, why don't we get into some background? So David, why don't you give us the journey? How did you two get into this? How did you event like, how did you start your journey in the property management space? [00:02:24] David: Yeah, great. It's crazy to think about it. It just all started probably about 15 years ago. Like many of you, started a property management company with a buddy of mine. I remember we started off with 80 doors. Got our 1st client, was excited. He left his job at Verizon. I was actually in the banking industry, bidding on subprime auto loans and the 2008 crash happened. And so we all knew what happened after that. And so anyway we actually had some tremendous success and in just over four years we added over 600 doors. Which was a phenomenal growth in our market. And we had a lot of people going, "Hey, what's your secret sauce? what are you guys doing?" Right. And the reality was, is that we just cared, right? We cared harder. We had fiduciary duty. And all of these owners were leaving their other property managers and saying, "Hey, Maybe these guys have it figured out," and we were getting conversions and our close rate was like 80%. [00:03:13] It was really crazy, but something happened and just like many of us, owners started getting frustrated feeling like, the magic was wearing off because at the end of the day, no matter how hard we worked. Those owner statements and those maintenance invoices at the end of the month, I realized were the main source of friction between those long lasting relationships and the same reason why somebody left that previous property manager to come over for the hope of more transparency and maintenance was the same issue that we ran into. [00:03:41] Right. So that led me on this journey of trying to figure out, how do we standardize our fiduciary duty to owners when it comes to maintenance and help them bring transparency and education and understanding to what I feel is really the cornerstone foundation of what a great relationship is? Because no, the building can be full, the mortgage can be paid, but those maintenance bills still come in and there's still the questions.  [00:04:06] "Why does this cost this much? So I had some great opportunities to work went on with Fannie Mae helped them manage their rental portfolio, but still in the back of my head, wanted to try to solve this issue. And all these years later, I get a phone call from somebody that said, "Hey, you need to meet this guy, Reza. He's in the HOA industry. And he's seen a similar issue with lack of transparency. And I think that you guys are trying to solve the same issue. Hey, why don't you meet up?" And I'll, and I'll preface this. This was the fourth introduction to a guy in a fourth type of tech or a company that we try to part with. [00:04:40] And it just shows you the journey of an entrepreneur. Like you never know when that right connection that's going to align with your passions, resources, and understanding happens. And I actually had three other techs that didn't work out before. And I didn't want to bring them to market. [00:04:52] Right. So that's our story. We got introduced to each other and the synergies have been fantastic. And I'm really excited to talk about what we're doing here in the space. So it's been a crazy journey. It's been exciting. Maybe one day I'll write a book down the road about all the things not to do. [00:05:04] Jason: I think every entrepreneur that has a little bit of success could write that book. I'm sure. So cool. David, where do you think we should start? Like there's a revolution right now, this AI revolution, like it's AI everywhere. And and it's moving fast.  [00:05:21] David: Yes.  [00:05:21] Jason: Like really fast. [00:05:22] And it's a bit crazy. And. Everything's changing. There's a million software tools and companies coming out. Maybe AI is making all of them. I have no idea, but like...  [00:05:31] David: 85 percent of all content written online is written by AI these days. So yeah, definitely.  [00:05:35] Jason: Right. There's the fake internet theory that like the majority of the traffic and communication and comments on the internet isn't even real. So it's like we're walking around this fake ghost town online. And we're consuming content and we're like none the wiser in a lot of instances. So my quick take, for those listening, as we're going through this AI revolution, it's exciting. There's a lot of change happening. [00:05:57] We don't want to be left behind. We want to make sure we're paying attention to what's new, what we can use. Everybody's probably used chat GPT once or twice or keeps hearing about it from other people. "They've got a GPT, that thing that you use." Yeah. I used it this morning, right? Like I was trying to figure out something in my Chevy Tahoe. [00:06:15] And I was like, "how do I do this thing in my Tahoe? Like, can you just tell me?" And it can collapse time, but sometimes it's not useful. I think my take on this is that human interaction is going to be a premium. It's going to be at a premium. It's going to be something that really sets people apart because we're moving away from humanity to some degree by leveraging all this tech and AI and all these tools and property management is a very human business. [00:06:43] It's a very relationship driven business. And and I think we'll get into this today. We want to be careful of using technology where we shouldn't or trying to trick people. "Well, look, I'm pretending like it's me, but it's AI. Haha. I tricked you." And what's funny is there's little indicators, like, and we know that this stuff's being used in a lot of different ways, like governments are using this now, like, we don't even know what's real on the news or what's like deep fakes or AI, like they're showing people's like doing interviews and people are zooming in and noticing their rings are disappearing and like weird stuff, right? [00:07:20] David: Yeah.  [00:07:20] Jason: And stuff's going viral on like the internet. And so we're living in this world where we're super skeptical and we wonder if anything's real.  [00:07:28] David: Yeah.  [00:07:29] Jason: Sometimes people are even asking, like, is this AI on a phone call?  [00:07:33] David: Yeah, well, you can't tell the difference now. I'll tell you, our tech team and AI guys they actually played around with me a little bit and they actually use my voice and had me doing work orders and no one could tell it was them. [00:07:44] Not me speaking and giving triage and doing that type of stuff. And I actually I tested it with my wife and I sent her a message over it and she didn't even blink an eye. Didn't even blink an eye. It was crazy. It was that first like aha moment that really when we talk about our fiduciary duty to our clients and ourselves about the power of this and where it's going, right. [00:08:01] And to that point. So when it comes to AI, I think people need to understand that really, the way that we look at chat GBT to me is just the new Google, right? It's Google on steroids. Okay. And so, yeah, for sure. Do we use some chat GBT to understand like, how to write the perfect sentence structure? For sure. [00:08:18] But the cool part about this, Jason, is that what we're doing is: how do we use these models in this education that teach it about fiduciary duty to your owners? That's what gets me excited, right? That's what gets me excited to understand and to think intelligently and to think with thoughtfulness to the owner's pocketbooks when it's considering a decision of how to dispatch for maintenance, right? [00:08:42] Like, isn't that what we're all looking for? That we need a system that every work order that comes in that it goes to a expert maintenance coordinator that we know what that costs. I'm talking expert maintenance coordinator, a person's been in this job for 15 to 20 years that you can send a work order to and they don't make an error. [00:09:00] They're intelligent. They're able to educate, they're able to be client facing. Like there's a real skill set there if you put that on a CV for somebody, right? But that's not what this industry is filled with. Actually, this industry is filled with individuals who are under pressure to find the most affordable maintenance solutions and the most affordable ways to try to find people to run those maintenance solutions. We're allocating the least amount of resources to handle what I consider the highest probability of owner dissatisfaction in the property management relationship with the owner, right? So I have a VA who's 2000 miles away that's responsible for spending a thousand dollars in my owner's money. [00:09:38] And there's all types of potential errors and things that are happening as a result of that. So the way that we look at AI and actually in our business, we just use the word smart a lot. And we try to use that word, that intelligent instead of artificial. Because you know what? There is a lot of human input that has gone into this to teach it how to be smart and to teach it how to consider the fiduciary duty. [00:09:59] So at the end of the day, I would encourage all the listeners here that are going on this journey with us today to understand, not to be skeptical, how to maximize its value, right? And that's really what we're going to be focusing on today and to show you how we're maximizing its value to help us achieve what we call our dream outcome when handling maintenance. [00:10:18] Our dream outcome is as a property manager, I'm starting a company or I'm looking to grow, or I'm hitting those next growth objectives, or I'm looking for ways to be more profitable. What is my dream outcome? And that all circles around having an expert maintenance coordination in my office that is reducing trips costs and considering the fiduciary duty to my clients. [00:10:40] Right? So that's what we'll talk about here today and how we're using AI to achieve that.  [00:10:43] Jason: Got it. Well, let's get into it. So what can AI do and what can't AI do? Like, well, specifically what can Tulu do and what can't Tulu do?  [00:10:54] Where's the line drawn?  [00:10:55] David: Yeah, that's a great question. [00:10:56] So first of all, I always tell everybody this out of the beginning: we are not an outsourced maintenance coordination solution. We're not an outsourced company. Yeah. We are not a vendor. Okay. We're not bringing vendors to your marketplace. Okay. Tulu is your expert in house maintenance coordinator. [00:11:13] So if you're thinking of "I'm hiring a maintenance coordinator" or "I'm building a property management and I need a maintenance coordinator," you now have that. That's that ability to add this onto your software, your system. It's a simple plug and play. You get to remain inside of your portal, you don't have to leave it. [00:11:30] There's not another new portal, all updates, all things are pushing to Buildium and we're pushing to Appfolio. That was a big part of it. There's no new app for the vendors. There's no new app for the clients because we know what's important for them to live inside of there. So what can it do? Well, first of all, it's a leader. [00:11:43] Okay. And being a leader means that it is going to use the information that we capture about your company to lead your VAs, to make expert triage decisions that always consider your fiduciary duty to the owner. So let's give an example right here to break that down. Right. Say a hot water tank comes in. [00:12:03] Okay. Hot water tank's leaking. Okay. First thing it's going to want to understand is what time of the day is it and where is the hot water tank leaking from?  [00:12:09] Jason: Okay.  [00:12:10] David: And then it's going to determine based upon the location of the hot water tank, the type of the hot water tank, which type of vendor at which time is the right one to send out. That is the most cost effective that has the greatest probability of resolving that issue for the best price and meets the satisfaction of the resident. Right. Now that was a mouthful right there. Okay. And if you think about all of the potential errors and data points and things that are involved, the smart maintenance coordinator considers all those and it brings out a triage and it tells the VA "here's the pieces that you're missing. Here's the information that I need. And here's what my suggestion is for you to move forward." So it's amazing at being a leader. And then it's amazing at being an expert about creating communications for the resident and to the vendor to direct them. And then it's also an educator and at the bottom of every work order. [00:12:58] And I hope to be able to show some people it's really cool. We don't believe in just telling people what to do. We should educate them and tell them why they're doing what they're doing. Right. So imagine if you had the best expert maintenance coordinator leaning over the shoulder of every VA that you have standing there and telling them every work order, every time, here's what to do, here's how to do it, and here's why you're doing it. Right. And as a result, we're finding that VAs that come over that are dedicated to the account in two weeks, they're educated. And in six weeks, the majority of them are executing as a high level maintenance expert within six weeks. Of after sitting down and learning the training system, because just as much as it's leading, it's also training and educating. [00:13:38] That is a wow moment for somebody who's been in the space, who's been here for 15 years, managing hundreds and hundreds of people for government entities and stuff and understanding the amount of time and effort and training that goes into somebody. And then all of a sudden they come and they tell you, "Hey, by the way, I got a new job. Thank you for all the training. I'm going to go make $30,000 somewhere else," right? How many times has this happened to me? Hundreds of times, right? And so that's a big part of what we're solving here.  [00:14:02] Jason: So in order to be effective and operate as an expert maintenance coordinator so that your VAs that don't have this knowledge can function as if they have this knowledge, then this has to be programmed, right? Maybe it'd be helpful for, the viewers or listeners of this podcast to find out what are all the inputs that go into this? What did they have to provide and what do you guys provide, so this AI, they can trust it? [00:14:29] David: Yeah. Yeah. Great question, Jason. So first of all, I want to put it on point two to make an emphasis that in this journey that we're all learning about these smart technologies and AI, there's still a big part of human component, right? [00:14:38] And it's like when you chat, when you write something in chat GBT, like you just don't send it without looking at it. Right. You're reviewing it and making sure it's still saying that you want it to say. Right. So everybody rest assured this thing is not, living on its own and there's checks and balances. [00:14:51] But the onboarding on average takes 30 to 45 minutes. Okay. And one of the things that we did is number one is, when it comes to triaging and best practices, there's literally probably about 500,000 work orders of data points that it's considering. And it's an expert in that thing that's saying, "Hey, listen, this is how you should handle every work order that comes in because I've seen this, 20,000 times, and this is the best outcome." [00:15:18] Right. But then what it does is it allows the property manager to talk in natural language. Like you want to talk like a robot. We don't have to write weird code. Just say things. "Hey the owner of one, two, three main street really loves Tom." Tom works on his properties. Comes in 123 main street comes up. It understands what Tom's capabilities are. And it says, "please use Tom to use this." The owner prefers that Tom works on his properties. They have a great relationship. Cool. And so those little tidbits for example, if the heat goes out in unit number one, understand that access has to be in unit number two basement to the HVAC unit, right? [00:15:52] So that's good to know, but why is that important to know? Because most VAs would make a mistake. They say there's no heat. They don't check property notes. They send out the plumber. Plumber is knocking on the door at unit number one. Person says, I don't know where the HVAC unit is. Tenant next door is not home. [00:16:06] Now you just charge your owner for 250 emergency call to go out. The resident still doesn't have heat. They think that you're unorganized. It shows you're unorganized on your owner statement because there's two invoices. "Oh, no, wait, you want to cover that? You're unorganized." So you just ate 250 that you're already not marking up on maintenance and you do that 10 times a month. [00:16:25] Okay. And that's what's going on.  [00:16:27] Jason: And this is where then the owner's like, "I might as well just do it myself because I know everything and it's in my head." So how did they get all of that out of their head? All the little things they know about each property, each multi unit property, what's in the basements, what's..? [00:16:40] David: We have a cool onboarding process. And again, most times about 30-45 minutes, they sit in, it's called building your AI co pilot. Actually, a lot of people dig it. It's cool. It's a cool process. And we will be first, we go into your system and we're able to pull out all your work order data and it organizes all your vendors, and we can tell who all your vendors are and what you're doing based upon the work order types. [00:16:59] We can tell if you're a preferred guy is here. Number one guy is, "Hey. This guy always seems to be working on these properties." So there's a lot of information that we gather. And then you just come in and you're like, "yeah, he's my primary. He's my secondary. Oh, here's this little information about this property." [00:17:13] So you really don't have to get like, like crazy. Like, like, the mailbox is located, like. You can add that stuff later, but in the beginning, it's just like, what are those important rules? I remember this one that really jumped out at me as impactful, a classic mistake, this owner had a lady living in the apartment for 35 years. [00:17:31] Okay, and she's getting old and one of the rules is that no matter what maintenance ticket comes in, "don't ask her to triage. Don't ask her. It's the tenant's responsibility. I love this person. Please send her out and just take care of her. Right?" What a great rule to put into your system that shows the owner that when that work order comes in, He's not getting a call from, and I forget what her name is. [00:17:51] And like, they're asking me to change my light bulbs again. And then he's like, I told you twice not to do this. And next thing he's looking for another property manager. And I always love that example of that rule. So that's what you're looking as far as the information you're giving us takes about 30 to 45 minutes. [00:18:03] For people who have anywhere between, 150 to 350 properties. If you start having, 500, 600, a thousand, I would definitely allocate up to two hours and onboarding for sure.  [00:18:13] Jason: Okay. That's really fast when it comes to rolling out a new technology. Yeah. It's ridiculously fast.  [00:18:19] David: Yeah. [00:18:19] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Extremely quick. So basically you have all this learning and understanding that's going into who your preferred vendors are. We know how to handle the maintenance work orders. There's no like integration that has to happen. And so as this triage is coming through, you're getting this expert level triage and you can add things down the road. [00:18:38] You can add it, but how to handle the work orders as we say, there's really nothing new in maintenance. What's new is: "what's the NT for the property? Are there any special conditions that we need to know? Right? What are your residents' responsibilities and what are you responsible for?" Once you have those four questions answered, how to handle the hot water tank, at what time to hit on the hot water tank, how to, how to repair this door, how to do that. [00:19:02] Those true principles of maintenance are true for everybody, if that makes sense, right? So, so that's a big part of the value that you get that You're hiring an expert maintenance coordinator. If you were to hire him, you wouldn't necessarily be telling him. "Hey, this is how you replace a doorknob." [00:19:18] He should already know that when you hired him. Right. So think of like it that way when you're considering us as a technology.  [00:19:24] Jason: So, a human maintenance coordinator, the challenge would be, there's no way they can remember every detail about every property, right?  [00:19:32] David: Yeah,  [00:19:32] Jason: it's not. Which means they would have to keep notes. [00:19:35] Let's say they've already got a decent amount of notes somewhere. Might be in the property management software, maybe they've got their own, I don't know, database of something. Is there the ability to pull in all that information?  [00:19:46] David: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. To grab those notes out. A lot of people have the ability to export it. [00:19:51] They have a good note file or something like that. We get those, we take that information and it can just be pushed up into the system for sure. So yeah, the onboarding it, it can be, again, some people come in and say, "all I have is single family houses." Everything's pretty straightforward. [00:20:03] Other people send over an Excel list. "Here's my property notes at the property levels" and upload them. So that's the cool part where. You ingest into the system. There's not a lot of data, manual input. It's reading it and assigning it. And that's where we're using technology to help even improve the onboarding process that you talked about, right? [00:20:19] You think about people wear t shirts, like, I survived the Yardi onboarding process, right? Like, technology has come a long way to help improve that process, and that was a big part that we focused on.  [00:20:28] Jason: Yeah, that's wild. So once you've got them onboarded and they're in your system, the AI knows pretty much everything about the property, but maybe it doesn't, maybe there's some things it doesn't know. [00:20:41] And so work order comes up. You're working on something and it's still just in the property manager's head or it's still in the business owner's head or maybe they don't even know yet, but it runs there. It runs into an issue. It's like it has a question maybe, or it doesn't. It needs to know some more stuff. [00:20:57] I don't know. What happens in those scenarios? [00:21:00] David: Yeah, this is a great one. So, all right, so let's talk about the life cycle of a work order. Right. And let's everybody just understand that there still is a human component involved in this, right? Every property manager has a dedicated, we call them a remote team member, who's now this expert maintenance coordinator at the cost of a remote team member. [00:21:16] Now they're able to execute at a very high level. But there are going to be things that they're faced that they don't understand. So they have the ability to communicate with you one on one, or we also have this process internally that they have this ability to go, "I need a request from the expert in the loop" and the expert in the loop is you know, invoice review, complication that they're saying that the AI is not clear on them and it's asking for additional support. And so they can bump that up to individuals, myself, and there's other members of the team members that are big part of this and they can get expert level triage inside of there, to say, "Hey, listen, I'm facing with this vendor issue. They need 25 percent upfront. The job is only 500. I'm not understanding what to do here. The building is located and they're saying access is weird. They need to bring something in." There are complications that still involve human understanding. And so that expert in the loop solves that piece in there. [00:22:07] And also speaking of humans, we believe that residents and vendors still need to speak to a human. Okay. Super important. Okay. So the value that we have is that we're able to create expert level triage, According to their specifications and the training model and all the great things and the automation and the text messages that are written for them and the codes that are written for them the emails, all those things. [00:22:31] So, if we can automate at a very high level and free up our people to be able to provide support on the phone to the vendor on the field, or to actually talk to a resident, everybody knows this and I talk to everybody, guys, residents don't want to talk to a computer. They want to feel that they have a connection to their property manager and that when they call in, a lot of people have not even adapted technology for anybody who has, residents have been with them with a while and they're used to talking to Janet, they're used to talking to tell him inside and next thing you can say to them, "Oh, we have a new maintenance system. And by the way, you have to talk to the system." They're like, "okay. This is lame," right? Like, so that personal connection and we have a saying inside of the office that we keep your residents and your vendors within arm's length of you, right? It's communicating. They're using your property management name. [00:23:20] They're speaking on your behalf. This is an extension of your office. This is your maintenance coordinator. Don't think of this as a vendor. Don't think this is an outsourced maintenance solution that you're setting all your maintenance to some company that's sourcing vendors or bringing them in and doing every, this is your in house maintenance team. [00:23:38] So always consider that when you're thinking about Tulu, real people. In house maintenance coordinator just powered by AI enabled execute at a crazy high level.  [00:23:46] Jason: So, yeah. So how do tickets get into the maintenance system? Like how are they initiated? Do they still have to be answering their own phone calls? [00:23:56] Are they just putting it into their property manager software? And then Tulu is going to like start taking some action. What communication does Tulu facilitate or take over if we're going to be having still needing some humans to be in Tulu allows us to increase the amount of communication and care that we show. [00:24:13] Where do we draw the line? Like, where is Tulu stepping in and doing some communication and where do we need team members to be doing communication?  [00:24:21] David: Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So let's just go through the life cycle of a work order for everybody. I think that's what everyone really understands when they're all thinking about this. [00:24:28] Okay, let's give me a work order from start to finish. Right? So no change to your residents. No change to anybody. They log into their portal, Buildium, Appfolio, RentVine, whatever they're using. They submit a maintenance work order, that maintenance work order through their system is dispatched to the Tulu maintenance coordinator, expert maintenance coordinator. [00:24:46] All the magic is happening, all the triage, everything is taking place, and inside of the property management software, they're going to see. Work order.  [00:24:53] Jason: And is that dispatched through via email? API? Yep.  [00:24:56] David: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just through email? Yep. Set up as simple. You can set it up as a maintenance coordinator and as the maintenance coordinator is set up and the email comes in and it pings out and that creates the work order and starts to process through the, yeah. [00:25:08] Yep. Cool. And then the property manager will see that the work order has been it's in triage on the status of their system. Then it's assigned, then the vendor will be assigned there. And then from there, the updates, when it's scheduled that we call it the who, what, and the why, right? [00:25:25] What's going on, who's doing it and what's being done to progress this for. That's a note. You're constantly getting those notes. Now, the cool part about this, Jason. is behind the scenes. All of those text messages and phone calls and emails that we call the noise that are between the residents and the vendors and everybody are all being captured in a system behind the scenes. [00:25:45] Right. Super value there, right? If a resident is a little bit upset about something or you have some questions, "Hey guys, can you hand me the phone call this one to show me the text messages," right? Communications are big part. So we capture all those communications inside there at any time that the owner of the property manager wants to pull them. [00:26:00] That's great. Then the work order is completed. The completion, quick question. So  [00:26:05] Jason: all this communication between tenants and vendors, unless they're using some sort of magical system That the vendors have to be in and that the tenants are logged into. And it's like seeing all this, how does Tulu capture that? [00:26:18] How does it know that the vendor is communicating with the tenant or the tenant? Okay. So it would be any point.  [00:26:24] David: Yeah. Good point. Any point that the the tenant. Is communicating or the vendor or just communicate with two of those. So if the vendor happened to communicate directly with the tenant, it would not capture that part, right? [00:26:34] That's their phone to phone with that part, right? So it's when the resident or the tenant is communicating with the maintenance coordinator. And as we all know, tenants and vendors love to communicate by text message, right? That's their number one thing to do. So, it's really cool for vendors too, because as we know, a bunch of vendors, they hate. "I don't want to work in another app." Vendors can take pictures from their phone. They can upload estimates from their phone. The estimate comes in and it's actually turned into this really pretty estimate because we know vendors estimates are notorious for being on the back of a paper and hand scratched, right? [00:27:06] So it actually creates into a brand new Tulu estimate. And so your owners get transparency into pricing and labor. And it's standardized and everything looks clean. And so yeah, vendors love it because they're not lazy, but they're busy guys. And instead of going home and trying to do a whole bunch of paperwork, they can now just generate an estimate, take a picture and shoot it right through. [00:27:22] So, yeah.  [00:27:23] Jason: Because the challenge that there's a lot of communication involved. And so usually to decrease the amount of communication, they're trying to figure out how do we get the vendors to just talk to the tenants directly to collapse time? But if you have AI, then my guess is that Tulu will still just act like that middle person because the vendor can communicate with them, they can immediately text you, then Tulu texts the tenant, then it's just doing it real time. [00:27:45] You don't have to wait on a human being in your office to like make this communication happen. So you're like, "well, we're so slow. Let's just get them to talk to each other." The AI is making this happen. Is that accurate?  [00:27:56] David: Huge point right here is, and man you really hit off the nail on the head on this one point here. [00:28:01] The amount of people that we are seeing that they're using vendors to perform triage in this space is actually alarming. Okay. Alarming. All right. Vendors should not be performing our triage. They should not be the ones trying to figure out what is going on. They're not our client facing people. Maybe some guys are good. [00:28:20] your in-house guys, goods or whatever. The majority of people are using this, right? The beauty of the system is: Do we have enough information that is captured? From the resident, the property manager that considers the needs of the owner to formulate the correct direction to the vendor so that they can show up with the resources that they need to fix the job the right time or show up educated about what they're there to fix. [00:28:41] Jason: So let's talk about this real quick. Like vendors should not be doing triage and why not? Like, like what are the obvious ramifications here? Well, vendors, that's like asking a surgeon if you need surgery, right? That's how he makes his money.  [00:28:55] "That's the solution is surgery. We should chop that out, like, let's cut that thing out and I get paid thousands and thousands of dollars."  [00:29:02] David: Or how about this one, Jason, on an owner's report. I see a cost for so many times you see a cost for a maintenance guy, "unable to resolve expert needed." well, why? Because the maintenance vendor was sent out to do the triage. [00:29:15] That's not fiduciary duty to the owner. If we had the right information, we could have avoided that one trip. So we have some really cool case studies. I'd love to show people that out of like 260 work orders, we have one right here, a client that signed up with us. And so out of that thing here let's see. [00:29:31] They completed 194 work orders. 17 unnecessary trips were canceled. Wow. Okay. 17 unnecessary trips and 15 of those work orders had an immediate reduction in price because they said that the wrong resource was assigned to that. So think about that. 17 different numbers.  [00:29:48] Jason: So if that, if they have an in-house maintenance team, you're decreasing your your cost deploying these texts, going out and doing stupid work, like significantly. If you are using third party vendors, then there's always an expense. If you're sending anybody out, unless you're like, go do a bid, or something like this, but that's costing the vendor, which they're going to be more frustrated with you. [00:30:09] So you're freeing that up or they're charging you for it. "Oh, well, if I go out, I charge, right?" Yeah.  [00:30:15] David: I'll give you an example. We just saved owner of a pad split property who wanted to replace the refrigerator. The request came in and they asked for three estimates, okay, to replace the refrigerator. [00:30:28] Okay, the suggestion came back that basically said in a nutshell, summarize this, "why are you sending three different appliance vendors who are all going to charge a trip fee to go look at a refrigerator when a Home Depot program should be used and the cost of refrigerator should be 860? To factor all those costs in, it would have been about 1, 400. I don't understand why you're doing this. Please explain, right?" Talk about fiduciary duty to the owner.  [00:30:51] Jason: This is why owners get frustrated and they're like, "I might as well just do it myself." [00:30:55] David: " Because I knew better. I would go to Home Depot. Everyone knows to order a refrigerator from Home Depot, right? Unless there's special circumstances." And now imagine this, and this is where we're going with this, Jason. At the end of each month, these owner reports go out to all these owners, and owners sit down and they call up the property manager, and we always hear people talking about this at every conference. [00:31:14] "Oh, I don't want to answer that phone call. I know what this is about, right?" And the property manager is scrambling at the end of the month to call the maintenance coordinator, dig into work order notes and justify why did this cost this much? "Explain this to me," right? So we have this really cool report that's coming out that basically, including in the property owner, It would let you know that, Hey, you had six jobs that were able to send a handyman this month. [00:31:38] Here's what's going on. You had two emergencies, two replacements, little asterisks that said, "Hey, this trip fee was 120. Why? Well, it required two people because there was a toilet that was being replaced on the third floor so they requested an extra hour of labor to be able to bring that toilet up because it was too like..." intimate details so that your owners are feeling like they're getting this like this whole transparency, unbelievable transparency, this report, the property manager doesn't have to waste at the end of the month, which I used to send away two to three days at the beginning of each month, just to answer phone calls and questions.  [00:32:12] Jason: Right. Yeah. It's like "why did it cost us much? Why?" [00:32:14] Like they can just see it.  [00:32:16] David: Yeah. "Why didn't you send Tom?" "Well, I did send Tom to snake the drain because it was clogged in the master bathroom. We set his limit at an hour. He used a 17, 25 foot power snake. And we said, if you can't get this done within an hour, then we need to send Roto Rooter." "Oh, I get that. You really did try to save me money in the beginning. Yeah. And Roto Rooter found that 35 feet down the thing was a clogged diaper or something like that." That's what owners need to understand. And to break that down in every work order is a tremendous strain on property managers and our system in V2 that's coming very quickly. [00:32:52] I was actually working on this morning. Those owner reports will be generated then if every month that explain intimate details about the thought process. and the costs and any decisions behind breaking it down into category for every maintenance work order type for their owners. Huge value. Imagine going to a client, a new client, and you're presenting against somebody else and they say, "Hey, how do you handle maintenance?" [00:33:14] And you pull that report out and you put it down on the table.  [00:33:16] Jason: You're like, "like this is the level of detail. Nobody else is doing this." The maintenance coordinator get on the phone every time and saying, "let me walk you through all these charges and why they happened and what did." And like, how many people listen to this right now? [00:33:31] I'm like, I know you're listening to this going, "if I never had to do that again, that would be the best thing ever. Ever. Like I've never had to have that uncomfortable conversation with the owner." Like it's all in there. It's all there. Like it makes sense.  [00:33:43] David: "Here's why we are your property manager. And here's the value that I'm giving to you in the transparency to maintenance." [00:33:50] That's a huge burden. It's a significant pain point. And we know this Jason, the first offense creates a little crack between the relationship. The second one, you're losing trust with your owner and they're beginning Googling "other property managers around me." The third one. You're just waiting for them to look and to go somewhere else. [00:34:07] So the relationship is falling apart. Right. And we are trying to know that  [00:34:11] Jason: You got a 600 door business in four years.  [00:34:14] David: Yes.  [00:34:15] Jason: Like, and so, and you have probably heard countless stories of people if they're switching companies, it's really rare that people switch companies. Usually things have to be pretty bad and maintenance that's in communication. [00:34:27] Those that's number one factors, communication and why people leave. And so this allows you to free up a massive amount of time so you can actually be on the phone with the people when you need to be on the phone and stop wasting time with all of these repeat calls, repeat requests, what's going on with this, and yeah, this would just save so much time. [00:34:44] David: Well, think about growth, Jason, right? So the three things that we're solving for, number one is we're protecting fiduciary duty to the owners, justifying maintenance costs and reducing the cost of expert in house maintenance coordination and making it scalable. Yeah. Okay. [00:34:58] So now if I can have an expert maintenance coordinator that I add to my office, there's a fixed cost to it. I can scale infinity and not have to worry about hiring and training and staffing and issues and all these problems in global, right? My fiduciary duty to my owners, I got reporting and transparency. [00:35:17] Maybe my property manager now, instead of being able to manage 250 doors, maybe they can manage 350 doors. Isn't that cool? Like that's where we're going with this stuff for sure.  [00:35:25] Jason: Yeah, it definitely would make a business as maintenance coordination, maybe infinitely scalable. So, okay. I know somebody that's listening, that's very detail oriented and their brain doesn't think like a spider web, like mine is going, "Hey, you guys never finished the example scenario because Jason derailed it." [00:35:43] And so we've got the maintenance request. It's come in.  [00:35:46] David: Yeah.  [00:35:47] Jason: So take, let's go back to that.  [00:35:49] David: Okay. Yeah. Maintenance request comes in the triage takes place. The information is gathered once the information is gathered, and it fills the requirements of what they believe is the right decision. [00:36:00] At that point, the scheduling takes place. Okay.  [00:36:03] Jason: Okay. So which pieces of Tulu doing?  [00:36:05] David: All of this.  [00:36:05] Jason: Okay. Okay.  [00:36:07] David: Okay. Okay. So then we're scheduling and then the work is completed. Quality pictures are received. If the resident is satisfaction, you have happiness received, vendors invoices received, and that's all uploaded into the system. [00:36:20] And then at that point, the property manager can pay the vendor directly if they have a great relationship and maybe they want to pay them in whatever way they do. A lot of people like paying their vendors, that's fine. Or they can reimburse the Tulu system. If they just want to pay one vendor for the rest of their life, and then Tulu will pay the vendor for them directly. [00:36:38] So it is from intake to vendor payment, all updates, all communications, all triaging, everything.  [00:36:46] Jason: Tulu does all of it. Does it all.  [00:36:48] David: It is your perfect maintenance coordinator. What we call the dream scenario. It has the ability to triage, troubleshoot, knowledgeable about vendor pricing, it's client facing and experience and client facing means that you can even set the parameter that said, "Hey, if anything is over my NTE, I would actually like you to generate your justification as to why think about this and send it out to my owner." Now imagine your owner getting this super email that's like, "Hey, listen, we have this problem. So the five to fancy, here's the steps that it took place to do."  [00:37:15] Jason: So like the amount that's in the agreement that says like anything under 500 in a single month, like we have a right to just take care of it. Right. Or something like this property managers having their agreements. Okay. So, so where do they need humans then? Where do humans come in all of this? [00:37:31] David: Humans need to be there to provide expert level, the same expert level triage that the system is providing, we need humans in there to make sure, first of all, it's accurate. There is a component of that, right? We're reviewing this and training it, learning it, but as we talked about before, humans need to be there. [00:37:47] We love that they have a great relationship because they're an extension of the office with their RTM, right? With their property manager and that RTM, they get to know each other. Humans are needed to talk to the residents and humans are needed for vendor support. Okay. Vendors don't want to call into a robot when their hand is in a sewer line from the field asking about, "Hey, I need help and direction. What's going on?" [00:38:07] They don't want to hear "press two if you're unhappy with this service," like they don't want to hear that. That's where humans come in.  [00:38:13] Jason: Got it. Okay. So what are some of the results that you're seeing when you're installing in this into businesses? Like what's shifting? Because I'm hearing some things like it's going to decrease the time you're spending on the phone with your owner. [00:38:25] So it's going to decrease the amount of time doing communication. You won't have to spend time doing triages. It sounds like a large piece of maintenance coordination is going to be taken care of. It sounds like staffing costs can be reduced. You tell me what are clients noticing once they get this installed over their previous systems of using a stack of tech tools to try and get their team to be able to handle this stuff? [00:38:47] David: I think in the beginning and I think that it's cool in our relationship is just to hear people come back after the first month and go, "I can't believe it. Like I went an entire month and like, I was not involved in maintenance the way that I feel that I needed to be to make sure that all these things were taken care of. And I'm finding myself with like 20 hours extra a month." And we're like "yes, go grow. Go add more doors. Go show greater value to your clients. Maybe call your client that you haven't been calling in a month because you've been so busy." Right. So, so those are really cool. I think from a cost perspective, they are appreciating. [00:39:24] And I'm believing that. Even people who had in house maintenance coordinators or VAs, good ones, always still feel that they needed to second check all the work. So even though you're giving to somebody, they never were able to detach themselves from me. [00:39:37] And now when they're seeing the justification and they're seeing the education behind it, they get this sense of like, I can let go. You know why? Because this system is doing maintenance exactly the way that I'm asking it to do maintenance. And they feel that now they're actually back in control. If that makes sense. Or they're giving it away, but they're actually feeling they're in more control, if I'm making sense there. That's one of the coolest things is that they feel now they have their pulse on every work order where versus before they have to dive into search. Now they know that their requirements are just laid over every work order. So those are some big ones that I'm seeing, especially for those people who really show their value to their owners in the fact that they say, "I'm involved in every work order, every job." That's a great value prop. It really is. Is it scalable? Is it burning you out? Is it pulling you away from other duties that you need to be? Are you spreading yourself too thin? [00:40:29] Great questions to ask if you have growth objectives, right? Scalable solution. And basically what we're doing is we're allowing the best in the business who are property managers who have created great relationships to duplicate themselves. And that's exciting for them to see. I think that they're like, "wow it's thinking like me."  [00:40:45] Jason: This really sounds like a serious competitive advantage for a property manager that adopts this over any other competitors that don't  [00:40:54] David: Jason, I'm going to a new client pitch and now I'm knowing that the guy next to me is sitting down showing him, "this is how I handle maintenance. This is how I'm keeping your cost down. This is the process. And that new report's coming in our V2. I was actually working some funnels that this morning. And if you're laying that down and then you're walking in behind them and the person says, "well, how do you handle maintenance?" [00:41:15] "Well, I personally call you on every maintenance ticket." We're witnessing the greatest generational movement of wealth and real estate properties from retiring baby boomers to the next generation to their kids who are all grown up in a technology world that are demanding transparency and reporting and it's just going to be the new standard, Jason, a hundred percent. [00:41:34] It's going to be the new standard for sure.  [00:41:36] Jason: Okay. We probably got somebody listening. They're super skeptical. They're like, there's no way. And they're going to throw us some crazy scenario that came up recently. And I'm sure you've heard some of these. So how would you address that? Like some sort of like, "well, what if it's like this and this," and it sounds like worst case scenario. [00:41:54] The AI just says, expert in the loop. Like it's, it raises his hand in some way and says, "Hey, I could use a human over here."  [00:42:00] David: Here's one that actually, as a guy who in my history, we had portfolios, like 30,000 properties. [00:42:06] So I've done probably over 500,000 work orders. In my career. Okay?  [00:42:10] Jason: More than most of the people that are probably listening to this. Yes.  [00:42:13] David: Yes. And as a result, just because of the size of the inventories that we used to manage the other day, a resident submitted a maintenance work order in and said, "my microwave is not working. And I assume it's because my gas stove is not turned on. And does my gas stove need to be turned on in order for the gas to flow up to my microwave?" Okay. True. True. Okay. All right. True maintenance work order. The the smart system picked that up and now imagine a VA facing that without any knowledge or an experience that's going to be an email to the property manager, a phone call to somebody, or maybe they make a mistake because they're 2000 miles away and they don't have any contacts and they sent out a plumber to go investigate. And the owner says, "why are you sending out a plumber for this?" Right? Right. Okay. The system picked up and it literally educated and trained. And it said that gas has no relevance whatsoever to a microwave solution. This is an incorrect thing, right? And that, when I saw that one, it makes mistakes. [00:43:04] Don't get me wrong. It's not perfect, but when I saw it pick up on that one, I said, man, I said, this is getting exciting that it picked up on that. So I would ask that person to come and just experience it and look at a little bit and understand guys, right? This is exciting. This is new. It's learning. [00:43:19] We're developing and it's improving daily. There's still a lot of human oversight. There's still a VAs that involved. We're getting expert maintenance coordination down to a price point that is affordable for everybody, scalable for everybody. And the biggest point at the end of the day, your owners are going to feel that every maintenance work order comes in, it's being handled by the best maintenance process in the industry. [00:43:39] And that's what you're going to be able to offer them as a property manager to compete against other competition you have in your market. And I think that's a good value prop. So.  [00:43:46] Jason: Yeah, definitely. So is there anything else related to turning maintenance into a profit center that we should cover? [00:43:52] David: Yeah the first step going into a profit center is realizing that the average person is paying between 16 to 28 dollars per door to manage their maintenance, right? If we get that down to the correct number, and I'd love to have anybody come through and we'll run the analytics for them and we'll give them a pricing model for that just off the bat, the first profit center that we're creating is what if I'm able to reduce that by 50 percent your cost, that's an immediate profit center, right? [00:44:16] That's profit center number one. And then we can look at profit centers number two, that like, all right, now I can add on if I want to add on to my markup or we have some other ways that we can show them how to. But the first profit center needs to be is what do you know how much you are paying per door to manage maintenance? [00:44:34] Take all of your staff, all of your VAs, all of your systems, all your after hour services, take all those pieces, add them all up and divide them by the number of doors that you have. So every door that you bring on, it's costing me $27 to handle maintenance emergency services. Okay. Know that number, and let's have a talk. [00:44:54] Jason: You got to build that calculator on your website.  [00:44:56] David: It's coming.  [00:44:57] Jason: A lot of calculators like that to help people calculate their cold lead marketing costs or whatever. And as soon as they fill that out, they're like, "okay, I'll sign up. Like this is ridiculous. What I've been doing?"  [00:45:06] David: We have that in product right now. [00:45:07] We have a couple of pieces. We did the finish on it, but that's coming out where people can just understand what they're paying per door. But give us a call up. We'll walk you through the exercise. We'll show you what you're costing. Think about that as your first profit center, Jason. And then we can talk about other ones and we help give some people some advice still. [00:45:22] Jason: So David, you have a lot of knowledge and experience. How much of your knowledge and experience has gone into bringing this AI up to understanding what you know?  [00:45:32] David: I've been working on this for 12 years. Of putting the data and the learnings. And again, I've been fortunate guys where it was just my path. [00:45:39] It was my journey through this, where I've got to work for some huge outfits. I had my own consulting company for seven years. I was working with some of the biggest SFR groups in the nation, guys with 10,000-20,000 doors. And I'm just fortunate to understand the amount of data. So, I've put my blood, sweat and tears into this, but at the core of that Jason, my blood, sweat, and tears. [00:46:00] Is that, 15 years ago when I was brand new in this property management space, I had a broker tell me one time that after the sale of the property is done, the success of the owner is no longer your business or mine. And it's up to them. The sale is done. And they told me that when they walked away and that bothered me to this day, it bothered me that the fiduciary duty that individuals are giving to us to manage in some cases, millions of dollars of their money and assets and portfolios, right? And what type of products or services are we demanding of this industry? That we would demand of, let's say if I gave 50,000 to my broker to invest in the stock market for me, what type of services and technology and platforms am I demanding of that person, education, schooling, name brands, right? [00:46:45] But yet, are we demanding that same of us in our fiduciary duty to somebody that's giving over maybe their retirement to us their kids', future, college... you hear all these people, "why'd you get into real estate?" "I want to create a college fund for my kids." And after two years, the guy's like, "this is not what I signed up for. This is the worst mistake I ever made. And I'm backing out of, buying more properties because of challenges," right? That's what I'm driven by. And I've always been driven by that. It's my curse. And so I'd have to say there's a hundred percent of me in this Jason, for sure.  [00:47:13] Jason: Awesome. And it, this will outlive you like AI doesn't die. [00:47:17] And this is this not to be grim, but this is the concern. Like anybody has when they're signing up for a business, they're like, all right, "how much is reliant on just this one person? How much is reliant on that key person I'm interacting with?" Right. And the AI is not a person. Right? [00:47:34] And so, yeah, so that's really fascinating to think about. Like you've built all that into it and it has immediate, instant expertise. It's not like, "Hey, well, let me go call Tom and let me go check with Fred or let me..." like all the data it has, it's there and it's instant. [00:47:54] David: What's the difference between an emergency of a hot water tank that's leaking in a basement with a permeable stone floor versus emergency hot water tank that's located in the utility closet on the first floor? [00:48:04] One doesn't have to necessarily require a person to go out because there's no damage to prevent with water leaking down there. But the other one is leaking onto the floor and damaging your drywall. So these conditions have to be taking place. Locations of hot water tanks, like there's, I can nerd out in this and I'd love to sit down with anybody and drink beers and talk about all the millions of different maintenance things that I ran through. [00:48:24] But at the end of the day, when you're able to show your owner, "we acted as an expert." That's the guy that's going to say to his buddy when they're just having a drink, "call these guys up to manage your property because they're an expert in the thing." And that's what we're trying to bring to the industry for sure. [00:48:37] Jason: So this brings a level of expertise that the business owner, the property manager, the maintenance coordinator, and certainly the VA's just would not possess.  [00:48:48] David: You're talking 15 years, over 500,000 work orders worth of data points, learning and understanding from commercial, multifamily, single family across the board, best practices. [00:49:01] And it's for somebody who wants to imagine now a person can start a property management company tomorrow onboard Tulu. And they're immediately a veteran in the maintenance industry. Immediately.  [00:49:12] Yeah. No learning curve. You're operating and executing as the best maintenance coordinator in the industry starting tomorrow. [00:49:19] That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really cool. Really cool.  [00:49:22] Jason: This is really, it's really wild. So now my brain's like, how can I get experts, how can I clone Tulu, but make an operator version of Tulu for running a property managed business. Or I can make it.  [00:49:32] David: Yeah there's, there, there are offshoots on this. [00:49:34] I would have to say, and I do want to tell anybody that in this space that we always say that property managers are safe because you know what the property managers do a great job of doing. You guys do a really good job at building relationships and creating value in your local markets. [00:49:46] Right. Focus on that. Don't get pulled into maintenance, right? Maintenance and that stuff can be automated. There are best practices. Don't struggle to have to be an expert there. Show your value and the resources and tools that you have. Lower your overhead. Produce better results. Be at networking events. [00:50:03] Shake more hands. Talk to more people. Sell more homes. Add more doors. Shine where you shine. Brokers shine when they're out in front of people shaking hands and having expensive salads over a nice glass of chardonnay and closing deals, right? Let us flip the toilets and do it well for you. [00:50:18] That's what I say.  [00:50:19] Jason: Awesome. Okay, cool. David, if they're interested in Getting started. How do they find out about Tulu? You can go right to our website  [00:50:26] David: at trytulu. com. And if anybody wants to email me personally, david.norman.trytulu.Com. I'll connect you with our sales team and set you up on a personal demo. I'll walk you through it. I promise I won't bring so much energy. I'm an energy guy. It's just my calling this space to be in the maintenance and I love to doing what we're doing and seeing owners go "yes!" Seeing property managers go "yes!" And we're not trying to replace anybody. We're just trying to help people honor their fiduciary duty to their owners. And that's my mission. That's what I'm driven by.  [00:50:56] Jason: Yeah. Fantastic. So try Tulu, T U L U. Dot com.  [00:51:02] David: Yeah.  [00:51:02] Jason: All right. Try it out.  [00:51:04] David: All right.  [00:51:04] Jason: David, thanks for coming on the DoorGrowShow podcast. Appreciate you.  [00:51:08] David: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Jason. Always great. Looking forward to the show. Until next time.  [00:51:11] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur and you are wanting to add doors, you get maintenance off loaded, off your plate, and you want to focus on growth and figuring out how to get more doors, you want to join the DoorGrow mastermind, our growth accelerator is all about that. [00:51:29] We are really good at optimizing businesses for growth using our rapid revamp class, where we clean up quickly, all of the front end stuff that is causing you to like kill trust and leaking trust and preventing deals. And then we give you the right strategies. We've got at least seven different growth engines that we can help build into your business that you can stack that will feed you unlimited leads without having to spend any money on advertising or marketing expense. [00:51:55] You just need people and it actually decreases the amount of time those people will spend If they're following working on the warm leads and the stuff that we would get you to do instead of cold leads, which take a lot more time. So we also have our super system level of our mastermind. This is where we're focused on ops, operations, helping your operator. That key person that's going to run the entire business for you, Mr. or Mrs. Visionary Entrepreneur, and they will help take your business to the next level. We can coach and support your operators, your BDMs, your salespeople, or you, the business owner to make this business infinitely scalable so that you can go to the next level and add a lot of doors. So reach out to us, let us assess your situation and see if we can help. [00:52

EP 96 - In this episode of the Share the Wealth Show, let's welcome back Nikki G as she continues to delve into her journey in real estate investing while balancing a W2 job. Discover pivotal insights into real estate investment in this episode:

Today, our guest is Alo Mukerji, VP of Product at WaveHQ, which develops money management software for small business owners. Driven by a genuine love for small and midsize businesses, Alo has worked in product leadership roles at Constant Contact, Buildium (acquired by RealPage), Toast, and Privy (acquired by Attentive). Alo's specialties include creating frictionless product experiences and increasing revenue through pricing models and new product lines. On today's episode, LogRocket's VP of Marketing, Jeff Wharton, talks to Alo about driving innovations at a fintech company, focusing on SMBs, and the importance of rapid innovation. Links Leader Spotlight: Making a tangible impact for SMBs, with Alo Mukerji (https://blog.logrocket.com/product-management/leader-spotlight-alo-mukerji/) https://www.linkedin.com/in/alo-mukerji-9a7154 What does LogRocket do? LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today. (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr) Special Guest: Alo Mukerji.

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

In Episode 11 of UX Leadership by Design, Joana Castro, Director of UX at Buildium in Portugal explains how she leverages UX Maturity models at Buildium, and more broadly, how organizations can use UX maturity assessments to measure progress (and regression), demonstrate the value of UX, and secure investment in user experience. This episode offers practical advice for UX leaders interested in implementing a UX maturity model in their organization, effectively using storytelling as a strategy to help stakeholders connect to user problems, and hiring and developing junior designers. TOPICS:1. The State of the UX Market in Portugal2. Building and Managing UX Teams3. The Importance of Soft Skills in UX4. Using storytelling to cultivate stakeholder buy in5. Transitioning from Individual Contributor to UX Leader6. The UX Maturity Model by Nielsen Norman Group7. Assessing and Demonstrating UX Value8. Demonstrating ROI and Business Value of UX9. The Impact of UX Maturity AssessmentsLINKS:Joana Castro LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joana-isadora-castro/Buildium: https://www.buildium.com/Atlas (North American Report) by Sequoia: https://atlas.sequoiacap.com/Nielsen Norman Group: 6 Levels of UX Maturity Model: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-maturity-model/Nielsen Norman Group: UX Maturity Survey: https://forms.nngroup.com/s3/Maturity-QuizFuzzy Math: fuzzymath.com Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markbaldino/

Last week, Buildium released its annual State of Property Management report for 2024. In this episode, Spencer and Matthew host a roundtable with other Evernest team members to discuss their biggest takeaways. Listen in to find out how property managers are looking at this upcoming year. =================================== Connect with Matt and Spencer at Evernest: Evernest.co Visit the Podcast Website: Evernest.co/podcasts Email the Show: podcast@evernest.co =================================== Production House: Flint Stone Media Copyright of Evernest 2023.

Michael Sullivan is a property management entrepreneur who has grown his business to 275 doors. Join property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull as they chat with former DoorGrow client Michael Sullivan to learn about his experience starting and growing a property management business. You'll Learn [01:44] Getting started in the property management industry [07:49] Growing a property management business [24:01] Having support and feeling fulfilled in the business [28:13] Growing and scaling to the next level Tweetables “To go faster, you need to invest the currency of cash if you want to get more of the other currencies and to get the business to the next level.” “If you're not making mistakes, you're not learning.” “A lot of us business owners, we have a bit of ego.” “Being an entrepreneur can be one can be very lonely, and it is really important to have people in the same industry kind of in your village.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: To go faster, you need to invest the currency of cash. If you want to get more of the other currencies and to get the business to the next level. 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. 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 co owner and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:09] Now let's get into the show and our guest today is Michael L Sullivan. Michael Sullivan is here hanging out with us. He is a client of ours and of Sullivan property management. Did I say that right? MLS ullivan property management. All right, your initials. Got it. And Michael, welcome to the show.  [00:01:33] Michael: Thank you. Thank you very much. Good to be here.  [00:01:36] Jason: We're glad to have you. So we've really enjoyed having you in our program and it's been really amazing seeing your progress. So maybe to kick things off, let's start with talking about how you got into this crazy industry of property management. Like you woke up when you were like maybe five years old and said "property management is the thing for me" maybe. [00:01:57] Michael: Yeah, like every little boy and girl, dreams about being a real estate agent or a property manager.  [00:02:03] Jason: It's right there next to veterinarian and firefighter. [00:02:06] Michael: I think that's right. That's right or professional baseball player so, I left the teaching profession in 1993 and became a real estate agent, a general brokerage real estate agent here in the Greater Research Triangle region of North Carolina, and I did very well. I, on average, sold anywhere between 5 and 15 million dollars worth of real estate when our average sale price was $150,000. Yeah, we were shifting a lot of shacks, and it was a good life. And for the 15 or so years between 1993 and the Great Recession of 2007, 2008, my biggest fear was, "what is going to happen when the market flips?" Because inevitably, real estate flips. It goes from a boom market to a bust market, a buyer's market to a seller market. And so during those years, I socked away cash. When the market crashed in 2008, I had an inventory of 40 general brokerage homes that were for sale. I had clients that were still moving to Massachusetts or Plano, Texas, or Austin, or Seattle, you know, to the other tech hubs in the United States and my clients were like, "All right, problem solver, what are you going to do because we still have to move?" And I was like, "we're going to rent them." And so with an Excel spreadsheet and time, because I had lots of time then I started managing property and in the first year, our goal was 30 homes and we had 50 and it was me and one part time assistant and an Excel spreadsheet. Well, after about 18 months, that didn't work anymore. So I went out and I found what I thought was a reasonable property management software. And then over the course of the next decade or so, we got up to 110 properties or so and things were good, you know, we were chugging along and profits were good, but I really didn't know what I didn't know, I kind of. [00:04:22] Believe that once you had an Appfolio or a Buildium on board that you had won the day and that your business was set and you know, it should be easy. And I soon discovered when I got to 115 doors and just kind of got stuck there that the business wasn't growing the way it should be. And I couldn't figure out why. I was on Facebook one day. And there was this guy, Jason Hull, talking about this company called DoorGrow. And so I did the click, click, clickety click. And then I started listening to some of his podcasts and I started researching DoorGrow and I thought, " huh, this guy knows a whole lot about this industry and maybe this is someone I need to engage with." and so that's how I came to DoorGrow about two and a half years ago, I think.  [00:05:21] Jason: And now you're on one, you're on one of the podcasts.  [00:05:24] Michael: I know.  [00:05:25] Jason: So what challenges did you start to realize you were dealing with at the time? Because generally, you've made a ton of changes in your business since working with us, and you know, it's been impressive to watch. What do you feel like were your challenges at that time? Like, what did you not know that you did not know? So  [00:05:43] Michael: I knew that there were currencies in a business, but I didn't know that there were five of them. And I knew that I was working really hard. So the currency of effort was there. Yeah, my bank account showed me that the currency of cash was there. Yeah, the currency of focus was really lacking because I was still doing a lot of general brokerage and still trying to do property management. The focus of energy was lacking. Because it was draining me kind of going in these different directions. And then there was a lack of time. I didn't have time to take off. I didn't have time to turn it off because it was me and an assistant property manager at that time, I was still doing all of the day to day operations and the round pegs in the round holes work. And figuring out those currencies and how to better divide them and focus on them was one of the things that I didn't know and that once I could put a name to it and once I could focus on fixing where there was a deficiency, then I kind of won the battle. I felt, you know, before you launched all of your different systems to help property managers, I listened to you and I went out and got Lead Simple. I went out and got Property Meld and kind of brought them into the fold. And I recognize that those tools, which you paid dearly for using these outside vendors, really bring you a wealth of time that didn't exist before. So I was able to capture that currency and by extension, the currency of effort was able to kind of tamp down because I had systems now in place to deal with the endless maintenance requests that having a practice that. Goes up over a hundred percent in growth is going to require.  [00:07:48] Jason: So let's talk about that growth. You had mentioned you'd gotten up to maybe, where were you when you started with DoorGrow?  [00:07:56] 118. [00:07:58] 118. Okay.  [00:07:59] And where are you at right now?  [00:08:01] Michael: 275.  [00:08:03] Jason: I mean, it sounds like you had pretty decent profit margin before. Well, what was that? If you don't mind sharing, what is it? [00:08:09] Michael: So, on a gross per door basis, when I joined DoorGrow, we were right at about $122 a door per month. Yeah. And today we're up. $153 and 82 cents per door per month.  [00:08:26] Jason: That's very specific. So, you know, your numbers, which is good.  [00:08:30] Michael: Well I try. Yeah. And year over year revenue increases from last year is up 58.7%.  [00:08:36] Jason: Wow. That's awesome. So money's up. So the cash currency has improved the focus currency. Have you been able to do less in the business and narrow your focus?  [00:08:48] Michael: Yes. So Saturday is my benchmark. I call it my Zen day. And if Saturday can be a Zen day for me, where I don't feel like I have tasks that I have to accomplish, that I can do the things that I want to do, still working on the business, not in the business, then I feel like the week has been a win. If I feel like there are pressing tasks that I have to work on within the business on Saturday, then I feel like the week has not been a win. So if Saturday is Zen, if I come into it feeling very kind of centered and relaxed, then I feel like things are in balance the way they should be. [00:09:34] Jason: So what percent profit margin are you operating at now?  [00:09:37] Michael: So coming into this year 2022, we were at 27 percent profit margin, but a lot of that was really underpinned by very robust general brokerage sales. I made a concerted effort this year to pour gasoline on the fire to really grow the business. The goal is to be over 300 doors by the end of the year. So we're 25 away. Nice. I'm pretty sure we're going to make that, you know, that goal. But our profit margin right now is at. 11 and a half, 11 and three quarters percent. So it's down substantially, but that was deliberate.  [00:10:14] Jason: Got it. And is deliberate because  [00:10:18] Michael: why? [00:10:18] Because we're making an investment in people. We're making an investment in systems and we're making an investment in things like vehicles and computers and marketing.  [00:10:30] Jason: Yeah. So I think that's an important thing for business owners to recognize that. To go faster, you need to invest the currency of cash if you want to get more of the other currencies and to get the business to the next level. And you can grow faster if you have thinner margins, which can feel a little more dangerous. And you know, if you're investing into the growth of the business and into the future, but you know how to add doors, so this isn't a concern for you. [00:10:57] Michael: It isn't. My bookkeeper and my accountant were a little apoplectic until I told them like, this is where we're going. And what I said to my bookkeeper was before the great depression of 1929, Ford motor company was the preeminent motor car company in the world. They had an amazing market share. Then the stock market crashed and the economy tanked and Ford circled the wagons, folded their tents and got very conservative. They scaled back. General Motors, by extension, said, "ah," and they saw it as an opportunity and they poured gasoline on the fire. And for the next 70 years, General Motors was the dominant car company in the world. And so I kind of am using that model.  [00:11:47] Jason: Yeah. So, now a lot of people listening to this might think, well, cool, I can get Property Meld, I can do something, you know, get something like Lead Simple, or we have a better tool now, which is DoorGrow Flow. " I can go and get tools and maybe I can do it on my own." Because I think this is the challenge. A lot of us business owners, we have a bit of ego. " I've made a lot of mistakes in the past and we think I can do it myself. Maybe if I watch enough YouTube videos, listen to enough podcast episodes, I can figure it all out on my own. I don't need DoorGrow or I don't need it." Like, so what would you say to people that listening to this or thinking that?  [00:12:22] Michael: So I would say to them, when I think back to me and one assistant and 115, 110 doors and good profit margins. You know, and a good life. I was in a really kind of felt very isolated and very alone I didn't have other friends or colleagues in the property management space that I could talk to. I felt like I was the only person in the world that was doing this, and once I joined DoorGrow and made very valuable, long lasting friends within the organization that I can call on off hours to discuss specific problems related to property management, that burden of feeling on my own and alone disappeared. Being an entrepreneur can be one can be very lonely, and it is really important to have people in the same industry kind of in your village. And that's why that's 1 of the benefits of joining DoorGrow is that I can call friends in Texas, Idaho, Pennsylvania, California and say, "hey, I've got this going on. What do you think?"  [00:13:40] Jason: Yeah, and I think you know, that's a testament to you is that you've been such a contributor that in the mastermind that it's allowed you to connect with all of these people, you know, there are some people that join the program and they still stay somewhat isolated. They're like, "I'm going to watch videos I'm going to learn stuff and do my own thing and they maybe don't get some of those advantages or benefits But I think that's key. [00:14:02] So yeah Yes. I mean, Sarah, when she had her property management business, I imagine you experienced some of the same sort of things of thinking it's. You know, this is, you're the only one in the world doing this. You're on your own.  [00:14:17] Sarah: Yeah, very much. And especially in the area that I was in I was always different and I just kind of do things differently and I think differently and oftentimes people are like, she's nuts, like, why would you do that? [00:14:29] Even my mom, sometimes she's like, are you sure you're going to do that? Like, are you sure? Like, I'm kind of nervous. But I've just always done things a little differently. And it's so, it is really lonely. And I think the mindset that I had back when I was in Pennsylvania versus, you know, the mindset I have now really has a lot to do with who you surround yourself with and that can. [00:14:53] I think it can just give you hope and it can show you like, Hey, like, I'm not so crazy. Like I've got it. Like I've got it figured out and I'm like doing the right thing and I'm on the right path. And you know, it feels right, but sometimes it's just, you know, you're like, Oh, is this really right? [00:15:07] Because it feels good to me, but man, everybody else is doing something so different.  [00:15:12] Michael: Yeah. And that's another benefit that DoorGrow has given me is. I now have the ability to say no. So I am the business development manager. I have someone in charge of maintenance. I have someone in charge of tenant experience. [00:15:28] I have someone in charge of ops within the office. They color within their lines and we are good. My job is to go out and build the business to work on the business, not work in the business. And until I joined DoorGrow, it didn't matter what came my way. Property wise, I was going to take it last week. I turned away more properties than we took on because they weren't the right fit. [00:15:53] And I have a very nice conversation with prospective clients about qualification and that they're qualifying us to make sure we're a good fit for them. But at the same time. I'm qualifying them, their mindset, their properties, their attitudes toward spending money, their attitudes toward maintaining their properties, and if those things don't align with what we believe here, that housing is a human right that people have the right to live in nice homes that are maintained and maintained properly, then We're not going to accept the business. [00:16:30] We're also not going to accept people that are rude, mean and abusive. Because I've learned since kind of letting the stress of being a general brokerage real estate agent. Slip away that there is plenty of good business out there and that it's more important to have the Philosophical fits with the business than it is to take just any property no matter what the cost  [00:16:57] Jason: Yeah, your ability to say no in business Gives you a business that you feel you can easily say yes to each  [00:17:03] Michael: day. [00:17:04] That's right.  [00:17:05] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. It's nice to not have to wake up and go, man, I really don't want to do this today. And that's because we're setting boundaries for ourselves and that boundary in those containers allow us to create a business that we really like to be inside.  [00:17:20] Michael: Right. That's correct. Yeah. Now,  [00:17:22] Jason: when you came. [00:17:23] To us DoorGrow initially. I remember like you really had this mindset that you, and now you're doing business development, you had mentioned, you really believed you were the operator. It all was on your shoulders to operate the business, do operations, and you were good at it, but you believe that was your primary gift, I think, to the business and what your contribution needed to be. [00:17:45] And and I know you had some conversations with Sarah and some shifts in that, so could you touch on that a bit?  [00:17:51] Michael: Yeah well, control freak and always have been a control freak. I know one of those. You know, own it. And to a certain degree, I still, I observe. I trust and verify, but I don't get involved. [00:18:07] My number two said it best the other day. He said, yeah, with you. I only have to come to you if I know it's a problem that I can't solve. So I have kind of empowered the people who work with me to color in their lines. And when they are in trouble, come here and ask and we'll figure it out. I have also given them permission to make mistakes because if you're not making mistakes, you're not learning. You're static, and I let them see that I make mistakes and that I admit when I make a mistakes above all else. I expect complete honesty here. We make mistakes. We admit our mistakes. You know, if we have to eat it because it's a financial error that we've made well, then by golly, we're going to eat it because it was our mistake. And we come by it honestly the empowerment of becoming a business development manager is I don't have to worry that the books are balanced every week because I know that there is someone who I've paid good money to who has balanced the books and they can't hide because the system has been created where I can see that it's been uploaded into the accounting software and that the books are in balance. [00:19:25] I can verify that the financial piece of the puzzle in the business is running properly because I get a report monthly from my accountant and my bookkeeper that says, "this is where we are. This is your cash flow. This is your profit. This is where you're spending a lot of money. Are you okay with that?" and I pay them good money to do those things. I have a maintenance coordinator who deals with maintenance and on the Property Meld dashboard, which I log into every morning. I can see the tasks picking off or I can see things progressing and I can see that we're handling our maintenance requests in 3 to 4 days on average and that's fine. I've also told him to maintain his sanity because he's a bit of a control freak. If it's after hours and it's a garbage disposal in a dishwasher and it's after 5 o'clock, you don't need to deal with that today. If it's a leak and we have a catastrophe, then you deal with that after five o'clock, but the small stuff can wait until tomorrow. [00:20:26] It's still important. It's important to get it done and move it off our plates, but you don't have to deal with it when you need to be spending time with your children at soccer camp or baseball practice or whatever he does in the evening with his four kids. And then my other teammates, I can see that they are moving their tasks forward and that I don't have to worry about the job that they're doing. And that's empowered me to go out and find the right properties to bring into the practice for us to manage.  [00:20:56] Jason: You know, one of the gifts that I see in you, which I think really sets you apart, Michael, is coming into the program you're really intelligent. You know this. You're an intelligent guy. I think everybody can pick that up just by hearing you and listening to you. But even though you're intelligent, you have humility about, you know, and this openness to learning. And you've come into the program and you just started to do stuff. Like you tried it out. You experimented, and you allowed yourself the time to prove whether or not it would work or not. And some of the times we get clients that are intelligent, but they're not humble and they're usually the biggest stumbling block to themselves. So I just wanted to point that out. I'm curious what Sarah's experience has been of you as well, because she worked closely with you on like reviewing some of the systems, reviewing your team assessing you and some of this kind of stuff. [00:21:54] Sarah: So, yeah, I think I definitely agree with what you just said about being open to learning and trying things just a bit differently. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, we do things differently. We're okay with that. But sometimes if it's not our idea, then we're like "I don't know if I want to do it because I didn't think of it." right. So, I think Michael is, he's open to thinking differently. He's open to trying things out and implementing a system. He'll do the research. He doesn't just, you know, blindly jump and he's like, well, Jason said to do this, so I'm going to do it, but he'll do the research and he's very thorough. And I really appreciate that about Michael. He's all into the details and he knows exactly what's going on in his business. He's not like, "Hey, I'm just going to kind of sit back and like, let the team run everything, and then I just, I'm going to cross my fingers and hope and pray that everything is going well, right?" like we know that it's going well because you're not the one who's doing it, so you've been able to get out of the hot seat in a lot of different ways and get yourself more into the things that you actually enjoy. because I remember that conversation with you about the operations and you said, "well, I really just, I love to sell" like, okay, then let's let you sell. Like if you're doing things in the business and you're just holding on to them going, "well, I have to be the one to do this." I think it's really common for us to think that like, " well, I own the business, so I have to do this piece or I own this. And it has to be me. It doesn't always have to be you." do you have to know what's going on? Absolutely. Do you have to have the right people on your team? Absolutely. And do you have to set it up so that things can run smoothly? Absolutely. But do you have to be the one who's actually like doing the work? Right. And I think that's one of the biggest shifts that I've seen in you is that you're able to say, okay I don't have to do this part and I don't want to do this part. [00:23:54] This is where I want to be. So I'm going to move closer to this and I'm going to figure out how to get these pieces kind of offloaded.  [00:24:01] Michael: Yeah. Yeah. When you taught me how to write R docs and after I had a disastrous hire two years ago, disaster, and I had to fire someone, something I'd never had to do, but it was my fault. There was nothing wrong with the person I hired. She was just the wrong fit for the job. And then we sat down, we wrote R docs. With detailed job descriptions and parameters and that made bringing on the next person who is now in that role a dream because she fit the culture. We knew what her profile was before she even interviewed with us. We knew who the person was and then she walked through the door and poof, there she was. And that's one thing I didn't know. I just thought you could teach someone into a position. Well, you can teach skills, but you can't teach the human touch. And that's what I had missed with the disaster, the mistake that I made.  [00:25:02] Jason: Yeah. You'd learn some concepts from us, like the three fits , mapping out R docs. One of you explain what R docs are for those of us. This is DoorGrow speak here.  [00:25:11] Sarah: I know it is. So an R doc, it's just basically a fancy word for job description. We call it R doc because every section on it starts with 'R.' [00:25:20] Jason: There you go. So the ultimate job descriptions. Awesome. So, yeah, so all of these little pieces and systems and mindsets that you've installed in your business have really, I think, primed your business for a lot of growth. Like, where do you see the business going in the future?  [00:25:37] Michael: Oh, so that's another thing I learned. And it was at, I think, Austin at the Austin meeting. And it was you said it in the first like two minutes and I got my nugget and I was like, okay, I can go home. I got it. You said, don't limit your growth. And I had constantly said 200 doors, 200 doors. That's where I'm going. That's where I'm going. And you already passed that now. Yeah, you said that. And I was like. " Why would I create like this false ceiling that I'm going to just bump into and stop at?" Yeah. So, ultimately, and I'd like to retire in the next 10 to 12, 15 years, maybe. We're realistically thinking in the neighborhood of 1,000-2,000 doors. Yeah, people have started to come a calling about, "Hey, do you want to sell your business?" And the time is not right. Some of the financial offers that have been made already are very intriguing. Yeah. But then I'm like, " what will I do with myself?" You know, "what's the next iteration?" And I think until I figure that out, we're going to just stay the course. [00:26:47] Jason: Yeah, I think that's one of the key things that I think a lot of people realize in the program that if it was just about money, then maybe you'd cash out, but it's not just about money, right? There's other things we want out of our experience here on this planet. And that's something else you got a lot of clarity on is what really personally drives you, which allowed you to build the business and the team around you so that you really could move into those plus signs and out of those minus signs. [00:27:13] Michael: Yeah, so the key is I went to the Netherlands in May to see art because it's my thing. Cool. And a little ostentatious to fly to Europe to see Vermeer, but I did it. And I was gone for a good long time and things here chugged right along and it was beautiful. And I knew then that we were doing things right, that I could leave and not be here for 10 days, and the business continued to operate. I continued to watch and check in. But they didn't need me.  [00:27:49] Jason: And how's that different from before you came to DoorGrow?  [00:27:53] Michael: Oh my God. Like the first meeting in Austin that I came to, I had I came really close to not coming because I was like "I can't leave. I just can't leave. I can't leave them." I was wrong. I was wrong and I went to Austin and I went to Vegas and you know, things were good. Yeah.  [00:28:12] Jason: Yeah. So awesome. Well, it's been really cool to see your progress. We really appreciate. Seeing your growth and yeah, there's no question in my mind. A lot of people hear you say, Oh, maybe a thousand, 2000 doors. And they probably think: this guy is ridiculously off his rocker that he could just believe that and the audacity to have that mindset. And I'm sure when you first came to DoorGrow, a thousand doors was like, probably magic, some magic, like pipe dream in the ethers that you would never even consider. I don't know, but. [00:28:40] Michael: 300 seemed unimaginable.  [00:28:43] Jason: Yeah, but now it seems very doable. And you're aware of the DoorGrow code and like we've got clients breaking a thousand doors. We've got clients doing it. And there's no question in my mind. You could easily do this in the next two to three years. If you really wanted to easily.  [00:28:57] Michael: Yeah, I work my golden 100. That's another thing I learned at DoorGrow. To have people that are valuable people that I love and care about that. I have to touch every 30 days because they love and care about me and buy it. So they send business. They ask questions and we share information. Yeah. And for that, I'm indebted to you.  [00:29:19] Jason: Not at all. Well, great. Well, yeah we, it's been really awesome seeing your growth. So cool. Anything else we should ask Michael? We've got him hanging out here with us. What's next for you, Michael? What's next?  [00:29:31] Michael: Well, once we go over 300, then the double it again. [00:29:34] Jason: Yeah. So what I see next for you is you've got some of the systems installed. And then I think what it will be next is to level up your three key systems of. People, process, and planning and maybe starting to build out even a little bit more of that executive team. I think you've got a good team going now and I think then what would be next would be maybe starting to acquire you'll be the one eating up some of these other companies. And I think, maybe working with us on acquisitions, and I think that'll be the quick pace to grow. And that also bring you really great people too, if you want. So [00:30:07] Michael: we're working on two. They're on a slow simmer because companies that I'm looking at have some. Bookkeeping issues. We'll just put it at that.  [00:30:17] Jason: It's an opportunity. Yeah. Always do.  [00:30:20] Michael: So we may be able to fix the problem. Definitely.  [00:30:24] Jason: You'll be able to fix the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Well, I'm excited to see what you do in the future. I know like, I've seen companies hit all these different stages. I know. We know the challenges that you're going to hit at these different stages in growth. We're here to support you. And for those listening here on the DoorGrowShow if you are struggling, you're hitting some of these sticking points, these milestones, you're stuck in your mindset, whatever. Be like Michael, be like Mike, not Mike, but all the reference, be like Michael and you know, talk to us and let us map things out with you and see if we could help you out. We'll be sure with you. So, well, Michael, appreciate you coming on the show. We appreciate having you as a client and grateful for you.  [00:31:09] Michael: Thank you. Thanks. I appreciate it. Have a good day.  [00:31:12] Jason: All right. Cool. So, if you're wanting to get into our free community of property management entrepreneurs on Facebook, go to DoorGrowClub.Com. We have some free gifts that we want to give to you. You'll provide your email as you join the group, we'll give you an, a drip, an email drip of some free gifts, including a fee Bible and some vendors that you can use and some different tools just to help you help yourself and help the industry level up. [00:31:42] And we, and if you provide your info, we will also reach out to see if you'd like to have a conversation with us and see if we could help you grow your business, which the answer usually is. Yes, we can. So we would love to support you and help you out. And if you're wanting to test out your website, which you think might be amazing, go to doorgrowcom/quiz and test your website. A lot of times, this is a great gateway to realizing that you have some blind spots in your business. When you see that your website is leaking lots of money. Which is something we can help you out with. There's a lot of other leaks you can't see, and this might crack your mind open, get you to be open minded like Michael and allow us to be able to help you and support you and make a lot more money, have a lot more freedom and make a bigger difference out there in the marketplace. [00:32:34] We appreciate you listening to our show. If you could do us a favor and leave us a good testimonial on, if you're hearing us on iTunes or like, or comment all of these things help us out and help us get the message out to enact our vision and our mission for this industry of helping it level up. [00:32:50] And until next time to our mutual growth, everybody, bye everyone.  [00:32:54] 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!  [00:33:21] 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.

No one is more enthusiastic about Multifamily Industry trends for small-to-medium property management companies than Buildium®’s Robin Young. And though she didn’t start her career in real estate, she’s energized by the endless opportunities to discover new insights about the property management industry and how it can touch people's lives in real and meaningful ways.

Episode #308 - Unlock more time and profit in your rental property ventures by making strategic hires, understanding the vital role of an asset manager, and harnessing the power of an integrator to take your real estate game to the next level.

Ο Δημήτρης Γεωργακόπουλος βρέθηκε στην Αμερική για να σπουδάσει. Αφού δούλεψε στην PwC και στην Sapient, ξεκίνησε το δικό του startup το 2004 προσπαθώντας να λύσει ένα 100% δικό του πρόβλημα. Παρότι του πήρε περισσότερο από έναν χρόνο για να βρει τον πρώτο του πελάτη, μεγάλωσε το business τόσο πολύ ώστε να πουληθεί για 580 εκατομμύρια δολάρια το 2019!Λίγο καιρό αργότερα, γύρισε μόνιμα στην Ελλάδα και δημιούργησε -μεταξύ άλλων- το Helidoni Foundation που προσπαθεί να υποστηρίξει ιδέες, ενέργειες και επιχειρήσεις που έχουν κοινωνικό αποτύπωμα. Στη συζήτησή του με τον Μάρκο Βερέμη, μιλούν για τα μαθήματα ζωής που πήρε από την εμπειρία του να χτίζεις μία εταιρεία από το μηδέν, για το πώς δούλευε remote από το 2009 (!) και, φυσικά, για το νόημα της ζωής.Ευχαριστούμε την Eurobank και την Grant Thornton που μέσα από τον κορυφαίο θεσμό Ανάπτυξης και ΑνταγωνιστικότηταςGrowth Awardsυποστήριξαν την παραγωγή της σειράς συζητήσεων Innovative Greeks Talks.Disclaimer: Ο ΣΕΒ προσφέρει την ευκαιρία να ακουστούν οι απόψεις και οι εμπειρίες των προσκεκλημένων στα Innovative Greeks Talks. Οι γνώμες και οι απόψεις που εκφράζονται μέσα σε αυτά είναι προσωπικές και σε καμία περίπτωση δεν απηχούν γνώμες και απόψεις του ΣΕΒ.

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. 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.

Join host Niyi Adweole on the Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Group podcast as he explores the regulations and strategies for short-term and long-term rentals in the real estate market. Discover the guest limits for short-term rentals, which typically allow two guests per bedroom, and learn how to calculate guest numbers accurately. Niyi also shares insights on managing multiple properties using software like Buildium and emphasizes the importance of understanding occupancy restrictions for long-term rentals based on county-specific regulations.Tune in to the Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Podcast for expert advice on optimizing rental properties and preserving personal assets through LLCs. With new episodes every Wednesday, this podcast is a valuable resource for real estate investors seeking financial freedom in the industry.Tune in to the Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Podcast for the latest in real estate and investing. NEW EPISODE EVERY WEDNESDAY Our Links -Financial Freedom Mastermind Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/53083... - Peer Space Host Referral Link https://www.peerspace.com/referrals/g... - AirBNB Host Referral Link https://www.airbnb.com/r/niyia41 - Ekabo Home Network (IG, Youtube, Email) https://linktr.ee/ekabohome Niyi Adewole is a licensed realtor in Georgia, brokered by EXP Realty. Feel free to reach out at Niyi.Adewole@exprealty.com if you would like to work with an investor friendly real estate agent.

You don't need to look very far to find a real estate success story, but it's not every day that you hear from someone who is currently in the trenches of their very first real estate investment. The truth is that there are all types of hurdles to overcome during an investing journey, and today, you're going to hear from someone who is still in the thick of it. For years, interior designer Sara Plaisted dreamed of investing in real estate. But like many real estate rookies, analysis paralysis prevented her from taking action. Having built up a network of people to lean on, however, Sara eventually drummed up the courage to dive in. It wasn't long before she landed her very first property—a two-story cabin tucked away in four-seasons vacation spot Julian, California. Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there. Rather than enjoying consistent cash flow and great tenants, Sara was dealt a steep learning curve that involved persistent water leaks, excessive rehab costs, and other issues. If you're struggling at any point in your real estate journey, you'll want to tune in to this episode and hear Sara's story. She shares about her initial fears surrounding real estate, how she was able to land her first deal, and how she is currently dealing with all of the unexpected hurdles that her new property has thrown her way! In This Episode We Cover How to get past analysis paralysis and finally buy your first property The importance of building your own real estate investing network Finding the right contractor to walk your new property with you When you should ask the seller to make repairs rather than making them yourself Three types of software you MUST have to manage your property How using virtual assistants can help you scale your investing business much faster And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Investor-Friendly Real Estate Agent Ashley's Instagram Tony's Instagram Real Estate Rookie Facebook Group Join BiggerPockets for FREE BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Bootcamps Property Management Software for Short-Term Rentals: Hospitable, Guesty, OwnerRez Dynamic Pricing Tools for Short-Term Rentals: PriceLabs, AirDNA, Wheelhouse Digital Guidebooks for Short-Term Rentals: Create on Canva, Hostfully, Breezeway, RemoteLock Software for Long-Term Rentals: RentRedi, Avail, Apartments.com, Zillow Software for Scaling Long-Term Rentals: AppFolio, Buildium, Propertyware Find Virtual Assistants at: Fiverr, Upwork Books Mentioned in This Episode: Real Estate Rookie: 90 Days to Your First Investment by Ashley Kehr Connect with Sara: Sara's BiggerPockets Profile Sara's Instagram Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/rookie-277 Interested in learning more about today's sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email: advertise@biggerpockets.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Leasing is one of the hardest aspects of property management. What if you had a way to offload some or all of your tasks related to leasing? Today, property management growth expert Jason Hull chats with Ben from Sunroom. This service allows property managers to offload leasing to leasing professionals who care about property managers, owners, and tenants. You'll Learn… [01:26] Offloading Leasing: What is Sunroom? [09:01] ShowMojo, Tenant Turner, vs. Sunroom, oh my! [016:35] Better ways to do Property Showings [020:23] How Sunroom Vets Tenants Better [24:21] Integrating with Other PM Software  [31:30] Net Promoter Scores for Property Management and Leasing [37:12] Learning to LET GO as a PM Entrepreneur Tweetables “Some of y'all entrepreneurs are control freaks. Let's be real, and you need to let go of some of this stuff and let somebody else do it a little bit better.” “We have a lot of egos as entrepreneurs. We think our way is the best way all the time, and we need to see that maybe somebody else could do this better.” “Property managers tend to do best if they just convince owners to do pets. You're going to get more tenants, you're going to get more money.” “One of the biggest time sucks for a property management company is dealing with prospective tenants.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Ben: So what we do is we partner with property management companies and become their leasing arm. So if you're a newer property management company, you're focused on growing doors and you just mainly want to focus on that, right? One of the most important things is you got to get leasing. If you don't get leasing, you're not going to lease the doors quickly, which then your owner investors are not going to be happy about that.   [00:00:22] Jason Hull: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the # DoorGrowShow. So 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 bebecause you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.    [00:01:19] Jason Hull: All right. Ben, welcome to the #DoorGrowShow.    [00:01:24] Ben: Thanks for having me, Jason.    [00:01:26] Jason Hull: Good to have you. So Ben, why don't we start by you giving us a little bit of your background, qualify yourself. You've done some cool stuff and I'm in the market where you did some of this cool stuff. We just realized in the green room that we're practically neighbors in Austin, market downtown, and I'm up in Round Rock. Ben, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into the, I guess technology space.   [00:01:49] Ben: Yeah, sure. Yeah, definitely. First of all, I mean we-- me and my co-founder Zach, we started working on Sunroom in right around 2017. And, the way that we had originally had the idea was, just being a renter for a decade and having a lot of interesting experiences trying to look for a place to lease. But prior to starting Sunroom, Zach and I had started a company called Favor Delivery, which is a small little delivery company here in Texas that grew to become the market leader in delivery. And we sold to H-E-B in early 2018.    [00:02:27] Jason Hull: And for people that aren't familiar with H-E-B, because I moved from California just before the pandemic because I wanted to get away from California and the taxes and it's poor political culture. But anyway, so I moved here, Austin and H-E-B was all over the place. I'm like, what a weird name. What is this place? But it's one of the, like America's top grocery chains. It's consistently rated as like one of the biggest and the best. So for those that are not in Texas, they are probably not familiar with H-E-B, but H-E-B is the, like one of the leading grocery stores, and it dominates everything.    [00:03:05] Jason Hull: Yeah.   [00:03:06] Jason Hull: I'm sure in grocery sales, it beats out Walmart, like it beats out any of the stuff that I'd heard about before and I'd never heard of H-E-B. And they offer delivery service.    [00:03:15] Ben: Yeah. H-E-B is an impressive company. And the crazy thing is they've been around for 115 years.   [00:03:21] Ben: Wow.    [00:03:21] Ben: They are the top employer in Texas. And when they acquired us, it was the only acquisition they've ever had in their history as a company. And even crazier than that, when we combined workforces at the time, we had the largest workforce of independent contractors. We grew to, now they're at a hundred thousand delivery drivers in Texas.    [00:03:44] Ben: Oh, wow.    [00:03:44] Ben: And H-E-B had a similar amount of employees. So when we combined workforces, it just became this really massive workforce supporting grocery and delivery of all foods. So yeah, it was a cool marriage that we had there.   [00:04:00] Jason Hull: Very cool. Yeah. Very cool. That's interesting history. So I've seen the Favor name when I'm doing delivery from H-E-B, so I was like what's this relationship?    [00:04:11] Ben: Yeah. So I can elaborate a little bit more too about, how we picked Sunroom. We had, like I said, I mean my co-founder Zach and I, we're actually best friends from high school and so we go way back. I think what you were saying about you wanting to support property manager entrepreneurs, I think that's a good mission because I just tip my hat off to any entrepreneurs who get any businesses working because we definitely know how hard that is. But anyways, our journey towards Sunroom was just having a lot of, I would call interesting experiences as a renter. And then we started calling-- once we were interested in the rental space-- we started making a lot of phone calls to, different rental listings. And we started asking the agents and property managers, "Hey, why are you doing this?" "why are you doing these leases?" And, we kept hearing the same thing, which was like, "oh, we don't-- I don't really want to be doing this lease. I'm just doing this lease. I'm helping this investor client buy more homes and so now I'm looped into to renting this place." And every once in a while you'd come across a property manager who really loved leasing, but a lot of the property managers we talked to too would be like, "yeah, I'm really focused on growing my door count. And these things are just something we have to do to get more properties in the door." And Zach and I saw that as an opportunity of: wow. No wonder why the experience is not that great for renters. A lot of the folks who are doing these leasing are not that excited about doing it. And so then that's how we started working on Sunroom.    [00:05:29] Jason Hull: Cool. So let's talk about then what-- you talked about the problem that you saw in the marketplace and experience wasn't super good, but a lot of owners and maybe even property managers aren't even super excited about taking care of the tenant experience. So it's not like their highest priority. Like, "I want to get more doors, I want to have more properties managed," so they're like, "what's my competitive advantage?" So when they're picking tools and software, they're usually-- they're trying to figure out: "how do I get some sort of leg up on the competition," so to speak, or "how can this lower my operational cost?" and these kind of things. One of the biggest time sucks for a property management company is dealing with prospective tenants.    [00:06:13] Jason Hull: Yeah.    [00:06:14] Jason Hull: These are not people that are paying them and they call them the most, and--   [00:06:17] Jason Hull: yeah.   [00:06:18] Jason Hull: --This is like the "garbage of phone calls," I've heard one of my guests call it.   [00:06:21] Jason Hull: Yeah.    [00:06:22] Jason Hull: So tell me about what does Sunroom do and how does it do it, and what's the benefit.    [00:06:27] Ben: Yeah, sure. So what we do is we partner with property management companies and become their leasing arm. So if you're a newer property management company, you're focused on growing doors and you just mainly want to focus on that, right? One of the most important things is you got to get leasing. If you don't get leasing, you're not going to lease the doors quickly, which then your owner investors are not going to be happy about that. And also I would argue equally as important is that renter does have a great experience because, that is really the beginning of your relationship with them, and what we've noticed of working with a lot of different property managers is that, when the renter goes into the home and they're really happy with their experience that led up to that point, they're a lot more-- how do I put this? They're a lot more quiet when they get into the home, right? They're just happy overall, which is going to reduce your maintenance requests and honestly going to make it more likely that they renew the next year, right? because that is just really first, and I would just say first impressions are, everything in life a lot of times.    [00:07:27] Ben: And so I think, leasing really is that first impression for that property manager. To come back around to what we do, yeah, we partner with the property management companies and make it so that they don't even need to have any leasing agents on staff. And we can really do the entire process of getting the home leased. But at the same time, we give the property manager the power over key decisions, right? Things like actually approving the applications, that's still going to be up to the property manager to make sure they choose the right applicant. And obviously if they want to use their lease that they prefer, there's all different ways that we allow them to customize what they want their leasing experience to be like. But at the end of the day, we're really doing the legwork for them and we have a combination of people and tech to do that.    [00:08:12] Ben: Got it. So    [00:08:14] Jason Hull: this combination of people and tech... are you able to do this in every market or is this like a local thing that needs to be done    [00:08:21] Ben: locally?    [00:08:23] Ben: Yeah, great question.   [00:08:24] Ben: So we started out just doing this in Austin and have partnered with several different property managers here. In town. But now we're expanding across the us. And I believe we're up to seven different markets at the moment. But pretty rapidly expanding to cover more markets.   [00:08:41] Ben: Got it. What's    [00:08:42] Jason Hull: the biggest limitation in expansion for those that you don't cover yet?    [00:08:46] Ben: We call ourselves a leasing only brokerage, so we're actually-- we're a real estate brokerage in each of these states. And so that's a blocker to getting set up in a lot of these places is actually establishing our brokerage in each one of these states.   [00:08:59] Ben: Got it.    [00:09:00] Jason Hull: Okay. Cool. I think a lot of property managers, they're aware of certain pools like ShowMojo and Tenant Turner and Rently and Knock Rentals and Turbo Tenant, so how does Sunroom differentiate from all these tools and these systems are already out there?   [00:09:20] Ben: Yeah, so some of those systems and tools you mentioned, I do think those-- they do improve the renter experience and at the same time. They do make it so that it's a little less work for the property manager to lease those properties. But at the end of the day, if you're a property management owner you're still going to need a leasing agent on your team. Or you're going to have to overextend the property manager that you have in order to use those, utilize those tools. Sunroom just takes it the next step where we have similar tools and systems. Obviously I'm biased, but I would argue they're better than those, but--   [00:09:55] Ben: You should argue that.    [00:09:57] Ben: We take it a step further. You don't even really need to have a leasing agent on staff in order to really execute everything you need to do for leasing. Whereas all these other tools or systems they're definitely completely reliant on still having somebody there behind the scenes catching the errors or all all the holes in those systems. And, if anybody has tried to. Integrate those different systems and tools, what they'll find is that they were built in a way that they had a focused goal. And there's a lot of different holes in that system. And I'm sure as operators see that, I think that's a big difference with what we're building, is that what we build, we actually use to operate. And so we're able to see all the different gaps and holes that those systems leave. And really between our systems and our team, we're able to fill in the gaps that those systems leave out.   [00:10:46] Jason Hull: All right. So I think people listening by now are like, "the wheels are turning a little bit," and they're like, "okay, how's this actually play out?" So could you walk us through step by step what-- how this process works with the property manager and the tenant from beginning to    [00:11:01] Ben: finish? Yeah, sure. So it usually starts within one of the property managers, property management softwares, right?   [00:11:09] Ben: We see commonly property managers are using App Folio or Buildium, so let's use App Folio for example. You have a property manager on your team that you have a home where the renter didn't renew. And it's a property that you're going to need to get leased. At that moment, if you were partnered with us, you would open up the Sunroom portal. We would already essentially have that home synced within our system. Because we're able to really pull data from App Folio and the Buildiums of the world. From there, they just really submit the property to us and say, "Hey, this home's coming up for lease." we would normally already have all of their settings. As a part of our onboarding, we're going to get them all set up in our system. So things like knowing what their tenant criteria is. Things like knowing when is this home actually available? When would you like us to touch the property? And then as soon as they submit the property to us, we actually will go out and touch the property. So we have boots on the ground. Those boots on the ground are going to get professional photography. They're going to set up a self showing lock system if that's what the property manager would like to. And then we're going to actually install a yard sign as well. And, we take pictures to really document everything that we do there. And then, we'll take it a step further, we'll get the marketing description written and then we'll get it listed online, and we do that entire process in an average about 48 hours.    [00:12:28] Ben: Nice.    [00:12:29] Jason Hull: Awesome. Yeah, that's very cool. So you actually have people come out-- swarm of people, and they get all this stuff done, right? In the description, getting it listed, doing all this stuff. Okay.    [00:12:39] Jason Hull: Yeah,    [00:12:40] Ben: and that's where our background in Favor obviously comes into play is that, I think if you think about Favor, there's a great consumer experience where the customer can order food, but then there's all these boots on the ground that actually go get the food and make sure that all happens in a timely manner. Leasing is similar in the sense that you need to have a great consumer experience for the renter to be able to see what they're shopping for and do the things they they need to do to see if they want to, lease that property. But then you're going to need boots on the ground to actually, handle the listing side of things.   [00:13:09] Ben: Very cool.    [00:13:10] Jason Hull: So is this totally Uber-like in that you're just pulling anybody in, or I'm sure you have criteria for the photographers and for all these different people that you're bringing in to do these    [00:13:22] Ben: little pieces.    [00:13:23] Ben: Yeah. Yeah. We don't just hire any random person. I'd say it's definitely not Uber-like in that I think, we use-- it's technology enabled so that we can do those things quickly and can measure how fast we do them, right? I think just the fact that we know we get those properties set up in an average of 48 hours, I think is...    [00:13:42] Ben: Yeah.   [00:13:42] Ben: ...more than your average property manager would know, but we know that the tasks we're doing are tech enabled, but no we care a lot about those people that we choose and we try to find folks that have a lot of experience with real estate photography and then we teach them the other aspects of what we're trying to get done at that property.   [00:14:00] Jason Hull: Awesome. Yeah. Very cool. When a property is going to become vacant, are they able to leverage a system or does it have to be totally empty and rent ready and everything    [00:14:11] Ben: else?    [00:14:12] Ben: No. So yeah, no, they're able to use the system. It sounds like you're asking about pre-leasing.    [00:14:19] Ben: Yeah.   [00:14:20] Ben: Okay. Yes, pre-leasing can be really important I think in some markets. Yeah, that's definitely something we support. And let's say it's tenant occupied and we need to act and do an escorted showing, we have different agents on the ground that we partner with that are some of the most active in the area touring homes and renters. And so we'll tap into that network to do some.   [00:14:40] Jason Hull: Got it. Okay. Now what if they want get the property listed, they want to get photos, but there's a bunch of ugly furniture in there and ugly stuff. Do you guys let maybe-- BoxBrownie I've had on the show before-- digital editors and they're like, removing all this    [00:14:55] Ben: stuff?   [00:14:55] Ben: Yeah.    [00:14:56] Ben: Take the photos.   [00:14:56] Ben: Yeah, we do have digital editing in that regard, but depending on the degree of how much that home is messed up. That's also something that we do is that if we go out to a home and we think it's not show ready we'll document that and share it back with the property manager. And I think we've seen property managers really love that aspect of what we do because oftentimes they have a tough time holding the make ready folks accountable or let's say they're doing a renovation on the property. In particular, I can't tell you how many times that a property manager said, "Oh yeah, this was supposed to be done. And then when we went out there we were able to collect evidence that it wasn't right. That's also part of our system is that if the home is not actually ready to be marketed, and then, we're going to gather that information, share it back with the property manager, and then essentially remind them until that's resolved and as soon as it's resolved, then we can make the listing active. But it's a pretty valuable system and checks and balances that we have in place there.    [00:15:55] Jason Hull: Got it. So you'll communicate with them. Then the property manager can send out maintenance, get things taken care of, dealt with, and then report back to you and you're checking in with them, "Hey, is this ready yet? Is this ready yet?" And then they're like, "we got it ready." And then...    [00:16:08] Jason Hull: exactly.    [00:16:08] Jason Hull: Proceed.    [00:16:10] Jason Hull: Exactly.    [00:16:10] Jason Hull: So you've sent up the people, you've got the photos, you got like maybe a lockbox on, you got the yard sign, you've got the description. It's posted online. It's probably pushed out to multiple channels.   [00:16:19] Jason Hull: That's right.    [00:16:20] Jason Hull: Then next come the showings, right? And scheduling and all this. So how does that work and are you doing one-off showings? Are you doing open house model? What would it be found to be the most efficient? What comes next?    [00:16:35] Ben: Yeah. Yeah. So what we do is we usually set these properties up with a self showing system, and then renters are able to go tour the properties seven days a week from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM and, we also have, a support team available those same hours, so 84 hours, we're ready to quickly text back any renters or answer any phone calls if, folks are having a tough time actually, accessing the home for any particular reason. Our system is really good. I'd say renters have a really good experience touring homes. Like any system, we're dealing with real world stuff. Sometimes maybe it could be a really humid day and maybe the maybe the door frame swells a bit or something, right? So maybe the door gets a little stuck. So the renter needs a little help to understand how to get in. Those are all things that I think us, having support team there available to talk to them and actually pick up the phone. I think is a really important thing. So that's just one of the many ways that we support tours. But I'd say one of the most important pieces of tours is actually collecting that tour feedback and sharing it with the owner after the fact. And so we have a really great system in place for that as well where a lot of renters will leave feedback just right within the place that they tour. And then we're actually able to take that feedback and then give it to display it on a webpage where then the property manager is able to share that webpage directly with their owner so they can actually watch the tours that are coming in and the tour feedback in real time. And we white label that for them. So you can imagine as a property manager, you just share this white label page with your logo and the owner's able to get a bird's eye view of how their home is performing on the market.    [00:18:21] Ben: Got it.    [00:18:22] Jason Hull: So could this be a scenario that the owner says, "I don't need to do this," and like the property manager says, "you need to do this. Like it'll get you more rent. People will have an issue with this place if you don't fix this or change this," and the owner's like, "no." And then they say, "look at the page, here's the white label page. It's got our brand, our logo, XYZ property management, and it says like, consistently feedback. Like the floor is too gross, or whatever."   [00:18:47] Ben: Yeah, "I would rent this home, but does it come with a fridge?" Just one way I've seen owners trying to cut some costs is like not putting refrigerators in the home. And then they see, three out of the five renters that tour the home mentioned "Hey, there's no fridge."    [00:19:00] Ben: "have to buy a fridge and I'll go somewhere else."   [00:19:03] Ben: Yeah, exactly. And that page really helps the property manager make their case to the owner and also show to them like, "Hey, we really are showing this property and this really is what the renters are saying.   [00:19:14] Ben: Cool.    [00:19:15] Jason Hull: Yeah, that's really cool. I like the feedback loops. So then, what's the next steps? You're doing showings, you're doing tours. Then I guess people are being pushed to apply when they're doing these tours by the system?    [00:19:27] Ben: Yeah, so we have a system, both to pre-qualify renters and to actually have them apply. As soon as they apply we're able to display those applications to the property manager. And we use the same page that we use to display tour feedback and also tracking the tours and the leads and everything. We use that same page then to actually show the applications to the property managers and to their owners. Because I know every property manager seems to have a different deal with each owner, right? Some of 'em, they want to run the application past their owner beforehand, or sometimes they're just the ones reviewing it. But either way, we display that information there so that both the property manager and the owner, are able to review the application before they decide to approve or not.   [00:20:14] Ben: Got it. So    [00:20:14] Jason Hull: they can either show this white label page that has the list of all the applicants or could they just say, "here's the one we recommend," and show that person's information?   [00:20:22] Jason Hull: Yeah.    [00:20:23] Ben: Yeah. It's usually the latter. Because it's trying to make it simpler. Yeah. It's usually just showing the one that they recommend. And at that point, we would've already done all of the vetting for that application. Even the manual steps of doing a verification of rental history, for example or a verification of employment. And we've actually seen just our application processing service. We've seen that to be so popular that we actually broke that out as something that a property manager could partner with us just on application processing, and that's also cool because we have a lot of tech to catch fraudulent renters. I'm sure you've probably heard about how fraud is on the rise especially with us entering recession. And I think it's just more likely that renters are going to try to fake pay stubs. Even some go as far as trying to fake their identity in different ways to try to get approved for a home that really are beyond their means. And so we've really, we've invested a lot into our application processing system. Doing things like being able to get their pay stubs directly from their payroll provider instead of having a way for them to upload their pay stubs, which could be photoshopped or something like that.    [00:21:35] Ben: Yeah.    [00:21:35] Ben: And then let's say a renter doesn't even have a job, or let's say a renter's, a self-employed or something, we have a way of actually pulling bank statements directly from their bank, instead of just receiving those bank statements and getting it uploaded. All that tech helps to really reduce the amount of fraud. And as for property managers as well, it's less work to actually investigate all those documents.   [00:21:59] Jason Hull: That's just technology and stuff a property manager can't do directly. They don't have the ability to pull directly from the bank their pay stubs, and it's not going to say, "here, let me give you my login to my bank account," and to pull directly from the employer. They don't usually have that ability really effectively either. There needs to be technology involved.   [00:22:18] Ben: Yeah.    [00:22:19] Ben: So we--   [00:22:20] Ben: --so what    [00:22:20] Jason Hull: about--    [00:22:20] Ben: oh, go ahead.    [00:22:20] Ben: I was just going to say, yeah, we recognize that you know most of what we've been talking about here is called our full service leasing, right? Where we actually become the leasing arm. But let's say, you've got leasing agents on your team and you think they're rock stars. You're happy with what's going on with your leasing. We could plug in and just do the application processing. We call that service, we call that Sunscreen, is what we call it. The idea is the quirky tagline that I came up with is, "Don't get burned by bad renters."   [00:22:47] Jason Hull: I like it. Little bit of sunscreen.    [00:22:51] Ben: Yeah, exactly.   [00:22:52] Ben: Okay.    [00:22:53] Jason Hull: So one of the questions I think some people will be asking is, what about pets? It's like a whole nother beast. Outside, inside pets and running pets and having pets, all this kind of stuff. Property managers tend to do best if they just convince owners to do pets. You're going to get more tenants, you're going to get more money. How do you deal with the pet side of    [00:23:11] Ben: things?    [00:23:12] Ben: Yeah, so at this point I'm sure most property managers have heard of pet screening.com. I think they're a great company. And so we actually integrate their data into our system. So if you're already signed up for pet screening.com. You can provide the pet screening.com login, and then we're able to pull that information into the application packet. So it's something that the owner and the property manager can consider as a part of the overall application. And, obviously pet screening.com does a really good job verifying things like our emotional support animal documentation. Is that legit? There's fraud around ESA documents. And that's just one of the pieces that they do. But yeah, that's something that we recommend whenever anyone is accepting pets.   [00:23:57] Ben: Very    [00:23:58] Jason Hull: cool. I like pet screening.com that I've had them on the show. I had another company that may be interesting to integrate with too on the show called our pet policy.com and they take things a step further on the protection side of things after the screening. So they go step beyond. So that might be interesting for you to take a look at integrating with as well.    [00:24:20] Jason Hull: Yeah.   [00:24:20] Jason Hull: Ourpetpolicy.com, they seem like a good group of people over there as well. So real quick, going back, you had mentioned AppFolio, Buildium, do you integrate with Rent Manager? Do you integrate with I don't know, there's some other things and some of these tools    [00:24:35] that    [00:24:35] Ben: people are using?   [00:24:37] Ben: Yeah. Great question. So it's pretty easy for us to get key information plugged into these softwares. And the reason is when someone partners with us, if you think about it, we really need to touch that property management software right when the home is when the home's coming up for lease, right? It needs to be listed. And then once the home gets leased, that's when that information needs to get back in the property management software again. So usually the way that our structure is, it doesn't really matter too much, which property management software you're. The system would be the same, where you would essentially create a user for us.   [00:25:15] Ben: So then once the home is getting leased, we know who's signing the lease. We're going to get their information set up within whatever property management software you use and make sure that it's set up for ongoing rent payments and things like that. It essentially, if you're using a property management software, but then you're going to use someone for leasing. But then once the home gets leased, it's going to be as if you had leased it through those other systems. And it's seamless in that way.    [00:25:39] Ben: Yeah. Very cool. So    [00:25:40] Jason Hull: you're PM    [00:25:41] Ben: software agnostic.    [00:25:42] Ben: Exactly. Yes. That's a much more succinct way of saying it. Thanks.   [00:25:47] Jason Hull: So that just means I've been doing this probably a long time. All right. So you've, you mentioned your solution. You've got the sunscreen that can be, pulled out just separately or if they're using the full leasing service. You've done the pre-qualification, you've got the applicant they can send over the white label thing to the owner. If the owner's like, "I really need to see what info you got." And you've tested out their pay stubs and their bank--   [00:26:11] Jason Hull: right    [00:26:12] Jason Hull: --stuff, and you've maybe connected the pet screening.com. What happens next? You've got    [00:26:17] Ben: a good applic--    [00:26:18] Ben: Yes. Yeah, so the property manager, the owner accepts the application. And at that point, we're going to reach out to the renter, say, "congrats, you've been accepted. Please now pay the security deposit." And as soon as they pay security deposit, then the owner or the property manager is able to connect their bank account, and that money will just automatically get deposited in whatever account that you specify. And then from a lease perspective, from really from the beginning of the process, we would've asked that you provide the preferred lease that you would like for us to use. We're going to get that lease drafted up and we're going to send it over to both the renter and the property manager. For some property managers, they like to review one last time before it gets sent to the renter. So we can fulfill that ask. And then the lease is going to get signed. And as soon as the lease gets signed, we will then dispatch our people back out to the property, do one final walkthrough, and also remove our yard sign and remove any other things that we had, any lock boxes or things like that we got setup. But we do one thing where we will leave a combo lockbox out at the property so that we can facilitate the renter actually moving in. So that's really the final and last step for our system, is facilitating to the renter actually getting the keys so that they have a smooth move in. And then the last step after all of that is we're going to survey the renter and make sure they had a great experience through the whole the whole leasing process.   [00:27:51] Jason Hull: And what's-- before we move on, because I'm curious like what difference you're noticing with these surveys, but let's say they don't accept somebody. What's the process? What happens to the rejects, so to speak? The tenants that didn't pass because a lot of times they're following up and bugging the property manager, "Hey, did you accept me? What's going on?" This sort of thing. What do you do?    [00:28:11] Ben: Yeah. So first of all, we shield the property manager from having to deal with all of that stuff. And I think for the position we're in, I think the natural thing is I think we would do what any other good property manager would do. We'd see if there's any other listings within that property manager that the renter would qualify for. First and foremost, we're going to recommend that of " There are these other listings for the same property manager" or, " do you like that?" And if the renter is not interested in any of those homes, then I think we would look broader to other listings that that are amongst our partners and say, "Hey, renter, maybe it would be better if you lease this property."   [00:28:48] Jason Hull: Yeah. That helps get the other properties filled. That's great.    [00:28:53] Ben: Yeah.    [00:28:53] Ben: Okay.    [00:28:53] Ben: And the renter's really happy too, because they don't have to pay an application fee again, so they're able to reuse their application.    [00:29:00] Jason Hull: Nice. Now what if you have two property managers in the same market and you get an applicant for one, are they completely segregated from being able to apply it to the other, or if they're in the Sunroom system,    [00:29:13] Ben: they can...   [00:29:14] Ben: Great question. Yeah. So we don't want to restrict where renters can apply, right? because that just doesn't make sense. But we have come across the scenario, it's been rare where renters have applied to multiple properties. And so what's really cool about our system is that we have a little disclaimer for the property manager where they can see, "hey, this renter's actually applied for multiple properties," and that way it's clear to them of " Hey, look, this renter is serious about your property, they are, they're hedging their bets," which, that's a common scenario especially in a hot market is if property managers are collecting multiple applicants on a single property, you can bet that the renters-- they know that. And so they're also applying to multiple properties. So I think we do our best to try to mitigate those scenarios. And I think one of the best ways to mitigate those scenarios is really just processing applications quickly and then, and working to get the renter and answer quickly around if they're accepted or denied. And, in most cases, I think renters are willing to tell you which one's their first choice. And so if you're able to process the application really quickly and drive it to decision, it doesn't happen too often where the owner comes back and wants to accept the renter and they've already decided to go somewhere else. It does occasionally, we try to mitigate that.    [00:30:28] Ben: Got it.    [00:30:28] Jason Hull: Okay, cool. So going back to the other path, I'm actually drawing this all out. I've got like a flow    [00:30:34] Ben: chart going on here.    [00:30:36] Ben: Sounds good. Keep    [00:30:37] Jason Hull: track.    [00:30:38] Jason Hull: So you surveyed the renter at the end, like you've got somebody in the property.    [00:30:43] Jason Hull: Yeah.   [00:30:43] Jason Hull: They've got a lockbox there. I think that's very cool. They can just go and "Can I move in on this day?" "Yep, here's the lockbox. You've got a code or however it works." And they can go get in.    [00:30:52] Jason Hull: Yeah.   [00:30:52] Jason Hull: And you don't have to show up. They can be there with their new U-Haul when they need to be there. That's super annoying, I think for property managers sometimes. And then afterwards you survey the renter. So I'm curious about the results of this. What's been the shift that people have noticed in the experience? This is why you started this in the beginning. You weren't having a great experience. Some people probably were like, "Drive to our office and you might get a key." Some people are like, "we can meet you maybe this day." It was like a mess. So what sort of feedback are you seeing on these surveys and what sort of shift are property management companies that are working with you noticing with your process versus trying to do this on their    [00:31:30] Ben: own?   [00:31:30] Ben: Yeah, great question. We collect what I would I consider a very important metric and I'm curious if it's come up before in this podcast. It's something called a net promoter score. Yeah. Have you discussed that before? I'm happy to--   [00:31:44] Ben: we    [00:31:44] Jason Hull: haven't really focused on that. But yeah, I think a lot of people are familiar. So net promoter score is when it says "on a scale of maybe zero to 10 or one to 10, how likely are you to recommend this company?" So a lot of people see this, the quick survey on software, different things like this.    [00:32:00] Ben: Yeah, that's right. And so when the net promoter score rank actually comes out, the scale is actually a minus a hundred to a plus 100. You could Google about how that works, but you're right. As a renter, what we would be asking them is, "how likely are you to recommend leasing a property to a friend through Sunroom or through x property management company?" And what we found is we just have a really good net promoter score. So if you could google this around, but the average net promoter score amongst property managers is a seven. And that's not on the zero to 10 scale. That's on the minus a hundred to the plus 100 scale, and. For the renters who lease a property through us, we have a 52 net promoter score.    [00:32:42] Ben: Nice.    [00:32:43] Ben: Yeah. So it's like what I said at the very beginning these renters are just a lot happier when they get in the home. For the property managers, they're seeing less really noisy renters when they first move in. I think that's a common thing that property managers are used to is that when a renter first moves in, that can be when they're talking the most or they're the noisiest. And so I think just anecdotally, property managers have said that, "Hey, these renters are just happier. They're just not causing as much commotion when they first move. And some of that has to do with our process too, right? Allowing renters to even self tour homes, it's a no pressure thing where they're able to really understand what they're buying before they move in. So I believe that helps as well.    [00:33:24] Jason Hull: This is the nerd in me coming out. So there's this really book called _Innovating Analytics_. And they put out this idea, basically the idea of the next generation of net promoter. They have used a lot of data to showcase and it's a little dry, but there's a lot of data to showcase the fundamental flaws of net promoter score, which is, has advantages over doing nothing, right? But then they talk about a new sort of score, which is the word of mouth index. And so we've incorporated that a bit into our business. It basically asks a second question, "how likely are you to discourage others from utilizing that?" Because what they found, just because somebody is not a true promoter, as they categorize them on the high end, like they choose like maybe a seven, eight, or nine or something, does not mean they're actually going to go hurt your business. And so a lot of big companies, they found were spending a lot of money to try and mitigate the people and pay attention to people and help the people they thought were detractors or people that would hurt their business when most of them really wouldn't. Just because it was a two or a three. They found that does not necessarily mean they're actually going to go actively try and destroy your business or hurt you. They just aren't going to tell people about it, because some people just don't want to talk about other businesses. Right? . So then asking a secondary question, how likely are you to tell others not to use this business or whatever. Then it gives you the true people to focus on mitigating or solving challenges for. Really interesting idea, but then they talk about the challenge of mainlining, where if they answer one question one way, first question, they'll answer it the same way, but it's backwards. Because they're just in the mode of answering questions like a zombie and they'll do it the wrong way or read it the wrong way. We've even seen this, so you have to put some questions in between and so it just complicates. But it's a really interesting book. You and I can geek out sometime and show you how I built this out so that it would work effectively, but it helps us identify which people are actually detractors that we need to take care of and focus on, and which people, they never rate anything positively and they're just, but they're quiet, which is fine.    [00:35:25] Jason Hull: Oh that's    [00:35:25] Ben: fascinating. I'll have to check that out.   [00:35:28] Jason Hull: I know, it's pretty nerdy. So_ Innovating Analytics_ is by Larry Freed F R E E D which is an interesting book. Cool. We've asked a lot of questions. You've explained the process. I think we've covered how it works unless we missed anything. But what else do people, property managers coming to you, what other concerns or things could we address here on the podcast before we wrap that they might have? Or what are the big FAQ questions that they ask before they're willing to explore giving up the leasing arm their business?    [00:36:00] Ben: Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of the questions just evolve around how they can still control the process. And so we've invested an incredible amount into giving them those controls, right? Like I think the key is, the way we look at it is look like we're going to be the best at doing this leasing legwork. It's all we do. And we've built technology to really hold ourselves accountable to really high standards. But at the end of the day, like we still want you to have control over who's the right tenant for this property? Or, "how would you like the that application process to go?" For example. And I think we've worked hard to streamline the areas and that, we just realized, hey, this is the best way to do this. But also we recognize that hey, these property managers, they have pride to process for a reason, right, for their particular market that might be the right thing to do. And so we've invested a lot in creating different settings and things like that, that can make it so that they get to use it the way they would like.    [00:37:03] Ben: Cool. So it's    [00:37:04] Jason Hull: really a lot of the big concerns are just about the flexibility. "Do I have to go all in and use everything that you offer?"   [00:37:10] Jason Hull: Right.   [00:37:11] Jason Hull: "Or can I do, some of this and maybe I'll give up pieces later--" because some of y'all entrepreneurs are control freaks. Let's be real.    [00:37:18] Jason Hull: Yes.    [00:37:18] Jason Hull: And you need to let go of some of this stuff and let somebody else do it a little bit better. We have a lot of egos, entrepreneurs. We think our way is the best way all the time and we need to see that maybe somebody else could do this    [00:37:31] Ben: better.    [00:37:31] Ben: But we've also, from    [00:37:32] Jason Hull: experience--   [00:37:33] Jason Hull: I'm guessing you're going to say that Sunroom probably does it better than what most property managers are doing.    [00:37:39] Ben: Better NPS scores?    [00:37:41] Ben: Yeah. I would just say that, some of the property managers that we've seen are the most excited to partner with us are definitely probably the ones listening to your podcast or it's the ones that want to grow. And, we have some great examples of that, right? There's one property manager that we started working with in Austin a couple years ago, and they started with 300 doors. And now I believe they're up to 800 doors. And so by them being able to just, focus on other things, they were able to grow pretty quickly. And because we recognize this and we're starting to set up in these new markets, we actually just this week launched a new program specifically for trying to find these property management companies that are really focused on growth. And so we actually launched this new growth program. That we just put on our website where property managers can apply for the program. And essentially this program if we accept them will actually give them-- and they partner with us-- we'll give them $10,000 to grow their business. And they can, they could use that money for-- or I'd say up to 10,000-- they can use that money for helping them grow. And really the only terms of it is that you're willing to partner with us on leasing to do that. And so we have different ideas of really how to use that money to grow. I know a lot of entrepreneurs already have those ideas and so that's why we yeah, we set up this new program.   [00:39:02] Jason Hull: Awesome. We should chat because we're really good at growing property management companies and yeah, I think there would be a good-- there. We'll chat later. We've also negotiated with most of the top vendors where we've got a hit list, but a lot of the top vendors we're negotiating best in class discounts just for our mastermind members.   [00:39:21] Ben: There you go.    [00:39:21] Jason Hull: So maybe that's something you and I can do with the Sunroom as well. So    [00:39:25] Jason Hull: Yeah .   [00:39:26] Jason Hull: If you're open, that's--   [00:39:27] Jason Hull: yeah. Cool.    [00:39:28] Jason Hull: We've got some big players on board already for some of these things, but I think it'd be really cool to see this is something new and I think it's innovative and it seems really exciting. So we'll we'll chat afterwards, cool. Is there anything else you want people to know before we go and if The last thing maybe is how do they find you? And how do they get in touch and how do they start working with Sunroom?    [00:39:49] Ben: Yeah. Just go to our website, Sunroomleasing.com. Fill out a little form. Be happy to have, someone from our sales team reach out and have a conversation and kind of explain more of these details about what we do. I'm an engineer at heart, so I think for some people, maybe I went into too much detail. But at the same time, knowing I've talked to a lot of property managers they love the details. If you want even more details yeah, go to our website, sunroomleasing.com. Reach out to us and someone from our sales team would love to dig into those details with you.    [00:40:18] Jason Hull: Perfect. I think the last big question everybody would have is be, is going to be what does it cost? Is this affordable? Can we do this? That sort of question. So--   [00:40:29] Jason Hull: yeah.   [00:40:29] Jason Hull: Anything to say about that?    [00:40:31] Ben: Yeah, so we're going to charge, similar to what I would say like other leasing agents would. So we're going to charge like a percentage of first month's rent. That percentage of first month's rent that we charge. It's going to be different depending on the market and depending on what kind of volume that you have. Normally, the way we are setting this up is that we usually make it so that the property manager can still make good money on leasing while still utilizing us for all of it. Property managers can charge a percentage of first month's rent to their owners. That could be different by market. We're usually going to charge, call it 10- 20% less than that so that they're able to still make money on the leasing, but still know that they have a best in class service for that happening. And so that's just for full service. For Sunscreen, that's actually free for property managers to use. And we just charge the renter an application fee. And so that's really the easiest way. If we said a lot of stuff today, people are like, "wow that's a little scary to adopt that big of a, have a company owning leasing." a great way to start to just build a relationship with us and start seeing what we could do would be to start utilizing our application processing system, which, really, it's going to be a really a low risk thing. Even if want to test out having us do one application on one listing or something, we'd be happy to do that.   [00:41:48] Ben: That's the    [00:41:49] Jason Hull: gateway drug. A little bit of Sunscreen, and then you're going to be like, "I want a whole room. I want the Sunroom now."   [00:41:54] Jason Hull: There you go. There you go.    [00:41:55] Jason Hull: "I don't want to deal with this anymore. I'm tired of putting the Sunscreen on. Yeah. Okay.    [00:41:59] Jason Hull: There you go.    [00:42:00] Jason Hull: Cool.    [00:42:01] Jason Hull: Yeah.    [00:42:01] Jason Hull: All right. Ben, it's been great having you on the show. Check out Sunroomleasing.com and then if you come up with some major developments or big shifts or changes, we'd love to have you back on the show. So thanks for being    [00:42:12] Ben: here.    [00:42:13] Ben: Thanks so much, Jason. And yeah, we'll have to meet up in Austin sometime.    [00:42:16] Ben: All right.    [00:42:18] Jason Hull: All right. Cool. Thanks, Ben.    [00:42:20] Jason Hull: Alright. Everybody, if you've been listening to this, we appreciate you listening to our podcast. We would really appreciate it if you left us a review in exchange. If you got value from this, that would mean a lot to us at DoorGrow and my team. We have been innovating and creating a lot of new stuff at DoorGrow. We've got some really cool stuff coming out. So if you have not been familiar with DoorGrow for a while, we've got some really cool things coming down that we are working on. You should get connected to do a sales call. Check us out at doorgrow.com. Reach out to us. You can reach out to us on any social media. And we would love to connect with you and share with you. We just released the DoorGrow Code, which is the first roadmap that really showcases how to go from zero to a thousand doors in as short of time period as possible. It shows you which things you need to do at which stage, at which door levels, and what questions you have, what major problems you have at each stage, and what you need to do in order to do things in the right order to get to the next level.   [00:43:22] Jason Hull: So if you've been at a similar door count for the last year or maybe two years or three years, maybe even kind feeling stuck or maybe even backsliding a little bit because of property selling off or whatever. We have clients that are adding a lot of doors. Andrew Rocha just chimed in on one of our mastermind calls. He's one of our clients. He added like 50 doors in the last month. We've got clients. One of our clients added 310 doors in a year. We've got another client that added a hundred in gosh, they've doubled their doors. Like we've got clients that are growing really rapidly and they're not spending any money on advertising. I want you to be clear, like our methods are not focused on SEO, pay per click, content marketing, pay-per-lead lead services, social media marketing. Our methods are what really work in the marketplace, and most of them are zero cost, like they cost nothing. It just costs time and effort, and it actually takes less time and less effort than doing cold lead marketing like seo, pay per click, content marketing, social media marketing, or pay per lead services that exist in the property management space. So I highly recommend you check this out if you're wanting to grow. And we are now helping really significantly. We've built out the best systems and processes and we've been stacking the best coaches in the industry. If you've heard of certain coaches in the industry, we might have them on as experts in our program. We'll be announcing more of that later, but we've got some of the best in the industry that we've brought on as coaches. So it's not the Jason Show. I've got an amazing team of people coaching and we have systems for operations. We have systems for process. We have systems for sales, and our clients are crushing it. Nobody in the marketplace is doing all that DoorGrow's doing or can compete with us. And so if you think you know DoorGrow and you've looked at us or judged us in the past, it might be time to take a new look because your competitors might be working with us or they might work with us, and you're going to wish that it had been you.   [00:45:33] Jason Hull: So until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.    [00:45:37] 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!    [00:46:05] Jason Hull: 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.

Over the last few years there's been a few startups that have tried to focus on the first-time home buyer as their market segment by courting renters through rewards programs. You can even see the evidence of this in how the listings marketplace websites like Zillow and Realtor.com want to build relationships with renters today—who in their minds are the homebuyers tomorrow. Will Dunn, Co-founder and CGO of Gravy (Chief Growth Officer, though I recommended the G should be Gravy), breaks down why creating a unique rewards program for renters is a powerful tool to helping unlock homeownership. What's unique about Gravy is there is no fee up front for renters and landlords don't have to sign-up for anything nor change anything about how they collect rent. Listen in as Will gives us all the details and more.More about Gravy and WillGravy is a mobile app that helps renters become homebuyers. Buying a home is a confusing and complicated process––especially if you don't have a network of friends/family who have done it––including knowing where to start.Gravy is designed to be both the first-step toward homeownership for renters and each step following to getting the keys to a new home.Will Dunn is the co-founder and CGO of Gravy, where he oversees the company's marketing, customer acquisition, and B2B partner operations.Prior to Gravy, Will was Business Manager of Resident Services at leading property management software company, Buildium. Teaming up with Buildium alumni Jimmy Lien and Jeff Dinter, the three launched Gravy in April 2022 to become the destination where all 100M+ renters in the U.S. save money to buy their first home and learn how to successfully navigate the homebuying process. Connect with Will on LinkedIn Check out Gravy

Hey friends, welcome back to episode 10 of the Women Invest In Real Estate Podcast! This week we are so excited to welcome Kayla Thorp, also known as thatlandlady on Instagram. Kayla is a residential real estate investor in upstate New York whose real estate portfolio currently sits at 40+ doors, mostly in the long-term rental market. Kayla is one of the smartest people we know in the REI biz and we are so honored to have her join us today on the podcast and dive into how she systemizes her business.Kayla started out like the majority of investors, self-managing her rentals but since then she and her husband now have their own property management team they can rely on to keep their units and operations running like a well-oiled machine. After purchasing their first couple of rental units, they started out using Cozy.co, and when Cozy merged with Apartments.com they realized the service was not serving them well, nor was it meeting their tenant needs. They pivoted and made the switch over to Buildium, and ultimately switched again to AppFolio, which is what they still use today.One thing Kayla impresses on other investors is that if you buy a property and don't factor in a management fee, you are not buying an investment. You are buying a full-time job. The reason for this is that eventually if you want this to become a more passive business, you will need to hire a manager (which hopefully you will see a good ROI with appreciation and rent growth). For Kayla, that time came sooner than later and they were quickly glad they had factored in that management percentage from the beginning. Being able to keep that management percentage to fund their own business and lifestyle, while building their portfolio, became super valuable for them. At that point, they were already ready to put more systems in place to be able to hire out different pieces of their business.Their first property management hire was an internal hire. Because Kayla had done her due diligence and created SOPs for each step of her business in the early stages, it made this transition much less painful. They could continuously point back to all of their documented systems and procedures for every detail of exactly how to screen a tenant, turn over a unit, review standards for rental criteria, and so much more. Being in New York, a very tenant-friendly state, Kayla has had to adjust her management style in a much different fashion than most others operate. Because New York has a unique set of laws and regulations regarding things such as evictions, collecting pet fees, the inability to check previous eviction history, and so much more. They have developed a problem-solving style that has really helped them get through most of these situations, without having to go through the eviction route.Kayla and her husband also started the Rochester Housing Coalition, which is a group of housing providers and also nonprofit organizations that deal with homelessness in their city to address some of the housing policy concerns and to help the city work through those things in a way that's beneficial to everyone.Eventually, Kayla and her husband were able to pivot their business and hire their first external property manager, who was actually an old friend of their business partner. They began to hand it off piece by piece starting with maintenance ticket coordination. They began by introducing them to their maintenance team. Introduced them to their ticketing system, worked out all of those kinks, and handed off just that piece. Next, they handed over learning the rent collection system, collecting outstanding rental payments, and so on. Ultimately Kayla's goal for herself and her husband was to get down to only working in their business for a total of 10 hours per week before they would consider the stand-up complete. Finally, they were ready to really test their systems and booked an Airbnb, out of town, for a full month to allow their team to really run the show successfully with their hands off. Kayla's Tips for Property Management1. Do not be afraid to reach out to your investing community.For the most part, the real estate investing community is so welcoming and genuinely wants to help one other. We all want each other to succeed. 2. Visualize the absolute worst-case scenario and piece together exactly how it could play out. Could you handle that? Consider if you've done all of your homework, you've measured and taken responsible risks, and you have done your due diligence. If you cannot cover that risk and if there is not something that you are willing to live with, in that scenario, then you might need to change your strategy and direct it towards a scenario that you can live with.  Kayla and her husband have now transitioned to a property management team. This is an amazing option if you have a larger portfolio and they chose to partner with someone who had extensive property management experience and was also interested in starting a property management company. Kayla and her husband brought the systems, processes, and business knowledge to the table, so this operating partnership made perfect sense for them. If you want to learn more about Kayla's business you can visit her website or connect with her on Instagram.Thank you so much for joining us this week, see you next time! Resources:Sign up for our FREE 60-minute trainingConnect with Kayla on InstagramSee how Kayla operates her businessCheck out the property management software Kayla uses in her biz, AppFolioFind out more about the Rochester Housing Coalition

Echoinnovate IT, a seasoned supplier of technology, is no novice when it comes to property management software development. We design technologies connected to develop a software like Buildium that give all of the features that contemporary companies want to maintain their advantage in the marketplace. Buildium is a property management software that thousands of property managers use to manage the residential portfolios they are responsible for. Endlessly, the rental industry seeks to optimize and standardize operations. They can monitor and automate back-office operations, property-related functions, and finances using property management software development. A bespoke solution enables firms to grow and develop unique designs and functionalities. If you understand the benefits of creating one, Echoinnovate IT developers will be pleased to assist you. Our software professionals and graphic designers will construct a cutting-edge solution, while our QA expert will guarantee its superior quality. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/echo-innovate-it/message

Geoff Roberts is the co-founder of Outseta, a bootstrapped all-in-one platform to help manage and grow your recurring revenue business. Before Outseta, Geoff was Head of Marketing for Buildium, a product that went through the phases of bootstrapping, raising and exiting, that was started by current co-founder Dimitris.What we covered in this episode: Taking a big 15 year bet on your business Going into an established, durable market Why not raise for the company? Single focus vs portfolio of small bets Why Outseta focused on brand building and not SEO Marketing trade-offs Why freemium doesn't work for everyone Building a flat, self-managed organisation Recommendations Book: Reinventing Organistations; Life Profitability Podcast: Tim Ferris Show Indie Hacker: Anthony Castrio Follow Geoff Twitter Read the Outseta Blog Follow Me Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) Sponsor - FiguraOften great design makes products stand out in this day and age; stop trying to figure it out yourself. Figura offers vetted product designers for startups and fast-growing companies. Find your first designer or contractor, or land a helping hand for your product in less than 48hours. Save $199 and start your project for free, using code "INDIE199".Head to figura.digital to try it out.

At DoorGrow, we aim to expand the property management industry and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We love gathering new strategies and ideas to help savvy property managers grow their businesses. In this episode, property management growth expert Jason Hull interviews Tommy Chambers from Chambers Theory about the secret to his success. You'll Learn… [02:08] The Secret Power of Trust Equity for Improving Churn Rate [08:59] Keeping on Clients… Even When they Don't Really Need You Anymore [15:09] Benefitting Homeowners and Investors with Ongoing Management [21:02] Why Recognizing Your Team Matters [26:07] Systems Every Business Should Have [31:23] The Importance of Establishing Company Culture Tweetables “It's not just about growth. It's also about keeping the ones you have and the clients you have satisfied. So our strategy has been to take care of our people.” “If your churn rate is high, that means you then have to replace all the doors you are losing every single month. If you're replacing every door that you're losing constantly, then you have stagnation.” “It's far easier to keep a client than to go acquire new ones... and far cheaper.” “Hiring is hard. One of the hardest transitions I see entrepreneurs go through is solopreneur to having a team.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Tommy: We said, "Hey, your services don't have to stop when you come back to live in your own home. We can still be your property manager even if we're not collecting rent.   [00:00:08] Jason: 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.   [00:00:46] 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 the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.    [00:01:11] Welcome to the #DoorGrowShow.    [00:01:13] Tommy: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on.    [00:01:15] Jason: Yeah. Glad to have you. So you've been doing property management for how long?    [00:01:20] Tommy: 21 years now.    [00:01:22] Jason: And how long ago did you start your business?   [00:01:25] Tommy: We started Chambers Theory in 2018. This was on the heels of my former company selling to a bigger broker and saw the opportunity to start fresh and bring my theory to the market of what property management should and could look like.    [00:01:42] Jason: Cool. Well, welcome to the show. So you guys reached out and wanted to be on the show, I guess you had been listening to the podcast for a while. We've never worked together, right?   [00:01:52] Tommy: Not yet.   [00:01:52] Jason: Not yet. Not yet. Right. So cool. Well, I'd love to hear how many doors do you guys have right now.   [00:01:58] Tommy: 717.    [00:02:01] Jason: All right. That's a nice number since 2018. So what's your biggest strategy to add doors? How have you grown the business so far?    [00:02:08] Tommy: You know, there's a lot of different ways we've approached that. There's a growth strategy just from organic growth. All of those doors have been organic growth. Of course, we look at acquisitions as well. And then, there's also the client retention. It's not just about growth. It's also about keeping the ones you have and the clients you have satisfied. So our strategy has been to take care of our people, use and try new tech, be early adapters with some new tech, and when we take care of our people and lean into some cool new products and leading-edge technology, the word gets out and when we're effective and take care of our people, people like to follow that. Clients like to follow companies where they have consistency of people they're dealing with and especially if they're happy with their jobs, it really works out well.    [00:02:55] Jason: I love what you said. One of the big things that a lot of businesses fail to look at is churn, you know, and retention. And your churn ratio or churn rate is basically the number of clients you had at the beginning of the month. And then, you divide that by the number of clients you have at the end of the month, basically is how you calculate churn. And so if your churn rate is high, that means you then have to replace all the doors you are losing every single month, if you're replacing every door that you're losing constantly, then you have stagnation, and a lot of business owners try to increase growth, increase lead then, and they don't focus on churn at all or retention at all. And they wonder why they're not making any progress. And it's kind of like trying to run uphill while somebody's pulling you backwards. So what are some things you've done to kind of decrease the churn rate and prevent clients from leaving? And one of the clients that tends to leave the most are accidental investors. Do you avoid those or are you good at convincing them to stay longer?    [00:03:56] Tommy: I love the analogy too. We actually use the analogy of pushing a rope uphill is when you have a high churn rate. Just doesn't make a lot of sense in that it takes a lot of energy to both reintroduce a new client to what your program's like and set expectations and agreements on that, but also to find them, so keeping the ones we have and keeping the ones we have happy is critical for us. And we actually have a high churn, natural high churn type of client base. A lot of our clients are military and US foreign service, which means typically we know when they sign on with us, they're gonna be back to their house in three years, which makes a really interesting... Mm, I'll call it calling or genre of residential property management. When you know your client's gonna be back in three years. You know, you have to plan for that replacement, and you also have this higher calling of care where: geez, this is not just somebody's investment property. This is their home they're going to come back to and the judgment is often a lot more meticulous when they come back and say, "How did you do taking care of my house?" not just, "How much rent did you earn me?"    [00:05:08] So some of the things we do are really to increase the level of care and communication the client feels during the period of time that we know we have them, and we call it building or losing trust equity in every interaction. So the way we describe trust equity is like having gas in your tank and you're going on a trip. You're only gonna go as far as you keep fueling up that gas in that tank. And for us, that gas in that tank with that client is trust equity. So in every interaction, we either see ourselves as building rapport, building trust equity or losing it, or losing the opportunity to build it. So a lot of our practices are focused on: how do we build up trust equity all the way through their journey and make it the full three years? And the positive side of the community that we're working with is: even though there's a high natural churn, there's also a high referral rate from one landlord client to another to utilize our services if we've done a good job for them.    [00:06:11] Jason: Yeah. I like that. Yeah. You know, refueling the tank or recharging the cell phone or, you know, anything. Like nothing just continually runs forever. Right? And I love the idea of trust equity. I've said many times on the show like I really believe sales and deals happen at the speed of trust.   [00:06:29] Tommy: Hmm.    [00:06:30] Jason: And, you know, retaining clients also happens related to trust. Like you're gonna keep clients if they trust you, and that trust is everything that you do in your business, everything that your business puts out there is either creating trust or taking it away to some degree with your clients. And so, one of the main things we focus on at DoorGrow with clients is taking all the major leaks that exist in their sales pipeline related to trust and helping short those leaks and that's always the language we've used around that is to try to make sure they're reducing the leaks. And there's lots of things in the sales pipeline that can destroy trust. It could be the brand. It could be maybe they're not destroying, but they're leaks in trust. Like they might trust a property management company over a real estate company when it comes to branding more.    [00:07:21] And so that could be a leak just at the branding stage there's leaks when it comes to your sales process, there's leaks when it comes to your website, there's leaks when it comes to your pricing, and all of these different things that exist throughout their experience in the sales pipeline can either add value and add trust and build it, or it can take it away. And this is why when we talk about cold leads versus warm leads, or going from a cold interaction or lead to close, the difference between cold and warm is trust, right? We're trying to nurture them through this sales process and through follow-up. And eventually, they get warm enough, they trust enough that we can close the deal, right? And then the trust cycle continues. You have to then onboard them effectively. You have to then make them feel safe because everybody has buyer's remorse after they purchase something. There's an initial dopamine high. When we make a purchase. And after that purchase, after we spend money, there is natural lull. Like it comes back down and that's where people kind of freak out and they look for the problem, and if they see one they're like, "Oh crap, did I make the wrong choice?" So making sure there's this smooth experience through the sales pipeline and then bridging over into onboarding and into their client experience.   [00:08:39] And if you onboard them well, and they have a good experience, you're gonna have a much higher retention rate. So now you've got people that are leaving most likely after about three years. So you've got like this three-year cycle. How do you deal with that? Because every three years you help that churn rate and that's better than some that are taking on accidental investors that are only gonna hang out for a year.    [00:08:59] Tommy: Yeah. So one of the ways we deal with it is-- which I think is unique, is we said, "Hey, your services don't have to stop when you come back to live in your own home. We can still be your property manager even if we're not collecting rent. Often, we were getting calls from clients that came back anyway saying, "Hey, you know, I was your client last year or two years ago. I need a recommendation on an HVAC company," or, "I need a recommendation on a plumber for Thanksgiving before my family comes to visit," or whatever it is. And it was like, well, oftentimes we were getting these calls back from clients anyway, saying, "I just need a contract recommendation," or "I'm going to be away from my house for three weeks on vacation. Can you just check on it once for me if there's a storm?"    [00:09:46] And what we decided to do is instead of treating it like a clumsy process to make it a formal process and organize that thing that was happening anyway, and we said, "Hey, when you come back, you don't have to close out your account. And you can continue to use us for anything related to your house and you can run your expenses through your escrow operating account in property management, and we'd be happy to be part of that for you and give you contractors when you need them." And we made the expense for that minimal, and it's not a profitable activity, yet it kept the connection and it also told these clients, "Hey, you know, we can trust this company even when they're not really making money from us, right, they're truly in it to serve us."    [00:10:32] And what happened is when they got their next assignment, whether they're military or foreign service, but they already had their account open with us, they didn't have to decide, "Oh, who do I want to interview?" Or "Who do I wanna start with this time in property management?" we made it easy for them to just keep going with us and recommend other people to start with us. So that's one of our nuances and I welcome other property managers to do it too. You don't stop serving them when they stop becoming a client, especially if they could become a client again or refer somebody else, you know, continue to offer them some kind of value even after you think that they're done.   [00:11:07] Jason: Yeah. That's fascinating. That makes a lot of sense in a military market. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Do you find that it is more of a loss leader or are you doing this at cost at least?   [00:11:18] Tommy: So I guess you could call it a loss leader if you tried to start a business that way. I mean, once you have a certain scale... our scale of our business, right, is we keep close track of how many property management hours per property we're spending throughout the year, and, you know, we have it down to a science exactly. You know, how many doors to our staff, not just per property management lead, but overall support staff. How many hours are dedicated to these properties? And what we find was keeping these accounts on wasn't costing us a lot of time, but it was giving us a really good return on trust equity. So we were building more trust equity when the client closed out their account, their normal rent collection account, and kept going with us from what we call a heat account or a home escrow account and the home escrow account, you know, we're charging $360 a year, a dollar a day, less than that, really. And oftentimes it was not profitable for us in terms of the hours we spent, but we'd spend, you know, five or six hours a year on those accounts, making recommendations, handling their expenses through their property account. So it wasn't like a money maker, but it really had a return in terms of these clients came back to us and they recommended other people to us because we were building trust in the process, not just cash.    [00:12:45] Jason: So this three-year cycle that you mentioned where they will go off for maybe about three years, and then they want to move back into the property. Do you know how long they're typically staying before they go off again?    [00:12:57] Tommy: Yeah. I mean, it depends on which government agency or department they work for. There's different requirements for each, which we've come to learn quite well. Sometimes they'll come back for, you know, let's say they work for the U.S. state department. They'll come back for one-year language training. So they're, you know, they're coming back from Bangkok and they're gonna be transferred to Nairobi, Kenya 12 months from now. So they know they're coming back just to learn the language of the next place they're going and all the more reason to just keep their account active, right?    [00:13:31] Jason: Yeah.   [00:13:31] Tommy: Often--   [00:13:32] Jason: So they're only back for a year and then they're probably out for maybe another three years?    [00:13:37] Tommy: Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, it tends to be a one or two-year return depending on the nature of their return assignment, domestic assignment. And then, another three years out tends to be.    [00:13:49] Jason: Wow. Okay. So, I mean, so the ratio skewed so that they're gone more than they're back. So by maintaining that relationship, you have built-in future clients.    [00:14:00] Tommy: Nailed it, yeah. Oh, and that maintaining the relationship is where the secret is, as we said. Not doing that turns growth into pushing a rope uphill. If you maintain that relationship, it makes it really easy for that business relationship to continue and that trust equity to grow.    [00:14:18] Jason: Yeah, it's far easier to keep a client than to go acquire new ones... and far cheaper. And it takes a lot less work and if they have a good experience with you, they already know you, trust you, like you, so like it's super easy. Next time they need it, they're gonna go with you as long as they had a good experience, and if that relationship has been maintained, they're still a client. Yeah, no-brainer. It's like, "Hey, we're going out again." "Cool." So pre-framing that from the beginning when you onboard a new client and letting them know, "Look, you're probably gonna go in some cycles. We're used to this. This is how we handle it. This is what we do," they'll just plan on staying with you forever.    [00:14:54] Tommy: Yeah, I'll tell you at first, it's an awkward value proposition, right? It's like, "Well, I'm back. Why do I need to keep a property manager?" And the answer is: you don't. You don't need to. You don't need us nearly as much as you did when you were on the other side of the world and we had a tenant.    [00:15:09] Jason: Yeah.    [00:15:09] Tommy: However, this is why every connection and communication is an opportunity to build trust is when they start to see, "Oh, I'd much rather call my property manager and have them deal with the contractor," or "call my property manager, see if they can check on this after a storm," or, "call my property manager..." whatever it is. The more that they see there's value in the process in the chain, then the more likely they are to say, "Wow, I actually wanted this. I didn't realize you guys even offer when I came back, I could just keep using you at a lower price." So, it's awkward at first because you're used to saying, "Well, these are the reasons we are worth property management: rent collection, and dealing with tenants," and you just have to change that and recognize that actually, we're valuable for a lot of things that the clients trust us on and including, you know, managing, making it easy for them to manage their home escrow account or their expenses related to their property, or we make it a lot easier for them to not call some contractor out of the yellow pages or Google somebody and get lucky. They already know that we have a tried and true stable of contractors.    [00:16:17] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. It's frustrating trying to find contractors and having to do the research, so I think that's a great selling proposition and property managers don't like giving out their vendors generally. So if they're a client and you're like, "Hey, let us handle this." If they come back to you... so what do you do in the situations where they're like, "Nope, I don't need you. And I don't want to do this. We're back. I got it handled. But then they call you up and they're like, "Hey who you got for me? You got a contractor that could do this or this?" Do you say, "Well, we have this great program," and you try and get them on the program?    [00:16:50] Tommy: Yeah. We try to reintroduce them to the program, and the reason why is because when you're out of the system, everything it's that much harder to translate the information to what needs to happen, right? Like, okay, you have something that needs to be done, but we don't have all the information in our system and as close anymore, and also our contractors, they like to know that if they bill a property manager, they're gonna get paid in two weeks. We build trust equity with the vendors too, not just the clients. So these contractors would rather get a call from us and say, "Okay, yeah, I'll be happy to do that job tomorrow or Monday, whatever it is because I know you're gonna pay me in two weeks when I send you the invoice," versus, "Oh, I've gotta deal with some homeowner that's calling me. Maybe it's good. Maybe it's not. I don't know if they're gonna pay me on time or if I am going to have to do an accounts receivable issue."   [00:17:43] It's just all smoother through our network when we have the account open. So yes when they call us back, we say, "Hey, of course we can give you the contractor's name and number, happy to do that. We're not gonna block you from that. However, the contractor's gonna prefer to hear from us anyway. So, you know, we're happy to set your account back up." we really put their account on pause if we think they're gonna be going back overseas in a couple of years, but yeah. I mean, we do reintroduce the concept, even if they closed out thinking they didn't need it.    [00:18:13] Jason: Hmm. Got it. So I'm trying to figure out how could this apply to non-military markets if at all possible. So I'm just spitballing here, but I'm wondering if property managers could present this as an actual product or service to just typical homeowners, like, "Hey, we'll handle the vendors, we'll handle maintenance, whatever," and they charge them for that, but they just, they charge some sort of fee and, "We'll take care of all this stuff and handle vendors, and we have the best contractors and we're organized and sort this out. I don't know if people would go for it, but...   [00:18:43] Tommy: Actually, I think it's a growing market and it is happening. A good friend of mine, Lisa Wise, who owns Flock DC, she's trying to build almost a franchise concept, but a series of this very thing where all they do is home management for primary homeowners. She's pursuing this market in high urban markets with really busy professionals who just don't know how or don't want to take the time to take care of their own house. And she's got a great program set up for that. Again, we're not doing it on the scale she's pursuing it. We're offering the service as. Let's build the relationship with the client that we have for rental management before they need us.    [00:19:24] Jason: Sure. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But yeah, I think there's an opportunity there for the people in the non-military markets to make that maybe a profit center or something. You cut out the whole tenant side of things, but there's the whole maintenance coordination piece and home management piece, lawn care, grounds, pools.   [00:19:44] Tommy: I'll tell you, I actually think investors would love this, and it might be something we pursue more as we work with investors that'll appreciate this that is to be able to do not just, oh, any expenses related to your personal residents, but to do an analysis like, "Hey, typically for a house your size you're spending two X the amount of water on your water bill that you should be. When you can start to do some financial analysis within their expenses, instead of just saying, "Oh yeah, like you can pass through your expenses through your account. So it's all in one place," but to add value by saying, "This is out of our standard deviation for this expense," or-- and again, you can always add value by saying, "You can call five contractors if you want, but we're buying in bulk as a property manager and we can get you either better pricing or better value of service."   [00:20:33] Jason: Yeah, very cool. So what else would you like to share with people about your business that might be beneficial to property managers listening? You've grown fairly quickly. I think you have the advantage that you're in that military market where you've got people leaving, which is great as long as they have awareness, you're going to be adding doors, which I think is really powerful. You focus on trust equity, which I really like that phrase, and what else do you think really kind of sets you apart, makes your company unique from the competitors in your market?    [00:21:02] Tommy: Yeah, thanks for the question. That trust equity is a strong theme at our company. And what I do is, it's not just with the contractors or with the clients, we're also building trust with one another on the team, and we call it the Camelot principle. So yeah, after you've done battle enough on our team as a property manager, you've been through a couple of tough summers. Summers tend to be the hardest time of the year in our market. Then we award that person with a sword, a sword with etching on it for chambers theory, and we welcome them as a knight of the round table. And what we really want to do is we want to build this interdependence of trust with one another as a team, and part of my promise as the employer and the business owner is to keep the job manageable for them, right?    [00:21:53] Like most of the time as the entrepreneur, like we're trying to get the most out of our teams so we can get more profits and grow and it's healthier. And sometimes it's great. Some of us are, "Hey, we'll pay our people more," which is a wonderful way to look at it, yet sometimes people want their job to be more manageable. Like we can call them to a higher standard, yet we also shouldn't overwhelm or burn out our employees, and it was really telling when we saw right after it was the end of 2020-2021 market, they call it the great resignation. There's a lot of people saying, "Hey I'm done working," seems a lot of it had to do with burnout. People are like, "Life's short, why am I burning myself out for this or for that?" And to really lean in on how do we build trust with one another?    [00:22:37] How do I serve my team by making them part of that round table of strategic decision making, making them part of that process where we say, "Hey, we're serving one another as a team, and then we serve our clients and we build trust with our clients and our contractors after we build it with one another. I have a high respect for these different elite teams in the world, in any industry. I love the new movie Top Gun Maverick. They take the top 1% of 1% of pilots in the Navy and they build this elite team, and yet still the part of the theme of the movie was: how do you take these elite individuals and turn them into a gelled team to accomplish a mission? And that's part of what we're trying to do is it's about believing in one another to accomplish the mission, not just going for the mission at all costs and burning each other out.    [00:23:30] Jason: Yeah, there's a lot of truth to that. I think one of the big mistakes I've seen, having been able to see inside of probably thousands of property management companies and work with lots and lots of entrepreneurs is I think it's a common misconception and a common belief that entrepreneurs carry that their team members want more compensation and that compensation will increase output. And the reason for this is entrepreneurs, we're money motivated, but most people are not. Entrepreneurs and salespeople typically are the two categories of people that are money motivated. But what I find is most of our employees, most of our team members, most of the people on the planet are not actually money motivated in that if you give them bonuses, commissions, incentives, financial incentive, performance doesn't really get better.    [00:24:24] And you can see this if you give team members a disc assessment. The more advanced disc assessments have what's called values index. And one of those values is the economic score. If the economic score is low, they're not money motivated. And if the economic score's high they're very money motivated, but entrepreneurs usually are money motivated, so they by default think, 'That's what would motivate me, so I'm gonna try and inspire them by offering money to get better output, and it backfires because if they're economic score is low and say, for example, their charitable scores high. Some of them have guilt related to money. So you pay them more, the performance actually goes downhill and they get worse. And so if their economic score's low, here's what you do instead, you give them recognition, they're recognition motivated. So I love the idea that you're giving 'em a full sword. You're probably like in front of the team. Recognition, generally, even the people that are money motivated is appreciated, so.   [00:25:28] Tommy: Yeah. I learned that one the hard way, just hearing you talk about it. I was like, oh yeah. I took me right through the past scenario where it's like, "Why am I not getting more? I'm paying this person more," and what they really needed was to be taken and given the opportunity to be believed in more. And actually, they wanted more responsibility, not more compensation. They wanted to show that they're capable of more things, and then the compensation piece made more sense, but they almost really felt like they needed to earn it first, which is beautiful, but I tried to do it the other way around and it didn't work so well.   [00:25:59] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a lesson everybody that runs a company eventually has to learn. And some of us are pretty hard at learning it, but I think another thing having a system in place allows recognition. So our planning cadence at DoorGrow, we call it DoorGrow OS, our operating system and it allows our executive team members to see what each other got done in the previous week or for our monthly goals or for our quarterly goals, and everybody gets to see the wins and gets to see that somebody contributed to the team goals. And a lot of businesses don't even have goals or it's the business owners pushing a goal onto everybody, which is very different. So having a really good operating system like that can really make a difference.    [00:26:46] Tommy: So I really like that system. I wanna talk to you more about that offline.    [00:26:50] Jason: Yeah. We'll chat with that. There's systems out there like EOS and Traction, and some of these, but really shameless plug, DoorGrow OS is better than those systems. Those have some fundamental flaws because they're still either entrepreneur centric and that's not as effective, like any business owner that's ever gotten burnt out or tired it's because you're doing too much and you're probably the biggest bottleneck in your business, and it's because you don't have a good operating system to really leverage your team effectively. And most entrepreneurs, we generally are the biggest bottleneck in our business. That's how it works.    [00:27:25] Tommy: What's interesting is I was gonna add, you said, what else would I offer property manager and other property managers out there from what I've learned and embracing technology. I can tell you, I researched the heck out of all my competition. I researched the heck out of property managers all over the United States, and I love learning about what are their best practices. What are they doing? How's their model set up? How do they value their company? Are they doing this new client retention thing? I love all the best practices and learning from it, but I almost always see, "Oh, we utilize technology," and I'm so curious. And then sometimes when I dig deeper, it's: "We send our clients digital pictures," like digital pictures isn't new technology. That was new technology 15, 20 years ago, or, "Our accounting platform says they're the latest in technology," and there's a lot of different platforms out there. And man, when some of these things came out, they were great platforms for being the latest and greatest at being more efficient in organizing your business.    [00:28:22] To say we utilize technology because you have email or mobile phone, smartphone, or a platform that came out 10 years ago. It's got some updates since... no like I'm interested in the DoorGrow operating system because you guys are leading edge in how to use that to make my business more efficient and grow not because it was something you came up with 10 years ago and you've made a couple of updates since. I'm fascinated by being an early adapter and new tech, not claiming I've got tech because I use email.    [00:28:54] Jason: Yeah, there are. There's a lot of property managers that feel like, "Hey, I used to doing spreadsheets and now I have AppFolio or Buildium, so like we're high tech, so.   [00:29:02] Tommy: Right. "I got a website!"    [00:29:04] Jason: Yeah. They got a website now. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm probably more tech-savvy and geeky than most people on the planet, but yeah we're doing some really cool things at DoorGrow that we really feel like add some serious value to the industry. I think two of the most challenging systems for our clients, once we get them growing that they need that we've built out is a really good planning system. Have project management or task management system, sort of system to assign tasks, but that's tactical work. They don't have anything related to strategic planning, and some have EOS, but there's some fundamental flaws with EOS, but the company that puts out the idea of EOS, the entrepreneur operating system, their goal is to sell coaches for that system, which they call integrators.    [00:29:52] And so they create this org chart in which you have the visionary, which is you usually, the entrepreneur, and then they have the integrator, and then they have the entire team. A fundamental flaw in that is if you have somebody that could run your entire business like that, and you're once removed from it. They could walk away with your business and that's not really a safe place to be, and that's not really how anybody actually does it. So you need a planning system though, and EOS DoorGrow OS, most systems out there will have annual planning, quarterly planning, monthly planning, maybe weekly, maybe some sort of daily things, but that's pretty typical of any business planning system, but you do need a business planning system.    [00:30:30] The other system that every business needs is a really good hiring system. So we just partnered with an AI firm for hiring because our clients always screw this up. Like it's hard. Hiring is hard. One of the hardest transitions I see entrepreneurs go through is solopreneur to having a team. And this is the transition from maybe about a hundred doors into that two to 400 door range, and usually they build the wrong team around the business owner, doing the wrong things, to where the business owner gets maximum lack of fulfillment and misery and being the biggest bottleneck and so really our entire system is built around the entrepreneur, like identifying what they most enjoy and don't enjoy doing, building the team around them and then build a hiring system to bring in the right team members that you actually can trust. Trust equity can only exist if there's culture in a business. And culture can only exist if it's defined so that you can bring in people that can look at that cultural material and say, "Hell yes, I want to be part of this where some people might just want a paycheck and there's a massive difference in output.    [00:31:41] Your team members, it sounds like you have good culture, and so you're probably getting three times the output of companies that have bad culture, and by bad culture I mean they hire team members just based on what the business needs. It's based on skill. And so they have people that are maybe a skill fit. They can do the work, but they're not the personality fit for the role, which means they'll never be great at it or they're not-- the most important-- cultural fit for the role, which means they actually share your values and you can trust them and let go of pieces of the business. So if you have team members you trust, but they can do the job, but they're always coming to you asking questions, you're always having to micromanage them, it's because you lack culture in your business. And you need to get that defined...   [00:32:21] Tommy: I hope-- you can't just have it. It's a continual build. It's just like trust equity like it's a continual... continue to work on, continue to define, continue to build. I would define our culture as that Camelot culture, Camelot principle, which is the heart of it is the saying "In service to one another, there is freedom."   [00:32:40] Jason: Love it. So yeah, service is one of your top cultural values. I love that. We have one at DoorGrow. Ours is called Care ROI, like care, and similar to your trust equity, like we wanna let people know that we care and if we invest care into people, then you know, we're gonna get a return on that investment. Tommy, it's been great connecting with you and chatting. It sounds like you found some cool little ways to facilitate and decrease churn. Appreciate you coming on the show and looking forward to connecting more in the future.    [00:33:11] Tommy: Yeah. Jason, looking forward to also following up with you and chatting, talking more about how you can help us grow.   [00:33:18] Jason: Absolutely. All right.    [00:33:19] Tommy: Cheers.   [00:33:20] Jason: Until next time, everybody, if you're curious about how to grow or scale your property management business, you're curious about DoorGrow OS or some things we mentioned on this show or how to identify culture, or you're just starting to experience that burnout as a visionary, and you don't feel like the visionary anymore. You feel like your best employee, which sucks. We would love to help you get out of that. We have processes to take you through to systematically help you offload, help you feel safe offloading, and helping you have great people to offload to that are actually better at those things you don't enjoy. And you, and a lot of entrepreneurs listening, if you haven't experienced that, you're like, "No, nobody's better than me." Believe me, it's an ego thing. We can kill that real fast. So reach out. We'd love to support you. Check us out at DoorGrow.com. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.    [00:34:10] 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!    [00:34:37] 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.

Property management growth expert, Jason Hull, has coached and helped hundreds of property management entrepreneurs change their businesses and lives. After all this time observing the industry, he offers an outside perspective on the kinds of software every PM entrepreneur needs.  In this episode, Jason Hull describes the ultimate stack of software for property management entrepreneurs, from the back office and maintenance to process documentation and hiring. You'll Learn… [03:00] The Best Back Office PM Software [05:26] Managing Maintenence Requests  [08:11] Doing Showings with Tenant Turner, ShowMojo, and Rently [10:00] Inspection Software and Sales CRMs [12:08] What you Need for Processes, Task Management, and Hiring [18:26] Why to Use the Profit First System Tweetables “I don't use property management software because I don't actually manage rental properties, right? But I have talked to thousands of property managers, and so I am kind of like the magic fly on the wall.” “Leads are really only good for about the first five minutes.” “I want to be able to pick the best tools because software's way cheaper than people.” “Shift away from one-off showings to open houses. This is going to be significant in collapsing time there. It creates a sense of false scarcity.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] I want to be able to pick the best tools because software's way cheaper than people, so even some of the most expensive software might only cost you maybe a thousand or 2000 bucks a month, right, if it were really expensive. People usually cost you more than a thousand or 2000 bucks a month. [00:00:14] 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. [00:00:51] 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.  [00:01:14] So we're going to talk about the ultimate property management software stack. I get this question all the time, property management software, "what's the ultimate stack?" Or "what software should I use?" Or "I've heard about this," or "we're using this, is this the best?" And I don't use property management software, right? I don't use property management software because I don't actually manage rental properties, right? But I have talked to thousands of property managers, and so I am kind of like the magic fly on the wall that's gotten more info and I don't think there's any other coach, anybody else out there that has the insight or the views or knowledge that I have. And so let me share with you just based on the feedback that I've gotten from property management business owners, my nerdiness related to software (I'm kind of nerdy.) This is what if I were starting property management company, this is the stack that I would use. And I don't think I have relationships with any of these, so they're not paying me to say this. One of the vendors might give me some sort of incentive or something if I send them business, but I don't even know if they're sending me stuff. I don't pay attention to it.  [00:02:25] So, here's kind of the ultimate stack based on what I know right now. And somebody may be watching this and they might think, "there's something better, Jason." If you know that there's something better, comment what you love and what you use and what you think is the ultimate stack. If you're a software geek, if you're a research geek, if you put in a lot of time and energy into this, I'd love to hear from you because I'm always looking for what's best for my clients and for everybody in the industry at large. So for single family, residential property management companies, which is largely the target audience that I focus on, this is the ultimate stack. [00:03:00] So first, basic, you need some sort of back office property management software. This is going to help you with the accounting piece and keeping track of all your rental properties. This is going to be the main sort of foundational piece in your business software- wise. , Usually I would recommend rentmanager.com. So Rent Manager... I just, I hear the most positive feedback on Rent Manager. And so I recommend that you take a look at that software. Now, I know it's really hard to switch software, so if you are using AppFolio or Buildium or Rentec Direct or Propertyware, or-- gosh, what else is out there? I don't know-- any of these tools, I'm not telling you, you should go switch software. Yeah. You know, it's hard. It's really hard to switch software, and usually people spend a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of energy to switch software only to notice the other software is missing some things that they liked in the previous one or has some other problems. [00:04:03] And so that's not generally super effective to do that. So the reason I like Rent Manager, let me explain this and maybe a little bit about why I don't like some of the others, right. Some of the challenges. One of the most common is AppFolio. So one of the reasons I wouldn't choose AppFolio is because AppFolio does not have an open API. Now granted, they have a lot of tools, right? So maybe you don't need it is the justification, but I like to pick the best tools. I don't want one Jack of all trades master of none, maybe master of some, maybe master of a few. I want to build the ultimate stack, and if I'm going to build the ultimate stack, that means I need to be able to pick and choose and create my ultimate Swiss army knife, my ultimate multi-tool, the ultimate thing that I want. And so I want to be able to pick the best tools because software's way cheaper than people, so if I can pick a software, even if it's more expensive or it's additional, instead of translating or transferring that cost onto the shoulders of humans and staffing costs, and I can just mitigate a little bit of staffing costs, it's totally worth it to me. So even though some of the most expensive software might only cost you maybe a thousand or 2000 bucks a month, right, if it were really expensive, people usually cost you more than a thousand or 2000 bucks a month, unless you're getting part-time people or people in the Philippines or something.  [00:05:26] Then usually you need something on the maintenance side, and this is usually maybe once you're at maybe 50 to maybe 150 doors, somewhere in that range. But at some point, you want some leverage when it comes to maintenance coordination. I hear great feedback from Property Meld. Now, these guys, when I did a podcast episode with them, we set up some sort of thing. I think it's still active. It'll send them a lead. They might give me a kickback on it. I can't remember. Property Meld, if you're listening, you should be giving me kickback for this still, but I don't even pay attention to it. But if you go to doorgrow.com/maintenance, long time ago, I set up a quiz. So if you go to this website, I set up a little quiz that you can take, and it will give you, I believe a 10% discount if you fill that out with Property Meld. But Property Meld, what's really cool about Property Meld is basically it's a three-way text message system between you, the tenant, and the vendor.  [00:06:26] And so this allows all three of you to be communicating, and it allows you to see the communication between the tenant and the vendor, which them communicating directly speeds things up like dramatically. There's that transparency that you can see how they're doing and see how it's going. So that's on the maintenance side. Now with Property Meld, they have a relationship, I believe still that if you get their full service, then also that's pairing it with EZ-- spelled E and then Z, which is sort of a cute, clever name that they probably should rebrand, but EZ Repair Hotline. I don't know if it's ezrepair.com or easyrepairhotline.com. Hopefully my team could figure that out when they do the show notes, (it's https://www.ezrepairhotlinellc.com) but EZ Repair and if you talk to Property Meld and get their full service, I guess that's who they use and that's what's included--  [00:07:18] EZ Repair is a call center service. It was founded by Andy Shin. He's been on the podcast before. He used to manage the call center for AAA, so he knows what he's doing. His team's based out of Vegas. And my understanding is they've really improved since he started the business, and they were a lot more affordable than Night Tenders, which became Super Tenders, which I think became Abodea or something like that. So my understanding is that they're are a lot more affordable, and they're comparable. They're pretty decent and pretty good at what they do, and that they made a lot of strides to get even better over time. So I would check out EZ Repair along with that, and what they do is they handle the calls. So they handle your maintenance calls. So then you'll have that for your maintenance calls, and that's going to take a load off of your plate as well. So, that's on the maintenance side. [00:08:11] The other tool in my ultimate stack if I were making a property management business is: I would get Tenant Turner, and that is just at tenantturner.com. You've got some competitors in this space. You've got Rently, you've got ShowMojo. I've heard good feedback recently on ShowMojo from some people. It seems like they do a pretty decent job. They've also got a call center where they'll field, I think the phone calls, I don't know, related to the rental properties, but Tenant Turner is probably the tool that I would go with as of right now. I've met some of the principals at that business. I like them. I feel like they're stand up guys and ethical. I believe I've had them on my podcast, but I like Tenant Turner, and that's probably what I would go with. So, that would be on the leasing side, and the smart thing to do on the leasing side, quick bone I'll throw out to everybody there is to shift away from one-off showings to open houses. [00:09:05] This is going to be significant in collapsing time there. It creates a sense of false scarcity, I guess, you know, lots of tenants coming at the same time. Do a 30 minute window. Just do it one weekday in the evening and one weekend day, and do it for a 30 minute window for each and everybody that wants to see that property goes to that, and Tenant Turner can help make sure people are reminded, they show, it can pre-screen, um, allows people to book that time and that sort of stuff, so I would go with Tenant Turner.  [00:09:38] Let me think if there's anything else I would use. I mean, this is kind of the core stack. You've got the main leasing side thing, which would be Tenant Turner and then you've got the maintenance, which are the two big sort of wings of the property management business or challenges. And then you've got your PM back office, which would be Rent Manager. So that would be kind of the core what I would do. Then you need some sort of inspection software. I don't get a lot of feedback on that, but I know there's zInspector I've heard good things about. There's Happy Inspector. There's Inspect & Cloud, and I'm sure all of those integrate with Rent Manager and probably all the other software out there, so I would pick one of those. I would take a look at those, and I would probably have some sort of inspection software as well. And that's going to be a pretty good stack for your business.  [00:10:27] Oh, there's one other software here I would probably recommend as of right now, that would be a sales CRM. As of right now, that would be LeadSimple. So LeadSimple is, as far as I know, the only property management sales CRM. There might be some others that can pull in leads and are okay, but LeadSimple's claim to fame is that if a lead comes in through your web form or your website, you can set up to parse the email, pull the phone number, out and initiate a phone call right away, because leads are really only good for about the first five minutes really, maybe the first 10, but you need to follow up within the first five minutes and then people are impressed. The lead's still hot, it's fresh, and it's not gone stale, to give you some other analogies here, but you want to follow up right away because otherwise, they're going to move on to the next company, and the first property manager that they talk to or that talks to them is more likely to get the deal.  [00:11:19] So, And if you're spending money on lead generation, which I don't recommend, but if you're spending money on like advertising, which I don't recommend there's better ways to grow your business, but if you're spending a bunch of money on advertising, you are wasting a massive amount of money into a leaky sales funnel if you don't have something like LeadSimple, or you aren't following up on leads within the first five to 10 minutes. So that can be effective as well. I send them so much business, they should be sending me some sort of kickback. So LeadSimple, if you hear this, you should be sending me some money, people, 'cause I send you a lot of business. All right. But yeah, I would check out LeadSimple. They have also a workflow built into their platform. That's kind of a, I guess, a competitor to Process Street. Personally, I don't know, Lead Simple's tools, so I can't recommend it, but internally we use Process Street. [00:12:08] I really like Process Street for processes. This is their website: it's process.st. I've had them on the podcast as well, but I really like Process Street. We use it internally. It's great for creating process documentation, but also for using as a checklist to run through that process, and it records an instance for each checklist every time somebody runs through that and uses that process. And so it's like having a clipboard with check boxes they have to go through each time they do that particular task. Except it's not a clipboard, it's digital. So I like Process Street a lot. You can get really complex with it or you can get really simple. And so we use Process Street internally. I highly recommend it. I like it. Now, I'm hearing some really good feedback lately.  [00:12:55] You also need some sort of task management system just for one off tasks. So there's a lot of people that will use something like Asana. Now, some people are, instead of using Process Street, which is really robust. They'll use something that's maybe not as robust, but has similar functionality to that and Asana, and that's Monday. So I'm hearing some really great things about monday.com for basically largely task management and maybe repetitive processes. Okay, so you may want to check out monday.com for your internal processes. Asana does have repeating tasks and has templates, so you can have sort of formulas of things, but I don't think it has the functionality of people following through a process and being able to show like screen recordings and screen captures and screenshots and steps and Process Street, you can build all that stuff in.  [00:13:49] I don't know if Monday can do that also, but Monday does allow you to kind of see where things are in a stage in a workflow and have stages and stuff. So for you know, really large pools of processes that are being worked on, like maybe you have like 20 properties you're onboarding, you can have an instance of Monday of each, similar in Process Street. In Asana, you would just build out like clone templates, probably. So these are these are some of the tools that I would be taking a look at seriously. If I were to start a property management biz.  [00:14:23] And now the other thing that I would recommend that a property management business is eventually once you have a team, you're going to need some sort of planning system, and we've built what I believe is the ultimate software planning system. We call that DoorGrow OS. OS stands for 'operating systems.' So there's a lot of talk about like EOS which is from like Traction or Rocket Fuel, these books. And, these are good books. It's a good system. These are good ideas. I really feel though that the flaw in this is It's built too much around the entrepreneur is what they claim, but it's not actually built around the entrepreneur. EOS is really built around the idea of the integrator, and the integrator is like the most critical piece in this system. And an integrator really is a glorified operations person that they're also putting over and it should be running your cadence and running your planning, but they're putting over sales and marketing and usually operators should not be over sales and marketing. It's a big tactical mistake in business. And it also is a very top-down system instead of the team kind of, it's, it it plays into the ego of most entrepreneurs thinking they're the visionary and everybody has to do things that they want. And it's very top down.  [00:15:45] DoorGrow OS is more bottom up. It allows you to have your entire team focused on the goals of the business based on what the biggest needs of the business are and the biggest needs of the entrepreneur are. And so, DoorGrow OS is really entrepreneur centric, visionary centric, which it's your business, and then we build the ultimate team and planning and cadence around you so you're going to have a business that actually gives you more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, and more support the bigger it gets instead of the reverse. There's some other flaws with EOS, like I don't like their accountability chart where they've got visionary and then integrator, and then the entire team answers to the integrator. I think that's the most dangerous business model ever. You're putting somebody in a position of power in which the entire team are loyal and connected to them. And they're probably not good at being over all of these different department. They basically, if they were or could be, they don't need you. 'Cause they could just chop off that top layer off the accountability chart, which is just a fancy word for an org chart in EOS and eliminate you and they can start their own business, right, if they really are that good.  [00:16:50] So you need a really good planning system. I recommend DoorGrow OS it's really cool system. And then the other thing is you need eventually if you're really wanting to scale and grow your business and you're growing quickly, like a lot of our clients do, you will need an ATS or an applicant tracking system. And so we have our system, which is DoorGrow ATS. And so, this is the ultimate hiring system for a business. We have some really cool stuff coming related to this, but this allows you to basically get really great people and get what I call the three fits, which is having the ultimate hire where they match all three fits, where they're a culture fit, skill fit, and personality fit for your team, and usually the most important of those three is cultural fit. Most people hire just based on what the business needs and based on skill that is needed, so they get a skill fit. But they're not the right personality sometimes for the position, so they're not going to actually be great at it.  [00:17:51] They're maybe not a good culture fit, which means they don't share your values and won't do things in a way that you would feel safe with. And so you'll never fully trust them. And so right now, if you have a team member that's just not great, I guarantee, they're probably not a culture fit or they're probably not a personality fit. Skill fit or intelligence, they just, maybe they're too dumb to do it. Most likely not. They might just not be the right personality and might not be the right cultural fit. So DoorGrow ATS is another system that would need to be built out in the business. And there's several other systems I've talked about on previous episodes that a business might need in the business.  [00:18:26] And I'll throw out one other system that we use in our business that I'm a big fan of, and that is Profit First. We have some other tools like my CEO metrics and some other stuff that my team report in, but I really like, you know, as a basic level, really healthy accounting system, I like the Profit First system. I've had mike Michalowicz the author of the book Profit First on a previous podcast episode. I recommend you check that out if you're running into cashflow issues, if you're having trouble paying your team, if you've run into any of these problems that are very typical in early stage businesses or with entrepreneurs. I've been there. You've probably been there. I highly recommend implementing the Profit First system in your business. It's really simple to implement. It's just getting some additional bank accounts set up and then as money comes in, divvying it up into these different bank accounts based on percentages and making sure that you're taking out a percentage for profits so that you are profitable first and then what's left over one of those will be expenses. And so I recommend taking a look at that. So these are some of the systems that I think would help too.  [00:19:31] If I were building the ultimate stack for the ultimate problem management business, these are the things that I would take a look at. And then really, it's about getting really great people and building a really great team so that you have awesome team members. Yeah. So that's going to create the ultimate business and that we want to build the ultimate business around you. So if you're struggling or trying to figure out how to grow your business, you are running into the bottleneck where you feel like you are the biggest bottleneck in the business, you feel like you're always having to micromanage your team, you're trying to get them motivated, trying to get them to do the right things. I really think you could use our scale program in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind, and we would love to talk with you. We easily will help pay for the program just by helping you to cut costs, increase the efficiency of your team. Usually, I can get people three times the output from their team or cut their staffing costs in half or by a third, depending on what your goal is, we can increase that. And then we also want to increase your level of what I call the four reasons. You're getting more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, and more support. [00:20:36] So we will realign the business around you and realign the team. So anyway, reach out to us at DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com and until next time everybody to our mutual growth. I hope you crush it. Take care, everyone. [00:20:49] 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!  [00:21:16] 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.

In this episode of the HR Leaders podcast, I'm joined by my guest, Jeff Belanger, Global Chief Human Resources Officer at Entera.He has a long history of success in designing and implementing holistic people strategies that supported business priorities at fast-growing organizations. Belanger started his career as a strategy consultant at PwC focused on learning and development and organizational effectiveness, then transitioned in-house to lead the building of HR infrastructures that helped accelerate companies including Pandora Media, IPG/Mediabrands and most recently Semrush and Buildium.We discussed:This episode of the HR Leaders Podcast is brought to you by AceUpAceUp is the premier provider of enterprise-wide and scalable leadership development to create the human-centered, purpose-driven leaders needed to thrive in the new world of work.They work with inspiring companies like LVMH, Ginkgo Bioworks, and Teradyne to build alignment on purpose, drive growth, navigate continuous change, and elevate leadership performance at every level of the organization.Register for AceUp's 2022 Summit today! Use code ACEUP22 for your complimentary registration : https://bit.ly/3lIuGGoHead over to our website to access the resources mentioned in this episode: www.hrleaders.co/podcastEpisode highlights00.00 - Jeff's background and why he views this role as the third attempt at a career07:44 - His transition to HR and his experience in change management09:54 - Think of HR as a department with the most reach and influence to drive success10:58 - How he's benefitted from seeing both sides of the HR stick13:10 - "If people don't see themselves in your organisation, they're not going to join"16:02 - How to retain talent during hyper growth19:49 - The three pillars for thriving during times of hyper-growth22:43 - Why Jeff see's himself as a builder rather than an optimiser27:47 - The biggest people challenges to consider when scaling to IPO30:15 - How instilling a growth mindset in your people can help them overcome change34:39 - Why Jeff thinks it's important to gather perspectives from outside of HR36:56 - What makes Jeff's friends and family think he's a hitmanSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sean Morrissey is a “buy and hold” investor and real estate broker/owner who resides in Aurora, Illinois with his wife, two children, dog, and cat. He hosts a weekly podcast for entry-level real estate “buy and hold” investors called “Landlording for Life” and just surpassed 85 episodes launched.   Sean started his real estate journey as a landlord in 2003. He earned his real estate license in 2006 and opened his real estate brokerage, “Chicagoland Realty Group Partners LLC”, in October 2011. Since 2010, Sean has managed up to 200 single-family homes while building his real estate rental portfolio in the western suburbs of the Chicagoland area – primarily in the Aurora, IL community. His current goal is to earn three times his family's monthly expenses in passive rental income and earn financial freedom by the year 2021.   In this episode, Sean discusses how you can self-manage your properties as he shares tips with regard to the components of property management systems. Checkout: Raising Capital Without Rejection Full-Day Workshop (Online): https://investorattractionworkshop.com/ What you'll learn in just 19 minutes from today's episode:  Discover the four components of property management systems and what each one is all about; Gather tips on how to manage a leasing system effectively without being deceptive; and Find out how you can avoid conflicts with your rent collection system along with the importance of considering the comfort from your side and your customer when deciding on the payment process. Resources/Links:  Rent Application: https://www.rentapplication.net/ Buildium: https://www.buildium.com/ Zelle: https://www.zellepay.com/ Venmo: https://venmo.com/ CBS News Chicago: https://chicago.cbslocal.com/ Topics Covered:  01:44 – Components of systems in property management along with the mistakes people make with regards to self-management 03:01 – Sean's real estate experience back in his early years, him being challenged to do more as the year's pass 04:45 – Sean's tip to manage a leasing system effectively: take quality photos 06:09 – How to take photos that will capture people's attention without being deceptive through the angles 08:42 – More tips for leasing: price it right and choose an application process that is easy to understand 11:26 – Site that is non-techy friendly: Rent Application 13:09 – Software to use for your rent collection system: Buildium, Zelle, Venmo 15:38 – The importance of understanding the eviction process in your state 16:45 – The rent collection challenges Sean encountered in the midst of this pandemic 18:09 – Check out Chicagoland Realty Group's website, grab a copy of Sean's book called “Building Your Efficient Property Management System”, and listen to his podcast “Landlording for Life” Key Takeaways: “Whether you have one property or whether you got 10, 20, whatever the case might be, eventually you're going to be challenged, and it's really setting yourself up for those challenges that you'd want to prepare for.” – Sean Morrissey   “Photos are the name of the game. Quality photos go a long way. You'd always want to set your photos up so that you're going to enhance the experience, but keep in mind that the majority of people are going to want to visit that property regardless, so you'd never want to appear deceptive.” – Sean Morrissey   “You'd want to make sure your price is right. You'd want to have your price reflect what you're comfortable with and not only generating your appropriate cashflow or what the market's going to call for.” – Sean Morrissey   “There are so many different websites out there now. Make sure you find the site that you love and is easy for the tenants to understand.” – Sean Morrissey   “Your lease is going to set up the parameters of when rent is due, what's considered your late fee, but you've got to notify your residents how you're going to collect payment. Provide a few methods so that the resident is always choosing the method that they're most comfortable with.” – Sean Morrissey   “The last thing you'd want to do is show up in court and find out that a judge doesn't think that your case is valid based on how you serve the tenants. You have to make sure that you have a few Attorneys on speed dial that have a working relationship with the judge that handles evictions in your county, and make sure you've got your rent collection process in place.” – Sean Morrissey   Connect with Sean Morrissey: Website: https://chicago-realty-group.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-r-morrissey Podcast: https://chicago-realty-group.com/podcast-for-landlords/ Connect with Dave Dubeau:  Podcast: http://www.propertyprofitspodcast.com/  Website: https://davedubeau.com/home  Investor Attraction Workshop: http://www.investorattractionworkshop.com/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedavedubeau  LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/davedubeau  Enjoyed the Podcast?  Please subscribe on iTunes for updates

Welcome to the Golden Nuggets of Real Estate Investing, a podcast dedicated to helping you achieve financial freedom through Real Estate. Ross is joined by Jeremy Ivany, a Real Estate investor in Chatham Ontario. Jeremy discusses how he's made the switch from an Electrician to being a full time real estate entrepreneur at the age of 24. We discuss, how to attract JVs (partners), how to get Vendor Take Back Mortgages and most importantly the fundamentals of the Chatham market such as which pockets to invest in, what the market rents look like, the tenant profile to expect and running a successful air bnb business. We also discuss using tools such as Buildium to put property management on auto pilot. Follow Ross on Social Media: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXJeEiAaVaEtYt0Sqr36TVQ/videos Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ross.nedaee/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ross.nedaee Follow Jeremy on Social Media: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremyivany/

Meet Jim Murray, a twisted individual crazy enough to actually enjoy property management. No, it’s true. His journey starts back in 2012 when he purchased his first House Hack, a four-unit property in Rhode Island. At the time, he was working full time for Fidelity Investments and was self-managing his property. Since then, he has jumped around to do some wholesaling, some flipping, to where he is today—a full time property manager and real estate investor. The unfulfilment with Corporate America had been building for some time since Jim made his first investment and one bad review too many, he did what most folks could only dream of and started his own company. So what makes Jim crazy enough to do the one thing most investors dread as it pertains to real estate? Simple, he says. He’s a systems-oriented guy who enjoys helping people succeed. Up to date, Jim manages over 600 rental units, owns and operates Lyon Property Management, and hosts The Cash Flow Kings Podcast. Going forward, he plans to continue to scale up his personal portfolio, transition more into the multi-family realm, and help more people grow their wealth. Our takeaways from our conversation with Jim:   1) Systems is the name of the game. Invest in technology that increases profitability. By having the right systems & processes in place, you attract and get to serve the right clients. And fortunately for us, business technology has never been easier to acquire and implement. So whether you self-manage or manage other people’s units, there’s technology out there that exists to help you out. (Find suggestion list down below.) However, understand this: Technology is meant to enhance, not replace. If you fail to develop & implement the proper processes first, investing in technology will do you or your business no good, and will probably only run you and your business dry of cash flow. 2) Fire bad clients. When starting out, you’ll be tempted to accept any and all business that comes your way. And that’s not really your fault. You won’t know what separates a good client from a bad one. But once you build your business to a respectable size, that’s when it’s time to visit our good friend, Pareto (80/20 Rule). Scale your respectable business into a sustainable one. Get rid of problem clients and double down your efforts on the good ones. Good clients (tenants, customers, etc.) are worth keeping around if you want to operate a sustainable business. But more importantly, bad clients are worth getting rid of in order to keep the good ones around. 3) Set expectations and practice accountability. This is the culture that Jim cultivates within his own company that has allowed him to make a business and career in taking over distressed properties. From the very beginning, let tenants (or clients) know what you are all about and what you will do for them. You must make your tenants know it is a privilege to rent from you, and at the same time, you must treat it as such—a privilege. That means holding yourself, your tenants, and all other parties up to the standard that you set. And when the bar is not met, someone needs to be held accountable for their actions. In doing this, you will weed out bad tenants and keep the good ones happy. 4) Image influences perception. As Jim explains in his story, when talking to contractors while wearing scrappy jeans and work boots as opposed to a suit and tie, he was quoted for a lower price for the same work being done. And it’s understandable as this is a natural human bias. So why not use this bias to your advantage? Here’s the point: It’s not always best to look like you’re made of money. While this goes without saying to look appropriate, hygienic, and professional, you don’t always need to look super polished. Rather, fit the profession you’re playing. While there are times that call for formal attire, wearing so in casual settings tends to make others perceive you as willing to pay more for something or are just flat out bougie. If Jim could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Buy more real estate in 2009.” In other words, take advantage of the real estate cycles and buy real estate sooner! An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Jim said, was the opportunity to live with time, location, and financial freedom. A piece of advice Jim would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Listen to other people.” Use the free content and information available to you online, whether it be other real estate & business podcasts, websites like BiggerPockets, or the thousands of educational real estate videos on YouTube. Jim recommends using zInspector to help you create and store tenant condition statements. This comes in handy during any tenant-related litigation, as well as have as an additional layer of legal protection for your business. Honorable mentions: For high-end scaled operations: AppFolio; Buildium; Rent Manager. For low-end (DIY-level) scaled operations: Cozy; Avail; Zillow Rental Manager. For rental unit showings: Tenant Turner; Show Mojo; Rently. Jim recommends reading The Wealthy Gardener: Lessons on Prosperity Between Father and Son by John Soforic to help you grasp important financial concepts found in many of the popular financial/business books around. Honorable mentions: The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field by Mike Michalowicz. The Richest Man in Babylon by George Samuel Clason. If you’d like to get in touch with Jim, follow him on Instagram @thecashflowkings

Why would someone start their own property management company instead of just hiring a third party? Today’s guest, Colin Douthit has some answers. Colin is the founder and owner of Atlas Property Management, has been in the real estate space for just three years, and already manages over 360 doors, with another hundred in the pipeline. In this episode, we talk about why Colin decided to start his own property management company, and the pros and cons of doing do versus hiring a third party. He explains some of the challenges, standard operating procedures, and tools he uses, as well as some tips about what owners can do to partner with property management companies to make it a little easier for both parties. Don’t miss this episode!Key Points From This Episode:Colin introduces himself and explains how he got into real estate as an investor.The pros and cons of starting your own management company versus hiring a third party.Inversely, why someone would hire a third party versus starting their own company.Some challenges with owning a property management company, like investors and tenants.Dealing with the balance between the goals of different customers, particularly disparities in desired rent and maintenance pricing.Standard operating procedures when running a successful property management company.Colin talks about using Buildium property management software and why it is a great service.The three top skills one needs as an investor before starting a property management company: Understanding investors, organization, and business acumen.The number of doors necessary per property manager to start a profitable company.The specialized approach that Colin takes to focus the work that property managers do.Colin talks a bit more about the role his leasing agent plays and the commission she takes.What owners can do to partner with property management companies to make it easier.How COVID-19 has impacted Colin’s business and projected long term implications.Why Colin can’t do without G Suite, and why you should always take out a construction loan.Tweetables:“There’s a certain number of doors that you need per property manager to, at least in our analysis, every company’s going to run it differently, but to be profitable, right?” — Colin Douthit [0:10:53]“As much as we wanted to give as much attention to the owners is we can, once we hit 30, 40 owners, you might not always remember all the plans that you had set forth. So like, ‘Hey, what was the goal on this one again?’ Just be understanding that we’re trying to execute your goal. We want it to be as successful as possible.” — Colin Douthit [0:15:28]Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:Colin Douthit on LinkedInAtlas Property ManagementAtlas Property Management on LinkedInAtlas Property Management on InstagramAtlas Property Management on FacebookBuildiumG SuiteAPT Capital GroupPassive Income Through Multifamily Real Estate on FacebookSchedule a Call with Kyle Mitchell

Real estate brokers and property managers receive what are known as “trust funds” in the normal course of doing business. These are typically deposits and payments received and held on behalf of others, thereby creating a fiduciary responsibility to the funds owners. In our business as property managers, we must handle and account for these funds according to established legal and accounting standards within the rules and regulatory requirements of our individual states. Not being in compliance could have significant financial and legal consequences for our property management businesses. On this episode of Property Management Brainstorm, Bob Preston discusses accounting and bookkeeping for property management trust accounts with Taylor Hou, Chief Happiness Officer at APM Help. Bob and Taylor discuss the importance of keeping the books clean, what auditors would see as red flags, and how to spot irregularities and discrepancies in your property management accounting reports.Topics Covered[2:20] Taylor tells us about his title, Chief Happiness Officer, and how APM Help works with its clients.[3:45] Transitioning from legacy accounting software like QuickBooks to more current property management software such as Appfolio, Buildium, or Propertyware.[5:20] The difference between corporate accounting and property accounting (also known as trust accounting).[7:30] Taylor explains three-way reconciliation and why it is important.[12:30] The Broker's fiduciary responsibility pertaining to trust funds.[14:45] Red flags and discrepancies that might indicate embezzlement within a property management company.[21:15] New tech coming in accounting using Artificial Intelligence to identify account irregularities.[23:00] Setting up trust accounts for different types of properties (long-term rentals, vacation-rentals, commercial properties, HOA).[25:25] What will state real estate regulators look for during an audit of financial records?[29:30] Taylor shares the story of how he got into accounting and bookkeeping for property managers.[34:20] How to get in touch with Taylor and APM Help.Connect with TaylorAPM Helptaylor@apmhelp.com Connect with BobNorth County Property GroupThis episode is always available for listening, sharing, or download at Property Management Brainstorm. Subscribe to Property Management Brainstorm on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, TunedIn, iHeart Radio and YouTube.

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

I am coining a new term with this one -- REFI! Financial Independence by Real Estate! This podcast set the record for my longest EVER. Carve out sometime ( or get your steps in) because listening to David crush it on a 54K salery will amaze you. He talks through his early days of finding deals all the way from Africa. with the help of his father and business partner. David and I also share a love for Facebook marketplace deals, live-in flips, and using smart-key locks. Despite carrying the most business debt of any person I have interviewed to date, David is very debt aware on the personal side. He was always raised to be wary of debt, and if you must use debt like student loans, you best pay it off fast. He even worked 30 hours a week through college. We cover the importance of living on less than you make and learning to be personally financially disciplined, and that you do not need a ton of properties to be financially independent. A portfolio will look different if you want financial independence vs. want to build a business. And David was here to build a business. We review two ways David protected himself during COVID. The first, and everyone's favorite: stacking cash. The second is access to cash. You will also hear how David celebrates every deal, and our favorite things on the taco bell menu. Listen to David scare me strongly away from investing in commercial real estate during COVID. Also, I have a new life goal of owning an entire street of duplexes now (to avoid “apartment complex” mentality). And I am hype to learn how he got not one but TWO whole streets of duplexes. Perhaps you too will learn a new term: elevator (or escalation) clauses. I love our talk on tenant screening methods, section 8, and all of the benefits of networking local. David dishes on how he bought his newest primary residence/house hack/live in flip (with FOUR kids, mind you!). David continues buying but cautiously with COVID. Finally, hear what David is OUTSOURCING (hint: it is the same sucky task I recently hired out!) to someone else, to buy back his own time. Learn: BRRRR. Or a whole book on BRRR. Buildium. Why David should stock up on 7 layer taco bell burritos while they last. (RIP also loaded grillers) Classes of property: my fav article on the topic. Elevator clause, or Escalation clause My Automated Tenant Screening System The book that saved him $120,000: Never split the difference. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nerdsguidetofi/support

The Real Estate CPA podcast is for general information purposes only and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Information on the podcast may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. No reader, user, or listener of this podcast should act or refrain from acting on the basis of information on this podcast without first seeking legal and tax dvice from counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. Only your individual attorney and tax advisor can provide assurances that the information contained herein – and your interpretation of it – is applicable or appropriate to your particular situation. Use of, and access to, this podcast or any of the links or resources contained or mentioned within the podcast show and show notes do not create a relationship between the reader, user, or listener and podcast hosts, contributors, or guests. Always consult your own tax, legal, and accounting advisors before engaging in any transaction. -- In this episode, we're joined by Gregg and Alexis from Buildium. Buildium is a cloud-based property management platform that gives landlords and property managers the ability to take control of every aspect of the business including online rent payments, vacancy management, maintenance cycles, accounting, and more. Today we discuss how delegating your property management to a third party and using property management software like Buildium can help free your time so you can focus on growing your business. We also discuss some new features that Buildium just released, like analytics and an open API. Learn more about Buildium and access their free content: https://www.buildium.com/ Work with Buildium: https://buildium.ustnul.net/c/2190075/787974/10839 Here's our special report summarizing the COVID-19 legislation: https://hubs.ly/H0nWXV40 We have created a Slack community for real estate investors to share ideas on how to protect their business and investments and to stay up to date on the laws and best practices as the coronavirus progresses. The community already has over 800 members and some great conversations are taking place: visit https://join.slack.com/t/cashflowcommuni…A59g~nnmkGfb58BNw to join! For more education about optimizing your tax position, use this guide as a resource for just about every topic that applies to you as a real estate investor: https://www.therealestatecpa.com/the-ultimate…te-investors To sign up for our Virtual Workshops visit: https://www.therealestatecpa.com/virtual-workshop/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/therealestatecpa Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/realestatecpa/

Join us for some timely insights from Mike Parlante on the landlord’s perspective in managing the Covid-19 pandemic. Mike’s diverse resume includes a career in the dental equipment industry as Director of Business Development for MidAtlantic Ortho, the owner of Capsule Products (an online store supplying Invisalign patients with on-the-go products), and he is the inventor of the Capsule Retainer Case. In the realm of real estate investing Mike is a partner at MDM holdings, and he shares the story of his journey: lessons learned, identifying desirable markets, hidden values, passive investing, attracting student tenants creatively using Facebook and Instagram, maximizing technology such as Venmo and PayPal to facilitate rental payments as well as Appfolio and Buildium to document landlord-tenant correspondence. Mike discusses his approach to decisions on seeking forbearance and sees open tenant-landlord communication as key during Covid-19. He is balancing his company’s on-going business commitments with flexibility and compassion to weather the crisis through well-documented lease modifications to meet the needs of struggling tenants.

Are you a property manager who spends too much time struggling with leasing requirements? It may be time to automate rental property management and focus more on how to grow your business. Today’s guest is Faizan Khan from LetHub, an AI leasing assistant service for property management businesses. LetHub utilizes AI to interact with renters, resolve their problems, and get them to the doors.  You’ll Learn... [03:40] Why LetHub? Opportunity to use AI to automate rental property management. [04:21] Myth: AI is a simple chatbot with multiple threads of what needs to be done. [05:00] Reality: AI goes beyond basics by understanding how the human brain works.  [05:26] Good vs. Genius AI: What’s the difference? Ability to learn and fix mistakes. [06:39] How to build an AI: Data scientist, algorithms, machine learning (ML), and supervised learning approach are needed to get started.  [07:29] LetHub’s Goal: Make experience for renters and landlords very easy.  [07:55] Property Management Problem: Difficult to get a rental apartment. Demand is high. Everyone is looking. AI can help. [09:05] Why LetHub uses AI? AI is not going to replace humans, but it’s a substitute. [09:19] Retention Rate: Property managers want to get the best tenants and keep them.  [10:25] LetHub’s AI: Replies to questions, books tours, provides CRM, handles emails. [12:15] LetHub’s Automated System: Requires less staff and time to generate results. [15:35] Pre-call Process: Top four questions focus on pets, moving date, student or employed, and tell me about yourself.  [17:25] API and Integrations: Connect to Buildium, Yardi, or other account. [20:00] LetHub Listings: All channels have Web link; connect email with Web platform.  Tweetables LetHub’s goal is to make the experience for renters and landlords very easy. Get people to the door. A good AI understands; a genius AI learns from its mistakes. AI won’t replace humans, but be a substitute for property managers to focus on growth. People like to chat. They don't want to call. They want instant replies.  Resources Faizan Khan’s Email LetHub Buildium Yardi Rent Manager RealPage DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. Today's guest, I'm hanging out with Faizan Khan. Faizan, how are you today? Faizan: I'm good. How are you? Jason: Welcome to the DoorGrow Show. I'm doing great. Faizan Khan has one of the coolest names that we’ve ever had on the DoorGrow Show. We were joking in green room that it sounds like he’s a gangster rapper, just cool. Actually, you made that joke, because I’m a nerd I said it sounds like some badass [...]. Faizan: That’s right, yeah. It’s a different name. I haven’t heard this name myself before. Faizan, I'm really excited to have you. You have a service that we're going to be talking about today called LetHub. I know nothing about it. I'm excited to ask you a lot of questions. I get curious. Before we get into that, let's talk about you. Where this guy with this cool name came from, what your background is, and why people should listen. Faizan: As a child, I had been involved in entrepreneurship stuff and starting businesses small or big. I'm originally born and brought up in Dubai and Pakistan, considered like a mixture. Then I moved to the UK for a bit and after that I have been living in Canada. I've lived in five different countries throughout my life. I love traveling. Whenever I get a chance, I try to go to any other spot that I can go to, provided there's no Coronavirus over there. I'm really interested in real estate. I've had a bunch of start-ups before. I saw this opportunity of using AI to automate rental property management, so I started this company called LetHub. We are in our start-up phase but we're doing pretty well working with a few clients in Canada and States. We're trying to help people to automate all of their leasing requirements so they could sit down and focus more on how to grow. Right now, we're using a very sophisticated AI to interact with renters, resolve their problems, get them to the doors, and all that stuff. We can get deeper into that. That's my background of why I started and who I am. Jason: This sounds really interesting. A lot of people talk about AI and you hear that thrown around. I think the term can sometimes be used very loosely. Their version of an AI is they're creating a chatbot with multiple threads of what they need to be done. Faizan: That’s a very good question. I think a lot of people are sort of sold on the idea that AI is basically just like a pre-made thread of questions or a pre-scripted bot. But the truth here is that it understands something in a similar way as a human would, like the sentences or words I'm saying to you, your brain is breaking them down, understanding the context of that, processing it, and then replying. That's how our brain works. A good AI would understand that, even a better or a genius AI would really learn. If it creates a mistake, you can teach it what to do or it could teach itself what to do next. An example would be if someone says hey, do you allow pets, or hey, do you love furry friends? The AI would respond saying that, hey, we do. This is our pet policy. The renter would say, hey, is a small dog or cat okay? The third thing that the renter says is context. The context is do you allow any pets. Truly, I would not understand that, but an actual AI would understand the context. Jason: How does one go about starting to build an AI thing? Is there an AI system that you are leveraging to build? Is that how this works? Faizan: Yeah, that's a good question. You need a data scientist, number one, and you need to build some algorithms. You need to understand how machine learning works. It's a lot of techy-techy stuff to get data, to train the AI from an infant to a child to an adult. It's a simple process like any other human would be trained, how we grow up, we learn a few words, and then we're taught a few things. Pretty much like that. We use a supervised learning approach. It's a very sophisticated machine learning approach. Our goal is to make the experience for renters and landlords very easy. From our tests, we see that a lot of people ask the same questions. We cut that down, get people to the door rather than them giving you a call or sending you hundreds of emails. Jason: Let's talk about the problem first. What problem have you seen to the property managers you're dealing with that you thought maybe AI can help with this? Faizan: First and foremost in a very dense city where I was living in Vancouver, it's very hard to get a rental apartment. The demand is high. Everyone is looking. For us as renters, it was getting impossible. It would take two months to get something, that's how I started. I was like, why is this process not solved? If I send an email to a landlord, why am I not getting a reply? If I show up there are 20, 30 other people, I need to fill out a new rental application every time. If you go into 10 units or 10 different spots or places, it will be 10 different applications and that's all while you're working 9:00 to 5:00 as a professional. That's how I started. Why do we use AI? AI is not going to replace humans, but it's going to substitute a lot of their work that they do so they can focus on other stuff. A lot of the problems that property managers face are mostly around getting the best tenants and then keeping them. What's the retention rate? That's one of the bigger problems in multifamily and also single family.  I believe that you can cut that whole process down to finding someone from a listing, to getting them to the door, and to sign the lease. You can cut the time down by around 60 to 70%. If you're spending four to five hours a day, if you have a lot of vacancies or spending a lot of time just on replying to people with the same questions and it gets monotonous, you might lose focus. You're not that happy talking to people. That's where an automated system comes in.  People like to chat, especially millennials. They don't want to call. They want instant replies. Our product comes in there and solves this problem. It replies to everyone's questions and books you a tour right away into the leasing team's calendar. It provides a nice CRM for property managers just to have a look at who's coming when, weather details, do they qualify, all that good stuff. It also handles emails coming through. We see that 50 to 60% of property managers get emails than calls. Emails and texts are the king right now in terms of communicating. We deal with that as well. Jason: LetHub is handling emails? Faizan: Yes. Jason: It's dealing with text messaging too? Faizan: Yeah. Apart from calling, everything. Our AI assistant is dealing with all the online web chat. You can put it on your website or you can just post it on ours. It would reply to your emails. It would reply to the text. It will send reminders, all that good stuff. Honestly, there's a lot of companies that have already built this, but the automation piece is missing. There's always some manual work. We built it in a way where you can just click a button and start using it. There's no need for a three week training. I hate that. Jason: What are you seeing in terms of how this is impacting the clients that you brought on some of your initial prospects? What are you seeing? What are they noticing? What's different for now? Faizan: I don't want to jump the gun on this one, but I think it's helping people not to hire more which is scary. An example is one of our clients, they used to hire interns who would take calls, reply to emails, and then give the lead to a leasing agent who would go out there and show the unit, do a tour and then sign the lease and all that stuff. They stopped hiring an intern because now the system’s so automated, they’re getting good results. From a leasing agent’s perspective, they’re leasing faster. Those hundreds of emails they get, because it’s automated, they can filter through renters faster and get signed leases faster. The rate of listing to lease, the timeline has decreased. We've been measuring that very specifically. Minutely looking at is that the USP, is that actually the time spent by a leasing agent, but it's both. If someone spends on these activities, that goes down and the time to lease goes down as well. Jason: Let's go through the lifecycle then. I want to understand which pieces of the lifecycle of dealing with prospective tenants, showing the property, getting the lease, then on boarding, how much of this is LetHub connecting with and helping with? Faizan: Our goal is to get people to the door. Jason: It's getting people to the showings and getting showings scheduled and that sort of thing? Faizan: Yeah. It's answering our questions, dealing with increased, pre-qualifying people, and getting them to the door according to your schedule. Just get them to the door and then after that you could do the rental application or whatever you'd want to do, but also we get feedback as well. We're getting them to the door. If they don't like the property, we're getting some feedback as to why they didn't like the property or something like that. The goal is to get them to the door fastest with good pre-qualification, answering all their questions that they might have, and booking tours in a smart way. If you manage more than 400 units, 1000 units, or even 2000 in our case, then your time is money in that sense. There'll be no shows. There'll be people who are not that qualified. You'll always be dealing with not a higher quality of tenant like prospective renters. Jason: Give listeners an idea of the pre-call process, like some of the questions you might ask or what property management might have connected or built out in that piece. Faizan: I've built the algorithm myself with the help of my CTO. It's highly customizable. Obviously staying within human rights, there's some questions you cannot ask but it's customizable. You put your criteria and river our AI. We'll make sure she gets those answers from people. Jason: What are some of the questions that it's asking? You had mentioned earlier like maybe pets, maybe if they've had an eviction before. Faizan: You could ask anything from if you had an eviction, do you smoke, do you have any pets, how many people are moving in, why are you moving, are you a student. A lot of people ask this. We suggest people not to ask more than four questions, otherwise, that drives renters away. The top four I'm telling you is number one is pets, what's your moving date, when do you want to move in, are you a student or do you have a job, that sort of thing, and then the fourth is please tell me a bit about yourself. Generally, tell us whatever you would want. Though you can keep the criteria strict. If they don't fall under your criteria, they don't actually book a tour. We'd show them other properties. Jason: I understand the idea of decreasing the amount of time wasting type of calls where they're just asking details about the property. Will this be able to pull in some of the data on some of the properties through API or connect, because most property managers have all this in their property management software? If somebody's getting into your chat tool or the system and asking what's the square footage on this property or where is this located, how many of these things can it feel? Faizan: All we ask people to do is connect their Buildium or Yardi account and then go from there. We are constantly working on improving the integration and it will have enhanced integration with time. Right now if you as a property manager want to have a taste of LetHub, just let us know and we'll add a few of your properties. You can have an experience and then we can attach your integration and all that stuff. But we're not really partners with any of these companies, we just want to be clear. These are one off requests from property managers where they say this software, can you integrate so that we help them integrate. There's some softwares that do not have APIs. Jason: What manager has a full API, I guess property now has an API? Faizan: Yeah, probably Rent Manager. I was talking to the folks at Rent Manager as well. We're in moving talks with them soon. We'll meet with them at the conference as well. With Buildium, they don't really have an open API, same way as bigger companies like Yardi or RealPage. They have a paid API so they have this whole program. But we're happy to work with anyone. The key is to cut down the time it would take to on board anyone if they are using a very sophisticated software. We're happy to work with them and help them set that up while not changing anything. That's the important part. They keep doing what they're doing, we're just going to be working on the side getting them into leads. Jason: LetHub can operate as a chat tool on their website for people that are coming there. How does it help them via their listings that are out on the internet on various channels? Faizan: All the channels, email, text, and just having a web link, when you list your property, all you do is you just connect your email with our web platform. When you list your property just in the description and say, hey, click here to book a tour, or you can just redirect users to your own website. If you spent a lot of money on branding and making your website amazing, which a lot of people have, just redirect them to your own website and the river would just pop up and guide the user to book a tour or answer any questions. Jason: What questions are property managers asking you that are a little bit curious or wary or whatever? What are some of the most common questions they're asking about LetHub before they're willing to take it for a full spin and utilize it? Faizan: That's a good question. I think it depends on the size of the company. We were in talks with Aimco which has 10,000 units, bigger company, and multifamily. Their number one problem is integration so they would want integration with their current software which is totally fine. Make sense, bigger companies, got more complex. With the smaller property managers, I think their major concern is that will people be okay chatting with an AI versus a human. I want to be clear on this that nobody's replacing nobody over here. We're just helping people and we've got the tests to show you that that's the future. There's a lot of banks using this technology and you can order a pizza. I don't know how smart it is, but you can order a piece of pizza through an AI assistant. Jason: Anything else you want to let people know about LetHub before we wrap this up and how can people get in touch and maybe check this out? Faizan: Yeah, for sure. I think if you're a property manager who is looking to automate things so you don't have to run after renters and if you're looking to really use the latest and greatest tech, then please get in touch with us. Our website is lethub.co. You can email me at faizan@lethub.co, I'll be happy to do a demo myself or one of my team members would do it for you. Happy to chat about your problems and see if we can build a more customized solution for you. Yeah, that's about it. Keep growing I guess. Jason: Faizan Khan, really great having you on the show. I appreciate you hanging out with me today and we'll let you go. Faizan: Awesome. Thank you so much. Jason: Awesome to have him on. Check out LetHub and let us know inside the DoorGrowClub Facebook group what your experiences are if you decide to try them out, what you think. We'd be really curious to hear about your feedback. Go post an update inside the DoorGrowClub. Get to that on doorgrowclub.com. That's our community for this property management podcast. If you are wanting to figure out how to grow your business, you're struggling to grow, you're running into issues, reach out to our team. Check us out at doorgrow.com. Until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Almost speechless, Jason Hartman discusses financial strategy along with best/worst-case scenarios in dealing with the Coronavirus. The economy of planet Earth is possibly facing a global hibernation, how long will it last, and how will we recover?  In today’s second segment, Jason speaks with guest Drew Baker, about self-management tips and applications to ease some of the hassles. Drew speaks about his experiences with the value of quality tenants.  Key Takeaways: [2:51] The economy of planet Earth is going into hibernation mode [4:08] “Buy on fear, sell on greed.” -Warren Buffet [6:28] How do you recover from a couple of months sliced out of an annual GDP? [8:15] Exploring best/worst-case hypotheticals [12:05] Supply/demand shock [14:00] Inflation Induced Debt Destruction profits to come [17:30] Drew Baker [18:43] Buildium vs Property Tracker [23:00] A better quality tenant can make for an easier self-management experience, a lower quality tenant makes the property manager a little more needed [27:00] A great tenant goes a long way [32:00] Coronavirus, a baby-boomer bomb Websites: www.JasonHartman.com Jason Hartman PropertyCast (Libsyn) Jason Hartman PropertyCast (iTunes) www.holisticsurvival.com/

George Gammon interviews Jason Hartman about The Jason Harman Risk Evaluator. In Part I of this three part series, Jason describes his ‘aha moment’ after 19 years of experience in Real Estate. The story begins with a call from Jennifer, an insurance agent in Irvine, California that leads to the necessity and application for understanding the LTI (Land to Improvement ratio). George Gammon shares an exhausting experience with lot subdivision and development. Eric, the appraiser comes out with good news prompting the question, “how would you allocate the new value between the two primary components, land and improvement?” Jason also shares a modern day story taking place in Seattle, proving once again the risk of investing in a cyclical market. Key Takeaways: [2:20] “No such thing as a passive investment” [4:03] The Hartman Risk Evaluator, LTV and LTI ratios discussed [7:28] The call from Jennifer, the insurance agent [9:45] What factors increase improvement value [19:38] The ingredients of a house, labor costs [30:06] The ingredients of a house, regulations [33:20] The ingredients of a house, cost of energy [35:05] “How do I know the land value vs the improvement value? [47:45] The risk when investing is in high land values [48:26] Three types of markets: linear, cyclical and hybrid. What market is a preferred market for investing? [53:00] Low land value equals low risk, high land value equals high risk [58:10] Human biases: recency bias, sunk-cost bias, and certainty bias can all distract an investor Websites: www.JasonHartman.com/Properties www.JasonHartmanPropertyHotsheet.libsyn.com/ www.WeGoLook.com www.NoLo.com www.RocketLawyer.com www.Buildium.com

Do you like dealing with people or properties? Most real estate investors and property managers leave dealing with numbers to their accountants. Today, I am talking to Kyle Redding, Head of Growth and Sales for Proper. The property management tool uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to provide accounting and bookkeeping services. As a former CPA, Kyle has extensive knowledge of accounting, bookkeeping, and customer experience.  You’ll Learn... [05:12] Purpose of Proper: Partner with property management companies to set up accounting automation for back office. [06:10] Proper Position: Works with, doesn’t replace other property management tools. [10:00] Sophistication Fog: Property managers who need additional software and staff to optimize accounting automation. [12:15] Proper Process: Property managers handle invoices via dedicated email inbox, training, and automated processing. [17:45] Reminders: Rent is due! Rent is late! Proper’s frequency of property management invoices and statements. [21:10] Proper Competition: Hire bookkeepers/accountants with qualifications, education, and experience to alleviate single point-of-failure. [29:55] Proper Pricing: Affordable and sliding-fee scale based on price per unit. Tweetables Proper manages the books, you manage the properties. Proper’s Primary Focus: Accounting automation for more scalability and less stress. Proper’s accounting team is not your run-of-the-mill bookkeepers. Leverage Growth: Partner with Proper to take property management to the next level. Resources Kyle Redding’s Email Proper Ernst & Young QuickFee Buildium AppFolio Rent Manager Propertyware Yardi QuickBooks DGS 101: Take Confusion Out of Property Management with the Proper App  DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. Today’s guest is Kyle Redding of Proper. We’re going to be learning about what Proper is now. I think we’ve had you guys on the show before and it’s different. Kyle, welcome to the Door Grow Show, glad to have you. Let’s get into your background and maybe you could share with people your entrepreneurial journey, I think you have a cool story and I think it’d be fun to get into first. Kyle: Yeah, thanks, Jason. This is exciting, thanks for having us. Up at baseball in college really all I wanted to do fell into accounting. That sounds a little crazy, but Accounting 101 was in all those classes that I took and got 100% in. Don’t ask me how, but it just happened. While playing baseball I was like, “Okay, I think I can do this.” You travel a bit, you miss a bunch of classes but still, somehow worked it out. That revolved into an internship with Ernst & Young and then ultimately, a full-time job. I started up at EY in Orange County, California for about five years or so in the real estate group. A lot of my clients were public REITs or real estate developers. I ultimately then transferred out to Australia where I work at EY. Again with some real estate clients and some other industries. Ultimately, I got out of the public accounting game and was attracted to start-up life. I found this little start-up in Australia that was looking for an accountant that could sell, and I thought I’d give this a crack. We are a little finance online payment company in the professional services, all of our clients were accounting firms and law firms. We got really deep into the accounting industry and the CPA world and how they run their business. We grew that business and brought it to the US about four years ago. I took that company public in July last year. While that happened, I’ve always stayed in touch with one of my best friends, Matt, who is our COO and head of finance at Proper and Mark, an old college roommate from USC. We used to make surfboards and Matt and I worked at Ernst & Young together. At that time, Proper was really trying to solve a lot of different challenges for a property managing company, mainly on the maintenance side, which I think he comes and talks about before. Mark, our COO, was just religious about user research and first principles, light up thinking, breaking down problems, and finding the best solution for those problems; which is how we ended up coming back to Matt and I’s core background from the CPA world and real estate and addressing that [...] maintenance side of things, which is a nice to have and people want that to be better. The real true problem that we found was on the accounting side. A lot of property managers don’t necessarily get into this business because they like doing the accounting, or they do not do the accounting because (like you said) different from the real estate sales. It allows them to grab a hold of these owners and these properties, and develop other business opportunities but at the end of the month, the key deliverable that they all have is a financial package on that owner’s investment. That’s where we are today, helping a lot of property management companies solve that challenge and get better and focus on growth as opposed to running a call center and operations. Jason: Cool, so let’s get into how would you describe Proper now to those that are listening? What does Proper do? Kyle: Yep, sure. We partner with company management companies to help automate their back-office essentially, from everything, from AR to AP, to bank [...], to owner reporting. We use very high caliber accountants who have all got an accounting degree from big universities, that work in a big board accounting firm, that works at a Fortune 500 accounting firm. We power our team with machine learning, automation, and artificial intelligence to help make their job easier and allow our clients, the property managers, to scale a lot faster without having to worry about hiring more staff for training those people or maybe delaying, bringing on more portfolio because they need to do those things before they can get to that next step. We focus on accounting automation. Jason: Help me understand then how that works. Most property management entrepreneurs and business owners that are listening to the show right now are probably thinking, “Well, I’ve already got AppFolio, I’ve already got Rent Manager, I’ve already got Buildium. I’ve got a property management back office or accounting solution.” Is Proper something that you guys are positioning yourself to replace these tools or is this something where work in conjunction? How does this work? Kyle: Good question. We work alongside all of those tools. We’ve got a big mix, we don’t just work in AppFolio, we don’t just work in Propertyware. We’ve got clients that use Buildium, use Yardi, AppFolio, Propertyware, Rent Manager, you name it. We’ve even got clients who start out with QuickBooks and then as we help them grow, we transition into something more appropriate like a property management software. Right now, we’re not looking to replace any of those tools. We help optimize them for our clients. We help them set up a foundation to better utilize those and then manage those as well. A big part of what we do is helping them set up the appropriate level of internal controls. Are they set up for growth? Is that foundation there to really pile on top of? When we take on a new client, a lot of times it’s retooling the way they’ve set up AppFolio, Buildium, or Propertyware. It’s helping them get their [...] matrices set up. It’s all of those things to create efficiency, get them out of the weeds of the mundane repetitive low-level tasks that are [...] time set from their day, put that on to our plate, and get them back out to the field, so they can grow their business. Jason: It’s not just accounting because you’re helping with some of the operational aspects as well. Kyle: Correct. What we found is depending on a property manager and the company and the way they’re staffed, there’s a lot of leaving in and out of that accounting process. There’s a property manager who might spend 10%–15% of their day doing some accounting function that they probably shouldn’t be doing. The other side of that is you might be the owner or the broker-owner going, “I wish my PMs are out there losing these vacant apartments I’ve got, but they’re stuck doing this paperwork because there’s no one else to do it,” or it’s part of a process that they set up that hasn’t been revisited or fine-tuned. So, we help alleviate all those little bits of pieces there, then create more capacity for them to focus on what they want to focus on. Jason: Is this difficult to get going, get set up, and is there a certain level that a property management business owner has to be at before it would make sense to work with you guys? Kyle: Let me tackle that second question first which is do we have a minimum or a certain size. The short answer is no. We’ve got clients who have as little as six units. We’ve got clients who start with us at say 30 units and grow to 50–60 within three months. I’d probably say where it starts to make the most sense where they can move away from that one part-time admin or office staff handling some of these admin related tasks or accounting related tasks. Generally, to make it to that 30–40 unit mark and they’re starting to gain some momentum and get a little serious is where we can usually help them get to that next level. Where we see a clear difference is with somebody’s property managers who we call in the sophistication fog. They’ve half thought on their AppFolio or Yardi to do some things for them, but they still have some low-level staff that may or may not have an accounting background. They’re essentially taking off things on the checklist on a daily basis to help get that job done but there really isn’t an optimization to that process yet, it hasn’t really been optimized. We can come in and create efficiencies for them and help them, ultimately, have them repurpose those people to maybe a more interesting role or a more revenue-generating role, and then start to use some automation and fine-tune their property management software to do more for them. Jason: When it comes to automation and the technology side, do you guys have a homegrown software that’s running and doing the stuff? Are you using a certain software platform that you work within? Kyle: We continue to optimize and build other tools mainly around AP. Our goal is to attack one of these functions at a time. We found by measuring our accountants’ time that on average it takes about 5 minutes and 59 seconds to process an invoice. We built a proprietary tool that allows us to take that 5 minutes and 59 seconds down to (say) 30 seconds. From a scaling perspective, that property manager then takes on another 200 units. There isn’t the fear of being able to handle that, and we don’t need to staff another five people on their account to get that work done. We can continue getting through that work at a very high accuracy rate by training our model over and over with the different touches and windows that we see. Jason: How are the property managers feeding stuff into the system as if they’re feeding it into Proper? Kyle: Just like maybe a more specific property manager we may have set up where, let’s say 70%–80% of their invoices from their [...] vendors are coming in by email. They might have a dedicated inbox, ap@xyzpm.com or billing@xyzpm.com. If they don’t already have something like that set-up, then we’ll help create something like that. We’ll work with their vendors and their team to start training those invoices to come through to that inbox, at which point we can then adjust them and start processing them through our automation tools. Jason: What are some of the big questions that you’ve been getting? Everybody’s using their property management software, they probably have their systems and processes going to where they’re afraid to even mess with it a little bit, they feel comfortable. Then hearing you say, “Hey, we can help you make things faster. We can make it better, we can help you utilize things better, we work alongside,” and they’re probably thinking, “This is going to be really expensive, I don’t know if this makes sense. I’m going to have to do something different or something new.” What are some of the concerns and how are you addressing those? Maybe you can address them here so people listening, they’re popping up in their head. Kyle: Sure. I’ll probably revisit one of the questions you asked earlier which I didn’t address, which was what does it look like to get started or to start working with us? What does that process [...]? Our onboarding process, usually depending on the size of the PM, say, between two and four weeks to where we’ve fully taken over the accounting work off of their plate. When we start working with a new client we’ll basically do a deep dive walkthrough through every single one of their processes that they have. We’ll then document that process, so if they do continue to grow or they want these policies, procedures, and manuals for their own internal use, they’ll have those and we can use those to hire additional staff as they continue to grow. That’s probably a big first step, is understanding what they do, how they do it, what is being done, who’s doing what, et cetera. During that onboarding process, if we see a glaring opportunity for an improvement or an optimization, we’ll help them execute it right there on the spot. In the first instance, we’re going to match what they do so there’s the least amount of distraction to their day. Then over time, the next 30-60 days, we’ll tweak that some more and optimize it a little bit further to where they’ve got a smooth running engine behind [...] essentially. That’s a big question for a lot of prospects of clients that we take on is how do we get started, how does this work? That’s a very high level. Jason: Let me recap that. Some of these direct out with accounting, they’re frustrated with some of their internal processes connected to these, their day-to-day, and in 2–4 weeks you feel like Proper can significantly lighten their load and allow them to breathe. Kyle: Yeah. For example, just in the last month, 80% of our clients had increased their unit count on a month-to-month basis. Obviously, there are ebbs and flows, they might lose an owner (which drops the units), but generally speaking, once Proper gets in there, we alleviate and free up. We have one client, we freed up 35 hours a month of their time. This is a seasoned property manager who’s just, at the end of the day having to review work, or they were using another accounting partner. Jason: Then roughly how many doors did they have that they were freeing up that much time? Kyle: About 200, let’s say. Not a massive one but a decent-sized property managing company. Working with Proper, we generally saved in terms of card cost of headcount, up to 30% of their accounting staff wages over time. Maybe not on day one because if we’re not going to replace a team, that comes in phases, but over time, we generally see about a 30% cost reduction. We can fix this cost for them as opposed to them running a call center. They want to be making more money so let us fix this cost for you. Keep the quality at a very high level so that financial output and what you’re delivering to your owners. We also see a significant reduction in the number of questions or queries that our clients get from owners every single month because now our accountants are coming in and doing things may be the way they should’ve been done before or at a slightly better cadence or faster cadence which helps them keep their relationships. Jason: What are you seeing in all the property management businesses that you’re working with? How often are they sending out statements? Rent is sometimes trickling in. Rent [...] coming [...] a month. Sometimes it’s late, rent is really late. In these situations, what are you seeing as a frequency for invoices going out? Kyle: Definitely ranges depending on who it is that we’re taking on board but ultimately during that onboarding and stabilization period, generally it’s within 60 days or so. We have them all recording on the 10th of the following month and that’s a pretty standard cadence across the industry, but we make sure it’s consistent. There isn’t that, “We’d like to get it done by the 10th. Sometimes it’s the 15th or sometimes it’s the 20th.” We try and help standardize that across all of their owners. That might even come down to giving them some advice around, “Hey, you don’t have this clause in your owner agreement negotiated property, let’s help you fix that real quick.” That way you have some consistency. There are fewer exemptions and less, “Oh, this one requires that and this one requires that.” Again, building for scale, they can make those tweaks and continue to pile on top of what they’ve already built. Jason: One of the questions that pop up in my head hearing about this and owners giving some of their subs, they’re concerned about checks and balances. How am I going to make sure everything between my management software reconciles with my trust accounts, banking accounts, and everything is going in and out? How do I make sure everything is legit and stable? If I’m going to hand it off to somebody, I want to feel safe that these checks and balances are in place otherwise I’m going to have to check everything. Isn’t that true? Kyle: Yeah. A big way that we approach that is through those onboarding walkthroughs. When we do a deep dive into each process, whether it’s collecting rent or AP, or with the owner recording if there are only [...] there, we go into extreme detail, we document and create a manual for that process. Then there is a consistent agreed way of doing it, whether we try to make recommendations to improve it, or we say, “Hey, you guys have got some great process here.” We just formalize it in that way there’s a clear line of, “This is how it’s going to work.” Then we use tools to keep people accountable. Set reminders for (say) someone on the PM side, they haven’t approved an invoice for us yet, we need to garnish their approval. We use tools that allow us to keep those people accountable, so we can keep them [...]. Jason: Short callers and text messages? Kyle: We communicate daily pretty much with all of our clients from Google Hangouts, workflow collaboration tools, things like that, so there’s clear visibility. Jason: What are some of the other frequently asked questions that people give you when they’re going through the sales prospects sort of process with you? Kyle: What are our qualifications, what makes us qualified to do this sort of thing. As I said, Matt and I—Matt is our head of operations—we’re both CPAs with extensive real estate experience at Ernst & Young. All of our accounting team—I think I mentioned this before—got an accounting degree from college, they’ve worked at a Fortune 500 company, or [...] accounting firms. Our staff is not your run-of-the-mill bookkeepers. They’re highly trained, they’ve got extensive experience, we require our team to do at least 10 hours of CP in real estate accounting every year, that generally gives them some confidence. Then we’ve got some clients out of their really sticky situation with back books and unreconciled accounts for a long period of time and if we can come in and clean that up in a very short amount of time. We have one client who had nine months of unreconciled accounts, and we helped clean that up in about 3½ weeks. When we can show our clients that we can do this for them and help them get to a part where they can sell all their managing company and their portfolio, that speaks volumes for the rest of the people that we talk to. Jason: Let’s throw stones at some of the competition. Kyle: Sure. Jason: One of the main competitors is going to be the property management that’s like, “I’m just going to go higher because the alternative will be I’m going to go higher than somebody. She’ll help me with my bookkeeping or my accounting, or data entry with checks and invoices and all this kind of stuff.” They bring in somebody, they’re probably one of the lowest-paying members of their team, and they’re trying to teach them how they do it and it gets really messy. I don’t know if you want to say anything else, maybe I already threw stones at it. Kyle: No, that’s good. It’s definitely a challenge that we come across, where they’re weighing up, “Do we do this in-house or do we bring on a partner like you guys?” What we often see or hear from people who maybe have gone down that road and then maybe come back to someone like Proper is that it's a single point of failure. It’s one person who’s a real accountant. They go on vacation, things get missed or they get tired if they’re growing quickly, and they’re not organized. All of those things are risks that a team like Proper doesn’t let happen because we have more than one person while working on your portfolio. We could do that and your pricing is still fixed. That’s one of the ways that we help alleviate those sorts of risks from that setup but that might be the right set up for some people. Jason: Yeah, I’m sure every property manager that’s brought anybody else in to touch anything financial in their business has noticed some really ugly mistakes that they’re having to clean up. They’re having to reissue their statements, they’re having to undo or apologize for a notice to quit or something that went out to the tenant that shouldn’t have. Let’s compare this now to just going and getting an accountant, like somebody maybe, “I’m going to go hire a local accountant. They know my area, they’ll get to know my business. Steve down the street, this guy, CPA.” Let’s throw stones at that now. Kyle: The biggest downside to that scenario is that they’re often doing things in arrears. The accountant isn’t there, the CPA isn’t there every day to do and process invoices or reconcile the bank account. They usually come in the first week of the next month to catch up on everything. The client isn’t super organized, they’re going to have to be digging through things, distracting their clients, asking them questions about stuff that happened three or four weeks ago. Which can be a big challenge. You might be able to navigate through that and create some processes, but that can be burdensome. Even more at a time sucks especially if people on the go are not doing things the way they should be along the way. With our team, we’re reconciling bank accounts on a daily basis as transactions go through. We’re processing invoices instantaneously as they come through. There are benefits of us essentially being an extension of your team, just maybe not sitting in your office, but having the same people every day in and out doing that work for you as you go. The other thing about the traditional CPA firm is they’d rather do the higher margin advisory work, tax consulting. It’s expensive for them to do the low-level bookkeeping. They’ll do it for a relationship, but they don’t necessarily like doing it. We actually get a lot of referrals from CPA firms who have clients who need property accounting done at an affordable price. Jason: You go get an accountant, they’re looking at things after the fact, they’re pointing out things you need to clean up, they’re disrupting your day. You’re having to communicate with them, you’re trying to find the problem they’re pointing out rather than these things being taken care of on a day-to-day basis. If you guys fix something that’s messed up within a day or even two, it’s dealt with. Thirty days later, some stuff to undo your mess. Kyle: Correct. Jason: What are some other alternatives to going without Proper? I guess doing it themselves. Kyle: Yeah, doing it themselves but again you’re constantly fighting that growth battle. How do I get to the next stage, whether it’s right? We all look for leverage to put us into that next zone. We get a lot of clients coming to us who want to grow. They get to the point of, “I can’t do anymore. I need a partner to get to the next stage.” We get people who’ve been burned by other accounting partners who maybe just don’t have the same quality control so now they’re looking for a new partner that isn’t going to mess things up that they don’t have to keep an eye on. I think because we focus exclusively on property managing companies, we’re not doing restaurants, we’re not doing eCommerce businesses. We’re 100% real estate accounting. That gives a bit of confidence in partnering with someone like us. Jason: Got it. If you’re working with some sort of accounting bookkeeping firm, you’re having to force the system, and you’re having to explain to them what you do and that rent’s going to come in, and certain amounts are going to be taken out, and all of those kinds of mess, and they just don’t get it. You’re having to use every time, like change the account rep that’s working with you this company has turned over. That can be a mess, you can guess it. Any other frequently asked questions that people come in to look at your firm would maybe want to hear on this podcast? Kyle: How quickly we can get started with people or whether we can help them retool their software stack. Another one we get quite a bit and gotten quite a bit recently is “Can you handle our overflow accounting?” As in they might already have a full accounting team with that capacity that they’re hungry to grow, and they want to buy four portfolios in the next quarter 400–500 units each. “Can we engage you guys to help do the mapping and the chart of accounts to our chart of accounts and the monthly accounting into a ready to transition them from whatever software they are on now to ours?” We handle a bit of our work as well or even maybe some ad hoc research of which one would outgrow this solution, what else should we look to do. We can scope in that sort of work and continue to partner with them on their growth. Jason: Okay, pricing. If we can really give any numbers here but if you can help people understand how do you price this out, how affordable this is, how does this work? Kyle: Great question. Our pricing scale is part of our client’s scale. As in the price per unit drops, the number of units continues to rise. We might start out someone with $12.99 per unit, we might have 100 units. Then if they get up to 2000 plus, we could get as low as $6.99 per unit. We calculate on a monthly basis and as the unit count fluctuates we adjust the pricing, so it’s a fixed note cost for them each month based on their unit count. If we don’t have to work on 100 units that they lost last month then cool, their fees are going to reflect that. So, between $12.99 a unit and $6.99 per unit per month for a full suite service. Jason: Got it. Well no matter how you work the numbers, doing that here at my screen, it’s going to be a lot cheaper than even a part-time employee generally would be. That’s handling the stuff, that’s a single weak link in the chain, that can be a bottleneck, that might get sick, go on vacation, or whatever, or yourself holding the entire company back because maybe this is not your area of genius or your life’s purpose to handle all this stuff. Kyle: Yup, exactly. We don’t necessarily provide à la carte services or our different functions of the accounting process other than accounts payable. We know that AP typically takes up about 60% of the time across the entire accounting function. We can get scale on AP pretty quickly especially with automation. If we’ve got someone who’s looking to maybe test us out, try before they buy sort of thing, we might take on just AP for them or maybe 60% of their workload at an appropriate price point for them to handle just AP, then move that into taking on the rest of their accounting services. Otherwise, we get people who just say, “We need this, let’s get started right now.” We’ll work with their team, get up to speed in a very short period of time, and then take everything off their plate. Jason: It’s just crazy to imagine that some of the property managers are going to listen to this. You’re dealing with some of the stuff, you’re running into headaches, you’re frustrated, this could be dealt with based on what Kyle’s saying here in like a month. It could be literally off your plate and your life could be infinitely easier. Kyle: That’s very true. We do start taking stuff off their plate in the first week or two but that first 2–4 weeks we like to really just make sure we’ve got a good understanding of what’s going on so that mistakes don’t happen, so that by week 4, we’re fully optimizing, we’re ready to roll. Jason: Cool. Well, I’ve gotten too deep with you and some of the members of your team and I know you guys are sharp. This sounds even better than what I thought we were going to be talking about today, so it sounds pretty exciting. I’m sure you’ll get some people reaching out that are running into some difficulties [...] off the top of my head that has been complaining about some of the stuff so it should be interesting to see the attraction you get on this episode. Kyle: The main thing, Jason, that we wanted to do is really give our clients their time back and give them the confidence and reliance on this financial that every month they got to deliver to their owners without having to worry, want it to be consistent, and want it to be high quality. We want them to not have to fear about getting right or spending time checking things. We want to be their partner in growth. We look for clients who want to grow and are like-minded with us to really help transform their business. Jason: I think those types of clients are my type of clients. These are the people that are focused on growth, so awesome. This is the Door Grow Show so hopefully, the people listening are that type of people. How do people get in touch with Proper? How do they get started? What’s the next step for those who might be listening that might be interested? Kyle: My email is kyle@proper.ai. You can check out our site proper.ai. Shoot us a note. We’d love to do a free consultation for you, show you a little bit about how we work. We’re happy to be in touch with any of our customers as well if you want to reference check us. Please reach out, and we’d love to work with anyone who’s interested. Jason: Awesome. Kyle, thanks for being on the DoorGrow Show. Kyle: Thanks for having us, Jason. I appreciate it. Jason: You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge in getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Almost speechless, Jason Hartman discusses financial strategy along with best/worst-case scenarios in dealing with the Coronavirus. The economy of planet Earth is possibly facing a global hibernation, how long will it last, and how will we recover?  In today’s second segment, Jason speaks with guest Drew Baker, about self-management tips and applications to ease some of the hassles. Drew speaks about his experiences with the value of quality tenants.  Key Takeaways: [2:51] The economy of planet Earth is going into hibernation mode [4:08] “Buy on fear, sell on greed.” -Warren Buffet [6:28] How do you recover from a couple of months sliced out of an annual GDP? [8:15] Exploring best/worst-case hypotheticals [12:05] Supply/demand shock [14:00] Inflation Induced Debt Destruction profits to come [17:30] Drew Baker [18:43] Buildium vs Property Tracker [23:00] A better quality tenant can make for an easier self-management experience, a lower quality tenant makes the property manager a little more needed [27:00] A great tenant goes a long way [32:00] Coronavirus, a baby-boomer bomb Websites: www.JasonHartman.com Jason Hartman PropertyCast (Libsyn) Jason Hartman PropertyCast (iTunes) www.holisticsurvival.com/

Almost speechless, Jason Hartman discusses financial strategy along with best/worst-case scenarios in dealing with the Coronavirus. The economy of planet Earth is possibly facing a global hibernation. How long will it last, and how will we recover?  In today's second segment, Jason speaks with guest Drew Baker, about self-management tips and applications to ease some of the hassles. Drew speaks about his experiences with the value of quality tenants.  Key Takeaways: [2:51] The economy of planet Earth is going into hibernation mode [4:08] “Buy on fear, sell on greed.” -Warren Buffet [6:28] How do you recover from a couple of months sliced out of an annual GDP? [8:15] Exploring best/worst-case hypotheticals [12:05] Supply/demand shock [14:00] Inflation Induced Debt Destruction profits to come [17:30] Drew Baker [18:43] Buildium vs Property Tracker [23:00] A better quality tenant can make for an easier self-management experience, a lower quality tenant makes the property manager a little more needed [27:00] A great tenant goes a long way [32:00] Coronavirus, a baby-boomer bomb Websites: www.JasonHartman.com Jason Hartman PropertyCast (Libsyn) Jason Hartman PropertyCast (iTunes) www.holisticsurvival.com/  

Almost speechless, Jason Hartman discusses financial strategy along with best/worst-case scenarios in dealing with the Coronavirus. The economy of planet Earth is possibly facing a global hibernation. How long will it last, and how will we recover?  In today’s second segment, Jason speaks with guest Drew Baker, about self-management tips and applications to ease some of the hassles. Drew speaks about his experiences with the value of quality tenants.  Key Takeaways: [2:51] The economy of planet Earth is going into hibernation mode [4:08] “Buy on fear, sell on greed.” -Warren Buffet [6:28] How do you recover from a couple of months sliced out of an annual GDP? [8:15] Exploring best/worst-case hypotheticals [12:05] Supply/demand shock [14:00] Inflation Induced Debt Destruction profits to come [17:30] Drew Baker [18:43] Buildium vs Property Tracker [23:00] A better quality tenant can make for an easier self-management experience, a lower quality tenant makes the property manager a little more needed [27:00] A great tenant goes a long way [32:00] Coronavirus, a baby-boomer bomb Websites: www.JasonHartman.com Jason Hartman PropertyCast (Libsyn) Jason Hartman PropertyCast (iTunes) www.holisticsurvival.com/  

In this awesome episode we talk to Justin Ellis from Wolfnest Property Management about his ongoing journey into building the perfect property management software in Podio.This is a different episode in that Justin is still in the final testing phases of his new system, so we get to talk to him while the experience (and everything he's learned) is fresh in his mind.We dive into some of the challenges that people have with existing software for Property Management (like PropertyWare, AppFolio, Buildium etc) and why Justin is convinced building everything in Podio is the way forward. We also look at some of the cost-saving he is benefiting from by minimising the amount of systems they use and consolidating their processes.This is a great episode for anyone in Property Management thinking about streamlining their business and looking for better options from the existing software systems.Check Justin out at https://wolfnest.com/

Cada empresa tiene que determinar cuáles son sus métricas norte. En este episodio del podcast en vivo intentamos definir al menos un grupo de ellas (Churn, CAC, CLTV, MRR, ARR, Payback period, Upselling...) en las que tenemos que hacer más hincapié. Para determinar las métricas que sí importan tenemos primero que tener en cuenta qué tipo de empresa somos y en qué estado estamos (tenemos pocos clientes, grandes cuentas, estamos desarrollando producto, hemos recibido inversión...). Comentamos las métricas en las que te podrías centrar para hacer crecer tu empresa SaaS, te encuentres en etapa temprana o en etapa de escalado.Estos son los enlaces a los temas de los que hemos hablado:The 7 SaaS growth metrics that really matter: https://www.appcues.com/blog/saas-growth-metricsThe ultimate analytics stack for startups [2020 edition]: https://www.projectbi.net/ultimate-analytics-stack-startups-2020/State of SaaS Product Onboarding: https://userpilot.com/saas-product-onboarding/What I Learned About SaaS at Buildium: https://www.outseta.com/posts/what-i-learned-at-buildiumNet Dollar Retention: https://tomtunguz.com/simpsons-paradox-ndr/Este hilo de Martin Casado de Andreessen Horowitz para entender las métricas que importan en una empresa SaaS b2b: https://twitter.com/martin_casado/status/1226563695418859520?s=21Las principales métricas que no deberíamos descuidar: https://youtu.be/HSNEDsqArq8Una guía de ProfitWell: https://www.profitwell.com/blog/choosing-the-right-saas-metrics-for-different-stages-of-your-company6 métricas de producto a medir por una empresa SaaS, del blog de Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/blog/metrics-for-enterprise-saasArtículo invitado del product marketer Lars Lofgren en el blog de Andrew Chen, socio de Andreessen Horowitz: https://andrewchen.co/the-critical-metrics-for-each-stage-of-your-saas-business-guest-post-by-lars-lofgren-of-kissmetrics/2019 High Growth SaaS IPO: https://twitter.com/jonbma/status/1227085189479882752Gustaf Alströmer y Eric Migicovsky hablando de tácticas de growth en un stream de YC: https://youtu.be/oog7n_1fR-o¿Por qué el Churn es crítico? David Skok: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/why-churn-is-critical-in-saas/Síguenos en Twitter:Danny Prol: https://twitter.com/DannyProl/Claudio Cossio: https://twitter.com/ccossioEstamos en todas estas plataformas:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/saas-product-chat/id1435000409ListenNotes: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/saas-product-chat-daniel-prol-y-claudio-CABZRIjGVdP/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36KIhM0DM7nwRLuZ1fVQy3Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8zN3N0Mzg2dg%3D%3D&hl=esBreaker: https://www.breaker.audio/saas-product-chatWeb: https://saasproductchat.com/

Do you need a place to rent? But you can’t complete or submit your application because you don’t have the required information and documentation for the property manager? This is a common and frustrating problem.  Today, I am talking to Stephen Arifin of The Closing Docs, which offers automated income verification in the property management industry. The Closing Docs is a modern way to help applicants prove their net income, which is the best indicator of their ability to pay rent. The Closing Docs provides property managers with income information needed to make a decision that can be defended. You’ll Learn... [01:48] Early Entrepreneurship Experience: Stephen started solving problems using technology to make money from the time he was in kindergarten through college. [02:50] First Job Out of School: Full-stack Web developer at Microsoft, where a small team taught Stephen the fundamentals of how to build a Web application from scratch. [03:08] Missing Entrepreneurial Spirit: Stephen leaves Microsoft to pursue broken industries in need of technological innovation to save time and money. [03:31] Mortgage Lenders: The Closing Docs was founded to fill in the gaps of loan application processes by automating income verification. [05:21] How it Works: The Closing Docs receives permission from applicant to prove their net income, the money that goes into their account to pay their rent. [07:00] The Closing Docs has developed integrations with property management software, including Buildium, AppFolio, On-Site, and Yardi. [12:18] Why switch to The Closing Docs and not follow the status quo? Information collected directly from banks is better and trustworthy for an approval recommendation. [13:38] Operational Cost Savings: People and software are expensive, so what can property managers/applicants expect to pay for The Closing Docs? $10 per screening.  Tweetables Broken Industries: Paper-and-pencil processes are ripe for technological innovation. Net income is the best indicator of applicant’s ability to pay rent.  The Closing Docs doesn’t ask or expect clients to change their software. The Closing Docs’s standardized information helps people close more deals faster. Resources The Closing Docs Automated Income Verification Process: How It Works Stephen Arifin's Email Microsoft AppFolio Propertyware Buildium Rent Manager On-Site Yardi The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to expand the industry, transform it, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception of it, expand the market, and help the best property managers win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. I am hanging out with a special guest today. My guest is Stephen Arifin. He is with a company called The Closing Docs. Stephen, how are you today? Stephen: Good, Jason. How are you? Jason: I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for being here on the show. Stephen, before we get started, give us a little bit of background on you. Tell us a little bit about you, your entrepreneurial journey, your adventures here, and what led you to The Closing Docs.  Stephen: Sure. First thing, I'm a tech guy. I've always been around technology and computers growing up. My dad was a programmer and started his own banking software company. I was always around entrepreneurship and technology. Even at a young age, I would always try to solve problems with technology. For example, in kindergarten, all my classmates were really upset when the school installed the website blocker that prevented them from playing their online games. I created my own website and hosted all of my classmates favorite games so that they can play at school. Of course, I took the nominal donation, and made a little cash. I studied software engineering in college. I love building apps. I was in a fraternity and we were having some major issues collecting and organizing our finances. A buddy and I built a better invoicing system, launched the company into our fraternity, and help streamline their finances. That was probably my first real entrepreneurship experience. My first job out of school was at Microsoft, where I worked as a full stack web developer. It was a small team and taught me a solid fundamentals of how to build a web application from scratch. I consider myself really lucky to be in a team with so many talented engineers, but at Microsoft, I really missed my entrepreneurial drive.  While I was working there, I've began investigating broker industries. I started with industries that has many paper and pencil process, and were ripe for technological innovation. An obvious contender was the mortgage industry. I started finding gaps where technology can save time and money. After talking to a few dozen lenders, it was clear there was a breakdown in the [...] application process. Typically, their proof of income. Why were they taking screenshots of paystubs in W-2? In 2017 and even today, why are loan officers forced to review these data sources in so many different formats? It's cumbersome, it's time-consuming. It invites human error and judgment. Honestly, it's just downright painful. There had to be a better way.  Thus, The Closing Docs is born to provide automated income verification. I started in the lending industry. I really tried to help verify their applicant's income. But my lack of industry knowledge made it really difficult to sell. After speaking with folks in the real estate industry, I learned about similar problems in the property management space—a far less regulated industry and one that is even more disaggregated than the lending universe. At this time, it made sense for me to combine forces with someone familiar with the startup landscape, someone familiar with starting and operating businesses, and all their direct industry knowledge.  The Closing Docs other founder and my partner, Mark Fiebig, had started a handful of companies, successfully raised venture capital, and also happened to have deep real estate industry knowledge including owning a property management company himself. Together, along with my technical knowledge, we combined our assets and knowledge, and created what The Closing Docs is today. Jason: Cool. Explain what is The Closing Docs today. Stephen: We provide automated income verification. Essentially, a modern way to help applicants prove their net income. Here's how it works. With the applicants permission, we can obtain a years worth of deposit history directly from their banks, and share a report that illustrates an applicant's net income. Why are we reporting net income? It is the best indicator of an applicant's ability to pay rent going forward. The money going into the applicant bank account is the money that will be used to pay rent.  Our message to property managers is clear. We'll provide the info you need to make the decision you can defend instantly. So often, applicant provides incomplete information. Whatever info they do share, it comes from so many different formats from so many different sources. At the closing docs, we streamline the process significantly. Based on our client's usage data, we are seeing time spent from applicant screening fall by as much as 30%. That means that three hours screening timeline turns into two hours. We're saving our clients real money. If you do the math, that's one full-time employee for our property management firms seeing around 2000 property.  It's honestly fun for us to be on the phone with our customers and have them jumping for joy because they're super excited. We help them simplify and expedite their workloads. In essence, The Closing Docs is standardized information delivered right into your inbox or pushed directly into your property management software through our integration. We help people close more deals faster. Jason: All right. That sounded very pitchy but it sounds cool. Tell me which software does your software integrate with, that some of my listeners might be familiar with? A lot of them are using AppFolio, they're using Propertyware, they're using Rent Manager, they're using Buildium, some of these tools as a back office. Stephen: We've developed a number of integrations with Buildium, AppFolio, OnSite, Yardi. Those are many of the popular property management software systems out there. We're continuing to grow that list. We don't ask or expect our clients to change their software or stop using what they love or what they're used to.  We know that property managers pay multiple logins and switching between apps, so we made it as easy as possible for them to use our income screening. If they want, we also create an online rental application as well. Jason: So, they're going through this process of using your application (probably) instead of maybe what's built into their software. This is helping to gather all the documentation or documents (The Closing Docs) that they might need in order to verify their net income. What happens next in this process? How easy is it for them to use the software and figure out whether somebody is a viable candidate for this particular property? Stephen: There's two different entry points that property managers can use in our tools. One, if they are a firm with around 100 doors (usually), they can use our standalone web service. Essentially, they type in the applicant’s email and it sends the applicant an email to our site. The applicant authorizes their banks and they authorize us to pull all the information needed to aggregate metrics like net income—yearly net income, monthly net income.  We also count non-recurring deposits like bonuses, W-2 tax returns. Once that information comes in, the applicant gets the chance to review the information so that we remain FDR-compliant and they know the information that's being shared with their property manager, then they click a button. What we do is we print an income report. We deliver that directly to the property manager's email. That's the first way we do it. The second way is for bigger property management firms around 1000 doors, we actually integrate our income verification directly into our online rental application. We have an online rental app and it has different controls. All the information that the property management firm requires, we can require it to the applicant so they don’t skip it, and the income verification is built into the rental app. When the rental app is submitted, the property manager receives the rental application along with our income report. It's all in one combined package. That helps the back-and-forth issue that property managers so often get into, where the applicant doesn't submit all the necessary information and they have to go hound the applicant to, "Hey, can you submit this paystub? It's from two years ago." We save a lot of property managers time that way. Jason: I imagine, even one piece of back-and-forth is costing probably, sometimes even a day. Sometimes, 10, 15, or 20 minutes minimum. If there's pieces that are over and over again that are missing, they're working a one application, this adds up. You have 5 properties that are vacant that you are working on right now, 10 properties vacant that you are working on right now. Your staff are going to be really busy. It feels like it's such an essential, critical thing that just has to be done to move these things forward to get things rented, but what you're saying is a lot of it can be automated. Stephen: Right. When you’re trying to get more information about the applicant, that unit is in a limbo state. It's not really on the market. It's not really off the market. We're trying to prevent stuff like that. Jason: And the renter gets frustrated. Everyone's been in a situation where you have a key providing more information. They keep asking for more information. It just starts to get frustrating. I'm sure there's instances where they just decide to move on to something that's easier. Stephen: Right. One of the sites that want to [...] from starting this company, the property manager loves us, but their customers, their applicants, actually love us as well. They get approved faster, it's super easy, and they save a bunch of time. Really, everybody wins. Jason: Ultimately, that's why every business exist. It's to create some win-win, maybe win. You're solving a problem. You're shortening the [...] the time. What are some of the other benefits why should property managers pay attention to this instead of just doing what they've been doing and following the status quo?  Stephen: We receive our information directly from the banks. We support about 15,000 banks which is about 99.9% of all of the banks in the United States. We get trustworthy data. We get better data. Since the information is digitized, we're also able to produce and approve a recommendation. We use 2.5 times the net income to rent ratio. If the applicant makes 2.5 times more, then the units rank and we give them a thumbs up. If they don't, we give them a thumbs down. Property managers can make a decision really easily. Their applicants qualified. If it doesn't qualify, we'll give all the details of the transaction history and deposit history. They can drill down and see a little bit more detail where applicants [...]. Jason: All right. So, they’ll be able to have a little bit of information is to why they maybe didn't qualify, that sort of thing. I think another issue here that were a benefit to any piece of technology is that there's going to be an operational cost savings. If you have a staff member that's manually doing this, they're doing phone calls, they're texting, they're emailing saying, "Hey, we need this piece," they're trying to get stuff out of an email. They're trying to store documents in a certain way. They're asking people to send things, "Send me a picture of this," they will go into your bank, download these bank statements, and send them to us.  The challenge is, you're going to be paying somebody to spend the time to do this, somebody on your team. People are expensive. You're spending (for a decent team member) probably $15–$30 an hour. If you have hundreds of properties that you're dealing with, vacant properties, you're going to be spending hours and hours of money towards something that could easily be handled by technology. Help those listening understand, if you will, maybe a little bit about the cost of the software. Just get them a ballpark or help them understand if this is something even feasible for them to be doing in their business. Stephen: Our pricing is super simple, $10 per screening. There's no implementation cost. There's no sign-up cost. There's no minimum fees. It's just $10 per screening. The time that you save, especially when we have clients with a lot of doors and there's just a lot of applicants, especially during busy seasons like the summer season, applicants are just piling in by the truckload, each minute count. Each mental step that you actually even skip, it all adds up. It's really great. We have a lot of clients saying, "Man, we love your software."  Jason: This $10 application fee, they're probably passing on to the renters, I would imagine. Stephen: We support both the property manager or the applicant. We have clients that do both workloads. It's a business that's usually up to your [...]. Jason: Okay. They can do it either way. They can build it in as a part of their application process. Most property managers are going to have some other steps besides just income verification as part of their application process that they need to take into anyway. This would be one piece of that puzzle. This would be the income verification portion. Just to make screening even more solid. I would imagine that the financial aspect is probably one of the number one indicators as to whether they're going to be able to afford it and pay for it. They're going to be looking at things like credit. They're going to be looking at other things. Bottomline, if they don't have the funds available, it's okay. They're likelihood of making rent every month is going to be pretty slim. What are some of the frequently asked questions that some of the people may ask when they're looking at your software? When they're looking at your solution? What are some of the most common questions that property managers would probably be curious to hear about here on the DoorGrow Show? Stephen: Something with our income screening is that it requires the applicant's permission and the applicant's involvement. It's not like a hard inquiry on credit where you can just type in a social security number then they automatically pull credit without the applicant's involvement. We need the applicant to authorize their banks. That's how we remain FDR-compliant. Our data showed actually that we have around a 97% quiet rate which is honestly awesome. We do have some applicants in the older generation that is a little unfamiliar with technology. They get a little worried when authorizing the banks.  We're FDR-compliant, we have the same security protocols of banks, and we never see any of the sensitive credentials. But sometimes, applicants worry about that. Whenever we incorporate our income verification in an online rental app, we give the option to go the route that we've all come and known by uploading bank statements and pay stubs. We give that option. But like I said, 97% of the applicant go for the more streamlined option because it just saves so much time. Jason: Okay. So, if they get a conspiracy theorist grandpa, that's been living in a basement, he's freaking out, wearing his tinfoil hat, he's worried about giving his password through your software tool, he can still do things the old school way if the property manager's willing to tolerate it. Stephen: Right. If you think about it, they’re still uploading all the sensitive information. They're uploading their [...].  Jason: It's less secure. Let's be honest. Stephen: It's a perception. Jason: Yeah. If they're sending these stuff through email, that's even more ridiculous. Some emails open and passes through multiple servers. We understand that as nerds. That's okay. We need to help out our less technological brothers and sisters out there.  Stephen, it's exciting to hear about your tool. I hope people will check it out. How can people get in touch with you or with The Closing Docs and learn more? Stephen: Our website, theclosingdocs.com, has got a lot of great information. It also has a contact form. You can get in contact with our team. You can also email me at stephen@theclosingdocs.com. If you sign up at theclosingdocs.com on our site, you'll get three free screenings to try out our tool.  We're pretty confident that you'll be hooked by the first screening. It'll give you a chance to try out this new workflow. In the end, it is a new workflow. As a business, you need to adjust your business processes to accommodate for new tools that you incorporate in your business. Jason: All right, cool. Somebody was asking a question. They're asking, "How do you integrate with AppFolio since they don't have an API?"  Stephen: We use a Chrome extension, a browser extension. That allows people to create screenings directly from their browser no matter what website you're in. They're still using AppFolio, they're still using the tools that they love, but they can access our income screenings through our Chrome extension or a browser extension. Jason: It's a clever solution to that. If anybody has any other questions, reach out to stephen@theclosingdocs.com. I appreciate you coming on the DoorGrow Show. Stephen: Thanks, Jason. Thanks for inviting me on the show. Jason: Yeah, you bet. Those of you that are watching, check out theclosingdocs.com. If you are watching us for the first time or maybe it's the 50th time, be sure to like and subscribe. Check us out on YouTube or leave us a comment on Facebook. I want to see people that are involved and see who's interested in the show. I love seeing that feedback. If you're on iTunes, do me a huge favor and leave us a review. I would appreciate it. We'd love some real feedback. Be sure to test out your website. You can do that at doorgrow.com/quiz. If you're doing any cold lead marketing, advertising, go to doorgrow.com/coldleads. Go through that calculator. I want to give you a gift and show you some leaks in your business that you may not be seeing right now. I would love to help you out, so reach out to us at DoorGrow. Until next time. To our mutual growth. Bye, everybody. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Successful people aren't martians! Success is possible for everyone. Jason Hartman speaks on taking advantage of a lucky situation by preparing for the opportunities that will inevitably drop into our lives. Then, Jason and George Gammon return for the conclusion of our three part story: the building blocks of the Jason Hartman Risk Evaluator. Jason also shares a modern day story taking place in Seattle, proving once again the risk of investing in a cyclical market. Key Takeaways: [3:45] The vast majority of us came from very humble beginnings [8:06] “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” - Seneca [10:24] The content is what happens, the context is the environment (our head) it happens in [17:45] The risk when investing is in high land values [18:26] Three types of markets: linear, cyclical and hybrid. What market is a preferred market for investing? [23:00] Low land value equals low risk, high land value equals high risk [28:10] Human biases: recency bias, sunk-cost bias, and certainty bias can all distract an investor Websites: www.JasonHartman.com/Properties The PropertyCast www.WeGoLook.com www.NoLo.com www.RocketLawyer.com www.Buildium.com

Successful people aren’t martians! Success is possible for everyone. Jason Hartman speaks on taking advantage of a lucky situation by preparing for the opportunities that will inevitably drop into our lives. Then, Jason and George Gammon return for the conclusion of our three part story: the building blocks of the Jason Hartman Risk Evaluator. Jason also shares a modern day story taking place in Seattle, proving once again the risk of investing in a cyclical market. Key Takeaways: [3:45] The vast majority of us came from very humble beginnings [8:06] “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” - Seneca [10:24] The content is what happens, the context is the environment (our head) it happens in [17:45] The risk when investing is in high land values [18:26] Three types of markets: linear, cyclical and hybrid. What market is a preferred market for investing? [23:00] Low land value equals low risk, high land value equals high risk [28:10] Human biases: recency bias, sunk-cost bias, and certainty bias can all distract an investor Websites: www.JasonHartman.com/Properties The PropertyCast www.WeGoLook.com www.NoLo.com www.RocketLawyer.com www.Buildium.com

In Part 2 of this 3 part series, Jason Hartman breaks down the ingredients of a house, otherwise known as “the improvement.” Jennifer, the insurance agent, is a key to understanding the land versus improvement value, and George Gammon shares an exhausting experience with lot subdivision and development. Eric, the appraiser comes out with good news prompting the question, “how would you allocate the new value between the two primary components, land and improvement?” Key Takeaways: [8:13] CPA (Cost Per Action) and is it applicable in a Real Estate Investment [13:37] The ingredients of a house starting with raw materials [16:46] “When I'm looking at an income property... I look at it as though I'm buying a stream of cash flow.” [13:38] The ingredients of a house, labor costs [24:06] The ingredients of a house, regulations [27:20] The ingredients of a house, cost of energy [29:05] “How do I know the land value vs the improvement value?” Websites: www.JasonHartman.com/Properties www.WeGoLook.com www.NoLo.com www.RocketLawyer.com www.Buildium.com

In Part 2 of this 3 part series, Jason Hartman breaks down the ingredients of a house, otherwise known as “the improvement.” Jennifer, the insurance agent, is a key to understanding the land versus improvement value, and George Gammon shares an exhausting experience with lot subdivision and development. Eric, the appraiser comes out with good news prompting the question, “how would you allocate the new value between the two primary components, land and improvement?” Key Takeaways: [8:13] CPA (Cost Per Action) and is it applicable in a Real Estate Investment [13:37] The ingredients of a house starting with raw materials [16:46] “When I’m looking at an income property... I look at it as though I’m buying a stream of cash flow.” [13:38] The ingredients of a house, labor costs [24:06] The ingredients of a house, regulations [27:20] The ingredients of a house, cost of energy [29:05] “How do I know the land value vs the improvement value?” Websites: www.JasonHartman.com/Properties www.WeGoLook.com www.NoLo.com www.RocketLawyer.com www.Buildium.com

Before you accept a bunch of cash from applicants who drive up in a BMW to rent a property for a few years, check criminal background reports. Otherwise, you could end up with drug dealers with grow operations as tenants. You may be their next victim! Today, I am talking to Jason Waggoner of ACUTRAQ, which offers accurate and reliable criminal background reports. He knows what property owners/managers deal with when it comes to tenants and how ACUTRAQ makes a difference in communities.  You’ll Learn... [01:50] Who is Jason? Started out by fixing and customizing cars to selling vacuums.  [02:40] Buyer’s Remorse? Selling a vacuum to the right person led to ACUTRAQ job. [05:00] Federal vs. Multi-state Databases: Criminal reports are important, but don’t capture all crimes and court activity. [07:02] Federal vs. State Crimes: Federal reports include most heinous crimes.  [09:41] Don’t Ask, Don ‘t Tell? Avoid lawsuits and being liable for renting to criminals.  [13:45] Aliases: Know tenants by all their names via social trace for criminal history.  [15:41] Why use ACUTRAQ? What does it offer compared to others? ACUTRAQ specializes in where accurate information comes from and how it’s relayed to landlords.  Tweetables ACUTRAQ: We love what we do. We love making a difference in the community. Some state criminal background systems generate reports that have a lot of holes for criminals to crawl through. If landlords don’t do background checks, it doesn't take long to destroy rental properties. When you run a background check, know applicant’s past alias names...all of them. Resources ACUTRAQ ACUTRAQ’s Email ACUTRAQ’s Phone: 479- 439-9174 Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) FBI’s Most Wanted List DEA’s Most Wanted List 50 State Sex Offender Search Social Trace National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Multi-State Criminal Database iCORI System National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) AppFolio Rent Manager Buildium Propertyware DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason H: 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 your business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker.  DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. My guest today is Jason Waggoner of ACUTRAQ. Jason, welcome. Jason W: Good afternoon, Jason. Jason H: I'm a little biased but I like your first name.  Jason W: It's a good one. We had some creativity going on in the 80s.  Jason H: Yeah. There's a lot of Jason, a lot of them. Let's get into this. First, I want to get in your background a little bit. How you got connected to the industry, how you got connected into doing ACUTRAQ. Give us a little bit of background for those listening on who is Jason. Jason W: Very fun story there. I started when I was 18, I actually went to school for autobody to learn how to work on cars, fix wreck cars, customize cars, [...] did that, got out of that, winning the sales. Years later, I was actually in between jobs at the moment and besides, this was in 2006. For 20–25 days, I sell vacuums while I was putting in resumes and different things. Thought nothing of it, got another job in inside sales. A month later, I went back to doing that. Two years later, Jeannie Baker, the owner of ACUTRAQ, calls me and ask me if I'm still doing sales and said that I had sold her a vacuum cleaner two years prior to this and wanted to go to lunch. We went to lunch, she had a great product, and believed in it. My father-in-law inherited a rental property. The things that he went through over the course of that first year, he ended up selling it and getting away from it. This was when I was young, 17–18-ish. After seeing him go through that and seeing what products she had that could have prevented it, it just made a home seem like a lot more. That was in 2008. I've been with her ever since and since then, the company has grown. We used to just be in a few states, now we're all in the lower 48 states with offices throughout the country and a staff of about 12 in Arkansas. Just good, consistent growth over the years. We love what we do, we love making a difference in the community. That's how I get hooked up in ACUTRAQ. It's not the normal story you hear from people.  Jason H: You sold her a vacuum? Jason W: Yeah. Jason H: You sold her a vacuum and she was so impressed at how you sold her the vacuum. She didn't have buyer's remorse. She wanted to have more of you, she wanted you to work for her. This is great. Jason W: She got up that morning and looked over the corner and thought, "I know who my salesman is."  Jason H: That vacuum was an anchor. Every time she saw that vacuum, she's like, "That guy sold me. I need somebody like that." It's interesting because as entrepreneurs, we're always looking for the person that's going to help us with the thing that we're weak at.  Jason W: Right. Jason H: You filled a gap for her.  Jason W: Definitely, yeah. She had done it for 10 years by herself at that point and had grown where she physically can't do it by herself anymore. A lot of planning, a lot of sleepless nights, we've been somewhat successful in growing this business and creating something that she started back in 1998 and just continuing to watch it grow.  Jason H: The topic at hand, the title of this episode is Everything You Need to Know About Federal Criminal Reports. Let's talk about what we need to know. Jason W: The federal criminal reports are important and a lot of people don't understand the difference between what most landlords run, meaning a multistate database and they sound similar. Multistate, federal, you think all the federal just covers all those different states. The reality of it is, the multistate database is what most landlords run. It has a lot of holes in it, it has States that don't even report to that database. For instance, New York, they report to the Department of Corrections but not their County data. Massachusetts has its own system called the iCORI system. There are holes in it but those are derived from state repositories from the Department of Corrections from different places like that. Let's say I get in trouble. I'm in Houston, Texas. If I get in trouble here, I go to Harris County, they book me in and if I get convicted, if I do prison time, I'm going to do it in a Texas state prison.  The difference with the federal criminal report is it's a different set of courts. Let's say I do that same crime. Let's just use drugs, for instance. Let's say, I do drugs and I traffic those drugs, now, I go to Louisiana, to Alabama, to Mississippi. I went across state lines. That's a federal charge now. I've messed up not only in my state but federally and that would be trialed in a different set of courts. Most landlords and even some employers do not get those federal court records because it's a smaller percentage. It's 8%–10% which is still a big chunk but the type of our crimes that are tried there are embezzlement, kidnapping, bank robbery, crimes against animals, child pornography, a lot of crimes. If a landlord knew that person had been convicted recently or maybe even in the past, it may change their decision on whether or not they would rent to that person. Most people don't know those records exist. The reality is, most landlords have probably placed somebody that had previously robbed a bank or an ATM, or somebody that had previously been convicted of kidnapping or embezzlement, things of that nature. A lot of computer crimes regarding identity, identity theft, things of that nature. The thing about the federal crimes that there may not be as many but they're all the crazy ones. They're all the ones that if that person had committed that type of crime, it would definitely change the decision. Jason H: They're the worst. Jason W: Right. That's the difference in those federal criminal reports. We offer them as an upsell to our clients for an extra $5. Whoever people are using, it would be wise to go back to their provider and say, "Hey, am I getting this federal criminal report? Can you show me that we're pulling that report?” because there are a lot of heinous crimes that can be committed under the federal level. Jason H: I just want to point this out because I thought this was really funny, that you're using an example of somebody committing crimes and you used yourself. You did this. You're like, "Let's say, I do this and I commit this crime." Most people do, "Let's say there's a guy named Fred." Jason W: Allegedly. Jason H: Allegedly. Here's what's funny. When I met you at the conference, you were this half criminal, half business suit costume like this thing. Sometimes, you even said you shaved half of your beard and you're like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or two-faced.  Jason W: Yes. At the Florida conference, the NARPM conference, the beard was just coming in. I couldn't quite get the half shaven down and make it look presentable. That piece, it really shed some light on what people come in looking like because we actually had applicants that showed up in BMW, with a briefcase full of money, and wanted to pay for the next two years in cash. Then, you look them up and they are known drug trafficker, they've been involved in grow operations and everything else, and you were going to be their next victim. Without running that report, you never see the criminal side of what they're bringing into that rental property because somebody's not going to buy a house and then trash it, do that stuff, dig down to the electric pole, and tunnel in all the things that it takes. They're going to do that to a rental property and then hit the road as soon as they have everything they need.  Jason H: Do you think some property managers would just rather keep their heads in the sand, kind of don't know, don't ask, don't tell? You think there's some that are like, "I'd rather just not do this extra work. I'd rather just not know. If that happens, I did something and they just didn't show up on that so I'm absolved." What would you say to those that they're thinking about listening to this, "I don't want to do extra work." Jason W: The thing about it is, let's say somebody moves in to that property and does something crazy, commits a crime. We've seen this before, it's the same way with our property managers. There's a lot of their stories that sound like sales pitches but they're really not. They're crazy stories that happened and they want to do whatever they can to help somebody avoid those again.  Let's say somebody does something heinous in a property. The first thing that the courts are going to do is go back to the person that leased that property and say, "Who put this person in there? What checks did you take to ensure the safety of the community around you?" Typically, they think that the homeowner has the deepest pockets. When something goes crazy, who's the first person they sue? The homeowner.  It may trickle down the line if there's a property management company involved, but the ones that are just out here doing it think maybe something is going on but like you said, they don't care enough to go to the motions. Whatever they do there is their business. It can be really scary, the things that we've seen. For the homeowner’s side, everything can be scary from the investment. You're looking at this company as an investment. So, if you get somebody that goes in and guts it down the studs, and puts all the stuff that they need in there to do, to set that house up for whatever they're setting it up for. Just to give you an idea, the things that go on, I'm actually in Kingwood, Texas which is the Northeast tip of Houston, Texas. Suburbs, everybody pretty much deems it a safe community. We let our kids play in the street. Last week, there was 79 arrest made from a sex trafficking operation. 79 people. How big that operation must be to arrest 79 people that are involved in?  Jason H: They just said, "Let's pick a really safe community. We're going to fly under the radar there probably." Those property managers aren't using ACUTRAQ so we're going to get away with this. Jason W: Right and even some of those. Those people are legit on paper and the career criminals know how to get by those background checks and we put everything in place in ours from identity alerts. We've tried to add a lot of things to try to catch these people when they're doing this. The reality of it is though, they're going to do it in rental property. If you get a property manager, I'm not even a property manager, in most cases, they're doing background checks. Let's say you get a home-based landlord, they just have six rental properties and the first one finds out that they don't do background checks or anything, as soon as one of their properties come open, "Hey, let me know if you have anything open. I've got somebody I know needs to rent a house, too, and I love recommending you." It just goes that line. Jason H: "I've got four other criminal friends that would love a place." Jason W: Yeah. "Landlord Johnny here does no background checks. It doesn't take long for those properties, the value and everything. Jason H: Let's drive this home to our target audience here. The property management business owners listening, they've got hundreds of rental properties. If somebody has figured out how to game their system, they don't really cover this check in this state. If we've done stuff in this state, we can fly under the radar. They're only running this light-level background. We get the pick of the litter. They got 20 properties available for lease, that just beat them up. Jason W: Yeah, it can happen. That's the thing. For instance, when you run that background check—this is for anybody that's in this world—you need to know the people or the person's past alias names. If somebody's been married three times, you need to actually run the married name and all three married names to get an accurate representation of that person's criminal history. If they changed their lives name, they change their date of birth, that's the only way criminal history is ran for a tenant’s screen is by name and date of birth. The career criminals, let’s say they say they know they have criminal history but it slides by, they automatically know that they either typo-ed something in it and it slid by, or they changed something on purpose and it got through. The next time they tell their people, "Make sure to change your data birth, your last names." If my last name's Waggoner, I may put it down on paper as Wagner. Even if they're looking at my license, if they're not matching it up right beside each other, it looks close enough that Jason Waggoner, Jason Wagner, it's all the same. That would cause a criminal hit to miss in most cases. The best thing to do is there's a search called a social trace and we put everything we have just because of how important it is but if somebody's not getting it, ask your provider about the social trace because it provides all the past alias names that that person has used with their social. If you signed up for a cell phone and utility, anything you had to put your social down, it's actually stored with that name used and the address used. That helps a lot in finding the alias names when people are trying to tell you they don't have any. This is the only name I've ever had. No, you've had two other ones and then, one nickname that you used as alias, too. Running those can make a difference. The career criminals, once they find the loophole, once they find the window or door opened, it's just like a house. They'll crawl through and they'll their other friends to come right behind them. Jason H: It's party time. Jason W: Yeah.  Jason H: Okay. There's a lot of different screening services out there. Help those listening. I'm sure a lot of them have something that maybe came with AppFolio or they got something with Rent Manager, something with Buildium, something with Propertyware. For those listening, why should they use ACUTRAQ? Help them understand what's the contrast between what they had typically and what you're going to do for them. Jason W: You bet. In Rent Manager, we're actually an affiliate of, some other software, too. Typically, the reason somebody will go outside of their software to use us for these reasons. The background check is a no way an afterthought. Not only that, if your applicants have trouble, they call us if they have a dispute. That's one of the big things. With tenant screening, it’s making sure your applicants have a way to dispute the information because you can have a Junior and a Senior. Senior's been arrested 10 times, been in prison his whole life. Junior didn't know him growing up. Jason H: Junior's a good kid. Jason W: Senior's criminal history still keeps showing up on Junior's report. Every time he gets an application for an apartment, he has to go through the whole process. "That was my dad. It's not my criminal history." Having a way to dispute that, it can mean them having housing or not having housing with those reports being accurate. If something like that does come up. Having that documented and being able to help him is one of the biggest things. The support side of things, that's what we do, is background checks, there's nothing else on our plate. The biggest reason is to have a third party, unbiased source outside of your company, outside of your software, all these people do are background checks and if something goes wrong, you could bet that we'll have your back and search through it, anything at all. That's the difference of having somebody that does that and having that as just an ancillary service.  Jason H: It's probably fair to say if their intuition is saying something's off about somebody but everything comes back clean, maybe they should put you to the test and see if you come up with something that [...]. Jason W: We love the [...]. The other thing too is not a lot of companies can staff and have people to make the phone calls to the landlords and employers. With our full premium report, you'll get an employment verification plus the current landlord and the prior landlord.  You'd be surprised that the different reports we get from one landlord that’s trying to get rid of them currently and the one from a year ago that lays it all out and lets you know what's coming. With those added, it really just helps give a better representation of how that applicant's going to act in that property and how they're going to pay rent and all that good stuff, everything to do with their character.  Jason H: We talked a little bit about why they should use ACUTRAQ and what makes it a little bit different. What are some of the typical questions a property manager might ask you about ACUTRAQ went during the sales process? You're the sales guy, I'm sure you dealt with some objections. What are some of the typical questions that you get for those that are listening? Jason W: We generally start with the application process. They want to know about that. Onboarding the applicants and how that process works. The biggest thing with the process is the application in our eyes because that's where it starts. That's the first thing that an applicant sees of your company, if you're a landlord, and whether they're doing it, the software's doing it, or a third party like ACUTRAQ. That's the first phase of the company. That needs to be a smooth process, the relationship, you get off on the right hand. The other thing is they typically want to see an itemized list of everything that's going to be on that background report. You think we're getting a criminal report. What does all that include? There are a number of different things that should be included on that and I hope most everybody listening is getting these with their provider, but of course, it's the 50 State Sex Offender search. It's the social trace that we talked about that has the alias names. The OFAC which is very important nowadays and that's the Office of Foreign Asset Control. They are the ones that have the terrorist database searches, the terrorist watchlist. Anything to do as far as that goes, that's where that information is going to come from and it's OFAC. A lot of people want to know about that one because everybody wants to make sure that we're not housing some terrorist cell in the middle of Houston or Atlanta Georgia, somewhere like that. The FBI most wanted list. That's another thing that's included that we forget to talk about a lot of time or the FBI most wanted list, the DEA most wanted list. Something a lot of people don't know is every major city has their own list for those. Along with the Top 10, every major city has their Top 10. Searching for those, understanding where the data comes from, and what you're getting like we were talking about name and date of birth only. So many people think it's tied to a social or driver's license number, or something like that, but in reality, it's not. The police officers and firemen are the only ones that have access to what we call the National Crime Information Center. Unfortunately, landlords don't have that luxury. Understanding where the information comes from, how important it is to make that decision can literally mean life and death from somebody on the block if you house a violent person in there, if you house a sex offender or something in that nature. That's a lot of the questions that we get. Spanish speaking, that's getting to be more and more prevalent, so we did add that a year-and-a-half ago. We do have bilingual staff. A lot of different things like that. What we specialize in is where the information comes from, how do we relay that back to the landlord in an accurate manner. Jason H: All right. So ACUTRAQ is your sole focus, is doing this screening, and you have these itemized lists, lots of different sources that you're going to be checking like OFAC. It goes well above and beyond what they're typically going to get. You integrate with some property manager software like Rent Manager.  Jason W: Yes. Jason H: I think I gave a light summary there, some of the pluses. This sounds like a really cool thing. How can people get in touch with ACUTRAQ? Jason W: acutraq.com. You can always reach us at info@acutraq.com, that goes to myself and the owners so we will reach back out to you directly. The website is the best way. If you want to call us, feel free to give us a call at (479) 439-9174. That would be the corporate office in Fayetteville, Arkansas and I'm out in the Houston, Texas office.  Jason H: You guys are making property management safer for the property managers that are the boots on the ground, you're making neighborhoods safer, and in general you're helping property management have a better reputation. I appreciate that. Jason W: That's our goal. Jason H: Awesome. Thanks for coming on the DoorGrow Show.  Jason W: Thank you.  Jason H: All right. You guys check it out, ACUTRAQ. If you're a property management entrepreneur and you felt like your website might be a little bit leaky, you're just not seeing enough business come through, you think you need more lead, if you just had more leads, everything will be better, it's not leads. Leads are not your problem. You've got leaks in your sales pipeline. Leaks are at the very front end of the pipeline. If you've got leaks throughout it that are causing attrition and without even changing your lead sources, if you're shore up all those leaks, leaks of trust, you can have more business coming out. You're getting some business now. It's not hard to double it just by reducing the friction that's happening at every stage in your sales pipeline. Reach out to us at DoorGrow, that's what we specialize in. We also can clean up your property management website, that's what we specialize in. I don't believe that anybody does better property management websites than DoorGrow. Our focus in not on trying to manipulate Google and with search volume is relatively low and it always has been for property management. Our goal is to facilitate greater trust which helps you close more deals and that's really what your website is for. It's a trust indicator. People don't buy property management. What they really want to buy from you is safety and certainty. That's what they want to buy. You can create more of that through your website, through your branding, through your sales process, through your pricing strategy, through your reputation online. We'll help you get these things optimized so that your business can grow. Check the site site of doorgrow.com. Until next time, everybody, to our mutual growth. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Returning guest Adam Schroeder joins Jason Hartman for this episode, as the two discuss the steps for transitioning from professional management of rental properties to self management. Adam and his wife have 3 (going on 4) properties and are thinking that the time is soon coming to venture out on their own. But before doing that there are some important things to do like what information to get from your property manager, what kind of initial contact to have with the current tenant, finding forms and contracts when you're finding/reupping tenants, pet rent, and more. Key Takeaways: [3:36] Why Jason loves a good recession [8:29] Jason's been involved in around 10,000 real estate transactions [13:08] Sometimes removing a property manager actually makes things easier [16:27] The information you need to get from your current property manager if you're going to make a switch [21:26] A way to change your relationship with your property manager rather than completely ending it [24:09] Bad property manager reviews on sites like Yelp might be a good thing, that's why you have to read them [29:23] Insurance: individual policies or a commercial policy? Websites: www.JasonHartman.com/Properties www.WeGoLook.com www.NoLo.com www.RocketLawyer.com www.Buildium.com

Returning guest Adam Schroeder joins Jason Hartman for this episode, as the two discuss the steps for transitioning from professional management of rental properties to self management. Adam and his wife have 3 (going on 4) properties and are thinking that the time is soon coming to venture out on their own. But before doing that there are some important things to do like what information to get from your property manager, what kind of initial contact to have with the current tenant, finding forms and contracts when you're finding/reupping tenants, pet rent, and more. Key Takeaways: [3:36] Why Jason loves a good recession [8:29] Jason's been involved in around 10,000 real estate transactions [13:08] Sometimes removing a property manager actually makes things easier [16:27] The information you need to get from your current property manager if you're going to make a switch [21:26] A way to change your relationship with your property manager rather than completely ending it [24:09] Bad property manager reviews on sites like Yelp might be a good thing, that's why you have to read them [29:23] Insurance: individual policies or a commercial policy? Websites: www.JasonHartman.com/Properties www.WeGoLook.com www.NoLo.com www.RocketLawyer.com www.Buildium.com

Jake and Gino in the house! Today, these guys join me on the show and we cover a ton of topics surrounding multifamily investing. I love this episode because we get into the tangible and tactical stuff that you can do today to better your real estate business. Everything they learned on their very first 24 unit all the way up to their current portfolio of over 1,600 units.   In this episode we cover: Value adds and getting more income from your properties Building credibility with banks and brokers R.U.B.S. (ratio utility billing service) Sure bonds Business partnerships Trash bill “price creep” Weekly vs yearly rentals “Refi and roll” Headaches from their first property   Links from the show: jakeandgino.com The Honey Bee 99 Homes Movie Jake & Gino’s credibility book Wheelbarrow Profits Podcast Jake & Gino’s YouTube Channel Chad Duval’s Instagram   You can find the transcript of this episode over HERE. Transcripts of all episodes can be found HERE.   Show sponsors: BUILDIUM - 15 day free trial HONEYBOOK - 50% off your first year   Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please email chad@chadduval.com with “sponsor request” in the subject line.   Follow Chad: Instagram: instagram.com/iamchadduval Twitter: twitter.com/iamchadduval Facebook: facebook.com/iamchadduval YouTube: youtube.com/iamchadduval Website: chadduval.com   Follow Start FM: Start FM’s INSTAGRAM Start FM’s SHOW NOTES   If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!   Have a question you want answered on air? Leave a voice message here: 1-415-WE-START (1-415-937-8278)   Sign up for Chad’s Email Club at chadduval.com/subscribe.

Is pre-screening tenant leads the most time-consuming part of your business? What you need is an online system that advertises, generates and pre-screens leads, automates showings, and turns leads into applications at a reasonable price.  Today, I am talking to Cliff Hayden of ShowMeTheRental, a time-saving tool for automating and screening rental leads. ShowMeTheRental handles the B.S. part of management between prospective tenants and property managers/owners.  You’ll Learn... [03:05] From Lineman to Realtor: Longest suspension in AT&T history to do real estate. [04:00] Poor Priorities: Money was goal. Financial success wrecked family/homelife. [05:15] ShowMeTheRental: System put in place to automate lead screening for tenants. [06:12] Fulfilling Family Priorities: Money is a tool, now; not a goal.  [07:25] Happy vs. Frustrated Customers: Set expectations of what you expect from them and what they expect from you via questions that filter qualified leads. [11:25] Where is ShowMeTheRental advertised? All major Websites, including Zillow, Facebook Marketplace, and HotPads. [15:18] See something you like? Try ShowMeTheRental today to save time and money. Tweetables Working all the time costs you family and friends. Money is a tool, not the goal. You can buy time, but you can’t get your time back.  Resources Cliff Hayden’s Email Cliff Hayden’s Phone: 502-641-8781 ShowMeTheRental  Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki CASHFLOW Game Kentuckiana Real Estate Investors Association (KREIA) Section 8 Housing Buildium Zillow HotPads Google Trends DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors and expand your rent roll, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to grow property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, expand the market, and help the best property managers win. So, if you enjoy this episode, do me a favor. Open up iTunes, find the DoorGrowShow, subscribe, and then give us a real review. Thank you for helping us with that vision. I’m your host, property management growth hacker, Jason Hull, the founder of OpenPotion, GatherKudos, ThunderLocal, and of course DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. My guest today is, Cliff Hayden. Cliff is from a tool called... what's your tool called, Cliff? Cliff: showmetherental.com Jason: ShowMeTheRental. All right Cliff, let's get into your background. Tell us a little bit about how you got into this so people get familiar with you a little bit. Cliff: I got into ShowMeTheRental to save my marriage, actually, and my family life. I worked at AT&T, my real job, when I first started this business. I was an outside plant technician, which is a fancy word for a line man. [...] bucket trucks and put up telephone lines everywhere. I always wanted something more, so,I got into real estate. You've heard of Robert Kiyosaki? Rich Dad, Poor Dad. My brother-in-law was in, and my sister came back from Iraq. They brought home a game called CASHFLOW. I can remember sitting at the dining room table playing CASHFLOW. I didn't understand that you can buy assets and buy rental houses, and people will pay you and you can make money off of it. That's how green I was when I first started. I knew absolutely nothing. From playing that game, I actually signed up for a mentorship through Robert Kiyosaki. They helped me buy my first duplex. End up being a horrible deal, it was bad, but it all worked out because in that whole process of getting a loan on it and learning what I was doing, I found our local real estate club called Cria. I started going to local meetings and I met a mentor, a guy named Mike Butler. He took me under his wing, showed me the road to real estate, and made sure I didn't fall on my face. He was a big part of my success. From there, I worked a full time job and started buying rentals on the side. Long story short, I just started making enough money to quit my job. Now, cool story that I like to tell is, I do hold the longest suspension in AT&T history. I come from a lower middle class family. I didn't want to quit my job and do real estate full-time. It was a very high paying job for us and a very good job for my family. I just didn't want to up and quit, so got suspended on purpose. As a lineman, you have to have a CDL license, and they random drug test you. They did pop me a random drug test. I decided I wouldn't take it, which is an automatic fail. Then they suspended me. I took that suspension and turned it into four-and-a-half months. In the meantime, in the first month of my suspension, I made my whole salary at AT&T doing real estate full-time. I kind of drag it out and then I decided to quit my job and do real estate full-time, which was awesome, because I was my own boss. I had a lot of fun in the beginning, but my priorities were all mixed up. When I first started, my priority was money was the goal. The problems that I had was all I focused on was money, buying houses, and doing everything I could to get money because I thought that was going to make me happy. What it did is, I became financially successful, but my home life was a wreck. I'm happily married with five children. I would work all day, come home, and continue to work. I couldn't turn it off and it's causing a lot of problems at home. The biggest problems at home is, when I would come home and eat dinner, I would get text messages, phone calls, emails, because at any given time we would have three or four empty rental houses. All these leads would start coming in and my wife would just get, I call it superman vision. She had that look on me where she could shoot lasers out of her eyes. She would. It caused a lot of friction at home and a lot of problems. I decided there’s got to be a system I could start putting in place to make this more fun, to make this job smoother, and to get my life back, because I was just working all the time. I didn't see my family, I didn't see my friends, I didn't have anymore friends because I was doing nothing but working all the time. I went out and started putting systems together. One of the systems I wanted was lead screening for tenants because it was our biggest headache. When we get empty houses in our town, nothing to get a hundred phone calls and emails a day. There's no possible way to keep up with those without a system in place. When I tried to find a system, I couldn't find anything I like or anything with a good price point that I like. That's where we created ShowMeTheRental.  What we did with ShowMeTheRental is we took all the problems we were having, created a system for it, and then automated it. What ShowMeTheRental does is, it's an online system that advertises, generates leads, prescreens those leads, automates the showings, and turns those leads into applications. We do all these automatically, with a few clicks of a button, and at a price point that I think is incredible. For $49, you can put it in our system and it's on there until it's rented. That's how I got into real estate. Over the last six or seven years, I started changing my priorities to live a more abundant life. Now, money is a tool and not the goal. That's the biggest change I've had over the last several years. Now, I don’t miss any field trips. We switched our whole business around and put systems in place so I can be mobile. That's our new goal now. With the technology that's out there now, and the systems in place, if you just take the time to do it, it's not very hard to do. Now, with all our kids, we travel every summer. This year we went to Colorado for a month, then stopped to St. Louis from Branson, Missouri, and we just get back from Pigeon Forge. We have systems in place now to run our company, so we can be mobile and I can do what's important, which is making sure my kids are good, happy, and productive citizens. That's my quick story. Jason: Tell us more about ShowMeTheRental. It sounds like a lot of your clients are individual investors. A lot of investors can use this. They can put in their one property when they need to make sure it gets rented. It deals with all these tenant leads, help systemize the process so they're not overwhelmed in it, and filters out some of the riff-raff and time wasting. Cliff: Correct. Jason: Maybe you could explain the process of once somebody gets into your system, they sign up. Take us through what's going to happen. Cliff: I'll tell you our situation. Our situation was, when we would have leads coming in, we would always find ourselves asking the same questions over and over, which were, “Are you on Section 8? Will you sign a three-year lease? How much money is in your bank account? How long have you been on your job?” Simple questions we wanted answered to qualify, to go see our houses, or to rent our houses. What we did is, we generated a list of around 40 questions that we use and that we think other property managers like you all would use to kind of this thing about big funnel. Take a big funnel people and just get them down to that. Take that 100 or 200, get it down to that 15 or 20 really qualified leads that get access to view your house, so you're not wasting your time. More importantly, what we learned is tenants get pretty upset going to look at houses they're not qualified to go see. They fall in love with the house, only to find out they don't qualify income-wise. “You don't take Section 8. They don't want to sign a three-year lease.” We set it up for them also, so they'll have a system where they know that if they don't lie on their question and tell the truth, they’ll have a great opportunity to get this house. It could be theirs. We mesh that together so everybody can be happy. Jason: So really, it reverses the issue. A lot of times, what happens is tenants apply for a bunch of properties, renters will apply for a bunch of properties, and hope that they'll get one. They aren't taking a look at the income requirements. None of these things were filtered when you're looking at Zillow rentals or wherever they're looking to find a property. They're just going, “Oh, I like this one. This looks great.” They're not really aware of what they would qualify for. They're getting frustrated. They're wasting a lot of time. Really, it doesn't take a whole lot for somebody to get frustrated. You see, you go look at a couple of properties that you like, and find out you don't qualify. You'll start to get pretty upset and annoyed, I'm sure as a renter. It would be really challenging. Cliff: Yes, and there are customers. I call them customers. Just like any business, you want your customers to be happy. You don't want to start them off on the wrong foot. I want to set the expectations upfront about our policies and procedures, so we go into what we expect from them and what they expect from us. It just streamed on that system so much better than what we did before. This way, we're not wasting our time and we're collecting all their information. We can go into that. It's hard to go over on a podcast, but we can. For guests who want to check out showmetherental.com, it shows you we collect all the lead information and we actually have a cross-reference database, that if they don't qualify for my property but you're in our system, they qualify for your property, Jason, it will send them over to you. We have a system where, when properties pop in our system that they qualify for, it will automatically send it to them. I know based on their profile they filled out and the prescreening questions they answered, that they're qualified to go see that house. I think that's important and the tenants really like it, because you said it best, it's just such a headache to go to 20 houses and know you're only qualified to rent two of them. I think a lot of people miss that because I think we need to take care of our customers because they're our business. If we don't take care of them, we don't really have a business. If we can get those good customers in there, spread that word of mouth, and get them to know about us, it makes our lives a lot easier. Jason: What are some of the common questions that a homeowner, or an investor, or maybe even a property manager usually ask you about ShowMeTheRental? Cliff: I don't know the common questions. The biggest one we get is what websites do we advertise on? We do all the major websites. Zillow, which is always number one, Facebook Marketplace, we just syndicated with Zumper, Trulia, HotPads, Rent Leads, all the major websites. We advertise on every major website. How this system works is, when you put in on the website through our system, it goes into our system. Instead of them contacting you, they're going to contact our system. They can contact us via phone, via email, and via phone number. Each specific city has their own phone number and how will they contact us. Usually, 90% is through email. When they go in Zillow and to your property, when they look at it, they'll inquire about it and then we will send them, through ShowMeTheRental, a link to your prescreening questions. From there, they'll answer those questions and if they answer those questions correctly, we will then send them showing instructions based on your preference. We have five different ways to show the property. Once they looked at the property, we will send them a link for an online application. We provide one, but we recommend if you have your own, you can just put your own application link in our system and it will send them to your application. We use a software company called Buildium. I want everything in Buildium, so I'll have all the stuff already entered. From there, we have our screening service. We screen, we don't offer the service we have in our in-house. We then screen the tenant, get all the information we need from them, and we take it from there. Jason: Okay. You're not just helping prescreening, but you're also fielding the phone calls. You really are this barrier between the prospective tenants and the homeowner property manager. Cliff: To me, we're the BS part. We help fix the problem, the BS part of management which is prescreening and leads. I think that is the most cumbersome, time consuming part of our business. Jason: Yeah. It's a huge time waste. Cliff: Yes, A huge time waste. Jason: It just cost a business money. It doesn't make an investor or property manager money. In general, it’s the garbage of phone calls. “How many square feet are on this property that I'm looking at right now?” where it says the square feet on the property. You know, these kind of calls. You guys will handle the phone calls? Cliff: The system does, correct. Jason: Or emails, or all that kind of stuff? Cliff: Everything, yes. It's all automated.  Jason: Okay, cool. You do it on a per property basis. What bout a property manager that has a lot of properties, or an investor that has a lot of properties? Cliff: What do you consider a lot? To me, a lot is a couple of hundred. If you have multiple properties, we’ll work out discount prices for you. I guess there's no grey area. There is no setup fee, but if you have multiple properties on there, multiple times we’ll work out deals with you. Most of the time it's people like me, who have 30 something properties. We have pretty nice properties. We sold off all our pain in the ass houses. We might have, out of those properties, every year we have two, maybe three turnovers. I like it. This is more built towards smaller amount of pop we do. Of course, we do take on all the bigger ones, but it's more of, you got two or three rentals a year. If you do have multiple ones, then we'll work with you on prices and make sure everybody is happy. My big goal is to get people their time back. I know it changed my life when I started living life more and stopped worrying about all the money all the time and just started being home and being present with my family, with my kids, and being more involved. That's our big goal, is just to help. You can't get your time back. That's what I tell everybody. Jason: Right. You can buy time thought. Cliff: You can. Jason: The residents experience going through this, what's their experience? Cliff: What they'll do when they log on to the site, their view is a map of whatever city they're in, it will show different properties. What we try to do, when we market, when they go in, they got to sign up with their phone number, email, and name. Then, we're going to try to get them a profile filled out before they even go into a house. We're going to get a profile filled out of all the questions we have and then we're going to match it up the properties. If they don't go that route and say, they find it on Zillow like I said earlier, then from there, they'll just get on Zillow, find a house, inquire about, and they'll answer the prescreening questions from there. If they qualify, they get to see the house. If they don't, it just tells them they're not qualified to go see the house. Jason: Got it. So just kind of kills it there.  Cliff: It kills it there so you don’t have to talk to them. You seem like a nice guy like I am. I don't know how many times you've been on the phone and you have to tell them, talk to them for 15 or 20 minutes and they go on for 15 or 20 minutes, and you don't want to hang up because you want to be nice. It’s just a headache. It takes care of that headache. Managers had that conversation, I know all of them have. All those conversations are gone, which is a big blessing. Jason: One phone call is probably 10-15 minutes, because you have a nice intro on the call, you have to be cordial, they're going to have some questions, you want to answer those questions, and then you need to figure out how to end and get off this call in a nice fashion. Yeah, it eats up a huge chunk of time. Cliff: Yeah, huge chunk. Jason: If it's a nice property, it's in a nice area, and it's priced appropriately, you're going to get a lot of these phone calls. It can be pretty cumbersome and overwhelming if you're trying to just enjoy your day, have a day job, or do something. Besides, I have this part time business of managing a property. Cliff: Yes, correct. Jason: This one property. If you have multiple, it becomes even more crazy real quickly. This is something that maybe property managers could use. I mean really, it’s a piecemeal service. It's like “Hey, I need it for this property, maybe not for this one.” They can use it as needed, maybe something supplemental to the other stuff they have going on, like through Buildium or [...]. Cliff: Correct. Definitely. Jason: Ok cool. Cliff, is there anything else people should know about ShowMeTheRental before I let you go? If not, tell us how everybody can get in touch with you and find out more. Cliff: The only thing I ask is just give it a try. Check it out. Hopefully, you’ll like it. It's been a huge game changer for us. Like I said earlier, when I come home from work, I'm actually home now, I'm not working all the time, I'm not answering phone calls. I just say, give it a try to see if you'll like it. I think you will. As far as contacting me, you can reach me anytime. My email is cliff@showmetherental.com and you call me if you have any questions, if I can help you. I do answer my phone only between 12:00 and 1:00, and 4:00 and 5:00. If you call outside of that, I’ll try to call you back the next day. You can reach me at (502) 641-8781. Jason: Perfect. Cliff, I appreciate you coming on the DoorGrow Show, it's great to have you, and everybody, check out showmetherental.com Cliff: Jason, I appreciate your help. Thank you, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Jason: Alright, cool. I appreciate Cliff coming on the show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to grow your business, one thing you may want to take a look at, that I will mention a little bit is take a look at your website. If your website has been around for 2-3 years or longer, that's the typical lifespan of a website or a design. It maybe starting to look stale, which creates a perception about your business. Once it's get about 5 years old, it starts to get a little bit painful. It's a little bit embarrassing. It looks probably outdated.  The reality is, most of our competitors, when it comes to website design, a lot of their designs were designed 2-3 years ago. The challenge is, you're getting websites, sometimes out of the box, that's already design-wise, behind and outdated. So make sure to go and test out your website by going to doorgrow.com/quiz. You go to doorgrow.com/quiz, test your property management website, take the quiz. It will help you see how effective it is at creating leads, generating business, capturing and creating trust, and capturing and converting people that are visiting on the site. It's really all about trust, instead of just trying to manipulate Google and get to the top of Google. I'll just point out that the reality that search volume for property management according to Google Trends—you can go to trends.google.com and put in property management, back date it, filter it for the US, back date it to 2004 to the present—is low. It's small. You can compare it to any other term and see this. It really hasn't grown since 2004. In fact, it slightly peaked in 2011, around July, the summer, when property management search volume peaks each summer, but it's been on a steady decline since 2011. There's less people searching. Not only that, but competition has gone through the roof since 2011. Competition has been increasing. Everybody’s pushing everyone to do. This was the game everybody’s playing. It's trying to manipulate SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Pay-per click, and Google Ads. The reality is, search volume has been on a decline. It's going down, while competition is going up. It created this false scarcity in the industry. I'd love for you to escape that. There's no scarcity in property management, 70% are self-managing their own properties right now. There’s tons of blue ocean. They have problems, they have stress, but they're not looking on Google, in general. If you can identify them, capture them, you have a website that creates and builds trust, and your sales processes optimize for trust, you are going to be the company that they work with.  We want to help you optimize trust in your business, clean up, and short all the leaks in your sales pipeline. Reach out to DoorGrow. We can help you with the website and we can help you with your sales process, your pricing strategy, all the things that affects your ability to close deals. We can help you clean all that up and make your business far more effective at capturing business and going after that blue ocean where 70% are self-managing. Check us out at doorgrow.com. So, until next time everybody to our mutual growth. Bye everybody.  You've just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Bryan Chavis gives his take on Buildium's 2020 Property Management Insights

Rod Khleif has been a real estate investor for the past 30 years has owned over 2,000 units. Rod shares his fascinating real estate investing journey and how he uses his massive goals to fuel him. Today, we dive into the techniques he uses to attract things into his life, whether it be real estate or that giant yacht he’s always wanted. If you’re looking for tangible strategies you can implement today or just some funny “war stories,” this episode is for you!   In this episode we cover: Getting a mentor Losing $50M dollars Helping others Goal setting Law of attraction Vision boards Repositioning a 403 unit apartment complex   Links from the show: Rod’s INSTAGRAM Rod’s Gift: TOOL BOOK Rod’s BOOT CAMP (use Promo Code: CHAD to get $100 off) Rod’s BOOK   You can find the transcript of this episode over HERE. Transcripts of all episodes can be found HERE.   Show sponsors: BUILDIUM - 15 day free trial HONEYBOOK - 50% off your first year   Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please email chad@chadduval.com with “sponsor request” in the subject line.   Follow Chad: Instagram: instagram.com/iamchadduval Twitter: twitter.com/iamchadduval Facebook: facebook.com/iamchadduval YouTube: youtube.com/iamchadduval Website: chadduval.com   Follow Start FM: Start FM’s INSTAGRAM Start FM’s SHOW NOTES   If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!   Have a question you want answered on air?Leave a voice message here: 1-415-WE-START (1-415-937-8278) Sign up for Chad’s Email Club at chadduval.com/subscribe.

Love episodes where you cover so many topics? Well this show is definitely for you.   David Pere teaches us about VA loans and how everyone in the military can utilize them to get started in real estate. He gives details about the qualifications needed for the loan as well as the benefits that come along with it. We also zig and zag through ways to hire a property managers, how to efficiently write yellow letters and even get into how he had to a dead tenant. David is an entrepreneur, a Marine, a real estate teacher and today he’s on Start FM.   In this episode we cover: VA Loans House hacking Yellow letters Living with your tenants RUBS (Ratio Utility Billing Service) Multifamily Utility Company Appraisals Questions to ask when looking for a property manager Dealing with a dead tenant   Links from the show: List Source Military Millionaire Podcast David Pere's Website The War Room Rich Dad Poor Dad Things to Avoid When Hiring a PM   You can find the transcript of this episode over HERE. Transcripts of all episodes can be found HERE.   Show sponsors: BUILDIUM - 15 day free trial HONEYBOOK - 50% off your first year   Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please email chad@chadduval.com with “sponsor request” in the subject line.   Follow Chad: Instagram: instagram.com/iamchadduval Twitter: twitter.com/iamchadduval Facebook: facebook.com/iamchadduval YouTube: youtube.com/iamchadduval Website: chadduval.com   Follow Start FM: Start FM’s INSTAGRAM Start FM’s SHOW NOTES   If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!   Have a question you want answered on air? Leave a voice message here: 1-415-WE-START (93-78278)   Sign up for Chad’s Email Club at chadduval.com/subscribe

In the Season 2 Finale of The Property Manager Podcast: The Future Is What You Make It, we invited CEO of Buildium, Chris Litster and Robin Young, Sr. Researcher, to show a behind-the-scenes look at the 2020 State...

Today we’re changing up the show and doing a “podcast within a podcast.” In this episode we’ll be listening to an interview I did with Ola Dantis on the Dwellynn Show a few months ago. We dive into my real estate story and share tips and techniques I learned through my journey. We also discuss how I spent 10 years moving around the country tasting different jobs, like working the graveyard shift at Kohl’s to stocking shelves at Sherwin William, until I finally found my love for real estate. Hope you guys get some value out of this discussion! In this episode we cover: USDA Rural Development Loans House hacking Living with your tenants Getting cash back at closing Taking risks early Being broken into by tenants Links from the show: Chad Duval’s INSTAGRAM Chad Duval’s WEBSITE Never Split the Difference  You can find the transcript of this episode over HERE. Transcripts of all episodes can be found HERE.  Show sponsors: BUILDIUM - 15 day free trial HONEYBOOK - 50% off your first year Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please email chad@chadduval.com with “sponsor request” in the subject line. Follow Chad: Instagram: instagram.com/iamchadduval Twitter: twitter.com/iamchadduval Facebook: facebook.com/iamchadduval YouTube: youtube.com/iamchadduval Follow Start FM: Start FM’s INSTAGRAM Start FM’s SHOW NOTES If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews! Have a question you want answered on air? Leave a voice message here: 1-415-WE-START (1-415-937-8278) Sign up for Chad’s Email Club at chadduval.com/subscribe.

Property management businesses always want and need products and services to be profitable and grow doors. That’s why many of them choose the user-friendly residential rental property management software for single-family properties called, Propertyware. Today, I am talking to Inaas Arabi, Vice President (VP) of Single Family Rental and General Manager (GM) of Propertyware. He understands the importance of developing new and innovative ways to help property managers attain profitability and growth. You’ll Learn... [04:37] Past and Present Perception of Propertyware: Before becoming GM, Inaas was a customer because of ability to customize system based on business models. [06:38] Who uses Propertyware? Typically, larger companies wanting to scale and grow. [07:45] Room to Grow: Never buy a solution for where your business is today; always buy a solution for where you want it to be. [09:50] Directions for Growth:  Add units by differentiating services via customization and special offers. Increase revenue per door by offering add-on products and services.  Reduce expenses via automation for manual and repetitive tasks.  [20:33] Propertyware stands behind its platform; serves as business advisor, not only technology provider, to solve pain points. [23:54] Facilitating Future Integrations: Freedom to connect with third-party tools, vendors, and services. [27:40] API Connections and Challenges: Propertyware provides two-way data exchange that’s maintained in one system. [34:50] Status of Property Management Industry: Advocate, educate, and train others on legislation and awareness to protect tenants and landlords. [45:38] Should you switch software? Break up dysfunctional system to experience freedom by having good data, building relationships, and improving processes. Tweetables Never buy software for where you’re at today; always buy software for where you want to be. Pick property management software that you can live with for the long-term to grow. Automate mundane tasks performed by property managers via software. Kiss of death is double entry and manual input. Resources Inaas Arabi on LinkedIn Propertyware HubSpot Zapier Tenant Turner Property Meld Renter, Inc. Rent Manager ShowMojo Rently Rentec AppFolio Buildium DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. Today's guest, I'm hanging out with, Inaas Arabi. Inaas: Yes. Jason: Did I say it right? Inaas: Yes, you sure did. Thank you. Jason: All right. Inaas, I'm excited to have you on the show. We have not yet had Propertyware on the show and Inaas is from Propertyware. Inaas: Yes I am. Jason: Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into the space of property manager first and then let's get into maybe Propertyware a bit and talk about growth. Inaas: Awesome. I do want to first of all say that I'm a door hacker as well, so thank you for having me on, I'm excited. I came in mostly from the operational background. I started a company from scratch, operated and built it a little bit to over 1700 doors and then I sold it to a national player, then I went to work for the second largest owner and operator in the single family industry, American Homes for Rent. I worked for them for a while. I was their Midwest regional director of ops. We've done a lot of great things there. We took the company public. I left that and went to work for a company called the Altisource, which deals with banks and REITs and does a very similar thing to third party property management or property managers but on a different scale mostly for the banks and the financial industry. Operated a very large portfolio over 35 states and after that I got recruited by RealPage to be able to become the single family vice-president for them as well as general manager for Propertyware. Now, the reason why I think Propertyware would be a great choice for somebody like me and for a lot of operators is because you're able to take somebody like me with my experience and put him into the seats where we can make decisions that would actually help the property managers with their day-to-day lives. That's the difference that we're trying to go after compared to some of the other systems, is that we really want to build things that would be usable and would make an impact for people's businesses. I know we are going to talk about growth here in a little bit, but that is really the approach that we're going with Propertyware since I came in. We are building enhancements that allows people to grow in multiple different ways. They grow by adding units, which is what you talked about as far as being a door hacker. Number two, you grow by increasing your revenue by making more money per door. Then number three, you also went to grow financially by reducing expenses while keeping everything the same, so that would allow you to be able to have a much better financials or higher NOI’s for your property, since you're an owner or operator. That's really the goal. That's the approach that we're taking upon with Propertyware since I've started to them. I started Propertyware late January of this year. Jason: Okay. This is kind of new for you, the Propertyware thing. Inaas: Yes, it is. I mean, you can say it's new. I've been there since January so depending on how you take a look at it. Jason: You're halfway through… Inaas: Yeah, you're right. I'm definitely halfway through a year, yes, but I'm not new… Jason: You're 0.5 years at Propertyware right now. Inaas: Yes, it is. Jason: I mean that's two quarters. That's enough time to… Inaas: Make a change, yes. Jason: Make some changes. So, what was your perception of Propertyware before you came in versus now? Inaas: I was a customer of Propertyware when I was working with Altisource. We ran a set of very complicated and very large portfolio, a little over 10,000 units over 35 states, and we did it through Propertyware. One thing that I always appreciated about Propertyware was the ability to customize and the ability to be able to build unique or redo the system around your uniqueness as a business model. Now, I think that also causes people to be more afraid of the technology because there is not a very easy systematic streamlined way of doing things on Propertyware. You have multiple ways of doing things. It's built as such to be able to allow people the ability to customize based on the business model. Having that I've been working for Propertyware, before I found it to be a very interesting point as a customer, it was very good for me, but when I moved in to being in the seat of making changes, I didn't realize that this is an intentional thing that we're doing where we are able to keep the business and keep the platform customizable by the business model. Now, I would also say that that will make some people be very hesitant into looking into Propertyware because they're afraid of how customizable the system could be. That could also take you into a lot of what I would call rabbit holes, meaning, if you've got 20 ways to be able to do something, sometimes you give way too many options for some people that would allow you to take out the simplicity aspect of it or the easiness aspect of it. Overall, really what I appreciate the most as customization, if I want to have to sum it up down to one thing. Jason: The perception that I've always had about Propertyware is I've noticed that a lot of the larger companies, the companies that really are folks on scale, that they tend to use Propertyware. Propertyware seems to be very scalable. It seems much more of an enterprise solution than a lot of the other property management software out there. That's kind of the perception that I've noticed. I have lots of clients that have used Propertyware. I noticed usually the guys with thousands of doors are using Propertyware. Inaas: We do have people from different levels of where they're at. Now, to your point, sometimes it's very difficult and I struggle with this myself as well, it's really very difficult to be able to equate the number of units for your business to how complicated of a process you’re running. We come across some people that they maybe only running 200 units, but they have some of the most complex processes that I've seen and the opposite is very true. It's really more about how customizable are you ready to look in to be able to build for your business. The one thing that I would always say, you never buy software for where you at today, you should always be buying software to where you want to be. It's almost like when you're talking to trainers that they always say, “You don't want to be the guy or the person who's playing today. You really want to be playing to what you want yourself to look like after you win or at the winning table,” and that's really where it comes in to be. If you're thinking you want to grow and you want to have a system that grows with you, scales with you, that allows you to be able to do different things in many different ways, Propertyware certainly will be it. Now, I would also say, you do have to be willing to take on this opportunity to be able to build things that will be customizable for you, so you can get the best advantage. Jason: This is the feedback that I've noticed about Propertyware. What he says is absolutely true. If you're going to pick a property management software solution or any solution for your business, you want to pick a solution that is going to give you room to grow into for whatever size you imagine because it's not easy to switch property management software. Anybody that's done it that switched from one to the other because they thought the grass would be greener on the other side, usually regrets it and it's not been so comfortable. I agree, pick a software that you feel like you can live with in the long term. Inaas: What you're saying is absolutely true. It’s really about jumping from one system to the next is not an easy task. I do recognize that you do have to put in a lot of effort into that, but you do need to find something that would scale with you for the long term, not for where you are today. That's the beauty about finding that system and being able to grow with it as you go. We've seen a lot of great companies have grown with us over the years and have done wonderful things as far as that goes. Jason:: Let's get into growth. The topic is growth via Propertyware. How does Propertyware help somebody grow or what are we chatting about here? Inaas: Like I said, the approach for us since I've got into Propertyware is the fact that we're building enhancements that would allow people to grow in all of those three directions. I'm going to give you specific examples because I know you like that. Number one. Growth, in my opinion, is adding units. How do you add units? You help PMCs differentiate their services and do things where they can go out there and put themselves in front of the right people that they're looking for their services. As an example, I know you guys offer wonderful websites offering, which is great. One way that we can help is we do provide our clients what we call a listing widget that they can plug in anywhere on the website. This way, you as a website provider don't have to build it for them. It defeats all the information directly from the Propertyware property management software. All of the vacancies, the rent price, the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, pictures and all that are all within that listing widget. Then we make it so customizable to the point where people are able to do some awesome things with it. An awesome thing would be, for example, you can add on banners at their specific workflow. For example, you can put in a banner that says, “Only make that banner available over the weekend to make a weekend offer,” so you can say, “Come take a look at my house that I have for rent and you're going to get $100 off if you look at it between Friday and Sunday,” or “If you look at it between the 1st and the 15th.” You can do things like, “We're looking for awesome owners like yourselves. Click on this link to be able to see our offering.” You could do things like the workflow, like once a property has an approved applicant for it, then you would automatically take it off the listing so this way you don't have to do anything with that manually. You could also do it where you can add a lot of information in the description for that property and one thing I teach people to do and I'm sure you’d like that, Jason, is the fact that for every listing that you put in out there for rent at the bottom of the description for that listing, you should take a couple of lines and you should type in information about your services with the link to the website that will take people on to a full offering of those services. Because we know when people go out to look for properties, rental properties on the market, majority of them will be renters, but some are not necessarily renters. Some of them might be owners that they're looking to comp out their property to figure out what the other properties in the area are renting for or they might be asset managers that [...] ability to put yourself in front of those guys while they're searching for properties. It's very unique. It doesn't cost you any extra. It's part of the listing widget that allows you to plug and play and do it as you go. This is one example of an enhancement that does help for the unit growth. There is plenty more, I don't think I have enough time to be able to share all of them because I want to talk about other items that are important. The second element we talked about, which is adding revenue or increasing your revenue, making it where instead of making $1000 per door, you go up to $1500 per door, you go up to $2000, $3000, whatever you feel like it's the right level that you want to go to. How do we do that? We do that by offering ancillary products that could make sense for the property managers but they're also integrated within the system so this way, they don't have to do anything offsite the system. The beauty about that is you get the beauty of getting something that is offered, make some money on it without adding too much expenses on your end from an HR or an employee perspective. Some examples with that would be asset protection or our renter's insurance. I know some other software do offer that. The reason why I mentioned it is because between Propertyware and some of the other systems is the fact that we really want to make sure that it’s fully integrated within our system. The tenant will have a very seamless experience when they're selecting the process or selecting the product and they were going through it, and then also the PMC will have a very seamless experience. Last but not the least, if there is an owner involved, that owner will also have a very seamless experience. As an example of the asset protection, it's a checkbox and then you can select whether it's paid for by the owner or paid for by the tenant. You can put in whatever extra fee that you would want to add on as a PMC as your profit margin, and then you can apply either to a tenant ledger or to an owner ledger depending on who's paying for it, and you do all of that very seamlessly with a couple of clicks. If you do enough of those, you start seeing a little bit of an increase of revenue in per door that you're having. Some of the other products that were also migrating or integrating within our system would be things like utility management which is I think we're one of the only system that I know of that offer something like that. Utility management in single family has not been a revenue center for a long time, but I think that is changing with all of the legalities where it's forcing either the owner or the property management company to keep a lot of utilities in their names so you don't have any off and on for all the tenants when they leave or when you have a new tenant moving in. If you are a PMC and you're going to have to manage that for the owner, we believe you do it with ease, but you should charge a fee to be able to do that and you can apply for that again either on the tenant ledger or on the owner ledger—depending on who's paying for it—and you make a little bit of money on it. That's the examples of how do we help increase revenue for our PMCs. The last type of growth that I want to talk about which is very near and dear to my heart is the profit growth by reducing your expenses. In my opinion, you reduce your expenses by doing automation. Now automation, certainly I'm not suggesting that you exchange relationships or conversations with owners and tenants with technology, but what you do, if you take a look at a lot of repetitive elements that we do every day in property management, you should automate those or you should look into making them systematic, so this way you're not spending a lot of time doing what [...] specific example here. Since I came in to Propertyware, we sat down and we looked at all the processes that our PMCs go through. From renewals, to leasing, to signing of a lease, to maintenance, to all of the big processes. Our goal was to be able to build or educate our PMCs on the best automated way to be able to do a process from A-Z, for the best results, for the cheapest cost as far as HR, and for the highest profit margin. I can tell you, we've gotten rave reviews from our clients when they've seen what we've put together. We have what we call road shows which is more of events that we put out in some certain cities in the United States and we invite our clients and prospects to come out to see us and see what we have going and what we're working on. We share with them for example the renewal process that we build together for them. Now, the beauty about why this is important, why I talk about it, we actually talk about both sides of the spectrum here. We talk about the setup, how you can setup Propertyware for full automation, as well as the actual process of how you run it from a systematic perspective and from an operational perspective. By the time you leave, if you have been a little bit hesitant about how do I work Propertyware to my advantage, you already know how you set it up, and you already know how to work the process itself. We've had customers where they came back and they reported that their renewal rate was at 60%-70%, now they are close to 80%. As a matter of fact, I was talking to a client a little bit earlier today and they quoted 79.83% renewal rate from, I think it was close to 71% or 72%. That's a huge movement. Now, why that's important for PMCs, that's a differentiator for you as well as a service. When you go talk to owners and you say, “I am able to get 80% of people to renew, that speaks volumes to the owners and allows them to see the benefit of working with you compared to working with somebody else who does not have a high renewal rate. Did I explain it to you well as far as all the different types of growth and how we calculate what kind of enhancements we use for each one of them? Jason: Yeah, absolutely. All of these things make sense and I love the idea that you're taking a look at the challenges that the property managers are facing internally when it comes to their operations to facilitate that with the software, to make that faster, to make that more simple versus all the manual stuff. Property managers do a lot of manual stuff. Inaas: They sure do. Jason: The more that you can pull into that software, the better. A lot of people a lot of times, they're turning to lots of different systems to try and systemize their business outside of their accounting solution and that can get cumbersome at times. Inaas: Yeah and the renewal process that we put together for full automation, we've got a little over 20 contact steps, where if you're doing this manually, you would need about 20, a little bit over 20 steps to be able to go through the entire process. We're talking steps from talking to the tenants and making sure that they want to renew, then again talking to the owner is making sure you agree on pricing, making sure you come back and you talk to the tenant and you send them a lease and you follow up on the lease and you do all of that back and forth. We changed that down to the point where we're able to do the entire thing with about six or seven touches. Six to seven touches in my opinion compared to over 20, does saves you so much time and so much effort that allows you to really concentrate on building the relationship instead of losing the time doing mundane task that you should be automating. In my opinion, that's how you grow, you grow by taking all of those mundane tasks, automate them, take those out of your way, and then concentrate on building the relationship, whether it's with the owners or with tenants themselves. Jason: Yeah, makes sense. All right, cool. Is there anything else that you want people to know about Propertyware while I've got you here? Inaas: Absolutely. There is a lot of things that I want to people to know about Propertyware but few things come to mind right off the bat. One, that we do stand behind all of our clients and we do appreciate the relationships that we have with them. Also, if you can imagine, we're taking a different approach by becoming more of our business advisors to our PMCs, not just a technology provider. A lot of times, you come across a lot of great technologies, but if you don't know how to take that technology and apply it into your day-to-day operations, that technology really failed because it's not really allowing you to get what you’d want out of it. Think about text messaging when it came out, for example. If people didn't try it, didn’t perfected it, didn’t figure out what to do with it, we wouldn't have had such a great success with it today. The same effort would be with our platform. We wanted to educate people. We want to make a business partnership with them, to be able to tell him how to do it, what do they do with it, and how they can use it to be able to get best results from all the aspects that we talked about. That's one. Number two, I also want them to know that we are property managers, building stuff for property managers. We’re not technologists, we're just building things in a vacuum, and really building it from the perspective of we know where their pain points are, we've been through it, whether it's myself or somebody on my staff, we know what your folks, the people that’s hearing us today are going through and because of that, my goal is to be able to build things to solve those issues for them, to solve those pain points. Now, sometimes we have to take them in steps, but at the end of the day we are solving those pain points. For example, we rolled out our text messaging feature earlier this year and for fairness sake it was what I would call the basic features of being able to communicate back and forth via text messaging. In order for us to take that to the next level, we're also working on enhancements now that would allow us to do the multi-level, the multimedia, as well as the group texting, and things like categorize station for all of the text. This way, our PMCs could take a text and apply it toward somebody specific, whether it's an owner or tenant. They can also do group texting. They can also do multimedia, so they can send a picture, send a file, and do all of that all within one centralized communication command, if you call it that, within the system, so it's not anywhere off the system. Then, last but not least, I think we’ve talked very greatly about growth, but what I really want people to know, your listeners, is that if you're looking for a scalable system that has a lot of potential for you, that would allow you to be able to do a lot of customization for your business based on your business needs, then you should look into Propertyware and you should evaluate it as an opportunity as an option for you. Now, it may fit then that's fantastic, it may not and that's okay, but at the end of the day you should really evaluate it to figure out if it's a good fit for you or not. Jason: You're talking about what you guys are doing internally. One of the big questions I know a lot of my clients have, a lot of listeners have that's really hot on the tip of the tongue of most property managers nowadays is integrations. That’s freedom to connect with third party tools, vendors, different services. Maybe you can touch on an API, what you guys have maybe going on there, and how you guys are kind of facilitating integrations with third parties. Inaas: Yeah. That's such a fantastic point, I'm so glad that you actually brought that up. Propertyware’s current approach is that we are offering a two-way data exchange [...] an API that allows people to be able to connect to their property management software. They can connect almost anything and everything that they would like to do. In my view, we want to provide people the opportunities to make a choice or pick the right option that fits for their business model. There is a lot of great things that we offer. If it fits your business model, if it fits your needs fantastic, use it. If you have something else that you'd like to use, connect it to property management software so you don't have to double entry anything. To me, the kiss of death is double entry and the kiss of death is any manual input that you put into either your staff or yourself, because somebody's going to make a mistake with that manual entry and somebody's going to cause you havoc later, even if it's not happening today. That's as far as the API. Now, I know on other webcast, Jason, you did ask about things like I think the place was, remind me again, was HubSpot or something like that, where you're able to connect Propertyware to everything else that it's out there as far as softwares… Jason: That was Zapier. Inaas: …yes, Zapier, thank you. I appreciate that. We actually looked into that and we're talking to them now about getting our platform on their site to be able to have full integrations with everything that they've done. You could do this yourself today, meaning if you have access to the API, you can take API, you can plug it into whatever other software that you'd want to plug it into, whether it’s CRM, whether it's an inspection product, whether it's a [...] product, typically anything and everything that has got API, you can connect it to do. Jason: If you're nerdy enough or you pay enough money to get somebody nerdy enough to do it. Inaas: True. I mean, you do have to have a developer to be able to take a look at it. This is not something that's geared toward a property manager to be doing it themselves, that's for sure. Jason: That’s why there's Zapier. The Zapier is very cool because it allows a somewhat normal person—you have to be a little bit nerdy, let's be honest—to do it without having to know code. You can create connections between tools and systems, so if you guys are working on that, I'll be really excited to hear when you guys have that ready. Inaas: Yeah, absolutely. You're definitely correct, it does need a little bit of development resources to be able to do the API, that's for sure, but remember though, Jason, once you do it once, you've got it, meaning you don’t have… Jason: You don’t have to do it over again. Inaas: Exactly. You don't have to go do connection every day, meaning if you've got five products that you're working on plus your property management software, you connect them all at once and you're done. You may have to do maintenance every once in awhile like if something is changed on your property management software or if you change your business model, if you do different things, you make maintenance changes, but it's not as big of a change once you've done it once. It's really more of an initial step and once you go through that initial step, you're good to go. However, I would also say, we're also one of the very few systems that offer two-way data exchange. Some other systems would offer data out and they call that API, but that's really not an API. An API should be a two-way data exchange, where you can take data out of your system and you can put data back into your system. If you can't do that, you can't really call it API but that's again [...] view at this point. I have seen some of our customers do some awesome things with the API connections. Those API's might have where they take information out of Propertyware, they go do something else with it and then go back and feed it back into Propertyware to be able to have one system through which is Propertyware for them. At the end of the day, you would want to connect everything you're working on with your property management software, so you're not having to enter anything manually. Jason: One of the challenges with API's is that you've got two pieces a software there communicating and if either one of them makes changes it can break that connection like something happens, that's what's I think is really important for the different vendors and property management software to create relationships where somebody's maintaining this. For example, if Tenant Turner was working with Propertyware or if Property Meld was working the Propertyware, if one of these vendors a lot of people are really enjoying, if they're helping to maintain that connection, then the business owner doesn't have to keep that working or make sure that it’s working. Inaas: It’s also fair and I'm again [...] and we have a list of companies that we’re actually working with to be able to have direct integrations with, you've mentioned Property Meld for example, that's one of our success stories with the API. We have a full integration with them, they'll tell you the same thing as well. The beauty about that is somebody could do the maintenance within Property Meld and then they can make the payment out of their Propertyware system with ease without any complications. It also allows you to do back and forth between the two systems, so if you have a work order that came in from a tenant, you can feed into Property Meld and vice versa as well. Having that we have the API, that's what allowed us to be able to do that. There is a list of companies that we're going through to be able to do direct integration with. I think RentersInc is one of the people here, they're putting in chats. We've been working with them on a direct integration of the API. I think they're almost there, they're about 95% there to it. To me, it's all about providing opportunities for our PMCs to be able to take advantage of what the technology could do for them. That's what we're embarking upon. That's what we are going to do. And if you stay tuned, you’re going to get a lot of great news about us connected with a lot of different vendors that does different things for our PMCs. The idea is, again to your point, we maintain the connection, so the PMC doesn't have to. If they wanted to go elsewhere like for example somebody wants to go to a different maintenance provider Property Meld is not what they want to use, they can still use the API to be able to make the exact same connection the Property Meld is made with Propertyware, if they have an access to the API. Jason: Yeah, makes sense. I love the idea of direct integrations. I love the idea of having an open API. I love the idea of you helping them to systemize your business internally, leveraging your software. These are all powerful tools for them. One of the main things you have mentioned at the beginning, is to lower expenses and all of these things is going to lower the level of communication, which lessens the amount of time in man-hours and manual stuff that has to happen. That's the biggest expense in property management is staff, it's people, it's those resources and that allows them greater leverage so that they can get more done without having to throw money at bodies constantly in order to get everything done. Property management is not a cheap business to run for a lot of people, so margins matter quite a bit. Inaas: It was quite interesting to me once I came on to work for Propertyware because I went out and talked to a lot of clients and again I'm an operator, so I understand what people are going through and I remember when I ran my own company, it was really more throwing bodies at it all the time. The difference though in today's world that is very different than when I ran my own company, is today you have options for technologies that could fulfill those tasks that people were doing for you before. Back when I ran my own company, those options were not even available. For example, if you recall back in the day when we were doing inspections on pen and paper or via pen and paper, everybody would take a piece of paper and a list of items or questions and you just fill amount while you're going through the property doing inspection. Today, you do most of your inspections via mobile technology on mobile devices and with mobile templates. The beauty about that is that saved you the ability or the need to have someone that is actually sitting down and writing down information on a piece of paper and they're transcribing them back into your property management software. If you have the integration correctly, you go from mobile inspection tool to the inspection report directly into your property management. We're working on something that we're just actually going to roll out here tomorrow, which is enhancements for our evaluation module. It allows people to be able to do multiple inspections and then match them column by column for every time you've done inspection. Think of when you go out and you do a move in inspection, you do a midyear inspection, you do a move out inspection, and then you're seeing all of those inspections in front of you matched line item by line item, so you know what the kitchen looked like when you did the move-in, you know what the kitchen looks like when you did a midyear inspection and you absolutely you know what the kitchen looks like when somebody moved out If you can show some damages that the tenant have caused that home, there is never a question anymore about who caused it because you have such an access to data and information that is beyond anyone's ability to be able to dispute it in court. Again, that's the beauty about the technology and the use of technology in today's market compared to what was before. Jason: Yeah. Technology certainly is changing quite a bit. I think here in the US, we’re in the forefront of what's happening technologically in property management, even if we are maybe behind other countries in terms of how well-developed or how familiar people are with property management. It's exciting to see what you guys are doing. Before we wrap this up is there anything else anybody should know about Propertyware and how can they get in touch with you guys? Inaas: I appreciate that. What I would like to do though is I do want to talk a little bit about the industry in general because I want to take this platform as a way for us to be able to educate and train. I do believe that our industry and to your point earlier some other countries have this property management business defined a little bit better and it's a little bit more integrated within day in and day out lives of people, so it's looked at a very different. Jason: There's probably two things, maybe just more legislation surrounding it and maybe just more awareness in those markets. Inaas: Awareness is really a good word. Thank you. The reason why I mentioned that is I truly believe that our industry has been under attack this year and is probably going to be continuing on ongoing under attack from almost everywhere. Whether it states that they're changing the rules, whether it's businesses that they're changing the rules, whether it's somebody else is changing the rules. The problem with it is I think we're so defragmented to the point that we lost the ability to stand up for ourselves as an industry. [...] I can give you of states changing the rules on the fly and make it miserable for our PMCs to be able to operate. Not to single them out, but I'm going to make an example of the State of New York. They just rolled out a brand new law about that the tenant protection law, that's what they call it. The effect of those things that they put into the… Jason: Protecting the tenants from the big bad evil landlord. Inaas: Yes, exactly. Part of it, for example, you can't charge more than $20 for application fee. You can't even call it an application fee, you have to call it something else. If the customer or if the tenant brings you a copy of an old credit report, you typically have to accept it and not charge him anything if you're going to go screen them through your ways. You can imagine the complexity that this is putting on our PMCs in the State of New York and they're not the only state. I know some other states and they're changing things, changing rules. The reason why I say all of this is I do have an ask for all of us as property managers and the ask is, let's really get together. Let's support the organizations that support us. I don’t want to make this a pitch for any specific organizations that are very well known in our industry, that are usually a couple, two or three, but let's support them to be able to have a voice, so they can stand on our behalf against some of these things that are happening to our industry. Let's really truly do a good job making sure that we're providing the utmost best customer experience, the best customer service that we can provide, because that is the only savior for us to where the public is going to realize that we have value and what we do has value and they're going to continue on working with us and our business is going to continue to grow. That's as far as the industry. I really wanted to make sure that I put that plug in there. You asked me about Propertyware, I think we've talked… Jason: To touch on that I want to agree with you on that. Property management is really in its infancy I think here in the US in terms of awareness and perception. Every property management business owner is either an advocate for the industry or they're hurting the industry. We all need to be advocates for the industry and we also need to educate. We need to educate because I think if a lot of these laws wouldn’t exist or they would be very different if property managers had input, because they know what works in the real world. They know what needs to happen. They do want to protect the interests of the tenant and the owner. When things get skewed, when the pendulum swings all the way away from the owner’s interests or the landlord’s interest just towards what serves the needs and interests of the tenants, eventually it's not really going to end up serving the needs of the tenants. It creates some sort of imbalance that is going to hurt tenants in the long run. That's generally just always going to be true when something isn't right, or isn't fair, or isn’t just. Inaas: I totally agree 100% and I think you hit the nail on its head with the education. I do also feel that we should educate everybody that we come across with. Whether it's our tenants, whether it's our owners, whether it's somebody else that we're dealing with our vendors. One thing that I was very advocate for when I ran either of my company or other companies, is the fact that you have to have an onboarding experience for everybody you’re dealing with. An onboarding experience with your tenant, an onboarding experience with your owner, an onboarding experience for your vendor. And guess what? Also an onboarding experience for the HOAs that you're dealing with, an onboarding experience for the politicians that are responsible for your area as well because if you don't educate all of those people on what we and how we do it well, there is also not going to be something you're going to like. To your point, Jason, I think if the property managers were involved in some of these laws that they were written, I'm sure they would have been written differently. It's not because we don't want to protect the public. We actually have the utmost respect for the public, but we know what works, and we know what works well. If the idea is to make sure that a tenant has the opportunity to not being overly charged for a particular application fee or something like that, you could have written that in as a rule but a little bit differently than just making it where it’s mandated, it's one fee, and you're minimizing the ability for somebody to be able to do the right screening for their tenant and putting the right people in place. Jason: Even in contracts and everything else, we need a little bit of educated language to explain the why behind things. Inaas: Yes, absolutely, 100%. Jason: It’s like that spoonful of sugar that Mary Poppins says makes the medicine go down. There needs to be a little bit of education added to some of the stuff rather than just throwing out, “This is how we're going to do it,” and you have to just take it. Inaas: Agreed. Now, you did ask me about property. I do want to say a couple things here. It is a system that I'd like people to take a look into as an opportunity for them to understand what the system could do for them, what are we doing as far as these processes, these automations, the opportunities for the two-way API for them to be able to connect their system to everything else that they're working on. We understand that people have to have options and we're supporting that and we’re going to go with it. I just want people to take a look at what we've got to offer and if it's fitting to what they need and what their business model is, fantastic. We can work together. If it's not, it's no big deal. We will continue on staying part of the same industry and we’ll support each other, but I do feel that people are missing quite a lot by not checking out what the opportunities look like and what the options are with Propertyware. As far as connecting with us what I would recommend, if people go on to our website Propertyware.com, we've just finalized a new experience for what I'm going to call here the free trial where you can go in, login, take a look at a little bit of the system, figure out what's going on. You're certainly not going to be able to do every single thing in the system. I'm not going to allow you to be able to take a payment in the system or put a tenant in there and kind of have them pay you through it, but the beauty of that is at least, it gives you an insider look of what we have available to you. I would also invite you to have a conversation with our sales staff to really truly understand what we have to offer and then go through a demo. If it works, great. If it doesn't, no big deal. Jason: I want to point this out because I'm an advocate for the industry. I'm not a property manager. I want to see the industry shift towards more openness, more freedom. I love what you're saying. We've had other property management software on the past and the general message of one of the big players out there who I won't mention by name was just, we're going to just create everything internally. We're going to just try and give our customers everything that they need rather than giving them what they really are asking for. The general feedback I hear from everybody is they want freedom. They want freaking freedom to be able to make choices, to make the best choices for the business, to choose the best tools and vendors. They want freedom. As entrepreneurs, that's why we are doing what we are doing. We don't give up the 9-5 job so that we can work even more hours a lot of times initially and have a lot more stress and a lot more pain just because we're crazy. We do it because we want more freedom. We want to be choosing what we're doing. What you're saying I think is in alignment with entrepreneurs. It’s in alignment with entrepreneurs that are running these property management businesses. They want the freedom to be able to choose the vendors, choose the third party tools that they're going to be using, and they want that stuff to work with their property management software. I appreciate that that is a focus of what Propertyware is doing. I wanted to point that out because I think it's important to highlight those in the industry that are doing that. I see you guys doing it. I see Rent Manager doing that, the open API thing. One thing I've also always appreciated about Propertyware since we started doing websites at DoorGrow back in the day, the very first website I did were websites for Propertyware clients and customers. I've always had that really good integration for the widget. In the first, I have a JavaScript widget, it would populate the data, it wasn't just a cheesy iframe thing that we were putting into the page, and that's always been nice. It's always been nice to have that reduced double data entry. People are putting in their properties into their websites and then doing that just back in the day. We've come a long way since then, every everybody has. Now they're using tools like maybe Tenant Turner, ShowMojo, or Rently, and some of these sorts of integrations. I've always appreciated those aspects of Propertyware. Question. Most people have a property management software. I would imagine most people listening to this show are not just startups that are like, “Which software should I pick?” Say they're using AppFolio, they're using Buildium, they're using Rent Manager, they're using Rentec Direct, they're using something already. What would you say as far as switching? We mentioned already. It’s painful usually to switch. How do you help facilitate this if you're going to get customers on? They're going to have to make the switch. Right now, they're probably not even listening because they're like, “There's no way I can switch. I'm married and I'm married for eternity.” I'm going to give you an opportunity to help them break up that marriage if it's dysfunctional. Inaas: I am so appreciative of you bringing this on as well. I do want to go back though. Freedom, I love that. I'm actually going to use it because you are correct in making sure that you highlight the fact that it's all about freedom. Yes, we do have offerings. Yes, we do have products, but at the same token, I am personally a believer. In Propertyware, we're believing that we have to provide options for people. You pick whatever makes sense for you as a property management company, if you have a different vendor that is offering something that is more unique to your business model and you like to use that versus using something that we have, great. Go for it. Now as far as the implementation—obviously you can use the API two-way data exchange to be able to connect them so you don't have to double entry anything—the implementation is such an important piece. When you talk to technologist and you talk to them about implementation, they just don't realize the amount of hassles that a PMC will have to go through when they're jumping from one system to another system. To them, it's more of a 1+1=2. Once I came in to Propertyware, the first thing that I have to tackle was our implementation. What we did with it is a couple of folds. One, we broke it down to where we provide now tools for ability to be able to have clean data that gets into your system. Having clean data is half the battle for your implementation because if you have a good, clean data coming into your system, it makes your life so much easier to be able to operate. What we found, a lot of PMCs may not have realized some of the, I'm going to use the word “garbage” that they may have had in their systems. When we go through our checks, we come back to our PMCs and we say, “You told us you managed 200, 300, 1000 doors but when we're looking at your data here, we're seeing 1033, so what's going on with those additional 33 units? Are they truly for rent? Are they truly something you don't use? What's going on with them?” and they're coming back saying, “You know what? You're right. Those are people that we lost two years ago and the person who was working on the system never deactivated the units.” Having good data is half the battle. Second is the partnership between the PMCs as well as a good implementation team that allows them to go through the experience one step at a time. What that means, when they're coming in to us to be able to work with Propertyware, they're going to be assigned a particular team with one project manager who is driving the entire implementation from A-Z. They have calls, they have specific asks, there is a specific journey that they're going through step-by-step. Data is usually number one issue that we all come across. Number two would be all your accounting setups. Number three would be all you process setups. Number four would be more of your training and your customization. Number five kind of bringing it all together with KPIs, reports, and dashboards. Now, after you've done all of this implementation, then you're also going to get the training team to come in and do full training with you for all these processes. That training is part of the implementation. It's not something specific that you got to pay for. It also allows you to be able to customize to what your business model needs. Let's say you have a specific way of doing move-ins, that trainer is going to learn that from you before they come out to train you and your staff. When they come out to train you and your staff, they're training you on the system to the best business model, to the best business process that you told him you want to do for that move-in. They're not going to tell you, “Propertyware does it this way,” they're going to say, “This is how you told me you want to do move-ins and this is how you could do the same thing in Propertyware for the best of all the results, whether it's for you or for us.” Last but not the least, what I would also mention is the fact that we provide our PMCs timelines for their integration. We point it out. We basically say you have, I think the timeline is about 90 days for you to be able to be integrated. You’re not paying for the systems during those 90 days until you fully integrated. Once you are fully integrated, then you start paying for it. That allows us to both be on the same footing saying, “We're going to work with you to be able to get you implemented because you're not paying us, so we're not making any money. At the same token, it's in our best interest to help you through this process so we can get you to that finalized implementation piece so you can start using your system.” Now, what we've seen is a huge reduction in the days of implementation for Propertyware in particular. We've also seen a very high number of what I would say happy customers that they came on our new plan for implementation. We’ve also seen a lot less issues with data when data comes in through the system and we're finding a lot of ahas from our clients similar to what I described to you saying, “Hey, I didn’t know that I had 1033 units. I thought I was only managing 1000 so now I got to deal with those 33 units,” or, “I didn't know that I could do move-ins this way or move-outs that way, or do a process of secure deposit, and refunds this way to be able to make it easier for me and more streamlined.” It's less touches, less communications, less points of friction between the teams, and then obviously what gives you the best results at the end of the day. We've seen very good results from our new approach with the implementation. Jason: People are a little frustrated with their existing property management software. It sounds like you guys have made a lot of changes, as well as the API stuff you’ve been talking about, direct integrations. It's probably worth to them to take a new fresh look at Propertyware. Inaas: Absolutely, yes. If you looked at it before, I do invite you to take a look at it again. I promise you, we've made a lot of changes. And we are continually making changes. We do this every day. When I say changes, it's really more of enhancements that really makes sense for all of what we talked about. You've mentioned the listing, how easy it is. One thing we just rolled out recently is the watermarking for photos in listing widget. It's a small thing but it's an awesome thing to have. Jason: It protects the photos. Inaas: It protects the photos. Especially if you're in areas where you're hit a lot by scams. When I went operating, I'm not singling them out but just a case of the matter. Florida was one of those states that had a lot of scams. By watermarking your photos at ease without a lot of work, it helps you to be able to protect them and making sure that no one is going to steal those photos to be able to scam you or your owners out of the property. Again, we're making enhancements that make sense and we're making enhancements that is allowing people to grow. Either by adding units, increasing their revenue, and/or reducing their expenses, and increasing their profits. Jason: Cool. Inaas, I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing some ideas about Propertyware, letting us know where everything's at with it. Again, people can get in touch by going to propertyware.com and check you guys out. Inaas: I appreciate that. Thank you very much, Jason. I'm really glad that I got a chance to be on the webcast with you. Thank you very much. You guys do a fine job. Please continue on these webcasts. Please continue educating our PMCs and just know that we're going to be supporting you all the way. If there is anything we can do for you and your listeners to be able to support them in their businesses, and in their endeavors, please reach out to us. We’d love to be your business partners. Jason: Awesome. Yeah, I would love to. That would be great. It would be cool. Maybe we'll do something to your audience at some point. That will be fun. Inaas: Absolutely. We welcome that. Jason: All right, cool. I love sharing the message that we share. I'll let you go Inaas. Thanks again for being on the show. Inaas: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Jason: As everybody knows, I love sharing the message that I think property management, there is a bigger vision for property managers than just getting mired in toilets, tenants, and termites. I do believe good property management can change the world. There is a massive ripple effect. There are thousands and thousands of families that can be affected by good management. There's a lot of situations in which families should be underneath good management instead of a crappy landlord situation. I do believe good property management can have a massive ripple effect that can change the world and hopefully that all of you get a little bit inspired or excited about that. You are having an impact. You get to make a difference. I am honored that through you my listeners, through our clients that we get to work with, that we’re able to get that message out, and that we’re able to have some small impact in the industry and have a ripple effect. I appreciate Inaas pointing that out. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, then please reach out. We’d love to have you and maybe work with you, and see if you’d be a good fit for the type of client that we're looking to work with, and make a difference in this industry. Check us out at doorgrow.com. Until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.

Today we have Joshua P. Morse on the show. This Denver-based investor has been investing in real estate for a couple years now and is killing it on his wholesale and whole-tail deals. As the title has eluded to, he breaks down how he made six figures in only a few short months. In this episode we cover: Why he decided against getting his real estate license Why being persistent with your mailing campaigns pay off How he wholesaled his first deal Don’t show the address of the house you’re trying to wholesale in your ads Never let your tenants know you’re the owner Know your market and numbers because you might have a deal in front of you, but don’t know it! Eggs benedict Don’t let kids let the water run 24/7 Show offers: BUILDIUM - 15 day free trial HONEYBOOK - 50% off your first year Links from the show: YOUTUBE for behind the scenes Start FM’s SHOW NOTES Start FM’s INSTAGRAM Chad Duval’s INSTAGRAM Joshua Morse’s INSTAGRAM Joshua Morse’s FACEBOOK Joshua Morse’s LINK Joshua Morse’s WEBSITE You can find the transcript of this episode over HERE. Transcripts of all episodes can be found HERE.

From surfing waves to making waves by fixing exploding toilets for tenants—how an entrepreneur and creative technologist leveraged design to streamline simple solutions.  Today, I am talking to Mark Rojas, CEO and founder of the Proper app that streamlines the building repairs process. Mark has spent his career creating positive user experiences and adding value by solving problems related to efficiency and human connectivity.  You’ll Learn... [04:40] Definition of Design: Viewing how something works in the real world and creating a corresponding experience to make your life easier and more enjoyable. [05:34] Proper app idea originated with possibility of becoming an accidental landllord. [07:13] Maintenance is the bain of their existence. There’s got to be a better way to fix building repairs process and problems. [09:30] Maintenance is more than one issue. It involves many problems for many people.  [10:10] Lack of Communication: Leverage “chat room” to create efficient and effective dialogue between contractors, property managers, and tenants. [13:07] What makes Proper different? Visibility and shared platform for centralized communication between all participating people and places.  [14:50] Building Repairs Process: Submit image, describe problem, create work order, send notifications, add contractors, diagnosis issue, complete fix, submit/pay invoice. [19:50] Property Management Platforms: Proper’s integration and import/export plans for increased visibility for systematic way to save time and money while simplifying lives.  [22:42] Common Questions and Concerns: Is Proper app intuitive? Is training provided? [28:15] Future Feature: Email integration and aggregation to avoid duplicate data.  Tweetables Every elegant solution involves some element of intelligent design. Design isn’t all about pixels. It’s applied via various mediums by viewing how something works in the real world. Maintenance is the bain of a property manager’s existence.  First Step with Proper App: A picture is worth a 1,000 words, so describe the problem succinctly. Resources Proper Mark Rojas on LinkedIn Venice Art Crawl Buildium AppFolio Propertyware Intercom Help Scout GatherKudos DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. Today’s guest, I’m hanging out with Mark Rojas. Mark, welcome to the show. Mark: Hey, it’s good to see you again. Jason: Mark is coming to us from a company called Proper Chat, correct? Mark: That’s correct. Jason: Mark, I’ll read a little bit of your bio. It says you are the CEO and founder and it says, “While you might not think of hiring a designer to fix an exploding toilet, Mark Rojas still might be the man for the job. From starting his own surfboard manufacturing company at 16 to founding multiple tech companies focused on creating positive user experiences, Mark has spent his career working to add value by solving problems of efficiency, and human connectivity. An entrepreneur and creative technologist from Queens, Mark is the founder and CEO of Proper, an app designed to streamline the building repairs process. He first began befriending property managers while producing the Venice Art Crawl, a passion project that transformed vacant properties into temporary art showrooms (aka fun, free open houses). Shortly thereafter while subletting his apartment in 2017, Mark was blessed with the invigorating experience of needing to manage repairs for a bathroom explosion involving multiple tenants.” Why don’t you take us from there? Mark: That’s a good intro. Jason: I’ll let you tell the rest of the story. How did you get into this from surfboards? Mark: Surfboards was a little I went to when I was 16 years old, but that did throw me into design and ultimately product design. Right after college, my career quickly became into web development, app development, and working with a lot of startups here in the Bay Area, which is where we’re based out of, to leverage design to solve water problems. It came with the advent of mobile, really becoming this fast-growing platform, where your everyday user now is expecting this very seamless experience that is solving various problems we’re on. That transitioned from building a product, starting a company, and then continuing to wanting to build products for others. I think one of those things that continues to be a passion of mine is finding a problem and leveraging design to simplify, streamline it, and make everyone’s life better. Jason: I love it. That’s entrepreneurism in a nutshell. We see a problem and we’re crazy enough to think we can solve that problem. We can make money solving that problem and create a win-win. You love that you say that you focus on doing it through design because really, every elegant solution involves some sort of intelligent design, whether it’s a system, whether it’s something visual. People think design, they think it’s like graphic design or something creative. Mark: Yeah. I don’t think of design as just pixels. There’s various mediums through which one can apply design. It’s really viewing how something works in the real world and seeing how can you create a corresponding experience that can streamline it, that can make it simpler, that can make it more delightful, more efficient, and really give you a lot of your life back, whether that’s time or even just joy. Jason: What problem then did you really see that you’re like, “I’m going to create Proper”? Let’s try to build this problem up. Mark: I’ve seen a lot of different thoughts to my life in being a tenant, but it really became a problem for me when I almost became an accidental landlord. I was traveling for an extended period of time, I have known my landlord for a while, and she was happy to actually let me sublet it. It’s like, “It’s okay. Go off, I trust you, and when you come back, it’s all good.” But there’s still a level of responsibility that was pressed upon me. As I rented out my apartment, I quickly realized that I have become a landlord. So, two days into it, the subtenant called me to let me know that there was a major problem. I was like, “What? What’s going on?” It turned out that the pipe above our ceiling under our neighbor’s bathroom had burst. To say the least, it’s quite a mess. This set up a flurry of emails, phone calls, text messages between the tenant and myself, the property owner, neighbors, contractors, plumbers, et cetera, and it was happening over phone calls, emails, text messages, WhatsApp calls, FaceTime calls. At some point, I was like, “Wow, this is rather ridiculous,” and my design mind immediately started thinking... Jason: Broken. This is flawed. There’s got to be a better way than this. Mark: Yeah. My wheels are just spinning and spinning and spinning, and I started designing it in my brain. Then, one day I just whipped it out of my computer, I just mocked it up, and I was like, “I’m going to build this.” I started building it and I think one thing that’s true then and now, and even more true now, is we spend a lot of time talking to our users and our customers, and really dissecting their problems or processes. I immediately started doing calls with property managers that I already knew. As you saw in my bio, I knew a lot of property managers. When I started the Venice Art Crawl, which is a crowd-sourced art event, we have 40 different art shows going on at the same time in Venice beach. The way I did it was I found vacant spaces, [...] the property managers and basically said, “I know I can bring high net worth individuals to these empty spaces and we can treat it almost as an open house.” That worked not only well—I was creating value for them—they all basically love me. When I started working on this idea, they were happy to talk to me for hours at a time. What I found is that maintenance is almost the bane of their existence. Jason: Oh yeah. We did a survey inside the DoorGrow Club Facebook group—property managers listening, you should be in there if you have a property management business—and we asked—just an informal poll in the Facebook group—“What’s your number one challenge in your business?” There were two or three items at the top of the list that were connected to maintenance. It was sourcing vendors, it was maintenance coordination. Maintenance is the biggest headache or challenge in property management. Mark: Yeah. It’s very painful to the point that I actually thought that I was becoming a therapist. Sometimes, they would talk to me for three hours at a time just talking about it, and I was like, “Wow, this is a very real problem.” I was able to take those learnings and turned it into a product that corresponded with it. What started off was really just a project. I didn’t think, “Oh, I’m going to become a billionaire off of this. This is my next big thing.” This is more, I was traveling, I wanted to start building a product, and I wanted it to not be something that I built in bane, but rather, to possibly solve someone’s problem. Initially, it was my problem, and when I talked to property managers, they actually laughed at me because I was building an app already and only dealing with a monthly maintenance issue, while they’re dealing with hundreds a month, if not more. Jason: Right. You’re building an app for one maintenance issue. Mark: Yeah, so talking to them totally validated that this is something worth pursuing. Then, I just went deeper. I kept talking to them. I started talking to the contractors, the tenants, and I realized that this is a problem on all sides of the equation and set out to start building a solution that could solve a lot of the issues with it. I think a lot of my history in design has been focused on communication, really making it richer and removing barriers. Essentially, a lot of friction and a lot of time wasted happens when poor communication happens. That’s why it’s proper.chat and leveraging chat as a platform to remove a lot of the bottlenecks that happen, like playing Whac-A-Mole between an email for this contractor, phone call for that tenant, and really starting to centralize everything where we could remove those bottlenecks and with the oversight of the property manager, the contractor and the tenant can speak with each other. Anything from scheduling, updates, “Hey, I got to go to Home Depot and get this part. I’ll be back tomorrow.” In the world today, the tenant would know. Three days could pass and that creates frustration and friction for the tenant because they don’t know what’s going on, and that means another phone call to the property manager. Jason: Right. Communication in a business, for any business, causes a challenge; internal communication. For a while, as I was growing from solopreneur to building a team, I have freelancers. I thought this was so great because I only have to pay them when there’s work. “Here’s the job, do this work.” But the challenge with that is the communication level was just not strong enough. I didn’t realize that until I started getting full-time employees. The communication level is dramatically different when you have somebody that’s dedicated because you’re reducing the number of people that you need. That person is giving more of their time. Two people that are doing 10 hours a week versus 1 person that’s doing 20 hours a week, I would take the one person any day of the week, especially if those two have to communicate. The communication back-and-forth wastes so much time, and there’s always a percentage of loss when there’s any sort of communication. If there’s communication between two parties, there are gaps. There just always is. It could be a misread and body language. It could be somebody doesn’t understand something. Somebody’s a poor communicator. There’s some sort of flaw. The more you can reduce that, the less friction there is. One of my recent hires was one of these unicorns that can do web development and design. The communication level is way shorter. He can get things done in such a short time. Normally, I want a specialist, but he’s able to create something so much quicker because he’s not having the communicate and negotiate between another party that doesn’t understand what they do. A developer and a designer are two different universes, right? Mark: Absolutely, yeah. Jason: [...] crazy guys setting you both. So, I get it. Explain how this helps reduce the communication and why is this better than the other stuff that’s out there, what other people have been doing? What’s unique about Proper that you’re noticing? Mark: A lot of it comes down to visibility and a shared placed for everyone involved with the maintenance, to communicate with each other. Where we really differentiate is that we started on mobile. We’re a mobile-first solution. We do have a desktop and a web experience for the property manager. In terms of being able to report, what we notice from a lot of property managers, whether they have Yardi, AppFolio, you’re still getting these maintenance requests from many different places. You’re getting from phone calls, emails, text messages. What we set out to build and we’re building right now is one place I can centralize all that. Not only centralize it but make it a more useful format. When someone writes you a three-paragraph email, a lot of it is frustration. Jason: Right. There’s all this emotion and they want you to understand their pain. They’re like, “I got to relate this. I got to paint this picture.” Mark: Exactly, and part of it is because they’ve waited too long to write this email. This frustration has built up and they want to write this email. With our application, which is native, you as a tenant are able to create a work order very quickly, and it’s very visual. An image is worth a thousand words and it really is in this area. Often, these emails don’t even include images, so a tenant is able to quickly snap a photo, almost like Snapchat or Instagram. You don’t train anyone. There’s literally billions of users on these apps who know how to use this and they’re able to create a work order in under 30 seconds. The format is not to write paragraphs and paragraphs. It’s to be succinct, 140–200 characters max and you choose a category. This gets fired off to the property manager, you get a notification on your phone or on your desktop, and then from there you have your contractors that you can add this this conversation. The idea is that it turns into a group chat at this point, with the property manager still being involved. Instead of trying to get back and forth between scheduling, instead of the contractor having to ask questions to the property manager to then go ask the tenant to further diagnose what’s broken, the contractor’s able to immediately see what’s broken because there’s always going to be a picture. We pretty much make that almost mandatory for the tenants. What we’ve seen from contractors is that they’re able to save time and cost by more quickly able to diagnose where the problem is, what tools to bring, what materials to bring. Everything just happens there. The property manager is still part of the process, but they don’t need to insert themselves. When they insert themselves now, it really takes up a lot of their time. Not only because they have to go back and forth, but often they’re fielding phone calls, they’re fielding emails, and then this really, really adds up. Jason: I love that it’s prompting them to take a picture. Mark: Yeah. The first step is to create a work order, take a picture. That’s the first thing. Jason: And a picture’s worth a thousand words. They’re not going to have to write a thousand words in order to get it across. You can see it and you go, “Okay, you can fluff it up or make it more dramatic, but I can see it. Here it is.” Or they might do the opposite. They might say, “Hey, there’s a problem with the faucet and it’s flooding the whole bathroom.” So, you can see it. They send you a picture. In a lot of apps, a picture’s an afterthought. They have to do some serious extra work in order to get a photo into something or to do it. I’ve had maintenance companies ask me, “Could you email me a photo?” or, “Can you take a picture so we know what to look for or what type of fixture we need?” whatever. It slows down the communication significantly. Mark: Totally and I think there are these added benefits that currently property managers don’t have the bandwidth to do. Because of the contractors there, they can easily provide updates themselves like, “Hey, I have this question.” “Hey I have to come back.” Right now, that has to go to the property manager, the property manager then has to tell the tenant, and then often this doesn’t happen. So, you have this built-in benefits of transparency that you have with the tenant that really builds trust, but also stops them from calling you, which once again takes up a lot of your time. The very nice thing is that at the end, the contractor is able to close up the job by providing proof that they’ve done it. So, they have to take pictures of it. Then, you have these records of the conversations that you have with everyone, the images at the beginning of the job, the images at the end, and it just creates a ton of transparency and documentation that you can have, that’s very easily searchable, filterable later on. One thing we’re starting to work on is really reporting. You can start to really understand the volume of workers that you’re getting, the stages that they’re at, the amount of time it took to complete it, and really how much time it’s taking up for you. Jason: It makes a lot of sense. If you can cut out one phone call, you’re probably saving your team, at a minimum, 15–18 minutes of productivity, simply because one interruption in a team member’s day, typically they say, cost about 18 minutes of productivity. Even [...] take 18 minutes, they got to rebuild the house of cards they were working on or go back to whatever project they’re trying to figure out. So, if you can cut down the phone calls significantly, even if you don’t have that large of a portfolio, it’s almost like getting a new team member on your team. It’s that significant. People are really expensive in property management businesses. It’s the highest cost in the PM business. I know what property managers listening to this are going to be thinking. They’re going to be thinking, “Well, that sounds great, but another piece of technology. How is it going to work with my Buildium, or my AppFolio, or my Propertyware? I got these, they’ve got maintenance requests built into them. How will this work?” Mark: In terms of the different platforms, there are ones that permit direct integrations and we’re starting to work with building some of those. Then, we’re also building a way for you to be able to easily export, search, and import this data at the end. I think the difference really is that the maintenance offerings that they have don’t create the same level of visibility and don’t save you the amount of time. Even if their integration is not there, the amount of time that we’re currently saving you and that we’re going to continue to increase, really starts to outweigh some of the cons of doing that. That’s the way we’re moving through with all these things. Jason: Can you tell us who you’re working to start integrating with yet? Mark: We have a couple of partners, mostly in the Los Angeles area. One has about 1000 units, another 2000 units, and we’re working with both of them. They’re both on different platforms and seeing what’s going to be the most efficient way. It’s not just integration of the maintenance, but also I think what’s really important here is their accounting. We’re really looking at accounting and how we can start to streamline with that because there is one of the things that we’ve seen with the contractors is a lot of them don’t have a systematic way of not just keeping track of their work orders or invoices, but even just generating invoices, so it takes up a lot of their time. On the property management side, you’re getting all these different types of invoices coming in, totally different formats, and then you’re manually doing double data entry into all these different systems. It’s kind of a pain because it’s like, “Why is it formatted this way?” You have this hurdle that you’re dealing with all these messed-up invoices. One thing that we’re seeing is there’s the ease of use of our invoice. A lot of the maintenance techs and workers are actually enjoying using it and starting to use it as a way to create a uniform way of generating invoices for their property managers. What we want to do is actually make that very easy to export so you can import so that you can import it into your accounting system. Jason: Cool. What are the big questions that people ask about this? What are their frequently asked questions, concerns? What are the big questions that they’re asking so that we cover all the bases here? Mark: There’s quite a few, but I think there’s this very chat-focused, very simple, clean design. There isn’t a lot of other platforms that we’ve seen in the space yet. They’re starting to show up, but really there’s very few. I think a lot of people are like, “Hey, do you provide training? How much is training going to cost?” Jason: You’re like, “Do you know how to use instant message?” Mark: No. We don’t want to be sending that at all. We really care about our users, so we offer like, “We’ll train you,” and then the funny thing here is that we do a demo and not for a minute we train them. Jason: And by the way that demo was the training. Mark: Yeah. If you know how to use iMessage or any of those things, it’s very intuitive. That’s really the core principle of the company is designing something that is not only beautiful, but it’s extremely easy to use because we don’t think that we should be paying and send somebody out to train you or that you need to hire some expert to use the software. Jason: All right. I’m going to go to the devil’s advocate on the other side here. It’s so easy, it’s just chat, it’s so simple, why don’t I just sign-up with Intercom or Help Scout and get a chat tool and take tickets? What’s different between those solutions and something like Proper? Mark: Proper is really geared towards maintenance. Even just the terminology, the flow, the understanding of the whole workflow of maintenance getting done, is what is unique to us. You could theoretically use text messaging to do. The reality is you can start to use that, but then very quickly it breaks down and it becomes cumbersome. For example, Intercom. There’s no mobile app. There’s no way to really add photos into what’s going on. There’s no way to categorize it into the type of problem that might be related to maintenance. For us, we provide all those things but then, you’re also able to search, filter, and zoom in on a property and be like, “Okay, these are all the work orders. This is how we spent maintenance on this property.” As we move forward and we start to integrate with other systems, that’s something that Intercom would probably not do. Jason: They’re going to put this chat tool probably on their website, so people coming there if they have maintenance requests, do they hide it like, “Go here for maintenance and then the chat is there”? Or is it [...] and if so, the maintenance coordination is one side, but they also have lead gen that they’re trying to do. They have sales. They’re trying to target owners and capture people with their live chat tools. How do you usually recommend they segregate that or can Proper help up with that other challenge as well? Mark: Good question. The way the application is working right now is that the live chatting or website, if you’re using something like Intercom, that is something that we’re not providing right now. Essentially, what happens is that property managers will announce that they’re using Proper to their network, share the app, then they’re able to install it, and then start reporting through there. It comes into our web app and mobile app. As a property manager, you can use the app from anywhere, but you could also use it at your desktop. From there, is where to start to field everything. Jason: So, Proper works more like an internal tool. When you onboard your new tenants, you can say, “Hey, get this. This is how you can communicate with us.” It’s probably not just functioning as the live chat tool that’s capturing leads on the front-end of your business, but you could always take that tool and put links into it or pre-written messages to say, “Oh, it’s a maintenance request. Go here.” [...] Intercom a button that they click, that I’m here for maintenance and it takes them to Proper to take care of that. Mark: Yeah and one of the really interesting things is that we’re starting to build email integrations, so the initial one that we built is that if you receive an email that’s coming in from a tenant and it’s maintenance-related, we build the Chrome extension where very easily just sends it to Proper and then it turns it into actual work orders. You’re not actually trying to do double data entry there. The next step of that is making it so that your tenants and contractors don’t have to join Proper. They can submit things via email, but then you have one place where it’s starting to aggregate everything, whether it’s submitted directly to Proper or through another channel like email. That’s one of the really exciting features for these next two months that we’re working on should be out. Jason: So, that will be similar to Intercom, which you can have a certain email address like maintenance@businessname.com and have that forward those emails into Proper? Mark: Yeah, it all vacuums it right up and then as it comes in, you’re able to categorize it and make it something that is not mixed with thousands of other’s emails but rather centralized and easy to find just like any of the other maintenance tickets. Jason: It sounds like it would make sense for them to have some sort of support solution and still use Proper for the maintenance portion for the back-end, and internally with tenants. Very cool. What other questions then do people tend to ask? Mark: One of the big ones is really that email integration that I just mentioned. That’s essentially what we’ve been doing is tons of user research and starting to find what are the biggest problems. Using that is like having it bubble up to the top and turning it into features that are usable to them. Jason: One of the challenges in maintenance is the communication between vendor and owner is getting paid, payouts. What if the vendor starts messaging and they’re like, “Hey, property manager, when do I get paid? Here’s my invoice,” and the tenants are seeing this stuff. How do you deal with that? Mark: I’m glad you asked that because that’s literally the feature we’re rolling out right now. We’re waiting for the upstart to approve and by the way, we’re on iOS, Android, and web. The next thing I told you, we make it really easy for your maintenance staff or techs to create invoices and generate them. We’re actually about to roll out payments where they’re able to get to pay through ACH and really it’s cut out a lot of time for the contractors to generate those invoices or even for the property managers to [...] and all these things which I still see very frequently happening. Jason: In the app, the contractor maybe see something a little different and they can submit invoice or something like this? Mark: Yeah. Basically, when the contractor closes up the job, they provide proof that they did it and they’re prompted to create an invoice. Jason: And one proof would be another photo, something along these lines? Mark: Yeah. You’re able to add multiple photos as the contractor. This then generates an invoice that the property manager receives. This is a separate view where the tenant is not part of it. They’re not anything around cost, they’re not seeing this. The property manager is actually able to pay via ACH directly to the contractor through the app. There’s no need to go elsewhere and try to cut a check, having anyone pick it up, or mail it, or anything like that. Jason: So again, it’s reducing a lot of the friction and communication challenges between the property manager or maintenance coordinator and the vendors. Mark: Yeah. That’s one thing that we’ve seen on both sides of the equation. A lot of property managers are still spending a lot of time just doing payments. On the contractor side, they are spending a lot of time generating invoices. They have a good support, so at the end of the week, they’re tying up all the work that they did. They don’t even necessarily have the good system to keep track of all the jobs that they did. So, they’re often once again spending this admin time where they’re not actually getting paid to do that. What happens now is that with the invoicing feature, although it’s simple and very intuitive, it actually reduces the amount of time that they’re doing this stuff, they’re able to get paid faster, and they’re able to spend a lot less time worrying about the stuff and actually getting more work done, which means your maintenance is getting done faster, which means your tenants are happier, which means you’re happier as a property manager because you’re hearing less from them. It’s really an interesting problem because you have these three different groups of people and you’re trying to design the simplest solution that takes into account their unique set of problems. Jason: If you imagine, what would be the ideal situation so that all three parties could communicate the most efficiently? You would just have all three of them sitting in a room face-to-face talking like, “Hey, you’ll do this. I’ll do this.” “Okay, I’ll pay you then. I’ll do this.” “Okay, team. Ready? Great.” Everybody’s there, it would be fast, but that’s not reality, right? Mark: Yeah. Jason: You’re trying to run a business and so is the vendor. The tenant should hopefully has a job and making some money to pay rent. There’s all this stuff going on, we can’t just all hang out, but Proper really creates a room that they can all hang out in and communicate. Mark: It’s great that you actually put it that way because that’s very much how I think about solving this problem. When you’re in person with sometime, it is the richest form of communication. If it’s a group of people, then the bottlenecks or the walls that exist, that is created through distance, creates all these inefficiencies. Essentially, that is actually how we think. That is what we want to be able to create these rooms and make this very efficient, yet rich way to communicate with each other, to eliminate a lot of these barriers that are currently costing a lot of time, which includes money, and often just frustration. One thing that I didn’t mention here is that I spent a whole year working out of a property manager’s office. You can call it extreme customer development and I really understood a lot of their operations and just so much of their time is spent on communication, but because they don’t have good tools for it, it just generates a lot of frustration on each side of it. Assuming that it’s hard to measure, the quality of life when you’re constantly doing frustration just really goes down. Jason: Yeah. Plus there’s a lot of turn-over. Among the property managers that are working for a property management business owner, it’s very difficult. Mark: What’s true of us as a company is to improve that quality of life because we know how gruesome the job can be, how hard it can be, how taxing it can be. If you use our app, it’s very colorful. We kind of joke around in the copy and we try to make it not just extremely efficient but fun. We want to make it [...] inject a little bit of fun into it. I don’t think that I see that very much in the space yet, which is one of the things I’m very excited about is that I want to bring that to the space. Jason: Some of the things I’ve seen in some apps lately that people have been doing to gamify things, which is really funny, that once you complete something or you finish something, you get confetti and balloon noises and stuff like this, like this is a little celebration. So, I’m just going to throw this is a feature request that after a maintenance is completed and somebody marks complete to get […] and they get this little celebration thing. It gives them that dopamine boost to get things done and they feel good about it. Mark: Oh yeah. That’s actually something that now that we’re starting to mature as a company and we’re getting ahead with the feature set and the road map, that’s something that we actually can bring into it. So, given my part of design background, I also know a lot of animators and illustrators. As you can see, we have a lot of illustrations. We very much want to use those opportunities. When you’ve succeeded at doing something, really just letting you know. Jason: Even rewarding a tenant for using the system. Instead of calling you, like they submit a ticket and you’re like, “You’ve done it! Good job!” All these little things just create positivity and they add a positive feel to the property management company. The tenants are usually pretty upset if there’s a maintenance request. The vendors are having to deal with that, the property manager. Anywhere you can add a little bit of fun and gamification into an app, I think is [...] world a little bit more fun. Mark: Yeah. There’s no reason you can’t have fun doing this job. I want to save you time, but like in this, get you to crack a smile a couple of times a day. It’s not just about saving time but it’s about being able to continue to do that job and be happy doing it. Jason: All right, cool. Mark, I really enjoy having you on the show. One thing that might be cool, it would be after a maintenance request is submitted, if we did an integration with GatherKudos, real super easy, super simple. [...] whether they’re happy or sad. Mark: I’m totally happy to talk about that. Jason: All right. That would be cool. It’s really great to have you on. How can people get in touch with Proper? How can do a demo? How can they find out more? Mark: We actually created a unique link for the show, so if you go to proper.chat/doorgrow, you can definitely learn a little bit about our products and then very easily set-up a demo with us. Again the tool is super easy to use, so we are happy to set-up a demo with you. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes. Once you start seeing the product it becomes very quickly evident how this can start saving you time and also maybe make you smile. Jason: Awesome. All right, everybody check that out. I appreciate you setting up that link. That’s awesome. Go to proper.chat/doorgrow and check it out. You get a little special perk for being a DoorGrow Show listener. Mark, really grateful for you coming on the show. I love hearing about new technology. I think this sounds really innovative and I think it solves a problem. I think that it will really be beneficial and I’m really excited to see what you guys do in this space and start hearing some feedback from my clients on what they think. Mark: Yeah. Thanks for giving me time and always a pleasure to talk. I look forward to checking in again soon. Jason: Cool. Yeah, we’ll be talking again soon. All right, I’ll let Mark out. If you are a property management entrepreneur and you’re looking to add doors, you’ve been struggling, you’re wondering why does it feel like there’s scarcity in an industry and 70% are self-managing. There’s no scarcity in property management right now. There just isn’t, but they’re not looking on Google. You’re going to have some trouble if your whole goal is you have people find you through Google. There are ways to go out and create business and we’re focusing on that. So, stay tuned with DoorGrow, keep an eye on us, and if you’re wanting to grow your business, if you want to short some of the leaks in your sales pipeline, you want to dial in trust engine, have generate more warm leads and warm business, it’s easier to close and have less conversations about price, price sensitivity, and comparison to other companies, that’s what we do. Reach out and talk to DoorGrow. We’ll be happy to help you add doors to your business, figure out how you can optimize your business for growth and creating trust. Again, I’m Jason Hull with DoorGrow here on the DoorGrow Show. I appreciate you tuning in. Please like and subscribe on whichever channel your hearing this on, whether it’s YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, whatever. Stay plugged in and make sure you get inside our DoorGrow Club Facebook group where we are putting out discontent. We have an awesome community of DoorGrow hackers like you. So, check it out doorgrowclub.com. That’s all for today, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

In Episode 15, Do What You're Good At (And Crush It), we spoke with Salvatore Friscia of San Diego Premiere Property Management. A longtime customer of Buildium, Salvatore has always demonstrated an entrepreneurial spirit, willing to try new...

This week we take a deep dive into unattended access. We mentioned it briefly on episode 62, but there were a slew of follow-up questions. We talk about set-up options, pros and cons, how to make it work, and what it means for the future of real estate. Plus… we have been trying to shorten the Story Time segment but it's hard when there are so many interesting tangents. Weigh in on if we should cut or keep Story Time in the Market Proof Marketing Facebook group. Story Time (1:12) Kevin talks brand preference. He chooses which brands can serve him ads on Facebook; plus, what he plans on doing with his new Apple Card. Andrew compares authentic vs. inauthentic brand experience. Becca is selling her old house and wishes she had an electronic lockbox. Plus, how her listing was duplicated on a different site at a different price. News: (18:04) Everybody Calm Down! This is NOT 2008 (KeepingCurrentMatters.com) Facebook confirms it is considering removing “Like” counts (MarketingLand.com) 360 Topic of the Week – Unattended Access (25:57) What is unattended access and is this even the right term to use? Set-up options: NterNow.com Use.Rently.com DIY: Cloud cameras + smart lock Zillow, Open Door options – NOT CONFIRMED! Unattended Access in the News The low-down on self-showings: Do the benefits outweigh the risks? (Buildium.com) Why Rental Property Owners Should Stop Being Afraid of Self-Showings (BiggerPockets.com) Self-Showing Lockboxes: What's the Risk? (ThinkRealty.com) DYC team discussion/debate Humans vs. No Humans On Demand Showings vs. Schedule a Tour Final Thoughts + Insight from Chris Hartley Question of the Week: (1:04:25) Last Week's: At what stage of construction do you put your homes in the MLS, and why? This Week: Should we kill story time or keep it? To answer the Question of the Week, be sure to join us in the Market Proof Marketing Facebook Group. Subscribe on iTunes —> https://now.doyouconvert.com/mpm-itunes Subscribe on Google Play —> https://now.doyouconvert.com/mpm-gplay A weekly new home marketing podcast for home builders and developers. Each week Kevin Oakley, Andrew Peek, and others from Do You Convert will break down the headlines, share best-practices and stories from the front line, and perform a deep dive on a relevant marketing topic. We're here to help you – not to sell you! The post Ep 66: Unattended Access – The Good, The Bad, The Future? appeared first on Online Sales and Marketing for Home Builders - DYC. The post Ep 66: Unattended Access – The Good, The Bad, The Future? appeared first on Online Sales and Marketing for Home Builders - DYC.

Property management is hard enough. As your business becomes successful, don’t always say “yes” or “no” to everything. Owners are coming to you to solve a problem. Step into potential opportunities without being pulled in multiple directions. Today, I am talking to Marc Cunningham, President of Grace Property Management, who identifies five characteristics that define successful property management companies.  You’ll Learn... [02:42] Entrepreneurial Footsteps: Marc grew up in real estate property management world working for his dad, who founded Grace Property Management in 1978.  [04:02] Doors in Denver: Grow slow and steady; from 110 to 1,000 doors.  [04:32] Mantra: Follow the opportunity. [07:15] However you define success, companies follow some of these five standards.  [07:56] #1. Filter and Qualify Owners: Don’t take every owner that comes along.  [20:04] #2. Know your numbers to know how well your business is doing.  [31:43] #3. Focus on profit, not door count. People are willing to pay for additional value. [37:20] #4. Have systems and processes in place, and follow them.  [43:50] #5. Recruit, develop, and retain talent.  [52:28] Marc’s Extra: #6. Hold weekly one-on-one meetings with each team member.  [53:15] DoorGrow Extra: #7. Invest consistently in your own development.  [56:27] DoorGrow Extra: #8. Get coaching to help grow your business.  Tweetables The more successful you get, the more opportunities come your way. Cycle of Suck: Taking on bad owners, you get bad properties, tenants, and reputation. You won’t regret firing difficult clients, despite emotional and operational costs. Track metrics regularly because numbers make a difference. Resources Grace Property Management Marc Cunningham's Email Business Health Check-up Form QuickBooks Steve Jobs FilterEasy PetScreening Process Street Basecamp Voxer Google Sheets AppFolio Help Scout Drift Intercom Traction LeadSimple DGS 25: Why Every Property Manager Should Implement Profit First DGS 80: Automating Your Business with Process Street with Vinay Patankar DoorGrown Cold Leads Calculator DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. This guest that we have today is a fantastic gentleman named Marc Cunningham. Marc, you're not a stranger to most people probably listening to the show. Welcome to the show. Marc: Thank you for having me, Jason. Jason: I'm really excited to have you here. It's strange that you haven’t been on here yet. At the beginning of the show, I was like, “Have you been on here? You're like, “No.” I said, “It's long overdue.” Marc: I’ve just been waiting for the invitation. Jason: Okay, well I'm glad we finally got you invited. I’m glad you're here and today's topic is going to be the five characteristics of successful PM companies. Before we get into that, I want you to share a little bit of your background to qualify yourself to the audience, help them understand how you got into property management and what your connection is to these five characteristics of a successful company. Marc: Absolutely. Let me start by asking you a question. What were you doing in 1978 Jason? Jason: 1978? Marc: Yeah. Jason: I was probably pooping in a diaper and drinking breast milk. Marc: Okay. That image there. Jason: I was born in 1977. Marc: Okay, so you’re one. I wasn't much older than that, but in 1978 my dad decided that he was going to quit teaching—he was a middle school teacher—and he was going to follow his entrepreneurial real estate dream. We opened up a real estate property management company Grace Property Management 1978 in Denver. I was employee number one because I was pre child labor, so my dad would have me doing all the things that kids probably shouldn’t do. He would have me showing properties, mowing lawns, collecting rents, and filling out lease, just anything that needed to be done. I grew up in that world, so it really gave me a unique view into real estate, into property management, and just in the business because that's all I knew. That’s all we did. As I got older, I’d take my summers, I’d worked for him in the summers, and again just doing whatever needed done. If I get really lucky, if it gets too hot out, I’d work in the office. When it got over 110 degrees, the deal is I get to come into the office, otherwise I’m mowing lawns. I did that for many, many years. I went to Colorado State University, I studied finance and real estate there, and I was working in Cheyenne, Wyoming doing accounting work there. My dad called me one day and he said, “Hey, I need to hire a property manager, are you interested?” Well Cheyenne Wyoming, with all due respect, isn't the most fun place to live, so I jumped to that opportunity and that was about 20 years ago, 20 some odd years ago. I joined the firm permanently at that point in time. At that time, we were relatively small, I think we had 110–120 doors and we have grown slowly and steadily over the years. Today, we do both residential and commercial. We've got just under a thousand doors that we manage. We do real estate sales, we do property management, we’re investors ourselves—I own some stuff—we flip. Our mantra is follow the opportunity. If there's an opportunity to real estate, we want to look at that, whatever that is. So, that's how we've gotten to where we are today. Jason: I was just down in Vegas speaking to a group of property managers and they were bringing up like, “How do I avoid all this distraction and move the business forward?” What I said to them is opportunity is I've noticed is what kills entrepreneurs. How do you keep following the opportunity at all times but also keeping your focus narrow enough that you're actually moving forward. Marc: That's a great question. That's a really good question and that's hard. It is really hard because we found that the bigger we get, the more successful we get, the more opportunities that are out there. At this point, we're of the belief that you've got to say no to almost everything. I think it was Steve Jobs that said, “The difference between successful people and really successful people are the really successful people say no to just about everything.” Jason: Following the opportunity as a mantra doesn't mean saying yes to every opportunity. Marc: It does not mean saying yes to everything. You need to consider everything. What I don’t like is people say, “No, we don't do that.” For many, many years, for example, we didn't do real estate sales. “Hey, will you help me sell my house?” “No, we don’t do that. We only do property management.” We didn't consider. Well then, one day we thought, “Maybe we should consider it,” and as we considered it, we realized, this is a really good opportunity that we should capitalize on. Where when an owner says, “Gosh, I want to sell my house. Would you guys be interested in buying it?” “No, we don't do that.” Well, stop saying, “No, we don't do that.” At least think about it, consider it, and I think that's the way to step into some potential opportunities. But yes, you have to be cautious or else it will get you pulled to many directions. Jason: Relevant to that, how many of these units are now in your own portfolio, are yours or your company's? Marc: I don't have a real big portfolio. I'm a pretty conservative guy, so I'm a buy-it-pay-it-off kind of guy. I've got 10–12 rental properties in my portfolio. Jason: Let's get into these five characteristics that you feel define a successful company, and you're obviously a successful company. You've helped keep it successful, right? Second generation, so let's get in number one. Marc: Yeah. I don't pretend to be a guru. I can't stand the guys that stand there, beat their chest, and say, “Do it like me, I know what I’m doing.” This is just from our perspective. We worked with a lot of companies and I didn't get this, but I do a lot of PM coaching in business stuff on the side with PM companies helping them get better, basically. We know a lot of PM companies, we've worked a lot of PM companies and there seem to be some standards, some things companies that are successful, however you define success, are going to follow some of these aspects. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list by any means, but it's the way that we gauge ourselves. Jason: This will be cool because I probably come from a very different perspective. You're in the industry, you do this in Denver and I don't have any rental properties. I don't manage. I'm not a property manager. I have largely been this nerdy fly on the wall that's been able to see inside of hundreds of companies. My perspective might be a little bit different, but I'm sure there's some alignment. Let's get into number one. Marc: Number one is successful companies don't take every owner. They don't take every owner that comes along. So you agree with that one? Jason: Totally. If anyone's heard my show, they've heard me talk about the cycle of suck, which is it starts with filtering owners. Like if take in bad owners, you have bad properties. It doesn't matter how amazing they are. If you have bad properties, you have bad tenants. It doesn't matter how much tenant screening you do. If you have bad tenants, you have a bad reputation because you have bad owners and bad tenants. Nobody's happy and this is where I think the entire industry as a whole in aggregate sits right now. It has a bad reputation because they're taking on any owner. Marc: Yeah, I would agree. The concept is this. Any PM company knows that if a tenant, a prospective tenant walks in the door, an applicant comes in and says, “Hey, I want to rent your property,” every property manager is a little bit skeptical. They raise their eyebrow. They say, “Okay, well maybe. I’m going to qualify you.” We know industry-wide that whatever the number is, call it 25%-30%, depending on the market you're in, the 25%-30% of the applicants are not going to make good tenants. Everybody would agree upon that. Well, we really believe that probably that same percentage 25%, 30%, 35% of prospective owner-clients are not going to make good owner-clients. The challenge comes, how do we filter them? Because if it's an applicant to rent a property, we have them fill out a rental application. We go in deep. That's the hardest part of the business is qualifying those folks. So, how do you qualify an owner? That’s where the challenge lies. If you called our office today as a prospective owner-client and you are talking to our new account specialist or one of our PM's, they would have a dock in front of them, a piece of paper, and a lot of this is just basic questionnaires—what's your email address, what’s the property address, tell me about the property—but at the end of that questionnaire, they have four questions. Yes or no questions that they have to check the box on yes or no. They have to discern this information during the conversation with you because it helps us qualify these owners. For example, the first one says, “Is the owner financially stable?” If during this conversation you as my prospective owner say to me, “Hey Marc, if you can’t get this property rented next week, I can’t make my mortgage payment. I've got to get this thing ready quickly.” Well, you're not financially stable, right? That's going to be a no on that box, that's the first question. Jason: “So, are you current on all your house payments?” One of my clients said that was a favorite question they would ask. If they say no, it's instant disqualification. Marc: Absolutely. Then the second question we have to ask ourselves is, is the client emotionally stable? That can be a hard one to discern. I always tell people, “Don't ask them the question verbatim, okay?” It will get you in trouble. Jason: “Are you sane?” Yeah. Marc: Exactly, but we need to be able to discern that information from the conversation. Is this somebody who's going to be stable when things go bad because at some point in time it will. Jason: Right. Sometimes, people will reveal their emotional instability pretty quickly, right? Marc: Yes. I tell my PMs, “Look. Two quick keys. If they cry on the first conversation or if they own more than two cats, they are not emotionally stable. Run away from them.” Jason: Might be a little biased against cat owners. What’s cat owners like? Marc: I know. You just lost half of your audience because of my personal bias. Jason: No, they’re cool. Marc: I am as well. Then the third question we ask is, “Can I control the situation and the client? Are they willing to give me control?” Not in a puppet master, I'm going to be the mean guy, but they have to give me control. They have to be willing to do so. Then question number four is, are they realistic in expectations? Do they think that we should be able to get $2000 a month for property that's only going for $1000? Or do they think that we should call them before we ever spend a dime on maintenance? That's just not realistic. That’s not going to happen. If we can't check the yes box on all four of those, then my PM does not have permission to work with that client. Jason: I love the idea of figuring out if they're willing to relinquish control. That's such a big thing because they're coming to you to solve a problem. I've noticed with clients that they're not willing to be strong enough of a fence for people to push against to elicit trust enough for people to relinquish that control. I think a lot of people will push. They might look like bad owners, they're trying to test the fence, and it's like in dating how girls will crap test the guy. They just want to see if they can handle them or if they're willing to be strong enough. I think a lot of times property managers will try to be nice and maybe don't have enough bite or drive and they’re really looking for somebody they can feel safe with, so they test us. I think clients will test us and then they're willing to relinquish control at times. It’s just something I've noticed during the sales process because I deal with entrepreneurs. They’re driven people and I need the same thing. They need to be willing to relinquish a certain amount of control because I'm asking to do crazy stuff, like fire doors or change your business name. I love that idea, and then are they realistic in their expectations. If somebody says, “Hey, I want to add 500 doors in the next quarter,'' then that's probably not going to be realistic. I want to make sure they're in touch with a reality that I feel I can give them or lead them towards and it's the same with our property management clients. Marc: Yup, and if we set those filters on the front-end, that's just going to make things so much easier on bringing good clients on because our business is hard enough without having difficult owner-clients. I think there’s the second aspect of that is, “Well, gosh. That's great. I wish I would have heard that before I took on Mr. Crazy,” so, what do you do then? I think the other part of that—you alluded to this—is sometimes you do need to let those clients go, and sometimes that's the best thing, because we're talking about what successful companies do. Successful companies realize that, “Hey, if we made a mistake, we brought on a bad client, we need to let that client go, whatever that looks like.” Jason: There's always going to be those mistakes. We cannot always know and perceive every person coming in and know that they are emotionally stable, or that you can control them, or that they will be realistic, but when they start to reveal those colors, we have to be willing to let them go. I've made bad decisions in bringing people in as clients and I have had to let them go. Some of them were just really like verbally abusive to my team. You’d be really amazed at some of the types of people that that can somehow leak through even if you have pretty good qualifications at the beginning. I love what you're getting at here because really anybody that studies sales in any capacity knows that qualifying a prospect is at the outset. It's really mind boggling that people would not qualify their prospects in any regard. Marc: I’m curious. You said you had to let clients go. How have you overcome the internal thought of, “Ooh, but that's money. That's a big chunk.” When do you decide? How do you decide? Is that an internal struggle for you? Jason: Sometimes. There's always a negotiation and it's a balance. It's a balance between the money aspect and the cost with the team. Ultimately, my team I want to keep forever. I want to keep them long-term. If I keep that client on, I’m saying to my team, your feelings don't matter. I don't care about you. That sends a really painful message and I've noticed this in property management companies. People wonder why there's so much turnover with their staff and I think one key reason is because you're allowing your staff, you're forcing your staff to tolerate too much. There are some of these owners that should be let go, and I've said many times to clients, “The hallmark of a seasoned property manager is that they fired some clients.” Some businesses have hundreds of doors and they've never fired a client. I know if they've never fired a client, they have some bad things in their portfolio. There's some pain in there and that's a difficult place to work. They’re not willing to let go of painful situations and there's always going to be painful situations. Marc: Yeah, and I've never talk to a PM who did let a client go who regretted it. Jason: Never. Marc: It's hard, it's scary. We face that. I remember very vividly when we were small and we had 125 doors, maybe. We had a client and had like 12 properties. I remember the guy, could see the guys face. He wasn't a bad guy, but he was just difficult and it had to be his way. He would contact us all the time. He just drove us crazy. We finally decided we needed to let the guy go. Well that was like 10% of our portfolio. That was hard. We thought about it, we don’t know what to do, and even after we did it we thought, “Oh, is that the right decision or not?” But we quickly realized it's like a load that’s been lifted. When you get rid of those people that sucked that time and energy and life out of you, it is a positive thing. Jason: The operational costs, the emotional cost when all of that falls by the wayside. I've never had a client fire something. I had one person fire half their portfolios like one big property. I had one person do that and they were terrified, but they did it. Two things happen almost every time. One, they replace the income really quickly. It always, it creates some vacuum in the universe, I don't know what you want to call it, but they always seem to replace the income really quickly with better doors. That always seems to happen. They just need to trust that's going to happen. The other thing is, is they always say to me, “I can't believe I didn’t do it sooner,” like they wished they had done it sooner. They were so afraid of doing it and then once they do it, they realize it wasn't so bad and they wish they were like, “Why didn't I do this sooner?” Marc: If one of your clients is talking to you and you're saying, “Hey, you need to fire this owner,” how do you recommend they do that like? What should they say? Should they say, “You’re fired”? Jason: You’re interviewing me now. Marc: Yeah. Jason: There's a few ways you can let them go. There are some creative ways. One of the best is just raise the fees. If [...] make it worth, just make it more expensive. Say, “Hey this property is difficult. You're a bit more challenging person to deal with, to be honest. We are willing to keep doing it, but it's going to cost X.” So, you just raise the rate, and if they keep being annoying and you feel like it's still not worth it, you keep raising the rate until they self-select themselves out. That's one easy way. Another way is to just refer them to somebody else, and if you're going to refer you might as well get a nice referral fee out of it. Go to one of your buddies and one man's junk is another man's treasure. I mean they might know how to deal with this type of person. They might be a better personality fit for this type of person than you. Don't just instantly assume that because you can't tolerate them or their difficult for you, that everybody else will. Give them to somebody else and let somebody else have a shot. Marc: I like it. We will rarely fire an owner, but we will as you just suggested bump fees up and up until they decide to fire us. I’d much rather have them fire us and leave on their terms. Jason: Right, they’ll self-select out. Are we complete on number one? Marc: I think so. Number two is successful companies know their numbers. I see this so often with PM companies. We get really good at the logistical side of we know how to lease, we know how to talk to owners, know how to collect rents, but when it comes to the numbers, the financials, we just don't know what we’re doing often times. I really am a big believer in that concept that if you don't know your numbers, you don't know your business. You don't know how well your business is doing. One question I’ll often ask of coaching clients that I work with on that side of things is also, “Okay. Now, if you, Jason own a PM company, at what point in time do you close the books for your company? Let’s say the month of June ends, right? We’re here almost until the end of June. When June closes for you, how quickly will you have your June books closed so that you know how much money your company made in the month of June?” The answers always surprise me. They're all over the board. “Well, I'm currently 90 days behind. I’m trying to catch up,” or, “I'm not much further behind in that,” or, “I might get it towards the end of the following month.” Jason: Yeah, how can they make business decisions if they’re 90 days in the rear-view mirror? Imagine trying to drive a car like that. Marc: Like I said, I've been doing this for many, many years. While we were small. like anybody else, I was everything. I was the janitor, I was the accountant, and I was everything. My favorite day of the month was always the first. Not because we collect rents, but because on the first day of the month, I go online and print out our company bank statements for the last month. I get our paper checkbook out and I’d reconcile. I’d get our ending balance and I enter it all into QuickBooks. I can look at that piece of paper and say, “Hey, how much money did we make last month?” I love that. I would wake up early to do that. I'm weird, I know, but that's how you know how well you're doing, I wouldn’t wait until the second, the third, the fourth, the twentieth, that's crazy. You can do it on the first. So, I'm a big believer in as soon as possible, which in this day and age it can be pretty much immediate. You get your books balanced, you run some numbers, you see how your company is doing it, and you’ve tracked some metrics, some internal metrics for your company to know how you're doing. Jason: I think the challenge is when property managers are holding on to something that's not in their particular wheelhouse or area of genius, but if this isn't your thing, if you're not like Marc and you don't love doing this and this isn’t like what makes you thrilled and excited is to get in your bank statements and numbers, have somebody else get everything ready for you. I've got a profit-first coach and accountant. She meets with me and goes over everything with me. I get not only my perspective, but she says, “This is what it looks like to me, Jason,” so yeah, I think it's usually helpful to do a review every month and look at your numbers. Marc: Yup, and like you just said, most folks aren’t as weird as I am as it comes to that stuff, and that's fine. But you need to find someone weird like me. You need to find someone who can go get excited about running your numbers, make sure they do it, and then you review those and you track a couple key metrics. For example, some of the metrics that we always track, are door counts proportional to owner count? Because that’s a sign of a healthy business. So for example, if your company has 100 doors, if you’ve got 100 owners for those 100 doors, that is the sign of a very healthy business because it means that you don't have any one owner with too much control versus the guy the guy called me a couple of weeks ago and he wanted to know if I was interested in buying his business. I go, “Tell me a little bit about it.” I think he had like 75 doors, “I’ve got 75 doors, I’m here in Denver and interested in selling.” One of the first questions I always ask is how many owner-clients do you have? He had 75 doors and 4. I was like, “You know what? I don’t need to know anything else. I'm not interested.” Why? Because if we took those doors on, that's four owners. That’s a lot of control. Jason: If it’s two of them, then what are you getting? Marc: It's something that you can't control, but you need to track it, that's one of the things you want to track on a regular basis. Another metric we really like to track is the percentage of our overall income that we spend on employees. Because in our industry, that again can just be all over the map on companies. Do you have a number on that that you recommend to your folks on what that number should be? Jason: It varies so wildly especially by market, but I know an owner that has 65% profit margin in his business. Marc: Wow. Jason: I know it's ridiculous. Marc: It’s a good thing I’m sitting down. Jason: I know. He has a couple of hundred doors. It varies so wildly and it depends largely on the type of owners they're taking on, the type of property, because—I’m talking about this in the cycle of suck idea very often—if you take one bad owner or one bad door property, can have 10 times, maybe even 100 times the operational cost as a good door. So, that can vary so wildly. I've had a company come to me that had 500–600 units under management and wasn't making a dime. I said, “How is this possible?” They’re like, “Well, we're doing $3 million a month in real estate,” so there was a brokerage with a cancerous tumor on the side called property management. He had twice as much staff as he needed, no technology in place. Fast forward, he fired half his team, he fired about 200 doors, maybe 300 doors, and it's now a very profitable company. So, it's not all about doors and staffing is always going to be the highest cost. If you can replace even a fraction of that or create some leverage for your team using technology, outsourcing, whatever, those are some big wins financially. A lot of times everyone's looking at, I got to get more revenue in and they're not looking at their expenses. That's why I'm a big fan of the profit-first system which says, “You take out a portion for profit and then what's left over is your expenses.” Most people are like expenses. You’re just revenue minus expenses and then whatever's left over, there's nothing left over typically in that situation. Marc: Absolutely. We have that profit is almost like an expense item that we know we’re going to take out every month and put into a savings account. We've been doing that for a long, long time from that aspect. But yes, I agree 100% with that aspect of what you're saying there. The number that we coach folks around is you don't want to go over 50% of your total revenue to staffing costs regardless of your size. The bigger you get, the more that number's going to probably creep towards that, just because you get more overhead, you get more managers, and you have more red tape, so that's a natural part of that. But if you go over 50%, that's a red alert. Something's wrong from that standpoint, so that an important to track for every company. Jason: Yeah, as a company scale, they're able to create a bit more leverage, but yeah, I could see how when you're really small and you're doing everything, your employee costs are a bit less per door because assuming your free labor or maybe if you work for your dad. Or sometimes it’s a spouse. They’ll have their spouse as their business partner, and you'll see them get to maybe 70-80 units, they’re tapped out, and they can't afford to hire their first person. Nobody's getting paid. That makes sense. All right, I like it. Anything else on number two, knowing the numbers? Marc: The other things I would just add that's worth tracking that I often find companies don't track this well enough is how many doors they’re adding and how many doors they’re losing. It’s always a surprise to me is when you ask them that, they'll say, “Well, I can dig it up, but I don't know.” A lot of the software don't track that. If we’re old school, we’ve got the spreadsheet. Every time we lose a door, we go to our spreadsheet for the year, we put it in, and it's going to keep that auto tracking. Every time we sign a new one up, put those on the spreadsheet so we can pull that up and instantly see, “Okay. As of right now, we've lost X number of doors per year and we've added X number of doors.” So, track that. Don't make that something that you've got to go dig in your software and try to pull a report. That needs to be one of those metrics that you're tracking at least on a monthly basis. Jason: Yeah. It's a pretty difficult situation and it’s a common one where you’ll see somebody adding a door and losing a door just as often. They wonder why they're not getting growth. Sometimes, the problem aren’t getting enough [...], it’s obtaining doors. They could be the type of target audience that they're going after, it could be that they are lacking some awareness around how to retain these clients or whatever it might be, but yeah, that's an important thing I think to pay attention to. Marc: Yeah, and to track the percentage of doors lost. That's all over the map as well. If you can keep your losses on an annual basis in the single digits from a percentage standpoint, that's pretty good. If you can keep it 10% or below on doors that are leaving you every year, you're in the pretty rare group of PMs. Jason: I created something for property managers called our cold leads calculator. One of the things I noticed with a lot of companies—this is more relevant to what I do—a lot of property managers are not paying attention to the amount of money that they're spending on cold lead marketing—pay per click, SCO, APM leads—all these different places at social media marketing, content marketing, that they're paying to generate business. A bulk of where most people get their deals and leads from I find in the industry is often word-of-mouth, so they just group everything together. All their warm leads from word-of-mouth, referrals, other cold lead marketing, and they're not paying attention. When you look at the numbers alone of the cold lead marketing, which everyone can check it out by going to doorgrow.com/coldleads, they can take this little questionnaire and go through it, but it'll help you calculate your cost for cold lead marketing. It also calculates and factors in the time. Time is worth money and it calculates and ask what that time is worth, like what's your hourly wage or whoever is following up on these, how much time does it take to follow up on these, to create a real aggregate or at least close aggregate cost of what one cold lead is costing you. I’ve seen numbers. I just had one come through the other day. One cold lead was costing them $5000. I've seen $11,000, I've seen a $1700 per lead or per acquisition per deal and what I love to ask them when I get them on the phone, I say, “Hey, I saw you fill out this cold lead thing. How long does it take you to recoup $5000 on a contract?” and they’re like, “Well, that's probably three years of free management or two years whatever.” Then their perspective starts to shift and we have to uncouple that. The transparency in numbers helps you make decisions as a business owner. Marc: Yup, and then review them regularly. Don't just leave it your accounts. If you're a successful PM company, you're looking at those numbers because those numbers make a difference. Jason: All right. We’re on to number three. Marc: Number three is a good lead-in as you were just talking about there. Number three will be successful companies focus on profit, not door count. You've already talked about this. This comes up so often in our industry, what's the first question any PM ask another PM? How many doors do you have? What’s your door count? How many doors are you managing? That's the measuring stick and it’s the wrong measuring stick because I know companies that are smaller, they're very profitable, and I know companies that are very large that are not profitable at all. Door count is irrelevant. The profit is what matters. What that means is practically speaking, if you've got 50 doors, I would say, “Before you say I another 50—that's fine—but you know what? Let's maximize the profit of the existing group you have.” That doesn't mean just go out and nickel-and-dime everybody, but it means what other services can you provide? What other things can you put in place to make sure that you're maximizing that income and that’ll have a dual impact in that you're going to increase your income on that 50? Then when you pick up your next 50, now you've already got some structures in place to ensure that they are profitable as well. You've got to focus on the profits, on the revenue streams to be successful. Jason: Absolutely, I don't think there's ever been a property management company that I’ve seen that is not leaving some money on the table. There's always additional services that you can offer, even if it's something little like filter easier petscreening.com. There's always some additional value that you can offer and there's always a way that you can monetize that. People are willing to pay for additional value. Marc: On the flip side of that as well, I think we need to pay attention to those expenses because what the industry right now is more difficult than it has been a long time and folks that have not been in the industry for too long, they’ll recognize this because this is normal to them, but it's a tough industry. This is a tough market to be running a property management company. When things get tough, you've got to be tight on expenses, and it’s too easy not to get tough on expenses. That's one thing we encourage folks, is to go through that profit of loss, line by line, and if there are expense items on there that are not directly relational to income coming in, you have to figure out how to cut them. You have to get rid of those wasteful expenses. That is such a good exercise to sit down and start going through that stuff and say, “Well, gosh, I’ve just been paying for the subscription service every month and I don't even know what it does. I signed up for it two years ago. All right, let's get that cancelled.” Jason: Yeah, and you’re like, “Why am I still on this?” Marc: Exactly. This is beneficial as getting on a new door, is cutting those expenses. Jason: This is why I love having a profit-first coach, because this really is built into the system. Every month is like, “Hey, what about these services you said you're going to cancel and you said you don't need this anymore?” Yes, so I think it's helpful. If you’re not like accounting-minded, I highly recommend you go back and watch my episode with Mike Michalowicz, who is the author of Profit First and check out that episode. I think it was a fantastic episode. Really cool guy, came and spoke at our conference. It covers that system like cutting down expenses, putting profit first, making sure that expenses are fitting within your existing budget and you're still getting a profit. Yeah, makes sense. Marc: What I had to do, I realized that the biggest expense item, the biggest overhead we had was my ego. The thing is that, that I wanted for me, the big desk, the big office, the nice car, and that's something everyone needs to start there because if you drive, especially in the real estate sale side, you go to any real estate sales event and what is the parking lot filled with? A lot of very expensed leased vehicles. I'm not against nice vehicles, but that’s just a suck on the income side of things. Jason: I think there's always this ratio between the amount of money that you’re going to take out of the business, and the amount of money that you're going to leave in to fund towards the growth. If we take out too much too quickly, the business growth is stagnated. I've seen some really aggressive companies put almost all of their money. I’ve seen owners try not to even take a paycheck. They’re really minimizing their take out of the business so that they could fund the growth, because they're delaying gratification for the future. They’re funding and creating a business that is growing and they’re putting their funds and their money towards that.  Sometimes, you have to double down as a business owner and to be willing to take a short-term hit because you want a long-term growth goal. And we can put too much towards growth to where it feels shaky, it feels unsafe. We're not holding anything back. There's no padding there. It really is this balance of how much I’m going to put towards growth be aggressive, how safe am I going to play it, and how stable and slow am I going to be at doing this. There's a balance there. Marc: It is a balance, it’s an absolute balance because you need to leave some in, and you need to be pulling some out every month and putting it into that savings account so that you have opportunities. We’ve purchased several companies over the years and every one of those deals worked because we were able to in essence say, “We can write a check. We’ll write a check today. We’ll get this deal done.” Why? Because we have money put away. That savings account isn't just comforting, it's an opportunity fund for things when they come up in the future. Jason: I like it. All right, is that three? Marc: That's three. Jason: All right, number four. Marc: Number four is successful companies have systems and follow them. They have systems in place and they follow. In a word, system means different things to different people. Some people think, “Well, that's just so I need a good software. What’s the system?” I really believe that probably 75%-80% of what we do on a day-to-day basis in our industry can be systematized, meaning, simply documenting your process, documenting your routine, because it plays out in so many ways. We learned this early on when we were growing and first there were two of us. My dad and I, we both did it all and we hired a third person, and then we all three did it all. Then we hired a fourth person, and by the time we hired that fourth person, we realized that, we can't all do it all. This isn't scalable, we can't all do everything. It works great at two people, it works great at three people, but when we had that number person and Mr. Tenant calls and says, “Hey, I called in with a maintenance request last week and I haven’t heard from anybody.” And I say, “Well do you know who you talked to?” “No, I don't remember.” “Well hold on, let me see if I can figure it out.” “Hey dad, did they talk to you?” “Hey, Bill did they talk to you?” “Sue did they talk to you?” “No.” “Well they talked to one of us, right?” That’s very ineffective. You've got to start specializing in your processes. We realized at that point in time that if we're going to hire someone to be our leasing person, for example, we better have a documented process for them to follow. I mean specific detailed documented. Here's what time you get to the property before showing. You open the door, you turn on the lights. Here's where you stand when they come in. Here's how you greet them, here’s what you say, here’s what you don't say, here's how you process an application. If we do that into our entire business and we break the business down into the smallest components, it simplifies things like nothing else because we’re in a complex business. If you think of a continuum in your mind, a long line going on both directions. On one side of the continuum, you have the words consistency and simplicity. On the other side, the far extreme opposite, you've got the words variation and complexity. You have to ask yourself, where am I on that continuum? We're all different places, but we hopefully will always be moving forward towards consistency and simplicity. I don't think there's a better way of doing that than through documenting your process, your system and then following it, training on it, improving it, upgrading it. It's got to be written, it's got to be documented, and it is a process. Jason: That needs to be used. People document it, they’ll give it to the team member, the team member will look at it at the first few times they do it, and then they're done. I have Process Street on as a guest once. We used Process Street internally, but it forces them to actually use the process on going. It's a checklist that has to be verified and completed. Marc: Yes, checklists are huge. We couldn’t exist without the checklist. Its old school, but it works. We still have paper checklists on some things in our office here that people say, “That wouldn’t work.” I guess just too old school. I say, “Well , we’re pretty successful. It worked for a thousand doors; I can tell you that. Will it work beyond that? I don't know, but it works to get you to a thousand.” Jason: There you go. I've noticed in businesses, I think there’s, at a minimum, probably seven systems that every business eventually has to have in a business. One, they have to have an internal communication system. For me and my team, it’s virtual, so we're using things like Basecamp, Voxer, stuff like that. But there needs to be an internal communication system that isn't just, “Hey Steve, did you do this?” So, internal communication. There needs to be process documentation system. That could just be Google Sheets, Docs, and whatever, or it could be something more complicated or cooler like Process Street or whatever, but there needs to be a process documentation system. There needs to be a billing system, of course. Property managers use maybe AppFolio or Rentec Direct, Buildium, but there needs to be some billing, accounting system. Then there needs to be a support system. A lot of property managers are starting to gravitate towards setting up Help Scout, Intercom, Drift, or one of these, but internally we use Intercom. There needs to be a support system in the business so that you can track tickets and track things. Sometimes, you'll do that through your property management software a bit. I find one system most property management businesses are lacking or missing is a planning system. You're hearing people move towards traction in some of this which I think has some fundamental flaws to be blunt, but it's a great system. It’s better than no system and there's a lot of systems out there for planning, but there needs to be a planning system in the business. Another system that's necessary is a sales CRM. This is different than your existing customer database. This is for prospects. There needs to be a sales CRM in place. A lot of property managers use LeadSimple, for example. If there were one other system you can throw in there probably be a phone system. We need some way to manage this big influx of calls or outbound calls with team members being able to be reached. These are some of the systems that I've paid attention to, that businesses need. Most businesses will have maybe two or three. Marc: Yup, and we preach what we practice as well as preach to make on the systems for individual team members to make them position-specific. We have 20-some odd people our office and every role has a position-specific system manual, so our director of accounting has a director of accounting system manual. I'm the president of the organization. I have a president system manual. Why? Because I need to be replaceable. That's one of the benefits of it. That idea that now we become less dependent upon individuals and no individual can hold us hostage to be like, “They’ve got everything in their head. What are we going to do they leave? We can't lose them.” It's a terrible place to be. We don’t have to worry about that. You're going to lose everybody at some point in time. You’ll either lose them for a good reason or a bad reason, but they need to be replaceable. Now if you have a document, if you have documented their process, then they become replaceable. I'm replaceable. If I get hit by the truck today, it’s alright. Hopefully, the company will take a little hit, hopefully they’ll need me a little bit, but we got a system manual, somebody can step in that role, and already says, “Hey, this is what Marc does.” Just do it and you'll be successful. Jason: I like it. All right, so are we on to five? Marc: Number five, the last one, successful companies recruit and develop talent. We just talked about systems and the concept that systems can make your people replaceable to some extent and they should. However, at the end of the day, the team with the best players usually wins. If you can go out there and if you can figure out how to recruit the best talent and then retain them, that is going to do more for your company than almost anything else out there. If I'm going to brag about something about our company, I’ll brag about that. We get the best people around. We've gotten good at that. It makes it so much easier to do business. I don't work harder than my competitors, I'm not smarter than my competitors, I'm not technologically savvy more than my competitors, but what we do better than a lot of our competitors is we get really good people  Now that’s hard, and it’s hard to get really good people and that's why you got to recruit. It doesn't mean you put an ad on Craig's list and read a bunch of resumes of people that can't get jobs. I mean you go out and you find people that are really good at what they do and you got to get them, you have to recruit them. That's hard because successful people aren’t looking for jobs. They are already successful. If you want to be successful, you got to go out there. I’ll tell a story and I'll give that the short version. We had to hire a leasing person not too long ago. Wwe were hiring, meaning we were just reviewing resumes and I thought this is ridiculous. We can't find anybody good. I better do what I tell myself what I should be doing. I got my car one day and I drove around to a lot of the multi-family class A properties in Denver, and I walked in as a prospect. “Hey, I’m Marc, I’m here. I just want to see what you have available. I’m looking for a buddy of mine to rent a property.” And I was usually met with the, “Okay, well here's a piece of paper. Tell your buddy to give us a call.” I say, “Okay” and left. About the fourth place I came to, I came in and met a gal there behind the front and I said, “Hi, I’m Marc. I’m just looking for a place for a buddy of mine.” She said, “Well, me about your buddy. He’s looking for one bedroom. He’s tall dark and handsome, got a cat, probably crazy,” and she's like, “You know what? I know the perfect unit for your buddy. Do you have a couple minutes? I'd love to just have you tour this property.” “Yeah, sure. Okay.” She tours me through and she's pointing out the feature benefits to offer. She was sharp. Her name is Lindsay. I said, “Lindsay, you are really good at your job. She goes, “I love leasing. I just love it. I love helping people. I love real estate. I love what I do.” I said, “That's great. Coincidently, I happen to run a property management company and we're actually looking to hire a director of leasing for residential real estate. Have you thought about doing residential?” because she’s a multifamily. She was like, “Oh no. I could never leave. I'm not a job hopper. I'm really stable. Stability is a big deal for me once I get somewhere I like to stay.” Now I'm drooling. I got to have her. I said, “Well is there anything you don't like about your job Lindsay? Well we work weekends.” I said, “Oh. That’s too bad. We don’t work weekends.” I said, “Tell you what. Why don't you come into my office sometime? Here’s my card. I'd love to just sit down and have a conversation with you. Who knows? Maybe something comes out of it, maybe something don’t, but I’d love to just connect and see if there's something there for the future.” Well long story short, we got her. We got Lindsay. And we had to go after her, we had to get her because she didn't want to leave. She's been a rock star. She's been amazing. The things that she's helped our company to do, but we would not have found her if we were just hiring. We had to go recruit her, we had to go get her. That's what you have to do in every position in your company. You have to go find stuff. I'm not saying go steal people away from your competitors, but you have to find those people out there that are successful and get them. Once you get them, you have to retain them. You have to train them well, you got to pay them well, which is one of the reasons you need to have good profit because good people aren’t cheap, but that's what's going to lead to a long-term success, and unless you take a step back out of the day-to-day stuff at the end of the day. Jason: Yeah. I think it's important to point out what you're saying is not that people are easily replaceable, that you can pop somebody else in. You're not saying that at all, and I think every business owner knows that if you have a seasoned team member that you've invested in, that you've trained, that you've developed, there's nothing as good as that, like having somebody that's been with you for years. I have team members that has been on my team for maybe six years and he's a rock star. I have a competitive advantage over most companies in that our teams are virtual, so I can source the best talent from anywhere pretty much in the world. But yeah, this can be challenging for property managers that are looking for somebody locally, they're looking for somebody nearby, they’re looking for a particular set of skills may be. But ultimately, if you find somebody good, you want to make sure you retain them and that you keep them happy. You can compare it to a wine, you can compare it to anything, but over time they just get better. If they’re good they get better, if they're not good, they get worse. Marc: That's the other side of the coin. That's where just like we talked about earlier with owners. This is what we started this whole conversation with you get a bad owner, what do you do? You need to let them go. Well if you made a hiring mistake, you need to fix that and correct that as well and let that person go, because we're going to make hirings. We are very good at this, but we make a lot of hiring mistakes. We just do, it drives me crazy. But when we do that, we correct it quickly. We're going to move that person on very quickly when we make that mistake. Why? Because the longer they're sitting there, the longer the right person isn't there. You've got to make that correction when you made a hiring mistake. Jason: I think it's amazing when you bring in a new team member, it changes the entire team. It either changes the entire team for the better or for the worse, especially if that team member that you just brought on is taking off of your plate everything. It changes your role as CEO. It changes your role as an entrepreneur, and it affects everything from you. It's pretty significant and it's important to make sure that they’re the right fit. We we're all going to make hiring mistakes. You have to kiss a few frogs and you have to suck a little bit at hiring in order to find the good people. Marc: It's an art, and a skill set to hire someone in no way translates over to property management. It's not like, “I'm a good property manager. I’ll obviously be good at hiring.” No, there's no correlation there. It's completely different. The other unfortunate thing is, the smaller your company is, the more important it is to make that first good hire. Now we've got 20 people. If we make a bad hire, we got one in 20 then who's bad. They can fly under the radar a little bit, they're not going to stick to the company. If we've got two people and then we make a bad hire for number three, so we never got 33% of our workforce that's a low performer. The smaller you are, the more important it is that you take the time to get the right person in. A lot of it is just time. You've got to slow down the hiring process. These ideas of we had a phone conversation and we interviewed him, it's not enough? Are you kidding me? No, you want to do multiple interviews. Anybody can come across as a positive person on that first interview. You want to have multiple interviews with multiple people. You have to dig, dig, dig on that before you make that job offer. Jason: I think where I've made a lot of mistakes personally in the hiring process is I love to delegate and its delegating too quickly. Some people will micromanage, they’ll control too much, and I think some people will do the opposite. They'll bring somebody on and they won't give them all the training, all the tools, all the support they need to really be the rock star they could have been. I've made both of those mistakes to be transparent. I think onboarding is a really important process to make sure you’re meeting with your new hires on a regular basis daily initially, then backing it up to weekly and so on, so that every day like where are you stuck? What do you need? What are you confused about? Often, they're not going to just volunteer all that information to you. But when you're meeting with them daily, they're going to feel supported, they're going to feel like they're invested in the team. I think onboarding is a really big deal. That's where I made mistakes. Marc: We still do one-on-one meetings every single week with every one of our team members. It doesn't matter how long they've been. I'm a huge believer in that, I guess if you wanted number six, there is number six, right? Have one-on-ones every single week, sitting down with them, even if it’s for 5 or 10 minutes, touch base, see what issues are going. Those have been critical for our people in their success. Jason: We have a bonus, number six. Marc: You got a bonus, number six, because you’re so good. What did I leave out? I’m curious. You talk to a lot of PM companies. What do you think are characteristics of success may be that we didn’t hit on? Jason: I wasn’t even thinking this, I was so into yours. I think all these things are really fantastic. I think if I were to add a seventh here that I think is absolutely critical, so imagine you have an orchard, you’re at the top, and this is like a reservoir of hopefully money and or water or whatever you want to call it. There's outflow, you're paying your team, you're spending money, things like this, and investing your team. I think where most companies are flawed is there's no inflow at the top of the orchard. There's nothing above the entrepreneur feeding into them. I think this is why it's critical. I probably spent at least six figures annually just on coaches and mentors. I have three coaches right now affecting different areas of my business. I think it's that inflow that I'm able to get that allows me to consistently have value to offer to the marketplace and to benefit my clients. It comes out in ways that I don't even expect, like a client will ask me a question or be stuck on something mindset-wise or be challenged with something, and I'm like, “I had that issue and I worked that through with my coach,” or, “I have done that in that training that I had done,” or whatever it might be. I think as entrepreneurs, we need to invest in ourselves if we're expecting other people to invest in us. When you go to prospects or clients and you say, “Hey, invest in me, spend money with my company,” and you aren't willing to invest in yourself or in your company in a similar fashion, I think there's a little lack of integrity. Energetically, something's off. If there were a seventh, I would say that's a big one is make sure that you're investing consistently in your own development, not just your team so that you have something to give. I think that's the inflow. You don't want to be a dead sea, there needs to be in flow and there needs to be outflow and that's where there's life. That's where it’s a healthy business. Marc: For the person that would say, “Hey, that sounds great, but I'm working 70 hours a week. I don't have time to invest in me. I'm just give, give, give.” What would you say to them? Jason: I would say they’re ineffective, they’re inefficient because if we're doing, doing, doing we moved out of the mode of being affected. That means most of our time is tactical instead of strategic. Any business that lacks, the business owner lacks strategic time, the business isn’t growing. There's a direct relationship between the amount of strategic time, planning, looking towards the future, coming up with ideas, or getting trained or learning new things, versus their growth. If all their time is tactical, they're dealing with maintenance, fires, leases, managing their team, emails, phone calls, if all their time is tactical, their business can’t grow. It will stay basically where it is. I think what I do with clients is I start them with a time study and we create time. Everybody is spending time doing stuff that's unnecessary, or low dollar an hour work, or silly, and it's pretty simple to start getting clarity on that first and then that helps them see what they need next. My entire foundation, my company really has been built on time studies. That's where I think fundamentally there's a huge difference between how I would coach operationally a business to run versus something like traction or a rocket fuel or these other systems where they’re saying, “Here's the magic org chart and here's the roles that you have to have.” Ultimately, a business should be built around the entrepreneur and what they actually need. The only way to really see that is to know where your time is going. Marc: Good stuff. Jason: That's my two cents. Marc: I like it. Jason: All right, so that's number eight maybe. I don't know. Marc: It’s number eight. Jason: We’d better stop before we add anymore. Marc: We’d better. I know. You’re making me think of too many things. Jason: Marc, it was really awesome hanging out here with you. This is really fun. You're welcome back anytime. Before we go, how can people get in touch with you if they're curious about some stuff that you offer for property managers or they want to learn more about your business or whatever? Marc: The best way to reach me is through our website which is propertymanagementsystem.org and we got a handful things on there, a lot of video resource things. We've got our system manuals, we talked a little bit about that, our actual system manuals, we offer those. You can download samples of those and we got packages on those. We do ancillary business training, some coaching stuff from that aspect. One thing I'm pretty excited about, we're just putting in place, we actually just put in place and I'm happy to share with any of your folks if they're interested, they can drop me an email. We put a business health checkup form where you answer some questions and it spits out a number to let you do that business health checkup. If anybody is interested in that, drop me an email, go on the website, reach out to me from there, will be happy to send it to them. Jason: Cool. All right, Marc, thanks so much for coming on the DoorGrow Show and excited to see what you do in the future. Marc: Jason, thank you, it was fun. Jason: All right ,so if you are property management entrepreneur and you are struggling, you are feeling challenged in growth, be sure to connect with us over Door Grow. I would be honored to help you out. As I said during this call, I'm a firm believer in getting coached, getting coaches, and even if it's not me, somebody like Marc, there's lots of other [...] there that can coach you. Get somebody that can give you some value, help you grow your business, help you achieve your goals, and figure things out. Until next time, everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.  

Are you tired of dorm food and want to avoid the mad rush of finding a place to live off campus before next semester? There’s got to be an easier way for students to rent houses and apartments. It’s a problem that many entrepreneurs have tried to solve.  Today, I am talking to Dave Spooner of Innago. There are few incentives for landlords to digitize their rentals. Landlord demand for a listing platform is low, but there definitely is high demand for better tools to effectively manage and communicate with tenants.  You’ll Learn... [02:50] Tenant Management Software: Making landlords lives easier with online rental payments, tracking payments, basic accounting, lease signing, and tenant screening.  [04:14] Understanding Innago: Flexible, effective, simple, and intuitive software for landlords and property managers.  [06:05] Learning Curve: Competitors’ software requires expertise and certification. [07:32] Who wants to waste time adopting ugly software?  [08:58 #1 Priority: Intuitiveness in software; speed is love language. [10:20] Different portals for different people to be more productive. [12:16] Find balance, and avoid too fast feature creep. [13:14] Possible future integration with Zapier and other third-party tools? [14:22] FAQs: Access permissions and pricing for landlords and tenants. [17:25] Innago offers unique and unmatched level of support. Tweetables Innago software is flexible, effective, simple, and intuitive. You shouldn't need a certification to use property management software. Choose features that matter, and get the biggest bang for your buck.  Big believers in early success begets future success.  Resources Innago Buildium AppFolio Propertyware Rent Manager.  Jason Fried of Basecamp Zapier 1099 Form Freshdesk HubSpot Intercom DGS 62: Property Management Accounting with Taylor Hou DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to another DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the unique challenges, daily variety, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses, and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show.  Today's guest, I'm hanging out here with Dave Spooner of Innago’s. Dave, welcome to the DoorGrow Show. Dave: Hi Jason, thanks so much for having me. Jason: It's great to have you. Dave, we always like to get into our guest first, help us understand who Dave is, and how you kind of got into the space that you're in, and give us a little background. Dave: Yeah, absolutely, I'd be happy to, and thanks for the intro. I graduated from university in 2013. I kind of already had that entrepreneur spirit. Me and a couple other folks got together and we wanted to solve the problem of finding a place to live. We're not the first people to try to solve it, and I'm sure we won't be the last to try to solve it, but we want to make it easier for students to rent houses and apartments off campus. A lot of those markets are still mostly or fully offline, and there's usually a mad rush to try and find a place to live. We recognize those issues and we tried to solve them. As we were going about doing that, we kind of quickly realized that there's not a lot of incentives for landlords to digitize their portfolio. There's not a lot of incentives for landlords in student housing to really do a whole heck of a lot, but helps the students out because they're already going to fill other properties, which is really high occupancy in student housing.  We kind of pivoted, and listened to the market, and realized that there wasn't a huge demand on the landlord side for this listing platform, but there was a lot of demand for better tools to manage tenants, and better tools to manage and communicate with those tenants, and to manage their businesses. That's kind of how I got my foundation. I worked on that listing platform for a few years, learned a lot about the market, and then myself and the CTO of that company started and founded Innago in 2017, and we've been hard at work trying to make lives easier for landlords ever since. Jason: How do you make lives easier for landlords? Dave: Innago is tenant management software, and we call it tenant management software instead of property management software because we really believe that the focus should be on managing tenants, managing those relationships, and managing those personalities. Innago, of course, includes a lot of your classic property management tools like online rental payments, tracking payments, basic accounting, online lease signing, tenant screening, etcetera. But at its heart, it's a communication platform. It's something that makes it easier to interact with and manage those tenants. We believe that having that, having that foundation enables landlords to become better landlords, and property managers become better property managers. Jason: I haven't heard of the software before, is this something that there's a good amount of property managers already using? Is this geared towards landlords, or is this geared towards property management businesses? Help me and the listeners understand Innago here. Dave: Yeah, absolutely. We work with both. We work with landlords as small as one unit, and landlords in the thousands of units. The software is really flexible, it’s effective, but it's also simple and intuitive for somebody who just owns some properties on the side, works a normal nine-to-five, and then manages at nights and on weekends, and for a landlord or property manager that's fully dedicated. We work with both property managers and landlords. We predominantly work in the residential space. We do a lot of student housing landlords, given my background, and my partner's background. We also have some commercial landlords as well. It's a really powerful, and flexible tool, and we work with all sorts of different clients. Jason: Cool, that's exciting. Help people understand, because a lot of the listeners in our audience probably already have a property management software, I mean, probably likely. They're probably already with Buildium, AppFolio, Propertyware, maybe Rent Manager. They're probably with one of these guys. But nobody's ever fully happy with their property management. Dave: Right, of course. Jason: So help those listening, how can they see where you fit into the market in relation to these? Dave: Well, yeah, it's funny you say that. I was actually listening to one of your earlier podcasts with Taylor, and he has the accounting services, the consulting accounting services, and one of the things that he mentioned, they work exclusively with AppFolio users, and kind of what they said is, “We only hire people that have worked at AppFolio, and we will only work with AppFolio at this stage because that's the only thing that we're comfortable with,” because it's this monolithic behemoth that you need expertise to even navigate, right? Jason: Right. Dave: That's definitely true for AppFolio, and it's true for a lot of the other software. There's a huge learning curve there. The first time we hire somebody on Innago, we always sit them down, and we jump on LinkedIn, and we do a little exercise, or research the companies. We're not looking for employees of those companies, or even their company page, we’re actually looking for employees at property management companies that their job title, their role is like the AppFolio expert on T, because you need certification to understand how to use it. That was kind of the initial kernel Innago came out of is, you shouldn't need a certification to use property management software. It should be like picking up Gmail for the first time, or picking up iPhone for the first time. It should be intuitive, and simple, and elegant, and powerful, and flexible to work with a lot of different users in a lot of ways. That's really our difference, in the way that we're approaching the market, putting a lot of time, and thought into the features, and the way that they interact, and the way that the user interacts with those features. We're really proud of the features that we do have. It is an ongoing product, and we're constantly adding more. I think for a lot of property managers, and landlords on the higher end, they're going to find at this stage that it might not be a perfect fit, but for those folks with small to mid size portfolios, it's got a lot of really great stuff that it will work well for them. Jason: Yeah, I'm in total agreement. When it comes to software, the number one challenge tends to be adoption, and ease of use is right there. If something is intuitive, that's the biggest challenge, and hurdle. Dave: Right. Jason: I don't even like them using software that's ugly. Dave: Right. Jason: I just can't bring myself to do it. Maybe it's the designer in me. I don't know, but if I'm going to be living in something, I don't want it to be ugly. That's why I use Apple products because they just… Dave: Right, absolutely. Clean design. Jason: I was around my mom just yesterday, and she had a computer and she was like, “I clicked on Chrome, and it's not loading, and nothing's happening coming up,” and I'm like, “I don't know, that's a PC. I've never had that problem on a Mac.” I just don't have that problem. I just think it's funny. I was like, “I don't know, good luck.” Dave: Yeah absolutely, and a lot of property managers and landlords—many are very tech savvy, there's also many that aren't so tech savvy. It's equally, if not more important, to have something that's not incredibly complex, and incredibly challenging, and opaque, and difficult to enter into. Jason: I'm incredibly tech savvy, and I probably could’ve figured out my mom's computer thing, but it probably would’ve wasted an hour or two of my time and I don't want to waste time figuring out my software at every step of the turn and teaching my team members how to figure out software at every step of the turn. Intuitiveness in software is my number one priority. A lot of people build their whole set up internally in their business, trying to find one piece of software that can do everything, and it's usually really awful at everything in a lot of instances, instead of finding the easiest, and best, and fastest tools. Speed is my love language, I think in business, and I want it to be fast, and want it to be simple, and intuitive. I love that that's kind of a foundational goal with your software, because I don't believe that any of the other property management software, that was their foundational goal, ease of use, and to be intuitive. If it was, they've gotten long far away from it. Dave: Right, yeah, I think you're right. Jason: Yeah, and some are much worse than others, and some of them, they can do everything. They're like the ultimate Swiss army knife. Like I've joked in the past, you're not going to see a handy man carrying around a multi tool to try and do all this hard jobs. Dave: Right. Jason: He's going to have a nice tool box with the best tools. The software’s more intuitive, the software is really easy for people to use, and now you're saying on all parties for like the owners, they want to maybe check reports, is there an owners portal? Dave: There is. Jason: Tenants that want to pay rent, and do their stuff, there's tenant portal. And then for the property manager, they can manage and see their portfolio pretty easily, and know what's available, and vacant. Does this have marketing stuff connected to it yet for listing, and the getting the properties out there in the marketplace? Dave: Yeah, great question. We do not currently have marketing. We plan to roll that out, but as you mentioned, I think one of the problems that's happened with other software packages, the feature creep went too fast. They wanted to get all the features that any landlord could ever ask for out as quickly as possible, and that has not been our approach. We have said let's do this methodically, let's think about ways to integrate this into the way that the rest of the software works. Let's make sure that it's easy to use. We are constantly adding features but we're not necessarily rolling out everything that everybody wants, all at the same time. Market syndication is what we call it. The marketing piece is definitely on its way, but it'll probably be another three or fours months before we have that out there. Jason: Yeah, feature creep is a real issue. I'm a big fan of Jason Fried. He's the CEO of Basecamp. I got to hang out with him on a Skype call for 90 minutes. He cut my staffing costs in half overnight, no doubt. I'm a big fan of him. By saying he cut my staffing costs in half, I should say he doubled our productivity. I didn't just fire everybody. We just became that much more productive because he helped me understand how we had so many interruptions, we had so many things that weren't intuitive, and he changed how we communicate as a company. He has a similar philosophy when he talks about creating their softwares. Basecamp doesn't do a whole lot compared to a lot of other software, it’s pretty limited in its feature set, but it's consistently always at the top of the tools and resources people mention for project management even though I really don't believe Basecamp is a project management tool, I believe it's a communication platform for internal communication, that's how we use it. Everyone's going to ask for features, you have to really be picky in choosing about what are the features that are really going to matter the most and get the biggest bang for your buck and really make a difference without it becoming overly crazy, too cumbersome, unintuitive, and difficult to do. There's always that balance of managing all of the features.  Do you see that you guys will be doing any sort of Zapier integration so that people can create zaps and start connecting and integrating with third party tools? No software has come out with this yet. Dave: Yeah. That’s a really good idea. That is not our road map but I love Zapier. We use it for all sorts of other things, whether it's connecting Wordpress to HubSpot or whatever. It’s a really cool platform. That’s an interesting thought. We hadn’t gotten that far. We might still… Jason: Add it to your list and be the first. I'm waiting to see who is the first property management software the adds Zapier integration because everyone's been asking for it. All these people want it connected to their automation. They want to connect it to their process street processes, or they want to connect it to whatever. I think this would be a really cool thing. Dave: We’ll let you know when we do. Jason: I keep throwing that out usually to property management software that I have on my show and I'm waiting to see who's the first to have Zapier integration. Some people call it [zey-pier], but I think [zey-pier] is weird because it creates [zaps], people, so it’s Zapier. You're not [zey-ping] your business.  What else should people know about this software? What are some of the most common questions that a property management business owner might ask that they're concerned about? Dave: Well, one you hit on was the sub users. Enabling not just the head property manager from accessing the platform, but also giving out who has access to which permissions, who has access to which features. Maybe it's Bob, you want him to handle these categories for these properties, or you want your property owners to log in and be able to handle it themselves. Jason: There's the ability for vendors to leverage and use the system as well? Dave: Not vendors, that would be like a maintenance person that you either have on staff or you have on retainer 1099 or whatever. We do not have a vendor portal at this time. That’s a big one and then the other really common question we get is of course the pricing because of the sector that we’re in, that's at the top of our base mind. Jason: Do you want to tell pricing now? If you're planning on changing, don’t. Tell them to go to your website. Dave: No, I'd be more than happy to jump into pricing. Now it’s pretty unique, we're 100% free to use for landlords. There’s no monthly fee, yearly fee, setup fee, there’s no contract. There's absolutely no cost. Everything that I've mentioned is included. Instead, when a tenant pays rent online, we charge them $2 for an ACH transaction. We charge them $2.75 for a credit or debit card, and that's it. Jason: Totally reasonable. I've been saying for at least over a year to people who have listened to some of my older podcast episodes that free property management software will come and there will be the day that somebody's going to offer it, just like people aren't paying for Gmail, people aren't paying for this sort of stuff and it's making money. It manifested, here it is. Dave: That’s right, we did it. It's 100% free for the landlord. Some landlords see the value in an online payment, they see it so highly to pay actually choose to incur a cost and we allow them to do that if they want to, but for most landlords 90% plus, they're not paying a dime to use Innago. Jason: Very cool, that's really interesting. This would be fantastic then for startup PM's, startup property managers. A question that my team would care about is for the rental listings, the vacant properties, do you have some way of listing the vacant properties in some web based fashion? If they're putting properties into their system, is there some sort of code that we can embed on a website to show their available rentals? Dave: Again, there's nothing on the marketing side just yet. Everything is cotntained within Innago but we certainly see the value in that. Jason: Maybe in the future then. What else should people know about Innago? Anything else you want to throw out there? Dave: Well, we offer particularly in our sector where you do have some of the lower cost platforms out there or some of the simpler platforms out there I suppose. Oftentimes, they don't offer any sort of support beyond a 48-hour email window. With Innago, we’re a little different, we offer full phone support. We also have embedded videos and help section to ease landlords along in the system as they get started and learn the platform. We’re really big believers in early success begets future success. We want to make sure that we’re hand holding for your first month, two months on the platform, and ensuring that you understand how to use it. You can use it effectively and can leverage it to improve your business. Once you do that, then you're off to the races and in really good shape. We offer a unique level of support that many others can't really match. Jason: What platform are you using for support? Dave: We use Freshdesk, and we use HubSpot, and we use Zapier to connect certain things to other things. Jason: Cool. We use intercom for anyone listening, because property managers need some sort of support desk too. Dave, this sounds really neat. How could somebody demo this if they're curious to check out your software and how should they get in touch? Dave: Yeah. They can go to innago.com and they can request access to a free account. We’ll get in touch with them shortly after just to make sure they're a good fit, that we're going to solve some problems for them. We don't want them to waste any time fooling around on a platform that is really not going to work for them. If they request access, we’ll shortly be in touch, and we'll get them into the platform, and they can start playing around with it. Jason: Where does the name Innago come from? I'm a branding guy, I'm always curious. Explain Innago. Dave: We like to think of it as a strong three-syllable word, that's about the extent of it. It's really kind of like Google or Yahoo, there's not a whole lot behind it. Jason: Okay. Maybe we’ll have to make up the story sometime together about it. Dave: Yeah. We’ve thought about it, but we'll take any suggestions. Jason: When did you guys launch this? How new is this software? Dave: We launched the company in January of 2017. We had the product out in the market, kind of like an alpha stage really in March of that year. We've been coming along ever since. As far as a product, we're a little over two years now. Jason: Awesome. How many companies are using this right now? Dave: We have thousands of landlords on the platform and it's growing every day. I would nail that hard number, but it probably changes by the minute. Jason: Yeah. It's probably pretty tempting and pretty easy if it's free. I would imagine you guys will have some success and you guys are making enough money you think to stay healthy just through the transactions? Dave: Yeah. As you know, there's a lot of landlords out there. The majority of them are still self managed or not using any kind of software. There's a lot of tenants that want to pay online. Only about 30% of the market currently pays rent online. That's a huge giant blue ocean that’s ready to be captured. Jason: Yeah. There's a lot of blue ocean that are self managing. If you really want to super attract property management business owners, if you can figure out a way to help connect these self managers so that they can get that professional managers to take over stuff, and partner, maybe create some partners, I think you’ve got a winning affiliate business going on right there that’s good for your company. Dave: Absolutely. Jason: I know there's lots of people listening that would like to get connected to those that are self managing and work with them. Dave, super cool to have you on the show. I wish you lots of success. It would be cool to have you come back maybe in the future after you've come out with even more features if you’ve got something really cool to share. I wish you guys a lot of success with the free software. I've been talking about this for a while. I think it's long overdue. This is really great. Dave: Awesome. Thanks so much, Jason. I really appreciate it, my pleasure being on the show. Jason: Yeah, thanks for coming on. You heard it everybody, free property management software that is intuitive. If they are really intuitive, they're going to have a lot of natural success and growth, and if they're free, they're going to have a lot of growth. If they can make the numbers work which sounds like it would be pretty easy with all the transactions that are going to be occurring, it could be a game changer.  I think other property management software, they're a little bit greedy, and there's too much of that feature creep. I think this will be a competitor. It’d be interesting to watch. Let’s keep our eyes tuned, our eyes peeled and stay tuned to see what they do. Anyway, this is Jason Hull of the DoorGrow Show. If you are wanting to know if your property management website is leaking money because every website is probably leaking money. If you want to see that it’s leaking money because you don't want it to be leaking deals and leads anymore and you want to make more money and cash from your business, test your website out by going to doorgrow.com/quiz and take our DoorGrow Score Quiz that’s going to grade your website on how effective it is at creating conversions. Some of the questions are tricky. There's a lot of people taking the test and then make a bunch of changes to their website, some of them are false positive, so be careful if you're going to do that. Do that quiz and then maybe talk to our team and we can help you improve your website piece because I really don't believe that anybody's better at creating websites that make money than DoorGrow for property managers. Alright, we'll talk to all of you guys soon. Until next time, to our mutual growth.  

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Kim Rose, VP of Customer Success at Buildium. Kim is a successful executive who spent 8 years out of the workforce. How'd she do it? She's walking us through how to render long-term success in the workforce and add customer value in your career.

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Kim Rose, VP of Customer Success at Buildium. Kim is a successful executive who spent 8 years out of the workforce. How’d she do it? She’s walking us through how to render long-term success in the workforce and add customer value in your career.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, most of us have lived with roommates at some point. You probably split expenses and chores, including rent and taking out the trash. Today, I am talking to Tyler Hayes and Joáo Ritter of Roof, which helps roommates resolve problems to live peacefully together and landlords easily collect rent and connect with tenants. You’ll Learn... [01:48] How a college hobby project created a company: A group of friends who love to design and build things, like apps, got together to foster productive communities. [02:21] It’s good to have friends with different skill sets to make a product even better. [03:17] Roof: A company all about people who share and make a place feel like home and landlords who make space available to those tenants. [03:55] Property vs. Tenant Management: Does your landlord treat you like a human being or asset? Problem-solving by landlords improves relationships with their tenants. [04:45] Pairing up to build an app: Eager to work on meaningful, real-world projects and continue to invest in them. [06:00] What is Roof, and what does it do? Landlord: Gets paid, makes sure home operates as expected, and creates positive renting experience for tenants. Roommates: Share reminders, shopping items, expenses, and anything else they want to exchange while living together. [07:28] Target Audience: Landlords handling a small portfolio of college housing; who know all their tenants by name and care about communicating with them. [08:13] Landlords recognize that renting experiences and services they provide for tenants reflect back on them and their reputation. [08:39] Societal trend toward people moving in together for the sake of economic efficiency; people try to live together, share spaces, and live more cheaply. [09:26] Recipe for Disaster: Relying on one to communicate to entire household. [10:00] Roof app revolves around sharing space between people who all share responsibility for that space. [10:54] Common Challenges: Roof helps solve communication issues and responsibilities masked as reminders for people sharing space. [18:09] People love interacting and inspiring one another to take risks, make the move, offer encouragement and support - Roof’s team is part of conversation/common goal. [22:57] Plans to integrate with property management software that lacks Roof’s roommate functionality/communication platform? Too cost prohibitive for small investors. [27:53] Future Feature: How Roof decides which features to focus on or throw away. Tweetables Does your landlord treat you like a human being or asset? Roof revolves around sharing space between people who share responsibility for that space. There's always going to be bugs, tweaks, changes—that's just the nature of software. Resources Roof ($20 of transaction fees for free, use code: 3875 DoorGrow) Roof on Twitter Roof on Instagram Roof on Facebook Contact Roof AppFolio Buildium Propertyware Rent Manager Rentec Direct Property Meld Happy Inspector Latchel Myers & Briggs Personality Types Slack BiggerPockets PayLease DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think, you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. Today, I’ve got two guests hanging out here with me. My guests are—see if I got the name right—Tyler Hayes and Joáo Ritter. How did I do? They are here from the company Roof, and one of you is the CEO. That’s you, Joáo, right? Joáo: That’s me, yup. Jason: You’re both software engineers. How did you guys get into this? How did you decide, “Hey, property management might be a space that we might want to connect with in some way, shape, or form.” Then let’s lead in how Roof came to be and what it is? Joáo: Sure. So, we started the company in college actually as a hobby project. I wanted to know how to build an app. I lived with a ton of roommates at the time, and we had a few things that we routinely split amongst ourselves: a few reminders of shopping, other expenses, rent, payments. I started to learn how to build an app by trying to automate some of these things. Part of my brain is naturally inclined to inputting names, and brands and business-fy things. Over time, we took this concept, I was working [...], and several friends wanted to put it on the App store, so we did. We started talking to my good friends who had different skill sets from myself, and we worked together to make the product even better. A couple of years then, super as a hobby project still, we had this app for roommates to solve roommate problems or roommate exchanges. We had a landlord, I remember at the time, Nathan, he really gave a damn about his tenants, about us. He's very much in tune with making sure we had a cozy place to live, the problems got solved, that he addressed us as human beings and not as assets, but his way of collecting rent was still pretty archaic, really easy to get logistics mixed up, and not communicate the way in which was authentic to him. We came to him. We were like, “Hey, look. We have this app for roommates that roommates are enjoying.” I think we really want to make this company all about home, about the people who share a home and make a place feel like home and operate well. That actually involves knowing that we're living in the house, but also the landlord to make the space available to tents. Funnily enough, we actually didn't come into the project with the intent of providing value directly to landlords. Our value prop was actually for roommates. I think that actually makes us a really interesting and appealing platform for landlords because their customers are roommates. By addressing the problem less, as a property management problem and more, as a tenant management problem, we really get to the core of the problem solving that you have to do as a landlord: from late payments to reminders to making sure service requests are addressed on time and that the communication is proper between everyone involved; that everyone who shares a home has the ability to stay in tune with the conversation with the landlord as the head of the [...] oftentimes and maybe [...]. That all led us to entertaining the idea of expanding to landlords. Then going all in, “Hey, look, if I'm going to build the platform of the future to make home exchange possible, we have to, not only solve roommate dynamics but also the landlord-tenant relationship.” Jason: Tyler, are you one of his roommates, then? Tyler: No. We never lived together. Although, we did both have roommates and we were both in college. Jason: Yeah. How did the two of you kind of pair up in the business here? Tyler: Well, at that time, I was in design school. We were in two different universities, pretty close to each other. At some point, we talked about this idea of building this app. Joao was really interested in figuring out how to build an app, [...] gets to practice in doing that is in trial-by-error, I guess. For me at the time, it was a similar sentiment because being in design school, I was really eager to work on something, some kind of real-world projects, work on something that's going to be meaningful, that I could follow, and continue to invest in. At the time, part of the motivation for starting the project was just like, “Hey, let's just make something.” We’re interested in learning some things and doing some things like, "Let's just make something." That was kind of it at first. Jason: Yeah, cool. Let’s let the audience know what is Roof. If you can give the back story. What the heck is it? What does it do? Joáo: [...] is an app for tenant management. It lets you collect rent payments and manage maintenance requests from your tenants, and communicate with your tenants. It's all about being on the same page with your tenants, you're getting paid and making sure your home operates as you expect, making sure your tenants have a great renting experience. It solves the core functionality the landlord needs when it comes to renting their home and growing their portfolio from there. For roommates, it helps you share your reminders, shopping items, expenses, and anything you may want to exchange throughout your living together. Jason: A lot of people listening, they might have AppFolio, or Buildium, or Propertyware, or Rent Manager or Rentec Direct, or one of this property management sort of back-office accounting solutions and some that might help with the maintenance request stuff. Some of them are okay, some of them a lot of our clients or people listening will use third party tools like Property Meld or Latchel. I'm really interested, and I haven't heard of anything for roommates, so that's pretty unique that you have something that helps facilitate roommates. Do you find that a lot of your target audience are running college housing or dealing with college housing situations? Tyler: Yeah, that's a really big segment of the people that we talk to, but it's not entirely. Generally, it's landlords with a bit of a smaller portfolio. The kind of people who probably know all the tenants by name, who would otherwise maybe be texting their tenants, having that kind of relationship with them. Basically, landlords who care about communication and especially landlords who care about actually just doing things that their tenants are going to appreciate. Because ultimately, for a lot of landlords, they recognize that the services that they can provide, the renting experience that they can provide for their tenants, is ultimately going to be reflected as their brand as a property manager, as a landlord. For landlords who want to invest in that, those are typically the ones that we see most invested in Roof. Joáo: Yeah, totally but let me double down on what you said. I think there's a lot to be said about the societal trend towards people moving in together, not for the sake of a family necessarily, but for the sake of economic efficiency. People are moving into urban areas, people are moving into college towns for school, and whatnot. Instead of living on the outskirts and pay cheaper, people try to live together and share spaces and live more cheaply. I bet a lot of landlords listening in here have rentals that they rent—not to single families—even though they may be single-family homes but actually to people who share a space as roommates, who may otherwise don't really have a relationship with one another apart from being roommates who may have found each other on craigslist or some service. What you'd probably run into as a landlord in those circumstances is you have to keep up a relationship with them. Normally, you have one head of the house, someone on the lease, or someone that you have their email, that you go to directly and expect them to convey the message to the rest of the house. That’s kind of a recipe for disaster when you talk about communication when you're trying to rely on one person to communicate an idea or a circumstance to a whole household. The core of our app revolves around sharing space and sharing space between people who all share the responsibility of the space. If you're a landlord who finds himself in this puzzle of trying to manage roommates, it makes it a lot easier to reach out in one spot, allow roommates to split payments as they will as long as you get the full rent ship at the month and then give them, as Tyler had said, a great experience meanwhile. There's a lot to be said about that. I think we have a lot to grow to accommodate larger portfolios which we fully intend to do. But for the time being, it's 100% focused on landlords who see the opportunity in creating a brand for themselves and experience for their tenants and solving problems through effective communication. Jason: What are some of the challenges that people sharing space will run into so that we can paint a picture of how this app solves these problems? What are some of the problems? Tyler: We could probably tape a whole podcast about that question. Jason: Cool. Let's paint a picture here. Tyler: At the core of it all is communication. The problem basically is, how can you communicate with each other things that each other needs to be responsible for, things that need to be done. Some of that can be abstracted into things like, if you're living together there's going to be expenses that are shared, there's going to be responsibilities that are shared, and purchases that are shared, items in their household that you might want to share responsibility for keeping in stock. Those things certainly tend to change a lot from household to household depending on just like what your house is like. In designing Roof, I think we tried to create some tools that were specific enough to target the main needs of people but still general enough to be applicable to as many different types of households as possible. The things that we've targeted are: one, just splitting expenses, so being able to keep track of who's paying for shared things whether it's groceries or split bills like monthly expenses like utilities or… Joao: Rent. Tyler: ...rent, yeah. Joao: That's kind of a holy grail of sharing space. Tyler: Right, the holy grail. We included a shopping list feature to keep things in stock that might be shared. Things like trash bags and groceries. In our household, we use it to track things like olive oil, things that we share for cooking, kitchen supplies, that kind of thing. Also, there is the responsibility aspect that I mentioned. Being able to sort of offer some kind of recognition for saying like, "Oh, Joao, took out the trash. Joao cleaned the dishes. Joao swept the hallway." Things like that, responsibilities that sort of affect everybody, that help everybody, that you want to offer some ability to track, but without getting too into the weeds of being like passive-aggressive like, "Come on. Do this." Joáo: Yeah, its responsibility kind of masked as reminders. So, “You have to take out the trash on Sundays.” You program your Roof app to schedule it between your roommates. So, one Sunday it'll be using, "Jason take out the trash." Then you know it’s your turn then next week time, “Tyler, take out the trash.” You can kind of all share the responsibility. Everyone has a roommate story. I think the roommate story, the core of them, stems from an imbalance of sharing. Maybe one person's accustomed to doing everything and has that sense of responsibility and autonomy but they feel as though people around them aren't keeping up or you're on the opposite end where you feel as there’s someone in your house just does everything without you having to say anything, and without you having the opportunity to be involved. All those are communication issues which I think is the backbone but still abstract. In order to make those tangible things like expenses, shopping, and reminders really kind of lay the foundation of the interactions. Rent payment is the thing you sign on the lease on together to be able to share, right, and we really see the opportunity there because no matter how many expenses you share throughout the month, usually they add up to less than your [...] in the month. You can imagine creating a more comfortable splitting environment where at the end of the month, I may buy a handful of groceries, and a new piece of furniture, but when it comes time to pay rents that just means I'll pay a little bit less and Tyler will pay a little bit more. You as landlord [...] full amount, we're even on our end, and all is well. That's kind of our way of operating. Jason: It's interesting because really, there are so many different personality types out there. I don't know if you've ever played around Myers Briggs, but in Myers Briggs, for example, you've got the ISFJ and the ESFJ personality types that are very much like givers, and they're always serving people, doing stuff for other people, but they don't want to ask. They’re just arguing, and they're expecting people to reciprocate. Joao: Totally. Jason: They're always let down because nobody gives as much as them. But their mindset is, "If I do this, people should just do it back, they should reciprocate." A lot of other personality types, they're focused on other things, they’re not focused on reality, they're focused on ideas or code or whatever you guys might have been focused on. There's this power play, and passive aggressiveness comes out, and challenges come out. It can get ugly. It's simply because somebody didn't communicate with somebody else. I can see how that would help. It probably could be used in families, let's be honest. Joáo: It's not dissimilar from Slack for workplaces. When you have a team that needs to collaborate or to get something done, you're going to have different personality types. Different people are more inclined to step in, and different people are more inclined to observe and take it in and then respond over time. But if you have the right organization of how you interact with one another, you have access to a whole group, you have access to individuals, you have access to services that come through and talk to you via this medium, you're able to actually keep clarity over the whole situation and manage those personalities. Roof, as a tool, is particularly useful for particular groups of people but it's really hard, as you mentioned, to solve the problem holistically. I think it's not terribly efficient to try to solve roommate ship. There exist roommates who already enjoy each other's company, and they aren't in this tug and pull battle. They just really could use a tool to basically make concrete their group and their place of interaction, and then through that means, you keep organized, but you're not necessarily leaning on the app to build your relationships. I don't know we're going to build any relationship that doesn't already exist, but we do have to step in and be a tool for people who are already managing themselves via a spreadsheet or via some other less efficient mechanism right. Jason: Yeah, cool. Yeah, I like it. What else should people listening, know about Roof? Joáo: I'm really proud of our team. I think that's why I love working on the project is I think we've managed to surround ourselves with incredible people. I think people who use Roof see that in the form of how they interact with us, and how we enjoy interacting with them, how we make ourselves available. Our whole team, from me all the way to people working on sales, it's a very small team. I don't state people as there’s just a bunch of us, a handful of us with pretty particular responsibilities. You have access to engineering, all the way to design, all the way to decision making, and we want your input. That's how we kind of operate internally with [...] one another. We consider the landlords who use us as investors. They're investing in us by putting their portfolio onto Roof, by extracting value that we have to offer, and by wanting our company as a means to build their own company, that's something I really care about. It sits tangent to the app itself, but I think it's actually a massive part of what you're getting with Roof is the team behind the project. Tyler: I actually just want to second that because I think it's something that, in my opinion, probably sets apart the company that we're building compared to some similar service in the same industry. I tend to be the member of our team who talks to the people who are using Roof the most. If you got an email from Roof, it's probably from me. It's something that we benefit from tremendously, getting to talk straight to people who are using Roof and not just from a feedback perspective like, "Hey, how is this feature working for you? What's something that you have in mind that could be working better?" It feels good to be able to hear the opinions of people have about how the app is working for them and any kind of conversation, really. What I found is that the types of landlords I think who want to invest in Roof tend to be the types of landlords who are very much interested in being a part and building something better than what already exists in the market right now. By nature of that, we're the type of people who are really eager to sort of get involved in the way that we want people to be involved which is, "Hey, like if you have an idea for something that we should be doing, tell us and reach out to us." We maintain a Slack channel with some of the more involved users that we're always trying to invite more people to. We maintain pretty regular e-mail communication with quite a few of our people who are using Roof. I think that benefits us as well as the people who use Roof a lot. Joáo: Jason, I know you know for sure how interconnected a lot of property management org, and financial freedom hustlers are. People love interacting and inspiring one another to take risks, to make the move, to encourage and to have the support, and I think we're an extension of that. We don't sit side by side to the landlords knowing the real estate investor is actually going out and paying attention to the market and purchases, etc., where we feel like we're very much part of that conversation. If you're expanding your portfolio, loop us in. We pay attention to so many blogs, from BiggerPockets to Instagram feeds of individuals who are, not only doing a hell of good work but also inspiring other people around them, in the same boat, maybe a little bit earlier on their careers to keep going. It's very similar, as a small business owner to work with small business owners towards this common goal. Jason: Very cool. Alright, I have feature requests, then, for you guys. I’m just kidding. Maybe these are on your road map, I don't know, but this is how my brain works. I'm going down all these channels. One huge opportunity, it sounds like for guys, is in the property management space. All these property management software tools, they lack this roommate functionality that you've created, this communication platform. Do you see the day that maybe you could somehow connect, or integrate with maybe Rent Manager, it could become sort of a strap on to AppFolio or Buildium or something like this to where if they have some college housing, they could set up the college housing people on this app and they could at least do the accounting. Because some property managers are using a third party tool just to collect rent payment like PayLease or something like that even though they have their own system. I think there might be a potential here for those that are doing college housing right now to use something like this, and they might have hundreds of doors. Joáo: Sure, yeah. Absolutely. I think the question is kind of multifold. I think there are several avenues, an opportunity that could be pursued there. The idea that Roof is a side-by-side tool to PayLease or AppFolio is interesting. You can set up your entire portfolio on Roof, and choose to collect payments directly on Roof or just mark settlements. If you want to actually put in your accounting on Roof, we don't yet have a full suite of graphs, charts, and really making your progressions known to you but not yet—that's another avenue. We could just go on accounting side-by-side through our communication core and really offer the value of other platforms. Or if you want to use the Roof side-by-side to it, you can just use Roof as a ledger, but actually, collect your payments through another software and just do all your communication on Roof. In which case, it's interesting to entertain the idea of proper integration between the two because I think in essence, we are competing and we are going after a different market. I think a lot of those tools, AppFolio in particular, is loaded with features that a lot of smaller rental operators don't need and it just overcomplicates the experience instead of ensuring it has a richer accounting feature. But oftentimes, too rich. It just gets in the way of the one report that we need, or the one piece of information that you actually come to over and over again. Jason: It’s too cost prohibitive for the smaller investor. Joáo: Too cost prohibitive. Absolutely. I'm unsure if a priority of ours would be to integrate. I think we would rather compete, to be honest, just because I think we see our market and our users as really valuing Roof as a strong competitor to those. I think it's a massive market. As you said, property management investors, property investors, come in all types, they all have different motivations. But I think the core of what you're getting at is, how can we extract the juicy features from our competitors and make them a part of the Roof in the most elegant way possible, and that's something that we're incredibly in tune with, "How our competitors' moving? What people are using?" Also, I don't think we're competitor-driven, I think we're customer-driven 100%. I'd rather spend my time talking to people who are using our app and appreciating the core of the features. We want to stay [...] with what we believe to be true about problem-solving and then say, "Yes, right. Cool. What kind of financial reports do you need? What kind of integration [...] do you need?" Then working those into the app in an elegant way. I think its value is to actually just build a feature and just throw it in another tab and just grow your tabs of different things you offer. Everything has to play with one another really well so that you actually create an experience that anyone can come into. From a person with one house and a couple of tenants to someone with 50 homes and hundreds of tenants and make the most of the platform. I'm more interested in that side of things—the post-integration bit. Jason: Right. Well, if you're open, in the future, I think there's a whole target audience that could use this that have lots of college housing clients. Rent Manager has an open API, Buildium has been doing integrations with Property Meld and Happy Inspector and others, and so I think there's a possibility there. AppFolio doesn't generally play nice with others. Usually, some people are finding workarounds, but they're still using third-party tools to do a lot of things. This is how my brain works are is, I would imagine one of the biggest challenges that roommates have is they lose a roommate. I don't know if this is some sort of future sort of idea, but I imagine this comes up a lot. They lose a roommate, they got to figure out how to pay rent, they need to find a roommate, and they want to make sure that they get the right fit. I don't know if this is something that you guys plan to tackle or this is a problem that Roof helps with it at all. Joáo: Yeah. I'll let Tyler explain, but I just want to say that, we sit and throw around ideas every single night. The most frustrating piece is just sitting on just like ledgers of great ideas. We're like, "We'll get to those. We have to do this thing that's in our face right now." Jason: How do you decide what comes first? How do you make the decision? Is it the noisiest customers or your biggest customers? As a software company, how do you decide which features to focus on, and which ones to throw away? Joao: It's a great question. It's the hardest part of the job, right, of making sure everyone's on the same page and has a shared belief of the direction we're going in. Oftentimes, I find that short-term goals can make the most sense when everyone sees with the opportunity that exists one, two, three years on the line. They still have to sit down and execute for three months at a time in particular feature set or particular go-to-market strategy or something like that, keeping these chunks of time open for discussion. Then, once everyone feels good that the product, that the users, marketing and the sales align, to basically, ink it all, sit down, get to work, knock it out and then go through your evaluation phase and then repeat the process. It seems like the most productive way to go about it. Obviously, I think as your cash flow increases, you're able to grow your company then you can kind of bring more heads, more brains out of the team and start to see if you can scale more horizontally. For the time being, I personally love working on a small team where we each kind of know each other intimately, know how we work and share [...]. It makes the decision making a little scarier because you have to pick a couple of things and do them, but you do them so well, I think. Whatever you choose to spend your time on, you just got to do the hell out of it and really believe that is the right way to go and then be truthful with yourself along the way if you need a correction. Tyler: Speaking to the scope of how user feedback, and what some of our customers are interested in, speaking of how that fits into the picture of what do we build next, there's certainly not any kind of rule for that. In fact, a lot of times, the two are sort of in odds with each other; the sort of things people would like to see us build versus the things we decide to build. Those are really tough decisions to make, especially when you have to make a decision and then respond to somebody in the email who's saying, "I love your app. I can't wait for you to build this." Then I got to come in and say, "Well, actually, it's going to be a couple of months before we can do that." A great example of that actually is right now, for the last couple of months, Joao and I have been invested in working on the new iOS and Android apps that we'll be shipping soon. Add the expense of otherwise, started addressing some urgent feature there's a couple of bugs that we'd love to be fixing in the current apps. Every single time something is brought to our attention where it's like, "Hey, this would be really helpful to have right now." We start to balance and say, "Okay. Well, do we take a couple of days away from this other project we're working on to do this thing that will help now? Or do we just buckle down and continue to invest time in something that's going to ultimately be an investment, and how well we'll be able to scale in the future?" The big reason that we're rebuilding the apps in the first place, from a tech perspective, the new stack that we'll be using to maintain those new apps will be a lot easier to maintain and so, adding a feature six months from now will take a lot of less effort than it would have taken now or a couple of months ago just because of how we're rebuilding things. The short answer is that it's really tough. Sometimes, one of the most frustrating things to deal with is having to tell people, "While you're suggesting is great, and I wish I can give you that. We've got to make a tough decision and focus on something else right now. Jason: I think every entrepreneur listening gets that. We all have situations in which we have our vision as an entrepreneur or as a business owner of what we want to do and accomplish, and then we have what our target audience is really screaming and begging for that we want to do. Every property manager probably has some sort of process they want to change or something they want to improve or something they're dealing with. I think that's the thing to realize is that the software that you're developing or the business that you're building, if you're a property manager that's listing, anything, it's always a living, breathing thing, it's never done. Just like, as human beings, we're never done. We're all still in the oven, so to speak. There's always going to be bugs, there's always going to be tweaks, there's always going to be changes—that's just the nature of software. You release new features, there's going to be little things, little nuances, and little things to change. Over time, you build something that just gets better and sharper. Then sometimes you have to completely rebuild something. You're like, "Okay. It'll be better to start over and do this really well now that we've learned so much than to keep building on a scaffolding that was not as strong." That's just how it works. I think our own main program, our seed program, we're on our third total revamp that we've done. I already have a whole list of old stuff I want to change, and add, and do—that's just how my brain works. Joáo: I think what's really important though is the fact that you've learned over time. It's not about always questioning, "Are you doing the right thing?" To me, it's all about knowing you are doing the right thing. If we make a choice to build something, "Let's build it. Let's ship it." There's going to be corners that need tying up in a good sense but, "Let's ship it. Let's learn from it. Let's move forward. Let's put weight on it and then let's see how far it can go until it stretches. Let's let it stretch." Let us not be afraid to let it stretch and feel comfortable like, "Hey, the work we did can hold that weight." But at the same time, we have to be evaluating, "Alright. Cool." If we then want to add more people or scale our transactions a hundredfold, "Will the stretch break?" At that point, you have to make a decision, "Yes. Let's go and do the remodel." I think the analogy for a lot of real estate investors is the remodel where maybe you have a house and you have a really janky kitchen. The whole house is beautiful, but something about the kitchen is off. People living in the house, they know that they would rather have a nicer kitchen that's going to take a long time. Meanwhile, you have a sink in the bathroom that's a little loose, and you have just a tweak off in the garden or something. The tenant will be like, "I get it. Yeah, you need to fix the kitchen. Spend time there. I'll deal with the sink and the little [...]." Jason: Meanwhile, I need a kitchen. Joáo: Yeah. A big thing for us is our Android app currently is running our web app on mobile, so it works. You can do everything you need, but the experience, the actual motion, the feel of it doesn't compare to what we built nearly iOS. We have a ton of people on Android who’s like, "Oh, I could use a new Roof experience in Android." Meanwhile, a lot of people already in iOS or on the web are kind of hoping at more sophisticated problems. But we’re like, “Look, by building a native Android app, we can also be able to offer this experience to a ton more people." Actually, [...] of doing that, we're now able to build for iPad, for desktop, new tablets, etc. It's exciting. Jason: Yeah, cool. I think it's exciting to hear what you guys are doing. I think you've done something really unique in the roommate space. It sounds like to kind of solve some problems. You've probably, solved a lot of passive-aggressive issues, and some [...] properties and created a lot more peace out there. It really sounds like this is software that creates a peaceful environment for all parties involved, including the landlords. To wrap this up, how can people find out more about Roof, and how can we get in touch? Joáo: Our website is roof.io. That provides an overview of the features that we offer, the different sides of it, you can read about how roommates use Roof, how landlords can use Roof. There's this little button that says 'Extra' which you click on, and we try to provide a lot of documentation to our accompany, it directs to the website also. You can go in there and find some more detailed information like FAQ and some guides for how to get started as a roommate or as a landlord or a renter. There's a lot of information on there. We also use Twitter to put out some updates as well as Instagram. We try to stay pretty up-to-date with that. There's also our Facebook page. We'll put some links to those wherever Jason thinks the best place to put some links. Reach out to us at team@roof.io—email address. Get directly in touch with us. We'll schedule a phone call with you, see what's up, see what's on your mind, see if Roof is a right fit for you. We're open to having a pretty open discussion. We've doubled a lot of users at this point, so we know kind of the ones that's really just a [...] value of what we offer them and those who are still in the edge of being the perfect fit for them. We'd be happy to kind of walk you through and making the right choice for you. Lastly, it cost $2 a transaction to use Roof. You can assume that yourself as a landlord or you can pass it on to your tenants, in which in case, it'd be free for you. If you do choose to assume, whenever your tenants come to pay, we give a little shout out for you in the app saying, "Your landlord is covering it for you. They're dope." But if you want $20 of transaction fees for free, use a code 3875 DoorGrow, it's a proprietary code just for the show, just for the audience here. You can get started, put some tenants there, try it out for a lease, you won't pay or tenants won't pay for about a year of that and see if it's right for you. Jason: The code one more time. Joáo: Code is 3875 DoorGrow. Jason: Okay, thanks for that. Those listening, property managers, that [...] college housing or deal with shared housing situations, I’d be be curious to get their feedback and see how it works for them. That’d be pretty cool. I appreciate you guys coming on the show. Have you guys thought of starting a shared housing property owners’ community? Like a Facebook group or something. It sounds like you’ve got this going in your Slack channel. Tyler: Speaking of Slack Channel, that would be another way to get in touch with us. Just scroll down to the bottom of the landlord’s page on the website, you can request to join there. Creating a community like that, it's not something that I think we have plans for. Jason: It's cool when you get them together, man. We’ve got our DoorGrow Club Facebook group, and you get these people together, and they start sharing ideas, helping each other, and the momentum is just awesome. I haven't heard of anything in the shared housing sort of space, this idea of having a property that is shared and this type of owners. College housing or whatever it might be, a cool little community out there, I guess. Anyway, check these guys out. Get into their Slack channel. Go to roof.io. I appreciate you guys coming on the show and excited to see what you guys do over the next few years here. Joáo: Thanks, Jason. Thank you for having us. It was a lot of fun. Jason: Alright. For those of you who are watching, make sure you get into our Facebook group, our community, which is doorgrowclub.com. You can get to that, it will redirect. If you are watching this on YouTube, make sure you like and subscribe so that you get these videos. We release the videos on YouTube before we release them to iTunes. If you're listening in iTunes, make sure you go to our YouTube channel, it's youtube.com/doorgrow, and click the red subscribe button there. Click the subscribe button and get subscribe and start getting notifications usually on your browser when we release or drop new videos. You can get this information and see some of these people instead of just listening. Until next time everybody. To our mutual growth. I hope you have a fantastic day and week. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Do you own single-family properties, but rent them out? Are you tired of dealing with tenants? Incompetent contractors? Why do-it-yourself (DIY)? Why waste your time? About 70% of owners self-manage their properties. You can’t and shouldn’t do it all. Help is available. Today, I am talking to Dana Dunford of Hemlane, an all-in-one rental property management solution. After being encouraged by family and friends, Dana decided to do real estate investing on the side while working at Apple. She tried self-managing her properties, only to discover how difficult that can be - even tougher than calf dressing! You’ll Learn... [02:50] Moving from self-management to hybrid solution involving experts in real estate/property management to streamline and mitigate risks. [04:15] Property Management and Technology: Taking a different approach to build communities of agents, owners, and managers to work together. [07:50] Potential for property management industry: Buying real estate is easy; property management is much more difficult, but determines the success of your investment. [10:27] Property managers have to do everything and need to be Jack-or-Jill of all trades (maintenance, lawyer, therapist, sales, marketing, etc.). [10:56] Dana’s driven toward challenge; something new happens every day in property management and risk needs to be mitigated. [11:27] Subject matter experts should provide best practice, place, and process; there’s only so much technology and robots can do. [13:05] Entrepreneurs/Gluttons for Punishment: Highly adaptable and enjoy challenges. [14:56] Turnkey: When something goes wrong, property manager gets blamed. [15:47] Hemlane: Flexible and transparent property management platform that helps property managers solve problems. [19:55] Hemlane’s Ideal Prospect: Under 200 units and wants to grow portfolio/clientele. [22:36] Hemlane offers automation of administrative tasks and competitive advantage by building relationships and services over time. [27:10] Real estate investors find out about Hemlane on social media and blogs. [31:57] Are you trained and qualified, or just pretending to be a property manager? [35:15] FAQs from Property Managers: How can I communicate with owners? Will Hemlane take my clients? How do I know if I need help? [41:07] People aren’t buying property management; but safety, certainty, and trust. [48:40] What is a hemlane? House Differentiation: Hem is house in Swedish; lane is a path that divides you from others. Tweetables Property management is challenging; something new happens every day. Whether you love or hate them, industry isn’t ready for robots to show properties. Turnkey is a terrible word; if something goes wrong, the property manager is blamed. People aren’t buying property management. They want safety, certainty, and trust. Resources Hemlane Dana Dunford’s Email Dana Dunford on LinkedIn Hemlane on Software Advice Hemlane on Capterra Hemlane on GetApp Apple Nest The Iceberg Report Industrial Calf Dressing - California Rodeo Salinas Tim Ferriss Buildium AppFolio Zillow Russell Brunson’s Value Ladder DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. Today's guest, I'm hanging out here with Dana Dunford of Hemlane. Dana, welcome to the show. Dana: Great. Thanks so much, Jason, for having me. Jason: I'm really excited to have you here. You have such a bright personality. I was really, I guess, curious with people. I was really biting my tongue, resisting just getting into figuring you out, and asking you questions. It was always a challenge for me. Now, I can do it. Let's get into this. Dana, why don't you share with everybody a little bit of background on you and who you are. Then, let's transition into getting into how Hemlane came to be. Dana: My background, by accident, I actually ended up at Silicon Valley. I'm just through studying here for university. My background was actually always been on technology and I've always been fascinated with that. I actually got into real estate and looking at real estate investing coming through two different people. One was my brother-in-law, who was investing in real estate and saying, "Dana, you need to get into investing as well. Do that on the side." I was working at Apple at that time doing new product introductions. Then, the second was actually who my co-founder is today, Frank, who has rental properties across the US. I haven't been on the property manager's side until we started self-managing. We ended up self-managing our properties remotely and trying to figure out how to make that work. Essentially, starting with self-management and then actually moved to a more hybrid model that worked out really well, where we were working with local managers and local real estate agents to help us with the management while we were still controlling the financials, the rent, and still be involved in it. So, a little bit of a hybrid solution which today I don't see actually in the market. It's either full service or do-it-yourself. I think do-it-yourself is really a horrible one to take because then every single person, all 43 million renter households, with 20 million people are looking for ways to essentially streamline and mitigate risks and all of that. Having property managers and experts in the industry really makes a ton of sense. That's what brought me to a more of a hybrid model. I left Apple then and went to business school at Harvard. After that, came back to Silicon Valley, was working at a company called Nest which is home technology, got me more excited about real estate technology. They were actually acquired by Google and I realized I want to actually start my own thing. Property management is one of those incredible industries where technology to date, there's a lot of players out there, a ton in the property management software space—quite frankly too many of them—but taking that model and saying how do we do it in a different approach, think about it differently, and really build communities of managers, communities of agents, communities of owners to work together because 70% of the owners, as you know, Jason—I think actually you were the first person I learned that from—self-manage, so how do you connect those 70% to get some sort of help? Right at the beginning, they're going to say, "I don't need help," but sure enough they call and they're like, "I had a nightmare of a tenant. I hate this. They're selling my portfolio," or, "I need some help." Really helping them and being there at the right time—a lot of times that right time for them—is getting involved with them even when they're self-managing. Jason: Yeah. I got the 70% stat from the Iceberg report which says, "On a single family residential, about 30% are professionally managed." I need to point out in your bio because this is the only bio I've ever seen. It says that you're an avid equestrian, paraglider, and skier. She is the first woman to win a calf-dressing championship belt buckle at the California rodeo. Are you kind of a cowgirl, then? Dana: Yeah, I did. I grew up in a farm in Salinas, California. We had horses, some cows and stuff in the backyard that really did teach me a lot of hard work. I did enter and I was the only woman. I don't why women don't enter these events. Salinas has the largest rodeo, the largest across the entire nation, largest prize pool of money, [...] and stuff they give you. I entered something called calf dressing. Actually, the huge advantage being a woman because you have to dress a cow in these Wrangler jeans. What's fantastic about it is you actually have to be able to get under the cow so you have to be small. These big burly farmer guys trying to do it and I came in with a team of two other guys. It's three people on a team and then me. I think there's a huge advantage to being small and just being able to dress it really quickly while they're holding down the cow. Anyway, we got a huge massive belt buckle, the same one that the pro bull riders win at the rodeo, which is pretty cool. Jason: This is so unrelated. This just fascinates me. You're actually putting pants on a calf, that's what's this is? Dana: Yes, that's the event. It has the same credibility as the pro bull riders that win the top belt buckle. You get the same belt buckle. It's like the best hack to getting a professional rodeo belt buckle. Jason: This is funny but it reminds me of listening to some of Tim Ferriss' stories where he just figured out how he could win some sort of a competition that was just random so that he could be a world champion. Very cool. You mentioned the property management industry and something about it got you excited which either says you're crazy or you see something maybe similar to me. What potential do you see the industry is having? In the US, I feel like it's underperforming in its potential. People just don't see it, awareness is low, perception is low. What's your perception of what the potential is for the property management industry as a whole? Dana: I think it's two things. It falls into two buckets of the potential. The first one really has to do with real estate investing in general. This happened to me when I was at Apple. Most people when you ask them, "How did you get into real estate investing?" it's usually, "Oh, someone told me. I have friend who is doing it and doing it successfully." All of these companies out there where they have these employees who have great savings and could be allocating money into real estate, they're literally going into stocks, bonds, and other things. It's sad. The biggest thing with property management was that's a biggest pain point. When I look at buying properties here in San Francisco, it didn't make sense. The numbers just didn't make sense for investment at that time. Maybe things changed. Some people want the appreciation gain that they'll invest in San Francisco, but it's really investing out of state. That’s the biggest thing is property management. I quite frankly think buying the property is the easy part of it. You put the numbers on spreadsheets, you're not emotional, you go and you purchase a property. There's not too much rocket science to that part. Where it really comes down to the success of your investment is in the property management. It's the most difficult part to be in and it's the one that you're stuck with for 20-25 years. Buying the property, it takes you maybe a year, depending on how long you're looking. Some people buy within their first month. The property management in actually being able to make sure you have that stable, steady, cash flow, is the most difficult part of it. There's no focus on it, I think, because it's the most difficult that people push it off. One of my biggest frustrations with property management is people thinking like, "Oh, maintenance is going to be so easy." That kind of stuff is really difficult to do. I always think of property managers as Jacks of all trades. They have to be good sales people. They have to be good at marketing. They have to be a lawyer because they have to know these lease contracts. They have to be a maintenance person because they have to know how to troubleshoot, push back on service professionals, and understand, "Am I getting screwed over or not?" They have to be a therapist because tenants get emotional because it's their home. One of the things I've always been driven towards this challenge, if something's not challenging and they get easy, I usually just leave the job. It's just boring. Then it’s just a nine-to-five. I think in property management it's not that. Something new happens every single day and you're constantly saying, "How do I take that and mitigate that risk?" That's really where I do think that there's just so much value to it. There's, quite frankly, not a lot of focus on it. That's where, Jason, this show's incredible because you actually bringing those people to talk about how do you mitigate that risk, how do you set it up for success, et cetera. I believe it has to be a subject matter expert that do it. There are certain things that technology can do to just say here's the best practice in place and process. Then, you also have to have the people component because you still have to talk to people. You still need someone physically there. The worst thing, I think, is when they talk about these robots showing the properties and stuff. Some people love it. I don't think the industry is there yet, go and show some of these properties. I don't think the industry is quite there for some of these stuff. That's just my own personal opinion from dealing with them, being hands on, showing properties, and doing all of these stuff. Inspections, move ins, move outs, maintenance coordination. It still needs that human component and it’s much better to say, “Here are the subject matter experts that do it,” versus every single person trying to do it. As you know, that happens with single family homes but still the majority doing the self-management themselves. Jason: Yes. I love what you said. Buying is easy, managing the property, hard. It's really simple. That's so true. When you get into real estate investing, they're hoping that they’ve got some turnkey magical easy thing, money is just going to be flowing in, and then they have to manage the property. That reality sets in. I think that's good pointing it out. Property management is the most difficult part. The other thing you pointed out is that property managers, these entrepreneurs are highly adaptable creatures. You call them Jacks of all trades or Jills of all trades. They're highly adaptable creatures as entrepreneurs. I think that's why I get excited about them because they're my type of people. What's interesting is some people maybe call entrepreneurs gluttons for punishment, but I think we love challenges. Just like I've said in the intro, we love unique challenges. I think that really we would be bored without challenges. We would [...] entrepreneurs. We want to be tested. We want to have some challenges to work on. I think the trick is finding the challenges we enjoy working on versus the ones that are kind of thrown into us that we don't want to be dealing with. There's a difference but I love that as well. I think the industry as a whole has a massive potential. You mentioned, the first one is real estate investing, that they need property management. What was the second thing? Dana: The second one, the challenges associated with it is just property management in general is such an afterthought of it. The first is real estate investing and thinking of it as stocks and bonds where you can purchase a property anywhere. But I tell people you shouldn't purchase in your backyard just so you can self manage it. You should be looking elsewhere. It's not like I say, "Okay, my neighbor rent this small little company and that's the only one I can do best in." When I'm looking at stocks, I'm like, “What stocks out there across the world should I invest in that's going to give me what I think is best return, diversification, and things like that?” It's the same with property management. The first is just that investing outside the area, but then the second is property management like you said. I think turnkey is actually a horrible word for that because when people say turnkey, it makes you think you don't have to do anything at all. It's going to be easy. The problem is that when something goes wrong, the property manager is first to get blamed. The first to get blamed. They actually don't even get credit because the word turnkey makes you think, "Oh, I'm going to get this casual." The turnkey companies put it like, "Hey, you're going to get this straight number, this is what you're going to get, and there aren't going to be any problems." What happens is you think you're going to be at the top of that and everything is going to go right. When something goes wrong, it's the property manager who gets blamed which we know there are women, tenants, out there, a bunch of different things. Those challenges and mitigating those are really that second component of it. Jason: Okay. Now, let's get into Hemlane a little bit here. Property management business owners have a lot of different pain points, challenges, and problems. There's a lot of pain points and challenges that owners, tenants, and everybody are dealing with. Businesses only exists, technically, to solve a problem. If a business exists that is not solving a problem, then it's just stealing money. Let's get into the problem that Hemlane helps solve. Tell us about the problem. I think this will help people transition into helping them understand Hemlane and what you guys do. Dana: Hemlane is a flexible and transparent property management platform. What I mean by platform is that we have software. Software, if you think of Buildium or AppFolio but for the smaller guy, not for 500+ units. It's got the software built into it where it automates things and sends reminders on what you need to do next, and it walks you through a risk-mitigated process. For example, people say, "Why don't you integrate PayPal? Why can't I pay with PayPal on Hemlane?" That's not a good process because tenants can dispute that. We're not going to flip that in there. Building the best practices in place, it's got the software. The second component of it is really saying that, “Hey, most of our clients are people who own rental properties and they don't locally.” What do they want help with? A lot of them are trying to self-manage or they're illegally using handymen to show the property and trying to haphazardly put together a process which we see a lot of the market doing especially the tail end of it. They usually do it with these B-class properties where it's not that they're having to deal with the Section 8 or much lower income, but they're saying, "Oh, I can probably manage this remotely myself." We actually come in and say, "No, if you want someone to show your property, they have to be licensed here, or managers we worked within that area, or real estate agents. They can show your property for you." That's why we call it a platform because we're not a brokerage. We're not trying to take clients from anyone. We're just looking to connect to them. There's basically two packages. Property managers and real estate agents use our software-only package because they don't really need us help connect them or do maintenance coordination. Owners will use the upgraded package, so owners of rental properties, and they'll say, "Hey, I still want to control my rent, have rent go to me but I want to pay someone a full leasing fee for them to do the leasing." Whatever it is, we don't get involved in that price negotiation. We just set them up with someone local who can provide those services for them. We have partnered with property managers and real estate agents across the nation based on where portfolios are or where the needs are. We're in all 50 states but our actual agents and managers are only in some of the major cities. We focus on certain cities. Then, what happens is when we have a real estate investor come to us, whether they purchased, they're in some group, whether they just come to us and find us online, we say, “Great. Here are the managers in the area, get on a call with them, and see what you want them to do. Whatever you want them to do, they'll just charge you for their services in the system.” It is in full service. Sometimes it does get to full service. Sometimes they just ask the manager to take over their account in our systems. It downgrades to the software-only package and then managers charges them a whole management fee. A lot of our owners are more in that category of, "Hey, we used to do it ourselves and we're looking for something else." They really fall into that do-it-yourself, that 70% category, and we're trying to push them into saying, "Hey, there are other things out there that are much more efficient than you trying to spend your time on doing your own property management." Jason: Let's make this super clear. For those that are listening, that have property management businesses, they're property management entrepreneurs, who's your ideal prospect when it comes to them? Help them self-identify if somebody that should be reaching out to Hemlane. Dana: Yeah. Great question. From that perspective, it's typically someone who has under 200 units, they're looking to grow their portfolio, and they're also open to doing a combination of multiple things for clients to expand their clientele. What I mean by expand their clientele is saying, “Hey, I'm going to offer a full service is one option and I'm going to offer some unbundled service as well, say, listing only, maintenance only, whatever it is.” When a customer comes to you, it's not saying, "I charged 10% on this. You don't want that, don't work with me." It's saying, "Hey, what do you want? What do you want me to do? Here's what I'll do. Here's what our contract says." Then, you can do everything yourself. They can jump on our platform. They don't even have to be using our software to actually get access to owners. They can create an agent manager profile for free. If we do connect them with people, we do have requirements and property management questions that we ask them to make sure that they're qualified, reference checks, things like that. Usually, it's for the smaller manager that doesn't have enough referrals yet, who's just starting out, saying, "How do I get an advantage in my market? I’m new, I'm a hustler, kind of crazy, in that sense of doing property management. I'm working around the clock, I know myself, but I'm just right now starting to grow my portfolio." In property management, there's only two ways to grow your portfolio. Starve yourself, do it slowly, and go door by door, or acquire brokerage. I have a tons of friends who just acquire property management brokerages. They just run on them, but they have capital. A lot of people don't have that capital. So, if you don’t and you're going door-to-door because your parents didn't hand down their property management business to you—doesn't happen a lot of the time—if you only have 10 doors and you're saying, "How do I get to 20?" working and partnering with companies like Hemlane makes a ton of sense to get you out there, your name out there, more referrals, et cetera. Jason: Love it. I know that we have quite a few that are under 200 doors who are listening. The fact that this could help them generate some more leads creates some more relationships and drum up some more businesses, I think is enticing. Let's focus just on the growth aspect. How does Hemlane help somebody, say they're stuck in that first sand trap, they've got 50 or 60 units under management, they're solopreneur, or maybe they just finally broken past and they wanted to get into that next level, which is that 200–400 door range I called the second sandtrap. How is Hemlane going to help them build up their book of business? Dana: There's two things. One is automation and stuff like that. Anything technology can do better that is administrative, we take off of you. Everything from a tenant just said that I’m interested in a showing and just reached out to you on Zillow, you shouldn't be manually responding to that. You should already have your calendar. You should already have your qualifications of what minimums they have, criteria to qualify. That showing calendar needs to be sent right out to them at that second. They can respond. If they don't, you can give them a personalized call. Everything from automation, so you're not focused on that and you're focused on sales and marketing of your property management business, which is the most important thing to grow at. That's number one. Number two is saying, why don't you give yourself a competitive advantage against everyone else by saying, "Hey, you know what? Everyone else has this 10% model." A lot of times these people who've been self-managing and they are saying, "Hey, I want a property manager," taking them from going to 0%–10% takes a while over time for them to do that, because they have to build trust in you, they've never worked with you. Starting them and saying, "Hey, let me just do your leasing for you. Let me just do your leasing. You can manage everything else on Hemlane." The next year, coming back and saying, "Hey, do you want me to take over this from you as well?" Letting them ease into it, it's like when you give a price. A lot of companies do 30 days free or you get those [...] and open door things. They're like, two-for-one. You try things at a low barrier to entry. Then, you're liking it, you're hooked, and you're connected to this person. Then you're like, "Hey, I trust this person. Now they can have more of my business." I think a lot of it is like, that doesn't happen today in the industry. The industry is just saying, "It's all or none." You're getting the same price quote from every property manager and you don't want to cut your prices. You don't want to say, "I'll give you everything at a lower price." You don't want a discount because then, there's quality problems there. Or when you say, "Hey, maybe I'll just takeover this little part from you." [...] with that and then, that's your biggest pain point. "Let me solve that. Now, let me solve your other ones." From that perspective, Hemlane can really help you set that up to provide your clients, new clients, and clients across the nation who may just be even looking in your area. With some sort of competitive advantage that you have, when you're trying to get new doors until you get more of them quickly, and then build those relationships and build that deal value on customer size, over time. Jason: Hemlane would also help expose this small business to investors in other markets and other areas? Dana: Yeah. They usually come to us. The investor will come to us and say, "Hey, I'm interested in this plus this." Usually, investors will come just across the nation and say, "Hey, I'm in Kansas City and I want to put my properties on Hemlane." We go, "Great! Sign-up and try us for free." Then we say, "What do you need?" They're like, "Oh, I need some advertising tools." "Great! We can provide that to you. Do you need someone to show your properties?" "No, I don't think I do." "Okay, when's your next turnover?" "In two months." "Great. We'll follow up then. Do you need someone to show you your property?" "Yeah. Actually my husband and I are going to Europe, things changed." "Great. Here's someone who can help with your leasing." From that perspective, it's capturing people at the right time because timing is everything. If you can just get your foot in the door, it makes a lot of sense. For us, because we're nationwide, we're a platform, people come in. Where our managers and agents are is where we focus on upselling them, connecting them with local professionals. Jason: Property management listings that maybe haven't heard of Hemlane, they were probably naturally inquiring or wondering how are these investors find out about Hemlane? Dana: There's a ton of places that they find out about us. The biggest ones that we actually find are actually in social media. Most of these real estate investors, I think, we have one of the best algorithms in place from this person we use from marketing. It is really social because a lot of them aren’t searching for property management software. They just don't search for that. They don't search for [...] software. A lot of it is on social. Whatever algorithms is being used is working for that. That's been huge for us. For example in the US, the top rated on Software Advice, if you look at their top products, you'll see us at the top for software solutions. They'll find us on Software Advice. They’ll find us on Capterra. They’ll find us on GetApp. The other thing is blogs and content. I write a ton of content on like, "Why is Venmo the worst way to collect rent?" "What do you need that's concrete in your lease?" A lot of times, when they're searching for something, they're not searching for a software or a manager. They're saying, "I have a problem and I need it fixed." They're searching that term. You can give them the solution in a blog post and say, "Here's some ways to get connected locally with folks in your area who do property management." A lot of times, I just set them up for a coffee. I just say, "Hey, so and so meet so and so for a coffee. I know you're self-managing, but it would be a great way for you guys just to connect locally in your city in case things change, in case your mind changes." That's a great way to start building those relationships without being too salesy. Those people come back to you and they do remember you, especially if you made that impression and you meet them for a quick coffee. Jason: You guys are pulling in traffic from Capterra, GetApp software sites, blogging all these. You got traffic coming in. For the property manager, what is the buy-in or what's the requirement for them to start working with you? Financially, what does this typically cost for them to get onboard? How much work does this take? What's your vetting process? How can those listing self-qualify to become part of the Hemlane network? Dana: Great question. In every area, we actually personally get on a call with you to understand you because if we're going to refer you out, we actually think of you more as a partner versus you created a profile. If we are going to refer you out, you actually do need to do some interviews with our team knowing who you are, asking questions, prequalifying. The minimum we've taken is someone who's done 10 doors. As long as you have 10 doors, even if they're your own doors or something like that and you're just starting your own property management, we need, as a prerequisite, that you have some experience [...] seen in property management because we're not [...] to that. Then, we ask you questions of what would you do in this situation, understanding how well do you really know property management in leasing and complex situations. We'll walk through those situations with you. The third and final thing is reference checks. We do some reference checks on you. There's two things in each area. The first is if you're using our software already, we obviously would refer people to you first before we refer it to someone who's not using our software because we don't take a cut. We don't believe in taking cuts of however how much you make so when you charge an owner for something, we don't take a cut of that. You get 100% of it. That's really important to us because we never want anyone to think, "Hey, we're working with this person because they give us 20% of their income." We don't care. That's yours. We make our money off of our software and our platform. The connections help make our software much more differentiated than others. We don't take a cut of anything that you made. That's really important to note. You build your own business, we build ours, we have the tools to help you with that. If you are using our software, we'll put you higher range assuming you fit our qualifications. Then, someone who's not using our software but just free on our program that just says, “Hey, I'm in this region.” In a lot of cities, we don't have anyone, any partner in that city. There's no one using our software that's good enough, that's qualified. Even if you're not using our software, we'll still refer you out just because we want to make sure those people are happy. That's the first things with it. What's even more important to ask to keep the business and keep traction going is asking reviews. When we refer owners out to you, we actually ask them for their opinions on you after working with you the first time. You might have done something really small for them by just saying, "Hey, let me do an annual inspection and drop by your property, you haven't been there," or we ask the owner, "How was it? What reports did they give you? This and that," because we want to make sure that you are trained and qualified. There's a ton of people out there pretending to be property managers who's like, "Gosh, if I have my property in their hands, this is a lawsuit waiting to happen." We found it's quality not quantity. It's the quality of the individuals we work with. In each city, we don't need 500 managers on our platform. "We have everyone on here." All we need is the top. The people who say they pick up their calls, they respond to emails, you don't need three weeks to respond to an owner, and they're fair with the owners. They set these owners up or the owners like, "Thank goodness I have this person on my team." They went in and did an annual inspection and saw leashes hanging and dog holes, but they're not supposed to have pets in the place. That takes us [...]. That's really where I do think the value comes in. It's really asking for reviews on that as well. You can even set it up if you use our maintenance coordination where you get reviews on how you did on maintenance coordination, how well your service professionals did. "I think, Dana's really big there," to understand how are people doing and performing because you can't do everything yourself. For us, it’s the same thing of how are our local agents performing. Sometimes we have to kick people off and say, “You know what? They're not exactly who we want our reputation to be surrounded with.” That's why it's just important if you don't have any leasing or management experience, you do need to go out and get some. We won't take someone who's a newbie and try to train them via meetings. Jason: This sounds like something ideal for probably most of our clients to get onboard with. If nothing else, you have that listing and be one of the boots-on-the-ground partners that you guys have in your database. Dana: Yeah. We would love for our team to interview you, have a call with you, and stuff like that. Like I said, it doesn't take too much time and adds free value. We don't ask you for marketing dollars. We have those inbound coming in already for our marketing. From that perspective, we'll just work directly with you and we won't take a cut. From our perspective, we’re not trying to make money off of you, we’re just trying to create a much more valuable community. Jason: We probably should have started the show saying, “If you’re a good property manager, Dana’s going to send you leads. She’s just going to send you some free business and you don’t have to pay for it,” and we probably could have just ended it right there and give in a link, and you probably would have gotten a few phone calls. Dana: That sounds good, yup. Jason: Okay, cool. What else should those listening know about Hemlane that we haven’t covered already? What are some of the most common questions that you’re feeling may be from the property management side? Dana: On the property management side, it’s really interesting. One of the things that we get most often image is with owners. When people come to us with owners of, “Hey, I’ve got too much going on, I can’t do it all, I’m stressed, I’m working around the clock, I can’t grow my doors, these owners are upset, blah, blah, blah…” One of the biggest things that I see is communication. When things go wrong, it’s usually because the owner wants to have communication and we see it on our side. When owners come to us, we say, “Why are you signing up for Hemlane?” Because I want some transparency in communication and for property managers to know that we have it in the solution wherein you can add your owners and decide what they get an access to. But you can also decide they get access to all of it but they don’t get notifications. Once the request is opened, they don’t get notifications on that but they just get a summary email once a week, once a month, depending on what you have set up. I think from the perspective of Hemlane, one of the things that we see as really valuable and the solution is having that communication. You’re not having to field 500 calls from owners everyday saying, “How many leads did I get today? How many showings did you do for my property this week?” All of that is in the system for your owner to just view and look at, and having that data and having that transparency to them it’s like, “Wow, you’re on top of what you’re doing,” and that makes them feel good. When they see an email it’s like, “We got 20 leads and 10 of them showed up for showings, and three of them completed an application,” and they go, “Okay, things are moving along.” So even if your day is back-to-back, you’re running around and you got some fire drill with plumbers, some tenants who wants to move out tomorrow, and all these other stuff going on, at least that technology is working for you. It’s one of the biggest things that we see that is really valuable on the software side. Other questions that we get from property managers is, “Well, what about if you’re going to take clients, and clients are just going to use you and not use me, and this and that?” We’ve never seen that happen. If you’re a good property manager which are the ones on our platform, that doesn’t happen. There are two types of owners. There is that 30% in the single family homes than Jason is talking about, who say, “I’m handing you the keys, I don’t want to hear about the property, take it and go with it,” and it changes based on different life events, especially when people have kids for some reason, that’s when they’re like, “Please take my properties now. I’ve got something worse than properties, I’ve got children. I’ve got something worse than properties, I can’t deal with them.” There’s these life events that happen that can signal, “Maybe I should check in with them and see if they want more full service.” For us, what we find is people really fall into different categories and they spiral into that. There are people who would say, “Take everything, I’m willing to pay for it, do everything for me, and send me my owner distribution.” There are other people in the system who want to be so hands on that quite frankly trying to do full service management with them is a nightmare. Jason, I love that you tell people to say “no” to clients. I think more property managers just need to do that, to fire clients, because they’re so hands on, they want to do everything. It’s double the work for you, then they get involved in things they shouldn’t, they mess up things, and it’s just way more for you. That’s another thing from Hemlane and what we offer and what people come to us for, what property managers ask us about is, “Hey, would you ever take our client?” we say, “No, we’re a platform.” People can use us but they sought just physically do the work and there’s still physical stuff to be done. The big question is, “Do they want you to do it, or do they want to do it themselves?” It’s based on life events and based on their personal preferences of whether they are going to do full service, whether they are going to do some hybrid, or whether they’re going to do everything themselves. I think that’s also another question that sometimes we get from managers and we just never seen that, we’ve never seen someone coming to us and say, “My property manager uses your software. Now we’d like to use it.” It’s not that, because that person doesn’t want to do it, right? Jason: Yeah. There’s a reason. Nobody generally wants to go from somebody’s taking care of something to I think I’d just be fun to start doing this on my own, when it comes to property management. Dana: Yeah, that’s true. The reverse definitely happens, and it happens in increments because they’re like, “I want someone to help me but I’m not quite sure, I don’t know if I trust this person, I’ve never worked with them.” So, it goes in increment. The only time they see someone who doesn’t work with their property manager, who isn’t someone on Hemlane but elsewhere is when something goes wrong or when they haven’t been communicated to, which honestly, if you have a really good process in place, you’re communicating with your owners everyday, you’re writing them mail, and they don’t have surprises, they shouldn’t have that. On our system, we have it set up wherein the property managers can just tell the owners on day two, “Here are your tenants who haven’t paid rent, we’re following up with them, but just as heads up, they haven’t paid rent, so we want to give you a forewarning,” so that when you call them on day six and tell them, “We’re serving a three-day notice,” they’re not saying, “Oh wait, now this is a surprise. I thought I was getting the money.” I think communication is really, really important there. Jason: Yes, you’re talking about this. A lot of times, property managers are just hoping for somebody to just get married to them like, “Let’s just get married, without the dating,” and I think people aren’t really buying property management. They don’t want just property management. What they really want is safety and certainty. That’s what they’re hoping to buy. People don’t buy property management, they’re buying trust in you as a property manager and asking somebody to turnover the keys and give you everything, for some, is just too big of a risk. I love the idea of they’re being some sort of stepping stone in leading into this safety and certainty. How much safety and certainty do they have initially? It’s pretty low and if they can just hand you a little bit or a piece of this, then it would be very easy to transition them. A major component of business is retention and upsell. If you can retain them and you can upsell to them, then you’re significantly increasing lifetime value and you have this funnel of people coming into this pipeline that you can build a relationship with over time and you can get them into something bigger. Russell Brunson, this crazy marketer that some are saying, got this concept that I’m sure he got from somewhere else called the Value Ladder. The idea of the Value Ladder is that you need these different price points that get marginally larger that you start people with, You don’t really want to start people with a really big, high-ticket item. You usually need to start with something small initially, which usually the very beginning is something free, like offering something of free value, or free content, or free information and then it incrementally builds. This gives property managers a little bit more of a Value Ladder to step people and seduce people or convince people into full management. Dana: Yeah exactly. I think you’re spot on there, Jason, in the sense of life events change where people upsells do happen. But you rarely see people say, “I’m going for full service with someone I trust” to “Now, I’m managing myself.” Once they have already committed, they’re done. The only time that happens is if you dropped the ball and what’s important for you is to have the software, have the communication, have the processes, have the team in place, build your team in order to do that. You’re right. A lot of times, I see it with property managers and I see they have a call and the owner says, “Hey, I’m looking for a property manager,” and they go, “Okay great. Well here’s all the services that we offer, we’re end-to-end, we charge one month’s rent for leasing, we charge 10% of [00:43.46] for monthly rent to do everything, and we’ll take the keys. When is the good time for me to meet you at the property to see at?” and the owner’s like, “Woah, woah, woah.” Instead, you should [...] the conversation about, “Great, thanks so much for reaching out to me. What can I help you with? What’s the one thing that you hate with your property management? Is it maintenance? Is it doing your showings? What’s the one thing that just drives you insane that you want to do?” That will change your game and differentiate you because they’re giving that same exact price quote, that same exact spiel from everyone, and it doesn’t differentiate you from that perspective. Jason: Going back to that analogy of marriage and dating, a lot of property managers are like, “Hey, you might need some help with your property?” is the equivalent of saying, “Yeah, I might be interested in, maybe, connecting with you.” “Great, I’ll be moving in tomorrow, like, we’re together.” Dana: Yup. All the way like, “Here’s my contract, sign it. It’s annual, there’s no free trial, and there’s a huge termination clause.” For an owner, it’s like, “I haven’t actually, physically worked with you.” It’s like hiring an employee. If you worked with someone in the past, you’re like, “Okay, I’m ready to go,” but if you haven’t worked with them, you’re like, “I need to do these interviews, I need to do these background checks, I need to do these,” and you’re like, “I’m not even quite sure if they’re going to work out.” There’s this much larger barrier. As much as you can, avoid and take down that barrier really will help your business. Also, it goes the other way. You’re dating now but sometimes you want to tell the client after doing just the leasing for them, “I’m so glad you’re taking over the management,” and then they reach back out to you to do the leasing next time and you’re like, “I would love to do the leasing for you but I’m completely booked,” because they were a freaking nightmare to deal with. I never want to deal with them again. Jason: “Please call our competitors down the street. They would love to help you, we’re a bit overwhelmed right now.” Dana: All of the competitors think. I think the dating goes both ways because one of the things, Jason, I love about your show what you’ve said time and time again is, a lot of these people who are really stressed in property management, it’s because they have 10% of their clients or 150% of the time they’ve spent of overworked, overwhelmed on these properties and you probably shouldn’t be doing those ones. So. I think the dating goes both ways. Jason: Yeah. I tell clients all the time that sales and deals and contracts happen at the speed of trust and it’s that simple. I love that with using Hemlane, based on what you’re saying, what this allows you to do is to start that relationship with trust. Once you build that, it becomes very easy to upsell or to get them into a more committed relationship with you of doing more stuff with you once you earned that. Once you earned that, if there’s anything that they’ll need, they’ll be happy to use you to do that and you then have more opportunities. That’s all property management entrepreneurs need is more opportunities to build trust and the more opportunities they have, the better. It sounds like Hemlane is another channel or possibility for them to do that, that they may not have considered before. Dana: Absolutely. Great way to market from that perspective. Jason: Dana, it’s been awesome having you here on the show. How can people get in touch with Hemlane? How can these property managers that are listening get started with you guys? How do they sign up? Dana: If you’re interested in our partnership program, we don’t do just regular sign ups through our partnership page. Instead of going there, you can just email me, dana@hemlane.com. I’ll send that out to our partnership team. Brad will give you a call, schedule, and find some time to go through things with you. That’s for the partnership. You can also go to www.hemlane.com and from there you can click the try us for free. You can watch our videos and see what we offer as well, features everything in there, so you can see that as well if you’re interested in using our services. If you just have some questions on property management in general and you’re in this rut or whatever and you think there is some way that potentially we can get you out of that, we’re really happy to hear about that, too, but the fastest thing to do is email me dana@hemlane.com because I’m always on my email. Jason: Cool. Maybe this is the last question so, what is a hemlane? Where does the name Hemlane come from? Dana: Great question. We wanted something that had an international feel to it. We wanted something that was easy to say, easy to pronounce. DoorGrow, really easy to say, really easy to pronounce, two syllables. We wanted something that didn’t have any branding behind it. When we looked international, we basically took multiple languages for the word ‘home,’ and we went through and looked at ‘home’ in multiple different languages. Hem is house in Swedish, and then Lane is a path that divides others from other people. When you think of a path, you’re always looking to get ahead of others and differentiate. So, we put how it’s differentiation from that perspective together. We wanted to make sure that we didn’t have rental in it, or something that didn’t really have its own branding around it. What was funny is when we started Hemlane, it sounded like a horrible pair of cut-off pants like hemline, and everyone I would go to is like, “Do you have a clothing company?” and I was like, “No, it’s not a clothing company. It’s like the opposite.” Now, when you look up, Hemlane it’s all Hemlane, it’s all property management, but before that, it was a lot of just really bad pictures of people’s cut-off pants, hemlines, and stuff like that beforehand. Jason: Good. I love branding, so I love hearing about how people come up with the name and I love that there’s this meaning behind this, so it’s interesting. Well Dana, it’s been a delight having you here on the show, always fun to hangout with like-minded business people and entrepreneurs. I love that you’re helping the industry, you’re helping growth. I think this is a great fit to have you here on the show and I’m excited to see what success you guys create. Dana: Great. Thank you so much, Jason, for having me on the show. I love your show and I love the content that you have. Jason: I appreciate that. Cool. We’ll let you go. It’s really great having Dana on, so if you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to have doors, then maybe check out Hemlane, sounds like interesting channel for growth. If you’re struggling, you want to optimize your business, optimize your warm lead funnel, you’re tired of playing the game of SEO, pay-per-click, content marketing, social media marketing, paper lead services, it’s not working, you’re spending a lot of money, and you’re not getting the return on all that money, then you’re probably worse off than if you just not done the marketing in the first place. Those are the people that we would love to help. Reach out to us at DoorGrow and we might just blow your mind, and help you figure out how to target that 70% and grow your business. I had a really cool morning call this morning with Regis [...] one of our clients. I haven’t really connected much with him over the last year, but he dialed in our program, did what we said, and he had it over a hundred doors in just the last year, just by doing the stuff that I told him to do. All these success story were keep popping up and I probably should stay better connected but if you’re looking to add 100, 200 doors in the next year and you feel like growth, you’re losing more doors than you’re getting on right now due to the sell-off in the market, and you’re focused on cold lead advertising just trying to grow your business and it’s just not working, have a conversation with us at DoorGrow. We would love to help you out and our mission really is to transform this industry and help grow it. I believe this industry have massive potential to be as big as probably the entire real estate industry here in the US. There are a lot of rental properties and we’ve only scratched the surface in terms of growth. I’m excited to see what happens here in the future, so reach out. If you are watching us on Youtube, or you’re watching this, make sure to like and subscribe. I want to build up our Youtube channel and get our first 1000 subscribers. We’ve got, I think a few hundred there right now but I’d love to get to that thousand-dollar market subscribers and you will see these episodes first. You’ll be the first to be notified when we put these episodes out. We release them to Youtube as videos before they show up on iTunes. If you’re hearing this on iTunes, make sure to go to Youtube and subscribe to our Youtube channel to youtube.com/doorgrow. You load it from your phone right now. Do it and click subscribe. You’ll even start getting some notifications from Youtube in your browser occasionally when we pop up a new video and you’ll be excited and able to hear some of the latest and greatest material connected to property management industry and the growth. That is all for today, until next time everybody to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Welcome to Episode 108 of The VentureFizz Podcast, the flagship podcast from the leading authority for jobs & careers in the tech industry. For this episode of our podcast, I interviewed Chris Litster, CEO at Buildium. Chris had a goal of being a CEO of a company, and his experience at Constant Contact put him on the right path to make this professional goal a reality. He held multiple leadership roles over the 10 years he spent at the company and saw the business grow at a hypergrowth pace. Chris is actually one of the growing number of CEO's that was part of the team that scaled Constant Contact to an IPO and acquisition by Endurance International Group for $1.1B. Chris joined Buildium originally as its Chief Customer Officer before moving into the CEO position about a year ago. Buildium is the property management solution for real estate professionals, and the company has been growing aggressively. Its platform services over 16,000 customers in more than 50 countries, totaling over 1.8 million residential units under management. In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of topics, like: -Chris' background and how he got involved in the tech industry. -The story of Constant Contact and how they scaled the company. -The details on Buildium and their market opportunity, plus growth plans. -Advice for others looking to become a CEO. -When a startup should think about getting a board of advisors. -Plus, a lot more. Is your company hiring? If yes, then you might want to add a BIZZpage subscription. It is our employment branding and hiring solution that helps to keep your company top of mind for our targeted audience of professionals in the tech industry. A BIZZpage subscription includes an employment branding page, unlimited postings to our Job Board, access to our exclusive content series, and more. Send an email to info@venturefizz.com for more details. Lastly, if you like the show, please remember to subscribe to and review us on iTunes, or your podcast player of choice!

Hey everyone! In today’s interview, I share the mic with Michael Monteiro, CEO and Co-Founder of Buildium, a property management software.    Tune in to hear Michael explain how Buildium serves as a solution for so many property management companies, how it took them 2 whole years to get their first 50 customers and how they now have 14,000 customers in over 40 countries!  Click here for show notes and transcript Leave Some Feedback: What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, leave a short review here. Subscribe to Growth Everywhere on iTunes. Get the non-iTunes RSS feed Connect with Eric Siu: Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @EricSiu