Podcast appearances and mentions of jason they

How did you end up in the property management industry? Becoming an entrepreneur is often a difficult and lonely path with many ups and downs along the way. Many property management business owners are miserable in their own businesses. In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with property manager and DoorGrow client Derek Morton to discuss how he was able to build his property management business and team around himself. You'll Learn [01:53] The Entrepreneurial Struggle [09:03] Building a Business Based on Humanity and Care [26:48] The Impact of The Right Company Culture and Team [38:57] Masterminding with Savvy Property Managers Quotables “Property management really is a business of relationships.” “If people fail me, sometimes I don't have a proportional response. So why would I expect anyone else to act differently?”  ”Your internal beliefs really, I think, shape the environment that we allow or create around ourselves.” “If you're relying on team members, it's really dumb to think you've got all of the best ideas and nobody else is as smart as you.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript [00:00:00] Derek: Sarah was like, "Hey, you did all this stuff, how did you do it?" And I'm like, I don't know. And so we went back and we ran the numbers. 88% of my growth has come from my network and just those relationships.  [00:00:13] Jason: They say your network is your net worth, right? [00:00:15] Jason: Okay. I'm Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management business owners. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. [00:00:32] Jason: At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of businesses, helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profit, simplify operations, and build and replace teams. We are like bar Rescue for property managers. In fact, we have cleaned up and rebranded over 300 businesses, done websites for hundreds more than that, and we run the leading property management mastermind with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world, and that property management is the ultimate, high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. [00:01:16] Jason: That's our mission statement. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:27] Jason: So I'm hanging out today with one of our clients, Derek Morton, over at Net Gain Property Management. [00:01:32] Jason: Derek, welcome to the show.  [00:01:33] Derek: Thanks for having me. I'm excited.  [00:01:35] Jason: So, Derek, you're doing a lot of unique things there and you've had a lot of success and things have been going really well. I'm excited to to, you know, get into you know, some of this unique stuff that you're doing and chat about this topic of 'from crisis to connection.' [00:01:53] Jason: And so to kick things off, tell everybody how did you get into— when did you first figure out you were an entrepreneur? Like how'd you get into business? And then maybe that'll segue into starting a property management business and so on. Give us some back background on you.  [00:02:10] Derek: I still struggle viewing myself as an entrepreneur to be honest with you in that way. [00:02:16] Derek: Like I've done sales stuff growing up and my parents are like, you suck at this. Like, you're not going to be able to make a living.  [00:02:23] Jason: They didn't believe in you.  [00:02:23] Derek: No, they're very self-aware. Like, I mean, trust me, I understood like they were right. But like, what was funny is like on the sales, like I couldn't close but I could present and I could put on a show and make it entertaining. [00:02:37] Derek: And so, like, one of the things that I did is I sold Cutco knives. Okay. But I couldn't close. But I would have more people like, and I'd have a longer list of referrals of people's friends after the end of each one of the presentations than anyone else. But I couldn't close, so I was getting, I made a decent amount of money, because you got paid per presentation. [00:02:57] Derek: And they couldn't figure it out. And they sat in on one of my things and they're like, "you need to close the deal." And I'm like, "I don't know how to close the deal." I just, you know, and then I ran a snow cone shack, and that was probably one of the funnest things I ever did. And we went crazy with stuff. [00:03:10] Derek: Couldn't make any money, me and my partner, but we had a good time and made an impact. We had came up with all sorts of crazy combinations and all this time I was in the title industry when I was running that and marketing and just built relationships and that was all my sales, was just relationships. [00:03:26] Derek: I can't do hard sales like it makes me sick. Yeah. But the relationships and all that stuff comes naturally. And so, I mean that's—  [00:03:35] Jason: and property management really is a business of relationships.  [00:03:38] Derek: It is.  [00:03:38] Jason: And people that lose sight of that think it's some sort of tech game or like a lot of these businesses have felt failed. [00:03:45] Jason: They just, they don't get it.  [00:03:47] Derek: As you say, the deals close at the speed of trust. Yeah. I do say, and so see, I listen sometimes and sometimes, enough to gather a few things. But being able to work on those relationships and just see people has like, been that secret elixir. [00:04:03] Derek: And so when I was looking to start a property management company my parents were like, "you're an idiot. You failed at everything else." Even my wife was nervous. The only thing that convinced her was we were in the process of building a house and we were going to rent out our town home. And she's like, "there's too many property management companies where we're at. I'm not going to pay, you know, who's going to pay 10% or whatever for this, like, when you can do it yourself." And I said, "okay, you're going to do this on your own." And so I just let her do it. And she had asked questions and I said, "Google it." And as someone who's married yourself, you can understand how well that went over. [00:04:39] Derek: And so, and then hearing everyone's stories and different things like that, my wife, by the time we had it rented out was like, "okay, you have my support." And then the, you know, the rest is history. Rough first year, and then we've just been on a rocket ride since.  [00:04:53] Jason: So you, how important do you feel like it was to get your wife's support? [00:04:59] Jason: I've been the entrepreneur that didn't have support in a previous marriage, like that was a rough thing.  [00:05:05] Derek: Oh it's a hundred percent. Like, I mean, it's the only way I could do like, I mean, so about six months in, so I didn't take, really take a paycheck the first year. We were living off savings. Yeah. It was kind of a struggle. My partner was looking at me like, "you're going to make this work." And once again, like, I struggled one, you know, with hard sales and the hard part that I didn't realize that, you know, I was marketing for title companies, so I had all these real estate agent contacts. But it's a town. It's notorious. When you try something new, they're like, "we know you as the title guy. We don't know you as the property management guy. That's a different thing." And so I was like, "oh they know me, trust, and they sent me all these deals to close for them, you know, for the client. [00:05:42] Derek: So they're going to try. And they're like, it's different. And I'm like, okay. Yeah. So I didn't anticipate that, but I remember one time, my partner had set up with the real estate brokerage he was in the management company or the broker of the business. Were going to start a statewide management company. [00:05:59] Derek: And they were going to have me run Cedar and we had a conversation and my partner was laughing because I was, I had no leverage. But I was kind of belligerent because I'm like, your software sucks. Like, I know I don't have a whole lot of clients, but like why would I ask them to take a step down on the level of service? And with that being said, I'm like, I have a family to provide for, and I'm like, the dream's dead. Everyone's right, right? I can't do sales. I'm not an entrepreneur. I can't work for anyone else either, so I'm like, I'm kind of screwed.  [00:06:26] Jason: I'm unemployable. That kind of means you're an entrepreneur if you're unemployable. [00:06:30] Derek: I mean, that's the funny thing is my family's like, "why don't you find a job?" I'm like, "I tried." All these companies, like, "dude, you've done so many cool, amazing things. We love you and everything. We can't hire you." "Why not?" "You just don't fit our culture." And I'm like, "**** you!" Oh yeah that's probably why I don't fit your culture. [00:06:45] Derek: Right. And so like I had at that point decided I was going to sell out and I'm like, okay, I'll work for something else and if not something else, I'll just kind of, this will be the next step. I'll just balance and then figure out where I go to next.  [00:06:56] Sarah: Yeah.  [00:06:57] Derek: But I woke up at like three o'clock in the morning and I'm just like, I can't do it. [00:07:00] Derek: I can't do it. And told my wife, I said, "I can't sell." And she's like, "okay, but when are you going to make money?" "I don't know. You know, I just know I can't sell." And I went to my business partner and I'm like, "I can't sell." And he looks at me and he is like, "I've seen you do dumber stuff. So, okay. What's your plan?" [00:07:21] Derek: "I don't have a plan." And then I remember. So I'm just like, all right. Like I have to figure this out. Two weeks later, an agent buddy of mine like calls me and he is like, "I am tired of my wife doing property management. Come in, let's talk." And at this point I think I was like at 40, 40 units. And you know, accounting's not my strong point. [00:07:41] Derek: because everyone's like, "oh, 40 units, you should been making money." I'm like, I was just trying to figure out the flow of money. Like that's not my strong point.  [00:07:47] Jason: And so this is the crisis. And the crisis to connection is like, you were just like trying to figure out mm-hmm we need money. Mm-hmm. [00:07:55] Derek: And and so he goes, "here's the deal you pay me, you know, one month's management fee and they're all yours. Here's 25 units." We did the math, it was like five grand. And what's funny is my business partner's like "you do not make a deal without talking to me." We were 50: 50 partners and we'd always joke around about like, Hey, I'm going to use my 50% majority and make this decision. [00:08:17] Derek: And we just, you know, this is kind of, we were interacted. So I came out of that meeting and I said, "I'm buying them." And he was pissed. He is, like "I told you—" and I said, "dude, it's $5,000." And he's like, oh yep, nope, we're good. We're good. We didn't tell anyone. Didn't make a big announcement. Yeah. But there was something about that moment like that led to credibility. [00:08:37] Derek: For whatever reason there was just a threshold of units. All of a sudden, now I'm at 65 and I was like, oh, like you're kind of legit. And then it's just kind of has been spiraling since then. And within six months I'd hired my first employee. because we were at a hundred units and I was adding 20 that month. [00:08:51] Derek: But but yeah, so that's just kind of the story and I still laugh because I don't view myself as an entrepreneur. It's just kind of, I view myself as a guy who's really good at relationships and magic happens with that.  [00:09:03] Jason: So, and you know, you mentioned at the beginning that you really, that's kind of your area of genius is you're really good at connecting with people and building relationships. [00:09:13] Jason: One of the things that I, you know, that one of the gifts I see in you that I've noticed, you know, as a coach is you genuinely care about people. You genuinely care about your team. You genuinely care about your clients, you care about the tenants. And I think it's that care that's really allowed you to have the success that you've been seeing. [00:09:35] Derek: Oh, a hundred percent. Like we, we laugh all the time. I said people as a whole are awesome and so good. There's so many incredible things. Individuals can be idiots, some, you know, me included. I'm an individual. But by and large, I mean that's,  [00:09:48] Jason: That's a very different belief though. And there's a lot of people that are like, "I don't like people, but I like you." [00:09:53] Jason: You know, or stuff like this. My wife's Sarah, she's like, "I don't generally like people, but I like you." You know, she likes Derek, you know, but Yeah. But you have this belief that people are awesome and I think that belief is, you know, that's a unique belief.  [00:10:07] Derek: Yeah. And I, you know, and especially in property management, like I, I mean, "oh, you're going to get yelled at all the time." [00:10:12] Derek: And I'm like, yeah. I mean, yeah. You know, sometimes it's deserved, sometimes it's not. And as long as you can separate those, like that's what's amazing. Like sometimes you're like, we failed and I can't control how people are going to respond. because if people fail me sometimes I don't have a proportional response. [00:10:27] Derek: So why would I expect anyone else to act differently? And so we just own it and try to fix it and apologize and, you know.  [00:10:36] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that another attribute, you know, there's generally, you know, the idea of not having to be perfect or look perfect all the time, there's a certain level of humility. [00:10:48] Jason: You joke about yourself like a lot, and you know, you, even from the outset of this, you know this podcast you recognize you're not this perfect unflawed person. And I think there's, that level of humanity, it's disarming, it allows people to feel even safer. And I think a lot of property managers listening could take note is they're always trying to maintain this perfect perception that there is this thing that never has a problem. [00:11:15] Derek: Oh, like, yeah. I mean, yeah, it's life's messy. I'm messy. Like, I mean, like everyone's messy. Yeah. We try to put on this show, you know? And I mean, that's one of the things, like part of the, my background coming into property management has given me the different perspective. I mean, so I served on the board for the local homeless shelter. [00:11:37] Jason: Okay.  [00:11:37] Derek: And so, like I saw on a day-to-day basis, like people going through crisises and seeing them and realizing, I'm like I was one or two decisions, or one or two friends from being there.  [00:11:50] Jason: Yeah.  [00:11:50] Derek: And so being able to recognize like that going, you know, if I would've gone to this, or if I would've done this, or, I mean, I can count on one hand, like times in my life that I'm like, you know, that was divine intervention. [00:12:05] Derek: I had a friend gimme a call at the right time and invite me to go do that before I did something stupid. You know, and it's like, I tell my kids all the time, I said, you're going to make mistakes. You know, the deci the hard part is making sure that those mistakes aren't life changing. And unfortunately, outside of a few, like big obvious ones, you never know when those life changing ones are until you know they're past. [00:12:27] Jason: You know, I really believe we are the creators of our own reality, and I believe that your belief that in divine intervention, belief in God being able to take care of you and that you trusting in that has allowed you to avoid some of those. Because I'm sure when you were talking to people at that local homeless shelter, you're getting this perspective, oh man, they just made one bad decision that led to this. Or they were just like, I'm one step away from this. But they probably, a lot of them you probably picked up, they have a different belief system than you do.  [00:13:01] Derek: Yeah. And I mean, what's fascinating though, when you work with those, they're generally trying to change. [00:13:06] Jason: Yeah.  [00:13:07] Derek: And this is a perspective of it, and it was eyeopening. So like when we set up our first transitional house for men and women coming out of homelessness and domestic violence, my kids still call it the stinky house. Like it was the stink, it was stinky house, it was a dump. [00:13:18] Derek: And like we fixed it up. Like, I mean, I've told the story like Home Depot, like called and walked off the job. because they were pulling up carpet. There was like dog crap, like somehow shoved underneath the— like, like, it was horrible. They had like 20 people and 15 dogs and 13 cats living here before this owner bought it. [00:13:37] Jason: Yeah.  [00:13:38] Derek: And he wanted to do student housing. And we're like, and I was like, all right, let's do it.  [00:13:42] Jason: Because all their parents paying the bill want them to be in that property.  [00:13:45] Derek: This was not like student housing at the time, but he is like. You know, as far I'm like, and it was still, to this day, it's like one of the best property pitches I've ever done. [00:13:53] Derek: And I'm still kind of a little bitter and I still manage this owner. I'm like, "we've done a lot of good with this house. But remember that pitch?" And it is like, "I know," and that pitch would've cost me a lot of money that I wouldn't have been able to make. It was awesome. It's what sold me on you and trust me. [00:14:09] Derek: because you put a lot of work into that. And so we pivoted because it's, you know, it was funny. It's like going back to divine intervention. Yeah, he spoke numerous times. He's like, "this house was speaking to me." Like, he's just like, "I have to have this house. I don't know why. I don't know what, despite everything," and so, you know, we kind of pitched and we made it up and worked with the homeless shelter going, here's what we think, there's, here's some funding. [00:14:33] Derek: Like, let's just figure it out. And he was on board and you know, so when we moved the first three in, they were so, so ecstatic. Hearing their stories, one of them grew up not far from where I grew up, and I laughed because, you know, he left where he grew up because he didn't want to get into drugs. [00:14:52] Derek: Lo and behold, he came to Cedar City and he got into drugs. So he left where I'm like, "dude, yeah, no wonder like you, you didn't do drugs in that area where you grew up? Like that's impress— but you got into it in Cedar?" he goes, "I know it doesn't track. I left to get away and then it was just. It just, you know," and it goes back to the connections that he made and the friends that he made and  [00:15:12] Jason: Yeah.  [00:15:13] Derek: And all of that, their ability,  [00:15:14] Jason: ... really that's who you are and how you're showing up and your beliefs and what you feel you deserve and what you you feel you're worth. And so really boils down to your internal belief. [00:15:24] Jason: And your internal beliefs really, I think, shape the environment that we allow or create around ourselves.  [00:15:30] Derek: Yeah. And these people like with, as their belief group, like their ability to celebrate like small victories.  [00:15:37] Jason: Yeah.  [00:15:38] Derek: That were just like, you wouldn't think we're that big. I remember they threw a party—  [00:15:42] Jason: Things they didn't have that most people would take for granted. [00:15:44] Derek: Yeah. I mean, the one got a job and he was able to hold it for a week, and so they threw a party. They bought a big old huge cake. I don't know how they got the money held. And they're like—  [00:15:53] Jason: yeah.  [00:15:53] Derek: They're like, "he kept his job for a week. He hasn't done that for years. Like, we're going to throw a party. You should come." [00:15:59] Jason: Right. Celebrate the wins.  [00:16:01] Derek: I mean, they had a cake and they were celebrating and like the music was loud, and I'm just like, " you kept a job for a week and you're celebrating?" Like, it was just I'm like, is this real life? Like this is, we're celebrating? I'm like, this is like common sense. Like, you know what I mean? [00:16:18] Derek: But it was a big deal for them. And then, you know, same thing with—  [00:16:21] Jason: it's common for you and it's maybe common for others, but for some that's not common. And so, yeah. We got to celebrate progress.  [00:16:29] Derek: Like, it was amazing. And just, you know, when you look at their sobriety coins and stuff they get at, those are always huge things. [00:16:35] Jason: Yeah.  [00:16:36] Derek: To do and being able to, you know, and they have to fight. Like, holy crap. Yeah. I mean, I wish people fully understood how hard they have to fight.  [00:16:45] Jason: Well, I think it was Alex Hormozi one of my former mentors and coaches, and he was also in a mastermind with me. He mentioned that you don't get self-esteem or self-worth by saying a bunch of affirmations in the mirror. [00:16:59] Jason: You get it by getting evidence. And these little wins that they're getting is giving them some evidence that maybe is in conflict with the current identity they've been holding.  [00:17:09] Derek: Yeah, I mean. When you look at these people, I mean, they, you know, and I love them. I love that population.  [00:17:15] Derek: Like it, it's amazing. [00:17:17] Derek: The insights that I've gotten into life and everything is unbelievable. And it's changed the way I operate my business and understanding to make sure that we can try to find support because you really are, there's these moments as we hinted at that you know, like, I think sometimes we have an inkling that these are moments, right? [00:17:37] Derek: But not always. And there's these moments that if you can get the support or the right person, like they're life changing and they go it makes a huge impact. Way more than it would on my life.  [00:17:49] Jason: Yeah.  [00:17:49] Derek: But it's huge on theirs.  [00:17:51] Jason: Yeah. So I mean, and this goes to your kind of core values that you've kind of built your business and your life around is, you know, related to contribution and making a difference. [00:18:02] Derek: Yeah, I mean, it's something, I mean, my, my parents raised me that way and I laugh like they, they always think that they failed me. because I just I'm different and quirky as you can attest. Yeah. And they just are like, you are not our child. Like we don't know where you came from. [00:18:17] Derek: And I just said, "I am both of your guys' best and worst qualities on steroids. So you struggle because you're looking in a mirror going, that could have been me. And instead we made it and now we can't control it." But I know my dad and mom were always heavily involved in different things and I watched that. [00:18:35] Derek: My poor kids have experienced too. I don't think they're going to be as heavily involved because they've seen more of the bad as opposed to the good.  [00:18:41] Jason: Okay.  [00:18:41] Derek: Sometimes with being willing to put yourself out there and be involved. And we're in a small town, so my kids can't escape dad. They go over, "oh you're Derek's boy, or you're Derek's daughter," and they just go, "yes." [00:18:54] Jason: right.  [00:18:54] Derek: But those values and being involved and realizing, you know, that was something that was instilled. Like, I can make a difference. And just, you know, my parents didn't put it this way. It's what I tell my kids all the time. I'm like, "you can go far in life. Just don't suck as a human being." Like you really just don't suck as a human being. [00:19:12] Derek: Like I said, my kids, my parents didn't put it that way. But they, I mean, it's through their actions and  [00:19:18] Jason: stuff.  [00:19:18] Jason: Are your parents, I mean, you strike me as pretty extroverted and connect and comfortable with people. Are your parents pretty introverted?  [00:19:26] Derek: Actually, my mom after the divorce, like she came out like pretty extroverted. [00:19:32] Derek: My dad was pretty extroverted. Okay. I grew up pretty introverted and it's still like my social battery, like it winds down and it's like, yeah I'm on a battery. When that battery's done, I just like but I've trained myself and I've just had to do so many different things that I'm like, I put myself out there and here's what it is, and that's how I have to get stuff done. [00:19:52] Derek: It's the only way to accomplish it. And then I can decompress and not have to worry about people until the next time.  [00:19:58] Jason: So, yeah, I'm very much the same way. I would categorize myself as an ambivert. So give people some context of kind of your journey here. How long ago did you start this property management business? [00:20:11] Derek: I started nine years ago in July.  [00:20:13] Jason: Okay. Nine years ago. And how many units are you at right now?  [00:20:18] Derek: We're at 650 units. Nice.  [00:20:20] Jason: Okay. Yeah, and I generally don't see people break four or 500 units unless they've got really good culture and a really good team. It just generally doesn't happen. And so you've built kind of a, it sounds like a unique culture. [00:20:33] Jason: You had mentioned earlier you didn't fit other people's culture. I. Like it was hard for you to get a job or stay in a job because you just didn't fit. In what way did you not fit that culture and how has that changed the type of business you've created around you? Because you have a very different culture in your business. [00:20:49] Jason: Obviously you fit in it because you're at the helm.  [00:20:52] Derek: It's my culture.  [00:20:53] Jason: It's yours. Yeah. It's your culture. So you built the business that didn't exist that you could work at. You know?  [00:21:00] Derek: So I'm pretty outspoken. And that doesn't always fit with the typical corporate job or working for other people. [00:21:07] Derek: because I'm not afraid to be like, "this is dumb and here's why I think it's dumb." And then with that, I think the other thing is I'm not as risk averse. I was really risk averse at one point in time, and then I got fired. And at that point I was like. Yeah, screw it. Like, like I survived once and so like, let's try this. [00:21:27] Derek: Um, Why not? You know, I like, but I also do a lot of research, so like, what seems risky the most like, is just the next step and it's logical. And I'm like, okay, yeah, we're going to do that. And you know why? Everyone's like, I, you know, I can't believe you're doing that. And I'm like, why? Like, this is the next step. [00:21:46] Derek: Why are you doing what you do? Like. You're selling yourself short. Like this is not risky to me. Yeah.  [00:21:51] Derek: And so because I just, you know, you get all the things in place and then you make the leap and you know there's going to be mistakes going back to, you know, the messiness. You're like, okay, I make that leap at 60, 70% certain and, you know, and realize that 30% may kill me off. [00:22:06] Derek: But because there's always stuff I miss, but, you know, life's more enjoyable that way and so those cultures just don't fit. You know, a lot of corporate and working for someone else. And then with us, like, you know, we try to let the girls in my office, I have three full-time employees. [00:22:20] Derek: And then and then a virtual assistant that, you know, they can speak openly and sometimes that is pretty open and honest with both of us with all of us. Yeah. And can be pretty gruff, but that's what we need. And like I tell them all, I said, "if you think I'm being an idiot, you can tell me I'm an idiot. Just, you know, make sure you have the evidence."  [00:22:37] Jason: How would you describe the culture then in your business? Like everybody has a voice. You mentioned outspoken, you mentioned basically, it sounds like you're willing to take feedback and you know, and I would imagine that allows the business to innovate and move forward much faster than most companies that don't foster environment of feedback or honesty. [00:22:58] Derek: I mean, there's a lot of times the girls in my office are right. They see stuff that I don't see. Yeah.  [00:23:03] Jason: If you're relying on team members, it's really dumb to think you've got all of the best ideas and nobody else is as smart as you.  [00:23:10] Derek: Well, and they, and we all balance each other out. [00:23:12] Derek: Like, you know, as you in your coaching terms I'm the visionary, right? The craziest thing you ever told me when we did the jumpstart.  [00:23:19] Jason: Yeah. [00:23:19] Derek: And I still laugh. For this past year and I wanted to, I brought it up at DoorGrow Live as part of the breakout session. When we did that, you're like, dude, you thrive in chaos. And I'm like, nah, yeah, maybe like, they're like, no, that's your life. And then as I was going through and putting together that breakout session, I'm just like. Jason was right, like is the girls are all stressed and everything. And my wife's like, what is going on? I'm like, this is amazing. [00:23:45] Derek: Like every said, you know, I got to figure out the student housing thing. And then we got this and we got this. And I'm like, this is fantastic. My mind's on overload. I'm going a million miles an hour, and I'm just like, this is great. All well, the girls are like ready to be balled, you know, baller than me pulling their hair out and, you know, and all of this stuff. [00:24:02] Derek: But that's where the balance comes in.  [00:24:04] Derek: And so, because with a visionary, there's certain tendencies that are pretty horrible and self-destructive that I've learned.  [00:24:12] Jason: Yeah.  [00:24:12] Derek: That have, it's been painful lessons over the years. [00:24:16] Derek: Which is why like, we spent the last three years really just cleaning up. Most of the stuff is still cleaning up our database from like eight years ago. That's like, why is not all this information in the property? I was just running, you know, who has time for that? [00:24:29] Derek: And so having that balance has been huge to kind of tone down those different aspects of my personality. So that we can move forward in a way that works and fit that's much better for us, much better for our owners that we work for, and much better for our tenants.  [00:24:50] Jason: Yeah. Well, you know, yeah I definitely can thrive in chaos and I think those that a lot of visionaries that might be like that, that are listening, that, you know, there's a certain amount of chaos that we feel really effective in while the everybody else are like freaking out. Sometimes I call it the Amon principle because like you've got, I was raised Mormon, and in that, there's this story where like, they're running around, freaking out. "We're going to get killed by the king, because the, these bad guys scatter our flocks." And Amon was the one that was like, "Hey. There's chaos. Here's an opportunity. I can create something out of chaos." And that he was able to show up as a leader. And everybody's like, "yeah, we'll do whatever you say because we're all going to die probably." So anything's better than dying. So they're like, let's do what this guy says and instantly is leading a group, even though he is the new guy. [00:25:40] Jason: Those are those in Myers-Briggs that have a P at the end that are listening. Like the raw material of chaos and new ideas and different things allows you to formulate some new thinking and to innovate and to create stuff. [00:25:52] Jason: Whereas those js, they're like, they're the ones that kind of keep us stable and they think inside the box and the box is a nice container and we need those team members that like can keep us a little bit, you know, protected and away from the, a little bit too crazy. And sometimes I jokingly call them the crusher of all hopes and dreams, but they keep us grounded and they keep us connected to reality and they protect the business, and they help us know when we're getting a little too wild, but we're the ones that stretch them outside the box. [00:26:22] Jason: We're the ones that help them lean into new ideas. And so I think depending on what you are as a business owner, we need that alternative. We need somebody that kind of can stretch us into growth or stretch us into maybe constraint and into some guardrails and some protective measures. And having a good planning system eventually and having team members that have a voice, I think is really important. [00:26:48] Jason: So. You built the business and built this culture and in nine years getting to 650 units that's, you know, that's no small feat. That's pretty decent growth. How have you gotten most of the doors up to this point?  [00:27:02] Derek: This is what's crazy. So when I was asked to do that breakout session and Sarah was like, "Hey, you did all this stuff, how did you do it?" And I'm like, I don't know. Yeah. And so we went back and we ran the numbers and so 88% of my growth has come from like my network and just those relationships.  [00:27:22] Jason: They say your network is your net worth, right? Yeah. So,  [00:27:25] Derek: so I mean, current owners expanding their portfolio, which is like awesome, right? [00:27:29] Derek: Because that means you're doing a really good job. They're like, "Hey, I'm comfortable, I want to buy more." [00:27:33] Jason: Yeah.  [00:27:34] Derek: Then they refer their friends. And then just kind of my group of friends that I have and then agents relationships that I've had over the years. Yeah. And so really only like 12% of my business has come from Google over the years, which was eyeopening. [00:27:48] Derek: Yeah. You know, because you hate when I say this phrase, but I don't know any other way like.  [00:27:53] Derek: You know, the really the ethoses of our companies, we just try not to suck. And I'm like, that was like the most—  [00:27:58] Jason: yeah,  [00:27:58] Derek: the best validation of that philosophy. I haven't figured out a better way to say it, to make it more Jason approved. [00:28:06] Derek: But it was awesome. Like, I mean, and so, and it was just validation for all the crazy stuff we've done. Like the owner's conference we do, the owner's gifts.  [00:28:16] Jason: Yeah, you do some unique things.  [00:28:18] Derek: Like just all those different things that it was like, alright, like the craziness worked. Like it was, you know, I have my own way of doing things. [00:28:25] Derek: I have my own way that I view the world. And that was like the best validation ever. Like it was awesome. And it was empowering because it just. You know, it played into my strengths as opposed to making, you know, cold calls and trying to do that way where I'm not as good at. It was a slower growth. [00:28:41] Derek: It was a slower burn. But now it's just— [00:28:44] Jason: now you can build systems for growth and we're working on some stuff with you, which is, which  [00:28:48] Derek: is the step that we're, that I'm on now, so.  [00:28:51] Jason: So, you know, there's a lot of property managers listening that maybe they have maybe more similar personality to you and they're good with people and they can make friends. [00:29:01] Jason: But one of the challenges I've seen with some of these individuals. They get stuck in this thinking as a business owner, that they have to be a business owner and what that looks like, and maybe it's more that corporate environment and they're like, I got to step out of being the guy that's connecting and networking and creating relationships and friends, and I've got to run this business and do all this stuff that's like not even aligned with their personality. [00:29:22] Jason: And so they really, it prevents them from being able to grow and creates a business that makes a miserable job for them. And then there's those listening that are like, "man, I suck at friends. I don't believe that people are awesome, as Derek says. And I just, I'm not into connecting with people," and they need to maybe. [00:29:40] Jason: You know, get a business development manager or salespeople or that like people, that can connect with people to bring in business and that's not their strength, you know? And so I think it's really awesome that you've been able to focus on building a business that you actually enjoy being in where most business owners think they need to build a business to please everybody else. [00:30:01] Derek: Well, and this is really a credit to you, Jason. So, I mean, I've been with you just over a year now.  [00:30:06] Derek: Like I stumbled across you. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's  [00:30:09] Jason: been a while. Little while. I didn't realize it's been that long.  [00:30:11] Derek: Yeah. Like, just kind of stumbled across you. because we'd, I had owners tell me like, "Hey, you need to expand up north and manage our properties. It's no longer a question of of if, you can no longer tell me no, it's a matter of when." I'm like, I can't do that, that my mind doesn't work that way. There's a reason I've been telling you no for years.  [00:30:27] Jason: Yeah.  [00:30:28] Derek: And so like we just stumbled across you and you know, I signed on pretty quick. [00:30:33] Derek: Yeah, because, you know, you spoke to me like you understood kind of at a level that I'm like, yeah, you know where I'm at. I understand,  [00:30:39] Jason: I understand your level of crazy for sure.  [00:30:41] Derek: I'm still that, like I'm in parts of the business that I'm not good at. I've pulled back so much and I'm in the process of pulling back more. [00:30:51] Jason: Well, what do you feel like over this year, what are some of the changes that you feel like you've made or that have been beneficial? How did. DoorGrow, me, Sarah, team help. Like what's changed?  [00:31:03] Derek: So one, trusting those that I hire, like I've had amazing staff, you know? [00:31:08] Derek: Yeah. But I'm also like, I need to do this. I'm the owner. And so being able to offload some of that. And so when you look the biggest thing is, you know, we all have certain ways that we think our business needs to look right, certain positions, we need to do this, we need to do that. And you gave me the freedom, and this is going to be kind of counterintuitive, but the time studies. [00:31:32] Jason: Yeah.  [00:31:32] Derek: You know, like was eye opening. because it's like, oh yeah, let's just take that off the girls' plate. Like, they don't like doing that. Why am I having them do that? Like, okay, so where does this need to go? And so being able to shift some stuff and now like now it doesn't matter, like what it looks like. It's based on my current staff. [00:31:51] Derek: And you know what I need and what the business needs. And so now like as I scale, I don't know what it's going to look like and nor do I care.  [00:32:00] Jason: Because you feel like you have a system for figuring out  [00:32:04] Derek: Yeah. Like, I mean, you, I remember you telling me that you know, each progressive time study, you're going to get more mad at yourself. [00:32:13] Derek: And I didn't believe it. because at first I'm like, oh yeah, like I love doing the showing. It's like, no problem. You know, I'll keep the girls in the office. Like, like I said, I love people. So me interacting with people you know, a lease and everything's like, dude, I love this property. [00:32:25] Derek: Like, cool, what do you do? Like, and just be able to like, I want to rent from this guy. And all of that. And then just certain other things. And so then the second time study I did, I was like a little more aggravated. And then the one I did in January with the girls in my office, because I said, we're going to do one and, you know, and kind of get some stuff into place for as we continue to grow and what that needs to look like. My whole thing was like, why am I doing this? He was all like, I was angry. Yeah. And Shaunna, as we're going through this, she goes, "your whole thing's angry." I'm like, "yeah, I'm shocked." [00:32:53] Derek: Like this was the worst thing ever. Like I was pissed. I'm like, why am I still doing showings? This needs to get off my plate.  [00:32:58] Derek: And she's like, you love doing showings? And I'm like, I do, but it's stupid for me to be doing showings. Like it just makes no sense. And so like over time having that and looking at the girls time studies and seeing certain trends, I'm like, okay, like yeah, I've got this. [00:33:13] Derek: I'm like, I have data and we're going to do another one here at the end of June to kind of make our next step because we're looking at another hire that we're trying to figure out exactly. This one will be, honest and frank conversations between me and my staff because I'm like, this is what I think we need and we can have them do. [00:33:28] Derek: And I think this is what they think going to be and well, so it may come to rock paper scissors, we'll see how that how that's decided. But having that time study and realizing. Like systems and people, you know, peoples and processes, right? You can, as long as you have those in place, you can scale.  [00:33:42] Jason: So for those listening, they're like, "time study. Like what? Like tracking your time?" Like could you explain to them the time study process and why it's beneficial?  [00:33:50] Derek: So it's basically every 15 minutes, here's what I did. And was it, you know, was I interrupted? Is this something I enjoy doing? Is this something I don't enjoy doing? Yeah. And so you can learn, you know, how to minimize the interruptions, you know, if there's certain things. [00:34:04] Derek: And then, you know, how do you get some stuff that you don't enjoy doing as much? You know, there's always the nature of it. There's always going to be things you don't enjoy doing, right? Yeah. But if you can kind of farm those off and then let those focus on. You know, those that are, be good at that be able to take that on because they actually enjoy doing that. [00:34:24] Derek: I think you described it to me like, because it was like, this doesn't make any sense. You're like, how many plumbers are there in the world and they love it.  [00:34:32] Jason: Yeah,  [00:34:33] Derek: they love swimming in the muck and here's what it is and they make good money with it. And I'm like, that makes sense to me. Like it just, it's, I'm like, oh yeah, there are a lot of plumbers. [00:34:40] Derek: Yeah, there,  [00:34:41] Jason: there's people that love doing everything that you don't enjoy doing. There's somebody out there that loves doing that and I think the time study, the purpose of it, isn't just to see where your time goes, there is that advantage, but it's really to figure out, not just time, but it's to figure out energy, like which things are giving you life, which things are taking it away? [00:34:59] Jason: What are the plus signs? What are the minus signs? And I love that you're already having team members do it because if you want to keep team members, and keep them happy and have really good culture and really good team, you want to move them towards their areas of genius, the things that they're naturally inclined to be great at in their personality. [00:35:15] Derek: Well, and it also like the way we did it, I had, I promised the girls, I said, I'm not looking at what you're doing. I know you're doing your job.  [00:35:21] Jason: Yeah.  [00:35:22] Derek: And they had all come from a corporate environment, so when they're hearing time studies, they like, there was huge fear. [00:35:27] Derek: There's a reason it was took nine months after I hired you, before I was finally like, you need to do this, right? Like, I'm going to die on this sword and you're going to have to trust me that I'm not looking at going, "Hey, like why are you doing this instead of you doing this?" and so when I went to with Shaunna, like I looked at it and we went through, I was like, man, we're taking a lot of phone calls. [00:35:48] Derek: Is there ways we can do that? And not that we had to make out actions on any of that right now, but it's like it started the conversation that now even six months later are starting to come to fruition that, that look, hey, like we are still dealing with a lot of this. We're dealing with a lot of this. Is there ways we can do this? [00:36:04] Derek: Things that I've put on the back burner for years, I'm like, I really need to look into this. That, like, looking at it, I'm like, oh yeah, this is like crisis. Like I've failed my staff, right?  [00:36:14] Jason: Yeah.  [00:36:15] Derek: And so kind of put some of those solutions in place and get answers for them and make things like that work. [00:36:19] Derek: So it was eyeopening, but it doesn't really. You don't matter how it looks. I mean, so like, I joke all the time, you know, at one point in time my office staff, because you're used to, when you hear property management, like, oh, you have a leasing agent, you have a maintenance coordinator, you have, you know, your office manager and the grocery, oh, you have a regional manager. [00:36:39] Derek: My staff at one point in time was a student life coordinator, a housing advocate, and an office queen. That was her technical term. Right. We even gave her a crown. When I went to London, I found a shirt that had a queen. And so like, we got her that, right. It was, it was on her business cards and everything. [00:36:54] Derek: Okay. But it doesn't matter. Like, and titles don't matter. Like, it's just a matter of putting them in the position to where they and the business can succeed.  [00:37:04] Jason: I mean, really a lot of business owners are trying to optimize their team through micromanagement and through KPIs and through metrics and trying to force them to perform better. [00:37:14] Jason: And our philosophy at DoorGrow is quite different. Like we're basically by doing time studies and by setting really good culture and establishing that we're optimizing based on personalities. Which is fundamentally way more effective. And so your business from the ground up is becoming more and more optimized based on your talent and they're able to perform at a much higher level. [00:37:37] Jason: Also, by doing the time studies you had mentioned getting clear on interruptions. Interruptions of that hidden thief in a property management business I talk about. And so by getting your team conscious of these interruptions and taking a fresh look at them. Do they need to happen? Most property management companies give their tenants and their owners a completely blank check to steal their money, steal profitability, and to increase operational costs. [00:38:01] Jason: They're like, call us anytime. And they just think, "we just got to add more staff and more phones and more everything." And so by your team doing time studies, they're becoming aware of interruptions, interrupting each other, interrupting you, like all that. They're starting to become conscious that this—  [00:38:16] Derek: or me interrupting them. [00:38:18] Jason: Yes.  [00:38:18] Derek: Like that came out. I'm like,  [00:38:20] Jason: Derek interrupted me five times on my time study. What the hell, Derek, why? Like, why can't, that came up quite a bit. Let's find another system, right? because there's Derek's sneaker net in the office walking in, interrupting, and you know. Yeah. So taking away Derek's blank check to disrupt his own team maybe. [00:38:39] Derek: Yeah. That's when we build a new office it's mandatory that I have my own space. Right now we have an open concept.  [00:38:45] Jason: Right? I've had clients after doing time studies that start working from home and their office performance goes up because they're not screwing everything up all the time. [00:38:53] Derek: That's now that my son's moved out, that's in the works myself too, so.  [00:38:57] Jason: Okay. Yeah. So, so it sounds like a big thing that you've gotten so far in DoorGrow is just more and more clarity. And so you can make better decisions as a team.  [00:39:07] Derek: Well, and confidence. I didn't know what I was going to be doing like when we were looking to make that leap, I'm like, Hey, I pretty much told I have to, so I have to figure this out, you know, to manage Northern Utah. And now like, we kind of laugh because it's like, okay, we did that and now it's just here's what we require for other parts of the state. [00:39:27] Derek: And having done it once we're kind of like, why the hell not? Like, what's next? That's been eyeopening. And then the other thing that's awesome. I mean, so I mean you got a network of the other property managers that you can use their brain and they can use yours and brainstorm and I mean that was the magic of DoorGrow Live a couple weeks ago. [00:39:46] Jason: Yeah.  [00:39:46] Derek: Being able to network and visit with 40 other property managers and be able to just kind of hear their pains and brainstorm and  [00:39:53] Jason: Yeah.  [00:39:53] Derek: You know, I learned just as much from those that had 25 units as those that were larger. I mean, and everyone had an attitude of learning. I mean, one of the best meetings ever is like, so we had a breakfast that Sunday morning, Ed and Sylvie and I, and all three of us were just like. [00:40:09] Derek: And Sylvie's like, I mean, she's a small, Ed's over 300 and has done it all and seen it all. And I'm at 600 and we're just like sitting there taking notes with what Sylvie was saying, like, we're like, that's genius. You know? Yeah. And and so just learning kind of where everyone else is at and understanding you can learn things from other people like, and it,  [00:40:26] Jason: yeah. [00:40:26] Jason: Sylvie's super sharp and I mean, she's just starting her property management business. But she's worked with coaches and mentors that I've been around that like were in high ticket masterminds and different things. Like her mindset is different and so everybody's bringing different things to the table. [00:40:42] Jason: Like you said, you can't just judge them based off door count. Some people are bringing some amazing things to the table. I think also, you know, we at DoorGrow, we attract a different breed of property managers. Like these are growth-minded people. It's very different. They're kind of the cream of the crop of the industry. [00:40:58] Jason: They're unique people that would invest money into their personal growth and personal development and into improving the business and be willing to take feedback and ideas from outside themselves, from a coach.  [00:41:10] Derek: And it's crazy at the time they're doing it. I'm like, man, I wish, I mean, that's ballsy. You're like, I'm at 50 units and I'm going to spend this much in a coach. Now it's money well spent. I'm like, I would've saved myself a whole lot of time and hassle had I done that. You know, so it's like it's a genius. We help them get an ROI,  [00:41:25] Jason: they can afford us, that's for sure.  [00:41:27] Derek: Yeah. I'm like, that's, that's gutsy. [00:41:29] Jason: Yeah. Some people are, they're really gutsy. But I think on the surface it may seem gutsy, but what I've noticed is I also get a lot of people coming to me that have bought into franchises that have really struggled. They've spent tons of money and they've really struggled, and sometimes for years, and I'm like, we could have solved this stuff like in a quarter, like we could have solved so many of these problems or helped them figure out how to grow so much quicker and they've just struggled with bad ideas and bad advice and not growing and, you know, or just so much stress and all of this stuff is so solvable and, you know, and I was that hardheaded guy in the past where I was like I can do everything myself and I'm a smart guy and I can watch YouTube videos and do courses and read books and but once I started investing in myself and realizing I sucked and I couldn't. I was hitting limits because of, you know, just who I was at the time. [00:42:24] Jason: I needed mentors and coaches to help me collapse time. Like it just reduced the amount of time wasting and experimentation because I mean, all of our clients are smart. I think they're all smart. All of them could figure out everything eventually, but, you know, it could take a decade longer. Like you can collapse a decade into a year if somebody just said, "Hey, I've tried that stuff. That doesn't work. Do this." And that's my shameless plug or competitive advantage is I've been able to see inside probably thousands of property management companies and see what doesn't work and what does work. And I'm not in the fire, like I'm objective. I'm not attached to any particular ideas. And so, you know, and I think that's the thing is I'm like, well, I've seen this and this. You could try that, but here's what will probably happen. [00:43:12] Jason: And I'm usually right because I've just seen, I've got so much data to work with. You mentioned confidence and I've, this is something I've noticed in you, Derek. I feel like you've shifted a lot over this last year in terms of confidence, just going from where you were when we first had our first conversation to you presenting to a group at DoorGrowLive and talking. [00:43:32] Jason: What have you noticed in the stuff that you've been working on in yourself and with your team in your own shift in confidence? Or have you seen this?  [00:43:42] Derek: I think clarity is what it is. Like. because I mean, I'm a control freak in so many ways, right? [00:43:48] Derek: It's my business and— Yeah. And I laugh because I'm not, unless it comes to my branding, I'm not OCD enough to be a control freak.  [00:43:58] Jason: Yeah.  [00:43:59] Derek: My branding, it's a completely different thing. Like I am like the crazy stuff I do. I'm like, it speaks, it has to be me. And I'm pretty anal retentive, and it's just a completely different beast. [00:44:09] Derek: Like, but as far as my business, I was such a control freak. And to be able to let that go so that I can be like, oh yeah this is what I enjoy. This is what I need to focus on. I care about that stuff. But that's a Shaunna and I can like, and then like recognizing certain things like now in the employees because— I recognize where we're at, like how do we jump in, you know, to kind of, to help. But the more I've gotten out of the day to day actually, the better the business has gotten because I can focus on the more higher level vision stuff. [00:44:43] Derek: And here's what it looks like. I, like I tell as I explain to people, I say I hate puzzles, but I'm really good at putting together the border and finding the like pieces and going, okay, these are all the pieces that go to the car. This goes to the bush. There may be some tree pieces in there like in the bush. [00:45:05] Derek: because you know you're just going. But I'm really good at that and kind of getting it close and seeing where things need to be. And that's my talent. I'm not good at spending the time to finish the puzzle. I enjoy the puzzle when it's done. Like, because, oh, that's beautiful, right? But getting in there, like, but I love gathering the like stuff. [00:45:28] Derek: I'm going, okay, here's this. Like, here's what you need. You know?  [00:45:32] Derek: There's this tech that I think can solve this problem. Holy crap. Like this is next level stuff. I can see that future and I can make those pivots. Yeah. And I can see those more clearly now as I've gotten out of the day to day. And that's where that additional confidence from. [00:45:45] Derek: because I'm like, you know, before I'm like, can I do this now? I'm like, why the hell not? Like it's just, and I've done enough crazy things that I've had some basic confidence, but. I mean, when I came to you, I've had the crap beat out of me for like three straight years. because of the growth and trying to clean up the book, like so much cleanup because I was an like, I was just an idiot and didn't have the systems and processes in place. [00:46:06] Derek: And so now that those are still, and we're still building them and still, you know, tweaking them and figuring them out, but that's where I'm like, cool. I can do a lot cooler stuff for us that I love, you know, that are important to me as opposed to being in the day to day. And I never really, like, I laugh because I told you, I said I do enough research that when I do the crazy stuff, it doesn't feel crazy. For me, when we made that leap up north, it's like there's now just kind of these moments that I'm like, that was crazy. Like I, we went to the Utah Apartment Association or Utah, sorry, rental Housing Association conference.  [00:46:41] Derek: And I'm talking to people like, oh, you're in Cedar City. Like, what are you doing up here? [00:46:45] Derek: Oh, like, I had to come, I came up here for a week for this and. You know, I had to work on my properties up here and they're like looking at me like, wait, hold on, you're managing stuff up here and you're based out of there. Yeah. I mean, we have two listings, 300 miles apart and that's all sudden. I'm like, that's kind of crazy. [00:47:00] Jason: Yeah.  [00:47:00] Derek: That's kind of insane, but it's just like, it just feels natural to me to where I'm like, unless you break it down like that, it just doesn't feel that crazy for me. Like, here's what it is. We got lucky on a few things and now like putting systems in place that I can continue to expand, know, where I want to expand. [00:47:15] Derek: And it's just like, yeah, we can make this happen. And that's more what we've, where I've gotten out of it. I always kind of had the crazy confidence to do crazy stuff. Now it's just like, oh, my business is no longer beating the crap out of me at the same level. And I can focus on what I enjoy. [00:47:29] Derek: Yeah.  [00:47:30] Jason: Well, I think that's maybe a good point to wrap up on is I think really it's been about helping you understand just yourself and helping you understand you so that you can build that business of your dreams. You can build the team around you that supports you. I mean, even from the very beginning and in the onboarding training, this is why I make sure that everybody's clear on the idea of the four reasons. Some of you maybe have heard me talk about on the podcast, I have a video on visionary versus operators, so they can kind of identify themselves and the more clarity we can give you on yourself and then doing time studies and figuring out your personality, then we can start to build the team and the business around you and get you out of those things. [00:48:08] Jason: And I find entrepreneurs make good decisions once they have better information. And the best information you can have is to really have clarity on yourself.  [00:48:15] Derek: I a hundred percent agree.  [00:48:17] Jason: So I'm really excited to see what you do over the next year or two. Like, I think you're going to have some big changes and some big shifts, and your business is just getting started. [00:48:26] Jason: I think you guys could easily be over a thousand units in the next year or two if you guys really put the pedal to that.  [00:48:31] Derek: That's open conversation in our office, which in the past, any of those conversations would've led to any of us being pelted with whatever was on their desk at the time. [00:48:41] Derek: And now it's just this is happening. What does it look like? I mean, and that's what's funny is like it's just really, we're just like, okay,  [00:48:46] Jason: there's kind of a new reality floating around in the office for  [00:48:48] Derek: the future. Well, it's a reality we already dealt with. Now we've just owned it and we're no longer fighting it at the same level that we used to. [00:48:55] Derek: Yeah. because we're getting stuff in place and you know, trying to minimize the chaos that is always there in property management. Anyways.  [00:49:03] Jason: Cool. Well, to wrap up, any parting words you would say to property managers that maybe were dealing with similar challenges of chaos or where you were at when you first came to us? Or, you know, something you want to say those listening that have property management businesses that might be struggling.  [00:49:21] Derek: You know, relationships matter. Like, they really do. I mean, like I said, that's how I built my business. That's how a lot of the stuff we've been able to do with the tenants and some of that focus that we've done, like those relationships matter. [00:49:31] Derek: People are people and they deserve to be treated as such, so, and it makes a huge difference.  [00:49:36] Jason: I, yeah, I think that would help every property management company's growth is just start to view people through a more positive lens and focus on relationships. Love it. Cool. Great. Parting words. [00:49:48] Jason: Derek, appreciate you coming out and hanging out with us on the DoorGrow Show. Do you want anyone to connect with you in any way or like any social media or anything?  [00:49:58] Derek: Best thing? Go to our website, netgainpm.com, N-E-T-G-A-I-N pm for property management.com. Yeah.  [00:50:05] Jason: And Derek, you're doing really cool stuff. [00:50:07] Jason: I love that you're kind of out of the box thinking and the stuff that you're doing to make things fun in your business. And like you mentioned, you do an owner conference where you have your owners and you do this virtually and you do some cool stuff. So it's exciting to watch you and I'm excited to see what you do over the next couple of years. [00:50:22] Jason: So it'd be awesome. So, sounds great. All right, thank you.  [00:50:26] Jason: So for those that are listening, if you are stuck. Or feel stagnant and you want to take your property management business to the next level, we would be honored to help. Reach out to us at doorgrow.com. Also, join our free Facebook community. We've got cool people in there like Derek, that are helpful just for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com. [00:50:49] Jason: And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a positive or review wherever you found this. We'd really appreciate it. And until next time, remember, the slowest path to growth is to do it alone, so let's grow together. Bye everyone. 

What if you could retain the doors you manage even when your owners decide to sell? What would that mean for you and your property management business? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Lior from Blanket to talk about how property managers can retain doors while also helping investors grow and add more to their portfolios. You'll Learn [02:59] Property Managers Can Become Asset Managers [11:13] Valuable Lessons Learned from Tough Situations [25:40] How to Move into More of an Asset Manager Role [37:25] Reducing Client and Retaining Clients [47:51] Helping Your Investors Grow Their Portfolios Quotables “You have to be very robotic, very technical, and that is one of the most important skills that really allows me to face difficult, you know, decisions in life, especially in business, without taking them personally.” “When you are rational and you're not driven by emotions, that actually allows you to be a lot more, you know, empathetic and kind and caring.” “There are no failures in life. There are only challenges, and every challenge is an opportunity for success.” ”Why be so focused on the failure if you can be focused on the lesson that you're going to learn, even before you even know it?” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript [00:00:00] Lior: The combination of these two, this is what allows you to be that ultimate asset manager to your clients. That can help your clients, optimize their portfolio and generate more cash flow, but on the other hand, help them make more money by expanding their portfolio, buying more properties, and growing it. [00:00:18] Jason: Welcome everybody to the DoorGrow Show. I'm Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. We are the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. [00:00:31] Jason: For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of businesses, helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profit, simplify operations, and build and replace teams. [00:00:52] Jason: We are like Bar Rescue for property managers. In fact, we have cleaned up and rebranded over 300 businesses and we run the leading property management mastermind with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world, and that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:01:17] Jason: 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. Now let's get into the show. All right, so today I'm hanging out with Lior. [00:01:37] Jason: How do you say your last name? Abramovich?  [00:01:42] Jason: Abramovich.  [00:01:43] Jason: Abramovich. Man. I butchered that one. All right. So with Blanket, he's repping it on a t-shirt, if you're seeing the video version of this. And so, Lior, we've had several calls, hanging out and you're just a really cool guy and we've really enjoyed hanging out. [00:02:01] Jason: Yeah. We've really enjoyed hanging out. He's given me a heart shape with his hand for those listening. But I haven't had you on the podcast yet, have I?  [00:02:09] Lior: True. This is the first time.  [00:02:11] Jason: Yeah. That's so odd to me. Usually people start by doing the podcast with me and so we're doing the reverse. [00:02:17] Jason: And you're a sponsor at DoorGrow Live, our conference coming up. Thank you. And we're really excited to have you there. One of our vendors said it's the only conference he still attends now. That's it. He's like, "it's the one I get the most value from learning, and the other ones just aren't worth the, you know, paying to go be a vendor there." [00:02:36] Jason: And I'm like, okay, cool. So hopefully you get some benefit from doing that as well. So I'm excited Lior to expose people to Blanket because I think it's very complimentary to our vision and what we do at DoorGrow in helping grow property managers. And I would call it like a client retention platform, but maybe you describe it differently. [00:02:57] Jason: But before we get into that, why don't we give some background on you and why don't you tell everybody how you kind of got into entrepreneurism, then got into property management and give us some backstory. We need the origin story of Lior.  [00:03:11] Lior: Will do. I'll try to make it exciting and interesting. [00:03:13] Jason: Okay.  [00:03:14] Lior: I started from real estate. I didn't start from the tech side or from, you know, the startup world. I started as an investor. I bought my first rental property in Atlanta, Georgia when I was about 18 years old. So started quite early with a lot of inspiration from my mom, which is my role model in life for pretty much everything. [00:03:33] Lior: And at that point in time, I actually was doing that investment from Israel, thousands of miles away. This is where I was born and raised. I actually moved here to the States just about a year, yeah, exactly a year ago. Moved to Miami, Florida. After just, you know, living on the line, flying back and forth almost every month for multiple years, but in that first stage of like my, you know, real estate, I would say career, at that point I also started my active duty service in the Israeli Navy. [00:04:05] Lior: So I'm a graduate of the Israeli Naval Academy, then served for almost nine years as a naval commander commanding hundreds of soldiers, officers, and combat soldiers in quite intense and interesting situations I would say. That's a whole topic that we can talk about for hours in another podcast. [00:04:25] Lior: Yeah. Episode.  [00:04:26] Jason: Interesting. I didn't know that about you.  [00:04:28] Lior: Yeah. That was quite an intense nine years and definitely shaped me as a person and as an entrepreneur as well. Most of what I know, most of what I do, most of what I act upon is pretty much majority, you know, of what I learned and implemented in myself as a person in my qualities, in my values, in my worldviews through that time in the Navy. [00:04:52] Lior: And, you know, before that, before like that step of buying that first rental property, it's not like it came from out of nowhere. You know, probably I started as most of our listeners today by reading the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki when I was about 13 years old. Again, my mom gave me that as a birthday gift at 13 years old. [00:05:14] Lior: And to me it was fascinating, this whole concept that you can, you know, like make money from like a property that you actually took money from the bank to pay for it, and it pays for itself and it makes some extra money. So this whole like very, you know, conceptualized plan was very interesting to me. [00:05:35] Lior: And I said like, this is something I would like to do at some capacity in my life. Especially because the fact that I was born for a family of immigrants, my entire family came from Ukraine to Israel. So we didn't have, you know, very good financial you know, let's say position in life as most immigrants do. [00:05:54] Lior: And my grandparents don't have, you know, today also a pension plan that, or that's how we call it in Israel. And here we call it 401k. So they don't have that. And to me, real estate was always a way to take care of my loved ones, to take care of my grandparents, to be able to at least give them one rental property that can enable them stable, and I would say secure financial retirement, and just really retire with dignity, retire safely. And that was like the big why behind everything I'm doing. So. Quick, you know, fast forward nine years in the Navy, kept doing real estate throughout that time. Helped a lot of my fellow naval officers to buy properties in the United States. [00:06:38] Lior: Okay. And then started working for a big investment firm in the United States that was doing build to rent before build to rent was a thing. You know, today, you know, people are talking about build to rent is with this cool name, but back then we just called it new construction you know, for investors. [00:06:52] Lior: So we were one of the largest operators in the Southeast. We were one of the largest operators, specifically in Georgia and Alabama. And I started there as their head of acquisitions quickly promoted to vice president of business development, overseeing our entire operation from due diligence, meaning land acquisition development, and then, you know, disposition and sales and marketing. [00:07:14] Lior: So, really had the opportunity to experience every part of the value chain of real estate investments from start to finish, seeing all the good, seeing all the bad, I had, you know, contractors that went bankrupt in the middle of a 300 property community. And I had very good stories as well. But that whole period of time of me working there for almost three years was the best school I ever got to really, you know, operate as an operator and manage an operation of hundreds of millions of dollars because in that time alone, I personally oversaw about $200 million worth of acquisitions and worked directly with over a thousand individual investors, mainly mom and pop investors, like most of you know, the clients of most of our listeners today. And the unique thing about it, and this is where Blanket sort of like starts to form up as an idea, the unique thing about my position in that company was that it had a very interesting model where. [00:08:16] Lior: All the clients that we sold properties to, which were clients, by the way, all over the world. We worked with buyers from Israel, Canada, Russia, China, Australia, like everywhere. You know, that was one of our, you know, major, I would say efficiencies, which we were working with a lot of foreign investors and we are one of the biggest drivers of that. [00:08:38] Lior: So we've seen pretty much everything in every one of those clients that we actually sell the property to we kept managing the relationship with them instead of the property manager. So think of that company as like an investor relations arm, right? Where you refer that client after we sell a property to a property manager partner that we worked with and we worked with a lot of folks and then that property manager is not talking with that owner. [00:09:05] Lior: No headaches, no nothing. We are managing that owner. So every time the owner has a question, he sends that to us and if we need, we escalate that to the property manager. If the property manager wants to convey something, he escalates that. So like he gives it to us and we pass it on to the owner. But the whole notion was that we will be their asset manager and this whole thing enabled me to see all the things that work and all the things that don't work when it comes to owner relationships and how property managers manage their owner relationships, especially with the things that are missing, which is what owners expect and what property managers don't provide, which leads in many cases to churn. [00:09:48] Lior: And that churn problem that today is pretty much the same as it has been 10 years ago, which is almost 25 to 30% annually. That's the average in the industry today in terms of how many properties we're losing today as property managers. So in that aspect, like you think to yourself, okay, what's causing that? [00:10:09] Lior: And that was the question that always led me to ask all my property management partners. Why are you losing so many clients? Like, we know we're doing an awesome job as your asset manager and you know, but like why is this a big problem in your business today? Yeah, and a lot of it was always due to owner sales or to owner experience, which we were solving a lot for because we were taking care of those owners. [00:10:33] Lior: So every time they wanted to sell a property, they told us and we were able to sell it inside the other, you know, the network of property owners and clients. And also when they... [00:10:43] Jason: if somebody wanted to sell property that was a client, you would be able to turn around and sell to one of your other clients so that you continued to keep the property, which is exactly awesome, which is a no brainer. [00:10:55] Jason: And I'm sure a lot of property managers like say that would be the ideal. That'd be great if I can do the sales, get those commissions, and still be able to keep the property in my portfolio. That would be really great. Exactly. Blanket helps do this, right?  [00:11:11] Lior: Yeah. We'll get to Blanket in a second.  [00:11:13] Jason: I have a question before we continue. You mentioned being in the military and being in the Navy and being Navy commander. I didn't know this about you. So what do you feel like that did to change you? How do you feel like you would be different if you hadn't have gone through that?  [00:11:30] Lior: It will be pretty much everything that I know and everything that I do. [00:11:33] Lior: But if I were to pick a few, I would say main things that were changed in how I view the world and how I operate, number one is being more rational than emotional, pretty much about everything. My mom even jokes all the time. She says, I'm like a robot, like you know, I'm not driven by emotions at all. [00:11:54] Lior: And that is one of the things that you have to sort of develop yourself into, when you're dealing with life threatening, you know, situations, you have to be rational. You have to be very robotic, very technical, and that is one of the most important skills that really allows me to face difficult, you know, decisions in life, especially in business, without taking them personally. [00:12:16] Lior: And, you know, it's business.  [00:12:17] Jason: I love, I love that idea. One of my favorite books lately is this book by a guy named Jerr, this philosopher, and it's called, The Wall Speaks and it's all about building a masculine frame. And it's being less emotional, displaying less emotion, and how that earns you respect and how that makes people around you, especially women, feel safer and everything else. [00:12:40] Jason: And this is something that just, if you are in very challenging situations. Like war, you know, military, whatever, like you learn this naturally. It's just, it hardwires it into you and. Yeah, exactly. Over emotionality is going to make a lot more sense. It's much more rational. So yeah, I think that's a great principle. [00:13:03] Lior: I would say even more than that, because probably, you know. The first thing that comes to mind when you hear that is like, oh, I don't want to be, you know, a cold person or a very, you know, apethetic person, like someone who doesn't, you know, acknowledge other people's feelings, et cetera. Sure. I say on the contrary, when you are very rational and you're not clouded by emotions, you are emotionally available to express emotion, to express care, to express, you know, concern about the other person in front of you, because you're not all centered in what you are feeling right now because something is, you know, bothering you and you're like all into that. [00:13:42] Lior: Instead, you are able to look at the other person in front of you and think how they're feeling. Think what, you know, what can help them feel better. So like when you are rational and you're not driven by emotions, that actually allows you to be a lot more, you know, empathetic and kind and caring. [00:14:00] Lior: Because you're not centered on what you're feeling and what you're experiencing, then you can really be thinking about the other person.  [00:14:07] Jason: Yeah. I love that. I think in order to reach that space, like it talks about in the wall speaks, we have to get out of this mode of trying to please everybody and trying to please others. [00:14:17] Jason: And so when we're so concerned about how everyone feels about us and we're too concerned about emotion, then we're trying to please everybody. So I love this idea this first point of rationale over emotion. This is super important in business. [00:14:31] Jason: And I love the idea that it actually enables you to be a better leader, to be able to take in and take into account other people's emotions and to see things from their perspective, because that's a more rational viewpoint than getting overly, you know, steeped in your own emotion and which blinds you to what others are feeling and what others are experiencing. [00:14:53] Jason: So you said that's number one. So I'm guessing there's a number two.  [00:14:55] Lior: There are, there are a lot. There are a lot more, but we'll keep to the I would say to the big ones. Yeah. The second thing is this very strong belief. I would say almost religious belief that there are no failures in life. [00:15:12] Lior: There are only challenges, and every challenge is an opportunity for success. Love it. That whole perspective. Well, it takes time to really live by it, but once you live by it, you don't have stress, you don't have, you don't worry about stuff. On the contrary you're getting excited about things that don't work. [00:15:33] Lior: You're getting excited about, you know, things that you would normally call failures because you're excited about what's on the other end of that. What's the lesson to be learned and what's the improvement that you're going to bring? So instead of. Being concerned about this thing right now, that it's not working. [00:15:50] Lior: You are excited, positively about what is going to happen after that because it's going to make you better. It's going to make your business better. So like this whole notion of understanding that at the end of every problem, challenge, failure, that some people might call, on the other side of that, there's always a good side. [00:16:13] Lior: Like think of it as like a coin, right? Like that's how I try to see, you know, failures in life. On one side you see the failure, you know, as some people would call it. But on the other side is the lesson, and every failure has that lesson. So why be so focused on the failure if you can be focused on the lesson that you're going to learn, even before you even know it? But you know there will be something there. You know you will be better. You know your business will be better. So let's get excited about that.  [00:16:40] Jason: Yeah, I love this idea so much. I often say I either win or I learn.  [00:16:46] Lior: Exactly.  [00:16:47] Jason: There's the only way you lose is if you quit or you give up. That's it. Like, so I either win or I learn. And I love this idea that, you know, after every struggle or failure or uncomfortable emotional experience or challenging, you know, thing in life, if we don't learn from it, then yeah, it's just trauma. It's just a problem. But if you learn from it, it becomes the bricks by which you build your character, by which you build a whole new life and a whole new self image. And if you learn from it, you're destined to not repeat it as well, which is nice. So you learn the lesson. Exactly. [00:17:23] Jason: And I think, you know, God and the universe keeps giving us the same lessons over and over again, maybe in stronger and stronger fashion until we finally learn the lesson. And I think going along with these two points, which relates heavily is being open and willing to take feedback from others, you know? [00:17:42] Jason: And so one of the things that I've, realized is that feedback a lot of people think is painful, and it can be really uncomfortable, but I've noticed that when I go to my mentors and I'm open and vulnerable to getting feedback. Sometimes, you know, it can cut pretty deeply, but it's good medicine and that's where I have the most growth and learning. [00:18:00] Jason: And so I've learned to actually love and enjoy the discomfort of feedback. And so I seek it now. Then I collapsing time on my learning. Yeah, and I'm experiencing the discomfort in that and, but I know that there's benefits to that because now I can see something that I was blind to or I'm experiencing something that I didn't realize. The reason I hire these mentors is because they're at a vantage point in some sort of area that they're ahead of me. And so being willing to get feedback takes somebody that's willing to be really rational and it takes somebody that's willing to see that there's no failure. You are not bad, sick, and wrong because somebody pointed out something that you're doing that's bad, sick, and wrong. Like that means now you have an opportunity to change or improve, which is good news. [00:18:43] Jason: It's like the best news ever. Yeah. Love this  [00:18:46] Lior: 100%.  [00:18:47] Jason: That's why we get along, Lior. You and I have just been through enough shit to learn some lessons, so. Hell yeah. So cool. Do you have a third one for us?  [00:18:55] Lior: Yeah, let's do a quick one. Leading by example. Okay. Is number one. And I'll actually give a quick story here just to explain how powerful that is. [00:19:06] Lior: And I think that's also really important for, you know, all of our listeners for property managers. Because in my first assignment in the Navy as a commander, I was assigned as a chief engineer, meaning I was in charge of the mechanics department. These are all the folks that are working the hardest. Like, think of them as like your maintenance, you know, contractors. [00:19:26] Lior: These are the folks who are going in fixing plumbing, fixing AC systems and like heating systems, like getting really dirty, you know, and like crawling underneath engines filled with like gasoline and stuff. It's like the hardest job in, you're doing the worst,  [00:19:44] Jason: worst job. It's like Mike Rowe's show Dirty Jobs. [00:19:48] Lior: Yeah. I don't want to be too explicit and vivid. But you're dealing with like pipes of like things that you know Sure. We use for other things stuff and who knows.  [00:19:56] Jason: Yeah. Okay.  [00:19:57] Lior: Exactly. It's bad. It's bad. Yeah. So anyways, so on when I was first assigned as the chief engineer, so the chief engineer in the ship is like the second to the commander. [00:20:07] Lior: Like if the, something happens to the commander of the ship. I'm taking command. So, you know, you have your respect and your sort of like, honor just with the title, you know? Yeah. It comes with it and you can walk around like, you know, like a peacock. Very proud of yourself and, you know, I'm like, I'm the boss. [00:20:25] Lior: I'm the big man or whatever.  [00:20:27] Jason: Yeah.  [00:20:27] Lior: Or you can do some other things. And for example, what I did on the first day of me getting, you know, onboard the ship and, you know, getting the role and getting command of the ship. So the first thing that I did was like every day we have like an hour at the end of the day that we're cleaning the entire ship. [00:20:46] Lior: And part of cleaning the ship is also for the mechanics department. Is getting below the engines that run the ship and cleaning all the oil residue that builds up there. So you have to literally, you know, take a lot of like cloths and sheets and just like, dive into the oil and just push it out. [00:21:04] Lior: Wow. So like you get out black, like completely black. And normally the ones who are doing it are the youngest, you know, mechanics and the youngest soldiers on the ship because it's like, you know, it's a newbie. Don't have seniority.  [00:21:16] Jason: And they're new and you give them the worst job. They get the shit job. [00:21:19] Lior: Exactly. So what I did, I went and got beneath the engines myself. Yeah. And it, it became a show. All the soldiers came to watch. Oh man, the chief got beneath the engines. He's crazy. What is he doing? It was a shock, but nobody forgot that. Like my soldiers up until today, were like best friends or like my little brothers, they remember this until today, this little thing that I never done after that again, by the way, I did it once. [00:21:48] Lior: Yeah. But they never forget it. And that sets so many examples in terms of what I expect from them in terms of ownership, you know, and values and teamwork and not being afraid to take on, you know, jobs that, that are like beneath me or whatever. That was such a powerful message without me even saying a word. [00:22:08] Lior: Yeah. So think of yourself as a property manager. Like what things you can do like that, that you need to do only once maybe in your life, you know, and show your employees that you're not afraid to get dirty and do the hard work and really show them that nobody should be feeling that something is beneath them or like it's not, you know, to their level or whatever. [00:22:31] Lior: Like if you are doing that, like who am I to, you know, raise any objections of doing something? Like I'm not the company owner and if the company owner is doing that, I better do that. Right? So  [00:22:44] Jason: yeah, that's a great story. Great example. I. You know, it's a great display of leadership. There's a really good book kind of about this principle called The Motive by Patrick Lencioni. [00:22:54] Jason: And in he talks about how there's two types of CEOs and there's the CEOs that think because of their position, everybody owes them everything. They're king, they deserve everything. And they end up having organizations that have a lack of ownership, a lack of accountability, and a lot of problems. [00:23:10] Jason: Because they think they're superior to everybody else. And then there's the CEOs that have the right motive and they understand that they have the worst job in the company because their job is to do anything that's not working and to step in anywhere that there's a problem and they need to be willing to, like you talked about, get dirty and start, like help out at the bottom if that's what the business needs to get clarity or to fix things or to figure it out. [00:23:38] Jason: And so being able to display that is a powerful thing. Like it reminds me the other day, I'm training some setters right now to do some cold calls for us, do some outreach to property managers. because we're like. The best kept secret in property management. Not all our people have heard of DoorGrow still, and so we're having them do some outreach and they're like, oh, it's really hard. [00:23:56] Jason: I don't know how to deal with gatekeepers and all this. And you like the subtext says, Jason, you don't understand. This is difficult. So I'm like, cool, let me do it right now. And I picked up the phone and they were watching me on Zoom and I'm cold calling and doing it. And the second call I got first was a voicemail. [00:24:11] Jason: I'm like, here's how to leave a voicemail to get them to call you back. And then the second call was a receptionist. And I connected with her. I made her laugh. I got info from her about the business owners, what their challenges are. Oh, there's two business owners. Okay, cool. And I got all this information about how many doors they have, everything about the business because I was nice to the receptionist and treated her like a person. [00:24:34] Jason: And and she was helping me out. She wouldn't give me their cell phone numbers, but I got everything else I needed so we could call back. And I'm like, cool. Did you see how that went? And they were like, well, it's really cool. So yeah, when we're willing to step in and show them how to do something, it can break some of their preconceived ideas, their perceptions, and so yeah, they see a leader and they're like, oh, well the leader can do this and the leader can do this well. Be cause if everybody underneath you is like, yeah, but he's never done this hard stuff, or he hasn't done this, and they're like. There's always that story. Well, he did that worst job, like he was pushing, they're like, what? Yeah, first day? I mean, it speaks volumes of character and it, yeah, it makes your leadership much easier. [00:25:19] Jason: That's kind of the equivalent of people say, if you get thrown in prison, go fight the biggest guy there, or something like this. Right? And that was the most challenging thing that nobody thought you would do, and you went and did it. And so, yeah, you earned respect. And you know, leadership has to be born out of respect. [00:25:35] Jason: So these are great principles. This was valuable in the podcast alone. So let's move on to getting into Blanket. And I think this is a game changer. I think every property management business owner should be using Blanket every single one. It's an absolute no brainer. It helps them retain their clients, well retain the properties. [00:25:58] Jason: So basically keeping their portfolio, even if the owners are leaving and it gives them access to a network of investors. And there's just so many benefits. So I'll let you tell everybody about it because you probably know a little bit more than I do, so.  [00:26:12] Lior: Sure. Thanks. Sure thing. I'll actually do I normally have, you know, the whole spiel and the features and what we provide and whatever, but I think if we already started on such a inspiring, I would say, note to the, to this episode. [00:26:25] Lior: I'll start with the why. With why we're doing what we're doing, because I think it's important and we, and I think we're not doing a good job maybe at explaining the why enough in pretty much everywhere we go about, yeah.  [00:26:36] Jason: People don't buy what you do. Simon Sinek says they buy why you do it. [00:26:39] Jason: So, exactly. Let's into the why behind Blanket. Why does Blanket exist? Yeah.  [00:26:44] Lior: So the overarching premise is that. Today there is a very big, I would say, failure or gap in the market in our single family rental market. When you look at other asset classes, when you look at commercial, when you look at, you know, multifamily, industrial office, any investors in those asset classes have an investment manager, a professional investment manager. [00:27:13] Lior: That provides them, you know, quarterly, you know, reports provides them with strategy sessions about their next capital, you know, allocation about their disposition. Yes, they have someone to guide them in a very professional way to their goals and to and to match their needs. The only asset class, the only asset class that does not have the function of an investment manager is single family. [00:27:40] Lior: Yeah. And that's especially the asset class that needs it the most because 99% of all single family rental owners are mom and pop investors. Institutional players own, roughly, depending on which source you're reading, but roughly between one to 2% of all the single family rental properties across the country. [00:28:02] Lior: The most is owned by mom and pop investors. The people who need that guidance the most. And they don't have that, which is why they're making mistakes, which is why they have maybe sometimes, and I bet all the listeners can agree some unrealistic expectations of what a property manager should do. And that creates a big gap that the only one losing or not the only one, but like the two people that are losing from the situation is that mom and pop owner and us, the property manager, because we then lose a lot of clients. [00:28:36] Lior: And it's sort of like this identity crisis where we as property managers are perceived as service providers, as rent collectors, as toilet fixers, but we are held accountable as if we're the investment managers. Like, you know, why am I losing so much money on this property? [00:28:57] Lior: It's all you. It's all about you. You didn't, you know, collect the rent. You didn't rent it on time. Yeah. Why it's vacant. Like with all due respect, you are the one who bought this property. You know, you bought it in this problematic area. You bought a very old property that never replaced the roof, never replaced the ac, and it is a very bad shape in a very bad neighborhood. [00:29:17] Lior: Like there is a limit to what I can do for you at the end of the day. But the problem is that we as property managers, we're stuck in this middle where we are held accountable. As if we're their investment manager, but we're perceived as just a service provider, which is the most difficult position to be at. [00:29:34] Lior: Now, how does that connect to our why? When I started doing real estate again, remember that like my personal why my grandparents, right? I wanted to build a real estate portfolio that will allow me to give them at least one property from which they can live off. To act as their pension. Sort of like plan. [00:29:53] Lior: And as, as more as I grew up in this industry as an operator, as sort of like a property manager without all the headaches of operation, you know, just acting as the owner relationship manager. I understood that if there was a platform, you know, back then when I was just dreaming about it, if there was a platform that will empower the property managers to become investment managers for their clients. I know that my parents and my loved ones can be in good hands because if those property managers that manage my grandparents' homes can tell them what to do based on, you know, what's happening with the property, when should they renovate, maybe, when should they sell, when maybe when should they refinance and cash out? [00:30:40] Lior: Or maybe when should they buy another property or any other question that is sort of like surrounding the investment life cycle or the investment journey, right? I know that their sort of like goal of retiring financially safe can be handled because there is no one else who will take care of that. The agent who maybe, you know, sold them that property, he has no vested interest in the long term. [00:31:05] Lior: He's doing a transaction and he's done. Out. The lender, same thing. He got the origination fees, he secured the loan, he's out the window and they're out. Nobody besides the property manager has a long-term vested interest in the wellbeing of the property owner. So for us, this is what motivates our entire team. We understand that if we'll be able to empower our partners, our property managers into investment managers, we will take care of our loved ones. [00:31:36] Lior: We will make sure that they will be in good hands and this is the why, because there is a gap that only property managers can fill. And this is that the gap of a missing investment manager for the investors that are the least experienced, that need the guidance the most, this is what we wake up for, this is what we work for. [00:32:00] Lior: This is everything that, you know, leads in every decision making intersection or like point in our company's life cycle. Yeah, I love it.  [00:32:08] Jason: This is why we come to leaders. This is why people come to a property manager. They're looking for leadership, they're looking for guidance. And when you're at that peak of customer satisfaction, customer service, that's where you are an advice giver, where you're giving advice, not just like the title of this episode is from Rent Collector to Asset Manager, and the idea is: [00:32:32] Jason: if you can go from just being somebody that keeps the rent coming to helping them manage the asset, you are already head and shoulders above other management companies. So if you can present yourself as an asset manager, and I've had a podcast episode with a client who's very good at doing this, he is able to assess their property. [00:32:51] Jason: We have this really cool tool called the ROI calculator. He'll help show them whether it's performing properly, what the long-term benefits are. What the tax benefits are, and so he can help them assess the property and they already just view him as an expert instead of wanting to work with any other management company. [00:33:08] Jason: So a lot of you feel like you're competing with other management companies because you're doing cold lead marketing stuff that probably doesn't work very well. And if you're doing that, reach out to DoorGrow, we'll help you fix that problem. But there's plenty of business out there. There's no scarcity. [00:33:20] Jason: But if you do feel like you're competing with other companies, one way to set yourself head and shoulders above the rest is to no longer be a property manager that just collects rent and coordinates maintenance, but to be an asset or portfolio manager for this investor. So, how does Blanket help with this? [00:33:37] Lior: I think we nailed it. We are right on point. And I love,  [00:33:40] Jason: I love it. I mean, everyone needs to realize this is the motivator. This is the reason. Because property managers, if you want to have an easier time closing deals, you want to retain clients, keep clients trusting you, and if clients trust you as an asset manager, they're way more hands off. [00:33:56] Jason: They don't try to manage the manager, they stop trying to micromanage you because they look at you as the advice giver and as the advisor instead of thinking, this is just somebody that works for me that I now need to manage and make sure they're not stealing from me and they do it my way.  [00:34:11] Lior: Exactly. [00:34:11] Lior: So we are really tackling this mission from two angles and the understanding here is that. As you said, if you are acting as a trusted advisor, if you're acting as an asset manager and your clients appreciate you as one, you will have less churn and you will grow a lot faster. So when we're thinking about these two, you know, functions of your business, on the one hand churn and on the other hand, growth, these two things always go together in property management. [00:34:47] Lior: Why? Because if we're looking at the average,  [00:34:49] Jason: and let's explain churn real quick for, because some people, this is a new term for them, they're like, what does this mean? Churning? So churn means you're losing business, you're losing clients, they're churning out. So this is the rate at which you're losing clients every year. [00:35:03] Lior: Exactly. Exactly. It's how many doors you lost technically, again, no matter what the reason, but like you lost the door, you know that's churn. So in property management there is a very unique and frustrating thing is that you'll always have churn. You can never lower to zero. Why? Because life happens. You might have a client that's super, super happy with what you're providing. [00:35:27] Lior: He loves you. He loves the relationship, he loves the service. He's getting everything from you, but suddenly life happens and he needs the money, he needs to sell that property, unfortunately. It has nothing to do with your performance, it's just his life. So that property is going to be sold and you're going to lose that, so you'll have churn. [00:35:46] Lior: So in property management there always be churn and it's something we have to accept. So that means if you can't, you know, really lower churn to zero, that means you always have to have a growth strategy to offset the doors that you're still going to lose. Yeah. So growth and churn, and. Or the opposite of churn, which is retention. [00:36:10] Lior: Okay. Growth and retention and property management have to work together always at all times. On the one hand, if we're like, imagine a bucket of water and your task is to keep in full and you have a hole at the bottom so it's leaking. Okay? Yeah. So you always have to work on closing that leak. [00:36:31] Lior: But you always have to keep pouring more water to keep it at the same level. That's pretty much the secret. That's how Blanket is built. We have two packages, one called Retain and the other called Grow. Very simple not too complicated on that front. And each one has various features and various products to help you achieve that goal. [00:36:53] Lior: So, for example. And by the way the combination of these two, this is what allows you to be that ultimate asset manager to your clients, right? That can help your clients, first of all, optimize their portfolio and generate more cash flow, and forget about a lot of headaches that come with property investing, but on the other hand, help them make more money by expanding their portfolio, buying more properties, and growing it. [00:37:20] Lior: So the combination of these two packages, that's what helps you allow, you know, what helps you be an ultimate asset manager. Now, what do each one of those packages do? So the Retain package gives your clients a branded investor dashboard. So it has your logo, it has your face, nobody knows who Blanket is, and that investor dashboard gives your clients real time performance metrics. [00:37:42] Lior: It allows them to see how their properties are really doing. Through an integration with their property management software and through pulling a lot of data from title companies, public county records, and national data providers that allow them to really see every property related transaction in real time from their mortgage payments, their property taxes, their insurance, their HOA and everything that you're tracking as well in your property management software. [00:38:07] Lior: So that way they can see exactly what's their net cash flow every month. They can see their property's value and how much it appreciated this month. And they can also see how much equity they have in their homes so that whenever it's time for them to take the next step, they can quickly press on the cash out button and refinance and extract the equity that they have in those proceeds and buy another property with that. [00:38:30] Lior: So that's part of the retained package that is owner facing. All the rest of the features are property manager facing, meaning your team is going to use them. But one thing I forgot to mention on that front, on the sort of like investor dashboard that your clients are getting, we also are doing what we call white labeled email communications. [00:38:52] Lior: So remember that story of me handling owner communications for property managers? This is where it comes from, and the understanding that your clients are used to a very bad, sort of like foundation of communication, which is I'm either getting an email about me having to pay for something I need to fix right now, and you're asking, you know, my money, or I'm getting an email with the owner statement, with that accounting view that I can't really understand and I'm getting just more confused instead of actually getting value from it. [00:39:24] Lior: Plus, it never shows me the full picture because it only shows me, you know the fees that you're charging, maintenance and like the rent, I don't see exactly how my property is doing. So it's really not a value. So like this is the foundation of the relationship. So if you are not providing your clients with additional positive touch points, how can they appreciate what you're doing for them? [00:39:45] Lior: because that's what they get. It's like, it's very the energetic I would say, you know, frequency of, from all these emails and touch points, getting them is negative. Like that's what they get. So what we're also doing, we're doing white labeled email communications as well. Again, it's your logo, it's your profile, it's your name that sends them, for example, a monthly report or update on how much their property is appreciated in value. [00:40:08] Lior: It sends them, you know, some like tips on how to utilize the platform and how to really be on top of things and always be in control of how your properties are really doing. A lot of these things that are just, yeah, just like, it's automated. You don't have to do anything. So like, it just gives them more transparency and feeling of, I'm in control, right? [00:40:28] Lior: Like I'm in control. I know how things are doing, like, and if there's something I need to do,  [00:40:32] Jason: which reduces their anxiety. The number one reason owners are constantly calling you, being interruptive, trying to micromanage you, is because they are anxious. Exactly. If you can reduce their anxiety. By increasing their awareness and their trust in you, it's a no brainer. [00:40:47] Jason: It's going to lower your operational costs dramatically.  [00:40:51] Lior: Exactly. So that's on the owner facing side of things. In the retain package, the team facing sort of like tools, they provide you two main things. There are two products within the retain package that your team is going to use. One is our portfolio manager. [00:41:06] Lior: Think of it as like an asset management dashboard. And the other one is our AI risk manager. So this one, you know, think of it as like your churn, you know, mitigator, and each one of them provides you two aspects of the same owner. The asset management dashboard shows you the health of every owner's property. [00:41:29] Lior: The churn manager or the risk manager shows you the risk of every property of churning. So the asset management dashboard will show you. Right.  [00:41:39] Jason: So the risk of them that like how likely they are to maybe start paying attention to maybe selling it, things like that.  [00:41:45] Lior: Just leaving, yeah. The risk of them leaving. [00:41:47] Lior: So, okay, let's maybe start with that because that's really, you know, one of the coolest products that we have. So the AI Churn Manager technically shows you the churn risk of every owner. Okay. Pretty much the risk of every owner from leaving you with ai, which takes in a lot of data. A lot of data from the communications with that owner to the property performance of that owner, everything that goes into whatever is related to that owner is taken into account and then it shows you the risk, but it also shows you the client value of that owner, meaning how much revenue this owner is generating your company. [00:42:25] Lior: Because we're integrated into a property management software, we know that revenue per unit of every property, so we can tell you how much every owner is worth for you. So the combination of these two elements of the churn risk and the client's value can really give you the ability to prioritize on whole, on who you are going to focus on first, and then you can really focus on the ones who are at high risk and high value. [00:42:50] Lior: And now what are you going to do next? Next, what that AI Retention Manager does for you is it also tells you exactly what to do to retain this owner. For example, let's say you have an owner that has a property that's currently undergoing a renovation, and he also has a mortgage in place, so he's losing money every month. [00:43:10] Lior: He's stressed. He might be thinking to himself, you know, why did I get into this whole thing? You know, I'm just losing money. I'm taking money outta my pocket every month. It's painful. So the AI will notice that and tell you something like, Hey, Jason, because A, B, C, D, what he should do is send this owner a link to his performance, which is one of like the features we have in that investor dashboard is like the forward looking performance of this property, right? [00:43:35] Lior: Send him a link to his performance so he can see that he should hold onto this property and not sell it right, because he's going to make a lot of money and waive two months of management fees. And again, those fees wouldn't cover for the losses, right? But it would show the owner how committed you are to his financial wellbeing. [00:43:54] Lior: So those are the things that the AI can tell you to do based on the retention policy that you will set in the beginning by answering questions that the AI will ask you to understand how you're thinking, what's your approach to retention. And lastly, when you'll see that recommendation, it will also draft you an email or a phone call script with your tone of voice. [00:44:15] Lior: So all you have to do is like literally hit send or just call them and read the script. So that's what the ai retention manager does for you. Okay, cool. And the asset management, you know, dashboard, which is that portfolio manager, that shows you just the overall performance of all your properties. And it can show you, for example, which properties are underperforming, meaning which properties are in negative cash flow position, so that you can reach out to these owners and tell them something like, Hey Jason, I see that this property is really not doing well. [00:44:42] Lior: We tried this, we tried that. We tried this. Why not think of 10 31, exchanging this property. Let's change it to a better property, one that wouldn't have all these headaches that we're going through. Two, it will be able to yield higher cashflow for you because we'll be able to charge a higher rent, you know, property in a better condition, so less expenses, and three, maybe even this will be a property in a better location, so more appreciation, potential, right? So like three wins for you, Mr. Owner, and to me, two wins because I'm getting the commissions maybe from both sides, right? Plus I'm getting a new door that might have a higher revenue per unit. [00:45:21] Lior: Or maybe there's enough faculty or which just more operational  [00:45:24] Jason: cost. Yeah, just easier to deal with. So like it's a winner. Also, maybe you could convert all the shitty properties in your portfolio and the easier properties to deal with.  [00:45:34] Lior: And that's the thing I always tell to all of our clients, think of this as like your blueprint to building the portfolio of your dreams. [00:45:42] Lior: Because it shows you which properties are underperforming. It shows you which properties have a high maintenance income ratio. So you can see which owners are really spending a lot of money on maintenance compared to how much money they're making in rent. And by the way, if, for example, if you have a maintenance division or you're charging markups on renovation, those properties are an additional revenue stream that you cannot reach out to all those owners and tell them. [00:46:05] Lior: Hey, Jason, like we're spending a lot of money on maintenance in the past couple of years. Let's think about, you know, reinvesting some of that cash flow and, you know, improving the property's condition, which is, you know, revenue for your company as well. So that what that, you know, asset management dashboard allows you to do is to see which properties are performing well, which properties are performing, you know, bad. [00:46:25] Lior: And for those that are performing well, you'll see things like, you know, which owners have a lot of equity trapped in their home? So that maybe when interest rates go down a little, you can reach out to them and say, Jason, like, look at this. Remember you said you want to build, you know, to grow your portfolio? [00:46:40] Lior: Interest rates have gone down right now and you have like $300,000 in equity. Let's step into that equity refinance, take the proceeds and buy another property in our area, which we have access to a lot of off market inventory here, which leads us to the grow package now. So that's the retain  [00:46:57] Jason: package that grow package. [00:46:58] Jason: I'll run through it quickly. I want all of my clients listening to this to be using Blanket like I want they all should be. This just is an absolute no brainer.  [00:47:08] Lior: Yeah. We definitely, by the way, it's not like I want to also give a shout out to all of our clients and all the folks that were with us from the start. [00:47:15] Lior: It's not like we are, you know, so smart and we had the solution for everything. This is a lot of hard work and sweat. By listening to all of our client's feedback and what they need the solutions to their like day-to-day problems and needs that they always experience and just never have the opportunity to really do it at scale. [00:47:33] Lior: Right? So, yeah. Back to the growth package. So that was the retained package, just as a summary. Two owner facing, you know, propositions, which is the investor dashboard and the branded owner communications, and two propositions for your team, which is the asset management dashboard and the AI retention manager.  [00:47:51] Lior: On the growth package, you also have two owner facing tools. One is the investment property marketplace, which is also white labeled with your logo. And this marketplace technically shows all your clients because it's closed only to your clients or anybody you invite to it. And we'll cover that in a second. But your clients who are in that marketplace see all the properties, all the off market properties that are for sale in your area. [00:48:16] Lior: So that way whenever they decide to buy another property, that will be a property that you're going to manage for them. So the marketplace. Acts as like this, you know, main tool for number one, capturing owners who want to sell. Remember what we started, we, you know, we want to capture the owners who are selling so we can at least, you know, get that commission or better get that commission and sell it to one of our other clients and retain the management of that unit. [00:48:41] Lior: But it also allows your clients to buy more properties. Now you're probably asking, you know, okay, where do those properties come from? So we source inventory on a national level from the largest wholesalers, turnkey providers, home builders for sale by owner feeds, anything that's off market, we are pretty much sourcing it across the country  [00:49:03] Jason: Is Blanket using investors that they can list their properties in this as well?  [00:49:09] Lior: So your clients, whenever they list their property, they will be at the top. They are what we call the exclusive properties category. So they are at the top. [00:49:17] Lior: We are pushing them always front face and center. They're the first ones for all your other clients to see, to increase the chances of them buying that from your clients and retaining the management of the unit. So all those properties that we have are all off market and. Yeah. Then this allows you not only to give it to your clients, but you can also invite anybody you want to it. [00:49:37] Lior: So maybe you have a list of leads that you bought in the past, you know, some cold leads or whatever. Or maybe you have friends and family that are interested in buying a property and working with you, or maybe you're going to like a BiggerPockets, you know, meetup or conference with investors or whatever. [00:49:51] Lior: They're always on the hunt for off market properties. So what you can do, you can invite them to the marketplace as a prospect. So like as a visitor, and once you invite them. And they log in, it appears as a prospect lead that you can then call them and say, Hey, Jason just saw you logged into our marketplace. [00:50:07] Lior: Hope that you liked it. By the way, if you have other properties in our area, I would love to send you some, you know, special friend, you know, discount for our property management services. And now you have a different conversation that is based on, you know, what your brand can offer them. So that's the marketplace. [00:50:24] Lior: And as you can see, the marketplace, technically what it does, it generates you leads, buyer leads, seller leads, prospect leads, et cetera. And what we provide is also sort of like a CRM feature that allows you just to keep track of all those leads, engage with them, or integrate with your existing CRM. [00:50:40] Lior: So folks might be using different systems we can integrate and push all those leads to your system. And lastly, the last feature that is also used by your team, by your BDM, or by yourself if you're starting out, is what we call our referral management system. So this system takes in all the agents in your area and pulls in information about them from the MLS and many other sources, and shows you, for every agent in your market, how many transactions they sold in the past two years, how many years in business, what's the average price of the properties they're selling, their contact details, their website, everything you need to actually start increasing or expanding your referral network that you have already in Blanket. [00:51:21] Lior: So what you do then. You could start reaching out to them, sending them emails from the Blanket system. And whenever they respond, you get on a call, you offer them, you know, to partner up and pay them referral fees for any client they're sending. And then you are giving them also a user in the system. And that's one of the interesting things. Today, agents are struggling, especially buyer's agents, which are normally, you know, the younger ones in every brokerage because the listing agents are normally the brokers and the most experienced ones. [00:51:48] Lior: So like buyers agents are having a hard time today with interest rates and with everything that's happening. So you can position yourself as their exclusive off market inventory partner, which they can leverage to be winning with their potential clients. So that way whenever you invite them as a partner, you're giving them access to off market inventory that they can't find anywhere else. [00:52:13] Lior: And that way whenever they bring on clients, they're sending them through the system and with a click of a button directly to you, you get those leads. They get paid through the system with that referral fee that you've set and agreed to with them, whether it's $500, 250, whatever. And the cool thing about it is that it has also automated updates to the agent every time one of the referrals inquired about a property they want to buy or to sell, assuming you promise them, you know, to return that lead back to them when it's selling. So that way you are making them happy. Those referrals are happy and you are able to really grow, you know, your referral network with everything within your ecosystem. [00:52:51] Lior: And be that center of the ecosystem, be that asset manager. Nice. So that's the goal package as well.  [00:52:57] Jason: That's super awesome. So cool. This Blanket sounds like an awesome tool. You've shown it to me. I think it's really a brilliant idea. I think every property manager should be using it. It's a no-brainer. [00:53:08] Jason: How do people get started with you? How do people get in touch?  [00:53:12] Lior: So you can either visit our website: Blankethomes.com and just schedule a quick, you know, 15 minute discovery call. You know, just listen to what we can offer so we wouldn't waste your time. And just understand if it's the right thing for you. [00:53:26] Lior: And then you can either just, you know, send me a LinkedIn message, send me a dm, pretty much on every social media platform. I'm not really responding very fast. And we could just get on a call. And I also invite anybody that wants you to just, you know, even if they're not interested in Blanket, right? [00:53:41] Lior: Like if you're thinking to yourself maybe it's too much for me. Maybe it's too expensive, I don't have the bandwidth right now, but you want to brainstorm about, you know, how to be more investor, you know, investment manager mindset as like guided property manager, how to be more of an asset manager. [00:53:56] Lior: This is my passion, this is what I've been doing my entire life. Like, if you want to just brainstorm, shoot me a message. Like I can talk about this for hours, so, you know, I'll be happy to help anybody that needs that. Even if you're not a Blanket client, again, you don't have to be a partner of ours to really just, you know, get inspired and, you know, learn from other people's mistakes. [00:54:14] Lior: And we've done quite a few.  [00:54:16] Jason: Awesome Lior, thanks for being a guest here on the DoorGrow Show podcast appreciate you hanging out with us. So, if you are watching this and you felt stuck or stagnant and want to take your property management business to the next level, reach out to us at DoorGrow, also join our free Facebook community. [00:54:33] Jason: It's just for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com. And if you've found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. Until next time, remember, the slowest path to growth is to do it alone, so let's grow together. Bye everyone. 

DoorGrow has been helping property management business owners transform and grow their businesses for over a decade… what's changed? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull explore some of the things DoorGrow has been working on in the last 5 years to innovate the property management industry. You'll Learn [01:24] Why DoorGrow Continues to Innovate [06:94] Helping Property Managers Avoid Common Mistakes [13:23] Changes and Improvements to the DoorGrow Mastermind [21:52] Innovative New Sales Strategies Quotables “A lot of people think, ‘I just need more leads. I just need to turn that on.' And they ignore this hose that has six major leaks in it.” “If you ask them the right questions, people will basically sell themselves.” “It's like when you go to a buffet, you're not going to eat everything at the buffet… You only want to eat the things that you want right now.” “You are the sum of the five property management business owners that you're the most connected to.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: Do you have any idea how powerful it is to be connected to a coach? 24 hours a day? Like there is no time in the world that you cannot message us. [00:00:08] Jason: All right. We are Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted and cleaned up hundreds of businesses, helping them add doors, improved pricing, increase profit, simplify operations, and build and replace teams. We are like Bar Rescue for property managers. In fact, we have cleaned up and rebranded over 300 businesses and we run the leading property management mastermind for the industry with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry.  [00:00:59] Jason: At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world, and that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.  [00:01:09] Jason: At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management, business owners and their businesses. [00:01:13] Jason: We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:24] Jason: Alright, so today, what are we talking about, Sarah?  [00:01:28] Jason: We're talking about what's new.  [00:01:30] Jason: So we've helped a lot of clients in the past, and if we've helped you three, five, maybe 10 years ago, there's been a lot that's changed at DoorGrow because we innovate and make changes pretty quickly, right? [00:01:44] Jason: And we've got systems for innovation in our business. And so, I think this is why we have the most comprehensive program in the industry and why nobody else can keep up with our pace and our level of creating and innovating and adding new stuff. And so a lot of you maybe have listened to this podcast a bit, maybe a while, maybe you're past clients. Maybe you've never worked with DoorGrow, but I'm going to talk about some of the stuff we've implemented since somebody was maybe a client in our older programs, like our seed program, or maybe did some initial marketing stuff with us back in the day. And so we're going to chat a little bit about what's new since then. [00:02:24] Jason: And so if you are a past client, this will be a great episode for you to catch up on what is new at DoorGrow. And if you'd like us to go deeper, I have a 37 minute video I recorded with slides on this subject going into a little bit more detail, but we're going to skim through some of this and help you understand there's a lot of innovation. [00:02:44] Jason: So if you had some connection with DoorGrow in the past, since then, we have become the world leaders at growing and scaling property management companies. And especially in the long term residential space. We've become the world leaders of property management branding. Like I said in the intro, we've rebranded over 300 companies. [00:03:04] Jason: We have launched hundreds of websites, more than we've done rebrands. And so hundreds and hundreds of websites. And we're still the leader in building responsive mobile friendly WordPress sites for property managers, which is the world's leading content management system. And if you're past client, you might be due for a website refresh. [00:03:24] Jason: We have over 70 different designs you can choose from, and they are clean designs, they're set up so that these sites, we call them seed sites, they're optimized for conversions, they're optimized to build trust. And so if it's, if you have an old website from us, you might be due for a refresh and we can certainly help you with that. [00:03:46] Jason: And past clients, we'll give you a discounted rate. So we're really great at doing websites for those that aren't a past client. And so, reach out, we can help you with that. And we include websites for free in some of our programs. You still have to pay like the support costs monthly, but the design piece, which normally is thousands of dollars to get a site built, we cover and take care of that. [00:04:09] Jason: That's included in our mastermind program. Related to that, we've also launched the world's leading mastermind for long-term residential property managers called The DoorGrow Mastermind. So, do you want to talk about this one?  [00:04:22] Sarah: Sure. I guess. Okay. All right. So one of the things that we had launched, what, like two years ago now maybe? [00:04:29] Sarah: Yeah. Is what we call the DoorGrow code. So what we've done is we've just seen over the many years and over Jason talking with thousands of property managers. He's just amassed a whole bunch of data. And after that happens, then you start to kind of see some patterns. So. What we did is we created this whole map that lays out stage by stage and step by step. [00:04:56] Sarah: The various different ,I'm going to call them stages, of a property management business. So all the way from, "I'm brand new, I have no doors yet, not quite sure I really want to get started, but I, you know, I don't actually have any clients yet" to, "well, now I have my first client and then I'm growing up to, you know, 50, a hundred, 200, 300, 400 doors, all the way up to a thousand plus. So we've created this whole roadmap, and then if you're in the DoorGrow Mastermind, we also have created some corresponding belt levels. So we kind of like a martial arts system, we've created different color coded built levels that corresponds to both your door count and your income because both things are important. [00:05:43] Sarah: And what are the things that you need to do at each different stage in order to progress to the next level in your business? Meaning you are making more revenue, you're adding more doors, and hopefully you're stepping back a bit from the things that you're not loving in the business.  [00:06:02] Jason: Yeah, and we call that the DoorGrow code, like we've cracked the code on growth and this is based on talking to thousands of property managers. [00:06:09] Jason: We started to notice a pattern. So if you'd like a copy of the DoorGrow code and see where you're at and stuck, reach out to us. We'd be happy to send you a copy. Just shoot us a DM on any social platform. Say, Hey. Just send us the word code and we'll, we can send you information about the DoorGrow code and that'll help you get some clarity on where you're at. [00:06:28] Jason: So that's been a game changer. We used to have this old program called the Seed Program, where we would kind of clean up their business and get it ready for growth. And it used to be a six month program. Some clients would take a year to do it. We've replaced that with a 90 day Rapid Revamp program, and so our Rapid Revamp program is even faster and this is where usually I use a diagram of a hose and there's like a faucet to turn on the hose. And that faucet Or spigot, it usually says lead generation. A lot of people think, "I just need more leads. I just need to turn that on." And they ignore this hose that has six major leaks in it, and so we've identified six major leaks, and so as part of this Rapid Revamp. [00:07:09] Jason: We spend like three months with clients, usually our newer clients that come on board, we do this first. This is like sharpening the ax before we go try to chop down trees, you know, try to do the work to grow the business, and we're optimizing it for growth and we're shoring up those six major leaks. [00:07:24] Jason: And the big leaks are branding, reviews, website, pricing, trust, and sales, your pitch. So we call it positioning, perception, presence, pricing, purpose, and pitch. And if we can get those things really well dialed in, we find that companies without even changing their lead gen sources, can double the amount of deals that they're getting on right now. [00:07:43] Jason: So if you feel like it's been hard and you can't see why, these are usually six major blind spots. And this is why it's been so hard. If we can get this stuff dialed in, even without changing any of the lead sources, however you're getting business right now, you could potentially double the amount of business you're getting on just by getting these leaks shored up. [00:08:02] Jason: And do you want to talk about pricing?  [00:08:04] Sarah: Okay. Pricing is actually one of the things that we cover now in the Rapid Revamp. And what we've noticed is even companies that grow to a considerable door count, most of the times their pricing is still just not great. I think we have yet to see a business that their pricing is already optimized, so a lot of times, they're leaving money on the table, which is so awful. Because you're working so hard for your money. Yeah. And you're just not making enough of it. And there's some statistics and data from NARPM. If you ever look at the NARPM data and you look at what like the average property manager's profit margin is, it's pretty abysmal. Yeah. And this is one of the reasons why. [00:08:48] Sarah: It's not the like the only reason, but it's one of the big ones. It's one of the factors. Pricing. So what we've figured out is, hey, a lot of property managers, they just kind of go with the flow. They do what the competition in their market is doing. You know, they just kind of, sometimes they wing it and they go, I think this is good. [00:09:07] Sarah: And they put something together. And when we come in and take a look at it, we can find thousands of dollars more per year. So like Anthony O'Reilly Brookes just said a couple weeks ago on the pricing, he's like, oh, if I just do this one change, I don't even have to do all of these changes. He is like, if I just do this one change, then I can make myself an extra $26,000 a year. [00:09:28] Jason: Yeah. This is one of our clients. It was great. So yeah, so we had an old training. We were the first to roll out kind of the three tier sort of pricing model to bring this to the industry. The basic idea was based around the Goldilocks principle and how it's easier to sell if you have three different types of pricing based on three types of buyers. Pricing secrets, we've rolled out 2.0. [00:09:51] Jason: So some of our past clients, you've gone through our original pricing secrets. You've have maybe a three tier model or maybe at least three plans sort of. Some of you maybe have lease only as one of them, which we don't recommend anymore. But now we've got this three tier hybrid pricing model and I got some of the idea from Scott Brady, really brilliant property manager. [00:10:14] Jason: He was using a hybrid model for pricing out associations. I then put my own spin on it based on what I know about pricing psychology. And I believe this is the most ethical and easiest to sell model. And it allows you to be unique and sell against all your competitors and to kind of poison the well against flat fee companies or percentage based companies. [00:10:36] Jason: And so it gives you competitive advantage and it helps you close more deals more easily at higher price points. So we've got that. The next thing we've made some big advancements into sales. So some of you went through my old Sales secrets training and and this was old school sales, like it was based on NLP neurolinguistic programming. [00:10:57] Jason: It was based on different formulas of communication that some would maybe calm, manipulative, but the idea, and I would present at the beginning, like, don't be evil. You know, like, these are powerful techniques. Well, a lot of the old school sort of sales tactics of high pressure closing and a lot of training you get from most salespeople and people that are known for sales really isn't working in the last three to five years. [00:11:23] Jason: And so there's kind of this new model of selling that needs to be done. And because we're in this post trust era, like everybody's been kind of exposed and woken up a little bit that everything's kind of fake. The news is fake. The pandemic's fake. Voting's fake. Like, like nobody knows who to trust or what to trust because we realize we've just been gaslighted and lied to by everything. Especially the government and powers that are over us. And so nobody trusts anything anymore. And so there's a new model of selling that allows you to create trust that we've learned and rolled out, and we get into some cool tactics like the three dominoes to creating the ultimate pitch. [00:12:05] Jason: I have a model of four phase selling, which is a simple framework for understanding four simple phrases to take people through when having a conversation. And then our Golden Bridge formula, which is even if you learn nothing else, is the ultimate sales hack to just creating authentic trust and connection with somebody, which is the crux of sales. [00:12:25] Jason: You know? And so this is high trust selling, figuring out your personal golden bridge I've used for years in my own sales and in getting on clients, and it's why people trust me so much. And so we'll help you figure out your own. And then we get into this whole new model of selling, which has multiple phases that helps people get their own clarity. [00:12:44] Jason: And what I've realized is people don't understand their problems and what they need, and until you ask them the right questions, and so if you ask them the right questions, people will basically sell themselves. You don't have to push, be pushy In sales, this is more about being empathetic, curious, asking questions, and it feels very good to be sold to in this way, if you could even call it selling. It's really coaching. And so I'm teaching you how to do that as well in this training. And then we've also added recently offer documents, sales trackers, like some really cool stuff that we use at DoorGrow to close deals and that are helping our clients increase their close rates significantly. [00:13:23] Jason: So we made a lot of improvements to our coaching program. Maybe you could talk about some of those things.  [00:13:30] Sarah: Yeah. So there... man, I feel like since I stepped into DoorGrow, we changed everything, so. [00:13:37] Jason: We did.  [00:13:38] Sarah: Which is great because it's like there's a lot of things that we wanted to improve, and there were a lot of things that we wanted to add. So I think one of the best things for me anyway, is I really love the Jumpstart events. So if you join the DoorGrow Mastermind as a newer client, then part of your launch package is going to be an in-person deep dive into your business with Jason and myself, you spend the whole day together with a small group of property managers. [00:14:08] Sarah: We keep it small because I cannot do a deep dive with like 10 people or 20 people. So we do a very small group. Yeah, and we really get into the weeds. We get into the nitty gritty. You walk away with a very clear action plan. You know exactly what to be doing, and you just get so much clarity and connection with other property managers that are attending that event, which is really great because after the event, those people, they stick together for a while, you know? [00:14:36] Sarah: Yeah.  [00:14:36] Jason: Create some nice connections. We rolled out the jumpstart sessions because we started to notice a pattern that when clients would meet us in person or come to DoorGrow Live or conference or anything in person, they would suddenly realize psychologically we were real people. There's just something psychologically about video Zoom calls video trainings in DoorGrow Academy. [00:15:00] Jason: That's not real to our brain. And so I call it the real bubble. And we've realized if we can pop that real bubble from the beginning, clients' perception of and recognizing that we're real people, then that translates into the things that we teach are real. And the things and the results clients are getting are real. [00:15:18] Jason: And so they start to get way better results. And so we want to give people that experience from the beginning, and we've got a much better outcome from all of our clients by getting them to do these in-person things towards the beginning of them joining DoorGrow's Mastermind and they're getting way better results. [00:15:36] Jason: They recognize that this is all real stuff and so they absorb the content in all the information in a completely different way, which is really powerful, so. [00:15:45] Sarah: And I would also say in addition to that too, though, if you had worked with us prior to what, four years ago? I would say probably four is the right answer. [00:15:56] Sarah: If you worked with us anytime before that, we recognized onboarding was very hectic and it was, oh man, it's really overwhelming. Everybody was like, "oh my God, there's so much information and I don't know what to do," and then they try to take it all in and they're overwhelmed and they're focusing on the wrong things. [00:16:13] Sarah: And then they have a bunch of questions and they're trying to like, jump on the calls to get their questions answered. So we did a few things. And the best thing that we have rolled out is. We have a really solid, streamlined onboarding process now.  [00:16:29] Jason: Yeah.  [00:16:29] Sarah: So we take you through a very proven like we have a whole course on DoorGrow Academy on onboarding to make sure that you get into all of the tools. You have access to everything. You know how to use it. Because just because you have it, doesn't mean you know how to use it. Yeah. And then that you're connected with our team. Because there are still some times that people are like, "oh, I didn't even know I could talk to Madi. Oh, I didn't know I could talk to Giselle." Or like, "oh, I didn't realize I could do that." Yeah, you absolutely can. We have a whole team to support you. So we make sure that you're connected with the right tools. We make sure you're connected with the team. You get on like a couple of 15 minute coaching calls with our like onboarding specialist right at the beginning just to make sure, like we're going to walk you through everything. We're going to check everything, we're going to explain everything to you, make sure you're on telegram, make sure you're connected to our entire team. And then they get a brand new thing that we had rolled out in addition that we added to onboarding is our client workbooks. [00:17:26] Sarah: So one of the things that everybody says is, "oh my God, it's like drinking out of a fire hose." I hear this almost from every client.  [00:17:33] Jason: Yeah. That analogy comes up all the time. It's like drinking out of a fire hose. Like they say it all the time. Yeah. Yeah. They're like, oh my God, there's so much, there's so much available. [00:17:41] Jason: Yes, there is. So we help them get focused.  [00:17:43] Sarah: And that's great. But it's like when you go to a buffet you're not going to eat everything at the buffet.  [00:17:48] Jason: No.  [00:17:49] Sarah: You only want to eat the things that you want right now. Yeah. And maybe you're like, oh, I'm saving room for dessert later. I know. Like, I'm going to pace myself because I want dessert later for sure. And that's great because you're not ready for dessert now. So it's not that you skip it, it's just that you don't need it right now. So we have a much better system of figuring out what do you need right now. So it's a lot more personalized, it's a lot more customized and then you're able to go through a proven roadmap that's for your business and for your stage. And a lot of that lives in our client workbooks. And that way there's like one place to refer to, you know your belt level requirements. You know your Rapid Revamp to do items. You know what the homework is that you're supposed to be doing. Your sales tracker lives in there and all of your action items and to do items, they're all in there, so you know exactly what to be doing and there's one document to refer to that makes it really easy. [00:18:45] Jason: And when you talk to a coach, we'll map out exactly what you know, we want to figure out your goals, and then we map out tactical items for you to check off and to work on specific to you. And so, even though we've got some different, you know, paths and formulas and classes, we always tailor this to our clients. [00:19:02] Jason: And the client workbook really helps that communication. It literally gets us on the same page, right? Yeah. Together. So, we've added client Success manager, my daughter Madi, who manages all her social media, does all our video editing. She is now also our client success manager, and she's amazing at that. [00:19:17] Jason: So we've had a couple different client success managers over the years and that's really helped improve the connection clients have, the clarity they have, and we also have giselle on our team who can find anything for clients and help them find things.  [00:19:32] Sarah: Giselle is like ai, but she's not. [00:19:34] Jason: Right. Yeah.  [00:19:36] Sarah: She's the best human AI I've ever seen.  [00:19:40] Jason: Yeah. So, and so we've got really good support systems for our clients. We also now leverage Telegram Messenger. We used to use Voxer. Some of my clients in the past, maybe remember Voxer. So I think we've upgraded by using Telegram Messenger for sure. [00:19:54] Jason: And it's a lot more reliable. And so we coach clients directly through it. Walkie-talkie style. They can answer questions anytime. So that's been really effective.  [00:20:01] Sarah: And I mean, that's super powerful too because, yeah, this is the one thing that I like, especially in the Rapid Revamp. I harp on this a lot. [00:20:08] Sarah: Do you have any idea how powerful it is to be connected to a coach? 24 hours a day? Like there is no time in the world that you cannot message us. Yeah. So you can message Jason, you can message me, you can message our whole client success team, including Madi. You can message us any time at all. [00:20:25] Sarah: It doesn't mean we're going to get back to you immediately. Sure. But we get back to you pretty darn quickly. Yeah. And out of all the communication channels, those are the ones that we check the most. So like Jason will never check his email. So if you ever email Jason, it's a black hole, don't do it. [00:20:41] Jason: Someone else will read it. Eventually  [00:20:42] Sarah: But Telegram, he checks Telegram a lot. And I check Telegram. I mean, I message people sometimes back at midnight, like if they send me a message at 11 and I'm still awake at midnight, I'm like, okay. I'm like messaging you in bed. I have no problem doing that. [00:20:55] Sarah: But you're connected very easily and very quickly to a coach who can rapidly answer questions. And it's not, you know, it's not like this cumbersome thing where you're like, "oh, I have to get on a call and figure out a time that works for me." Right? Like it works for you all the time because you just send a message. [00:21:12] Jason: Yeah. So that's been real effective. We've got three different weekly group coaching calls. We've got a Rapid Revamp class where we're optimizing the product of the business. And getting the business dialed up and ready for growth. Then we've got our Growth Accelerator class that we do. So the Rapid Revamp's on Tuesdays. Growth Accelerator is on Wednesdays, and this is where we focus on just adding doors. [00:21:34] Jason: We work with BDMs, we work with salespeople, we work with business owners to figure out how to grow and working on different growth engines. And then we have our Friday class, which is our operations class where we get into creating scalable operations so that you can handle high paced growth without the business falling apart. [00:21:52] Jason: So, we've also added in our Growth Accelerator, we've added a bunch of different growth engines. These are different sort of vehicles or engines you can build in your business that feed you business organically without having to pay for marketing or advertising. And it's actually more effective than any cold lead advertising we've seen to date. [00:22:12] Jason: We just brought on a client with 6,000 doors that was spending 30 grand a month. Trying to do internet marketing and digital marketing to grow their business, and they reached out to us for help. And so we're giving them a better strategy of leveraging business development managers in each market doing organic outreach, and they're going to grow way faster. [00:22:29] Jason: And it's going to cost them way less money. Way less. Right.  [00:22:32] Sarah: And for those of you that are doing paid marketing, do you think you can outspend someone who's spending $30,000 a month?  [00:22:38] Jason: Right. And the reality is there's very little search volume of people looking for property management on the internet, and that's what all of the companies are competing in that red bloody water. And there's tons of blue ocean of people. 60% are self-managing. There's no scarcity. And so we help you get these different growth engines dialed in and we've got great tactics like you know, product research interviews, realtor intros, which is 10 times more effective than realtor referrals, which a lot of you try and it doesn't work super well. [00:23:05] Jason: We've got you know, some clever tactics of going direct to investors. We also launched this ROI calculator that's pretty brilliant. That goes along with our realtor intro strategy. We've got the neighbor strategy. Which helps you get business from neighboring property management companies, which is really brilliant. [00:23:23] Jason: We've got warm review outreach, which will help you get better reviews, help you increase the lifetime value of your tenants and owners, and help you get more referrals from your existing clients. And so that can be real effective. Any one of these has helped our clients at a hundred to 200 doors a year organically, and you can install as many of these as you want. [00:23:42] Jason: We've got outbound partner prospecting where you can go after lenders, insurance agents, attorneys, vendors, and another example is groups like one to many sales and how to, instead of walking away from a group interaction where you hope maybe you'll get a lead or a referral or something, you walk away with scheduled, booked calls and can make money. [00:24:04] Jason: So, cool. So those are some of our growth engines. Let's talk about, this is new.  [00:24:09] Sarah: I love talking about DoorGrow Hiring. We could do a whole podcast episode on just that alone. Sure. And this is not specific just to property management businesses, this is businesses in general. Yeah. They. Really struggle with hiring. [00:24:22] Sarah: It's hard. It is so challenging and what usually happens is you wait until you're in pain and then you hurry up to hire and then your situation gets worse than it was before. And then, now you've got, you know, some scar tissue and now you're like, oh, I don't think I want to hire. Or like, ah, there's no good people out there. [00:24:44] Sarah: Like, I've been burned before. And it's because people approach everything pretty much the wrong way. Yeah. So we built this into entire system that's called DoorGrow Hiring. And we'll take people through it to make sure that you've got everything in line that you need ahead of time. So that you can actually be prepared to find the right person. We also give you proven processes to help you find the right people. Including things like your R Docs, which is just a fancy word for job description, your company culture. We build out your application, we put it on your website. We give you like the job postings. We give you an interview guide. [00:25:20] Sarah: I literally give you the words to use in an interview, these are the questions you're going to ask. This is the order you're going to ask them in, and these are the words you're going to say, and then that is it. We take you like step by step. So we created this whole system in order to help people find really great team members instead of playing Russian roulette with hiring, which is really dangerous. [00:25:45] Jason: Yeah. So, and the whole crux of it is focused on the three fits, which is finding the right culture fit, skill fit, and personality fit for the role. You cannot create those in people, you have to find them. And finding all three can be challenging and our whole hiring system's built around that. So, just three more things real quick. [00:26:03] Jason: One, we've focused on the five levels of exit. So a lot of property managers can't figure out how to exit the frontline work of the business, so they end up then selling the business because they're miserable in it. So we help you figure out how to get to there's five levels. We help you figure out how to get to somewhere in the middle where you're happiest and you're out of that frontline work without going all the way to exit five and selling the business and having a lack of purpose or you know, not having the business anymore and then trying to start something new and getting to the same level of problem in the video game and you keep losing against the same boss and whatever. So we help you figure out how to beat that boss in the video game. We also launched DoorGrow OS, which is a really robust planning system. [00:26:45] Jason: We have found some fundamental flaws in other planning systems, which are a step up. Just having one like EOS, Traction, Rocket Fuel, some of this kind of stuff. We've built something we believe is innovative and far better after working with some of the most brilliant operations people. And, probably in the world. [00:27:01] Jason: And so this is DoorGrow OS and this is our secret sauce at DoorGrow. And so we're helping people roll out and implement a planning cadence and system and get operators in place that can run this for you, the visionary entrepreneurs. So that your business runs smoothly and you can handle high-paced growth and have goals and get your team focused on the strategic side of the business rather than just being micromanaged through tactical work and task management. [00:27:29] Jason: And then this is the last item you want to talk about this one? [00:27:33] Sarah: Well, we've got our DoorGrow Live conference coming up, so I think you did the first one in like 2018. Then we took a break and then we brought them back. So yeah. We run our DoorGrow Live conference once a year, this is our big event, we open it up to clients, past clients, people who have never even worked with us. People who are in and around the property management industry, including real estate. Because if you're in real estate, you should seriously consider getting into property management, or at least knowing a property manager. And if you need to know a great property manager, there's going to be a lot of them in the room. [00:28:06] Sarah: So, the DoorGrow Live, it's a really powerful event. We bring in some fantastic speakers. It's always very motivational and very tactical, so no matter what it is that you're looking for from the event, you will find it there. And it's a great place to connect and meet people who are doing the same thing that you are doing. [00:28:28] Sarah: Because that is just such a powerful tool to be able to have a network of people that you can rely on and that understand you and understand what exactly you're trying to do and what you're going through.  [00:28:40] Jason: Yeah, and we have some amazing vendors that sponsor the event. One of them told me this is the only event that they now do of all the property management events, because it's their favorite. It's the best one. Even though it's small compared to many. They love this one and they get so much value out of learning and being at it as an entrepreneur. And so that says a lot. And so, these are different property managers. [00:29:03] Jason: These are growth-minded people that invest in their businesses. These are not the people that are just trying to have a shitty vacation and escape and go to a bar. These are people that are focused on growth. And so if you want to be around the best in the industry DoorGrow Live is the place to be around the best, and you are the sum of the five property management business owners that you're the most connected to. [00:29:23] Jason: You know, birds of a feather flock together. So if you're growth minded, you want to be at this event. So, and by the time this airs, for a lot of you, if you're listening to this on Spotify or somewhere else. You may have already missed this year, so, but get your tickets and we've got some cool bonuses that we're giving to people if they attend. [00:29:40] Jason: So. Cool. That's it for today. If you have felt stuck or stagnant or want to take your property management business the next level, reach out to us at DoorGrow.com. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners. We reject 70% of applicants doorgrowclub.com. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. [00:30:02] Jason: We'd really appreciate it. Until next time, remember, the slowest path to growth is to do it alone, so let's grow together. Bye everyone.

Introduction   Welcome back to Higher Density Living! After a brief hiatus, hosts Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby reunite in the studio, buzzing with life's latest revelations. Jason returns from a European adventure, while Alexander steps into fatherhood with the birth of his son, Gabrael. Together, they unpack the profound alchemy of parenting—blending raw spiritual awe with biological evolution. This episode, Part 1 of a two-part series, invites listeners to explore creation's edge, where innocence meets potential and exhaustion reveals divinity.   Hosts Bio Alexander McCaig: Co-host of HDL, a consciousness seeker and new father, sharing transformative insights from his journey into parenthood. Jason Rigby: Co-host, spiritual guide, and father, back from a European trip, weaving travel tales with deep reflections on the human condition.   Key Discussion Points 1. The Return and Life Updates Jason kicks off: “We're back! My gosh, it's been some time. You've really been gone—you've been busy.” Alexander: “I've been gone ‘cause I had a newborn recently—one of the most transformational experiences of my entire life.” Jason: “You were in Europe too—Napoleon, Corsica. But yeah, we're both fathers now. Kind of wow, right?”   2. Fatherhood as Creation's Mirror Alexander: “The power of creation at the human level—another human growing inside a human because two came together. It's not just physical, it's deeply spiritual.” Jason: “It's a symbolization of creation growth—innocence and potential, that's all that's there.” A renewal moment: The newborn reflects creation's essence—pure, unfiltered, and brimming with possibility.   3. Innocence and Potential in Newborns Jason: “What I love from a spiritual perspective is seeing innocence and potential—so beautiful, we forget it.” Alexander: “They're helpless, needing 100% of your attention—like tending the most delicate crops.” Jason: “They're not desensitized like us—they see the world fresh, and we can't limit that.”   4. The Responsibility of Self-Awareness Alexander: “You need self-control and self-awareness to not impress your stifled energy onto the child.” Jason: “Everything you bring to their care opens their potential—or stifles it. There's two options.” Alexander: “You'd want the maximum and the best—hoping they take your best and step above you. That's evolution's point.”   5. Biological Evolution in Parents Jason: “Parents undergo shocking transformations—gray matter increases, prefrontal cortex and hypothalamus grow for bonding.” Alexander: “Oxytocin's through the roof—your senses max out, supercharging your brain.” Jason: “Evolution doesn't stop; having a kid accelerates it for both parent and child.”   6. Sanctification Through Chaos Jason: “Sleepless nights and constant care—it's sanctifying, a space for divine presence.” Alexander: “Try this: Use the newborn as a candle—gaze into their eyes silently. You'll be shocked how long they hold your attention.” Jason: “It's pure connection—a meditation.”   7. The Energy of Naming (Gabrael's Story) Alexander explains naming his son Gabrael Rowin: “Energy in names matters—spelling and meaning align with creation's patterns.” Why “Gabrael” (AEL spelling): “An older, primordial form meaning ‘might of creation,' synced with birth timing and Chaldean numerology.” Rowan: “‘One who lives in righteousness'—congruent energy for his potential.” Jason: “I love that—it's not just a name, it's intentional energy.”   8. Awe and Exhaustion as Spiritual Gifts Jason: “Why do we feel awe in exhaustion after birth?” Alexander: “It's creation reminding you of true purpose—a visceral truth you've ignored, demanding your attention.” Alexander: “You could feel this awe every moment if you paid attention, but the baby forces it. Look at the raw power and beauty.”   Memorable Quotes “The power of creation at the human level—it's a renewal.” – Alexander “Innocence and potential—that's all that's there in a newborn.” – Jason “Your brain evolves as much as the child's—evolution doesn't stop.” – Jason “Creation wakes you up: Look at the raw power and beauty of this.” – Alexander   Resources Mentioned HDL Podcast Archives: Explore all episodes at higherdensityliving.com Coming Soon: Part 2 of this fatherhood series—stay tuned!   Call to Action Subscribe to Higher Density Living for Part 2 and more consciousness explorations. Share your thoughts: How has creation touched your life? Comment below! Visit higherdensityliving.com to browse past episodes and awaken your potential.   Closing Thoughts   Jason and Alexander close Part 1 with excitement for a deeper dive in Part 2, leaving listeners with a powerful reflection: Fatherhood isn't just raising a child—it's a spiritual and evolutionary catalyst. From Gabrael's energy to the awe of exhaustion, this episode beckons you to look within and embrace creation's edge.   Connect with HDL:    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/highdensityliving Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hdlspiritualpodcast/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HigherDensityLiving TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@higherdensityliving   Subscribe: Join Alexander and Jason for more journeys into the unseen.  

If you were managing a football team and you had someone with the skills to be a star quarterback, would you have them be a kicker?  In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the pitfalls of having dual roles in your property management business. You'll Learn [01:26] How to Guarantee Your Team Will Fail [06:19] Why Dual Roles Often Do Not Work [09:17] Set Your Team Members Up for Success Quotables “It's never ideal when we have a dual role, but it is possible in certain cases.”  ”Most entrepreneurs, we can do this, we can shift and balance back and forth. The problem is that then we think that's normal. And we expect other people to be able to do that.” “We make the mistake as entrepreneurs of assuming other people think the way we do.” “You probably could wear 10 different hats in your business, but you don't enjoy doing probably half of them at least.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: If you have a star quarterback... [00:00:02] Jason: yes.  [00:00:03] Sarah: And that quarterback...  [00:00:03] Jason: super sharp  [00:00:04] Sarah: can put that ball anywhere on the field with pinpoint precision,  [00:00:08] Jason: right?  [00:00:09] Sarah: Are you going to take that quarterback and make him the kicker?  [00:00:12] Jason: All right. We are Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of businesses, helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profits, simplify operations, and build and replace teams. We are like Bar Rescue for property managers. In fact, we have cleaned up and rebranded over 300 property management businesses, and we run the leading property management mastermind with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry.  [00:01:02] Jason: At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world, and that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:01:12] Jason: 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. Now let's get into the show. Alright. [00:01:26] Jason: Sarah, what are we talking about today?  [00:01:29] Sarah: We are going to talk about how you can almost guarantee that your team will fail.  [00:01:34] Jason: Guaranteed failure. And the method to do this- yes- we call dual role...  [00:01:40] Sarah: oh.  [00:01:41] Jason: Team members...  [00:01:41] Sarah: yes.  [00:01:42] Jason: Right? So and so, what's the scenario? What do we mean by dual role? And it's pretty common. [00:01:48] Sarah: I see it quite a bit.  [00:01:50] Sarah: Yeah. Do you see it a lot?  [00:01:51] Jason: Yeah. I mean, do you want me to explain the idea or you want to explain what you see?  [00:01:55] Jason: No, I just want to know if you see it a lot.  [00:01:56] Jason: Yeah. I see a lot of people make this mistake when hiring. I don't see it work  [00:02:01] Sarah: Well, no.  [00:02:02] Jason: And I see people try to do it, but I see a lot of failure. [00:02:06] Jason: I've seen companies with, I talked to one the other day with 6,000 doors, which was kind of trying to do a dual role. And I've seen lots of startups try to do more than just two roles. They're trying to get somebody that's like them. They're like, I just need to find the clone. I call that the clone myth, like that's the earliest stage of hiring, the biggest mistake. [00:02:26] Jason: They're like, I just need somebody that can do 10 roles, 10 things. Someone just like me as an entrepreneur that would love to work for me, unlike an entrepreneur. Right. So how about you? You've helped a lot of our clients with hiring. So what what comes up?  [00:02:41] Sarah: So usually, and let's just backtrack and say, alright, by dual role. [00:02:47] Sarah: Yeah. What we mean is, Hey, I need to hire someone and they're going to do this and that. So they're going to do, you know, sales and manage the doors. They're going to do the operations and like help me with the team and stuff and then also they're going to be a property manager or a maintenance coordinator or whatever. [00:03:08] Sarah: Yeah. So take two roles that are not the same thing and mash them together, and this is what we mean by dual role. And this situation gets aggravated significantly if those two different roles are also two different personality types.  [00:03:26] Jason: Yeah.  [00:03:26] Sarah: So if you have someone who's going to do operations and function as an assistant. [00:03:32] Sarah: Okay. I mean, it's not ideal, but it's possible. Yeah. It's possible. If you have someone who's going to function as like a sales appointment setter and a closer or, and a BDM. It's possible. It's never ideal when we have a dual role, but it is possible in certain cases. [00:03:52] Sarah: Okay. Where it never works out is what all entrepreneurs think is, "oh, I'm like that. I can do that." Yeah. So somebody else should be able to do that too. Well, I can shift in and out of different roles and in and out of different personality types, and I can turn it on and off like a light switch when I need to, so then that means everybody can, and it's not true. We are very unique in that.  [00:04:17] Jason: Yeah.  [00:04:17] Sarah: So I can also turn it on and off, like light switch when I need to get into something, I'm like, okay. Like let's go. And then when I'm done, I'm like, oh, okay. Get out of that. And I kind of shift back to my natural normal state. [00:04:30] Sarah: So if any of you guys see me ever in person. That is not my natural normal state. It's just not because it's so high energy. Especially at something like a DoorGrow Live event. Yeah. Like after DoorGrow Live, I crash for about two days, like two full days. This is true. I'm done. I am done. I sleep for like 15 hours, 16 hours straight because I've spent too much time in my opposite. [00:04:54] Sarah: Yeah. And most entrepreneurs, we can do this, we can shift and balance back and forth. The problem is that then we think that's normal. And we expect other people to be able to do that, and most people cannot do that.  [00:05:07] Jason: Yeah. The mistake that a lot of us make, like you said, is we make the mistake as entrepreneurs of assuming other people think the way we do. [00:05:15] Jason: Entrepreneurs do this all the time. They assume other people are money motivated, so they try to bonus them or compensate them with money. Most people are not actually. They assume that people are adaptable and can just wear lots of different hats and be entrepreneurial like that way, but that's also not generally the case. [00:05:34] Jason: And if they are adaptable, usually they go start their own business. So they leave, and I've seen a lot of property managers steal doors from their employers, so their employer's basically just training their next replacement.  [00:05:47] Jason: I love, I think when we don't put the dogs away during a podcast, and I'm being super sarcastic right now. [00:05:52] Sarah: Yeah. Well, I did say this was going to be a quick podcast, but the food... [00:05:56] Sarah: so maybe this is a sign we should wrap it up. Yeah, the food that you ordered is probably...  [00:06:01] Jason: Oh yeah. I ordered some food. [00:06:02] Sarah: ...being delivered right now because it's like six o'clock on a Monday right now. Which is great.  [00:06:07] Jason: They're protecting us from the food. [00:06:09] Jason: So, while we've got a chorus of dogs in the background.  [00:06:12] Sarah: They're just confirming.  [00:06:13] Jason: Yeah.  [00:06:14] Sarah: They're like, definitely they agree with us. Don't try to hire two different people. So here's the idea.  [00:06:19] Jason: Let's break this down real quick and then we'll wrap up because the dogs are going insane, but. People do not have split personalities that you want to hire. [00:06:28] Jason: They're not two different people, and so different roles have different personality types, and it's very difficult to find somebody that can jump into very different roles and personalities that would actually enjoy those. Even you as a business owner, you probably could wear 10 different hats in your business, but you don't enjoy doing probably half of them at least. [00:06:46] Jason: If not most. Yeah. And so that's the idea. So you need to figure out what would a good property manager look like? What would a good business development person look like? They can't be both. What would a good assistant look like? What would a good operations person look like? What would a good maintenance coordinator look like? [00:07:02] Jason: They can't be multiple things typically, and I think we got to end. Okay. It's getting louder.  [00:07:08] Sarah: They're just dropping off the order. That's all. Now we have three dogs barking.  [00:07:13] Jason: It's not stopping.  [00:07:14] Sarah: So we have a big one and a medium one and a very little one.  [00:07:19] Jason: Okay.  [00:07:19] Sarah: But you know, that's a good example though, is so we've got three very different dogs. [00:07:25] Sarah: Like Captain is small, he's maybe 14 pounds, and Parker is pretty large. He's about 85 pounds. So would I do the same thing for the big dog that I would do for the little dog? No, I'm going to feed him differently. I'm going to, you know, get him like a different size harness, et cetera. You have to kind of think of roles in your business the same way. If you're trying to treat every role the exact same, it'll be really hard because you'll be like, I don't know, I don't understand. Like that worked with my sales guy. Why can't I just throw more money at this person and then they're going to be better? Yeah. That worked with my sales guy. [00:07:58] Sarah: Yeah, of course it did. It's not going to work in other roles. And then if you're a dual role and you're trying to constantly bounce back and forth, like, oh, I got to do the sales and I got to like do maintenance coordination and like property management work, like, oh well, which, what am I supposed to do? [00:08:14] Sarah: What do I prioritize? And then when you get busy, when you get overwhelmed and you get stressed, something is going to not get done. And it's really hard sometimes to choose, well, what am I going to sacrifice? Because both things are important, and I can tell you that 99% of the time, the thing that will be sacrificed is the thing that they just don't like doing. [00:08:35] Sarah: Yeah. So if they don't like doing the property management piece. Your delivery is going to tank. And then if they don't like doing the sales piece, they're going to focus on the delivery and your sales. You're going to have none. And you'll be wondering, well, I don't understand. Like I hired you to do both and this is why this is that pitfall. [00:08:53] Sarah: So if you want to guarantee that your team is going to fail, that your business is going to be stressed, and that your team, you are, it's almost a guaranteed like turnover of your team as well because they're not going to, they're not going to stay when they're not happy. And part of them is doing a role that they hate. [00:09:11] Sarah: The other part of them might be doing something that they really love, but part of them, for part of their day, they're doing something that they hate.  [00:09:17] Jason: Yeah. So to drive this home, it's really important that you don't put people in a position that they're going to fail. And here's a big major tip. If you have somebody that's good at selling, and you're having them waste time doing anything else, that is a really stupid way to like waste a resource. Like if somebody can make you money and bring fresh money into the business and you have them doing stupid stuff like posting notices or talking to your existing clients. You are wasting a massively valuable resource. [00:09:54] Jason: They would make you so much money they could pay for multiple other team members if you just let them only focus on business development. And so if they can sell, get them just doing that. If they're good at that. If they are good at property management, don't have them waste time dinking around trying to sell. [00:10:11] Jason: Go get somebody that can sell, that can grow your business. Right. And there's other roles, but we're using these two as an example. But yeah, dual roles work. I doesn't work.  [00:10:19] Jason: I think  [00:10:19] Sarah: that's one of the most common ones. I see.  [00:10:21] Jason: Yeah. It is pretty common.  [00:10:22] Sarah: It's either sales and operations, which like never works. [00:10:25] Sarah: Yeah. Or sales and like property management. Yeah. Those are like the two most common that I see. And the way that I explain it to people is. If you understand sports... [00:10:37] Sarah: we're using sports analogy?  [00:10:38] Sarah: We are. We're going to use a sports analogy. Okay. So on a football team...  [00:10:43] Jason: yes. [00:10:43] Sarah: If you have a star quarterback... [00:10:46] Jason: yes.  [00:10:46] Sarah: And that quarterback...  [00:10:47] Jason: super sharp  [00:10:47] Sarah: can put that ball anywhere on the field with pinpoint precision,  [00:10:52] Jason: right?  [00:10:52] Sarah: Are you going to take that quarterback and make him the kicker?  [00:10:56] Jason: No, that'd be stupid.  [00:10:57] Sarah: Or the blocker... [00:10:58] Jason: that would be really bad.  [00:10:59] Sarah: Or a defensive lineman? No way. How about the water boy?  [00:11:02] Sarah: No.  [00:11:03] Sarah: Why would you ever do any of that? Right?  [00:11:04] Sarah: So people who are like, they're like, oh my God, no. So are you going to see the star quarterback doing anything other than his job?  [00:11:13] Jason: No.  [00:11:14] Sarah: Never. Never. No.  [00:11:15] Jason: That's actually a really great analogy.  [00:11:18] Sarah: I know. I'm really smart sometimes. So there's...  [00:11:21] Jason: you're really smart all the time, and you know this.  [00:11:24] Sarah: I do know this. [00:11:24] Jason: Don't pretend you're humble. [00:11:26] Sarah: Well, I'm the most humble of all of the Zodiac signs.  [00:11:30] Jason: Yeah me too. I'm super humble too.  [00:11:31] Sarah: No, I'm the most humble though.  [00:11:33] Jason: You're way more humble than me.  [00:11:34] Sarah: I'm more humble than all of...  [00:11:36] Jason: you're the most humble ever.  [00:11:37] Sarah: As Scorpios, we all are. Okay, guys. Yeah. So anyway, if you're going to have your quarterback doing anything other than that, like that would just be silly. It would just be stupid. So if you were watching TV and that's what your team did while you were watching...  [00:11:52] Jason: yeah.  [00:11:52] Sarah: And it's like a playoff game. And that's what happens is you're like, why is my quarterback, what are you...? You wouldn't even believe your eyes. But then that's what you are doing in your business is you are taking your sales person, your star sales person, and you're making them do other stuff. So it works the same way. It's divide and conquer. That's like football teams do this. That's why it's not just a free for all when you get on the field, it's like, all right guys, just figure out how to, no. Yeah, they're specialists. They divide and conquer. Your business is the same thing.  [00:12:22] Jason: That's a great analogy. Cool. So it's super obvious in sports, like you've got some guy, man, he could throw it anywhere on the field. Look how accurate he is. He's not super big, but man, he can really throw it. Maybe we should have this guy just be a kicker. Yeah. That would like, that'd be crazy, but somebody's really amazing kicking the ball.  [00:12:39] Sarah: Some of you guys would lose your freaking minds if you saw that happen in a game.  [00:12:42] Jason: Right? But then you're doing it in your business! [00:12:44] Jason: You do it in your own business. You're doing it in your business. They're like, well, they could do both and maybe it'll save money and they can kind of do two things, and you wonder why the business is struggling or not growing. So we need to make strategic hires. We need to be make careful hires. [00:12:56] Jason: We need to get the right personality fit, skill fit, culture fit. We talked about the three fits on previous episodes, but you also want to make sure that personality fit, they are a really great personality fit for that particular role, and you're not trying to hire them for two. All right. Anything else we need to say about this? [00:13:11] Sarah: I don't think so. We're going to go eat.  [00:13:13] Jason: Cool. So if you have felt stuck or stagnant and want to take your property management business to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com. Also, join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. [00:13:34] Jason: We'd really appreciate it. Until next time, remember, the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

As the property management industry continues to evolve, it's important to stay up to date on the latest innovations in technology. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with David Normand from Vendoroo to talk about AI's role in the future of property management. You'll Learn [01:29] The AI Revolution [08:47] The Importance of Empathy and Human Touch [22:21] Decreasing the Cost of Maintenance Coordination [32:29] New Features Coming to Vendoroo Quotables “As any property manager believes, we know how to do it the best.” “If you're not reading articles and studying up on this, I think that's going to catch you by surprise pretty quickly.” “Empathy is the magic lubrication that makes everything better.” “Empathetic reflection and empathy is a magical ingredient.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript [00:00:00] David: If you're not building AI tools from working with your partners, from being on the ground floor with them and using the data and building tools based upon the data and their pain points and their failures, buyer beware. If somebody's coming to you and saying, Hey, we figured this all out in the lab. [00:00:14] David: Come use it. Yeah. Right. Buyer beware. [00:00:18] Jason: All right. Welcome property management entrepreneurs to the DoorGrow Show or the Property Management Growth podcast. I'm Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive group coaching mastermind for residential property management entrepreneurs. We've been doing this for over a decade and a half. [00:00:39] Jason: I've brought innovative strategies and optimizations to the property management industry. I have spoken to thousands of property management companies. I've coached over 600 businesses. I've rebranded over 300 companies like Bar Rescue for property managers, cleaning up their businesses, and we would love to help coach you and support you and your growth. [00:01:01] Jason: We have innovative strategies for building out growth engines, for building out your operational challenges, for helping you figure out how to get to the next level in your business and one of the cool tools that I'm excited to showcase today with my guest here, David Norman, is Vendoroo. We've had you on the show before. [00:01:19] Jason: Welcome back David.  [00:01:20] David: Yeah. Thank you for having me. It felt like years ago, it was only about, I think eight months ago since we did this, so much has changed over the time, so it's great to be back. Yeah, it's great to be back.  [00:01:29] Jason: Good to have you. I know you're in the middle of this AI revolution, which AI is just innovating and changing so rapidly. It probably does feel like years ago, so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's been crazy. You guys have made a lot of changes too, so, you even changed your brand name from the last time we had you on the show. Yeah. Which was I think Tulu. Yeah. Right. And so, yeah. So why don't you get us caught up on what's going on 'cause, you know, there's been a lot.  [00:01:55] David: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you first of all for having me here today, Jason, and from the entire Vendoroo group of us, which, you know, the team has grown 10 x over the past eight months, which has been awesome. And I just also wanted to start in thanking everybody from what we call our client partners who have jumped in into this great unknown that is AI and is going to be like, how is this going to work in our industry? And so that's really what we've been focusing on the past eight months. You know, it's been a unbelievable journey of both failures, successes learnings and insights. And ultimately we're getting excited here at the NARPM broker owner which is in Denver to unveil Vendoroo. Like this is the coming out party. And so we're super excited if you're going to be there. We have a massive booth that we have set up that we have the ai alliance with other people that are working in the AI space, and I really hope that you guys come over and check it out. I promise this. [00:02:53] David: You'll never see a booth or a display like we have set up. At the NARPM broker owner. So.  [00:02:58] Jason: Now I want to go attend it. Yeah. Just so I can see your booth.  [00:03:01] David: So, let me put it this way. You may see the robot from the Jetsons walking around the booth walking around the NARPM broker owner, so, okay. [00:03:07] David: Yeah. Rosie? Yeah. You may see something like that. So she'll be vacuuming with her apron? Yeah. She'll be doing a little social engagement. It'll be cool. So, okay. Okay.  [00:03:17] Jason: Yeah. Very cool. Yeah, so catch us up on what, like, let's get into the kind of the background and the overview for people that have never heard about Vendoroo and what you guys do and how you got into this. [00:03:29] Jason: Yeah. Give people kind of the backstory. Yeah.  [00:03:31] David: Yeah. Thank you for that. So really the backstory is that, you know, we know of this AI economy that's coming, right? And there was a few of us, you know, I've been in this industry for 18 years. You know, I've managed you know, portfolios of 40,000 doors. [00:03:47] David: I've managed them for governments. You know, I started off with our own property management. Much like you guys. We started off with 80 doors. We grew to 550 doors in four years. So it was exciting to know that technology that was coming that promised duplication because, you know, as any property manager believes, we know how to do it the best, right. [00:04:05] David: And so what we decided to do is to come together and say, Hey, if AI's coming, there's two things that we need to figure out. Number one is how is this going to help us show value in this new industry to this new generation of property owners that is here, that is coming, that has been raised in the technology world too, right? [00:04:25] David: And two, can it actually duplicate our efforts? Can it actually be an employee for us? Right? And I don't care what people are promising about ai, you don't know until you get into what we call like, you know, get into the weeds, you got to get into the trenches. And so that's what we did, right? We went out and we were the guys that grabbed the torch and we said, we are going to take all the risk. [00:04:46] David: We are going to jump into the mix. We're going to ask people to jump onto the bandwagon with us and we're going to figure this out. And oh my gosh, what an unbelievable eight months it has been in learning and insights. And I can't wait to get into all the things that we've learned about the property management industry. [00:05:01] David: But that's really what we've been focusing on here the past eight months, right? So we started off with well hey, can the AI assist the va? Can it turn them into a super va? Is that what it's going to be? And, you know, some people were like, yay. And some people were like nay, you know? And so, and you know, because that human failure still was there, right? [00:05:21] David: And you know, what happens if they left? There was that inconsistency. And then it was like, all right, well what can the AI own? Right? What can it do? What can it perfect? And you know, can AI actually be the last employee that I ever hire? Right. That's really, that's a really cool thing to do. [00:05:39] David: But the property managing community had some really specific demands that they said that if this is going to be the last employee that I've had, it has to do this. And that's what I'm excited about our new technology 'cause it's doing those things. You know? [00:05:52] Jason: Yeah. And now you guys have made some big moves. I know, like I've, I have clients that we've sent over to you and they've shared some incredible stories. Like one client, I think he had 154 units or something like under management, and he said in the first day you're of turning on Vendoroo, like it closed out like 80 something work orders. [00:06:12] Jason: Yeah, like, it was crazy. Another client, they had a little more doors. They said it was like 50 something work orders were closed out in the first day of turning it on. And so, I mean, you're creating some dramatic stuff. Like this is a very different thing than what people are used to in maintenance. [00:06:27] David: Yeah. Yeah. And really what the exciting part about this, Jason, is that maintenance is actually really easy. And I know people laugh when I say that it's managing communications that is extremely difficult. Okay. Okay. Right, because you have, you know what AI told us about our industry over the last eight months is when we dove in with it and it took a step back and it said, whoa, you guys don't have a data problem here. [00:06:51] David: You guys have a emotion problem here. There's very specific categories of emotion that are in this space, right? Like, how do you build a technology that senses something? And I know this relates with property managers, 'cause I know this for myself. A property manager can walk into their office, sit down at their desk, and their spidey senses go off and they know something's wrong. [00:07:15] David: There's no screen that's telling them anything. There's no spreadsheet. They know something's off. Right. And so the AI is like, well, the statuses really don't matter that much to me based upon the feedback that I'm seeing from the property managers. Because the status and the communication all seem to be in order, but there's a disruption somewhere. [00:07:35] David: So I need to know about people's emotions. I need to understand about is the resident happy? Does the owner feel supported? Is the vendor being directed? And does the property manager believe that I can own the outcome for this? And it was really cool to start seeing its learning and understanding and picking up on these cues where, you know, people say that this is a data-driven industry. [00:07:55] David: It's really in an emotion driven industry.  [00:07:57] Jason: Oh yeah. It's a relationship and emotion industry for sure. Yeah. Yeah, big time.  [00:08:01] David: And it's really cool to see, and it's really started happening over this past last 60 days, the amount of residents, I was actually just looking at one before I jumped on here, that are like thanking the system, right? [00:08:15] David: Imagine that, like think of all of us that actually worked with the chat bot at like Verizon. I've never thanked that chatbot at Verizon for being their customer service. Right.  [00:08:25] Jason: And how do I get a representative? Representative. Representative!  [00:08:28] David: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Versus you seeing people, you know, seeing individuals saying to the, you know, saying to the Vendoroo maintenance coordinator, Hey, I really appreciate feeling supported and how fast you acted because you know, there's empathy that's inside of its law and learning. So I don't want to get too much into the details on there. But yeah, these are some of the exciting things that we're working on.  [00:08:47] Jason: I mean, empathy is the magic lubrication that makes everything better. [00:08:52] David: Yeah,  [00:08:52] Jason: I mean they, they've done studies. Teams, even in working in warehouses, are more productive if the team has a higher level of empathy. Yeah. And doctors perform better. Yeah. If there's a higher level of empathy, there's less malpractice suits, like empathetic reflection and empathy is a magical ingredient. [00:09:10] Jason: I coach clients to add that in during sales. Yeah. 'cause their close rate goes up dramatically. Yeah. Right. So yeah. So leveraging and like getting the AI to actually be empathetic in its communication. Yeah. When that's probably not a natural skill for a lot of maintenance coordinators to be empathetic. [00:09:26] David: It's not, it's not a natural skill for a lot of people in the maintenance industry. Right? Yes. Especially when you talk about burnout. People begin developing views of the rental community, right? Like, oh my gosh, they're calling again, and that empathy meter goes lower and lower and lower. [00:09:41] David: Yeah. As people have been in the industry longer. But isn't it great that you have an employee now that knows that, yeah, it's my duty, rain or shine, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 a year to always operate at the highest level of empathy? I never have a bad day. I never take a day off. [00:09:57] David: I'm never upset. I'm never short with somebody on the phone, never tired, never like, oh my gosh, Susan is calling me again. I'm going to let the phone just ring because I'm annoyed of talking to her. And it just is constantly hitting that same level of standard. And this is what's exciting to me, is that there are people that that have played around with this and have been a part of what I call the pain phase, right? [00:10:20] David: The pain phase is that understanding the way that agentic AI works, right? It's input in output. Input, output, right? The more that you're putting into it, the better the results are that you're going to get out of it, okay? Right. It's just like training an employee. So over the last eight months, what we've seen is that the community has trained this to be the level of a person that has now been working in the industry for five years. [00:10:46] David: In eight months. It's got five years of learning in eight months. Okay. Wow. In the next six to 12 months, we're probably looking at somebody that has 10 to 15 years understanding in the next six to 12 months and understand the level of type of tasks that it can do, especially getting into estimates and getting some other work. [00:11:04] David: And again, just you know, having empathy in my own life towards the people that jumped in that are like, what is this all about? Like, how does AI fail? Like, you know, there's still people that are involved and it was like this big like momentous train of like, you know, all these people were jumping on and giving ideas and people are in the loop and now it's weeding everything out and the AI stepping in and saying. [00:11:27] David: Hey, I appreciate all the input that you've given me. Thank you for all your effort. I'm now ready to step up to the plate and to own the outcome. Right. And that's what we're seeing at the NARPM show that's coming out. There's five AI tools. There's a master agent, five AI tools. And you know, I'll give you a couple of pieces here that, you know, we had feedback from our property managers like number one across the board. [00:11:50] David: A property manager said, if I'm hiring AI as my last employee, that has to work in my system. Yeah. Okay. Right. Like I don't want another, I don't want another technology. Yeah.  [00:11:59] Jason: I don't want a new system I got to get every vendor to use or a new system I got to get my team to use or figure out. We don't need another tool to make our lives more difficult. [00:12:08] Jason: No. They've got to use our stuff.  [00:12:09] David: They got to use, we have our existing stack. Yeah. So now the AI is fully integrated into all the most common PMS systems. You know, you have a cool chrome extension that you can download and there's a little yellow kangaroo right right there. And it's actually reading the work order that you're working on, and you can literally just ask it a question now and just being like, Hey, did anybody express frustration or concern on this work order? [00:12:32] David: Right? Because that's the emotion behind the status that you need to know. And it's like, yeah, two days ago Sally said that, you know, she was actually really frustrated about the multiple reschedules by this vendor. And it's like, great, that's a person I should be reaching out to and that's what I should be knowing that a status is never going to tell you. [00:12:47] David: Right? Yeah. It's in your slack, right? So if I have, if I'm on my phone, I'm talking to my employee and I'm laying in bed and I have a panic attack as a property manager, and I'm like, oh my gosh, did we take care of John's refrigerator and the office is closed? I can't get ahold of my employee. Yeah, you can. [00:13:03] David: Your employee works 24 7 now. Hey, can you give me an update on the refrigerator replacement at John's place? Yeah, it was scheduled this day. I contacted John. Everything's good to go. You know, go to sleep. You know, like, like that's the power. Full audit. Full syncing. So it's in your platform. That's really cool. [00:13:21] David: The other thing, it's got to be branded, right? This is a thing that we really learned about, like how important branding is to the community of property managers, right? Yeah. So the communications that go out have to be from your area code that's done. The emails that go out have to have like, you know, your company name and your logo on it. [00:13:39] David: The AI is doing that as well too. So that's being sent out, which is really cool. So people are feeling like, you know, that loyalty to brand is super important. And also do you know now that the AI can ask the residents to give a Google Review and we can link to the Google reviews and give you instant Google reviews to your page through the ai, which is cool, like how it's, it will know that if the success of a Google review is high on the way that the work order was done, that it's probably best to ask this person and it will send them a little thing. [00:14:11] David: Hey, can we get a feedback from you? And we link up to your Google review. And it posts that Google review to generate those 'cause we know those are super, super valuable to property managers. So that's actually going out today. That's kind of a little teaser there. That's the emails out now. [00:14:23] Jason: Nice. We'll have to get you to also connect it to our gather kudos links for clients 'cause then people can pick which review sites. So it diversifies the review profile.  [00:14:32] David: Love it. Love that. I'm going to hook you up with our guy Dotan. He's running that. He's one of our head of product. He's, actually out of Israel. [00:14:39] David: He's a amazing guy. I'd love to get you connected with him. Yeah. Cool. Let's do it. Cool. And then the biggest one too is like, I need a single point of contact. Right. And we knew that before there was a lot of people were still involved. There was a lot of oversight that was going on there, having that confusion and single point of contact. [00:14:56] David: Now it's in your phone, it's in your Slack, it's in your phone extension. It doesn't matter what's going on. You have one point of contact. It's your employee. You ask the question, get the answer, Jason, you can even ask for a change. You can even say, Hey, I want to change a vendor on a job and you'll see that the vendor gets changed for you in the system. [00:15:17] David: You can even say to your ai, and this is the big one: hey how do you triage this work order? And I want you to do this, or I want you to do that. And you just do it right through Slack or right through your PM chat and it makes the change for you. And now you have custom triage and all property managers have the ability to train their own AI for their company. [00:15:36] David: Think how cool that is. A person with 75 doors now, and the product that's being released has their own AI agent customized for their company, right? Yeah. Like, that's what happened over the last eight months, so you can see my excitement. There's been a lot of hard work in this. [00:15:54] David: Yeah, that's amazing. But this has been all the effort and a huge thank you out to everybody who's tried us, you know, even said that this wasn't for them at that point in time because those learnings went into what's going to make this product the best product in the property management space and is going to help people leverage sales and leverage efficiencies and blow their owners' minds away in ways that, that we have never thought about. [00:16:15] David: Oh yeah.  [00:16:16] Jason: Yeah. So I know like initially when you rolled this out, a lot of people were nervous about AI and you guys had kind of a human layer in between the AI and any communication Yeah, initially. Yeah. And so there was like, they had like a reps and a lot of people associated, oh, I've got this rep. [00:16:33] Jason: Yeah. You know, Steven or whatever is my rep or Pedro and I've got Pedro and like, oh no, what if Pedro leaves? And they were associating with that while the AI is really doing the crux of the work. Right. And so you guys have shifted away from even that now the AI is directly communicating with people. [00:16:52] Jason: Correct? Yeah.  [00:16:53] David: Yeah. So let's talk about that. So, definitely, so in the beginning there was like, we all had like lack of trust. We believed what it was going to do, but it was like we had a ton of people still trying, like, you know, using qualified VAs, training them. Like, you know, like, you know, if it fails, like, you know, you have to have a person stepped in and so let's talk about that. [00:17:12] David: So, you know, it was definitely that human layer. And let's talk about where we're at today. It is very clear to us, and the one thing that separates us from everybody is we still believe that humans are super important in this process. Okay? Yeah. And where humans are very important in this process are going to be when the AI says, Hey, I need you to make a phone call to this person for me, right? [00:17:35] David: Hey, I've reached out to this vendor three times and they haven't responded yet. I need you to give a phone call to see what's going on. Right? Hey, I need you to recruit a vendor for me. I need you to reach out and do a recruitment for the vendor. For me. Hey, this owner is asking questions about this estimate. [00:17:51] David: I need you to give a call for me. So the AI is basically able, on a standard work order, the AI can handle 95% of the workflow, no problem. Work order comes in, gets assigned to the resident. It gets out to the vendor. It's under the NTE not to exceed. It's great. The work gets done, the resident uploads its photos, the AI says to the resident, are you happy? [00:18:14] David: Everyone's good. It closes the work order out. Cool. Right. And then if a human...  [00:18:19] Jason: and how is it communicating with the tenant and with the vendor typically? [00:18:24] David: Yep. So, it's very clear that and this isn't a surprise to anybody. Everybody loves text messages, right? Yeah. I mean, that's just, it's just what it is. [00:18:32] David: You literally, like, people will get a phone call and they won't pick up and the text will come back and like text back. Yeah, text me. What do you need? Yeah. Text me here. But, so here's the things that people don't see behind the scenes that we'll talk about. So the complexity that went into. [00:18:51] David: Mapping out how to allow vendors... so a vendor could have like 20 jobs, right? And we don't want to send him like a code that he has to text for every work order so that it links to the right work order. Like what guy wants to do that? Okay. Like that's not how he works. So we figured out how to allow a vendor through AI just to use his regular phone and text anything about this thing. And it's understanding it and it's mapping it, it's routing it to all those work orders because we knew that in order for this to be the last employee somebody would have to handle, it also means that the vendor has to be happy and the same for the resident. [00:19:30] David: They can just text that they have multiple work orders. It understands what work order it's going to. If it's not quite sure, I would ask them, Hey, is this question about this work order? And they say, yeah. And so there's not like, again, codes and links and things that they have to do. It has to be seamless if they're working with a person. [00:19:46] David: So yeah, text message is massive. Email is second, and then phone is third for sure.  [00:19:51] Jason: Got it. So is your AI system calling people yet or you or telling the property manager to make the phone call?  [00:19:58] David: Yeah. People are okay with. If they're calling in like our new front desk agent, which if a person calls in and they want to get information about a listing or if they want to get information about a work order or something like that, or, you know, they're okay with getting that type of information. [00:20:13] David: Yeah. But they are, it is very clear that they are not okay with AI calling them when they're asking for an update on a work order like that. Like that line in the sand very clear. Yeah. And so we have people on on the team. That are constantly monitoring into ai, giving feedback, hitting improvement. [00:20:31] David: I want everybody to know there is not a work order that is taking place that is not touched by a human at least twice.  [00:20:38] Jason: Okay.  [00:20:39] David: Okay. Right.  [00:20:40] Jason: So there's a little, there's some oversight there. There there's, you're watching this, there are humans involved  [00:20:45] David: And then the ai will when it hits certain fail points, right? [00:20:51] David: It then escalates those things up to what we call the human in the loop, right? So there's an AI assistant, we there's people now that we're training a whole new generation of people that are no longer going to be maintenance coordinators. They're AI assistants now, right? And so when the AI says, Hey, this work order is not going down the path that I think it should go to be successful. [00:21:12] David: I'm escalating this up to a human, and so now as a property manager, not only am I getting this AI agent workflow that's standardizing the empathy and the workflows and all the stuff that we talked about in the communications, I also now get a fractional employee that when the AI says, Hey, I need help, I already have an employee that it can reach out to that can make that phone call or call the vendor. [00:21:36] David: But it's also monitoring the AI for me on top of it. So yes, there is, and that's one of the big thing that separates us apart is that the platform comes with what we call a human in the loop, an expert in the loop and so we're training the first generation of AI assistants in the property management industry. [00:21:55] David: Yep.  [00:21:56] Jason: Got it. So the AI maintenance coordinator. Has human assistance. Yep. Underneath it.  [00:22:02] David: And before it was the other way around where Yeah. The AI was assisting the human right. And now the humans are assisting the ai. That's what's happened in the last...  [00:22:11] Jason: that may be the future of all of our roles. [00:22:12] Jason: So,  [00:22:13] David: If you're not reading articles and studying up on this I think that's going to catch you by surprise pretty quickly. Yeah. Learn how to write prompts. I'll tell everybody right now. Yes.  [00:22:21] Jason: Yeah. Interesting. So, now what about this, you know, there's the uncanny, you know, sort of stage where people get a little bit nervous about AI and what do they call it? The uncanny valley or something like this, or right where it gets, it's so close to human that it becomes creepy. And there's some people that have fear about this, that are concerned. You're going to have a lot of late, you know, adopters that are like resistant. "I'll never do ai." [00:22:49] Jason: What would you say to somebody when you get on a sales call and they're like, well, I'm really nervous about this AI stuff, you know, and they just, they don't get it.  [00:22:57] David: Yeah.  [00:22:58] Jason: I'm sure there's people listening right now. They're like, oh man, AI is going to kill us all and it's going to take over the world and it's going to take our jobs. [00:23:05] Jason: And they think it's evil.  [00:23:06] David: Yeah. Yeah. I, and you know, I really want to hear that fear and I want to like, again, have empathy towards that. 'cause I do understand that fear of change causes people to get... Change in general. Yes. Right. It's like, whoa, I like everything the way it's going to be. Right. And we are historically in one of those phases of like, you know, the industrial revolution, the renaissance, like the automobile from horse. [00:23:34] David: Like, this is what is taking place. This is, this will be written down in history. It's massive change. It's a massive change. Massive. So what I would say to them, and not to, not from a way of fear. But to inspire them is there are a lot of hungry entrepreneurs out there that are embracing this head on. [00:23:57] David: Yeah. That are pushing the boundaries and the limits to be able to bring insights and customer service to their clients at a much higher level. And if you want to compete in this new AI economy. I would definitely encourage you to understand and get in and start investing in yourself now. But understand that investing in AI means having some pain threshold. [00:24:21] David: Like you got to get in, like you, you need to be able to give the feedback. You need to understand that if it falls short, do you have to be able to give it the time and the energy and the reward and the payoff of what I'm seeing for property managers who've embraced that when they're sitting there and they're going, I don't touch maintenance at all anymore. Yeah, it's wild. Right? And those are the people that in the beginning of this relationship, and there's a few that come to my head, are the ones that were sending me emails constantly saying, David, this is failing me. I believe in this, but this is failing me. And as my technology partner, I know that you're going to help us get this better. [00:24:58] David: And there is, you know, I have this word down that struggle equals great con conversation, right? Like, and so they had a struggle and that opened up a great conversation and because of that, their technology and the technology is getting better. So yeah, I think that from a personal point of view in this industry, one thing that I want to solve with AI is I think that we can all say that over the past 15 years, we've probably yelled at a lot of vendors or yelled at a lot of VAs or yelled at a lot of people. Let's start yelling at the ai. And then hopefully that the AI will actually eliminate the need for us to ever have to yell at anybody again because it knows us. [00:25:36] David: Yeah. It never fails us.  [00:25:38] Jason: You know? It really is amazing. I mean, your company is creating freedom for the business owner from being involved in maintenance. Yeah. Really?  [00:25:46] David: Yeah.  [00:25:47] Jason: And it just, and they get used to that pretty quickly. Like maintenance is just running and they're like, yeah. It frees up so much head space for them to focus on growth. [00:25:56] Jason: It gives them a whole bunch of like just greater capacity. Yeah. So they feel like, yeah, we could handle adding any number of doors now and we know we can still fulfill and do a good job.  [00:26:07] David: Yeah. Fixed cost scaling. Right? That's a term that we came up with is now that you know that I have a price per door that will cover all my maintenance. So if I went in and brought on 75 doors, I know that I don't have to go out and hire another employee. The system just grows with it and I know exactly what my margin is for all those doors. Right. And as we know previous, before fixed cost scaling a property managers is like, I have enough people. [00:26:32] David: I don't have enough people. Someone quit, someone didn't quit. My profit margins are good. My profit margins are bad. Yeah. And now with these AI tools. You know, you have your front desk employee, you have your maintenance coordinator, you have these fixed cost scales, and now somebody calls you up and says, Hey, I want you to take on 25 doors, and you're like, I have the resource resources for maintenance, which is, we know is 80% of the workload already. I don't have to go out and hire another maintenance coordinator 'cause the system just grows with me, which is cool.  [00:27:00] Jason: So one of the things you shared at DoorGrow Live and you're our top sponsor for the upcoming... Can't wait for DoorGrow Live, can't wait to, so we're really excited to have you back so. [00:27:10] Jason: Everybody make sure you're at DoorGrow Live if you want. Our theme this year is innovating the future of property management. And we're bringing, we're going to be showcasing, innovating pricing structures that are different than how property managers have typically historically priced, that allow you to lower your operational costs and close more deals more easily at a higher price point. [00:27:30] Jason: We're, we'll be showcasing a three tier hybrid pricing model that we've innovated here at DoorGrow, and we've got clients using it. It's been a game changer. We're going to be sharing other cool things about the future hiring systems, et cetera. Right. So you guys will also be there showcasing the future. [00:27:46] Jason: One of the things you shared previously that really kind of struck me as you showed, you did some research and you showed the typical cost. Per unit that most companies had just to cover and deal with maintenance. Yeah. And and then what you were able to get it down to.  [00:28:03] David: Yeah.  [00:28:04] Jason: And that alone was just like a bit of a mind blowing. [00:28:07] Jason: Could you just share a little bit of numbers here?  [00:28:09] David: Yeah. So one of the first things that we had to do when we started way back in the day is figure out well. Like, like what's the impact of AI going to be us from like a cost perspective, right? Is it a huge change? And so we went out on a big survey mission and we were surveying property managers and asking them, what's your cost per door for managing maintenance? [00:28:30] David: How much do you spend every door to manage maintenance? Now the first thing is less than 1% of property managers knew what that cost was. Sure.  [00:28:37] Jason: Oh, sure. Right. Because, but then they got to figure out, oh, we got a maintenance coordinator and we've got these people doing phone calls and they cost this, and yeah, it's complicated. [00:28:45] David: It's complicated. So we built a calculator. Okay. And then people could start adding in that information out into the calculator, and the average person was around $13 and 50 cents a door.  [00:28:56] Jason: Okay. Okay.  [00:28:57] David: Wow. Right, right. So that was where the average person was, somewhere in the low twenties. Yeah. [00:29:01] David: And others were actually pretty good. Like, I'd say like, you know, some of the good ones that we saw were maybe around like, you know, 10, $11 a door or something along that line.  [00:29:09] Jason: They probably had a large portfolio would be my guess.  [00:29:12] David: Yeah. And also I think a lot of it's just like, you know, I don't know if they were still accounting for all their software and everything that they had. [00:29:19] David: Maybe they're not factoring everything. Yeah. No, I think if we really dug in, it'd be different. So now we know that, you know, the base package of what people are getting in. The average cost of what people are paying for 24 7 services that's emergencies around the clock is about $7 and 50 cents a door, right? [00:29:37] David: So right off the bat in AI's first swing, it said we cut the cost in half. Yeah. Okay. Right. So 50% reduction. I mean, to me as an owner, a 50% reduction in cost. That's like. You know, alarms and celebration going off, you know? For sure. And then, yeah.  [00:29:55] Jason: And that's, if everything just stayed the same, like it was still the same level of quality, cutting in half would be a solid win right there. [00:30:03] Jason: Yeah.  [00:30:03] David: Yeah. That's just like status quo stuff. And now what, with the release of the new Vendoroo product that, that's actually being announced here today. The email's going out to all of our existing clients of all the new features that are coming out now, we're starting to see that. You know that quality is now increasing to where if you were to go out and hire that person, you may have to be spending, you know, 55,000 or $65,000 a year. [00:30:29] David: Right? So now it's like saying, okay, if we can get as good as what these people are using for their VAs right, and we know what that cost is, and they're saying that's, you know, that's what their factors is. Well, what happens in the next six to 12 months when this is a seasoned person that you would've to pay $85,000 a year to? [00:30:45] David: Right. Yeah. And right, because they have knowledge of. Estimates and knowledge of vendor routing and knowledge of, you know, it can handle...  [00:30:53] Jason: you've invested so much time into them, so much attention. They know your properties and know your portfolio. They know the vendors. Like you've invested so much into this person that now they sort of have you by the balls so that they're like, Hey, I want 80 k or I walk.  [00:31:06] David: Yeah.  [00:31:06] Jason: You're like, you've got to come up with it.  [00:31:08] David: Yeah.  [00:31:09] Jason: Right. You've got to do it.  [00:31:10] David: Yeah.  [00:31:10] Jason: And you know, because that's not easy to create. And a lot of people, in order to have a good maintenance coordinator, they need a veteran of the industry. Veteran of industry. [00:31:19] Jason: They need somebody that's been doing this a long time.  [00:31:21] David: Yeah.  [00:31:22] Jason: And that's really hard to find.  [00:31:24] David: Yes. It's extremely hard to find as we know. One of the things that I think that we're doing for this industry is we're actually preserving knowledge that I don't think is necessary getting passed down. [00:31:33] David: Yeah. You know, there's a lot less people that I think are as handy as they once were in the Americas and so we have a lot of that knowledge. Like, you know, we know that the average age of an electrician is in the sixties, the average age of a plumber's in the sixties. And these guys, you know, they have wealth of knowledge that it can troubleshoot anything that's going on in a house. [00:31:54] David: And so to be able to try to preserve some of that, so maybe if a person does come in, you know, maybe there's some knowledge sharing along the lines. But let's take it even in another step forward Jason that in the future, you know, the AI is going to know the location of the hot water tank in that house. [00:32:10] David: It's going to then add it automatically to the system, like. It's going to know more knowledge than they will because it's going to have maps of every single property that's all currently sitting inside of, you know, that maintenance coordinator's head, right? And so it's going to, it's going to actually know more than them, you know. [00:32:26] Jason: Yeah. That's wild. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. It's the future. Cool. Well, you're rolling out a bunch of new features. You're announcing these today. You've told me a little bit, but why don't you tell the listeners what's changing, what's new, what innovations have come out? What are you guys launching? [00:32:41] David: Yeah. Exciting. Yeah. So, the biggest one I think is, which is the most exciting is, is Resiroo, which is the first one that actually handles all the communications with the resident and does the triage and troubleshooting. First one of what are you talking about? So we have our products. [00:32:57] David: So you have these AI tools, right? These agents. Right.  [00:33:00] Jason: And so, you know, every, so think of them like different sort of people?  [00:33:04] David: Skill sets. Yeah. Different person. Okay. Exactly. And so that's when you come and see our display at the NARPM conference, you'll actually will see these five agents kind of in their work desk and in their environments, kind of cool. [00:33:15] David: Okay. Able to see them right. So the coolest part about that one is we're doing a major product you know, update on that for not only the knowledge base, but we're actually turning that over to the company. We were talking about this a little bit before, and now they own their own AI agent and they can customize it into how they want it to ask questions or the type of questions and the mindsets when it's triaging stuff. [00:33:41] David: Triaging work orders for their portfolio. Like super cool. So fully customizable to your company, right?  [00:33:49] Jason: So now sometimes the more humans get involved, the more they mess stuff up.  [00:33:54] David: Yes. We make sure they don't mess it up. So everyone's going to learn how to write prompts and they'll submit it into us. [00:33:59] David: And we have a great team of AI engineers that when that knowledge base is written or what they're doing. We will ensure that it is put in so that it actually produces the desire outcome, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that's a very exciting one. The second one that I'm that I think is so cool, do you know that only 10% of all estimates get approved by the owner without one or multiple questions? [00:34:23] David: Because owners really struggle with trust when it comes to estimates. Like 10%. Like, that's a really bad number, I felt as the industry that owners only believe us one out of 10 times. Like that's the way I took that. Yeah. Right. And so, Owneroo is what I coined inside, is the estimate of the future. [00:34:41] David: That really was looking in understanding like what was, what questions was the owner asking when they were rejecting a bid that that we could proactively ask the answer for them to help guide them to understanding the value in this estimate that they're looking at in historical context of the property. [00:35:00] David: How many other people have experienced this issue? Like, like there's a whole bunch of factors that should go into an estimate and an estimate should no longer be like, here's a cost from Frank. Right? Like, like that was like, like that was...  [00:35:14] Jason: here's what Frank said it is. Yeah. Like that was like from the 1940s. [00:35:17] Jason: That's good. How do I trust that?  [00:35:18] David: How do I trust that? That was from the forties and we're still...  [00:35:21] Jason: how much went into this decision? Was this just out of the blue, like pulled out of your ass or is this like legit?  [00:35:27] David: Yeah. Yeah. What's the, you know, we live in a data-driven world, so what's the intellect behind this estimate? [00:35:33] David: And so I'm really excited about Owneroo, which is going to be the new standard for the way the estimates are created. We have the front desk agent which is coming out. So, that one is going to handle phone calls that are coming in, be able to talk about available listings, actual general questions about leases route phone calls over to property managers for you. [00:35:54] David: So again. Very human-like interaction, great AI voice. Actually. We feel it's going to be the best in the industry. So a person's calling in, just like they're calling your office able to handle all those front desk things. We, we have the PM chat, which is now the employee which is fully integrated into all of your systems. [00:36:14] David: It's in Slack. That's your employee that you get to talk to. We believe that if you're going to hire somebody, they should be inside of your communication channels. You have the Google Chrome extension that it's on right inside your AppFolio or your buildium or your Rentvine software that you can ask and talk to it. [00:36:31] David: So, yeah, so we have a lot of exciting products that have come out. And then of course the backbone of all of them in the middle is Vendoroo, which handles all the scheduling, all the communications. You know, a resident asks for an update, responds to them, an owner asks for an update, it responds to them. [00:36:48] David: And you know, it handles actually the body of the work order. So you have those five tools, we believe are what the property management industry said. If you are going to give me an employee, this is what the employee has to be. This is what makes up that employee. So we say that these tools, these agents were actually built by the property management industry. [00:37:08] David: And that excites me because if you're not building AI tools from working with your partners, from being on the ground floor with them and using the data and building tools based upon the data and their pain points and their failures, buyer beware. If somebody's coming to you and saying, Hey, we figured this all out in the lab. [00:37:25] David: Come use it. Yeah. Right. Buyer beware.  [00:37:29] Jason: Yeah. So you guys connect with Slack. They can communicate through Slack, but it slack's a paid tool. Have you guys considered Telegram? I love Telegram Messenger.  [00:37:37] Jason: Alright. Could you do that? Write it down. Telegram Messenger is like the iMessage tool that works on every device. [00:37:44] Jason: It's free. It's one of the most secure, it's not owned or controlled by Facebook. Like, WhatsApp, like, yeah. But WhatsApp might be a close second, but we use Telegram internally, so I love Telegram.  [00:37:58] David: We'll definitely take that into, into consideration for sure. Yeah, check it  [00:38:02] Jason: out. Because I, what I love is the voice message feature and I can just listen to my team and others at like high speed, but internal communications and it's free for everybody, which is great. [00:38:12] Jason: So, yeah.  [00:38:13] David: Yeah. I think a lot, for a lot of people it was like you know, who was Vendoroo in the beginning and Vendoroo was like the team of like people that were trying to figure out like how is AI going to work in this industry? [00:38:26] David: How is it going to solve the needs of our property management partners? And this is why I say to everybody, if you thought about Vendoroo, if you came in and the experience wasn't great with Vendoroo, if you're one of our existing clients that has been with us and you're and you're still moving forward, and we thank you so much for your dedication to this, the Vendoroo product, everything that we've done, everything that we worked at is being showcased at the NARPM broker owner. The email's going out today. This is who Vendoroo is. We are a team that is a technology partner for the property management industry that is helping building meaningful AI tools, specifically by demand, by our industry to help us show value and to preserve this great industry. [00:39:09] David: For the future in this new AI economy, right? Like we need to step up. We have clients that are adding doors left and right because they're showing their clients that they use an AI maintenance system and their clients are like, this is what I expect from a property management in this community. [00:39:24] David: Right? And again, Owneroo, that estimate, we believe that in the future. Like, like owners are going to say like, I'm not approving an estimate unless it's like the estimate of the future, right? Like, like that's the new standard. So you got to know what the new standards are and you got to get technology that are going to help you compete with those new standards that will be in your community and are will be in your community in the next week, the next two weeks. [00:39:46] David: And definitely some really cool products in the next six months.  [00:39:49] Jason: All right. Well, yeah, I'm really excited to see what you guys have been able to create so far. So yeah, it's pretty awesome. Yeah. All right. Well David, it's been awesome having you on the show. Sounds like you guys are really innovating the future. Everybody come to DoorGrow Live. David, are you going to be at that one? I will be there. All right, so you can come meet David in person. [00:40:08] Jason: We've got some amazing people that are going to be at this. We've got technology people. There's a gentleman there, one of the vendors they created another really cool tool, but he had a hundred million dollars exit, you know, in a previous business, like there's really amazing entrepreneurs and people at this event, so come to DoorGrow Live, get your tickets, and if you do, we have just decided that we're going to give out to anybody that registers. [00:40:34] Jason: You can pick from one of our free bonuses that are well worth the price of the ticket. Or coming or anything in and of itself, including our pricing secrets training that goes over a three tier hybrid pricing model or our sales secrets training, which goes over how we're helping property managers crush it and closing more deals more easily at a higher price point. [00:40:55] Jason: And reputation secrets, which are helping our clients get way more positive reviews by leveraging the psychology and the law of reciprocity and getting the majority of their tenants in order to give them positive feedback online. Maybe some others. So you'll be able to pick from these bonuses one of these that you might like and that's our free, most incredible free gift ever that we'll give to each person that registers for DoorGrow Live. [00:41:19] Jason: So.  [00:41:20] David: Cool. Awesome man. Always great to see you. Looking forward to seeing you at DoorGrow Live and love that you guys are working on pricing because AI is going to make people think different about pricing. It's going to be way more efficient, so you guys are ahead of the curve on that. Great job, Jason. [00:41:33] Jason: Awesome. All right, so how can they check out Vendoroo, David?  [00:41:36] David: Just visit, Vendoroo.ai, go to the website, request a demo with one of our great sales reps, and yeah they'd love to help you out. See all the new products, see how far it's come. And again, we thank everybody from the bottom of our hearts for all their effort, people who've tried us out. [00:41:52] David: Come back and see what you built and yeah. Come check us out at Vendoroo.  [00:41:57] Jason: Got it. Go check out Vendoroo, it's vendor. If you know how to spell that, V-E-N-D-O-R-O-O dot A-I, go check it out. All right? And if you're a property management entrepreneur, you want to add doors, you want to make your business scalable, you want to get out of the day to day, you want to increase the capacity so your company could easily handle another 200 plus doors without having to make any significant systems changes, reach out to us at DoorGrow. We will help you figure it out. So until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. 

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. 

The property management industry is no stranger to conferences and in-person events, but have you ever thought about creating an event yourself? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the behind-the-scenes of putting on a live event or conference and all the pros and cons of doing so. You'll Learn [04:39] Learning from Past Mistakes and Failures [15:32] Getting Back in the Saddle: DoorGrow Live [21:07] What Goes Into Creating a Conference? [30:31] The Magic of In-Person Events Quotables “I think being able to just connect with people, making sure that people know who you are and what you do, I mean, it's really valuable.” “When you've got a room full of people who are in the same sector, in the same industry, there's so much knowledge in that room.” “When you're connecting with other people that are like you, that are growth minded and you both share an industry and a share a business model, like it really helps you grow.” “Your business is the sum of the five property management business owners you as a business owner are most connected to.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: When you're connecting with other people that are like you, that are growth minded and you both share an industry and share a business model, like it really helps you grow. [00:00:08] Jason: Your business is the sum of the five property management business owners you as a business owner are most connected to. [00:00:13] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the Property Management Growth 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. [00:00:42] 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. [00:01:06] Jason: We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. All right.  [00:01:14] Sarah: Woo!  [00:01:15] Jason: So first, you'll have to excuse if I sound a little nasally today, because I have a cold, which doesn't happen often. And I might have given it to Sarah. I don't know. [00:01:25] Sarah: My sinuses just feel weird.  [00:01:27] Jason: So.  [00:01:27] Sarah: So thanks.  [00:01:28] Jason: Yeah.  [00:01:29] Sarah: Thanks for that.  [00:01:30] Jason: Okay, so.  [00:01:31] Sarah: Appreciate it.  [00:01:32] Jason: You keep kissing me. I'm not kissing you. Like I'm not trying to get you sick.  [00:01:35] Sarah: He's not kissing me.  [00:01:36] Sarah: She can't resist.  [00:01:37] Sarah: Does anybody believe that? Nobody believes you. Nobody should.  [00:01:40] Jason: I'm sick. You keep coming up to me. [00:01:42] Jason: I'm like, you want this? Obviously she does, guys. Obviously.  [00:01:46] Sarah: Oh brother.  [00:01:47] Sarah: Alright.  [00:01:48] Sarah: What a great episode. What a great kicker offered.  [00:01:51] Jason: So I might be coughing and I apologize. Alright, so what we're talking about today is we thought we'd give you a little bit of behind the scenes into us creating an event and us doing DoorGrow Live, getting prepped and prepared for this. You know, we put an entire year into getting this thing going and getting this prepared and promoting it, finding speakers. [00:02:15] Jason: And so let's chat a little bit about some of the behind the scenes stuff.  [00:02:19] Sarah: Yeah. So one of the things that I wanted to talk about is kind of everything that really goes into it behind the scenes that when you go attend an event, you just don't notice. You just don't like realize a lot of the times, unless you're used to running events. [00:02:35] Sarah: And once you start running an event, go run one event and then you will attend every other event differently. For example, when we go to, you know, Aaron's events, or Funnel Hacking Live, my brain is constantly going, like, operationally, this must be a nightmare. How on earth are they coordinating all of this? [00:02:56] Sarah: It's just insane. Because I know how crazy it is with our conferences, and we don't yet have thousands of people there. We will, at one point. But, man, there's just so much that goes into it. So, If you're ever considering running events, and I think that for property managers and for anyone who's a real estate agent or investor, I really think events are something that you should at least look into. And it doesn't have to be this big crazy event where, you know, you spend 25- 30 thousand dollars like we do and that's kind of like a low budget, you know. That's like you'll blow through that real quick. It doesn't have to be anything like that and it definitely doesn't have to be this, you know, this big crazy promoted thing you can do your own version of events like in a very different way, back when I was in property management, you know, we would do some little networking events and they were nowhere near the size, but also nowhere near the cost, but they can be really beneficial for you to do. So I think if you haven't experimented with that, then maybe get some tips and pointers and check it out. Like try it, experiment and see what happens. Because for me, it was really great to just be connected. So there's that saying, "your net worth is in your network," and I think being able to just connect with people, make sure that people know who you are and what you do, I mean, it's really valuable. So if you're a property manager and you haven't done a little in person event yet, then perhaps you might want to try. And we're going to talk a little bit about, you know, what goes into like a bigger event the way that we run them. So why don't you give them some background? [00:04:41] Sarah: When was your first? Your first DoorGrow Live was pre-Sarah, the pre-Sarah DoorGrow age, I think it was it 2018?  [00:04:49] Jason: Yeah. 2018. 2018. Yeah. Yeah.  [00:04:51] Sarah: Okay. Can you talk about you know, what was the first DoorGrow Live like?  [00:04:57] Jason: Oh man. Yeah. And if you want to get a visual of this, you can go to, I think it's photos.doorgrow.Com and we have photos of all of our different major events. You can go back to 2018 and there's a nice photo of me and Mike Michalowicz there. And so we brought in some big, you know, for me, they were big speakers. Some people that I really looked up to and that I got a lot of value from. [00:05:22] Jason: So, coach, authors, you know, people that I had worked with. And so, it was a big deal. We spent, I think we spent about $115,000. Putting that event together because I wanted to do it, right. I didn't want my first event to be Mickey Mouse or cheap or you know, whatever So I wanted to do a really good job and I thought well, "and we'll sell tickets to make up for it." We did. We sold about a hundred and fifteen tickets at around, I think $1,000 a pop. [00:05:53] Jason: And I have a whole podcast episode I did on this. I call it my $2 million mistake because we were growing at a pace of, we were doing about a million in revenue a year and we were growing at a pace of about 300% percent at the time we were growing really quickly. We had a lot of momentum, and I decided to do this big conference. It was a little bit of an ego thing. Like it was like kind of a dream that I wanted to feel cool and be on stage and it was super stressful. The event went really well. People liked it, but I was massively stressed during it. And then I didn't do another one for how many years? I don't know.  [00:06:29] Sarah: Yeah, that was his first and only and then like canceled it  [00:06:33] Jason: I was like, "I don't think I'll do that again." [00:06:35] Sarah: Yeah.  [00:06:36] Jason: I mean I didn't realize everything that goes into it. I'm sure people were watching me start my first conference from the sidelines who have done events in the space were like, "good luck, bro," because they know how hard it can be. [00:06:47] Jason: It's like starting a whole nother business but you have to recognize there's like the hotel. It's hard to do an event that's not at a hotel. So you kind of have to do it at hotels and so they have this like, sort of, they're like the mafia. [00:07:01] Jason: They have this control over doing events. Like, and you go to them, you're like, "I want to do an event here." And they're like, "cool." And like finances become a thing and they negotiate a group rate with you, which means you have to book certain number of rooms because they want you to book rooms, and if you don't book out the group rate for the rooms in the room block, then you're responsible to pay for that. [00:07:24] Jason: So we were on the hook for like a lot of money for rooms. I'm like, "well, how many rooms does that mean? And like how many nights?" And all this stuff. So just managing finances for an event is like managing finances for a dangerous business startup is really what it is. Because people have gone bankrupt from doing big events really big events where you have two, three thousand, five thousand. These are millions and millions of dollars in and out. [00:07:48] Sarah: Yeah. [00:07:49] Jason: And if they don't navigate this well, it can bankrupt companies  [00:07:53] Sarah: Russell just said that on stage. He didn't say who, but Russell Brunson said that he knew someone that was running a big event, didn't sell enough rooms in the room block, and he went bankrupt from it because it was such a large event and he was on the hook for so much money and ended up bankrupting the company. [00:08:13] Jason: It's dangerous. And then you got to get people to buy the ticket, book the hotel, like, and then there's marketing to do this. You got to spend a lot of money to get people to do this. And then, you know, in order to attract people, sometimes people will do like big speakers. Like I got some speakers and let me tell you speakers, they're expensive. [00:08:33] Jason: Like usually they, they want thousands and thousands of dollars. Like an  [00:08:37] Sarah: inexpensive speaker just to like put it out there, like an inexpensive speaker is still usually around like 5k  [00:08:44] Jason: Anyone you've probably heard of is that minimum 25 grand.  [00:08:47] Sarah: Well more than that. [00:08:49] Jason: And if they're a big name It's 50k, 100k, it can be really expensive to have them come be in an event. [00:08:58] Jason: So, Yeah, so it can be really challenging. Then there's food and beverage minimums. So the hotel, they're like, "you also have to spend a certain amount on food and beverage while you're here." Yeah, so they're like, "you have to book a certain number of rooms. You have to, like, pay for a certain number of food and beverage, and you're not allowed to bring any other food or beverage into our place." [00:09:19] Jason: Nope.  [00:09:19] Jason: "You have to use our stuff. And our stuff is like going to the movie theater. It's overly priced, like, inflated."  [00:09:26] Sarah: Remember, we did the Game Changer event at the JW Marriott in Austin so I looked at everything afterwards and it was not a huge event. It was not a big event. We had under 20 people there. [00:09:40] Sarah: Yeah. And that included like Jason, myself, DoorGrow staff, speakers, like under 20 people. And one lunch and we had, it was a two day event. So we did like two lunches. So one lunch, I think was somewhere around like two or 3,000 dollars. Yeah, it was insane for lunch.  [00:09:57] Jason: And my first event, we spent eight grand to provide coffee for two days. Eight grand for...  [00:10:03] Sarah: coffee. Yeah.  [00:10:05] Jason: For two days like and you know, and they have all these rules. I think the rules are made to inflate the price, but they have these food and beverage and they charge you sometimes by plate. So that hotel that we were at our first event, we didn't realize this, but they have people to go around and pick up plates. [00:10:22] Jason: And you're paying by the number of plates people use. Like how much food they consume and by plate. So they were picking up plates.  [00:10:29] Sarah: Oh my god.  [00:10:30] Jason: It's a racket. Like if you go into this not knowing what you're doing, some hotels can take gross amounts of money. Wow. They negotiate a terrible group rate, they negotiate a horrible food and beverage minimum is really high for you, and then you go way over that minimum if they have anything to do with it. [00:10:45] Jason: And so you're spending all this money and they're like, "well..."  [00:10:47] Sarah: you'll never have to worry about hitting your minimum in food and beverage, like, never. No, really.  [00:10:51] Jason: I mean, if you want food there, period, like,  [00:10:54] Sarah: you're going to hit it. So, I don't care. I don't even care what my minimum is because it doesn't, honestly, it doesn't even matter.  [00:11:00] Jason: Yeah. So then people think, oh, well, then I'll do the event somewhere else. Well, if you do it somewhere else, then how are they going to get from where they're staying to the venue? And so then there's a logistical challenge. So then like people aren't like coming and it's just like it's so much easier if they walk. [00:11:17] Jason: So everything gets like complicated when you don't do it at the hotel.  [00:11:22] Sarah: Where was your first event? Where was it?  [00:11:24] Jason: It was in St. Louis at an old classic hotel. It was really beautiful.  [00:11:28] Sarah: Okay. Interesting.  [00:11:30] Jason: Yeah, we did in St. Louis. We did it at This hotel and we did it because we thought we'll make it easy because NARPM had an event around the same time. [00:11:41] Jason: So we're like, Oh man, we want to do it at the same time. So let's just do it at the same venue. I think we did it the same venue, but we booked a nicer room on the top floor with lots of windows. It was very cool. And it was on different days. So you could attend both. We thought that would give us some cross pollination and really, it didn't. [00:12:00] Jason: Like there were a few people that went to the NARPM one and came to ours, but yeah, it was like so small. So that didn't even really help. "We're like, yeah, it's so easy to stay a little longer and go to ours." [00:12:08] Sarah: Interesting. Okay. Yeah.  [00:12:10] Jason: Yeah.  [00:12:11] Sarah: So after the first DoorGrow Live, he decided, I think when I came on board, he said, "I'm never doing another event again." [00:12:18] Jason: Yeah, I just didn't want to deal with it. It was so stressful. And your whole team, that's the real part of it, is like your whole team is involved in it in different ways, unless you have someone specifically handling sales, event, marketing, planning, advertising, planning, like every role we had in our business that we needed for our business had to go towards the conference because we were now on the hook for, I can't remember, like 50, 80 grand or something with the hotel. We had to figure out how to get rooms booked. We had to figure out how to pay for speakers. It was a whole thing. It was like starting a whole nother business. And our main thing was no longer the main thing. [00:12:58] Jason: So our business stopped growing. It actually didn't grow for several years after that, like a couple of years after that. And that's why I call it my 3 million or 2 million mistake, but it was probably a bigger multi million dollar mistake than that, because there's a lot of money I could have made over those years extra. [00:13:14] Jason: We're not hurting by any means, but that really slowed things down. And I just chalk that up to being the price of tuition in business. I made a mistake. I didn't know. And I learned from it, right? And I didn't listen to my mentor. Alex was like, "make it a really small event. Make it really small. Do your first one, make it small." I'm like, "no way. I've been to so many events. I'm going to make this awesome. I want this. If I'm going to compete with all the other events that are out there, I want this to be the best." And I really think, like, we had the best food there. We had the best, like, everything was the best. [00:13:46] Jason: We had audio visual team. We had a stage set up, like, we put a lot of money into this and it was pretty awesome. Like, it went pretty well. But I was massively stressed during the whole event. And yeah, but people that went, they gave us good feedback. They had a good experience. So, which I'm glad. Then you got to like ticket sales is hard too. [00:14:06] Jason: That's a tough challenge. How do you get people to give up what they're doing to come do something else? And so, you know, we've created some really strong magic. I think at DoorGrow, like our in person events, there's just something magical about our events. There's more heart, there's more connection. [00:14:20] Jason: It changes lives and that's very different than what has happened in the space. And I think that's more just about who we are and what we bring and the type of speakers that we bring in. It's very different than just property management.  [00:14:34] Sarah: And so that's one of the things I wanted to talk about is, so you did your first event. [00:14:39] Sarah: It went well, but it was pretty crazy. We basically broke even. We're not doing another event. I came on to the business a couple years after this and there's still a lot of like trauma and PTSD associated with it and then we started talking. Well, what if we do another event? And he said "no. No I don't want to do another event," and I said, "well, what if we do it differently?" So we did bring DoorGrow Live back after that first conference that they did and we've done several of them since then. We have another one coming up in May. It's May 16th and 17th. It's a Friday and Saturday at the Kalahari Resorts in the North Austin, Texas area. So if you're watching this and you have not yet registered, then definitely go do that. You can go to doorgrowlive.Com. But we've done several of these events since then, and one of the reasons that we wanted to bring these events back, especially even though for Jason it was just so, so traumatic, we just needed to do them a little differently. [00:15:43] Sarah: So, the reason that we wanted to bring them back though is because everything is just so much different when it's in person. And we know that there's so much magic that can just happen if, you know, if we can get people in a room. It's not just going to another conference. So in the industry, there's a lot of conferences, I mean, there's tech conferences and like all the big you know softwares have their own thing and there's NARPM events and there's all kinds of things like this and DoorGrow Live is just different. It's different than all of those things. We're not trying to focus on hey, you know, what are they doing and let's duplicate it. We're focused on how can we provide like such a great experience and such great value and real connection in a like large group environment? Which is hard. [00:16:38] Sarah: Like that's a challenge. If you're like, okay, we're going to get, you know, 50 to a hundred people in a room and we want them to all be connected. That's hard. That's hard. But I think that our events do actually a really great job at that.  [00:16:49] Jason: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, we get great testimonials. It's going to we have a really cool venue We just decided to keep doing it at this Kalahari resort. [00:16:59] Jason: It's near our house. It's in Round Rock They treat us really well there. It's a big it's like we have endless room to grow there We could have thousands and thousands of people someday if we wanted to. There's plenty of room there  [00:17:12] Sarah: But they're great to work with and the rooms are nice. When you guys book a room, the rooms are nice, everything is right on property, it's very family friendly too, so, you know, if you want to kind of bring your family and usually, I've noticed sometimes people, when they go to the conference, and then their family stays at home, there's a little bit of like, "oh, you're leaving me with the kids, like, what is this? Like, you get to go off to a conference and," well, come, like, come with us and you guys can hang out at, like the water park and the Build A Bear and the restaurants and the like arcade and there's still...  [00:17:48] Jason: America's largest indoor water park. Yeah. Yeah.  [00:17:52] Sarah: And I think when you book a room, they include a ticket. [00:17:53] Sarah: Yeah.  [00:17:54] Jason: You get a ticket to all a bunch of cool stuff. So like you get a, like a wristband. So yeah it's a pretty fun place. Like there's a whole Facebook group just for people looking for deals and discounts to stay at this resort. Yeah. They're like always talking about it in that group. I've joined all the local groups, just see what's going on. [00:18:15] Jason: So, yeah, so it's pretty interesting. So yeah, we've got a really cool venue. And oh, the other things places have charged us for other places we've done some of our events they charge us for electricity, they charge us for, like, just having cords put down.  [00:18:31] Sarah: They charge for internet. [00:18:32] Jason: They find a way to charge you for everything at some venues, and so, not all venues are equal. [00:18:38] Jason: So, yeah, so we've really appreciated the Kalahari Resort in Round Rock. It's a cool resort, and they treat us really well there, so.  [00:18:45] Sarah: Yeah, and it's a great experience for people. Because that's really frustrating when you go into any kind of hotel and you're like, "Oh. Why is this where I'm at? I guess I'll be here because the conference is here, but outside of the conference being here, I would never book here." And this is not that at all. Like people like to book here for sure. I think now let's do our little demo and then we'll get back into it.  [00:19:08] Jason: Got a little sponsor for today's episode, KRS SmartBooks. [00:19:13] Jason: Do you have properties to manage and zero time for bookkeeping headaches? KRS SmartBooks is your secret weapon. They specialize in finances for busy property managers like you with 15 plus years of real estate know how and skills in Appfolio, Yardi, and more. Imagine monthly reports magically appearing and zero accounting stress. [00:19:35] Jason: Sound good? Head to KRS Books. At K as in Kansas, R as in Roger, S as in Sam. Books. Sarah's already dying. She's like, you didn't do the right military phonetically.  [00:19:46] Sarah: I really am dying inside.  [00:19:47] Jason: KRSbooks. com to book your free discovery call. Integrity, quality, and a dash of bookkeeping brilliance. That's KRS Smart Books. [00:19:58] Jason: Alright, how should I phonetically do KRS?  [00:20:00] Sarah: K like Kilo, R like Romeo, S like Sierra.  [00:20:04] Jason: Alright, Sarah, by the way, is Becoming a pilot. She's taking pilot flying lessons.  [00:20:11] Sarah: I've known the military code for years  [00:20:13] Sarah: because I used to work in a casino and that's how they would communicate in slot machines.  [00:20:20] Jason: Yeah, alright. [00:20:21] Sarah: But now it's also handy being a pilot.  [00:20:24] Jason: Okay.  [00:20:24] Sarah: Alright, so if that sounds good, I think it sounds really great. Because I know a lot of property managers struggle with bookkeeping, and that's usually not something that's fun for property managers. It's definitely necessary, but it, oh man, it's not fun, and it's really draining. [00:20:38] Sarah: So if you can find someone that's great at what they do, and you can allow them to handle that, and just kind of check in and make sure things are going well, then, whoo, man, life gets a lot easier.  [00:20:51] Jason: Yeah if you're not paying attention to the finances or the financial health of your business or your accounting You're probably getting stolen from it's just I've seen it happen so many times. [00:21:01] Jason: So get a great bookkeeper. Yeah have people you trust to take care of that. Okay.  [00:21:07] Sarah: So speaking of finances, let's talk a little bit about what kind of goes into an event. So for example, we have our DoorGrow Live coming up in May this year. So we have been working on this event now since, so our last one was in May, and then I think we started working on the new one in like July, June or July. [00:21:31] Sarah: So things that have to kind of happen just to be able to have the space, obviously, you have to look into venues, you have to, you know, look at the space, make sure it's going to work for the size of your group, which means you kind of have to estimate a little bit what it's going to look like, and then make sure that the room can. [00:21:48] Sarah: fit more or less if needed.  [00:21:51] Jason: You've got to negotiate with the hotel.  [00:21:53] Sarah: Yep. You've got to negotiate what the rates would be. You know, am I paying for the space or am I paying for the room block and the food? Because there's different ways to do it. So you've got to figure out, you know, how many rooms in the room block do I need? [00:22:09] Sarah: Because if you overestimate that, if you go, "Hey, I think I'm going to have a thousand people come" and 100 people come, it is not going to be a good time for you because every room in the room block that is not sold, you are financially on the hook for. So you get to pay for that. And it's like, it's a certain number of nights. [00:22:28] Sarah: So it's not even so much how many rooms it's, how many nights someone will book. So you want to track that along the way. And then you want to start looking at a lot of the tactical things that go into it, like, well, who is going to speak at the event? So you want to start looking at speakers and when you're looking at speakers, you start to think about, you know, who would our audience resonate with and what kind of value would they provide? [00:22:55] Sarah: And, you know, is this strategic and tactical stuff or is this like mindset and empowerment stuff? Because you kind of want to get a mix of both at each event because everyone who comes to an event They're looking for a different thing. So it's really impossible to satisfy everybody make sure everybody, you know is super happy with everything sometimes people say, "oh, I wish there was more of this and oh, I wish there was more of that," but you kind of have to do like this balance and mix to make sure that everybody gets something out of it. [00:23:25] Sarah: And that they have a great experience. You also want to build a little bit of fun into it. So that it's not just, "hey, show up to this conference, sit down, learn something, take some notes and walk out of the room." You know, we've been to events like that before. Where it's like, "okay, that was a lot. But also, man, it would have been really cool to like, do something fun and you know connect with people," so you want to you know start to build in some time so that people can connect with other people, you know, so are you going to do a mixer? [00:23:52] Sarah: Are you going to do some sort of networking event? You know, are you going to you know go do kind of some fun event before like the night before? Are you going to, you know, send them off to lunch together? What is that going to look like? So that they can really connect with each other especially when you've got a room full of people who are in the same sector, in the same industry, there's so much knowledge in that room. [00:24:15] Sarah: So just talking to other people in the room is really valuable and making connections. So there's got to be some room for that as well. And then you want to think about well, are we going to have any vendors or sponsors? Yeah, and are those vendors or sponsors people that have services that are valuable and that we trust? Because there have also been times where, you know, someone had wanted to sponsor us and we did not want them to be a sponsor. [00:24:43] Sarah: Because if they don't provide a great service, you know, can you throw some money and be in the room? Yeah, but if it's not the right person to be in the room, then that matters. That matters a lot. So we have turned down money. We've turned down sponsorships. So then you also have to think about all of the tactical things. [00:25:05] Sarah: Well, you know, am I doing round tables? Am I doing classroom style? Are we doing full circles? Are we doing semi circles? Like what is the front of the room? And what's the back of the room? And where are the vendors going to be? And what doors do people walk in and out of? And as soon as they walk in, what is the first thing that they see? [00:25:20] Sarah: In what direction do we want to go in? And are they crossing over our equipment? Is somebody going to trip and fall on all the 10,000 chords that we have like taped down and. Then you have to also think about things like your AV. So does the room have internet? Is there power in the room? And I know that seems like a silly question to ask, but guess what? [00:25:40] Sarah: Sometimes they charge you for power. So you would think, hey, there's power in the room, obviously, because like it's at a hotel. They obviously have electricity. Yeah, but do you have to pay for it?  [00:25:49] Jason: Yeah, AV is expensive. Like we rented it initially and it was so costly.  [00:25:54] Sarah: Yeah.  [00:25:54] Jason: For the price you could rent it for it made sense to just buy it. [00:25:58] Sarah: To buy it.  [00:25:59] Jason: And so we eventually bought all our own equipment, but that means now we have to set it up and we have to figure it out. And so, yeah, so there's always a challenge.  [00:26:08] Sarah: Before the actual conference, like before anybody even steps foot like on property, Jason and I and several members of our team are there setting things up. [00:26:18] Jason: Sometimes my kids. Yeah,  [00:26:19] Sarah: sometimes the kids, sometimes an assistant, sometimes Madi comes on in.  [00:26:22] Jason: We're hooking up lights, we're plugging in audio equipment.  [00:26:25] Sarah: So we like pack everything up in Jason's SUV. We drive it over, we unload it. I'm doing this in stilettos, mind you, because I'm a stubborn  [00:26:33] Jason: You do everything in stilettos. [00:26:33] Sarah: Yeah, that's what I am. Right, so we like, we get there, we unpack it, we have to set it all up. You know, we're making sure that, like, all the lights are working, a sound system has to work, because there's no point in having a microphone if it's not going to work. There's always technical errors, and I'm horrible with technology, so Jason is our tech person, and he is the only tech person that we have. [00:26:54] Sarah: So he gets to figure everything out. And then it's like, you know, is the screen working? And can people see it? And is the laptop connecting to the screen? And is it blurry or is it too big or too far? Like there's always these weird little issues that happen and I don't know how to solve any of them. [00:27:10] Sarah: Yeah, so Jason knows how to do that. And then there's the other things like well. What about swag? And you know, are we doing a registration table and who's going to be there to, you know, check people in and make sure they know what to do and they know where to go? And, you know, is there like just kind of first come first serve seating? [00:27:27] Sarah: Or is there like a separate section for, you know, special clients or VIP clients or speakers or the team? And there's also things like, "Oh, well what about name badges?" You know, are we doing, like, are we doing name badges? Are we, you know, making sure that everybody kind of knows who everybody else is? Is there anything special or is it just like a bunch of people walking into a room and then hopefully they figure out that they're in the right room? Like there's so much that goes into it and then there's the scheduling. So well, you know, who's going to go in what order, what day and time are certain speakers available? Because just because they commit to an event doesn't mean, "oh, I can speak at any point during the event." [00:28:11] Sarah: So, you know, it's putting the agenda together and how long do you give them for lunch and where are they going for lunch? And are we doing lunch? Are we, you know, letting them facilitate it on their own? Are we doing breaks? How do we get them back from breaks? Are we, it's crazy. Like it's so, there's so much. [00:28:28] Jason: If you give people a break at an event, it's like 30 minutes of downtime. Oh yeah. It's really hard to get people to like get to the next thing or come back right away. And they all start talking to each other, which is cool. They want to network. Yeah, so getting people back from lunch.  [00:28:43] Sarah: Yes, absolutely. Yes. [00:28:45] Sarah: And then it's, you know, who kicks off the event? Who opens it? Who closes it? Who's going after lunch? Because we all know most people, what happens to them after lunch? They're tired. I'm fine. But a lot of people, they're tired after lunch. So you can't have a, you know, more mundane or quiet or low energy speaker after lunch. [00:29:06] Sarah: You just can't. Because you'll lose everybody. So there's a lot that goes into the scheduling as well. And then there's things like, you know, who's going to MC it? Who's making announcements? Who's making sure that everybody knows where to be? And what time? And what to do and when to come back? And who's doing the intros for speakers? [00:29:26] Sarah: Are you doing music for every speaker that comes up? If so, like, are they picking it? Are you picking it? What happens? Like there is so so so much that goes into it, and then after you like run the event then you got to break it all down if it's your equipment. Yeah, so then it's like pack it all up and put it away and make sure nothing gets damaged or lost and repack the car and unload it again, and like there is so much that goes Into it. [00:29:53] Sarah: And I would say at this point, it's funny because Jason now can show up to DoorGrow Live and nine out of 10 times, he has no idea what's going to happen or when.  [00:30:05] Sarah: I love it.  [00:30:06] Sarah: I just call him up on stage and he's like, oh, okay, because, and I'm like, my team handle most of it. Talking on this go.  [00:30:12] Jason: Right now. I still just have to make sure the tech stuff all works. [00:30:15] Jason: But yeah, other than that, yeah, I don't. I don't have to do as much which is nice, but because it's stressful enough. It's stressful enough So yeah, so it's a lot. There's a lot that goes into it, but it's been worth it to have you know to see people's lives change to see people impacted. We've noticed there's some sort of magic that happens that when people come to something in person with us even if they've been a client for years, they start to get different results. [00:30:40] Jason: They start to see things differently. They start to absorb all of our content, our information, our training material, our ideas more effectively. Everything just magnifies. There's something about in person. You can't get the same sort of benefit in your business. If you think, "all I need to do is read books and watch videos and show up to zoom calls to grow my business. [00:31:04] Jason: Look, there's a lot of benefits in all of those things. I do all those things, but we still go to in person things. There's something different about in person that I don't know if it's the energy of being in the same space as the people you're learning from. If it's the group energy and that group mind that makes you able to like learn and faster. [00:31:23] Jason: There's, but there's some, I don't know if maybe there's some quantum physical magic, magical stuff, but there's something different about it in person. It's happened too many times for me to like believe otherwise or to dismiss it. I've had too many clients that I've been working with for years, go to their first in person thing with us, and then they have some breakthrough. And I'm like what? And they tell me about it, and I'm like, "I've been teaching you that for years!" Like "I know but like but it's just hit differently." [00:31:51] Jason: Yeah, "I just got it." [00:31:52] Sarah: It hits different. It feels different and you just absorb things. [00:31:57] Jason: And because we've seen this pattern, we've seen this pattern, we now make it part of our onboarding of every new client to come hang out with Sarah and I in person for a one day with usually a small cohort and like, and just get some things figured out and dialed in their business. [00:32:14] Jason: And that's been magic for our business. Like it's been magic for our clients, magic for us. So we give them that in person experience early on. And then DoorGrow Live allows them to connect with others, which is there's just something different about the people at DoorGrow. The property managers at DoorGrow are different. [00:32:30] Jason: I've been to a lot of conferences. A lot. Like in various industries, but especially in property management. And there's something different about the people that we attract and the clients that we attract. They're growth minded, they're positive active in mentalities, which means they're not like the skeptical, negative Nancy's that are grumpy about the industry and the business. [00:32:51] Jason: That there's this positive growth minded, healthier sort of personality that we attract at DoorGrow. And maybe that says a little bit about who we are, because that's what I tried to be. But we attract amazing people and the connections people make, when you're connecting with other people that are like you, that are growth minded and you both share an industry and a share a business model, like it really helps you grow. [00:33:15] Jason: Your business is the sum of the five property management business owners you as a business owner are most connected to or that you're most influenced by. So look at those property managers if you've got coaches or mentors, and they're not people that you really like that maybe you think they're smart, but you don't really want to be more like them, then maybe you're around the wrong people. [00:33:34] Jason: Maybe you have the wrong coach, and I'm not the coach for everybody. Sarah's not the coach for everybody. But you should have a coach. Otherwise, you're selling yourself short if you're not accountable to anybody, you're definitely getting less results than you could or should be so come to DoorGrow Live come check us out. This DoorGrow Live, [00:33:52] Jason: I want to open our playbooks up if Sarah lets me. I want to just reveal some really amazing stuff that only our clients get to see because I want to show anyone that shows up that's not part of our DoorGrow ecosystem. Our clients know the magic's there. We have more case studies or testimonials than anyone else in the industry, but if you're not a DoorGrow client, and you want to come to DoorGrow Live I'm going to give you some gifts for sure, some magic. We're going to make some significant changes in your business. They're going to help you make a lot more money a lot more easily and keep a lot more of your profit and so come hang out with us. [00:34:29] Jason: You're not going to be disappointed for sure So there you go.  [00:34:33] Sarah: Yeah. This event we've got some really awesome things planned. We can't let too much out of the bag at this point. But we always have some really great things planned and every event we do, like we always learn from it. [00:34:46] Sarah: And we always do like a little team meeting afterwards and we get feedback from people. We're always looking to make it better and better. And this year is absolutely no exception to that. So the things that we have planned for this year, like I know that if you come to this event, it will change your business and it will change your life. [00:35:12] Sarah: And I know that's a really bold statement and we're ready to back it.  [00:35:16] Jason: Yeah. And maybe that could be a later podcast episode as we get closer to the event. But we can tell you a little bit more about what's going to be happening there, but hopefully this was interesting to get behind the scenes at all that goes into DoorGrow Live and we meet on this you know, we're talking about it weekly, monthly in our planning meetings, like and quarterly. [00:35:37] Jason: And so, and that's it for today's episode. So if you are interested in that, go check it out at DoorGrowLive.Com and get your tickets and get things booked and get ready to come have an amazing experience in May at DoorGrow Live. So, and until next time to our mutual growth, bye everyone. 

After working with property management business owners for over a decade, I've realized that the problems they are experiencing tend to be deeper than issues in the business… In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Sam Womack to discuss entrepreneurship, health, and how the two intertwine. You'll Learn [01:57] How stress affects your health [13:48] The impact of oxygen and proper relaxation [17:40] The importance of being able to calm your nervous system [26:10] More health expert insights   Tweetables “Everybody's doing the best they can with their current limited access to knowledge and resources.” “Don't beat yourself up for when you feel stressed out. Just make sure that before you continue that stress rollercoaster, like find some space to find some peace.” “You don't have to like beat all your competitors in a lot of instances, you just need to outlive them. You just need to outlast them.” “High performance isn't just how hard you push. It's about how well you recover and regulate.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Sam: If you don't find time to balance your nervous system or don't work on implementing tools to balance your nervous system, then you are limiting yourself to lower performance in the short term and decreasing performance in the long term.  [00:00:15] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the Property Management Growth Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:37] Jason: So 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. [00:01:21] Jason: Now let's get into the show. Cool.  [00:01:24] Jason: And I'm hanging out here with sam Womack. Sam, welcome to the show.  [00:01:29] Sam: Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here.  [00:01:31] Jason: Cool. So Sam we met at a local mastermind here in the Austin area, which is really cool. And for those that know that I run a mastermind for property managers, I also eat my own dog food and believe in getting coaching and learning and growth and everything else. [00:01:52] Jason: And wanted to connect with some people locally and make some friends as well. So, Sam's one of those friends. So, Sam, welcome to the show. And why don't you give people a little bit of background on yourself and what you do and how you kind of. Got into running businesses and doing cool stuff. [00:02:10] Sam: Yeah, no, thank you. First off, I don't do anything near as difficult as you guys. Managing property and tenants, I think is a feat to be held. And so props to all you guys out there crushing it in real estate. I cut my teeth in entrepreneurship starting at a young age. I was charging like 30 bucks an hour to teach old people how to use their computers, you know, tell their life story. [00:02:29] Sam: They'd pay me 30 bucks an hour while they sat there and henpecked. It was pretty ingenious. Fast forward into later on in life when the pandemic hit the business that I was launching just disappeared overnight. The retail died, everything that I've been working on, all the investors pulled out. [00:02:44] Sam: I was left with a few grand in my name and a baby on the way, living in a studio apartment with my wife. Had to figure something out, went into supply distribution, and a couple years later, fast forward, I did about 20 million in revenue as a solopreneur distributing gloves, masks, COVID test kits, etc. [00:03:01] Sam: But throughout that time, I dealt with like a really serious health issue. Stress had kind of overwhelmed me and I ended up with an autoimmune condition in my brain and through the journey of healing that autoimmune condition that was presenting as like early onset Alzheimer's, it was kind of a mystery. [00:03:16] Sam: They didn't know what was happening. I developed a deep passion for finding the root of health and the root of optimization and root of performance. A lot of that came through working with my mom, who's a preeminent physician focusing on anti aging and regenerative science here in Austin. [00:03:31] Sam: And so I typed her handwritten notes for a couple years and followed the patient journeys of the elite because she has a concierge practice for the elite here in Austin. And as I saw what drove change in their lives, I learned a lot about the human psyche and I learned a lot about how each of our individual unique biologies are very different when it comes to what we choose to do to find optimization or find optimal health. And so now I have a passion for bringing that to the masses. And as the pandemic waned, and as I healed, I became passionate about different physics based modalities and the different systems in the body and how to reach optimal performance. [00:04:07] Sam: And now I have a wellness center here in Austin that focuses on performance optimization, as well as maximizing human potential and transitioning the human experience as well as a research Institute called Human Beaming Research Institute, where we present the stories of the truth about health and where we help bring true health science to light so that people understand what's actually true, not truth that's manufactured by special interests, but truth that's founded in science. [00:04:36] Jason: Got it. Yeah. I mean, there's kind of a battle right now, right? We're like seeing it all play out live real time. Oh yeah. Got this whole make America healthy movement. We've got RFK, Bobby like and it seems like there's some major disruptions that are kind of happening right now and there's a battle and we're waking up. [00:04:58] Jason: A lot of people are waking up that hey, you know, big food, big pharma, you know, big government are not in favor of us being healthy for some reason, which is kind of scary. So yes, yeah kind of waking up to this and I don't know, maybe we're all biohackers now. I don't know.  [00:05:17] Sam: Yeah. No, I you're absolutely right I think that humanity as a whole is kind of done drinking the Kool Aid when it comes to what we've been told is the truth. [00:05:27] Sam: And, you know — [00:05:29] Jason: Yeah. Cause the Kool Aid has like glyphosate in it and like, also like molds and mycotoxins, like it's got bad stuff all over it. And I'm not saying actual Kool Aid. This is metaphorical people. Metaphorically.  [00:05:42] Sam: Yes. And when you look at like where, you know, just briefly to when you follow the money and you see that, like, from a business standpoint, one of the largest mergers and acquisitions in history, if you bring it to current dollar value was when big tobacco bought the food industry and you look at when that transition happened and you see what happened to our food supply and you know, we're fish in a barrel that they're just taking their pick of right now when it comes to what we have that's societally acceptable to put in our bodies and societally acceptable to engage in, in terms of social interaction, et cetera. [00:06:15] Sam: And it, yeah. Kind of funnels us down this path of high stress, which kind of takes us to today's topic with the nervous system. But yeah, I don't don't know if you have anything else you want to discuss before we dive in.  [00:06:25] Jason: Well, I want to point out. So Sam really sharp guy, as you can tell already, Sam's going to be a speaker at our DoorGrow Live conference. [00:06:35] Jason: And he's going to talk about some really cool stuff that we're very holistic at DoorGrow. And so I know that in coaching entrepreneurs and having talked to thousands of property management business owners and coaching hundreds of clients that it's never really the business or that they're spending too little time in their business that's keeping them from succeeding in business. It's everything else, especially health, especially their relationships, especially their marriage. Like these things create a lot of friction for entrepreneurs And they've got a lot going on. You're not really talking about property management when you come to DoorGrow Live, but I do believe it will be a game changer for them to be able to perform more, be able to get more out of their business, be able to get more out of life, which is the goal of having a business, right? [00:07:20] Jason: That's more freedom and more fulfillment. So, yeah. So if you have not yet gone to doorgrowlive.Com and gotten your tickets. Go do that right now. Go get your tickets and make sure you're at that event. Come hang out with us in North Austin at round rock at the Kalahari resort. It's going to be awesome. [00:07:36] Jason: All right. Shameless plug completed. Now, Sam, let's get into talking about the topic at hand.  [00:07:43] Sam: Yeah, I know. And thank you. And I'm really excited to get on stage and speak and I'm going to save some nuggets for the stage. Won't give it all the way here. So I'm really excited about that and helping you guys understand what the true root of your full potential actually is and not from some woo woo space, but actually understanding like the fundamental simple science beneath high performance and beneath fulfillment in life because it really does break down to a very simple equation. One of the key factors is a molecule, and that molecule is actually oxygen. [00:08:13] Sam: And when your brain is in a high stress state you would think that your body would give it more oxygen under high stress, right? But under high stress, you actually have vasoconstriction. Your blood pressure rises, blood gets pumped to your extremities, you got to get away from that proverbial bear, right? [00:08:29] Sam: But for y'all, that bear is the constant wave of tenant complaints, the constant wave of, you know, economic factors interest rate shifting stuff like that And so you have this like constant bear chasing you and if you're always in that state of fight or flight your brain is patterned to operate on survival mechanisms and a lower amount of oxygen and so And then we get this like male, sometimes male and female, but we get this, like this almost masculine energy of like, let's go conquer and do this high stress, high action push, push, push coffee, stimulant. [00:09:03] Sam: And we're really performing with our hands tied behind our back at that point, because our brain has less oxygen in it. And when you look at the other side of the nervous system, which is our parasympathetic nervous system you have this increase of oxygen in the brain. which actually raises serotonin instead of relying on that dopamine cortisol roller coaster, right? [00:09:24] Sam: And so, at the base of this is oxygen, which is bringing us life, which is creating ATP, cellular energy. And, to put it simply, If you don't find time to balance your nervous system or don't work on implementing tools to balance your nervous system, then you are limiting yourself to lower performance in the short term and decreasing performance in the long term. [00:09:48] Sam: Higher relying on stimulants, higher amounts of of just stress and cortisol and dopamine reliance in the long term, which takes away from your ability to connect with others, to find community, to find that real fulfillment that comes in life.  [00:10:02] Jason: And so what you're saying is we shouldn't just overdose on coffee that here in the U. S. probably has mold in it and makes you not feel good and have to pee way too much. And then not, you know, take care of ourselves in breathing effectively and getting too little sleep, too much hustle, too much stress.  [00:10:23] Sam: Yeah.  [00:10:24] Jason: Okay.  [00:10:24] Sam: Yeah, we can get addicted to that pattern because stress actually can feel really good. [00:10:30] Sam: When you have dopamine augmenting that cortisol, right? Without dopamine, cortisol feels really crappy. You know, you look at high anxiety. You look at that restlessness feeling where you don't feel good. You're on edge. That's when your cortisol's high and your dopamine is kind of low because you've been exhausting the dopamine stores by just pushing it. [00:10:50] Sam: Dopamine is supposed to be a short term reward to get us out of the stress back into a parasympathetic state. Dopamine was never meant to be the consistent ongoing reward. Because, like, think about it for survival, right? If you're, you know, trying to get away from the bear, and you're running, that needs to somewhat feel good, in order to get you through that stress. [00:11:11] Sam: So dopamine kicks in when oxygen lowers in the brain. And then, when you get out of the stress, you find that parasympathetic state again, you calm down, oxygen rises in the brain, serotonin rises, which is that more deeper, long term fulfilling chemical, that actually leads to creativity as well. But our society tells us that love is dopamine. It tells us that success is dopamine. It tells us achievement is dopamine. It gives us these dopamine triggers for all of the cultural hierarchy and the cultural validation, that external validation when you do something to succeed and you show it off, that's a dopamine trigger. Social media is a trigger. So all of these things, society is structured in a way that says, "dopamine's the reward. Now go buy shit, right?" Like almost all the financial economy is driven surrounding dopamine, which is a ultimate losing game because you guys all know that it doesn't really provide that end fulfillment, but since it feels good, we're kind of stuck in that loop. And so. What I want to help illuminate is where true fulfillment can be found and help with some kind of practical tools and a practical understanding of this foundational science so that when you're looking to perform at your best, you can give yourself a break and allow yourself to relax. [00:12:22] Sam: You know, before you have that next cup of coffee to keep yourself going, take some deep breaths, find some space to relax. Don't worry that your brain doesn't feel a hundred percent on. And give yourself some space to allow that peace in knowing that you're raising oxygen in the brain. You're opening oxygenation to areas that are going to drive creativity, that are going to allow for connection, that are going to allow for more presence in your body. [00:12:44] Sam: You'll be a different person in the home. You'll be a different person towards yourself. And so these are critical components of understanding the power of the nervous system when it relates to performance. Because high performance isn't just how hard you push. It's about how well you recover and regulate, and it's about how you create that balance that pushes for longevity and pushes for long term endurance and strength. [00:13:09] Sam: Because if you want to succeed and grow your business 5x, 10x, 100x, you need endurance. Sympathetic, nervous system tone, high stress does not create endurance. It's short term bursts, you crash out or you keep hitting the stimulants. And it keeps you in this narrow window of potential. You find that parasympathetic, you find that relaxation, you get creativity going in your brain, you get higher oxygenation in your brain, you're shifting gene expression towards longevity. [00:13:33] Sam: So it's a pretty powerful tool. And most people think, "oh, I don't want to meditate, you know, or I don't want to relax", or they don't feel safe when they're calm. And it's something to just work on shifting your perspective on because there's true power in that state of peace.  [00:13:48] Jason: A while back, I read this book. [00:13:50] Jason: I don't know if you heard of this. It's called the Oxygen Advantage. It's by a guy named Patrick Mckeown and it's got a forward by Dr. Joseph Mercola, but it's interesting because basically the book is about how he trains athletes to breathe through their nose while working out instead of their mouth, which like exercises the lungs and increases lung capacity. [00:14:15] Jason: But if they're, if we're constantly operating with our mouth open and working with our mouth open, we actually decrease our lung capacity. And so, athletes are just burning out really quickly and they don't have the ability or the capacity to, you know, absorb as much oxygen. So like working out those muscles, like breathing through your nose, you know, is something that talks about, but that's interesting that when we're not calm, we're not getting enough oxygen that we're not recovering, we're not regulating our stress, our body probably starts to eat itself a little bit and, you know, and then we get addicted to dopamine and you know, in business, most businesses fail and really you don't have to like beat all your competitors in a lot of instances, you just need to outlive them. You just need to outlast them. And that, that endurance aspect. And so I think, you know, I think we're going to go through some financial turmoil in the marketplace. Things are probably going to get worse before it gets better as we're cleaning up all this mess financially that is going on in the government. [00:15:18] Jason: And the U S dollar is like, I think it's been going down from its original value down and down as they've been stripping value out of it through inflation and giving that money to who knows who. And so. I think there's going to be a big transition. It's going to get really stressful. [00:15:33] Jason: And I think the businesses that are just able to last through this transition and endure and they're focused on the long game are the ones that are going to win.  [00:15:43] Sam: Absolutely.  [00:15:44] Jason: And there's going to be a lot just eaten up.  [00:15:46] Sam: Yeah. And if you don't allow that perspective of what you just explained about business to apply to your own self and your health, you know, what got you here won't get you there. [00:15:54] Sam: And if you want to sustain and succeed through the turmoil, then you need to adapt. And when you have a high stress state, you actually lose BDNF expression in the brain brain neurotropic factor and brain derived neurotropic factor. And that is our adaptability aspect and factor in our brain. And it literally decreases its efficiency, the higher, the more chronically stressed we are. [00:16:18] Sam: And so it's super important. You guys can look up BDNF and understand its role with oxygenation in the brain. And so fundamentally, you know, the more oxygenated your brain is, the greater your access to intuition, memory, and high level thinking. And those are key components to succeeding in business. [00:16:33] Sam: And when you are in a state of constant survival mode, constant reactivity, constant push, hustle, you lose that space to develop creative longterm solutions. You lose that space to be able to get that spark of inspiration on how to pivot around the corner and see around that corner or do something a little differently than what other people are doing. [00:16:55] Sam: And that's why even you look at like Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, like they would love to access that like state estate, the theta state just akin to sleep. They would put like a lead ball in their hand over a metal plate. And then as they were falling asleep. It would drop and the ball would hit the metal plate wake them up and they'd have their pen and their quill and ink on the table with a candle and then they'd have their formula or problems they were trying to solve and then they'd go to solving it because that was deep parasympathetic state where that creativity was opened up brain oxygenation was opened up. And me, just like so many of y'all out there, like, I'm like, man, I do not like meditating, I do not like calming down, like slowing down.  [00:17:31] Jason: I mean, especially if we're addicted to dopamine and adrenaline, like slowing down feels like a waste of time.  [00:17:39] Sam: Oh yeah, it does. And so you, most of you have heard of dopamine, serotonin, and adrenaline slash norepinephrine, right? That's only 20 percent of our neurotransmitters. [00:17:51] Sam: Okay. What's the other 80 percent glutamate and GABA, right? Glutamate is the exitory neurotransmitter. So that's what animates our body. Think glutamate animate, but then GABA is what balances that. So GABA helps slow things down, shut things down. And it's kind of interesting that popular culture slash society, like you don't hear much about GABA. [00:18:13] Sam: And the reason why is because they're selling us GABA in the form of alcohol. Alcohol is a huge GABA receptor connector, so it just hits the GABA and you feel kind of calm and relaxed. And so people love alcohol to be social because you want to be in a slight more parasympathetic state to be social, right? [00:18:30] Sam: Because high stress doesn't lead to—  [00:18:32] Jason: What about scrolling on social media?  [00:18:33] Sam: Social media is going to be hitting dopamine, not so much the GABA. But scrolling social media is going to be giving dopamine, new information. Ooh, new information. I learned something new, like boom, like that constant external input stimulus. [00:18:45] Sam: But when you look at the importance of GABA and you understand that a lot of us aren't making it on our own, which is why we're staying in such a high stress state all day. Yeah. And then we take a GABAergic, like GABA or a benzo or some weed or something that, that can hit that, that GABA receptor instead of making our own endogenous GABA. [00:19:02] Sam: And that's what happens when you're in a parasympathetic state is your body is creating its own GABA to balance out the brain. And that's what drove me to developing a suite of tools called Peace on Demand that I have at my wellness center that are physics based modalities that drop you into that parasympathetic state without sitting there fighting against your brain and trying to force yourself to meditate. [00:19:21] Sam: And then also with hyperbaric oxygen therapy, that's another tool that induces a parasympathetic state over the course of the treatment. And so I found tools because my brain, I had a hard time controlling with the autoimmune disease that I had and how stressed and on fire my brain was, I had a lot of difficulty finding that space, but without those tools, you can still utilize things like breath work, even if it's just longer exhale than the time you're inhaling or like four seconds in, you know, hold for a little bit and then eight seconds out or seven seconds out. [00:19:48] Sam: That, that's just like the simplest form of breath work to kind of activate the vagus nerve and slow down that that nervous system and get you into a more parasympathetic state but it's really interesting when you see that some of the most creative people and the most successful people, they're not super high strung. At a certain point, you'll see a lot of successful people that are high strung. Push, push hustle. [00:20:10] Sam: But then you go to that next level. You look at like the Elon's of the world, or, you know, so these people are on that next level. You watch them speak. They're calm. They have this, you know, they go hype on at times to like reach certain goal. But then they also have that balance. So the key is balance. [00:20:26] Sam: Don't beat yourself up for when you feel stressed out. Just make sure that before you continue that stress rollercoaster, like find some space to find some peace, do some breathing, take a pause, give yourself that chance to take a break. That'll start developing some resiliency in your nervous system so that you don't burn out. [00:20:42] Jason: Yeah, it does seem like really high performers are highly adaptable to, you know, situations. So they move and adapt quickly. It seems like they are able to maintain some calm, but they also are really quick thinkers, like their thinking seems to be faster than normal. I notice for me, I get really frustrated with team members when they're not— [00:21:05] Jason: I'm like, "come on, this is super quick. Like, look how fast I can do this." And I'm like, "keep up." And so that becomes a little bit of a frustration. I'm like, why is everybody slow? I saw this really interesting thing. My son sent me this and he's really into football. And I guess there's some quarterbacks that are now training with VR. [00:21:23] Jason: Playing the game in VR and but they're doing it at 1. 5 speed. And so they're getting used to everything being fast and they've adapted to that. So then when they go and play, it feels like everything's in slow motion. And I was like, wait a sec. I listen to telegram messages at two speed. I listened to audio books at two, between 1.8 to two speed. Like, so my brain is probably more adapted to speed.  [00:21:49] Sam: Yes.  [00:21:50] Jason: And and so I'm able to process, I was just hanging out with somebody who has a lot more money than me, who runs, who's the CEO of Real, Sharran Srivatsaa. And he talks really fast and he thinks really fast. Like this guy is sharp. [00:22:03] Jason: And I'm like, how does he move so fast? You know? But also and he doesn't seem like stressed out or anything. One of the things I've noticed, maybe like sparks this GABA sort of thing is just for me, reading? Just reading, actually reading not like high speed audiobooks, but sitting down with a book and processing information, my body's in a calm state. I feel a really deep calm where I'm in a flow sort of state reading and absorbing and processing information. So I found that can be a really good tool for me. [00:22:34] Jason: Sarah and I go do your peace on demand thing, which is just awesome. And a game changer. It's really been helpful for Sarah. It's kind of, I compare it to doing a float session, having a really good float session which doesn't happen every time you do a float session, but it happens every time you do Peace on Demand and you don't have to get wet and naked, and nothing gets in your eyes or ears on accident sometimes and stings. [00:22:54] Jason: So that's nice. The other thing I've noticed is just walking. So I went and did EMDR therapy for a while, for like a year with a therapist, bilateral stimulation, both sides of the brain is the concept. And then I noticed like, well, walking is bilateral stimulation. And so that's like a free, very cheap version of EMDR therapy is just to go on walks. [00:23:14] Jason: And rather than running, which is like, Hey, stress response. I found walking is very calming, especially if I'm really stressed. If I go for a walk, it kind of signals to my body, "Hey, you're okay. You're not being chased by a saber tooth tiger right now." So your fight or flight, calm down. So those are the things that work for me. [00:23:32] Jason: I don't know, but those are great tools. I don't know.  [00:23:35] Sam: Yeah. So what those are doing are like, you mentioned a keyword there and that's safe, right? And so you're creating these environments. One, you're reading a book, gaining new knowledge, and you're not cramming the book in a stressed out state to try to memorize it for a test, right? Which so much of us get programmed in school at an early age, that like reading means like, focus hard and stress out over what you're reading. [00:23:56] Sam: But if you allow yourself to relax into that flow state, and you mentioned flow state as well, flow doesn't happen when you're in super high stress state. Some people We'll try to say, "Oh yeah, I'm in flow" because they've got like dopamine coursing and cortisol coursing and  [00:24:10] Jason: they're like manic and going crazy.  [00:24:12] Sam: Yeah, exactly. [00:24:13] Jason: They're busy, but they're not productive.  [00:24:15] Sam: Yeah. And when you get productive and when you feel like you're going fast and your team isn't responding fast enough, like you have that adaptability, you have that BDNF that's really efficient in your brain because you practice going in and out of these states and you spend a lot of time in this flow and in this GABA balanced state Where you're not hyper stressed out and one one thing that also on a biochemistry level explains some of this is: in a sympathetic nervous system response, your body is trying to find as much glucose as possible to burn glucose for fast quick energy, which creates oxidative stress on the body, which creates inflammation. And then your body has to like go clear out all the junk but it doesn't care that it's creating a bunch of junk to clear out, because it's trying to help you survive short term. [00:24:59] Sam: When you're in a parasympathetic state, you're looking at a—  [00:25:02] Jason: Does it make you crave sugar then?  [00:25:03] Sam: Yeah, so high stress makes you crave sugar. Whereas parasympathetic state, you're on a more fat burning metabolism. You're not creating as much oxidative stress. You're like expressing longevity genes. You're expressing anti inflammatory genes. [00:25:16] Sam: Your body literally shifts into almost a different state, not just mentally, but biophysically and biochemistry wise all throughout your body. You adapt based on the nervous system state that you allow. And that's where it does come down to personal responsibility to make the choice to start practicing finding this state that will empower so much more potential for your life than that narrow band of, you know, survival programming and high stress thinking. [00:25:46] Sam: And then it's better for your health longterm too, because you're not just compounding oxidative stress nonstop and then needing those negative inflammatory inputs to make your dopamine stay high. And you can just find that peace. And then you'll find a much higher level of performance and that flow state will start just happening naturally constantly, which is what's been happening for Jason as he's been practicing these things as well. [00:26:08] Jason: Got it. Okay. Very cool. So little teaser, what are you going to talk about a little bit at DoorGrow Live that will be revelatory or helpful for people that might be a little bit stressed in their business or are wanting to take their performance to the next level? And I just, I want to point out, the difference I've noticed just in clients doing time studies and things like this. [00:26:32] Jason: Some of my clients will, we can see in their time study that they, it takes them in the latter half of the day, like the afternoon, an hour to do stuff that takes them 10 minutes in the morning. They're just, they're running out of brain chemicals. They're running out of like, what are neurotransmitter chemicals that they produce while sleeping? [00:26:51] Jason: They're now no longer productive and efficient, even though they're working really hard and they're really busy. And so, so yeah, maybe you could tease a little bit. What could we talk about there that might optimize their productivity so that they could actually feel superhuman and get two to three times the amount of output with the same amount of work or stress or effort? [00:27:14] Sam: Yeah, so we're going to go into a little bit more detail on some other aspects of the foundations of performance. So today we focused on nervous system, which is key. But. Controlling our nervous system isn't just as easy as thinking about it. There's some environmental factors. There's some lifestyle choices we can make. Often, we have a really hard time making those changes due to the, those well worn grooves, like, you know, skis on a slope that are really hard to get out of. And so I'm going to help with some simple truths that you'll understand and make it a lot easier to start making small shifts that will create massive change and that don't have to be stressful or induce anxiety or feel hard. It'll actually feel easy. So I'm going to help you understand some fundamental truths about your biology and That will unlock unlimited potential.  [00:28:03] Jason: Yeah, because I think every entrepreneur listening, myself included, I'm sure you as well, have been in those time periods where you feel like you're working so hard and you're investing so much time and energy, and you're going nowhere like it feels like you're just treading water and you're burning yourself out and you're like, "why am I not adding hundreds of doors? Why am I not growing my business? Why am I not getting ahead? Why am I seeing idiots get further along than me?" You know, like, " why is this not working for me?" And and I think that all plays into that like that. Everything you're talking about plays into that.  [00:28:41] Sam: You'll find yourself having permission to make some changes and the permission is a key aspect of that courage and that bravery to choose something different to focus on something different. [00:28:56] Sam: I mean, we all hear where you, where your attention goes, your focus grows, you know, and what you focus on is what you create, you know, all these things. What does that fundamentally and literally mean when it comes to the way we choose our life experience? And what can we create when our choices change and how can we be empowered to make those choices? [00:29:16] Sam: Those are some of the more intricate topics that we'll discuss.  [00:29:19] Jason: Got it. Almost like shifting from feeling like, "Hey, I'm giving up something or sacrificing in some way that in actuality, you're getting more."  [00:29:30] Sam: Oh, so much more. Exactly. So much more. Yeah. Cool.  [00:29:34] Jason: So. Those of you listening, I'm guessing you're growth oriented, growth minded. [00:29:39] Jason: You want to get more. Come to DoorGrow Live. Come hear Sam talk. So cool. Sam, appreciate you coming here on the #DoorGrowShow. If people are hanging out in Austin or curious about what you're up to, how can they find you? Peace on Demand. Tell them about your stuff and how people might be able to follow you or get in touch. [00:29:58] Sam: Yeah. So we have a small wellness center here. It's a private, you know, high touch concierge space, very comfortable here in Austin. And it's open for business by appointment only but just go to beamhyperbarics.Com and you can book an appointment. If you want to reach out to me I am Sam Womack. [00:30:15] Sam: On Instagram or you can send a message through the website. Easier website to remember is beam.do B E A M dot D O. And yeah, just reach out, come hang out. You don't even have to buy something to come in. Just hit me up. We'll make sure that I'm around and we can sit on the couch in the back and talk life. [00:30:34] Jason: All right. Awesome, Sam. Appreciate you coming on and excited to have you at DoorGrow Live.  [00:30:40] Sam: Yeah. I'm excited as well. Looking forward to it. I love what you're doing. And I think the steps that you're taking to help empower people beyond just showing them tactics and strategies, but helping them live a more fulfilled and empowered life. [00:30:50] Sam: That's what it's all about. So thank you for that work you're doing.  [00:30:53] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. We've just noticed like we can give them all the right tactics and strategies, but if they don't incorporate the other things, it's kind of like you're trying to run a race up the mountain with rocks in your backpack, like boulders, you know, it's just, it's so much more efficient if we get everything else in alignment and usually it's never the business piece that's really what's holding them back. It's not the tactics it's mindset. It's their mental health. It's like everything else, their family. Yeah. So we're excited to bring you and some others that are going to just unlock a lot of things for our clients and for non clients that are coming to DoorGrow Live. [00:31:32] Jason: So appreciate you.  [00:31:34] Sam: Yeah, you bet. Thank you. And just one last thing is you guys are all doing such a great job too. Like, don't think of this as any type of a criticism or, "Oh, you're not doing good enough." Like you're doing such an excellent job with the tools that you were programmed with the upbringings you had with the environment you're in. [00:31:48] Sam: So like, just look at it as a chance to learn something new and be empowered by it. But you guys are all doing such a great job. And so keep it up.  [00:31:56] Jason: Yeah, everybody's doing the best they can with their current limited access to knowledge and resources that they put out. Whatever. All right, cool. Awesome, Sam. I'll let you go. All right. So, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're wanting to add doors or increase your profit or lower your stress, reach out to us at DoorGrow we would love to help you grow and scale your business. You can check us out at DoorGrow. com. And if you're wanting to join our free community, get a little bit more info about us, hang out with some other property managers, go to DoorGrow club. com to join our free community and connect with other property managers and get some cool free stuff. And until next time to our mutual growth, everybody. Hope you all crush it. Bye everyone. [00:32:38] Jason: 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 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 a world where your potential clients are constantly inundated with marketing content, how do you create trust and ensure your property management business sticks out? In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management expert Jason Hull sits down with Dan Lievens, Founder of Share One, to talk about the benefits of collecting and utilizing client testimonial videos. You'll Learn [01:56] Getting Started as an Entrepreneur [08:41] The Impact of Social Poof and Positive Reviews [15:39] How to Ask Your Clients for Video Testimonials [24:53] Handling Objections and Retaining Clients Tweetables “Marketing is always evolving as well. Like it's not like you learn to do it once and then you're done forever.” “If I say it, no one believes it because it's my business, but if my clients say it, that's the ultimate social proof.” “The ability to be able to create human connection in any marketing or any business, I think is absolutely critical today.” “A lot of people think, "Well I have a skill in doing something. Maybe I could start a business doing that thing," but the skill is the technician-level work.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Dan: Even if you have a solid business model, like property management, for example, which is obviously needed you know, how do you communicate that? [00:00:06] Dan: How do you attract the right people? And so it's a constant exercise of being able to put yourself in a position of your customers.  [00:00:15] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. 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. All right. My guest today is Dan Lievens. Dan, welcome to the show.  [00:01:23] Dan: So glad to be here and looking forward to meeting your amazing community here. Thank you.  [00:01:29] Jason: Awesome. So Dan and I, we met at a local mastermind in the Austin area, which is really cool because I need more friends and I was like, how can I meet some? I'm in all these different masterminds, but I'm like you're traveling all over the US I'm like, I don't get to hang out with any of these people that often. So yeah, so I joined a local one and there's some really cool people in that group, which is really awesome. [00:01:53] Jason: So Dan's one of them and Dan, why don't you give us a little bit of background on yourself as an entrepreneur and then we'll get into what you do.  [00:02:02] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So, this is actually my 12th business and in a variety of different industries from technology to health and wellness. [00:02:12] Dan: And my last big venture was opening up coworking facilities in the Philadelphia area. So I was one of the first people to open coworking facilities there and basically catering to startups and small businesses. And we very quickly became a business incubator and a business accelerator and supporting, you know, small startups and getting going right? [00:02:35] Dan: And what I noticed pretty quickly was there is a pretty high rate of failure, and the rate of failure was primarily due to not necessarily the idea of being bad but more the lack of the ability to communicate the value proposition. So that's when I kind of pivoted and said, "Hey, how can I continue growing my impact and helping these folks?" [00:02:56] Dan: That's when I started getting into marketing, really helping them be able to communicate a little bit better in terms of why they do what they do and really meeting the clients where they're at. And so we started getting into video production and pre pandemic, we had a huge video studio with audience, live audiences and all sorts of recording stuff. [00:03:18] Dan: And then the pandemic hit and that's when we kind of realized that, "Hey, at the end of the day, yes, fancy videos are good to have, but what's really going to help people move the needle is social proof. So how can we create a service for businesses to be able to leverage social proof, in other words, video or testimonials basically, to give consumers exactly what they're looking for?" [00:03:42] Dan: So if you're in a market to, you know, rent an apartment or to buy something somewhere, the first thing you do is you look at reviews and So that's how Share One began is really being able to help businesses capture legitimate social proof to grow their businesses.  [00:04:00] Jason: Yeah, awesome. Business can be tough. And like you're saying, there's a lot of good ideas out there, or there's a lot of people that think they have good ideas and you know, I've noticed not everybody tests those ideas. They just, they think the idea is so good, they're like, "everybody else has to love it." And they're surprised when nobody else has the same taste as them. You know? Other people don't love it. Or there's so many pieces that go into it kind of like the book The E Myth Revisited, a lot of people think, "Well I have a skill in doing something. Maybe I could start a business doing that thing," but the skill is the technician level work. Usually like "I can bake a cake, so maybe I should start a bakery business," you know? And then they're like, "Oh, accounting, marketing, sales, prospecting, like all the details, inventory, all the stuff besides baking a cake is where they get hung up on and they get frustrated. [00:04:59] Jason: And then there's just people that are just really bad marketers. They just don't know how to get the message across. Sometimes you run into the opposite problem though, right? Like I've had coaches and people I've worked with that were really great marketers, but their stuff wasn't super great. [00:05:14] Jason: I've had that situation happen as well. But even if they were great marketers and their stuff wasn't great, they still were making money... unfortunately. [00:05:25] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. You know, most entrepreneurs, you know, me included, we find a passion, we find a purpose and we come up with some kind of a amazing technology or whatever that may be. [00:05:35] Dan: And then, you know, our personality is just jump in and do it, you know. And it's so valuable now to really kind of take a step back and understand, you know, what the consumer wants and it goes beyond that. I think it really goes into, you know, even if you have a solid business model, like property management, for example, which is obviously needed you know, how do you communicate that? [00:05:58] Dan: How do you attract the right people? And so it's a constant exercise of being able to put yourself in a position of your customers. Right. And then even as time changes as AI comes in, which hopefully we can talk about a little bit today the landscape changes and consumer behavior patterns changes and what people are looking for changes as well. [00:06:18] Dan: So to, to have that finger on the pulse of, "Hey, what are my prospects actually thinking? What's going through their head?" Is a constant exercise that I think every single entrepreneur needs to do. And then from that perspective, it's like, okay, how do I reverse engineer what's in their mind? [00:06:34] Dan: How do I meet them where they are? Create the language and then slowly kind of invite them into the product and service that you're offering.  [00:06:41] Jason: Yeah. Marketing is always evolving as well. Like it's not like you learn to do it once and then you're done forever. Right? Like what I did to grow DoorGrow in the beginning doesn't work anymore. [00:06:53] Jason: Right? Some of the things that we were doing, like I had LinkedIn automation that was able to generate profile views. And then people would look at the profile view and go, "Oh!" And it's like "somebody viewed your profile." So they go look at mine, which I had set up like a sales page and then I was getting messages and then I would message them, "Hey..." I was getting friend requests or whatever you call it, connections on LinkedIn. [00:07:16] Jason: And then I would send them a message. "What prompted you to reach out?" And then they started clamping down on how many views you could generate a day. And like, then the automation, like, and eventually that whole mechanism pretty much died, you know, and then it was Facebook groups for a while. For a while, the Facebook algorithm was heavily aligned towards Facebook groups. [00:07:34] Jason: So that went crazy for us there was a time where it was like, you know It was just, you know, organic Google was doing its thing. We still get business through that, but you know, it's always evolving as well, which is a challenge. Now, one thing that has always worked well, always, is testimonials that has always worked well for us. [00:07:56] Jason: And so we have more testimonials. I realized this early on. If I say it, no one believes it because it's my business, but if my clients say it, that's the ultimate social proof. That's the ultimate evidence. And so gathering testimonials has always been a like a focus of us at DoorGrow and we have more video testimonials than any other coach or consultant in the property management space. [00:08:24] Jason: I mean, we've been doing this a long time, but we're also really good. But the challenge is how do you show that you're really good in a way that people believe it? Well, I just capture other people's results. So we're always having clients share their wins on our calls and then we're recording it and stuff like that. [00:08:41] Jason: So what, what prompted you to start to focus on testimonials as a business idea?  [00:08:48] Dan: So I do have, you know, pretty strong tech background. So being able to leverage the technology and human resources to be able to give businesses truly what they need. Just as an example we'll take care of the entire invitation interview process with the real producer and edit everything down for less than 200 a piece, right? [00:09:09] Dan: So our next competitors to do the same thing. are $3,000 to $5,000. So we've really, you know, grown this entire business to be able to scale and give businesses exactly what it is that they need. And as I mentioned before, over the years, it's like, yes, you can get super fancy with different things. But video testimonials today by far are the strongest piece of marketing content that you can use as you just mentioned. There's research that says there's an up to 62 percent increase in conversions. So the conversion could be a schedule, a call or schedule, a visit, or, you know, fill in the form. An increase of 62 percent if you start showing video testimonials on pages. [00:09:51] Dan: And today, recent research also shows that 82 percent of consumers have some level of suspicion towards written reviews. That includes Google, Yelp. Amazon today employs 12,000 full time employees just to track down fake reviews. So, you know, talking about market change, right? So that is definitely something that's changing. [00:10:10] Dan: And so being able to capture somebody in the comfort of their homes or their offices, truly speaking from their heart and sharing where they were before and how they met you and what your lives look like today and sharing that transformation is, you know, ultimately the most powerful thing you can do because it's believable, right? [00:10:29] Jason: Yeah, it's reality. It's not AI. It's not you know, even text testimonials, like on Amazon, there's lots of fake reviews. Like, you can have fake text. Somebody could type out anything. You got to chat GPT. "Type out a fake review that sounds credible," you know, or something like this. [00:10:46] Jason: Yeah.  [00:10:47] Dan: So be super careful with that. If anybody out there is, you know, starting out and you're looking for some kind of social proof on your website or anything, the FTC had a new bill in October really cracking down on people that are using fake reviews, $27,000 fine, and just some really crazy stuff. [00:11:05] Dan: That's, you know, consumer protection.  [00:11:07] Jason: You have to be able to back it up. So, yeah, you put some text on something with a testimonial, if you have the video original of that, you're good, right? [00:11:15] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, in my company, we take a lot of care in terms of certifying that every single video that we conduct is a true human transformation. [00:11:24] Dan: So it's a critical component, but at the end of the day, it's like, you know, any listeners today. What's the first thing that you do when you go on Amazon? You look at the number of reviews, look at the number of stars. Is that like four? Is it four and a half? Or is it five? Right? [00:11:36] Dan: And then we scroll down and say, does anybody have any videos? And do these things look legitimate? Right? It's, that's the first thing that we, that anybody does when purchasing something new. And that's part of human nature, right? Dr. Robert Cialdini has a really famous bestseller book called Influence. [00:11:52] Dan: I don't know if you've read that. It's all about the psychology of persuasion. And in there, he mentions that, you know, out of 95 percent of all consumers are what they call imitators and only 5 percent are initiator. So what that means is only 5 percent of people will be open and willing to go be that first person to try something, right? [00:12:15] Dan: Yeah. 95 percent of consumers are waiting for some kind of social proof. They're imitating somebody else's results.  [00:12:22] Jason: That's why the bandwagon approach is so effective. Most people on the planet want safety and security. It's more important to them than freedom or fulfillment in life. [00:12:35] Jason: They want safety and security first. Those people are not entrepreneurs They work for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are a small percentage of people and they value freedom and fulfillment over safety and security. We want that too, but our priority is in a different order.  [00:12:50] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, even attracting tenants or you know, bigger decisions to there's especially with the age of AI. [00:13:01] Dan: So I personally believe that we're going into next six months to a year. I mean, things are moving so quickly right now is that there is going to be a revolution or direct kind of already is of like humans against bots, right? So the ability to be able to create human connection in any marketing or any business, I think is absolutely critical today. [00:13:22] Jason: And  [00:13:22] Dan: most people aren't doing it. So you can definitely be ahead of your competition if you start leveraging and building that human connection into your marketing. And one of the easiest way of doing that is allowing your happy clients to tell a story.  [00:13:35] Jason: Yeah, I totally believe that. I think, you know, that all the interactions that AI can do are going to put a premium on humanity. Human connection and human conversation and human relationship is going to be a premium luxury product in some way. And so that's one way to set yourself apart always is to go deeper and to show care  [00:14:03] Dan: Yeah. [00:14:04] Jason: Most companies are going to leverage ai and people are going to leverage ai to go wider but it's not going to have the same depth AI doesn't have that soul. Might get there. [00:14:14] Jason: Yeah, I can see that. And that'll be important. The other challenge I've noticed though, with gathering testimonials is that if I do it, It feels a little awkward and it feels a little forced. Hey, what do you think about my business, you know? And so I think there's an advantage in what you're doing. And then like I know what it takes. Like we have somebody on my team that can edit video and can reach out and like do interviews. And like this is a difficult thing for the typical business owner to like go and do. It's like almost a whole nother thing, a whole nother business or something that we've had to incorporate over the years. And our best testimonials are the unprompted things that we randomly captured during our calls, which we do three, one hour calls weekly coaching clients, group calls. And we just. Have the whole thing recorded. So we capture stuff constantly, just unsolicited, unprompted, great things. [00:15:14] Jason: But when I have to go ask the client, "Hey, how did you like this event?" It just gets awkward and it's not as effective and they can't think of what to say. And they're like, oh yeah, it's really good. And I'm like, "no, tell me about all the problems you had and tell me about all the success we've helped you create." [00:15:31] Jason: But in that moment, they're like, "oh my gosh, I'm taking a test right now in front of a camera. I don't know what to say." And then I don't get something good. So.  [00:15:39] Dan: Yeah, there's quite an art to doing that. And the word awkward definitely sticks out like a sore thumb from the invitation, like asking your people, "Hey, would you record a video testimonial?" All the way to interviewing them as well. [00:15:53] Dan: So we take a slightly different approach. And the invitation, we have a 47 percent success rate in getting your clients to show up for an interview. And that's all about the way our white glove invitation process works. [00:16:06] Jason: This is like all of their clients that they give you their information, you reach out and you can get about half to give you a full testimonial. [00:16:16] Dan: Yeah. [00:16:17] Jason: It's an amazing stat that I'm just saying, by the way, everybody, imagine if you got half of all of your clients to give you testimonials, you would look like an amazing business.  [00:16:27] Dan: So whether you're doing it yourself or somebody else, let me just give you a couple of pointers. We never use the words "video testimonial." [00:16:34] Dan: So it's always something along the lines of, "Hey, I realized that, you know, you've been living here for a month and you seem really happy." Or, you know, "you've recently had a transformation...  [00:16:44] Jason: We've managed your property for a while.  [00:16:45] Dan: Yep. So think something along those lines and say, "Hey you know, there are a couple of really cool individuals that we're trying to bring into our community, and they're on the fence about moving here, if they could hear firsthand what it's like living here from somebody like you, I think you'd have, you know, great neighbors, right?" Something along those lines. "Would you be open to meeting with one of our producers just for a quick 15 minute chat over video, just to ask you a few questions about your stay here? And you know, your story can be truly inspiring to others. And maybe you'll meet some new neighbors," something along those lines, right? So really getting creative and the invitation don't ask for video testimonials, really about, hey, how can you as the client contribute to somebody else's wellbeing, right? That's another human nature thing that's important. And then being able to pass it off to say, "Hey, when you meet with my producer," so it becomes less of you know, it's almost like if I said, "Jason, I'm going to send a news crew to your house tomorrow to interview you."" [00:17:41] Dan: You'd be like, "Oh my God, great!" Like you feel honored. Right? So that's the kind of invitation that we're trying to create here too.  [00:17:46] Jason: Yeah.  [00:17:47] Dan: And then honoring their time, honoring their stories and being a super, super easy, you know, real human being kind of conducting the interview and our 15 minute interview, it gets edited down to, you know, sometimes 60 seconds, maybe two minutes tops just for the golden sound bites that you need to help your your free marketing conversions. [00:18:04] Dan: So yeah, don't go out and ask for video testimonials. That's not going to go over very well. Just get creative with the invitation.  [00:18:10] Jason: Yeah. Good tip. So explain how your service works and what it is and what it's called. And like, so that people can understand the advantage that this can give them.  [00:18:21] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. [00:18:22] Dan: So we're a membership model. We are currently $189 per month to be a client of Share One. And we take care, as I mentioned before, the invitation. So we'll invite your clients. We'll remind them, answer any questions, scheduling and all that. And then basically schedule a call with one of our producers. [00:18:39] Dan: All of our producers are going to be highly trained on the specifics of what you're looking for. So your branding you know, what locations you're trying to fill, whatever that may be our producers already know going into the interview, what the soundbites are you looking for? And we'll basically coach them into answering questions. [00:18:55] Dan: So we'll help them with their cameras a little bit, their lighting. And say, Hey, why don't you finish this sentence and, you know, make sure it doesn't ramble on and on. So we're literally producers looking for these soundbites. So we'll coach them into basically saying the things that we need them to say. [00:19:09] Dan: And that 15 minute interview gets edited down. We add captions and then we deliver that back to you. And from inside of our portal, you can easily say, "Hey, this is a cool testimonial. I want to run it as an Instagram Reel or Facebook ad or anything like that. And we'll recut and reedit everything for you. [00:19:27] Dan: So we're basically completely done for you video testimonial service. Yeah, so we're affordable. We're white glove and we're extremely effective at what we do.  [00:19:38] Jason: Yeah, I mean at 189 a month, it's an absolute no brainer. Just the cost of getting people to do this stuff, or trying to go out and get cheap places to do it, like to edit some video that you capture yourself, the quality's just not going to be there. [00:19:53] Jason: I think the magic is probably in the coaching and in the right questions and in the process and then the editing, putting it together is going to make it all work.  [00:20:02] Dan: And then once you have the video testimonial, we have a couple of really cool new piece of technology that we can automatically push testimonials to certain parts of your marketing assets. [00:20:13] Dan: So we have a, like a floating widget that can sit in any corner of your website that says video testimony. As soon as you click on it, it pops up and people can start watching mobile friendly. You know, when consumers are about to take action. So whether it's a book a tour or schedule a call, there's this anxiety inside of them when they click that. So we have this really cool inline widget that can sit underneath the buy button or schedule button that basically it's just a whole bunch of videos that they can watch some quick social proof in terms of that they're making the right decision. [00:20:44] Dan: Send them over the edge. [00:20:45] Dan: Absolutely. So as a member of Share One and we'll push all those videos automatically as we collect them onto the different parts of your marketing assets.  [00:20:54] Jason: Yeah, nice. So this can be it like there's a code snippets that you can embed on your website stuff like that. Very cool Yeah, we found that conversion rates increase... we'll do on our websites that we do for clients, I call it a testimonial sandwich. So basically we have the main call to action form that's lower on the page and we'll put like maybe two testimonials above it could be videos most of the time It's like a face image and text and then below that we'll have testimonies that have been gathered from their review websites, but videos would maximize if you just had two or three videos that somebody watched before signing up with you, there's a scripture in the Bible that says "in the mouth of two or three words shall every word be established." [00:21:41] Jason: There's this thing that happens in people, if they watch two or three videos of testimonies, or even just see that you have two or three, and there's some sort of headline below them that, like, sums up what it's about, they'll just believe it. They think that this is how everything happens at your business. [00:21:56] Jason: And so the power of just having even two or three videos, now if you have a lot, and you're able to continually gather these from clients, and then maybe leverage getting them to give you positive reviews on review sites, as well, then maybe after they leave the video, there's this other thing, I think Cialdini talks about this as well, that once somebody takes a certain action, they're more likely to believe in that like a positive action towards a business are more likely to want to continue to do that. [00:22:27] Dan: Validates their decision, right? [00:22:29] Jason: Right. And so once somebody gives you a positive review like if a tenant gives you a positive review or an owner gives you positive review, what happens is they tend to have a longer lifetime value. They stay longer and then when you have a problem because something inevitably comes up. The tenant gets frustrated, or the owner gets frustrated about something. [00:22:51] Jason: They're more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt, because previously they acknowledged they had a good experience with you, and they're more likely to say, "Oh, they'll figure it out. And so, it just makes business easier. What we coach our clients on is the best time to get a testimonial or a review is at peak happiness. And for most tenants and owners, that's usually around tenant placement. That's once the tenants in place, the tenant's happiest and the owner is now happy. "Hey, I've got a tenant and they're paying rent," and that's when everybody's happiest. And so during their and owner, new client onboarding processes. [00:23:29] Jason: They could build in this connection with you guys to give you their info and you reach out and ask about their experience. And our usual script for clients when we're coaching them to do this directly is that they reach out, point out the good that they've done for them so far, and then ask them the loaded question, like how do you feel we've done so far? [00:23:51] Jason: And then they're like, "Oh, well, you just told me you did all this you took care of that leaky toilet. You did this and property is ready for me And yeah, it's been great." " What's your experience been like with ABC property management so far?" "Oh, yeah It's been great." Because you just pointed out all the good. For the owner, you're like we got a tenant in place. We got the rent collected should be hitting your bank account in the next couple days. Like how do you feel ABC property management's done so far?" [00:24:15] Jason: "Oh, yeah. You guys are great." "Awesome We love hearing that would you be willing to share that feedback with us online? Or would you be willing to share that feedback with somebody else? That would really help us out." "Oh, yeah." So, it's called the Law of Reciprocity. They want to reciprocate, because you pointed out that you did something for them. [00:24:35] Jason: Yeah, there's kind of this debt or this leverage and they're like, "yeah, sure. I'd be happy to. Awesome. I'm going to have our producers-" you say right? "Our producer reach out and they'll do a little interview with you and I think you'll really enjoy it, and we're really good at making you look good." [00:24:51] Dan: Yeah, so great point. [00:24:53] Dan: I mean, testimonials build trust ultimately, right? And trust lasts a very long time. So even being able to send testimonials to existing tenants or existing owners as a reassurance, like, you know, if an owner has been with you for years, it's like, "Hey, If they're ever doubting about leaving us, let's send them like a case study or something, you know, once every six months or so, just to kind of reaffirm that you guys are really good. [00:25:15] Dan: So, so we actually have technology. We actually have technology that can build into the CRM process to know exactly when to reach out. So that can be automated. And we also upon completion of the video testimonial, we automate the whole Google or Yelp or any other types of site reviews. Automatically for the people that we interview and then one more thing I want to touch on Jason is objections, right? [00:25:37] Dan: So video testimonials are super powerful to use to address all objections before they even come up. So if you know right off the bat that nine times out of 10 people are going to say, well, you're, you know, such and such place is cheaper or other property managers or, you know, only charge 8 percent or whatever." [00:25:55] Dan: Then using the video testimonials and you can cue your producers into collecting that as like, "Hey, initially I thought that going with X was going to be a little bit more expensive, but little did I know they took care of X, Y, Z." Right. So being able to have those little seeds or saying, "Hey, you know, yes, this apartment building is probably not the cheapest around, but I'm so glad I chose this because of XYZ. So being able to take those objections and understanding how to reverse engineer these interviews to be able to get those soundbites that are going to help you with your closing.  [00:26:24] Jason: So this is something that your producers are trained on. That is in part of your onboarding process with new clients, then it's probably to identify what actions or challenges do they tend to deal with? [00:26:36] Jason: And then as you're gathering testimonials, it becomes a goal to offset those.  [00:26:41] Dan: Absolutely. So every new client that comes on board, we do a deep dive really understanding. who their audiences are going to be, who they're trying to attract, where these video testimonials are going to be displayed where these people are coming from, essentially trying to understand like what's in that prospect's mind frame, like what are they looking at when they're watching this? So that we can really kind of, you know, hit a home run for them. [00:27:03] Jason: Yeah, I love this. I think good testimonials are more important than most companies' marketing. They're more important than most companies' websites. They're more important than most everything that a company does to try and get new business. They don't understand the impact. And if you have negative reviews, which is like the opposite, it's like a clamp on anything that you could potentially do in your entire sales pipeline, any marketing you do, anything else, if you have negative reviews. People will check you out. People want to know, can they trust you? So they're looking for indicators. Even if they heard about you word of mouth or whatever, they might still go check and they're like, "well, they have a bunch of bad reviews. Maybe we should do some more research and find another company." And so the impact of that, I think is often underestimated. You can have the ugliest website. You can have the worst branding. You can have all the other leaks that exist in businesses, but if you have great testimonials and great reviews online, people will still work with you and those will be warm leads. [00:28:08] Jason: Like they'll trust you. There's stats that suggest that people trust online reviews or testimonials as much as word of mouth from a trusted friend or advisor if the reviews are credible, unlike some on Amazon. And then, so like the conversion rate or the close rate then is really high and you don't have to have as good of a website, you don't have to be as good at sales. You don't have to be as good at marketing. Good testimonials and good feedback really solves a myriad of marketing sins.  [00:28:37] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. And then it's reputation management too. So if you do have some bad reviews on Google, you can easily upload videos onto your Google business profile and you can upload positive video reviews. [00:28:49] Dan: And when somebody reads something that's written that's negative and they go to your website and there's what we call wall of love, which is basically a whole bunch of videos saying how great, you know, you are, that's a game changer.  [00:29:00] Jason: That's an outlier. That negative review is now an outlier. You know, owners know that there's going to be upset and negative tenants. [00:29:06] Jason: And that's a given in property management. But they want to know that you know how to deal with those situations and that you're making changes or improvements or whatever. So having good responses is also can be important on those reviews. So having a whole wall of proof, yeah, that overcomes a lot of challenges. [00:29:24] Jason: So well cool, Dan. I appreciate you coming on the show. I wanted to announce Dan, you're coming to DoorGrow Live. You're going to be talking at our event in May about some of this stuff, but going even deeper into how people can have an impact in a way that I think would help grow and scale their business, which was what we're all about at DoorGrow. [00:29:45] Jason: And so everybody, make sure and go and check out the details at doorgrowlive.Com. And we were bringing in some really cool experts that are going to be talking about a variety of different things. And Dan is going to be one of those. So really excited to have you at that, Dan.  [00:30:02] Jason: Super excited. Can't wait for it.  [00:30:05] Jason: Yeah, that's going to be really cool. And so if you want to take things to the next level and grow your business, this is the place to be. And can you give them a teaser of what you might be sharing at this?  [00:30:15] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So, being able to present actual case studies in terms of property management and give solid advice and examples on how you can immediately start using video testimonials and leveraging social proof to be able to increase your conversions and also teaching you how to collect them. [00:30:33] Dan: And everything to do with social proof. So I'm super excited about that.  [00:30:37] Jason: This will be really cool. So make sure to get your tickets to DoorGrow Live. Go to doorgrowlive.Com. Dan, I appreciate you coming on the show. How can people learn more about Share One and get connected with what you're doing? [00:30:51] Dan: Absolutely. So our website is www.share.one O N E. And I think, Jason, we might put something nice together for your listeners and we'll add that to the show notes.  [00:31:01] Jason: Awesome. All right, appreciate you coming and hanging out with us here on the DoorGrow show and excited to do more stuff with you in the future. [00:31:08] Jason: All right. So, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're wanting to grow your business, add doors, reach out to us at DoorGrow. We can help you with that. So until next time, everybody to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. [00:31:19] Jason: you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:31:46] Jason: 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.

As entrepreneurs, we have the ability to make a difference in the world and in those we serve by aligning our  In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Ryan Pineda, real estate investing expert and author of The Wealthy Way to talk about real estate, business, and faith. You'll Learn [01:34] Getting Started in Entrepreneurship [08:07] Faith and Business [17:16] Having Impact as a Business Owner [29:50] You are What You Consume [45:35] Don't Wait to do the Work Tweetables  ”There's no more efficient business model for positively changing the world than business.” “ When you start becoming process-driven more than results-driven, your life changes.” “ We should expect things to be hard and worth it.” “ You are what you consume in all areas of life.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: There's so much wisdom in there and if you can at least just be willing to extract wisdom wherever you can find it, then you're not an idiot And so at least start there, everybody listening, just look for wisdom, be a seeker of wisdom and look for the things that are better and higher.  [00:00:16] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:34] 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. [00:00:54] 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. [00:01:13] Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:17] So my guest today, I am honored to hang out with Ryan Pineda. Ryan, welcome to the show.  [00:01:22] Ryan: Hey, happy to be here. Good to see you.  [00:01:25] Jason: So Ryan, I'd love to kick things off by getting into your background of how you kind of got into this journey of entrepreneurship. But before we do that, your company's called Wealthy Investor, right? [00:01:36] Yep. And you've worked with a lot of real estate investors. My target audience listening to the show are usually the vehicle or the support mechanism for a lot of investors. I think the audience would be interested in hearing a little bit about how you got kind of started into entrepreneurism first of all, and then maybe how you got into real estate. [00:01:57] Ryan: Yeah, I'll give the quick story. You know, I never wanted to get into real estate or entrepreneurship. I was a baseball player growing up and that was all I wanted to do. I was grateful and thankful that I was able to actually do that. You know, I ended up getting drafted by the Oakland A's and got to play professional baseball for eight years. [00:02:15] But, I didn't get paid much in the minor leagues. I never made it to the bigs. I was making 1200 bucks a month. And so I had to make money elsewhere. And that's what led me in entrepreneurship. You know, I got my real estate license in 2010. Yep. And, you know, so I've been in the game for about 15 years now. [00:02:32] And, you know, I've seen a lot. You know, started as an agent and hated it. My mom was actually a property manager. I didn't tell you that. So, I watched her do that for a little bit while being an agent as well. So she was an agent herself, but you know, watching her, I had no desire to be an agent or do anything in real estate because when I got in in 2010, she had just lost everything. [00:02:53] You know, and she's like, you need to get like a safe job. You need to get something that has a salary and a pension. That was literally her advice. Well, and I was like, yeah, maybe, I don't know. Hopefully this baseball thing works out. But while I'm playing, I can't get that. So I'm going to have to do something. [00:03:11] So anyways, I become an agent. Hate it. Do it for a few years. Ended up getting into other weird things. I started flipping couches. I was a substitute teacher. I was just doing anything that could make a buck on the side. And then eventually that led to flipping houses in 2015. [00:03:27] And that was when I, for the first time, started to make some real money. And yeah, I mean, by my third year, I had made, you know, I became a millionaire after year three, flipping houses. And it was just like, wow, this is crazy. And since then I flipped, you know, I think almost 600, 700 homes. And. You know, I've bought rentals. [00:03:47] I own apartment buildings through our syndication. You know, we've coached people, like you said, with wealthy investor. We've coached thousands of students and held really big events. You know, I've started another subsidiary businesses for real estate investors. You know, we have a lead generation company called Lead Kitchen where we help them get leads for sellers. [00:04:05] We have, you know, I had a tax firm, you know, I've kind of done almost everything you can imagine in the real estate world, but  [00:04:10] Jason: Yeah, that's a lot. So I'm curious you said your mom was a property manager and she gave you the advice It was kind of like maybe steer clear of this stuff. [00:04:19] What does your mom think now about everything?  [00:04:22] Ryan: You know what? She's still always hyper cautious so, you know, I retired my parents in 2019 I bought him a house bought him all the cars and everything and my dad actually started working for me in 2018 as a project manager. So he would oversee a lot of our flips and even to this day, he still does it. [00:04:42] Not cause he has to, because he's just like, well, if you're going to, you know, pay for us, I might as well like earn it, you know, and he just wants to support and whatever. So, You know, my dad understands the game. My mom though, obviously she's seen the results, but she's still always hyper cautious. [00:04:57] And so, she doesn't think I need to get a job now, but she does think a lot of times the big risk I take, I shouldn't be taking.  [00:05:05] Jason: Yeah. Looking back, when do you see in hindsight that there were clues that you were maybe destined to be an entrepreneur? Maybe even doing baseball. [00:05:16] Ryan: Yeah. I look back in hindsight, even as a kid and I was always buying and selling and thinking about money. Like I started an eBay account when I was like 12 years old. I remember. You know, buying stuff and bidding on stuff and getting good deals on eBay. And then I remember I was selling Pokemon cards and Yu Gi Oh cards, you know, in middle school and stuff. [00:05:37] And it's just like, You know, the signs were always there. And then even I was always attracted to just making money myself. So like I was good at poker, you know, I won poker tournaments and I played online and I made money that way. And so in hindsight, it was always very clear. I was never going to have a job. [00:05:53] Really the only true job I ever had was playing baseball. And even then it's like, yeah, there's not really a way to be an entrepreneur. I mean, you kind of are you're in charge of your career and how well you want to do and like how well you want to train and. And so, yeah, even in that sense, baseball is kind of in that same vein. [00:06:12] Jason: Yeah. So I'm sure even to get as far as you got in baseball, there was a lot of drive involved and a lot of effort involved, even though there wasn't a lot of pay, it sounds like.  [00:06:25] Ryan: Yeah, I think yeah, for me, like, I had to learn how to like win, you know, at the end of the day, losing is not an option, right? [00:06:33] It's a zero sum game in sports. One person wins, one person loses, you know, for the pitcher to succeed, you must get out. And so, dude, I'm like, I'm going to just figure out how to win. I'm competitive. And so I think competitiveness has always fueled me. It's different in business now because I understand the games that we play. [00:06:52] It's like, you know, We both can have good podcasts. We both can win in business. You don't need to lose for me to win. But that doesn't mean I'm still not competitive.  [00:07:00] Jason: Sure. Yeah. I'm sure in the different industries that you have businesses that you focus on, you have competitors and you probably want to win. [00:07:09] Ryan: I don't want to lose.  [00:07:11] Jason: Right. I want to be the best. I think that's true of most entrepreneurs. There's this drive or, this bite to win. You know, I remember early on, I think some of my first clues as to that I might be an entrepreneur is I was into music. And I remember in college, I was going around door to door pre selling CDs so that I could fund doing an album. [00:07:31] And yet I still at the time was thinking I've got to get a degree to get some sort of job to rise the corporate ladder. And I had no clue that entrepreneurism was like a path at the time. So it's interesting and Entrepreneurism sort of found me In that I needed a way to not be doing a nine to five job to be able to take care of kids because I ended up as a single father right and divorced and like went through all this stuff. [00:07:57] And so I was like, all right, what can I do? And so I sometimes joke that my kids turned me into an entrepreneur. It was just what needed to be done, but there were always clues before, right? So you know, one of the things that you've talked about a lot, I've noticed on your social media, on podcasts is you're very faith forward. [00:08:15] Like you're very comfortable talking about your faith and like the things that kind of motivate you and drive you. And you're involved in some charitable sort of, you know, businesses or charitable entities or organizations as well. How does faith sort of play into all of this when it comes to business for you? [00:08:33] Ryan: Well, you know, I grew up in the church. So, you know, for those who don't know, I'm a Christian. And you know, I grew up in a baptist church and you know, faith was always a part of my life. And I felt like for the most part, I did things the way God wanted me to. You know, I didn't really rebel and go crazy in college, got married young. [00:08:51] You know, I've always tried to put God first and everything. And You know, I think in the last couple of years, God was just pushing me to get even more deep in faith and more bold and to really embrace the spiritual and supernatural side of faith because I was always a very theologically sound person. [00:09:11] And you know, I've read the Bible many times, and, you know, I spent a lot of time, like I said, in church and serving and other things, but you just realize in everything in life, especially with faith, that there's so little that you actually know, and you know, as I've grown in my faith, I've learned to hear from God better. [00:09:29] And tune out all the noise of everything else going out in life, right? I mean, there's so many distractions in life. There's your business, there's social media, there's your kids, your family, you know, the recession, the election, it's like distraction. I think that's Satan's biggest, yeah, that's Satan's biggest tool is to distract you from the truth. [00:09:49] And so the truth was God wanted me to get more bold and to really use my platform for him, not for me. And, you know, with that, I became convicted to just really go all in because I mean, one thing I guess people would notice about my career too, is like, there's no really lukewarmness, you know, when I go all in on something. [00:10:09] It's like, yo, if we're going to throw an event, it's going to be crazy. If we're going to start this, we're going on a blitz. And so I said, you know what, we need to start something for Christian entrepreneurs and Christian business people. And so, you know, I created Wealthy Kingdom last year and you know, we're a nonprofit and, you know, we have three goals. [00:10:27] Well, I shouldn't say three goals. The one goal, the mission is to bring the kingdom to the marketplace. And what I mean by that is so many entrepreneurs just think it's the church's job to, you know, go get people saved and to go disciple people. And it's like, yeah, you know, just invite them to church on Sunday. [00:10:44] It's like, no, our job, every Christian has this goal or mission. You know, Jesus tells us right before he left, he said that the mission here is you need to go make disciples of all nations. We all have that same mission. And it's like, it's not to make the most money. It's not to do the thing that you love. [00:11:05] Like, Jesus never said do the thing that you love. Like that's another big lie that, you know, people have been told.  [00:11:12] Jason: Jesus didn't even do what he loved necessarily. Like to a degree, he said, I don't even do my own will. Yeah. He does the will of him who sent me. Right. He's like, I'm not even doing my own will. [00:11:22] And so if that's a model, then maybe it's not about just selfishly doing our own will all the time.  [00:11:29] Ryan: Absolutely should not. Our will, as we grow should be more aligned with the father's will. And that's what sanctification is. So anyways, to, to long story short. God called us to go be disciples where we're at. [00:11:42] We don't like, we need to go make disciples of all nations right now. That's in our job, in our career, in our business, at an event, whatever. And so I took that to heart. So we started you know, looking at everything that we currently do. And we said, well, let's do it for the King. And so I said, all right, well, let's get a kingdom based community. [00:12:01] And so, you know, we started an online community because that's something we currently do in business. It's like, well, let's get one kingdom based. And so we have that it's completely free. Anyone can join it. Then I said, let's throw events. We throw a lot of events. Why are we not throwing kingdom events? [00:12:14] And so we started throwing big events for the kingdom. And in fact, in my secular events, I just started throwing worship services and pastors in the middle of the event without even telling anyone. Because I'm like, look, this might be the only time they ever hear the good news in their entire life. [00:12:31] And, you know, whatever they might like it, they might not like it, but I don't really care. They need to hear it. And so we started incorporating faith into our events. You know, and then the last thing was really just discipling the current believers because I'm all about the lost. I want to get the lost at the events. [00:12:50] With our content, with our community, but also too, what about the people who are already saved? Well, we need to disciple them and make them better. And so we started running Bible studies all across the country. And I think we're close to a hundred, actually across the world right now, that meet every single week in people's offices, in their homes. [00:13:07] And we all go through the same studies together in these Bible studies, across as a body. And it's really cool. So, yeah, we're trying to attack it from a lot of different angles.  [00:13:18] Jason: It's a lot to organize.  [00:13:20] Ryan: Oh, yeah. But here's the thing, right? It's weird because I just said, Hey, don't do your will. Do God's will. [00:13:26] Right. But on the same hand, God gave us all talents, abilities and different life experiences. And so, you know, he calls us to use those to do his will and it's like all right god gave me a lot of influence online. Why am I not making videos and content, you know helping people understand what that means? [00:13:47] God gave me the ability to throw massive events. We threw wealth con every quarter a thousand plus people every quarter for years. Why am I not throwing massive events for the kingdom? God gave me the ability to organize communities and groups and all these things. Why am I not organizing and using my administrative gifts to do that? And it's like it's all the same thing, and they're all the same gifts and they're all the same skill sets, but on one hand you're putting him first and on the other hand you're putting yourself first  [00:14:16] Jason: Yeah, I love the idea of you know positively impacting the world I think business a lot of people don't realize I think business really there's no more efficient business model for positively changing the world than business, right? [00:14:31] I don't think charities don't function as well like businesses. There's an exchange of value And if there's value like behind it and there's a mission and a purpose behind it Then even the team members the employees everybody Are more lit up and excited and so business is a very efficient business model and you know, one of my past mentors, Alex Charfen, and he would say something to the effect of like entrepreneurs are the people that have changed the world throughout history. [00:14:57] They're the people that kind of think differently. And you know, you mentioned the word disciple like several times and I love the scripture where it's like, how do you know who's a disciple, right? And it's by this shall men know, right? You're my disciple. If you have loved one towards another and I think you know this spreading this message of like sharing true principles Which I think is what makes scripture, right? [00:15:20] It's that there's true principles that can be applied to things that are useful and I think a really good business book will have maybe one key principle it teaches, but then you take a book like the bible and it's just full of lots of different instances of principles that these levers that you can apply to various situations in your life or in decision making. [00:15:39] And you know, that's always been sort of my purpose, I feel is to bring principles to people and to share principles of truth to others, because I feel like that's the easiest lever to impact people's mindset or change their lives is to bring some truth or light or some true principles that they can apply, especially if it's facilitating more love or more kindness. [00:16:01] And there's so many different things different principles that apply in business in order to figure things out like related hiring related to you know running an efficient business  [00:16:11] Ryan: How do you know like a non profit is a business right? I mean, it's a non profit.  [00:16:15] Jason: Yeah, it is. It is a business. Yeah. [00:16:17] Ryan: A church is a business technically based on its designation, Wealthy Kingdom is a business. [00:16:22] It's a nonprofit, right? I mean, in many cases, well, I shouldn't say this because every nonprofit's different, but like for me, I make literally nothing from it. You know, I do it out of a, you know, I just want to do it. Now we have employees, we have staff, we have marketing, we have event costs, we got to pay for all this stuff. [00:16:38] Right. And so we got to figure out, man, how do we use the resources we have in the best way possible? Well, it's the same thing we ask ourself every day in business. We have a limited amount of labor, a limited amount of capital, a limited amount of time. What do we do, you know, to make the most of it? So it's all the same. [00:16:57] And I think too, right, you don't even have to have a nonprofit for this to be the example, right? This is just simply the idea of stewardship. You know, God talks a lot about stewardship and it's like, well. I've given y'all different varying degrees of talent. I've put y'all in different places. Y'all are going to be judged accordingly based on how you used your talent. [00:17:16] And I think that, well, I know that 1, 000, and a lot of Christians don't realize this. A lot of Christians, so, for all the Christians on the show, this is going to hopefully convict you, okay? A lot of people think that when you get saved, that's the end of the journey. Yeah, when literally that is like they've arrived they're done. [00:17:39] You just started! Great! [00:17:41] Jason: Yeah.  [00:17:41] Ryan: Now guess what you your whole rest of your life now actually begins and so many people like, God tells us that hey, guess what? Once you're saved, you know, there's a new judgment now. Because before it was like, all right, what happens in eternity, right? You're going to be in heaven. [00:17:58] You're going to be in hell. That's like the salvation question, but then there's this next question about judgment and stewardship and what you did with what he gave you because Somebody like myself and you will be judged more harshly than other christians and people are like, what does that mean? [00:18:18] Well, it means that if he gave you more resource and he even says if you're a teacher and you cause other people to stumble, you are going to be judged significantly more harshly than others. And so I take that super serious because I'm like, all right, yeah, I'm saved. I'm not worried about that, but man, I better do everything in my power to be a great steward and to understand if I have influence and I'm teaching people, I know exactly what I'm saying. [00:18:44] Jason: Yeah, it's much like the Parable of the Talents, you know, the worst was like to try and bury it and hide it, hide the money. The person that did the best with the money that he trusted with the most money, like, made twice as much money, like, he increased it significantly, right?  [00:19:00] Ryan: And he was also given the person's talent that, who buried his talent. [00:19:04] Jason: Exactly. He's like, I'm going to take it away from you because you don't know how to use this or how to deal with it. And so I think there's a nice summation of business in that for us, like where much is given, much is required and yeah, I've got a little bit of an audience. [00:19:18] You've got a little bit of an audience as well, right? We've got these audiences and people are listening, people pay attention to what we're doing And you know, we have a ripple effect. And I have a ripple effect through my clients who have a ripple effect through all the families that they support, the investors, the team members that they have. And that's significant and to me, that's exciting. Like, that's what motivates me to do what I do. [00:19:43] That's inspiring. But yeah, I could see that some people would maybe it would convict them. Maybe they would feel maybe they feel a little ashamed if they thought about it, man, you know, the energy I'm putting out into the world and in the universe here, isn't the ripple that I really feel is the best ripple I could create. [00:19:59] Ryan: Well, the other part, too, is obviously we have ripples here on Earth, but, you know, there are ripples for eternity based on our decisions for the people we help and everything else, and, you know, the Bible talks about how, you know, you store up your treasures in heaven, and if you read, you know, a lot of Christians also don't know this, they think that Heaven is this place where everybody's equal and, you know, we're all in the same thing. [00:20:25] No, it's actually not like there's hierarchies in heaven there. Like it's clear when the disciples are talking to Jesus and they're like, man, dude, I want to sit on your right hand. He's like, you don't even know what you're asking for. And. you know, they're clearly trying to be in that inner circle after this too. [00:20:43] And, you know, you could read all about it. There's hierarchy with demons. There's hierarchy with angels. Hierarchy is going to be in heaven. It's already there. And it's like, you know, you got a lot of investors on this podcast who are like, Oh man, I got to invest for the future. I got to get my net worth here. [00:21:01] I got to get my cashflow here. I got to. And it's like, we're investing trying to build for the future of this life. And once you truly understand that this life is so short in the span of eternity, you start thinking very differently. And you're like, well, I would rather invest for eternity. And actually, we just read this book in our Wealthy Kingdom group. [00:21:21] It's called Driven by Eternity by John Bevere. It's a great, one of the most convicting books I've ever read. But, he goes, alright. He's like, I learned this in math. Anything divided by infinity is infinity. And it's like, eternity is infinity, right? But if you were to try and even just, finitely say it with our brains, let's just say the next 24 hours, we're going to dictate the next thousand years of your reward here on earth, right? [00:21:48] How you spent the next 24 hours would dictate what reward you got for the next thousand years. You'd be like, that's insane, right? That doesn't seem right. That, you know, this is going to be  [00:22:00] Jason: proportionately skewed. To this moment. Yeah, it's- [00:22:04] Ryan: that's not even close to infinity.  [00:22:07] Jason: Yeah.  [00:22:08] Ryan: We spend 100 years here on this earth thinking we have all this time. In the scheme of infinity, it's worse than way where it could be 24 hours to 10, 000 years to a million years, a billion years. It's still not infinity. And yeah, people just don't, they don't think about it because it's so hard to grasp. But it's like I wish and this is why god has you know kind of got me more vocal about it. [00:22:33] So we're talking about it now But it's like I want investors because I'm an investor right now, you know, like I'm always looking for the best investment I'm always looking for the best use of my time, but I want people to start thinking about man, Invest for eternity. That's way longer than this! Your retirement is way shorter than infinity and eternity. [00:22:54] Jason: Though, could Jesus be a house flipper in the eternities? Because he says in my father's house, there's many mansions, right? And he said, I'm going to prepare something for you guys. And so I think what you're talking about is maybe we should be paying a little less attention maybe to just our real estate assets and our investing here and maybe do some heavenly real estate investing. [00:23:17] Ryan: I'm being 1, 000, that's 1, 000 percent what I'm saying. And it's changed my mindset so much in the last year that I could care less about my net worth. I could care less about how many properties I own. I could care less about any of it. Because eternity is so much greater.  [00:23:36] Jason: So some people might be saying, Ryan, come on. [00:23:38] You're wealthy now. You run Wealthy Investor. You've got money. So it's easy for you to say that. What would you say to the naysayers?  [00:23:46] Ryan: I would say that I've had a certain level of contentness, no matter how much money I had. I made 1200 bucks my entire 20s a month. Okay. So like, I understand what it is to have nothing. [00:23:57] And you know, people always make an excuse, right? It's like, I got three kids and a wife, five, five and under, man, I got a special needs son. I spend a lot of time with my kids. And it's like, well, you know, that's cause you, everybody's default is that's cause you have money or this or that. [00:24:14] It's like, no, all these things were built with nothing. They were all built simultaneously. It wasn't that, oh, this came after that. It's like, no, they were all built in the same construct. So people just need to realize it's just an excuse. It's a cop out. Right. And the other part too, is it's just a fact of not trusting what the Bible says. [00:24:33] So if you're not Christian- [00:24:34] Jason: which essentially is just not trusting God,  [00:24:37] Ryan: Yeah, and if you're not Christian and you don't believe it, that's one thing. But if you are a Christian, you cannot say that you are a Christian and then claim that. It is a lie. And it's like, if you read Matthew 6:33, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, then everything else will be added to you. [00:24:54] And so this is where it comes into play of like, if I'm seeking those eternal rewards, everything else will be added to me. Now, does that mean I'm going to be a hundred millionaire billionaire own all these prop-? No, but I do know I'm going to be just fine here on earth. Like, I don't have to worry about that. [00:25:11] Like I'll be taken care of. It'll be added to me. So I just trust that promise.  [00:25:17] Jason: Yeah. I think I've always just trusted, even when money was tight, I've always trusted in my ability to figure things out and that God's going to take care of me. I just, I bought  [00:25:27] Ryan: money's been tight for me many times after I've been rich. [00:25:30] Jason: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:25:31] Ryan: Like so many times every business owner every you know, Elon Musk, dude I mean the richest man in the world, right? This guy struggles with money like, you know Yeah, dude, he had to buy Twitter for 50 billion dollars he didn't have 50 billion dollars just laying around It was like the last hour to figure out how to go buy that thing. You know, they tell the story of how he invested all of his, like, 300 million he got from PayPal into Tesla and SpaceX and they were going to both go bankrupt and not make it. [00:26:01] Yeah. So, you know, I guess it all just is, like, it comes back to this idea that people think that there's a certain amount of wealth that prevents you from, you know, ever having to work again. And that's not true. It's just not true. Like, it can all be taken from you instantly.  [00:26:16] Jason: So, here's a thought I have that I think might convict, as you say, you know, Christians or just other people that claim to believe in God. [00:26:24] Is one thing I've noticed is you know, especially among, I guess, poor christians or people that have money issues is that I've noticed this action of cursing reality while claiming to love god. It's like oh well this sucks and this and they're kind of they're negative about everything showing up in reality and my favorite name for God in a lot of instances is reality because he says I am what is I am the truth he's the ultimate and reality always wins God always ultimately wins and I don't think it's fair for a christian to claim, I'm like so like faithful to god yet I'm going to curse my reality and complain about reality and complain about how everything is and complain about my family and my spouse and my job and the world and everything else. And there's such a difference I think in people that are at odds with reality which reality will always win. Reality doesn't lie reality is what is and those that are actually in alignment with reality, and align their will to god. [00:27:29] What do you think of that?  [00:27:30] Ryan: Yeah, I mean look god has been here way before us and here's another thing. I tell people I'm just like, all right, look, you know Even if you're not a Christian, right? I think majority of people believe there is something after this life. People believe there is, you know, some supernatural thing. [00:27:47] Most people would believe in the afterlife and whatever. And then, you know, almost everyone agrees there was nothing and then there was something right. And we would call this the creation of the world. But you know, my belief is, you know, It's based on the Bible, and the Bible tells us that there was a supernatural world well before this physical world you know, God talks about there was angels, there was all these things happening well before he created the earth, and the earth is going to pass away, and then, you know, You know, it's going to be back to how it was. [00:28:16] And you know, it's like, and you know, there's going to be a new heaven, new earth, all these things, but my point with that is God was always, that's just the best he has always been. He will always will be. He will always like he's past, present, future. He's just all present. And you know, The other part I struggle with a lot of Christians is they just don't understand the power that they have. [00:28:44] You know, they walk in weakness. And in reality, it's like, Do you realize, an axe, Jesus said or not an axe, but in the Gospels, and then it happened, an axe. He said, look it's good that I'm leaving you, because you're going to get something far better than just me being here with you physically. You're going to get the Helper, and then an axe, they receive the Holy Spirit, literally God living within them, inside of them. [00:29:08] And it's like, you have literally the same God that has always been here, that created you, that created this world living inside of you, and you're worried? What would you ever be worried about? You know, just think like back to just metaphors, you know, would you ever be worried if like, you know financially if you had just like all this money just with you at all times? [00:29:31] No, you wouldn't be worried financially. Would you be worried for your physical safety if you had the most elite killers as bodyguards around you at all times? No, you wouldn't be worried about your safety. You know, like, we have something so much better than all of those things, and we're worried. [00:29:46] We think we can't do things. We don't trust.  [00:29:50] Jason: So this is a good question. Let's bring this back to entrepreneurism. How can people, maybe they don't believe in God, maybe they, they do, but how do they bring themselves, do you feel, and how do you do this? How do you bring yourself in alignment with this greater power for those that maybe can just believe that or towards the universe or the God that created it? [00:30:12] How do we start to get ourselves in alignment? So we know we're on the right path.  [00:30:15] Ryan: Well, this doesn't apply to just God. But this is just everything in life, right? You are what you consume. So if I consume junk food and crap, then, you know, I'm going to be fat and my energy will suck and all those things, right? [00:30:30] Or like for another example, right? If I consume the news all day, 24 seven, right? I'm probably going to be a very skeptical, not trusting person. I'm going to have biases, all these things. Yeah. If I consume entrepreneur content all day and I watch all these guys I'm probably just going to be thinking about making money 24 seven, right? [00:30:48] You are what you consume in all areas of life and you know, you are the average of the five people you hang around with all of these things are a form of just what you consume And so if you want to become more like jesus you have to consume and get around people that are like Jesus. And so, you know, what does that look like? [00:31:05] Well, it looks like reading your Bible every day. It looks like praying every day. It looks like hanging around, you know, other Christians who are walking the walk. It looks like going to church on Sundays. It looks like listening to sermons, listening to worship music. You know, you just have to immerse yourself in it and consume it. And that's how you're going to become more aligned. It's crazy because like, I'll tell you this, and this could sound extreme to people, but it's like, you start to realize the rest of the things in the world that are deception, right? It's like, I used to not think rap music and things were like bad. [00:31:38] You know, I used to listen to gangster rap all the time, man. I love Tupac and all these guys. And then you start to just like, you know, they call me little Ryan. You know, you look, you listen to the lyrics, you know, from a different point of view and you're like, Oh my gosh, this is not good. This is crazy that I listened to this when I was a kid, I should not have been listening to this. [00:31:59] Right. Because you start to get convicted if you watch porn, it's like you're going to start looking at your wife a different way because you're just you're consuming the wrong things. Yeah. Yeah, and even little things start to convict you too. It's like, for the first time ever, we didn't celebrate Halloween this year. [00:32:15] Because I just became convicted that you know, its origins are demonic. And it's like, you just watch all of this stuff with it. And it's like, yeah, definitely none of this glorifies God. If it doesn't glorify God, why would I do it? You know? And it's like it glorifies demons and, you know, all of these dark things, it's like, that doesn't seem proper. [00:32:39] Jason: Yeah, like, you know, it's kind of that balance of how to be in the world, but not of the world, right? Like Jesus was hanging out with publicans and sinners and he was around people, but he also wasn't like just doing everything that they were doing. And so, yeah, I think that's an interesting concept. [00:32:53] I like, though, what you said about. And that wasn't even where my head was going, when I asked the question, but I love that you said like look at the people that you're choosing to be around. There's a consumption there and There's this book called the Dark Side of the Light Chasers it's by Debbie Ford and it's interesting because she talks about in it that we each have this golden side and we also have this dark side to us and the golden side Is the side of ourselves that we see reflected in others that we of the people that we look up to. And there's different people that kind of trigger that in us. [00:33:25] Some people, for example, like look at Donald Trump, very polarizing figure. Some people look at him and are very triggered and their dark side is triggered. They see a narcissist, they see all these negative attributes and then there's some that look at him and they're like, Oh, he's an entrepreneur or he's strong or he's masculine or whatever. [00:33:42] Right? And they look at the golden side. And I think what we see in other people and the people we choose to be around, we want to choose to be around people that we perceive as having a light. Somebody that has something that we want and attributes that we want to become more like. And I think choosing to do that, especially in choosing mentors, is important. [00:34:01] Because you're going to ultimately become a little bit more like them. And that doesn't mean every mentor that I choose is, like, ahead of me in every key area of life. But if they're at least in the area a little bit ahead of me in success in the area I'm getting coaching from then I'm going to absorb that but I'm careful not to take on everything else and to be discerning and to use discernment. [00:34:23] I think it's important like you said to be around people that you perceive as being a high caliber or people that you believe are moving towards greater light.  [00:34:33] Ryan: I agree with all of it.  [00:34:36] Jason: Love that. All right. So Ryan, what if somebody is listening to this and we talked a lot about like kind of faith, God, religion, stuff like this, and somebody who's like, okay, maybe I'm willing to entertain the idea that God exists. [00:34:54] Maybe Jesus is somebody I should like figure out, what would you say is a good first step for those people?  [00:35:02] Ryan: Well, you know, obviously like the Bible is the truth, right? That's God's revelation to us. And so a lot of people are like, well, I don't even know where to start with the Bible. I would say step one buy a study Bible. [00:35:13] So I would just go on Amazon. I would just, I would get an IV study Bible. It's very simple. So that way it has you know, just notes on the side for you to help you understand what it's saying and different questions. And so, you know, I have a study Bible right here. So this is, you know, maybe you can find this one on Amazon. [00:35:31] This is called the Quest Study Bible. Now, this Bible is like 15 years old. So maybe this one, they don't make this one anymore. But actually, I know they do make a version of it. It's not called the Quest Study Bible anymore, but just look at the NIV Study Bible. And I would start in Matthew. [00:35:44] That is the very beginning of the New Testament. I would just start in Matthew and read it all the way through. So, unlike other books where you start at the very beginning. You're going to start about two thirds of the way through in Matthew and just trust me, it'll make sense. So that would be step one. [00:35:58] Step two, I would say, you know, obviously you want to get plugged into a local church. That, that's a lot harder for somebody who doesn't know anything. So here's what I would advise is join us at Wealthy Kingdom. So it's wealthykingdom.Com. Everything's free. You can be a part of the community and you can get plugged into a Bible study with other entrepreneurs in your area or virtually. So that's going to be your best place to really build connections because you're going to also be around other people who understand the actual life that you live right now. And they're open. We have lots of non believers in our Bible studies who are there to learn, man. [00:36:34] They're like, look, I'm here to learn. I don't know. I don't believe. I don't even know what you believe, but I'm here to learn. And so we, we love those types of people. So I would, those would be the two steps I do because I don't know everybody here listening is listening to different things. So I don't know what local church you should go to or anything. [00:36:52] So come join us virtually. And then you're probably going to meet people in Wealthy Kingdom that are in your area, especially the local Bible study. And they're going to know what local church for you to go to.  [00:37:02] Jason: Got it. You know, this is maybe a controversial hot take of, mine But I feel like a lot of people get so caught up in trying even among christians or non christians trying to prove whether the bible and everything in it is factual history or not It's like facts and data. [00:37:19] They're trying to prove it and I think both sides miss sight of the most important elements, which is are there true principles that are applicable? Can you apply these things to your life? Are they useful tools? And I think that's the real measure of a principle, whether it's true or not, is you try it out. [00:37:38] You test this, try this on in your life and see if the fruit is good. See if it gives you positive results. Does it give you positive results to believe these things? Or does it cause, you know, does it take you in the opposite direction? Do you feel like you're moving towards something higher? Or is it taking you backwards? [00:37:57] Ryan: Yeah, there's biblical truth to that. You know, there was a reason Jesus performed miracles, you know, like a lot of people, a lot of people are like, well, why? Right? He could have just said all the things he said, hey, you know, don't steal. You know, follow the Ten Commandments. Love your neighbor. [00:38:13] Everybody can agree with those things. But it's like, yo. I'm going to make this person the lord of my life, which he was asking them to do, to believe that he's the son of God, to believe and give their entire life to him. It's like, well, dude, you better show me something else if you want me to commit to that degree. [00:38:31] And you know, that's why he performed signs and wonders to show them that, hey, look, I am the one. And You know, it's true, right? Like, that's why he did it. And that's why all of the disciples you know, were killed for preaching it well after he was gone, because they saw it, they believed, and they knew that the reward, you know, was going to be great eternally, right? [00:38:52] Look, Jesus says it to Doubting Thomas too, when he returns, right? A lot of the disciples believe, they're like, Oh dude, like he's back. And then Thomas is like, I ain't believing until I see him. Until I see the holes in his body. And so Jesus comes back and he's like, Look, Thomas, feel the hole, right? [00:39:08] Shows him the hole in his hands. And he's like, blessed are those who believe without seeing.  [00:39:12] Their faith is stronger, but still, it's all good that you needed to see to believe. Like, it's all good. And so. There are going to be people who listen to this and they're like, I believe all this makes sense. [00:39:26] And then there are going to be those who say no, I need to see the fruit. I need to see why I should believe. And in fact, I still believe miracles happen today. I've seen them with my own hands. I've prayed for miracles that cannot be explained other than they were miraculous. And you know, with that, it's like both happen. [00:39:43] Jason: I think that I think if we're really created in the image of God,. Then I think that is a clue that we might be a lot more powerful than we realize and you know there's even evidence that the placebo effect is getting stronger as time goes on. So like as they do drug testing and stuff like this drugs have to pass a certain test that they're stronger than placebo. The challenge is drugs are having a harder and harder time showing that they're stronger than placebo because the placebo effect is actually getting stronger. And I think that humanity worked our consciousness is raising a bit. [00:40:19] I think that people are realizing that we are creators, that we are more powerful than we give ourselves credit. And, you know, Jesus says, if you have faith, like a grain of a mustard seed, you could like move a mountain or something. Right. And so I think that I think there is something to, you know, this idea that we can create this positive future or alter our reality or alter things real time, like people's physical health or blessing people or different things. I do think that miracles can occur and there's evidence of it happening all the time. And I think in religion, see, I grew up Mormon. And I'm a very ultra conservative. [00:41:00] I was a Mormon missionary for two years and then eventually left it. I didn't even try alcohol until I was over 30. And I'm the only one in my family that, that left. I'm the black sheep and I'm the oldest of five boys. So, sorry mom, sorry dad.  [00:41:14] Ryan: I'm not happy with you.  [00:41:15] Jason: They still love me, but I think one of the things that I, and I'm grateful for all that I learned, like we, we did, I did a lot of religious study growing up and I was the one that just kept digging until I took my way out of it, I guess. [00:41:26] Ryan: Mormon apologetics is a tough thing to defend.  [00:41:30] Jason: Yeah. So I think you know, there's a lot of people think that they need to sell some sort of gospel or good news of, Jesus or the christian church by convincing people their life is going to suddenly be magical or better and that's not always true, and I don't think that's the whole point is that you don't magically make everything about your external circumstances in your life better, but I think being more in alignment with god and being more connected allows you this greater strength to weather what's happening. [00:42:02] I mean if you look at what happened to Peter or any of the apostles, like they suffered horrible deaths. I don't know that their life magically became more amazing because they followed Jesus, but they had that conviction and they knew truth. And I think in a lot of instances, becoming Christian or believing in Jesus or following his principles may make your life in some instances, more challenging, you know, maybe there's more fiery darts thrown at you by the adversary, for example, but I do believe that there's some sort of there's some sort of power and confidence that comes with knowing that your personal life and will is in alignment with God wants for you. [00:42:45] Like you're following that calling and that knowing within, and there's a strength that comes from that, that nobody else can shake. It doesn't matter like what your parents are saying to you. It doesn't matter what your spouse maybe is concerned about. It doesn't matter if you know, you're doing what is right, then you're willing to just let the consequences follow. [00:43:03] And that's different than just looking for this better life or a mansion here on earth instead of a mansion in heaven.  [00:43:10] Ryan: Yeah, and you know, Jesus said hey you got to pick up your cross and follow me. It's like picking up your cross literally means dying to your old self and giving your all to Jesus And you know somebody's like oh, but like I got to say bye and to my dad and I gotta bury and he's no. [00:43:27] No, this has nothing to do with your current family. This is about you and me You know, whether or not you're going to follow. And you know, I've met many Mormon, ex Mormons, Jews, Muslims, people who have given their life to Jesus. And you know, it's tough because there's so many family dynamics that go on to it. [00:43:46] And it's like, it ain't easy. And I feel for those people, cause that, that's very hard. But I also am a believer that, you know, through your faith and through, you know, those who make that commitment, they have the chance to impact their families. So much more and they can be sanctified through them. [00:44:02] Jason: Yeah, I mean I had a meeting with the mastermind this morning and we were talking about distractions And we were all these they're all men and we're all sharing like what's distracting us and what's holding us you know back from the things we should be doing and you know and I was thinking about you know, just how can I be a better father? [00:44:21] How can I be a better partner, a better spouse? How can it be a better business leader? And at the stage I'm at now, it's just more discipline. It's less distractions. And it's all like cutting out all of the fat and the little things that are so easily taking us. And that's kind of what you led us into here in the beginning. [00:44:39] You know, what do you, what would you say to those that are just, they're trying to run their business, they're dealing with a lot of distractions, which is common for entrepreneurs. We see shiny objects everywhere. How do they get focused and how they start, how did they start listening to that inner voice that connects them with the divine so they can start making the right moves? [00:45:00] Ryan: Well, I think it's very simple, right? You just make God the focus. You just have to trust that if you make him the focus. Everything else will fall into place. And then it goes back to Matthew 6, 33, seek first the kingdom and his righteousness and everything else will be added to you. And that's faith. [00:45:18] That's faith in a nutshell, because you'll be like, well, don't understand the fires that I have, Ryan. You don't understand the drama and the problems. My kids are doing this, my relationship with my wife sucks. Like I got to focus over there in order to fix. You know, well, before I can go worry about God. [00:45:35] I mean, that's like the biggest thing I hear all the time too. It's like, well, I. Once I get my life right, then I'll start going to church. I'm like, no, you can't get your life right. That's why Jesus paid the price, because you can't. It's the same funny thing I hear when people are like-  [00:45:49] Jason: it's like saying once I get abs, I'll stop eating candy bars. [00:45:53] Ryan: Yeah, well, I was going to use a health example too where I hear this actually from people because I was in sports for so long Hey, I'm going to get in shape first, then I'm going to go get a trainer and start you know, because I'm not ready to go train with them like, that's too hard. I got to like get in shape first and I'm like, dude. [00:46:09] No, that's why you need a trainer like no, And yeah, it's the same thing with faith. It's like if you follow god and you seek his ways I mean just like you've been saying from a practical standpoint. If you follow what the Bible says, your relationship with your wife will get better. Like, you're just going to be a better leader, you're going to serve her, you're going to be different. [00:46:27] Your relationship with your kids will get better. The relationship with your employees will get better. The way you act in business will be better. You know? And it doesn't mean that it's going to be easy. I didn't say it was going to be easy. I just said, it's going to get better. And you know, I've had, yeah. And I had, I've had so many difficult situations in business, you know, lost millions, investors pissed, customers pissed, lawsuits. [00:46:53] I've dealt with everything you could imagine in business. And guess what? Every time I've been able to get through it and it's because of my faith and I didn't know how I would get through it. I didn't know what the outcome would be. I didn't know how I would solve it. But I can tell you I slept pretty good throughout all of it because I just knew God would take care of it some way somehow. [00:47:16] Jason: You knew it would be figured out and you felt like you had somebody on your side that's pretty powerful.  [00:47:21] Ryan: I mean, God promises to be on my side.  [00:47:23] Jason: Yeah.  [00:47:24] Ryan: You know, Romans 8, 28 says that, you know, he works all things for my good, for those who believe.  [00:47:30] Jason: Even the tough stuff.  [00:47:32] Ryan: All things, not some things.  [00:47:34] Jason: Whom God loves, he chastens. Despise not the chastening of the Lord, right? So may not necessarily be easy, but yeah, it'll be worth it.  [00:47:41] Ryan: Don't expect anything to be easy.  [00:47:43] Jason: Right. I think we go into it, we should expect things to be hard and worth it. And I think when we're, it's kind of like the old stoic adage, you know, hard choices, easy life. [00:47:53] Easy choices, hard life. We all know people that they're focused on ease. They're focused on trying to have comfort They're focused on how do I how do I avoid doing stuff? I just want to relax. I just want my weekend I just want time and I think as i've grown into adulthood and you know focus more on stepping more into my masculinity. [00:48:13] I've realized that you know, nobody's coming to save us, except maybe Jesus, right? Nobody's coming to do it for us. There's a level of work that's expected and we need to get beyond always seeking comfort because comfort is a deceptive and alluring sort of drug and we need to be willing to put in the work put in the effort and focus and put in that discipline and then life gets a lot easier overall Like life gets a lot better overall when we're disciplined. Disciplined people don't cheat on their spouses. [00:48:47] Disciplined people like, you know, take care of their kids and spend time with them on the weekend. Disciplined people you know, focus and take care of their health so they have less health issues. They're putting their own oxygen mask on first, so to speak, so they can take care of others, right? [00:49:02] And that's it. That's discipline. And I think that's important. Well, Ryan we're about out of time. I really appreciate you coming on the show. This has been I think inspiring conversation. It's got my brain sort of running in a bunch of different directions thinking about, you know, how can I be better and how can I evolve as a human? [00:49:19] What would you like to say in your final words to those listening to this podcast and maybe how they can get in touch with you or your various businesses.  [00:49:30] Ryan: Yeah, I think you know, as far as getting in touch with me, that's easy. You can just go on social media, search Ryan Pineda, wherever. [00:49:37] So that part's easy. I would say the final thing to leave him with, I mean, we've talked a lot about faith and eternity and everything else. And that's usually the final thing I leave on podcasts because I don't depending on where the conversation goes, right? You know, I'll always draw it back to faith. [00:49:51] So I would just say that, man, I mean, like, look there's a common theme for what we're saying. It's like, life's going to be hard one way or the other, you know, you're going to go through tough times. You are going to have uncertainty. You're not going to know if things are going to work out or not the way that you're hoping. [00:50:08] You know, One thing I know for sure is, and this will apply for both ways, not just faith, but also business and faith. When you start becoming process driven more than results driven, your life changes. Because you're never going to be up and down with the result. You're always just trusting the process. [00:50:28] And so, you know, baseball, we had to learn this every day. It's like, I don't know who's pitching tomorrow. I don't know. Like, I just got to trust my routine, my process, and then I'm doing the right things every day. And if I follow that, I know I'm going to get the best result that I possibly can get. In the long run, and I think you were referencing that when it comes to, Hey, you know what? [00:50:46] Even if you don't believe these biblical principles are going to change your life, that's a form of trusting the process. And if you do, you know, you'll end up getting better results just overall, whether you believe or not, and you just follow that process. And then, you know, I would say even to take it a step further, it's like, man, if you trust that he is the creator of this world and he has promised to take care of you then that's a process to choose to have faith and trust that's the case, to trust that his plan is better than your plan. And it's not easy because we all want control. We all want certainty. That's, you know, that's our human nature. [00:51:21] That's why we're trying to get financially free. That's why we're trying to you know, get enough cash flow and I teach on these things like I get it. But there's a better plan. And you know, if you just trust the process every day of following him, he will make your path straight, you know? And so I've seen that in my own life. [00:51:42] I'll tell you this. I never thought I'd be a podcaster, an events guy, a social media guy. I never thought that was going to be the thing, but. I felt like God was calling me down that path, and here we are. And I don't know where he's going to call me the next 10 years. I don't have a 10 year plan. I don't have any of that, and I don't care. [00:51:59] All I'm trying to do is whatever God's calling me to do at this moment, and I want to be flexible to his will, and be very careful not to just insert my will. And that's it, right?  [00:52:10] Jason: Yeah, appreciate it. You know, appreciate you coming on the show. I think, I agree. I think you know, even if you, For some reason don't want to be christian you don't you don't you're opposed for some reason. [00:52:23] Some people are just like opposed to the bible, just look at the bible through the lens of what are the principles that have made this book one of the greatest books of all time? Why has it stood out? Why has it stood the test of time? Why do so many people look to it for wisdom and for insight? There's so much wisdom in there and if you can at least just be willing to extract wisdom wherever you can find it, then you're not an idiot And so at least start there, everybody listening, just look for wisdom, be a seeker of wisdom and look for the things that are better and higher. [00:52:53] And that's going to eventually lead you to better and higher things and help you to weather the storm. And you can tell Ryan has, you know, he has this confidence that comes from knowing it's not all reliant on him. He trusts that there's something greater than him that's going to give him a source of power or ideas or decision making or guide his paths and to not have that for those of you listening must be terrifying. It must feel a little bit scary to just not have nothing else above you to reach up to. And so there is a god. There's somebody reach up to, go ahead and test it out. [00:53:29] My way of aligning towards God is to sit, read things that I feel like lead me closer to something better and higher. That could be scripture, whatever, or to meditate on something, but then to think, how can I align my will with that? What is that voice inside? What is that calling telling me to do and take those actions and do it. [00:53:47] If you don't take those actions, listen to it, that voice will get quieter. But if you start to listen to that voice and take those actions, it's going to get more and more clear to the point where you have that confidence to go out and make decisions. So I think that's a good ending note here. [00:54:01] So Ryan this is a very different podcast episode than we've ever done here on the DoorGrow show. So there we go. I like it. The most impactful one though. I appreciate you inspiring us to get into faith and chat about that. All right. And And that'll be it for today's show until next time everybody to our mutual growth If you are struggling within your property management business to figure out how to figure out what you need to do next in your business operationally or how to add doors, reach out to us. We'd love to support you. Check us out at doorgrow. com and that's it. Bye everyone. [00:54:33] 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!  [00:54:59] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Owning a business of any kind impacts your life and relationships. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts talk about marriage, relationships, and how these things correlate with having a property management business. You'll Learn [02:03] Owning a business impacts your relationships [07:45] You have to be selfish sometimes [11:10] Why people pleasing is harmful [14:13] Masculine and Feminine frames [24:51] Leveling up in business and your relationships Tweetables “In business, you don't want to be the needy, pleasy guy running a property management business, trying to please every tenant, trying to please every business owner.” “I think as a business owner, you, there is part of you that has to be selfish and you have to be comfortable with being selfish because there is a time and a place for it.” “If you do not take care of yourself, you are not going to have energy to then continue to take care of other people.” “Ironically, the more you are trying to please somebody,  the less they value you.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: In business, you don't want to be the needy, pleasy guy running a property management business, trying to please every tenant, trying to please every business owner.  [00:00:08] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you are 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. We're your hosts property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull the owners of DoorGrow.  [00:01:11] Now Let's get into the show.  [00:01:14] All right, so today's topic, we're going to chat a little bit about marriage. So let's talk about it. We're going to tell a little bit about marriage. Those that have followed my journey over the years have probably seen that I've been divorced. I've gone through struggles in marriage. I've learned things the hard way. Some of y'all probably been married forever like my parents. I have amazing parents and they were a great example of just loving each other from the beginning forever. [00:01:44] They've been married for, I don't know, like 50 years or something.  [00:01:48] Sarah: Almost. 49.  [00:01:50] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I think  [00:01:52] Sarah: this year is going to be 47. So they're like going to be 50.  [00:01:55] Jason: I think they got married two years before they had me. So yeah.  [00:01:58] Sarah: They celebrate it though, but they're still in Australia.  [00:02:01] Jason: Yeah. So my parents, they just love each other. [00:02:03] But one of the things that I think it's been coming up a lot, I've been noticing a lot of clients as I go deeper with them and they kind of open up especially the guys like relationships are a struggle. It's a challenge. I think it's difficult. It can be difficult for entrepreneurs. I think it's difficult for the women entrepreneurs because in a lot of ways you have to kind of step into sort of a masculine frame to run a business. And that creates an interesting dynamic in a relationship. And this is in general. Some women out there, maybe you don't want a masculine guy. Maybe you don't want a guy that leads. Maybe you don't want a guy that initiates stuff. Maybe you don't want to be able to let your hair down after work and like have him kind of take the reins and like plan something and take you on a date. I think a lot of women do. A lot of women appreciate that. Even the ones that are running businesses and showing up in a masculine sort of frame and being kind of dominant in leadership and displaying these things, they would like to have somebody else take the lead. Is this accurate do you think or no?  [00:03:03] Sarah: Yeah, well. You think it's different.  [00:03:05] Jason: You've run your own business. [00:03:06] You've been kind of in that frame.  [00:03:08] Sarah: I'm a very masculine woman.  [00:03:11] Jason: Yeah, in some ways I think you've consistently since we've been together.  [00:03:15] Sarah: I look very feminine. I do it's deceiving. Yeah.  [00:03:19] Jason: Yeah, I think since we've been together, you've consistently stepped more and more into your feminine and I've stepped more and more into my masculine I think has kind of been a trend. [00:03:29] Would you say that's accurate?  [00:03:30] Sarah: It could be. I don't know. I think you've probably more recently been focused on that. I can't say, I really cannot say, oh, I've ever been focused on.  [00:03:41] Jason: I don't think you've been focused on it. I just think.  [00:03:44] Sarah: I'm just living life.  [00:03:45] Jason: Yeah, you're just living life and this is the thing. [00:03:48] Sarah: I'm just going about shit, doing my thing.  [00:03:50] Jason: She's not as conscious of it probably because I think this is something that men, if you are the leader and leading, you should be conscious of this. And women, when men are kind of taking that leadership role, women respond to that, and it's natural. Like, I've noticed it in Sarah, she's not even probably super aware of it, but there's behaviors and things that have kind of shifted. [00:04:15] And so, the way it'll show up for a woman in this, in a relationship like that, as a man stepping more into leadership and into his masculine role, she will generally, over time, feel calmer. There'll be probably less fights, probably less explosions, you know, things like this. And the guy will be like letting go of some of the needy, whiny, pleasy, weak behavior that's kind of gross to women. [00:04:39] Does this sound accurate?  [00:04:40] Sarah: That is, yeah, that is gross.  [00:04:42] Jason: Yeah.  [00:04:42] Sarah: To me, anyway, I cannot speak for all women.  [00:04:45] Jason: Yeah.  [00:04:45] Sarah: To me, it's gross.  [00:04:47] Jason: Ironically, when women are showing up kind of more in a masculine frame, they sometimes bring that out in guys. Like the guys think, Oh no, there's a problem. I got to please more. [00:04:57] And so it kind of creates this weird, gross spiral in relationship. And so, which I've experienced in past relationships. Right. And so the man needs to kind of. shift and lead out of that. And so I've been noticing this in clients. And so, this is something that I've been paying a lot of attention to. [00:05:14] A lot of guys show up in a feminine frame because we've been raised by our moms. Maybe you had a loving mom. She took care of you. Maybe she didn't. And she wasn't really a great mom, maybe but either way, that feminine influence towards pleasing has a strong impact on the male psyche, which puts us into kind of a growing up with kind of a feminine frame. If we don't have a really strong sort of masculine walled stoic father, you know, and there's really great book I would recommend for men that want to kind of eliminate that feminine frame that they're carrying around. [00:05:49] It's called shattering the feminine frame by Jerr, J E R R. It's really hard to find, so you may have to search for it on Google, because if you search for it on Amazon, even though it's there, Amazon won't let you see it. I don't know why. It's super weird. You may not be able to find it. Sometimes searches on some of the books by Jerr don't show up when I search for them. [00:06:11] His main book that he puts out there, I can find, and then I have to go to the author, click on the author name, and then find his other books to find some of these books. I don't, it's really weird, but you might be able to find it through Google.  [00:06:23] Sarah: Maybe it's just you. It could be just you. It'd be an interesting test. [00:06:27] Maybe everybody else, even though.  [00:06:30] Jason: I bought multiple copies of the book and sent them to guys. So Jason gets blocked on everything. He gets himself blocked. I'm a little controversial. I get shadow banned all the time. It was something. I was definitely shadow banned on Twitter. My accounts aren't working, your whole Instagram account. [00:06:45] I have a political account on Instagram that's totally blocked and shut down. Like, I log into it, it blocks everything. I can't do anything. I can't even go to settings to, like, request help to support. Nothing. So, yeah. So, which probably might be why I can't find which probably means my ideas are actually correct. [00:07:04] So since we live in a world of control and censorship nowadays, all right, so that aside, so I think you know, to kill that needy sort of pleasing behavior, I think guys, this is really important. And it's important in business too, because in business, you don't want to be the needy, pleasy guy running a property management business, trying to please every tenant, trying to please every business owner. [00:07:30] And that was something you were very good at not doing in your property management  [00:07:34] Sarah: business. I don't give a shit about that at all. I [00:07:37] Jason: think you're like, what do I want my business to look like? How do I want to show? Yeah. Yeah.  [00:07:42] Sarah: Right. And I think it's, It, part of it is very selfish. And I think as a business owner, you, there is part of you that has to be selfish and you have to be comfortable with being selfish because there is a time and a place for it. [00:07:54] Now I am not sitting here telling you, be only selfish and only think about yourself all the time. No matter what, prioritize you and forget everything else, right? That is not what I'm saying, but there is a time and a place to be selfish and to really think about you. And if you think about it this way, there's a lot of people, like one of my, one of my very good friends in Pennsylvania she will just give and give and give and give to everybody. [00:08:21] She worries about her kids and she worries about her friends and she worries about her family and she worries about, it's like, she's like, so giving and like, I mean, she would literally give you the coat off of her back in the middle of winter if you needed it. I have watched her do it. And that is great. [00:08:42] However, if you do not take care of yourself, you are not going to have energy to then continue to take care of other people. And I tell her that all the time because she's just in this constant exhaustion. Like now it's manifesting physically. Now she's had like, she had health issues. She had like a heart problem. [00:09:02] She had all kinds of issues and it's because she's not prioritizing herself. She will go to do something for herself, but then something else pops up and needs her attention. And she's like, Oh, well, I can't worry about me. Now, I have to worry about this other thing. So there is a time and a place to be selfish, and you must take care of yourself first in order to then serve and take care of other people. [00:09:22] It's like, put on your own oxygen mask before helping other people. Because if you die trying to help your family, well now your family doesn't have you. When you could have just put on your own oxygen mask first. Yes? So there is a time and a place to be selfish. I think in my later years, especially after my, like, my divorce when I was, what was I, 28? [00:09:48] Yeah, I was 28. So, 28, I flipped my entire life upside down. All of it. Everything. I pretty much scrapped it all. Anything that wasn't serving me, anything that was toxic, anything that wasn't good for me, anything that didn't make me feel happy or bring me joy or make me feel loved and cared for, I said, fuck it. [00:10:10] Gone. Gone. So I cut off relationships with my biological father. I ended my marriage. I cut off a lot of friendships. I quit my job. I did all kinds of things. I was like, yeah, this isn't working like, and that was the end of it. But that was very much about, that was for me. I did that for me. [00:10:30] And up until that point, I wasn't really living for me. Yes, I was concerned about myself. I was always trying to take care of myself. But I was also always worried, Oh, well, who needs this? And who needs that? And, oh, you know, this person, you know, is kind of, it's always like in the back of your brain. [00:10:48] And after, after that, I made that change and that after that point was when I started my business, when I started my business, I'm glad that I didn't do this before I had that shift in my life because when I started my business, number one has to be me. If the business makes me miserable, then I'm doing something wrong. [00:11:07] So why do it like that?  [00:11:10] Jason: A lot of people are miserable in their businesses. They like, we see a lot of them. That's why a lot of people come to us. We can turn that around. Ironically, the more you are trying to please somebody, the less they value you. And so if you're like just bending over backwards trying to please tenants, they're going to treat you even more and more like garbage because you're showcasing and demonstrating in your language your behavior everything, "I'm low value." [00:11:37] I'm a doormat. Walk all over me. You might do that with owners. You might be displaying, Hey, I'm low value. I'm available whenever you need me. Your time is so much more important than my time. Interrupt me anytime. Here's my cell phone number. Right? And so by displaying that you're low value, you actually end up being treated worse and being perceived as worse. [00:11:58] And people respect business owners that are leaders and then are able to display strong behavior that they can lean into and that they can trust. You need to have a stronger frame or a more masculine frame if you are the leader of a business. Otherwise, people are not going to really trust, respect, or feel safe with you. [00:12:18] And so I think that Also, when we're in relationship and we're with somebody and I think that this is probably more true of women, a lot of women might throw me some shade for saying this, but as guys, I don't know what the major difference is. Maybe it's testosterone levels, whatever. Maybe it's just in our DNA, but we do not grow up feeling fear. [00:12:41] We just, we don't generally feel afraid of a whole lot of things. Like, most guys would never even think, like, am I safe if I go walk out on the street? Unless they're in a really shitty area, you know? But if I go out for a walk, I'm not concerned about my safety at all. I could roll down my windows and take a nap in my car, parked by the side of the road, and wouldn't even worry. [00:13:03] Women, I didn't realize this until later years, but women from.  [00:13:08] Sarah: Even going like for a walk by myself, no way, I'm taking my pitbull, like  [00:13:12] Jason: Yes.  [00:13:13] Sarah: Or I'm carrying.  [00:13:15] Jason: Right. Or some combination.  [00:13:18] Sarah: Something. There's no, there's no chance. Yeah,  [00:13:21] Jason: I mean even if I'm out of town, for example You'd like you get a little bit more concerned about things and your safety and stuff like that, right? [00:13:30] Sarah: See, I'm the type of person I'm like, I want like a fortress. I want like reinforced concrete like five inch, you know, like, maybe even 11 inch thick, like, walls, I want, like, a moat, I also like some sharks that we don't feed, like, ever, and then, you know, somebody might accidentally fall down. [00:13:49] I've been getting in, like, this is how I'm like, that would make me feel safe. I want like bulletproof glass. Give me the Cybertruck glass just everywhere. Like, that's like, this is what I need. I need like laser beams, like you see in museums. Like motion sensor laser beams that trigger like the SWAT team. [00:14:06] That's what I need, but I've watched way too many horror movies, admittedly, way too many for my own good.  [00:14:13] Jason: So regardless of your gender, masculine and feminine energy is always at play. And, Feminine energy generally is not going to feel safe without masculine energy nearby. [00:14:24] That's just generally how it works. Masculine energy creates that protection and safety. This will be true of your clients. So you'll need to show up somewhat in a masculine frame so that your clients can feel safe. feel safe with you. And that's what they want to buy. They don't want to buy property management, but they want to buy a safety and certainty. [00:14:40] They want to buy peace of mind. And so that certainty that you can display is more of a masculine energy or masculine frame. This is true of women that are in relationships. If they're not getting that from the man that they're with or around them, That sort of masculine frame, they're going to become, a lot of times, they become more nervous, more neurotic. [00:14:59] They're more concerned about things and more fearful. And especially if they have to then step into the masculine frame to take care of the guy that they're with because he's even more needy and pleasy and whatever and feminine than she is, then it's like, it creates this gross sort of I'm your mother type of dynamic, right? [00:15:17] And you don't want to be my mother, right? You don't want to be cleaning up after me and telling me what to do all the time.  [00:15:22] Sarah: I don't want to be anybody's mom.  [00:15:24] Jason: Yeah, exactly.  [00:15:24] Sarah: I am not cut out to be a mom, let's be honest. I'm just not, I'm just not good. Like my mom is the best mom in the world and then like, how do I measure up to that? [00:15:34] Like I can't compete with that.  [00:15:35] Jason: Well, I don't think it's a competition.  [00:15:37] Sarah: Everything is a competition.  [00:15:39] Jason: It's not really. [00:15:39] Sarah: You know nothing about me.  [00:15:41] Jason: It's not really competition. You don't need to compete with your mom, but you can take, you know, some of the good that you've got from her and the stuff that you don't want to apply or we learn from our parents. [00:15:51] We don't want to be like. We don't have to take that. Right. So, you know, I guess the takeaway from this episode maybe is men, check out that book, like step into a little bit more masculine role in your relationships, your wife will be calmer, she'll be more loving, you will definitely get more respect and you'll get more sex if you're showing up in a masculine frame. And it's your responsibility. Stop trying to change her. Stop trying to get her to be something different. Stop wishing she was nicer to you. Stop trying to focus on I need love and I need to please her and do things like that like Show up in a confident leadership position, like plan stuff, plan dates. [00:16:35] We're going on a date this weekend, right? We went on a date last weekend.  [00:16:40] Sarah: Round two.  [00:16:40] Jason: I messed up last weekend. I planned a date. I was so excited and took her out to eat. We went to go to where the date was, we were supposed to go watch a show. And it was closed, like, there was nothing there. And I was like, what? [00:16:54] And I checked and I had the date wrong. I had the date wrong. So what did I do as a leader? I found another date. So I quickly booked tickets, found tickets to a comedy show that was right there, downtown Austin. And then we went to that and we had a good time, right?  [00:17:08] Sarah: Well, that was when I rescued the bird. [00:17:09] Jason: Yes.  [00:17:10] Sarah: So here, let's talk about this. This is how crazy my life is. Jump out of a moving car because my husband wouldn't stop the car.  [00:17:16] Jason: Let's, let me explain this. I'm driving into a parking lot, there is a bird that has landed on my hood and it's just staying on there so I'm like, this is weird and I'm turning into a parking structure and I was barely moving. [00:17:30] I was slowed down or you would have hurt yourself but I'm like, she's like, I'm going to get out and I'm going to take care of the bird and because it had jumped off. And I was like, No.  [00:17:37] Sarah: It didn't. It tried to fly, like, it was on the hood. And it tried to fly a little bit and it, like, barely cleared, like, the roof of the car and I went, Jason, that bird is injured, I'm telling you, it's injured and he's like, okay. [00:17:51] And I'm like, stop the car, and he's like, what? I'm like, no, stop the car. I was like, I am not stopping the car. Yeah, he's like, I'm not stopping.  [00:17:57] Jason: There were, like, homeless people on the street, like, right outside there. Yeah, I know. Ghettos, they probably were all high on drugs, like, it was not a great area. [00:18:06] And she jumps out of the car and I have to then find a parking space because there's nowhere to park and I had to go up seven floors in this parking structure. I'm like, my wife is probably going to be dead by now, right? So I eventually get to the top floor, then I come down, I'm, like, so anxious because I'm, like, I need to protect this woman from her crazy bird saving, like, whatever. [00:18:27] Sarah: And actually, I had this dress on. And my high heels, and I'm running around trying to, like, scoop up. I'm like, it's okay, try to scoop the bird. And the bird, like, it can't really fly. It flew a little bit for, like, a couple feet, and then it, like, sank back down. And I'm like, oh no, it's injured. So I'm, like, chasing the bird, and the bird, like, hops around. [00:18:45] Like, it comes out of the parking garage, and it hops around to the corner. I don't know what's back there. So I'm just following, I'm like, come here, bird. And there's a man in the corner. who I can only think, my guess is, like, coke, I don't know. I don't know what he's doing, it's, I don't know, crack, whatever crack is, it's probably that. [00:19:03] So, I don't know, I'm not a drug expert, I've never been in narcotics, I don't know. But he's, like, in the corner and he's, like, doing, I was, like, okay, I'm just going to, like, not look at what's happening, cause I don't care, I'm just, Hi, I'm just getting the bird, I'm, like, don't, like, sorry don't mind me. [00:19:19] And yeah, he didn't like that. But I did get the bird, and then I didn't know what to do with the bird. So I have the bird now, I'm like, oh, what do I do now? So I was going to walk back to my husband and tell him to get in the car.  [00:19:33] Jason: Yeah, we were seven floors up. You had no idea where I was.  [00:19:36] Sarah: No, I didn't. I was just going to walk around until I found you. [00:19:39] But I had the bird in my hands. And I was going to go back to my husband and then say, like, I guess we have to figure out what to do with this bird. We have a bird now. But this woman, she was on the street and she's like, Oh, hi. She was like, excuse me, do you need help? And I said, I don't know. [00:19:54] Can, do you know what to do with an injured bird? And she said, actually, yes I do. And I said, Oh my God, thank God. Because I didn't know what I was going to do with this bird. And she said, Oh, you have to take it to whatever on earth she said. And she's like, I can do that because I guess she works there or something. [00:20:11] So she's like, oh, I'll take it in tomorrow. She's like if you give me the bird So then she had this whole bird probably ate  [00:20:18] Jason: the bird. She's probably some homeless person that ate the bird.  [00:20:21] Sarah: He was not a homeless person. It was a couple.  [00:20:23] Jason: Okay.  [00:20:24] Sarah: There was a couple they had a dog.  [00:20:26] Jason: Okay, meanwhile, I'm coming down an elevator. [00:20:30] It lets me out on the first floor of this parking structure, does not let me into the parking structure. There's no, like, it just exits the building. So I exit the parking building and it locks me out of the building. So I can't even go back in and I'm like trying to find her. I have no idea where she is. [00:20:49] And so I'm calling her and yeah  [00:20:53] we ended up talking, didn't we?  [00:20:54] Sarah: No, I called you.  [00:20:55] Jason: Yeah, you called me.  [00:20:56] Sarah: Then so the lady takes the bird and now I have no bird, which is great and the bird is safe. And now I'm thinking, okay, let me just, I didn't realize it was as tall. I really did not know that the building was that tall. [00:21:08] So I figured, Oh, there's probably like three levels, whatever. I'll just walk around and find the car. It won't be hard. Well, I'm walking around and I'm realizing, Oh, okay. Well, this just keeps going. Yeah. And you  [00:21:18] Jason: were wearing the worst shoes on the planet.  [00:21:19] Sarah: Worst shoes. I was wearing a  [00:21:21] Jason: Okay. Let me explain this. [00:21:23] They can't see your outfit right now. Sarah looks like sex on wheels. Like, her outfit is hot. Like, this is a hot dress. This is like a form fitting store dress. I bought this for her. She looks really good in this. Sorry. And she's wearing these high heels. [00:21:39] She's wearing these high heels like Louboutin, whatever they're called. And they're like, did I buy you those?  [00:21:46] Sarah: That pair? Yes.  [00:21:48] Jason: Okay. Yeah, I bought her these shoes and they're wicked uncomfortable.  [00:21:51] Sarah: They're so uncomfortable.  [00:21:52] Jason: Like whenever she wears them on a date.  [00:21:53] Sarah: Christian Louboutin, I have to say something about him. [00:21:55] He either hates women or he has no idea what women's feet are like.  [00:21:59] Jason: I don't know, but he's laughing. Or both. He's laughing all the way to the bank, whatever. Because they're not cheap. So, she's wearing these shoes that she can't even walk around in. And you're going to, there's no way she's going to go up seven floors of parking. [00:22:12] Sarah: I was on the third floor.  [00:22:14] Jason: Yeah.  [00:22:15] Sarah: Yeah, I got to the third floor and then I realized, oh, okay, so then I called you.  [00:22:19] Jason: Yeah, and then she eventually finds me. We get. You need to go back up to the car because I didn't grab your purse. Because  [00:22:26] Sarah: he left my purse in the car.  [00:22:28] Jason: Because I should have been psychic and known that she needed me to grab her purse. [00:22:32] Right guys. And so we go back up, but he had to let me back into the building because I was locked out and their thing wouldn't work to let me back in with my parking pass thing. So she comes down to the first floor, opens it up, lets me in. We begin in the elevator, we go back up the top floor. [00:22:47] I'm like, what were you thinking? And she's like, what were you thinking? You didn't grab my purse. You left my purse. I'm like, you're way more important than the purse, woman. And you're like going around crazy homeless people and like trying to save a bird.  [00:23:03] Sarah: It was saved.  [00:23:04] Jason: So  [00:23:05] Sarah: It was saved.  [00:23:06] Jason: Okay, good job. You did it. [00:23:08] Good job. You're like  [00:23:09] Sarah: We've been saving lots of animals.  [00:23:11] Jason: I think there's a Bible verse where Jesus says something or God says something about like your life is worth more than many sparrows or something like that. Yeah. So I don't know. Some of you don't know what the verse is.  [00:23:24] Sarah: I must've missed class that day. [00:23:26] Jason: Yeah, exactly. So anyway, we go up to the car, get this, come back down, we exit that same exit down on the first floor and I'm looking around, I'm like, this is not a great area. No, it was not.  [00:23:37] Sarah: It was bad.  [00:23:37] Jason: There's some rough characters and like, they're walking around and like,  [00:23:41] Sarah: bleh. In fact, we went to the comedy club and one of the comedians, he said, so now I have a bully and he's a homeless man and the same homeless man, he like, hangs out right outside the comedy club and he said, I'm here all the time. [00:23:52] And now the homeless man is like harassing me every single time. And he's like, so now I have a bully who's a homeless man. He's like, what do I do about that?  [00:24:01] Jason: Yeah, this is great. This is great. So  [00:24:05] Sarah: yeah.  [00:24:06] Jason: Yeah. So I may be able to keep Sarah safe from her bird rescuing adventures in the future. We'll see.  [00:24:13] Sarah: Stop the car. [00:24:15] When I tell you to stop, just stop the car.  [00:24:16] Jason: You still would have gotten out. I didn't want you to get out. We could have come back.  [00:24:20] Sarah: Oh, no. It could have died in the meantime. What if it went in the street? It tried to go in the street. I had to stop it.  [00:24:27] Jason: All right. I would rather a little bird die than my wife. [00:24:31] Sarah: So that's okay. Yeah. But I don't feel like I feel like there's a third option.  [00:24:36] Jason: Men, you know what I'm thinking right now? You know.  [00:24:40] Sarah: They're like, what is wrong with her?  [00:24:42] Jason: They don't think what's wrong with it. They just go, that's what women do. Like, and yeah, and guys understand. So.  [00:24:49] Sarah: We have to save things. [00:24:51] Jason: Okay, so, should we wrap this up? Anything else we should have? I didn't know we were going into this whole date, but I have a date planned for this weekend. It's the one that I thought had been the previous weekend. So we're, I'm taking her out again, but men plan some dates, show some leadership. Don't wait till she asks you to do things. [00:25:10] Try and Be proactive and find ways to do things before she asks you right. And if she's asked you to do things multiple times, you probably are being a lazy bum. Comfort ease and that's feminine, right? Everybody loves to see a woman in comfort in with her pillows and cushions laying out attractively but guys. They love to see guys at work, like they, man, you do the work. [00:25:34] If you are just sitting around watching football games all day and being a bum, then you are actually in your feminine as a guy and men are men of action. Get some stuff done, do some things, be proactive, improve yourself. So that's all I'll say about that. All right. So yeah. And join our program and get, join our program. [00:25:56] Get a coach like me. That's going to call you out on your BS and help you step into a mass more masculine frame. We will crush it more in business. And I guarantee that you will be getting more respect, more love, more sex, more, all the good stuff. If you show up and if you like show up and be the person you were meant to be. [00:26:16] So, we, I will challenge you to do that. I've worked with relationship coaches. I've got a coach for a marriage coach right now. I've got we've had business coaches like you need to be constantly improving yourself. So, I will make sure that you're doing that if you join our program. All right. [00:26:33] That's it for today, right? All right. Until next time, everybody to our mutual growth. If you would like to be part of the adventure with door, grow, Go to doorgrow. com. Check us out. Book a call with us. We'll find out if we can help you. And if you are wanting to be a little bit more connected to our free community, you can go to doorgrowclub. com and join our free Facebook group. And that's it. Bye everyone. [00:27:01] 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!  [00:27:27] 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.

Man can learn valuable lessons from man's best friend…  In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about their passion project of fostering dogs and how business owners can learn about resilience from these adorable rescue pups. You'll Learn [02:56] The story of Chance the dog [11:09] What does this have to do with running a business? [18:39] Jason and Sarah's foster dogs Tweetables “You will look back on this as being such an easy thing for you to deal with in the present moment.” “If you're going to go through tough stuff, it's a lot better to have the right support around you.” “You're going to make mistakes, but that's the price of tuition in business.” “We're all doing the best we can with our current limited capacity and knowledge that we possessed in that moment.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: If this dog can go through everything that he went through and still push through, whatever is happening in your business, whatever is happening in your life, whatever is happening in your marriage, in your friendships, in your relationships, you can push through it.  [00:00:14] Jason: Yeah, just tell yourself you're not yet at Maynard level. [00:00:17] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:35] 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 we're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, founder, [00:01:16] cOO of DoorGrow. [00:01:18] And now let's get into the show. All right So we were thinking what we should talk about today and one of Sarah's strong passions Is dogs. I think Sarah likes dogs more than people. Is that fair?  [00:01:34] Sarah: That's accurate.  [00:01:35] Jason: Okay, she's an intj. Any of you that are familiar with myers briggs intjs typically like animals more than people. I don't know why, and I like dogs too, so not a fan of cats I'm allergic to them and I think they're smelly. [00:01:51] Sorry, all you cat lovers out there, but I'm more of a dog person. You can see in the background here is. Hey buddy, who's smelling around. This is a dog that we're fostering right now. And the working title for this dog is Hans. That's they give them names, but this is a dog we're fostering and it's such a sweet dog. [00:02:13] And so I wanted, this is a passion of Sarah's. We've been fostering some dogs and we've had, had some difficult times fostering dogs and we've had some good times, you know, let's, should we talk about our first foster?  [00:02:27] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. If that didn't turn us off to fostering...  [00:02:31] it was like worst case scenario, I would say. [00:02:35] Jason: So Sarah's dog, one of our dogs, he's a large dog and he's a Pitbull. American.  [00:02:44] Sarah: He's an American Pitbull. American Pitbull.  [00:02:45] Jason: Terrier. 100%. We got him DNA tested, purebred. And then we have another little mutt that we can talk about that we got.  [00:02:53] Sarah: That we adopted. Well, that one was after the whole Chance thing. [00:02:56] Jason: Yeah, totally. So we decided to, like foster, we brought a dog in and this dog's name was Chance and he was a pit bull. We thought maybe they'd get along but we didn't know Chance's background. We didn't know Chance's history. The previous people made it sound like he was a good dog sort of, but they really, I think we're kind of keeping secrets from us and gave us a bunch of rules. [00:03:21] Like, be careful with other dogs and like separate for a while and we did everything  [00:03:25] Sarah: that's always the rule.  [00:03:26] Jason: Sure.  [00:03:26] Sarah: Careful with other dogs be separate for a while. Slow introductions. Never feed together. That's yeah, those are always the rules. You say that as if that was like a red flag. [00:03:35] That was not a red flag.  [00:03:36] Jason: Okay. [00:03:37] Sarah: They tell you that with every dog.  [00:03:38] Jason: They had to have known that this dog had some violent tendencies or some history. So long story short, this dog bit Sarah. They gaslit us and blamed, it bit her arm. And they were like, "oh, well, there was food involved" or something like this. [00:03:53] We're like, okay, maybe it was us. We'll be more careful. So we still kept the dog. And we had the dog for like a month.  [00:04:00] Sarah: We struggled with that too. Because we really, we, right then and there, we thought, okay. I think we're done. I think he's got to go back. Someone else can foster him. [00:04:08] Yeah. And they kind of talked us into it. Like, "oh, well, can you just hang on to him until I find another place for him to go? Because like, nobody can take him right now."  [00:04:18] Jason: I don't think there's any safe place for them to go. So later. At this point later, it had been a month, we had integrated the dogs, they were hanging out, they're on the couch together, like it didn't seem to be a problem. [00:04:31] It was kind of, but I think really was like a working truce or something. I think this dog had a history of maybe being involved in dog fights, something like this would be my guess. Because some dogs will usually get together. And they'll do a little bit of have a little tiff, but they're not trying to kill each other, right? [00:04:48] They'll, like, bite, they'll do something, they'll give a warning, and they'll be done with it. So, I had come home from a walk, Parker came up to me, I played with him a little bit, he did a little playful sort of growl with a toy or whatever, the other dog gets off the couch. This dog had no expression. He's just headed towards Parker. [00:05:07] Parker saw him and it was like, it was on and saw him coming towards me. And they just locked up and they got into this horrible dog fight. Like, and we have a long entryway into our home, like a big hallway, like entryway that runs kind of all the way to the back of the house almost. [00:05:26] Right. And this was. in our family room towards the back of the house and the fight continued all the way to the front door. Like it was just, it was a disaster. This dog Chance and Parker were fighting and we were trying to break it up. Sarah was on with Parker trying to pull him and I was trying to get Chance off and Sarah, you were freaking out if you don't mind me saying. [00:05:51]  [00:05:51] Sarah: I mean, yeah. Like, rightfully so.  [00:05:54] Jason: Yeah. She's freaking out. And so it, yeah it was interesting. So there's blood everywhere. Blood flying all over the place, dogs are locked up and fighting, biting at each other and so then I, yeah. You know, if I had my gun or knife on me, dog probably would be dead. [00:06:09] I couldn't figure out what else to do. And we weren't going to let him kill our dog. And he was much stronger than Parker. So, we didn't want Parker to die. Right. So, but what I did in that moment is I was like, I had done a little bit of jujitsu training in the past. So I was like, Oh, I'm going to choke him out. [00:06:26] I was trying to, I first tried to lift the legs up. Cause that's what people say. I didn't, that wasn't really a great idea because I lift his back legs up and to try and pull him off. And he just turned and latched onto my leg. He turned really quickly, latched onto my leg, bit my leg through my pants. I have permanent bite mark on my right leg and had latched on my leg. [00:06:49] through my pants and was biting me. Then Parker was coming at him. So he turned back to Parker. And then I use that moment when he came at my leg towards me to get my arm underneath his neck and then to choke him out, just like in martial arts. So I did a blood choke and I figured he's probably got veins going through his neck to his brain, just like all of us humans. [00:07:13] And it choked him out. And then He passed out. I was holding him in my arm and I picked him up and was choking him out because he eventually released Parker and I was choking him out. I'm holding this limp dog in my arm. And then his Parker was latched onto one of his legs or something. And Sarah was like, "what do I do? What do I do? He won't let go!" And I was like, Sarah has a martial arts background, so I figured you knew how to do a choke. So I was like, "choke him out. You got to choke him out!" So she had to grab Parker and get him to release. And and he did. Parker really was trying to protect us. That was obvious. [00:07:52] But Parker was losing, like it wasn't going well for him. Parker, the other dog had some bites on him, but he was okay. But Parker had to go to the hospital. Like he was really messed up. He had to get surgery. His ear was like torn in half. Yeah, his  [00:08:09] Sarah: ear was torn and then he had a chunk ripped out of his neck. [00:08:13] Like the back of his neck. Yeah, it was ugly. Yeah, it was not good.  [00:08:16] Jason: So, while I had Chance in the choke hold and limp, I carried him through the house to the backyard and put him into the backyard. And shut the door so we could just keep them separate. And then, yeah, we were just, I was totally scared of that dog after that. [00:08:33] But that's what we did. And eventually I think we just got him into a crate or something. So he wasn't in the backyard.  [00:08:39] Sarah: Yeah. No, I had to go get him.  [00:08:41] Jason: Yeah.  [00:08:42] Sarah: Into the crate. Because he was like, I don't think he's going to want to see me. I just choked him out. No. No, that's probably a good call. [00:08:48] Jason: He probably wouldn't want to attack me. Yeah. Because I was pretty rough with him. So, that's my adventure in choking out a pit bull. Yeah.  [00:08:58] Sarah: So I think you never really know what you're going to do until you're like in the moment.  [00:09:02] Jason: Yeah.  [00:09:03] Sarah: And then your adrenaline kicks in and sometimes you know what you're going to do or you think you know what you're going to do ahead of time and you find out there's no plan. [00:09:12] There's no plan. And the they do tell you like, oh, lift the dog's hind legs over its head and it will release. Yes, and  [00:09:20] two out of two times it released and then latched on to.  [00:09:25] Jason: Yeah, they don't like that it's being lifted up.  [00:09:27] Sarah: No.  [00:09:27] Jason: So, I mean, that was an interesting moment because I went into tunnel vision. [00:09:31] This is how guys brains work. We're generally singular focused. This is why they send us to war, right? We can just focus on one thing. So I wasn't really particularly traumatized by the event. I mean, it was, but I was like, okay, I'm in mission mode. I'm doing what I need to do with the dog and that's it. [00:09:47] Yeah. And then we got to clean up because there's blood everywhere, all through our home. Yeah, it was like a freaking emergency. Walls, everywhere. It was awful. There's blood everywhere.  [00:09:53] Sarah: Everywhere. And then I was covered in it. Because I was holding  [00:09:57] Jason: Parker and I had a white t shirt and then  [00:09:59] Sarah: when we like I got Parker in the office and Chance was outside because Jason put him out there and Jason looked at me and I'm literally like from here down I was just drenched. [00:10:12] Jason: You were holding Parker and he was the more wounded. Drenched. Yeah. [00:10:15] Sarah: And he's going "oh my god. Oh my god." He's like, "Sarah, there's freaking blood" It's not mine. It's not mine. Like, I'm okay. I lost my pinky nail. That got ripped off. So for a while I had no pinky nail that, that was not fun.  [00:10:27] Jason: Like your actual nail.  [00:10:28] Sarah: Like my actual, everybody says, okay. [00:10:30] Let me clear something up. Everybody says, Oh, those aren't real nails. These are real. These are actually attached to my real nails on my finger. So like underneath you can kind of see,  [00:10:41] Jason: yeah, there's like,  [00:10:42] Sarah: there are real nails here. And then yes, I make them longer, but it's not just a tip. Like if you pull off one of these nails, it is attached to your real nail and your real nail will come off with it. [00:10:55] Jason: You had a flesh pinky, like there was no nail for a while. Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of odd.  [00:11:00] Sarah: Yeah, it was horrible. Yeah that, that was awful.  [00:11:03] Jason: Yeah, and it took a while for my bite mark to heal. So, yeah. So, so that was our first adventure.  [00:11:09] Sarah: Let me pause here and say, cause I know some of you guys are going, "why the freaking hell are they talking about any of this? It sounds awful. And it's like, oh my God, I don't even want to keep listening to the episode." Keep listening. Because I think one of the things that I would say about particularly about this situation that we had to go through is sometimes in life, sometimes also in business, you gotta go through some shit. [00:11:34] And you're going to be in some situations that you definitely did not plan for, that you've never been in before, and that Maybe you don't know what to do, and in the moment, the only thing you can do is whatever comes to your mind, whatever you can think of, and then, it's afterwards, then there's the PTSD, so then you just have to heal from the PTSD, but I also would say it's fair that every entrepreneur has a little PTSD from their business.  [00:12:07] Jason: Yeah, for sure.  [00:12:08] Sarah: Yeah  [00:12:09] Jason: Well, because entrepreneurs we take bigger risks. We get to experience you know issues like cash flow problems or staffing issues or team members that losing faith in us and leaving or team members stealing from us, right? [00:12:24] Sarah: Having to fire somebody.  [00:12:25] Jason: If you're working for a boss you don't generally have to experience a lot of this stuff that you experience as a business owner. We're choosing into a higher level of stress, trauma, difficulty, which is why it's not for everybody when not everybody starts a business. And but yeah, it's important to heal from these things and to level up from these things and learn from these things so that you can get to that next level of capacity to be able to deal with that next level of stress that exists in business. And I tell clients this all the time. [00:12:55] They're currently dealing with some problem they think is so hard and they're at kind of a lower level and I tell them, someday, you will look back on this as being such an easy thing for you to deal with in the present moment, you'll be like, Oh man, I can't believe that was so hard for me then. I'm dealing with such bigger challenges and bigger level, higher level things now. And that's encouraging for them. They're like, Oh, that's good news. They're like, and they know they're like, yeah, someday this will be easy. I'm like, someday, this hiring stuff will be easy. Someday this, you know, process stuff that you're dealing with will be easy. [00:13:29] Because you're going to increase your capacity. You're going to learn, you're going to level up. It's the price of tuition and business. So let me take a quick break. I'm going to share our sponsor for this episode, which is Vendoroo. So if you are dealing with constant stress, the hassle of maintenance coordination, and that's an issue for you, check out Vendoroo. They're your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish, triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection and coordination. It's built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. [00:14:08] Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today at Vendoroo, V E N D O R O O dot AI slash doorGrow and experience maintenance done right. I was actually, we were hanging out with the Vendoroo guys and I was telling them the story. Because we were telling them how we were fostering a dog and we had to get home, you know, from dinner. [00:14:29] And then they were, we somehow shifted in that story and they were just like, so interested. So, but yeah, so if you want to check out DoorGrow. com, we actually just put this up yesterday because we've been fostering and taking care of dogs and our team are really excited about this. I had the idea with one of my team members, we did a secret project. [00:14:51] Yeah, because we knew Sarah would probably like it. So we put up a dog page. So you can see the dogs that we've like, fostered. I don't think we put Chance on the page. Did we? I don't think we put Chance on the page.  [00:15:03] Sarah: No, we didn't. No. Chance was not a great story. But Parker isn't on there either. And Parker is the OG. [00:15:09] Jason: Parker's the OG. We can add Parker.  [00:15:11] Sarah: Parker's like the mascot of everything.  [00:15:14] Jason: So, anyway, check that out right at the top, you'll see a little dog emoji and it says dogs on our website. And you can see, you know, a little bit of the passion we have for helping out dogs. All right. So we told the story of Chance. [00:15:27] And you would think after that we would be done. And I think we were for a little while. It was like, yeah, kind of free, especially for you to like, get past the PTSD of that. You beat yourself up quite a bit about it, which you can be good at times, right?  [00:15:43] Sarah: I'm really, yeah. Yeah. Because on the DISC profile, I'm a DC, so I'm super critical of everything and everyone, including myself. [00:15:54] Yeah.  [00:15:54] So yeah.  [00:15:56] Jason: Which good operators are hard time.  [00:15:58] Sarah: And hard time with that. And I, like I, I internalized a lot of that. I took blame for a lot of that and I had to just kind of work, work my way through that. And it kind of goes back to anytime that you deal with a hard situation, it might be in business or otherwise, you know, you're going to reflect on the situation and some people are really good at externalizing and saying like, none of that was my fault. [00:16:25] You know, I have like no ownership in that whatsoever. Some of people, they take all of the ownership and are really bad at externalizing. So I think you have to kind of find the middle ground. Like what am I responsible for? What am I accountable for? You know, how can I learn? I'm going to learn from that. [00:16:43] And for me it was the, it hands down, it was the scariest moment of my life. Most terrifying moment of my entire life. And I've been in some pretty scary situations back when I did property management. This puts it to shame, absolute shame. But I think it's really just, it's finding the middle ground and figuring out what am I responsible for and how can I learn. [00:17:06] Jason: I think also, I think that some people are kinder to themselves and have more grace for themselves. And I think it's important to remember, like all of us have been through tough stuff and we may beat ourselves up for it, but beating ourselves up doesn't really have any saving power. It doesn't make us better to beat ourselves up. [00:17:26] What we can do though, is we can recognize, you know, in that moment. And based on the decisions we made we were making the best decisions we knew to make at that time And I think you know, we can all afford ourselves a little bit of grace. You're going to make mistakes and screw things up in business. [00:17:41] You're going to fuck up and you're going to make bad choices. I've made some big mistakes like in business. You know, I did a whole episode on my two million dollar mistake or whatever you're going to make mistakes, but that's the price of tuition in business and you keep going. But I think also we need to be willing to afford ourselves some grace and recognize we're all doing the best we can with our current limited capacity and knowledge that we possessed in that moment. [00:18:08] And so if you knew better, you would do better, right? We are definitely going to behave differently having had that lesson with Chance with other dogs, right? We're a little bit more attuned to their behavior. their temperament, like how to integrate them. Like we're paying more attention. [00:18:25] Like we just, we have a different level of awareness and that's what happens in business. If you can move past the trauma and the difficulty and you go right back at it, you pick yourself back up. You dust yourself off. You're going to learn from the experience. So should we talk about some other dogs real quick? [00:18:42] All right. Who else? Well, let's first, let's go to the OG, right? So Parker's my baby. Parker is the best dog I've ever had. And I don't know if there's ever going to be a dog that is better than Parker. I just don't, I said that about my first pit bull and then Parker, I love him so much more than my first pit bull. [00:19:01] . So Parker, I got him 2016, so he's like eight now. And he his mom was a family pet who got out of the yard one day and got herself pregnant. So she went, had a good old time. Her owner found out that she was pregnant and decided to drop her off at the pound because he didn't want a pregnant dog. [00:19:25] Sarah: So, you know, instead of like spay, neuter, that whole thing, he's like, yeah, I'll just take her to the pound.  [00:19:29] Jason: Let's get rid of her.  [00:19:30] Like, while pregnant.  [00:19:32] Sarah: Still going to find you, bud. Like you're out there, I'll get you one day. So dropped her off at the pound. Pregnant dogs should not be at the pound. They will, you know. [00:19:40] Get very sick. So, they moved her to a foster. She had a bunch of puppies and Parker was one of those puppies. So I saved him and he's my baby. He's fiercely loyal and protective of me, even when he probably shouldn't be. Sometimes with Jason, he's protective of me. Like you'll smack my butt, and Parker does not like that.  [00:20:04] Jason: I do smack Sarah's butt butt, everybody. Honest confessions. Husbands, if you are not smacking your wife's butt occasionally, something's wrong. Letting you know. So.  [00:20:15] Sarah: Yeah. But Parker doesn't know. He doesn't know that. He doesn't know it's friendly and playful and loving. No. He knows hitting is bad. [00:20:21] I [00:20:22] Jason: have to do it when he's not nearby.  [00:20:24] Sarah: Yeah. To be fair, I can't hit myself either, so, like, if a bug lands on me or something, I hit myself.  [00:20:30] Jason: Yeah, he starts getting around you and, like, trying to, like, climb on you and, like, protect you from yourself, yeah.  [00:20:36] Sarah: He does.  [00:20:37] Jason: And he'll get, try and get in between us and, like, prevent me from getting near her, yeah. [00:20:41] He does.  [00:20:42] Sarah: He does. So Parker was the first dog that I had ever rescued.  [00:20:45] Jason: He's like a nanny dog.  [00:20:46] Sarah: He is a nanny dog. We call him the nanny dog. He is. And we say, when he's doing his thing, I'm like, oh, he's nanny dogging again. Yeah. So, Parker, we've got Parker. And then after the whole Chance thing, we took a break for about eight months. [00:21:01] And then I thought, okay, well, what if we do a smaller dog? Because after that, Parker was more selective with bigger dogs. Rightfully so. That's his version of PTSD. So I thought, okay, well, maybe a smaller dog could work. And that is where Captain came in. So Captain just for reference, size reference, Parker varies between 80 and 85 pounds. [00:21:24] Jason: Big dog.  [00:21:24] Sarah: Captain is 14, 14 pounds.  [00:21:27] Jason: Yeah, Parker's tall like a lab, but built like a pit bull.  [00:21:30] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, so Captain is only 14 pounds. He's a little baby. He's about  [00:21:36] Jason: tiny  [00:21:37] Sarah: three or four ish He was we got him from a shelter about like an hour and a half away an hour 45 minutes away and Someone had him and his two brothers and decided they were done with him So they shoved them in a crate and they dropped them off at an animal shelter overnight  [00:21:56] Jason: Yeah, because it says you're not allowed to leave animals here. [00:21:59] So they secretly did it in the middle of the night, left the crate there.  [00:22:03] Sarah: On the doorstep. So the staff came in at 7 a. m. and found three dogs shoved in the crate. Huh. Super, super, don't be like these people, be better, okay? So, then him and Parker actually worked really well together and Like Captain just loves Parker so much. [00:22:21] He just loves him so much. Like I take Parker to the chiropractor and Captain stays here. And when I come back with Parker, Captain is way more excited to see Parker than he is to see me. He loves me so much, but he's like, just  [00:22:35] Jason: he's jumping all  [00:22:36] Sarah: over the moon about Parker. So Captain's our second rescue. [00:22:40] Jason: And Captain's, he's kind of a mutt. He, we did a DNA test on him.  [00:22:43] Sarah: Oh, no, he's a he's absolutely a mutt.  [00:22:45] Jason: Yeah, he's got Rat Terrier. He's got...  [00:22:48] Sarah: I think if you could do him in order, probably not.  [00:22:50] Jason: I don't know. Rat Terrier was probably the largest.  [00:22:52] Sarah: Rat Terrier is the largest. What's next? Then American Pit Bull Terrier, which is why he's brindle on the top. [00:22:57] Jason: Oh, yeah.  [00:22:58] Sarah: Huh. Yeah. Okay. Yep. American Pit Bull Terrier. Then Super Mutt.  [00:23:03] Jason: Yeah, that's what the That's a breed. Super Mutt.  [00:23:05] Sarah: I'm like, oh, wow. They call it a Super Mutt. Okay. Okay. It's like 14 percent Super Mutt. Huh. I think. Boston Terrier, Yorkshire Terrier, And then Dachshund, which is what we're told he was. [00:23:19] Jason: Yeah, and he's little. He's really little. He'll get in our face. All the time. Alright, so, next dog.  [00:23:27] Sarah: Yeah, so, we've had Captain for a little over a year now, and then I thought, okay let's foster. We won't adopt another one, but like, we'll foster, we'll, you know, help train it, kinda get it back on its feet, do something good, get it ready for a family. [00:23:42] And that's where Maynard came in.  [00:23:44] Jason: Mmm. Maynard.  [00:23:45] Sarah: That one, that, he's heartbreaking. So if any of you guys had followed us on social media, like, a lot of people I guess were checking in with you, like, how's Maynard? How's Maynard?  [00:23:55] Jason: Yeah it was hard to even look at him and not get emotional. This dog was so emaciated, so starving. [00:24:03] It was a bulldog. They found him in the, in San Antonio, on the street. And this is like in the height of summer. In 104 degree Texas heat, which, if you know anything about bulldogs, they can't breathe because their face is smushed. He was basically a skeleton with fur. If you see pictures or any of our, if you see it, you'll be like, Oh my gosh, like, how's this dog alive? [00:24:27] Yeah, he was covered in like over a hundred ticks. Yeah and he had all sorts of diseases and problems related to that.  [00:24:36] Sarah: Like lesions and wounds. Yeah, he had wounds.  [00:24:38] Jason: Burns it looked like all over his body? [00:24:40] Sarah: He may have hidden under a car that was hot and like burned himself on the hot car trying to find some shade. [00:24:47] Jason: Yeah. [00:24:47] Sarah: And cool himself down. Yeah  [00:24:49] Jason: It's super sad.  [00:24:51] Sarah: This dog was in bad shape. He was 25 pounds and he's supposed to be probably at least 50 or 60.  [00:24:57] Jason: Yeah, they spent And a whole evening trying to pull all the ticks off of him, like they had to give him a blood transfusion or he would have died. Like he was just, he was in bad shape,  [00:25:07] Sarah: He had two tick borne illnesses. [00:25:10] He had pneumonia. He needed a blood transfusion just to survive this. He was obviously severely emaciated and severely dehydrated. And eating, you can't just take a dog like that and shove a bunch of food like Edla, she was like, oh, we could just feed him a lot. And I'm like, you'll kill him. [00:25:29] He'll die. Yeah. So your body, very what happens when you're that far along is muscle atrophy. So your body will eat the muscle. So he had literally no muscle left on him anywhere.  [00:25:42] Jason: He didn't hardly walk  [00:25:42] Sarah: at all.  [00:25:43] Jason: He would just crumple over like he would like, yeah, he would try to walk. [00:25:46] You fall the time, man.  [00:25:47] Sarah: But he would try. He was really like, he tried. You'd think that a dog like this with this many problems would just say like, fuck it, I'm out. Like, I probably would. If I was up for it, I'd be like, alright, just, like, where's the plug? Pull it. Let's do it. But he did not. He did not want to give up. [00:26:04] He did not want to die.  [00:26:06] Jason: We had him for about a week?  [00:26:07] Sarah: We had him for a week. Yeah, we had him for a week.  [00:26:09] Jason: And then, like, he was in bad shape. I don't even think they should have let him come to us, but they didn't know all the stuff that was wrong with them. They  [00:26:15] Sarah: didn't, yeah, they didn't know everything because they didn't do the full like, scan. [00:26:19] Jason: So we had him for a week and took care of him, but we started to notice he was like, he was getting worse. So then we we reached out to the foster organization and then they took Maynard to the doctors and they were, like, he was in bad shape. His whole esophagus had been destroyed so he couldn't, like, move food down. [00:26:38] They've, we've, later they figured out, well, he just needs to sit upright, and like, gravity, and maybe that'll heal over time, I don't know, but he had a whole bunch of issues, but before they figured that out, they were like, this dog is in such bad shape. He's not really getting food down.  [00:26:53] Sarah: He's. Well, they didn't know what exactly. [00:26:54] Yeah, so they were about to put him down. When I brought him back to the vet. So they started doing some tests on him. They said he actually lost weight and I'm like that doesn't make sense. Like he's been with me for a week. He's eaten every day and he wants his food. Like he wants it, desperately wants his food. [00:27:11] And that doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. How did he lose weight? And they're like, I don't know. So then they found out that he had. A very rare parasitic infection that attacked his liver. He has heart disease. His pneumonia has gotten worse. And then they were trying to figure out the whole, why did he lose weight type situation? [00:27:38] And they ended up doing a scan. They did not think he was going to make it. They just, they didn't know. There was so much going on with him. Like issues as long as my arm, the list was as long as my arm and they didn't think he was going to make it. So the president of the organization, she let me know, she's like, I have to make a really tough decision right now. [00:27:59] Jason: And they put a lot of money towards this dog. The whole, like, a lot, thousands of dollars.  [00:28:03] Sarah: It was, I think his treatment was somewhere, All of it was like over like 7, 000 so far.  [00:28:09] Jason: Yeah, they were really doing everything they could to take care of this dog. But she was at the point where she was like, I think we're going to have to... yeah. [00:28:16] Sarah: Oh, and he was anemic on top of all of that. So he couldn't keep heat in.  [00:28:19] Jason: Okay.  [00:28:20] Sarah: Poor guy.  [00:28:20] Jason: So like, they were about to put him down. Right.  [00:28:25] Sarah: Yeah they decided like it doesn't seem like there's anything like he's too like he's just too far gone and The vet came in the room like with the shot and they said all right, let's give him like one last really awesome meal So they gave him mac and cheese and he Scarfed it down like you wouldn't even believe and that whole day and the whole day before he wasn't moving. [00:28:49] He wasn't walking. He wasn't really interested in anything. He was just very lethargic, very tired. He didn't, he did not care. Mac and cheese, he was like, what is that? Give me all of it. Perked right up for the mac and cheese. So the mac and cheese literally saved his life because he was minutes from being put down. [00:29:08] Said that she has never been that close to putting a dog down and then didn't do it.  [00:29:13] Jason: Yeah.  [00:29:14] Yeah, but that gave her hope that, Hey, there's something here. There's some life in him. And he's, You know, he's motivated for some reason.  [00:29:22] Sarah: Yeah. And the vet who was going to euthanize him then, she said, there is something weird with this dog. [00:29:30] Like, it's just, there's something off. We don't know, like, is it okay if we do like the full scan? And she's like, if you think it'll help him, like, if you think that we can figure this out and save him so that he has some quality of life. So  [00:29:45] Jason: because of the mac and cheese, and seeing something that seemed a little bit off, because that like, he was so excited about that and he was eating it, they then did and he perked up, they did the scan and they found what? [00:29:59] Sarah: So in dogs, they call it a mega esophagus. So essentially, his esophagus doesn't work. They think that he may have, back like when he was dumped on the side of the road, and also, I should, we should have said this, he was intact, so we think that he was used for breeding. And then when he got too far along, these fuckers dumped him on the side of the road. [00:30:21] So they're number two on the hit list. I will find them and they're not even far from me. I will go get them. So they dumped him on the side of the road. When he was on the side of the road they think that he either ate something or drank something that was toxic and messed up his whole esophagus. [00:30:38] Yeah. [00:30:39] So that's why he was eating food, but it was all impacted in his esophagus. Hardly any of it was actually getting through to his stomach.  [00:30:47] Jason: Yeah,  [00:30:48] Sarah: so they found that out and Bruni the president of the organization said well wait a second when he was with his fosters like he had a bowel movement So something had to have gotten through like what can we do? [00:30:59] She's like, what if we like prop them up. They have like a little Bailey chair, but they didn't have one there. So they made a makeshift one out of like blankets and cardboard.  [00:31:07] They're like, what if we do like a makeshift Bailey chair, test it for 24 hours, see if any food actually gets through into the stomach because that is a treatable condition. [00:31:17] Now, if they're born with it and then that's really hard. But he wasn't born with it. Something destroyed his esophagus. So they said, oh, that's like, it's a treatable condition. So what if we try this, give him 24 hours, and then he's got to show us that he can get some food and medication down into his stomach because all the medication for all of the problems, it wasn't even getting into his system. [00:31:46] Jason: Medicine, food, nothing was making it.  [00:31:48] Sarah: Nothing. No water. Like he had a couple bowel movements with us. So like Something must have, but not. Not the way he should have been. So after a 24 hour hold, he had a full stomach of food.  [00:32:02] Jason: Yeah, they figured out he just needed gravity. Like they just had to prop him up. [00:32:06] So he's sitting up like a human eating, you know, and he was perfectly happy to eat. Like he was a hungry dog. So then he went to be taken care of full time by the foster organization. Yeah [00:32:18] Sarah: He has multiple medications he has to eat like a very small strict  [00:32:23] Jason: And she has a lot of dogs at her place that she's taking care of so she asked if she had another foster. She said could you take this dog Silver? Yeah So then we got Silver was the next...  [00:32:33] Sarah: oh, wait. The thing I want to say about Maynard is that he had every reason to give up and he had every reason, multiple reasons. [00:32:43] Like he had like literally so many health problems.  [00:32:46] Jason: Yeah. And everybody around him had multiple reasons to give up on him. .  [00:32:48] Sarah: He had every reason to not trust humans and every reason to be like a nasty, vicious dog. And he just wasn't he was not he was so sweet and he loved to like just shove his little smush face into me And just nuzzle it and when it was in there, he still wasn't close enough He was still like pushing trying to get closer Because I think that was the first time he ever experienced love and even though he had every single reason stacked up against him. [00:33:19] Like the odds were not at all in his favor. There's no reason that this dog should technically be alive. It's only because he's so freaking stubborn. He did not want to give up on himself. Even through all of that, even through all of that, he didn't want to give up on himself. So when we were going through all of that, like with him, I was telling people like when I would run my scale calls on Fridays, my our operations call, I was telling people like. [00:33:45] If this dog can go through everything that he went through and still push through whatever is happening in your business, whatever is happening in your life, whatever is happening in your marriage, in your friendships, in your relationships, you can push through it. Because every single time that they thought they had the issue figured out, there were like five more issues that popped up with him. [00:34:08] Jason: Yeah, just tell yourself you're not yet at Maynard level. You can handle it though. He also had a really good support mechanism around him eventually, right? And I think that's also there's a little lesson in that is that you need If you're going to go through tough stuff, it's a lot better to have the right support around you and to have people that believe in you, even when you might feel like giving up, and that, you know, can see that you can be better. [00:34:36] And we need those. We need those people around us. And so if you don't have that in your business, it's probably feeling pretty hard because you're doing, you feel like it's all up to you and you're all on your own. And that's a dumb way to grow business. It just is. All right. Next dog.  [00:34:54] Sarah: Okay. So the medical foster that took Maynard after his second, third ER stint she said, Hey, like I, I cannot take another foster, but I have to take Maynard. [00:35:05] Can you take Silver? And then that gives me room to take Maynard. And I said, so Silver, like this is Austin Bulldog Rescue. They largely work with bulldogs. It's not only bulldogs, but most of them are bulldogs. Silver is not a bulldog. He looks like some sort of terrier. I think he had very terrier fur. But he was little, like 30 pounds. [00:35:28] Very high energy. He was probably like in his teenage phase. They also found him on the side of the road in San Antonio. The sad thing about him, though, is he had like, he was house trained. He had like house manners. So he lived in a house at one point. And Either escaped or was dumped, but he was hanging out with a pack of dogs and the bulldogs He was like, these are my friends and the rescue were saving all the dogs and they were like, okay There's like this other dog like what do we do? [00:35:58] And she's like, well, you can't leave him like come on he's an honorary bulldog now. So so they They fostered him, took him in, and then we had him. We had him for about a week, and he already had some applications coming in on him, and he got rehomed to a family that I think is a great fit for him. [00:36:17] Jason: Yeah.  [00:36:18] Sarah: They're such a good fit.  [00:36:19] Jason: Silver had a lot of energy. Yes. He was like doggy teenager. He had a ton of energy, super excited, loved running around. Yeah. Yeah.  [00:36:30] Sarah: And they're like, we want to go for a walk every day. And we like to go on hikes and we like to go camping and we'll bring the dogs. And I was like, Oh, he would like,  [00:36:37] Jason: he'll love that. [00:36:38] Sarah: He would love that. He would love that. And every dog that Silver saw, he wanted to play with every single one of them. And then they have another dog. So it was just figuring out, are those two going to be nice to each other? And they're great. He was very like respectful of her boundaries, which none of us had seen previous to that. [00:36:57] So that was really good. And they're doing great so far. And then. The woman that adopted him, she sends me pictures of him. Like, she's like, just so you know, he's doing great. I'm like, oh, thank you. Thanks for sending that.  [00:37:09] Jason: All right. Next.  [00:37:11] Sarah: Next is this guy behind me.  [00:37:13] Jason: Yeah.  [00:37:14] Sarah: Baby. [00:37:15] So we wanted to do another foster. Bulldogs are a lot of work, like so much work. And we went to a shelter that's local and we were looking, I was looking online for a dog that was not small, but also not large. So he's like 44 pounds ish. He's  [00:37:37] Jason: got a bit of a cough right now.  [00:37:39] Sarah: Yeah, he had kennel cough. [00:37:41] So we're. working on clearing that up with him and they don't know a whole lot about him. They found him as a stray in Round Rock but that's also so sad because he's so sweet and like he's house trained and he's got manners and I'm like, oh, Jason keeps saying he's like this somebody's like some family's dog like they must be missing their dog and I'm like, it was in the shelter for over a month. [00:38:06] So yeah, like Parker goes missing. I'm not sleeping until I find him.  [00:38:11] Jason: Sure. [00:38:11] Sarah: You know, I would there would be a bolo out on it everything like I would call the SWAT team like Everybody would be involved. So now we are fostering Hans and We're looking for a forever family for him. Although we might foster fail and keep them ourselves. [00:38:30] We'll see but we're That's what it called. It's foster fail.  [00:38:33] Jason: Oh. Yeah. This one's hard to not  [00:38:37] Sarah: The first day we got him, the two kids and Jason were already pushing me. They're like, we could just keep him.  [00:38:44] Jason: He's a special dog.  [00:38:45] Sarah: It didn't take long. They're like, we could just, and I thought I was going to be the one who was weak. [00:38:49] I thought I was going to be the one who says like, oh, we should keep him. Like, let's just keep him.  [00:38:54] Jason: Yeah.  [00:38:55] Sarah: And shockingly enough, I was the one that was like, yes, but like, we're fostering so we can help more dogs. And the three of them, they're like, but we can just keep him. He's so perfect. Aren't you perfect? [00:39:07] So if he gets along with our other two, then. I think we might keep them. We'll see. See what happens. So. All right. So there's our dog story. That's the current. That's what Jason wanted to talk about dog thing  [00:39:20] Jason: today. So, you know, gives you a little glimpse into, I guess, what? Our personal lives a little bit. [00:39:27] Some of the things that Sarah cares about that we care about. And yeah, so. Dogs. So if you like dogs, then maybe you enjoyed this episode and maybe you learned something. I don't know. All right. Well, I think that's it for today. Until next time to our mutual growth, everybody, if you're wanting to grow your property management business, you can use some extra support, then reach out to us. [00:39:50] You can check us out at doorgrow. com and be sure to join our free Facebook group. If you are a property management business owner or planning on starting a property management business in the near future, go to doorgrowclub.Com and join our free community and that's it. Bye everybody. [00:40:09] 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!  [00:40:35] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

If you are existing in your property management business but you aren't enjoying it, you might be in property management hell. In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull explain how to escape property management hell. You'll Learn [01:19] How do you know if you are in property management hell? [05:40] How to escape property management hell [07:33] How do you know if you are in property management hell? [10:32] What does an operator do in a property management business? Tweetables “So if you are existing, living in your business and you're not enjoying it and it's frustrating… then you might be in property management hell.” “There's definitely something to be said about working hard. There's definitely a time and a season for this.” “We have to get to the next level, and what got you to where you are now is not going to help you move forward.” “You can still be miserable and have an entire team.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: You will have more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and more support in your business as it grows. [00:00:05] And this is the right way to do it. This will change your life. [00:00:09]  [00:00:10] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, and 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 and Sarah Hull, the founder and CEO and the COO of DoorGrow. [00:01:15] Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:18] Welcome everybody. So we were thinking about what to talk about today, and one of the things that I coached clients on this week in depth was this idea of how to escape property management hell. So let's talk about how to escape property management hell. So if you are existing, living in your business and you're not enjoying it and it's frustrating, you've got an entire team and you're wondering 'why won't they just think for themselves?' And you're stressed out and you're tired of dealing with all the escalated situations where your team couldn't handle it like tenants and owners, and you're still wearing a whole bunch of hats that you don't enjoy wearing, you're still doing a lot of stuff in the business that you really don't wake up in the morning and go, "man, I'm excited to do that thing today," then you might be in property management hell. This is not property management heaven. This is not the place you're supposed to stay. And so if you're not enjoying that we're going to talk about how to get out of that. And it's not that complicated of a process. We're not going to go into a ton of detail cause we don't have a ton of time. [00:02:20] Not as in depth as we would in coaching our clients, but we're going to give you the high level overview so you can understand that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. All right. So what do you notice with clients that they're doing and what's going on when they are in hell? What sort of frustrations and challenges are you hearing? [00:02:40] Sarah: Overwhelmed. They're overworked. They're crazy busy. Most of it is just busy work. [00:02:46] It needs to be done, but it's not high level things that a business owner would need to do. They're working lots and lots of hours. Sometimes it might be eight, 10, 12, 15 hours a day. Sometimes it's seven days a week. Usually it's at least six and then they do a little bit on the seventh day, but they don't really fully get time off and they're just responding to everything as it comes in and they're trying to handle everything and they're frustrated and they're just very stressed out.  [00:03:23] Jason: Yeah, I was talking with a past client who may end up, probably end up joining our mastermind program. I think we'd worked together four or five years ago, helped him with his website and some different stuff. And he's been using some of the stuff he learned and he was really excited to tell me how far he's come and he's like at 700 units and I think he was small when he came to me, I don't remember, maybe 50 or something, and so he's really excited about the progress he has. [00:03:50] Then he was telling me he's working 17 hour days, some days, like he's working these crazy hours and he's going through these cycles of growth and like working crazy hard and then stopping the growth so that he can focus on building up the business and operations and doing a lot of the onboarding of the properties and then he goes back into this cycle and he hasn't taken a legit vacation since he started the business. [00:04:17] And he goes on vacations, but he's on his phone the whole time. He's not totally available. And this is not a sustainable thing. Now he's just done it through sheer drive and will. To his credit, he's like, "nobody will outwork me." This is like a badge of honor for him. And he works incredibly hard and he's like, that's why he's had more success than any of his competitors is he's just willing to outwork all of them. [00:04:43] And there's definitely something to be said about working hard. There's definitely a time and a season for this. And if all of you or any of you are being lazy, work a little harder. Like do some hard work for a little while to get to that next level. But we want more fulfillment and more freedom. And I wasn't getting a sense from this gentleman that he was experiencing fulfillment and freedom. [00:05:03] To me, that sounds like hell. It's like a treadmill that you feel like you've created and you have to keep running on to keep the business going. And he's going to burn out. And you know, he even mentioned like it's affecting his health, it's affecting his body, you know, and it's probably impacting his relationships, you know? [00:05:21] And so a lot of guys get into this stage and I think women do it as well. Everybody does this in business where they get into this mode of growth and work and hustle. And that's how we get businesses going. We have to get to the next level, and what got you to where you are now is not going to help you moving forward. [00:05:38] You have to start to get out of the way. And so the way to escape this property management hell, this cycle of endless work and torment is we need to figure out what help do we need in the business? A lot of people go, "well, just offload stuff." Yeah, but how do you know what you actually should offload? [00:05:58] Because the big mistake people make is they go hire what they think the business needs and they keep helping the business. And this gentleman and many others I've talked to have an entire team and they're still stressing themselves out. You can still be miserable and have an entire team. Some of you listening are like, "yeah that's me. I've got an entire team and I'm miserable," right? So, how do we escape that? Here's how we figure out what you need. Because if we instead shift it to figuring out what you need, then this will be a game changer. So, the first thing we do is, we have our clients do a time study.  [00:06:30] We have a sponsor and our sponsor is Venderoo, which we're getting some great feedback on from clients. Tired of the constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination. Meet Venderoo, your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish. Triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection, and coordination built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today at Vendoroo, VENDOROO dot ai/doorgrow and experience maintenance done right. And I'll just add one of our clients had 80 work orders in his first day of turning Vendoroo, the AI thing on, he had 80 work orders closed out. Another client had 54 work orders closed out in their first day as well. [00:07:29] Like we're in this AI revolution. So I highly recommend you check these guys out. It's very cool.  [00:07:33] Okay, so back to what I was saying is here's the strategy. You do a time study. This time study will help you figure out what you're doing every 15 minutes and you're going to categorize your time based on whether it's tactical or strategic and you're going to figure out which things are your plus signs or your minus signs. [00:07:50] We have a whole process for this and a training on how to do this and you want to do this once a quarter. This will move the business forward more than most anything else that you could do. And it'll help you get out of the way. You do the time study, figure out plus and minus signs. Then you create a job description. [00:08:04] We call those R docs because each section starts with an R, ultimate Rdoc job description for yourself and your team members creates a ton of clarity. And so you get these Rdocs created, you create one for yourself, and then you highlight the things that you no longer want to be doing, or that are your tactical minus signs that are the things you're working in the business instead of on the business, which is strategic. And so then you take that and build out a new Rdoc for your ideal candidate and hire. And this needs to be a single personality type, not like, "Oh, I need somebody to do some sales stuff and some accounting stuff and some operations stuff." [00:08:41] No, those are weird people called entrepreneurs. Don't do that. Pick one realistic human being that's not entrepreneurial like a specialist. So that might be a really good executive assistant. And then you'll have a really good job description, move all the things on that job description that would be for that person. [00:08:58] And then you put that out to the marketplace. Now, if you want to do this correctly, DoorGrow hiring is the game changer. This is where you stop playing Russian roulette and you attract the right personality type for the role. So they will actually be good at it and the right cultural fit so that you will actually trust them. [00:09:15] It's not just about finding somebody willing to do the work or that has the skill, but you also need to find somebody that's intelligent enough to be able to learn and adapt to you and to be able to do this. And then if you start building your team this way, you will have a team built around the right person would because you're adjusting yourself every quarter, you're improving yourself every quarter, you're moving closer and closer to your plus signs and more of what energizes you, and then you're going to do this with all of your team members. You're going to have them do time studies and identify their strengths and what they enjoy doing, and your team will get better and better. And you will have more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and more support in your business as it grows. [00:09:51] And this is the right way to do it. This will change your life. This is going to make you have a business that you actually enjoy being in that you're less and less involved in over time and that you're the only pieces you're still holding on to are the pieces you love. And so this is a business that is built to sell if you do want to exit because you're systematically exiting from the right pieces of the business. [00:10:15] And there's the right accountability. And then you need to get a really good operating system like DoorGrow OS, where you have a good planning system and you need to get a good operator to run this system and to run the business. And that will legitimately change your life. Having Sarah as an operator, changes my life. [00:10:31] Anything you'll add to this?  [00:10:32] Sarah: I think aside from the fact that people don't know what an operator is because everyone goes, "Oh yeah, I'm going to hire somebody for operations. And these are all the things they're going to do." They are not handling tactical work. [00:10:42] Your operator is not talking with tenants. Your operator is not talking with your clients. They are not involved in maintenance, rent collection, evictions, owner statements. They don't do any of those things. That is all front end, front line work. And your operator, no one will even know who your operator is because they don't talk to anybody in the business except for you and your team. [00:11:03] They're all back end. So they're very strategically involved in the business, which is very different. So they are responsible for the inner workings of your business and how things are progressing and moving forward. And are you guys running your strategic planning meetings? Are we on track for our weekly goals and our monthly goals, our quarterly goals, and most importantly, our big annual goal? Are we doing daily huddles? Are we attracting the right team members? Do we have the right team members? Do we have the right people in the right seats and the right roles in the business? If not, we need to make some adjustments. Do we have Rdocs and job descriptions for every single person? [00:11:47] Are they up to date? Are our processes documented? Are they up to date and are they actually being used? Or do we just have this library of processes that nobody ever looks at? And then we spent hours and hours wasting time because now nobody ever uses them or looks at them. Right? So hiring, firing, strategic planning, daily huddles, your team check ins... how are things going with your team? [00:12:11] If you don't know, and you're not regularly having these meetings, then you are missing out. Because your team will know things that you don't know, as soon as you get out of that role, and have somebody else fully in it. They're now going to know things that you don't know. So you have to rely on communication with your team to understand, "hey, is there some sort of cog that we don't know about now because I don't handle leasing anymore? But is there a big problem with leasing that we can probably shore up somewhere?" So, these are the things that your operator does. The operator and the CEO, they go together very well. They're like yin and yang. [00:12:51] One will balance the other out, but they work hand in hand, and your operator does all of the things back end in the business to make sure that the business is growing and running well, and that you have the right team. So, your operator, just so you know, has absolutely nothing to do with front end work. [00:13:09] They just kind of look over the people who do.  [00:13:12] Jason: They're not your property manager. They're not your maintenance coordinator. They're not your accountant.  [00:13:17] Sarah: No.  [00:13:18] Jason: They're not a lot of things. They're not your executive assistant. [00:13:21] Sarah: They don't do move ins. They don't do move outs. They don't talk to tenants ever. And they don't talk to clients.  [00:13:28] Jason: No. They will run your business and they will change your life, right? And this will free you up to be more of a visionary entrepreneur in your business, which is what the business needs. It needs somebody leading not working. Cool. Preach! Preach, Sarah. I'm like I'm going to let her cook. [00:13:44] She's going! [00:13:45] Sarah: I hear it because I hear it all the time, "Oh, I need an operator. Great. What are the things they're going to do?" [00:13:50] "Oh, they're going to handle my admin work. They're going to do my leasing." Not an operator. Right. Great, fantastic, that's the role that you need. [00:13:57] It's not an operator.  [00:13:58] Jason: Operator is not a worker. They're like, "I need a worker. I need a worker to do work." There's a little confusion there. Okay, cool. So, in short, operator is going to help with people, planning, and process in the business. We call those three systems that are key part of the super system. [00:14:15] So if this is of interest to any of you listening and you would like to get things flowing and working really well in your business and find these game changing people to build out your team so that you've got the right people to help you grow it, the right people to help you scale it, the right people to help you run it, then reach out to DoorGrow. [00:14:33] We would love to coach and support you and help you get your business to the next level. And that's it for today.  [00:14:40] Sarah: Oh, and if you're not yet in our facebook group, you should check that out!  [00:14:44] Jason: Oh, yeah DoorGrowclub.Com. Join our facebook group. All right until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:14:52] 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!  [00:15:18] 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.

A lot of the property managers we talk to who want to grow say the same thing, “I just need more leads.” In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the 6 major leaks that property managers can have in their sales pipeline and why they don't just “need more leads.” You'll Learn [06:22] 1. Positioning [10:14] 2. Perception [11:19] 3. Presence [15:30] 4. Pricing [18:18] 5. Purpose [20:24] 6. Pitch Tweetables “Does it make sense to turn on the hose full blast if there's all these leaks?” “People want to work with a specialist. They don't want to turn over their biggest assets ever and their financial future to somebody that's dabbling in property management.” “If your reviews are good, it backs up everything that you say in your sales pitch.” “Are you clear on your personal motivations for why you have this business beyond just getting money?” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: Get these things dialed in and shored up and what you'll find is: you may not need nearly as many leads. [00:00:05] You won't have to spend nearly as much money on advertising or any money.  [00:00:12] 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 than you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:32] 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. [00:00:54] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGroww, and now let's get into the show. [00:01:19] Sarah: We wore DoorGrow colors today.  [00:01:20] Jason: Oh, we did. For those  [00:01:22] that can see us. We're wearing DoorGrow colors. It's not on purpose. Yeah. Green and blue. All right.  [00:01:27] Sarah: I wanted something easy. It was like, let me get a comfortable dress that looks nice, but it's comfortable. Ladies know what I'm talking about. [00:01:34] They're like, "yeah, those are awesome. That's this." [00:01:37] Jason: Okay. It's good to know. So we were talking about what we should talk about today. And one of the things that I've been doing on sales calls in conversations with potential clients is taking them through a diagnosis and diagnosing the front end sales pipeline of their business. [00:01:56] The challenge is a lot of people come to us that want to grow. We're called DoorGrow. So we certainly can help with that. We've been doing that for a long time. One of the things we've noticed though, is that a lot of times people think, "I just need more leads." They just think they need more leads. And some of you are just going to be listening to this, so I'm not going to do a drawing, I'm going to explain what I would usually draw, but I usually draw like a spigot, or a faucet, or whatever you call it, and a hose attached to this, and this long hose, and then a like a plant pot at the end of this hose that you're trying to water a little tree or something. [00:02:30] And I usually put fruit on it because that's your business and you want to get something from it. Like you want it to bear fruit, like make you money or something. Right. And so we've got this tree we want to grow and we've got this pipeline. This is our sales pipeline, this hose. And we think we just need to turn on more water. [00:02:46] Right. It seems to make sense. What I've realized though, over time is we used to do lead generation for property managers. Like that was like a offering that we had, a core offering that we had for our clients. So we would help them just turn on the hose, like full blast. We'd help them turn that on and they wouldn't be able to get business. [00:03:05] They wouldn't be able to get enough water to grow their business. Like it wasn't working and it wasn't the leads. It wasn't the lead generation necessarily. It was the hose. They had like all these major leaks that were preventing it. So over time, I started to see like, they'd be like, "well, it's not working." [00:03:19] I'm like, "well, you're not even answering your phone," or "you're waiting 24 hours before responding to a lead. And it's only good for like 15 minutes." And there was just all these leaks and problems. And there were some bigger, more macro level problems in their sales pipeline. [00:03:32] Like their pricing was terrible, so it was off. Or their branding was off. And so people were like, "well, yeah, but they look like a real estate company," or their website was awful and it would send traffic to their website and it was just leaking money. And so the fluid, if you will, that flows through the pipeline. [00:03:51] Is five currencies, time, energy, focus, cash, and effort. These are what you have to invest. And if you're shelling out a bunch of money, time, energy, focus, all of these things, right into the pipeline because you're just turning it on full blast, it's just going to leak out and you're just wasting all of that. [00:04:09] You're wasting time. You're wasting money. You're wasting your energy. Right. And it, and a lot of businesses are like, "I just need more leads." So I call this the leads myth. And so we found it to be effective is to start looking at the business and if they come to us saying, "Hey, we want to grow." [00:04:24] "Okay. How would you like us to help?" They're like, "we need more leads." [00:04:27] "okay, you may need more leads, but first, does it make sense to turn on the hose full blast if there's all these leaks?" [00:04:34] "What leaks?" Right?  [00:04:35] "Okay, well, let's take a look at your business and see if you have any of these." So we thought today we would get into some of these leaks so you can self assess and figure out, all right, how's my business doing? [00:04:43] We're going to do the quick, super fast version of this. And I recommend you set up a longer call with our team so we can go through this. Okay?  [00:04:52] Sarah: Oh, or if you want the short, shorter version and you're like, "Hey, I want to see it. It's visual." then go to YouTube on our YouTube channel. We have a video that we created about this and our hose just died and like, I think it froze over the winter and we went to go turn it on and everything was leaking. So then we were like, "Oh, Well, before we throw the hose away let's make a video because this is what we talk about all the time." [00:05:16] Yeah. So we did make a video. So if you want to visually see this and watch Jason get water everywhere and make a big mess, then watch a video.  [00:05:25] Jason: It's pretty goofy. So if you wanna laugh at me or make fun of me, that'd be a good one to watch. So just go to youtube.com/doorgrow and go to the playlists that we have and then go to funny videos and I'm sure you'll enjoy laughing at me and Sarah laugh at ourselves, especially. [00:05:44] All right. So let's chat about this, these leaks. So these are some of the things that may be preventing you from closing as many deals, and you may have plenty of leads, but you may not be closing as many as you could be. And so these are some of the leaks. So, there's six major leaks that we focus on in our Rapid Revamp class, and if you're interested in this class where we help you shore up all of these leaks so that you can more easily grow more quickly without even changing whatever lead generation stuff that you're already doing or what's working, this will increase the output of what makes it through the hose and to grow your business Okay, so the first leak at the very beginning, and these are all blind spots the most businesses have is Positioning and so in positioning, we focus on the brand branding And so what are some of the things related to branding? [00:06:37] Sarah: Well, the big one that we see a lot, and we did a video about this too is what is the name of your company? Is it something "real estate, realty, properties, investments, assets, solutions," things like that. So if any of those is how your brand name ends. then that could be a very potential big issue in your branding. [00:07:05] And you could be turning people off before they even decide to have a conversation with you.  [00:07:10] Jason: Yeah. People want to work with a specialist. They don't want to turn over their biggest assets ever and their financial future to somebody that's dabbling in property management but is primarily focused on real estate. [00:07:21] So if you have realty real estate in your name, for example, you have a significant leak here. So if a hundred percent flow through would be the ideal, you have maybe a 50% right at this stage. There's this there's loss. Is your name generic to the location? For example, you're Phoenix Property Management in Phoenix. [00:07:39] Or is it generic to the industry like property management inc? Sorry guys. Or real property management, right? These things are really difficult to remember right generic names. And that hurts word of mouth and it hurts people telling people about your business and all that kind of stuff, right? [00:07:55] So is it unclear that it's property management? Like Sarah mentioned, like maybe we're "Prestige Properties or Radiant Rentals." Radient Rentals, "oh, do you do bouncy houses and like chairs and stuff for weddings?" Right. So there might be confusion there in the marketplace, or do you have a overly common name? Could be a problem. Like lighthouse, just Google lighthouse property management, and there's like a bazillion companies all over the place that want to be a lighthouse. [00:08:19] And so they all get mixed up and confused, right? Because property management is a kind of a global competition. Even if it's only focused on a local market, right? You're getting investors from overseas sometimes you're getting investors from out of state. And so if they're trying to find you, "Oh, well, they said their name's light- oh man. There's a lot of lighthouse. I don't know." Right. And these are just some of the challenges with branding that we teach in our branding secrets and helping clean that up.  [00:08:45] Sarah: Yeah. And one of the worst things is if they're looking for you and then they find a competitor instead, or they find the same or a very similar named company, but they're nowhere near your market. [00:08:59] Because then what happens is you're now connected to this other company. Even if you're like, "well, I'm in Tennessee and this other company, yeah, but they're in like Nevada." Well, Oh, okay. You would think the distance alone would be enough to separate the two, however, we have to remember that sometimes people make mistakes and sometimes people don't read, right? [00:09:22] So if an angry tenant from that other company is like so fuming and they get on and they're like, "I am leaving a horrible review" and it hits your company just because you have a similar name and they didn't bother to read. Now we have issues.  [00:09:36] Jason: And there's lots of other challenges. You could have your name, like some clever misspelled name, like a barbershop called haircutz with a Z. [00:09:43] Sarah: Like my biggest pet peeve.  [00:09:44] Jason: Like there's lots of ways you can screw up branding.  [00:09:47] Sarah: Spell things correctly. Don't get cute.  [00:09:49] Jason: Or acronyms. Acronyms aren't super effective. Like PMI. Sorry guys. All right. So let's go to the second leak. So give yourself a rating on that. Like just a quick judgment, like on a scale of zero to a hundred, how effective is your brand in being memorable and in word of mouth and whatnot? [00:10:07] So maybe it's 50%. Maybe it's totally off in the category. Maybe it's worse. Maybe it's like 20, 30%. Next perception. This is reputation. How are you perceived online? What are your ratings maybe on Yelp, on Google, on Facebook? How many reviews do you have in relation to your competition? And what is your rating? So quantity diversity, do you have reviews on lots of channels? How do you compare to your competition in your local market? Because people are going to check you out. They're going to judge you. And if your reviews are bad, even if everything else you do is amazing, this can put, be a significant clamp in the hose. [00:10:45] And if your reviews are good, it backs up everything that you say in your sales pitch.  [00:10:50] Sarah: And if you have no reviews at all, this is also an issue. Yeah. So sometimes people go, "Oh, well, like I'm brand new. I don't have any reviews, so I don't have that problem yet." It's still a problem. It's just a problem in a different way. [00:11:02] Jason: So let's go to number three. So give yourself a rating on that. Zero to a hundred. Where are you at in relation to your competition? Are you the best reviewed company in your market? Are you like somewhere in the middle? Are you the worst, right? Or do you have no reputation, right? How are you perceived? [00:11:17] All right. So you have a number there. All right. Number three, presence. This is the website, right? Your online presence. So there's a lot of different roles related to the website. I'll, I can throw out a couple, a few real quick. If you really want to grade your website, and not just like how much does Google like it? [00:11:36] Not that if you want to grade your website, how much people like it, how effective it is for capturing business, right? How big of a leak do you have in the hose? Go to doorgrow.com/quiz and take our website quiz and grade your website. Do this, you might have a brand new, beautiful, amazing website and it's like just hemorrhaging and leaking money. [00:11:59] All traffic feeds to the website, right? Your reviews feed to the website. Everything goes there. Your ads feed to the website. Take a look at this leak and get your grade and see what it is. And we're happy to then get on a call with you and tell you why your website sucks, help you figure out like how to make it better. [00:12:16] So, couple of quick things. It should answer three core questions like above the fold when they first land on the page, what you visibly can see in on the screen should answer that there are three core questions, which is, "do you do what I need in the place I need it? What do you do and where?" And second, "why should I choose you to do it over your competition?" And then third is "what do you want me to do?" There should be some sort of call to action. Most websites don't even have those three really basic things, three basic questions that people have. So that's a great starting point And then there's other things like how many menu items do you have? [00:12:54] If you have too many menu items, it actually decreases conversion rates. Do you have like distractions like social media icons and different things trying to send people away from your website which can decrease conversion rates and getting business and leads. Do you have trust symbols and social proof and testimonials and things that increase conversion rates? [00:13:14] Do you have a lead capture form on the page? We've studied this for well over a decade. We've studied this the top website companies that target and focus on property management try to copy our stuff without understanding the psychology behind it and try and copy our designs. [00:13:33] I believe we build the most effective and the most beautiful websites in the industry. And so if this is an issue, DoorGrow can help you with this. So, talk to us and get a new website.  [00:13:44] Sarah: Before we move on, I just learned this yesterday, I think yesterday or the day before. So if your website was once amazing. [00:13:51] And you're like, "no, my website is great. It's so awesome." But it's old. Then it's not doing you the good that you think it is. And maybe at one point it was, maybe it was so fantastic. But now all of a sudden, if things seem like they dried up a little bit, it could be that it needs a little bit of a refresh. [00:14:10] And apparently the shelf life on a website is about two to three years and then it needs. To be redone.  [00:14:17] Jason: Yeah, this is true. I've forgotten about this. I'm totally aware of this, but I just, I forgot that other people don't realize this. And so websites have a shelf life just like fashion does, just like anything else does. [00:14:30] And so websites start to look stale or out of date or old and create the perception of being old too. So a lot of people don't perceive that their website is actually looking stale and looking old and causing issues for them, right? [00:14:45] And people will perceive you, "Oh, this company's more modern and we're up to date or fresh or is with it or gets it, and this company it looks like they've been in business forever, maybe. They're using old techniques and they don't know what they're doing, right? So make sure your business is no older than maybe two to three years. [00:15:03] It's probably time.  [00:15:04] Sarah: Not your business. Your website.  [00:15:05] Jason: Yeah, sorry.  [00:15:06] Sarah: If your business is three years...  [00:15:09] Jason: just get rid of it. So if your website, usually people will go until about five years. By five years, it's usually visibly painful, and this is usually where business owners reach out to us for a new website. [00:15:22] If your website is five years old or older, it's due. And you know it, like you can look at it and go, "this doesn't look fresh." All right. So good point. All right, next is pricing.  [00:15:32] Sarah: I love the pricing calls that we do. They're so good.  [00:15:35] Jason: It's such a magic trick. [00:15:35] Sarah: And also people get stuck here for a really long time.  [00:15:39] Jason: Yeah, so most pricing, just to be clear, is set by companies focusing on the worst people in the market. They're focused on the cheapos and they're focused on what they can capture through internet marketing, which are the worst leads. And so the cheapos are really price sensitive. [00:15:56] So it creates this sort of downward race to the bottom in terms of price. So, most people typically do a 10 percent in most markets. Maybe a little less than that in really high rent markets, or they'll do some sort of flat fee. So, Most pricing is not good and it's probably similar to what everyone else in your market is doing, and so you look the same as everybody else. [00:16:17] So there's unique methodology in doing pricing. And so we focus on our unique blend of what we call a three tier hybrid pricing model, which focuses on three different types of buyers psychologically and creates a proper incentive to get more high rent properties, less lower end properties and it lowers your operational costs, right? [00:16:41] Because the higher rent properties generally have a lower operational costs and they make you more money. Right. And so your pricing model is probably unknowingly incentivizing you getting on some of the worst clients and the worst properties and not helping you to set yourself apart from the competition. [00:16:58] So we've never had anyone really come to us with good pricing, never. And so we've always helped people clean this up. And then they close more deals more easily at a higher price point. And you might think that's crazy, but that's what we do.  [00:17:11] Sarah: And they tell us that!  [00:17:12] Jason: Yeah. [00:17:12] Sarah: We're not just saying it. [00:17:14] Like our clients tell us that they're like, "Oh, I didn't think I was going to do this and I didn't want to and I didn't even think it was going to work, so I figured I'd try it and then i'll just change it back when it doesn't work," And every time, they are so surprised and they love it and they're like "man I really wish I did this sooner." [00:17:30] That would have been so much better if I did this.  [00:17:32] Jason: They usually get a significant number of their clients upgrading to a premium tier so they're making more money off their existing portfolio right away. And so usually pricing's this magic trick we can pull out of our hat that we can immediately pay for if they have a decent number of clients. [00:17:47] We can immediately pay for our program and our program's now basically free, right? So let's get into the next one. So rate your pricing, if it's typical of everybody else then maybe you give yourself, if you want you can give yourself a 60 70 percent or something like that, but I would say it's a 50 percent because the profit margin difference can be pretty significant, right? [00:18:08] But give yourself some sort of rating if you're cheaper than most of your competitors give yourself below a 50 percent Like you're worse than everybody else. So give yourself a number there. What's your leak? All right next:  [00:18:18] Purpose. This is the most important thing that we take clients through. This causes not just a leak in your sales pipeline, but it causes a leak with your team and a leak with financials. It's one of the greatest profitability hacks. [00:18:30] It's one of our greatest. Sales hacks, and it sounds like woo fluffy BS, but purpose is the most significant thing that we do in companies. And our clients tell us this was the most significant thing that we did. So what do you want to say about purpose?  [00:18:45] Sarah: Yeah. So this is usually where we start in our rapid revamp and then, and only then can we then continue on with the rest of the class because everything stems from this. So if you're trying to fix your pricing and you don't understand your company culture yet, it's not going to make sense because you're going to have to redo your pricing. If you're trying to fix your website and your branding and your online perception, but you haven't figured out. the foundation of where all of these other things come from, then it doesn't matter because you're going to have to go back and fix it anyway, because you don't really have clarity on that. But once you get clarity on that, everything else becomes so much easier now.  [00:19:23] Jason: Yeah. So the way to score this is, some questions you might ask are do you have maybe three or four core values defined? [00:19:31] If you have a lot more than that, then give yourself a lower score because that means really, it means nothing. Do you have a clearly defined mission for the business? Are you clear on who you're targeting and is it clearly defined and written down? Like, how do they know what a good client looks like versus a bad one? [00:19:46] Right. Are you clear on your personal motivations for why you have this business beyond just getting money? That in a way that you could relate it clearly your personal why? Are you clear on the business's purpose or your team? Right? So do you have a ceo decision making guide so others know how you think on your team, right? [00:20:03] There's a lot of different things that deliverables in the purpose Weeks in our rapid revamp that we help businesses define, and it changes the profitability. It changes everything in the business. So based on these questions, give yourself a rating on zero to 100 percent and figure out where you're at. [00:20:19] And if you don't have a lot of these things defined, then give yourself a pretty low grade, right? Next is pitch. So purpose feeds into the pitch and so you need those things defined. But what's your sales pitch like? Is it basically just answer questions and then hope they sign up? [00:20:35] Which is bad. That's pretty weak, right? Or do you, for example, like us have a four phase process that's systematically like getting clear on what they need and breaking things down and then figuring out like how to deal with objections and et cetera. Right. What's your sales pitch? How effective is it? [00:20:53] Do you have visuals that maybe facilitate that, et cetera? Right. So if you feel like you have a high close rate, right. But it's just warm leads like a referral. You're you have a really high close rate, that doesn't mean you have a good pitch. That doesn't mean you're good at selling. That just means they were a warm lead, right? [00:21:09] So in dealing with colder leads or where it's competitive or they're looking at you and several other competitors, how good are you at convincing them to use you over everybody else? May help you see how effective your pitch is right on colder leads or more lukewarm leads, right? So give yourself a rating on pitch. [00:21:25] Anything else related to pitch  [00:21:27] Sarah: So I'll just one more time reiterate the company culture, you can't have a good sales pitch if you don't first know your company culture. Yeah. So if you're like, "Oh wait, like my pitch is so good. I can close anybody." You're missing your company culture and you do not have that piece defined, there is no way that you can have a great sales pitch, at least in the way that we teach it. So we have the golden bridge formula. You can not do the golden bridge formula if you do not first understand your why and your business why. You don't have those two pieces? You're not doing the golden bridge. And without the golden bridge, sales just gets hard. It just gets hard. And then it's like, "well, like I don't want to be pushy, but also I want to close deals and I have to sell people and like, I don't know, I'm in this loop I don't understand why I can't close things and like, this should be easier." And then people go and they take a bunch of courses to learn how to do sales better. [00:22:23] You can just have a better sales pitch.  [00:22:25] Jason: Yeah. Good point. So to sum all this up, all of these leaks are leaks in trust. And if in your pitch, for example, you are trying to sell property management, you're selling the wrong product. Nobody really cares about property management. That's not what they want to buy. [00:22:42] And so what they really want to buy is peace of mind or safety and certainty. They want to buy, they're buying their trust in you. They want trust. And so all of these leaks in the pipeline relate to trust. They're all trust leaks, sales and deals happen. You could write this down, tattoo it on your forehead. [00:22:59] Don't do that. Put it up on your wall. Sales and deals happen at the speed of trust. And so if you have any of these major trust leaks, you are just wasting time, energy, money, focus, cash effort. Right. And so let's get these leaks all shored up. It doesn't make sense to keep putting blood transfusions into somebody when they have their arm chopped off and they're just hemorrhaging blood. [00:23:22] That's pretty gruesome, but  [00:23:24] Sarah: yeah  [00:23:24] Jason: Stop the bleeding first. And then, "Hey, it makes sense now. Now that we've stopped this major bleeding, let's now take care of things. Right?" And so get these things dialed in and shored up and what you'll find is: you may not need nearly as many leads. [00:23:39] You won't have to spend nearly as much money on advertising or any money. Our clients don't, most of them don't spend any money on ads or lead generation, and they actually had doors faster than their competitors that are. And so this is the starting point. Get this stuff cleaned up. It's like sharpening the ax first, before you go and chop down trees, do the smart thing first and everything else becomes easier. [00:23:59] And this really is lubricating your entire sales process. Everything flows through a lot easier. And so you could double your deals flowing through without changing any of your lead sources that you've already got going right now, just by shoring these up. And so get these blind spots dialed in and reach out to us at DoorGrow. [00:24:15] And we'll tell you about a rapid revamp program where we tackle each of these leaks in two weeks, two weeks for each leak. And so it's a 90 day program. It's really rapid and it will transform the front end of your business forever. Okay. That's it. So you can find us at DoorGrow. com and until next time to our mutual growth. [00:24:35] Bye everyone. [00:24:36] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:25:03] 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.

Are you a property manager? Do you hire property managers? Can you answer the question: what is a property manager, and what do they do? In today's episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss what a property manager is and what they should be doing in a property management business. You'll Learn [01:14] Million-dollar question: What does a property manager do? [06:25] Siloing information to protect your business [10:26] Hiring specialists instead of people who can “do it all” [12:20] What should a property manager's role be? [16:31] Property managers as client success experts Tweetables “There's a lot of confusion as to the definition of a property manager in the property management industry.” “When your company grows, what we're going to hopefully have you do is shift into specialists, so that you won't have a property manager that just does everything.” “Effectively cloning yourself or duplicating yourself in the business usually means getting 10 people, not one.” “It's not hard to be exceptional in property management.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: Business owners, we need to stop trying to find people that can do everything. We need to find people that are really good specialists.  [00:00:08] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives. And you are interested in growing in business and life. And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:28] DoorGrow Property Managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. [00:00:56] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the B. S. build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management, growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:13] All right. So one of the things that's come up, we just did a DoorGrow boardroom event. [00:01:18] And one of our clients that was there was like, "I need to hire a property manager." And we're like, "okay." And what we noticed in talking there and going deeper and digging in deeper is that there's a lot of confusion as to the definition of a property manager in the property management industry. [00:01:37] Sarah: Yeah, it's like a catch all.  [00:01:39] Jason: So the challenge is it can mean just about anything.  [00:01:42] Sarah: Yeah. The definition of property manager is: "do anything and everything that the company needs."  [00:01:49] Jason: And so I've noticed this for a while. we've had a lot of clients and they'll say, "Oh, I need another property manager," or "I need to hire a property manager." [00:01:56] "I need to get a property manager." And it always means something different. So like some people think a property manager does everything, and this is the portfolio style property manager. They're like, "they need to go get business." And so they're a BDM, they need to handle and do some of the bookkeeping accounting stuff. [00:02:17] They need to do maintenance coordination. They need to do the leasing. So they're trying to find somebody that's basically an entrepreneur. They can do everything that's probably going to run away and steal half their business. Right. Which happens. It's happened quite a bit. I've seen it. And that's, I think the wrong way to build a property management business, it's the wrong way to hire and build your team. [00:02:36] So let's figure out. What is a property manager? What is it?  [00:02:41] Sarah: Love it.  [00:02:41] Jason: What are your thoughts?  [00:02:42] Sarah: Well, so I think that there's an important distinction, especially when it comes to the size of your company. So in the beginning, When it's just you do everything. It's all you, you, and then you some more. [00:02:58] And I think this is why then when they go to hire a property manager, they're like, "Oh, well I did everything and I want to replace myself. So I need a property manager to replace myself and then they're going to do everything because I did everything." So in the beginning. When you are in the day to day and it's just you and you haven't built a team yet and you're functioning as the property manager because you're in the day to day and the tactical work, yes, you are technically a property manager. [00:03:26] And then when your company grows, what we're going to hopefully have you do is shift into specialists. so that you won't have a property manager that just does everything. You'll have people who are really good at the one thing that they do and will be able to then segment the business and split that out into multiple roles instead of just having a property manager that does everything. [00:03:56] Everything. Yeah. So I created a Facebook post, cause  [00:04:00] There was some heat on that post. Well, I like this. I don't know if you read the comments.  [00:04:03] Jason: I like to stir the pot a little bit. For those that are watching this on video, this is what it looks like, right? So join our Facebook group, go to doorgrowclub. com, get in there. So I said, if the property manager role on your team is not your maintenance coordinator, operator, bookkeeper, leasing agent, then what is their role? And so people are like "define operator, like what's an operator?" So then I was defining what an operator was, but Michelle Miller, shout out to Michelle, she commented. She said, "in other words, if they aren't doing everything, what are they doing?" Right. Brian Nelson said "delegator." And I like that. That's I think  [00:04:39] Sarah: I don't like  [00:04:40] Jason: that.  [00:04:40] I like the idea that they are not the person that's doing all this stuff. Maybe they're orchestrating, maybe that's what they're doing. [00:04:47] They're maintaining the relationship with the owner. Sean Foster, he says "PM's number 1 job is to be the middleman between the owner and the tenant advising and the correct path of the most profitable investment." [00:04:56] And "but that one responsibility branches off into another 20, doesn't it?" [00:05:00] And then, "depends on the systems." There's a little dialogue going back and forth there. So if you do property management, you manage the property. And to manage the property, you're doing leasing, maintenance, inspections, all this stuff. But that doesn't mean that the property manager in your business is doing all this stuff or should be. [00:05:17] Usually you don't want somebody that's a jack of all trades and a master of none trying to do stuff. And if they're actually good at everything, they'll probably just go start their own business. And I think that's the other challenges that we often mistakenly fall into this clone myth. And this was what was going on with our client at the DoorGrow boardroom event. [00:05:35] He thought, he's like, well, "I was a property manager at another company for a while. Now, I have my own business and I'm doing all everything and I need to go hire a property manager and I was doing everything at that company. I'm doing everything in my own company. Now, I need to go find somebody else to do everything." [00:05:50] And when we finally identified this. I call it the clone myth. We think, "I just need to go find somebody just like me. I need to clone myself." Effectively cloning yourself or duplicating yourself in the business usually means getting 10 people, not one. Like 10 different hats, 10 different specialists in the business. [00:06:07] And so just want to address the clone myth real quick. So I think we want to find a way, I think in the industry, it might make sense to eliminate the term property manager. If they're not actually the one doing all of the little pieces, unless you're portfolio style. So what are your thoughts on that? [00:06:25] Sarah: Well, I think the other thing too, that I want to bring up about him at the boardroom event is he's like, "I need a property manager and they're going to do everything. And I do everything. And I also did everything at my other company when I worked for them as a property manager. So I need one. How do I make sure that they don't just steal my business and steal my clients and walk away though, because they're going to be doing everything? [00:06:48] Jason: Yeah.  [00:06:48] Sarah: And that's a really good reason to not have them doing everything.  [00:06:52] Jason: Most business owners eventually figure out you need to silo information. So for example, when I ran a web design agency, I had an intranet where all the information was stored and I had how I sold, how I found clients, like all this was built out in the intranet. [00:07:07] All the sales related stuff. And then I had all of how we build the websites, how we put them together, all this kind of stuff. And I would hire web designers to build the websites and to do work and they would get access to the intranet. They would read the sales stuff and then figure out how to get their own clients and then they would quit. [00:07:25] I kept having them leave and they're like, "Oh, well, I've got so much business. I don't have time to do your projects now." And I was like, "what?" it happened over and over again. So I was like, "okay, something's going on here." So then I realized I needed to segment the information because the stuff that I figured out was pretty effective and pretty valuable. [00:07:40] Sarah: And essentially you were paying them to train them to then run their own business and not work for you anymore.  [00:07:47] Jason: What a deal. So, okay. Yeah. So then I started siloing that information. And so I think I think I shared a TikTok or a reel or something with you where a guy was talking about siloing the information and he was talking about sales and manufacturing and a product business. [00:08:02] And if they know where to source all the manufacturing stuff and they know how to acquire business, they don't need you anymore. So he had to segregate that information. I was like, that's the same thing. You need to segregate knowledge in your business. Your goal is to hire specialists on the team, not generalists that can wear multiple hats. [00:08:22] You're the business owner. You have to wear every hat in the business that is not currently worn by somebody or is not being done properly. You have to step in. It all falls on you. That's the job of the CEO, right? You have to do it. If you have a good operator, then they step in and some of that stuff, too. [00:08:40] You have to do stuff that's uncomfortable.  [00:08:43] Sarah: Well, let's just pause for a moment. Your operator is not going to do your day to day stuff in property management.  [00:08:47] Jason: They shouldn't do your day to day stuff. It sounded like. A lot of people get confused.  [00:08:50] Sarah: I know what you were trying to say, but people are going to hear that and go, "Oh yeah. And then my operator is going to do everything."  [00:08:55] Jason: I just wanted to include you. I didn't want to say you don't do the hard stuff too.  [00:08:59] Sarah: I do the hard stuff when I have to.  [00:09:01] Jason: Yeah.  [00:09:01] Sarah: Until we can hire somebody else to do it. Because I hate doing it. I hate certain parts though, then we hire somebody and they do it much better. [00:09:11] Jason: Yeah. So I think it might make sense unless you're portfolio style, which I'm not a real big fan of. I think there's a lot of downsides to portfolio style management. I think it's really rare that people are good at everything. And so I think it's a lot more effective to get somebody that's a really great maintenance coordinator that can handle maintenance for probably thousands of units, right? [00:09:32] If they really know their stuff and have the right systems and tools and you can take that off of your property manager's plates. You need probably accounting or bookkeeping or a team that helps with that kind of stuff. There's vendors that can help with some of those pieces, especially if you don't enjoy, or aren't good at that piece, there's a lot of available resources, but if you get specialists that are really good, they will surpass your ability in that particular category. [00:10:00] Sarah is much better running the planning system that we have DoorGrow OS, running the operations of the business than me, I just like, when I was doing it between having operators I just stopped planning. I didn't want to do the meetings. It was, "anybody stuck? Let's move on. And now it's meticulous and it's detail and we're moving forward. [00:10:19] And everything's focused and we're hitting all our goals and we're making progress. Right? Because I have a good operator. So I think the business owners, we need to stop trying to find people that can do everything. We need to find people that are really good at specialists. So, I met with this entrepreneur a while back named Joe Abraham. [00:10:39] He gave this cool Ted talk that I liked and I checked out his book and I took his online quiz and he has a book called entrepreneurial DNA and he created this score similar to an assessment like this, but it's BOSI. B O S I. And it talks about the four different types of entrepreneurs, which are builders, opportunists, innovators, and specialists. [00:11:01] And you need to figure out what you are, the book talks about, and then build the right team around you. So, historically, I was more of a specialist, which means I'm dedicated my craft for over a decade to coaching and supporting property managers, right? And like figuring out how to grow businesses and then I'm an innovator. [00:11:17] I like to take in lots of ideas and formulate new ideas and create stuff and that sort of thing. So more of a specialist, innovator and specialist, and most of the coaches and mentors I've hired have been builders. Builder, innovators, stuff like that opportunists are always looking for the next way to make money or the next vehicle or this sort of thing. [00:11:38] Think like Ray Kroc, who took the McDonald's brothers', intellectual property, because they were innovators and specialist, and he blew it up and he was a builder and an opportunist so, opportunists make great salespeople. For example, builders make good CEOs. And so I wanted to be a better CEO. [00:11:56] And so I've worked with a lot of coaches to become more and more of a builder to develop that skill set. And I'm getting better. Better and better. So, so I think we need to as entrepreneurs figure out what are our strengths and then what are we lacking? If you need to get around maybe coaches that can help you with with some of the gaps that you have in your own personality or your own knowledge base, then that can help you get to the next level. [00:12:20] All right, so I think if we could eliminate the property manager term from those that are not portfolio style, then what would a property manager that people typically think is a property manager do if they're not the maintenance coordinator, they're not all these things What do you think?  [00:12:34] Sarah: Yeah, I think you can still call them a property manager. [00:12:37] I'm not against the term like you're like, "eliminate! Anti property manager term and industry!" I just don't think that's going to happen Okay. I do think though once your business grows and gets large enough you can have one person or team to do the maintenance coordination, and then that piece is handled by the maintenance team. [00:12:58] Then you can offload the leasing part, right? They're going through, maybe doing showings if you still do those, or at least going through applications and moving people along doing the move ins. Dealing with move outs and starting that whole process, kicking that off. You might have a leasing person, or a leasing team, and then the accounting piece, like your property manager probably should not be doing accounting. [00:13:20] You should have somebody who is really good at accounting to do the accounting. And if that means you need to have a service, do it for you. That's fine. Just make sure that they're a really good reputable service. And there's someone that can hopefully like triple tie out your books and make sure everything is correct. [00:13:36] And then you, here's the big thing, you still have to monitor it. Don't just hand it off and say, here, please go do this thing. And then just sit back and never look at it and hope that it's right. Because I've seen that a lot where people go, Oh, like I haven't done the bookkeeping. I have somebody else do it. [00:13:52] And then they start investigating because there's a one little issue and they start to pull the thread. And it's like, when you pull the thread of the sweater and it just all unravels. Okay, so don't do that. Don't do that. But then your property manager can be more like the person that deals with the relationships of between like clients and tenants. [00:14:13] Right. So we're bridging a gap.  [00:14:15] Jason: So then technically they're more of a relationship manager, right. They're managing relationships. I think a big gap that we don't see a lot of in the property management industry, that's super common in every other industry is the category of client success. And the category of client success, their whole goal is to retain customers to keep customers, make sure that they're happy. [00:14:38] And so I think that's the role that some people might say, "oh, that's the property manager" is they need somebody that's just focused on client success, loves on the clients, takes care of the clients, makes them feel valued. Maybe meets with them annually to make sure that everything's looking good financially. [00:14:53] Sarah: Portfolio review calls.  [00:14:55] Jason: Portfolio reviews. [00:14:56] Sarah: I love those. I will harp about that all day long. If you're not doing them, do them.  [00:15:00] Jason: Yeah. So, client success in a lot of industries. I've heard some of our coaches and mentors describe as your other sales team. Right. You've got those that sell people in, like your business development, your BDs, your business development managers, your BDMs that bring clients into the business, but then they are not responsible for retaining the clients. [00:15:22] And you think you retain clients just by doing maintenance coordination and just by doing leasing, but these things don't really develop or solidify or build the relationship. If you screw those things up, then you're bound to probably lose clients. And so that's the bare minimum.  [00:15:36] Sarah: No one is going, "Oh my God. This leasing team is so amazing. I'm never going to leave." [00:15:41] Jason: Right.  [00:15:41] Sarah: They just expect the leasing to be good because it's what they signed up for when they hired a property manager. Right? They're not going to go, "Oh my God, I can't believe they got this maintenance thing done so so fast. And it was done in two hours and it was amazing. I'm never going to leave." [00:15:57] Jason: So Gallup organization wrote this book called first break all the rules. And then it has this customer satisfaction pyramid. And at the lowest level, there's the lowest two levels are availability and accuracy. So these are the two things that if you're always available and you're always accurate in what you say you're going to do and you do it, people just don't even notice. And so it's not hard to be exceptional in property management. If you do that, it's expected and demanded.  [00:16:24] Sarah: So this is like all the tactical stuff that we do.  [00:16:27] Jason: Yeah.  [00:16:27] Sarah: It falls into this.  [00:16:29] Jason: Yeah.  [00:16:29] Sarah: It's just expected.  [00:16:31] Jason: So the next level, if you really want to have great client, customer service and great client interactions is partnership and then advice. [00:16:40] And this is where I think a property manager can really add value. This is where they are really a client success role where they're retaining clients. They're improving the relationship and the value that people see in the relationship and in the longevity of staying a client of your particular business, when there's plenty of others that could do it, they can manage their property. [00:17:00] You have team members that are managing the relationship and focusing on client success. So maybe there should be some client success managers in property management and less property managers. As far as terms go.  [00:17:13] Sarah: He's really trying to get rid of that term.  [00:17:15] Jason: I don't know. It's just, it's so ambiguous. [00:17:17] Sarah: That's why. So when we were creating R docs, like all of the job descriptions for different roles, he's like, "I want there to be an R doc for every role in property management business." And I said, "okay, I can create it." Here's the problem. The problem is that if I create one for an assistant, it's going to be different from company to company. If I create one for a property manager, there's going to be some similarities, but there's always going to be things that are different from company to company. So there are great templates, right? And it's they're, it's amazing. And then you just delete the things you don't need and add anything you do need from there. There's nothing that's uniform. There's so much that's different from business to business. We all do the same thing. We're all property management entrepreneurs, but the way the ins and outs, the inner workings of our business, there's a million different ways to do it.  [00:18:10] Jason: We did define those Rdocs though. [00:18:12] We have Rdocs for each of the major roles. I think yeah, I think having recognizing that. You need a client success person to maintain the relationship. You need a maintenance coordinator. You need if all these things are segregated and you get really great specialists in each of these areas, then yeah, you're going to have a much stronger lifetime value of your client. [00:18:33] You're going to make a lot more money. So I think that's important. Anything else we should talk about related to property manager?  [00:18:39] Sarah: I think that covers it.  [00:18:40] Jason: All right. So figure out and I'm curious, go ahead and find my post in the DoorGrow club group, or go post or comment in the DoorGrow club community. [00:18:51] I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. What do you feel a property manager is if you don't do portfolio style? What are your property managers doing? How do you define that role? And are they really managing properties? Are they really managing people? Are they really customer success? Are they really supporting and taking care of owners? [00:19:08] Or do you think they're taking care of tenants and like maintaining a relationship there? So, all right, I think that's our interesting conversation for the day for the DoorGrow show and do you want to give them a call to action? That's a good call to action for the end of the show here? [00:19:23] Sarah: Oh, well, we have a few events coming up. So go and check out our events that we have coming up. Don't miss DoorGrow. It's going to be a big one. [00:19:31] This is like our big conference. We do it once a year. It's here in Round Rock, Texas on it's a Friday and Saturday, May 17th and 18th. And our theme this year is creating opportunity from uncertainty. So we have a lot of great topics, a lot of great speakers lined up for you guys. And I've got something special in the works that I haven't really released yet, but It's gonna be really cool because we've never done anything quite like that before  [00:19:57] Jason: Yeah, all right. [00:19:59] Cool. All right. Well on that note Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:20:03] 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!  [00:20:30] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

If you are a property management entrepreneur, you have likely been your own salesperson or BDM at some point. Eventually, every property management business owner will need to hire a salesperson and develop different growth engines. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about their BDM Bootcamp event You'll Learn [01:52] What is a BDM? [03:00] Get your BDM Ready for BDM Bootcamp [08:42] You Need a Sales Pipeline! [14:26] Benefits of In-Person Events Tweetables “It's not the growth strategy that's the problem. It's that there's multiple stages in a pipeline for each growth engine, and you are not identifying the leaks that exist in this pipeline.” “Your pipeline will literally never ever work if you don't even have one.” “If you're not working the pipeline and you don't know the different stages of a pipeline, you're just guessing, and you're just hoping.” “You need to get to the real pain and related that you need to get to the real pleasure, like what they really want. Nobody really wants property management” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: It's not the growth strategy that's the problem. It's that there's multiple stages in a pipeline for each growth engine and you are not identifying the leaks that exist in this pipeline or you're tolerating drop off at one of these stages.  [00:00:17] 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 a business and life. And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:36] 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. We're your hosts, Jason and Sarah Hull. [00:01:15] Now let's get into the show. All right. So today we're going to be talking about BDMs.  [00:01:24] Sarah: Yeah.  [00:01:26] Jason: In honor of this event that we have coming up, which is. Going to be super cool. I don't know that there's been anything like this. That's been as cool as this that's existed in the property management space, maybe ever. [00:01:39] There's a lot of people that talk about BDMs, but there's very few that are actually getting BDMs to get great results. And we're going to be hosting a BDM bootcamp. And so Before we go any further, every time I start talking about BDMs, as if everybody knows what it is. I just talked to a guy with, I think, 800 doors the other day. [00:02:00] He's like, "what's a BDM?" I was like, man, okay, I need to make sure I explained this. BDMs are business development managers. Sometimes they're called BDs, business developers and they're salespeople for property management. That's what people will call them, right? Business development can happen in any industry. [00:02:18] But the reason we use the phrase BDM in property management is because property management is closely connected to real estate. And whenever you mentioned sales, people get it confused with real estate brokerage sales type of stuff. And that's why. Now everybody knows what a BDM is, and we're going to be talking a little bit about that today. [00:02:37] Sarah: Okay.  [00:02:38] Jason: So anyone listening to the show, you better know what a BDM is from now on. That's it.  [00:02:43] Sarah: There's a quiz at the end.  [00:02:44] Jason: What is a BDM? Did you get it right? If not, go back and start this episode over.  [00:02:49] Sarah: Try again.  [00:02:51] Jason: Okay. All right. What do we talk...? Do you want to like tell them about the event? [00:02:56] What do we want to talk about?  [00:02:58] Sarah: Yes. Tell them about the event. So we are launching a BDM bootcamp. So there's a lot of companies that promote getting BDMs. And there's a lot of companies that promote getting BDMs and then spending a bunch of money to run ads and get leads and pay for leads and then have the BDM work the leads. [00:03:21] And then if you just want the BDM to close more deals, it's simple. All you have to do is spend more money and buy more leads. Which is really expensive and wildly ineffective. So we have strategies that BDMs use...  [00:03:35] Jason: that actually work  [00:03:37] Sarah: ...that are free, or at least very inexpensive. [00:03:40] You might have to pay for lunch. That's okay. You get something out of it too. And we've decided that we're going to launch a BDM, aka salesperson, boot camp. It's going to be a one day training. And we've never done anything like this before. For those of you that are current clients, there's some trainings on DoorGrow Academy. [00:04:01] We run every wednesday, our growth accelerator calls, but it's hard to amass all of this information that Jason and I have learned about sales over the last, what, 20 something years and put it in a course. Or talk about it on a one hour call. It's darn near impossible, right? So what we wanted to do is we wanted to take some of this information and spend one day going over all of it. [00:04:31] Now, this is very likely going to end up being a series because we can probably talk about sales and strategies and tactics and how to improve your scripts and what to say and like NLP language and filler words and all this good stuff, we can go over this for probably days on end. So what we're doing is this is very likely going to end up being a series, but we're going to launch the first one in April, so for those of you that are watching live, you all have a chance to get in on that for those of you that are watching this recording is will probably be released after the event, but don't fret because  [00:05:11] Jason: you may have missed it.  [00:05:12] Sarah: You might have missed it. Oh, man.  [00:05:15] Jason: Maybe you should get in our Facebook group and pay attention to the live streams. [00:05:19] So you don't miss stuff.  [00:05:20] Sarah: Sometimes we do some cool things that you need to know about right now.  [00:05:23] Jason: The Facebook group, go to doorgrowclub.Com apply. We reject 70 percent of the applicants, which is why the group is good.  [00:05:31] Sarah: Okay.  [00:05:32] Jason: Okay.  [00:05:32] Sarah: Anyway. So that was our shameless plug. All right. No, right. Go ahead. [00:05:36] If you've missed it. Yeah, we don't have a word from ourselves yet. That's a great idea. Who wants to sponsor this podcast? We'll plug you on every episode. Talk to me, baby. So anyway, if you've missed it. Sad for you, but don't fret because there's going to be more of these. This won't be a once and done thing. [00:05:55] So for those of you that are listening now and or hear the information before the event, then this is going to be for you. So here's the information. It will be Thursday, April 11th. So this is also open to anyone on your team who handles sales, meaning it might be you, it might be somebody else. You may have multiple people on the team who handle sales. So if you would like Jason and myself to train your salespeople for a day. This is a really great opportunity for you because that's exactly what we're doing. [00:06:33] So do you want to tell them a little bit about what we're talking about? Or do you want me to do that?  [00:06:38] Jason: I'll go ahead. So we've seen a lot of problems with businesses growing. And so if you, have a BDM or if you are the BDM, you're the business owner, you're the one that closes deals and you are not adding at least a hundred orders a year, hopefully through organic methods instead of wasting a bunch of money on advertising to get cold crappy leads, we're going to give you the strategies, we're going to focus on some different growth engines talking about those. We're going to get into specific pipeline stages because what I often identify is that it's not the growth strategy that's the problem. It's that there's multiple stages in a pipeline for each growth engine and you are not identifying the leaks that exist in this pipeline, or you're tolerating drop off at one of these stages. And not making progress and so we're going to help you identify where the leaks are if you've started building some of these growth engines, you may have started doing things like trying to do realtor referrals and it's not working very well. [00:07:39] You're not getting easily 10 doors a month from that. You might maybe you've heard of our neighbor strategy and you're not getting referrals from that. Maybe you've heard of some other of our strategies, it's not working. And if you haven't heard of these, then you might want to show up, but we're going to talk about the different stages. [00:07:55] We're going to talk about what maybe is affecting things at different stages. This will be very tailored to those that are in attendance. We want to help you move your business forward significantly. And sometimes there's very simple tweaks that could be done at each of these stages that opens the floodgates. [00:08:10] So you have a lot more flow through the pipeline, which means more deals and more money.  [00:08:15] Sarah: Yeah. So back up because you skipped to topic number two, which is cool. We can do two and then one and then three and then four, but that's fine.  [00:08:21] Jason: They're not numbered.  [00:08:22] Sarah: They're not, but they are in order on the document. [00:08:24] Jason: Okay.  [00:08:25] Sarah: Yeah. [00:08:25] Jason: So Sarah's an operator and everything has to be done a certain way. There is a right way for operators.  [00:08:32] Sarah: There's a right way to do literally every task on the planet.  [00:08:34] Jason: I'm talking to the business owners and they care most about what is interesting or different, but...  [00:08:42] Sarah: yes, and I understand, but your pipeline will literally never ever work if you don't even have one. [00:08:50] Jason: That's true.  [00:08:51] Sarah: Or you don't know the stages of a pipeline because a lot of times, and I bet this happens to you too, but it happens to me when I ask people, okay, "what does your sales process look like?" [00:09:00] " Oh, I talked to somebody." "Okay, great. And then what?" "Oh, and then I send them some information." "Great. And then what?" [00:09:05] Jason: "I wait." [00:09:06] Sarah: "Oh, then I wait." "Oh, okay. Like, do you call them again or do you check in or do you like set up another call?"  [00:09:13] Jason: "Or I follow up in a way that I look needy and creepy?"  [00:09:16] Sarah: Sometimes the answer is yes. And then sometimes the answer is no, but even if they do follow up or have another call or check in again, somehow, then my next question again is "okay, and then what?" And then they go, "oh, and then I just wait." So essentially what happens is you have no pipeline. Okay. And you don't know that you don't have a pipeline, but you don't have a pipeline. [00:09:35] And that means if you're not working the pipeline and you don't know the different stages of a pipeline, we're just guessing, and we're just hoping. We're going, "I don't know. I keep talking to all these people, but nothing seems to be closing. And I don't understand why," because you don't have pipeline stages. [00:09:49] Jason: Okay.  [00:09:49] Sarah: So you got to need a pipeline.  [00:09:51] Jason: So we'll teach you how to build out the pipeline. We'll talk about the different stages that need to exist. And then it'll be a lot more clear and we'll talk with you about how to build that out in your CRM of choice. So you'll understand the principles. [00:10:04] You can go apply this to whatever CRM you use, whether it's DoorGrow CRM or lead simple or whatever else is out there. Okay, I'll go to number three now that we're back in order. Okay. All right. Number three, [00:10:19] Uncovering your client's pain points. So superficially people think they know the pain of their target audience. So they want their property manager. They don't want to have to deal with managing the rental property. That is not the real pain that gets you to close deals that you have to go a lot deeper than that. [00:10:36] And so we're going to talk about how to disarm people, how to not come across as super salesy, how to create authentic communication and an authentic relationship where they believe that you can help them and how to get them to open up about what the real pain is, the real stress of the real emotion that might be motivating them to have a conversation with you. [00:11:00] And one of the biggest problems we see in sales is that a lot of people don't take time to identify what the real pain is. The pain often has not really anything to do with the rental property. It's something going on in their personal life. And so you need to figure out how to connect to that. [00:11:16] And for some that's like, "Whoa," that's like, "I don't know how to do that. That'd be weird or awkward," but you need to get to the real pain and related that you need to get to the real pleasure, like what they really want. Nobody really wants property management, right? Just like if you're booking a trip to Hawaii. [00:11:34] Property management is the flight to Hawaii. It's not the paradise. It's not the outcome that they're hoping for. It is property management. So we want to sell the trip. We want to sell Hawaii, not the flight there, right? Which is property management. So we'll talk about also getting towards the, not just the pain, but the pleasure. [00:11:54] Those are the 2 ingredients you really need to know and uncover in order to close the deal. And so if you're not closing deals, it's probably because somebody else is better at that than you. You're one of your competitors, or they're just going to go with the cheapest company because you haven't really created a connection. [00:12:11] And so they think you're a commodity. You do everything everyone else does. And so that we'll get into that. All right. So good?  [00:12:18] Sarah: That was good.  [00:12:19] Jason: Number four, reviewing and improving your call scripts to book more appointments and close more deals. So we want to like, take a look at what are you saying? And you may think, "I don't have scripts. [00:12:30] I'm just awesome. I just wing it every time." I guarantee 90 percent of the time, you're saying similar things, dealing with objections in similar ways. And so you have a script. It just probably isn't a very clearly defined one, which means it's probably not a very good one because you haven't taken an objective look at it to optimize or improve it. [00:12:50] And so we're going to take a look at some scripts that are effective and figure out ways to improve your scripts. And sometimes it's not even about what you're saying. It's about how you say it. And so we're going to focus on some of the magic that comes with how you communicate with people. I've got clients that are not salespeople, like no real training in sales, terrible at sales. And they're crushing it because they know how to be authentic. They are communicating in a way that's disarming and they're just being helpful. And so we're going to talk about some of that stuff. How to close more deals. Some of you that are so good at sales, you're super salesy, you like cut your teeth as a baby in real estate and like you're a shark, like we're going to help you figure out how to undo a lot of that mess so that you can create more trust and sales and deals happen at the speed of trust. [00:13:44] And so we're going to help you close more business, which will make things a lot better. Okay.  [00:13:50] Sarah: That's what we've got. All right. That's our agenda. And if this sounds interesting to you, now, our hope is that once you come to this event, you'll obviously get a lot out of it and learn a lot about sales that we just typically can't cover on a one hour call. [00:14:07] It's just, it's too much. I can talk about 1 of those things for more than an hour. Right? Once you come to this event, you'll learn a lot and you'll be able to immediately implement these things so that very quickly, you will start seeing some changes and some positive results and momentum.  [00:14:24] Jason: So why do this in person? [00:14:26] So let me talk about that. One of the things we've noticed in DoorGrow's, I'm starting to call it the real bubble. And so there's this mentality, I think, unconsciously in our brain. So when we're doing stuff on zoom calls and zoom meetings, which we do a lot of cool stuff that way DoorGrow, but we've noticed that when we get people in person for the first time they meet Sarah and I and realize we're real human beings. [00:14:48] We're not just something on video and that we're real and they can like hug us. And like we touch right? Like then something shifts in their brain that everything else they're saying is real. When they start to meet clients that they've seen on some of the Zoom calls, sharing their wins and talking about crushing it and adding doors. [00:15:07] They're like, "Oh, these are real people." And then the brain shifts and they start to connect that, "Hey, if they're real, and this is real and they're getting real results and they're like me, I'm a human, like I can do this too." And all of this stuff is actually true, impossible. And so we've noticed a shift in clients once they come to DoorGrow live, which is coming up in May, or they come to one of our in person events. [00:15:32] And so we want to do this in person because there's something magical about in person that content and information is absorbed. A lot more easily. There's also that sort of kinesthetic aspect that we're there physically but the learning is a bit more experiential. We'll be able to maybe even role play, go over some scripts, talk, like, say things. [00:15:52] It's just a bit more real than just seeing something on video or watching a video replay or something like that. And so come pierce the real veil with DoorGrow and realize the real magic that exists.  [00:16:03] Sarah: All right. Yes. And at this point you guys might be wondering all right, so this sounds pretty good. [00:16:09] I think I might be interested. What do I do? Contact me. Don't contact anybody else on the team. They're not even going to know what you're talking about. Just contact me so you can get in touch with me. It's Sarah S-A-R-A-H. If you go to our website and you end up talking with somebody else on the team, they will point you in my direction and you can get registered that way. [00:16:29] Now, tickets for this will be 1k per person. You can have as many people on your team attend as you would like. So if you have 3 BDMs and you want to send all 3. If there's just one or two, maybe that you want to send or you want to come check it out yourself, go ahead. But you'll need to let me know now spots are going to be limited. I don't even have 20 spots. I actually need to go back and confirm how many I have left because I know we had some people interested. But the price for this will be 1k per person. And I know that the price will not stay. At that rate. [00:17:03] So we're launching it and we're doing something special with the price. So for now, take us our one case. So get in while the cost is low.  [00:17:12] Jason: There you go. All right. You will easily offset the cost of doing this. For most of you, that's like getting one more deal, right? So lifetime value for most of your clients, probably a lot higher, like maybe 10 times. [00:17:27] Maybe 20 times higher if you can keep them a while, right? So this is a no brainer. This is very easy and we can get your BDM adding a lot more doors. So just like some client results, we've got clients that are easily some BDM are adding 200- 300 doors a year organically without paying for any SEO or pay per click or content marketing or social media marketing or pay per lead services like APM and they're able to grow and scale their business quickly through organic methods. [00:17:56] Sarah: And we have some clients that turn business away every single month because they just cannot.  [00:18:02] Jason: Get pickier and pickier.  [00:18:03] Sarah: Yeah, they're backlogged. And then they ask us on the calls what do I do? Like, "I don't want to say no, but then I can't take on this many." And we're like, "now you have a waiting list and you can take on X money per month." [00:18:14] And if they can't come on this month or they missed that deadline, then roll them over to the next month. If they qualify.  [00:18:20] Jason: Okay. All right. So that is BDM bootcamp. So check out BDM bootcamp, reach out to sarah@doorgrow.Com. Sarah with an H.  [00:18:28] Sarah: Yeah, if you spell my name wrong, I'm not talking to you cause I won't get it. [00:18:32] Jason: Okay. That's your punishment.  [00:18:34] Wow. Okay.  [00:18:35] Sarah: So don't forget my H because everyone does.  [00:18:38] Jason: Just email me. I'm nicer.  [00:18:40] Sarah: He never checks his email. Don't email him. That's true.  [00:18:42] Jason: My assistant does. Don't do it. All right.  [00:18:44] Sarah: You'll never hear back the black hole.  [00:18:46] Jason: No, my assistant's good. She'll take care of it. I just won't see it. [00:18:51] She'll tell me about it if it's important. All right. For those of you that are wanting to join a community, be part of something awesome, reach out to us. And so you can learn more about DoorGrow Mastermind. You get access to some of the coolest stuff and to be part of the coolest community of the most growth minded property management business owners in the industry. [00:19:11] And we can help you get your business to the next level. So whether it's scaling operations, whether it's figuring out how to grow, whether it's cleaning up the front end of your business, getting your website and your pricing, right, all this kind of stuff. So we can help you. All right. Check us out at doorgrow. com until next time to our mutual growth, everybody. Bye for now. [00:19:33] 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!  [00:19:59] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

A lot of people are speculating about the real estate market right now. Some property managers are concerned about how it will affect their business. You might not realize that you actually have an opportunity to take advantage of a potential downturn. In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about what a real estate market downturn would mean for property management entrepreneurs and how they could take advantage of it. You'll Learn [01:15] Uncertainty in the industry [04:21] A downturn isn't the end of the world [07:36] Millions are made in downturns [09:59] Going deeper on the topic Tweetables “Things do not need to be bad in a downturn. You just need to be prepared.” “Serious, savvy real estate investors get super excited when there's a downturn.” “Millions are made is in downturns.” “If you think it's going to be harder in the downturn, you're right, and it will be harder.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00]  Sarah: Pick up the phone and have a conversation with your investors and the ones that are like, "I can't wait," those ones are the ones you call first if and when shit hits the fan.  [00:00:10]  [00:00:12] 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're interested in growing 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. [00:00:37] 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 Hull and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. [00:01:12] So we are going to talk about what? [00:01:15] Sarah: There's a lot of uncertainty right now in the marketplace, especially with might be happening with the real estate market.  [00:01:22] Jason: Okay.  [00:01:22] Sarah: And what to do. What you could do, right? If we have a downturn, because a lot of times people hear downturn and then they panic and they go, "Oh, shit." [00:01:32] It is like winter. It's coming. Woe is me. Things are bad. And things do not need to be bad in a downturn. You just need to be prepared.  [00:01:41] Jason: So I'm thinking related to this also, this is it's 2024. This is an election year. The election cycle is such that every election year, it gets crazy. [00:01:52] Sarah: Like, remember last one? We had COVID.  [00:01:56] Jason: Yeah.  [00:01:57] Sarah: So the craziest one yet.  [00:01:59] Jason: Yeah. So every election cycle, there's like racial tensions, there's whatever it takes to get people riled up on every side, everybody's angry and there's like political tension, there's economic challenges, like, I don't know what happens, I don't know if you're a conspiracy theorist, but things get crazy every election year. [00:02:18] And we have this big black swan event that was COVID and there's been previous ones in the past. [00:02:23] Sarah: Not like COVID.  [00:02:24] Jason: Not like COVID. Not like COVID. But, there was the housing crisis stuff. There's been things in the past that have happened. And so under the potential possibility that there could be a black swan event in 2024, or that there just could be some significant changes in the real estate market, how do we deal with that uncertainty? [00:02:41] Sarah: So it's really, it's being prepared. For whatever happens, right? Because when the real estate market, do you remember? Maybe a year or a year and a half ago, when things were like crazy, you would list a property and you would get like three offers the first like ten minutes. You would always be in a multiple offer situation. [00:02:59] Things were going way over ask price. So you had listed at a million, you knew you were going to get significantly higher than that. And we're not really seeing that so much anymore. Things have started to cool off. Things have started to shift. Interest rates are way higher. So the question always is does this continue to happen? [00:03:18] And do we see more of a downturn or are things going to pivot and all of a sudden, "Hey, we're going to be back in this bull market with the real estate." Okay. So everybody knows what to do. I think that's fair to say everybody knows what to do when things are great. We're like, "Oh, we'll just list a bunch of properties. And then we have a bunch of investors that are buying and then like property management is easier." It's easier to sell and it's just a more healthy market. And like there's lots of new leads coming in and it's fantastic. And then the rental market usually heats up and then it's easy to rent properties and tenants might be fighting over properties and we're like, "Oh yeah, I could get this rented out in like a couple of days." [00:04:00] When we're in a downturn, then it's like, properties sit a little bit longer and tenants aren't as hot as they were before. And now it might take a couple of weeks to get it rented out, maybe even longer and selling properties isn't really happening. And maybe investors aren't really buying. And the thing to remember is investors definitely buy in a downturn. [00:04:24] This is in fact, when they're really excited. Serious, savvy real estate investors get super excited when there's a downturn. So when I was a property manager, what I was doing all the time because I would just connect with my clients. No, I don't ask them every month, but at least once or twice a year, ask them like, "Hey, what's your strategy?" [00:04:43] Has anything changed? This is why I'm really big on year end reviews so that I know what is their plan for the following year?" So right now, if you haven't done your year end reviews, that's fine. Make up a new reason and you can just say, "Hey, it's the beginning of the year. I'd love to just connect with you." [00:04:58] There you go. There's your reason. And you can always say, "Hey, listen, things are weird in the real estate market right now. Things might pick up and they might continue to get worse. So if they continue to get worse. Where are you? Are you decking cash? Are you ready to buy a bunch of things? Are you going to be trying to panic sell? Let's not do that." So that may be a separate conversation, but "where are you?" Because some of my investors, they were like, "Oh, it doesn't matter. I'm not really looking at picking anything up. I'm going to stay comfortable where I am." But some of my investors, they were like, "Sarah, I can't wait for this market to crash." [00:05:33] They were excited. They're like, as soon as things start to dip and really when things start to dip, when there's a hard dip, they're like, "I will call you and we will pick up as many properties as we can pick up." They will do anything. So they might've been stacking cash. They might've had access to capital. [00:05:52] They might've been able to take out a loan. They might've been able to pull equity from properties they already own to purchase new properties. People love a sale. So if you could pick up a property for 500 K, when typically it might be six or seven or nine, which investors that you work with already are super excited for a market crash. [00:06:13] And if you don't know this. Then you are missing out. Pick up the phone and have a conversation with your investors and the ones that are like, "I can't wait," those ones are the ones you call first if and when shit hits the fan.  [00:06:27] Jason: Okay, cool. So I think it'd be a really good piece of knowledge to have, if you aren't super familiar with all of your investors or clients situation to be very aware of which ones are ready to capitalize on opportunity. Which ones have a stockpile cash? Which ones are aware that they could pull money out of their existing properties? Maybe do a cash out refi one as soon as interest rates drop and get into more units, right? [00:06:53] Sarah: Even if not, I would do a cash out refi with an 8 percent interest rate, and I don't care because as soon as the interest rates dip, I'm going to refi that again. Okay. Don't care.  [00:07:01] Jason: Yeah. So we need to be aware, like, what do our clients have and what are their options that are available so that we can help them win if their goal is to do more investing and get more investments and they're thinking, "I have to wait till interest rates drop, like you just said, or I have to wait for this," or whatever it might be. And you can help them figure out how to get funding, or you can help them figure out how to price out a deal, or you've got other investors that are sitting on a bunch of cash that would be willing to go in with another owner on something, right? [00:07:29] So you need to be aware of these opportunities because you could be leveraging this. Even if in the downturn. Yeah.  [00:07:36] Sarah: So in the downturn, this is what we hear all the time. "Oh, but oh, real estate sucks. And tenants like they don't want to rent. And it's harder now." It is not harder in the downturn. If you think it's going to be harder in the downturn, you're right, and it will be harder. But if instead you just capitalize on the opportunity that lays just awaiting then that's where millions are made is in downturns So people that know that they get really excited when like the stock market crashes when the real estate market crashes in 2008 people lost millions of dollars And then there were people who made their millions because of what they did in 2008. [00:08:15] Jason: They were ready.  [00:08:16] Sarah: They were ready. They were like, " things are tanking. Let's get in." [00:08:20] Jason: The people that were ready probably made it happen. I'm just kidding. Conspiracy theory. All right. Be ready and talk to your clients and be ready because when there's crisis... so there's this principle that when there is chaos and crisis and everyone's freaking out and fear is contagious, right? [00:08:36] Fear is contagious. We saw it during the pandemic and it turned out to be not as crazy as we all thought it was right. But we were made to be super afraid. When there's crisis and when there's chaos, the one person that stands up in the local market to all the investors and says, "Hey, here's the plan. This doesn't have to be scary. We've got the roadmap. We know how to support you. We know what to do." In that moment, you instantly take ownership and leadership of the situation and everybody then trusts you even more because they don't know what to do. They don't have a plan. So they're scrambling. [00:09:07] You're like, "Hey, I've got the plan." You are a beacon of light in times of darkness, people. So that is a moment where you can now shine and stand out and get more clients. When owners are like, "man, I don't know if my tenants are going to pay rent." And you're like, "I'm a property manager. I can make sure people are paying rent." [00:09:24] They're like, "Oh, okay. I don't want to be the bad guy." Some people were stacking doors during the pandemic. And then there were some people like, "Oh, this is my excuse for why I lost a whole bunch of business and people freaked out and got out." So I think it's what you perceive it to be. And I think the goal we're talking about here is to perceive it to be an opportunity. [00:09:43] And if you go in with that mindset, how is this an opportunity? How can I make this an opportunity? You can be the select few that lead others towards success. And make a lot of money. All right. And related to this, before we wrap up, we'll keep this a short episode. This is going to be a large focus of DoorGrowLive. [00:10:02] We're going to be talking about... what's the theme?  [00:10:05] Sarah: Creating opportunity in times of uncertainty.  [00:10:08] Jason: That's good.  [00:10:08] Sarah: Or something very similar to that.  [00:10:10] Jason: Something like that. All right. And so we've mapped out over the two days a series of conversations, things to be taught that I think are going to help people really capitalize on growth to get you unstuck, to get you moving forward. [00:10:25] This will be a game changer for anybody that attends and we're really excited. Like we put some serious thought into this and there's some new stuff that we're going to be talking about there as well.  [00:10:35] Sarah: Somebody needed four and a half hours to map it out with me the other day.  [00:10:38] Jason: She's a little bit bent on spending the weekend doing work. [00:10:41] Sarah: So there was a lot that went into it and that was just the rough draft of the schedule.  [00:10:45] Jason: Hey, to be fair, you make me work on the weekends all the time too, so you know this is true. She was like, "we're watching these videos today and we're doing this thing, learning." [00:10:53] Sarah: we're learning too. Yeah.  [00:10:55] Jason: Yes. We mapped out something really cool and we're really excited about this. [00:10:59] So check out this at doorgrowlive.Com. We're going to be adding more and more details as it gets closer, but get your tickets. It's in may. It's going to be at Kalahari resort in round rock, Texas, which is just like a quick drive from downtown Austin, super cool area. And so this is going to be a lot of fun. [00:11:20] All right, then I think that's it for today. So until next time to our mutual growth. [00:11:25] 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!  [00:11:52] 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.

Property management entrepreneurs… how many hats are you currently wearing? It's easy for business owners to get stuck doing things they don't actually enjoy doing. Property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about how to get out of the roles you don't enjoy and into the roles you do. You'll Learn [03:17] The myth of wanting to clone yourself [07:51] The pros of a great hiring system [13:46] Which hat do you take off first? [17:58] Next steps Tweetables “That you need 10 people to clone yourself as an entrepreneur.” “A generalist that's good at everything is never the best.” “For every role that exists, there's always a person to fill it who actually really love doing that role.” “If you have office politics, you've got a culture problem.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: For every role that exists, there's always a person to fill it who actually really love doing that role.  [00:00:09] Jason: Welcome DoorGrowers, 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 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 Hull and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. [00:01:03] Now let's get into the show. All right, so we released a funny video. So if you have not seen any of our funny videos, we put out quite a few of these. We have a whole playlist of them on YouTube. You can go to youtube.com/doorgrow and go to our playlist and look for our playlist of funny videos. Our newest funny video that we released is all about hats. [00:01:28] It's got a whole bunch of hats and it's silly, and I'm putting on different hats, and so if you want to laugh at me. Go check that out. we thought we would talk about this idea today. So what's the idea?  [00:01:40] Sarah: So the idea is are you wearing too many hats, aka are you filling too many roles in your property management business?  [00:01:50] Jason: All right, so when you first start out, you have to wear every hat, right? [00:01:55] You do everything in the business because it's all on you. You're like, "Oh, let me send that over to my maintenance coordinator... who's me. And let me get that over to my bookkeeper... who is also me. And Oh, my receptionist will answer my calls for me today because that's me." What are some of the hats that property managers are wearing. [00:02:15] Sarah: There's so many of them. Let's see. There's maintenance coordinator, a leasing agent, there's usually the bookkeeper, whoever's going to handle finances, there's of course the CEO who's going to set the vision of the company, there's the operator who's going to do things on the backend, there's the salesperson or the BDM, there's usually like a property manager, there's sometimes assistant property managers... As companies grow, they sometimes get tenant coordinators or client coordinators like just to handle like tenant or client communications. But when you start out, like all of this is usually you. [00:02:55] Jason: One of the things that I hear a lot from early stage entrepreneurs, people that are just getting started is they're like, "I just need to clone myself. I just need to find somebody else. Just like me." And so this is the big mistake that everybody makes initially in hiring. It's everybody does it like we all go and try and find somebody like ourselves. [00:03:15] That's what we think hiring is. We think hiring is cloning ourselves. The challenge with that is that the clone myth, as I call it, the reality is that you need 10 people to clone yourself as an entrepreneur. You need a different person for each hat. [00:03:32] Because if you find somebody that is as adaptable as you and that can do everything like you and is driven like you, guess what they're going to do? They're going to do what you did and they're going to leave and go start their own company. I've seen this over and over again where people hire a clone and the clone does exactly what a clone would do. They become like you and they leave and sometimes take your clients and start their own business and become your competition. And so we don't want to fall prey to the clone myth. We want to find specialists that we can give pieces of what we do or hats to that are really good at that particular hat and a generalist that's good at everything is never the best. [00:04:17] You are not the best at every role. You probably think, "nobody else could do it as good as me." This is the other belief that early stage entrepreneurs say. "Nobody else can do it as well as me. I might as well do it myself." And that's a trap. It's a trap that keeps you doing everything forever. And if you believe that, then that means you will by default be comfortable getting crappy team members that are worse than you at these hats. [00:04:42] Because if you believe that you're the best and nobody else could be better than you, then you will go hire people and you will tolerate people that are worse than you at these particular roles. And then you'll be frustrated and I have a team of people that are better at their particular roles than I would be and this gives me a lot of confidence being able to let go of stuff. Like Sarah is way better at the details way better operations way better at putting things together. Like you've significantly improved the business and she's better at all of those things than I am and there's things that I'm better at than Sarah, but that allows me to stay in those areas I get to stay in those areas where I am better at those things than Sarah and then we have different team members Adam, and Mar, and they're all better at their particular tasks than I would be. [00:05:31] Sarah: Or I would be. Yeah.  [00:05:33] Absolutely. And that's what you want, is you want someone who is better at whatever this is than you are, especially if you don't enjoy it. So if you've got things in your business that you're holding on to and you think, "oh, I'll just never find somebody who loves maintenance coordination. Like who on the world would love to do that job because it's horrible?" Somebody will love it. [00:05:59] Somebody who likes details and organization and they like having a plan and a structure and a system. There are people who function that way and they really enjoy that. And it's so funny because Jason was like, "for every role that exists, there's always a person to fill it who actually really love doing that role." And it's true. It's really true.  [00:06:22] Jason: That's a good point because early stage entrepreneurs also believe that because they hate doing something like if you hate maintenance coordination, you're like, "man, if I never have to do another maintenance escalation or talk to a tenant again, I'd be so happy." [00:06:37] A lot of times entrepreneurs believe that means nobody else would like it either. It's really a self centered, self centric view to believe that the rest of the world are like you. They're not. Like one of my mentors would say, there are people out there that like changing bedpans, you know? [00:06:52] And I've said that to some people that were nurses or something like that. And they're like, "yeah, I do. I feel like I'm helping them."  [00:06:58] And I'm like, "that's great. I wouldn't want to do that.  [00:07:00] Sarah: Like Evelyn, she says, "I don't like the changing of the bedpans, but I do like that when I do that, I know that I'm helping somebody who can't do it for themselves." [00:07:07] Jason: Yeah. And so she's happy to do it.  [00:07:10] Sarah: You can't pay me enough money in this world to change a bedpan.  [00:07:13] Jason: There is not enough money in this entire universe. That's my sister in law. And yeah that's wild. And so I want everyone listening to believe that there are people out there that can do the things that are your minus signs. [00:07:26] You can find people that's their plus signs and they will do it better than you. If you believe there are people out there that can do it better than you, there's a lot of dinosaur bosses. This is how you know you're a dinosaur boss. If you're the person that just believes everybody in the younger generation is terrible and there's no good hires out there available and nobody wants to work, then guess what you're going to find and attract when you go onto your job search? [00:07:51] There are great people out there. And if you build a really good hiring process, you can find and attract them. But the great people don't want to work for a dinosaur boss, like somebody that just believes that 'if I pay you, you should just do it and you should just like it and just suck it up.' [00:08:06] Because that's not very inspiring and people have options nowadays. They don't have to stay at a job very long. They can go work elsewhere. And the way that we retain team members is we create a culture of people that all share the same vision, same mission to transform property management, business owners. [00:08:23] And because we hire specialists and hire people that are really dialed in personality wise for that particular role that we know they can be great at it. And because each of our team members are great, it creates this sense of mutual respect on the team. Everybody on our team likes each other. Yeah. And they respect each other. [00:08:42] And in our daily huddles, they're like celebrating each other and sharing, like pointing out how awesome different team members were because they can see that these team members are really good at the things they do and it's things they're not good at or wouldn't want to have to do.  [00:08:57] Sarah: Morgan just said, I think, when she came back from leave, I was catching up with her. And then she was on some coaching calls with clients and she shared part of it with me. And I just had this conversation with one of our clients, and she said, "everybody on our team. I love them. Like I really like these people. I work with them every day, but I really enjoy working with them." And she said, "if anybody on the team came to me with any task and said, 'Hey, like I could really use your help on this.'" She says, "I would do it in a heartbeat. I wouldn't even flinch. I would do it in a heartbeat and I would want to do it because I care about these people and I want to help them."  [00:09:34] Jason: And that's because we've created a culture initially entirely around what I want. Like I as the visionary gets to set the culture of the company and I created values and everything. [00:09:47] Now, when Sarah became an owner, we took a fresh look at them. And we revisit them and then I don't think we really changed much.  [00:09:55] Sarah: No, we didn't. I gave her an opportunity to have input, but... [00:09:59] would you, if I wasn't a value match, would you have brought me into the company? You wouldn't have hired me, but nevermind ownership of the company. You don't give ownership of a company to somebody that's like not a culture.  [00:10:10] Jason: If you weren't a value match, we probably wouldn't be married. And so this is the thing. There's a lot of couples in property management. I've noticed we get a lot of couple clients, husband and wife teams. [00:10:21] And it's very typical that the husband is more visionary, sales, wild, cowboy, entrepreneur and that the wife is like stable, crusher of all hopes and dreams, just kidding, grounded, practical, make sure everything works operator personality type. Yeah.  [00:10:38] Sarah: Sometimes we do see, they're like, "we're going to do this crazy big thing!" [00:10:41] And operators were like, "we can't afford that. Cool, but that sounds really insane. So what can we actually do and how can we actually make it happen?" So like we are the ones who make sure that things happen instead of just,  [00:10:57] Jason: yeah.  [00:10:57] Sarah: We're not the crusher of the dreams. [00:10:58] We're the dream makers.  [00:11:00] Jason: They're the dream. Yeah. They bring it into reality. The "maker-happeners". ,  [00:11:04] That's good. That's really good.  [00:11:05] Sarah: It's so good. Madi's going to laugh so hard when she's editing this. She's going to go, "that's not a word."  [00:11:10] Jason: Maker-happeners.  [00:11:11] Sarah: The word now, Madi.  [00:11:13] Jason: This is my Maker-happener. [00:11:15] And yeah, we've got this mutual respect that exists on the team, and if you don't like your team, be honest. If your team increases your pressure and noise, if they stress you out, if you are frustrated at your team members, you have the wrong team and it's your fault. You created it, you allowed it, and you kept these people because you probably thought that's just how business works or that's what's available.  [00:11:40] Sarah: Even if you're like, "Oh no, I like everybody," but does everybody like everybody else? Because if your team doesn't like each other, how quick do you think they're going to be to really jump in and help the other one? Because everybody needs help at some point. [00:11:52] Like deadlines come and things happen or whatever. Like summer happens and we're like, "Oh my God! I thought like I had more time on this and all these leases are due. Can somebody help me?" There is going to be a point in which someone on your team needs help from somebody else that doesn't usually do that thing. [00:12:07] And if they don't like each other, they're not going to help each other. They're going to go, "Oh yeah, look at Susie. She can't even do her own job."  [00:12:14] Jason: Yeah. If you have office politics, you've got a culture problem. If you've got you may have team members that secretly don't even like you and you may not know it, but you can tell. You can feel it. [00:12:25] Most employees probably here in the U. S., that standard American employee doesn't really like their job. They just want safety and certainty. They want stability. They're not there because it's giving them a sense of fulfillment, freedom, contribution, support. It's like the best thing and they love it. [00:12:41] So that means they're B players. A players are what we have on our team at DoorGrow. B players are what one of my mentors called hiders. Their secret goal if they were really honest would be to do as little work as possible, get paid as much as possible, and then they go and complain about you and live for the weekend. [00:13:02] And so if they love the weekend way more than they love their day-to-day, there's probably a problem. Like you want team members that are like, "man, I'm really excited. I love getting to do what I get to do." If I didn't have the role that I have or get to do what I get to do, I would feel probably lost, depressed, and bored out of my mind. [00:13:23] I love getting to do what I get to do. And my guess is that most of the people on my team would probably feel that same way. If they just had nothing to do. So I don't know, maybe there's some that would love to just not work ever a day in their life. I don't know. But for me, that would be crazy. [00:13:39] Sarah: Not anymore.  [00:13:40] Jason: So what else can we talk about related to getting rid of these hats? Because in the beginning they're wearing every hat. How did they decide which had to get off first?  [00:13:49] Sarah: What are the things that you like? Because those are the things you should keep. [00:13:54] And not just "Oh, that's annoying," or like "it's okay, but I don't love it." The things that you really don't like, the things where, like for me it was talking to tenants, that was what it was for me, and sales. I hated sales. I hated doing sales. I was really good at it, but I just, I hated it. Look at, the things that you do and the things that you like, you tend to get them done pretty quickly. Yeah, if you like going through emails. You're going to do that and there's going to be very little friction there. [00:14:23] No one's going to have to say "Oh, did you check your email?" But if you hate going through emails and you're like, "oh my god. Like why is email even a thing? I don't even know why we have to do this," You're going to procrastinate. Yeah. It's going to build up and you're probably not the right person to be doing it. [00:14:41] Jason: Yeah. If there's anything that's been on your to do list for more than a month, it's probably because you are not the person that should be doing it. That's a pretty big clue. One of the big mistakes I see people make when getting their initial hire is they try and find team members to wear multiple hats. [00:14:57] They're like, "I'm going to get an appointment setter slash assistant."  [00:15:02] Sarah: My favorite is, "my operator is also going to do sales for me."  [00:15:05] Jason: Oh yeah.  [00:15:06] Sarah: No, they're not.  [00:15:08] Jason: And why that's a problem is these are opposite personality types. If we're picking people that are two different personality types. If we're giving them a role that's two different personality types, then we are setting them up for some sort of failure. [00:15:21] And they're not going to really do well at the one that is not their personality type. And so we need to make sure we're not throwing multiple hats onto a person. We're trying to offload multiple hats that are different personality types. It's not going to work. We need specialists that are the right personality for the role. [00:15:39] So at DoorGrow, we are experts on matching the right personality types, knowing the personality types that you need for particular roles. There's a certain personality type for a BDM, for an operator, for a receptionist, for maintenance coordinator, property manager, leasing agent. [00:15:54] There's certain personality types that are good at these. And if you hire based on skill, you will miss the personality. And so hiring based on personality and based on culture are more important for the team and for the role. So usually the first person that we recommend in our DoorGrow code that most entrepreneurs get initially to get the most leverage would be an assistant. [00:16:19] Like maybe around 50 units, you should have your own assistant. But we've got clients that come to us with hundreds of doors and they still don't even have an assistant for themselves. They just keep hiring to take care of the business while not taking care of themselves. So they're not really taking hats off or giving up stuff. [00:16:35] They're just helping the business out. And so they end up more and more stressed the bigger the team gets. So a big piece of this is you need to make sure that you are taking care of yourself and the way we help our clients get clarity on themselves in clarity on what are their minus signs versus their plus signs, what they, what drains them versus what gives them energy is by doing a time study. [00:16:57] And this gives them a lot of clarity on how do I get to the next level? How do I offload the negative things so that I can spend more time in my area of genius and wearing the hats that I want to wear? And then we build out job descriptions and et cetera. So we have this whole process for taking entrepreneurs through to give them a lot of clarity. [00:17:14] Then later. Maybe around 200 plus the most important hire that you will ever make in the business will be to get an operator. If your spouse is already an operator, then you already have the most important person that you will ever bring into the business on your team, which is amazing and awesome. This person needs to be very intelligent. [00:17:34] They need to be sharp. They need to be driven to getting systems and processes dialed in. They want to see the business succeed. They handle all the details. They make everything work and they make sure that the team makes everything work. And this allows you to spend more time in the visionary role or in the sales role or whatever it is as a visionary entrepreneur that you really enjoy. [00:17:55] All right. Anything else related to hats?  [00:17:58] Sarah: So I think if you're listening to this and you're going, "yeah, but I'm still doing all this stuff and I would like to offload that, but I don't think I have the money to offload that," because this is what we hear next is, "yeah, that would be great, but I can't afford it. I can't afford to hire, two or three or eight people."  [00:18:18] Jason: So we have processes for this, but we have to back you out of the corner. You've painted yourself into, so first we do need to get you clarity on what you do enjoy and what would make you more money because it doesn't make sense to go get somebody if you could create more leverage, right? And so sometimes it's about creating more leverage related to time right now. So we have processes for helping you get even more done. Like one of my clients did a time study and recently and said that he had found that he was spending an hour after three o'clock, he was spending an hour to get things done that took him 10 minutes in the morning. [00:18:56] And so part of it is just clarity on your circadian rhythm, your time, like your energy, whether you're getting good enough sleep. So we worked on some hacks to increase his brain's bandwidth so that he could do more later in the day and get a lot more done. This may triple the output of what he can accomplish. [00:19:15] Then we have processes like daily planning time studies. We have these different things that help you get more yield from your day. We have a training called the priorities training. It talks about how Sarah was able to run her business with over 60 percent profit margin with only one part time person up to 260 units. [00:19:34] Which is crazy. They add units too.  [00:19:36] Yeah. C class properties. Yeah. In a rough area. Yeah. And she was able to reduce a lot of the communication, a lot of the friction and systematize the business so that it could run very efficiently. And so we train clients on how to do that. We get people come to us and they're like, "I'm burnt out at 50 units." [00:19:55] Sometimes they're like, "I'm stuck at a hundred units. Like I just can't handle anymore." And you can. There's ways of making this easier.  [00:20:04] Sarah: But you can't give nothing changes, right? So if everything stays the same, you're right. You can't, but you need to make some changes probably to yourself and in your business. [00:20:15] And then all of a sudden it will allow more space and you'll be able to add on more units.  [00:20:21] Jason: This is where good coaching comes in is we can help you get more yield from your day, create more bandwidth so that you can spend more time growing the business. We give you the strategies to grow. You make more money. [00:20:32] So a lot of times clients come to us in that scenario. I'm like, "let's create some space and then let's get you focusing on revenue generating stuff. Let's get you making a lot more money. And then let's make sure we hire what you actually need most. So you can spend more time making more money because then you're making smart, strategic moves when you hire. Instead of just hiring what the business needs, which can be really expensive if you make mistakes. And if you get any bad hires, we have a really great hiring system called DoorGrow hiring. One bad hire is going to cost you minimum 10 grand because you're going to spend probably at least three months on them of pay, there's a certain amount of money they're going to cost you and you're going to lose out on because they weren't generating revenue or helping to keep revenue. So there's a lot like bad hires are one of the most expensive and costly things you can do and it eats up your time, which is the most valuable resource in the business. [00:21:24] When you're onboarding and training somebody that's never going to be good at it. And so we can help with that as well, helping you get really good team members and collapse time on hiring. We've helped companies replace entire teams, cut their staffing costs in half like overnight, she does this stuff and and build out really good hiring systems and processes so that you can get people quickly and scale quickly as you're adding doors. [00:21:49] We have the stuff to help with all of that.  [00:21:51] Sarah: We do. Cool. If you're hearing this and you're like, "man, that would be really nice, then you should reach out. Contact us. Get on a call. Go to doorgrow.Com. You can see what we're all about, what we do. You can book a call. If you're like, "hey, this is for me and I'm ready to go right now," cool. [00:22:06] Sign up. Join our mastermind and you'll have some awesome coaches to support you.  [00:22:10] Jason: Yeah. Some of you listening are feeling really stressed out. Every business owner has been there. Some of you listening have felt really stuck. [00:22:19] It's just things aren't moving forward. You can't figure out why the marketing stuff isn't working. You're not really adding doors. You're not getting ahead. You're getting stressed. You're getting burnt out. You probably cannot see yourself doing this for five more years. And you need to reach out for help. [00:22:36] One of the most difficult things for entrepreneurs to do in especially early stage entrepreneurs is to humble ourselves. To be humble and to realize we could use some help and ask for help. We just we always think we can handle it all ourselves, like we've got it. "If I just watch enough youtube videos or try and get enough free stuff I can figure out." Or "if I just work hard enough I can save a dollar and do it myself or if I read enough books..." and so our goal at DoorGrow is to help you collapse time and make a lot more money. You can probably figure it all out, and I've seen people work really hard at doing this, but it will probably take you a decade to figure it all out. Whereas we could probably help you figure it out in a small fraction of the time. We've done it over and over again. So if you're feeling stuck or frustrated, reach out to us, let us help you make it make sense financially. We will help you justify the financial expense of working with us because really, a good coaching program should be making you money, not costing you money. [00:23:40] And if you do what we tell you to do, you will be making more money. Our program pays for itself. This is why we have probably the lowest churn rate in the entire industry. We keep clients because they're winning. [00:23:52] So reach out to us at DoorGrow. We would love to help you get going.  [00:23:55] Sarah: Be open, just be open to do things a little differently. [00:23:59] And if that's the case, if you are interested at all in having your company and your business and your life, just be better and different than this might be for you.  [00:24:11] Jason: The slowest path to growth is to do it all yourself or to think you can do it all yourself. That is it for today. So until next time to our mutual growth. Make sure you join our facebook group at doorgrowclub.Com. We have a bunch of free stuff in there and reach out to us at DoorGrow at doorgrow.Com We would love to help you grow your business. Bye everyone [00:24:30] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:24:57] 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.

At this point in the year, it's still early enough to make some plans to level up your property management business. One of the best ways to learn new strategies is by masterminding with other professionals. In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about the importance of strategic time as a business owner as well as some upcoming events for property management entrepreneurs. You'll Learn [02:06] The concept of your default future [06:43] The four reasons for having a business [10:26] 2024 events for property managers [16:51] Why masterminding matters [19:44] The ultimate event for property management entrepreneurs Tweetables “If you're working with any business, they should be helping you change your future outcomes.” “Worse is still different, but not probably the change we were hoping for.” “I never want to be the smartest person in the room. If I am, that means I'm in the wrong room.” “They say you're the sum of the five people that you are around the most or something like that, but I think your business will be the sum of the five property managers are the most connected to.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: They say you're the sum of the five people that you are around the most or something like that, but I think your business will be the sum of the five property managers are the most connected to and to be connected in our mastermind to other mastermind members  [00:00:13] Welcome DoorGrowers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrower. DoorGrower property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many real estate think you're crazy for doing it you think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. [00:00:53] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason Hull and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. All right. [00:01:11] So before this show, we were talking about what we should be talking about in today's episode. So what are we going to talk about today?  [00:01:18] Sarah: We will talk about getting ready for your 2024 and prepping, getting your schedule ready for some events that we've got coming up. [00:01:27] Jason: Okay. It is January 26. January 2nd. Sorry. I don't know why I said that January 2nd. What's wrong with you? I don't know. I don't know. I think I saw the clock. All right, so it's January 2nd The new year has just started. This episode will probably come out on the main podcast a little bit later, but we wanted to kick things off for the new year. [00:01:49] Make sure that everybody gets in momentum. I think 2024 is going to be a wild year. Every election year is. It's going to be interesting. So let's talk about your property management business, how you can get more of what you want and grow. So let's talk about some of the stuff coming up. All right. Where should we start? [00:02:06] Sarah: Let's first start about talking about what did your 2023 look like? Was it what you wanted it to look like? Was it maybe a little different where there's some curve balls that came at you in the middle of the year and threw the whole plan that you had off balance and if so, what are you going to do differently in 2024? [00:02:26] So if you change nothing, if you do nothing different, your 2024 will look probably pretty similar to your 2023 if not worse because the market is totally different, at least part of 2023. The market was good. The real estate market was pretty decent. It's not so decent right now. It's a little bit cooler. [00:02:45] In fact, we're really close to it flipping over to a buyer's market.  [00:02:49] Jason: Okay. And for those of you listening, I think you'll really enjoy this concept. This is one of my favorite closes when it comes to converting people into clients or customers. And we call it the default future versus created future close. So it's important to take a look at your default future is. What you're going to get in the next year, and you can easily base it on what you did the last year and the year before that, and the year before that, you should have a pretty good idea of what your default future looks like. And if you're working with any business, they should be helping you change your future outcomes, right? They should be helping you improve your future. So for you selling to your clients, they should have a default future if they continue to DIY, do it themselves, manage their own property, work with the crappy property manager they've got now, whatever their current future is. [00:03:36] They should have a different created future if they're working with you and you need to help them see a different alternate future reality that includes you. So we run into people all the time that have had a very uncomfortable default future in property management. They have not grown for the last sometimes 10 years. [00:03:55] They've struggled. We have a client we just got on. He's been around 50 units for a decade. So that means it's a grind. That means there's a lot of churn, losing a lot of customers while you're adding customers and you're just not growing, right? Some of y'all are down in doors because I've heard the excuse of the pandemic or people, a bunch of my clients sold or whatever. [00:04:15] So a lot of you might be down in doors. And so your current future, default future looks even worse than last year or the year before, right? So we want to shift you towards a created future. Yeah, so how do we do that. Okay you do that with DoorGrow, right? So we are really good at helping create a different alternate reality for you a different future That includes us. [00:04:39] And because we've been able to coach and support so many, like hundreds of property management, business owners, we have tactics strategies that we've developed over time that we're always. Honing, improving, figuring out that have allowed us to increase our client's door count, make their operations smoother, improve their team, lower the entrepreneur's pressure and noise, decrease their stress, make the business more fun so they feel like they're more of a business owner. [00:05:07] And so these are the things that we do. At door girl. All right. And we've got a bunch of events that we do throughout the year that help to facilitate our vision in helping transform property management business owners and their businesses.  [00:05:20] Sarah: Now is a really good time to plan out "what do I want my year to look like this year? Do I want it to look like more of the same? Or do I want it to look different, but positively different" because it can still look different, just maybe worse. Worse is still different, but not probably the change we were hoping for. Yeah. So if you want your business and your life and your income and your team and your day to improve, then you may need to just be open to doing things a little bit differently than you have before. [00:05:52] And I think being that we're at the beginning of the year, this is a really good time to set some time aside for you. Set some time aside to make sure that you're prioritizing the things that you really want to get out of the business or out of your life. And how do we do that? There's a few events that we have coming up throughout the year. [00:06:12] You can find all of our events, all of the details on doorgrow.com/events. And that will show you our event calendar. What event, who it's for, what the cost is, where it's located, the dates, all of that kind of information is on there. And if you go all the way to the bottom, there's a quick little video I recorded with even more details. [00:06:34] So you can watch the whole thing. It's only a couple minutes long, or you can skip to the part that talks about the event you're interested in.  [00:06:41] Jason: Okay, cool. So for this new year, I would like to recap the four reasons, because I think. It's important to take a step back and assess your business through the lens of these four things. [00:06:55] We have a fifth reason, so maybe the five, but we want to take a look at your business through this lens and make sure you're actually headed in the right direction. Because it's very possible to be making more and more money in your business and become more and more miserable. And that's not the goal. [00:07:09] We didn't start businesses to become more miserable. We thought we started them to make more money, but what we really want is what more money can give us, right? We're hoping more money can give us more, number one, fulfillment. We get to spend more of our time doing the things we enjoy doing. More and more freedom. [00:07:24] We feel free. We don't feel trapped. We don't feel stuck. We don't feel like we're controlled. We don't feel like our business runs us. We don't feel like a slave or servant to our business. We feel free, right? Freedom. The third reason is Contribution. So if we have freedom and fulfillment, usually then we want to make a difference to others, right? [00:07:44] We want to benefit other people too. It's just innate I think in entrepreneurs, we want to change the world. We want to make it a better place. We want to improve things. We see problems and we're like, "I can make money solving that problem, right? That's contribution. That means making a difference to your family, to your team, to your clients, to everybody that you can have impact with and so contribution, I think, is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves. It feels really good to benefit others. And then the fourth reason is support. It's really difficult to have fulfillment, freedom, contribution if we don't have a team because then we end up doing and wearing all the hats that we don't want to wear and we should only be wearing the hats. Eventually, if we had the ultimate business, it gives us the ultimate level of fulfillment and freedom. Then we are only spending our time wearing the hats that we most enjoy wearing, which would mean we have a really good team that supports us and they enjoy wearing the hats that they're wearing and they take those off of our plates. [00:08:41] So we don't have to wear those hats. And so those are the four reasons. Now there is a fifth reason, and this is important to recognize. This is what your team members want more than the four reasons, typically. This is what your clients want often more than the four reasons... they want safety and certainty. [00:08:58] They want peace of mind. And so this is why a lot of people are willing to give up fulfillment, freedom, even contribution. They're willing to give those up and trade them in order to have safety and certainty. This is why they will go get a job. This is why they want to do what they're told to by maybe the media at times, right? [00:09:17] They want to be safe and entrepreneurs were a little bit, we're wired a little bit differently. We care more about having our freedom than safety and certainty, but we also want that too. And so having our business built out in a way that gives us all five of those things gives us the ultimate business and it allows us then to make a real impact and to have a really good team and to have less stress. [00:09:39] And so this is our primary goal with DoorGrow is to move you towards that. So take inventory. How do you feel you rate on each of these five areas right now? Do you feel you have safety and certainty? Do you feel like you have support and a really great team? You really feel supported in your business? [00:09:54] Do you feel like you've got freedom and fulfillment? You get to do the things that you really want to do. You're really enjoying your day today. You feel like you're making a difference out there and contributing in the best way. If you don't have those things, even though you have a bunch of money coming in or a lot of doors, you built the wrong business. [00:10:11] And it doesn't mean you need to change businesses or industries. It just means you need to change what your role is in that business. So 2024, let's move you towards more towards the four reasons. All right. So should we talk about some of the events we have coming up? Yeah, let's do it.  [00:10:26] Sarah: Let's talk about the events scheduled for 2024. [00:10:29] By the time this airs, it'll still be early in the year. So you should be able to mark your calendars for the things that sound interesting to you and make sure that you prioritize your business so that you are set up for success so that you are able to grow so that you are able to get more of the day to day stuff that you just don't enjoy the stuff that bogs you down off of your plate because this is not the life that you need to live, but it's really common for property managers, so make sure that you prioritize this stuff. [00:10:59] So let's talk about some of the events that we've got coming up this year. What's first? Okay. The first thing we have, this is for our clients only. It's in January this month now. And that is open to all of our current mastermind clients. We're going to San Diego, California. So these type of events if you join the DoorGrow Mastermind, you'll have access to them. [00:11:20] So what our tribe events are. They're usually smaller events. They're not huge with, like 100 people or more. They're smaller, more intimate events. So if you're a little bit more on the introverted side, then this event might be really good for you because you get to create close connections with people. [00:11:39] So Jason and I attend these events as well as some of our clients. So you'll get to network and spend some time with other property management business owners. And what we'll be doing, this event, we do a little bit of business and a little bit of fun. So we have some activities planned out there for the day and either before lunch or at lunch or probably both because that's what happened last time is we're going to be, talking shop, talking business, what's working, what's not working, what's your plan? [00:12:07] What are you working on? How can we help support you in that? So that's our first one.  [00:12:11] Jason: Okay, cool. Now we have some other things happening in January. [00:12:13] I'll just throw out there. If you're hearing this later and you miss this stuff, we might have recordings that you might be able to get access to if it's one of our public things. But make sure that you stay connected to us, follow us and are connected to us on social media or you're inside our Facebook group at doorgrowclub. com where we broadcast this and stream it live so that you don't miss out each week. January 11th in a week, we are going to do with our clients a jumpstart 2024 call on zoom where you can 10x your year. And we're going to talk about 10xing your growth in your property management business. [00:12:47] What's next? [00:12:48] Sarah: Okay. So the next event that's coming up will be open to everyone So if you're currently in our mastermind or not yet in our mastermind, or you were formerly in the mastermind, this will be open to everyone. We have our boardroom event that's coming up March 13th and 14th. It will be in Round Rock, Texas, which is just north of Austin. [00:13:10] And that event, we actually launched a lot of these events for the first time last year in 2023. We've had some success with them. Clients really enjoy these style of events, so we carried them on into this year. So the boardroom event, it is a smaller event. We will probably limit it to about six clients, like six businesses total. [00:13:35] For that reason, because we really want to be able to go deep. If the event gets too big, then we have to stay granular and more topical and this event, we call it boardroom because we sit on each other's boards, it's a two day event. And what we'll do is we'll really get in and we'll like tinker with your business and see, where are you spending your time? [00:13:55] What does your team look like, what does your profit margin look like? What does your revenue look like? Where are you struggling? Where are you succeeding? So we really get in and we go deep with clients on the smaller style events. So spots will be limited. If you're interested in attending any of our events or getting more information, just go to doorgrow.com/events. [00:14:15] All of the information is there.  [00:14:17] Jason: Yeah. The last boardroom room event that we did was pretty awesome. So everybody walked away with a really solid set of clarity and to do items to take their business to the next level. And what was interesting is, a lot of them were really stuck and couldn't see where they needed to go next. [00:14:34] And so this allows us the opportunity to really go deep with the business owners. And so they get a lot of value from this.  [00:14:40] Sarah: So that one is coming up March 13th and 14th. It will be in round rock, which is like North Austin here in Texas. That one is very focused on business. So we do break for lunch. [00:14:52] We do go for dinner. But it's boardroom style events. So we're in session almost all day. It goes from about nine to five  [00:14:59] Jason: is serious stuff. All right  [00:15:01] Sarah: Yes, cool. All right, then this one personally is my favorite is our premium mastermind events we also launched that last year for the first time and This one for me, it's just so fun because it mixes the two things that I love, which is business and travel. [00:15:16] I'm like all about both of these things. So if you're looking for an event that allows you to travel, do something fun, explore the area and really dive into your business in that same depth that we offer in the boardroom, then this event will be for you. So this we do reserve for our current and former mastermind clients only. [00:15:38] It's not open to everyone. But what we do is we get a luxury Airbnb or rental of some sort and we will rotate where they're held. This one that's coming up, it's April 9th and 10th. It will be in Bentonville, Arkansas. Very random spot, but the home is beautiful and it's huge. So we'll do some fun stuff in the area. [00:16:01] What we do, it's about a day and a half event. So we come in, we'll do a mastermind during the day, and then at night we spend some time just, hanging out at the property and getting to know each other and really connecting. It was really interesting because we did this last year in April, and then in May, we had our DoorGrowLive and the clients that attended our premium mastermind, oddly enough, they all also attended our DoorGrowLive, they were like their own little group of people because you just know each other so well, like you've spent time with each other. You really get to know each other's businesses and like business model and what are they doing and what are they all about? [00:16:39] So it was like so worth it for me. And it was amazing to see that at our DoorGrowLive. So if you are a current or former mastermind client, then. This might be a really great event for you.  [00:16:51] Jason: Yeah. These are super fun. It's more of a more personal, more of an intimate setting. [00:16:56] We're hanging out together in the same house. And so the conversations are just, they're just really great. And this allows you to create some relationships and friendships. They say you're the sum of the five people that you are around the most or something like that, but I think your business will be the sum of the five property managers are the most connected to and to be connected in our mastermind to other mastermind members and our mastermind members are different. They're just different than the typical NARPM crowd or the typical crowd of people that are involved in property management. They like love what they get to do and they've shifted more towards the four reasons. They have a much healthier mindset because we've installed a lot of mindset things. This is why we want to bring mastermind clients to these, they're just a different crowd and being able to hang out with other people that are playing a similar game that have a similar mindset is just like next level. [00:17:45] And so the relationships that are created, I think will last a lifetime, which is really awesome.  [00:17:50] Sarah: And I think that's a really good point is there's a lot to be said about who's in your circle and, who you're spending time with. So if your circle is doing things that are either similar or if they're even a step ahead of you, that's fantastic. [00:18:06] You're in the right circle. So I never want to be the smartest person in the room. If I am that means I'm in the wrong room.  [00:18:12] Jason: I like being the smartest person in the room sometimes, but not all the time  [00:18:15] Sarah: No, it's like when we run the events, yeah. I'm talking about when we attend.  [00:18:19] Jason: Yeah, we invest a lot. [00:18:20] We invest a lot And we're a part of groups and have mentors that are like beyond where we're at here at DoorGrow. And being able to create that for clients and facilitate that, is really awesome. We love being able to experience that as well. So great leaders, I think are also great followers. [00:18:36] And I think that's why we're able to deliver so much to our clients is because we go join programs and events and do things like this, where we're the student, where we're learning, where we're connecting with people, where we're masterminding, we want to bring the same value to those that we serve. [00:18:49] So we've gotten really great benefits. We've done some really cool trips, different places, hang out with other entrepreneurs, and we always get a lot out of it. Even when I don't think I'm going to, I'm like "it might be fun." But then it like, sometimes it's changed my life. It's been really impactful. [00:19:04] All right.  [00:19:05] Sarah: Next, we've got our DoorGrow Live. Okay. And as an added kicker this year, if you are a current mastermind client in our super system tier you get your own special event. Yay, so we're tacking it on right before DoorGrowLive, that way it's not additional travel, it's not really like hard to do, it's just gonna mash in with DoorGrowLive, so it will be the day before DoorGrowLive, which is, I believe it's a Thursday, it's May 16th, this is for our current SuperSystem clients only, we will be diving into all things SuperSystem, all things operations at this event. [00:19:41] Jason: Okay. So now DoorGrowLive. The DoorGrowLive is our ultimate event. This is where we get everybody to go, clients, non clients. It's our biggest event of the year. This is fun, interesting. We've got speakers, there's lots of interaction. We've got a lot of fun stuff going on. So this is going to be at the Kalahari Resort in Round Rock, Texas, which is the North Austin area. And it's a super cool resort has a huge indoor water park. It has a bunch of restaurants.  [00:20:11] Sarah: It is Friday and Saturday. It's May 17th and 18th. This is open to everyone. So whether you are a current, former, it doesn't matter. You are never in our mastermind, never a client at all. [00:20:21] Does not matter. It's open to everyone. This is our big event of the year. So we bring in a bunch of different property managers. We bring in some vendors, we bring in some speakers, like it's a two day event. And we're holding it in again, North Austin. So Round Rock, Texas. And the resort is really, it's really great. [00:20:43] It's very nice. The rooms are nice. They have plenty of restaurants to choose from. We did our DoorGrowLive last year there, and we liked it so much. We decided to go back.  [00:20:54] Jason: Yeah. Some venues treat you really well and some treat you really not well. And this one was really good. We really liked it. [00:21:00] Yeah, so make sure you get tickets to DoorGrow live. If you're wanting to just initially put your foot in the toe in the water to see what is it like around the DoorGrow culture? What is it like around DoorGrowers? What is it like around people that are involved in their ecosystem? This would be a great way to decide whether or not you should be spending a whole bunch of money with DoorGrow, right? [00:21:22] Is come hang out at DoorGrow live and see the magic that's going on and learn about the DoorGrow code, learn about people that are scaling up, talk to people that have their different lanyard colors with their different belt levels. Like we've got a whole program of ascension and, just like in martial arts, and so come check it out. [00:21:40] It really is a different thing. This is not your usual conference. Let's say it like that. This is like the ultimate conference We've decided like we want to make these the best that we can make them. So sometimes NARPM events are okay and sometimes NARPM events... maybe they're not. Some of them though, we like we've even had clients say well on some of them our event and NARPM event were right at the same time and they said "there's no way I would skip DoorGrowLive to go to a NARPM But what we've done is we've done everything that we could to make these conferences, the best conferences ever for property managers. [00:22:16] Sarah: There's a lot that goes into it like every little detail that we put into it, we really try to make sure that this is so beneficial and it's the big event of the year. It's open to everyone. So if you're thinking, "Hey I don't know what event I should go to," this would be a really good one to go to because it's so big and there's just so much that goes into it. [00:22:36] You'll get a lot out of it and it's not the boring conference that you're going to go and sit and fall asleep. And go, "Oh God, is it lunch yet. Can I go home now?" It's not like that at all. It's very exciting. There's a lot going on and we always provide really good opportunities to meet and talk with other people too. [00:22:55] So it's not just like you're in session all day long. There's a lot of opportunities to network with other property management business owners.  [00:23:02] Jason: Yeah we actively try to facilitate that because we know that that's one of the biggest benefits we've gotten from going to events. It's just the connections that we actively facilitate that. [00:23:11] I think what makes, the DoorGrowLive events stand out is that it's a bit more holistic. We're not just focused only on property management. We're focused on improving you and your life and focusing on entrepreneurship, focusing on taking things to the next level. So people get a lot out of it and it really can be life changing instead of just business changing.  [00:23:30] Sarah: So that's our big one. Now, if you like vacation style events, this one is a newer one. So we're testing this out this year. This is going to be our first one ever it's DoorGrow retreat. Yeah, so this will mix a little bit of business and lots of vacation style. [00:23:47] So this is open to your family to your kids to your spouse, whomever wants to join you and let it be like a business trip on a tax write off for sure So we will still do some business stuff and it's vacation style event, and that is going to be July 17th through 21st. And it will be in Punta de Mita in Mexico. [00:24:10] Yay. Super excited. So you will need a passport.  [00:24:12] Jason: Get those passports ready. Get them now. We're going to mexico. So yeah, and this is gonna be a nice resort.  [00:24:19] Sarah: Oh, it's yeah, it's very nice.  [00:24:21] Jason: We go to nice places. All right. Yeah. Cool. A little picky. All right. All right.  [00:24:25] Sarah: Then, second half of the year, we just mirror what we do the first half of the year. So for a lot of things, not for everything, but for a lot of them, we like to have a spring session and a fall session. [00:24:35] So our tribe meetup, we do two per year, one in January and then one in September. And again, this is for our current mastermind clients only. It will be September 11th will be our next in person tribe meetup location to be announced. Why? Because if you're a mastermind member, you guys get to submit your ideas and vote on it. [00:24:52] Then we have another premium mastermind event. So again, spring session, fall session, our fall session will be October 22nd and 23rd. This is open for our current and former mastermind clients. Only this one will be in Water Sound, Florida. We've got a really nice place there lined up. And then boardroom. So again, spring session, fall session. Our fall session will be November 20th and 21st, and we'll hold that here in round rock, Texas. Those are our events that we've got coming up. I'm super excited for all of them.  [00:25:21] Jason: Yeah. I don't know that we've ever talked about all the different events and there's a lot of virtual events and online things we do for our mastermind members as well, besides all of this. [00:25:29] And we've never really talked about this. I don't think as much on the podcast. So I'm sure there's people listening. They're like, "Oh, I didn't realize DoorGrow did all this stuff or had all this stuff going on." We've got a lot going on. Yeah. In fact, one of the consistent pieces of feedback we get from Mastermind members is, "wow, there's a lot." [00:25:44] There is a lot. It can be a little overwhelming in the beginning. So we really hold people's hand to make sure they can navigate everything in DoorGrow Academy, all of our events, all the online classes, everything that we've got going on to make sure that it is geared towards what they need most and they don't get distracted by all the shiny objects everywhere. [00:26:02] So it's important. But if you're interested in any of this. You're interested in coming and jumping into the DoorGrow ecosystem. We have plenty of free trainings we would love to throw at you based on what your current challenges are, so you can get an idea of how we can support you, how we can help you. We've got a lot of case studies and testimonials. [00:26:18] I think over a hundred now on our playlist on YouTube of our case studies you can check out. See if you can trust these DoorGrow people. And once you're beyond the paywall and you're in with our clients, you'll get it. It's pretty awesome. But between now and then, feel free to join our Facebook group, which I mentioned earlier, go to DoorGrowClub.com and you get access to our podcast live. You get access to our masterclasses that we promote. That are free, you get access to a lot of really cool stuff and we've got a bunch of stuff, cool stuff in the file section there as well. It's available.  [00:26:51] It's a great online community. And if you join it and you have to put in your email address, answer the questions and if we give you access, it's for property management business owners. We reject 70 percent of applicants. So it's a little bit exclusive, which makes it really cool. But if we give you access, you'll also get five emails that are sent to you. Like a fee Bible we're gonna send you gifts, we're gonna send you some free stuff.  [00:27:15] I think we've covered all the events. Sarah's always coming up with more ideas, so there might be more stuff that we're going to be doing. [00:27:21] But yes, this is a pretty good overview.  [00:27:22] Sarah: If you can give me the opportunity to travel, I'm probably going to take it.  [00:27:25] Jason: She'll add it to the program for sure. All right. All right. So we appreciate everybody hanging out with us. We hope that this has opened your eyes a little bit to some of the cool stuff that's going on in DoorGrow, inspiring you to get plugged into our ecosystem. [00:27:37] And we are all about helping property management business owners take their business to the next level and grow. And until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:27:46] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:28:12] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

One of the biggest questions we get from property management business owners once they start building out their team is “How do I compensate and recognize my team members?” In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the different kinds of compensation structures for different personality types and roles on your team. You'll Learn [02:15] The difference between you and your team [07:56] The problem with giving out percentages [12:13] How to set up commission structures [21:23] Recognizing your team effectively [25:44] Giving out raises and job titles Tweetables “Business is a more effective vehicle than even a charity at creating lasting and impactful change.” “When you dangle the carrot in front of a great salesperson, they will jump off a freaking cliff to get it.” “Your discomfort in giving somebody a raise should be equal to their discomfort in asking for it.” “Recognition costs nothing.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: They need to be invested in like committed to helping you grow this business and helping you move it forward, otherwise they are just dead weight and you're creating a bigger and bigger monster of dead weight as the business grows.  [00:00:14] Welcome DoorGrowers 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 DoorGrower. [00:00:31] DoorGrower property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management, business owners. And their businesses, 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 are your hosts, property management, growth experts, Jason Hull and Sarah Hull, owners of DoorGrow. [00:01:11] That good? Now let's get into the show. All right. We were trying to change the intro right before we did it. And sometimes she's not on it. Sometimes she is. She's mostly on it now. So. Anyway, here we are. So our topic today, I'm getting a lot of questions, a lot of questions, and this has been going on for a long time, but we're getting a lot of questions about compensation. [00:01:37] This just keeps coming up and we see a lot of mistakes when it comes to compensation. So the challenge with compensation is that entrepreneurs think differently than most people that they are paying, and so they make mistakes in how they compensate people because they think it's going to help them get more of what they want and they actually create the opposite. [00:02:00] And so I want you to pay close attention to this today. If you watch this you should not ever ask if you should be giving out a commission or percent sign to somebody or whatever So let's talk about a couple of things here. So where should we start?  [00:02:15] Sarah: Well, I think the best place to start is probably from just for background. [00:02:20] What is the difference between someone who has a sales mindset or entrepreneurial mindset versus someone that may not.  [00:02:30] Jason: Cool. Let's talk about that. The two types of team members that you're going to have. There's two types of people on the planet, those that like money and those that don't. And I know you're thinking, "man, no, everybody likes money." [00:02:42] And you'd be surprised. And so if you had all of your team members take a DISC assessment, there's usually on a nice DISC assessment, a section called the values index. And one of those values is the economic or financial score. And so on the economic or financial score, what you will see is that the score is low, then they don't like money. [00:03:04] And I know that sounds weird. They're not focused on money. They're not trying to get money. Money is not a big part of their psyche. It's just not. And I know entrepreneurs, you don't get this because you like money. Sarah and I do not hate money. We don't hate money. Okay,  [00:03:20] Sarah: I need that shirt. This is the one t shirt. [00:03:22] I'll wear the capitalistic pig shirt  [00:03:24] Jason: Right and so we don't hate money. You probably don't hate money either. If you do hate money and you're an entrepreneur Then you are probably struggling to have money, right. Money is the ability to change lives, make a difference and have impact. This is why business is a more effective vehicle than even a charity at creating lasting and impactful change in my opinion. [00:03:47] Okay? Because it has healthy motivators connected to it. Right. And money is the energy and currency of what everything moves through to happen. Right. So let's talk about this. So if the economic score is low, what does that mean? I'll tell you whose economic score is high. If your economic score is high, you are probably an entrepreneur or a sales person, right? [00:04:11] Those are probably the only two personality types or people that you should be paying out more money or bonuses or commissions to incentivize better behavior. That means most people, you should not be paying bonuses, additional financial compensation to try and motivate or change behavior. Now, if you just want to be generous and it's Christmas, that's different. [00:04:36] But if you're trying to consistently compensate somebody and motivate them, the motivators need to be connected to what your outcomes are and most people are doing it incorrectly. Now, if the economic score is low, this is what this means, they would rather what they most value is recognition. They would rather be recognized. [00:04:55] And recognition costs nothing. It costs nothing. And if you don't give them recognition, but you give them bonuses, it's often the opposite, it has the opposite effect. There's another values index called the charitable score. If they have a high charitable score, which means they might want to volunteer to soup kitchen. [00:05:14] They want to like donate money. They want to give money away, not get money. They want to give money away. And then they have a low end economic score. That means if you pay them more money than what is comfortable for them. You pay them more than that. They will start to become a worse team member. They will start to self sabotage because they feel guilty. And then they're going to project that and externalize it because they have to justify it. They're taking more money. They don't want to give up the more money, but they feel guilty. If Sarah was my boss, it'd be like, "Oh, Sarah's giving me more money. Well, all right. I have to be worth this. So I'm worth this more money. And you know what? I'm entitled now. And maybe I deserve even more because I'm developing this kind of cancerous blind spot of I deserve this money because I feel guilty. So I externalize it. And I blame that uncomfortable feeling on my boss. Oh, well, my boss is like terrible and doesn't do this stuff. So I deserve that more money to compensate for it." And so they start to find fault with the boss and they start to justify them taking this more money cause they feel bad so that they can feel somewhat okay about it. And then their behavior starts to show that and they start to perform worse. [00:06:23] I know entrepreneurs, you're like, "that makes no sense." But that's how a lot of people think. Most people do not enjoy seeking money. This is not their goal.  [00:06:33] Sarah: There is a caveat team members, they have to have enough to be comfortable, right?  [00:06:38] Jason: If they're starving, broke or hurting, they're not comfortable.  [00:06:42] Sarah: In pain or like worried, like, "Oh my God, I might lose my house or I can't feed my kids." [00:06:47] Like. Yeah. We're not saying, Hey, like give them no money, they'll work for free. That's not the case at all. Right. They have to have enough to feel comfortable to make sure that their needs are met and make sure that they're able to provide for themselves and anyone else or anything else that is important to them. [00:07:02] Once they reach that level though, and I think studies have been done on this, which is really interesting to me I don't know if they just surveyed Americans. Don't know, but I think $75k was like that magic number or $65k. It was something like that somewhere in that ballpark is that's like where people feel like they have most people feel like they have enough. [00:07:25] So once they feel like they have enough money to live and be okay and make sure their needs are met and bills are paid and things are taken care of and like Johnny can do soccer and whatever they, you know, they want to do, they don't then go, "well, now I want a hundred and now I want 200." They don't keep trying to climb that ladder. [00:07:46] Once they feel comfortable and they have to make sure that their needs are met, then they're not interested. So if you take it from 75 to a hundred, they're like, "it's okay."  [00:07:55] Jason: Okay. So the other piece to this, another challenge that I see is that because business owners want people to have skin in the game and they want them to, they think everybody wants money, they hand out percent signs. [00:08:08] This is one of the most dangerous things to hand out. We even made a silly video called, what's it called?  [00:08:13] Sarah: I think it's called Percentage Breaks the Property Manager for the Property Management Business.  [00:08:19] Jason: Yeah. So you can check that out on YouTube. But the idea we're playing this, these roles and I'm a business owner and I don't have money in the beginning, so I'm going to pay her a percentage of all the doors that I get in. [00:08:29] We made it ridiculous, like 50%. Right? Which means if you're handing out a percent sign, and we see this all the time, say Sarah's my employee and I'm the boss, and I hand out 50% or whatever to a property manager.  [00:08:42] Sarah: Or even if you're like, "okay, here have 30," because like even 10, 30, 40, I still, I see the that a lot. [00:08:48] Sometimes I see 20.  [00:08:50] Jason: It doesn't matter what the percentage is, right? The challenge is in a business, some property management companies don't even make 10 percent profit margin. And so handing out percent signs is really dangerous for businesses. So what they'll do is hand out a percent sign. So let's say I give her 50%. [00:09:06] That means my 50%. My, the other half, all of the expenses have to come out of that. And usually if a business has 50 percent profit margin, that's pure expense. So then I'm broke. So what happens is she's making more and more money because she has all upside. It's pure profit. And I have all the expenses do not give a percentage to a broker. [00:09:28] Pay them a flat fee of like five, 600 bucks. Do not pay a percentage of broker. If you don't have your broker's license, don't create relationships or situations where you are giving up a percentage to a property manager. "Hey, you get like 50 percent of each door that you get on when you get a 30 percent of each door," whatever, right? [00:09:46] Because then what happens is these property managers, if they're the personality type of handling property management, instead of doing sales, they are not going to be focused on getting more business on. They're going to be focused on just helping run the business and you're giving them more and more money the more doors you get, which means you're making less and less money, right? They're making more and more money, the more doors that you get. And they will get more and more lazy and more and more comfortable because there's no incentive for them to go work harder or hunt or chase to get money. You need to make sure if you're handing out a percent sign in any capacity, that's like giving out ownership of the business and they need to be invested in like committed to helping you grow this business and helping you move it forward, otherwise they are just dead weight and you're creating a bigger and bigger monster of dead weight as the business grows. This is why a lot of people join a franchise and then regret it later on because they're paying out six to eight percent, which is a lot, of their gross revenue not of profit not of what's left over for you. And some business owners. [00:10:56] That's their whole owner payout. Yeah, that's like top one. Some business owners, that's what they take out like you're giving away that to basically to a team member that's not really adding value. I could go on and on about franchises. You can check out my YouTube video about franchises. [00:11:12] I'm obviously like not a fan of the franchise model because I believe it hurts the entire industry. There he said it. All right. So don't hand out percent signs. Do not get into a relationship with a business partner and give them a percent sign unless they are the type that wants to hustle and grow and make money. [00:11:33] The challenge is I see a lot of business partnerships are like, "here's a percent sign" when they should have just said, "here's your salary. You can be the operator." So operator personality types, for example, systems, process, whatever, they don't usually want ownership. They're not often that entrepreneurial type. [00:11:51] They just want to make sure they're getting paid enough and taking care of enough. Now there's exceptions to this, right? But you don't want to be handing out percent signs to somebody unless it's like super critical for growth. And I do not recommend. I recommend in any way possible, don't hand out any percent signs to anybody ever except to yourself and maybe a salesperson. [00:12:13] Now, let's talk about commissions, right? Let's say somebody is money motivated and they can help you make more money. So if they're money motivated, then you need to be using them to help you make more money. If you're going to pay them a percent sign, but you're not going to pay them a percent sign residually. [00:12:30] Because then you're motivating them to not do more work. What you want from a good salesperson or a BDM, a business development manager, or a BD business development person. What you want from them is what? You want results, which is more doors. You want them to add more money to the business. That's the result you want. [00:12:49] So you're going to pay for them to get more business, not keeping the business because keeping the business is the rest of the team. And that's fulfillment. So don't pay them a percentage residual. You pay them a percentage of maybe the first month or the, like some sort of commission upfront. [00:13:07] And it could be a percent, or it could just be a flat fee. Like, "Hey, we'll give you 200 bucks or 300 bucks or 500 bucks or per unit that you bring on." and give them an incentive. So that means they have an incentive every month. They stay to hunt and to chase. Now, another mistake people make with salespeople is like, "I want to get a salesperson, but I want to have zero downside and I want all the upsides. [00:13:33] So they create another unfair structure where they're like, I will pay you pure commission. And if you don't hunt and kill, you starve. And if you hunt and kill, I make money and we both make money." so I need to address this. That only makes sense if you are giving the salesperson, all of the leads, they have a great follow up and nurture system, and all they do is show up to calls and close.  [00:13:56] Sarah: Now, can you clarify what giving them the leads means? Because you're like, "Oh here's the leads. Like, here's a list of 10, 000 people."  [00:14:04] Jason: Okay. That's not what I mean.  [00:14:05] Sarah: So yeah, exactly. So let's clarify that.  [00:14:09] Jason: Okay.  [00:14:09] Sarah: So 18, 000 people in my CRM. Here's your leads. [00:14:13] Jason: If somebody is going to be paid pure commission, which means they're just paid for basically closing deals, they should not have to go find potential clients. They should not have to be hunting for potential clients. They shouldn't be spending any time doing any of that stuff. They should just be taking appointments, somebody else scheduled for them and closing deals. [00:14:33] Then they're a closer. Everything that happens before that would be handled by a setter and the setter would be cold calling, following up, like all this stuff. Setting appointments. Setting appointments, rescheduling.  [00:14:46] Sarah: Making sure people show up. They don't show up. Right. Calling them again.  [00:14:49] Jason: Feeding the closer. [00:14:51] Feeding the closer. Then the closer can be peer commissioned and the setter would be paid a base, mostly a base, plus a small percentage for each like appointment they set or some sort of results. So they're motivated to get more results and they should be a little bit money motivated, right? Now, most people are going to hire a BDM and expect them to do both. [00:15:11] And if you're going to hire a BDM and expect them to do both, you need to pay them a base. I would recommend at least maybe 20 to 30 K, something like this of a base that covers their setting activities. And then they, the rest, they should be able to make somewhere annually about maybe six figures should be possible. [00:15:30] So work it backwards, but there should be a commission structure that if they're adding 10 to 20 doors a month, they should be able to make. Some sort of six figure sort of salary would be the goal. So figure out a commission on top of that base. Because what you're doing, if you say it's pure commission, you're expecting a closer who lives or dies by whether they hunt or kill and create some money, you're expecting them to starve for at least two months, usually. Because usually three. Because it takes about 90 days to build up a sales pipeline. So they're going to have to do networking and prospecting and outreach and they're working for free and. If they're starving for 90 days, they're just going to quit. [00:16:10] I've seen so many BDMs burn out and it sounds like this great model. "Well, I'll pay you basically nothing in the beginning." And you might get somebody to agree to do that, but they might be stupid if they're willing to do that. And then they're going to be like starving and not figuring it out. And then you don't give them a good system. [00:16:26] If you plug them in to DoorGrow, we can get them making a lot of money. We have an amazing system. Like we had a client in just 10 to 15 hours. We go from zero to a hundred doors in six months. And he didn't spend any money on ads and he was a solopreneur. He was all by himself. This is absolutely possible. [00:16:44] We can help BDMs crush it. We've helped some BDMs add two- three hundred dollars in a year. That's absolutely possible to do but they need to be able to dedicate their time to that and you are not going to get that kind of result if you just pay them a commission because they will only focus on the closing type of activities or the commission generating activities, and they won't do what the leading activities that actually generates the opportunities to close. [00:17:12] And so you're putting too much attention on the wrong thing. They need more attention. Most of the attention should be on the leading activities. Phone calls, outreach, networking that leads to this and then deals will happen. They don't even have to be super amazing at closing if they're doing enough leading activities And so we want to make sure we give them a base and then we give them an incentive to move those things forward.  [00:17:35] Sarah: Okay. Now with the base, this is the big one. "Well, how much is the base supposed to be Jason? I don't know?" [00:17:41] Jason: 20 or 30 K. Maybe  [00:17:42] Sarah: You need to find an amount that would be uncomfortable if that's all you made. It needs to be comfortable enough that if that's all they made, they're not going to be starving and eating out of a dumpster. [00:17:58] And it needs to be uncomfortable enough that if that's all they made, they wouldn't be happy and they would be hungry for more.  [00:18:06] Jason: They need to be hungry. They got to be motivated. It's financial compensation is all about motivation, right?  [00:18:13] Sarah: With a salesperson, when you lay out their commission structure and you let them know like, "Hey, this is your base and I'm giving you this base because of these reasons. I don't want you to be starving. I want you to be motivated. The real money, it's over here. This other piece, I'm going to give it to you because there's things like phone calls and settings and appointments and you know, all the stupid crap that you don't want to do, but that you will do because it leads to deals." [00:18:38] And they're like "yeah, I get that. But the real money is over here. So when you close deals, that's when you start to make money." And when you dangle the carrot in front of a great salesperson, they will jump off a freaking cliff to get it. The problem is if you just give them the carrot and you're like, here, have a 50, 000 base, have 100, 000 base, have a 200, 000 base. [00:19:03] They're like "Yeah. I don't need to work that hard. I mean, if I do nothing, I still make 50k." We just at the boardroom event, we had a client whose BDM has a 50, 000 base.  [00:19:13] Jason: And then he was wondering why they weren't super motivated.  [00:19:16] Sarah: She doesn't really, she closed like two doors a month. And I'm like, well, yeah, cause she's comfortable. [00:19:22] She's super comfortable there. So she's never going to be motivated to work harder and do more and stretch herself and go above and beyond. Because she doesn't have to, you gave it to her. I have to work for it. There's a difference. And the other thing is salespeople who they love the challenge. They don't want you to give it to them. [00:19:43] They don't want it. Like they'll tell you like, "Oh, I'll take 500, 000 a year for doing nothing." But they wouldn't really be fulfilled by that. They'll probably take it because they love money. I mean, who doesn't, but they wouldn't be fulfilled by it. Yeah. If you give them 500, 000 for doing nothing versus if they make 500, 000 because of the work that they did and because of their efforts, there's a big difference. [00:20:06] They're going to feel really proud of that and they're going to want that. So they're going to chase it. So you have to dangle the carrot and make it something that's interesting enough. You have to, you, and you have to set it up so that they have the ability to make at least six figures because that's what sales people want But don't just throw it to them.  [00:20:24] Jason: And to be clear No, bdm should be making five hundred thousand dollars.  [00:20:28] Sarah: That's not accurate at all. [00:20:30] Jason: There's really great bdm. Maybe if they're helping do some acquisition deals If they're adding 500 a year, maybe all right So but if your bdm can live comfortably without adding 10 doors a month, your commission structure is wrong. They should be minimum adding about 10 doors a month as a full time BDM minimum. [00:20:52] And they should need to do 10 doors a month in order to just reach comfort. And if they're really motivated, they'll do even more than that. They'll do even more than that because then it gets exciting, right? Then it's the game, right? It's the hunt. Okay. So we talked about compensation. [00:21:08] Is there any other challenges or mistakes we see people make compensation wise?  [00:21:13] Sarah: I think those are the big ones. I think let's though, before we wrap up, let's talk a little bit more about the recognition piece and then we'll close it out. Okay. Because people are like what do you mean recognition? [00:21:25] Like, "Hey, I see you." [00:21:26] Jason: So recognition is a process of just helping the team members be seen, especially in front of other team members for doing good things or accomplishing things. So the way that we do that in DoorGrow and in our operating system, DoorGrow OS. Maybe you've heard of like EOS or traction or some of these things. [00:21:43] DoorGrow OS is better. And what we do in DoorGrow OS to increase the amount of recognition is in every meeting we share wins. So if it's our weekly commitments meeting, we're sharing what wins did we have last week and everybody adds to the list. What did we do in our monthly goal setting? [00:22:03] We share wins for everything we did the previous month. Same thing with the quarter and annually, and it's pretty awesome. Like, we're building these lists and everybody feels great. And then even in our daily huddle meeting, which is like a 15 minute, 20 minute meeting we do every morning, I guess we do ours in the afternoon, but we do with our team. [00:22:21] We do Caught Being Awesome and we allow team members to share their wins or to highlight somebody else. And so our team are highly motivated because most of them are recognition motivated. So we're recognizing them. If we do give a bonus, like say for the holidays or something like that, we do it in a way that the focus is we wanted to recognize you because of what you've done for us this last year. So it's still about recognition and appreciation. And so that will get you team members that are incredibly loyal to you, that love being part of the team, that feel a sense of belonging, and that means a lot more to most of your team members than getting more dollars. [00:23:04] Is that good?  [00:23:04] Sarah: They want to feel important and they want to feel valued and they want to know that you care about what they're doing and especially in an industry like property management because it's tough. Yeah. Everybody has those like really awful days because let's be honest, sometimes owners or tenants or vendors and sometimes life just happens, right? [00:23:27] So it's tough and sometimes it's tough. All the time or it's tough for a while. This is not an easy industry. So when you've got this pressure all the time and this like annoyance, like, "Oh, that tenant's going to call me and yell at me again, or, Oh, like, Oh, I have to have this uncomfortable conversation and tell my client that we need a $15,000 sewer repair. [00:23:50] I don't want to do this." The it's the little things that will keep your team going and make sure that they understand like, "Hey. I know it's not the most glorious thing. I know it's always not super exciting, and it's not always super easy. However, what you're doing really makes a difference. It really is important and this is like the bigger mission and vision of the business and you contribute directly to that vision and what you're doing matters." [00:24:22] So that way it's like, Oh, you know, it's not this grind and this drain and we don't have a lot of churn on our own team and burnout and you know, bad team members that are like, "Oh, I hate my job." Right. Because that's super easy. It's easy and then you make it even harder. It's easy just by itself and then you make it harder because it's property management. [00:24:43] So it's super easy in property management to have that. So let's combat that. And just by recognizing them and saying like, "Hey, I saw you took care of that thing. Like, hey, oh my god, you got all the leases done. And hey," like, and it could be the littlest things. It's things that they do. Anyway, it doesn't matter. [00:25:00] They don't have to do anything that's like spectacular. "Oh my God. You like cleaned all the bathrooms today, Sally. Thank you. That was amazing. Like you didn't have to do that." It's little things and it's things that they're going to be doing anyway, but just let them know, "Hey, I see it. And I appreciate it." [00:25:16] Jason: All right. So the other thing I'll say about recognition is you might be thinking, well, salespeople and entrepreneurs, do they like recognition? The answer is yes. They like it too. We still like it. They like it too. So if you're giving them recognition that adds more fuel to the fire, right? And so you need a system like DoorGrow OS in which everybody gets recognized for their accomplishments and everyone will perform and behave better because they feel seen by everyone. [00:25:42] And that has value, right? Now one more point I want to make is you might get somebody, an assistant, you're like a VA, you're like they're amazing. I love them so much. They're so awesome. I don't want to lose them. And then you are like, because you're hardwired to be so money focused, you're like, I'm going to pay them a whole bunch more money. [00:26:02] I see this happen so often. Be very careful about just giving out raises prematurely. Be very careful about this because what I've seen over and over again, I've been in masterminds, multimillion dollar business owners, we're hanging out together and they're like, "Hey I just got this assistant. She was super amazing. So I gave her this big raise 'cause she's so awesome. And now she's showing up late. She's not like getting things done. She seems like entitled." This is what happens when you compensate people financially, instead of giving them recognition and doing it based on how you think instead of what they want, you then sabotage their efforts or they start to sabotage their efforts. [00:26:43] So don't start paying somebody more just because you like them, right? There needs to be a justifiable reason and they need to be able to justify that reason. And so they may need to come to you and be like, "Hey, here's why I deserve more compensation." And you're checking in with them regularly and saying, "Hey, how are things going?" [00:27:01] And if you have an open communication with your team members, they're going to tell you when they feel like it's time that they deserve some more money. And it's going to be really uncomfortable for them to do it if they don't like money, it's going to be so uncomfortable to have that conversation, but it's also uncomfortable for you to spend more money. [00:27:17] Team are the biggest expense. Your discomfort in giving somebody a raise should be equal to their discomfort in asking for it. It's my thought. And so they need to be reaching out. To some degree, and you may recognize somebody deserves more pay, you know, deep down they're being paid too little. [00:27:36] So then you can give them a raise, but be careful about handing this out.  [00:27:40] Sarah: My other little tip with raises is I worked in corporate for a bit and it was like every year, you know, you're going to get a raise and how much of a raise you get depend, depend on all your stupid numbers and metrics and all, you know, call time and all that stuff. [00:27:55] So you knew you were getting a raise though, like for sure, unless for some reason they're firing you, right? But other than that, you know, like, "Oh, my annual review is coming up. How much money am I going to make now?" And then they expect it. And then you don't really appreciate it because it's expected. And it's like normal now it's like, "Oh, well I'm getting a raise now. [00:28:13] Now I'm going to raise." And then. What also happens is, "well, I'm getting a raise," and sometimes people go, "Oh, well I deserve like this much." And then they don't get that. They get less. And then they're like mad about it. They're mad because they're making more money. It's not as much money as they wanted or as I expected. [00:28:30] So one of my big rules when it comes to raises is with raise comes responsibility. Don't just throw out more money. Like, "Hey, if you want to go from here to here, I'm happy to take you there. This is what that would look like. Are you in?  [00:28:44] Jason: Okay. One last thing. Titles. Titles are heavily connected to compensation. [00:28:49] So I dealt with this week. I talked to a property manager. They had like 20 doors or something and they hired a director of operations. No. You can't afford a director of operations. So the thing is, yeah, I said, "tell them they are an operations assistant in ecrow." And said, I gave you this inflated title. [00:29:06] You're an operations assistant. Maybe then eventually they could graduate operations manager. Maybe then be the, you know, maybe eventually. The director of operations, VP of operations, COO, but titles matter. So be very careful about handing out titles. Start everybody out as a something assistant or junior  [00:29:24] Sarah: property manager, junior assistant, property manager, or you can just have levels, property manager, one property manager, two property manager, three, like. [00:29:32] There's a lot of different ways you can do it. Be careful about titles. Yeah, be super careful about  [00:29:36] Jason: titles. Because they'll go look it up on salary. com and they'll be like, "Oh I deserve this. I'm director of property management. I guess I should be getting 150k or whatever, right?"  [00:29:46] Sarah: And also, 20 doors, fun little caveat. Be careful when you're reviewing resumes with titles for the same reason. Because titles they sound really impressive sometimes and they mean they could be made up They mean nothing when I got hired at an insurance job. They were like, oh we have to make your business card And I said, "okay," and they said "well, what do you want your title to be?" [00:30:05] And I said, "I pick my own title?" And they're like, "yeah, you can put whatever you want on there." And I said, "well, aren't I a sales rep?" And they're like, "yeah, but don't put sales rep." I'm like, "oh, okay. So what should I put?" They're like, "put like account manager or account executive or like something like that." [00:30:24] So I don't remember what we came up with, but. Came up with something that sounded like I was like, "Ooh, I'm a big deal." I was a sales rep. That's it. I sell things. That's it. But the title sounded a lot more impressive. And sometimes that can go to people's head just a bit. And keep in mind, money is connected to the title. [00:30:45] It always will be. So get on. And if you're like, "well, I don't know what to," Google will help you just get on. Well, I just had this conversation, I think two weeks ago with client. " Well, I don't want to hire like the COO of the company. I can't afford that." You're right. You can't. So. [00:31:00] What are they doing? Maybe they're the team leader. Maybe they're the office manager. Maybe they're an operations assistant. Like get on, find some kind of title, get on Google and say, what are other job titles for this thing? And it will tell you and pick one of those and avoid things like manager, juror, and like VP president or like, Senior account executive, things like that. [00:31:26] Because it. It will be startling if someone. Looks at their position and realizes. "Oh, I should be making 125 and I'm only paid 55. Huh? That's odd."  [00:31:38] Jason: All right, so wrap us up. Give us a call to action. [00:31:41] Sarah: Just If you feel like you're struggling with any of this and I know there's so many of you that are like, "oh man. Yeah, that's me." [00:31:48] I might have made some of these mistakes and that's okay because we all have we've done it to Go on doorgrow. com Book a call with us. We can help you with this stuff.  [00:31:56] Jason: This is what we do. Yeah, and if you made any of these mistakes, I guarantee there's a lot of others going on in the business you can't see right now. [00:32:03] We can help you get this cleaned up and help you make a lot more money, help you grow a lot faster. All right. All right until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:32:11] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:32:37] 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.

When you are creating a team in your property management business, the culture that you create will make or break your business and your ability to grow and scale. In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with property management entrepreneur and DoorGrow client Brian Mullins to talk about hiring, culture, and processes. You'll Learn [05:33] Why culture is important in a business [12:07] Importance of humility and showing gratitude as a business owner [19:48] Having processes makes everything easier! [24:18] Setting goals in your business Tweetables “If I could just clone myself, then all my hopes and dreams would come true because I would make that clone of me do all the stuff I don't want to do. Guess what? They wouldn't want to do it either.” “People that can do everything do not make great team members. They make great business owners.” “Don't be the property manager, be the property management business owner. Hire the property manager.” “Whatever we focus on with our team and are grateful for, they get better at that.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: They say pride cometh before the fall. So if you're not humble in business, usually you get your ass handed to you at some point, and then you are forced to be humbled. And so you either humble yourself or you get forced to be humbled.  [00:00:12] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management, business owners, and their businesses. 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. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:19] And our guest today is Brian Mullins. Brian, welcome to the show.  [00:01:24] Brian: Thanks for having me.  [00:01:25] Jason: Cool. So Brian, give us a little bit of background on you for those listening, how you got into property management, why you decided to do that crazy thing, and yeah, share a little bit about your journey in entrepreneurism. [00:01:39] Brian: Okay. Well, it goes back a long ways. I I'd always had an interest in real estate. I grew up in high school during the ramp up to the great recession and was fascinated by it, and graduated high school, wasn't sure exactly where I wanted to go. I was leaning towards technology or entrepreneurship, finance business, and started computer science, said, "Oh, hell no, I'm not doing this," and then switched over to finance. And in that time, I was also working for a collection law firm as my college job. So I switched to finance, fell in love with that, and then I got an opportunity to take some electives in finance, and real estate was actually one of the departments under finance. [00:02:20] And so, like, well, I can get a minor and fulfill my electives in real estate, or in finance. And so I took my first real estate class, and that was the point which I decided that this is where I wanted to be, and this would have been in 07, 08, and I set myself as a goal to go through college, graduate college, work five years for somebody else, and then start essentially a investment brokerage, doing property management acquisitions, the whole nine yards. So I went all the way through school, graduated in 2010, which is a really crappy time to find a job and I said, "I'm not going to go do some of these jobs that are actually available," and I went and got my MBA instead, graduated in 2012, worked 5 years for a regional automotive group, and I was in charge of all their real properties, and so I was doing a lot of commercial real estate at that point, building buildings, and also managing the various assets that they owned. And then after one week, should I have my five year anniversary? I quit, made a little bit of a shift. In hindsight, probably wasn't the best idea. I went more towards retail brokerage, and ran with that, never had a ton of success, survived made a decent chunk of change, but I was never super satisfied with it, recruiting agents is not my jam.  [00:03:32] And so during COVID, I saw the handwriting on the wall, I knew that the market was going to collapse, you know, you can't live with interest rates as low as they were, and it's a pendulum that's going to swing the other way, and so we made the conscious shift at that point, and I took a few key members of my retail brokerage and said, we're going to go into property management, and this was in early 2021. So, at that point, I had, I owned like 17, 15, 17 doors, something like that myself. I managed a couple others, so we're at about 20 doors. And then we quickly expanded, we got up to our peak was about 150 doors that we got up to, and then that was about the time that we joined DoorGrow and we ended up firing our largest client. [00:04:14] It was an apartment complex, but it was just an absolute nightmare, and then we've been rolling ever since. And then also during this. I actually had an investor reach out to me and say, we want to grow a real estate portfolio, and so we shifted from when we originally signed on with DoorGrow to really looking for clients to more, we need the process and the culture so we can grow this business because we've got essentially, you know, a big portfolio of properties coming on and we need to be able to scale it. So that's the short story of how I got into it. I've always loved it. All my work history has led up to this. Working collections for 10 years through high school and college is a really good transition into property management because it's the same thing. [00:04:54] Yeah, it is. You're dealing with the people who don't pay their debts are a lot of mostly tenants, you know, to somebody. And so you have to deal with that type of clientele, and it's that balance. And I really appreciate my lawyer that I work for. He really taught me a lot of like, how do we balance being compassionate, but also being firm because that you can be a jerk, right? Or you can be a, you know, somebody just gets rolled over. It's like, you need to find that in between. So I learned a lot from that and working real estate from five years and then even doing, I learned a lot being on the retail brokerage side. [00:05:27] Jason: Awesome. Yeah. So it sounds like you have a lot of experience that you really can leverage to benefit your clients. So the topic we are discussing today's how process and culture can make or break your organization. So what what have you learned about process or culture related to this? What conclusions have you been arriving at? [00:05:47] Brian: So, yeah, so for me, I'm an only child. I was always raised, you know, very independent, and I can do it myself. The problem is I can't grow an organization like that. Yeah. The kind of my first real inclination of this was like when I read the book Good to Great, right? It's, you know, and then that's even on a big scale, but like, how can I be a leader to grow an organization because I can't do it all myself? I could, but I'm never going to be able to scale to where I want to. I'm always going to be capped out and I'm going to have a job and not a business. And so, you know, whenever this investor came on and we were really starting to grow, like we were at 150, we were feeling the growing pains and we noticed this like with the retail brokerage, like keeping people was harder. Like I could recruit, I'm a good salesperson. Whatever I want to do, I can get somebody in the door. But then keeping them long term because people are looking for something different than what I would be. That's one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that not everybody's like me. If I'm an employee, I don't care as much about culture. Even though I do in the background, but like, that's not my main thing. Like I'm very goal oriented enough. I'm going to get my job done, but that's not what the majority of people are looking for. And so we need to be able to set that culture. [00:06:59] And so that was the first piece that we were noticing, but we didn't really realize it. And so like when we came to DoorGrow and especially when I got this investor, it was processes too, because I, like you said, I have so much experience and all of this, and I've done this for so long. I'm a hell of a property manager. I can manage all day long. I don't like doing it necessarily, but I can't grow, I could probably manage a hundred 150 doors on my own. But then I'm tapped out. And so how do I take what I'm doing and make it a process so I can replicate it? And once I replicate it, you know, even here in this market, how it should be something I can replicate in other markets as well. [00:07:39] So that's where we've been going and we've been working really hard at getting those processes documented, getting as much automated as possible. So that way we don't have to worry about it. The system just runs on its own and, you know, and we're getting to that point now, and once we fully execute everything and we feel really confident in that, it's just going to be plug and play on grip. [00:08:01] Jason: Yeah, yeah. I think it's a big mistake that entrepreneurs make early in their journey. And it's super common to assume that people are like them, right? We all start there. A lot of times that's our goal with hiring in the beginning, I call it the clone myth. [00:08:15] It's this belief, maybe those of you listening right now are thinking this, "if I could just clone myself, then all my hopes and dreams would come true because I would make that clone of me do all the stuff I don't want to do." Guess what? They wouldn't want to do it either. [00:08:27] And so they go out hunting for a clone. They're like, "I need to find somebody like me because I can do everything. If I just had somebody amazing like me, they could do everything..." and then leave and go start their own business is the reality, right? And so, but everybody thinks this and you can wear every hat in the business. [00:08:44] Entrepreneurs generally can do that. We're very adaptable. But people that can do everything do not make great team members. They make great business owners and you don't love doing everything right? Like you just said, I don't like being a property manager, which for those listening could mean two different things, right? Your clients would probably not want to hear that, right? But when you say that, you like having a property management business. I like dealing with the owner. In which you're a property manager, but then for some, being the property manager means doing the actual property management work, which is the property manager you hire as a property management business owner. [00:09:18] Yep. Well, those are two different statements, right? And so we encourage everybody listening, like don't be the property manager, be the property management business owner. Hire the property manager. So you've gone through this journey. You started working with us and defining your culture, getting your culture materials defined, and in the beginning, you're like most entrepreneurs. They're like, "what's this culture stuff? This sounds like fluffy woo woo BS. Like I don't need this. I just, I want results. Get the job done. I pay you. Just do the effing work." So, yeah. So what conclusions have you come to then with your team and with culture? [00:09:52] How does this shift your team and, or how does this shift who you hire? Like, what have you realized?  [00:09:56] Brian: So, we've been working really hard on that hiring piece. And so whenever we're looking to hire, like we've got to make sure we hire the right person. And, you know, we've had like some team players that, you know, maybe aren't the best team players. [00:10:10] And then you try to hire someone that can put up with them. Well, that's not a good option because you end up hiring somebody just like that. And then you've got two people that are like that. And you're like, we can't do this. You know, that doesn't really work in the organization and it's going to completely destroy stuff. [00:10:23] So, you know, we have to look for people who are willing to be team players. And so there's a book that I read The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni, and he mentions in the book three virtues. And I think it's a really good summation of what we're looking for when we hire. And those three are humble, hungry, and smart. We'll start at the bottom. So smart is not intelligence. It's emotional intelligence, right? It's can you handle yourself with clients? Can you handle yourself with the coworkers? Do you know how to make a smart response to things? And hunger obviously drive. You know, we don't want people that are just here to get a paycheck and go home because that's not going to succeed. [00:11:00] We're not an assembly line and this business is a 24/7 business. So I don't need someone at 5 o'clock that they fall off the face of the earth and maybe they're the only ones with an answer that we need to get ahold of. And then humble is the hardest thing to hire for and humble is where I struggle the most because naturally I am not a humble person my wife likes to make fun of me about that. But it's true. I'm not. I've always known that I'm decent at what I do and I walk and talk like it. So those three things is what we're looking for. And so we're very intentional when we're hiring now at looking for these aspects because you're right. When I first started hiring, I wanted to hire people like me, but all that would do is create tension, and they would eventually leave and start their own business and that's not a way to grow the business. I need people that fit in their role, who know their role, but also there's only so many people that can be the entrepreneurs only some people that can be the leader, right, of the organization. That's just the way the world turns. And so, like, we're hiring people on culture. We're also hiring people for the right position that fits their personality.  [00:12:07] Jason: So let's talk about humility. Let's talk about this. because I think this is a challenge and there's benefits to being humble. There's significant benefits to being humble. [00:12:16] Humble means that you are teachable. It means that you are able to get new information. They say pride cometh before the fall. So if you're not humble in business, usually you get your ass handed to you at some point, and then you are forced to be humbled. And so you either humble yourself or you get forced to be humbled. [00:12:34] And so the advantage, and a lot of people think humility is debasing yourself or putting yourself down or saying that you're not great. And I don't think that's what real humility is. That's like false humility maybe. I don't think that's what humility is. I think my definition or how I define humility is that you have the ability to recognize others hand in your own success, whether it's God, whether it's your team, whether it's your mentors, just being able to recognize that other people played a part in your success is the key to humility and it's also what opens the door to you being able to be more successful because if you think it's all you, you always are limiting your ability to have more success.  [00:13:20] Brian: Yeah. It's the people that are around you and that's why whenever I hire somebody, like if they think they're all that and that no one can touch them, they will never work because they lose their hunger too, right? Because they think it's all them and they lose their smart communication. They think they're all that and that they're always right with how they communicate. And that's not true. Everybody makes mistakes. I make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. And you have to be able to admit that humbly. And, you know, one of the things that we've always done, even from day one is I want to make sure the client's taken care of, and that is being willing to admit when we've effed up and take the hit, there have been real estate deals in retail time, there's been, you know, there was a tenant that we placed recently that just went completely downhill real fast and within like a month and we took the hit on that, but that's not my client's fault, right? Should we have done that? I don't know. It's a really good client but you know, we need to make it right to the client and we need to say, "hey, we shouldn't have placed this tenant in here," and I told the client that, and I told him "we'll make sure you're taken care of so and that's what we do.  [00:14:32] Jason: Being transparent. I think you know, I put a lot of research into this a long time ago because, you know, I grew up in this religious culture in which you were always taught to be humble. But I was like, how do you humble yourself? Like, how do you become humble? And eventually, I had this epiphany if humility is recognizing other's hand in your success, the secret key to unlock humility and all the juicy benefits that everybody talks about that humility gives you true humility is gratitude. And so just learning to be grateful. And the way I think we can facilitate that with our team is to recognize their hand and to be grateful. So one of the things we do in almost all of our team meetings, especially our daily huddle, we do 'caught being awesome' or gratitude and like, 'what are you grateful for?' [00:15:16] And in our daily planning that we give the clients to do, we're like, what can you appreciate? And there's a double entendre there or meaning right of increasing in value, but also recognizing gratitude. And whatever we focus on with our team and are grateful for, they get better at that. [00:15:33] Brian: And for me, like it was, it's not my natural instinct to say, "Hey, you did a good job." I have forced myself to be like, "Hey, you've done a good job," and then I make sure my management team below me does the same thing with their people. We're not big enough that I don't see it, right? Like they're pulling around the office and I hear it and I will call the manager out and say, "Hey, you know, you should talk to your people and make sure they know that, you know, that they did a good job." [00:16:01] Sarah: That's one of the things we do in our team review meetings. Well, I run them. But like, I talk about like, "hey, you know, what's going well. And then are there any challenges?" And then I always just leave space at the end. Like, "do you have just any ideas?" Because maybe every day you do this thing and you're like, "Oh, it would be so much better if we could do it like this," or "it would be easier if we could do it like this." [00:16:23] Well, tell me that. And then I always want to make sure that I'm bringing out. Like, the opportunity just to be thankful for what they do. And especially because I don't have to do it. So if I didn't have you on my team, it would be me, it'd be me and Jason. So like I'm appreciative, you know, for the team members that we have and for the care that they really show our clients. [00:16:45] And that to me is big. But our team members consistently, like they just go above and beyond like all of them and they'll be like, "oh no, I already handled this" or, "oh, well, hey, I found this problem, and then I figured this, and then I just took care of it" and we're like, " okay, we weren't even involved in that. Thank you for doing that." And I think that's a really good, like the daily huddles are great. And then that one on one too is also really really important for them to just to hear that because it's always nice to hear "thank you," and especially in an industry like property management, where your tenants are not calling you going, "Hey, Brian, I just wanted to tell you how amazing you are. Thank you so much for being so great. I really appreciate everything you do. I've never had a property manager that really cares like this." They're like, " why wasn't this done? And I'm angry about this and rah!" Right? Like this is what we deal with. And this is what our front end staff deals with. So having something to counterbalance the like ball of hatred that's presented to us every day is huge in this industry. [00:17:46] Jason: Yeah. I think what's really cool when Sarah's running our meetings, what we'll see because we've led it by example, and Sarah's much better at this. She points out every team member that like, "thank you for doing this" and this sort of thing. The team now do it for each other. So when we have our little stage in our morning huddle that we do, it's, you know, caught being awesome or, you know, anyone do anything praiseworthy? Then, you know, team members now are calling out other team members. [00:18:17] "Hey, thank you for Adam getting answers to me so quickly. He's always so responsive," things like this. And so the good in that in being grateful, you're magnifying all the good. And so all my team members want to do more. They're getting rewarded. And what I find most team members want more than money. Most team members want recognition more than money once their basic needs are met. And that's weird for us. That's weird for us because we like money, right? We like money probably more than recognition. We're like, "well, let's get paid. You know, cool. I have some accolades. Get me paid, right?" Salespeople may be like that. The rest of your team probably really would just like to be recognized, but everybody likes being recognized. [00:18:58] So I'll recognize her. She runs our meetings and does an amazing job and I would not be nearly as good at this. And she facilitates this and gets everybody talking. Sometimes I don't even talk like the whole huddle was like, "Hey, everyone," you know, and I'm not as connected to a lot of the team sometimes. [00:19:16] So I can't even think of things sometimes to call people out for being awesome because I'm probably mostly interacting only with my assistant or sometimes with Sarah. And so, you know, that's it. And so my team members calling each other out creates this sort of culture of gratitude and appreciation, which increases the positivity and the positive results and that work environment, it becomes this almost like a feedback loop, a positive feedback loop. It grows my team members' skill and ability.  [00:19:48] Brian: And I think with this, like, because yeah you have to have your team and you will retain your team more, but then that also goes ties into the process side of things, because if you do lose a team member, if you have your processes lined out. [00:20:00] It's not as stressful if somebody were to leave because it's plug and play, right? Like, "okay, this is your job." And we've been working on recording videos of how you do certain things. And they're short. We try not to make them, you know, an hour long videos. And that way it's like, you know, you can go find that little piece that you need instead of having to like watch hour long video, but you find that and then now it's plug and play. And so that way you can easily hire somebody that maybe they're not, they don't have the perfect skill set, but they have the humility, they have the hunger, they have the smarts, they have the right culture for your organization. [00:20:35] And then the process is there. Where if they have that culture piece, they can be trained pretty easily in the process if it's documented properly.  [00:20:44] Jason: Very cool. So what's next for you in systems, process, developing your culture? What do you see on the horizon for your team?  [00:20:52] Brian: So, right now, what we're working on is finalizing everything that we have been working on. I've got an intern who's been incredibly helpful and getting everything set up. And so here in the next month or so, I'm going to have him sit down and go over everything that he's built in the process. And we're going to tweak it. But we've got everything written down on paper, and we've gotten most of it into the computer systems. [00:21:14] And then we're going to have a team meeting and make sure everything is running like it should. And then from there, we're going to make sure all those videos are up and going. And then we're going to work on expanding the team. So the thing is like with my investor who wants to really push this, like he wants to get in multiple markets. [00:21:31] And so what we're going to be doing is expanding with him. And so what we're doing is we're going to be looking for acquisitions. So we're hopefully we'll start with an acquisition and somewhere in our market. Because that way it's a little easier. I don't care how huge it is, even if it's 30 to 50 doors. [00:21:48] That would be stellar because it gives us an opportunity to learn the acquisitions piece. And then the next thing is we're going to go, because we're in Oklahoma City, next thing we're going to go up to Turnpike and start looking for acquisitions in Tulsa. And then we'll essentially set up a separate base in Tulsa. [00:22:03] But once we have all of our systems here and our cultures here. You know, it's going to be pretty easy to set. It's a 90 minute drive up there. So it's not the end of the world to have to run up there. And then from there, we're going to be going into other markets out of state. And that becomes more of an issue because we have different brokerage laws and I don't sit for my broker's exam or someone who would in another state. [00:22:23] So that's where we're continuing to grow is to go regional with this. And, you know, and the side that doesn't, isn't directly related to property management is like. We're tasked with bringing on doors. And so these things, the same pieces, the culture and the process follow with any business, it's not just property management. [00:22:42] And so like me and Mallory, my operator, we are having a meeting this morning. It's like, "okay, we've got this ball rolling. We need to start looking at the next thing, which is how do we increase our acquisitions of properties?" Not of actual real estate acquisitions. And so we're taking these exact same pieces and say, "okay, we need to line out the process," and then we can hire people to do it because the two of us can do it. [00:23:06] We don't have the time to do it. We need to get the processes lined out so we can put the right person in the seat and make it happen.  [00:23:12] Jason: Yeah. So we've touched on the three systems that are really needed to make the business infinitely scalable, as I say. So you need really good people. You need a good people system, need a good process system, and then the next big piece is a really good planning system. Sounds like you have a plan and getting that plan built out in DoorGrow OS so that it's no longer just your vision and you have the entire team helping you move this forward will take a lot of weight off your shoulders and allow your operator to make sure that this all happens. [00:23:44] And then you have a predictable future, which is really amazing. It's like, you can see the future and you can see the future growth of the business and your team helped make it all a reality.  [00:23:54] Brian: So one of the things that I really took away from the regional automotive group that I worked for the founder of it he passed a few years ago, but I got to know him. He was essentially retired, but I got to know him. And one thing he always did, and this is obviously before computers, because this was in the 70s, or what we have today, he wrote, I think it was three to five goals, and he wrote it on a piece of paper, and those were his goals for the next year. [00:24:18] And he would accomplish them and it's easier to accomplish what you have set. I had a teacher in junior high and she told me, and it's always stuck with me. You will get further if you set your goals high and don't reach them versus setting your goals low and easily reach them. And so that's the philosophy I've taken with my whole life. [00:24:40] Like, I'm going to set these goals, and whether I get there or not, you know, I'm sure going to try, but I know I've made it further than if I set my goals really low.  [00:24:48] Jason: Yeah, it's like the old quote, it's better to aim for the stars and miss than a pile of manure and hit, right? I love this idea for entrepreneurs. [00:24:58] The challenge though, a lot of times with team members, one of the things we coach on is that can sometimes demoralize the team because they have to be winning. And so I say entrepreneurs set your big hairy ass goal, keep it a private from your team. And then with your team set a goal that there's zero chance they can not hit by the end of the year, zero chance that they don't hit by the end of the quarter. [00:25:19] And that they're very likely hit by the end of the month. And it's because you want to teach them to be winning constantly. And this gives them you the ability to recognize them. And they actually increase their results because they're winning. And if they learn to lose, teams get very comfortable with losing very quickly, right? [00:25:38] They don't hit a sales goal that month. "Well, we'll get them next time," you know, and then they just get worse and worse. And so really big, I'm making sure like hit those goals, but back the goals down low enough that you'll hit it for sure by the end of the year and then see as a team, can you hit it sooner? [00:25:55] Then. Winning bigger.  [00:25:56] Brian: Yeah, I think that comes to knowing your people too, because there's some people that are going to be more ambitious, right? And so you can maybe knock circles up a little bit more than you would somebody that needs that fulfillment that, "hey, I've accomplished my goal." [00:26:08] And so that all comes with knowing your people and pushing that down the line as, you know, for me as entrepreneur and owner, pushing that down the line to the rest of my team members and my management team, and they push it down.  [00:26:20] Jason: Cool. Well, Brian, we appreciate you being in the program. Do you want anyone to reach out to you from this or get in touch with you or..? [00:26:27] Brian: Yeah we're in Oklahoma City Metro. If you have anybody that is looking to expand their real estate portfolio, feel free to give us a holler. You can find us in 1907investments.com and, or you can find me online. I'm all over the place. And you know, we really take pride and take care of our tenants, treat our tenants as clients, because then you're going to have a more successful business. [00:26:47] Because if you want your real clients, your owners should succeed. You got to make sure the tenants stay in and are happy.  [00:26:53] Jason: Awesome. Well, Brian, you're a sharp guy. We appreciate you being in the program. Thanks for coming on the DoorGrow show.  [00:26:58] Brian: Appreciate y'all.  [00:26:59] Sarah: Thanks, Brian.  [00:27:00] Jason: Thanks. See you. All right. [00:27:01] So if you are a property management business owner, and you are at the place where you are stressed out, you're struggling, you're frustrated, maybe you're thinking like, "what's my business worth?" Keeps coming up in your head because you're like, "maybe I should exit this." You want to get out of it. Maybe in the next two to three years is your plan because you don't really see a light at the end of the tunnel, then reach out to us at DoorGrow. We can help you get out of that, out of a business that you don't enjoy and turn it into the business of your dreams, a business that you do enjoy. Help you get the right systems installed so that it becomes easy, comfortable, and maybe even fun, right? Let's have a little fun. [00:27:39] And if you would like that, reach out to us at doorgrow, you can check us out at doorgrow.com. Bye everyone. [00:27:44] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:28:11] 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.

Owning a property management company can be expensive, risky, and stressful. Property management business owners often surround themselves with the wrong team members. Today, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with Pete Neubig with VPM to talk about building effective and efficient property management teams. You'll Learn [01:58] Having a business in “Chaos Mode” [09:02] The importance of core values [14:45] How VAs help your business thrive [23:18] Accountability, KPIs, and training [30:06] Creating company culture with VAs [37:07] Getting the right people in the right roles [41:30] VAs for property management companies Tweetables “When you're in high growth, you seem to be in chaos mode, and when you're in chaos mode, you don't make any money.” “When you're not proactive in your business and you're reactive, you're losing trust and churn goes up.” “If you don't have your org structure correct, it doesn't matter how many whistles and bells you have.” “I think every business owner needs to build the business around themselves.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Pete: If you don't have your org structure correct, it doesn't matter how many whistles and bells you have. If your org structure is not correct, It all goes to hell in a handbasket.  [00:00:09] Jason: All right. Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:28] 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. [00:01:03] I'm your host, property management expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, along with Sarah Hull, my wife. Co-owner of DoorGrow and the COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:16] So our guest today, we've got Pete Neubig back on the show with VPM Solutions. Welcome Pete.  [00:01:23] Pete: Welcome Jason, sarah. Thanks for having me.  [00:01:25] Jason: Yeah, good to have you. So now Pete, you were an operator of a property management company.  [00:01:31] Pete: That's correct.  [00:01:32] Jason: With Steve Rosenberg and you really helped to dial in the operations there and build that up. And now you're helping people do this in their property management business with your VA company. So we're going to be chatting about today is the number one way to increase productivity and profitability, so this should be interesting. So Pete, what is the number one way to increase productivity and profitability? Let's get into the subject.  [00:01:57] Pete: Sure. So before I jump right in, I'll talk about just a little brief history of Empire Industries, which was the company that we owned. So, we came from the investor side, Steve and I, we partnered up, we owned about 31 homes. Bought too many, didn't know how to manage it. [00:02:12] We love the idea of buying the deal. We hated the idea of managing it. So we went out looking for management firms and then realized we felt we could build a better mousetrap, which we ended up doing. Our original vision, I know you talk a lot about vision in your coaching, our original vision was we were going to own 500 homes and manage them ourselves, and within a year, that vision went to crap and we ended up managing 60 homes and I owned 37 of them. I'm like, "Steve, how are we managing these other homes?" And we were third-party managing all of a sudden. Because he felt that everybody needed help. And so we started third-party managing. So that's how we got into it, and we ended up building a better mousetrap and we created a third-party management firm and we took it from those 31 doors that we had all class D minus stuff, which is a whole other podcast. And I think you've actually listened to one of yours recently about something like that. So we ended up taking it to about 980 single-family homes and nothing more than four units in Texas, single families, one to four units and we went to three markets. We were in Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth. And what happened was with us, our vision was no longer aligned. Steve wanted to take the property manager firm national. I wanted to literally just stay in Houston and get like 1500 homes. And so that fractured the partnership to the point where we decided to sell the business. Long story short, I couldn't afford to buy him out and he didn't want to buy me out. So we ended up selling to My Management, took a job with them for a couple of years, and realized I was no longer employable and that's when I started VPM Solutions. So that's the short version of it, but we were in chaos mode for many years at Empire. [00:03:43] When you're in high growth, I don't know if you've seen this with your clients, but we were in high growth and when you're in high growth, you seem to be in chaos mode. And when you're in chaos mode, you don't make any money. We didn't anyway. And so what we had found was our number one challenge was payroll costs. So the number one challenge that I've seen, and I've talked to a lot of people across the country, your number one challenge is either growth or payroll costs. The interesting thing about property management because it's a service-based industry and because it's so service-based that you almost have to stress your team out to make money. [00:04:16] Right? So you're on this kind of seesaw where I don't really have that many doors, but I need the people. But so the salary cost is so high that there's no money for me. As I grow the doors. Right. Now I don't hire anybody, but now I'm making money, but my team is now completely stressed out. They work in weekends, they work at nights, they're taking phone calls. They don't give the great customer service. And so payroll costs, what we saw was with us, our payroll costs are about 56%. Which is really high. A business should be around 30 to 36% is what I was taught by my business coach. I don't know if you've seen anything different in the service space, but that's what I've heard. So I had to figure out how to get my payroll cost down from 56% all the way down to about 30%. And I'll tell you how I did it with virtual assistants, so I'll let the cat out of the bag, right? We got it down to about 34%. So from 56 to 34%, and every percentage that you save in payroll costs is a dollar in your pocket. [00:05:11] But then you'd be like, "Well, Pete, if you have less people or, you have less payroll, typically you have less people. And if you have less people, your team is stressed," and I get all that. But let's talk a little bit about what happens when you have a stressed team. Okay. So when you have a stressed team, the little things go out the window, right? [00:05:27] All of a sudden, you're not making those calls to get those online reviews. All of a sudden, you're not making the calls and your communication goes downhill. And when a landlord owner or an owner client calls you to find out what's going on with the problem, whether it's maintenance, lease, you know, lease renewal, whatever it is, they feel like they're managing you. [00:05:43] So when you're not proactive in your business and you're reactive, you're losing trust and churn goes up. At Empire, our churn was around 34%, which is insane, right? The average churn in the business, my understanding is like 18 to 20%. Right.  [00:06:00] Jason: And that's his annual churn.  [00:06:02] Pete: Yeah. So it's high, right? [00:06:03] 34%. And I can tell you that the majority of it was people were unhappy with our service. Yeah. Right. So it wasn't good churn, right? Because you have good, neutral, bad, however you want to define it. We had mainly bad churn. People weren't selling houses and like, "all right, we're out of here, we sold." No, they were taking them because they were not getting the love, the communication really from us. So by having these payroll costs so high, I couldn't afford it. I couldn't afford people. So what happened, especially after 2020 with that pandemic is that the cost of hiring people got incredibly high, right? [00:06:34] So I call them low-level, low enjoyment jobs. Let's take a maintenance coordinator, for example, right? That's the number one job that is posted on VPM solutions today. Is the maintenance coordinator. So that's the first thing people look for typically. Well, a maintenance coordinator in Houston, Texas, back in 2018, 2019, was about a $35,000 a year job. Well, after 2020, people that want to do a job, they want like about $50-55,000, right? And the company just can't absorb that. They can't afford to hire people. On top of that, the type of people that we were getting were GEDs or high school, diplomas, no longer college-educated people wanted that job. Most of those people have challenges in their life and they bring them into your business. So, this all came to a head. I had a lady named Sharon, and Sharon was my front office coordinator. This is back in a day when we had these things called offices and office space. [00:07:22] Jason: Yeah.  [00:07:23] Pete: So I remember those days. In 2019 and before so people would walk into our office, drop off, rant or whatever. Right. And Sharon was this, she was like this angry lady. And I'm like this tells you what my hiring process was back then it was not very good. And some of the things that you teach, I'm like, man, I wish I would have known that back in 18, 17 and 19. So she's the wrong person. She was the wrong person and she was the wrong fit. But in my mind, I'm like, "Well, she's mean." I'm like, "She'd be great for a maintenance coordinator, right? She can tell people no all the time." So I decided instead of firing her, I decided to promote her, right. Which was a terrible mistake. So I promote Sharon to maintenance coordinator. Now, unfortunately for Sharon, she was my maintenance coordinator. I was actually managing properties back then at the time. And so just for that, she probably should've got some hazard pay. So I get that. I'm not the easiest guy to work for, especially when I'm managing properties. So Sharon comes and within one week, Now I gave Sharon a raise, so I moved her from front office to the maintenance coordinator. She was making about $35, I gave her like $ 40,000. [00:08:20] She's making what I think is decent money. That's not great money. I get that, but it was good money at the time. Within one week, she comes to my office. She tells me she needs more money. I'm already just scraping by as the business. Just scraping by, single-digit profit margin. So that's when I realized that I could eliminate her position. I can hire three people that are overseas for the same cost as one Sharon. But here's the big difference. Those three people, they're obviously bilingual, right? And here I'm in Houston and Dallas and Fort Worth at the time, Spanish is like, a lot of our tenants, about a third of them didn't really speak English. A lot of our vendors, Spanish was their first language. So I can get bilingual people, I can get college-educated people, I can get people that are ready or knowing that they want to work from home. And here's the most important thing though. I can get people that were not just a J-O-B to them, but a career and they were excited about the opportunity to work with us and for us. And so the attitude and all of a sudden I can find people that align with our core values.  [00:09:18] Jason: Yeah. That's significant to be able to find people that align with your core values. Yup.  [00:09:22] Pete: A hundred percent. But now I have three people doing the work. So now what happened is I had a little hesitation from my property managers, right? Because property managers are designed to be taskers. Right. So I had to take my property managers and I had to lift them up. And we actually changed the name. We said, you're no longer considered a property manager. You're a client relations specialist. Or an asset manager. I like asset manager better, but that was one of the fights I lost with Rosenberg. If anybody knows Steve, he's 6'4 full of muscles. So we arm wrestled and I lost on that one. We call them client relations specialists.  [00:09:55] Jason: But you wanted to call them what? Asset managers?  [00:09:58] Pete: Asset managers. I think an asset manager just has a little bit more cachet. And if you really think about it, right? How many clients do you have, like you're listening, that call you up and tell you how to manage their property, even though you're the expert? I felt the property manager, I call them gophers. I felt the property manager, they had to take these calls from these owners all the time and say, "Hey, go to my property, make sure the water in the pool is being filled up. Go to my property. Gas man's going to come there. I want to know about this $12 expense." meaningless and small conversations. You would never have those conversations with the guy managing your money, right? Imagine calling your Smith Barney guy and say, "I don't like the way you made this trade. Like you should make this trade different." no, you just let the guy do his thing. So how do you let us do our thing? Well, words are powerful and property manager to me has lost its luster. And it just reminds me of a gopher.  [00:10:45] Jason: I think also the phrase property manager in the property management space has become like saying " miscellaneous role" and that like it doesn't have meaning a lot of times there runs into this a lot with coaching our clients. [00:10:58] Sarah: Like, "what does your property manager do?" And they're like, "they pretty much do everything." "Okay..."  [00:11:02] Pete: And that's a problem And the reason why they do everything is because they can't afford more people because the margin is so slim. Right, so we got to the point where our property managers got elevated, made them client relations specialists. And what does that mean? It means that they had to learn a new skill. They had to manage by reports. They had to manage people because now all of the low level property management tasks were being done by my team in the virtual assistant world. And when I mean everything, but by the time Empire was done now, granted, we're almost a thousand units. But at that point we can hire some people. Everybody had one hat, which was a beautiful thing because now you can have your job description really set. You can have your KPIs really set. You can have your DISC profile really set. And you know who to hire. [00:11:43] And they have one or two numbers and they end up doing a much better job than the manager who's doing all of it. So over the course of your growth, you have to change your infrastructure, right? You go from portfolio to hybrid, hybrid to departmental to pod and all that good stuff. I got to departmental, we never got to pod and then we sold. That was probably going to be the next move for us. [00:12:05] If you don't have your org structure correct, it doesn't matter how many whistles and bells you have. I could have property meld and I can have Zapier and I can have lead simple. I can have all these things. I can have a bunch of VAs, but if your org structure is not correct, It all goes to hell in a handbasket, just even quicker, right? [00:12:22] Cause now you have all this stuff happening even faster and it just gets crazier. And so with us, what we did is we had the structure, right? So now the managers, they're not taking those first phone calls. what was happening, Jason, is that when people would call, right? An owner client would call, my manager would pick up the phone. And as they're talking to this person, they're literally online and doing 14 tasks, responding to 18 emails. And people can hear that, they can see that and they can feel it over the phone. And so what do they do? Well, you don't really have enough time for me, I'm going to go take my property elsewhere. Or if you mess up, you know what, not only do you not have time for me, you mess up, right? So now what we do is we have everything happening on a low level.  [00:13:01] My managers told me, and I've talked to other managers since, my managers told me that maintenance took 80% of their time, right? And so I've heard that time and time again. So that was the first thing. So everybody always asks " okay, if I do hire a virtual assistant what's the first thing I should hire?" And the answer is, it depends for me. I knew my churn rate was directly related to the way we handle me.. I knew it. I didn't have to have a consultant come in and tell me that, right? [00:13:27] I just getting beat up every day by it. So I ended up hiring I was going to hire one remote team member, I ended up hiring four, right? And I trained them, figuring that somebody is going to drop off, but I wanted to train them all together. Now I did the training. Training is like literally the most tedious thing ever. And nobody wants to train. Everybody wants to hire somebody that they know exactly how to do it and they know exactly how to do it your way. It doesn't work that way. You have to take one step back to two steps forward. What people don't realize is the time you spend training your people, you get back in perpetuity forever. Because if you train your people correctly and you have good core values and you have a great culture, they ain't going to leave, right? People are so worried. I'm going to transfer, isn't going to leave. Yeah. If you're running a crappy company. Right. If you're running a crappy company and yeah, I'd be freaking worried too. [00:14:11] Right. Yeah. Make sure you're running a great company. You train the people. And then here's the great thing. As people moved on, whether they moved on and got another job or they moved on because I promoted them, guess who did the training for the next batch? My team did the training for the next batch. By the way, my churn rate for my remote team was way less than my churn rate in my US team. Right. Right. Incredibly different.  [00:14:32] Jason: Churn rate of retaining clients, of team members?  [00:14:36] Pete: Team members. Retaining team members. Churn rate of clients and you have churn rate of team members, right?  [00:14:39] Jason: Yeah. Their loyalty is just a lot stronger because they don't get these kinds of opportunities as often.  [00:14:45] Pete: Correct. Correct. So once my maintenance team was on board, now my manager, I literally saved with the narrow minds 80%, but here's the funny thing, right? So as I'm training. I had a director of operations. Her name was Margo and I still talk to Margo today. I love Margo. She would come to my office every day for 90 days. She came to my office with her cup of coffee every morning and said, "I don't think these VAs are going to work. I don't think these virtual assistants are going to work." Okay. Because when I was training right now, I did the training, not Margo. [00:15:12] I was training them, but when I was training them. What we had to do is every work order had to go to the property manager, then to the virtual assistant, then the virtual assistant would talk to the resident, the owner, bring it back to the property manager because they were getting, they were training, right? So they had to learn what to do in each situation, which caused my property managers more time, right? So that 80 percent went to 90 percent or even a hundred percent or 110. Now they're working extra hours. So they hated it. On day 91 I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I shit you not, day 91, she comes into my office and she has our same cup of coffee and I'm getting ready to listen to the spiel and she goes, " do we have maintenance anymore?" [00:15:47] Yeah. And I laughed and it took 90 days, but I got it. Yeah. The point where, so all of the work orders were being done by the remote team that nothing was getting escalated anymore. Only very little things right? So my managers do say, what do they do? Well, they take on all the escalations. Now imagine. What brain power, right? My team in United States, they were the ones that were the experts, right? So, but imagine if they only are dealing with high level escalations, not all the other little, because how many times did I have all these little things get done, but then we missed the big thing. [00:16:18] And then all of a sudden what happens is I call them taps, two by fours, and mack trucks, right? A tap is basically a maintenance request. That's going unanswered for, let's call it 15 days. Okay. That's a tap. The two by four is now the resident bypass you calls the owner. Now the owner knows that it hadn't happened or the resident blasts you on social. And then the mack truck is the lawsuit that gets across your desk, the tech, the report the complaint to the the real estate commission. Right. Or you're just getting, or you lose a client, right? Yeah. Those are two of those. So my team was so busy that they were missing the taps that they were becoming two by fours. And these are called fires. All right. And all we're doing is trying to deal with this fire. And then of course, every once in a while you get a mack truck, right? And it's what the heck? So now that my managers are not doing the day to day stuff, they're able to be proactive. So they're looking at reports. They're literally looking for taps. And now they're solving those taps. What that means is now the owner clients not calling you to find out what's going on. You're calling them, you're reaching out to them, you're letting them know, or you're taking care of it before they even, before it even becomes an issue. [00:17:18] And so by, by having your high dollar people that are licensed and they have experience by allowing them to not do the low level, low enjoyment stuff they actually became not only do they take all the escalation, but they actually became internal salespeople. All of a sudden, and this is stuff that we didn't anticipate, all of a sudden, though, like my company's name was empire property management in realty. That 90 percent of my customers had no idea that we could buy and sell homes for them. We're called realty and no idea. But once I got my property managers to be client relations specialist, guess what's happening. All of a sudden people are going to buy houses and they're buying them through us. [00:17:54] All of a sudden people want to sell. They want to sell through us. So all of a sudden our revenue goes up, right? Then all of a sudden they're like, who do investors hang out with? They hang out with other investors, right? You're the, you're like the five most, what is it? It's the old saying that you hear you're the average of the five people you hang out the most. All of a sudden they're getting, we're getting referrals. We never got referrals. So now we're getting a bunch of sales. We're getting a bunch of referrals. We're getting people to buy stuff where the agent, right? And when you're the agent, you get, you build that, that relationship. [00:18:18] And so now all of a sudden our churn rate dips down to, I think it was 22 percent from 34%. Right. So the interesting thing is I told you when I first started, right, I went from 54 percent to 34 percent in payroll costs. My payroll actually stayed the same. It was the churn rate that went down, increased my revenue. [00:18:36] It was the other clients, right? And retaining people and getting more clients. That's what, that's where the difference was. And now my managers. We're incredibly happy. They're no longer working nights and weekends. They're no longer stressed. Right now. And so now they are they're having the best life ever. [00:18:53] And my VA team, my remote team, they're making more money than they've ever made before. And it was easy to, and then they all had KPIs and they were all like. People want to inherently do a good job. They do. Right. And so, but they don't know how to do a good job unless you tell them what that looks like. And that's the job description. And they want to report card and that's KPIs. And my team down there, we had them in Mexico cause they're the Spanish speaking. But what happened was again, another thing that we didn't realize was not only the team do the work, they hit the KPIs, they exceeded the KPIs and we create a bonus structure around the KPIs. [00:19:26] So if you hit the KPI, you got a firm handshake. Thank you. Right. But if you exceeded the KPI, you got a bonus. And if you were part of a team, everybody in team added the KPI or you didn't get the bonus. And what I like about with the virtual team is the bonus was a hundred dollars a month. If you hit a certain level, you got a hundred dollars for us wasn't a lot of money, a hundred dollars to somebody in the US. Like literally would get mad at me. That's a little, that's too little of a bonus. It doesn't even fill up my car. Right. And they throw it at you. Somebody in the Philippines or Mexico or Costa Rica it's an extra couple of days of work per month. [00:19:58] So they were really appreciative of that, of the opportunity to make more money. What happened was everybody started exceeding their KPIs to the point where I couldn't make the KPI any more difficult. Like it just is what it is. And they were just doing it. And then here's the magic. [00:20:11] What happened next? was they ended up updating or changing the process. So my deal as the business owner was, I am the policy maker, I make the policy, but you own the process. And when somebody comes in and says, "Hey, I changed the process." And I use this example a lot. I had Jessica who was running all my lease renewals. [00:20:30] So we had about a thousand units and I have one person doing all lease renewals, inspections and lease renewals. Our policy was that you could not do a lease renewal unless an inspection was done, an annual inspection was complete. And we used to start the process 60 days out. Jessica moved it to 90 days out. And when I was talking to them, I'm like, Jessica, I'm just curious what made you, and I don't, I try not to ask why questions because why questions put people blame, excuse, denial below the line and they get defensive. I asked, what made you decide to move it from 60 to 90 days? And she goes, "well, with 90 days, I can do X and Y. Like I can get to the owners faster. I know if the, if the residents do it" and she laid it all out. I'm like, amazing. She was doing a better job than I could have done because that's what her core focus was. Yeah. She was just on that. So then what people will say to me is Pete. [00:21:13] Okay. Well, how do you know she's just not doing the lease renewals and not the inspections because she wants to hit our number. Right. That's the first question I get all the time. And I say, "well, we hire people based on our core values. And one of our core values was integrity. And so if you hire people with integrity, they're not going to do the loop around." [00:21:30] I was able to run reports very quickly that determined all the lease renewals and if they had an inspection done so I've been reporting it. It was very simple to, to make sure that I was, I hold them accountable. Yeah, that's another core value of that we had is we hope people get, we run our business by numbers. [00:21:48] We hold people accountable. And so that's so, so because we did all of that, we were able to solve our challenge of no profit or single digit profit margin to, double digit and eventually get to about that 20 percent profit margin, even though we, even while we were still investing in a lot of money, growing the business. [00:22:07] Jason: Yeah, so we've, I love all the stuff you've been talking about. I think we've had some phenomenal results getting clients to improve their profit margin. And we've got clients easily getting up to 40%. Sarah ran her business over 60 and I think the three biggest profit levers are building a really solid process system, a really solid people system, and a really solid planning system and the planning system we call DoorGrow OS. [00:22:33] But that was really where we started to motivate the team to think in terms of outcomes and get them to think more strategically like business owners. And so that strategic work is what moves businesses forward. That's where they're innovating. That's where they're improving a process and so those kind of goals, if we give a team member an outcome and we say, "figure out however you can best do this, within our values with integrity. Figure out a better way," then I'm not concerned about micromanaging them. I we're less involved in managing the team. They're now managing themselves because they're trying to achieve the outcome. And a lot of team members in a lot of business don't even have job descriptions. So they don't even know what outcomes they're expecting. [00:23:15] Pete: If you're not sure what they're supposed to do. How do they know what they're supposed to do?  [00:23:18] Jason: Right. And if you ask anyone listening to this, if you ask your team members. This would be a curious and interesting experience for you or experiment. Ask your team members, "what are the outcomes that you think are most important for your role?" and compare that with what you think they are. I think you might be surprised. These should be agreed upon and defined, right? That should be in the job descriptions. Pete, I really appreciate all your transparency and sharing, because a lot of times everybody wants to, especially with like coaches in the industry, I see a lot of people coaching mentoring, but you don't get to see how the sausage is made and you don't really hear the challenges they have, but they might be really charismatic. They might really be good at speaking, but there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. And then what a lot of coaches in the industry do is they try to get people to build the business the way they did, which may not even be working. And so I think what's important, I think every business owner needs to build the business around themselves. It needs to be built to allow them the maximum level of fulfillment and freedom and contribution and support in their own business and that fifth reason of safety and certainty. [00:24:25] And that means every business is going to be unique because every business owner is unique. If you started a property management business right now, it would be run very differently than some others, because you're very operationally minded and you would build your team very differently than somebody that's very visionary sales oriented, right? [00:24:41] And I think it's important to get the right team built around you. And a lot of times I think the foundational challenges, a lot of business owners aren't clear on themselves. And then they start building a team and they're miserable. They have an entire team and they're still miserable. They've built the wrong team. [00:24:55] Pete: Well, I think every new business owner does that, right? They don't feel like they deserve good people. So they self sabotage sometimes. Right.  [00:25:04] Jason: They don't believe the good people are out there. A lot of times they just don't even believe there's good people. They're like, "Oh, everybody's terrible." so guess what they attract? Right. And what's surprising the truth is just like you had mentioned, when you find good people, they will exceed you doing that role. Especially if it's one of your minus signs, it's not one of the hats you enjoy wearing, they will be better at it than you, if they enjoy doing it. A hundred percent. And that's super humbling for these early stage entrepreneurs, because they think they're the best at everything initially.  [00:25:33] Pete: There's two thoughts, right? So when you hire somebody, there's the whole abdication of it. And then there's a delegation and then there's the micromanagement. And so, what I find is that when people hire people in the United States, they abdicate a lot of times when they hire people that are remote, they want to micromanage for whatever reason, even though they've invested a lot more money in the person in the United States. Right. And then there's people that just, they just abdicate regardless. [00:25:58] And what I mean by abdication is, I'm a property manager. I'm doing a whole bunch of stuff myself. I hire an assistant and I just throw up on them and say, here's all the things that I'm doing. Go ahead and do it. There's no direction. There's no accountability. There's no management. [00:26:11] Right. And then they get excited. " Oh yeah, I'm a great delegator." No, you're an abdicator. You're not a delegator because you're not giving them the tools and the guidance that's needed. And then what happens is the VA or the person leaves and " well, I don't understand. I can't find any good people, so I'm just going to keep doing it myself." the first thing is when you hire somebody, you have to understand, you just can't just abdicate. You have to make time for them, especially in the first couple of months, right? They're learning you and your culture. At the end of the day, if you are the sole operator and the business owner each one of us have core values, right? We have our personal core values. Most of those are going to be embedded into the company that we built. They should be anyway. You shouldn't change your core values for your company. If I'm full of integrity, I'm not going to create a company that's not, that doesn't have a lot of integrity, right? [00:26:55] So these people are going to learn by you training them or your team training them, right? Core values always get pushed down. If you're listening to this and you do not have core values in your company, you have core values in your company they're just not yours. The team created core values. They push them up and they may or may not be the ones that you want. Right. But when you hire somebody, it's important that you spend a lot of time with them to train them properly so that they understand what they're doing. What I have found is that most jobs can be trained within two to three weeks. Especially if you're wearing one hat. The more, what I call decision points or if then else's, and the biggest one that I've found is in maintenance coordination has a lot of decision points. What if it's over the threshold? What if it's a home warranty? What if it's an emergency? What if it's cosmetic? [00:27:39] Right? You go on and on. That's why it took me 90 days. Because we had to go through every one of those scenarios and I had to train on. And it's just a little bit more in depth. My least renewable person, I was able to train her in two to three weeks. And you're right. And so by the training and by creating the KPIs and then by having a weekly meeting with structure. [00:27:57] Right. So nothing gets me more fired up than having a meeting, just to have a meeting. And then we sit there and we sit there for an hour and I literally just wasted not just my time, but everybody else's time all because we don't have any structure. So I'm a big fan of EOS. I'm sure that you have something that's very similar to a meeting structure. [00:28:15] Jason: We call it DoorGrow OS.  [00:28:16] Pete: DoorGrow OS. So DoorGrow OS. So if you're not part of DoorGrow, join DoorGrow and get on the OS. That's like number one, right? Because if you just get your meetings in order, you will see an increase in productivity just like that. So by the way, the maintenance team that I built, they always reported to me, even when I sold, until the day I sold the company. I just had a soft spot for them. I like maintenance. I know I'm weird that way, but I really did. And so they reported to me. My other team, I had other supervisors. I actually had supervisors in Mexico that were managing the other team members in Mexico. And that supervisor report to somebody in the U. S. or to report directly to me. But I still had my weekly meeting with my team every week. And we had our OS and one of the questions I asked every week, there's two questions that were always number one was always. "What can I do as the business owner to make your job easier?" I think there's a, I think there's a sphere, a circle, right? My job is to take care of my team. My team's job is to take care of the client. The client's job is to take care of the business and the business job is to take care of me. That's the circle right? So no the client is not always right. And let's do what we have to do to make sure that if we did mess up, we want to make it right. And I get all that. But how can I make my team's job easier? And that could be, I need to go talk to Sandy in accounting because she's not doing something or it means, "Hey, can you create this report for me?" I need a whatever it is. What can I do? Then the last question I asked on every meeting was what is your stress level on a scale of one to 10? And this was really important because it does two things. Number one, if somebody is a 10 plus for three weeks in a row, they are ready to punch out. Yeah. No one wants to work in a stressful environment for more than if we can see that Hey, it's summer, we're a little short staffed, you're going to be stressed for next, six to eight weeks, but there's a, but we're going to do X, Y, and Z to get out of it, I get it and people will handle stress for a short period of time. [00:30:05] The second thing is, believe it or not, sometimes people are stressed out and has nothing to do with you or your company. I know we all think it's about us and our company, but personal stuff. So one time I actually. And so if anybody's 10 plus and I want to talk to them, I do it off the meet. Like we have a one on one say, "Hey, stay on everybody else. Get off the meeting, whatever." Yeah. And I had this one lady 10 plus and I said, "Hey you're usually a two what's going on. My brother got hit by a car right now." What this does is everybody's always asking me how how can I, how can I bring my team, my remote team into our culture. This is a great way, right? Because at the end of the day, just like you, you want to give time to your owner clients and you want to build relationships, you want to build relationships with your remote team. And so by, by taking an interest in them as human beings. [00:30:52] Right. It doesn't mean you have to give them, I'm not going to, I didn't fly down and give them a whole bunch of money. I just listened and I cared that her brother was doing okay. I would ask, and it was just an emotional human thing. My team, if your team, if your remote team know that you actually do care about them. So if your remote team knows that you care about them, they're not going to leave you for a 50 cents more or a dollar more an hour. They're just not. Because most of the time, if you're paying them a fair wage. They are making more than enough money to cover their, what I call their nut, just to cover their living expenses. So they're not going to leave because the grass isn't always greener and they are freaking happy. [00:31:28] If you make your team happy by asking them, how can I help? How can I make your job easier? And letting them know that you care about them as people. That's the, that's like a number three question I get, right? Number one is how do I train them? Number two is where do I find them? [00:31:41] Number three is how do I make a part of the team? This is how you make a part of the team, right? By, by advocating and just throwing a bunch of throwing a bunch of stuff on them and letting them go. That's not how you do it. And by micromanaging, I'm saying, I want to see all the screenshots. I want you to write down everything you did from this time to this time. [00:31:57] And if you take a 15 minute break, I need you to punch out and punch in. Right. You said it earlier. You manage by results. That's what I do. Do I care if you put 40 hours a weekend? I really don't. I'll pay you for 40. But if you get if if you're available and I need you, right. So I have managed on availability first, it had to be available. [00:32:16] So we have policy. We use Slack. If I Slack you, you Slack me back within 30 minutes. If I email you, you email me back within four hours. If we have a meeting, you're on video and you're in your home office. None of this Starbucks crap, none of this on the beach crap, like you're in your home office, you're working, right? [00:32:30] So availability is number one. Then number two is KPIs. Are you meeting or exceeding your KPIs? Number three, and if I have the right KPIs, I can just look and if it's green, I know that position is doing well. And then number three is escalations. Am I getting calls from our clients or from internal members of the company saying that you're not, that you can't, that you're not doing your job or you're not getting back to them or whatever. [00:32:53] Those are the three things I need to know. I don't need to know that you're moving your mouse every 30 seconds. I could care less on that. If I got those three things, I know, and again, I know I have the right people because I hired them based on my core values or the company's core values. [00:33:06] Jason: Yeah, totally. We do a lot of the similar things at DoorGrow. Like one of my mentors would say, cadence is culture. And I really believe that the cadence of your meetings creates the culture. It really does. And this is where you're able to set the culture with your team. And we ask questions like, where are you stuck? How can we support you? We do caught being awesome. We, and I think what team members really want more than money, a lot of entrepreneurs, we like money, right? We don't hate money. And so we assume mistakenly that's the highest priority for all of our team members. Well, I'll just give them bonuses or I'll pay them more. The reality is most team members. With the exception of maybe entrepreneurs and salespeople, most everybody else on the planet would prefer once their basic needs are met, financially would prefer to be recognized rather than get a bonus. And so creating the right cadence and creating a system like DoorGrow OS allows the team to be seen and recognized for their accomplishments strategically and moving the business forward. [00:34:03] And that prioritizes that we find that if you can get those three systems in place. The planning system, that's DoorGrow OS here at DoorGrow. The people system, we've got DoorGrow Hiring, Applicant Tracking System, etc. And the process system, we've got DoorGrow Flow and some other stuff. If you have these three systems in place, these are three of the biggest profit levers you can get in place. [00:34:23] And a lot of times people try to skip those three and jump right into profitability and micromanage through just more severe actions, more severe KPIs, and trying to control more. Thinking they can squeeze more blood from the stone when if they did these three profit levers, we've got clients that are hitting amazing profit margins. [00:34:42] They don't even have KPIs because they don't even need them because they trust their team members so much and their team members are really great culture fits and really motivated. And so focus on those three profit levers first, and you're going to make a lot more money. And really what happens is you get three times the output from good team members. [00:34:59] Easily and they can be anywhere. And what's, what I love about being able to have a remote team, we've got team members all over the place. Some of the U S Canada, Mexico, one's in London now, Philippines. I'm able to hire the best. I'm able to hire the best, no matter where they are. And I'm able to also for certain roles, get, make sure it's really affordable for the business. [00:35:20] And so we're not, I'm not too particular about where they're at or what they're doing. It just needs to be a price point that we can afford. And I need a really good outcome. And if we can get that, then that's the ideal. And it's easier for me to run things remotely than if everybody were interrupting me coming into my office all day long, it's a lot quieter. [00:35:42] And I feel like everybody's able to get more done, but we're able to create that connection in our daily huddles. We check in with everybody, ask where they're stuck. We do one on ones like you were talking about. All these things to figure out where everybody are at. The one thing that we do that I think is really impactful is we have our team members do time studies, not as a punitive measure, as a way to support them and figure out how to get them additional support and help. [00:36:05] And this is where we figure out which, what are their plus and minus signs. So Adam, who's been on my team for almost, I think almost a decade now. Yeah. I'm like nine years. And he started as a content writer and he's done multiple time studies and every time he gets really honest with me, he's these are the things I don't enjoy doing anymore. [00:36:21] I'm not enjoying doing all this writing. I'm, what do you enjoy? I enjoy interacting with the clients. He now manages our entire department for websites, branding, all this. He's got a whole team under him. Whereas nobody initially would have thought, Hey, Adam is a manager, but he by default naturally became one because we just got him the support he needed. [00:36:40] And so he's been, he, and that's how we've been able to retain Adam. And the cool thing about retaining team members is they're like wine. They get better with time. Better and better. And so Adam knows lots of ins and outs in the business. He's super adaptable and versatile, and we're able to use them for billing related stuff and website stuff. [00:36:58] And there's so many things over time that he's developed and absorbed and learned. He can run significant pieces of the business for me if necessary.  [00:37:07] Pete: Well, I'll give you a funny story because, here I am teaching and telling you, oh, here's how hire people. Right? So when I first started VPM Leon, who is our onboarding guy now came over and he was with me at mind and he was with me at empire. [00:37:20] So I've known Leon and I knew he had our core values, right? And so we're like, maybe eight months in and I go to one of my business partners and I go, "Hey man, I don't think Leon's working out," and he's like, "really?" he did the, I called the Mongolian reversal, right? Because he basically takes my words and he puts them right back at me. [00:37:34] He goes "let me ask you what's his job description?" And it's crickets. So I'm like, "yeah, he don't really have a job description." He's " what's his KPIs?" I'm like, "yeah, we haven't really got to that." So he's like, "how much have you trained him?" And I'm like, "all right, enough." [00:37:45] Basically, Leon was the right guy. I just didn't know what he's supposed to do. So how did he know what he's supposed to do? So then I got serious about the job description. And then what we realized is Leon was running about two hats, maybe three hats. It's really like he, he was good at one of them. [00:38:01] So we ended up hiring another guy, Angelino, and gave that hat away. And now Leon just runs and now he is. Thriving and exceeding all of the metrics that we put in his place. And he's the happiest he's ever been. And even though, this stuff, sometimes you have to continuously, make sure that you're doing it. [00:38:20] Jason: Oh yeah. We had a conversation last night about a team member that we realized they weren't doing some things right. And Sarah put it back in my face. She's well, did you train them on this? And I was like, No, I didn't. I made a mistake in training. I thought they would understand it in my superficial explanation. [00:38:38] And yeah,  [00:38:39] Pete: it's shortcuts, right? Those three things that you put out there, the hiring and the process, it sounds so easy, right? But we know it's tedious. And there's, that's a, that's the reason. Why most entrepreneurs who are most of 'em, are visionaries, right? A lot of guys start business with visionaries. [00:38:53] They're not in the details. They don't like doing that. It's not natural, right? I need an integrator. They need a, they need an integrator. I'm guessing Sarah's the integrator. I'm the integrator. I'm guessing you're the visionary, right? So they need an integrator to, to literally do that stuff and you get, like I said you, when you do it you get it back in perpetuity, like it just, once the system is complete, it's just tweaking. It's not rebuilding, once, and and but a lot of visionaries, they skip that part because they don't like that part. [00:39:18] Yeah. I agree. It's from hire a consultant or hire the, hire somebody that, that likes that stuff.  [00:39:23] Jason: Yeah.  [00:39:24] Sarah: And I love that you just keep like, thank you for continuously driving home the point. Like you have to train people. You have to. And a lot of times what we see is we see doesn't matter your location. [00:39:34] Doesn't matter your size. Doesn't even matter what industry you're in. People hire out of pain, which makes sense, but they're in so much pain that they're like, Oh, they think as soon as they hire somebody, they're like, Oh, like I'm, it's solved. It's not solved yet because you haven't trained them.  [00:39:48] It's still your problem until they are properly trained. And it does take time. So for a period of time, when you hire somebody, your life is going to get worse. You're going to be taking on more if you want them to do a good job That is what has to happen because if you hire somebody and you're like, "here just have it like baptism by fire figure it out go ahead and do it." [00:40:09] It's not going to work out. You're going to be frustrated They're going to be frustrated and it looks bad for both people and then you guys are both frustrated at each other and you're like Why are they not working out? And this person is like I didn't even get training. I don't like you're mad at me all the time. [00:40:22] And I just I don't even know what to do, but you didn't tell me what to do. Help me.  [00:40:25] Pete: I'm not going to hire people because I just, there's no good people out there. Right. It's just, when I was telling you that story about training the maintenance team, I was trained about two hours a day on the maintenance, which is a little too much, probably an hour and a half is probably the maximum we can take. [00:40:37] But I was doing two hours. That didn't mean that my 10 hour day. was still a 10 hour day. It became a 12 hour day because I still had 10 hours of work. I had to do, I just took on more, two hours of training. And a lot of times they ask more, a lot of times it's even more than that because as you're training, what I have found, and maybe you guys see the same thing is as I'm training, I actually learned a lot more about my processes and about my company, and then I realized, oh. [00:41:00] There's no policy here. Oh, there's no field for that. Oh, that's just in my head. However, I feel that day I'm going to, I'm going to judge on that. And so I, there was a lot of work that I ended up having to do as I'm creating the, to training, oh man, this process is not exactly at all what I thought. [00:41:16] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, Pete, this has been an awesome conversation. We appreciate you coming on the show. Why don't you tell everybody just a little bit about VPM solutions. Do a quick plug and how they can reach out and connect with you.  [00:41:30] Pete: Yeah. So, thanks for that. So VPM solutions is an online platform that connects property management companies with remote team members. [00:41:38] It's a direct hire, so they don't work for VPM. They work directly for you. You negotiate the hourly rate. There is no upfront cost and there's no fee to use the site. So it's all free for the company managers. The way VPM makes money is the virtual assistant. Pays 10%. So when they apply to a job, they have a breakdown of this is how much hourly rate that I'm applying for. [00:41:59] It is how much that BPM charges a platform fee. And this is how much that I'll get. We also have about 20, I think 23 free training. So, there's training on the site from fair housing to marketing, social media, to pro we have a flagship property manager, one on one courses. It's about nine 12, 12 courses, nine hours of content. [00:42:20] Wow. And it's there just to teach folks the basics of property management. No, you're not going to hire them and they're going to be able to run and be a property manager for you, but they're going to know the ins and outs of the verbiage of just the life cycle, like high level stuff. But it's our attempt to get people trained up so that when you, so that when you get them, they're not like that, at least they're crawling. [00:42:44] Right. Yeah. They have a little bit of deal, a little bit of information. And then we also have we also have some free resources that are on the side as well. Like we have I think we have 50 job descriptions with this profiles that we assume, assume assumptive this profiles. [00:43:00] We also have like org charts, like what you should, or chart should be as you grow your business. And then we also have just a list of all the vendors and resources and all the different Facebook groups and all of the conferences that are out there for profit management. [00:43:13] Matter of fact, you're actually on that site by the way, as a vendor. So, yeah. So. That's what we do. And then we also offer what we call the white glove service. It's a free service that helps you go through the hiring process. Because we, what we realized early on, it's a do it yourself platform, but what we realize is most people don't have a hiring process and no idea what to do. [00:43:34] So we guide them. Now your team your clients probably have a good hiring process, but we'll offer, like we'll offer that free white glove service to them as well, if they want to come in and just. Need a little bit of help. What should they ask before they interview? There's some red tape. [00:43:47] Like we say, you get a disc profile, and then the, we have these courses that they take, they get certifications, you can search based on those certifications. So it's really the only platform literally built for property management.  [00:43:57] Jason: Love it. Yeah. Very cool. We'll check it out. So everybody make sure you check out Pete Neubig's VPM solutions. [00:44:04] Take a look at that. And Pete, thanks for being on the show today. It's good conversation.  [00:44:08] Pete: Yeah. Thanks guys. Thanks Jason. Thanks Sarah. Appreciate you.  [00:44:11] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur, you're wanting to grow or add more doors or you're struggling with dealing with your team, reach out to us at DoorGrow. [00:44:19] We can help you with this. We do this all the time. We would love to support you. We have clients that are easily going from, we can help you scale anywhere from zero to a thousand plus, and anybody can do this in the next three to five years. We would love to support you, help you scale your business and help you save collapse a lot of time and not have to go through a make. [00:44:37] So many mistakes in your business. And so until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:44:42] 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!  [00:45:09] 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.

Real estate agent referrals can be a great source for leads in a property management business, but this strategy is often challenging and confusing for property management entrepreneurs. Join property management experts Jason Hull and Sarah Hull as they dive into the world of real estate agent referrals and why they often don't work for property management entrepreneurs. Learn how to shift the focus from seeking referrals to creating impactful introductions that connect you with the right clients. You'll Learn [02:24] The Problems with Trying to Get Referrals from Realtors [05:39] How to be Memorable to Your Clients [10:31] How Going Deeper can Land You More Deals [15:24] Challenges with Asking for Referrals [17:44] Don't Make Realtors Sell for You + Building Confidence Tweetables “We have maybe three or four different bodies or parts of ourselves. We have our intuitive, we have our mental, we have our emotional, and we have our physical.” “What I found was they'll have a logical mental memory of something, but a logical mental memory of something alone doesn't really stay there unless there's emotion connected to it.” “If they're not excited or feel something, why would they be motivated to give you referrals or even remember you or think about you?” “Depth is where the magic happens.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: They wake up every morning wanting something and it's not property management and it's not like helping their clients with property management that is not at the forefront of their mind, their heart and their desires. What do they want? They want money. They want more real estate deals.  [00:00:17] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you 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. [00:00:59] 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 COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:20] My iPad dinged. I didn't turn on do not disturb when it started. I need my— I have to have a pre flight checklist like right there. Like I got to do it. So, it's on do not disturb now. By the way, I was talking with a client this week. And he said that he had some of my videos playing in the background and he forgot and he came back into the room and he heard this voice talking, and he's like, "why is Ed Norton talking in my office?" You know who Ed Norton is?  [00:01:55] Sarah: No.  [00:01:56] Jason: All right for those of you listening, you probably know he's an actor, very famous actor, but apparently I might sound like Ed Norton, so I don't know.  [00:02:05] Sarah: I'm one of those people, don't ask me like, "oh do you know like this?" Don't name drop with me, I don't know who they are. [00:02:10] Jason: She doesn't care.  [00:02:12] Sarah: I don't, especially if it's like a celebrity, now I really don't know.  [00:02:16] Jason: Yeah, she's like, they're not paying me. [00:02:19] Sarah: I have no idea who they are.  [00:02:20] Jason: Okay.  [00:02:20] Sarah: I don't know. Alright. I can maybe name like five celebrities.  [00:02:24] Jason: So our topic is, and we had a question asked about this in our Facebook group in the DoorGrow Club. So if you're interested in what I told him and the coaching that— I created a video and I put it into there, go check it out You can go to doorgrowclub.Com. But the topic was— He was basically frustrated about getting agent referrals. Like how do you make this work? So a lot of property managers think a great lead source would be getting referrals from real estate agents, but we found that it doesn't work very well if you're asking for referrals. And so I wanted to talk about why real estate agent referrals in property management don't work. And maybe if you can understand why it doesn't work, you might be interested in reaching out to DoorGrow and learning how we make this work really well. So what typically happens with people that go out and they think "I'm going to go get some real estate agents to give me referrals 'cause they might know some investors." [00:03:23] Sarah: Yeah. And I did it too. So like, I'm guilty as charged, but it was like, "Hey, so if you ever know anybody who needs property management, then just like, let me know, like, here's my card, here's my information. Like, just give me a call." [00:03:36] Jason: Yeah.  [00:03:36] Sarah: " Keep me in mind." It doesn't work.  [00:03:39] Jason: Or they'll go and like, "Hey, could I present to your office about property management?" and so they'll go do to the real estate office. They have their morning meeting, you know, in their office maybe once a week and they go present and they sit there and they pitch and talk about property management and how they're so good and all this stuff. And then at the end, they're sitting there insecure, wondering like, "Why was everybody just eating donuts and looking at their phone the whole time?" you know, and "nobody's coming up to me." And maybe one person says, "Hey, nice presentation," you know, and then you walk away with nothing, and they don't really care about you, right? So, why doesn't this work? Because a lot of people try this. Why aren't they getting tons of referrals from real estate agents? [00:04:22] Sarah: Well, there's a lot of different reasons. I think one of the big ones is we're just relying on people to remember you like "oh, hey if you need, you know If you come across somebody who needs property management, then you have to just remember that I do it and then hopefully You know, pass it on over to me." and they're not going to remember you unless there's a really good reason to there, especially if they don't see like a benefit in it for them. So if you're like, Oh yeah, who paints houses? It's like, now I have to go find people that paint houses. But very rarely do we have like this Rolodex in our head of, you know, people who do certain things. We do have connections to people who do things that we refer out to a lot. So for example, in real estate, you might know somebody that paints houses. You might know somebody that cleans. You might do, you know, know someone who does some like handyman work. Because if you've got a client who's buying a house and they're like, yeah, but I hate the color. It's like, "oh, don't worry. I'll just send you to John and he'll paint the whole thing for you, right?" But property management is a little bit different unless you're working with a lot of investors, then you probably just don't need to have a property manager, like in your Rolodex. So that's one of the first reasons why it doesn't work. [00:05:39] Jason: Okay. So, I like what you said about it not being memorable. So I'll talk about memory real quick. So we have, you could say that we have maybe three or four different bodies or parts of ourselves. We have our intuitive, we have our mental, we have our emotional, and we have our physical right? And I used to do, you know, some emotional processing work with people like I would help them work through emotional stuff. And what I found was they'll have a logical mental memory of something, but a logical mental memory of something alone doesn't, they don't retain it, or it doesn't really stay there unless there's emotion connected to it. And so. The example I like to share with people is I just asked him, what were you doing on the day of 9 11? And what was the weather like? And they can usually remember quite a bit in detail, even though it was quite long ago. And I say, what was the day like 2 days before? And they're like, "I have no idea," right? Because there's no emotion. Maybe if they were hypnotized, their logical brain could go, "yeah, I could, I remember this," but we don't really retain things well, if there is an emotion connected to it. So that's one of the reasons why they don't, they didn't feel anything in you talking to them. They don't, they're not excited. If they're not excited or feel something, why would they be motivated to give you referrals or even remember you or think about you? So the anchor that we've created with them is— And anchoring is a neurolinguistic programming tactic. You can do this very strategically and effectively. You can create anchors. You also can create emotional states in people by the way that you communicate and maybe even listen to this. You're like getting a little bit excited. You're feeling a little bit excited about getting agent referrals, but you still don't know how it works, right? So what I did is I just created a state in you just a little bit. All right. So, the reason I think agent referrals don't work is because real estate agents don't care about you and your business.  [00:07:39] Sarah: The other reason they don't care: why would they don't care about what somebody else is doing? They're not, you know walking around going. "Oh, how can I help you today? How can I help you today? And how can I help you?" They're like, "what am I doing? Like, what's on my plate today? What do I have to do?" And the sooner we realize, like, hey, people are just in their own little bubble. Like, they're worried about what is right in front of them. And like, what are the tasks that they have to focus on? And what's going on in their life? And what are they thinking? What are they feeling? They're not very often stepping outside of that to go like, "Oh what is he feeling today? And what is she feeling today? You know, what are you dealing with?" People are very concerned with, you know, what they've got going on and that's just, that's normal. So we need to kind of just understand that and then figure out, "well, okay, if that's the mindset and the headspace that people are in knowing that, what do we do differently?  [00:08:36] Jason: Yeah, I think we need to figure out like, what do they actually want?" They wake up every morning wanting something and it's not property management and it's not like helping their clients with property management that is not at the forefront of their mind, their heart and their desires. What do they want? They want money. They want more real estate deals. And so you have got to connect them getting more real estate deals to them connecting you to their investor clients. You've got to figure out how to make that connection. So we have this very well scripted out. We have our clients that are, let's talk about some results. Like some of our clients, one of our clients, one of our best success stories this year in less than a year has added 400 doors in less than a year without really focusing on paid advertising really at all, right? Contrast that. So they've broken the thousand door barrier. Another client came to us and they have I think 1300, 1700 doors and their BDM bought 322 leads from a lead service, like, I'll just say APM. They bought it from APM and they closed 18. They closed 18 in the last year of those. They got 18 doors in the last year. If you calculate what each of those probably costs and they have a full time BDM that they're paying to work this, they have a setter that they're paying. [00:09:56] Like this is expensive with the per deal acquisition costs must be ridiculous. If they spent all of that time and all of that money and all. You know, follow up and everything else doing the strategies that we teach a DoorGrow, they probably could have, they might've been able to double their portfolio over the last several years. They're just churning and burning through all this energy, time, focus, cash and effort. Like, it's super wasteful. So, one of our clients added 310 doors just using this strategy in a year from only five or six agents. So a couple of things, the reasons that agent referrals don't work, we've established, they don't care about you, they care about getting more deals. You've got to connect that you aren't making them feel something. They want to feel excited. They feel excited about getting more deals. You're creating a weak anchor. Other ways in which this isn't working is that. You're not really getting to know them well enough. There's not enough depth in the relationship or a connection. They're not going to connect you to somebody unless they feel really safe with you and they like you. And so a lot of people are trying to do this so superficially, like "let's go pitch to a whole group and maybe I'll magically get a bunch of leads that come in from them." There's no depth there. [00:11:14] There's a lot of width, right? You're hitting a lot of people, but depth is where the magic happens. This is probably the greatest secret I think that we teach in helping people grow and add doors rapidly is we just get them doing depth in a way that none of their competitors are doing it. Going deeper. That means more personal, more intimate, more one on one, like focusing on like in person or video, whatever's the deepest things that you can do, you're going to grow faster. So I think there's also a lack of depth is a challenge. I think also with why agent referrals don't work is because nobody comes up to them and says they need property management. This almost never happens. And if it does— [00:12:01] Sarah: If they do, they're not the ones you want to take on.  [00:12:03] Jason: Right.  [00:12:03] Sarah: Like, "Hey, I desperately need a property manager. Please help me. Like, I don't want that.  [00:12:08] Jason: Yeah.  [00:12:09] Sarah: I want somebody who's we know without even asking any further questions, this is not going to be a great property to take on. [00:12:15] Jason: Yeah. Their hair has to be on fire or that like to call their agent up and say, "Hey, this rental property, it's a nightmare for me. I have this huge problem. I've got an eviction. I need to get done. It's a meth house. Like they, they burned down the back porch. Like it's leaking. Like they, like, they won't let us in. They've got a pit bull, right? Whatever, right? It's a nightmare." And for you to take it on, you would, it would probably— [00:12:42] Sarah: They're breeding dogs and the tenants were addicted to drugs. One's in rehab. One just died. Now we have I think there was like 12 dogs in the house. There were puppies. We had to do like a puppy rescue. [00:12:54] Jason: Oh gosh.  [00:12:55] Sarah: We've seen it all. Super fun as a property manager.  [00:12:58] Jason: Yeah. The things you property managers have seen, right?  [00:13:00] Sarah: It's like, "oh, hey, you know what? Jason does property management. Let me call Jason." And Jason was like, "I don't want that." I'm like, "why? No. Like, thanks for thinking of me, I guess." And now, that almost, like, shoots you in the foot even worse, because now it's like, "hey, well, now I have something to give you, and I gave it to you, and you don't even want it?" [00:13:19] Jason: Right.  [00:13:19] Sarah: So now we're like taking what could be a good relationship and kind of saying like, yeah, well, thanks for that lead, but it's garbage. Yeah. Thanks for giving me the shittiest thing you could possibly find.  [00:13:30] Jason: Yeah. The worst thing you could do is finally get them to give you a referral. You've been bugging them over and over again. They're like, "here, somebody came to me, here you go. And can you help my client out?" And you're like. " Do I have to? Like, I don't want to change somebody else's dirty diaper." Like you don't want to deal with this. You don't want to deal with this problem.  [00:13:48] Sarah: Right. And it's probably not gonna be profitable for you. It's probably not like if I think if a lot of property managers ran a profit and loss statement, or like a cost analysis on each individual door, which some of those low rent doors would not be profitable for you, right?  [00:14:05] Jason: You should know some of those owners.  [00:14:07] Sarah: These are part of, yeah, these are part of knowing your financials. We have a whole course in here about it, but there are certain data that you should just know in your business, you should know which doors, you know, are profitable, which doors maybe are not so profitable, which clients are and are not profitable. You should know all of that. But if you really start to dig into that, you're right. You're going to see very clearly like, Hey. This one doesn't quite measure up to, you know, what we're hoping for. But if you're just waiting for somebody to go, "Hey, I need a property manager. Like that's what we're getting. We're getting the, "Oh my God, I have this like awful situation and now I need somebody like that's what we're waiting to get." [00:14:50] Jason: Yeah. I mean to expect that a bunch of people are just going to walk up to a real estate agent and say, "Hey, I need a property manager. Who do you got that almost never ever happens. It's super rare. Now, some of you have gotten some referrals from agents and it might've been some sort of scenario like that. Like they came up to him and said, "Hey, they need a property manager," but it's probably super rare. So you're probably not getting, you know, 10, 20, 30 doors a month from this engine. The other challenge why agent referrals don't work is a lot of real estate agents don't even work with investors. Most real estate, 50 percent of real estate agents in the last year, the stat I heard was they didn't even do a single deal. [00:15:38] Sarah: Oh yeah. Yeah, I was talking with a client, I think yesterday with anyone with them and he's in the Miami market and like in his like city alone. I think there was something like 60, 000 agents, but out of those 60, 000 agents, like, you know, they're not all active and then out of the ones that are active, like, what are the ones that I've actually done a deal? What are the ones that actually do multiple deals? And then what are the ones that actually work with investors?  [00:16:04] Jason: The ones that actually work with investors must be a pretty small pool. Like maybe they'll do a deal occasionally, but how many agents are regularly working with investors? All the time, and they have a Rolodex and a pool of a bunch of investors that they have connections to not very many. So, our client that added 310 doors in a year, he did it from only 5 or 6 real estate agents he told me. That was it, but he said he tried calling a 1000 to find those 5 or 6. So that's a lot of deals from very few. He had to kiss a lot of frogs to find a few princesses. Right? Or princes, whatever. So, now, a lot of real estate agents are working with investors. So you need to find the ones that do. So this is another reason why referrals don't work. You go pitch to a office meeting. You might as well just like— well, I'm not going to give away all our strategy, but you might as well just ask, like how many of you work with investors? If no one's raising their hand, you might as well just end and say, "cool, if you find anybody, send them our way." And that's my time, right? You don't need to be wasting your time. Another reason referrals in general don't work is that you don't even go to the right audience. So if you're going to real estate agents that don't have investors, that's the wrong audience. Some go even worse than they go to a BNI group where there might be one real estate agent only, or they go to a chamber of commerce, or some sort of networking groups and they're like, "Hey, everybody, and nobody there really has rental properties. Maybe like, they're not even an investor or they don't have connections to investors. And so those kind of things can be a big time, suck or a waste of time when there's way more effective strategies. So now, another reason why referrals, agent referrals for property managers don't work is you are, if you're asking for referrals, which is the wrong thing to actually ask for, you're expecting them to sell for you. So, the idea of a referral, if we break this down, is somebody's going to come up to them. And say, "I have this problem. They're going to say, let me sell you on this idea of getting a property manager and then connect you to somebody." You're expecting them to sell for you. The way our clients are winning this game is we've set it up so that you get to sell. The client, our client gets to sell, not the real estate agent. So what we teach instead is to focus on getting introductions. So, so that is— and if you want to learn more about that, we recommend you get into our program because our clients are crushing it. We have scripts for this, all of this. All right. Any other things about this that are not why realtor referrals don't work for most people? [00:18:48] Sarah: I think that about covers it.  [00:18:50] Jason: I think if I were to add one more thing, it would be a lack of confidence. So a lot of property managers don't go into these situations knowing clearly how to get Referrals to come from them. They don't know how to create these relationships effectively. They don't know the language, the scripting to use. Oh, this is a big one that we missed. Another big reason is they're not going to refer to you if your business is a real estate brand. This makes them feel very unsafe. So this is why we rebrand a large percentage of our clients. If your brand has 'real estate' or 'realty,' or they know that you're a real estate agent, it's like all over the tin. They don't want to send people to you because they don't want to lose their clients and they're afraid of their clients being stolen by you. And everybody says, "Oh, well, I'll just promise I'll refer them back," but their clients might put pressure on you or know that you do real estate. You need to create a scenario in which they're going to feel safe connecting clients to you so that you look like property management, not real estate. So those are some of the big ones. So, I think that's basically it. I think that's pretty comprehensive. So realtor referrals for most people are not working. And if you'd like this to work, what should they do?  [00:20:09] Sarah: Well, you can talk with us. You can book a call. You can check us out online at doorgrow.Com. We also have a free Facebook group and you can check out our Facebook group. There's a lot of information that we have out there available for you guys, but check us out. And if you're like, "I just don't know." That's okay. Do some research like where I think our results speak for themselves.  [00:20:33] Jason: Yeah. Nobody has as many case studies as us. We put out 40 testimonials or case study videos in the last year. And these are just captured during our coaching calls. Our clients are crushing it. And nobody is moving forward or innovating as quickly as DoorGrow when it comes to coaching. So join our group coaching mastermind. You can get all the details by going to doorgrow.Com. There's a big pink button on the page say "you want to grow." Click on that. It'll give you the three steps that you need to take in order to potentially work with us. We don't just like work with everybody. We want to work with people that are willing to put in the effort, but we're actually going to reduce the amount of friction and effort and time that it takes for you to get business on by doing more effective strategies. So reach out to us at DoorGrow. So I think that's it. So until next time to our mutual growth, bye everyone. [00:21:27] 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!  [00:21:53] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

There are important questions we must all ask ourselves. One major question is, “How do I want to spend my day?” In this episode of the Class E Podcast, we talked to Jason Richards '01, the Global Business Director and shareholder of the commercial real estate property management firm, NAI Earle Furman. Richards discusses how his involvement with non-profits led to him to where he is today.  He shares why it's key for entrepreneurs to listen and reflect, and the importance of passion in a career or venture. Guest: Jason Richards Host: Mary Sturgill Producer: Isabella Martinez Transcript: MARY: Hi there, everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Class E Podcast. I'm your host, Mary Sturgill. This is the podcast that is brought to you through a partnership between the Hill Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and the Communication Studies Department here at Furman University. And we're so happy to have you with us today. We have a very special guest, Jason Richards is not only a Furman alumni, you… I believe serve on the Board of Trustees. He's on the board of trustees, and he is the Global Business Director and shareholder of the commercial real estate property management firm NAI Earle Furman. That's a mouthful Jason.  JASON: It is. It doesn't roll off the tongue very easily.  MARY: No, it doesn't. I was like alliteration there. No, not at all. Well, welcome to the show.  JASON: Thank you. It's an honor.  MARY: So I wanted to have you on because I love your background and you were a political science major here at Furman back in the day when you graduated.  JASON: Back in the day.  MARY: Back in the day. And then you went to Duke and got a certificate. Tell us about that certificate.  JASON: So yes. When I finished Furman, I moved up in Durham and I was working with Habitat for Humanity. I was not building houses. I'm not remotely handy, but I was on the administrative side of the office and Duke, I think they still do have a certificate program in nonprofit management, and I took that. It was probably about a six-month course. It was great, it's a great background, even for small businesses frankly.  MARY: Yeah, that's what I was going to talk… so talk a little bit about because I believe, just looking at your background, I would think that that would lead you into the small business part. But before we jump into that, though, I want to talk about the nonprofit sector because I think it's so important. I worked for Habitat for Humanity too for a while. You guys are not gonna believe this. I was the construction project coordinator for Habitat for Humanity in Hickory, North Carolina…  JASON: Okay.  MARY: …for about a year. I did all of their PR stuff. And then I did all the ordering for the projects and all that stuff. It was a lot of fun.  JASON: I visited a job site once to work and was not invited.  MARY: They didn't give you the build and a hammer? JASON: They did not. I think they spent more time fixing my mistakes that I spent trying to help.  MARY: There were a few volunteers like that I would say.  JASON: Know your limitations.  MARY: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And accept them. So let's talk about your role in the nonprofit world.  JASON: Sure.  MARY: What kinds of things did you do and did you learn that help you now?  JASON: Well, you know, so when I finished that program, I moved back to Greenville in 2003. And so my wife and I met at Furman. We're one of those couples, and she finished graduate school. We got married and moved to Greenville and I started working in nonprofits here. And so I worked for two different nonprofits, and a nonprofit's a small business…  MARY: Absolutely.  JASON: And really, I'm so thankful from that point early in my career, because working in the nonprofit…that you have to be hands on in every aspect of the operation. And so I learned, I think a lot more than many of our counterparts that went more traditional corporate routes right out of the gate.  MARY: Right. That's a very good point. Because when you do work for a nonprofit, you have to wear multiple hats. Because, you know, money's thin most of the time.  JASON: Oh, yeah.  MARY: And you have to put your talents where you can put your talents and make it, make it happen. You know? I love that. The fact that you compared it to a small business because that's really in fact the way that most nonprofits should be run. And the successful ones are.  JASON: Oh, absolutely.  MARY: Yeah. So you still have to be pretty innovative though in that and I'm gonna circle back around to the idea of innovation.  JASON: Sure.  MARY: So then after the nonprofit sector, did you go directly to NAI Earle Furman?  JASON: Sure. So as I said, I worked with two different nonprofits here in town, but on the side, I have always been interested in passive income and alternative investing. I started dabbling with stocks when I was in high school. And at that point in my, I guess, mid 20s, I was very interested in real estate. And so while I was working with nonprofits, I was actually investing on a very small scale in some commercial properties and was a client of NAI Earle Furman.  MARY: Ok. Yeah.  JASON: And so working in that second nonprofit, I was in operations management and an operations position was coming open at NAI and they asked me then. So I started there in 07.  MARY: Yeah, that's a great stepping stone too. I did the exact, not the exact same thing, but a similar thing - working in nonprofit that led me to my corporate jobs in two instances.  JASON: It's a great foundation for business.  MARY: Yes. Yeah, for sure. So let's talk about what you do now in the commercial real estate world. You're in charge of kind of growing the business.  JASON: Right. So it's been fun. When I started with the firm in 07, we had, I think, 12 commercial brokers, a couple of property managers, and the company as a whole was, you know, one floor of one office here in Greenville with about 30 people. Now, we're about 160 people. We have five offices in North and South Carolina. And in addition to you know, the brokerage and property management, both of which have grown quite a bit, we started the private equity fund seven years ago. We bought about, I think, six or $700 million worth of real estate with that.  MARY: And that's kind of your… you're the one who kind of looks for acquisitions. Is that right?  JASON: Well, so, I mean, everything we do is a team effort. Very collaborative, very entrepreneurial, is the word we like to use for our firm. But yeah, so I was the COO and actually pivoted to a different position a couple of years ago. But at the end of the day, yes, we're all always looking for opportunities. You know, one of my roles as COO was looking for acquisitions, not of real estate, but other brokerages and like firms that we could roll in, and I'm still, still doing that as well.  MARY: So to grow the firm. So in your, and you just alluded to it, in your description on the website, it talks about how you guys are innovative thinkers and talked about that entrepreneurial mindset.  JASON: Right.  MARY: I want to talk about that a little bit. How do you carry that out as a company and then individually too?  JASON: Well, I think, you know, our business especially, you know, as I said, we have three business lines, but commercial brokerage is our core business and, you know, nationally and really internationally that's becoming much more corporate. There are a lot of really large firms that do a lot of work with Fortune 100 companies, and they're very process oriented if this than that.  MARY: Right.  JASON: We actually like to joke, all of our upper management is liberal arts majors. So I mean, and truly, you know, we're very much… we're very thoughtful in how we approach things for, for clients and investors and for our own business. And I guess the word that I always like to use is then we're just very, we're very open minded. And we don't say no to an idea just out of hand. You know, we really think through, is this something we should try? Yeah, and we're open to trying and failing.  MARY: Yeah, I think that's a great trait that entrepreneurs should have.  JASON: Absolutely.  MARY: You have to be, and most entrepreneurs do, I will say this… and this may be the main difference between people who are entrepreneurs or innovative thinkers and people who are not is that entrepreneurs and innovators say yes.  JASON: Right. Well, and I think, you know, too often, and certainly when I was in the COO role, and especially as, you know, with regards to, you know, employees come to you and they have an idea, I think people just too often say no, because that's the way you know, well, that's not the way we've done it.  MARY: Exactly. We've always done it this way.  JASON: Right. So, you know, training yourself to say, well, no, you know, is there a reason that we haven't done it or we just don't do it? And sort of re-centering that thought, and I think we're really good at that.  MARY: Yeah, and I think that's important. I think if COVID taught us anything, maybe that's one of the things that it taught us.  JASON: Right.  MARY: There are other ways to do things.  JASON: Absolutely.  MARY: Yeah. Yeah. If you would give advice to new entrepreneurs because you're, you know, you are an entrepreneur, even though you may work for a company, what would your advice be in addition to saying yes to those things?  JASON: You know, I think and…entrepreneurs or people, you know, just getting started in a corporate career, my advice is always kind of the same. And this is reflective of my personality so your knowledge may vary. But, you know, I've built all of my success on relationships, and I do feel you know, that things, especially, you know, with COVID, and you know, people getting very comfortable with remote things, which is great. You have to work extra hard to build relationships.  MARY: Absolutely. Yeah.  JASON: Because, you know, the people who focus on the transactional aspects of business, do very well on the short term. But as you're growing a company, if you're an entrepreneur or trying to bring a product to market, it's the relationships you've built along the way before you actually needed them that are going to help you get across the goal line. So for me, it's, it's time invested, you know, that may not have a clear objective at that moment, but it's taking time to build and maintain those relationships.  MARY: And planting those seeds.  JASON: Exactly.  MARY: Yeah. I don't think a lot of people or enough people maybe kind of have that mentality that if it's not, if it doesn't have a quick return on my investment, so to speak…  JASON: Right.  MARY: … right? Then I'm not going to put the time in.  JASON: Well, and I think too, you know, I love the energy and I use this term loosely, young people, right? So I'm 44. So I don't think of myself as old but I'm certainly not young either. But, you know, I think it's hard to, you know, when you're 23, 24 and you're starting something you're excited about you want those quick returns.  MARY: Right.  JASON: But with a little bit of hindsight, you know, I've now realized how quickly 10 years passes. And I've started to see and have seen that the seeds that I planted, many of which were inadvertent, frankly 10 or 15 years ago, have really paid off with great relationships now. MARY: Yeah. And that's true when it comes to, you know, banking, and I mean, all aspects of business.  JASON: Right.  MARY: I was just a ghost writer for a book for a local businessman and part of what he talks about in his book is that very thing about planting those seeds, keeping those relationships, the reason he attributes his success, a big part of it is the relationships that he had, from the time that he was in high school playing sports.   JASON: Right.  MARY: Right?  JASON: And you never know and that's, you know, that's one thing I, you know, I'm…my personality by nature is that I'm a helper.  MARY: Yeah.  JASON: All the assessments I've taken have indicated that, but, you know, a lot of the relationships that I now have are people that I helped in some way, you know, 10 or 15 years ago with no notion of a return at the time, but they've worked their way up and now they're in a position to pay that back and you just, you just never know.  MARY: That's amazing.  JASON: Yeah.  MARY: Yeah. So how did the 2008…Let's talk about kind of the real estate business.  JASON: Sure.  MARY: 2008 huge crash…  JASON: Right, right.  MARY: …that affected everybody, especially companies, I'm sure like yours. And then… how have we grown and where are we now? That's a loaded question.  JASON: How long do we have for this podcast? You know, I think, you know, obviously, it is funny, when I tell people a little bit about my journey which I alluded to earlier, you know, that I was investing in real estate…  MARY: Yeah.  JASON: …at a young age, people say, well, how were you able to do that? And I said, well, that's part of the reason that we ended up in the crash because it was a little too easy to borrow money and leverage was a little out of whack…  MARY: Yeah.  JASON: …in terms of the ratios and things like that. So you know, obviously we're in a complicated place right now.   MARY: We are. Yeah.  JASON: Interest rates are up and deals are slowing a little bit. But I do think it's very different in terms of, you know, the fundamentals never went back to the pre 2008 issues. It became the, you know, borrowing money was not as easy right as it was then nor should it have been.  MARY: Exactly.  JASON: So I think, you know, the fundamentals are better, you know, things… COVID changed everything. And so the economy is in a weird place right now. But you know, at the end of the day, real estate and this is where I think we go sideways, you know, people have these pontifications at a macro level. Real estate is not a national business.  MARY: Right.  JASON: It is hyper, hyper local, and very regional. And you know, my lens, although we don't, we do deals all over the country, my lens is focused on the southeast and this region is booming. You know, there are certainly some speed bumps and some hiccups in the real estate world at this time, but at the end of the day, this area is growing. People want to be between Raleigh and Atlanta, and we're smack in the middle of it here.  MARY: Right.  JASON:  And so, you know, we're very bullish on, on real estate now. And in the immediate future.  MARY: Yeah. So what advice… that's good to know, for those of us who live here.  JASON: Right. Certainly. Certainly.  MARY: What, what is your advice to someone say like yourself who might be young who might want to start their investing career in real estate, what would be your advice to them, how to get in right now?  JASON: Well, right now, it's a tough time to break in.  MARY: I know.  JASON: And, you know, one of the things that I always get and actually, I was talking to a Furman student who had this question, he said, you know, I've got X amount of money and I'm interested in getting into real estate. And one of the things that I tell people is if you have X amount of money, and that's all you have, don't buy real estate with it because, you know, banks when they're lending for real estate, you need to have some liquidity somewhere else.  MARY: Absolutely. Yeah.  JASON: So that's gonna make your life a lot easier.  MARY: Yeah.  JASON: So that's, that's number one. But for right now, you know, again, I go back to relationships. You know, like it or not, the reality is that real estate, like so many things is kind of an insider's game. And you know, the best opportunities are ones that you never hear about.  MARY: Right.  JASON: And so it's getting out there. It's networking, and not with the notion of I'm going to find a deal right now, but I'm going to get to know these people and let them get to know me so that when they have an opportunity to be involved and to invest, they're going to reach out.  MARY: I like something you kind of alluded to right there, and you've alluded to it before, but I want to make sure our listeners get this is that if you're going for the sale…  JASON: Right.  MARY: If you're going for the immediate satisfaction, that may have an immediate, you know, kind of boom to your pocketbook, but in the long term, it's not going to sustain you like relationships will do.  JASON: Right. Because you're going to have to recreate that transaction time and time again, but if you have the relationships, eventually you get to the point where they're coming to you.  MARY: Yes, yeah, that's, that's a good point. They're coming to you. And I think, I think that's a mistake a lot of people make is they go after the dollar…  JASON: Right.  MARY: …rather than a relationship.  JASON: Right. Exactly.  MARY: Yeah. So how do you find your clients when you, when you bring clients on?  JASON: Well, you know, actually, I'll sort of pivot back to the nonprofit.  MARY: Yeah.  JASON: Right? So I was very fortunate with both of the organizations that I worked with, that the positions that I held interacted very closely with the boards of directors, and some of the top fundraising volunteers and I cultivated some amazing friendships out of those groups, people who are much further, you know, 20 and 30 years into their career, CEOs of local companies, banks, etc. And those relationships served me really well, but also sort of modeled for me… I watched how they interacted and how meaningful… they had found these organizations that they were passionate about, and they were giving their time, but that also helped them with their work.  MARY: Yeah.  JASON: And so I have, you know, sort of followed that path. You know, I've served as you mentioned, I serve on the Furman board, I chaired the local United Way board, I've been on several others…  MARY: The list of your boards is… you need to go to an NAI Earle Furman website and look at his bio because there's like 15 boards on there. And I believe in that too.  JASON: Well, it's important.  MARY: It is important.  JASON: And when I pivoted, you know, my wife and I both were working professionally in the nonprofit world. And when I made that decision to go into the business world, one of the things that was very important to me, was that I worked with a company that valued community involvement.  MARY: Yes.  JASON: And not, you know, obviously it's good for business.  MARY: Right.  JASON: But for the right reasons.  MARY: Exactly.  JASON: And our company is very, very tied into the community. And so there was a while there where I was on way too many at one time…  MARY: It's time-consuming.  JASON: It is. And so I've had to step that back. So now I think I'm only on three right now. And that's probably the max.   MARY: Well and that would be a piece of advice that I would give to young entrepreneurs too is to find… and I would, I've always served on boards personally that I'm passionate about…  JASON: Right.  MARY: Right? Like helping children, helping SA victims or survivors, or the Humane Society. I've lived in several cities around the country, and I think I've been on the Humane Society board, in almost all of them or some animal shelter boards. And that has kind of opened doors for me in those relationships that you talked about in the same way.  JASON: But you have to be passionate…  MARY: Absolutely.  JASON: And that's one thing we tell, you know, when we're training new people within our firm, we encourage them to be involved.  MARY: Right.  JASON: But we also put that asterisk on there that says, if you do this for the wrong reasons, if you're doing it just to try and build relationships and you're not passionate about the cause, you're going to do more harm than good in your career because people will see through you so you have to have that passion.  MARY: That's a good point. I'm glad you made that point. It's so true. You do have to kind of follow your passion because you're right. People know you're not going to put in the time that a board member needs to put in because there are, there is time that needs to be put in and you're not going to do the things that you need to do to be an appropriate board member for it. You know, and they're gonna see that and they're gonna think that you are that way in everything that you do.  JASON: Exactly.  MARY: So it carries over. Completely agree with that. What kind of obstacles have you faced that you've overcome?  JASON: You know, in all honesty, I am a very fortunate person. And you know, I don't know, maybe I'm a very optimistic person. So maybe I just, you know, try to see the sunny side of things, I guess. But I've been very fortunate. I have had, you know, my parents super supportive. You know, there was never anything that I felt like I couldn't do. I came here to Furman and had amazing, you know, professors and experiences and I've, I've never lacked self-confidence. And so it's, it's, it's been a fairly smooth ride, I would say, you know, if nothing else, you know, maybe one of the obstacles was just when I first landed in Greenville post-college to start my career, you know, I didn't really know anybody.  MARY: Right.  JASON: You know, at that time, there were not a lot of Furman alums. You know, I mean, always some, but Furman alums didn't necessarily stay in and around Greenville at the time. This was you know, 20 plus years ago. And so, you know, we didn't know a lot and so I was starting from scratch. But Greenville is a hugely welcoming community. And so we got over that pretty quickly. MARY: Yeah, yeah. And I think now it's probably better for Furman grads because I know five that have graduated in the last year that have stuck around, if not more.  JASON: How could you not?  MARY: How could you not? It's a great place. So do you have an entrepreneurial or business philosophy that you kind of live by?  JASON: You know…Yes, I mean, I think, again, it's sort of going back to what we already talked about, just you have to be open minded. But you also have to listen.  MARY: Yeah.  JASON: And I think, you know, certainly, depending on what field you're in, you know, there can be a lot of alpha personalities that like to talk a lot.  MARY: Right.  JASON: And, you know, that was something certainly when I was in my 20s I wanted to be noticed, you know, I always felt like I had to be in the meeting. I had to speak up so that people knew that I was there and that kind of thing. But I think, you know, one of the things that the founder of our company, Earle Furman, that I've always taken away from him… Earle does not talk a lot and has the superpower of being able to just sit there quietly, and he takes everything in and he doesn't miss a thing. And I think listening is a really underrated skill in this day and age, for any business, but certainly for entrepreneurialism, because if you're an entrepreneur, you have to learn from others. And not just asking people about their successes, but you have to listen for people's stumbling blocks and their mistakes.  MARY: Exactly. Exactly. I think that's a great point. You learn more by listening and taking mental notes than you do by directing conversations.  JASON: Absolutely.   MARY: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I think the best entrepreneurs kind of get that because we don't know everything.  JASON: Right.  MARY: You know, how can you? How can anybody? So you may be an expert, you know, in fly fishing or tying flies or whatever. I don't know why fly fishing popped into my head. But can you start a business around selling flies?  JASON: Right.  MARY: Right? You know, what do you know about business? You're a great fisherman, right? So we have to surround ourselves with those people and listen to those people and learn from them. I think that's 100% a great piece of advice there. Any other piece of advice that you would give to young people or anything that we need to talk about?  JASON: You know, I do a lot of the meetings with Furman students here through the mentioning office, and I'll meet often with people who were maybe a year or two out of college trying to find their way and the question that I have sort of really decided is maybe the ultimate question, you know, certainly when you're trying to start your career, but also something to reflect on along the way is how do you want to spend your day? You know, people think about what industry do I want to work in or what job do I want? But it's you know, how do I want to spend my day? You know, do I want to work in an office? If I want to work in an office, do I want to be with a big office or a small nonprofit type place where it's an intimate, more interpersonal environment? You know, people don't reflect on those questions and if you know the answer to how do I want to spend my day, it makes answering all the other questions a lot easier. And I think for entrepreneurs, especially, you know, you may have the best idea in the world, but ask yourself how you want to spend your day and if it's not doing all the hustle and the grind that you have to do to start something, then, you know, maybe entrepreneurialism is not for you. You know, so I think that's a question that people really need to reflect on.  MARY: I love that. How do you want to spend your day?  JASON: Right.  MARY: Because most of the time when we're in college, and I can think back, I'm older than you but not so old that I can't remember, that my goal was just to graduate college.  JASON: Right.  MARY: Right? And then after that, what do I do? I got a job.  JASON: Right.  MARY: You know, but there was no thought into what that job necessarily would be at the time and things like that. So…  JASON: And having been, you know, in an office environment, many office environments over the last 20 years, you know, they're not all the same.  MARY: No.  JASON: Even within our office, you know, we have people who are very interactive internally, people who are interactive externally. And then we have, you know, number crunchers that love to be left alone all day.  MARY: Right.  JASON: And you just have to decide, you know, where you want to be and what you want to do.  MARY: The… one of the things that I think that you do is so important is that mentorship. And I think that's great advice for people not only to seek out mentors, but to become mentors. What have you gained from that, that relationship that you've, that you've garnered with your mentees?  JASON: Well, I will say, you know, I've done it through many different methods here at Furman and in the community and first I'll say I've gained a lot of friends.  MARY: Yeah.  JASON: Which is really cool. You know, over the years, you know, people I met 15 years ago and you know, now they live here in Greenville and have families and we're still friends. But you know, for me personally, I think, when I talk things through with current students or young people in general, you know, it forces you to think about what you're saying and reflect on yourself. Because the advice that I gave 10 years ago is different from the advice that I give now. And so it's, it's, it's very, it's very useful for me in that regard. But at the end of the day, for me, it's just fun. I really, I love people. I love relationships, and it's a great opportunity to get to know folks.  MARY: All right. I love that. Jason, amazing advice all the way through the conversation.  JASON: Oh well, thank you so much.  MARY: Thank you. Thank you so much for coming.  JASON: Oh, it is a true pleasure.  MARY: Speaking of mentoring folks, there's a great opportunity for you if you're a business person, if you're an entrepreneur to mentor our students here at Furman through the Hill Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. And so to find out more about that, if you're interested in that, we would love to have people like Jason, and like many of you to come mentor our students through their entrepreneurial journey. So contact the Hill Institute for that. But for now, remember, this is the Class E Podcast. I'm your host, Mary Sturgill. It is produced by student producer Isabella Martinez. And it's produced through a partnership between the Hill Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Communication Studies Department here at Furman University. Until next time everybody, dream big.  

Pat McAfee has gone from being a footballer with a successful NFL career to being an enormously successful and popular media personality. The former Colts All-Pro punter built a large and loyal following in the digital media space. McAfee didn't need the help of a mainstream media platform to become a major player in broadcasting. That all changed when ESPN and Disney came knocking this week. McAfee is ditching his deal with FanDuel to dive into the corporate cult of ESPN. His role is abundantly clear to Jason: They want McAfee and his “bro show” to serve as a beard for Disney's real agenda. “McAfee knows why ESPN dropped a bag at his door. McAfee's white-male-dominated show is intended to be a dog whistle to the white male, traditional sports fans who have grown tired of Stephen A. Smith, Kendrick Perkins, Ryan Clark, Jalen Rose, Molly Qerim, Elle Duncan, and Malika Andrews constantly pushing the white-man-is-the-devil narrative.” “Fearless” contributors T.J. Moe and Royce White join the show to discuss the McAfee defection. It's the return of Coach Jason Brown of “Last Chance U.” Coach JB joins Jason and T.J. to destroy ESPN's JJ Redick and his take on the Ja Morant gun saga. Plus, NBA aficionado Jordan Bowles stops in to talk about Nikola Jokić's triple-double against LeBron's Lakers in Game 1 of the NBA's Western Conference finals. We want to hear from the Fearless Army!! Join the conversation in the show chat, leave a comment or email Jason at FearlessBlazeShow@gmail.com ​​Today's Sponsor: Men! Feel like it's harder to get in shape and stay in shape? Nugenix Total T is offering a complimentary bottle when you text 231-231 and enter keyword, “FEARLESS”. Text now and also get a bottle of Nugenix Thermo, their most powerful fat incinerator ever, FREE! Get 10% off Blaze swag by using code Fearless10 at https://shop.blazemedia.com/fearless Make yourself an official member of the “Fearless Army!” Support Conservative Voices! Subscribe to BlazeTV at https://get.blazetv.com/FEARLESS and get $10 off your yearly subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, Jason Pereira will be reviewing the federal budget for 2022, and the reason is that when it came out a couple of days ago, there was a lot to go through. There are 17 key personal, and corporate points that he thinks are worth accounting for. Episode Highlights:The first big change is the addition of the tax-free first home savings account. This new account will help Canadians over 18 who have not owned a home in the current or last four calendar years. You can also move money from an RRSP to a first home savings account, but you cannot combine this with the existing RRPS first-time home buyer's plan.If you are buying your first home, you were entitled to a tax credit previously that is now increasing, so it used to be 5000, and now it is doubling to 10,000, giving you a total tax credit maximum value of $1500.Home accessibility credit has been doubled. It used to be 10,000, but now, it's 20,000, and this helps pay for renovations and alterations such as wheelchair ramps, walk-in bathtubs, chairlifts, or anything to help you get around the house if you physically need to.There is a change in the alternative minimum tax credit. They haven't announced what it is, but they have started setting the stage for taxing Canadians with the highest income. And to support this, they released a chart that showed that 28% of people earning 400,000 were paying less than 15% in taxes. Previously if you sold an assignment to someone else, GST would typically not apply, but now it does, and in addition to that, it's not capital gains. It's fully taxable income.There are many changes in corporate taxes, and the most impacted is the small business tax deduction. As a result, Canada's first half-million in active business income is taxed at the lower small business rate, and then anything interactors taxed at the general rate.There are specific credits now available for those who are using carbon capture utilization in storage.Critical mining exploration tax credit is basically targeting shares that flow through exploration expenses down into your personal tax rate.3 Key Points:In the new residential property flipping tax, if you hold a home by home as your principal residence and live in it for less than 12 months before selling it, the principal residence exemption does not apply and qualifies as full income. Surrogacy is becoming more of a need in Canada. If you are using a surrogate, you will now be able to cover and claim those expenses under the medical tax revenue in Canada.In the intergenerational shares transfers process, they are extending the consultation process to figure out how to fix this and hope to have a report by June 17th.Tweetable Quotes“There is a system in Canada called the alternative minimum tax, which is there to test and prevent people from gaming the system too well.” - Jason “They are going to increase the capital tax from 10 to 15 million, and it will phase it out now over until it is 50 million.” - Jason“One of the things that got popular since the small business tax measures of a couple of years ago was what is known as non CCPC planning.” - JasonResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInFull Transcript See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What does it look like to follow the thing that keeps you up at night? From choosing to go with your passion to getting comfortable with uncomfortably, Jason Frazell brings practical steps to creating your ideal life schedule. If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co . And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.In this episode you will learn about:Attracting the people you're meant to work with What does the noes mean about you and for you?The pace of starting something newGetting comfortable with comfortability Scheduling your ideal dayEpisode References/Links:WebsitePodcastIGFBLinkedINBrand Builders GroupsGuest Bio:Jason is a Growth and Leadership Coach for high-impact people and teams in tech. He is also the host of the podcast Talking to Cool People, a speaker and is a leader at a coach training program.  OPC Flashcards:OPC Flashcards are on AmazonOPC Flashcards are on our site  If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox.  ResourcesWatch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!Lesley Logan websiteBe It Till You See It PodcastOnline Pilates Classes by Lesley LoganOnline Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTubeProfitable Pilates Social MediaInstagramFacebookTik TokLinkedIn Episode Transcript:Lesley Logan 0:00  Hey, BE IT listener, what's up? I have an awesome guest for you, Jason Frazell. Ah, so fun. Um, we probably should have recorded everything before I hit record. And then after, it might out of context mean nothing to most listeners, but it was super fun. And I'm really excited to have ... his words in your ears because he is someone who was in a regular, real job, real, (like all jobs are real, that's lame) but really, like, you know, the ones with the 401k, and the health insurance and the paid vacations and all the things and he was slaying, you know, he was doing so great. And he changed that. And he's now working for himself. And it's can be scary. And, you know, like many of us who had maybe started something new. And then the pandemic happen, you know, Brad and I, Brad came working for me full time, three months before, (Lesley laughs) for me with me for three months before the pandemic happened. And, you know, it can be really scary when you have made a leap. And then something happens that makes you question whether or not that leap was a good idea or not. And so, what I love is, he made that leap, he's dove straight in, he's really rocking it. And he's an expert in a lot of things. And he's got a really cool podcast, and I was on it. So y'all gotta go, listen, we'll have that link in the show notes below. But um, what I hope you hear from this podcast is that, you know, having people around you that support you, inspire you is important. Especially when you're wondering if you should do the thing and also that like, whatever it is that you're doing working for someone, working for yourself. There's there's a lot of pressures and a lot of scary stuff. But, you know, if it's the thing that you have on your heart to do, you got to do it, you got to find a way to do it. So here is Jason Frazell.Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast, where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring Bold, Executable, Intrinsic and Targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started.All right, everyone. Hello, welcome back to Be It Till You See It. I am so excited. I have a conversation for you. I have this amazing guests name is Jason Frazell. I hope I didn't screw that up because ... (Jason: You got that Lesley) asked (Lesley laughs) (Jason: You're good) this it's so funny is, um, we we randomly connected inside of a group that we're both in. And then because the world is so small, and I was like, "Who knows who's ever interviewed a Pilates person?" You're like, "Oh, do you happen to know this guy, Benjamin?" I'm like, "Oh, yeah." (Lesley laughs) Benjamin, I go way back, like years back. So it's just (Jason: Yeah) funny that we have mutual friends in (Jason: We do) common. And we didn't even know each other until the interwebs brought us together. So Jason, can you tell everyone, who's listening, who you are and what you're excited about right now?Jason Frazell 3:13  Yeah, Lesley. I am, so like you said I'm Jason Frazell. Congratulations on getting my last name correct in the first try. (Lesley: Yeah) So yea it puts you in the top like third of all people. There you go. (Lesley: Well, we like to be unique) I am ... Yeah, so I always like to start with. So I'm a dad. I've got two kids, married, from Minnesota live in New York now, moved out 15 years ago. So, I'm a, I call myself East Coaster with a Midwestern attitude sometimes. (Lesley laughs) So that's like ... (Lesley: Sometimes) sometimesLesley Logan 3:41  ... 15 years. I mean, yeah, that's a sometimes (Jason: Yeah) at that point.Jason Frazell 3:44  I can, I can also cut people New York style. (Jason Yeah) So what I do for work, which is what I think you're asking is I'm a growth and leadership coach. And I specifically focus on people and teams and tech. So, I work with founders, co founders, individual contributors, directors all the way up, both in startups and in big tech. So, I have customers that work at places like Facebook and Google, and I also coach with a lot of startups. In addition to that I'm a fellow podcaster. (Lesley: Yeah) And I won't spoil the surprise, we won't ... spills surprise, Lesley is gonna be a guest on my show soon, (Lesley: Yeah) very soon. I have a show called "Talking to Cool People." It's a fun podcast similar to this where we'll talk about some cool stuff. And then I'm also a personal brand strategist at a company called Brand Builders Group, which I know you're familiar with. (Lesley: Yeah. I love ...) They know a little bit about me.Lesley Logan 4:29  I love Brand Builders. They've been so good to me. And also, we've had many Brand Builders on the show. So it's really ... (Jason: Nice.) Yeah, it's really great. Jason, I want to talk about being a leadership coach, though, because I think it's really interesting, because I actually, I think so few people realize how much of a leader they are on this on this planet, right? Like, (Jason: Yeah) like every single one of us has it's opportunity to lead people and we ... (Jason: Everyone) We think it's like, "Oh, maybe, maybe I maybe only teach five people" or maybe only maybe, maybe you don't actually run a company, but we actually all have an opportunity to be a leader to somebody. So, how do you, how do you, first how do you become a leadership coach? And then second, what are you seeing happening as far as people? What's getting in the way of people seeing that in themselves?Jason Frazell 5:14  Yeah. I'm going to answer your the first part of your question with two answers. How do you become a leadership coach? You don't have to do anything. You call yourself a leadership coach. (Lesley laughs) It's not like it's so it's not like being a Pilates. I mean, I guess you could call yourself a Pilates instructor ...Lesley Logan 5:31  Yeah, we're supposed to go to the training. (Lesley laughs)Jason Frazell 5:33  Right? But so you can call yourself that. But then people go, "Wait a second, how are you trained?" So anybody can call someone as a leadership coach, life coach and executive coach. So that's what makes the coaching industry a little bit different is there's no regulation. (Lesley: Right) So you see people call themselves, else, there's probably my guess is there's probably Pilates coaches who don't have training would be my guess. Or (Lesley: Yeah) if they have, they don't have the level of training that you do. That's, so to answer the first part of your question, how I became a leadership coach is I actually, almost four years ago, was in the middle of my my corporate career, and I just like something wasn't working for me. And I wasn't really sure what it was. I ended up hiring somebody worked with her for eight months. Through that work, I decided that I was going to go through the same coach training program that she went through, ended up doing a year long coach training program, put in hundreds of hours, from there have coached over a thousand hours of people and I'm now a leader at that coach training program. So that, so how I call myself a leadership coach, is how you call yourself a Pilates coaches through training, and time in the field and the good, bad and the ugly that all that comes with.Lesley Logan 6:36  That is insane. That is (Jason: Yeah) that's a lot. So but I, but I also love that (Jason: A lot) because I think sometimes you, what it sounds like is you set out to work in corporate and have this job. And then you're like, "I have a problem. I'm gonna hire someone." And then you're like, "Wow, this is really cool. I want to help other people." (Jason: Yeah) I actually think that's how most people end up where they're gonna be and (Jason: Totally) and they put this pressure on themselves that they're supposed to know what they want to be when they grow up. But they might not have had the experience to know what that is yet.Jason Frazell 7:04  No. I'm, I'm so with you. So, if you talk a lot of coaches that I know that do more personal coaching, most of them hired a coach, and they're like, "Oh, this work is really fulfilling. Oh, this is something I want to do." So, I agree with you on all that. And yeah, I agree. Like, I think that's like for those and I came from corporate I worked almost 20 years in corporate for me as like, "Hey, something's missing. I've got this problem." I'm not sure what the problem is, which is interesting way to buy something when you're like, "I don't know what the problem is." But I'm (Lesley: Right) gonna spend money on it anyway, and then quickly discovered what it was I just didn't like, what I was bored. I mean, that's what it came down that I was bored. And I had the entrepreneurial fire. And I didn't, but I was too comfortable. So, I didn't know it. And so (Lesley: Yeah. There ...) yada, yada, yada, as they say on Seinfeld here we are on the podcast. (Jason and Lesley laughs)Lesley Logan 7:10  But it's all I've had, I have friends who, who lost their jobs. And they, I was like, "I'm so sorry." They're like, "Honestly, the best thing ever happened," because it was like, it was too comfortable. But also couldn't leave it because like, you know, it's hard, it's hard to leave the paycheck and the guaranteed and all the benefits and all the things. So you're you've been thousands of hours later. So my other question is, like, what keeps people from thinking that they're a (Jason: Yeah) leader?Jason Frazell 8:17  Yeah. So for some people, and I think this really relates to ... I don't want to stereotype. But you see this, this is obviously gonna make sense for people that are a little bit newer into their career, newer into their, into their personal journey, is the idea that you have to have somebody reporting to you. We have to have some sort of actual authority over somebody. I don't agree with that. I think to your point, we always have to, we always have the opportunity to be leaders. So for example, you and I are going to have people listen to us on this podcast, and they're going to go, they may like me, they may hate me, but they're probably going to listen to what I have to say. It's same for you, they probably, probably love you, which is why they're tuning in. (Lesley laughs)Lesley Logan 8:56  A laugh is helpful, actually. (Jason and Lesley laughs) I think some of them listen for that. (Lesley laughs)Jason Frazell 9:00  Yea I bet they like the laugh. They like Lesley's laugh and amongst other things. But um, so I think the disconnect for people is understanding that we actually know a lot more than we think we do, especially when we're starting out, especially in fields where it's not purely about expertise. Like things like sales, things like marketing, where a lot of that is very artful. And you bring it and you bring a different perspective, like, obviously, there are certain fields that are quite into the note like ... you know, like engineering, manufacturing, where you really need to know the specifics. I think like fitness, (Lesley: Yeah) you really need to know a lot of the science behind that to do a good job with it. But (Lesley: Yeah) understanding that what you bring is a unique flavor. And that as you build that people look to you as a leader, whether or not you're managing them. I think that's (Lesley: Yeah) that's one of the first disconnects. The second disconnect that I see is people that have a job they don't like and they don't acknowledge that all the other roles they play in their life has them be a leader, whether they're a parent, their date, you know their spouse or they're in a romantic relationship, that friends are involved in their church, they're involved in charities. All those places we get to show up as leaders and a lot of people like, "Well, I'm not a leader because I don't manage anybody at work." (Lesley: Right) And I would say, do you, you know, do you, "Do you help your kids with their homework?" That's leadership, I mean, it's parenting, but it's also leadership and how do you show up there. So. I'm with you, everybody is a leader in their own way. And we all (Lesley: Yeah) played it in many, many different roles.Lesley Logan 10:18  Yeah, yeah. I love that. I am ... So, I want to go into you recently got into your coaching business. So you were in corporate for 20 years? How recently, (Jason: Yeah) I mean, like, a thousands of hours (Jason: Three years) of coaching? Three years? OkayJason Frazell 10:31  Yeah. Three years. Yeah. (Lesley: Yeah. So ...) It feels like a long time.Lesley Logan 10:35  Especially with a COVID year ... (Lesley laughs)Jason Frazell 10:37  I know, the COVID year, yeah, exactly.Lesley Logan 10:38  Especially with COVID year. I'm always shocked when I realized .... we moved to Vegas, Las Vegas, from Los Angeles during the pandemic. And it surprises me how long I've lived here because it (Jason: Yeah) doesn't it feels long. It also doesn't feel that long. So it (Jason: Yeah) it's like a it's weird time work. But you guys, you've been doing this for a little over three years, thousands of hours. Similar to when we start this podcast, there was no episodes, no listeners. When you start a coaching business, it's not like, it's not like you open the doors and people are like, lined up already. So, how do you, how did you start that? Like, how did you go, how did like, because there's a there is a Be It Till You See It in there. Like, you're telling your people, (Jason: Yeah) "I'm a coach." And yet you have no clients.Jason Frazell 11:18  Yeah. I'm laughing about this for two reasons. One, because there's a lot of people on LinkedIn, who will sell you that will try and sell you on, "oh, we'll fill up your practice with these people." Um, no.Lesley Logan 11:30  Oh my God, they do that on LinkedIn, you know what I (Jason: Yeah) have it there's like, on because I get the DMs on Instagram daily, daily (Jason: Say thing probably) right, like, (Jason: Yeah) "Here for $7, you can get 7000 followers. And also like, what, what's your affiliate because I can bring you tons of customers." It's like, "Hmm." (Jason: And you're like, "Yeah.") I don't think you can. (Lesley laughs) So this happen (Jason: Yeah) on LinkedIn. Okay.Jason Frazell 11:51  Yeah. So, um, the way that I started my business is, well, first of all, I just, I just started it, right. So I just said, "Okay," and I was in my coach training program. So I had a grand total of maybe 30 hours of training, and decided that I was going to go out and find some clients. (Lesley: Yeah) So I went out and did that. And I did that through word of mouth and my network and said, "Hey, this is what I'm up to. Anybody interested in doing some pro bono stuff?" (Lesley: Yeah) Becuase when you start out, it's it's nice to you know, it's nice to get out, get some referrals, some testimonials, and let people know that, "Hey, like, you know, I'm new to this." And I wasn't, I wasn't trying to pretend somebody I wasn't, (Lesley: Right) "I'm new to this. And I'd love to provide the service to you". And through that work, just generated some generated some paying clients, which then generates more paying clients and on and on and on, and on, and on, we go. So for me, it was just a matter, it was kind of like a be it till you, you know, like, "Hey, like, this is what I'm going to do. And this is how we train new coaches in the coach training program. I'm a leader at." Just go out and talk to people and start doing it. There's all these and this kind of goes back to the LinkedIn or the Instagram thing, generate followers or LinkedIn, or all these tricks of getting people just like, just go talk to people share authentically on your Facebook page or on your LinkedIn or in your IG like, "This is what I'm up to. Do you know anybody?" (Lesley: Yeah) And eventually, somebody will you'll start to attract the people that you're meant to work with. And the rest is history.Lesley Logan 13:12  Yeah. I mean, there's very few businesses that cannot be built on referrals. And (Jason: Right) yes, I think like social media makes us all think that it's a numbers, if it's about how many followers we have. I know people who have 1000 followers who make hundreds of 1000s of dollars. (Lesley: Yeah) and I know people who have hundreds of 1000s of followers who make no money. So it's not the followers. It's like how like, it is that word of mouth. Did you help someone? Did you change their life in some way? And then asking them, "Who else do you know? (Jason: Yeah ...) Who can use what I just gave you?" And it's really, (Jason: Copy chapter ...) it's really crazy. So, I think it's really cool. I love that you started out with like, "Hey, I'm working on this thing. Can I work with you?" And like, "Can you (Jason: Yeah) tell me ...?" I think that it's you know, that is also scary because so many people are afraid of rejection. (Lesley laughs)Jason Frazell 13:58  Oh my God. Yeah. Well, and I and I came from, I spent almost 20 years in sales and corporate sales and technology and worked at some big companies worked at some startups. So I was used to getting "Noes" Right? But it's different getting a "no" when you're like, "I don't want your piece of software," And you're like, "No, I don't want to work with you on an individual level." That's a very different, "no." And it took me a while to get used it and I still don't, I still don't, I don't ever like being told "no" but that that's a whole different conversation. But it's I'd still don't like it but it's hard because you're it's just you like I was (Lesley: Right) it was just, it's literally, it was just me and my business and the service that I provided with nothing else behind and people were like, "I don't think so." So, I'm like, "Oh, well what's wrong with me?" Like that's ... what's wrong with me (Lesley: Right) what I need to do differently? And, I don't know ... Lesley Logan 14:44  So, what ... (Jason: Yeah) what do you do differently? Like because it's true like my my husband he does talks on like "200 noes." Like that's how you build your business like go for the noes because the (Jason: Yeah) more noes you get like the better you get at talking about what you do and all this stuff and and he ... You know, he's born salesperson. So, it's really me ... (Jason: I like him already.) I know "noes" do not like bother him that much. He's just like ... I mean, like, it's kind of amazing. So it's been helpful for me (Lesley laughs) as someone who, when people say "no," it's like, "Oh, it's it feels like it's a no to you when it's (Jason: sure) not." So how did you get over that? Or how do you teach people to like not take those noes when it's their personal business? (Jason: Yeah) Your personal coaching? Like, how do you take that? What do you tell yourself?Jason Frazell 15:26  Yeah, so this is an interesting question. I'm thinking about this, how I do it for myself. And then also, when I'm coaching other entrepreneurs who get a lot of noes is getting curious about what you make it mean about you? Like, what is that like, for you, when you're first getting those noes. Like, what do you make it mean about you? Do you make it mean that there's something that you're not talented enough? Does it mean that there's something about who you were? And then also, the idea like what your husband, it's just a numbers game. And when you get out of the scarcity mindset, and into the abundance mindset, which these are overused, jargony stuff. But it's true, like there's more people that I'm the perfect coach for them can ever hire me, it's like, there's (Lesley: Right) more people that could ... They just don't know who I am. And that's it. So (Lesley: Yeah) there's a way to and there's a, there's a coach out there, she has something that I like to quote her name's "Stacy Boehm." And she's a coach for, she's this coach for selling life coaching. And her her target demographic is females. She has this one thing that she says it really stuck with me. She said, "What would you do if you knew your ideal clients were looking for you?" Like, what would you do today? What would you do tomorrow? Like, what's the thing that you would do? Because like, what we all do is we're like, "Oh, there's nobody out there. Nobody's interested." But like, if I knew that you wanted to hire me, when you just didn't know me, what would I actually do and what I post on social media. Would I pay for ads? Would I do search engine, would I go to a networking event, and like that's the thing that I would say like, "Hey, what would you do?" Because the truth is, there are people out there for everybody. And I really do believe that.Lesley Logan 16:56  That's so good. I love that so much.Jason Frazell 16:58  It's Stacy's, I wish, I wish I could take it. It's Stacy. But ...Lesley Logan 17:01  I know. Well, Stacy, thanks so much. (Jason laughs) We're all gonna live by that because, like, even inside like, I it's almost like, I wish I had heard that, even though I believe that they're like, you're on the right ... person for the right people. And that it's okay, if you don't like what I'm offering, because there are more people just even hearing that would change how I would like change them in the thoughts I have posting on when there's a sale or when there's a launch? (Jason: No) Because it's, it's like, what if people were looking there are actually Googling and you need to come up? And like, how would you do that? And you'd be less scared, "Oh, it's like, that's way better than leap and the net will appear." (Jason and Lesley laughs) Right? That's so good. (Jason: Yeah) Um, yeah, I do think like, fear rejection is real. And it keeps people (Jason: Sure) from doing. So, okay, you mentioned earlier and maybe this is too personal, you know, let me know, but like, you have two kids ...Jason Frazell 17:52  Nothing's too personal. I'm here.Lesley Logan 17:53  Yeah. You have two kids, you're married, you know, like, and you wanted to switch careers? How hard like, what did you, how, what, what, why did you go? How could you do that? How did you do that? And also, like, was it scary because I do think, you know, when for people might not know, in 2019, Brad sold his companies and came full fully on board with my businesses, which is so exciting. And then three months later, we had COVID happen. And I was like, "Oh, well, okay, this is, this ship is only sailing with, with this is all I got. So here we go." (Jason: Yeah) Like, what was it like for you with kids and spouse? Like, was it easy (Jason: Yeah) to make that transition or was it hard?Jason Frazell 18:29  Well, I'm very fortunate that my wife is amazing. And so it could have been a lot harder if it wasn't for the fact that I told her what I saw and what I believed was possible. And she was on board with me. My wife has more of a vision and goals and person than I am. I'm more of a pragmatic, practical as a good. This is one of the Midwestern comes and I'm like ... "What's practical about all this?" She's more like, "Hey, well, what, what do you think would make you happy? What do you believe? What does your intuition tell you?" And, you know, I have been fortunate I had a good career before that. So it wasn't like, I was living paycheck to paycheck at that point. So it was, you know, it was, it was a conscious family decision. (Lesley: Yeah) And but yeah, I'm fortunate to have an amazing partner that supported me in that because I was, you know, if the tables were turned, I don't know that I would have had the same response be like, "Well, what do you mean? Go back, get another job. Making what you're making. We got to keep this money flowing in." So yeah, (Lesley: Yeah) but the truth is, it's all it's all about a powerful conversation, my wife and just getting aligned on what this is, what I'm going to do and why. And it also helped that when I decided to do this, I had already started the business. So it was a side hustle that went full time quite quickly. But I had a, I had a few proof points. It's not like one day I'm like, "I'm out of here. I don't know what I'm going to do." (Lesley: Right) I was already, I was already turning out a couple clients and it certainly wasn't enough to pay the bills. But I was I was on the path already. (Lesley: Yeah.) Which (Lesley: That's ...) that's what, that's one thing I would say to to everyone listening is, "You don't have to just quit full boat and go full into it immediately." A lot of people that I coached that like are that working like places like Facebook, and they want to do a side hustle, they do them both. (Lesley: Yeah) Then at some point, your business becomes big enough where you do need to go out and do it yourself. I do believe at some point, you have to work only in your business. But there's no shame in like doing the side hustle stuff, you know, like, there seems to be this culture. Like, "if you're really committed, you'll just do it." I'm like, that's not realistic for a lot of people.Lesley Logan 20:25  It's, thank you for saying that. I think it's 100% true. I mean, I, I, I think it's easy for people looking outside, they might see that somebody went from Facebook to this company, and they're like, "Whoa, how" but really, most people are, if they are transitioning from one thing to the other, there was a time where they're doing two things. And like, that's (Jason: Yeah) how, that's how all of my businesses were. You know, I was, I was running studios, as I was renting space far enough away, that it was allowed, but also like building my own business. And (Jason: Yeah) then, and then I figured out how many clients I had to have to make the switch. And then we made that leap. And that was sitting down and like being really conscious about like, "How many pe... people is that so I could make that switch?" And it's difficult, and we didn't have kids. So it was a lot easier, I could overwork a little bit for a short period of time to make that happen. And then when I want to transition again, you know, we did the the bridge again, and the only (Jason: Yeah) time it was like, rip... let the boat you know, burn the boats or whatever was because of COVID. (Lesley and Jason laughs) It was like "Oh, (Jason: Yeah) well, we're we're gonna have to close that studio. And this and this, because it's not reopening anytime soon." (Lesley laughs)Jason Frazell 21:38  No. State mandatedLesley Logan 21:40  Yeah. (Jason: closing) Yeah, I know. I think it's I mean, and if you're listening to this I lived in California, so the gyms would didn't open for 13 months. So it was (Jason: Right) you know I was just like, "This is not ... I could see the writing on the wall. Like they're, they're not reopening me any anytime soon." So, so I think thank you for sharing that because I do believe a lot of people think I have to have it all together. And I have to go all in. And it's like, I just believe that there's like ... there's a trial period as a trying something on, there's like, figuring it out and like and then knowing that you have a little bit and then you have to get uncomfortable. So can we talk about that, like, there (Jason: Yeah) Is it still uncomfortable in your business? Or now your three and a half years in like it feels a little less uncomfortable? Like, what was that like going you know, that getting comfortable with uncomfortability?Jason Frazell 22:23  Yeah, so it's, it's still uncomfortable because I'm still, my business is morphing is the word I'll use, or it's becoming more aligned to what I actually want to do all day, every day. It's kind of like, I don't know, it's kind of even like my podcast. I'm at almost 100 episodes. It's a little different than it was 100 episodes ago. That (Lesley: Yeah) so that is, to me, that's a fun, uncomfortable. I actually I'm actually one of those people. I kind of like being uncomfortable. (Lesley: Yeah) So it's fun to because for me uncomfortable means that I'm a little bit in the unknown, which means there's something super creative and innovative, which is like where I do my best work. (Lesley: Yeah) But yeah, after spending 20 years with a paycheck every two weeks, and a bunch of operational people and benefits and stock options and 401k's and all that. And then to suddenly be like, "Oh, wait, if I want to make any money and be successful, it's on me today." Like, (Lesley: Yeah) that's still uncomfortable. I'm still getting use to that I'm, we call that like, I call that a corporate context. I'm still breaking it up. (Lesley: Yeah) But there's days where I'm like, "Man, I just wish I'd have somebody that would just tell me what to do today. Or like, send me 20 clients." And I'm like, "No." So the uncomfortable part is. And the exciting part is what's next, who's my next client? So for me, like, I don't know who my next client might be. (Lesley: Right) I might get somebody to hit my website today, which might be the client that hires me at my highest rate, which refers me 10 clients, which creates the business of my dreams, or that might not happen for a year and that that's the uncomfortable thing. Because my automatic place that I like to go is I like to know. How's it gonna go because I was in sales. So your husband probably like sales is all about predictability. (Lesley: Right) Oh, like, "Hey, quarter after quarter, how am I gonna build this pipeline," and I just don't, it's just not a thing in this in my business. So that part is uncomfortable for me.Lesley Logan 24:12  Well, and also I'm reading Joe Dispenza's book. (Who knows what it's called, actually, I'm sorry, I'm obviously not reading it. It's on Audible. So, I just hit play.) Anyways, it's about getting out of your own way. Someone will tell (Jason: Yeah) me on Instagram and go, "Shame on you for not knowing he's brilliant." He is brilliant. It's amazing. But he talks about like how we all want cause and effect. We're all living ... in this like Newtonian thing, which is like, (Jason: Oh, yeah) this happens and this happens. But when we start to actually understand that we are causing an effect that is like, it's like you're unstoppable. It's this crazy thing. And and it's true because I, because I was in corporate, I was in fitness corporate, which is nice. (Jason: Yeah) Like they put budgets out. (Jason: Yeah, like ...) I meet them, you know, and like I lead a team and either way I had vacations and 401k's and amazing health insurance that I don't have any more, I have something (Lesley laughs) that they (Jason: Yeah) that they let self employed person by. But there that is all, that that is there is something like that, that and I, on a bad day I'll go, "Gosh, you know, what am I doing?" And then I'll go and then I can look back at like the promotions I didn't take and I can look to the friends that are still there and I can go, "You know that I'm not that person." And (Jason: Yeah) that's I think, to to to go back would be denying that I'm like, I am someone who has to keep creating and I have to as much as I hated I I clearly love being in the unknown because I spent so much time there. (Lesley laughs)Jason Frazell 25:40  Yeah. Well just ... Yeah, I heard just a quick anecdote on this. I don't know if you saw what happened to Peloton last week, but they (Lesley: Tell me) well, Peloton had was one of the best performing stocks in during you know, kind of the height of COVID. They released their quarterly earnings last week, they were not good. Their stock dropped 35%. And they went on a hiring freeze, I saw as of today. (Lesley: Wow) So, so like, and I say this to people that are in corporate that, that it's it might be more secure, but it's not that much more secure, you're still at the whim and mercy of of you know, one bad quarter and they dropped 35% and all those, I'm assuming all those employees hold stock options. There goes 30, you know, 35% of your wealth and stock options down.Lesley Logan 26:23  Well 100 ... look that's it, you're either like you and I we work for ourselves. So like, I am at the mercy of making sure my messaging is good enough that people buy it. But those corporations are at the mercy of those investors and those stockholders (Jason: Yeah) and people. And so like, wherever, however you slice it, there are people you answer to and there is difficulties and there's scary times but like I think, you know, if you were to look back, I don't know I don't answer for you. But I have I when I look back, I I would be struggling right now to work for someone doing something and not doing what I'm doing right now. Because what I'm doing right now is like literally what's inside of me what like comes to my mind, what keeps me up at night. What me... and I can take action on that. I'm actually I feel like I'm fulfilling my purpose. And I think (Jason: Yeah) that that's what it is. So I don't know, I think it's hard to be uncomfortable. But I don't know that (Jason: Yeah) it was much more comfortable on the other side. It was just like there's a paycheck. (Lesley laughs)Jason Frazell 27:20  Yeah, yeah. Right. But I mean, you know, as a salesperson, I'm it sounds like all the things you're doing. There's a lot of uncomfortable meetings you go to ,where you tell your boss, "Oh, we're breaking into this million dollar deal." And then the customers like, "Yeah, we're not doing it." Then you have to have a ... that's not comfortable either.Lesley Logan 27:35  Right, right. I think we're just ... Well, I think the grass looks greener on the other side. And we think that it's all there. But the reality is, is that like, you know, putting one foot step in front of the other without knowing what it's going to be is like the way you get anywhere, you know. So ...Jason Frazell 27:49  I'm with you and I, you and I are on the same page for sure, Lesley.Lesley Logan 27:52  Alright, Jason, how do people get to know you? Get to work with you? Find out how to get leadership coaching with you because it sounds like you're doing some really cool stuff with all (Jason: Yeah) these companies.Jason Frazell 28:00  Yeah, thanks so much, Lesley. Yeah, best place to start is just my website. It's just my name. So, it's Jason Frazell f r a z e l l.com. And from there, you can also connect with me on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn. And I do want to put in a plug that I mentioned earlier, I'm a podcaster as well. And if anybody here is listening who is interested in coming on my podcast next year, it's "Called Talking to Cool People". And check it out. It was actually, it's a, we'll talk about on my podcast how the name came about it was pretty funny. And so you can connect with me there and listen to some of my episodes, I talk to all sorts of interesting people from let's, very diverse set of individuals that I've talked to over the last couple years. So yeah, connect me on all the social. I'm the only person on social with my name, I believe (Lesley: That's amazing) it's a pretty unique name. It's a pretty unique name. Yeah. And, and then my website and I look forward to hearing from you and connecting with you. And so you know, I can support everybody out there.Lesley Logan 28:52  Yeah, well, our listeners will be very excited. Y'all, he does talk to cool people. He interviewed Benjamin Degenhardt. (Jason: I did) And our listeners are many of them are big fans of his. So, y'all can go. Jason Frazell 29:03  I know Benjamin. So yes, that's awesome. (Lesley: That's so crazy) It such a small world.Lesley Logan 29:08  It's so small. He's, he's amazing. I, we used to pre COVID run into each other all over the world, because of pilates. (Jason: I can imagine) So like (Jason: I can imagine) would be at the same event and it's like, I would never see him in our home cities, but we'd see each other and other people's cities which are just so fun. Okay, so I asked everyone bold, executable, intrinsic, targeted steps to prioritizing yourself. How do you be it till you see it? What do you what tips do you got for us?Jason Frazell 29:33  Yeah, be it till you see it. So first things first, this is very tactical, for those who are ... And I think this applies to sales people working for others. This applies to entrepreneurs, put in your calendar, block out your calendar, like you had customers there, or you had clients there. So for new salespeople, I coach a lot of salespeople. When you start out there's like, "Oh my gosh, there's a lot of things to learn to do," like block out your calendar like you had that appointments already, and then use that time to prospect, use that time to get, as your husband, Brad said, use that time to get some noes and hopefully some yeses. (Lesley: Yeah) If for an entrepreneur like you're, I know like let's say you're a new personal trainer, and you've got three clients and you've got, you know, 20 hours of your week, not ready, book it up, and then figure out what you're going to use that time for to either improve yourself, go find clients. So, I think there's some energy that gets put out when you do that. There's some things that like, that's like a, I'm not gonna say manifesting, but you're actually telling, actually telling the universe or spirit or God or whatever you believe, "Hey, there's some stuff that I'm going to be doing here." And it also trains you to get used to what that schedule is going to be like. So (Lesley: Yeah) for example, some coaches like, "I want 30 clients a week." And I'm like, "Do you?" (Jason laughs)Lesley Logan 30:42  I know, I get that a lot when we coach Pilates instructors and they're like, "I think I want to teach 30 hours a week." And I'm like, "You do? You wanna (Jason: You're like ...) teach 30 hours a week?"Jason Frazell 30:49  ... You're like, "Have you ever taught 30 hours a week?" And they're like, "Nope ... I could tell."Lesley Logan 30:53  Yeah. (Jason: So ...) Let me just tell you, you don't, that's a lot of human being.Jason Frazell 30:56  It's a lot of human beings that it's like, you won't get to eat probably. (Lesley: Yeah) Um, so that's first thing. The second thing is, and I think it was President Obama who once said, this is I think he said this in one of his books. And if I misquote it (Lesley: It's alright). Okay, (Lesley: Their already coming for me and Joe) I think he said. (Lesley laughs) Yeah, it's it, you know, like, yeah, exactly. He said, like, "Act as if." I think it was him. It's one of the things because people were I think, if I'm not mistaken, somebody asked him when he was a junior senator in Illinois, "How did you ascend to become the president?" is like, almost unheard of in that way. He's like, "I just had to go into rooms and act as if. Act as if I was the President. Act as if, as if I was a senior member of the Senate. Act as if I belonged in the room." So when I say that, I don't mean it from like, an imposters way or like, trying to, you know, alpha it or become the dominant person. It's like, just go into like, act like you own it. (Lesley: Yeah) Because most the secret that I love to say and I don't know if you feel this way, but I really do as most people don't know what they're talking about or doing most of the time anyway. (Lesley: No) Like, they have their they have they have training, you know, like all these all these experts and gurus out there and I'm like, "These people don't know anything more than you and I do, they just have good shiny sales and marketing." And yeah, if you just like ...Lesley Logan 32:14  100% correct on that. I rem...Jason Frazell 32:16  I mean in the fitness industry is full of people like this, right?Lesley Logan 32:18  Oh, 100... I'll be in the rooms. And I'll be like, "Oh, my God ..." And I hear like, "I have, I've been trained by people vigorously." (Jason: Right) Like I haven't like, oh, it's just that they acted as if, they put themselves out there, they took the risk. So you know, I mean, like, I think we tend to put people on pedestals who are actually our equals. And if you met them and actually talk to them, they would see you as an equal as well. Like ...(Jason: They would) were (Jason: Yeah) putting them up there when they're like, "Hey, I'm just right over here with you."Jason Frazell 32:18  Yeah, I'm just right over here with you. And I just but the thing I think that, that a lot of those people do. And you know, some of I do think there's some snake oil stuff out there. (Lesley: Oh yeah) There's a lot of good people who are have this kind of, you know, like same place. What they are willing to do though is get uncomfortable. And share themselves in this kind of like, they're willing to show up. (Lesley: Yeah) Even when, even when they're not ready. And I think that's one of the things that holds back a lot of people, especially in entrepreneurial space. Especially personal brand space is being willing to show up and speak your truth and let the world know who you are without it having to be perfect. Because to me, there's no such thing as perfect.Lesley Logan 33:20  Yep. ... I mean, that's a mantra around here, "Perfect is boring. Do it messy." ...Jason Frazell 33:27  Yeah, that's a that's a mantra at Brand Builders, too, is like we're not gonna do it perfectly, but like we're gonna do it. We're gonna get out there. We're gonna do it.Lesley Logan 33:33  Yeah, well, cuz I'm one of my favorite people on this planet, Jill Coleman says, "Perfect is the like the thing keeping you from being consistent." (Jason: Totally) You know, and so and honestly, most of the people doing things that you're like, "Gosh, someday when I'm ready." They weren't ready. They weren't perfect. They just were consistently showing up. And so yeah. Well, Jason, thank you for being here. Thanks for being on the Be It Till You See It podcast. I can't wait to be on Talking To Cool People. Oooh (Jason: Yeah) (Lesley laughs)Jason Frazell 34:03  Yes. Lesley, thanks, thank you so much for having me. It's a delight to be here with everybody.Lesley Logan 34:07  Oh, you're amazing. This is a great conversation. And everyone please screenshot this tag @jasonfrazell, tag @be_it_pod. Let us know your takeaways. Let us know how you're going to act as if and how you're going to use these BE IT tips. And until next time, Be It Till You See It.That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review. And follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcasts. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the @be_it_pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others BE IT TILL YOU SEE IT. Have an awesome day!'Be It Till You See It' is the production of 'As The Crows Fly Media'.Brad Crowell 34:55  It's written, produced, filmed and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan and me, Brad Crowell.Lesley Logan 35:02  Kevin and Bel at Disenyo handle all of our audio editing and some social media content.Brad Crowell 35:08  Our theme music is by Ali at APEX Production Music. And our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.Lesley Logan 35:17  Special thanks to our designer Jirah Mandal for creating all of our visuals (which you can't see because this is a podcast) and our digital producer, Jay Pedroso for editing all the video each week so you can.Brad Crowell 35:28  And the Meridith Crowell for keeping us all on point and on time.Transcribed by https://otter.aiSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/be-it-till-you-see-it/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The October 2021 episode of Deepdale Podcast looks forward to Halloween with the arrival of Haunted Deepdale. Chris & Jason review the amazing Deepdale Festival. Plus Nathan & Jason do Farm Chat.00:00 - Intro music by Jess Morgan03:20 - Haunted Deepdale - Jason chats with three of the Slow Theatre team who are organising, writing and acting in Haunted Deepdale, our first ever promenade theatre Halloween event. Steve Keyworth (writer), Vanessa McAuley (actor) and Danny O'Hara (director) chat about how Haunted Deepdale came about, how they got involved and what we can expect from this unique event on The Orchard at Dalegate Market.20:04 - Deepale Festival Review - Chris and Jason chat about the amazing artists who performed at Deepdale Festival this year.34:45 - Deepdale Festival Soundscape - Snippets from performances throughout the weekend in chronological order, including Man The Lifeboats, Ben Denny Mo, Quarterman, Ebb Tide, Mammal Not Fish, Inlay, Little Red Kings, Ouse Washes Molly Dancers, Kirsty Merryn & Ben Walker, Zong Zing Allstars, Katherine Priddy, John Ward Band, The Shackleton Trio, Cut Throat Francis, Goat Roper Rodeo Band, Bleeding Hearts, Lisa Redford, Katie Doherty & The Navigators, Alden Patterson & Dashwood, The Drystones, Martin Simpson and 3 Daft Monkeys.44:13 - Farm Chat with Nathan & Jason - They chat about what's going on at Deepdale Farm, from drilling crops to rural craft workshops and everything in between.

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

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

Thank you for bearing with me as I roll out podcasts. Some of you had trouble subscribing to get these podcasts in your regular player. You have a few options. The simplest way is to just add the RSS feed to your player (link). You can also find the podcast the way you find any podcast. Here is the link to the larger players: Apple, Sticher, TuneIn, Overcast , Spotify. The “best” way to subscribe is a little more complicated. Click on the little grey link above (or here). It will give you a URL for a “private RSS feed”. If you ever subscribe to Marketing BS+ this will allow you to get the premium podcasts directly into your player (and all the non-premium ones in the meantime).Sorry for the confusion yesterday. I am figuring this stuff out as I go along. (Fun fact: The idea of public “beta” software originated with Netscape, October 13, 1994. It has been growing strong ever since.)Onto Part II. of my interview with Jason Goldlist, former head of marketing for WealthSimple. Yesterday's Part I covered Jason's career. This part of the interview dives into the (unusual) marketing channels and techniques Jason used to scale WealthSimple into the largest “roboadvisor” in Canada. I particularly like the billboard stunt. As always the entire transcript of the conversation is below, but I recommend listening through your podcast player.Transcript:Edward: This is part two of my interview with Jason Goldlist. Today, we're going to dive into his experience as Head of Marketing at Wealthsimple. First, Jason, can you describe what Wealthsimple is for those who do not understand?Jason: Wealthsimple is a leading financial technology player in Canada that helps make personal finance really simple and really powerful. It's a robo-adviser, so it helps automate investments. It's a savings platform, helps you save your cash for the future, it lets you buy and sell stocks, and even buy and sell cryptocurrency.Edward: Is it like a combination of Betterment with Robin Hood?Jason: And Coinbase.Edward: Got it, and is that a good description or is it something different? Again, if those three companies were to merge, that's Wealthsimple?Jason: Sure. Wealthsimple operates predominantly in Canada and the Canadian financial services market is totally different than in the US. What happens in Canada is you've got five big banks that completely control Canadians' finances. Wealthsimple is hoping to be that sixth alternative bank that's going to come in and shake up the entire industry. We think that there is a whole slew of financial products that consumers need, that they want, but they aren't getting from the big banks.Edward: Got it. I think that's super helpful and sets the groundwork. I want to dive into your biggest marketing channels, which I think are fairly unusual for a company of that size. Let's start with offline partnerships. What were you doing there?Jason: I was lucky enough to join Wealthsimple at a very early stage. I was the 10th employee of Wealthsimple, leading marketing, building that team essentially from scratch, and when I left Wealthsimple, it was several hundred employees managing billions of dollars with a really large, robust marketing, product, and brand team.The channels that we focused on changed throughout the evolution of Wealthsimple. You can imagine at the beginning when I joined, we had only raised, I think, less than $ 2 million Canadian. There wasn't a lot of money to go out and spend. We were really scrappy with each and every customer. At that time, adding 10 customers, adding 100 customers was a big win. Later to the end of my 10 years at Wealthsimple, of course, adding 10 or 100 customers happened in the blink of an eye. We were looking for new ways to grow customers by thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands at a time. What we looked at evolved over time, but we've always been looking at channels that aren't the easy ones. I've always had this feeling that if it was an easy channel, the return isn't going to be there. You've got to pioneer a channel in order for it to be really unique and interesting to your business. Because every business is a little bit different, I also think you want to create your own little bit different channel. Just because these big channels, whether it's traditional channels like television, Facebook, or Google work for other people, doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work for you. I think the process of thinking deeply about what it is that makes your business and your customers different and then going out and creating your own channel for it, can make a world of difference.Edward: When you say offline partnership, what does that mean?Jason: One of the channels that we cultivated was, as you mentioned, offline partnerships. What that means to us is how could we find other brands or other organizations that had large customer bases that wanted to share those customers with us. This would be not through a platform, not through a marketplace, but actually going directly to other brands, finding, and building relationships that were win-win and mutually beneficial. As an example, one of the earliest partnerships we did was with Airbnb. We looked at the landscape of brands and said the brand that we aspire to be and that our clients aspire to use would be a brand like Airbnb. I think I went on LinkedIn and I think I just typed in Airbnb and I use the geography filter for Canada. I was like, who is running Airbnb in Canada? We traded some emails and we sort of said we think there's this opportunity. Let me understand your goals better and maybe there's something that we can do with a campaign to actually go out and help you with your goals, and at the same time raise Wealthsimple's brand awareness with our target market and also acquire new customers.They said one thing that we're really trying to do is get people to use Airbnb for the first time. I think this was in 2015. They were still growing in new markets. We said, okay, cool. Do you have a financial incentive for new customers? They said, yeah. We pay $200 to acquire new customers so we can pay that out.So I said if we were to go out and spend some money on channels and incentivize people to try Airbnb, that would be helpful for you, right? They're like, yeah. And we were able to make this channel. We're able to leverage Airbnb's brand to go to market with an offer to attract people to use Wealthsimple and it became a new Wealthsimple client that got some of that and an Airbnb client. They got some of that Airbnb money deposited directly into their Wealthsimple account. That's an example of an offline partnership that worked really well for us and not only did it work in the direct channel and that there are lots of customers that responded to campaigns that we were able to attribute to that partnership, but also in the mind of the market. We were now hanging with the Airbnb brand and it set the idea that we were an innovative company, a young company, an emerging company that had the same brand DNA as Airbnb, and opened up the floodgates of being able to partner with lots of other organizations in Canada as well.Edward: Sounds to me that there are two parts to that. There was the halo effect or the fact that your brand is getting affiliated with Airbnb, and then there's Airbnb giving you the $200 or whatever you negotiated that you could go and drop into your customer's accounts. But you still need to have a marketing channel now to go and attract that customer. It just makes it easier to make that marketing channel work now, right? Now you have $200 additional monetization for any customer that you attract.Jason: That's right. Now we've got a great concept for a campaign and the question is, how do we want that campaign to live in the world? Most of my campaigns are going to be across multiple channels. There'll be different places that I'm going to share that with the market. The first place that I'm looking to, especially with a partnership like this, is to leverage Airbnb's channels. Now, here's an opportunity for them to also incentivize their followers. Maybe it's an email list of non-converters, maybe it's their social media to go and check out Wealthsimple for this benefit. At the same time, I can also go to the market and put some money behind it. Maybe we'll even co-market it together in the sense that maybe Airbnb will chip in some marketing dollars for me to go and put this on Facebook and retarget some visitors, or put it through a social channel like Twitter in order to get more people, or run an email campaign or something in order to get people to convert. Certainly, there's a bunch of different moving parts here. I love that you brought up that there's the halo effect and there's the direct effect. I think almost all of my campaigns fall into one or the other or a combination of both. Starting with what you think success is going to be on those different dimensions can really help you make sure that the campaign from end-to-end achieves the right objective.Edward: Let's talk a little bit about that. So you're Airbnb, Airbnb has a list now of users that have not converted. What's their incentive to target that list with a Wealthsimple offer versus just saying, hey list of people who haven't converted, we'll give you $200 that you can spend on Amazon. Why partner with you on that deal?Jason: There's a bunch of different ways that the value gets created. One of them is that there is a bit of a quid pro quo when you're negotiating a partnership like this. At the time, our Canada list was a lot bigger than their Canada list. For a brand like them who's trying to build a new market, we're excited to reach their list and they were excited to reach ours. So there is a bit of a trade that happens there and it's a win-win as long as the brands are aligned and customers aren't confused as to why it's happening. You need to create a great story, a little bit of a landing page collateral to make sure that the story's well-articulated. But there are other offline partnerships that were really successful where it's even plainer the benefit. I'll give you an example of a partnership that we did together with Zipcar, Ontario.Zipcar has members and they have a specific member benefits portal. They're always looking for interesting opportunities to put into their member benefits portal that's going to reward Zipcar members in Ontario. That was an easy one where they actually have planned activities to email their entire base about new offers in their members' benefits. They're just looking for the right members' benefits to be there. We were able to approach Zipcar and show them how our audiences would overlap, and we had a really interesting and compelling on-brand offer for them to share with their mailing lists.Edward: How many of these types of partnerships did you have? Between Airbnb and Zipcar, how many of them existed at that scale?Jason: Well, in the beginning, there was the first one. Of course, we found success with them. One of the reasons that we did find early success with them is, as we were growing, we were trying to convince larger brands to use us and to partner with us. We were able to reach wide audiences without typically a cost of acquisition. Now, the cost was the hustle, originality, creativity, and the relationship-building that it takes to make this, but there wasn't an incremental cost to it, which is why we liked it. What happened is as we got bigger, first we expanded the portfolio and then we actually contracted it. The reason that we contracted it is that as we grew bigger, it was no longer so helpful to get dozens of new clients from a channel.It was only really worth our time to get larger ones, so we had to create partnerships with larger organizations that had a broader reach. Now when I think about the partnership opportunities in the landscape for Wealthsimple today, they look a lot more like large telcos, other large financial institutions that maybe aren't related, other consumer retailers like a grocer, gas, or pharmacy that really reach millions and millions of Canadians. That would be an opportunity that would get me excited today, but it just started with members' benefits of Zipcar.Edward: That makes sense because I think initially, if it's quid pro quo, if you have no email list, you don't have anything to offer a really big partner. Then, as you get bigger through leveraging, it's almost a ladder up strategy of starting with smaller partners, use that to get to scale so you can trade for bigger partners.Jason: That's exactly the strategy. What's interesting about this is that there isn't a website that you can go and log into, then just put your credit card down and get these partnerships up and running. These are partnerships that require you to go and meet with real people, create something out of nothing, and you've got to demonstrate and establish trust. You've got to follow through for your partners. You've got to do awesome tracking for them. You've got to make them feel really special. I think to my point I made earlier, they're not easy because there isn't a directory of them to take off. But I think to the point of creating new channels, I think these are the kinds of channels that I love creating. Something that didn't exist before, something that's uniquely your brands and something that's really effective for both sides.Edward: Let's talk about public relations. That was another big channel for you.Jason: It sure was. One of the things that's interesting about public relations or I call it earned media, is that similar to these partnerships, you're not paying cost per acquisition for each customer. Of course, there's an investment that you make in time or if you hire an agency and you can tie it back, but ultimately if you do it well, you're able to get low cost, ongoing inbound traffic. I remember sitting around the table with the early team, and if we would just get a mention on the national news, in Canada, it's the CBC. The phone would start ringing. It was like magic and we didn't pay anything for it. A reporter got us, we reached out to a reporter, and then suddenly we got new clients. It was always exciting to see the traffic volume spike on the website when something as boring as an article in the local newspaper came out. But I think that showed us really early on the power of doing this well.Edward: How did you do it well? PR is one of them, obviously. You can optimize page search to death and there are agencies that can optimize television spend. How do you optimize PR? How do you know you're doing it well? Jason: First we didn't do it well. I think sometimes it takes not doing a channel well first to learn a little bit more about how to do it better. The first thing that we did is we hired a firm that specialized in financial services public relations, to help us with this. I think that playbook was irrelevant to us. We paid them a retainer every month, and every month they've got to get some relationships with the journalists and they go through all their client list. At the end of the day, that wasn't differentiated, it wasn't interesting, and it didn't get us the results that we needed, but we had that early taste even before I think we were working with an agency of what PR could do. So when we set out to do a real earned media campaign, we tried to think a little bit differently. We try to think about a couple of different ways to do it. For example, you can create data and then share that data back with publications. You can capitalize on emerging news trends and then use that to get into the news cycle. There's a whole bunch of different tactics and we would think of interesting and differentiated tactics to do it. I'll give you one of my favorite stories. One of my favorite stories of an earned media tactic that worked really well for us was in Canada, there was a large tech company that had IPOed called Shopify. We, of course, in the wealth management business, love when big tech companies IPO because that means a lot of wealth is typically created. We'd like them to park their wealth with us. During the IPO, it was really hard to cut through the clutter of that news cycle and get earned media for different tech companies' IPO. What we found was there was going to be a different date that was less celebrated and it typically is never celebrated in the media, but it could be, which is the expiry of the IPO lockup period. Not a super sexy date, but nine months after the IPO, that's when the insiders can actually sell. That's when the wealth is realized, not just created. What we did is we created a campaign around the expiry of the lockup period that would educate Shopify employees on how to get a diversified portfolio out of their holdings. We created a little ebook, we made a landing page on our website, and we actually took out a billboard across the street from Shopify so that you could see both the billboard and the Shopify building in the background. We hired a photographer to take the picture, and then we shopped and pitched that story to the media. We said, hey, are you covering the Shopify lock-up period? You should be thinking about what happened nine months ago. Now is the time all this money is liquid. Oh, by the way, here's a photo, a Wealthsimple guide that we've made to help Shopify employees manage their wealth.Can you believe it? Articles were written about the story, we did the journalists' work for them, our photo ran as the photo in the article, and there was a great mention about how companies like Wealthsimple were helping employees at Shopify manage their wealth.Edward: That's fantastic. I believe that there's something to this new way of marketing, which is this combination of PR and paid media. In that example, you use paid media to presumably acquire some Shopify customers but then accelerated with PR.Jason: And the loop doesn't even end there, Ed, because once that's done, you take that article that's being published by reputable news media, then you go and you put some dollars behind it on social media to amplify it even more. That, actually, I think goes beyond that. From there, we actually got some inbound traffic. I believe Toby, the founder and CEO of Shopify, messaged us and said, "Hey, great campaign." That opened the door for us to actually get into Shopify and start managing their employees' retirement plans, which was fantastic and it involved us bringing out our wealth advisors to help manage their employees. I believe for a long time, Shopify was the number one source of clients at Wealthsimple by employer by a large margin, even though they only employed several thousand people, our percentage of Shopify employees using Wealthsimple was astronomical.Edward: If we were to break that particular campaign down into (say) four parts, which was number one, was the billboard and the marketing to get Shopify customers to come on board. Number two is the PR push around that was targeted more broadly and far more than just Shopify customers. Number three was the paid acceleration of number two and then number four, was the enterprise sale effectively that you got to Shopify. Roughly, how much impact did those four things have? Was it 25, 25, 25, 25? What's your best estimate?Jason: I love that you say best estimate because some of those things we can directly track and of course many of those things we can't, but we know they're there. If I were to do my estimates, I actually think the last one, the halo effect we got inside of Shopify's hallways, of them talking about us, of them referring their friends, of them trying us, and then bringing and consulting their wealth with us over the years was so much bigger than the direct effects of (say) having the billboard in the first campaign. I think that the fourth one is only possible if you get number two. So, you need that multiplier. I think if you have that campaign without that endorsement or thought that earned media pick up, I think that would be a failure of the campaign. But once you've got number two that allows you to unlock number three and number four (if you can), it becomes even more successful than you imagined.Edward: If you hadn't got them all, like if you'd only gotten number one or only gotten number two, would it have been ROI positive or would have been negative, and you needed those three and four in order to get it over the top? Jason: They're not really expensive ideas and the truth is, we're talking about one that works for everyone that worked. Of course, there's a whole bunch that don't work and that we don't talk about as guerrilla campaigns or earned media opportunities that didn't work out. But if you look at the direct costs of doing that, we recycled some content. We wrote some original content. We're talking about hundreds of dollars, not thousands of dollars. We chased down that billboard. Hard work especially because we need it on short notice, but we got it. We're talking about single digits, thousands of dollars. We're talking about a campaign that was a few thousand dollars. At the time, if that hadn't worked out, we'd be totally fine. But I think there was an ROI on that that was well beyond the five digits or maybe even six digits on it, so the percentages return on that campaign like that were fantastic.Edward: What does growth hacking mean to you?Jason: I've never described myself as a growth hacker and I don't have a stock definition. But what it makes me feel is that how do we do alternative things to drive the adoption of the product. One of the things it does sort of bring up for me are the viral loops. How do we get the customers that we have today to maybe adopt another product, increase their usage of the product, or tell others themselves about the product, too?Edward: So when you talk about growth hacking at Wealthsimple, is Shopify an example of that or is there something different?Jason: Probably in the broadest sense, but I think in the more narrow sense of how do we have a virality coefficient that supports growth without (for example) creating new campaigns or without (for example) spending money on social channels. That is sort of what growth hacking would mean to me more so. I think we are really lucky at Wealthsimple in that for whatever reason, your wealth advisor and some other financial products do tend to be products that people talk about, and especially if you do them different or better, save people money, and make their life more effective and efficient, you share it with family and friends. For a long time at Wealthsimple and hopefully to this day still, that was the number one way that people found out about us, by referring Wealthsimple to their friends and family.Edward: That's great. Hey, thanks so much for coming on today, Jason. Before we go, tell me about your “quake book”.Jason: My quake book, of course. I'm always thinking about my quake book. What did I tell you my quake book was, Ed? Edward: Fooled by Randomness. Jason: Oh, yes. Are you a fan of Nassim? Edward: Nassim has blocked me on Twitter. Jason: There you go. Well, that's all you need to know. Hopefully, he hasn't blocked you from reading his books, though. What I love about Fooled By Randomness is that sometimes we see patterns where there aren't patterns. Certainly, as an analyst starting my career, all the time I think we talked about things that maybe weren't there, but we hoped were there. I think reading that book is one of the eye-opening opportunities, along with the rest of Nassim's writing, to help you really understand the way the world works and not the way that you hope the world works.Edward: Thank you for that, Jason, and really excited to have you on the show. Jason: Thanks, Ed. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

This is the first “beta” podcast for Marketing BS. I would love your feedback as I refine the interviews and the production quality. These interviews are all in two-parts. Part I covers the CMO's career - how they got their first head of marketing role, and how they have pushed their career from there. In Part II we dive into one specific business they have overseen to talk about growth levers.Transcript below:Edward: My guest today is Jason Goldlist. Today's episode dives into his career. How he got his first CMO role and beyond. University of New Brunswick, McKinsey, INSEAD, A Place for Mom operations, and then Strategy, and then Head of Marketing at Wealthsimple. Today's co-founder of TechToronto or TechTo, among other things.  Jason, we know each other quite well, but I don't think I know the story of how you got your first Head of Marketing role at Wealthsimple. I know you're working for me at APFM leading strategy, you've done some work on television, but how did you get a marketing offer to run the whole thing?Jason: Well, thanks for having me, Ed. I do owe a lot of my success as a marketer to you. You have been a manager and also a mentor to me over the course of my career. Quite a self-serving question, Ed, because the answer is going to be due to your guidance. But it comes down also to the people that I've met along the way. You mentioned McKinsey in my biography. I did start my career there and I had the opportunity to meet a lot of incredible people that have served me well over the course of my career. One of those happened to be the founder of a Canadian fintech startup called Wealthsimple. As I was working with you in Seattle, A Place for Mom, I wanted to make that transition back to Toronto, back to Canada where I'm from. I reached out to some contacts, including Mike, the founder of Wealthsimple, and told him I was coming back, and he was excited to share with me that he was looking for someone to lead marketing there. It just happened that the relationship that we'd had over many years at that point, it was a good fit for me to come on board and give it a go.Edward: Were they looking at any other people or just your personal relationship was what got you the job?Jason: At the time, they actually had an original marketer who joined the team, and that marketer didn't really have that third way about him. It was more of a traditional marketer who had come from a larger organization and didn't have that scrappy, thoughtful, counterintuitive thinking that the team really wanted. They did get rid of the first marketer and were looking for someone else. They had started a search and in fact, if I remember correctly, Mike's original way of finding me was to ask me if I had any referrals for him. He said, "Hey, we're looking for a marketer," and then he described someone that sounded a lot like me and maybe looked a lot like me and had a lot of my experience, and I said, "Oh, sounds really cool. Let me think about a couple ideas for you and then I'll bring them back to you." Then a few weeks later, we sat down and said, "Okay, I've got a couple of names for you." He goes, "Oh, yeah. I don't really want those names. I was hoping that it will be you."Edward: Obviously, he wanted you. He knew you and he trusted you. Why put you in a marketing role and not in a strategy or an operations role where you arguably had more experience?Jason: There's something that I've read from you, Ed, and that is marketing is everything. When the best leaders, the best founders are putting together their leadership teams, I think they recognize that. So my background is a little eclectic. I have done work in strategy, I have done work in operations, I have done work in product, I have done work in marketing, and especially for an early-stage company that had really big ambitions, more so than usual (I think) you had to pitch in and do everything.I think Mike recognized that was a good background for him and for what the company needed at the time and was something that I was more than eager to do, which was more than AdWords analytics, but actually anything that the company needed to grow and be successful.Edward: It was almost less of a marketing role and more of a ‘grow the business anyway you can' role.Jason: Sure. I would argue that when it comes to an early stage company, in that time the company was 10 people. It had raised under $2 million Canadian in funding, had a couple of hundred consumer clients, and had its sights set on being what it is today and beyond, which is the leading fintech company in Canada with over a million Canadians as clients, managing billions and billions of dollars with the team of over 300 people. We needed to grow. I would argue that it's actually everybody's responsibility in an organization to grow. The marketer is maybe just the one that's watching the metrics every day and making sure that all the activities that everyone's working on are adding up to the growth that we want to see of the company.Edward: You have that job, the job you came in on for a little less than 18 months before you were promoted to GM. How did your job change post the promotion? Or did it?Jason: It did change a lot and I think it changed more so with the growth of the company than it did with necessarily the kind of work that we're doing in marketing or in general management. I think what's really neat about joining a fast-growing company is that there are so many opportunities everywhere to contribute and to get impact. Something that I learned working with you is that it's much more fun to have 800% growth than just to have a 0.8% growth. Even though there are many opportunities where maybe working at one of the world's largest companies, 0.8% growth can represent a lot more dollar value than 800% growth. But in terms of a fast-growing startup, when there's that kind of growth and that kind of excitement, there's a lot of opportunity for impact. The kind of things that I would work on started at (I would say) traditional early stage startup channels, like how do we get earned media? How do we find our communities online that want to be early adopters of our technology? How do we go participate at local events and win customers one by one? That ended up turning really quickly into what new products do we need to introduce to keep our growth, sustain, and accelerate it? What are our customers telling us that we need to build and fix? As an example, what are the other skills we need to add to the team to grow and deliver the brand on the product promise that we've delivered with our brand?Edward: I want to go back a little bit. I want to talk about the path that got you to the place where you got that offer. I have a theory that the things people do when they're in junior high school ended up affecting them their whole lives. Let's go back to that time when you were in junior high. What were you passionate about back then?Jason: It's funny you mention it. When I think about my junior high experience, I was not super studious. I was not booksmart in junior high. I was the kid who was hustling his classmates in the hallways to buy from his latest venture. I remember one of the things that I built in junior high was, you'd call it today a direct-to-consumer clothing brand. Then, I just called it ugly wear and I sold very ugly sweatshirts to my friends at school. I had a paper order form that they would use to customize. I found in the Yellow Pages, a tailor that would come and actually stitch custom logos onto the blanks that I would buy in Chinatown. I think the total cost of one of my items was like $50, which was a fortune for a junior high sweatshirt, and I probably sold it at $51 or something.Edward: Why did you do that? Did you need that dollar that you're making? I can't imagine that was the motivation. What was the motivation?Jason: I thought it was cool and I think that's driven a lot of the things that I've done in my career is that I find it interesting and I want to learn more about how it's done. At the time, I think the core insight to me was everyone's wearing the same clothes, everyone's looking the same. There's got to be a way to express your personality more. Why can't we order custom clothing? That just turned into a bit of a self-directed research project to figure out how it could be done. Then once it was done, how to let others do it as well.Edward: What broader elements did you learn? You learned obviously how to make a sweatshirt. Did you learn anything that was more broad than that?Jason: I think that's one of the earliest examples that I can remember of something I kind of live my life by now, which is GTD. How do you get things done? And how do you ship product? How do you make decisions? And how do you not necessarily delegate and outsource things, but just go and do it yourself? I think that was a really important learning that I had from doing that. It wasn't like there was a turnkey provider who did it. It was every step of the way thinking through the process, finding out how these things get done in the real world, and then going out, getting driven around by your mom to go and do it.Edward: You outsource nothing except for the driving of the car? Jason: You know what? I wish we had more lax driver regulations here in Canada. I could have done it myself then. Maybe I would have Uber'd if that was around back then.Edward: Jumping ahead to your university experience. Who's unusual? Tell me a little bit about where you went to college and how that happened.Jason: Part of it is because it was cool, I think applies here, too. A part of that is also sort of thinking against the grain. For me, a lot of my classmates in high school were all going to the same colleges and studying the same things. I had been successful or interested in things that ran against the grain a little bit.I wanted to do something different and I found that at a small college in the Maritimes in Eastern Canada called the University of Brunswick, where they had a 20-person program that focused on interdisciplinary studies.It was a philosophy degree that helped you think about the world and instead of putting you in a large auditorium and giving you a multiple choice test, they sat 20 people around a piano in an old Victorian home and had discussions with the different deans of the faculties. You were sort of ranked and rated based on learning outcomes. There were no numbers involved or attached. It was really about the impact of your thinking, the quality of your discourse, how you interacted and pushed the thinking forward together with your classmates.Edward: How did you come out different from that experience than when you went in?Jason: They talked about different types of programs. One that accepts great people, there's no transformation, and they come out the same. Of course, you have the stamp of approval from the program. You've got all other programs that bring in certain people and then transform them into something different.I do think that this one was a transformational program. For me coming into it, I think I lacked perspective on how powerful those skills would be. I think I've still thought that perhaps you needed a high score in math to be successful or you needed to study engineering to know how the world works. I think what happened is when I came out of that program, I learned really the way that we interact with each other, the way that we solve problems together, and it's not just about what you know, but how to learn and how to know is more important.Edward: Do you think that your career and the kind of the rest of your life would have been different if you'd taken a different route if you'd gone to the University of Toronto? How would things have been different for the rest of your career?Jason: I think it would have been really different, actually. The reason is that I think that in any other program, if I hadn't gone against the crowd, I think I would have fallen in with the crowd. I think I would have thought the same way. I think I would have studied the same things. I think I would have coveted the same graduate roles as everybody else. By striking a little bit of an alternative path for the time, it let me think in a different way and question myself, just because other people are doing it, do I need to as well?I'll give you a great example. A very common path for people from my high school was to go in, do a college degree, go straight to a law program and practice law. Very common path for my friends, one that most of my peer group did, and those are higher-earning jobs. Those are people who have comfortable lifestyles and are able to provide for their families very well. For me, that wasn't interesting, and I think if I hadn't made that choice, I think I would have fallen into that path. For me, instead, coming out of that program, I was really interested in the world. Part of the program included sort of a domestic internship anywhere in Canada and an international internship anywhere in the world. Through my program, I was exposed to all sorts of different things. Having gone to the West Coast for an internship, a marketing internship, and then gone actually overseas, going to Switzerland and spending a summer there. I was curious about the world in a way that was different and I wanted an opportunity not to go to law school after I graduated, but to learn more about how the world worked.Edward: And yet, your first job after college was at McKinsey, which many people would argue is the epitome of the traditional path for high-performing young people.Jason: It's funny looking back at it now. It certainly looks the case and I have to agree with you. At the time, I had no idea what McKinsey was and I have to say, my family, my friends, my peer group, my school, for God's sake, do not know what McKinsey is. I did not go to a feeder school where there was on campus recruiting. I had never even heard of it. In fact, the way that I discovered it is also quite interesting. I was doing an internship in Ottawa after I graduated and I just struck up a random conversation with someone in the community and had mentioned to them that I did that internship in Switzerland. He said, "You know what? You remind me of my nephew who's actually working in Switzerland right now for a company called McKinsey. You guys should connect." In fact, I made that email to Rob Charon, who was in fact, finishing his second year as a business analyst in the Toronto office of McKinsey. He encouraged me to learn more about it and apply, helped me with the interview process, and helped me find that job.Edward: If you'd gone to University of Toronto, do you think you would have ended up McKinsey anyway, maybe even without doing the internship in between?Jason: Certainly not. I think I would have been on the path. I think I would have kept the blinders on, put my head down, and ended up following the path to the world of law or something like that.Edward: Okay, let's play another what if. Now you're at McKinsey. You don't have that lunch, and you don't find out about Rob Charron and the opportunity, and you don't go to McKinsey. What happens instead? What does your career path look like for that alternate Jason?Jason: We can play it out a few years. That could be fun. I do think I would go to law school. I do think I would start a job at a law firm. I do think that I would practice law, try to become a partner. I think that's the game that people try to play. I think that's a six- or eight-year game, which is kind of fun. Probably sometime along the way I become disillusioned with the art or the practice of law, and maybe I would feel the fallacy of sunk costs so strongly that I would leave private practice, just go in-house at a company, and keep practicing law in-house. I think it'd be sad. I think lawyers are sad.Edward: Do you think you end up being the in-house counsel for Wealthsimple?Jason: Certainly not, and the reason I say that is because the fiduciary responsibility of being the in-house counsel of a disruptive finance company is not something I want to take on, and I can't imagine that my career path would have led me to be intimately familiar with the capital market legislation in Canada. I don't think I could find that interesting. Even though we've played this what-if game where I've gone against my natural curiosity, I do think that would kick in at some point along this career path and prevent me from doing something like that.Edward: You come out of McKinsey and instead of going directly to business school, you work for the Vancouver Olympics. How many McKinsey people were you working with there?Jason: It was none when I started, but one of the cool things about working for an organizing committee (the Olympics) is that I think I joined as employee number 900 and something. By the peak of the games, I think there were 70,000 employees, contractors, and volunteers working for the games. So you need to scale up quite quickly. I think all that happens in the span of six or nine months. I had the opportunity to hire some great people to join my team, but on the other hand, it's not a professionally-managed business, for example, like the one that we joined later afterwards and A Place for Mom.Edward: What did you learn when you're at the Olympics that you wouldn't have learned if you'd done a more traditional post-McKinsey role?Jason: It's a good question because I think this goes back to part of the career arc here, which is after McKinsey, there is also a defined path that lots of people do that I also avoided at the time. It was very fashionable to go and spend a year or two at a private equity firm or a hedge fund before going to business school and coming back to the firm. For me, that also didn't sound interesting and I wanted to try something different. One of the things that I thought I had been missing from my McKinsey experience, even though I had managed teams of clients, is that I hadn't had a direct management role at McKinsey. As an analyst, I was doing tons of maybe big data insights, creating lots of decks, and trying to come up with strategic recommendations, but I hadn't really managed the team. I thought it would be cool to add that weapon to the repertoire and manage a big team. I think at the peak I was managing a hundred paid staff and volunteers to run the operations at the Games. That was the path that I took. I also thought it would be cool to be part of the Olympics. I mean, the Olympics don't come to your home country all the time. The timing had worked out and I thought it'd be really interesting to take a peek inside of that organization.Edward: Now, post-McKinsey, I hired you to come to A Place for Mom. This was the job you had before your CMO role. Why did you come work for me and what else could you have done instead?Jason: Actually, in between there. I did do my MBA in INSEAD, so that opens up a lot of job opportunities. There's a huge on-campus recruiting push. There are all sorts of post-MBA opportunities that open themselves up to you. But I think there was a transformation that I had there where before I had been guided by what I thought was cool.I thought clothing was cool. I thought that doing the small program was cool and interesting. I thought doing the Olympics was cool. I thought seeing the world with McKinsey would be cool. There was a bit of a transformation I underwent during my MBA, which was seeing a lot of other ambitious people that also thought some of those same things were cool.One of the defining factors for me of something being cool was that not a lot of people want it. It made me reflect a little bit more on what I wanted to do next and the reflection led me to this new insight, which is awesome people are cool. Instead of chasing industry, instead of chasing a brand, instead of chasing experience, how can I chase great people that I could work with who would care about me, who would invest in me, who would believe in me to take on more responsibility and grow? I made a list of people who had worked with before who I thought fit the bill and I guess you were just the first person to pick up when I called you. You told me there was a great opportunity and I think I said yes before I even asked who it was, or where it was, or what we were going to do. I just was excited about the opportunity to work with someone awesome.Edward: A lot of your career looks like jumping from success to success and sometimes fairly randomly where opportunities kind of happen and you jump at them. What were the biggest failure points in your career? Where did things not go as expected?Jason: It's not always up into the right in the sense that if you wanted to use a traditional measure like salary. I certainly made much more at McKinsey than I made at the Olympics. That was a major step backwards, for example.Edward: I wouldn't call it a failure, though. Where did the failures happen? Where did things happen that at the time at least you did not expect and did not want?Jason: The human mind is probably really good at erasing a lot of those things to be consistent with your story. But there's no doubt that at each one of those points, there are things that you want specifically, like local maxima that you're optimizing for, that you don't get.You can imagine at a firm like McKinsey, there are lots of different projects to work on. I'm certain there are projects that I wanted that I didn't get, and even worse, projects that I had that I hated, and ones where I wasn't working with great people or didn't feel like I was, and it was a slog every day to learn, to try to be productive, to try to even just be happy. It's the same also at the organizing committee for the Olympics. This was sometimes tedious and not exciting work. I can remember a time where I tried to make it better. I tried to apply some of the insights I had from McKinsey to some of the processes at the Olympics. After spending weeks building this macro model in Excel to help all of the volunteers get their preferred time spots on a 24 hour calendar for 77 days, I was told that I couldn't use it. I was like, what? All that time and effort that I put into what I thought, improving the process, making it more efficient, making it more effective was sort of all wasted.I had maybe some dreams or delusions of grandeur of this product that I built, sort of being rolled out across the entire organization and maybe it would be like a legacy of the organizing committee to be passed on to the next organizing committee, the next one, and there it ended with me using it by myself.Edward: When you left Wealthsimple, you did not move on to a new marketing role. What was your plan for what to do next and where did you end up at?Jason: It's similar to the transformation that I had at business school, which was driven by a lot of reflection and seeing sort of people around me be successful in their own career paths. I think I got the chance to do that a lot again at Wealthsimple, which is to think about the people that inspired me, the people that I looked up to, see their career paths and where they were going, and see which parts of those I wanted to take for myself and which ones I wanted to leave behind. I certainly saw lots of people continue on the marketing path, chase another CMO role or level up to a bigger brand with more spending, maybe one with more followers on Instagram, or maybe one that gets treated better by Google or Facebook because of their annual ad budget. That wasn't an interesting challenge for me. The people that I looked up to, they had taken marketing skills and they had created something entirely new. I think I got pulled into more of an entrepreneurship track and thinking, how can I take some of the skills that I have and apply it to something new and different, together with the people that I want to be building with.Edward: What's next for you?Jason: We are starting all over again. If you think about my career progression, I started at a really big firm, then I went to a smaller organization. I went to an even tinier organization, then I went to a 10-person startup. I think I finally—like Benjamin Button—gotten back down to being born and starting with just myself.What's next for me is building a software business in a sustainable way that's going to help really change the way that people meet each other, that people learn together, and that people grow as one and I'm really excited about it.Edward: That's great. Well, thank you, sir. We'll continue this conversation in part two, digging into Jason's experience at Wealthsimple. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

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

What You'll Learn From This Episode: How to deal with missing process in your company Not to feel overwhelmed and trust your team Putting accountability to people ​ Related Links and Resources: Jason and Mary Sturgeon host a weekly peer group for construction companies and it's called builder chat. If you go to www.arcadewayfinding.com/builder-chat , every Thursday at 1PM Pacific and talk about contractor things, and work through construction problems and company problems. Also check out their personal podcast at www.arcadewayfinding.com/critpath/ were they talk about fun topics, light topics but also impacting and heavy-hitting construction topics as well. Summary: Jason and Mary Sturgeon are both ‘Principal Wayfinders' at Arcade. Arcade Wayfinding is an organization based, first and foremost, on finding the best, most magnetic ways to help construction industry people to make beneficial changes to their habits and workflow, and to better understand the nature of their work. We lean into a hands-on approach, so our training series focus on workshops, games, interactive activities and keeping people talking, laughing and engaged. One of our core beliefs is that if you're not engaged, you're not learning. Here are the highlights of this episode: 1:26 Jason and Mary's ideal Client: The ideal client for us would be someone who is good at their business, they're good at their trade, and they are good people. It's really important to us that they are good people, the people you want to sit down and have dinner with. And there are people that need a little bit of help. Everybody doesn't know everything, and when you recognize that you are not an expert at everything under the sun, your first step would be to identify those resource experts and get them in your corners. So that you are better prepared to be able to deal with the challenges that life throws at you. 2:11Problem both of you helps solve: Mary: It's true that there are lot of little problems, but if you had to put it under one big heading, it will be missing process. We start building company out and we do the thing we do and we're good at it, we work with the people that we like and that works well. And at some point, the business will grow up to a point that we need processes to help us help our people get work done. Were a lot of construction owners is good in construction, but they're not good at process. Jason: So, they're very good at their trade, they're good at their discipline, but when it comes to building process where training to that process, that's where it all breaks down. 3:11Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Jason and Mary: Jason: The symptoms are pretty simple and we see them all the time. They feel like that they can't get away from the business, they feel like they can't take a vacation, they feel like there's no one around them that they can trust and delegate to. Mary: If they don't do it, it doesn't get done. Jason: And there is a sense that I wish we could just grow; I wish we could just scale. But you don't take a car that needs some engine work and make it go faster. You actually have to invest the time to make it run clean and then you can go as fast as you want. But we skip that step, it turns into frustration, friction, anger and turmoil within our team. 4:20What are some of the common mistakes that folks make before finding both of you and your solution: Mary: One of the first mistakes is that before they even start trying to solve the problem, they make the mistakes of thinking that they have a different problem than they have. Jason: They feel like it's special Mary: What people would tell us, their problem is, my team is not accountable; they don't have accountability. And they think that the problem is that they're hiring people who are not accountable people. And the truth is, accountability is an outcome, it's a thing that you have to build.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode: How to deal with missing process in your company Not to feel overwhelmed and trust your team Putting accountability to people ​ Related Links and Resources: Jason and Mary Sturgeon host a weekly peer group for construction companies and it's called builder chat. If you go to www.arcadewayfinding.com/builder-chat , every Thursday at 1PM Pacific and talk about contractor things, and work through construction problems and company problems. Also check out their personal podcast at www.arcadewayfinding.com/critpath/ were they talk about fun topics, light topics but also impacting and heavy-hitting construction topics as well. Summary: Jason and Mary Sturgeon are both ‘Principal Wayfinders’ at Arcade. Arcade Wayfinding is an organization based, first and foremost, on finding the best, most magnetic ways to help construction industry people to make beneficial changes to their habits and workflow, and to better understand the nature of their work. We lean into a hands-on approach, so our training series focus on workshops, games, interactive activities and keeping people talking, laughing and engaged. One of our core beliefs is that if you’re not engaged, you’re not learning. Here are the highlights of this episode: 1:26 Jason and Mary’s ideal Client: The ideal client for us would be someone who is good at their business, they're good at their trade, and they are good people. It's really important to us that they are good people, the people you want to sit down and have dinner with. And there are people that need a little bit of help. Everybody doesn't know everything, and when you recognize that you are not an expert at everything under the sun, your first step would be to identify those resource experts and get them in your corners. So that you are better prepared to be able to deal with the challenges that life throws at you. 2:11Problem both of you helps solve: Mary: It's true that there are lot of little problems, but if you had to put it under one big heading, it will be missing process. We start building company out and we do the thing we do and we're good at it, we work with the people that we like and that works well. And at some point, the business will grow up to a point that we need processes to help us help our people get work done. Were a lot of construction owners is good in construction, but they're not good at process. Jason: So, they're very good at their trade, they're good at their discipline, but when it comes to building process where training to that process, that's where it all breaks down. 3:11Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Jason and Mary: Jason: The symptoms are pretty simple and we see them all the time. They feel like that they can't get away from the business, they feel like they can't take a vacation, they feel like there's no one around them that they can trust and delegate to. Mary: If they don't do it, it doesn't get done. Jason: And there is a sense that I wish we could just grow; I wish we could just scale. But you don't take a car that needs some engine work and make it go faster. You actually have to invest the time to make it run clean and then you can go as fast as you want. But we skip that step, it turns into frustration, friction, anger and turmoil within our team. 4:20What are some of the common mistakes that folks make before finding both of you and your solution: Mary: One of the first mistakes is that before they even start trying to solve the problem, they make the mistakes of thinking that they have a different problem than they have. Jason: They feel like it's special Mary: What people would tell us, their problem is, my team is not accountable; they don't have accountability. And they think that the problem is that they're hiring people who are not accountable people. And the truth is, accountability is an outcome, it's a thing that you have to build.

I sat down with world-renowned vegan chef and author Jason Wyrick who has co-authored a NY Times Bestseller "21 Day Weight Loss Kickstart" as well as the book "Powerfoods for the Brain" with Dr. Neal Barnard, MD. Other books he has written are "Vegan Tacos" and "Vegan Mexico". He was the food editor for "Living the Farm Sanctuary Life" with Gene Baur and Gene Stone. He's a coauthor of "Clean Protein" with Kathy Freston and Bruce Friedrich. Jason has published the world's first vegan food magazine, The Vegan Culinary Experience which is now defunct and has been featured in the NY Times, the LA Times, VegNews, and Vegetarian Times. He has traveled the world teaching cooking classes and is the first vegan instructor to teach in the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu program. We talk about being vegan, health benefits, dairy, cheese, his home delivery service of amazing vegan food called The Vegan Taste and his restaurant Casa Terra. Jason gives us such a great insight of his progression of eating like most of the population to becoming a vegetarian and finally a full out vegan. It was such an honor for me, to have such a celebrated chef and author on my show. Because I've eaten his food, this conversation had so much more of a meaning due to my various attempts of being vegan myself. I hope you enjoy this conversation and the knowledge Jason shares with us all from his heart. Jason Wyrick: Vegan Food Delivery Service: The Vegan Taste Vegan Restaurant: Casa Terra Co-authored a NY Times Bestseller: "21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart" and "Powerfoods for the Brain" with Dr. Neal Barnard, MD. Other books he has written are "Vegan Tacos" and "Vegan Mexico"He was the food editor for "Living the Farm Sanctuary Life" with Gene Baur and Gene Stone. He's a coauthor of "Clean Protein" with Kathy Freston and Bruce Friedrich. Connect with Jason: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/thevegantaste/videos Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jason.wyrick.5 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/casaterrarestaurant Twitter: https://twitter.com/VeganChefJason https://youtu.be/6jzSCBvX7PA ********** Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass ********** 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. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#thejoecostelloshow Subscribe, Rate & Review:I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to https://joecostelloglobal.com/#thejoecostelloshow Follow Joe: Twitter: https://twitter.com/jcostelloglobal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jcostelloglobal/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jcostelloglobal/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUZsrJsf8-1dS6ddAa9Sr1Q?view_as=subscriber Transcript Jason Wyrick: Joe: All right, welcome, Chef Jason Wyrick, this has been a long time coming for me. I have looked forward to interviewing you the moment I tasted the food that was delivered to my house. So here we are and I'm so excited to have you on the podcast and I really appreciate the time and you actually saying yes to me, so thank you so much and welcome! Jason: Well, you're welcome, I appreciate you having me on here. Joe: Yeah man this is a, the way this came about for me was I got a flyer in the mail and it was one of those things like come to this free, healthy dinner to hear some, I don't know, some sort of talk about healthy eating and nutrition. And it happened to be from a nutritionist, a company in town, like an office in town. And I went and then I, I got pulled into it, you know. The food we had was great, but it wasn't necessarily vegan, it was just healthy. But then when I got into the program, which was not cheap by the way, but I felt I was worth it. They started to say, you know, do all this blood work and then we found out my, I knew my cholesterol is always a little high. So their program is doing vegan for 30 days on their menu. And then from there, you, you know, you the hope is you stay with it or you alter it a little bit or whatever, so that's how I got into this. And the problem for me was I literally was so busy I did not have the time to prep my food. It was taking me like half days on Saturdays, half days on Sundays. And I was like, my weekend is shot and I've prepped all this food and, and I, you know, any small amount of time I had was gone. So then I really went on the hunt for trying to find healthy vegan food that I could just literally eat and not do anything with. I had already done, I think I did Sun Basket a while back. You know, all the food prep things that you know Jason: Right. Joe: of and we talk about. So that's how you and I got connected. I, I don't even know how I ended up finding you. I say it was just purely, I was so desperate doing a Google search and I found you and I was like, SOLD! You mean I can just heat it and eat it, right? That's that's your thing, it's just heart and eat. So here we are. So I want to start from wherever you want to start. I know that this was a health thing for you in combination of other things. But knowing the stories that I've read and interviews I've seen of you, that this came about more for a health reason initially for you. And then it just blew up from there and and it became your passion, which is really cool to me, because this is what I preach on this show and on my videos, is that I want people to live or fulfilled lives doing what they love. And it's cool that you went into that direction knowing some of your past, which you can talk about om how this all started for you. So take Jason: I'm Joe: It away! Jason: Sure it was a kind of a winding journey, I think I mean, it, it seems kind of straightforward when you look at it. I was unhealthy, I went vegan, I got my health back. Hurray! But that's, that's really not how it started, I mean. It's starts when I'm a little kid because, I think I didn't eat great, but I didn't eat bad for the kind of regular American diet. Which meant, you know, my mom cooked some of the meals and occasionally ordered out and I played sports all the time, I was always active. So I was a super healthy rail thin kid. And then as I got older, towards the end of high school and in college, I kept eating the same way I had been eating the last few years and last few years had changed because my mom went to work, she got busier and so our food choices changed to, "What, which one of these seven different chicken dishes do you want tonight that I know how to make? or would you like Taco Bell or Burger King or Pizza Hut or something like that?" So when I stopped playing sports all the time and was super active, the calorie and taken and honestly, like the terrible food I was eating, started to catch up with me. And so I, I probably put on 30 pounds from when I was 16 to probably 19 and just kept going up about 10 pounds a year from there. Jason: So I was already getting overweight. And then right at the end to college, I started learning how to cook. So I went to, I went to this really great Egyptian restaurant in Fort Worth where I went to college, had the ah this amazing meal with the first amazing meal I'd ever had. And I was like, "I want to learn how to eat like this!" And I'm broke because I'm in college. So I started to learn how to cook for myself. And then right after that, it was like two months after that, I went vegetarian and that was solely for ethical reasons. No real idea of the health impact or anything like that, that it has. I didn't care at the time, I was just going to keep eating food that was super tasty and not worry about the health part. So, of course, even going vegetarian, a couple gaining weight. In fact, I was kind of a stupid vegetarian, I'll just be blunt about it. I took the meat I was eating and I replaced it with blocks of cheese. So instead of these instead of like these super fatty steak fajitas loaded with sour cream and cheese that I was eating before. Now I was eating cheese lover's pizza from Pizza Hut and the additional topping was extra cheese. Exactly! [laughter] Joe: [laughter] Jason: And that was that was my dinner. I was with someone at the time, she had her own pizza. It was it was terrible. And so I became incredibly overweight. I weighed about 330 pounds and I got type two diabetes by the time I was in my mid 20s. And I was, I was faced with having to take insulin for the rest of my life and in basically starting to deteriorate even more. Like I was already deteriorating, my eyesight sucked, sleeping 10 to 12 hours a day. Everything you can think of with Type two diabetes was going wrong with me. So I was facing having to take medication and deteriorate for the rest of my life, which was probably not going to be that long at this point or changed my diet. And so it's, it's funny because I was, I've been vegetarian for five years and I had, I had heard of vegans, but I didn't really know what they were. And I even made fun of it a little bit.[laughter] Joe: Right. Right. Jason: This was back in the late 90s. And then all of a sudden it's 2001 and I'm faced with having to make this choice, do I do I give up this food that I love, which is cheese, and live a better life or just keep going with the cheese and and it's funny because even though it it sounds like a no brainer, like eat cheese and die or give up cheese and regain your health. I mean, it sounds like an obvious choice, but there is so much there's so much pain involved in a lifestyle change, that the stress of that was really bad in itself and, and going vegan in 2001 when really no one else around me was, was vegan. It meant I had to learn how to cook, I had to learn how to fend for myself, I had to completely change all these foods that I knew how to make and eat when I was growing up. And so it was super stressful at first. And so I relaxed a little bit and decided I was going to give myself a cheat day. So I was going to be a cheating vegan once a week. So every Wednesday night I'd go out and I get all you can eat enchiladas at my favorite Mexican restaurant and they bring them out in pairs they'll bring you two enchiladas at a time. And the first time I went in there, the waiter was like, "OK, yeah, whatever, it cool! He brings out enchiladas, except I eat 14 of them. Joe: Oh, my gosh. Jason: And then they come back the next week and all of a sudden the waiter's like, "Hmmmmm" because I need another 14 enchiladas. So by the third week, the waiters like "I hate you but I have to serve you anyway." Joe: You're like the, you're like that all you can eat buffet, crab, Jason: Right. [laughter] Joe: Leg guy. [laughter] Jason: It's it's probably familial in some way because I know my, my little brother would go to a Mongolian stir fry places and he take the bowl and see how much he could pack in the bowl because it was one pass through. And so he'd, he'd have the regular bowl and it only come up like three inches and then there was like the six inch pile of stuff on top Joe: Oh, Jason: Of the. [laughter] Joe: My gosh. It's. Jason: So there must be something familial about that, that buffet all you can eat thing. I, so I, but anyway, the point is, I, I did that for a few months and even then I managed to start losing weight and my symptoms went away. So I'd be vegan for the entire week, except for this one, one rather egregious cheat meal but it was still just one meal. And then it went to once every other week when I would go to this place. And then once a month. And then I remember the last time I purposely had went to this place in order cheese that I order in the enchiladas and I, it was a weird experience because I looked at them and I realized they didn't taste good to me anymore. They didn't have that, that feeling you get when you cheese that Homer Simpson like, "dooonnuuttt" like when you eat dairy, so I didn't have that anymore. They didn't taste good and I realized I was ordering them out of habit and not because I actually wanted them. So I didn't even eat the enchiladas, I pushed them away, paid the waiter, who probably sighed relief Joe: Right. Jason: that I was getting had their there and that was the last time I ever stepped foot in that place. And at that point, I was a full on vegan, which took me about eight months. And it also coincided with me completely getting rid of diabetes. Jason: And Joe: Incredible! Jason: After the first year, I dropped about 60 pounds and then when I added in some real exercise, I dropped another 60, so I dropped about 120 pounds over two years. Joe: That's incredible. And I think Jason: Yeah. Joe: What people need to understand about you, you're a big guy. Like I know Jason: Yeah. Joe: from the interviews and stuff, 6' 3", right? Yeah, I mean, that's you know, and and I think at one point you said you, you went to school and lived in San Antonio...Fort Worth, sorry. So you're like in steak town. Jason: Yeah, I mean, Joe: Right. Jason: The nickname of Fort Worth is Cowtown. Joe: Yeah, ok, so there you go! Yeah, so that must, the be, that must be hard. It's just the stigmatism with, you know, vegan and yoga and all of those kind Jason: Ok. Joe: Of things. Right. It's tough. Jason: It depends. OK, it was weird because Texas is really interesting. I mean, I grew up here in Arizona but my dad is Texan. And so I was already pretty familiar with Texas before I actually moved there for school and stayed there afterwards. And Texas has this reputation of being big and boisterous and rednecky and it is. But it also has has this huge liberal side and has this huge health side, has this huge vegan side to it. I mean, I remember when I was in college, I went to the Texas Vegetarian Chili Cookoff. And this was in the mid 90s and it was like this huge gathering of people from all over Texas doing this Chili Cookoff. Like Texas had one of the biggest vegetarian societies in the 90s, at least when I was there participating in that stuff. And so Texas is just this really cool mix of all these different things, religion and Atheism and big hair money and rebel activists and steak eaters and vegans and no one is quiet about it. Maybe that's the one thing about Texans is, you know, everybody kind of gets by in the big city but they're, they're friendly but boisterous about that stuff, which makes it really cool. Anyway, that's my tangent on Texas. Joe: No, but that's great, because it's exactly you, you saying that is exactly how it educates people to know that it's not just big hats and boisterous voices and steak and whatever, it's, I had no idea that you would think that long ago people were vegan in the state of Texas. Jason: I mean, I think, I think Fort Worth had one of the first vegan restaurants in the country, which was Spiral Diner that opened up in 2001. Joe: Yes, I don't think anybody would ever know that. So that's, that's cool. So the tangent was great. OK, so you are, this is what year now that you go full vegan? Jason: So that was the, I started the beginning in 2001 and then I was full vegan by the end of 2001. Joe: Got it. Jason: And I think, I think I might be more like a lot of other people with this, like I've, you know, I've written books with a lot of the vegan doctors and usually their message is that's all or nothing proposition. You go from zero to 60. And from a physiological standpoint, you're going to regain your health really fast that way. But if you're miserable doing it, chances are you're going to quit out. And so I think for a lot of people transitioning, as long as they have it in their mind that it is a transition, it makes it easier for people. So that's that's what I did. It took me it took me about eight months to fully transition over. And I tried to zero to 60 approach for Joe: Right. Jason: three weeks, and it, I was miserable. Joe: Yeah, and for me, the 30 day thing I did not find hard, the part I found hard about it was the meal prep and that's literally what was difficult for me. And I even heard you in some other interviews, the good thing that we have going for us these days is that it's, it's much more accepted in the world. And when you go out to a restaurant, there are options that would have never been there 10 years ago. Jason: Yeah, there are plenty of options, Joe: Right. Jason: Which has made it an interesting landscape for vegan businesses. Because I think in the past, vegan's gravitated towards vegan businesses because that was their only choice. And now at least in the Phoenix area, vegan businesses are just one amongst a bunch of other vegan options. Joe: Right, but I think the key and the reason I was so excited to have you on is what helped me get through the, the, the next 30 days that they asked me to do because they could see that my cholesterol was dropping. So Jason: Great! Joe: They were like, will you, "Are you willing to buy into doing it another 30 days? And towards the middle or end of the first, as I think when I came across your website and then it was easier for me to say yes, because I literally just could not afford the time to prep. Jason: Right. Right. Joe: But but besides that, the biggest thing for me was the taste. And I don't know, like this could be a trademark or something that I'm saying, but I didn't know vegan food could taste so good, and you can still Jason: No it's true, Joe: if you want. If it's not taken by somebody, it's all yours. But, yeah, that's what it was for me, man. When I first dug into it and the way I worked with you was that I wanted it spicy, which you were all down for. I think even when I, I got from my doctor what I needed to do, he said, OK, well, if you're gonna get this food from The Vegan Taste, just make sure, ask them if it's low and oil, right?. And it so... Joe: It everything was a yes. Like all, you know, that was when I wrote to you, Yes, you know, it's either low or minimal oil or no oil. And I can get it the way I like it, so you made it spicy, which is the way you said you liked it in email. Jason: Right. Joe: So it was like the perfect marriage. I was like sold! Jason: Yeah, I think that's, that's the key to getting people to make a change. It's about honestly, I think it's like about the in the environment that you put people in. So I know Dan Buettner, who wrote the Blue Zones by it. And one of the things that he told me that really impacted the way I thought about food and getting food to people and the way we treat people, is that the the biggest determinant for someone making choices that let them live a long time was not their willpower, was not a doctor's prescription or anything like that, it was the environment in which they lived. And so if the choices were easy to make, to go out and exercise, statistically speaking, more people would go out and exercise...that way. And so to me, food is part of the environment that you're in. And so the easier I can make it on someone to make a better choice for themselves, the bigger chance they are they're going to have to actually make that choice. And so for me, that's putting ready to eat meals in front of someone that's going to make them happy. Joe: Yeah. Jason: The less you have to worry about it, the easier it is for you to be healthy. Joe: Yeah, it's it was so nice to find the website. It was that, I could hear that sound when the heavens open, I was like "Thank you!". It's the only thing that's gonna keep me on track. Now, you know, before, before we get too deep into this, I'm not full vegan. Since doing nutrition program, I've cut out a lot of, like I would use, I would snack before dinner. I'd be so hungry I'd come home at four o'clock, whatever, and I'd pull out the the block of cheddar cheese and some Triscuits and, you know, just take the edge off. I, I stopped doing that a lot more than I use, you know, it's, it's cut way back to almost minimal, you know, to none. I don't drink, I used to drink half and half of my coffee and now all I use is either oat milk or almond milk. So I've completely switched over to that type of stuff. So while we're on the subject of, of, you know, how this has helped you, why do you think dairy is so bad? Is it just that it's like, was it not meant to be eaten or drank? Is it just like we've created this product that should not have existed? Jason: I think so. I mean, dairy's primary uses to grow a baby. And so you're you're consuming something that's meant to grow another being and as, as adults, we're not, I don't think we're supposed to be consuming foods that are continue endlessly making us grow to that scale. Like I have a five year old daughter, I watch how much she eats and sometimes as much as I do, because she, she's always out there running around and she's, like I look at her in a week later, she's taller and I'm like, oh, my God! And so calorically dense foods are good for her, I mean, that's why human mothers breastfeed and you know, all this other stuff. But then when you stop growing and you keep eating those foods, you're consuming growth hormone and all this other stuff that I don't think we're meant to be consuming. And then, you know, there are a couple other issues that go with it, which it turns out casein, which is the protein in milk seems to be carcinogenic, even, even in that milks appropriate species after their weaning, it seems it seems like the incidence of cancer goes up in that species if they continue to consume milk even from their own species after they're supposed to stop drinking it. And then, I mean, look at us where we're drinking stuff that's meant to grow a baby cow into this big monster cow compared to humans I mean a cow is pretty heavy. Jason: So, you know, there's, there's that it's, it's loaded with fat and it's all if you have cheese, it's all condensed down into this calorically dense product with all these other, all these other ingredients into it that are probably not meant for us to just get fuel. And it's all like if you take milk, milk is this big volume, take cheese and it comes down to  this little thing, all that condensed down. It's like a black hole of food. And then you're you're eating that, so, of course, no wonder you're you're getting fat, you're having arteriosclerosis as you age and all these other problems. So that's why I think the health problem is with dairy. From, from an evolutionary standpoint, it's was a good thing because you could have this nutrient dense food even in times of famine. That's, that was one of the benefits of cheese because cheese was basically shelf stable in a long period of human history when we didn't really have very many shelf stable foods, the same way that after a fashion beer, a shelf stable, just one of the reasons that beer was traded there and there are all these ways to preserve foods during times of famine and we just don't live in that anymore. Joe: Right. So on the dairy part of this, what I guess people have a hard time thinking of how they would substitute a cheese for these recipes, and I know that in you know, you have this enchilada recipe and you, there's I mean, you have a ton of different recipes. What are just some off the top of your head, some substitutes that you do use for cheese? Like, how would someone make a pizza? What would they put on it as their cheese? Jason: You know, it depends. There are a lot of nondairy commercial cheeses out there. I think from a health standpoint, they're good insofar as you're not getting casein and all these hormones that go with it, but I can't pretend that they are health food. Joe: Right. Jason: I mean, it's base, it's like cheese is solidified fat when it's dairy and the non vegan cheeses are still a solidified fat. They just have all the other junk that goes with them. So, you know, if you if you limit that look, if you're going to have a pizza and you have it once a week and you put some vegan cheese that's made out of almonds or cashews or something like that on it, you're going to be OK. If you do that every single day, you're not going to be so OK anymore. You can still be a junk food vegan. In fact, it's easier now to be a junk food vegan than it is to be a healthy vegan, because you can run over to Carl's Jr. and get a Beyond burger, that's, you know, still loaded up with all this fat and it's still a burger where as when I went vegan almost 20 years ago, if I was craving a burger, I had to make it myself. Joe: All right. Yeah, I mean, the creativity Jason: So that's. Joe: That, that you have to come up with for these recipes must be daunting. Jason: I sometimes, but only because when I do a lot of recipes, Joe: Right. Jason: I mean most, most chefs at a restaurant might do 30 recipes throughout the year. If they're really pushing themselves. I think with the delivery service, we're doing 300. Joe: WOW! Jason: Every, every year, at each year, it's different too. Joe: Ok. So you're rotating 300 recipes a year from The Vegan Taste. Jason: And we're just making about as we cook every week. Joe: It's amazing! Jason: Yeah, it's, it's, it's daunting, but it's cool. Joe: Yeah, it's. Jason: Yeah, I mean, and like back to the cheese thing, sometimes it's replacing that, that fatty mouthful, mouthfeel that cheese gives you so you can even use something like an avocado or you can use, what are my favorites is this thing called pipián verde, which is just this ah pepitas and tomatillo puree. It's it's a classic Mexican dip and I'll just use that on enchiladas or we'll make our own cheese at the restaurant, sometimes we'll make it just out of almonds and some other ingredients and we'll make our own queso fresco like that and we make our own mozzarellas and stuff. That's a little laborious, I think, for the for the home cook, it's just getting that, that creamy texture which you can get from nuts and seeds. Joe: Right. Yeah. Because even on the recipes at Casa Terra, your restaurant, I saw that there was I think you have is it brick oven pizzas or just... Jason: Yeah, Joe: Or Jason: We have worked fire Joe: Wood Jason: With Joe: Fire. Jason: Fire pizzas Joe: Right. Sorry. Wood fire. Yeah. And so and I did see one of the recipes are one of the descriptions of the you know, the pizza said mozzarella. So I was like, OK, how does he doing that? Jason: Right. It's just a, when you get to that type of cheese, that's it's a little time consuming and it's a mix of art and chemistry. Joe: Yup. It's just it's incredible. So I know we just kind of skipped over it a little bit but we talked about your daughter and, and I and I know we talked about, we didn't quite say that she's vegan, but I know that she is from based on my research about you. And I know it's tough with kids these days with all of the gluten allergies and, and everything that's going on that or used to be a lot tougher. Now, its parents are more aware there are more options and I would think that it's almost the same thing with your daughter as it is with a child that has a gluten allergy. When they go to a house for a birthday party and let's just go back to using pizza as a example, because that's how I grew up, right? That your parents would buy a bunch of pizzas, and... What does she do in that case? Or how how do you let the parents know that she's vegan and that, you know, that isn't something she would (A.) like to eat or (B.) she shouldn't eat or (C.) it might make her sick of she eats because she's not used to eating cheese. Jason: We just we tell them and ask them not to make a big deal out of it. And then we make sure our daughter has food that totally owns everybody else's. Joe: Perfect. Jason: I Joe: That's awesome! Jason: When she was in school before COVID hit, the teachers were asking if we could bring stuff for them. Joe: That is so funny. I can imagine, no I, listen, I know what it smells and tastes like. Every kid we sit there with, their pizza from Dominos going, WWO!, what are you eating? I'll trade you, I'll trade you two slices for that, that's perfect. Well good, she's totally vegan incorrect? That's amazing. So you, what is the Vcology project? Is that how you say it? Vcology Project? Jason: Vcology. Joe: Vcology. So. Jason: It's pretty much the umbrella for all the stuff that I do. Joe: That's what I thought, I just wanted to make sure. And I, because I know that you spoke about The Vegan Taste, which is the home delivery food service, Casa Terra, which is the restaurant out in Glendale, Arizona. And then I heard you speak about other things potentially coming down down the road, so I assumed that that was the umbrella where all of these things would fall under. Jason: Yeah, I mean, we're working on commercializing our cheeses on a large scale. We've already had one big vegan restaurant chain express some interest in it, which was really cool, it came out of the blue. But that was, that was a nice surprise. And Joe: Yeah. Jason: And we just want to roll out really high quality vegan cheeses onto the, onto the food service market and then retail, if we can. Joe: That's great. Jason: But if I can. I mean, if I can get, like some of the best restaurants in Phoenix using high quality of vegan cheeses, all of a sudden it opens up really great menu options for vegans around the entire town. Joe: Right. And I Jason: And Joe: Was Jason: I Joe: Thinking Jason: Think Joe: Good Jason: Go ahead. Joe: While I was sitting Jason: I think. Joe: On the dairy part of it, and I didn't even know that this underlying thing about the cheese had a broader scope or what was happening. I just I kind of chose the one thing that I know, like you, you know, it's like, how do you have ravioli? How do you have a pizza? How do you, if you you're so used to having half and half in your coffee, how do you make the move away from dairy? And I think that's, I think that's harder almost than the meat part of this or that Jason: It's way Joe: Or the Jason: Harder. Joe: Protein part of it. Right. Jason: I didn't know why until Dr. Barnard told me a few years ago that the casein in cheese is called the casomorphin and that basically means that acts like morphine. It acts like an opiate in your system. And I was like, "That makes sense!!", because one day I just gave up meat and it was like, whatever but when I gave up cheese, I had withdrawal symptoms. I was jonesing, I mean, like the hands were shaking and I had headaches and I was irritable and everything else that I had heard from people that were trying to give up cigarettes or drugs or something like that, I was going through and I'm like, "What the hell is going on?" That was, that was one way where I knew, like, I've really gotta get off this stuff, because Joe: All right. Jason: If I'm having that reaction, this is probably pretty bad for me. But it was a few years later when he told me why. And so Joe: That's Jason: Anyway, Joe: It. Jason: I think that's why cheese is so hard. Joe: That's incredible. How did the two of you get connected for that book? Your book? I wrote it down. I'm going to have it in the show Jason: Sure. Joe: Notes. Jason: The "21-day Weight Loss kickstart". So he was coming through town to do a talk and they wanted someone to do a cooking demo and I was the only one in Phoenix, doing this kind of stuff, so I just volunteered to do it. They were gonna pay me and I was like, don't worry about it, I'll just I'll just do it. And so we became friends through that and then I started teaching the cancer project classes here in Phoenix for a few years, which later became their Food for Life program. And, and during that, I just developed tons of recipes every single week. Because I think back then they were kind of in the same boat that a lot of healthy, healthy doctors are in, we're like, they're like, you have to change your diet. Here's how you do it. But they're not really experts at the here's how you do part. Joe: Right. Jason: And so, you know, their recipes were easy to do, but they weren't necessarily great. They were just like, "Ahhh". And so during that class, I just continuously develop stuff that was usually easy to make, but also really spectacular. And then because of that, we just wrote the book together. Joe: And that's really cool. It's just amazing how things, you know, you can make these connections and they just turn into something amazing like that, so, yeah. I'm trying not to skip around, there's so many things I have to ask you, I have so many notes, it's like this is, like I said, I, I was doing the meals for when I was doing the 30 day thing, basically for lunch and dinner. And then I started to do them just for lunch because my partner, Jo Ellen, we were like we were eating separate times, separate things at dinner, it felt like it wasn't this Jason: Right. Joe: Community. Jason: You loose the social part. Joe: Yeah, and so it's this balance for me. But so I thought at least at a bare minimum, and I think this is one thing that we talk about stepping stones and doing this in stages, is that it's worth at least trying to say to yourself, OK, "I'm going to eat vegan for lunch", just take a meal of the Jason: Right. Joe: day and say, this is what I'm going to do. And literally, breakfast is super easy because for me, it's, it's like a vegan smoothie, right? There's nothing and so I don't have to worry about that. It's not sausage, an egg and bacon and all this other stuff. So then you handle the vegan lunch part and you're already better than probably seventy five percent of the world in regards to how healthy you're eating. Jason: That's Joe: And Jason: What Joe: Then. Jason: I think. Joe: Right and then you just. So and that's kind of the approach I took. I don't know yet, just being honest with you, if I can completely eliminate that occasional steak or burger or Jason: Right. Joe: And I'm sure I can at some point, like for me, like you, I, I refuse to go on medication. So I'm 58 years old and I'm like, I'm not going on cholesterol medication. I don't take anything for high blood pressure. I'm not going to do any of that stuff. So if it's a, if it's food, it's going to make the difference, then that's the difference that I'll make. Go into the gym five days a week is already easy for me. But if I have to do that and get rid of the burgers and the steaks and whatever, and that's the mood that I would make. Jason: And if you could make that, did you make it fun and pleasurable, then why not? Joe: Right. That's Jason: If Joe: It. Jason: It's this chore, you know, like most people are gonna be like, ahhh screw it. I don't want to do it, Joe: Now, Jason: But. Joe: For me, it's it's talking my girlfriend into seeing if we can do it together, so that'll be the that'll be the piece we'll see. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about, oh, I also heard an interview where you said that your daughter growing up with two chefs. So is your wife also working with you at either at The Vegan Taste or Casa Terra? Jason: She she was Joe: Ok. Jason: Doing The Vegan Taste for a while. Joe: Ok. Jason: I mean, for, for years, she was with me in the kitchen. And sometimes when I was off doing other stuff, she was running at it for months at a time. Joe: Got it. Jason: But I now we're in a situation where it's hard for us to split our time like that. And so she takes care of the household and raises our daughter while I take care of the business. We tried where we were splitting it both ways and it was like, I think it's hard to multitask. Right? It's hard to be great at a bunch of different stuff at the same time. And so we just finally decided, well, I'll have to go off and kind of slug it out and be the champion for the business, while she's the champion for keeping the rest of the family sane. Joe: Which is the admirable thing for sure. So The Vegan Taste, let's talk about that really quickly. So The Vegan Taste as home delivery, vegan meals that come in these great packages that are, like you said, are the goal is to heat and eat. And Jason: Right. Joe: They I don't know. I'll let you just talk about it because I don't want to, I know I had a certain schedule and the whole thing with the coolers, but I'd like you to describe it so that the audience will know what it's all about and then they can make their decision from there. Jason: Yeah, it's it's super easy. So the menu changes every single week. It's a fixed menu. You put your order in by Friday night. My crew comes into the kitchen on the weekends, makes everything. We plate it up over the weekend. Pack it up for delivery on Monday and then my team of drivers go out every Monday and they deliver all the meals at once for your entire week, that Monday. They leave it in a cooler loaded up with ice packs so even in the middle of July, the meals will stay chilled until you can pick them up and then you put them in your fridge. I know, some of our clients will reheat them on the stovetop. They'll take the ingredients out and reheat them on the stove, top it honestly, talking to people, most of them stuff it in the microwave and they have a lunch in two minutes. Joe: Yup and those containers are microwaveable. Jason: Yes, Joe: Is that correct? Jason: Yes. Joe: Yes. I know I've done both. I've depending on what the food was, sometimes I would heat it on the stove and sometimes I would heat it in the microwave. And I think that's all, also another thing in my brain about microwaves, they know make me a little nervous thinking that maybe something's there that eventually Jason: Right. Joe: someone's going to admit to, so if I if I have enough time, I'll go to the stove. If I don't, I just use the Jason: I Joe: Microwave. Jason: Am exactly the same way. I mean, I don't even have time to cook for myself very much anymore, so so I use our delivery service for me and most of the time I just slide the contents out of the container and right to a pan. Joe: So in regards to the meals that are available, is it, are they just lunches and dinners? Are they breakfast, lunch and dinners or... Jason: It's basically lunches and dinners right now, but will add in a breakfast option and the juicing option and some desserts pretty soon. Joe: And and like me, at one point, I was getting doubles of things so that I could have something for lunch and then something completely different for dinner. So I assume you have clients across the board that are only lunch, only dinner or a combination of enough meals for, is that how many, how many Jason: Yeah, Joe: can they get? Is it Jason: So, Joe: The. Jason: Yeah, basically we do six different dishes every week and you can get a single portion of each one or you can get a double portion of each one. And the people that want to have our meals for lunch and dinner, get the double portion. Joe: Right and that's what I was doing for a time, that's, that's right. And then in my case, I said that I wanted it spicy but so you actually keep tabs of certain things that people request on a small, I assume a small level because you can't be doing personalized, you know, things across the board for everybody. Jason: Yeah, we have spice is one of the standard options we have for people. And then we have a gluten free option, soy free option, although we use pretty limited soy already anyway. And then no oil option in the meals, again, are are pretty much pretty low oil already. So we just talked to people like, do you really, really want no oil? Or is that that's that you're trying to minimize your your oil? Are you trying to minimize your soy? Are you trying to minimize gluten? Because we don't we don't use those types of ingredients heavily in the meal service. And then if there's something that we can, leave off as a garnish for someone like if someone's like, "I hate right onions." I'll tell them, you know, if it's mixed into the dish, we can't change it but if it's a garnish, we can make a note to leave it off for you. Joe: Right. Jason: I mean, most people are good about it, but then sometimes I get someone that sends me a list of like 10 different things, I can't, sorry, I can't do that. Joe: Thank God I do that I don't want to sit here and look at you in the camera and go, oh, I was one of those people. And Jason: No, not Joe: I Jason: At Joe: Think Jason: All. Joe: The only thing that I said, I everything was great for me. The only thing I request that I think was less tofu in some of my stuff only because I'm I, it's just me getting used to it, it's it, and, and it's not, I would, I wouldn't even say it's a texture thing for me because I eat oysters, right? That's about as weird of a texture as you can Jason: That's sure. Joe: get. So I don't know why I definitely have had tofu from your food service, that was amazing. And it's almost like it's firm and some of it sometimes is even like crispy, like it's it's hasn't where I've had it other times where it just, just, it's just weird. Jason: Yeah, I mean. Joe: I don't know if there's good or bad tofu, maybe there's just the quality of it, I don't know. Jason: It's the way, it's the way it's prepared. And I think it's also what you're used to growing up with. I mean, if you're used to growing up with, say, diced up firm tofu in a miso soup, you're not going to bat an eye at it. But if you're not used to that, the texture might be weird for you. And I think, when dealing with American culture where we're not used to that stuff, too many people just take tofu and throw it in a soup or a stew and they're like, "Okay, that's good enough." But it's not I mean, it's like to me that's like throwing in a raw hunk of meat and is something and being like whatever. So, Joe: Yeah, Jason: You know, it's just it's Joe: Ok. Jason: All in the preparation. Joe: Ok, good to know because I started to get to like it. And thanks to you once again, because I was definitely I grew up with, in an Italian restaurant family and my father was a chef and so all of this stuff is new to me. Jason: Right! Joe: I was eating pizza and pasta and bread and, and you name it. So I wanted to ask you about Cassa Terra. I noticed that on the website, like a lot of places, especially during this time we're living in right now with COVID-19, that the kitchen is closed for the summer, right? That's what it says on the website. Jason: Yeah, Joe: Is that true? OK. Jason: A lot of the high end restaurants, it seems, around town actually close up for the summer. Unless there are these big corporate things that can afford to take the loss that restaurants just suffer with the summer here. Joe: Is Casa Terra where you do actually all the food prep and making them? So that that kitchen is still being used for the food delivery service? Jason: Yeah, it's our Joe: It's. Jason: R&D kitchen and our delivery service kitchen. We do catering and stuff out of there, too. Joe: When does the restaurant open or when do you expect it to open back up in the fall or ? Jason: I'm not sure yet Joe: Ok. Jason: Because honest answer is for a, for the type of food that we do, our location is not that great. And so if we can find a location that's more central or on the east side, that makes more sense for us right now than trying to just reopen in Glendale. And Phoenix is a weird city, so, we have these really accessible freeways and it's actually pretty easy to get around here but I don't know if our food culture is is there yet, because if someone else to drive more than 20 minutes here for food, it's painful. And the chances are they won't do it. Joe: You know. Jason: Or if they do it, they'll come once a year. And Joe: Yeah. Jason: So it's, it's difficult that way we're compared to like Los Angeles and New York or Chicago, people will spend an hour getting to, getting to a place to have dinner. And if it's a good meal, that's just part of the it's part of the experience. That might not be a great part of the experience, but it's something you're willing to do. So. Joe: Yeah, absolutely, Jason: So Joe: Yeah. It's Jason: We Joe: Funny. Jason: Have to be, yeah, we have to be in a more central location. Joe: Yeah, because I know we're in, and I live in Arcadia and the boundary for me is pretty much like the 51. If it's on the other side of the 51, I have a hard time going that far west but I understand that. You, one of the things that I did read was that about the Le Cordon Bleu the school and it was something about you being, was it the first graduate of vegan Jason: First Joe: Or Jason: Instructor. Joe: First instructor of vegan? Jason: Remember when it was theater, 2007 or 2008 that I was teaching at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute Joe: Yeah. Jason: And right when I, right when I started teaching there, they became part of the Le Cordon Bleu program. And so I, because I became the first official vegan instructor in that program. Joe: That's really cool! Jason: There was there was cool. Joe: Yeah. There's so many things, the other thing was I remember either hearing or reading that philosophy was your major? And I think what, what struck me about it, when I when I read it and then who you are and, and I even, there was an interview about making the argument of why to go vegan, like how when someone find something like this and this is why this has been like I've wanted to talk about, even though I haven't gone full vegan, I think that the health benefits are so important and just the, the eliminating of dairy alone. I mean, I've told people when they said, oh, yeah, you know, it sucks getting old. I'm like, well, I'm 58, I agree with you, but I don't, I'm, I don't wake up feeling achy. And, and, and I never did a lot of dairy, but even cutting out what I've already done, I think the inflammation piece of this is what other, you know, is another part that people are missing. Jason: I'd, Joe: And so, Jason: Yeah, it's. Joe: You know, so getting back to the philosophy part about how you're able to convey this in a not like beating someone over the head with a club, you've got to do this, it's, it's the only way. Your approach to it is your first of all, your demeanor of how your, you know, your a 6' 3" guy who you would never think if I met you in the street, would say you're vegan. And then the way you intelligently talk about the food and then the bonus of all of it is how it tastes. And so there's just so many amazing things about this, it's why I was so excited to finally do this. Jason: Well, cool! Thank you. Joe: So the Jason: It's. Joe: Go ahead with the phil..., with the philosophy part of this, I think it's helped a lot. Jason: That that's actually what got me to go vegetarian, but also it it taught me a few things about the way people make decisions because I socially and just because of the way I was raised, I didn't want to go vegetarian because it meant changing my lifestyle. And intellectually, I've been kind of bandying it about for a couple months before I pulled the trigger on it. And I didn't do it, it was just something I had thought about it. And then I had an epiphany because I was watching, I was playing with my cat. And I, intellectually, I knew my cat is this other being with its own thoughts and her own emotions. But then there was something where I was just playing with her and I had that emotional epiphany and that's where it went off and I was like, I understood that my cat was this separate creature that was valuable and she had her own rich emotional life and because she was sitting there problem solving and she was getting excited about bringing this little bottle cap back to me and playing fetch with me. It wasn't like this, this robotic, emotionless, thinking-less, piece of matter that, that's how Descartes used to view animals and that's how he justified doing all these horrible experiments he did on them because he, you know, even though they would, they would scream and all this other stuff, he passed it off as they didn't have a soul and they weren't really conscious and all this other BS. And so you can intellectually know that, but then you have the understanding there is that connection. And within a second I was like, wait a minute, it's not ok for me to just, like, take a hammer and smash my cat apart right now, that's really jacked up, that's something serial killers do. Why? Why can't I do that to my cat but why am I paying someone to do it to a cow? And I was like, "I have to stop!" So I stopped, went vegetarian and then spent a month arguing against vegetarianism to see if any of the arguments hold up. And none of the arguments were self-consistent. And so I was like, I'm going to stay vegetarian. And that was the the rational part of that. But what I learned was I had to have that emotional epiphany to fully make that leap in my decision making. And then when I went vegan, it was even more so because I was doing it for health reasons. But then I found out about factory farming. So it's ironic because being vegetarian for a few years, I had no idea about factory farming and then all of a sudden I'm looking at it for health reasons and learning about factory farming and I know that it's what happens in a factory farming is horrible and I don't want to partake in it. But yet I'm going out and having all you can eat enchiladas once a week. Because I emotionally had that tie to the enchiladas and, and so I think for most people, decision making is ah, pain pleasure balance. And it's, it's a very immediate and very immediate decision. And it's funny because people that can make that decision for the long term, we call them wise, because in the short term, going out and jogging or lifting weights sucks for most people. But the wise people go out and do that because, you know, it's going to pay off in the long term. And so I think going through that myself, even though I was trying to be rational about it and I knew what the right decision was and not being able to make it because I had this emotional thing is what got me into food in the first place. Because I knew if I could if I could take the pain part of that calculus away for people and just give them an environment where they could make a good decision for themselves and for the planet and for the animals, then, then I had to do it. Joe: Yeah, it's, it's really cool. I mean, I learned so much more about you just doing the research that I wanted to do up front and, and I think it's important how the philosophy part of your, what your brain has done through, you know, getting that degree in school and then then I heard about the soul sucking marketing job that, you Jason: Oh, Joe: Know. Jason: It was horrible. Joe: Right. Yeah. And it's and this is it all plays, this is why this Jason: It's. Joe: is such a cool interview for me. And I don't want to keep you any longer because I know that, you know, you work really hard and but I, I would love to do more at some point, Jason: Yeah, that'll be Joe: You Jason: Fun. Joe: Know, it's just cool that you, you are doing your passion. It really means a lot to you. You're you know, you eat, sleep and breathe what you preach, but you preach it in a way that it's not preaching. The food tastes amazing! It was just a godsend for me to find it. We find out tonight as you're setting up here and give it a talk, you play the drums. It's like, what, what more of a kinship could we possibly have? And all I do is try to preach on my podcast and on my, you know, social media and all that is just people following their dream. And it's really cool to see you do this. It's, it's, it's great. And and I'm glad you're healthy. Glad you made the choice when you did. You're here Jason: Yeah. Joe: To help keep us all healthy and feed us. Jason: Well it's funny, so it's funny you brought that up, because I feel like I'm in another transition point in what I'm doing because, ah you know, I had this amazing journey where I lost all this weight, I cured my diabetes, became a chef and went and helped out other people. And in the last couple years my, my health started to decline and I was like, what's going on because I'm eating right. But there's, there's all this other stuff. So, I mean, you know, in the last couple of years, I almost got divorced. I was working 100 hours a week. I was doing all this other, other stuff. I was, you know, we went to set up to open up this restaurant, we had some guys steal about 50K from us and steal, ah... He probably cost us about 200 grand in the long term, which was almost all my family's money and almost all of my best friend's money that she had. And then we opened up this, opened up this restaurant, which you were in the restaurant business, so, you know, like it is a lot of work. And on top of that, we're doing these other businesses. Jason: And so there are all these other stressors and I realize it actually happened right wing COVID hit. Because we were thinking about like, we were really looking forward to the summer when we could shut the restaurant down for a while and get a breather. And then COVID hit and all of a sudden, oddly, my life got better. Because I was spending time with my family and I was killing myself anymore and my health started to improve. That was it, I had this very narrow focus in my life, which I was really good at but it also carried all the stress that I think, I think you have when you get a little bit older in your career and you're kind of at the, you're operating at a higher level, it's also a more stressful level. And there's a lot more at stake about point. And so when COVID hit, I had more time for my family. And then I started going on bike rides again and hiking and I started spending time playing the drums, I hadn't touched my drum set in three years. Joe: WOW! Jason: And I started playing again, which was actually cool. I have this thing where I get my, stop something for a while when I pick it up and better at it. So now I can actually play some of the Rush songs that I couldn't get through Joe: Nice. Jason: For three years. Like, where did this come from? Joe: It's awesome! Jason: You know, so that was cool. And so, so I realized, like, I'd been talking about environment with food choices. But I've been ignoring everything else that goes into being a healthy person and taking care of your mental state, taking care of your family, making sure you have time to not be insane with all this other other stuff and so I think my crew is shifting into a point where I'm going to start talking about more about holistic health and creating good environments for your, for your well-being as an adult. It's, I'm sure it's true for for kid or whatever part you're in but since I'm in my 40s and kind of went through the midlife crisis part, that's how I solved it, was figuring out that I had to create a good environment to make good choices throughout my whole life and not just with the food, because I'd just been concentrated on the food, which is one key. Joe: You. Yeah, it's amazing how many people I know, it's it's hurt a lot of people. But I personally, it's been the best three months and so long because I was running so hard. And like I said, I've gotten to do things that I want to do. I it's just it's been a good thing. And I'm glad to hear that everything is turning back around for you, too, as well. I worried about you when it happened, to be honest, because, you know, I, I know it devastated the event world for me, I mean everything just stopped. And so I was worried just purely whether or not you know how how well you would do during that time. And it's funny, speaking of, you know, COVID-19. Was there any concerns about, you know, your clients with Joe: The food delivery and any, any things that you had to do differently in order to to be, you know, follow the CDC guidelines or anything like that? Jason: We just did extra sanitation, but we were already doing that stuff anyway. Joe: Right. Jason: We were just more hardcore about it than normal. But that was it. Because I think with the food delivery, it's contactless, so our drivers just show up and Joe: Drop the Jason: They're Joe: Cooler. Jason: At their doorstep Joe: Yeah. Jason: In and head out. Joe: Yeah. Jason: So, so in a way, it didn't really affect the delivery service at all. Joe: Got Jason: It was Joe: It. Jason: horrible for the restaurant, but that ended up being a boom for us personally. Joe: Yep, yep. Well, awesome! Man. I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you're here. Like I said, I was disappointed when I had a sort of postpone it last time, I just took on too much. It was one of those deals where I thought I could I forget how much time postproduction takes after I get off this thing to get it, Jason: Yeah. Joe: You know, ready for prime time. But I am super, super grateful that you said yes and you came on, I love your food and you're an amazing human being. The more I've done the research and get to know you now. And it sounds like your daughter is definitely waiting for you to put her to bed. So I'm glad, I could go on, I swear to God for another hour, there's so many questions about food and just things that you've done, but we'll do it another time for sure. Jason: Yeah, that'll be fun. I'd love to come back. Joe: I again, I can't thank you enough. It's an honor to have you on here. And I'd love to have you back again. Just for the audience sake and things like that, where's the best place to get in touch with you? And I'll put I'll do in the show notes, I'll list every, you know, your social media things but like in regards to, let's say, The Vegan Taste, what's the best way for people to reach out? Jason: Just go right to thevegantaste.com Joe: Okay, perfect. Jason: I mean, we have all the social media platforms, but it seems like, you know, Facebook changes what they want to show to people every few months and Instagram is the same way. You know, all these other ones. So just just go straight to thevegantaste.com Joe: Perfect. I'll put in all the other links, I'll take care of all of that. Again, thank you so much, I appreciate it, it's so, I look forward to actually meeting you live in person. Maybe we can sit around and jam one night. Jason: That would be awesome! Joe: I would love it. So. Jason: Cool. Joe: All right. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. Jason: Hey, thank you. Have a good night. Joe: You too!

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

Today, we talk with Jason Yelowitz and his client, David Wolf. David could best be described as a “serial entrepreneur”. We discuss the sale of David's business and Jason's role therein. Tune in to hear our discussion about David's successful sale, knowing when it's the right time to sell, and business in the time of the CoronaVirus.   Episode Highlights The efficiency of the marketplace. Why cash is king. Incentives for having payroll employees. Why Dave decided to sell. Knowing when it's right to sell. Is selling at a loss the wrong move? If the pandemic has slowed down or changed deals. Is this a good market for first time buyers? How to keep your business stocked and afloat during the pandemic. Transcription Mark: All right this week we don't have Joe with us. We have Jason Yellowitz with us because Jason had one of his previous clients, Dave Wolf, on the podcast to talk about the sale of his business and some of the lessons and looking back on how that sale went. I always find these conversations interesting because after you sell a business, you have the chance to finally be somewhat introspective into what that process was like and maybe what you would do differently. Jason, I know you have Dave Wolf on who you work with for quite a while. You guys had I think two different LOIs that you had to work through in order to get to a closing. How did that conversation go? Jason: Yeah, it was really interesting to catch up with Dave. We got his business sold. I want to say it was around August of 2019, so it's been a while. He feels happy that it was sold. It was a very; at least to me it looked like a very good business. It had a general manager in place that was running the day to day. In his case, it really wasn't taking up his time but there's always that bit of mental focus that you can't let go of. And Dave has his fingers in so many different businesses that I think for him he needed to let up on the mental focus and then I think also he reallocated some of the capital. He really ends up buying a fair number of distressed kind of assets and for that kind of thing, you need cash in your pocket typically. Mark: Yeah, I know. Absolutely. I know you guys went through two different offers on this and I'm sure you'll get into that a little bit on the podcast. Did you guys discuss what happened with that first one that didn't go through? Jason: I don't know if you got that into it on the podcast, but it is an interesting sort of lesson for potential sellers. When we had first listed the business, we got multiple offers. And like most people, the seller gravitated towards the one that had the highest headline price. The challenge that sellers should remember is the market is pretty efficient. A lot of times if someone is bidding more than others, the reason they're doing it is because they're already aware that they are less likely to get the financing necessary to close the deal, and therefore they're willing to bid it up a little bit. Whereas someone that comes in in the middle of the pack might have a much higher chance of closing, but they know it and they're not going to pay up as much. So what it comes down to I think is don't get wooed simply by the headline number. You have to think of it holistically if you're a seller of what's most important to me; hitting a certain dollar amount or walking away versus a higher likelihood of closing. And there's not a right or wrong answer but the lesson is, don't deceive yourself into thinking you can have it all. There's usually some sort of tradeoff. Mark: Absolutely. Now the market is strikingly honest. It's always very, very honest, very direct, and you can't really fool it so I think that's a good lesson. Well, let's get into the episode and I can't wait to listen to this one. Jason: Hey everybody, this is Jason Yellowitz from Quiet Light Brokerage and for today's Quiet Light podcast, our special guest is David Wolfe. David is a serial entrepreneur. He's got his hands in all sorts of businesses. And it was probably about six months ago that I represented him in the sale of an online e-commerce business he had. Dave, welcome, how are you doing? Dave: Hey Jason, how are you doing? I'm pretty good. Jason: Good. So are you sitting there in some tropical location, I can see palm trees blowing in the background. Dave: I wish. I wish I was. Unfortunately, it's just a cool background trick for Zoom video because I'm sitting at my house quarantined like everybody else. Jason: Yeah, well, you mentioned quarantine. Obviously, we are in the heart of the COVID-19 coronavirus situation so if you don't mind, maybe you can just tell viewers just quickly what are the businesses that you're running and what impacts positive, negative, neutral have you seen from the coronavirus? Dave: Well there's definitely a lopsided negative for this; for what we're dealing with right now. I'm in several different industries. So we are in some direct to consumer automotive space online. I have recently, after the purchase that you represented for, I got into some brick and mortar stuff doing fencing installation and some manufacturing of fencing products; vinyl privacy fence. And then we're also in real estate lending and a few other places. And it's pretty drastic across all industries. From what I can tell the online businesses are faring just immensely better than just about anything else. So some of the brick and mortars, we're dealing with a; when I get off this call, I've got to deal with one of my managers needs to self-quarantine. So he's showing symptoms. He's not in a terrible situation. But now we're looking at we're already planning on going down to a minimal staff while this was blowing over. And so now we've got to see okay well, now it's zero because we can't have him at the shop at all. So these are just normal things. On the plus side, I think as most people I've talked to; as I'm sure you have a lot of different business owners in a lot of different industries just because of what I do. And because of the people that weren't in a good position, there is, unfortunately, going to be some business fatalities from this. I talked to a bankruptcy attorney the other day that was representing me in purchasing some assets and he was just the ground is already starting to rumble with the volume of business that's going to be occurring from that. And so I think there's going to be a lot of opportunities for people that; everything is going to work itself out but the reality is if you know how to run a business if you have sound principles in operating businesses, there is going to be a lot of opportunities. It's going to totally switch from a seller's market to a buyer's market. It was basically overnight I feel like. I think you would agree when you were working with me we had talked about it. For the most part, it's kind of a seller's market. There's a lot of capital out there. It's easy to get. And now we had; the institutional lenders aren't even lending on in our hard money lending business, which would be considered about us. We've dabbled and had conversations about that space. It's a very secure asset. Even they're holding off on buying more assets. So what that tells me is cash is king, right? So if you have money to buy a business and I would say you have the bandwidth and you can afford to wait, you don't need the cash flow right away, I think there's going to be some unbelievable opportunities in the next few months. Jason: Okay, that's a pretty interesting perspective. From our end what we've seen is the economic; obviously, there's the human and health toll. And I feel sorry; I've got a lot of empathy for your manager who is showing symptoms. On our end what we're seeing is the economic impact is really hitting different businesses differently. Some of them are way down. Others are way up. We've got a number of online businesses where their sales literally doubled versus the previous year in the past 12 months. What's not clear is whether it's a temporary blip or if there is long term enduring changes in customer behavior. For instance, I've got a client who sells a security device on the internet. His sales have doubled and his theory is more people are staying home and they want to feel safe at home. And without a crystal ball, that sounds as plausible to me as anything. So let me ask you this question. You mentioned that you believe there's going to be some golden opportunities for buyers, especially cash buyers. I think as of about an hour ago, I read a lot of headlines that Congress and the president were very close to passing a historic stimulus bill. And my understanding is that's inaudible[00:09:56.6] to fund a lot of money to the Small Business Administration. Do you think that that money will get to people that want to buy businesses or is it mostly going to be used to shore up existing businesses or do you have no opinion? Dave: Well, one of the things I think is going to happen. I think that you're going to see and I guess you can't quote me on this, but you're recording this so I guess you're going to. So normally and you think; I don't know if you've had this conversation, but typically the kind of par for the course for purchases of at least smaller businesses is an asset purchase agreement where you wipe out and start again. Well, there might be some people willing to take on some of the risks of a previous business if it means that by having the established business in place all of a sudden it makes it tremendously easier to be able to get capital from some of the pipelines that's going to be coming through. I mean, I think they're probably just going to be throwing; it's either they're going to be difficult to get because it gets bogged down in bureaucracy and that's going to be a disaster for the country or it's going to be they're just writing checks and throwing money at people that have a business and primarily a business with payroll employees. I guess that's one of the things that we've kind of; a lot of company shy away from that and try to stay lean and online. But there's going to be a lot more incentives for having a payroll more than likely. Jason: Yeah, that's what it sounds like. It sounds like most of the incidents are tied to maintaining a payroll. So maybe we can; let's go back in time six months, you had sold a business, what month did we close; was it October? Dave: August is when we closed; very end of August I think. Jason: What was going through your mind at the time? Why did you choose to sell and are you happy that you made the decision that you did? Dave: Yeah, well, so I definitely am very happy that I made the decision I did. I wish I would have just had all the money sitting at a bank account. But like an entrepreneur, we put a lot of it back to work afterwards. But, yeah I'm very happy that we sold. We would just kind of look at it as I wasn't focused 100% on that business and I knew that there was some opportunity in it but I needed somebody that looked at it the way that I did when I bought it five years before that could take it to how do I 3x this business and it was. It was a solid business. And I knew it was because you have had several side conversations with me where I was like do I really want to let this go? And in talking with them that business is one that's kind of about where it was, they haven't really been too badly negatively affected by the issues that we're dealing with right now even after a slowdown, which is good for them. But it allowed me to free up my time and focus on new things and kind of you had said like I was able to find plenty of things to focus on to grow. And I was reinvigorated by having that newness to it again where I was kind of tired. It wasn't that there's anything necessarily fundamentally wrong with that business it's just that I was seeing opportunities or make investments to grow it and it just didn't excite me. I wasn't doing it. I wasn't pushing like I was. And so a new owner came in and he has that same; it's new to him so he's making changes and making moves and improving the business and I think they're doing a good job. And I'm taking that renewed energy and I'm putting it toward something totally new and so I think that's a real win. So I'm definitely happy. I have no remorse for selling the business whatsoever. Jason: That's a really interesting point that you bring up, because at this point I've been brokering for 10 years and what I've acknowledged is a lot of times when I meet a seller, their first instinct is how do I get the absolute most money out of the business? And the obvious answer is grow it to its utmost potential and then that'll translate into cash flows and you'll get a multiple on those increased cash flows. The reality I find is usually when people want to sell it's not specifically for the cashout. The cash out most people consider that's the fair market value of what their business is worth today. So the decision comes down a lot more to personal things. Most of my sellers, there's a personal reason; marriage, divorce, buying a house, I have to move, I have to support my in-laws, anything like that. And then on the business front, it usually boils down to some version of what you just said, which is I know how to grow this business I just find that I knew how to grow it six months ago and I didn't. Clearly, I'm lacking the motivation and the sort of excitement that comes from new business ownership so maybe I'll hand it off to someone else who's got that level of motivation and excitement. So the way I think of it is each party takes the business to whatever is the highest level while counterbalancing all the other things going on in their life and how much attention they can put to one versus the other. What would you recommend to someone who wants to sell their business now? We are probably at a peak uncertainty. We don't know if the coronavirus is going to infect millions or hundreds of thousands in the US. We don't know if it's going to make another round around the globe. I mean, the truth is, we just don't know. What we do know with some confidence is the central bank and the US government is putting a lot of firepower into trying to keep the economy going. But we don't know what the facts are so what advice would you have for someone who they had their plan, they were going to sell this year in 2020; maybe in June, maybe in October, and then boom, coronavirus. Dave: Well, I mean first it has to be a scenario where you have a willing and able buyer. So if you don't have a buyer already then it's a totally different story. And it really depends on what your consequences are of not selling I would say. I mean I have a lot of assets that I have for sale in the market right now that aren't business-related. And this could totally be; I mean I don't know when you're going to publish this podcast; a week from now this might be irrelevant. But in this very particular instance while we are quarantined in the house and just I'll give you the; I'll let down my guard here so that you guys, you know, it's a this is just for inaudible[00:16:36.4] the house. Jason: They're not quite as nice as the beach. Dave: Yeah, right. I'll go back to the beach. I think that it's obviously not the best time to be in a transition flow for the assets. Now, that doesn't mean that it's a bad time to sell. It depends on what does not selling mean. I mean in some cases, even selling; I mean I'm going to go to the extreme, even if you had to sell at a 50% discount to what your business would be worth a month from now, if not selling is going to cause you even more financial damage because of the foreclosure on a large property or something like that, it may still be worthwhile. It's kind of the lesser of two evils to sell your business. Jason: You know what's interesting to me about your statement was you said a week from now this might all be irrelevant. It was about a week ago we had an all-hands meeting at Quiet Light to say what are we seeing in the market and I was taking the same point of view that you're taking today, which is the values are going to come down. It's going to be all distressed sales. Strangely, in the last week and a half, we have gotten reports of a number; I think we've closed four deals in the last week. None of them were significantly different to my understanding from what the letters of intent said. And as I mentioned in the beginning, we've seen some businesses that have really; their financials have really gone down. And for those sellers, I would say if that's where it is you need to decide for yourself are sales coming back or are they permanently down? If they're permanently down you need to get very real very quick with what the market will bear. If you think they're going to be back, your best bet is to wait until that happens. But then the other side of the coin which Dave this is really surprising, some of the businesses are going off the hook up and those are the ones where I think the sales are closing and the buyers at least it seems; I've gotten this mostly second hand, it seems to me the buyers are feeling that their golden opportunity is that with behavioral changes worldwide more is shifting possibly to online, possibly to certain sectors and they want to get in on that now so that they want to close. So it feels like the market is changing but not necessarily in the static way that many of us would have predicted. Dave: Yeah, I mean a good example is I think that this is going to accelerate the move from traditional brick and mortar businesses to online. People that have never done insta-corridor like Amazon Prime delivery and stuff like that are now ordering their groceries and they're using Zoom video to chat. I mean this accelerated technology, the adaptation or adoption two, three years easy. I mean the stuff that we're seeing, people that have never used that technology are figuring out how to do those kinds of things. They're ordering food, they're doing; so day to day habits that typically don't change that fast have completely changed. I just bought a set of gymnastic rings to work out at home because I usually go to the gym. I like to go to the gym but I can't go to the gym so I was like, all right, well, I'm going to buy something and my routine just totally changed. I might continue with that. I actually really liked that so I'm looking at doing some other upgrades that go along with that. Maybe like putting some bars up in my back yard and doing a couple of other things. So that's happening across the board and I think I'm starting to see some adaptation from businesses as well changing and pivoting. But I think that's pretty simple as if it's just I guess as a buyer or a seller you really have to categorize yourself in are you a person that buys off of past success or are you comfortable being a little more speculative and focusing on future potential speculation like you said in a sense that I had a letter of intent on a project and I saw the sales skyrocket and because of this I'm more than happy to close. It's obvious that the effect of this has already impacted that business in how it's more than likely going to in the short term so you're not really too concerned about that. And then again the same thing I would be very worried if I was in LOI and the business fell off a cliff in the short term or had to shut down entirely and you have to start with a terrible cash flow. And then how is that going to affect the annual cash flows on the back end of that? I think there's ways around that. I personally; I mean like you said, most of these LOIs fast purchase is 30 to 45 days. I don't necessarily think it's a bad time to be shopping for businesses if you don't have to spend all your time focusing on making sure that yours isn't on fire because if you go into LOI you have plenty of time to do the due diligence on before you have to close to make sure that you do, in fact, want to go through with it. Jason: Do you think this is a market for first-time buyers? Let me give you an example. Let's say we've got somebody in their mid-30s who has worked in corporate America for the last 12 years, risen up the ranks to middle management, is not excited about their day job but as of today, they still have it and they want the excitement of being an entrepreneur but they've never thought or run their own business. They've been part of a much bigger organization. Is this the time for them or do you think it's only the time for more experienced buyers with the larger risk appetite, a larger balance sheet, and a better ability to forecast or better confidence in their ability to forecast? Dave: I actually think it's a great time for a first-time buyer to come into the marketplace. I mean in contrary with the right outlook you have to be able to have a long term outlook and you have to have enough cash to be able to weather an uncertain future for at least a few months, if not a little bit more. Because the reality is that if you can get a good value like I think there's going to be opportunities for lower valuations out there which allows somebody to get into a business that couldn't otherwise get into. I mean people say like, oh, well, it's a bad time to buy a business because this stuff is happening but you could get the same business that potentially four months ago would have cost you 1.5 million. If they have cash flow issues and they have a bunch of other stuff, there might be one out there that is 750. It's really the same business. Maybe it needs $60,000 in cash infusion to survive what's going on or $50,000 in additional cash to survive what's going on for the current process but I think for most businesses, this is a temporary liquidity issue and not necessarily a fundamental the business is just completely destroyed. Jason: So going to your example, I mean, you just gave an example of a business where because of what's happening hopefully temporarily; obviously, none of us has a crystal ball. In your example, the business value dropped in half. It kind of seems to me that if you're going to buy in that environment, you have to kind of know yourself. How did I react in 2008 when I saw my 401k drop in half temporarily that kind of thing? It feels like it's more of a risk tolerance question as opposed to a more simple decision. You have to know yourself, how you react, how you're going to sleep at night. Would you agree with that? Dave: Oh yeah, definitely and that's there's so many caveats. I mean, you'd have to pick a much more specific type of business and I would imagine if I've never been an entrepreneur and I've had a regular middle management or upper management job and I'm just going into entrepreneurship this would be; it's going to take some cohunes to pull the trigger on something right now in this environment just because of how many unknowns we're going into as to if it is in quick recovery, what's the long term economic impacts from a potential but hopefully not recession and some of the other things or we could come out booming. I mean, there's going to be a lot of pent up demand for every service after this is done. Jason: I was thinking there's going to be a line around the block at your barbershop. Dave: That's funny, I actually did; I did okay do I get myself a haircut. Yes. Jason: No, it's nice. Dave: I'm going to show you the back. That's a little; but yeah, I actually talked to a salon owner today that I used to do marketing for and I was telling her; she was like what do I do? She's got a good business but I pay everybody and lose 25,000 and then pay my rent when we're closed. And so she's in a much better position. She's got plenty of money laying around and she had no debt. And we had a conversation and I said look, if I was you, you've got these lines of credit that aren't used, the bank may close those down soon because I have talked to several banks; smaller banks that are concerned about not necessarily lending on new businesses, but really more they're concerned about liquidity without this stuff coming down from the federal government where they can't do; I have a loan for a new primary residence I'm doing and the guy was on it's a portfolio loan, which if you guys don't know what that is, it means that the bank is going to hold the note versus handing it off to Fannie or Freddie Mac because my taxes are very difficult to do because I have seven or eight businesses and all these different things. And they said they're not doing any portfolio loans because they have 60 million dollars in commercial credit lines that have not been pulled down yet that if those were pulled, they have to have enough cash to be able to provide that liquidity to those commercial lines and so that's affecting them. Jason: That's pretty interesting. I was looking at online savings accounts yesterday and I was expecting that the interest that they pay savers would have dropped down to a couple of basis points. In fact, it was still up in the 1 ½ to 1.7 range. Dave: That's the reason why. The reason why is because they need depositors because they were concerned about whatever happens. A lot of commercial credit lines were closed in this type of environment because really the banks aren't afraid of everybody; every customer defaulting. What they're afraid of is every customer maxing out their line at once and taking all the liquidity from the bank. So that's one of those issues and so I personally had some large, large lines that I just pulled out all and put it in a checking account. And I'm happy to pay the interest on the short term so that I have access to capital, particularly because I do plan on; even though I'm pretty busy I do plan on being a buyer of business assets here in the next couple of months. I don't know what they're going to be. I just know that if you do have cash, if you were fortunate enough to have money sitting on the sidelines due to just serendipity or it just being the right time and place, there's just going to be some unbelievable opportunities. And I mean you can see them everywhere. I told my friend that was a salon manager; I said, look there's going to be a lot of salons that are closing down or people that just need cash and they pay their day to day bills with that money. Call them and see if you can buy all their color product that they have sitting in their salon that's not being used for like 10 cents on the dollar. Jason: That's a pretty interesting idea. One thing I've heard with those small local service businesses that have been put into a shock so hard is to reach out to their regular customers and ask if you'd be willing to prepay for the next haircut or the next meal. I think there's a lot of community spirit of none of us wants to see the small businesses in our town collapse so many of us who have the means are willing to prepay just as a sign of good faith. So as always, anytime I talk to you it's a fascinating conversation, as kind of that final piece I would love it if you could give a synopsis right now; let's see today is March 25th, so with the caveat that at today's speed of news cycle. Dave: 1:35 PM. Jason: Yeah, anything can change. So at 1:35 PM Eastern on March 25th, 2020 in the middle of the coronavirus I would love to get just your little quick snippet advice for buyers, advice for sellers, and final thoughts. Dave: Okay, so let's start with the advice. I would say, advice for buyers go ahead and go out and look; I would say go out and look as if nothing has happened. Remember that when you're putting LOIs out, you're doing your underwriting afterwards. So if you're looking at a business, you say I like this business in normal times let me go ahead and look at this and place the offer with a condition of you can stipulate obviously always you understand, hey, I'm kind of concerned about what's currently going on, but let's go ahead and get this going. So remember that doing an LOI doesn't mean that you can't do your due diligence and confirm the underlying fundamentals because this month's cash flow is probably more than likely either going to be significantly better or significantly worse than it was last March or last April. And I suggest you just got to have to understand that. It doesn't mean you got to close right away. As far as sellers are concerned that would be my number one piece of advice is to keep moving forward up to the point where you do have to make the commitments. You can still try to get the SBA financing, get all your ducks in a row, and then once you have everything in place, you can decide to make the final decision based on where things are at that time. Because by the time; like you said in 30 or 45 days we could be in a drastically different economy. But you might have started a deal when nobody else was bold enough to put out the LOI. You might have an exceptional value on a business that's right back to being extremely healthy. And as far as sellers are concerned, it's really just assessing. Maybe it's possible if you have to sell, you really need to determine what your best alternative to a non-agreement is. Are you willing to go back and run this business for a year inaudible[00:31:29.8] or mentally are you done? You don't necessarily have to tell the buyer that. But if mentally you're done and you have an offer that comes to the table that's lower than what you're expecting, you're really going to have to grapple with the decision of are you going to stick this out and do the work to make sure that this business is healthy again so that you can get your higher valuation or is it time to just accept a lower offer and realize that they're not gouging you? That it's just most of the buyers are buying off of the cash flows of that business and significant disruption in cash flow is a very reasonable thing to reduce the purchase price of a business. I mean, I saw that when I sold mine. I won't get in the numbers, but I had a higher number and then we had a small hiccup because we lost one contract and still very healthy business but it had a material impact on what our future cash flows for expected without having to make changes. And I totally understand that. In principle, we agreed to a multiple which just unfortunately for me it's a lower purchase price when you use the same multiple if you lose $5,000 in monthly cash flow. And so it happens but again, on the other side of that, being somebody that had a higher offer that then wasn't able to for whatever reason didn't go through; there's no fault of my own and then going to another offer that was lowered because of something had happened. I think we were dealing with the China tariffs and all that stuff during that time which looks like a child's play now with what we're dealing with. I resulted; I ultimately made the decision to still sell at a lower purchase price and looking at it now, I don't regret the decision. So if you're just looking for what; instead of me giving you empty advice as a seller all I can do is tell you that of what I did and what I decided to do. And now looking forward, I don't regret making the decision to accept an offer that was lower than what I originally wanted for the business. Jason: Are there any brokers and brokerage that you personally recommend? Dave: Anybody with Jason. Jason: Anybody but me, okay I got it. Dave: I'm very happy; I was very happy with Jason's advice. I think it was spot on and yeah he was just a very level head with a lot of experience on how to get a deal done. And really without railroading you, I think one of the really comforting things is Jason is going to be one of those guys that will tell you, look, if this doesn't feel right, just don't do the deal. You probably won't get to pry out his financing, but I can tell you that he does not need the check from your sale to survive. So he's my; yeah, I don't want to like let the cat out of the bag there but he's not going to push you into a sale specifically to get a commission check and that's something that is very nice to see in a broker. He does this because he likes it and because he's very good at it and likes the transactions of the business. And I was very, very happy with the work that I got done at Quiet Light. I can definitely see; from a DIY-er, I have no problems with the commission brokerage that I paid with Quiet Light at the end of the day. I think it was well earned and I would be happy to do it again Jason inaudible[00:34:48.8]. Jason: Wow, well that's ridic; I have to end it with an endorsement so I think with that I'm going to say thank you so much for your time and your thoughts, you're obviously a very experienced entrepreneur. You've bought, you've sold, you've built, you've experienced setbacks, and here you are with the beautiful fake background of a beach. It's phenomenal. So thank you for your time, everyone. This was Dave Wolf. He owns too many businesses to list. But obviously, he knows what he's stocked up. Thank you, Dave. Resources: Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com

Do you have a coach to help guide you to grow your property management business? If you want to excel at what you're doing, you must have somebody who's playing a bigger game than you. Today, Jason Hull and Jon Ray of DoorGrow continue their discussion on premature expansion in property management. Besides putting planning and process documentation systems into place to be more efficient, they focus on the third system: Communication (internal and external).  You’ll Learn... [01:33] Interruptions and Inefficiency: Every interruption costs 18 minutes of productivity.  [02:13] Pay to Play: Learn from coaches how to protect and guard against interruptions. [02:40] Cut the Slack: Chat tool that creates interruptions and crushes team productivity.  [03:15] Under-Communication: Creates interruptions that prevent momentum and flow. [04:07] Communication System: Only involve those internally that need to know, and find ways to improve external client communication. [06:01] Organizational Structure: Clear line of communication for delegation. [08:15] Who does what? Pair effective visionary with brilliant operator to get things done. [18:18] Sales solves all problems—not always true. Growth feeds business. [19:25] Get things in place, and then it's not premature. [21:00] Jack of All Trades, Master of None: Entrepreneurs find opportunity everywhere.  [25:34] DoorGrow OS: Consolidate systems, processes, professionals to be successful. [31:10] Three Currencies: Growth involves time, money, and effort. Tweetables Every interruption costs about 18 minutes of productivity for one team member.  Under-Communication: Creates as many interruptions that prevent momentum and flow. Every team member you add lowers your pressure and noise. Every team member you add makes your job and life easier.  Get things in place, and then it's not premature. Resources Intercom Help Scout Voxer Process Street Jason Fried of Basecamp Warren Buffett Slack Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)/Traction Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm HireSmartVAs Anequim with Mexican VAs DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jon: I have worked with coaches for the past 20 years. I believe in them wholeheartedly. If you're going to excel at what you're doing, you have to have somebody who's playing a bigger game than you. 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, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. I’m hanging out here with someone else from DoorGrow, Jon Ray. Jon: Yeah. Thanks for having me. Jason: The third system that's necessary so that you can avoid premature expansion is you need an internal communication system. If you're still operating on sneakernet, or constant interruptions like sneakernet as they walk into your office all the time and interrupt you, then you're operating really inefficiently. Every interruption costs you about 18 minutes of productivity for one team member. If one team member interrupts another team member that's 18 minutes times 2. I don't know what that is, but it's more than a half-hour. Jon: Thirty-six minutes. Jason: Too many minutes, like 40 minutes down the drain because two people decided to talk to each other, or one person interrupted somebody else. You have to protect and guard against interruptions. All of this stuff is stuff that has to be learned. It's stuff that I've had to pay lots of money to learn from different coaches.  I had met with Jason Freed, the creator of Basecamp, and hung out with me on a call like this for 90 minutes. He cut my staffing costs in half overnight. We're high tech. We were using all kinds of technology. He pointed out how we are using this chat tool that had group rings. It was causing everybody to interrupt everybody all the time. Everybody feels like they had to read everything. It made our entire business completely inefficient. The software was Slack for those of you that are big Slack fans. Slack was absolutely killing and crushing our productivity as a team. It is basically an endless diarrhea without context or stream of information for every single project. Everyone on the team felt like they had to read every single thing. Jon: One of the things that entrepreneurs are aware of is that when a team is under communicated, that's not a good thing. But there's this idea that maybe over-communication is the way to go. That's actually just as bad, if not as bad, because it creates so many interruptions that then prevent people from finding the momentum and flow that allows them to be most efficient. Jason: The reason it costs you 18 minutes of productivity is because that's about how long after somebody that causes interruption, regardless of how much time they're spending with you. They might spend 15 minutes with you, and then it's 18 minutes. It takes time to get back into the flow. What was I doing? How do I rebuild this house of cards that I was building before Steve came in from finance and interrupted everything? There needs to be an internal communication system that works effectively for the team that only involves the people that need to know or deal with a certain thing at a certain given time, rather than everybody needing to see everything. If you're a control freak as an entrepreneur, and you need to know everything, and see everything, you're probably the biggest bottleneck in the company. You need a planning system, you need a process and documentation system, you need an internal communication system. The other system that you need is you need an external communication system. You need a client communication system that makes it easy. We use Intercom. Some people will use HubScout. You also might use your property management software in some ways for this. You might have phones, but you have to clearly have an effective client communication system. That's something we're always working on improving is client communication. We use Voxer internally as a team, and some of my coaching clients will use that as well. We've got a lot of tools that we use to increase communication, but most of it is one-on-one. It's not causing big group interruptions or situations like that. Jon: An important thing to reference here—when it comes to creating the right communication systems—is that there has to be clear lines for delegation. Part of your process documentation needs to be letting each employee at each level and in each role understand what type of tasks are appropriate to delegate up to you and what needs to be delegated down. Jason: All that comes with the process documentation, but planning helps with that a lot at that system, and then you need an internal communication system. As part of that, that's kind of the organizational structure. There needs to be a clear line of communication where somebody reports to somebody. I was talking with a property manager the other day. They had their part of another business. What she said is that this other business that she's a part of—outside of a property management business—that there are three bosses. Over one department there's two managers. I said, “Well, how did the team members know which one to go to?” I said, “Are they very different personality-wise? Do they get different answers?” She's like, “Absolutely.” So then, how do they know which one to go to? There's so much confusion in this entity. She could see it. Me hearing about it just made my skin crawl because I was like, “I would feel so crazy and uncomfortable because it sounds like a nightmare.” There's all this infighting and politics and all the stuff going on because nobody has any clarity. People don't even know. She said somebody got promoted in this business and everybody said, “Hey, congratulations.” There was a celebration. Jon: I’m going to take this time and just pause you. I know that there are people out there that are saying, “This sounds like a lot of work. I'm already too stressed out.” There's so much resistance to putting in this work. What we're talking about is do you want to win at a new level of the maze? Do you want to be a high achiever? Because if you're satisfied with being in this mediocre average zone of success, then maybe you don't need all of this. If you ever want to get to a level where you're dominating your local marketplace, and you're running a business that isn't just growing but is growing comfortably, these things are mandatory, right? Jason: Yeah. I can empathize with that strongly. The little story—just to wrap it—was everybody was congratulating this person. They were asking him, “Cool. What are you going to do now?” He said, “I don't know. I’ll figure it out as I go, I guess.”  Anyway, let's go back to the question. What was the question again? Sorry, I have to finish the thread. Jon: There's so much resistance around showing up and having to actually do all of this stuff. Maybe you can talk about why it's important to push through that resistance, or how to do that? Then why ultimately, the short term resistance and discomfort leads to a more comfortable, more profitable, and more fun business down the line? Jason: I just would rather kill the resistance. Here's what I realized. I had a ton of resistance. When I started working with some of the best operational companies, ­­I was working with probably the best operational coach that might exist in the business world. I had already studied traction, and EoS (end of sale), and I'd heard of the Rockefeller Habits, and scaling up, and I went to this thing called warrior. There are other systems out there similar to the 90-day year. All these planning systems have some commonalities between them, which I sort of outlined when we discussed the planning system. I felt a ton of anxiety when I was going and learning this stuff. You want to know why? Because I'm not the person that should be doing that stuff. That kind of stuff is stuff that operationally minded people love. I can geek out on a system like I could see the genius in it, but me doing it, and me implementing it, me running meetings, I'm not the person to do that. Most CEOs and entrepreneurs are the worst to run team meetings, to manage their team, to manage operations, to manage operational processes. That's why you'll see almost any visionary—that's really effective—paired up with some sort of person that's operationally brilliant. It gives them the freedom to create ideas, create a vision. The operator helps them make that stuff come true and happen. Jon: If I'm a property manager and I'm still in that first sandtrap, and maybe I'm not even doing more than a quarter-million a year in revenue, and I don't really have the budget to bring these people on. Can you talk about what it would look like to start thinking about a hiring trajectory and mapping out some of the milestones of how I can get to this place? Jason: This is a learned process to know clearly where your time is going, how you're the biggest bottleneck in the business, what needs to happen next? This is stuff that we teach, but it's a process. There's a system for knowing exactly what you need next to take the business to the next level. It's part of the stuff that we teach clients.  Ultimately, for those that maybe they’re the lower level like, “I can't hire a COO. I can't hire an operational manager. I can't even hire an operations assistant yet.” Maybe they just get a personal assistant, executive assistant, somebody that loves planning. They love process. They love documenting things. They love systems. They geek out on these things. They like calendars and spreadsheets. They'd love to color coordinate sock drawers. Their closet is organized. Their desk is spotless. These are not typical visionary entrepreneur personality types that are high-driven types of people. If you are not that personality type—now on property management, you do get some operationally-minded people, but they might not also be the driver. They may need to get a BDM (business development manager) in the business. Somebody that's out there crushing it, and closing deals, and aggressive because maybe they're that operationally-minded person. That's why I think every business needs to be built around you, the entrepreneur, but if you're hearing this and you're getting anxious. You're like, “All these systems, all this stuff,” and you're overwhelmed. That probably means you're not the operations-minded person. The operations person, they probably have some of these, and they get excited about that. Those property managers are the ones that are like, “I can't grow yet. We're working on all of our systems and processes first,” and they have 10 doors. They're documenting everything and getting everything dialed in and then you have the opposite. You have to figure out which type are you? The other thing to point out is this stuff doesn't make your life crazier, and it doesn't make your life more chaotic, and it doesn't feel it's not more work. Because when you start to get these things implemented, and you're offloading, and you're systemizing, and you have planning, and you have vision, your team can actually help you do all of this. Every team member you add actually lowers your pressure and noise. Every team member I've added to the team has made my job and life easier. I'm doing less. Every day I'm doing less. Every new person—I brought you on—I’m doing less. What that allows me to do is to do more of the things that I really should be doing, the things that I'd really love, the things that really make me feel alive. I'm to the point now that I enjoy doing sales, but you've taken that off my plate, and you're taking some of the marketing stuff off my plate. I enjoy doing marketing, but there are things that I now want to do more than those things. As you build out your team—the very first person you need usually is an assistant, very first person. Hopefully, that's a person that you can grow into the role of being an operations assistant, an operations manager, maybe a COO of your company at some point if they’re brilliant and effective enough. Because that's going to lower your pressure significantly, and they're going to help you get all of this stuff dialed in and implemented. Jon: I know a lot of people have hired somebody at $10 an hour to be a personal assistant. They've had a bad experience, or that person just didn't really do what they were supposed to do. Is there some way to think about bringing on a personal assistant where that's actually going to be a successful relationship? Jason: Oh man. We've had people in the show like HireSmartVAs and Anequim with the Mexican VAs. If you're not an expert, and you don't know how to answer that question, and you want to just get a virtual assistant like those, or a great assistant we've had on the show—if you want a US-based assistant, you need help. Because you don't know how to identify these people. The mistake we make as entrepreneurs is we tend to hire people we like or that are like us. That's not the person you usually need. You usually need a person that's somewhat your opposite that can balance you out, and handle the things, and take things off your plate that gives you more pressure noise. We have a process we take people through to identify that so that you can build up the ultimate job description for your dream team member. The silliest thing I ever hear—and I mentioned this in some of the system shows—is when an entrepreneur starts asking around, “What do you have your assistant do?” That's like walking around the grocery store asking people, “Hey, what do you eat? What are you having for dinner?” Because they have no clarity. You're not ready to hire. It's not what they can do, it's what do you need? You have to get really clear on what do you not enjoy? What drains you? What's sapping your energy? What is that has alignment with you personally? That's one of the things we get people really strong clarity on is who they are, what they should and shouldn't be doing, so the business can be built around the entrepreneur instead of built around somebody else's system, or somebody else's process. This is my major problem with traction and some of these other systems. It’s building according to somebody's ideal system, which ironically is a system that requires some special coach that's super expensive that you have to do it that one exact way. You need this thing called an integrator that is only one that can do it. Jon: I was going to say I think the people that I see who are the worst at delegation are really nice people. Because really nice people hate asking other people to do stuff that they don't want to do themselves. The misconception there is that other people like the same type of work that you like. You can always find somebody who loves to do the things that you hate to do. That's how you should be thinking about hiring. Let me find somebody that I can bring on as an assistant who can start to help me offload all the things I don't want to do, but they love doing those things. Jason: The biggest mistake we can make as an entrepreneur in our business—when it comes to team members—is to assume that our team members think the way we do. Almost none of them do. They're very different. Otherwise, they'd be entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are just different. My team members love being told what to do each day and having clear ideas of what to do. Me, I want freedom and I want autonomy. There are huge differences. You need to recognize that the stuff that you hate doing, somebody loves doing that. I don't like calendars. I don't like staring at spreadsheets all day. I don't like doing graphic design in front of a computer all day. Can I do these? Can I enjoy them sometimes? Yes, but that doesn't mean that that's my best use in the business or in life and that I want to do that. My team members that love those things, they love those things. They could do that every day. That's just fun for them. I don't ever have to motivate them. That's how I know I've gotten somebody in the right position because they love doing what they're doing. Without getting too far off-track—because we could do a whole episode just on hiring, planning, whatever. Jon: How does all this tie back into premature expansion and whether or not I as a property manager am ready to expand? Jason: The one other system we didn't mention is you need a sales process and system. You need some growth system that's feeding the business. This might be the most important. Some say sales solves all problems. Not totally true, but without sales, you don't have a business. There's no revenue. You can't pay your team members. Things get scary. You can't pay your mortgage, or rent, or whatever you’re doing, you can't pay the lease on your building. Sales have to be happening. Bit growth has to be happening in the business. All of these things go together. You need all these different systems in order to work. If you have all these systems, then you almost have a franchise model in which you can open up another office, or a new location, expand into a new market. Ultimately, you're going to want to keep as much as possible—probably centralized—to lower operational costs, to reduce redundancies, and get what you need to support that new location. Then you know, all right, this is not premature. We've thought this out. The baby is ready to be born. This is all set up. The reason I call premature expansion because there's nothing premature that is usually considered positive. Anything that's premature—whatever you can think of—is usually a bad thing. I wanted people to understand it's too early, it's too early. You don't have things in place. Get the things in place, and then it's not premature. Does that mean you're going to learn? Yeah, you're still going to learn. Are there going to be mistakes? Absolutely. Is it going to be messy sometimes? Sure, but that's running a business. Perfect businesses don't exist. That's part of just what's going to happen. If you're dealing with that, the idea of starting this new location expanding everything else and everything else is already a mess, you're just pouring gasoline on a fire that's already there and it's just getting worse. Jon: These processes and systems really give you a leverage that allows you to be really successful in a lot of different styles of expansion. Whether that's opening another office, or acquiring something. The best investors in the world—like Warren Buffett—are essentially people who are really good at systems and processes. When they go and acquire a business that's in chaos, they know that they can immediately implement the right systems, processes, and management team, and that business will become profitable very quickly. It puts you in a position where you have a huge competitive advantage over anybody who's just bootstrapping it or shooting from the hip. Jason: Another form of premature expansion is death by opportunity. Entrepreneurs, we see opportunities everywhere. You know you're the opportunist type of property manager or entrepreneur business owner if you are like, “We can start a roofing company. Let's start a maintenance company and we could serve these other companies. Let's do roofing. Let's get a house cleaning business. Let's do carpet cleaning.” I know business owners that they have new property management, and they have seven or eight other businesses. Jon: It's like the jack of all trades, master of none. Jason: Some of them can be good. They can build out teams, they can have things really well dialed in. If you learn to do it for one—like you we're saying—you can do this for all of these businesses and make sure that it's going well. But if one's a mess, you're just adding more problems and making it more challenging. What it does is it dilutes focus. Focus is one of the key ingredients for making money. If you want to make a certain amount of money, and you're like, “Well, let's add more services.” You would think that would add more money. What it usually does for most entrepreneurs is it just dilutes what they can already do. It just divides that up and it becomes more and more challenging. It's a lot easier to make a million dollars in one company than a million dollars to 10 annually. That's another form of premature expansion. That all comes back to the planning system. The planning system, and our vision, and goals as a company give me constraints as an entrepreneur and as a visionary. I'm like, “We could do this and we could do that.” My team is like, “We can't. We've got all these goals that we’re working towards. We've got this, we got this. Maybe we can make room for that next quarter or next year.” This protects them from the grenade when I come back from the conference and I have all these ideas and want to change everything. They'll say, “I can see that I don't want to lose sight of what we have going already and destroy that momentum. I want to achieve these objectives. It's going to get us money. It's going to get us making a difference. All these things that I want. We need to keep that going. Then we can figure out where that can fit in.” It just allows us to not just go through the buffet line, throw a ton of stuff on a plate, and then end up not being able to utilize even half of it. Jon: Once everything that you're talking about—the communication systems, the processes, the systems—once all that's in place, it also gives your staff and your employees a mechanism for delivering feedback to you, even if that's uncomfortable feedback. Almost always—maybe not almost always, but at least in the businesses that I've run as a high-level manager—the employees who are actually doing the operations a lot of the time have really solid ideas on how to make things more efficient, but they feel afraid of communicating those up. By opening up those channels of communication and making it so that it's not uncomfortable for a lower-level employee to give a great idea and have that idea be received, you can actually empower your team to fix a lot of the inefficiencies. Jason: Here's a real simple thing that I thought of that you can recognize if you're ready for premature expansion. If you are the one running all your team meetings, and you're the first to speak in all those meetings, you're already losing. Have you noticed that I'm not running the meetings, and everyone asks me what I think less? “Hey, are you stuck on anything?” I'm the last one to go. Because it's so easy for us as entrepreneurs to say, “Hey, here's my idea. Everyone should do this.” Then when you ask your team members they're going to go, “Yeah, what the boss says. He pays me. That sounds like a good idea. I'll go with what he says. That's the safest answer.” Jon: Growth in all levels—personally and it when it's directly related to revenue—means that there has to be an integration of discomfort sometimes. The proper communication levels mitigate and buffer the discomfort that employees have for communicating good ideas. Oftentimes, the people on the ground level are the ones most capable of finding the thing that's going to work for your current team dynamic. Jason: This is something we've been thinking about a while. We run our business using a system that we called DoorGrow OS that I feel like is one of the most brilliant planning systems out there. It's a consolidation of several different planning systems, operational coaches I've worked with, having brilliant operators on my team. It's something I built out even software-wise that we use internally as a team. You've just started to get a taste of this. There's clarity. There's communication. Everyone knows what they're doing. We're hitting targets, and goals, and objectives each week. The momentum is strong. This is how we grew 300% in a year. Jon: It's a really interesting way of running a team. I've run a lot of teams that have a lot of branches underneath the management. This just provides a level of efficiency and oversight that still makes upward and downward communication very feasible and very easy. Maybe at some point, I'll convince you to share that system with the rest of the world, but right now, it's been really interesting for me to understand some of those principles and see how the years and years of working with all these coaches have been baked into some of these ideas and the things that you're identifying as the ways to know whether what you're doing is premature expansion or actually profitable growth. I don't know if you have anything else on your list, but I know that we're starting to get a little bit long. Maybe we could just recap what we’ve talked about. I'll turn it over to you for any final words of how somebody can take what we spoke about in this podcast and make it actionable. For somebody who has nodded their head to at least one or two of the things that you said during this podcast, what should be their next step for starting to figure out how they can start to tweak the knobs and levers of their business in order to be more in line with what will actually make them successful? Jason: Every business owner is doing the best they can with what they know. Every person on the planet really is doing the best they can with the limited access to knowledge and resources they currently possess. If you knew better, you would do better. There's a lot of things I don't know. There's a lot of things that I can't see. My best feedback is—you've probably heard a lot of ideas on this recording. Maybe you were nodding your head, but ultimately, if you feel stuck, or you don't feel like you're going as fast as you want, or you don't feel like your company's in momentum, then you need help. You need to reach out. That's one of the scariest things for us to do as entrepreneurs, but I do it. I have coaches that I pay. I go and I get help. If I don't know something, I hire a coach. I've got an event I’m planning on going to in March to learn something that I feel like I'm weak at in the business. Normally I would hand up to other team members but something I've avoided that I need to know more about. You need to have enough vulnerability to recognize that you can't do it all on your own. You're not Atlas holding the entire globe on your back. You need to get support.  If you don't feel like you have support, if you don't feel like you have somebody in your corner, if you feel like you're the smartest person in the room in your company, and everybody's just going to say yes to whatever you throw at them, there's a big problem. You've got big blind spots. You need to reach out. You need to get help. That could be us at DoorGrow. Set up a call with us, reach out. We can help you identify some of the blind spots, some of the leaks, some of the inefficiencies, and get you into a high state of momentum. We start in those five core functions at the very beginning. Jon: I want to just mention—because I can feel that somebody just had some resistance to, “You can't do it on your own. You need a coach.” That almost sounds too salesy. Maybe we could alter that statement and soften it for that person who feels resistance to that because you could do it on your own. You could go to the bookstore. You could buy all the books. You could read through them all. You could slowly implement things, and see what works, and what doesn't work, and it would take you forever, or you can work with a coach and collapse time. For people who are looking to collapse time, that's when it becomes incredibly valuable to work with somebody who's already done all of that research and extracted the best practices, split testing all the ideas and figured out what works. Now, you can have a roadmap for how to get to success in the quickest way possible instead of having to trial and error your way down the road. Jason: I am a big fan of trial and error, but I do also like collapsing time. My coaches have helped me collapse time dramatically. I was that guy. I was for many years. I was the guy that thought I could watch another Youtube video, or read another book, and I could figure out on my own. It took a ton of time. You have to recognize there are at least three currencies. If you want growth, it involves time, it's going to involve money, and it's going to involve focus, or energy, or work, or effort, whatever you want to call it. Those could probably be broken up even further, but you've got these three currencies. If you use all three and invest all three you can grow faster. If you decide, “I'm not going to invest money. I don’t want to go hire a coach. I don't want to pay DoorGrow. I don’t want to go spend money on this.” Then you can go buy cheap things like books, and watch free YouTube videos, and get a lot of some good stuff. Some stuff that's leading you the wrong way but you don't know. They're experts so maybe they'll be telling the truth. You try it out. Then what ends up happening is it's just going to take infinitely more time. That was my challenge. I spent a massive amount of time. It was painful. When I finally started to invest serious money towards the best that I could afford at the time, I collapsed time dramatically, and I always made that money back. Not even just made it back. I made it back monthly. I was making more than I paid the coach. That's almost been my experience with every coach. I've got so many coaches that I paid $5000 a month. It gets ridiculous, but do I make more of that in a month? Absolutely. Jon: One of the things that I hear on the calls is if someone isn't seriously setting goals for their business, it feels to me like it's because they're afraid that they're not going to hit them. If they don't say them out loud then they don't have to suffer the defeat of not hitting it. One of the reasons to work with a coach is to have the accountability and the hand-holding required to get you over that resistance and that hump so that you can actually start hitting those numbers. The first time that you hit one of the goals that you set, you get addicted to it. You want to keep hitting goals, but because people have set so many goals in the past and then failed at hitting them, they don't set goals anymore. Jason: They don’t trust themselves. Jon: One of the things that a good coach can do is get you back in alignment with your goals so that you recognize that that vision is possible to hit. That's part of that collapsing time. There's a ton of great business books out there, there's a ton of great niche courses out there. You can throw money into a million different ways to “grow your business,” but if you're not looking at your business holistically, and you're just looking to fix the symptom with some kind of a band-aid, you're never going to be an A-player in anything that you're doing. There's an opportunity to level up by working with a coach—whether that's DoorGrow or somebody else. I have worked with coaches for the past 20 years. I believe in them wholeheartedly. If you're going to excel at what you're doing, you have to have somebody who's playing a bigger game than you. Jason: That's very true. I agree. Let's end on that note. Jon, I appreciate you and hanging out with you again. Those that are watching, make sure to—if you're watching this on Youtube—subscribe, like us. If you're hearing this in iTunes, please, be sure to leave us some feedback. We want to hear your real feedback there. Leave us a review. That helps us out. Jon: I’m also going to say before this goes out. Join us in the Facebook group because this can be an ongoing conversation that we have in the Facebook group. We have so many stellar examples of property managers who are doing all the right things there. You can interface with them, you can interface with the people on our team, and you can tell us what's working, not working in your business. Then if you disagree with everything that we just said, we invite you to come and have that conversation as well. Because any type of conversation whether you're praising what we're doing or trying to chip it down with an ax is going to allow us to grow, and iterate, and become better. We want to have you in that group. Jason: Well said. 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 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.

00;00;14;09 [Jason]: Jason Watson with WCG Incorporated here in ColoradoSprings, we're a local tax and accounting firm. Joined by RachaelWeber and Joseph Bassett, both tax professionals for us. We'realso hosted by Axe and the Oak here in Colorado Springs, they'vebeen gracious enough to open up early for us, part of our Bourbonand Business00;00;31;29 series, podcasts and videos. We just got done wrapping up a videoand podcast on some of the bigger deductions that we see, cars,that's always a big one for most small00;00;42;29 business owners, meals and travel. We're going to talk this time or,this time around about home office and then all the other likegoofier ones, if you will.00;00;54;25 So, you know, tell me the rules, Rachael, on the home officededuction.00;01;00;04 [Rachael]: It's got to be used regularly and exclusively00;01;03;27 [Jason]: Okay.00;01;04;26 [Rachael]: In your home.00;01;05;13 [Jason]: Okay, regular and exclusive and have a business.00;01;09;01 [Rachael]: A Business purpose.00;01;09;14 [Jason]: That's probably true for every deduction on a plan, right?00;01;12;18 [Rachael]: Yeah.00;01;12;27 [Jason]: For a business deduction to be a legitimate businessdeduction it has to have a business purpose. So, use regularly andexclusively. So, can you break those words down for me? What's"regular" mean?00;01;23;15 [Rachael]: "Regular" means you would be checking your emails,invoicing your customers, doing administrative work. Okay. Meetingwith clients, holding your inventory. It could mean a whole host of00;01;37;27 [Jason]: Right.00;01;38;03 [Rachael]: of things. You're just doing that on a regular basis, notonce a month00;01;42;26 [Jason]: Right.00;01;43;14 [Rachael]: but on a regular basis.00;01;44;21 [Jason]: Yeah. And one of the words that the IRS will also use too is"continuous", right? This is regular and continuous, it's, it's, got alife, you know, it's got a cycle.00;01;53;28 [Jason]: So yeah, absolutely, regular is a big deal. We have folksthat have a rental, one rental, you know, they have a W-2 job, theyhave all those things and they're trying to say, I have a home officeto manage my rental. It's just never going to happen. Now, if wehave 10 rentals, 6 rentals, that's all you do is manage your00;02;11;02 rentals. We have some people that have 3 or 4 VRBOs or Airbnb,short term rentals and that is all they do.00;02;18;24 [Rachael]: Time consuming.00;02;18;29 [Jason]: Their working that stuff 100% so yeah, so that's regular.How about exclusive Joe? Joseph? What's exclusive?00;02;24;27 [Joseph]: So, let's say you have an extra room in the bedroomthat's you want to use for your home office and it also can't be yourtheater room. So you know, that's gotta be exclusively used forbusiness.00;02;33;20 [Jason]: What if you're a videographer and the theater is yourbusiness? I'm teasing you.00;02;38;03 [Joseph]: Well, you have an argument there. Or, or00;02;38;24 [Jason]: No, but you can't mix the use, yeah00;02;41;07 [Joseph]: Right, unless you run a daycare out of your00;02;42;13 [Jason]: Right.00;02;42;21 [Joseph]: House as well.00;02;43;05 [Jason]: Yeah, and daycare has its own special rules and this is notthe podcast for that because00;02;47;27 [Joseph]: Right.00;02;48;01 [Jason]: I don't know those rules by a memory. I look them up oncein awhile when I have to, but that's it. But right, those are some ofthe shared use stuff can be daycare. Other than that, it's regularand exclusive with a business purpose. So, tell me some of thebank, the benefits of having a home office00;03;05;25 deduction or home office reimbursement.00;03;08;10 [Rachael]: Reimbursement? Is that part of your mortgage interest?00;03;13;15 [Jason]: Okay.00;03;13;23 [Rachael]: Your real estate taxes,00;03;15;05 [Jason]: Okay.00;03;15;19 [Rachael]: Utilities.00;03;16;21 [Jason]: Okay.00;03;17;09 [Rachael]: Could become a small deduction.00;03;19;21 [Jason]: Okay.00;03;21;11 [Rachael]: For you, a business deduction.00;03;21;18 [Jason]: Yeah absolutely. And what are some of those expensesthat aren't otherwise available to be deducted? And mortgageinsurance, we say yes, right?00;03;27;29 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm00;03;28;14 [Jason]: Schedule A property taxes, we say yes, but how about theother ones?00;03;31;04 [Rachael]: Utilities, insurance00;03;33;19 [Jason]: HOA dues.00;03;34;21 [Rachael]: Yeah. Mm-hmm.00;03;35;24 [Joseph]: Repairs. Okay, so suddenly those become deductible andin a world where otherwise it wouldn't be.00;03;40;11 [Rachael]: Right.00;03;40;21 [Joseph]: Yeah.00;03;41;01 [Jason]: Okay, and how do we calculate that home officededuction?00;03;45;17 [Rachael]: Well we do it by square footage.00;03;48;07 [Jason]: Yeah, that is probably the most common, is squarefootage. You could do it at room by room, the IRS allow that, theyactually mentioned that in Publication, what? 587, or whatever it is.But I've never seen anybody do room by room.00;04;00;15 [Rachael]: No.00;04;00;20 [Jason]: It's always, usually, I shouldn't say always, but usually it'ssquare footage, yeah. So what's the basic calculation? It's thehome office space divided by00;04;09;24 [Joseph]: Total space of the house.00;04;10;26 [Jason]: Yeah, the total space of the house. What if you use yourgarage, then what do you do?00;04;15;08 [Joseph]: You include it.00;04;16;12 [Jason]: Include it where?00;04;17;08 [Joseph]: In both.00;04;18;01 [Jason]: In both numerator and denominator? Yeah, exactly. So ifwe're going to take the benefit of the garage and it's not otherwisein the denominator then we have to add it in.00;04;29;26 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;04;30;02 [Jason]: Yeah, exactly. So, that's home office. What's this 50 milerule thing? Who wants to talk about that?00;04;38;14 [Joseph]: Right, so the 50 mile rule's, you know, kind of a safeharbor if you will, that if you know, your home office is within 50miles of your tax home then you can, you know, deduct expensesassociated with00;04;50;29 commuting from the tax home to the home office.00;04;54;17 [Jason]: Yeah, exactly. It's, they want, "they" being the IRS and thetax court, they want your home office to be, there's no written ruleon this, it's more of a contrived rule.00;05;06;23 But your home office needs to be within 50 miles of your tax home.Your tax home is where you earn your revenue. So, the greatexample, in one of the tax court cases, is a surgeon had a home inPennsylvania.00;05;23;05 He drove to New York, I believe, and it was 130 miles away. He wasattempting to deduct all those commuting expenses and becausehe was like, well, I got a home office. So then my commute is frommy bedroom to the basement. And then when I hop in the car, it'sall business miles, and of course the00;05;43;06 IRS and tax court said "No." They said it's too far from your taxhome, basically. So they dis, disallowed all those expenses asdeductible expenses and00;05;54;27 consider them commuting expenses, which is normally a personalexpense.00;05;59;03 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;05;59;12 [Jason]: Non deductible. So, that's this 50 mile rule. What, youknow, talk to me about the audit rate risk for home offices and00;06;09;25 [Rachael]: [Inaudible]00;06;10;00 [Jason]: and, you've, and you've been doing taxes for a little bit oftime.00;06;14;07 [Rachael]: Just a little while.00;06;14;13 [Jason]: So tell me a little bit about the history.00;06;16;12 [Rachael]: It's kind of high. Yeah and it's, it's almost like they canwalk in and assume you're doing something wrong because they're,they're not easy rules. And you know, maybe the square footageisn't complete or they can say, Hey, what's with the day bed andyour home office?00;06;31;02 [Jason]: Right.00;06;31;13 [Rachael]: Or, and it's not just the deductions that you're getting,your utilities, your small amount of additional square footage, butit's that commuting miles00;06;42;07 [Jason]: Right.00;06;42;15 [Rachael]: That are, it's going to be pricey00;06;43;26 [Jason]: Yeah.00;06;44;04 [Rachael]: If its not done right.00;06;45;07 [Jason]: Yeah, absolutely. So, home offices, 20 years ago were notvery common, so it was a high audit rate risk.00;06;53;19 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;06;54;11 [Jason]: Today telecommuters and all that stuff is a lot higher. Butnow we're back to not being seen very often because if you're aW-2 individual working out of your home office for a company out ofCalifornia,00;07;07;05 you would have to deduct that on Form 2106.00;07;10;19 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;07;11;04 [Jason]: And those expenses, those deductions are no longerallowed. So, home office is almost been shrunk down to just forbusiness owners.00;07;18;02 [Rachael]: Yeah.00;07;18;29 [Jason]: So, how are we going to do that? Joseph, talk to, talk to usabout how we're going to do the home office from an S Corpperspective.00;07;28;20 [Joseph]: So, we'll use an accountable plan for the home office forthe S Corp and one of the reasons why we do that, so you know SCorp's are cash basis, you know, and00;07;38;07 [Jason]: Typically.00;07;38;23 [Joseph]: Typically, typically.00;07;39;14 [Jason]: Yes, small businesses enjoy using cash as their method of00;07;43;18 [Joseph]: Right. Accounting, it's simple. Depending on their grossreceipts.00;07;45;18 [Jason]: Yeah.00;07;45;27 [Joseph]: And we just, we have you record it, you know, for like, likeRachael said, your interest, taxes, insurance, and then you getreimbursed by the S Corp for your business use percentage of00;07;58;00 [Jason]: Okay.00;07;58;06 [Joseph]: Business expenses.00;07;59;18 [Jason]: So, just to back up for a viewers and listeners, anaccountable plan is the method used to reimburse people,employees for business use of their personal assets.00;08;13;03 [Jason]: Car, cell phone, home, are probably the biggest ones,right?00;08;16;05 [Joseph]: Mm-hmm.00;08;16;19 [Jason]: So, and we forgot to put cell phone down on our big list ofdeductions, but we can talk about that in a second. So, the benefitto that is we're getting reimbursed by our business. That expense iskind of tucked away on the S Corp tax return, using00;08;35;29 an S Corp in your00;08;36;29 [Joseph]: Mm-hmm.00;08;37;28 [Jason]: example as occupancy expense. Not that you can't defendit, not that we're doing anything wrong, but it certainly is not as highof an audit rate as filing Form 8829.00;08;49;29 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;08;50;06 [Jason]: Which is clearly the Office In Home worksheet.00;08;53;12 [Joseph]: Right.00;08;53;20 [Jason]: That gets tucked on or tacked onto your Schedule C, if youwere to have a business only on your 1040. So, that just shrinksdramatically, the audit rate risk, from home office perspective.00;09;07;06 [Joseph]: And too, S Corp's already face a lower audit ratethemselves.00;09;10;14 [Jason]: Yes, 0.4% given I think 2017 data00;09;14;28 [Joseph]: Mm-hmm, 2017, yeah.00;09;15;02 [Jason]: Is the latest that we have now. So the IRS takes forever tocompile00;09;19;03 [Joseph]: Yeah.00;09;19;11 [Jason]: This stuff. I mean, I guess it makes a little bit of sensebecause audits take time00;09;23;07 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;09;23;18 [Jason]: to generate and to do. But I still like to think we can live ina real time world. You know what I mean? Like we should know likeright now how many audits are happening. So, alright, let's talkabout commuting expenses. You know, you get up in the morning,you drive to WCG Inc, you know, is00;09;45;22 that an expense you can deduct?00;09;47;09 [Rachael]: No, it's not.00;09;48;01 [Jason]: Okay. Are you bummed out about that?00;09;49;20 [Rachael]: Yes, I am.00;09;50;08 [Jason]: Yeah, okay, we should write our Senators and ourCongress people. So, okay, so commute expenses? No. Even ifyou travel far, let's say you moved to Denver and you drove everyday down in the Colorado Springs, it doesn't matter, right?00;10;03;18 [Rachael]: Still personal, yeah.00;10;03;27 [Jason]: Right, so there's no like, Hey, we recognize that you'retraveling really far, we'll give you that deduction. There's nothinglike that. So, commuting expenses, parking, tolls, all that associatedwith going to00;10;16;18 your tax home if you will, are not going to be deductible. So, great,Country Club Dues, Rachel?00;10;23;14 [Rachael]: No, can't do it.00;10;24;15 [Jason]: No! Wow! Just hammered, boom.00;10;28;06 [Rachael]: Sad, yeah.00;10;29;14 [Jason]: Talk to me a little more about that. So we have someonewho has a membership somewhere, but they do entertain, shouldn'tsay that00;10;35;07 [Rachael]: Nope. Yeah.00;10;35;11 [Joseph]: Yeah, discuss business.00;10;36;08 [Jason]: They do discuss business at their country club.00;10;40;17 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;10;40;20 [Jason]: How does that work?00;10;41;29 [Rachael]: Those expenses for the country club dues are going tobe personal.00;10;46;19 [Jason]: Right.00;10;46;25 [Rachael]: It's great that they're generating business00;10;48;29 [Jason]: Yes.00;10;49;07 [Rachael]: At the country club00;10;50;14 [Jason]: Okay.00;10;50;20 [Rachael]: but the dues are not deductible.00;10;52;01 [Jason]: All right, so this same member, buys a meal. The businesspurpose is clear. They00;10;59;20 [Rachael]: Yup.00;10;59;23 [Jason]: Were there to discuss business and now this individual isbuying a meal that's going to get tacked on top of his or her dues.How's that work?00;11;07;16 [Rachael]: That meal portion is going to be 50%00;11;10;14 [Jason]: Okay. Deductible as a business meal. Just, just like we'vealways done.00;11;13;06 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;11;13;09 [Jason]: With meals. Okay, great. Talk to me a little abouteducation. Can you run education expenses through yourbusiness?00;11;20;21 [Joseph]: It depends.00;11;21;20 [Jason]: It depends, ah look just the classic accountant.00;11;24;28 [Rachael]: Yeah, maybe.00;11;26;00 [Jason]: Yeah.00;11;26;14 [Joseph]: If those education expenses are to improve your currentfield, then possibly. If they're to do something completely different,you know so if I was going to go to school to become a doctor now,which probably won't happen.00;11;37;13 [Jason]: Yeah.00;11;37;23 [Joseph]: But, those won't be deductible.00;11;40;03 [Jason]: Right, so the rule is it has to improve your current workskills. And you can even do, deducted a degree or even like, youknow, college courses, even if it leads to a degree, provided it'simproving your current00;11;57;20 work skills. So, you're absolutely correct, the other half of that is ifyou need it for certifications, like your continuing educations and allthat stuff. So, people who are CPAs have to go do all these, youknow, nauseating00;12;10;15 [Rachael]: [All laugh]00;12;11;02 [Jason]: Continuing Ed credits, you know, I'm sure we learned a lottoo, but you know, anyway, so, so that's education. How about yourchildren? Can you hire your children and consider them employeesand have the company00;12;27;10 pay for the education? Who wants to take that one?00;12;31;01 [Joseph]: I would say yes.00;12;32;07 [Jason]: I'd say no. [Laughs]00;12;34;09 [Joseph]: Like, the client advocacy in me would say Yes.00;12;38;13 [Jason]: Yeah.00;12;38;20 [Joseph]: Because of the, the relation though it will be disallowed.00;12;41;15 [Jason]: Right? Yeah, I was giving you a hard time. So section 127says if your child is 20 years or younger, they have attribution toyou as Mom and Dad being an owner of the company.00;12;54;21 If you own 5% or more of the company, you can't deduct thateducation.00;13;00;01 [Jason]: But if your child legitimately works, and is 21 or older, sowe're talking junior or senior00;13;08;24 [Rachael]: In college.00;13;08;29 [Jason]: If you're on a six year plan, you're a sophomore, right?Then the company can pay up to 5,250 a year, I think that's 2019limit. So, that might get index every year, like everything else. So,anyway that's education. How about client gifts? How do youhandle that?00;13;23;16 [Rachael]: Oh, they're $25 cap.00;13;27;08 [Jason]: Ahh $25?00;13;27;14 [Rachael]: I know, its really, yep. Mm-hmm.00;13;28;29 [Joseph]: Well they give you the $4 for gift wrapping, so00;13;31;16 [Jason]: And they give you $4 per pen or something.00;13;33;09 [Joseph]: Per pen, yeah.00;13;33;11 [Rachael]: That's advertising, yes.00;13;37;02 [Jason]: So, talk to me more about the $25 rule. Is that like all giftsor, or is it just for gifts to specific people?00;13;48;14 [Rachael]: It's gifts to a limited clientele. If you were handing giftsout to the general public and it was a lower cost, then that would beconsidered advertising.00;14;00;07 [Jason]: Okay.00;14;00;14 [Rachael]: And I think they give $4 for each advertising gift.00;14;04;21 [Jason]: Yeah.00;14;04;27 [Rachael]: Which I'm not quite sure what, you know, a pen or acalendar or something like that.00;14;08;26 [Jason]: Yeah, I don't know how much stuff like that costs either,yeah.00;14;12;12 [Rachael]: But your $75 wine basket is going to be a $25 businessgift.00;14;17;29 [Jason]: Yeah, and as I've seen it, read it maybe in Journal ofAccountancy, other things like that, but that's an individual limit. Soif you don't donate, or if you don't provide that gift to an individual, ifyou just do it to the business00;14;33;01 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;14;33;10 [Jason]: There might be different rules00;14;34;03 [Rachael]: Yes.00;14;34;13 [Jason]: allowing you to take more deduction. So if you say, DearBob, thanks for all the business00;14;39;27 [Rachael]: versus staff at.00;14;41;03 [Jason]: Yeah, exactly.00;14;42;19 [Rachael]: Yeah.00;14;43;06 [Jason]: yeah, exactly. So, and you can see why, you know, theIRS is always worried about transfer of wealth without taxation.00;14;50;02 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;14;50;12 [Jason]: Right? So if you, if you come in there with a bunch of clientgifts for one person it might look like a transfer of wealth. So, howabout professional attire? I am rocking the WCG.00;15;00;18 [Joseph]: That's true, very nice.00;15;00;29 [Jason]: On my shirt here. But tell me about professional attire.People will constantly ask you00;15;07;09 [Rachael]: Yep.00;15;07;28 [Jason]: I have to look good in my business suit, I have to have mynails and hair done, I have to rock, I have to rock this image.00;15;15;25 [Rachael]: And they're all personal.00;15;17;27 [Jason]: Yes, even though they're dead sexy, right? Even thoughthey're very good looking.00;15;21;21 [Rachael]: And necessary00;15;22;01 [Jason]: Yes.00;15;22;14 [Rachael]: Absolutely necessary. Yeah. So there's a businesspurpose behind it, but no tax deduction.00;15;26;09 [Jason]: Right. So what's the rule?00;15;28;07 [Joseph]: If it's not suitable for everyday wear00;15;30;00 [Jason]: Yes.00;15;30;11 [Joseph]: You can deduct it.00;15;30;20 [Jason]: So, if it's, yeah, so if you can, if it's suitable for everydaywear, easily convertible into everyday wear, then it's not deductible.00;15;38;08 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;15;38;25 [Jason]: Right? Business suits are, you know, clearly somethingyou can convert to everyday use. We do have some, TVpersonalities.00;15;47;10 [Joseph]: Yes.00;15;47;15 [Jason]: We do have some models, you know, and we can, we canidentify some of that attire as costumes, something that theywouldn't, you know, be caught dead in. And that's true for some ofthese models, for sure.00;16;01;26 They wear stuff and they're like, I'm never wearing that in public. Itjust, it looks good on a cover of a magazine, but that's about it.00;16;08;15 [Jason]: Those are costumes, they're not suitable for everyday use.Those are something that we can deduct. TV personalities, they'llbuy, you know, a thousand jackets and they'll give them away andso those become marketing toys00;16;20;19 [Rachael]: Yeah.00;16;20;25 [Jason]: Or ploys or whatever, so absolutely. Let's talk about, perdiem and I'll just kind of talk about this real quick. Per diems a funnything. If you own 10% or more of a corporation and, and also theremight be some00;16;38;21 attribution there, where if your brother or your sister or your Mom or00;16;42;16 [Joseph]: Spouse.00;16;43;12 [Jason]: Whatever, then you are assumed to have the same,greater than 10%. If you are in that boat, you cannot take a perdiem reimbursement. So the scenario would be like this, I'm 100%owner of a corporation. I pay myself $71 a day for every day thatI'm in San Francisco, because00;17;02;15 that's the per diem rate. Let's say using 2018 numbers, I haven'tseen them, I haven't looked at per diem in a while cause we don't,we don't see 2106 expenses anymore. But, that would not beallowed. WCG Inc says, Rachel, we need you to go to, let's sayCortez, we really00;17;18;23 didn't like you very much. I'm teasing, Cortez is lovely. But, and wesay, Hey, we're going to give you $71 per per day that you're00;17;27;08 there for meals, that would be acceptable.00;17;30;11 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;17;30;13 [Jason]: Now that will not be revenue to you. You maybe only spend$20, you know, whatever. You still get to take that $71 as tax freeincome.00;17;40;24 [Jason]: So, because you don't own 10% or more of WCG Inc.That'll change, you know, you'll own, own it all and00;17;49;07 [Rachael]: Eighty-five percent like you.00;17;50;09 [Jason]: Joseph, I'll be working for you one day, it'll be awesome.So, but that's per diem, per diem is a little tricky. There is the, themeals and incidentals component. There is the lodging component.The meals and incidentals component, as far as I know and read it,is00;18;06;24 available to Schedule C, Sole Prop, single member LLC types. Theminute you're a corporation or you act with a corporation through anS Corp election that gets tossed out the window.00;18;18;06 Lodging, regardless, is always going to be actual expenses. Youdon't get the high, low seasonal rates and all that stuff that you seein those per diem tables as a business owner. So, we ran throughhome office, all kinds of good stuff there. We ran through all kindsof other deductions that we get entertained with,00;18;38;10 quite literally, cause some people are pretty clever, right?00;18;41;22 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;18;41;29 [Jason]: With, with their deductions. The bottom line is, people askme all the time and they ask all of us all the time, how do I save ontaxes, right? And the first thing I say is, look, your job is to buildwealth, not save taxes.00;18;56;12 We can save taxes along the way, that's great. But your job in life isto build wealth. Now, if you still want to save taxes the trick is tolook at what cash you're already comfortable with leaving yourbody.00;19;10;24 [Jason]: So go through your checkbook and try to figure out if therewas one thing that you missed or maybe this expense really didhave a business connection to it and I forgot that it did, or to digdeep. So, it's to look at the money that you're already willing tospend and try00;19;28;06 to find a business connection.00;19;29;23 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;19;30;15 [Jason]: Now, I say find a business connection, like discover abusiness connection00;19;35;18 [Rachael]: Not create one.00;19;35;27 [Jason]: Not fabricate a business connection. So anyway, those,those are some of the other business deductions that we see a lotof: commuting expenses, country club dues, education, client00;19;47;20 gifts, professional attire, per diem, all that good stuff. We talkedabout home office in this segment as well. We didn't talk about cellphones. You know, cell phones, you know, folks will try to deduct100%, right?00;20;02;16 [Joseph]: Mm-hmm.00;20;02;21 [Jason]: "I use it for my business," oh, I know you use it for yourbusiness, I see that. But the minute you get a text saying, Heyhoney, you know, you're out of beer you should probably pick somemore up on the way home; and milk and eggs are low too. Nowyour cell phone's no longer 100%.00;20;17;04 [Rachael]: Mm-hmm.00;20;18;17 [Jason]: So, you know our firm-wide soft ceiling is around 80%, ifyou're a realtor, you're probably on the phone all the time. Peoplehave kicked landlines to the curb but still your phone is going tohave a high personal use and I, I believe, we believe as a firm, 20%is00;20;37;00 about the minimum there, meaning 80% is for business.00;20;40;26 [Jason]: Maybe you're a dentist, right? And you use your cell phoneoccasionally, you do have an office phone and all those otherthings, so maybe that's like 30% business use and 70% forpersonal. So, commonly we see cell phones being paid for by thebusiness and they00;20;58;19 truly are a mixed-use asset, so a mixed-use asset should be00;21;03;06 [Joseph]: Paid by you personally00;21;04;10 [Jason]: Exactly.00;21;05;00 [Joseph]: And reimbursed to you on an accountable plan.00;21;06;04 [Jason]: Yup. So, assets that you own personally should be paid forpersonally. If there's a business connection or use of that assetthen get reimbursed. No different than you working for Google andGoogle says, Hey, you know, drive down to the store, pick up some,you know, some pencils and we'll00;21;21;15 reimburse you. Well, you bring in a receipt and you're bringing inyour mileage log, and maybe you have to use your cell phone andall that stuff, and they would cut you a check for the business use ofyour personal stuff. So, anyway those are some of the common taxdeductions that we see here at WCG.00;21;36;06 My name is Jason Watson with WCG. I'm alongside Rachel Weberand Joseph Bassett. We're at the Axe and the Oak and this is a partof our Bourbon and Business series of podcasts and videos and wethank you for joining us and we'll00;21;51;00 talk to you real soon.

Do you want to grow your single-family portfolio, but not sure how? Don’t think you’re smart enough to be successful in real estate? Invest in yourself, get an education, and hire a coach. Today, I am talking to Mark Dolfini, founder of Landlord Coach and author of three real estate books. Mark shares how he ventured into real estate, property management, and landlord coach. He follows the VIP Paradigm: Vision, Infrastructure, and Process.  You’ll Learn... [04:40] Real Estate Education: You can learn, if you want to; even if you’re not smart. [07:21] Hospitality Industry: How to treat people, customers, and residents like guests. [10:37] Set up sustainable business by shifting to VIP Paradigm. [14:35] Landlord Coach’s favorite catch phrases focus on valuing your time and money.  [19:30] Better Business Owner: It’s not about the number of doors, but what you’re trying to accomplish in revenue and lifestyle. [26:40] Cycle of Suck and 4 Ds to Revenue (doors, deals, duration, and dollars). [29:10] Being time wealthy is more of a decision than a destination. [31:37] Bad communication is a symptom of the problem, not the problem. The problem is a bad infrastructure and/or process.  [36:35] Product to Produce: Consistency; sloppiness is your only competition. [37:35] Negative Feedback Loop: If you put something in place, make sure it gets done. [39:04] Company’s Compass: Define/develop core values to make business decisions. [41:55] Being your own boss is great, but get a coach to take you where you want to go. [44:10] Difference between mentor and coach: Invest in yourself by paying a coach to hold you accountable. Tweetables Real Estate Education: It’s about the want to; not the intelligence. Don’t do it all. Learn to fire yourself! There is no amount of money that will make time irrelevant.  If you don’t place a value on your free time, someone else will.  Resources Mark Dolfini on Facebook Landlord Coach The Time-Wealthy Investor 2.0 Marriott 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’m hanging out with Mark Dolfini of Landlord Coach. Mark, welcome to the show. Mark: Hey, it’s great to be here. That’s a heck of an intro. Jason: It’s our manifesto, I call it. Mark: I love it. That speaks directly to my heart when we’re talking about people who want to grow their single family portfolios. That gets me fired up. Jason: So Mark, I want to introduce you. I’m really excited to have you on the show. We’re talking before show a little bit and we have a lot of alignment. We both believe in coaching, we both believe in having coaches. It says Mark Dolfini is a veteran of the US marines—thank you for your service—and the author of three real estate books. He was first published in 2017, second book released in early 2018, and his third book, The Time-Wealthy Investor 2.0, came out in March of 2019. He received a Bachelor of Science in Accounting at Purdue University, worked for Marriott International before venturing out full time into the world of real estate investing. He’s a managing broker for property management company based out of Lafayette, the founder of Landlord Coach, sits on numerous boards, including the Better Business Bureau of Central Indiana, the National Federation of Independent Business, and is a training director for the Central Indiana BNI Franchise and Networking Organization. He spends his free time pistol shooting and kayaking, and lives in Lafayette where he and his wife, Jennifer, are raising their two sons, Leland and Logan. All right, so we got through your bio. Mark, let’s start out with you and I want to hear about your background. How did you get into the space of real estate, property management, landlord coach, all of this. How did this all come about? Give us a little backstory. Mark: Sure. Well, I’d love to say it was a straight line trajectory, but you know there’s your plan and God’s plan, right? That doesn’t and usually don’t always match up. Jason: [...] and then there’s reality. Mark: Exactly. Jason: [...] winds. Always. Mark: Right. I’d always wanted to do something entrepreneurial. I didn’t know exactly what that was. I mean, this is back me being seven or eight years old, I started with a vegetable stand, the vegetable that I grew in Upstate New York and sold them at a vegetable stand that I built out of out of wood. So I always started back from there. My first go at real estate was when I was actually in the marine corps still and I bought 40 acres of property that was in Northern Arizona. I paid a couple of hundred bucks an acre for it and that was really it. It was just a desert in the middle of nowhere that no one seemed to want, but I knew at $200 an acre was a pretty good deal. I ended up buying it for capital appreciation at that point in time. But having a piece of land that doesn’t generate income doesn’t generate revenue. I learned pretty quickly is not the way to wealth. Getting someone else to pay for it was really what I wanted to do. I was getting near the end of my time in the marine corps. Had a great time, it was good for me in a lot of ways. It was tough, but I’m glad I did it. I also knew I needed to get an education. So, I got out. Now, let me just frame this because I went to school in Upstate New York and graduated 352nd out of 354. Let that sink in, everybody. I was at the bottom of the class. Jason: Right [...] the class by any means. Mark: Right. Not even close. The reason I’m saying that is because people who are out there think that they have to have this high-level of intelligence and high-level of intellect to make this business work. If you know anything and you’re doing real estate, it’s about the want to, it’s not about the intelligence. Let me just put that to bed right away. Now, that doesn’t give you an excuse to not go out and say, “Well, I need to learn things and therefore it’s just too hard.” There are lots of things are difficult. Walking when you were two years old was probably difficult. Or 18 months when learning how to talk was difficult at one point. It’s the same thing. You can learn this if you have the right intention. Anyway, getting out of the marine corps and getting into college was a little tricky because with my “stellar” high school career. I had to figure out how to how to do that. I hadn’t sat for an SAT. I had to learn in high school all that stuff. When I got out of the marine corps, I actually got accepted to Purdue. I got a high-enough score on my SAT. While I was at Purdue, I started buying some rental real estate. By the time I got out of Purdue, I had about a dozen rental units altogether, which is roughly half a million dollars for the real estate. That really how I got started and that’s really where my real estate education really got started. Jason: Right, so you cut your teeth on in the real world with your own real estate deals dealing with tenants, toilets, and termites, I’m sure. Fast forward to now. Help us understand. We’re going to be talking about the VIP paradigm: vision, infrastructure, and process the acronym. Let’s get into it. Mark: Sure. Before I get into that, it’s important to know that the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey might say. As I was getting out of college and I was buying more rental units, there’s lots of property managers out there who are also investors, so now I’m speaking to them as well. As I was growing this side of the portfolio, I was working as an accountant—I have a degree in accounting—for the Marriott. Wonderful, wonderful company. I learned an awful lot from the hospitality industry in terms of how to treat people, how to treat customers, and really treat my residents like I would be treating hotel guests. There’s a lot to learn out there from the hospitality industry in terms of what they do right. It’s just a different approach. It’s almost like the paradigm shift that happened with the banks maybe about 20 years ago. It used to be you run into the bank almost when you were in trouble. Now, you walk into a bank and everyone greets you, throws bottles of water at you, says hello and they give you this. That wasn’t always the way. The old school guys may remember that. Now, it’s a different paradigm because now they’re welcoming customers. They want you to come into the bank. They want you to have that transaction at their location. I would love to see that shift continue into the property management side because now it almost seems like the residents are the enemy rather than they’re the ones who pay the bills. As I continue to evolve and I loved what I learned from the hospitality industry, eventually I got to a point where I was able to get out and start to do that full-time just managing my own portfolio. Unfortunately, I got very, very overleveraged, not only in money but in time. What was happening is every time a task would come on, rather than looking for someone to hand that task to, I just took it on and kept it. There’s lots of property managers out there that are doing this. They’re not valuing their time highly enough. What ends up happening is they end up taking on this job, they don’t factor in opportunity cost where they’re going to take every job that’s out there and they’re going to do it. Even though they may be worth realistically $20–$50 an hour, they’re still doing $10 an hour jobs. In essence, every time they’re doing a $10 an hour job, they’re costing their business $40 an hour or $30 an hour and they don’t look at in that paradigm. Learning to fire yourself is one of the biggest things and I’m sure we can get in that little bit later, but really where my transition in the property management occurred was almost out of necessity. That seems to happen for a lot of people and certainly I was no exception. Going into 2009, I had about $6 million worth of real estate in my own portfolio. I was working 16–17 hours a day just trying to keep all the balls in the air. When the economy fell apart, that’s when things really, really got bad for me. Of course I started working 20 and 22 hour days and kept catching naps wherever I could. I was doing it all and I was doing it all very, very poorly. Finally, where the camel’s back broke was I got sick and I almost died in the hospital from double pneumonia. From all that, is really where I really got very intentional about setting up a business that was sustainable and I started delivering to my cash flow by doing some property management for other people. I got my broker’s license, started doing some property management on the side, and that’s really where I also got very, very intentional about how I want my business to look, the infrastructure that I needed it, and also the processes that needed to run on that infrastructure. That’s the vision infrastructure process paradigm that you’re alluding to earlier is you’re getting a vision where I wanted to go, setting up the proper infrastructure for it, and then putting the processes in place on top of that. Jason: I want to point this out because this is a milestone that I’m wondering if every entrepreneur eventually go through it. It’s like a crisis of health where we finally realize that we are not invincible, that it’s not sustainable to just do the hustle and grind that’s trumped up, and it made to look beautiful and exciting to just work, endless work weeks and crazy amounts of hours. Looking back, I had my own crisis like this. I remember I was literally at the end of a sales call laying on the floor because I had slipped a disk in my back or something because I wasn’t eating. I was just working, I thought I had to work harder and harder, I was just do-do-do, and then I couldn’t work for two weeks. I was laying on the floor and it was ridiculous. That gets really expensive trying to recover from that. 5That was when I had this shift and this epiphany came to me that our health and self-care is the foundation for my ability to provide, to do everything in the business, and you need to have a business that serves your needs and be sustainable instead of becoming this robot slave that is going to wear your body out on the business. Mark: Right To that point, you have to understand that we work so we can live, not the other way around. There’s so many people who are out there living to work and property managers, you get that one or two critical pieces, or one or two critical people that are doing 80%–90% of the work, and then you get everybody else who just shows up and cares or doesn’t care, whatever. I know it’s a typical 80/20 rule where you get 20% of people doing 80% of the work. In property management, it’s more like 1% doing 99% of the work. Then you got those critical pieces and you cannot build a sustainable business on that. Lots of property managers are very small. They’re under 500 units and they’re one- or two-man shops. In the property management company that I have, definitely is a weird hybrid between management company, maintenance company, but it works and it works really, really well. We can get into that later, but I agree with you. You have to almost get to that crisis. You either get to that crisis and you make a decision or you just have enough for you to just walk away. In either one, I don’t think is good. A lot of people get to that point because they don’t value their free time. That’s fundamentally it. They’re just not buying their time. Rob: Yup. Time is worth more than money to me now. If people approached it from that standpoint at the beginning, that’s why you hire somebody. You’re buying time. That’s why you build the business. You’re buying time. Every dollar I spend should be hopefully moving towards buying me some additional time or collapsing time. That’s why I get coaches. It collapses time. I’m buying time. I love what you’re saying. A lot of times, we start out building the business we can have instead of the business that we want, and they’re two very different things. One you’re serving and the other one serves us. Mark: That’s exactly right. There are two catch phrases I use all the time. One of those is, “There is no amount of money that will make time irrelevant.” When you get your head around that, then all of a sudden you say, “Okay.” The other phrase I use quite often, especially when I’m signing-off on a live event or something like that is, “Not only is there no amount of money that will make time irrelevant, but if you don’t place a value on your free time, someone else will.” Usually the amount of value that they’re going to place on your free time is far less than what you're worth, and they know it. That’s why they’re calling you with that, right? Jason: Yeah. The, “You got a minute?” and, “Hey, can I just take you out to lunch?” these kind of things. Mark: Absolutely right. That’s exactly right. Jason: You need to value your time. I don’t know how you tell people to value your time, but I usually say, “Take your gross revenue of the company if you’re the entrepreneur and divide that by 20-, 80-, or a 40-hour work week. That’s a pretty good estimate of what you should, at least, value your time as a dollar if you were looking at it on a dollar per hour basis.” Mark: Yeah, and if you did it on a 40-hour work week, you’d be surprised that most property managers I know are working way more than that. When you come back into it just from that simple math, that’s a perfect calculation. In fact, that’s exactly how I would tell people how to put just a rough number on your time. Or even people that are doing property management on the side. There’s lots of property managers are also estate brokers. They all have to be brokers, but they’re also doing real estate transactions on the side where they’re showing properties and they’re selling properties. That’s all revenue and that’s where you need to determine your opportunity cost. I would say all of your revenue that’s coming in, divide that by coming up with an hourly rate in terms of a 40-hour work week or even a 50-hour work week, to be fair. If you’re coming up with the $50–$60 an hour rate and you’re doing a $12 an hour work, you’ve got to replace yourself from doing that task as soon as you possibly can. I have a driver that I hire when I go to Indianapolis. I go to Indianapolis a couple of times a week and people are like, “Oh, you’re mister big time,” and I’m like, “No, it’s not about that. It’s not about because I feel super important. It’s because I get three hours of windshield time that literally is purposeless. I might listen on audio book. I still like to drive, but it’s not about that. It’s so I can get that time back.” So when I’m done at the end of the day, I’m not completely wiped out and spent. I don’t have to spend an extra three hours at the office that I should be spending with my wife, even if just sitting on the couch with her. Or just sitting at home being with her, or being around my kids, or just being home, where I want to be. There’s lots of people who don’t understand that and I’m like, “Okay, I pay this guy maybe $50, $75, $100 to drive me there and back. That’s easily worth it because my time is several hundred dollars an hour. Someone wants to call me and coach with me, I’m like, “Yeah, that's what I’m going to charge you,” so why would it cost myself that money driving? Sometimes, I still do because I want the solitude and I want to listen to an audio book and just enjoy it. Sometimes, I just want road time. But lots of times, if it’s purposeless, I really want to try to eliminate those bottlenecks as quickly as I possibly can, so I can stay focused on what I’m really trying to accomplish. Jason: Yeah. It’s funny. You’ll see entrepreneurs, they say they have $1 million business. Their time is probably worth about $480 an hour by that calculation, say $500 bucks an hour, and they’re still doing stuff like sometimes you’ll see them doing their yard. If they love doing those things, great, but sometimes we’ll be so focused on one area that we lose sight. For example, there was a time period where I hired a house manager and a nanny because all the fake dad stuff was being done. [...] care about laundry. They don’t care who makes the mills. They want time. So if I can offload those thing to somebody and I’m not paying them $500 an hour to offload those things, then I can spend time. Ultimately, were buying time and that’s a critical piece to growing and scaling business. Mark: Yes. That’s 100% vision. A lot of times, especially whether I’m working with an individual investor or I’m working with a property manager, door count is really where a lot of people say that and I stop them. I know. For example, I got the moniker, Landlord Coach, but my goal is to make people not landlords. If I was going to be a property management coach, my goal would not to make them better property managers. My goal for them is to be better business owners. Even though a lot of times they say, “Oh, all I want,” if it’s an investor, “are 100 units,” or if it’s a property manager, “I want 1000 doors.” I’m like, “Okay, so 999 wouldn’t do it?” and they go, “Well, yeah maybe.” “Okay 997 wouldn’t do it?” I’ll go down this until they finally get that, “Well, okay Mark, what’s your point?” I said, “Look, it’s not the number of doors. It’s really about...” Jason: It’s not an ego number, not an ego goal. Mark: Right. It’s not about that at all. It’s about what you are trying to accomplish in terms of your revenue goals. It’s really about that. If this is about ego, I respect that, but that’s not toward your vision. A lot of times they say, “Okay, well let’s get towards a vision that’s really actually purposeful and usually after I beat him up a little bit and I go, “Okay, 997. How about 995?” After they go, “Okay, what’s your point?” A lot of times I would say, “Okay, so in other words, you’re saying to me that you need to get to a revenue or you need to get to 1000 doors at, say, $1000 apiece. That’s what you need, but you couldn’t get there with 500 doors at $2000 apiece? Obviously the math is the same and a lot less work,” and they go, “Well, yeah. Okay.” “So, is it really about door count? Because I can get you 1000 doors. There are not going to be anything in the world that you or anybody else going to want to manage, but you really want 1000 doors?” Jason: [...] ridiculously low, that you can get a lot of doors really quickly. Mark: And that’s what a friend of mine did. He’s in the area of the state that I wouldn’t go to for love or money, and it’s terrible. I feel bad for him because I see him, watching him get into a leaky lifeboat in shark-infested waters, and I’m just like, “Oh, my God.” And he’s a good dude. He grew overnight from zero to, I don’t even know he’s pumping maybe 150–200 now, but they’re units that I wouldn’t take for any amount. I literally go, “Well, the rent amount isn’t enough to cover my management fees,” because they still wouldn’t be enough. Jason: Ultimately, people really need to ask themselves the question, “What do you really want? What do I really want out of the business?” If it’s an ego goal, great, but maybe what you really want is usually some lifestyle or maybe you want to have some amount of time, you want to spend time with your kids. What do you really want? And maybe you can create that and have that without having 1000 doors or without it having to look a certain way that you may have thought. [...] really matter? Why [...] matter? Mark: Right. It’s really not about door count as much as people want to focus on that now to a certain degree. It depends on your business structure. Again, investors are a little bit different than property managers. In my case, we do a lot of our own maintenance. We have an in-house maintenance department. A significant amount of revenues come in from that. Having more doors enables us to have more opportunities to maintenance. So in that particular case, it does really matter, but we still want to manage higher-end properties. We don’t do a lot of low-end stuff anymore just because of the amount of banging your head against around. It just increases exponentially when you get a certain lower market. It’s just not a market that we want to court anymore. We got out of that probably maybe six years ago and never looked back. The level of drama that has decreased in my life has just been exponential. Not saying that’s bad. There’s other people who want to court that market and do well in that market. That’s certainly fine if that’s a strategy that’s working for you. I’m not telling you about to change it. But for me, I would really invite you to really focus on not even so much as a revenue goal, because then the revenue goal, it’s funny because people go, “Well, yeah. I would like to have $50,000 a month coming in free cash flow, Mike.” And then, I go back to my normal argument and go, “Well, okay. So you want $50,000 a month coming in. $49,990 won’t do it?” So, you have to tie it to a life output goal. That’s why I say to them, “What is this even about? What are you trying to accomplish?” When they say, “Well, okay. What I’m really trying to do,” and usually it’s after they start to fight back some tears, “honestly I just want to spend more time with my kids.” “Okay, does more time mean?” “Honestly, I would love to be able to homeschool them.” “Awesome. Now we’re getting to a vision that really frigging matters. Not some nebulous 1000 doors, or $50,000 a month, or whatever it is. That’s what you want and we can tie a number to that. We can tie a revenue number to that.” Or, “I want to move my aging mother into a house that’s just close by.” “Okay, what’s it going to take to buy your mom a house? Do you even need to buy it? Can you rent one? The next 10 years, your mom’s 80 now. Is she going to live another 10 years or you can budget 10 years worth of rent payments for that sort of thing?” Whatever that is, you can actually get a quantifiable life output goal that’s tied to that and that’s really what vision really needs to be. It needs to come from the limbic system of our brain. The problem with the limbic system is it doesn’t have a capacity for language. It can’t explain why you love your wife. It can’t explain why you love your grandmother. We come up with platitudes like, “Well, she bakes me cookies,” but that’s a thing. You just say, “I don’t know. It’s just the way she makes me feel,” and you get teary-eyed. That’s the limbic system activating your brain and that’s how when you get to that point of your vision and you start to think that way, feel that when you get the goose bumps on your on your arms, that’s when you’re close. And that’s when you know you’re starting to get to a vision that really, really matters. Jason: I like it. I like it a lot. You touched on a couple things. Some of the concepts that I share is the cycle suck. It’s like if you take on bad owners, you’ll have bad tenants or bad properties. If you have bad properties, you get bad tenants. If you get bad tenants, then you all have a bad reputation, and then you’ll attract more bad owners. By taking up on the crappy properties, you end up caught in property management hell, the cycle of suck. Another concept that resonates with what you’re talking about that I the shares the four Ds to revenue. It’s not just about doors. The four Ds, the first one could be doors, but the next one is how many deals. Deals is usually what I share first. You get number of deals you get in, how many doors per deal? It’s not just about the doors. One deal being worth one door, that’s the ratio, then you don’t have as much leverage. It’s not as easy, but if on average your deals have two doors, you double your revenue. It’s these four numbers that multiply. Then, you’ve got duration. How long can you keep the door on? A 1-year accidental investor versus a 10-year buy and hold, in your property management business there’s 10 times difference. That’s pretty significant. Then, there’s dollars. It’s just what your fee structure is like. Are your fees good? It’s not just about doors. There’s all these other variables that can create that. I love shifting it towards the life goal because the life goal is what really matters. I would imagine you found this with coaching clients. Sometimes the life goal and all the stuff they had trumped up in their mind, or built up, or that they felt they needed in order to have the life that they want, sometimes you can just jump right to life goal. You can just create that like, “I want to spend an extra hour with my kids.” “Okay, block out an extra hour,” and they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t think I could do that.” Sometimes it’s really that simple. We can just jump right to the life goal and the business will still be there and it will still function. Mark: Yup, that is true. One of the things I talk about in The Time-Wealthy Investor 2.0 is really about making that decision. A buddy of mine who’s got multiple units is just nauseatingly wealthy in terms of real estate. He’s a great guy and said to me, “You know? I read your book the other day.” He’s a guy who doesn’t read and he’s such a snarky friend. His name is Randy and he says, “I would never admit this to your face, but I feel I have to,” he goes, “I really got a lot out of that book.” I was like, “Okay. What’s the punchline?” He’s like, “No, there’s really no punchline. I feel I am time-wealthy,” he goes, “and funny, I could probably retire based on the life output that I want to define right now.” He’s like, “Really, time-wealth is really more of a decision that it is a destination.” I was like, “Yeah, it really is because right now I have all the time-weath that I want. I work about maybe two hours a week. Sometimes I’m working more, like right now, I’m pitching in more in the office just because we’re down a person,” but it gets me re-engage in the business and it makes me go, “Hey guys, why are we doing it this way?” and then they go, “Oh, because this this and this.” I’m like, “Okay, cool,” and I let them define the process. If they’re the ones that normally work the process, my job is really to come in, look and see what maybe needs tinkering with, maybe new or adjusting, giving them coaching, that’s the sort of thing. Working 2 hours a week, sometimes 4–5 hours a month in the property management business, but I have all this time-wealth to do other things like coaching, writing books, and things that I really, really enjoy. It really is just a decision. When you hire good people, you bring them in, you set up a solid infrastructure for your business, set up solid processes, and you let them run it. Stay the hell out of the way. When I’m coaching property managers, that’s where I see a lot of problems. They don’t have an established vision for themselves, they don’t have proper infrastructure, they’re trying to run on really lean infrastructure or none at all, so the process has to pick it up. What I’m talking about infrastructure, say property management software, or website, or things like that, when you have a weak infrastructure, it has to be picked up by a stronger process, which means people. A person has to pick up that extra process. Let’s just go from the really sublime to ridiculous level. Say you don’t have property management software. You’re running everything on Excel spreadsheets. That’s the extreme, but there are property managers out there doing that, so that means they have to have a lot of people managing that poor infrastructure. Here’s the thing. Here’s the one thing I hear all the time is that, “Oh, my property manager doesn’t communicate. They don’t communicate with me. They don’t tell me.” When you have bad communication, that is a symptom of the problem, not the problem. Let me say that again. When you have bad communication, that’s a symptom of the problem, not the problem. The problem is you have bad infrastructure, you have bad process. That’s where communication issues are going to show up. Let’s just use a very obscure example. We’ve all been to a restaurant where you had bad service. You’re sitting down and you can see that that waiter has nine tables and that waiter has one table. You’re trying to communicate to someone to take your order. You can see the problem because you’re sitting on the outside. You can see the problem, but you’re going, “Well, that waiter’s got nine tables, that one’s got one. Why isn’t the manager stepping in?” Bad process. “Why does that person have nine tables?” That’s bad infrastructure. That never should have happened that way. That’s just one very obscure example. Let me use another quick example here real fast. Have you ever walked up to a McDonald’s at a truck stop, where there’s basically four cashiers ready to take your order. You walk up, you look left and right, and everybody’s standing back away from the registers. the customers. You’re trying to figure out who’s next in line. You’re like, “Can I go? Are you next?” Because there’s no infrastructure, the customers have to decide who’s next in line. What’s a simple piece of infrastructure that you could put in place to manage that? Well, a simple queue, a simple rope line. That’s a piece of infrastructure that you could put in place that would manage the customer flow. Then, you don’t have to worry about that. Another example would be a bad process. Let’s pretend you go back to the same McDonald’s. This time it’s really busy and the customers are four and five deep at each line at each of the four registers. This time what ends up happening is you get a manager that opens the fifth register and says, “I can help the next person.” Then, you get somebody who goes from the bend of one line and then jumps in front of everybody else. Now you just base and created a brawl. It’s this mad rush towards this fifth line. That’s a process problem. What should have happened is, “Hey, I’m the assistant manager. I’m going to have you open that line over there but I’m going to direct some people over there. I’m going to go out to the crowd and direct some people over there first before you say anything.” Then you can manage the process. That’s process. That’s a broken process when they do it the other way. That’s why I’m saying infrastructure and process shows up in bad communication all the time. This means they’re not communicating work orders when they come in. They’re not communicating when a resident doesn’t pay rent. Owners need to know that. They need to know if they’re expecting the revenue to come in on a certain month and they don’t get communicated that. “Oh, by the way, the resident never paid rent,” and, “Oh, yeah. By the way, we’re going to go ahead and evict them.” They need to know these things and when you don’t have an infrastructure or a process in place to let them know that, that’s when communication falls. That’s when the bad communication issue show up. Jason: Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s really tempting for entrepreneurs to start blaming their team. This is like early entrepreneurs that they’re transitioning away from being a solopreneur, that having a team, they usually build the team around them as if they’re just the solopreneur still, and they try to micromanage them. They’re always complaining about the communication. They’re always complaining about people not doing things, “Why can’t they just do what I tell them?” and that sort of thing. I like what you’re saying is they have bad infrastructure and bad process. Things are not defined, there isn’t clarity, and that leads to challenges in communication. [...] built into the process. They can be part of the process. [...] you need the right tools to facilitate communication. I run a virtual company. If we didn’t have the tools that facilitate communication, there wouldn’t be any. We’re in different states, some of us different countries. Mark: That’s exactly right and they need to think about their business, about the product that they produce. I used somewhat as a nebulous example, but the product that they need to produce should be consistency. That’s the product that they need to be shooting for. When consistency is your product, the only competitor you’re going to have a sloppiness. When consistency is your product, sloppiness is your only competition. That’s the thing that is really hard for me to convey to lots of managers because we’ve got all sorts of products. We sell properties. We buy properties. We do all these different things. I don’t care what you’re doing. I don’t care if you’re making razor blades. You need to have a consistent product and I will not allow us to do anything in the business unless we can do it consistently. If they come to me and say, “Hey, you know what we should do? We should send out birthday cards to all of our residents.” “Okay, great. How are you going to do that consistently? And you need to tell me. Who’s going to manage it? Who’s going to do it? What’s the negative feedback loop if that doesn’t happen?” Let me talk about negative feedback loop for second. You put something in place, it’s like I send you an email expecting you to do something. What’s the negative feedback loop I’m going to put in place if that doesn’t happen? I’m not talking a negative feedback loop like someone complains, which is often what happens if something doesn’t get done. You go, “Oh, man. I don’t know. I sent that email off two weeks ago. I forgot about it. I just assume that they would do it.” What’s the negative feedback that you’re going to put in place to make sure it actually gets done? Are you going to list that [...]? Are you going to put a task? Are you’re going to put something in some task management software? What’s the negative feedback loop that you’re going to have to make sure that stuff gets done? That’s all part of process. Let me just boil this down into an example because I keep saying vision, infrastructure, and process. Think of vision as your map. Infrastructure would be the train tracks, and then the process should be the train that runs on those tracks that all stays in alignment with your vision for the future. Now, for property managers, they’re saying, “Well, why would my employees care about my vision?” They’re not going to care about your vision. They’re only going to work so hard, but they’re not going to work that hard to put a boat in your driveway, or a pool in your backyard. This is an extra step to goes in with property managers is once you have that vision for your future, then you go into developing core values for your business. The core values are just the things that you value. You may value justice, You may value efficiency, you may value lots of different things that are core to you, but now you get to identify what those things are and that becomes your compass for all decisions that you’re making. Once you have those core values defined, if you’re making improvement, you say, “Okay, is this in line with my core values?” If I’m going to make a hiring decision or a firing decision, are they acting in line with my core values? When I do my employee evaluations, I’m going to say, “Hey, when you did this, this was really in alignment with our core values and I really like what you did,” or, “Hey, when you did this, I was really upset because it wasn’t in line with our core values. I’m [...] say you. I’m just upset that your behavior because this isn’t in alignment with our core values.” One of the things I’ll coach them through, some are three, four, five, no more than six. A lot of people sometimes want to get, “Oh, we value all the stuff,” but usually it’s something that’s inherent to them as an individual and they value these things. They value justice, they value equity, they value fairness, and they can value profitability. There’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person because we all need profits to grow, get better, and be a better company. Once you get those core values defined, then it’s easier to put infrastructure and process improvements in place. The infrastructure of the things I’m talking about there are websites, software, even the desks and chairs in your office. The process pieces are really about how you operate. It’s the rules of how much you operate, it’s your SRP, it’s your FAQs. Those things that really helped define how things are done in your office based on it that infrastructure that you have in place. Jason: A lot of alignment between what you’re doing and what I do with clients as well. I mean, 3–4 core values for their business, you’re helping them figure out their purpose, their why as a business owner. These things sound like woo woo and fluff to a lot of people until they implement them. Then, they’re usually pretty astounded because, like I tell my clients, “You’re the sun at the center of the solar system. If you don’t like what’s going on inside the solar system, you change the sun, everything changes.” Usually as business owners, we try to externalize everything and tackle everything farthest away from ourselves. If we work on ourselves. everything changes by default. Mark: That’s so good. I love that. That is so true. Jason: So, we talked about vision, we talked about the infrastructure, we talked about the process. Is there anything else that you want to touch on while we’re hanging out here? Mark: Yeah. I see a lot of people out there that are just working themselves. They’ve created a job for themselves and they’re not ever trying to transition themselves out. They think that there’s no end in sight. Jason: They’ve succumbed. They [...] to their fate. Mark: Yeah. I’m not saying I’m the coach for everybody and you would probably say the same thing, that you’re not the coach for everybody, but for God’s sake, get a coach. Get somebody that can help you get to where you want to go so much faster. Yeah, it’s great being your own boss because you didn’t want to be held accountable to anybody. But now you’re not accountable to anybody, know your life sucks. It didn’t turn out the way you want it. If you’re living the dream, your life is great, and you have everything that you want, that’s great. I don’t know that I can help you get much better, but get somebody to help you. We talked earlier about each of us having coaches. I spend a lot of money each month on coaches to help me in areas where I have blind spots and just to challenge me, just to say, “Hey, Mark. You said you were going to do XYZ by a certain period of time. That’s not done, so now what?” They already know how they’re going to hold me accountable and I pay a fair sum to these people, so it hurts when I show up. I know I’m going to be ready when the bell rings. It’s not about paying them the money just for the sake of paying them the money so that they can call and yell at me. They are a softer touch, but the thing is, I want to make sure that I’m being held accountable because we don’t have anybody that’s holding us accountable. That’s the danger of being an entrepreneur. I would really encourage people to look at that. It doesn’t necessarily need to be real estate-focused although it probably would make more sense. I have one that helps me in sales. I have one that helps me in marketing. I have one that helps me as a national speaker. I go and I speak at a lot of different places, so I have one that help coach me in that. And of course different masterminds of things like. I would really, highly encourage people that if they are looking or just flirting with the idea, get somebody. I am going to say this. The difference between a coach and a mentor, I would say a mentor is probably someone that you’re not paying, probably a friend. They are not going to hold you accountable to the level that you need. I say that this is someone you need to pay, it needs to hurt a little bit, and you need to have some skin in the game. You really need to be committed and you really need to be paying somebody to do that. Like I said, it doesn’t need to be me, it doesn’t need to be you. I’m just saying it’s someone they knew paying someone. Jason: Yeah. There’s some magic I’ve noticed, just psychologically, that happens in shifts inside of my clients or that shifts inside of myself when I am paying a coach and I’m investing in myself. It just shifts psychologically how we value ourselves and energetically it allows us to convince others to invest in us as well. It’s a hard sell to go out even as a property management business owner and if you’re doing the sales in your company, you’re the BDM and say, “Hey, you should spend money with us. You should invest. You should have us manage your rental property,” but I don’t even invest in myself. I don’t care enough about myself or my business to invest in that. I’m just trying to make money, then you’re going to ask others to invest in you. Psychologically, when you invest in yourself, I’ve noticed revenue goes up for me, lifestyle shifts. There’s something that happens energetically and psychologically when you are subconsciously investing in yourself. It shifts things. I love what you’re saying, everybody really deserves to have a coach, they deserve to be working with consultants, they deserve to have people above them. If you’re at the top of the org chart, there’s a problem. There’s a problem because everybody below in the org chart is hopefully being fed, getting some input, growing, and evolving, but if you’re at the top of the org chart and there’s nobody above you, it’s a scary place to be. [...] The Emperor With No Clothes, unless you get some input, unless you get somebody that you can place above you in that org chart like a coach, or mentor, or something that will feed you. Mark: I look at it exactly the way you’re looking at it except I flip your chart upside down. I look at those people as the direct supports for everybody above them because they’re carrying the weight of everybody above them. If you get somebody that’s not doing what they’re supposed to be doing—they’re coming in late, they’re wiggling around at the top, and you’re trying the keep the org chart balanced—it’s tough. Maybe it’s so far up that you can’t see what’s going on up there, but you have a coach that can stand back and go, “Yeah, that guy’s playing Galaga on his computer and you don’t even see it,” because you don’t want to see it or you just can’t see it. That’s where it gets tricky and a lot of times, you get too close to the problem and you can’t see it. It’s like you sitting back watching the waiter who’s got nine tables. You can see the problem instantly. Jason: [...] you can’t sometimes. They’re too close to the fire, they’re dealing with what they’re dealing with right at that moment, that’s us as entrepreneurs all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a coach, I’ve sat down with coach or talk to one of my coaches and said, “Hey, here’s what I’m dealing with,” and they point, they say something to me, and I feel really stupid, then I say back to them, “That’s exactly what I would’ve told one of my clients.” We’re just too close to the fire. We don’t have somebody outside of ourselves because we are the one that created the problem. We’re at the helm. We are the problem. We are the biggest bottleneck in our company. We are the one holding everything back. We’re the one preventing growth. Us trying to solve the problem on our own is like trying to look at the back of our own head. Mark: Yeah. It’s like trying to put sunscreen on your own back and that’s the thing. If you don’t see yourself as part of the problem, you cannot see yourself as part of the solution. A lot of times when it’s educating them to say, “Look, your company has a very real culture problem. That one is not respectful, that one is treating customers anyway that they want. As a result, they’re treating each other very poorly and blah-blah-blah.” That’s because when you got ill-defined core values, you’re going to run into that. You’re going to run into culture problems. There’s a client that I really didn’t feel like I could help him as much as I wanted to, but he had a real culture problem is at his office. He didn’t really see it until he started letting some people go that were really some of the major problems. He had a live event that we don’t work together anymore, but I’d love to get him back on just to say, “Hey, how are you doing? How did things evolve for you in terms of getting those core values more well-defined?” and really start holding people accountable to them. One of the things that I do is we have an 8:07 meeting every day. The reason it’s 8:07 is people are rarely late to a meeting that’s got an oddball time to it. They always get there early. There’s not much I don’t do without purpose, but every meeting, we pick one of our five core values and we review it. They’re hearing these core values every single day. That way at their 90-day evaluation, guess what they get to roll over again? Guess what they’re hearing again? Our core values. They’re getting graded against those core values. It’s not just a shock like, “Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah. I never heard that core value before.” These are things that need to be repeated over and over. Jason: Yeah. I think we run our businesses probably somewhat similar [...]. Everything gravitates towards truth. We do our daily huddle at 8:45 every morning. I always have appointments starting at 9:00, so it has to be short and that allows our team to see each other because we’re virtual, but yeah, it’s an oddball time which does work, to make sure people show up. Mark: Absolutely. Jason: Cool. Mark, it’s really great to connect with you, to get [...]. How can people get in touch with you? Now, I want to point out like we were talking before the show, your area of genius, what you really can help probably our listeners with, is on the delivery, the fulfillment side, building out this portion of their business where they may be struggling, especially those that are graduating maybe from solopreneur to trying to build a team. That’s where they’re getting the systems and processes. They’re not the guy doing every single thing or the gal doing every single thing anymore and that’s a painful transition. How can people get in touch with the Mark and Landlord Coach? Mark: My website’s landlordcoach.com. I’m on Facebook @mylandlordcoach. You can find me easily. You can see the moniker in the back. I think where you and I differ is that I helped create capacity in the world. I helped create white space on our calendar. What they do with that white space is up to them. If they want to use that white space to grow their company from 300 doors to 800 doors, that’s fine. I don’t help them with the growth side. I just help them create capacity on their calendar, help create white space, so they can do whatever they want. Now, some people go, “Yeah. I’m happy with the white space and I’m making enough money now and I’ve gotten time on my calendar. I’m cool. I got everything I want.” Some people get to that point in their like, “No, we’re ready to grow.” I’m not the growth guy. It’s not what I do. I’m not from that piece of it. I [...] turn it over to someone you and say, “Now that you got this increased capacity, that’s the person that’s going to help you take your business from 1000 doors to 2000 or whatever.” That that’s not what I do. What I do is I help them create capacity on the calendar. To that aspect I just want to make sure I delineate myself there because I do work with a lot of individual investors. I also work with property managers and just helping them get their life back. That’s one of the biggest things that I do. Jason: Love it. Mark, I appreciate you being on the show. Thanks for being here. Mark: This has been great. Thanks so much and my best wishes to all your listeners. Jason: Thank you. All right, we’ll let Mark go. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to like and subscribe on whichever channel we’re on. We’re on YouTube, we are no iTunes, and make sure that you subscribe to our email newsletter. If you are property management entrepreneur that’s wanting to grow your business, add doors, and increase your revenue, then please reach out to us over at DoorGrow. We’d be happy to have a conversation and see if you are a good fit for what we might be able to do for you. Of course, check out Mark and his business over at Landlord Coach. That’s it for today. Until next time, to our mutual growth, everyone. Bye. 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.

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.

Freedom of time, money, relationships, and purpose is what we all want. Property managers, realtors, and investors help clients build wealth through real estate.  Today, I am talking to Steve Welty, owner of Good Life Property Management business and podcast. He enjoys meeting amazing people and indoctrinating listeners with his philosophies.  You’ll Learn... [03:23] Stop whining about solvable issues, such as online reviews to get warm leads.  [04:41] Steve surfs to success with Good Life Property Management.  [06:43] Podcast Passion Project: Do content for content's sake; add value to people's lives for opportunities and connections to come your way. [10:19] Don’t lose focus on why and what fires you up; limit time and effort spent on your business to achieve outcomes. [15:00] Purpose of Business: Not to make money; build a business that makes money.  [16:25] How to be happy: Create momentum for other people to gain momentum. If you wish to become great, learn to become the servant of many. [18:12] Zig when they Zag: Success outside outsource sandbox to reduce costs.  [18:55] Results-based Biz: Hire young, smart, motivated people and leave them alone.  [19:31] Big Issues, Big Success: More people can lead to more problems; paint a compelling vision to keep good people and let them do what they want to do.  [20:10] Move Out and Outwork Others: Create freedom of time and money by hiring CFO or profit first coach/accountant to offer advice, not control over finances.  [26:10] Value-add Revenue Sources: If you don't charge for it, you're doing it poorly.  [28:25] Opportunities in Other States/Markets: Pop-up shops to buy cash flow property.  [29:05] To Die List and Time Study: Procrastination problem property managers and owners experience.  [35:00] Barriers/Protections: Teach team and customers how to treat and reach you.  [37:35] Opinions vs. Observations: Co-creation/coaching is transformational and transactional superpower that changes lives.  [46:45] Give up control and allow people to fail, or you create an unsafe business.  [52:30] What Matters: Million ways to get to end results and outcomes.  [54:05] Hire and Fire: Center on core values; be reliable, positive, and go-giver (RPG). [57:10] Epiphany: Everything worthwhile lives on the other side of fear.  [1:03:05] Money is one side of it. Easiest decision to make is to be a different person.  Tweetables Do content for content's sake. Limit time in your business; achieve outcomes with least amount of effort. Add limitations or constraints to create a necessity for innovation. First key to greater time, money, and purpose is to create space for yourself. Resources Steve Welty’s Email Good Life Property Management Good Life Property Management Podcast Steve Welty on Spotify Steve Welty on Apple PM Grow Orange Tree Property Management GatherKudos National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) Brad Larson Gary Vaynerchuk The 4-hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss Todd Breen Making Money is Killing Your Business by Chuck Blakeman How I Built This with Guy Raz Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard  Voxer Jason Goldberg (Strategic Coach) Extreme Ownership Book E-Myth Book The Go-Giver  KingJasonHull’s Whimple on SoundCloud 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're open to doing things a little 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 change 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 really excited, we’re hanging out with Steve Welty. Steve, welcome to the DoorGrow show. Steve: What’s up Jason? Good to be here. Jason: Steve and I were reminiscing. I saw Steve at a broker owner conference, the very first one I went to several years ago and we were sitting at the same table and I guess I said hi to you and we were chatting it up. Steve: Yeah. It's funny, I remember that day very vividly and it's interesting because I have a very poor memory. You were the mysterious man behind me and you were dressed really nice. Jason: I don't dress nice anymore. I'm too lazy now. Steve: Yeah, you're just soaking it all, but we were talking before the show, was that really one of your first conferences? Jason: That was the first conference I'd gone to, yeah. My dad had just started property management business. He's got maybe about 200 doors now, but he had just started a property management business. He had been a hospital administrator for 30 years or something and he said, “I'm going to do what Bryan’s doing and start a property management business.” My brother has got maybe 1000 doors or something like that and he is out of Orange County. Not too far from you down San Diego. He thought, “Bryan’s doing it, maybe I could do this too.” He decided to become an entrepreneur. Caught the bug. It's been fun to watch that, but I was like, “Dad, let's go do this. I want to see what happens there. The only way I can go is if I'm with you, you're a broker owner.” I was his director of marketing and I was just the fly on the wall for Orange Tree Property Management, just checking out what goes on a broker owner. I just want to see what happened there. It was challenging for me though because the entire time I'm hearing people talk about problems, and challenges, and I'm just biting my tongue the whole time. I’m like, “I could solve that challenge. I can help with that.” I just had to sit there and be quiet. I've even got a text message from one of my clients that was sitting in the room and he said, “I'll bet this is just killing you right now,” I texted him back, “You have no idea.” It was just really funny to hear people whining about stuff that I think is solvable. Steve: What was something out of all those issues you're biting your tongue about that you can reflect on today. Jason: Now you’re interviewing me. Steve: I'm interested to hear that. Jason: I remember one of the things that really killed me was people were like, “How do you deal with your online reviews? How do you get more positive online reviews?” We have our system GatherKudos, and we have coaching material around that that we’d go through with clients to figure out how to identify peak happiness, leverage a lot of reciprocity, how to get more reviews, how to build a system in your business as part of your onboarding process with new tenants so you get more reviews. I think that's a better system to have than even most marketing systems, because that creates warm leads. I was just sitting there listening to them talk and some of the ideas were, “We're okay, we're good,” but I was like, “This is so solvable.” Steve: Reviews are still a big issue, six years later or whatever it is. Jason: Correct. Steve: People still can’t figure it out. It’s tough. I still try to figure it out on a daily basis. Jason. Yeah. Cool. Steve, you've got an awesome property management business. You've got your own podcast that you do. You've got a lot of stuff going on. Help my audience understand who you are and give us a little bit of background on Steve, your adventures in property management, and how you got into it. Steve: For sure. I graduated from San Diego State 2005 and stayed in construction for a little while. I was working with constructions in college, just bumming around, surfing, and doing whatever I was doing. Got my real estate license finally and did some deals 2006-2007. I hear a lot of stories like this, it’s like 2006-2007 sales, all of our sales, we should start a Facebook group for sales guys that flamed out, well I think it is, it’s probably called than NARPM of Facebook group. It seemed like everyone has that story. I made some nice checks in sales and I thought I was great, and then I became broke very fast. I was 26-27 and I was broke. I was applying for any job that I could get and I went to work for a French entrepreneur in Carlsbad as a personal assistant. He wanted someone to manage his property manager that had a real estate license because he didn't trust his property manager. Jason: Okay, so you were the spy that was going to monitor whether he was doing his job or not. Steve: Yeah, most managers hate it when the owner micromanages you. Imagine a realtor micromanaging you. I was like, “Yeah, I can do that,” I never managed anything in my life, but I figured it out and worked with him. He actually taught me some great business lessons looking back, but two years in, it was very stressful working for him. He was not the nicest guy, but he did teach me a lot and then I went out on my own with a business partner at the time. We decided, “Hey, let's start our own management company and just got it enough off the ground to allow me to quit my job, be on property management with my partner I think in 2008. We grew that until about 2012 and then we decided to part ways. I started Good Life in 2013 and then been doing Good Life ever since. I started the Good Life Property Management podcast which has nothing to do with clients, nothing to do with getting new customers. It was really a passion project and something I learned out of that was that I encourage people to do content for content's sake if their heart tells them to do that. A lot of times we try to figure out, “Well, how am I going to monetize that?” I remember when I asked Brad Larson, I think he was one of the first people to do a podcast that was a property manager. I was like, “What are you doing this for?” and he was like, “Oh, it's fun,” I was like, “It didn’t make any sense, you're wasting time.” When you add value, like Gary V—a lot of people have really put this in the forefront—when you add value to people's lives, opportunities come your way, connections come your way. I have so much fun doing the Good Life Property Management podcast and we serve the same community you serve which is property management entrepreneurs. I don't run ads. I have ran ads in the past, but I don't anymore. I don't necessarily get anything out of it other than just meeting cool people and getting to indoctrinate my listeners with my philosophies which are really along the same lines in a lot of ways as you, Jason. I really resonate with your manifesto in a lot of ways, so that's cool. That's it. I'm big into music. I do a lot of music. Steve Welty, I’m on Spotify and Apple, and that's my passion. I'm going more and more into that. Also, we have tried mastermind for property management entrepreneurs to max out their business and life. That's what's up for me. Jason: Cool stuff. I think we have a lot in common. Not only are we both California guys. A lot of people listening may not know this, but I had a band in college. I wrote all the music, I played guitar. I didn’t know I was an entrepreneur then. I didn't know that was in my blood, but I was the guy going door-to-door with a guitar and a clipboard pre selling CDs at girl’s dorms that I could fund to self-produce an album, and I was playing music. Steve: That’s [...]. Jason: I know, it was pretty crazy. The album is on SoundCloud if people are searching for it. Steve: Let’s check it out, what’s it called, how can we find it? Jason: My username on SoundCloud is my username everywhere, which is KingJasonHull, and the album is called Whimple, that was the name of my band. Steve: I love it. I think you told me that a while back, but I forgot, but I'm really fascinated with that because that was my story, too. I was a songwriter. That was hustle. I give you street credit like going dorm-to-dorm, playing for chicks, that's pretty cool. I thought I was going to be a rock star. That was my deal, but it's so funny looking back. I didn’t even practice. I just thought I have the natural talent and I used to drink a lot so I was probably delusional. I had this moment, this crossroads where I was like, “Okay, you're not going make it,” I'm not going to be okay being older and broke, so I'm going to go on a business route. I just gave up music completely, and then I was in a strategic coach workshop. I have given it up five or six years and I met this entrepreneur. I was telling him about my story. I was like, “I don't really play music anymore,” and he's like, “Oh, that sucks.” I’m like, “Yeah, it does suck.” Then he’s like, “Well, you have a guitar in your office don’t you?” and I was like, “No.” He’s like, “Well you’re the boss, aren’t you?” Jason: I can see it right behind you. Steve: Yeah, right now I do it. He’s like, “You’re the boss.” I’m like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “Well, why don’t you try this, try just putting a guitar in your office. Just make a commitment to picking it up once a day even if it's for one second.” It really resonated with me because I had given up a part of myself that was really important because I think a lot of time as business owners, we just get so focused on like, “We got to make this company work,” and we’d lose focus of why and what fires us up on an internal level. I did that and that about two years ago, fast forward to today, I'm putting many hours a day into music, into song writing, into recording, into building my audience and it's helped my business so much because when you limit the amount of time that you're in your business, you can only do the things that you're really good at and so that's what I'm really passionate about, is figuring out how can I achieve an outcome with the least amount of effort possible. Jason: Yeah, because when we add limitation or constraint, it creates the byproduct of limitation or creating a constraint is it creates a necessity for innovation. If you have unlimited amounts of time, unlimited amounts of money, unlimited whatever, there's no innovation because it's so easy to be lazy. It's so easy to just let things unfold in a different way, but when we have some time constraints or we have some financial constraints, we have to get creative and that's where the genius starts to come out, that's where new ideas start to come out. I've noticed that even with team members, if I say “I need this done by this time,” they get creative or if I need this done under this budget, they get creative, then they start to innovate. If I say, “Yeah, do it whenever, take as much time as you want, spend as much money as you want,” there's no innovation. They're just going to go towards whatever seems easiest, which is the status quo. Steve: Yeah, you nailed it. I've been really interested in constraints. I had a son, my first child, he’s six months old, Myles, and I was encouraged by a friend of mine. He said “Take 30 days off, Steve,” he's like “It'll be the best thing you ever did for your business. Don't check in, don't do anything. Take 30 days off. Be with your son.” It was in December, so it was like the perfect time and so I did that, and man he was right. It really levelled up my business, my team got way better. They were already good, but just putting these things into place that force you to grow. That 30 days off was huge. Next year I'm planning a 60-day trip to another country that I’m really passionate about using that. I even got my operations manager. He doesn't work out of the office anymore. I moved out of my office a long time ago because when you're in the office, you are often the bottleneck for your company and everyone comes to you for the answers and the solutions. I really grabbed on to that concept and constantly looking for new ways to use constraints to my advantage. Jason: I love it. It's been awhile since I've told the client to do this, but a lot of clients will ask questions like, “How do I become a business owner instead of my own best employee?” I would tell them, “You just start doing it. You take a vacation.” If you schedule a week-long vacation, if you're not taking vacations, for those listening, you schedule week long vacation and you can't take off a week, you're going to have to figure out how to make everything not fall apart for that week. To go 30 days, that's incredible, 60 days is ridiculous, that's pretty awesome. At that point, you've arrived as owner of the company instead of being your own best employee. I noticed when I would take off time or vacation, I would be surprised by how my team would step up. I'd be surprised by the things leading up to that vacation, more would get done than would get done sometimes in months. There are so many little things that you need to get dialed in. “Oh my gosh, they’re going to be gone for a week. How are we going to live without Jason? We got to get this.” My team would say, “Hey Jason, I need this,” or, “I need to access to this,” or, “I need to know how to do this.” Suddenly everybody's rallying around this idea of taking some stuff off your plate because they need to be able to make sure things don't break and it creates the possibility for you to do that more or forever. Steve: Yeah, and I think its baby steps. I remember when I first read the four-hour work week. I thought Tim Ferriss was a god. I was like, that makes no sense. Jason: Did you almost move to Thailand? Steve: Close, but no, it was just really interesting. I guess from a personal level, having time was even more appealing than being a billionaire I guess to me personally. When I see people like Todd Breen and other people talk at NARPM that would talk about running your business from the beach or not is just very appealing to me. I wanted to grow a self-managing company and it was baby steps. There's this book called Making Money is Killing Your Business and they say it really why. It says the purpose of the business is not to make money, it's to build a business that makes money, like time and money equals wealth. Your business should throw off time and money. Now, if you want to then use that extra time to just pour more time in your business, doesn't mean you got to go live on a beach. You could do other adventures. For me, what's really worked and what I'm super blessed to have now is that it's created space in my life to actually start cultivating the other things that light me up, like music, other things. It gives you those options, but that's what I think in our industry especially in a lot of industries, we want to help people, help them anyway we can to experience that. Jason: They say, “What the world needs is people that are alive” I think as entrepreneurs that's where we feel. We want momentum. That's what we crave. The rest of the world, they're just trying to figure out how to be happy. “If I could just be happy then everything would be great.” It's whether they're happy or sad, depressed or excited, but for entrepreneurs, I feel like our two speeds are momentum or stuck, that's it. It’s momentum or overwhelm. We either feel like we're in complete overwhelm, we’re stuck, we can't move forward or we’re frustrated, or were on fire and alive. That's my version of happy or sad. I want to feel like I'm in momentum and I feel like as entrepreneurs, we get momentum when we give it away. When we create momentum for other people, whether it's our clients or the people in our family, the people around us, when we're creating momentum for other people, we get that sense of momentum, too. Steve: Yeah, and that's something I resonate with and I’ve heard you talk about it Jason. I love that message. I really think that the blue ocean is caring about people more than anyone else, like proactively putting the people in your life in the forefront, figuring out, “Who do I want to be a hero to?” and being a hero is usually used in a reactive way. Jason: Right, like there's a crisis or a problem, now you're going to be a hero. Steve: Right, as opposed to being a proactive hero like spending time and saying, “Okay, who are the most essential people or buckets or groups of people in my life and how can I serve them more deeply and impactfully today,” because the best quote of success I've ever heard is something like become a servant of many. If you wish to become great, learn to become the servant of many. I sometimes get a little jaded in certain groups because you constantly hear the feedbacks, the reduce the cost, the get it all out sourced. I use VAs, I look to reduce cost, I look to get fair fees, so I'm not knocking that, but everyone's playing in that sandbox. I'm very interested in seeing what is everyone else doing and how can I do the opposite because that's one of the ways to become successful that I've learned is that you go zig when they zag. That’s cliché. You can't do that when you're buried in tenant complaints and one-star reviews and a team you have to micromanage. I'm a big believer in hiring young, smart, motivated people and leaving them alone. We're a results-based company at Good Life. You can work from home, you could bring your dog, although actually our manager of our building said we can't anymore. I don't really care, with the exception of a couple like the front desk needs to be there in case someone walks in and things like that, but do your thing. There's a great podcast I heard yesterday on how I built this with Guy Raz where the owner of Patagonia wrote this book called “Let Them Go Surfing” and it's all about that. I think our biggest issues once we get to a certain size is people problems, and then we don't know why we can't keep good people, it’s because we don't paint it in a compelling vision. We micromanage. We don't let them do what they want to do. We try to fit corporate bureaucracies into the more entrepreneurial company that people want to be a part of these days. Would you rather follow just checklists and not have a future or would you rather be able to create your own future? Like I tell my team, “You can become anything with me. The sky's the limit wherever you want to go.” So, I think those are big parts of success. Jason: That's really what we're talking about today. The topic is freedom of time, money, and relationships through better business practices. What are some of the practices that you've implemented at Good Life that you feel like you've created more freedom of time and money? Steve: It starts with the business owner and probably a series of game changers. The first was moving out of my office. I had this epiphany and I was taught this by someone and I told the team, we had a meeting, I said, “I apologize. I've stood in the way of you guy’s future and I apologize for it. When I'm here, I'm the bottle neck. I'm stunting your growth. You can come to me for all the answers,” and the fact is as entrepreneurs if you serve 100 people and say, “Where do you do your best work?” nobody says at their office, who does the best work at their office? Why are we working out of our offices? It's just because that's how it's always been done. I kicked myself out. I don't have a desk at my office on purpose. I used to have the stereotypical nicest office in the corner with the best view, and then it freed up so much space, it helped my team grow. Once I created that space, now I work out of my home, and the first key to greater time, money, and purpose is to create space I believe, for yourself. I came from a place where three or four years ago, my dad always taught me outwork everyone else. I remember one time he came to visit me at a college and he asked me how much I was working, I said about 60 hours a week. He’s like, “60 hours? I work 60 hours, I'm retired. What the hell is wrong with you?” Jason: Step it up Steve. Steve: Yeah, and it's great. I love my dad. His work ethic was the reason I'm here today, because it got me to that. There are seasons of life. I knew there had to be a better way, so when I'd made that decision to move out of my office, I said, “Hey, you guys are going to have a bigger opportunity to move up now.” Some of the other things we did was hiring an operations manager. That was huge. That created space and that was something I look forward, and it took me probably eight or nine months to pull the trigger on that, but the operations manager was huge. Slowly but surely, I went from just being stressed out all the time, not having any space in my life. An over-scheduled entrepreneur has no time to transform. I said, “Alright, I'm going to create some space,” and then all the ideas and all the answers start bubbling to the surface because spiritually we all have all the answers inside of us, just we’re so distracted and so just going that we don't allow it. Jason: We’re preloaded, we're in fight or flight, we're up in our monkey brain, and all the great things, our greatest geniuses as an entrepreneur can't bubble up or can't come through when we're in that state. Steve: Exactly, and so that's time that just forced me to get more time because as an entrepreneur, you can make that decision. Jason: We’re buying time. Every person that we pay on our team, we’re buying time. That's what we're buying. I think the mistake we make as entrepreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs I see, they go hire based on an org chart. They don't hire based on what they personally need in order to off load or get themselves out of the things that they don't really energetically enjoy. You getting an operations manager if you're a visionary entrepreneur is brilliant, because that's like the yin to the yang. It's the exact opposite personality type of the driven entrepreneur is to have somebody that is systems-minded, process-minded, and that can make sure everything's running. Generally, us entrepreneurs, we’re terrible managers. We think we're great at everything, but we're really terrible managers and usually the operations manager is much better at making sure everything runs smoothly. Steve: It's hard to take off or get more time initially if you don't have the money. The money component is important. I went on a Mastermind trip to Mexico a few years back with a handful of people and we looked at everyone's P&L and that was one of the biggest game changers for me was not only understanding my numbers. I think everyone needs a CFO at least part time or at least some outside eyes on the business is so important. Jason: I have a profit first coach and accountant. I'm not really a big fan of having a CFO in a business. Usually, my take on it is every story I've heard of embezzlement or of challenges it's always like the CFOs, and so they're also the crusher of all hopes and dreams. I don't want somebody making too big of decisions there personally, but I want to be coached, and I want to have input and I want to have insight from a third-party perspective, but I don't want them to have control over my stuff. Steve: Totally. I get that. I don't have a CFO, we use a profit coach. Jason: Yeah, similar thing. Steve: Right, but I found that I wasn't going to build a business I thought I was going to build because I'm a feel guy. Like I learn by doing. Does this feel right and I’ll make a decision, but I make decisions very quickly. I'm a high quick start, so I'll make 10 decisions, eight will be bad, two will be great but in the same time that someone else makes one decision. I sometimes can stay a step ahead, but I had to add some revenues and I wanted them to be value-added revenue sources where everyone was a win-win-win, so things like doing inspections better in charging for them. When you don't charge for something, you usually do them poorly. Every manager that doesn't charge for inspections, I guarantee 90% of you are behind on your inspections. Jason: Let's say that again. I like that concept. If you don't charge for it, you're probably doing it poorly. Steve: Right. I'm a believer in this. Just take inspections for example. You go survey people around NARPM or any property management group and everyone's behind on their inspections so they don't do them right. We send a letter to our clients. We said, “Hey, inspections are actually really important. This is when we identify how well the tenant is taking care of the place is when we get out in front of preventive maintenance and it needs to be done well, so we need to hire someone to do this full time and we want to invest in this X amount we charge. It’s going to probably save you three times at least that amount by getting out in front of some of this stuff,” so that was a win-win and our clients loved it. Maybe they didn't want to get charged initially, but once they saw the improved inspection, once they saw the improved communication and results, that was a big win. Then just some other ones that we added in. I think you got to keep the investor fees-friendly. The worst thing we can do as managers is fee our owners to death and they’d get out of the business. Ultimately, the freedom of time, money, relationships, and purpose is what we want, but it's a human need. It's what your clients want, too. So, we have a unique position as property managers, realtors, and investors ourselves in a lot of cases to help people build wealth through real estate. You're a manager and you make it easy, because if you don't make it easy, they burn out and they sell, but if they hold that house specially in San Diego for 30 years, that’s all you have to do and you've set your family up for life. They burn out, so we have a big position, a big part to play here. Jason: I love it, and I love that it’s like a mantra, having others build through real estate, and ultimately what property managers could be allowed towards doing. It’s not just managing a property. If your interests are in line with theirs, which that's their goal. Their goal is to build some wealth, otherwise, why would they be holding on to that property. Steve: Exactly. There's different ways to do that. Right now, we're looking at some other states to buy cash flow property and figure out how to have our owners follow us into some of these other markets. I think with technology these days, that's what all the venture people are doing, how to just pop up shops anywhere. That's something that's exciting to me right now because in San Diego it doesn't make sense to buy an $800,000 house that rents for $2800. We're sitting on some stuff when the market turns for San Diego, but yeah, there's different opportunities out there. Jason: Alright, cool. What should we talk about next? Steve: You know what I'm interested in? I actually thought of this today, and there's some things I've been thinking about doing that I procrastinate on. You know the saying… Jason: I think every business owner can say that. Steve: I know right? Jason: I call it the to-die list. We all have to do list of stuff. Just last week, I have my weekly commitments and I realized I was carrying all of these things over from week-to-week. I'm the guy that says to my clients, “If there's anything on your to do list for more than two weeks, you're not the person that should be doing it.” That's the problem. Yes, we all tend to do that as entrepreneurs. We tend to hold on to things instead of finding the right person to do them or giving it up somebody else. Steve: That’s so true. Jason: Talk about the to die list. Steve: Yeah, the to die list. I was thinking about this today. Two examples of things I have been procrastinating on. One, I don't want to answer email, anymore. I literally want to have email leave my life. I have gotten email down to just like 10 minutes a day at the end of the day, have an assistant, but literally that is still bugging me. I once got this really inspiring auto responder from this really smart cool guy, let’s see if I can find it. Jason: I don't deal with email anymore? Steve: He said, “Thank you for your message. Perhaps you are overwhelmed by email. In fact, last year I sent 43,742 emails, read and review countless more so in order to serve our stakeholders much more efficiently, I have asked my highly capable assistant that’s in New York to review, assign and reply all my email request moving forward,” and then it says some other stuff. That's something I want to do, but it's big and scary, and yeah, I know I'll probably have to respond to some emails, but I'm talking about eliminating it more. I'm like, “Why don’t I just try that? Why do I have to make this decision I procrastinate on forever? Why don't I just try that?” I think it comes back to we don't want to fail like that, we're always raised with, “There is no try, it's to do or die,” or whatever. You don't try, you either do it or you don't, but it's like, “Why can't I just try that? I have an assistant. Why don’t I run that for two or three weeks and see how it goes?” The other thing and I'm sure you've probably thought of this, Jason, is like Gary V, having maybe a semi full-time person doing vlogs, recording not just every few days, like every day. I'm just sitting on that and I'm like, “Well, why don't I just try it for like a freaking month?” I think there's so much possibility with that and I wanted to see what you thought because I'm like, “I don't have to commit to it.” There's so much stuff. Even hiring someone. I was thinking about hiring a GM or an operations manager for eight or nine months. What if I just said, “Hey, let's try it.” I mean this isn’t Canada or some other places where I don't think you can fire people. Try it, hire the person, and if it doesn't work out, let them go. Jason: Yeah. Let's go back to the email and then we can go the other thing. Here's how I identify stuff. I mentioned this on the previous episode, but I personally will do a time study probably about once a quarter and if I bring on a new team member that takes something off my plate, because how I identify what I need to get off my plate is by doing a time study. I have to be accountable. Where's my time actually going and which things are low dollar an hour work, which things are things that I don't enjoy. I actually write a plus or minus sign next to each thing that I'm doing, whether it energizes me or it drains me, and then identify the things that are tactical or strategic, things that are self-care versus family time. I have a whole system, I take clients through for doing time studies. When I do this, that helps me get clarity for what I need to get rid of. I gave up email a long time ago because I hated email. It was always a minus sign, it was always tactical, it was never like my hopes and dreams were coming true when I was writing an email. I don't even look at my email. So, if you've emailed me, I'm sorry, I don't look at it. My assistant will take care of the email. She reads it. If she has any questions, she sends me a message through a walkie talkie app, because I don't want to type to her. She'll send me a voice message through Voxer. We use Voxer and I use it with coaching clients, she will send me a Voxer voice message and say “Jason, what do you think, how should we respond to this email. They're asking this.” I say, “Just tell them this, this and this, but say it nicer than I just said.” Then she’ll take care of it, and she's asking me questions throughout the day. We also do daily huddles as a team and that's usually where she gets most of her questions in. I say, “Is anybody stuck on anything?” She's like, “Yeah, did you get my message about this?” “No, I wasn't paying attention.” “Okay, what do you need?” I answer it and she can respond to the email for me. She's gotten really good at understanding over time, she gets better and better at knowing my voice, knowing what I would say and she takes care of more and more and more. Every day she'll give me a short list, “Here are the emails I don't know what to do with. You need to take care of these,” and I begrudgingly will deal with them within a day or two. That's how it works. [...] then I’ll talk with them and move them forward, but outside of that, usually she hands it off to my team or has somebody else in the team deal with it. If it's support-related, I think most of my clients have learned that they're not getting a fast response by coming to me directly. They get their best response by emailing our support email address or system and so I think every property manager needs to do the same. Initially, when you're small you're the guy. They probably have your cell phone number. Tenants owners, everybody, and eventually you change your phone number and you create some barriers and protections, you have to educate and teach people how you want them to treat you, and you’re going to teach your customers what are the right channels and you have to teach your team what are the right channels. My days are pretty quiet. Steve: I love that. That's super inspiring. You fired me up even more and I love how you said it's tactical. It's very transactional-tactical. I want to be playing in the sandbox of transformational. I feel like I'm retired now because I do what I want and I'm blessed to say that. There's been a lot of hard work behind that, but I'm to the point to where I'm not going to do stuff that doesn't light me up and there's a small subset of tasks like creating content—podcast is one of them—that I could do all day and I have endless energy for. That's where I add the most value. So, the bigger the impact on people that I can have is going to be when I'm fired up and passionate and not dragging off of email, but I think we don't give ourselves permission to do that. You saying that, I'm all in now. I was 80% in, Jason, now I'm all in. I hope some listeners are all in to move forward. That's what I love about podcasts and other things with so much being shared these days. A lot of times we think things, or we know things internally, or we feel things a certain way, but we don't give ourselves permission to actually say that or feel that in public because sometimes we just need someone else to say it to give us the courage. I've noticed that happening so much lately that I finally got pissed, and I'm like, “You know what? I'm making a list of everything that I believe in whole-heartedly, that I think is a little off mainstream maybe.” That way I can have it in writing and I'm just going to start saying these things because I'm tired of being, “Oh yeah, and I felt that way, too,” but I never said anything. Jason: I mention this on the previous episode, too, that I've been really opinionated in the past and I've realized that I think I'm a little more humble now that I realized my way isn't always the exact right way for everyone, so I'm learning. I was just in Columbus for a week and one of the things that really hit me hard is that I've been really opinionated and I think it's important to put out things more as observations rather than gospel truth. Somebody may love email or somebody may hate doing podcast stuff. Everybody is different and I think everybody's perception is different, everybody's experiences as to what works or doesn't work in marketing could be different, their market might be different. There are so many variables involved, so I think moving forward, my content is a lot more observational because I've realized I was attracting clients or creating monsters in the industry that are hyper-opinionated and the hyper-opinionated people become like, “Oh my God, [...],” but the problem is they create a lot of negativity in the industry. They become the rampant [...] guys that are heartless, that want to crush all the hopes and dreams of every tenant on the planet. We need to be careful in any business or any industry in being too opinionated because what ends up happening is we end up attracting most opinionated people. Those are the people that turn on you. Those are the owners you don't want eventually. Those are the people that give you the negative reviews when one little thing goes wrong. I want open minded people, and these are the clients that I’ve loved the most, but I was attracting less of them per capita because of the message that was so in your face. “This is the [...], do this,” and I was just so strong willed that way and I realize now that that creates its own monster. I think it's important to share though, honestly, these little things that we have, that are weird about is or that are woo-woo that we feel like the rest of the world will judge. To say. “This is me, this is how I am, this is my experience,” and yeah I think you when we let our freak flag fly, so to speak, there are people that run with it. As long as we're not, “Hey, this is the gospel truth. This is the only way to do it,” we're not going to turn off so much so many of the people that don't resonate. They might go, “You know, Jason, that’s cool that you're into that weird stuff, but I'm more of a practical guy and I don’t resonate with that, but I like a lot of the stuff you say.” If I say, “This is the only way to do it,” I'm forcing them to make a choice to go all in and do everything my way or the highway. Steve: Your coach helped you nail that idea. I had that opposite issue. I think the issue for me was that I didn't want to ever come off as opinionated. I'm scared almost having an opinion because I'm like, “Do your thing, man,” so I’m always quick to anything I believe in. I'm quick to say, “Do what works for you. This is just my journey. Do what works for you.” I think like attracts like and that's a really cool observation that you started attracting all these opinionated people. The coaching thing, I love that you have coaches and you’re a coach yourself because the power of coaching has changed my life. Strategic coach, I work with Jason Goldberg. Every time I have a call with him, I transform. It's really crazy. If there's one thing I'm super high on right now, it's co-creation. Co-creation is the super power that nobody's talking about and I've experienced it in many ways. First through music. Although I normally do music on my own and I'll just write songs. When I get in the room with the right people, they don't even have to be a great musician, it's just that the energy. If we’re vibrating on the same frequency, things just come out so great. I played with this rapper the other day. Two of our new songs are two of my favorite songs I've recorded in the past year. Back when I had a casual mastermind that we used to do, helping each other co-create, kick this process back to you, now you kick it back to me and blah, blah, blah, everything just accelerated. So, I think outside eyes on the business, coaches, casual masterminds, paid masterminds, whatever it is, I think the more we're interacting with others and having a sounding board, the faster we're going to get to where we're going and the more transformative the experience will be. Jason: I agree. To touch on that, every single person you'll notice, everybody listening will know this is true. You can talk about it in terms of inner energy or spirituality or whatever, but every single person that you’re around brings out a different side of you. There are people that when I'm around them, I feel I'm freaking hilarious, I’m the funniest guy on the planet. They’re laughing at everything I say. It's awesome. Then there's people that I'm around that I feel I'm super mental, analytical, and logical. That's how they perceive me and that's what they bring out in me. And there are people that feel I'm this emotional sensitive person. My kids would probably say, “No, he’s Mr. Analytical.” There are different people that bring out a different side to us. This is also why I have a strong introverted side. I need space away from people to reconnect with who I am and to make I'm me. I feel when we're around other people, part of it is how they perceive and see us, brings that out in us, it allows us to be [...] energy and yes absolutely there's this connection and a certain combination of different people, or different energies, or different whatever that will create a different music. You've got the Beatles, for example. These four guys came together and they created all kinds of interesting sounds and music that had a really strong impact and all them wrote songs [...], but on their own, none of them really created as strong of a situation without the others. Just the energy between Paul McCartney and John Lennon was pretty magical. Steve: Totally, and country artists or country songwriters write typically with at least two but usually three or four people in the same room. I think there's parallels because I can speak from experience. I was constantly, with the exception of going to maybe two conferences a year, I was at the desk in my office, head down, genius with 1000 helpers, although I wasn't a genius that is just a saying I’ve heard by any stretch of the imagination. Jason: The emperor with no clothes. Steve: Right, the fool with too much control, and that’s the thing now. I'm in charge, but I'm not in control and that’s self-freeing. It's the people, my people that are awesome are in control and the cool thing now to get to the impact or the purpose part that is super firing me up these days is that I've gotten to a point now to where my job with Good Life is to take care of my team. It's to figure out how can I make their lives better. How can I figure out, what are their dangers, their opportunities, their strengths? Where do they want to be in three years? How can I cultivate that? How can I make it so all of them would run through a wall for me and take a bullet for me because if they would do that, they will treat my money like their money, my company like their company. The reason I started really researching how, I was like how does the military sail hundreds of 18-year-olds across the sea and set up forward military bases. It's just mind boggling, and I read Extreme Ownership. It’s a great book, some other books, but you talk about decentralized command. The top gives them the mission and then that leader gives them the mission and then the lieutenant, I’m butchering correct words. Jason: The hierarchy? Steve: Yeah, the hierarchy, but they are allowed to come up with the game plan and the battle plan. One of my jobs at Good Life is to make it okay to fail. To be okay to test things and screw things up and get beat up over it. Jason: Because if they're afraid to fail, guess what happens? They start hiding crap from you. Then there's all the secret stuff going on then there’s interoffice politics, there’s backbiting. People have to be allowed to fail and not feel they're going to have their head chopped off. Otherwise, you have a business that’s unsafe for you. I love the idea of you giving up control, I've given up control over my email. I don't even know what's getting sent out half the time, but I've created trust and I trust her. She's very cautious in how she does it. I've given up my schedule. I was in Vegas last week, the week before that I think it was in Columbus, a week before that I was I think in Phoenix. I don't choose anymore. My assistant, she's like, “Here’s a speaking opportunity. You're going to go speak here.” She sets up these podcast episodes, everything I've given up autonomy on my time, but I still blackout Mondays and Fridays so I can do some of the things I want and then I have my weekends, but you give up control. The higher you move up in your business, the less control you have and the more you give to the people around you. I just do what they tell me to do. I show up. My job is to support them. I love what you were saying that you've transitioned because I think as we start out as entrepreneurs and we get our first few team members. We’re always asking the question and frustrated why can't my team just do what I say. Then eventually we transition and we transform and evolve and realizing they are some of our best assets, they're supporting us, they're better at us in things that they do, they love their areas of expertise and now it's, how can I support them? How can I help them get ahead? How can I make it easier? How can I help them avoid burnout? You also threw out the words transformational and transactional, and I think those are two very different leadership styles that I think are important to point out. I think what you’ve just been describing is you're trying to create a team that is transformational. Transformational leadership is where you give them an outcome and say, “That's where I want to go,” and they say, “Great,. We'll figure it out, we'll help you get there.” Transactional leadership is, “We're going to go here and here's exactly how we’re going to do it and we’ll do it my way,” and then there's no buy-in, there’s no ownership, they don't get to fail because if they do what you tell them to do and it doesn't work, whose fault is it? It’s mine, but that means they can't win too. If they can't fail, they can never win, and you're never going to keep A players on your team that never get to win. This is why people get so frustrated by millennials, because they're dinosaur business owners, they're running their business like assholes, they're tyrants, they're trying to micromanage their team, tell everybody to do it, and it’s transactional. They're saying, “I'm giving you money, just do what I tell you to do. I paid you, do it.” Millennials don't stand for that. They value themselves more. They want something beyond just being told what to do and getting a paycheck. Believe me, I have team members on my team that would just be there to show up and [...] and get their check. They don't believe in you, they don’t believe in the company, they're hypers, and they go home and complain about you, and the job, and they live for the weekends. But if team members enjoy the work and they feel they have freedom and they have autonomy, you have their discretionary time. They're thinking about you after work. “How can we make this better?” They’re thinking about you on the weekends. They do extra stuff because they're in love with what they're doing. Steve: Totally. Now, you said that really well and I think what comes up for me as the EMyth, which was a very transformational book to use that word for me. Checklist, at certain points at Good Life, we are a results based company, but a lot of times I get pulled to these meetings it’s like this person is not… they checked the box and they didn't do it or they didn't check the box and they should have, you know I mean? What's the results? Is the days on market good? Where is his KPIs? Although they’re good, we have this back and forth. So, here's something that I want to stick my flag in the sand as something that's not conventional and goes away from my instinct which is let them figure it out. I don't care about the checklist. We're not all going to be McDonald's. Honestly, I'm not trying to scale my business across the whole country, if I was, I probably would have to make sure everybody checks that box, but I'm really interested in the small giants approach, where it's going deep with the smaller amount of people, still having a big business that makes a big impact. I say, “Hey, look at the results. Make it a results-based company because they can own it. They have more ownership in that regard.” Something else that comes to mind was, I remember I used to walk into the office when I used to go to the office every day and people would be on YouTube and I would freaking be so mad. They're watching some videos, I would stew about, I wouldn’t say anything right away. I would go in my office and fume. Then I remember I talked to a friend about it, someone I respect, a mentor. He's like, “Man, you got to let that go. If they get the results, who cares how many cat videos they're watching. You want a fun environment. If you go lay the hammer down on that, you're going to not have the team that you need to have to make your dreams come true.” Someone I respected telling me that was me letting go of a helium balloon. All this weight was just lifted and I was free. I didn't have to micromanage. Jason: I think it's interesting because sometimes usually the person or the team that gets really caught up on the checklist and everything being done a certain way, that's usually the operations person. They love that stuff, and it needs to be done this way, but I think that's our job as the visionaries to remind them it's the outcome that matters. It's the end result that matters. The end result is making sure we have a profitable business. The end result is to make sure that we're honoring our customers and we're treating people well. These sort of things, if we want to get to the outcome. How we get to that outcome, there's probably a million ways we can do it, and whether a certain box wasn't checked or certain thing didn't end up happening. Well, maybe that process is too cumbersome. Maybe it needs to be supplied, as long as getting a result. There’s always this balance. You can have a 30-point checklist that somebody has to complete, but if you can get it down to 10 steps and they can actually do it every time and it doesn't feel it’s in the way, then you're better off than the people that are operating without looking at a process document because most people don’t. They'll do it once and then just skip it. You need something that they can live with on an ongoing basis. I think that's really important to point out what you said is that it's the results, that results don't lie, it's the outcome that really matters. So, I think if you take a step back and say, “Well, what outcome are we going to achieve? Somebody's talking about checklist not being done well. What was the outcome we were trying to achieve? What's the outcome? Okay, did we achieve it? Who was responsible for it and how do we know whether it got done or not? Okay great, well then we're good, maybe we should change the process.” Steve: Exactly. Those are some things, but the exciting part is having freedom of time, money, relationships, the people you work with, the people you get to do business with, I know you talk a lot about firing the bad clients. That was an amazing experience, our profit went way up when we fired the wrong types of clients and getting really centered on our core values because then it's easy to hire and fire people and hire clients based on your core values. Ours are really simple. It’s RPG: be reliable, be positive, and be a go giver. It's based off that book, The Go Giver, and it's just simple. We used to have seven or eight, but then I couldn't even remember what they were and they felt weird, so we made it really simple. Now, my business development manager just goes down the list, like, “Are they reliable? Were they at the appointment on time? Did they send you the thing they said they were going to send you?” It just makes this compass of how to do business with the type of people that are going to make you successful. Jason: That's one of the things that coach clients through is to get clear on their three, maybe four core values because you can have a list to 10, you can have 20, but really your team aren’t going to remember all of those and you can usually boil it down to three core things. For us, ours are a little bit different. One of my core values is just transparency. That's originally why I call my company Open Potion and in just creating transparency I think in the industry has created some various significant shifts. I think also for [...] just how I operate. That's a value that is central to me and I want my team to espouse and really our companies are just extensions of us. It's my Iron Man suit that I get the strap on every day, that's my team and everything around me. It increases my capacity. It makes me feel a super human. I'm getting more done. I've got India handling my email and Adam handing fulfillment. I feel like I’m a superhuman. Steve: He’s awesome, by the way. Jason: Thank you. I think of other things I'm really big on is just eliminating constraints and looking for the big constraints that are preventing momentum, so that I can create momentum. It’s all about creating momentum for my clients and for myself. I think it's going to be different for everybody. With all the different things that we are inspired or that resonates with us and I think every business owner needs to get clear on really what their values are because you can't have it. There are only two types of team members. There are hiders we talked about that are hiding and they are living for the weekend and they show up for paycheck or there's believers. The only way you can have believers is if you have something for them to believe in. If you want believers on your team and you want clients that believe in you, you have to have values that you make transparent or clear to the marketplace or to your team so that they can they can buy in to them. It's amazing to see companies get to a large size without even having that in place. Once you get it in place, I imagine the shift is traumatic for the culture. Steve: And if there's one last thing I would leave the listeners with that’s going to be probably the most impactful thing for me in the last 24 months was, I had this epiphany that everything worthwhile lives on the other side of fear. I knew that instinctually and I've been told that before. You know how you can read a book, that's why they say re-read the books that you love because you read it four times and then you'll start to actually really get it. I knew that, but I didn't really get it and it hit me, it became crystal clear. I was like, “Okay, if I want my dreams to happen and be fulfilled and live a life that I want, I have to figure out what scares me and do that.” I have a two-part test. Does it scare me, part one. Part two, does my heart tell me to do it? If the answer to both of those is yes, you do it. I even made a wristband that says, “What scares you, do that.” I don't have it on me right now, I took it off. Just to remind me and it goes back to the try thing. All my biggest leaps came after I did something I wasn't prepared for and I was scared to do, like going to that mastermind. I couldn’t afford it, it was really expensive. Hiring my operations manager, hiring a marketing manager. I gave a talk recently at PM Grow that I thought I was going to be broke after I hired my marketing person because I didn't think I have the margin and we ended up having our best year ever. It comes back to the try thing. Figure out what scares you, do that, try it, whatever it is. I think that's where we make our biggest leaps and that's what sets people apart from living a life that they intended to having regrets, which is the number one regrets of the dying is that they didn't live a life true to themselves, instead they lived a life other people expected them to live. That's the thing that scares me more than anything in the world and so I’m passionate about sharing that message. Jason: Steve, it’s been awesome having you on the show. I'll second that. It really is that voice deep down that is that voice of truth, and also you can ask yourself deep down, “Do I really want to be doing this?” Deep down, “Should I be doing this thing?” Deep down, “Does this really resonates with me,” and if the answer isn't a, “Hell yes,” then there's a lack of congruency and I think that's where you're saying your heart is yes. I think [...] of something that isn't working is the death of something inside you. It means change, something has to die. You want to know what's really interesting? I've noticed a lot of this on [...]. The scariest thing to kill or to allow to die is the fantasy of something great. I’ll explain this, I've noticed this a lot lately with business owners. They have this fantasy of having a really healthy business, or having a business that is growing, or a business that they contribute, or they get to do great things, and that fantasy is so exciting to them and juicy to them that they don't want to take action on it, because to take action on it means they have to kill it. They have the brutally pull out the knife and slaughter their fantasy the second they start taking action towards it, because now reality sets in. Reality is never going to be at that level that the fantasy was, but it's better because it's real. I usually use the example of my friend in high school that wanted to be a rock star, which sounds like you. You had to eventually give up the fantasy of being a rock star or you have to choose into it fully. He had this fantasy of being a rock star and he would buy expensive guitars and amplifiers, and he wouldn't take guitar lessons. He won’t love the fantasy of having this fantasy of being a rock star and as long as he can buy cool guitars and keep imagining this future that would never happen, he was happy, but he didn't want to go sleep in his car and do gigs, tour round, work his butt off, and practice nine hours a day. He didn’t want to do any of that. That's reality. Reality means some work. Initially, if you're listening to this and you’re like, “This is great. Jason and Steve have these companies and making all this money, they've got their assistants. It must be so nice for them.” They're probably listening and going, “I don't get it. I'm not there.” You may have to be the person listening that you right now, it's time for you to double down. It's time for you to hustle. It's time for you to do stuff that scares you. It's time for you to get off of the fantasy of whatever you're hoping of doing or hoping of starting to really get out there and do the work, the hard work to make it happen and you listen to that voice, you get to that place. You get to that place eventually where you're now are able to focus on your team. You're able to be a coach and a mentor to people around you instead of the person trying to figure out how to get everybody to do everything. I think that transition really involves taking those scary leaps. I think every coach that I've hired was a leap. None of them were cheap. Every coach I've hired, every program or training I bought into, some of them I couldn't even afford at the time. They were risks, but I knew deep down it was a yes. I just knew it was a yes and it terrified me. I think for those that are really analytical and logical, they're like, “I don't get it Jason,” but for anybody else listening. If you have that voice deep down inside that is saying, “Hey, this is what's next for you. You've known it. You've been avoiding it and you're trying to figure out how to make it all feel safe, take the leap, and jump and do it. Worst case scenario, you're going to learn some powerful lessons.” I had lessons where I spent a lot of money and it didn't work out. A lot of money. I've probably lots of money making some bad choices, but I wouldn't trade those lessons and I've learned from them. Steve: Yeah, and money is just one side of it. Making a decision to be a different person, or to take more time off, or to go into a completely different field, that's probably the easiest one to do is scratch a check for something. Sometimes our way of being is probably what gets in the way of most of our issues because you can't solve the problem with the same mind that created it. Creating some space and getting clear always helps, getting clear on what you're trying to do and the life you're trying to live. At the end of the day, we’re the writer, director, producer of our own store and I love how you said, you kill off the fantasy because that's true. It's scary. I think that's why a lot of people don't delegate it or it takes so long to delegate because it's scary. If you give that up, what are you going to do? Then you actually might have to sit with yourself and figure out what's next and nobody wants to be alone with themselves. That's a scary place. It's through the work, it's through conquering those demons slowly over time that I've seen good results, so it's a process. Take it easy on yourself and do what's doable. I beat myself up a lot over the years and it's I think we're all pretty ambitious. Don't kill yourself. Life's too short. Just have fun with. Do what’s doable. Jason: Well, Steve, it’s been awesome having on the

Do you want to build wealth through real estate investing and property management? Then, put in the work, trust the process, be open-minded, and get results that change your life. Today, I am talking to Robin Reed, CEO of Concept 360 Property Management and a licensed California real estate broker. She helps clients reposition assets to maximize their value by decreasing expenses and increasing income.  You’ll Learn... [04:29] Challenging Coworkers: Let them go, and try not to grow the company.  [05:07] Learn to appreciate employees who handle day-to-day tasks and tenants.  [05:45] Feast or Famine: Flip from brokerage income to property management.  [07:27] Completely Commit to Changes: Follow DoorGrow, and do whatever it takes.  [12:00] Then vs. Now: No Jerks Allowed policy to make everyone happy.  [17:05] Desperation and Disrespect: You get it, or you don’t.  [17:25] Value of Property Management: If working for peanuts...get what you pay for. [18:20] Walk Away: Not everything, everyone is a perfect market/product fit.  [22:00] Feeding Funnel: What do you do? What’s property management?  [25:50] Retention: What works? Sells? Results and relationships with real estate agents.  [26:05] Growing from 65 to 200 doors; adding 2-5 doors/properties each month.  [30:15] Second Sandtrap: New challenges ahead for processes, teams, trust, and more.  Tweetables I like working on the business, and not in the business. Feast or Famine: Rollercoaster of brokerage income. Be willing to change, take action, and make a difference. What sells, what people want to buy are results. Resources Concept 360 Property Management National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) LeadSimple GatherKudos DoorGrow Case Studies and Website Secrets 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 is Robin Reed of Concept 360 Property Management. Robin, welcome to the show. Robin: Thank you, Jason. Jason: It's really good to see you. Robin: You too. Jason: Robin has been a client. For long have you been a client? Robin: Coming up to two years. I think we’re right around two years. Jason: Maybe I should read a little bit of your bio because you’re really cool. It says, Robin Reed is a licensed California real estate broker and CEO of Concept 360 Property Management with a background in commercial real estate, finance, investment, and development. She's experienced in all real estate asset classes having secured over million in both debt and equity for her clients. She opened Concept 360 Property Management to share her true passion and combined experience as a broker and investor with her clients by helping them reposition their assets. They maximize their value by decreasing expenses and increasing income. A passionate real estate investor herself. She enjoys helping her clients build wealth through real estate investing. Robin is actively involved in several real estate trade organizations including NARPM, the National Association of Residential Property Managers, and is always aware of the pulls of the current real estate market. An Orange County native, she holds a BA degree in English and Comparative Literature from Chapman University. Robin, I actually saw you in person in Long Beach when I spoke at the NARPM chapter. It was awesome because you and your husband came up to me and gave me a big hug. I remember after that event you said some kind words to me. After that event, I was kind of high of the event, but afterwards in the parking lot, I started crying. Because as a coach and as a mentor to a lot of property management companies, I don't get to see clients in person very often because a lot are digital or remote. But occasionally, at a conference or something and somebody comes up to me and they say something in gratitude, that means a lot to me. Robin: Right. Jason: That was one of the moments I cherish. It was really nice being able to help you guys out. Why don't we start back at the beginning? Maybe a couple of years ago when you came to myself and to DoorGrow. What challenges were you dealing with then? What has been happening? Robin: We had let an employee go. The company was something that at the beginning when it first started in 2004, it was pretty big and had a lot of multi-family and things like that. Then the recession hit, a lot of people sold their buildings, some lost them, things like that. We weren't really focused on the property management company. It was just sort of this thing over in the other office that was self-sustaining and it was really something we weren't paying attention to and we were really focused on brokerage. We did a lot of brokerages, sold a lot of REOs for banks and we were really involved in that. I guess it was three years ago, that was right, it was about three years ago and we let an employee go and we looked and realized we were down from probably at the hay day close to 1800 doors, we are down to 65 doors. I said, "I don't even think we should keep this open. What's the point? It's a liability. I'm not into it. Let's just close it." So, we didn't, we kept it as a self-sustaining thing, but we didn't try to grow it. Then my remaining employee went to a maternity leave and I was doing her job for a couple of months which I learned that I hated doing her job. I'm glad I have employees. I like working on the business and not in the business. Luckily, we were at the point where we were able to have employees and I don't really have to deal with day to day of tenants and all that. I did her job for a couple of months and during that period I thought to myself, "This is a good business. This is a good business to be in. This is viable." I was so used to the rollercoaster of brokerage income, it's feast or famine. Jason: Yeah. Robin: And the property management company had always been in the background if between commissions or something like that. I thought, "why don't I flip it? Why don't I flip the script and focus on the property management company and then put the brokerage on the side?" My husband saw you speak somewhere on the internet, came across you and your videos and said, "You got to check this out." Historically, there's been a lot of "check this out", "we got to try this system" so I'm skeptic with systems and coaches, I always have been. I saw one video of yours and I said, "Yes, I'm in." Jason: That’s it. You have been super skeptic and one video was all you needed. Robin: One video and I said, "I'm in. Let's check him out." Jason: What did I do in that video? Robin: I don't know. I wish I knew which one it was. Jason: It's good. I got to do more of that video. Robin: That one, yeah. Jason: Yeah. Robin: We joined up with you and we were willing because we wanted the property management to grow. It’s like, I have this company already and we already have clients, it's something that I can grow from. I was committed and I said, "Whatever needs to happen." We went through all of the training. If I needed to change the name, we ended up changing the logo for you guys. I would have changed the name. I would have done anything. I said, "I'm completely committed to this system. I'm willing to do whatever it takes. Let's go." We did the website. I think before we even did the website or maybe in conjunction, I don't know how it works, but we did GatherKudos and that was huge. Jason: Yeah, [...] on the reviews. Robin: Yes, that was huge. That's been a huge help for us still. We have people that say, "Oh my god. I just saw your reviews." We started asking tenants and owners to review us. Sometimes you have to ask several times for people to review you. Dana, who works for me in the office, she's always trying. She's very good at getting people to review us. She's like a dog on a bone that she said, "You said you we're going to review us. Review us. Review us." So that's good. Jason: Yeah, good. You started going through a process. Robin: Yeah. Jason: The one thing I really loved about you guys as clients is I made mistakes in the past in attracting clients that are really opinionated because I was being very opinionated to the marketplace. Robin: Okay. Jason: But somehow you guys came through and were amazing clients. You guys were the type of clients that I really wanted because you were open to doing things differently. You were open to trying stuff. That's the type of person that I am. I'm very much like an open-minded person and so I'm getting better at putting out more of an open-minded message to attract those types of clients because we attract really well what we put out there. You guys came to me and you were willing to put in the work and you guys trusted the process. Those are the clients that get the biggest results and that's always really exciting to see a client get results, doing what you say that you asked them to do, I feel like when my clients come on, they are putting a lot of faith in us. Robin: Right. Jason: Whether you are a business owner or coaching client of mine and if they put that faith in you, that's a secret thing, I think, in business. I think that's why when your husband came to me—I don't even remember what he said off the top of my head—but he said something like, "You changed my life," or something like that. Robin: I think it was something like that because it's true. Jason: Yeah. I think as entrepreneurs—or at least the type of entrepreneurs I really like to work with—that's really the core of who we are. We want to make a difference. Some entrepreneurs, maybe you can call them entrepreneurs, they have business in which all they want to make money. Robin: Right. Jason: They are not really concerned about solving the problem, but real business exists to solve the problem. Property managers solve the real problem. Robin: Right. Jason: I think a lot of them are very much enjoy people who are contribution-focused. That really was great to watch you guys go through and trust that. You guys asked a lot of questions. Robin: Yeah. Jason: A lot of questions, good questions, then you guys took action. You guys did stuff. You did the things that I told you to do. Robin: Yeah. Jason: You did a lot of different things. You’ve gone from saying, "It's a liability. Let's just close it down," to saying, "Hey, maybe there's something here." To getting coaching, to going through a process, cleaning up your reputation, working on your website, working on your pricing model, working on your sales process, working on your prospecting methods. You've really gone through all of that and then we started getting on the operational things, figuring out your team a little bit, figuring how to get you in alignment with your business that wasn't so uncomfortable. Robin: Right. Jason: Because it was, it was uncomfortable for you at some times. Robin: Yes. It was. Jason: I think we've all been there. I remember some calls of you where you were like, "How do I get this one team member to do things the way that I want them to do?" Robin: Right. Jason: "I want things to be this way." Your perspective shifted really quickly after that. Robin: Oh, I did. Yeah. I've learned a lot. Jason: How do you feel like your business is now? How does it feel different now having gone through all that? Robin: We have no jerk's policy. You were talking about the kind of clients that you want to attract and it's the same. Life's too short. We've had some clients that are just not great and we let them go. That takes some faith in the system because it'd be easy for me to say, "I have a staff. They can deal with this person. I don't have to deal with him. I'm just going to keep them because of the income." But that's not really the culture that I want. I don't want unhappy employees to hate me because I keep bad clients on. We've attracted so many just really cool, nice people who get it. There's people that just don't. They don't get it. They don't see the value of property management. They maybe have self-managing for a long time and they don't see the value, but there are other people that do, and those are the people we want to work with. We've really streamlined our criteria about the kind of clientele we want, the kind of properties that we want to manage. We manage several HOAs. We don't manage them anymore. They had their separate challenges that weren't really working for our business model and so we let all of them go. That's income, but it's been replaced. It’s come back around. You were talking about relationships. You said to us, "Your property management company will be a place where you get referrals for your brokerage." I've got one in escrow right now that we’ve managed for a couple of years. Another one that we managed that were evicting a tenant and putting on the market. It is true that the property management company has been an interesting gateway to the brokerage business which has sort of become my side hustle, if you will, not my main thing. Jason: Yeah. It's a good side hustle. Robin: Yeah. Jason: One of the things that I point out to clients, and for those listening, I think it's very easy for us as business owners to fall into having the business that we can create or that we can have. Having the types of businesses that we can serve instead of having the business that we really want and the clients that we really want. Robin: Right. Jason: It's such a slight distinction and such an easy trap to fall into. It's similar to what I said outside of this is that, ultimately, I think what happens to clients is that we help them understand not just who they want to really work with, but who they don't want to work with. Then when they get that clarity and we then engineer the sales process and the reputation process, your pricing, and everything around who you really want then the message creates and attracts the right type of clients or tells the wrong type of clients, and so you are now attracting the right type of clients. I think a lot of property managers are hearing you and they just don't believe it. They’re hearing you say, "Our clients are great. We love them. They are easy. "And they’re like, "She's smoking something." They don’t get it because they’re feeling, "I know. I talk to people every day." And they’re like, "I hate this business sometimes. It's crazy. I'm struggling. We are dealing with people who are like we have to replace one door every time we get a door on." Really, it’s that they’re putting out the wrong type of energy, message, or perception or they’re focusing on the wrong type of audience and they don't see that it's possible. This sounds like a pipe dream to them. How would you explain that to somebody that's sitting where you were two or three years ago? Robin: It does sound like a pipe dream, doesn't it? It does sound a little bit scary to start trusting the process and that you will get new doors on if you let go of some. I'm a firm believer of that kind of energy anyway. You let go of some things and they are going to be replaced by something better anyway. I'm a firm believer in that kind of energy, but you might not be able to let go. Let's say you start doing the process and you start to GatherKudos and you start getting more clients. Then you'll be able to slowly maybe let go of the worst ones to replace it with better ones. You've got to trust the process. That's the thing and it's an empty card. I think a lot of times in this business, I've seen it in brokerage, and I'm sure it happens in every business, people get desperate and they accept treatment from clients they don't really want to accept, but they get desperate. We've had people call us and other people will do it for less. [...]. I mean, go ahead. I saw somebody on one of the DoorGrow threads say, "If you want peanuts, you're going to get monkeys or something." It was essentially like. Jason: If you’re working for peanuts, yeah. Robin: Right because that's what you pay for. Jason: [...] monkey if you’re working for peanuts. Robin: Right. There's a lot of people that would do it for less, go ahead. If that's your main thing, is somebody who would, "What the price is?” I mean, I was telling my husband, I said, "I've never gone in the hair salon and said, okay, how much?" It's more of what can you do and then how much. Don't you want to know what the product is? I have these people call me the other day and they had a litany of questions. I was being peppered with questions. I finally said, "It sounds like you guys have a lot of questions, maybe we can set up a meeting." They were just hammering me on pricing and I said, "Maybe we’re not a fit." It's okay to walk away, you are not going to fit with everyone. Jason: Probably the people that ask endless litany of questions, they're usually really looking for an excuse not to work with you... Robin: Right. Jason: ...especially if they know that your pricing is higher. They're looking, "There's got to be a reason I want to work with these guys, give me an excuse. Oh, you guys don't do that one little thing? Hahaha. I have my excuse. Now, I can avoid this leap that I was going to take working with a coach, working with this business, or whatever. I can avoid that and I can stay in my mediocrity. I can stay in my stuff. I can stay in my dysfunction." I mean, there might be people that call you up asking about your business and they really just want to self-manage. They're just looking for an excuse why is it too expensive or too bad of an idea, or why can't I not trust them so that I can hold onto this moldy peanuts and [...] a monkey and keep my hand in the monkey trap. They want to hold on to it. They don't want to let go and they are looking at you to give them a reason. I love when people play tug of war game with me. Robin: Right. Jason: My favorite thing in the tug of war game is to let go of the rope. Robin: Right, exactly. Jason: And watch them fall on their ass and then they are sitting there holding on going, "Why won’t you play with me? Why won’t you fight me on this?" "I don’t need to, I don’t need to play that game." Let’s get into the changes that you’ve made. Your business from where it is now in almost every way is different. Robin: Right. Jason: What changes did we go through? Did you mess with your branding? Robin: The logo. Jason: Okay. We did change something to do with branding. Then we go into the reputation stuff you mentioned. And you guys also have process now reaching out to people, and stuff like that. Or it’s gotten [...] for you? Robin: We used LeadSimple. I tried so many different things just to make our systems better as you bring on more doors, you have a quality problem of how do you manage everything. The system of bringing them on board and all of that. I’ve actually just been working, finessing our onboarding process. Our BDM wouldn’t get all of the necessary information. The BDM just wants the signature on the contract. Jason: Right. "Let’s get the deal, let’s close it." Robin: I realized, "You go get that signature, I’ll get the rest of the stuff." I’ll send them a welcome email with all the things that we need, and that has really worked out well for us. Jason: You’ve also revamped your pricing, right? You went through significant change there. You revamped your sales process, which you’re talking about right now. Robin: Right. Jason: Making significant changes there in optimizing that. How about the methods for feeding this funnel and prospecting methods? Robin: I’ll talk about a couple of things that have worked for us, and then something that haven’t worked for us because I’ve tried everything. Something that’s very, very simple is that when you have a business, whatever it is, you need people to know what you do. Especially in property management, my local area, there are people that sell products that can sell to a nationwide audience, that’s not what I do. I am managing properties in my local area. I think focusing on that type of local people that are local professionals that know what I do, and that can refer business to me. We do a lot of speaking engagements. We have Dan [...] presentation and then we have one that we’re doing right now that we’ve done a couple of times that is some before and afters because we do a lot with clients that have maybe inherited a property or bought something at a discount that needs to completely be rehabbed. We’ve worked through a lot of those. We’ve some before and afters and we talk about the clients getting more money in their pocket every month now because of turning the units. We got a client that inherited a property that his mother had owned and she had kept the rents the same for years. One bedroom was getting a month. It’s now getting . Jason: Wow. Robin: How can you argue with that? Jason: That’s what sells. What really sells, what people want to buy are results. Robin: Exactly. That’s why that presentation has been so successful, it’s black and white, it’s the numbers, it’s the before and after pictures, it’s the before and after rent rolls. It shows clients, when we manage their properties, and we have a lot of guys that work for us that can do the turns. We do a lot of it. We can discuss a lot of business. We have a lot of vendors that give us great deals. It’s been really beneficial for our clients. Doing this speaking engagement gets us out there and has people see what we do. That’s been very beneficial. I go to events, I’m really the only property management company there. There’s no other property management company that show up to these events that I go to. In general networking event, I don’t really seem to get much out of those. In our area, we have the realtor referral program on our website, we don’t get anything. I don’t know if it’s because the realtors in our area, they’re doing one-offs, kind of they’ve got one deal and that’s it, you never hear from them again or in LA County you make so make so much money on one deal that our little referral, they don’t care, they’re not interested. Jason: Not as enticing. Ultimately, having a relationship with real estate agents is what works... Robin: Right. Jason: ...and nurturing relationship long term. That’s really what works there. You mentioned before and after and how effective that is. Let’s paint a picture of your before and after for your business that helps me out. Let’s look at this. Before, when you came to me, you were 50, 60 units? Robin: I want to say it was 65 doors, 64 doors, right there. Jason: Okay. And then where you guys at now? Robin: Right around 200. Jason: Oh my gosh. So, 200 doors. How many doors were you adding when you were at the 65? What was the sort of the challenge then? What was the typical growth rate? Robin: Nothing. The growth rate was a negative. We were losing. We weren’t doing anything. The company was just in the other room on its own and we weren’t doing anything to try to grow it. Jason: No growth. That’s 65 doors and now, if you guys were at about 200 doors under management, what sort of the growth rate still like? How many doors you add in typically in a month on average? Robin: Typically, a month, 2-5. Jason: Okay. Steadily. If that’s the case then you must be retaining doors a lot longer. Robin: We always have. Our retention rate is really a lot longer I think than the stats I’ve heard in the industry. We’ve done well with that. Jason: Which [...] targeting better owners, or owners that are not just accidentals that are going to fold after a year. Robin: Right. I find the single family is what we like to target and the small multi-family. We do manage some properties, that’s why 2-5 a month, sometimes that’s not necessarily doors that’s properties, some of those properties might have 4 units. Jason: Oh, okay. Robin: We’ve taken on some larger multi-family. We actually started in multi-family. Jason: [...] a year typically on average adding a month maybe is what, maybe about 10? Robin: It may be. Depending. Sometimes it’s just five single family. It just depends on the month. A lot of times though because we’re doing so much prospecting, we have so many in the pipe that somebody I’ve been talking to for four months comes on, that kind of thing. That works well. Jason: That [...] nurture process. Robin: I just found that people that have the 25-unit buildings and things like that, they want you to run your business the way they want you to run it. I had a guy come and talk to us. We do all of our statements, there’s an owner portal, we email them, we don’t do a paper statement, and he wanted a bound paper statement every month, so his wife could read it. I said, "Too bad, we don’t do that." Jason: Could you imagine if you had 20 of those to do a month? Robin: Exactly. Jason: 50 of those to do a month? Robin: They seem to want special treatment so you really have to set your boundaries and know what you’re willing to accept. There’s always negotiation. It’s business. There’s always a bending. You might think, "Well, this is so worth it. You know what, I will lower my price on this or that, or I will do something out of the ordinary." But for the most part, you really have to stick to your guns and know what you’re willing to accept. That works for us. Jason: Works for me too. I love hearing about you and your husband’s successes. It’s really great to see you. I appreciate you coming on the show and hanging out with me. It’s great to hear that you guys are 200 doors and having growth. You guys are headed into what I call the second [...]. That’s the 200-400 doors and this is where now you’re dealing with processes and staff, and building a team. You’ve got some new challenges ahead. Maybe we’ll be talking soon. Robin: Okay, good. Jason: [...] challenges. It’s really great to see your success. Shameless plug, for those that are considering maybe working with me, doing the seed program, maybe they’re skeptical, or they’ve heard mixed reviews. What would you say to them about me, what’s your perception of me and DoorGrow? Robin: I can’t say enough positive things about you and DoorGrow. It has truly changed our business. If you have a property management company, if you’re starting a property management company, especially if you’re starting one, there’s not so much clean up that you’ll have to do. Do it right from the beginning. Jason is very genuine. He’s a good human being. That’s important. We trust you, we really care about you and you care about us, and we’ve had a two-year relationship with you and we know you’re there for us. We’ve seen the results. Not only that, for me, it was hard for me to trust the results, and trust that they were going to keep coming, and they have. You don’t just get a new DoorGrow website and have a seat and have everything come to you. That’s not how it works, but it’s all of these different pieces that starts to funnel business your way. Jason: I tell potential clients or even clients, it’s the last 10% of dialling in things that give you 90% of the results. Robin: That makes sense. Jason: It’s that last 10%. For example, they’ll do the website, but they don’t get faces on there, they don’t get the social proof. They’re missing just a couple little pieces. I have the whole website, that’s 90%. But they’re missing the little pieces that create that trust or ticket to the next level. How I built my business, and how I built the entire program is built around the idea of trusts. Trust is what sells and the fact that you came on board and trusted me, allowed me to help you create a business that creates trust. It sounds like you’re putting out a lot of trust for the industry and property management industry in your market which I think is awesome as well. You’re changing the perception of property management. There’s a lack of trust. For those that are listening, pay attention to this, people that are not signing up with you that you feel like should be, it’s not because they distrust you, it’s because you haven’t created enough trust for them to pick you over your competition. You just haven’t created enough trust. It’s not that they’re walking around just distrusting everybody. Maybe they are, maybe the property management industry has earned a bad reputation in some ways. But I think more than that, it’s that you haven’t created enough trust. It’s about creating that trust. Anyway, I honor you for your growth. You did all of these. You did it. I just pointed, and you and your husband deserves all the props for making this happen. Robin: Thank you. Jason: Really, you guys have done some phenomenal things. Like you said earlier, “I tried everything.” You have the tenacity. And I gave you ideas, but you tried things, you tried everything out. You did, you trusted the process but you experimented and that’s really what entrepreneurs do. That’s how business works. Robin: Yeah. We’re still tweaking. You mentioned the website. Jason: Always. Robin: I just took the website quiz again last week. I got a B. There’s a couple of things we need to tweak. Jason: I have a new training called Website Secrets that you got to watch. Robin: Right. Jason: And we’re getting to an A. Robin: Yeah, exactly! I know exactly what we need to do and it’s just getting with your team and making those tweaks. Jason: Make sure you watch the training because some of my questions in DoorGrow secrets or in the DoorGrow score quiz. Robin: I will. Jason: If anyone wants to grade their website, you can go to doorgrow.com/quiz and take a test to grade your website, how effective it is to creating trust and getting conversions, but some of the questions are backwards. You think you’re saying, “Yes, I’m going to get this, and I need to add this for my website.” It’s a trick, it’s like the reverse. I didn’t really explain which ones are right and which ones are wrong, I’m just asking do you have this and then it gives you a grade in the end. You’re on the inside. I’ve seen people go and implement a bunch of changes, thinking they could just go off the quiz and then it’s just [...] they can clear things up. Cool. Robin, really great to see you again. I’m excited to hear about your continuing success and what [...] big and brighter future with Concept 360 Property Management. Robin: Thank you. Thank you so much. Jason: Alright. I’ll let Robin go. Really great to connect with her. Always exciting to see and share in the winds with clients. Man, I would love to take all the credit, but my best clients, all the ones that are in my case studies that you guys can see back onto the doorgrow.com/case-studies, these are clients that they trusted the process, but they did the work. They did the work. This is a secret, there’s no company that you can just go hand them money and they’re going to give you contracts. We don’t do that. Marketing agencies can’t do that. The best they can give you, most agencies with cold leads, we’re going to help you build system so that your business grows more organically, that it’s easier that we put gasoline on the fire that works in the sense you which is word of mouth and we optimize your business towards that. If you are struggling to grow, if you are maybe what Robin was in the beginning saying, "It’s a liability, let’s just close it. I’m burnt out, I’m stressed out. I’m not getting any younger." I’ve heard these phrases from clients. Get on the phone with DoorGrow or start with our case studies, go to doorgrow.com/case-studies and just start there. If you go there, there is a free training—it really is the beginning of our program, I give it out for free. There is a link you can click on to watch free training about DoorGrow Secrets. It’s going to share with you concepts like the cycle of suck, the 4Ds to revenue, cold leads versus warm leads, the myth of SEO, so that you can be a more savvy educated person with marketing and growing your business. If you decide that we can help you out, I would love to do that. If you feel like you are a right fit, you are open-minded, you’re the right type of client, I would love and be honored to be able to work with you and coach you and help you grow your company. Again, thanks Robin for coming on the show. 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. This document has been edited with the instant web content composer. The online instant HTML converter make a great resource that will help you a lot in your work. Save this link or add it to your bookmarks.  

When property managers need a helping hand, where can they go to find the right handyman/maintenance contractor? Today, I am talking to Liz Koser of Keepe, an on-demand marketplace that fills the supply-and-demand gap between contractors and property managers. Liz is a real estate investor and landlord with 10 properties, 15 doors.  You’ll Learn... [01:40] Early Exposure to Property Management: Liz is following in her parents’ footsteps of real estate investing.  [01:54] Own vs. Rent: Liz’s first condo was her own home that turned into her first rental. Since then, she typically purchases 1–2 properties a year. [02:07] Diversify Property Portfolio: First year for Liz to explore out-of-state investing.  [03:32] A lot like Uber: Based on location and availability, contractors go through a background check before picking up jobs via Keepe’s mobile app. [04:00] Keepe Connecting through Techstars: Fast track program for startups to get feedback on product/market fit; network with others to quickly bring things to market. [04:39] Future Growth Goals: Keepe’s on the West Coast and making its way to Denver and beyond.  [06:25] Why choose to use Keepe? Allows property managers to feel safe expanding, growing their business, and extend the reach or capability to get jobs done. [08:55] Keepe Options as Seasons Change: When things heats up, it’s time to grow.  [10:07] Keepe’s Process: No monthly subscription fee, paid on-demand.  [11:08] Common Concerns and Questions: Keepe constantly collects data and feedback from customers and others to improve its network of contractors. [12:25] Building Relationships and Referrals: Bring over or block contractors to join the network.  Tweetables Diversify within the real estate investing realm. Pick up out-of-state properties, and continue down that path. When everything heats up, that’s the time to grow. Keepe makes property managers feel safe expanding, growing their business to get jobs done. Resources Liz Koser's Email Keepe Techstars Uber Lyft DoorGrow Secrets DoorGrow Newsletter 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. And today, I’m hanging out with the fantastic Liz Koser of Keepe. Liz, welcome to the show. Liz: Thanks for having me. Jason: Liz, give us a little bit of a background. Who is Liz? The bio that I have says you’re a Seattle real estate investor, landlord, you have 10 of your own properties, 15 doors, alongside with your husband, your parents actively invest in rental property, and you were exposed to this early on. Tell us a little more about you and how you got into property management or into the space. Liz: As you said, my parents were already investing in real estate and I have bought my first condo in 2009, which was my own home, and that eventually became my first rental. Then from 2012 to now, I steadily bought 1–2 properties a year. Last year, we didn’t get any, but this year we already have two and I think we’ll probably going to continue to add this year and continue to be aggressive about it. That’s where I’m at on the investing side. Also, I think I mentioned this in my bio, but this is the first year where I’ve explored investing out-of-state. I picked up my first out-of-state property and have every intention of continuing down that path. With the Seattle market, it’s high and it just makes sense also to diversify. I know people diversify within the stock market. I actually think it’s somewhat important to diversify within the real estate investing realm as well. Jason: Now, lead us towards Keepe. How did Keepe get started, what’s your role there, and give us a little background there. Liz: Keepe got started because there is a supply and demand gap between having handymen available and property managers’ need for finding handymen, especially in the markets that we’re in today. Keepe got started as a way to address that gap. We are an on-demand marketplace, matching contractors and property managers. It works a lot like Uber in that contractors pick up jobs on mobile app, based on location and availability. They go through a background check and so on. One of the Keepe founders does also own rental properties. I had known him previously and that is how I made the initial connection. Keepe went through Techstars in 2016. Jason: What is Techstars? Liz: Techstars is a startup incubator, which is a fast track program for startup companies to get feedback on product and market, the whole fit, top-end networking with lots of other entrepreneurs and investors to bring things to market more quickly. Jason: Okay, So, that means it rapidly was getting ready faster. Where’s Keepe at now in terms of growth and penetration? How new is Keepe for those that are listening? Liz: We’ve been in Seattle the longest, but actually Keepe is in the greater Seattle area, Portland, San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, Phoenix, Arizona, and then most recently Los Angeles and Orange County. Jason: You’ve hit a lot of the major markets here on the West Coast, right? Liz: Yup. Jason: What’s next, Denver? Liz: Yeah. I think Denver is a very good candidate and I’m actually from Colorado, so Denver would be a good fit for me personally in terms of running the sales side of Keepe. Also, I think Austin, Texas or the Dallas Fort Worth area, but definitely we’re here to grow nationally. With that, the first step is getting off the West Coast, right? Jason: Right. When you start shifting towards the east, it’s going to be Atlanta and Jacksonville. Those are big markets for us. They seem to attract a lot of businesses there. Certainly those. Liz: It’s interesting. We’ve actually received a few phone calls from the Atlanta area, property managers asking if we’re there yet. That’s a good sign we’re getting preemptive calls. Jason: All right. So the goal is expansion, you guys are growing, and eventually people will be listening to this because this episode will have been out for a while and you might already be in some of these new markets, right? Liz: Right. Jason: Explain to everybody why they should choose to use Keepe. I know a lot of property managers are like, “Well, we find our own people,” or, “I don’t trust this.” What are some of the typical things that you tell people to sell this to them? Liz: One, starting now, a lot of property managers who use Keepe kind of slow go. Let’s say they start to send us a handful of jobs and then over time, we end up gaining a larger portion of maintenance from our customers. I know people have their trusty handyman, but I would say a big need comes up when people say, “Oh, no. My handyman retired or moved away,” and this happens all the time. That is one area where if you’re counting on one or even two people, there’s a company in Arizona that said, “Oh, both our people retired at the same time.” It just doesn’t work in the long run. The other thing is when property managers are depending on those one or two handymen and they’re also a little bit geographically limited. Some of our customers maybe were in a certain Bay Area city, let’s say San Jose, and they’re weren’t willing to pick up clients in San Mateo because they didn’t have a contractor in San Mateo. Using Keepe now opens the door to look at branching out into other geographies as well. We’ve had customers that have been able to expand their footprint because they have Keepe in their back pocket and they know they can handle maintenance in other areas. Jason: So, having Keepe allows these property managers to feel safe expanding, growing their business, and allows them to extend the reach or capability as far as their challenges with getting jobs taken care of that they have. If the handyman retires, moves, all these kinds of stuff, then they’re typically in pain. This is one when they typically would reach out to Keepe? Is this what you’re finding? Liz: That is where they are like, “Oh, great. Now I get it.” We have a lot of property managers try us out before that point and we’ve had property managers that have said, “Oh, great. This helps me grow because I maybe had one on-staff handyman or two and I wasn’t sure about adding a third.” Sometimes, they realize that there’s busy seasons and so seasons, so, “How do I keep our team busy throughout the year?” Well, you might be able to keep one person busy throughout the year and utilize Keepe instead of adding a second person. There’s a lot of options here. Jason: That’s a little bit of flexibility to what they’ve got going on, which makes a lot of sense. Property management is a very seasonal sort of business. It really heats up in the summer and even if you look at Google Trends and look at search volume, you can see the year just spike through summer every single year in search volume for property management. That’s when everything heats up and that’s the time to grow if they’re needing to expand during those seasonal times without bringing on staff because bringing on somebody long-term is a commitment. Nobody wants to lay somebody off if things gets a little lame. It allows them a little safer adjusting. How does the process work with Keepe? How do they work with you? Liz: We have a pretty easy sign-up process and we actually don’t have a monthly subscription fee. We are paid on-demand. Keepe is both a platform and in the [...] contractors. All the payments flow through us. Invoicing comes from Keepe and we pay out the contractors. The sign-up process is pretty much getting set-up for billing terms. When property managers use us for a job, that’s when we make money. We actually don’t have a monthly subscription. Jason: Interesting. So, it’s only when you need it. Liz: Yeah, but our job is to earn a greater percentage of our customer’s business, which is good for our customers because that means that we are working to build a relationship in the long run. Jason: Fantastic. What are some of the common questions or concerns that people will bring up when they call you? We got people listening right now. They probably have these questions. What are the typical concerns that they have in handing something over to Keepe? Liz: We get questions about how do we find the contractors and what’s our process for getting contractors on board. Sometimes, people think that there’s somebody in the background dialing a list to find them a contractor. It’s just shifting the burden. We actually have a team that interviews contractors. We do criminal background checks and then from there, we are collecting ratings on the contractors, so tenants today are the ones that respond once a job is complete unless it’s a vacant unit and it’s a rental turn, then it would be the property manager. We’re constantly collecting this feedback and we have contractors that have been in our network for multiple years. We do remove contractors at times. So, it’s all about the feedback loop and continuously improving the network. Jason: Got it. Fantastic. Any other questions or concerns that they might have or that they bring up during the sales process? Liz: One question we get is if they don’t like a contractor, can they block them? Yes, we do allow property managers to block certain contractors. It’s come up more recently is, “If we end up going with Keepe, can our handyman join Keepe’s network?” Yes, we are happy to take those referrals from property managers. They are probably some of the best referrals we can get because if one property manager likes the contractor, then that’s a good sign going forward. Jason: It kind of like a timeshare. Liz: Yeah, a little bit. Jason: They’re like, “Can I share my contractor with some of the other people in your network, so I can keep them on?” Liz: Yeah, definitely. Once question we get is can they request their contractor. When you think about how Uber and Lyft operate, where they’re matching you with the driver near that location when they’re available, that is essentially how our network works. Although you could have a preference for someone, if that person is not available at that scheduled time, then it’s not going to be an exact matching. That’s one thing to keep in mind with a fluid marketplace is that it doesn’t work with the on-demand model to request a specific person necessarily. Jason: It’s optimized for efficiency. The trade-off in not getting to pick Steve is that you get the job done for faster and probably get a better review. Liz: Yup. Jason: This is very interesting, super helpful. I’m excited to see you guys expand into some more markets and grow. Anything else anybody should know about Keepe that we didn’t cover? Liz: I am always interested in hearing from people in other markets, too. Like I mentioned, we had a few calls from the Atlanta area. I do make note when people come to us and I’m like, “Oh, there’s already a lot of demand there.” So, even if we’re not in your city today, I would recommend reaching out because I do track that. It’s very telling of demand and helps us in the decision-making as we move forward into new markets. Jason: Liz, how can people get in touch with you to let you know they want you and your market or if they’re in one of the markets that you cover, how can they get in touch? Liz: They can reach me at liz@keepe.com. Jason: And they can check Keepe out at keepe.com, right? Liz: Yes. Jason: Perfect. All right. Liz, it’s great having you on the show. Excited to see Keepe grow and expand. It sounds like the service that helps feel that in-between gap between people’s in-house maintenance, people’s seasonal maintenance, some of these challenges that they’re dealing with. I look forward to seeing which markets you get into next. Liz: All right. Thank you for having me on the show, Jason. Jason: Yeah. Thanks for being here. So, check them out at keepe.com and see if it might fit. As always, I love getting feedback from you guys, so let me know what you think of these guys. And I appreciate Liz being here on the show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that is wanting to add doors, you’re trying to figure things out, you’re struggling, and things just don’t seem to be working, I would love to have a conversation with you. Reach out to our team. Go to doorgrow.com, give us a call, connect with us, schedule an appointment, and check us out. If you are a property management business that can handle adding 50 new doors at least, you want to add maybe 100 doors over the next year at least, then you can go to doorgrow.com/optin. Plug in your email address and that will get you access to some case studies. See if you can see other people that have done it. And they’ve done it without SEO, pay-per-click and content marketing, without social media marketing, without pay-per-lead. They were able to grow their businesses organically, healthily, with warm leads to take away last time, have a much higher close rate. You’ll also see that they’re all really happy, which is not super normal sometimes in this industry. It’s a tough industry. I want you to notice that. So, check out those case studies. On that case studies page, I have a link to free training called DoorGrow Secrets that really is the beginning of our training material that I give out for free. I’m going to share with you and add some concepts like The Cycle of Suck, The Four Ds to Revenue, Cold Leads Versus Warm Leads, The Myth of SEO, and some other cool stuff that’s going to help you see why growth has been challenging and what makes the most sense to help you grow your business. Hopefully, everybody checks that out, doorgrow.com/optin is where you go to that; one word. So, 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.

How does an aggressively-minded property management company grow quickly? Leads. But it’s impossible for property managers to pursue the blue ocean of 70% self-managed landlords. There's no way to contact them. Until now.  Today, I am talking to Ben Atkin of DoorsUp, a lead generation service for property management entrepreneurs. You’ll Learn... [02:30] Ben’s Background: Grew up surrounded by real estate, property management, and software.  [03:09] 50-unit Student Housing Apartment Complex: Managing students is difficult; Ben moved on to something less stressful and more lucrative.  [03:40] Bootstrap to the Core: Partnered with Coldwell Banker Premier and started property management company from scratch. [04:10] Daily Pre-occupation: How do you grow doors? How do you increase the number of units under management?  [04:41] Database: How do you identify people who own rental property? Where do they hangout? How do you contact them?  [05:03] DoorsUp Prototype: Every person in market who owns rental properties and their contact information to track interactions and engagement. [06:20] Secret Sauce: DoorsUp gets information and people ready to sign-up.  [07:37] Grow Doors: Use DoorsUp to pick an area to pursue to contact owners and acquire more properties to manage. [14:20] Future for DoorsUp: Going to NARPM to add service areas.  [16:27] FAQ: Does this have all the data that I can find myself? Data is concise, filtered, and updated regularly to make your marketing more efficient and cost-effective.  [21:14] Bogged Down and Overwhelmed: Grew too fast and doesn’t want to be a property manager!  [22:15] My Thesis: Property management has a serious marketing problem. People cannot find a sustainable way to grow doors.  Tweetables Bootstrap to the Core: Zero clients, zero connections, zero revenue, and zero Website.  We have a lot of data. Mining and handling data is our expertise. We’re marketing strategy agnostic. Property management has a serious marketing problem. Resources Ben Atkin's Personal Email DoorsUp Ben Atkin on LinkedIn Google Street View Grant Cardone National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) Business Network International (BNI) Cole Realty Resource SmartZip  REDX  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'm hanging out with Ben Atkin from a new startup, it sounds like, called DoorsUp. Ben, welcome. Ben: Thanks, Jason. It's a pleasure to be on the show. I'm just going to go ahead and say this and geek out out of the way. I've watched literally every single one of your podcast and I can jive so much with that intro. It seems like it's changed a little bit in the last. Did I notice that? You changed that intro to include a couple more things recently? Jason: I have made some subtle changes, yes. Ben: Subtle changes, okay. I love that. I'm really excited to be on this show. I'm just stoked to be here. Jason: Let's get into your background. You've got this startup called DoorsUp, which in my understanding is a lead gen service for property management entrepreneurs, so they can get more owners which sounds very in alignment with what we do to optimize companies so they can handle those leads, so they can effectively, organically, create that business. Tell us how did you get into this space? Give us some background on Ben. Who the heck are you? Ben: Yeah. It's a long long road. I'm a second generation real estate person as well as second generation software developer and software person. My dad has a real estate company, was a real estate developer. The most inopportune time to be a real estate developer in 2006-2007. I grew up surrounded by real estates, surrounded by property management, and also surrounded by software. Anyway, I got my start in actually having experiences in property management in college. I was managing a 50-unit student housing apartment complex. If anybody is familiar with student housing, they know that that is just a difficult job to manage students. 50 units is about 250 leases in student housing. I was looking for something a little bit more lucrative and a little less stressful. I found an opportunity in my local market with a Coldwell Banker property management franchise or Coldwell Banker Premier, partnered with that franchise, and started with a property management company from scratch. Zero clients, zero connections, zero revenue, and zero website—nothing; we just started from the ground. Jason: Bootstrap. Ben: Bootstrap. Yeah, absolute to the core. I have very little experience in property management at that time even though I did my best at pretending that I did. That was our major problem was how do you grow doors? How do you increase the number of units under management? That was my preoccupation daily because I wasn't being paid. You talk about bootstrap, I was living on savings trying to grow a property management company. That was my challenge. That was my problem. I remember speaking to my broker at this franchise. I waited at his office for about an hour. I was brainstorming with him. I said, "How do you identify people who own rental property? Where do they hangout?" It's not like there's this big database of everybody who owns rental property and a way to contact them. That's really was the impetus for what we developed and what we started to pursue. I leveraged a little bit of my connection with my dad and my brothers who were software engineers, I have a software engineering background a little bit, and we built the prototype of DoorsUp, which is exactly that. It's a database of every person in your market virtually who owns rental properties. A way to get their phone number, mailing address, and a way to track their interactions with them as you pursue them to engage with the property management services. Jason: I love it. It sounds like this is almost the equivalent of somebody doing all the manual work to go and find an owner occupied list, then start trying to direct mail to them, and doing all this so manually which works, which can work great to help them grow their business. But it’s a long game. People will try it once and feel like, "I did a mailer, I didn't get anything." But then I hear people that have played this game and they’ll say, "I have clients walk in all the time." They're holding a postcard they did 10 years ago and saying, "Hey, I'm ready, so sign up." Explain how this works. Where are you getting the information? Let's start there. Ben: Sure. I'm going to mention that it's a little bit part of our secret sauce. I don't know if I consider ourselves a big data company. That's kind of a word that people on software throw around to make themselves sound cool, in my opinion. But we have a lot of data. Hundreds of sources, public sources, that's really our expertise is in managing and handling data to be able to target these types of people. Like what you mentioned, let me just make this quick point, mailing to absentee owners is, in some ways, inefficient. How many second home owners who aren't interested in property management are you mailing to? In a market like mine where it's a lot of retirees and it's almost a vacation area, that would be completely ineffective because you'd sent out a thousand mailers and 700 of those would go to people who really have no interest or their daughters' living in that home or whatever. I'm just going to make that point that what we're doing is quite a bit more targeted, and hopefully, should save on expenses, marketing wise and other things. Jason: Explain how somebody could utilize the system growth in their business. Ben: It's a web based application. The first thing that a user would see as they login is they would see a map and filters on the side. They can pick an area that they like to pursue in trying to acquire more properties to manage. Let's say, they've got a neighborhood that they really love, they draw a box on the map, and then they add a couple more filters. Maybe they want to manage only properties that are the 2000s and newer properties, so they don't have to deal with maintenance issues. They hit filter parcels. They'll just see a whole bunch of pins drop on the map, hundreds of pins of rental properties that are algorithms, are big data approach as identified as rental properties. Not just as absentees parcels, but as rental properties. It's really rigorous in deciding what we display as rentals. That's the first step. They filter, they find the rental properties, they can view the properties from the street with Google Street View through our application. It's very easy to see if the property's run down. They can actually look at it from the satellite imagery. They click on the owners name and they click the lookup button. Our system does a whole bunch of secret sauce magic in the background, gives you a phone number, and the accurate mailing address of the owner. As well as information about if they own other rentals. That type of information that they can then pursue that person and try to engage them into a conversation about their property management services. That's the simplest way to explain it. Jason: They sign up for your service, they markout their geographic area, they get some pintabs, they can street view the property, then your system will crawl the magical interweb, pull in phone numbers, email addresses, or mailing address. Then the next step for them would basically, probably be to do some sort of a direct mail campaign, cold calling. Ben: Yeah. We're agnostic to whatever marketing strategy they want to take. We provide the information, we provide the data. They can be as creative as they need to in order to pursue that market. Call, mail, we don't have email addresses, that would be something that they get them on the phone and ask for an email address. Then start them in their sales funnel. A great way to distribute their content, things that you've helped them create, or others who've helped them create, or even knocking on people's doors. That sounds ridiculous in my mind; it sounds ridiculously inefficient. But if you knew that someone had 10 rental properties and those rentals properties were exactly what you wanted to manage, you can see exactly where the homeowner or where the landlord lives or where the rental owner lives, it might be worth dropping off some fudge at the doorstep of their home. That sounds ridiculous, but that's actually something that one of our [...] has done in the past. It's very differentiating as opposed to just this search engine optimization, pay-per-click strategy. It's a little bit closer to a human connection. Jason: Oh, yeah. Realtors still knock doors. Realtors still do this. Property managers have probably really tried to avoid doing that. I've got a client who's in commercial property management. One of the ways he would get clients is he would go bring a candle to their place. "I'm old fashioned here, so here's this candle." He would give a gift, a little gift. The secret is, he'll buy these at the dollar store. This isn't like an expensive thing. But some people are showing up with, I don't know, a bottle of wine or something. It's a dollar of candle and it probably meant something, it felt like something warm to them. I think it's all about connection.  Obviously, if they were really aggressive, they’ve listened to Grant Cardone's 10X, they're like gunho. They wanted to create some business. They just need the opportunities. They go into the system. They may have done a multichannel approach. They're like, "This is my dream list right here. I'm going to call them. I'm going to send them some material. I'm going to nail them on a regular basis. I'm going to go knock on their door." They will get the business. Ben: Here's the thing, like I said, we're marketing strategy agnostic. People are already doing wonderful things to get more doors. They're doing great things. They're setting up landlords seminars, they've got great content, they're trying to push them to these distribution channels, but one of the things that we can provide is a way to reach more and more people. As part of your mailer, send out an invitation to your seminar. It fits really well into the things that people are already doing. If you've got a digital marketing strategy, get somebody on the phone, and say, "We would love to just send you an information in an email about what we do." Just enroll them in an email nurturing campaign that you've already developed, that you've already got going. It seems like organic traffic is a little bit harder to get in our industry for the smaller guys and for some of the companies that are just starting out. They've got to put a little bit of effort into it to start getting those doors, getting the traction that they've got. Jason: Yeah. If we've got roughly 70% that are self-managing in the industry, there's tons of blue ocean. This just helps you to see where the fish are. If you can see them, you can go hunt. It's time. Love the idea. I think this is such a nice match-up between DoorGrow and what you do. I'll be really curious to give feedback to some of our clients on some of the strategies that we teach them if they have these opportunities that they can go after. It's really going to be cool. Ben, what’s sort of the future for DoorsUp? Ben: Yeah, good question. Like you mentioned in the beginning, we're very recently coming out of stealth mode or development mode. We launched just short of a month and a half ago. We’re constrained geographically right now where we can service. Having just barely launched, we are currently servicing customers in Utah and Nevada. I live in Utah, I live right in between Las Vegas and South Lake City, which are two large markets that we wanted to initially, prove the concept of the product and establish a customer base. We are going to be in NARPM, at the NARPM convention conference in October in Arizona. Is that right? It's in Arizona. Jason: Yeah. My assistant schedules it all for me. I just do what she tells me to do. I'll be there. Ben: We'll be there and that's where we hope to add, geographically, another service area. We're going to be growing that way, kind of state by state as we go. That will be determined by the traction we're able to get in different states that we're able to start servicing. If we can grab a couple of customers in one state, that would be enticing enough for us to go through that state and start servicing that area. There's an advantage for our customers right now. They're alone in these sea of data. They're the only people using it. That's a huge competitive advantage right now for the people using it, to be some of the first ones that are using it. As much as we're just coming out of beta and the user interface is not as polished as it should be or could be, but there's a huge advantage for those that are early customers that are starting to use the system and see some results. Jason: What are some of the most common questions that people are asking you about this? I would imagine one question that comes to mind is, "Does this have all the data that I can go find myself?" Or is it missing that? Ben: Right, good question. Essentially, people ask that question. They have a little bit of misunderstanding about what we do. That was an instinct that you had right at the beginning of our conversation is, it's similar to what people are doing which is they're going out sourcing their own data, sending out mail, or sending out stuff like that. That's a very rudimentary version of what we do. The answer to that question is, I guess, the data is so concise, so aggressively filtered, that makes your marketing very efficient, and enables you to do certain things that you never would have time or money to do otherwise. Now, campaign is being an excellent example. The sales cycle for property management is so long. We're not selling toothbrushes. If you ask somebody, "Hey, you want to buy this toothbrush?" They can say, "Yes," and it's done; the sale is done and the service is done. Property management has such a long sales cycle where you get somebody on the phone and you say, "I would love to manage your units." And they say, "Well, it's got a 12-18 month lease on it. I'm not interested unless it's vacant. 12 months from now, call me." I'm being able to keep track on that and being able to keep track of how many times you've mailed to somebody is another really important part of that process. It's integrated into the system right now. People are able to track their leads, they're able to keep track of how many times they've mailed to somebody, keep notes on phone calls that they've had. The other aspect of that is that the data updates. I don't know if you've ever spoken to somebody who has actually tried to implement a long-term mail campaign, but the data, six months out, has changed. People buy properties, they sell property. How do they correlate whether they've mailed to somebody already? Whether they've called somebody already? How do they just track that change over time to be able to spend their time with one person long enough for them to close them given that property management has such a long sales cycle? That's part of the advantage of using a system like ours to do your prospecting and data sourcing. We keep it up to date. The data is updated monthly. The phone numbers, you click the lookup button and it does lookup immediately right then. Very, very fresh data which you're not going to be able to find yourself. Who has time for that anyway? You're going to be managing 200 properties and you're going to be spending time in a big Excel spreadsheet trying to correlate [...]. Absolutely not. I saw as a huge way to be much more effective and to really spend my money where it's going to make the most effect, given that I knew that people have multiple units, and they were units I wanted to manage. I can pursue the market that I want rather than shotgunning a mail campaign or something out in the world and seeing if I got anything I wanted. Jason: Tell us a little bit about some of the early adopters. What sort of experience have they had? Is there a case study or an example you can share with us? Ben: I'll start with myself. I was the first case study. If we go back to that origin story of DoorsUp, I asked my broker, "Where do I find these people?" He said, "I have no idea. No one has any idea." We developed this raw prototype of the system. I got this report. It's so embarrassing to even look at now, it’s this ugly Excel spreadsheet, but it was our prototype. It was the name, phone number, and address of every person in my market who owned rental property. How many rentals they owned, the value of their portfolio, and the addresses of all of their rentals. It was ridiculous to me. To me, it felt like magic. I got straight down and called through that list. After wasting three months getting four or five units, in two months, we were managing about 45 units. I was just bogged down. It was crazy. We grew too fast. I discovered that I didn't want to be a property manager, so I went into software. Jason: Yeah. A lot of people were like, "Why don't you do it, Jason?" I'm like, "Then I can't help everybody else do well." Then, I'll be competing with everybody. I don't think anybody wants that. You're no longer doing that, but you had a really rapid growth initially. I love creating that problem for clients, by the way. I love when they come to me and they're like, "Man, my biggest problem is adding doors and getting doors." Then I say, "Great. Let's get you to problem number two which is how you deal with the growth. Now, you've got doors coming in and you're in pain because you have so much growth." I love creating that problem. Well, anything else they should know about this? If not, how can they get in touch? How can they find out more about DoorsUp? Ben: Yeah. I guess, I'll end with this thought, this is kind of the thesis behind DoorsUp. This is why we got into this space and try to solve this problem. My thesis is, essentially, that property management has a serious marketing problem. I listen to your show a lot and I feel like I didn't steal that idea from you—I sure hope I didn't—but you've taught me a lot about that, but I experienced that myself. People cannot find a sustainable, reliable way, to grow their door count. Profitability aside, that's important. That's very, very important, but top line revenue growth is the thing that we are focusing on helping people to. We don't have, in our industry, any sort of enabling data or service or company like other industries do. For example, if somebody in property management really wanted to spend all day everyday prospecting, if they wanted to do Grant Cardone 10X, they want to not talk to seven new landlords a week, they want to talk to 75 new landlords a week. How would they do that? They would go to Rotary Club and hope that a landlord was there. They would go to BNI, Business Network International, and hope that a landlord is there. Or they'll take a realtor to lunch and pray that he'll give him a referral. How does an aggressively-minded property management company grow quickly? They just need these leads. Whereas in real estate sales, real estate sales and other industries, we've got Cole Realty Resource, we've got SmartZip, we've got the REDX. We've got all these prospecting tools. Property management industry just does not have that, which has made it impossible for property managers to pursue this blue ocean, 70% of self-managed landlords. There's no way for them to contact them. They have no visibility into that market. Just from a very macro perspective, that's what we're trying to provide the industry. To be able to turn the focus from just closing hand razors, people who go on Google and raise their hands and say, "We want your service," to be able to aggressively pursue that market instead of just waiting for leads to come to them. That's what we see. That's my thesis is that there's a problem in property management that they need this data and we can provide it. We're still proving and testing that thesis. But we're very excited to get out there and be able to offer that to people. We've seen some success. If people want to contact me, there are plenty of ways on our website. You can go ahead and email me. My personal email address is ben.r.atkin@gmail.com. That's probably the easiest way to reach out to me personally. Though, I'm also tuned in on the website if you chat with us. It'll be an actual person who answers that. If you're in Utah and Nevada, go online, signup for a free trial. We’d love to have you start using the system. We do a two-week, 30 lead, free trial. Other than that, just reach out to me. I'd love to chat about it, and jive about property management, and see if we can help this industry grow from the 30% penetration to 40% or 50% or 60%. I see there needs to be some sort of change in order to be able to do that. Jason: Cool. Ben, where are you based out of? Ben: I'm in St. George, Utah. Just an hour North of Las Vegas, Nevada. Jason: Got it. I know where it is. I was born in Utah. Alright. We'll connect, I think that I have a lot of clients are at the point where they're ready to be able to leverage their service like this. I think a lot of property managers are not. I think a lot of them really are just not ready to leverage something like this, unfortunately. If that's the case, reach out to DoorGrow. Then they'll see if you're ready. "You're ready. You have the bandwidth to do these kind of things and grow your business. Let's get you connected to DoorsUp." I look forward to watching what you guys do, seeing the progress, and growth of your company. Ben: Thanks, it's a pleasure. Jason: Thanks for coming in this show. Ben: Hopefully, we'll see you at NARPM. Anybody else, hopefully, we'll see in there. Thanks! Jason: Alright. Very cool. If you are a property management entrepreneur, and you are wanting to grow your business, and you want to grow without SEO, without pay-per-click, without content marketing, without social media marketing, without uncomfortable videos, without pay-per-lead services, and they're having phenomenal growth, they're easily adding in a year 100 doors to their business, they're adding $100,000 in revenue to their business annually and you want to do that, maybe you're one of these companies that, right now, is losing more doors than you're getting on right now because it's difficult to try to outpace the market when doors are selling off because the market's good with marketing then reach out to DoorGrow. Let's optimize your business, let's get you ready to use a service like this, and some other strategies, and tactics that we have, that can help you grow your business. Check us out at doorgrow.com. We would love to help you out. We want, like what I say in the intro, we want to impact this industry, and we're excited to find like-minded entrepreneurs like Ben and others that are helping to make this industry great. I think it has massive potential. I believe that property management industry can be as big as the real estate industry; I think it has the potential to really grow here in the US. Let's make that happen, everybody. Make sure, if you're a property management entrepreneur, you join our Facebook group doorgrowclub.com. Get inside the community. Connect with us. This is a group for property management business owners. Get with your tribe. Connect with us, and we'll probably see you in person at some of these NARPM events because I'm hitting as many as I can lately. Hopefully, I'll be connecting with you guys in person and inside the DoorGrow Club. Thanks everybody for tuning in to DoorGrow Show. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.  

Managing people when you are not a people manager keeps most property management businesses within 0-200 doors. They can’t scale beyond that without hiring a significant number of people. How can you shift to outsourcing to scale, save money, and improve business operations? Today, I am talking with Todd Breen of VirtuallyinCredible, which helps answer property management leasing calls every day through its experienced call center. Also, VirtuallyinCredible can hire virtual assistants (VAs) and customer service representatives (CSRs) with or without phone skills for you and your property management business. You’ll Learn... [03:15] Outsourcing: Follow rules to get it right, and select best solution to avoid failure. [04:03] Outsource companies often find and hire virtual assistants (VAs) and other team members from foreign countries causing frustration instead of support . [06:00] Small businesses need an entrepreneur, people manager, and task-oriented employees. [07:43] People Manager Traits: They care for their staff and have strong coaching, communication, and development skills. [08:50] Avoid pitfall of a property management entrepreneur who manages a team, but shouldn’t; they’re nice people, but they’re not making money or sales for the business. [12:30] Grow your management company by adding more doors and a people manager. [13:35] Entrepreneurs are sales-oriented, driven, and willing to do things others aren’t; they start controlling everyone and everything, so they need “inspired staff.” [16:25] Systems can make or break businesses; is your business systemized; and has it established and documented processes, policies, and systems? [20:14] HR should find, hire, and train employees; supervision is quality assurance. [21:38] Three Outsource Options: Hire your own VA directly; hire a VA reseller/recruiter; or select turnkey solution to hire VA for you. [27:54] Ask for and get good reviews by offering good service. [38:30] Don’t underestimate or overestimate software; technology is another tool. besides outsourcing that creates leverage, and lowers operational and staffing costs. Tweetables Property management businesses can’t scale, stay stale without hiring lots of people. Shift to outsourcing to scale, save money, and improve business operations. Outsourcing: Get it right by following rules and avoid failure by selecting a solution Lifeblood of Real Estate Business: Answer phone, get listing, rent/sell new listing Resources Todd Breen’s Email VirtuallyinCredible HireSmartVAs GatherKudos SuperTenders Property Meld EZ Repair Hotline DGS 39: Property Management Outsourcing with Todd Breen DGS 43: How Virtually Incredible Can Help a Property Management Business Grow with Todd Breen DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive The online Windows XP simulator runs in a web browser and its operation imitates the operating system. You can use it to prank someone. 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 transform 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. 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. Today’s guest, I have with me, the wise, experienced, property management guru, Todd Breen. Todd, welcome to the show. Todd: Thanks, Jason. It’s awesome to be here. Jason: Todd, you are talking to us live right now from Manila, right? Todd: That’s correct. I spend a few months a year here working with our team and been enjoying my time here, and getting a lot of work done. It’s an honor to be on your show all the away from around the world. Jason: It’s a tropical island though, right? Todd: It is. It’s actually the cooler season right now, so it’s similar to where I live in Florida. It’s just a nice weather. Jason: Maybe there’s a little bit of fun in it while you’re there too. Todd: Yeah. I played golf today while you guys were sleeping. Jason: Yes, nice. Cool. Todd, today, we are going to be talking about outsourcing roles for small, medium, and large companies—perhaps there’s some differences there—and connected to Virtually inCredible. Tell everybody, what is your thinking behind outsourcing in general. This is a topic that used to be taboo. It used to be a bad word. “Uh-oh, they’re outsourcing. You’re not using people in the US, you’re like some sort of evil entrepreneur.” I think the temperature shifted. Todd: It has. I first started outsourcing eight years ago in 2010. Back in those days, I got a lot of raised eyebrows and funny looks. Now, when people hear that we’re outsourcing to the scale that we are, a lot of people are like, “Wow! That’s awesome! How can I save some money and improve my business operations in the process?” It’s really matured nicely. The topic today is about how to get it right if you’re going to try and outsource, whether you’re a small, medium, or large business. I’m really excited to share what I’ve learned in eight years of helping small, medium, and large businesses outsource. I’ve seen what’s worked and what hasn’t. In this, I’m just going to lay it out for you and say, “Hey, if you’ve tried and failed in the past, I can probably pinpoint how that happened.” We’ll do it in a very simple grid that I’ve made for you guys. If you’re a first timer and you want to get it done right the first time, we’re going to explain the rules for you and have what it takes to do it right and to pick the right outsourcing solution. Jason: Anyone that’s listening to this show knows we’ve had a few different companies that help with like either VAs or outsourcing or finding assistants for things, and I’ve revealed multiple times, I’ve had my fair share of failures. I’ve had team members in India, Bolivia, Philippines. Right now, the bulk of my team are in the US because I’ve had so many struggles dealing with a lot of that. But we’re now just now ourselves getting back into hiring and sourcing some talent in the Philippines to add greater support for my team and my staff. Our team has helped your team with some branding work and designing new logos, so check out Virtually inCredible’s new shiny logo. I’m really liking it. We also helped out HireSmart VAs and have cleaned up their branding. It’s been awesome getting familiar with people that are making a difference in the space of property management. You’re also making a difference in the lives of people in the Philippines. Todd: I grew up in the real estate business. My dad was a very busy real estate broker, very successful, and he was working days, nights, and weekends, and he was always answering the phone. Because he couldn’t afford not to answer the phone because the lifeblood of any real estate business is answer the phone, get a listing, answer the phone, rent or sell new listing. I have a real passion now with my four kids to give them a better quality of life as third generation property management company. They just look at me and say, “Dad, how did you do it before you could outsource your leasing lines or before you could have your own private virtual assistant that was full time helping you?” And I said, ‘Yeah, it was a lot of hard work and now, it’s a lot of smart work.” Let me get into what the rules are so that the viewers will have an idea what it takes to get the right solution for you no matter what stage of business you’re in. Is it alright with you if I share my screen? Jason: Yeah, you can share your screen. Just make sure you’re talking through it because some people would just be hearing this. Todd: I’m sharing my screen, I’m going here, I’m hitting play, and tell me if you can see my slides. Jason: Yup, I see them. Todd: If you’re a small business, you’re all three of what a business needs. Because a business needs an entrepreneur that actually is the driving force behind the business, a people manager and task a score of people or employees that actually perform the tasks needed to get the job done in the business. Me, I’m an entrepreneur, always have been my whole life, and I struggled building my management company with one thing and that was managing my staff. I was pretty good at managing owners and tenants, but you don’t work everyday, all day, eight hours a day with your homeowner and your tenant. You get intermittent relationships with them. You have to actually build a relationship with your team. Whether it’s inhouse, whether it’s onshore, whether it’s offshore, if you can’t manage people, then my aha moment was, “I needed a people manager.” On this screen, I'm listing the things that a people manager needs. They’re good at caring for their staff. Me, as an entrepreneur, that’s not in my DNA. I’m not going to trouble you with my troubles and I appreciate it if won’t trouble me with yours. Entrepreneurs are not the warm fuzzy people managers. People managers are good at coaching, communicating, development, they take an interest in the development of the staff. I’ve got a graphic on the screen, there’s things that a people manager does. Number one, they know me. Number two, they focus on me and help me to focus. Number three, they care about me as a person. When all three of those things happen, they inspire me to do my best. There’s a long list of things that people managers do, but that inspiration in getting into the minds and hearts of the team and building a team is what a people manager does. Jason: Just to back that up, what I’ll say is, I see this a lot. That’s what I get to do all day long is—I’ve talked to hundreds of different property management entrepreneurs, especially when they get into that 2-400 door range—they end up in this pitfall where they now have a team and the trap because they’re trying to manage this team, and they have this to-do list that’s ever growing and endlessly long, and everything on their to-do list have been sitting there for more than two weeks. It’s probably there because they’re not the person that should be doing it. They’re in a situation which they are not natural managers. It’s just not who they are. Todd: Right. Jason: They end up in a difficult situation in which they’re not managing well, the team’s not performing well, and then they’re blaming the team. Todd: They’re really in the wrong role. An entrepreneur is very rarely a people manager. If we meet an entrepreneur who’s an awesome people manager, you’re looking at the one in a thousand entrepreneurs, or one in a hundred. It’s rare to see somebody who’s a gifted entrepreneur, and a wonderful people manager. Jason: Virtually, if they are really good people managers, they’re not so great at the entrepreneurship, the sales side of the business is struggling, they’re really nice to people, but they’re not making money. Todd: On the screen, I’ve got a picture of my wife and I right now. My wife is the consummate, ultimate people manager. She’s tremendous in managing people. We have a team of well over 150 here in the Philippines. They all think of her as the mother goose or mother hen, but they love and respect her, and they all do for her above and beyond because they’re inspired by her. It’s awesome for me to see that because I don’t have that skill set and it’s wonderful, it defines our company. Let me explain to you why that’s so important. If you are a small business, you’re the entrepreneur, and you hire your first staff member—maybe it’s a property manager, maybe it’s a secretary, or a receptionist, maybe it’s an inspector, or a work person/handyman—as soon as you start managing people and you’re not a people manager, that’s what keeps most property management businesses in the 0-200 doors. Because you can’t scale beyond 200 doors without hiring a significant number of people. Whether you hire them yourself, or you outsource them, it’s up to you, but you need people to blow past 200 doors. The companies, they get from 150-200 doors and grow up to 500 doors, they have to develop a people manager and get reliable people that work for them. There’s ways that you can get a people manager. You can hire one directly. By the way, if you were 500 or more doors, the companies that are 800-1000, 2000 doors, let me tell you something, they have a people manager on staff. Jason: Sometimes multiple. Todd: That people manager is the reason why they’ve hit that level and it’s the missing ingredient. Everyone says how do I grow my management company. I say, We’ll, there’s two ways to grow your management company. One is add more doors but at some point, you’re going to need to add a people manager.” You can actually rent a people manager or you can hire one depending on how you outsource. That’s one of the keys to today’s lessons is, “Hey, if I’m 100 doors and all I really want to do is get to 200 because the cash flow just looks so amazing then I want to go to 300. How do I best do it?” There’s some real super rules that I’m going to walk you through on how to do that. I’ve switched screens here now, for those who are listening. If you don’t have a people manager, you’ll have staff turnover, more than you want staff turnover. You’ll notice that it’s easier to get bad reviews than it is to get good reviews because you don’t have inspired staff on your team. You’re going to hit a slower growth process because normally what happens is, the entrepreneurs grows the business to the first 100, 200 doors and then, unless the entrepreneur replaces him or herself and stays working in BDM or business development and growth, then they’re going to slow down on their growth. They won’t know what to do to kickstart the growth because they’re so busy putting out fires because they’re not a people manager. Their lifestyle will suffer and they’ll say, “I’m not having any fun.” Jason: You’re referring to inspired staff. I heard this phrase several years ago that’s always stuck with me that I believe it’s true, that I love sharing with people connected to this and it’s, “Whenever we fail to inspire, we always control. Whenever we fail to inspire, we always control.” What ends up happening is, as entrepreneurs, because we’re generally really driven, risk-oriented somewhat and we’re willing to do things that other people aren’t willing to do—and sometimes we’re more sales-oriented and driven—by default if we’re not able to get people to do things, we start just controlling. The opposite is to make them inspired and they just do it. You’ll end up with these business owners that are trying to micromanage, push their team, control them, force goals on them, and they aren’t inspired to do any of it. These are the team members that are B players, that’s the only ones that will stick around in a situation like that, and they are the ones that are complaining about you, the boss, and they go home and live for the weekend. They’re just hoping to get a paycheck. That creates a company culture of hiders, they’re hiding. Todd: They’re hiding even when they’re at work. They might hide behind their voicemail. What’s the solution? We pointed out that if you are a small business and you want to go to large, at some stage you’re going to need a people manager. You can actually hire a local people manager which might cost you $50,000 or $80,000—depending on where you are—or you can hire a virtual people manager for some of the tasks at your business. By doing that, you’re now a well-rounded business. You have the entrepreneur, you have the virtual and local employees, and you have a virtual people manager. We’re going to ask you guys to rate your business. How do you rate for systems? If you’re listening to this right now, “Am I systemized, yes or no?” And if you answer is, “Yeah, I’ve got a system for everything.” If I hire somebody, I sit in my desk, and they can open a training manual, and they can open policies and procedures manual and all of the answers are there. If the answer is that you’ve got your policies, procedures, and systems setup, then you’re halfway there to being able to onboard people. A lot of people, small business owners, and entrepreneurs, they do the trial by fire. They’ll hire somebody, sit him at the desk and say, “Figure it out,” and if the person survives, then they walk through the fire, and if not, they burn up, burn out, or they leave, or they get fired. And that’s all due to a lack of systems, policies, and procedures. Now, what I’ve seen is that in the 0-150 doors, unless you have a franchise that they’re giving you every system that you could imagine, and even some that you don’t need, and then you tailor them to your local market, unless you’re one of those people who has bought or created your own systems, policies, and procedures, then from 0-150, you’re winging it. You’re figuring it out yourself and it’s all in your head. If you’re listening to this you’ll say, “Yeah, that’s me.” Then what’s going to happen whether you hire a local staff or a virtual staff and it’s all in your head? Jason: For those listening, they can break it down even further because in a business there’s not just like one system. A lot of people think, I just need a process system for processes. Every business needs some sort of sales system in their business. They need a communication system as a team in order to communicate effectively. They need a planning system in their business—which a lot of businesses don’t really have—for setting goals and milestones and allowing people to know what outcomes that are being worked towards. They need an accounting system, and they need a process system, if I didn’t already say that, for documenting, capturing all the process. Whether it’s a manual or something like Process Tree. And they need a support system for managing all the customer requests and everything else. They might be a 10 on 1 of these and a 1 on another. It really takes all of these different systems. And then you need processes for all the documented. Todd: What happens is in those 0-150, most entrepreneurs still haven’t even started with these systems. From the 150-500, they slowly come to realize that, “These systems are going to make me or break me.” By the way, we’ve outsourced for large businesses that are over 500 and they still have horrible systems, horrible policies, horrible procedures, and believe it or not, really interesting staff and that’s the nice way to put it. Jason: That’s probably the norm which is sad. Occasionally, you’ll see the conversed side where you’ll see somebody that is super systems-oriented entrepreneur. They’re basically an operator trying to function as the CEO. They will focus so much on process, and operations, and systems and they have no revenue. Todd: It went off work and they’re not growing. If you’re good at systems, give yourself a pat on the back with your policies and procedures. The next we’re going to talk about is your HR. If you;re going to grow your business and scale it and have quality and lifestyle, you have to have HR that can find good people. Then you have to get those people trained, and training does not mean you sit up the desk and figure it out, it means, before we put people to work on their tasks, nobody goes to work with less than one week of training. That’s 40 hours of specific human training. It’s a live trainer, training somebody with what’s our business, what’s out vision, mission, values, and then how do you do the actual tasks that you’ve been hired to do. Supervision is quality assurance and etc. If you have all of those things, probably, you’re closer to 500 and more doors. If you’re missing any of those things, you’re probably in that 0-400 doors. You can say, “I’m good at some, but man, I got major holes and others.” That really impacts how you should outsource. I’ve got a graph up on the screen. The graph talks about if I am rough on my systems or rough on my HR, in other words, if I didn’t rate myself high on that last five minutes of conversation, how should I outsource. The answer is, you have three choices: You can hire your own virtual assistant direct by going to the destination country, for instance, the Philippines, wherever, and you can run your ad and try and hire somebody. Not recommended for anybody of any size that’s rough on their systems or rough on their HR for obvious reasons. Jason: Yeah. You’re setting them up for failure. Todd: Yeah. I see people say, “I don’t need a reseller or a turn-key. I’ll just do it myself.” I’m like, “How are you doing with your systems and you HR with you onshore operations because that’s going to directly impact or give you an insight into how your offshore is going to be?” And then they look at me and say, “Yeah, not so good.” I’m like, “Well, running out of the country isn’t going to make it better.” The first option is to hire your own virtual staff direct. The second is hire a VA reseller which is either a recruiter or somebody who will actually stick around after they recruit for you. And then the third option is, “Hey, I just want a turnkey solution that will take care of it for me. In other words, I want staff but I’m paying you to also provide me good systems and processes and good HR because I don’t have that yet. In fact, I don’t think I’m going to have it anytime soon because I’m busy in that 0-150 doors just getting volume and growing my business.” If I can figure out a way to affordably get good systems and HR brought into me by outsourcing, that sounds like a dream job to me. This tells you that turnkey is your number one solution. If you can go to somebody that offers turnkey outsourcing and just give them some process or system or some of the workflow from your business, and then it’s called set it and forget it, and just manage the results, you’ll be thrilled. If you hire a reseller, you may or may or be thrilled based on how well systemized those systems are for the work that you give. “Have you got a system, or policy, and procedure for the specific work that you’re giving?” And/or, “How good are you at managing onshore staff and how well do you think you could manage some offshore staff?” Jason: Right. Todd: Let me go to the next screen which is a hiring guide; if you have good systems already in place and you have a people manager. In my case my wife, in your case, if you have somebody who’s a good people manager, wow, what should I do? The answer is, the world is your oyster. You can do turnkey from 0-150 and that allows you to just focus on growing your business. And then when you start hiring locally, from 150-600 doors, it means that it’s one last thing to worry about. Now, 600 and more doors, you’d be looking at a big bill from a turnkey operator and you’d be saying, “Look, I can do this myself. I should take this over inhouse with either my own DA resellers,” where I pay a recruiter to hire me an offshore staff, or by going to the destination country yourself to hire which can all be done virtually or you can actually take some trips depending on how far away you go. But good systems, good HR, and a people manager is important before you start hiring individual offshore staff that are going to report to you and work for you directly. Does that make sense? Jason: Absolutely. I think people really need to realize that they need to figure out what’s the best fit and works for them. One of the biggest mistakes I see people really early on is their default thought is, “I need to go hire somebody like me right here in the US.” That’s the first employee. They’re like, “I need to go get another me and duplicate myself,” and they’re doing 20 different things; they’re wearing 20 different hats. They go to try to hire and they’re not ready for that. They can’t even bring on somebody, they really should with technology and just start with outsourcing solutions like Virtually inCredible because you’re bringing to the table a lot of the stuff they aren’t even aware of that they might need yet. Todd: One of the things that I outsource at my management company, for those who are listening who aren’t aware, I had a property management company since 1985. I used to absolutely hate the answering my leasing calls because I knew if I didn’t answer them during the day then I had no return calls. I knew if I didn’t answer them in the evening or on the weekend then I wasn’t going to fill my vacancies and I’d have to return more messages. My phone was glued to my ear. I decided to outsource my leasing calls and so many other managers heard about and said, “Will you take my calls too?” It’s such a systemized process with us that it’s not like you could just hire somebody if you’re 120 doors. You can’t hire somebody for what you pay us because you’re going to pay more for your outsourced people, and they’ll only answer 40 hours a week, and we’re answering 80 plus hours a week. There’s a stage which it makes sense to take it over yourself, but there’s a stage where you just say, “Get rid of this and let me focus on other stuff.” When we talk about capacity in online reviews, this is the DoorGrow Show and Jason, I’m one of your customers for the review, what’s the software you have? Jason: GatherKudos. Todd: GatherKudos, thank you. I think we’ve had it for several years. We’ve had good reviews in my management company and that’s because we offer good service, and we ask for the reviews. Seasonal workload variations can actually impact your reviews. Let me explain to you why. I’m going to show you what the variations look like. This is what your work orders look like. This is from Super Tenders. Hundreds of thousands of doors went into this. In January until May, you don’t have near the work orders that you do in June, July, August, September and then it’s slower a little bit again in the fall. You’ve literally got double the work orders between April and July. April is half of what July is. How do you staff for that in your business? Jason: Yeah. The question is, “Are you going to just double staff and then fire half your staff every season?” Todd: What happens is, if you look at when you get your bad reviews from tenants who are tired of work orders taking forever to get done, you’re getting those reviews typically, not April, you get them in June, July, August, September. That’s when the majority of bad reviews come in. It’s no secret, if you’re not staffed for the increase in volume, you’re going to have a problem. At my management company, we use Property Meld to technology, really accelerates the communication process and then we use EZ Repair Hotline. Now I can outsource. I’m pretty good at it, but I hire somebody else to do my work order outsourcing because they’re pretty good at it. I haven’t chosen to do that in the Philippines yet and it’s got a US-based team. What do they call about eating your own dog food or drinking your own Kool-Aid? I outsource to other people at my management company because it makes sense for me to do it and I’m under 300 doors. I’m not at that stage where it makes sense for me to take it over. The same goes for our leasing call volumes. This is data courtesy of Virtual inCredible. This is our call volumes across the entire United States on a monthly basis, and you can see, December’s the slowest month of the year. Thank goodness, right? Going into the holidays. November, December are great, but literally there’s double the volume between December and June. June is going to crush you and people say, “Man, I can’t answer my calls or my properties take longer to rent.” It’s because you’re not really staffed to handle it right. This is called a heat map. For those of you who are listening, it’s a counter Monday through Sunday, and it shows the darker hours of the day are when we have higher call volumes and the lighter colors are lower call volumes. Throughout the course of the week, on an 80-hours of answering your calls, days, evening, and weekends, there’s a tremendous call volume variation between Monday all day. By the way, there is a reason why Mondays are Mondays. Your phone’s going to ring with your highest call volume on your leasing calls on Monday. Jason: Compared from the weekend because we aren’t generally doing it over the weekend. Todd: Or they didn’t get you on the weekend. It could that too. Wednesday is a calm day. How do you staff for that? When you’re at 120 doors. When it’s just all hands on deck at all times when you’re at that volume. It makes sense to just say, “Hey, take my calls. When I grow to a certain stage, I’ll take them back.” That’s where people are able to make a tremendous good decision for their business because if you’re under capacity, under staffed, you’re going to get bad reviews. Jason: Yeah. Todd: If you have sufficient capacity at all times throughout the season of workload variations, you can get good reviews if you ask for them. If you have too much capacity, too many staff, you’ll get good reviews but your profit will suffer. Managing that becomes a full time job when you go past 500 or 600 doors, you’ll start to do that yourself but under that, it just makes sense to outsource some of these stuff. It will save you a tremendous amount of time and money, it’ll make getting good reviews easier, it’ll make your staff happier to get rid of some of your high seasonal workload that varies a lot, and just outsource it until you’re big enough to take it back inhouse. Jason: And if you’re built out to the point where you can handle the amount of seasonal growth and seasonal increase, then what happens during those lean times, you end up with team members that are sitting at unused capacity. Nobody likes being in a position, or a job in which they feel like they’re meaningless, or there’s lack of purpose except really bad team members that you wouldn’t want. Todd: They’ll never tell you that they’re not busy. Jason: Yes. They will never say, “Oh, I have so much extra time right now. I’m probably not relevant during these few months. I probably shouldn’t be here.” It makes a lot of sense. Todd: If you’re a small company and growing, this is the last part, I don’t have slides for this, maybe I’ll stop sharing my screen. Jason: I’ll point out, connected to that, it’s not a great investment to have a team member that’s sitting in the garage half the time not being used. Imagine you live in a big city, and you’re taking the subway all the time, and you have this expensive car that you’re maintaining constantly but you’re not using. Financially, it becomes incredibly costly to have a team that is under utilized especially if they’re US-based staff, they’re really expensive, and you’re not just able to use them. You’re [inaudible 00:34:56] the money whether you’re using them or not. They’re not making any money. Todd: Can you imagine what it’s like being me? We’ve got hundreds of staff and our volume is following that curve. We figure out how to do it. There’s something I wanted to share. This is on a personal note from a guy who’s grown a management company through a few cycles. If you’re in that 150 or less, I want you to ask yourself, “Is it easy to get leads to grow my business?” If it is, great, if it’s not, check out DoorGrow, check out some great ways to get improve your leads. Second is, “Am I too busy to grow my business being an operator instead of being an owner?” An owner knows how to grow a business and knows how to keep the capacity to grow the business open because that’s what it takes. You know, 60% or 70% of calls to a business are your leasing calls. When you’re sitting there answering somebody who says, “How much is that house with the red door?” You’re considering the brain damage that’s giving you. Meanwhile, your phone’s ringing on line two and it’s an owner who has a nice listing and you didn’t get to that call. If you’re struggling to grow your business and you have leads, but you’re not growing your business, man, clear your plate, get rid of some of your work, and grow your business. You can always take it back. And then work on reducing your labor costs. If you’re in the stage in your business where, “Oh I don’t get enough leads or I don’t want to grow my business.” Well then fine tune your business, that’s great. But as long as you can grow and you want to grow, clear your plate and move forward on growth which is your highest dollar. People are valuing management companies at between $2000 and $4000 per door. Each new listing that you can sign up is going to increase your net worth, your asset value of your company by $2000 or $3000. If you can get five new listings in a month, and that’s worth $3000 a listing, we’re talking $10,000-$15,000, that’s what you’re increasing your net worth. You grow up that rate in a year and you’re $150,000 and $200,000 in your net worth. It’s all because you’re focused on growth and clearing the decks to make it possible. That’s what it takes to grow your business. Then as you bring in the new volume of work, decide carefully, “Should I insource or outsource? Do I have a people manager or don’t I? What’s the best way that’s going to keep the machine moving forward?” That’s what I tell people because if they fail that outsourcing, I usually say, “Well, who’s the people manager?” And when the entrepreneur says, “I am.” I’m like, “Oh, okay.” Jason: It didn’t work for me. You just did it wrong. Todd: Did you learn something, Jason? Relative to your world and your lives that you’ve been living with our outsourcing? Jason: Absolutely. All of these makes so much sense. Over the last decade, I’ve had plenty of failures in outsourcing things or I’m trying to do things. I think if I were to add one thing to this is one thing that has really helped me is to not underestimate or overestimate technology. Because technology, like you mentioned, like Property Meld for example, technology is another tool besides outsourcing that creates leverage, and lowers operational costs, and lower staffing cost. A lot of people will try to go cheap on software. I believe that when it comes to software, you want the best tools, the best softwares. I have spent a lot of money on software tools and I buy the best. I don’t buy the Swiss Army knife that can do everything crapily or terribly, but I buy the best in each category to make sure we have the best systems for process, or the best communications system in our business. That allows my team to get more done, and be more efficient, and more effective. Whether you’re going to outsource directly or you’re going to outsource to companies, make sure that you have the best tools available software-wise because even if software costs you hundreds of dollars a month, people are always going to be more. If you can give them the tools that they need to do the job well, you’re collapsing your cost and making them far more efficient, and it always pays off. Todd: Very true. Listen, if anyone has any questions about this, I’ll just briefly tell you how we can help you at our company. We do answer your leasing calls, we also have a tenant screening department. That scales too because you get your number of applications in the summer, is a heck a lot more than it is in the winter. We do that. Those are full termkey systems, where you’re actually putting a department into place and you don’t need a local department to do either of those tasks. In addition to that, we also have a brand new service where we’ll hire an individual VA for you with or without phone skills. You can get an admin VA or you can get a CSR, a customer service rep that can answer calls for you, and they’re all screened by our company and trained in property management. I used to be a trainer for the Property Management Academy. We put all of our people through all of that training now before they show up at your job. You get screening and training though our VA. If you like some more information, just send an email to todd@virtuallyincredible.com. Be happy to help you out however I can. Jason: Awesome. For those listening, when we put on our conference, DoorGrow Live, we gave Virtually inCredible an award because they have consistently been one of the best in class or the best in their category for what they do inside the DoorGrow Club and inside the feedback that we hear from clients. It’s not just my recommendation, it’s a recommendation of a lot of people, and you provide a really good experience for people. You are making a difference in the industry. Todd: Yeah, thanks. We’re having a ball and appreciate all you’re doing to help people grow with creative ways that aren’t obvious. I’ve been through some of your education, it’s really high quality. Thank you for what you do. Jason: Appreciate it. Todd, thanks so much for coming on the show, and appreciate you sharing all these insights. I think there’s some solid takeaways that people listening this show. I think some rising like start with technology, then start with outsourcing to a solution like Virtually inCredible, and then maybe once you start getting some things dialed in, you might want to start bringing the staff in-house eventually, but you may not. It’s going well. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Todd: That’s right. Jason: Todd, thanks again. Todd: Alright, guys. Take care. Jason: Alright, it’s great having Todd on the show. Again, to make sure to check out the previous episodes in which we talked specifically about leasing lines and the challenges with those with Todd. You can just search for Todd Breen and DoorGrowShow, one word. If you are listening to this on iTunes, be sure to give us your feedback in iTunes, they helps us out, also makes us aware of how you feel about the show. We love getting your feedback on these different shows, and make sure you are inside our Facebook community where you can hang out with cool people like Todd and other really savvy entrepreneurs. You can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com and this is a community unlike any other. It’s a special community of property management business owners that believe in this vision and message that collaboration is more significant and important than competition in what this industry needs right now. If you love the idea of collaboration and helping level up the entire industry, we’re just going to help every property management business owner succeed and grow this business and industry and get more market share then that’s the place for you, that’s your home. Join us in the DoorGrow Club. Thanks everybody 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, and to get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time. Take what you’ve learned and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Do you overcomplicate things? Try to automate and systemize everything? Focus too much on drip emails, SEO, or pay-per-click (PPC)? Then, you’re missing the most important element in property management: Taking care of people and property. People don’t buy property management. They buy into a relationship with a property manager. Today, I am talking with Patty Young of Pearson Smith Realty. She describes how technology has its benefits, but building relationships and being there when someone needs you is the key to success and growth in the property management business. You'll Learn... [03:40] Grow a property management business by talking to people and being available on the phone; avoid complicated conversations by being confident and authentic. [05:38] Pain and pleasures of solving their problems; property managers close deals by asking more than talking. [09:07] Understand and categorize personality types; don’t stereotype, but figure out where they are to know how to make them feel better. [11:05] Why are you reaching out to get property management now? Determine what’s driving their decision making to reach out for help. [13:18] Create opportunities to start relationships by giving away a value and your free time to help people; find events to attend and places to volunteer. [15:52] Actively create business by being dedicated and disciplined; schedule time every day for prospecting. [17:53] Growing too fast isn’t always good; only take on what you can effectively manage and avoid sales lumps by creating consistency. [21:53] Ratio between level of connection and intimacy in sales situation and close rate is not about how many people show up, but how well you connect with them. [23:10] “Why don’t you like me? What made you decide to go with them and not me?”; ask for feedback to make your business better and leave the door open for the future. [32:33] Showcase your expertise and stay on top of what’s happening in the industry; don’t listen to people telling you things that aren’t from a real source. [39:08] Shift yourself with any prospect or referral partner into being an advice-giver; you’re in a position of authority and trust, which is what creates sales. [44:34] Be aware of applications that come in where person froze their account due to bad credit history and to bypass your system. Tweetables Solicit and close deals by asking more than talking. Be yourself, be a person, and listen. You can’t sit back and relax. There’s no relax. You’ve got to keep it going. Needy in sales is creepy. Resources Patty Young’s Email Address Patty Young on Facebook Crowdcast NARPM DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive  Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it. You think they’re crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, Property Management Growth Expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. I have a special guest. We’re hanging out with Patty Young. Patty, welcome to the DoorGrow Show. Patty: Thank you. I’m happy to be here. Jason: Patty, you are with a company called Pearson Smith Realty. Maybe you could give everyone a little bit of background on your experience in property management. How’d you get into this? Patty: Oh, good lord. Many, many years ago, I won’t give out my age, I’ve always liked real estate and just renting property and I was living in Montana at the time. I thought, “You know what? This can’t be that bad. Let’s try this out,” and so I met this fellow who owned a complex and that’s where it all started. Jason: Were those famous last words? Patty: No, I guess I’m one of the old people that started this long before we had cell phones and technology, Crowdcast and all those kinds of stuff so it’s really been interesting watching it grow. Jason: I want people to realize that you have single handedly helped out a lot of doors to some property management businesses. Tell everybody a little bit about your BDM sort of experience. Patty: I’ve done the franchise route. That’s where I met you many years ago. I did that and grew it and worked with a lot of people in the franchise, which is great, and I was able to do a lot of training. I’m a teacher by trade so I go back to—property management, I think, are protectors to some degree, and so the educating, teaching and trying to explain how to do things is just at the root of what I do. I got to do a lot of training in the franchise world of property management and just kind of kept growing and growing, and it just seemed to make more and more sense. Jason: While you were working at that franchise, I think you added maybe about 600 or 700 units to the franchise. Patty: Yeah, in about four years. Jason: I’m trying to help you brag about yourself a little bit in a relatively short period of time. I think everybody listening would be curious, what are some of the things you’ve done to help grow a property management business just as one of the big challenges? Patty: One of the big things is talking. You’ve got to be available on the phone and talking to people. All of this technology’s great, having drip emails and all that kind of stuff, but it comes down to the real relationship and being there when they need you. It’s not the SEOs. It’s not all that stuff; it’s about a real person needing real services and being able to help them when they need them. That’s the basis of what we do. Jason: Absolutely. I think, a lot of times, we overcomplicate things in property management and we think we’ve got to automate everything, we’ve got to systemize everything and we’ve got to create a bunch of drip emails, we’ve got to do SEO, we’ve got to do pay-per-click. We’ve got all these crazy things that we’re trying to implement and do, and then the challenge is that we’re missing the most important element, which, in property management, if you are a protector, you are taking care of people, and taking care of property. People don’t buy property management; they really buy into a relationship with a property manager, and I think we lose sight of that. Sometimes,we think, “I’m trying to sell my business to them,” and, really, they’re not trying to buy your business. What they’re trying to buy into is whether or not they can trust you to take care of their property. Patty: Exactly. I think people are not confident enough sometimes and they think, “I’ve got to talk, and talk, and talk,” and you never stop breathing and then you just become an elevator speech and everybody’s saying, “You’ve just got to be yourself. You’ve got to be confident, you’ve got to feel good about what you do in the service that you provide, and the rest comes.” It is crazy how complicated people make it. Jason: It would probably be true, then, to say as a property manager if you’re working on closing a deal or soliciting somebody to hopefully get their business that you need to be asking a lot of questions. Patty: You need to be asking more than you’re talking. You need them to talk. You need them to tell you where they’re scared, where you can come in to help them and where you can support their needs. That’s what they want to hear even though that’s not what you’re hearing them ask. Jason: What are your favorite questions to ask, then, during that sort of sales process or maybe even in initial conversations to really identify where they’re at and whether or not you can close that deal? Patty: I want to get a report going as quickly as possible. “So, tell me about yourself.” That’s kind of like the first thing, and they will start talking, and they’ll tell you, “Oh, I just had it and got it today. I’m moving to California. I’m coming up by you,” and he’s got to move, and he’s got this house, and there’s no way he could sell it because he just bought it, and you just let them go. They will start answering all the questions themselves when you ask them, “Just tell me about yourself. What time would I mail? How can we support your needs? What is it you need?” and let them ramble out. Once they ramble it out, in your head, you’re already knowing how to answer those questions that they—the holes in your life that you can plug. Jason: Yeah. They’ll start to help you identify some of their pain points. They’ll start maybe even giving you some clue as to what they want. Really, the two things you need to know to close a deal are, “What problems do they have that you can solve? What’s their pain?” and, “What do they want?” and that’s the outcome of solving that problem, the pain and the pleasures. If you have those two pieces, those elements, that can be really effective. I think, a lot of times during the sales process, if we get too caught up on our own voice and what we want to say to them, we miss really digging into that pain because the stronger we can really identify that pain and really connect with it, and the stronger we can really connect with what they want and really get clear on that, and help them be really hyper aware of those things, the easier it is to close a deal, but if we go, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,” and gloss over it and move on to what we feel like we need to tell them or we want to say as a salesperson, then what ends up happening is they start tuning out, they are thinking you’re just a commodity like, “You’re all the same. Every property manager’s the same,” and they’re probably heard that from most of the people they’ve talked to. “Well, we do this, and here’s our fees, and here’s how we do it, and we’re going to do this. We’ll come out to your property,” and they’re thinking, “Well, what about my problem?” Patty: Right, and you just sound like a recording like everybody else. No. The one I had today, he was asking about going to California. I said, “Well, great. What’s prompting you to move? Is it a job? Are you from there? Tell me about your trip to California and this new chapter in your life,” and then, all of a sudden, it all just comes tumbling out. In allowing them to talk and then, at the right time, knowing when to—and you’re not going to know until you know. Now, every human, luckily, is different and all that good stuff, and some people are your very Excel Spreadsheet-of-the-World, some are the technical people, some are more like, “Where’s the pictures?” or whatever, but you don’t even know what they are so stop trying to sell that until you even identify what it is. Jason: Do you feel like, over time, you’ve become really astute at understanding different personality types? Because what it sounds like what you’re saying is you’re taking some time to get to know them to build rapport, but it sounds like you’ve kind of categorized people a little bit in your head as certain personality types. Patty: I did. Jason: Give us some examples of some different personality types that you maybe come across that are different like this gentleman from California. How would you categorize him as different than somebody else that you might talk to? Patty: He was right to business. He doesn’t want any—he’s no fancy-pants. He just wants to know, “All right, am I going to make my numbers? Is this going to work? What is my involvement in this?” He was just so cute so when he talked about himself and told me about what his needs were, what he did for a living, and all these kinds of things. Every human is different. Now, I don’t mean to stereotype, but you have to figure out who your audience is. “Well then, great. Now I know what’s going to make this guy happy. We have this portal. Everything is there for you. You have electronic filing cabinets. You’re going to have monthly statements,” and then you go down what they’re really after that’s going to make them happy. If it’s a person who is more about, “Oh my gosh, I’m so worried my house is going to be torn up,” or if their baby, and they just built, and they picked out every cabinet and all that kind of stuff, it’s a different, softer approach because now you’re dealing with the emotional side of the client. So you have to figure out where they are because you don’t know how to make them feel better unless you know whether it’s making them anxious. Jason: Got it. Some people might be a little more on the analytical side, they might be a little more concerned about the numbers, you might have some people that are a bit more on the emotional side, maybe the property is connected to a family member or there’s some history there emotionally or there’s some sort of pain that they’re in, emotionally, that is connected to this. One of my favorite follow-up questions during the sales process after I initially connect with people and get familiar with their situation is to ask, “Why now,” which is a great question just to identify, like, “So you’ve had this property for a while. Why now? Why is this an issue now?” and then I get a whole different set of answers a lot of times. Why now? Why now are you reaching out to get property management? You’ve obviously had this for a little while and maybe you’ve been self-managing. What’s sort of driving this? Then you’re going to get even more insight they’re going to share with you, and that’s where, usually, I get the real pain answers, when I ask that question. I’ve heard anything from, “I have cancer,” or, “My family member just died.” To not know that information and to just keep plowing forward in the sales process almost seems insensitive sometimes when you get to the bedrock of what’s driving their decision-making to reach out for help right now. Patty: Absolutely. Now, this guy, obviously, he’s very excited. He’s got a position in California so he’s changing coasts. He’s not happy about having to pick up and move his family, but it’s okay because he’s leaving winter behind. He’s happy to get rid of our cold. We’ve got more snow coming. That makes him very happy so that piece of it is good for him but then with that move comes the hardship because his brother is here. You have that to go with. "Maybe I can just have my brother do it,” and that comes into play as your why. You’ve just got to be yourself, be a person and listen. If you’re just a person listening versus this façade as some person who’s just doing their job, walking in, you’ve got to be confident and you’ve got to care. Jason: All right. If you’re confident and you care, what are some other ways that you are creating opportunities to start these relationships? Because I think a lot of people are like, and I hear this all the time, “If I just get people on the phone, I can close them. I close everybody,” which usually means they’re closing all the word-of-mouth leads, which are easy to close, but the real concern they have is, “How do I get more conversations?” How are you creating opportunities to have these relationships instead of just waiting for them to come to you? Patty: You’ve got to put yourself in positions with other people so I do that through teaching. I’m giving away a value to a lot of different offices. I’m giving away a value. I do a lot of different speaking engagements for free, no charges, because, in doing so, then, one, they look at you as an expert, two, you’re willing to give your free time and to help people and talk with them, and you’ve just got to find places in your communities to rise above and be there to volunteer. I look at it as I’m a farmer. It took me a long time to grow up and figure out, “Where am I going to be? I’m a farmer.” I like to grow businesses. I like to grow relationships. What’s a farmer’s duty? There’s different kinds of farms. You can farm neighborhoods. You can farm HOAs. You can manage those if you want to. I personally like HOAs, and a lot of people do manage those. Are you doing more of a commercial management or residential? There’s different audiences. Are you looking for investors? You have to think somewhat here, and maybe you want to level up, but you’re going to have to set a plan to decide where you’re going to farm and where you’re going to get these people from. Then, once you do it, one of the duties or tasks, if you will, of farmer is you get animals now. Okay, property managers, what kind of animals do you want? Are you raising these investors? Are you doing accidental landlords? Are you looking for trustees? I’m one of them. One of our animal’s realtors. Some of those are big brokers, but I do go to a lot of real estate events and I do a lot of talking and a lot of chatting. You can do NARPM events. You can do realtor associations. There’s just so many different places that things are happening. You’ve just got to get out of the chair and be out there where the people are because they’re not going to find you in your seat while you’re still there talking on the phone. Jason: Right. I think one of the big challenges is that there’s so much opportunity in the property management industry. There’s such a high percentage in the US that are not using property management that are self-managing and yet you have so many property managers that are just looking over their shoulders back and forth and everybody else going, “What are you doing to wait for leads and wait for business to come to you?” They’re hoping that they can take money and just hand it to a marketer and suddenly people will just walk in the door and say, “Take my money.” You’re out there actively doing what a coach likes to do. You’re actively out there creating business instead of waiting for it to come to you. Patty: Eventually, it comes to you. Once you get enough to go in and you become—yes, you can get that going. Every day, you should have prospecting time, whatever that is. If you’re going to spend two hours every day or whatever it is you want to grow to or do, that’s your call. But you’ve got to have that dedication and that discipline to do it because if you don’t, then time just slips on by. Jason: Let’s create a little bit of perspective here. It’s taken you a little while, but when you start out in a new market, which you’ve done several times, and you decide you’re a farmer using this analogy and it’s time to farm, and you’re looking at the field and you feel like you need to get things started, how much time do you start spending in a week on prospecting or maybe in a day? Patty: Today’s world is so different from what it used to be. You’ve got meet-ups, you’ve got Crowdcast, you’ve got podcasts, and you’ve got all this stuff out there. So you’ve got to quiet the noise down, and you have to start somewhere. Don’t be afraid to start because that’s the other problem. Maybe you can just say, “I’m going to pick this neighborhood.” Okay, great. “In this neighborhood, I could do a little research and see that there are 5000 thousands in this development so how do I reach out to these people?” Okay, maybe you go and you meet the HOA people. They’ve got different events that happen so you’ll want to be part of all that. There’s usually some businesses nearby that you can be part of. Let’s say you’re going to take this area, you want to at least be putting in, at a minimum, at least three hours a day. If you’re going to do eight hours, let’s just say, I think there should be at least three hours of that as prospecting. Jason: So, probably about 15 hours in a week? Patty: Depending on how much you want to grow and how fast you want it to go because sometimes growing too fast isn’t good. Jason: Right, so then you’d be able to handle it, and manage it successfully, and deal with each new property to bring you on each—bringing on board and effectively. Patty: If you’re going to promise something, better do it. Jason: Right. Yeah. They can start farming neighborhoods. They can start reaching out. They can start hitting up some groups in the area. How much time are you spending now that you’ve kind of primed this engine in the business that you’re in now towards prospecting? Patty: Probably at least the same, if not more. There’s very little internet need-leading or any of that going on. At this point, I’m curating it. I’ve got people coming in and I talk to some, need to nurture some and all that kind of stuff, but you can never stop this. You can’t ever get happy like, “Oh well, I’ve got these three coming so I’m all good,” like a realtor will. “Oh, I’ve got these few commissions. They’re going to close them and I’m all good.” You can’t sit back and relax. There’s no relax. You’ve got to keep it going and, sometimes, it’s evening weekends or whatever it is and, of course, they’re seasonal in this, too, so you have to be watching that, but you can never stop prospecting because even if you’re happy and maybe your goal is a hundred doors and you’re happy with a hundred, they’re not going to stay with you. That rollercoaster’s going to start moving. Somebody’s going to sell. Somebody’s back. It’s constantly changing. Jason: Right. The sales has to outpace the churn, and the doors getting sold, and so on. I think you bring up a good point in that if you don’t have consistent prospecting and consistent lead-gen systems in place where you’re doing it consistently, then what ends up happening is, usually, it creates a sales slump, and those last for maybe a month to 90 days, typically, and they’re difficult to crawl out because you’ll build up the pipeline and then you have deals closing. If you get comfortable and turn that off, what you’re doing is you’re creating a problem a month or two months later in which you’re going to have a sales slump. You’re going to have less cash flow coming in and you’re going to have less new clients coming in, and it’s going to get quiet and then you’re going to hi ho Silver. You see salespeople, "Hi ho Silver," they jump on the horse and they’re like, “I’m going to ride this hard and I’m going to figure this out and do sales, sales, sales,” and then they come across almost needy. Needy in sales is creepy and then the problem is it starts to get carry for them. Patty: They’re panicking. Jason: They start to panic, and so they can avoid these sales lumps by creating some consistency even if they’re only able to dedicate a small number of hours a day or even just an hour a day, as long as they have some consistency throughout the week that they don’t just shut it off for half the month or shut it off for a month, they should consistently be able to generate leads. They have no control when those deals will really close. If they aren’t doing it, those deals won’t be closing. Patty: Yeah, they’re zero. In the classes that I teach and things, I might get one or two leads that day and then I don’t know what’s coming. You cast out the net and you see what it brings in. I didn’t want to do it. It was early December. It was a bad time of the year, but they really wanted me to come do this and I was like, “You know what? Absolutely. I’ll be there.” Now, I didn’t think there was going to be much of a turnout but you never know, and it turned out there were four people. I was like, “Whoa, that’s pretty cool. That’s all right. I could do four. It doesn’t matter.” Out of the four, I got three so who would’ve known? It was awesome. Even the lady that was doing the events, turns out she was convinced and she decided to give me her house to manage. You never know what’s out there and if you’re not out there, you’re not getting anything. Jason: I think there’s a direct ratio between the level of connection and the level of intimacy in a sales situation and the close rate, and so it’s not just about numbers. It’s not about how many people show up but, like you said, it’s about how well you’re able to connect with those people. The smaller the group, the more intimate that communication can turn, like if you’re working with one-on-one with somebody, I’m sure it’s a very intimate conversation. It’s personally about them and their pain that we talked about in the beginning. You get three or four people, it gets a little bit more broad. If you’re doing it through an entire room, there’s some authority there and that’s nice, but you’re going to then have to do follow-up to create that intimacy and create that connection afterwards, which is really important in those situations, but you then are getting to do one of the many sales and establish yourself as an authority in front of them. Patty: And you didn’t cancel. They never expected that you’re going to cancel and bail. That would stop you from getting the next gig. These are all gigs. We’re constantly going after these gigs. You cancel one and, “Yeah, do I really want to get out there? It’s 7:00 at night. Could I maybe do more work on the site? Yeah.” No, being in front of people makes a huge difference. I’ll tell you: Some people don’t think about it, but if you’ve gone on a meeting, you’ve tried and you’ve lost, you need to ask why. At this point, “Oh, that’s fine. I have another company.” “Okay, you tell me so I can make better my business. What is it that made you decide to go with them and not with me?” It’s a hard question to ask, like, “Why don’t you like me?” but you have to ask the question. “What was it? Was it my perfume?” But you have to ask because if they say, “Well, the other guy seemed more confident.” Now, you know what to work on. You need that constructive criticism, but most people don’t want to ask because they just want to feel, “Ah, they didn’t fit anyway. I don’t want them.” They may or may not but if you don’t ask, you never know and then you can’t improve. Jason: Feeling safe asking for feedback is a huge superpower. I feel like, for business owners, not being willing to palate or not being able to palate, digest, absorb or take in feedback is a dangerous thing. I honestly feel like I’ve built my company on thousands of failures, and so being able to get feedback, make mistakes and to keep moving forward as a business owner is huge. If you don’t get a deal, there’s some awesome feedback waiting for you that you could potentially gain from them so I love that idea. Sometimes, it’s just simple as just sending an email follow-up. “Hey, honestly, could you tell me why you went with this other company? You won’t hurt my feelings. It would help us. If there’s anything that you can do to help us improve, it’d be great,” and people love sharing advice. Patty: If you put it that way, “Look, I just need a favor. I know that you’re going X, Y and Z, but I would just so be appreciative if you can give me some constructive criticism. What exactly was it? Was I 10 minutes late and you didn’t like that? Don’t you like our pricing? What is it? What swooned you? What was it?” and maybe it was just, “I have no idea. I just like this guy better.” Okay, that’s fine. I’m okay with that, but if I don’t ask, I never know, and if you don’t know, you don’t improve. It’s kind of like those, “Listen to your sales pitch,” and nobody likes to hear their own voice and no one wants to hear why they’re not picking you but you need to. Jason: Yeah. If we’re really honest with ourselves, we really do want to make money and we really do want to know. We really do want to know why they didn’t go with us, and so being willing to be vulnerable and ask for that feedback can be really powerful. Surprisingly, when you do that, it gives you ideas. It’s like, here’s how to win more business, and sometimes it’s the things that they use. The deciding factors are so simple and they’re so simple that you’re kicking yourself. You’re like, “Really? That’s it?” I mention that on every call. It’s really simple. Patty: You're not going to know if you don’t ask. You've got to ask. Jason: One of my favorite tactics, though, if I don’t get a deal, is to lead the door open for the future. “Why’d you go to somebody else?” Great, I really appreciate that feedback. “If things don’t go well with this company, you have any trouble or this happens to this, we will still be here, ready and willing to take your business and help you in the future.” I love just leaving that door open. I don’t want them to feel like, “Well, they shut the door on me and they’re dead to me.” I’m creating that anchor for the possible future because I’ve had clients go with another company, they have happened exactly what I had explained to them would happen, and they come back and like, “You were right and I would love to work with you guys.” Patty: Because they’re not ready to hear it yet. They haven’t reached the point what you’re telling them. They can’t absorb what you’re telling them yet. Jason: They don’t believe it, they haven’t experienced, and they have to go experience that. They have to go try out the cheapest property manager, the cheapest website company or the cheapest whatever, marketing firm. They’ve got to try out somebody and test out stuff because they believe they know better and then, as soon as they realize that they don’t know better, they didn’t know something, something blindsides them or they’ve run into a snag that you had kind of mentioned or foretold, you’ve created this powerful anchor that they’re going to remember you the moment that happens. Patty: Yeah, and it’s great because—you have to leave it open to the point that they’re not going to—a lot of people don’t want to ask the question why they didn’t get it. It’s the same thing; they have to be comfortable to come back to you because you’re not going to say, “I told you so,” so it has to be very open. I always say, “Look, I’m a sounding board. If anything happens in the future,” and sometimes, they’re like, “I’m going do it myself.” You have those people in the world and you have those that go to the bare minimum bones. “I’m glad they can help you for that price. It’s not something that we can do, but if something should change down the road, if you have questions or something odd comes up, you’ve got my number,” and I sit there with them. “Can you put me in your phone please?” and I make them do it while we’re there. Otherwise, they’re not going to put you in there. You’re gone. They’re going to forget so I say, “Here, put me in there,” and I watch them put my number in there if it’s not already, and if it is already, I just say, “Just put, next to my name, ‘Call her.’” He’s like, “What?” I say, “Well, down the road if something comes up, you can say, ‘Oh, yeah. It says, ‘Call her.’ You can search and find me.” They’re like, “Okay?” but it works because they do. It’s kind of like when you have a little child that they’re just not mature enough to understand maybe how to tie a shoe or whatever. They just mentally can’t do it. It just can’t happen. These people are not going to be able to get where you’re at yet, and you’ve got to understand that and it’s okay. They will mature eventually and we’ll see what happens, but making them put you in their phone is like, “Oh, I’ve got to be in that phone because they’ll never find me if I’m not on their phone.” Jason: Such a little hack and I can see how effective that would be. Yeah. As soon as you have this problem, you’re creating this anchor. “As soon as you have this problem, if you run into this or if you run into any issues, I am available for feedback. You don’t even have to remember my name. Just put, ‘Call her,’ in here and, remember, call her and just plug it in.” You walk them through, making sure they get it into their phone. They’re going to do it. They want to finish the conversation, they want to be done and you’re hanging out with them or you’re talking with them. “Enter this into your phone.” Another tactic is you could say, “What’s your phone number? I’m going to text-message you right now and then you have my phone number. Enter this number in,” or however you want to do it and just make sure you get them into the phone. Patty: That’s the new Rolodex. Jason: Then, send them a follow-up email after that and say, “Just in case you ever lose my contact details, here is my information. Here is my direct number. Reach me if you run in any problems.” I love the idea you mentioned of being a sounding board. I think a lot of property managers are so focused on getting the deal, but what they really need to start with is being a resource. Patty: Yes. Yeah. I always tell them, “You’ve got my experience at your disposal.” You’re doing your research. That’s great. We all have availabilities on our computer to do some research. “Great. I'm planning to get a roof, I’m going to do some research,” whatever it is, and that’s all great. Hey, absolutely. I'll do the same thing. I said, look, if you hear something from one of the other companies that you’re shopping or something doesn’t make sense because you’ve got to peel back some onions to get down to—how you’re really comparing here, apples to apples, call me and I’ll answer whatever it is. There’s no cost to you. You’re just going to call me and ask me a question. Usually, they do. Maybe you’ve met with them or they’re not going to be moving in for six months or it could be one of these long nurtures or whatever, they’ll come up to something. They’ll go, “Hey, someone told me this but you told me that, by the law, it was this so what really is it?” I’ll say, “Oh, absolutely. Let me send you the statutes,” and, all of a sudden, you’re on top again because they’re constantly doing the comparing. Guess what: I’ve got the law that states this is what it is. Now, Patty wins. I like it when Patty wins. Jason: I’m sure, in some of those situations, you’ve gotten the deals just because you actually showcased your expertise. They gave you that chance. Patty: Yeah, it’s amazing. Even in today’s day and age, how much out there is just make-believe and fluff. “Well, our agent said this was it,” or, “This one said this is it,” and, all of a sudden, that becomes a new law and it’s not, and there’s a lot of it out there. Unfortunately, people get away with doing stuff and they keep doing it, but they don’t invest in themselves enough to continue the training, go to classes, just become smarter or at least be updated or something. Those agents, even when I’m working with them, I can look them up at our MLS system and I look and see when something starts–you get that gut feeling. I’ll look them up and I’ll just say, “Oh, okay. Well, they haven’t done a rental deal since 1997 so now I know how better how to work with this agent to make this deal get through.” Knowing what you’re dealing with helps. Jason: How much time do you invest in making sure that you’re on top of the industry, that you know what the latest laws are, that you know what’s up with property management in your state? How much time are you investing on a regular basis towards this? How do you stay connected to all of that? Patty: I’m probably obsessed with it more than most because if we’re here—my job is to protect your property and protect you. How am I going to be done if I don’t know what all this stuff is? Actually, I was on the phone yesterday with one of the attorneys and a simple little thing, as an example—every state’s different, but the pet addendum that’s used in our state does not have a sentence it’s needed to be there that says, like a tenant signing off, “Pet does not have a bite history.” One sentence, that’s all we need. That’s it. To give the insurance companies all of our emotional support, our services and all of this, they’ve gone away from that dirty dozen. They’re not barring any animals anymore. They’re going by bite history. Why doesn’t our farm have that? I’m like, “Hello? Boo.” I do volunteer with those associations. I volunteer on education committees, on the fair housing task forces, the forms committees, all that kind of stuff, so that knowing where we need just makes sure it’s pushed through, one. Two, finding out what they’re up to and what we’re going to get is another and fighting for what we need. If you’re staying in two and you’re involved in these organizations, it’s all volunteer so you don’t have to pay for this kind of stuff, but you volunteer in NARPM and other ones. I’m heavily involved in NARPM and trying to make sure all that’s going through, but you’ve just got to find out what’s around you, volunteer and get into it. I guess I’ve never really sat down how many hours it takes; some of it just comes up and you know there’s a need for it so you know the right people to call and say, “How do I do it?” Even if you don’t know, maybe you’re brand new, and just moved here, “Okay, who’s the wielder association? Who’s the property management companies? Where’s the NARPM groups? Where’s this? Where is that?” Some of it is research. You’ve got to find out how do you know and who do you know to call. You find out and then say, “How do I volunteer to get to the meetings?” and then, pretty soon, it just builds its way from there. Jason: I’ve heard you mention a few things. You’ve mentioned you talk to an attorney so you’ve got some attorneys that you’re connected to that you leverage as resource, you mentioned NARPM which you use as a resource, you mentioned real estate or realtor association and being connected to those, and then you also mentioned doing your own research. Overall, you said you’re obsessed, and I think it’s important that if there’s one thing you should be obsessed about as a property manager, it’s being able to effectively solve people’s problems. That’s this, is to solve some of these problems. If you are obsessed with doing it correctly and solving people’s problems, that gives you a lot of confidence going into a sales conversation, I would imagine. Patty: Yeah, and there’s so many chat groups, Facebook groups and all this, but the other thing, too, is make sure that you’re not listening to the players of the world. If I’m listening to people telling me things that aren’t the real source, then I’m learning it wrong, which is the only reason I teach and I have my own real estate school is I teach it right, but if you’re listening to the wrong sources, then now what? I had a call today from a fellow. He used to own a property management company, I’ve known him for years, and he was a meeting. I won’t say which company he’s with now. Anyway, he’s just doing real estate; he’s not doing management. He goes, “Hey, I thought, years ago, when we did this and this, we weren’t allowed to give out the credit reports,” and I said, “It depends on your contract.” He said, “Yeah, but they’re saying dah, dah, dah, ” and I said, “Who are you listening to? Wait a minute. Why am I on a speaker there? When’s the next meeting?” and that was my question to him. He goes, “Oh, absolutely. Okay, can you do April?” I said, “Give me a date, Baby.” When I find out and it doesn’t matter whose name’s on the doors. When I find out that there’s stuff happening that I know is incorrect, based upon me being around the right sources and the smart people, then I want to go fix it before they all start it because when we’re running these properties, we’re very real estate-driven. Everything is done through the MLS here, so I’m going to bump into these agents. I don’t want them doing it wrong because it makes my job harder plus I want their referrals. Jason: As soon as you identify that somebody is inaccurate in maybe landlord-tenant law or in process, you leverage that as an opportunity to go and speak to them, educate and to teach, which then feeds you referrals. Patty: I attack it. I’ll bring the cookies, I’ll bring the donuts, and whatever. Let’s go. Give me a date now. Jason: They have a question and you’re like, “You have an audience? I’ll come answer that question and I’ll give even more value.” I love it. Patty: It’s funny because it all just kind of evolved. When I was doing the franchise pieces, I met a lot of great people all over the world, literally all over the world. It was special over every country and it just became—they would have something come up. “Patty, can you give me a hand? Can you help me?” “Yeah, what’s going on?” and, because we were the same franchise, it was easy for me to answer a lot of questions so I kind of became the 911 or the 411 when they would ask questions. It was awesome and then I started training with them, too, and I enjoyed it. I enjoy fixing people’s problems. I’m one of nine children so I’ve got on-the-job training, you see. My dad’s an engineer and my mom’s incredible so you learn this stuff. There’s a lot of realtors here that have called me on different things and when they call or when you work with a realtor on something, if you are dealing with them, ask them. You’ve got to ask, “What do you guys do for training?” and they’re going to come back and say, “Well, what do you mean? All we do is a rental deal.” “I know, but you do guys property management in your office?" Are you asking these questions because there's another opportunity or a source. Most people get the deal done, they move on and don’t even think twice about it, but you can get feedback. Jason: Right. You’ll ask them, “How are you handling leases? How are you handling property management-related things?” and as soon as you notice there’s problems, you use that as leverage to say, “Hey, maybe I should come teach a class for you guys. Let me come share some ideas with you.” Patty: All I need is a little crack in the door. Jason: “Got it,” and then you’re in. It’s a magical and powerful thing if you can immediately shift yourself with any prospect or referral partner into the category of an advice-giver. As soon as you’re there, you are in a position of authority and a position of trust, and that is what creates sales. Sales happens at the speed of trust, and so you can skip right to the top simply by shifting yourself and positioning yourself into a position of being able to give them advice, and that instantly establishes you as a trustworthy person in their mind that you can now give them information and value. They’re receiving information and value and once you give them value, then it’s a lot easier for you to get value from them. Patty: Yeah, and then you're going to find out too—let’s say you go to their April meeting. Okay, you’ve done their meeting. “So, can I come back next April? When’s your next meeting?” That’s usually the one you can’t stop. It’s follow-up. Our laws in Virginia change every six months. I need to come here every six months so that I can keep you guys abreast of it, right? Because the brokers don’t want to do it. You have to make sure you’re cycling there every six months. Jason: Don’t just give up. After you do it once and you’re like, “Wow, I did this. Hurray!” you might be leaving a lot on the table if you don’t just simply ask, “Can I do this again? The laws are always changing. Things are always coming out. I’d love to come right back, and I’ll put you in my calendar and follow up with you, and let’s just do it again,” and they’d probably say, “Yeah. Well, this has been great. It’s been a good experience. We would love to.” If you don’t ask, then, odds are, they’re going to be focused on their own problems, on their own business, and their own things, and they’re not just going to go, “Maybe we should invite Patty back. I wonder what’s going on in property management law lately.” Patty: They’re not going to call you unless there’s a problem. It’s like when you go to a dentist. Before you leave, they have you booked. “How are you doing in June?” or whatever. They already had you booked for the next one. Before you leave that office or whatever groupie you’re doing, you should be already booking your next event. It’s a new gig. Get that new gig set up. Jason: Cool. Really smart. What do you do at these events to make sure that you’re able to follow up and connect with people after the event? Patty: Some events, I do registrations so that I have all the information. Some don’t so if they don’t, I need to sign up. I always give a raffle giveaway put their cards in. If they don’t have cards, I have index cards that they put all their information on it. If it doesn’t have an email and a phone number, it doesn’t count; they can’t be pulled. If they want the freebie, they’re going to have put them both in, and I want them both. I want their cell phone and I need an email. Otherwise, whatever. I can find the rest out in the internet as to where you live and all that kind of stuff, but it depends on the audience. If I’m with realtors, they love their toys. They’re going to hand me their cards. I do a lot of stuff, too, that’s landlord lessons so I do a series with landlords. I have all kinds of different people come join me, different partners I’ll partner with. If it’s just a landlord, they may not have a business card. Maybe they don’t want to give me their work stuff so I always have index cards and I have them already ready to go. Phone, email, name—boom. It’s all you need. Otherwise, you can’t win this $100-giftcard and everybody wants a $100-giftcard so in they go. Jason: Cool. You’re gamifying the whole situation a little bit here just to make it joyful. Patty: Yeah. People like to want to do stuff and they want to be told. They do, too. Kids will tell you they don’t but they do. They really do and adults do, too. Did you go to the DMV? I know we don’t have to go anymore, but when you did go, I always feel like a DMV person when I'm doing the W-9 form, is they would highlight that one spot. They highlight where your name is, your phone number and all that kind of stuff. It’s great so it’s like, “Okay, here’s what I need,” and they just look at you like, “Oh, she said so,” and they fill it out and they give it to you, just tell them to do it. Jason: Yeah, they do it. “This is what I need from you. Here you go,” and they just do it. They’re like, “Okay.” You’re like the Pied Piper. Patty: Well, one of the biggest compliments I ever got and I didn’t even know is my son has become a realtor, which is crazy and I told him that. I didn’t know he was listening. You’re in the car, you’re his mom, and you hear all this stuff, and you figure they’re not listening. They do listen. Anyway, I used to tell him—I’d be talking to someone and when I had papers that need filled out that I’m actually meeting in person, I highlight everything; it’s all ready to go. He’s eating his pie. “Here’s your pen. Follow the yellow brick road and everything is all done.” I heard him repeat that and I was like, “Oh my, gosh.” There we go. That’s one of the biggest compliments you can get, is when somebody repeats what you said. He goes, “Well, I told him to follow the yellow brick road.” That went on his first listing with him and that’s what he told the client. I’m like, “Yes.” Jason: Yellow highlighter. Follow the yellow brick road. Patty: Yes, that’s all I need, is these signatures. Jason: Patty, I think you’ve shared several cool little hacks and ideas. It’s really clever and I think all this is very helpful for property managers who are seeking to cultivate relationships which eventually lead to contracts. Are there any other recommendations or any other challenges you’re noticing among property management business owners that are struggling to grow that they should be paying attention to? Patty: One hack that I’ve seen that’s not good that is out there that they might—I don’t know if they’re aware of it or it’s happening near them, but it’s not for growth; it’s more for protection. A lot of people have identity theft. It’s all over. What a lot of people have done to save it instead of paying money to some of these companies is they’ve just frozen their credit. They’re not buying anything. They just freeze it. Therefore, they didn’t protect it, but what’s happening is we have people who are putting applications in our—there’s 5 million different software out there, and most people doing applications online actually agree with that. The application comes in and what’s happening is the people with really bad credit are freezing their credit. So when we pull the application and we run it, it comes up as, ‘N/A.’ We don’t see that they have 14 late payments. We don’t see that they have two charge options, three bankruptcies and all that kind of stuff because it comes up as, ‘N/A.’ People assume, “Oh, well, based on the birth date, they just don’t have enough credit established so it’s coming up as, ‘N/A.’” Not true. They’re freezing it so they’re bypassing our system, which is pretty smart when you think about it. It’s pretty slick. What I’ve done and everybody can do is just add one sentence to your application that says, “Have you frozen your credit? If so, please unfreeze before applying,” because if they’d lied on the application, now that affects them getting released, but it’s a pretty slick little smart way. I’ll give them credit for that because, by freezing it—and I can’t tell you how many people have gotten by with it because most owners—so, if I’m telling you, Jason, “Well, they don’t have any credit based on the score and they really don’t have any debt. They just haven’t established yet according to the agent but they’re making this much money and they’re going to come in and take care of your house, and the property manager’s telling the truth.” You might buy that, but if I tell you their credit score’s a 420 and they have 18 collections and all this kind of stuff, you’re going to say, “No way,” so I give them an A for effort. However, they’re not getting past us. Jason: Yeah, if they have a credit score of 420, what then… Patty: You’re probably going to say no. If I tell you, “N/A. They just don’t have any,” versus a 420, you might be willing to accept the, ‘N/A,’ but you’re not going to take the 420 so it’s a pretty slick little racket they’ve got going on, but the way […] one question in the application and then now you’ve got it. Then, the other part, too, is there are some people that we have a lot of military government being here near DC so we have a lot of people moving and they maybe forgot they’ve frozen it, and I don’t want to run the credit and then it comes up nothing then we have to go back again. By asking that question, if it’s a legitimate person that has done so, they can see on there, “Oh, wow. We froze it. We’ve got to fix it,” and they’ll fix it before they apply so it’s a good thing, but it’s been used in a little interesting hack, if you will. Jason: Got it. All right. Patty, all this has been super informative. I agree with you that property management is about relationships. People need to be getting out there, creating relationships, connecting with people. There’s so much blue ocean and opportunity available that’s just waiting for leads to come to you. It’s probably not a great growth strategy in general, and I know you’ve had phenomenal growth in all the businesses that you’ve been affiliated with because of these methods so I think everybody should pay attention and listen to Patty. If anybody has some questions for you or wants to reach out to you, how can they get ahold of you? Patty: My simplest email is realtorp@gmail.com or you can reach me on my cell number. I’m on Facebook. I’m on your staff, of course. I actually was thinking, Jason.When I was back with OpenPotion, did you live in Idaho or somewhere at the time? Is that where it was? Jason: Yeah, I’m in Southern California now. Patty: I know, but was it in Idaho? I want to try to remember. Jason: Yeah. Patty: Gosh, what year was that? Jason: I don’t know. A while ago. Patty: A long time ago. It’s so cool to be old enough, to have a relationship with someone like you back then, and you had the dreams and the ideas to do this, and then to actually see you do it is awesome. Jason: I appreciate that. I think we’ve probably known each other for about a decade, realistically. Patty: Gosh, we probably have. Jason: Yeah, because I helped my brother, Bryant, with his business originally, probably back in 2008. Patty: I was going to say ’07 or ’08, probably. Jason: And then you were one of the early clients, I think, that we’ve worked with. Patty: And you often have. Jason: Exactly. Patty: Back then, even. See? When you were just starting out on this. It was awesome. Jason: We’ve learned a lot since then. A lot. Patty: Yeah, it’s crazy. Jason: Like I said, a thousand or more mistakes. Patty: No, it’s all good. We don’t fall; we don’t get up so I’m glad it happened. Jason: Yeah, always learning. Patty, it’s been great having you on the show. I appreciate you coming out and I wish you continued awesome growth and success. Patty: And yourself as well. Thank you. Jason: All right. Thanks, Patty. Okay. Cool. Everybody watching this show, please be sure to check out the community that we have going on online, which Patty had sort of mentioned on Facebook, which is our DoorGrow Club. You can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com, and if you are a property management business owner and you are looking to add doors and grow your business, that is an awesome community of people that are helpful. Then, if you want some help figuring out how to grow your business, you want to align and clean up your sales pipeline, clean up the major leaks that are limiting organic growth and preventing you from being able to really capitalize on a lot of the things that Patty was discussing, then reach out to us at DoorGrow. This is what we focus on. It’s helping you align your business so that you can create new revenue, create more growth, and maximize each door that you have. You can get to us just by going to doorgrow.com. I’m Jason Hull of the DoorGrow Show and until next time. To our mutual growth, everybody. Goodbye.