#DoorGrowShow - Property Management Growth

DGS 88: Managing Tenants More Effectively with Dave Spooner of Innago 0

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's guest, I'm hanging out with Katie Lance from Katie Lance Consulting. Hi, Katie.

Katie: Hi, Jason. Thanks for having me here today.

Jason: I am glad to have you. Katie, we’re going to be so social today.

Katie: That would be a lot of fun.

Jason: [...] social media and we're on social media right now. We're doing it. Katie, help everybody understand your background. Can I read some of your bio?

Katie: Sure, go ahead.

Jason: It’s really well written. Katie is the CEO and co-founder of Katie Lance Consulting. Katie is a nationally known keynote speaker at conferences and events. For the past 10 years, Katie has been working with real estate agents and brokers to help them get smarter about how to use social media to grow their business. Her specialty is in helping real estate agents and brokers achieve big results using social media without spending a ton of time.

She is also the author of the best-selling book, #GetSocialSmart and the founder of #GetSocialSmart Academy. Katie has been named one of the most 100 influential people in real estate by Inman News and is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two beautiful boys.

Katie, welcome to the show. Tell us how did you get into social media? How did this come about for you?

Katie: I’ve always loved social media. I've always been a marketing nerd. I’ve always been one of those people to just really love marketing and didn't necessarily go to school for social media, and probably dating myself, but there was no Facebook when I was in college. I fell in love with social media and probably about 10 or 12 years ago.

I got my first job in real estate. I was hired as a marketing director for a local real estate company and that was really when social media was starting to come to the forefront. I just remember having this epiphany and thinking this is so perfect for real estate. I had seen so many agents and brokers spending so much money on traditional marketing, which, a lot of it still works. I don't necessarily think social media replaces traditional marketing, if that's working for you, but it can be so expensive. And I thought, what a great opportunity.

That's really where I fell in love with it. I worked at that real estate company for a while, then I went to work for In The News for quite some time, ran their social media, and grew their social presence. Then about 2012 I decided, “You know? I'm going to go out on my own,” and got that entrepreneurial bug and haven't looked back since. It's been quite a journey.

Jason: What caused you to take that leap? It's a risky leap. To preface this, I didn't realize I was an entrepreneur. Even though I was the guy that started a band in college, created big events, going door-to-door pre-selling CDs so I could pay for an album at college girls dorms with a guitar and a clipboard, I didn’t realize I was an entrepreneur. I thought I needed a job, but what pushed me over the edge to jump into entrepreneurism was a divorce and needing to take care and wanting to have time with my kids. Out of necessity, I had to do it.

What caused you to take the leap? That's a pretty big leap. People don’t just go, “I've got a job that’s going pretty well. I’m just going to throw it to the wind and go do something on my own.”

Katie: I think there’s a couple of things. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Any job I've ever had, I've always treated it as if it were my company. It was always very hard for me to just “work a 9–5 and turn the off button off.” I guess I always had that attitude for anywhere I've ever worked and I had a great job [...]. I've worked there for many years and for a lot of people, you get to a point in your career where you have that itchy feeling, like what's that next thing.

Jason: Something more.

Katie: Yeah, there's something more and quietly started to explore other options. It just became really clear to me that I don't necessarily want to work for anyone else. I want to work for myself and I want to be able to help not just one company but lots of different people, lots of different companies, lots of different organizations. And it was scary. It's a whole another ballgame.

I'm happily married, we have mortgage, we have kids, so it's not necessarily the easiest leap. The hardest part was just making that decision. Then you make the decision and it was pretty much smooth sailing from there. I also had a really supportive husband, which makes a big difference, too.

Jason: I was going to ask about that. If a spouse is not in support as an entrepreneur, there's a lot of friction, right?

Katie: Yes.

Jason: And a lot of times as entrepreneurs, we tend to pair up with people that want safety and certainty. They're our balance and our opposite.

Katie: Yes. Actually, he ended up quitting his corporate job about 2½ years ago, so now we run our company side-by-side and it's been a great journey.

Jason: So you converted him?

Katie: I think I did, yes.

Jason: [...] to a job, right?

Katie: Yes.

Jason: Perfect, love it. Let's get into the topic at hand, which is how people can grow social media. I tend to be upfront and honest. A lot of my listeners have heard me say, probably at different times, that the challenge that property managers face with social media is that their target audience does not care about property management.

They don't care at all and when they ask me, “Should I spend a bunch of time and energy doing social media?” my general response is, “How much time are you spending time following and listening to plumbers? Plumbers want your business. They want your attention. Why aren't you subscribing to their newsletters and following them on social media?” and they're like, “Because I don't care about plumbing.” I’m like, “Your audience don't care about property management.” What should they be doing? I'm excited to get into this.

Katie: I think social media is relevant for obviously a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs and whether you're in property management or you're a plumber or whatever business you're in, that is the default response. “Well, who really cares? Is this really interesting to a lot of people?”

At the end of the day, one of the ways to get traction on social media is to be that unique voice, that authentic voice of what's happening in your industry, what's happening in the market. People tend to follow you and engage with you, not necessarily for just facts and information that you're spewing out there, but because they connect with who you are and your personality.

It's amazing about the management or real estate, and a lot of it's so done through word-of-mouth. A lot of it is still done through those connections that we make. That's what I think there's a lot of value in social media. It's funny you mentioned plumbers because there's actually a plumber who's killing it on YouTube, because of exactly what you said, because most people don't think like, “Oh, who's going to put out that type of content?” But his content is engaging, it's interesting, it's valuable, but it's also with his voice.

That's the thing that property management. You could talk about renting or whoever and all these different topics when it comes to property management. But you can insert your own opinion, your voice and not be afraid to just be really truly who you are. Some people won’t like it and that’s okay. Those aren’t your people.

Jason: I’m going to rephrase what you just said and sum it up. It's more important on social media to be you than to be your business.

Katie: Absolutely.

Jason: That's really what's going to attract and get people to resonate and connect with you as if you're willing to put it out there and be you, weirdness and all, and that's something. People follow me on social media, no. I'm putting out random stuff all the time about my life and who I am, and I figure that some people are just not gonna like me.

Katie: Yeah, and that’s okay.

Jason: There are definitely people that don’t like me.

Katie: Sometimes, we try to want to be really professional and we don't offend anybody. I'm certainly not saying start offending people on social media. But there's that risk of becoming just really vanilla and really boring. If you think about as an end user, somebody uses Facebook or Instagram, what do you click like on? What do you comment on? What do you share? Typically, it's things that are funny, or poignant, or interesting, or they move you in some emotion, you get angry.

There's nothing wrong with having an opinion. That's where I think in real estate and property management, really for any entrepreneur, that's where the magic is because most people are not putting up that type of content. If they are, they're not doing it on a consistent basis. That's a big thing that can make a huge difference.

Jason: People should have an opinion and share their opinion on Facebook and let their freak flag fly, right?

Katie: Yes, and be comfortable with the fact when you do that, there’s going to be people that watch you and say, I don’t like that guy or girl. You have to be okay with that because with the opposite, which will happen, is that you will start to attract the people who go, “I really like that guy. He's doing a podcast? What other podcasts? I got to catch up on all of his podcast episodes.” That's what happens with video. When you start putting out especially episodic video or episodic podcast content, people start defining you. They’re like, “What else does she put out there?” and you search who attract your tribe. That's what can turn to business down the road. It just takes time just like anything else.

Jason: I’ve always thought this is very in align with what I think and feel, is that if you are not creating polarity, if there's no polarity, then you can’t be attractive. A magnet without polarity is not a magnet anymore. It's not attract anything. Nothing will be pulled towards it. Electricity without polarity doesn't exist anymore if you remove the polarity. There has to be polarity and that means you have to be willing to polarize someone there.

I've probably been a little too polarizing in some instances; let's be honest. But I've noticed that when you are willing to just be you and polarize and put it out there, yes, you're going to have people that don't like you. You’re going to get flack for that, people are not going to attract you, but you now are attracting the right people. You’re attracting people that like you the way that you are. They like the way you communicate, they like the way that you coach, they like the way that you run your business, they like your philosophy.

Just like Simon Sinek said, “People don't buy what you do.” They don't buy what you do. They don’t buy property management, they don’t property management coaching/consulting from me, they don't buy what you do, they don't buy social media, whatever from you. They really buy why we do it. That's really what they're buying into is they believe in Katie, they believe in Jason, they believe in the property manager, they believe in you and they share values. What you do is really an afterthought compared to that. So, they need to create polarity.

This is a great question everybody listening can ask is am I creating polarity? Have I offended anybody in the last month? And have I attracted anybody in the last month? Did anybody say, “Hell yes, I agree to that,” or, “That totally rubs me the wrong way,” but that's you, so thanks for sharing.

Katie: Absolutely.

Jason: We don't want to be vanillas. What’s maybe the next thing that we should take away?

Katie: Like I said, don't be vanilla. I've often said, “Lean into who you are and who you're not.” It goes hand in hand with that idea of not being vanilla. I also think a big part of your social media strategy is not outsourcing it completely. There's this feeling even still in 2019 of, “Oh, my gosh. I don’t have time to do this. It's one more thing. Who can I hire to do it?” It's a little bit of a slippery slope because I do think that there's value in hiring certain people. For example, we have a video editor on our team because my value is being on camera but I don't need to learn video editing, I really don't need it. For one or two, that's fine, but I don't have desire.

Jason: That’s not your dream and goal in life is to edit videos and stare at videos on the screen for hours a day.

Katie: Exactly, it’s not my dream. I’d rather put my eye out, honestly.

Jason: Me neither.

Katie: Similar with podcast. My value is in the content and the education I can bring, not necessarily in can I edit something. I think there's value in bringing at some point, maybe not in the beginning, people on who could help you with either editing, for example video or podcast editing, or copywriting if you enjoy writing, or something as a blogger or graphic designer, but to totally hand out who are personally is really risky and there's lots of businesses out there that are selling this idea. “You're too busy. Let us do it for you.” I would just caution anyone to be just be careful when you do that because you're handing off who you are. It's like having a dinner party with your 10 most important clients, and instead of you being there, you have your assistant run the whole thing.

I just think it's a basic tip, but it's also something that is important to address because time is all we have. It's our most precious asset. I don't think you need to spend all day on social media. I'm in the business of social media and I'm certainly not on social media all day long, but it comes down to having a smart system, and making sure you're inserting yourself and your personality into what you do. I think that's really valuable.

Jason: This makes a lot of sense. I think there's so many parallels to this. There's so many situations in which we would not outsource. I wouldn't outsource to somebody to be the dad of my kids. I'm really single again after two decades, so I wouldn't outsource somebody else to use swiping on dating apps for me. They just don’t know what I’m into.

There's a lot of things we just should not outsource. And yet, being the face of our business, we will a lot of times as business owners, want to just outsource that, like some company can just come in and post a bunch of memes and garbage, and we're suddenly going to get business from it and then we wonder why it's not working.

What about those business owners that are not charismatic, they don't have personality, they're better behind the scenes, they just feel really awkward putting anything out there. How do you deal with that? Some of the listeners avoid social media. Social is like an anxiety-inducing word to them.

Katie: For a lot of people who are anxious or feel a little overwhelmed with social media, I would imagine part of it is because you don't have a system for, and it feels like this thing that's out there, that you have to do, that you don't really know how to do it right, and everybody saying that you have to do it, but you don't really have a plan. It just becomes sort of the snowball. The thing is, anytime you're trying something new, especially with technology, it can feel ridiculously annoying. You feel like, “Oh, my God. What am I? How do I not know how to do this?” and it's just like anything else.

We work with a lot of agents and brokers. I always say, “Imagine when you first got your real estate license. You took the test, you went through the courses, but you didn't really know what you're doing until you had your first client. And then you really learn. And then you learn again and again and again.” Part of it is just getting over and putting yourself out there. Sometimes we're so concerned with who am I, who cares what people think, I don't know, I don't like how I look or how I sound, I don't know how to do it, so I’m not going to do it. I always like to say, “Done is better than perfect.”

Jason: Oh, my gosh. I [...] that, too. I love that.

Katie: I’d love to say I made that up. I did not make that up. I’ve heard it somewhere and probably from you.

Jason: Maybe not. I think I got it from my business coach. I’m sure he got it from somewhere, too.

Katie: You just start today. So if you’re listening to this, start today. Go on Facebook and connect with three or four people at Facebook today. Don’t just like a bunch of stuff, but go on engage with a few people. Wish somebody a happy birthday. Start today. Then you can move on from there.

Part of it is just getting a system together, getting a process together. One quick thing I'll mention real fast for anyone who's feeling a little bit overwhelmed, I would encourage you to think about all the things that you do on a day-to-day basis, all the questions you get asked, all the topics of conversation that come up. Get a notebook, get a pen, and just start brainstorming things that happen a day in the life of you. I would imagine you're going to come up with 10, 20, 30 different topics of things that you could potentially talk about, whether that's through video or on Facebook or whatever it might be. Just go to start. “Just do it,” like Nike says.

Jason: I love the concept of done is better than perfect. I put that because a lot of times we're trying to get clients to launch their websites, we're trying to get them to take action and moving themselves forward on different things, and they just stay analyze really hard about something and they want it to be so perfect. I just iterate over and over again, done is better than perfect because once it's done, it can do its job in making money. You can go back and change it later, you can improve it later, but get something done because until you have something there, until you have the website up, or until you have this launch, or until you've done something, it's nothing to do anything for you.

The other mantra that I'll share with everybody listening, if you're in that state of overwhelm, you’re feeling scared, whatever, just remember that that's how you start everything. One of my favorite mantras is, we all start at level suck. That's where you start in everything. You start at level suck. That is the level you started everything. My first YouTube video was two minutes long and had 30 uhms and and so's in it, and I had to edit them out. The video looked choppy and it was awful. It was so awful. I tried to get perfect lighting, I have my little mic clip thing, an uncomfortable shirt with a collar, and I was trying to be what I thought I needed to be in order to do a video and look good. I'd probably spent hours making a two-minute video. Here's the ironic thing for everybody listening. You think it has to be so perfect? I've made way more money by doing really crappy, shaky, jittery, selfie style videos, walking around outside, than any of those videos were I was uncomfortable behind a desk or in a shirt or whatever in front of a whiteboard.

Don't think it has to be perfect. People will crave reality nowadays because there's so much BS. They’re really craving reality. The other thing I point out to clients, is that they are talking to people all day, every day and it's really the same thing. You just look at a device and pretend you're talking to a person, you just say exactly what you would say and talk the same way. You don't have to think, “What am I going to do with my hands?” What do you do with your hands normally when you talk to people? “How’s my face supposed to like?” How does your face normally look? Just talk. You have the thing like you're talking to a person. So, just start noticing when you're talking to people and pretend they're a camera or a phone and just realize they're not that scary or awkward.

Katie: Absolutely. To your point, it doesn't have to be perfect. What a lot of people don't realize that maybe they forget is the lifetime of a post is pretty short. Let’s say you create a video, you put it on Facebook, that video will disappear in a couple hours. You put it on Twitter, tweet disappears in a matter of seconds. YouTube has a longer shelf life and certain content certainly has a longer shelf life. But generally speaking, we live in a world with so much noise, I often feel like I'm standing on the side of the freeway just watching cars fly by.

If it's not your best performance, it doesn't have to be Oscar-worthy. As you said, just get it out there and especially with video, it's like a muscle. I will say the more you do it, the more comfortable you get. I don't know if I'm ever totally comfortable hearing myself and seeing myself, but what I am comfortable with are the results. That's what you have to think about. When you put yourself out there over the course of time consistently, that's when the magic happens. It's literally like a snowball and the consistency part is a huge part of it. Do you mind if I share a quick tip?

Jason: Go ahead. Give us all the tips you want to. We want some free Katie Lance Consulting right now.

Katie: Perfect. One of the things I always share with our GetSocialSmart Academy members is this idea of batch-creating your content. I love batch creating because for me, if I'm going to sit down, do my hair and makeup, and record one video, I might as well sit down and record four or five. We've been doing that the last couple years and that's made a huge difference. We'll set aside a couple hours once a month where I do the hair, get the camera set up, whatever. To be honest with you, the first 99 episodes were shot on my phone. So, it doesn't have to be anything fancy.

This idea of getting into a system and batch-creating your content, that way you're done, you're locked and loaded. When we do that, then we're able to drip out those episodes once a week for the next month, but it gets you into that rhythm. When you're publishing at the same day and time every single week, people who start to follow you, as we talked about earlier, they start to notice that. It's just like your favorite TV show, you may not watch your favorite TV show Thursday night at 9:00 PM or Monday at 8:00 PM, but you know it's on and you set your DVR. It's the same thing with content. Once you start to put it out there regularly, if you can start doing it consistently, it can make a big difference.

Jason: Absolutely. That's one of the reasons I really like my assistant; made this show finally somewhat consistent. We're getting about two episodes done a week now. Consistency is huge because as soon as you disappear for a week or two, people are wondering if you're gone. You lose the engagement, you lose the momentum, so done is better than perfect, but consistency is better than anything, really, probably.

Katie: People wonder what's the best day. There's no best day. What day is good for you? Just pick a day. I remember when I first started sending out and email newsletters, it’s like, “Well, let's do it on a Saturday. I don't know. That sounds like a good day.” Seven years later, we're still sending our email newsletters out on Saturday, and people are like, “Oh, I love it. Get it every Saturday morning.” It's just consistency. So, pick a day.

Jason: Love it. I love the idea of batching tasks, and you can apply that to so many different things. I just did a post on this on social media about this and I showed my pill case. I hate going and digging through all my supplement bottles every single meal, trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be taking. So, I got this pill case. It’s literally the size of a notebook. It's got every day of the week, four times a day, and I fill it once a week. If I travel I can take it with me. It's done, I can just take these supplements. That's how I'm able to be so sharp and so crazy all day long. No, I’m just kidding.

Batching tasks reduces the decision-making that has to go into and the thought that has to go into it every day. You don't have to sit there, stress out, and “What should I talk about today? Oh, my gosh. I need to do a post. I haven't done it for a couple days,” and thinking about it. I love the idea of batch the tasks and we've got a pile of them waiting. Even with this podcast, we've got several episodes in the can. We're releasing them to iTunes and dripping them out because we want to have a little bit of padding.

There's an advantage to having some things in the can, especially if you want to keep the consistency. What if you want to travel? I'm going to Austin this week to meet with my business coach. Next week, I'm going to Phoenix to talk to the NARPM Chapter in Phoenix. We’ll still be able to release some episodes while I'm gone.

Katie: That's awesome. What you're doing which is so smart is you're repurposing your content. We're streaming this live, it's getting shared on social media, but you're going to put it on YouTube, at some point, you're going to put it on iTunes. That's really where the magic can happen because instead of feeling like you have to post something every single day, why not invest in one great piece of content like this podcast you're creating.

That's what we try to do, too. It's one piece of great content, and then it can get sliced and diced a dozen different ways. You can turn it into an Instagram story or an Instagram post today and a post some two or three weeks, especially when you create content that's somewhat timeless. It's not just relevant on what's happening in the market, but it's going back to sharing things that are informative, that are really helping your audience, that have a voice, have an opinion, and that repurposing, there's a lot of magic in that.

Jason: Let's talk about platform then. How do people pick? Because they're like, “Should I be on Instagram? Should I be doing LinkedIn? Should I be doing Facebook? Should I be on Twitter?” What's your recommendation when people are like, “What platform should I be on?”

Katie: It depends on a couple things. Number one, where your audience is. Right now, typically, Facebook is still the number one platform for a lot of people in property management or real estate or even as an entrepreneur. But I also think that's changing as well. Instagram is growing by leaps and bounds. A lot of people have started to leave Facebook and go over to Instagram, even though Instagram is owned by Facebook, because Instagram is such an aspirational platform, lots of pretty pictures, there's not as many political posts and noise on Instagram right now. I think those are two big ones to watch.

I do think for LinkedIn, though, it's important to at least have your profile updated. Make sure that's up to date. LinkedIn is not as fun as Facebook or Instagram, but if you get googled or your company gets googled, typically, one of the first things that pops up is LinkedIn. Just making sure that's up to date, that's professional social network. Outside of LinkedIn, I do think Facebook and Instagram are two big platforms to connect with people, stay in touch with people, and then also to post relevant content and to repurpose some of the content you're creating.

Jason: What do you think is coming new in social media? I'm sure you're always paying attention. What do you think coming up that's hot, that probably the teenagers are using that we’ll eventually be using?

Katie: Good question. Snapchat was getting a lot of buzz a year or two ago, that a lot of folks in real estate were jumping on that. I think a lot of people realize it's still for the kids.

Jason: I think the Instagram stories and Facebook stories killed it.

Katie: I agree. I think a big opportunity right now is definitely Instagram. Instagram is spending a lot of money and resources for people to stay on their platform. Especially Instagram TV right now is a big opportunity. That launched about a year or two ago. It’s doing so-so and then Instagram made some really big changes pretty recently to Instagram TV.

When you're uploading a video to Instagram TV—if you don't know, you can upload a video up to 10 minutes—when you upload it to Instagram TV, you now share a one minute preview over to your newsfeed on Instagram, which shows up on your page, it shows up in your newsfeed, which is more likely that it shows up in the explore button.

We found that for whatever reason, Instagram wants you to spend more time on Instagram TV. Our posts on Instagram TV are getting a much higher reach, likes, and engagement than just about any of our other posts. As of right now, as of the recording this podcast, that's definitely one to watch. It just reinforces a lot of what we're talking about with video.

Jason: I will have to start doing those. When they started doing it, I was like, “This isn’t getting any attention,” but I have noticed, I have watched a few videos on Instagram, and I've hit that button that says, “Keep watching.”

Katie: Yeah, it definitely keeps you engaged. We used to just beginning a couple of hundred views on our videos and now we’re consistently getting thousands of views on our videos. It's nothing really different that we've done other than just be consistent with putting up that content, sharing it over to our news feed. I think, ultimately, video is worth that. If you’re not creating original video content in your business, you’re missing a really big opportunity.

Facebook even recently just came out over the last couple weeks and said, “Video has one of the highest rates in the Facebook newsfeed, original video content versus content that’s shared from somebody else.” If there was ever a time to get over, “How do I look?” or, “How do I sound?” or, “I have nothing to say,” now's the time to do it.

Jason: Just do it. Nike.

Katie: Just do it, yes.

Jason: I'll just throw this out there because somebody is going to mention it later. If they have teenagers, I think TikTok right now is the thing.

Katie: It is, yes.

Jason: My teenager’s really into this TikTok thing. I don't know if that will somehow eventually translate to business, but let’s see where it gets.

Katie: It might. It's fun to watch. It’s entertaining.

Jason: It’s like the new Vine. It’s ridiculous.

Katie: Exactly.

Jason: Any other tips or takeaways we can squeeze out of Katie Lance before we let you go?

Katie: If you are in real estate in any capacity or an entrepreneur, I really can't emphasize enough. There's two big opportunities with social. The personal side of it, being intentional, taking just 5 or 10 minutes a day to connect with people, wish people happy birthday, don’t just be a drive-by liker, actually be a person, connect. That relationship-building piece is so important. Then, that other piece is putting out new content, which is going to attract new business.

I just would encourage anybody who's listening to really think about it. I love using techniques like time blocking where you're setting aside time, a couple of times a week, maybe it's just 15 minute blocks of time, or a couple times a month, to really get a system together. If you think about the areas of your business you’re most successful in, most likely there's some sort of system or process. Whether or not you're working with us or anybody else, that's my biggest tip. Get the system, get a process together, and don't wait. Don't suffer from analysis paralysis. Just do it.

Jason: All right. Awesome. I love it. So, commenting and connecting, and then content and creation are things we need to build our social network, and we need to create social media. Two different things. Katie, if people are wanting to get a plan, get organized, figure this stuff out, be interesting, and learn social media, how can they get in touch with you?

Katie: The best way is through our website, people can go to katielance.com. We have a free content grid that anyone can sign up for. It's a great planning guide. So, if you're listening to this going, “Okay, I’m stuck when it comes to putting a system together,” you can download that content grid for free right on our website. We have hundreds of free resources on our website, as well. Of course, I'm Katie Lance kon just about every social media platform. You can find me on Instagram or Facebook also.

Jason: Awesome. Cool. And then anybody listening can also connect with me. I’m King Jason Hull on all social media. There we go, we were just very social, sharing ideas about social media. Katie, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for being here.

Katie: Thank you so much for having me.

Jason: Really cool. Check her out at katielance.com. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors and make a difference, as I said in the intro, be sure to reach out, connect with DoorGrow, we would love to help you figure out how to grow your business. If you feel stuck or frustrated, you feel like you're trying to do a bunch of marketing, pay per click, SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, and it's not working for some reason. You may have some blind spots. We can help you organize, sort out those blind spots, and get some clarity on the business, to help you focus on the growth side of your business. We would love to help you do that.

If you want to see a big blind spot, you can start with a very public one, your website. Take our website quiz by going to doorgrow.com/quiz and grade your website. This will give you a letter grade for your website. Most websites fail going through this and this quiz will grade your website as to how effective it is at making your money, at creating conversions, at attracting leads. Go ahead and fill that out and then we'll be in touch with you.

Thanks everybody for tuning in to the DoorGrow Show. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Download this Episode

Jul 23, 2019

Are you tired of dorm food and want to avoid the mad rush of finding a place to live off campus before next semester? There’s got to be an easier way for students to rent houses and apartments. It’s a problem that many entrepreneurs have tried to solve.

Today, I am talking to Dave Spooner of Innago. There are few incentives for landlords to digitize their rentals. Landlord demand for a listing platform is low, but there definitely is high demand for better tools to effectively manage and communicate with tenants.

You’ll Learn...

[02:50] Tenant Management Software: Making landlords lives easier with online rental payments, tracking payments, basic accounting, lease signing, and tenant screening.

[04:14] Understanding Innago: Flexible, effective, simple, and intuitive software for landlords and property managers.

[06:05] Learning Curve: Competitors’ software requires expertise and certification.

[07:32] Who wants to waste time adopting ugly software?

[08:58 #1 Priority: Intuitiveness in software; speed is love language.

[10:20] Different portals for different people to be more productive.

[12:16] Find balance, and avoid too fast feature creep.

[13:14] Possible future integration with Zapier and other third-party tools?

[14:22] FAQs: Access permissions and pricing for landlords and tenants.

[17:25] Innago offers unique and unmatched level of support.

Tweetables

Innago software is flexible, effective, simple, and intuitive.

You shouldn't need a certification to use property management software.

Choose features that matter, and get the biggest bang for your buck.

Big believers in early success begets future success.

Resources

Jason Fried of Basecamp

DGS 62: Property Management Accounting with Taylor Hou

DGS 87: Strategies for Growth into Multiple Markets with Bryan Jenkins and Jonathan Cook of AHI Properties 0

Transcript

Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to another DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the unique challenges, daily variety, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.

At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses, and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show.

Today's guest, I'm hanging out here with Dave Spooner of Innago’s. Dave, welcome to the DoorGrow Show.

Dave: Hi Jason, thanks so much for having me.

Jason: It's great to have you. Dave, we always like to get into our guest first, help us understand who Dave is, and how you kind of got into the space that you're in, and give us a little background.

Dave: Yeah, absolutely, I'd be happy to, and thanks for the intro. I graduated from university in 2013. I kind of already had that entrepreneur spirit. Me and a couple other folks got together and we wanted to solve the problem of finding a place to live. We're not the first people to try to solve it, and I'm sure we won't be the last to try to solve it, but we want to make it easier for students to rent houses and apartments off campus. A lot of those markets are still mostly or fully offline, and there's usually a mad rush to try and find a place to live. We recognize those issues and we tried to solve them.

As we were going about doing that, we kind of quickly realized that there's not a lot of incentives for landlords to digitize their portfolio. There's not a lot of incentives for landlords in student housing to really do a whole heck of a lot, but helps the students out because they're already going to fill other properties, which is really high occupancy in student housing.

We kind of pivoted, and listened to the market, and realized that there wasn't a huge demand on the landlord side for this listing platform, but there was a lot of demand for better tools to manage tenants, and better tools to manage and communicate with those tenants, and to manage their businesses. That's kind of how I got my foundation. I worked on that listing platform for a few years, learned a lot about the market, and then myself and the CTO of that company started and founded Innago in 2017, and we've been hard at work trying to make lives easier for landlords ever since.

Jason: How do you make lives easier for landlords?

Dave: Innago is tenant management software, and we call it tenant management software instead of property management software because we really believe that the focus should be on managing tenants, managing those relationships, and managing those personalities. Innago, of course, includes a lot of your classic property management tools like online rental payments, tracking payments, basic accounting, online lease signing, tenant screening, etcetera. But at its heart, it's a communication platform. It's something that makes it easier to interact with and manage those tenants. We believe that having that, having that foundation enables landlords to become better landlords, and property managers become better property managers.

Jason: I haven't heard of the software before, is this something that there's a good amount of property managers already using? Is this geared towards landlords, or is this geared towards property management businesses? Help me and the listeners understand Innago here.

Dave: Yeah, absolutely. We work with both. We work with landlords as small as one unit, and landlords in the thousands of units. The software is really flexible, it’s effective, but it's also simple and intuitive for somebody who just owns some properties on the side, works a normal nine-to-five, and then manages at nights and on weekends, and for a landlord or property manager that's fully dedicated. We work with both property managers and landlords. We predominantly work in the residential space. We do a lot of student housing landlords, given my background, and my partner's background. We also have some commercial landlords as well. It's a really powerful, and flexible tool, and we work with all sorts of different clients.

Jason: Cool, that's exciting. Help people understand, because a lot of the listeners in our audience probably already have a property management software, I mean, probably likely. They're probably already with Buildium, AppFolio, Propertyware, maybe Rent Manager. They're probably with one of these guys. But nobody's ever fully happy with their property management.

Dave: Right, of course.

Jason: So help those listening, how can they see where you fit into the market in relation to these?

Dave: Well, yeah, it's funny you say that. I was actually listening to one of your earlier podcasts with Taylor, and he has the accounting services, the consulting accounting services, and one of the things that he mentioned, they work exclusively with AppFolio users, and kind of what they said is, “We only hire people that have worked at AppFolio, and we will only work with AppFolio at this stage because that's the only thing that we're comfortable with,” because it's this monolithic behemoth that you need expertise to even navigate, right?

Jason: Right.

Dave: That's definitely true for AppFolio, and it's true for a lot of the other software. There's a huge learning curve there. The first time we hire somebody on Innago, we always sit them down, and we jump on LinkedIn, and we do a little exercise, or research the companies. We're not looking for employees of those companies, or even their company page, we’re actually looking for employees at property management companies that their job title, their role is like the AppFolio expert on T, because you need certification to understand how to use it.

That was kind of the initial kernel Innago came out of is, you shouldn't need a certification to use property management software. It should be like picking up Gmail for the first time, or picking up iPhone for the first time. It should be intuitive, and simple, and elegant, and powerful, and flexible to work with a lot of different users in a lot of ways. That's really our difference, in the way that we're approaching the market, putting a lot of time, and thought into the features, and the way that they interact, and the way that the user interacts with those features.

We're really proud of the features that we do have. It is an ongoing product, and we're constantly adding more. I think for a lot of property managers, and landlords on the higher end, they're going to find at this stage that it might not be a perfect fit, but for those folks with small to mid size portfolios, it's got a lot of really great stuff that it will work well for them.

Jason: Yeah, I'm in total agreement. When it comes to software, the number one challenge tends to be adoption, and ease of use is right there. If something is intuitive, that's the biggest challenge, and hurdle.

Dave: Right.

Jason: I don't even like them using software that's ugly.

Dave: Right.

Jason: I just can't bring myself to do it. Maybe it's the designer in me. I don't know, but if I'm going to be living in something, I don't want it to be ugly. That's why I use Apple products because they just…

Dave: Right, absolutely. Clean design.

Jason: I was around my mom just yesterday, and she had a computer and she was like, “I clicked on Chrome, and it's not loading, and nothing's happening coming up,” and I'm like, “I don't know, that's a PC. I've never had that problem on a Mac.” I just don't have that problem. I just think it's funny. I was like, “I don't know, good luck.”

Dave: Yeah absolutely, and a lot of property managers and landlords—many are very tech savvy, there's also many that aren't so tech savvy. It's equally, if not more important, to have something that's not incredibly complex, and incredibly challenging, and opaque, and difficult to enter into.

Jason: I'm incredibly tech savvy, and I probably could’ve figured out my mom's computer thing, but it probably would’ve wasted an hour or two of my time and I don't want to waste time figuring out my software at every step of the turn and teaching my team members how to figure out software at every step of the turn. Intuitiveness in software is my number one priority. A lot of people build their whole set up internally in their business, trying to find one piece of software that can do everything, and it's usually really awful at everything in a lot of instances, instead of finding the easiest, and best, and fastest tools.

Speed is my love language, I think in business, and I want it to be fast, and want it to be simple, and intuitive. I love that that's kind of a foundational goal with your software, because I don't believe that any of the other property management software, that was their foundational goal, ease of use, and to be intuitive. If it was, they've gotten long far away from it.

Dave: Right, yeah, I think you're right.

Jason: Yeah, and some are much worse than others, and some of them, they can do everything. They're like the ultimate Swiss army knife. Like I've joked in the past, you're not going to see a handy man carrying around a multi tool to try and do all this hard jobs.

Dave: Right.

Jason: He's going to have a nice tool box with the best tools. The software’s more intuitive, the software is really easy for people to use, and now you're saying on all parties for like the owners, they want to maybe check reports, is there an owners portal?

Dave: There is.

Jason: Tenants that want to pay rent, and do their stuff, there's tenant portal. And then for the property manager, they can manage and see their portfolio pretty easily, and know what's available, and vacant. Does this have marketing stuff connected to it yet for listing, and the getting the properties out there in the marketplace?

Dave: Yeah, great question. We do not currently have marketing. We plan to roll that out, but as you mentioned, I think one of the problems that's happened with other software packages, the feature creep went too fast. They wanted to get all the features that any landlord could ever ask for out as quickly as possible, and that has not been our approach. We have said let's do this methodically, let's think about ways to integrate this into the way that the rest of the software works. Let's make sure that it's easy to use.

We are constantly adding features but we're not necessarily rolling out everything that everybody wants, all at the same time. Market syndication is what we call it. The marketing piece is definitely on its way, but it'll probably be another three or fours months before we have that out there.

Jason: Yeah, feature creep is a real issue. I'm a big fan of Jason Fried. He's the CEO of Basecamp. I got to hang out with him on a Skype call for 90 minutes. He cut my staffing costs in half overnight, no doubt. I'm a big fan of him. By saying he cut my staffing costs in half, I should say he doubled our productivity. I didn't just fire everybody. We just became that much more productive because he helped me understand how we had so many interruptions, we had so many things that weren't intuitive, and he changed how we communicate as a company.

He has a similar philosophy when he talks about creating their softwares. Basecamp doesn't do a whole lot compared to a lot of other software, it’s pretty limited in its feature set, but it's consistently always at the top of the tools and resources people mention for project management even though I really don't believe Basecamp is a project management tool, I believe it's a communication platform for internal communication, that's how we use it.

Everyone's going to ask for features, you have to really be picky in choosing about what are the features that are really going to matter the most and get the biggest bang for your buck and really make a difference without it becoming overly crazy, too cumbersome, unintuitive, and difficult to do. There's always that balance of managing all of the features.

Do you see that you guys will be doing any sort of Zapier integration so that people can create zaps and start connecting and integrating with third party tools? No software has come out with this yet.

Dave: Yeah. That’s a really good idea. That is not our road map but I love Zapier. We use it for all sorts of other things, whether it's connecting Wordpress to HubSpot or whatever. It’s a really cool platform. That’s an interesting thought. We hadn’t gotten that far. We might still…

Jason: Add it to your list and be the first. I'm waiting to see who is the first property management software the adds Zapier integration because everyone's been asking for it. All these people want it connected to their automation. They want to connect it to their process street processes, or they want to connect it to whatever. I think this would be a really cool thing.

Dave: We’ll let you know when we do.

Jason: I keep throwing that out usually to property management software that I have on my show and I'm waiting to see who's the first to have Zapier integration. Some people call it [zey-pier], but I think [zey-pier] is weird because it creates [zaps], people, so it’s Zapier. You're not [zey-ping] your business.

What else should people know about this software? What are some of the most common questions that a property management business owner might ask that they're concerned about?

Dave: Well, one you hit on was the sub users. Enabling not just the head property manager from accessing the platform, but also giving out who has access to which permissions, who has access to which features. Maybe it's Bob, you want him to handle these categories for these properties, or you want your property owners to log in and be able to handle it themselves.

Jason: There's the ability for vendors to leverage and use the system as well?

Dave: Not vendors, that would be like a maintenance person that you either have on staff or you have on retainer 1099 or whatever. We do not have a vendor portal at this time. That’s a big one and then the other really common question we get is of course the pricing because of the sector that we’re in, that's at the top of our base mind.

Jason: Do you want to tell pricing now? If you're planning on changing, don’t. Tell them to go to your website.

Dave: No, I'd be more than happy to jump into pricing. Now it’s pretty unique, we're 100% free to use for landlords. There’s no monthly fee, yearly fee, setup fee, there’s no contract. There's absolutely no cost. Everything that I've mentioned is included. Instead, when a tenant pays rent online, we charge them $2 for an ACH transaction. We charge them $2.75 for a credit or debit card, and that's it.

Jason: Totally reasonable. I've been saying for at least over a year to people who have listened to some of my older podcast episodes that free property management software will come and there will be the day that somebody's going to offer it, just like people aren't paying for Gmail, people aren't paying for this sort of stuff and it's making money. It manifested, here it is.

Dave: That’s right, we did it. It's 100% free for the landlord. Some landlords see the value in an online payment, they see it so highly to pay actually choose to incur a cost and we allow them to do that if they want to, but for most landlords 90% plus, they're not paying a dime to use Innago.

Jason: Very cool, that's really interesting. This would be fantastic then for startup PM's, startup property managers. A question that my team would care about is for the rental listings, the vacant properties, do you have some way of listing the vacant properties in some web based fashion? If they're putting properties into their system, is there some sort of code that we can embed on a website to show their available rentals?

Dave: Again, there's nothing on the marketing side just yet. Everything is cotntained within Innago but we certainly see the value in that.

Jason: Maybe in the future then. What else should people know about Innago? Anything else you want to throw out there?

Dave: Well, we offer particularly in our sector where you do have some of the lower cost platforms out there or some of the simpler platforms out there I suppose. Oftentimes, they don't offer any sort of support beyond a 48-hour email window. With Innago, we’re a little different, we offer full phone support. We also have embedded videos and help section to ease landlords along in the system as they get started and learn the platform. We’re really big believers in early success begets future success. We want to make sure that we’re hand holding for your first month, two months on the platform, and ensuring that you understand how to use it. You can use it effectively and can leverage it to improve your business. Once you do that, then you're off to the races and in really good shape. We offer a unique level of support that many others can't really match.

Jason: What platform are you using for support?

Dave: We use Freshdesk, and we use HubSpot, and we use Zapier to connect certain things to other things.

Jason: Cool. We use intercom for anyone listening, because property managers need some sort of support desk too. Dave, this sounds really neat. How could somebody demo this if they're curious to check out your software and how should they get in touch?

Dave: Yeah. They can go to innago.com and they can request access to a free account. We’ll get in touch with them shortly after just to make sure they're a good fit, that we're going to solve some problems for them. We don't want them to waste any time fooling around on a platform that is really not going to work for them. If they request access, we’ll shortly be in touch, and we'll get them into the platform, and they can start playing around with it.

Jason: Where does the name Innago come from? I'm a branding guy, I'm always curious. Explain Innago.

Dave: We like to think of it as a strong three-syllable word, that's about the extent of it. It's really kind of like Google or Yahoo, there's not a whole lot behind it.

Jason: Okay. Maybe we’ll have to make up the story sometime together about it.

Dave: Yeah. We’ve thought about it, but we'll take any suggestions.

Jason: When did you guys launch this? How new is this software?

Dave: We launched the company in January of 2017. We had the product out in the market, kind of like an alpha stage really in March of that year. We've been coming along ever since. As far as a product, we're a little over two years now.

Jason: Awesome. How many companies are using this right now?

Dave: We have thousands of landlords on the platform and it's growing every day. I would nail that hard number, but it probably changes by the minute.

Jason: Yeah. It's probably pretty tempting and pretty easy if it's free. I would imagine you guys will have some success and you guys are making enough money you think to stay healthy just through the transactions?

Dave: Yeah. As you know, there's a lot of landlords out there. The majority of them are still self managed or not using any kind of software. There's a lot of tenants that want to pay online. Only about 30% of the market currently pays rent online. That's a huge giant blue ocean that’s ready to be captured.

Jason: Yeah. There's a lot of blue ocean that are self managing. If you really want to super attract property management business owners, if you can figure out a way to help connect these self managers so that they can get that professional managers to take over stuff, and partner, maybe create some partners, I think you’ve got a winning affiliate business going on right there that’s good for your company.

Dave: Absolutely.

Jason: I know there's lots of people listening that would like to get connected to those that are self managing and work with them. Dave, super cool to have you on the show. I wish you lots of success. It would be cool to have you come back maybe in the future after you've come out with even more features if you’ve got something really cool to share. I wish you guys a lot of success with the free software. I've been talking about this for a while. I think it's long overdue. This is really great.

Dave: Awesome. Thanks so much, Jason. I really appreciate it, my pleasure being on the show.

Jason: Yeah, thanks for coming on.

You heard it everybody, free property management software that is intuitive. If they are really intuitive, they're going to have a lot of natural success and growth, and if they're free, they're going to have a lot of growth. If they can make the numbers work which sounds like it would be pretty easy with all the transactions that are going to be occurring, it could be a game changer.

I think other property management software, they're a little bit greedy, and there's too much of that feature creep. I think this will be a competitor. It’d be interesting to watch. Let’s keep our eyes tuned, our eyes peeled and stay tuned to see what they do.

Anyway, this is Jason Hull of the DoorGrow Show. If you are wanting to know if your property management website is leaking money because every website is probably leaking money. If you want to see that it’s leaking money because you don't want it to be leaking deals and leads anymore and you want to make more money and cash from your business, test your website out by going to doorgrow.com/quiz and take our DoorGrow Score Quiz that’s going to grade your website on how effective it is at creating conversions.

Some of the questions are tricky. There's a lot of people taking the test and then make a bunch of changes to their website, some of them are false positive, so be careful if you're going to do that. Do that quiz and then maybe talk to our team and we can help you improve your website piece because I really don't believe that anybody's better at creating websites that make money than DoorGrow for property managers. Alright, we'll talk to all of you guys soon. Until next time, to our mutual growth.

Download this Episode

Jul 16, 2019

If you enjoy unique challenges, daily variety, learning new things, finding opportunities, and experiencing freedom, then you would probably be successful in property management. Entrepreneurs would rather work 80 hours a week for themselves, than for someone else. You don’t have to do it all on your own. Be willing to take some risks, and connect with like-minded people. Let your entrepreneurial spirit fly!

Today, I am talking to Bryan Jenkins and Jonathan Cook of AHI Properties. They share strategies that consistently grow their business and add doors in multiple markets.

You’ll Learn...

[02:00] Keep on Growing: Corporate housing to single-family homes to property management.

[05:25] Real Estate Market Crash: Created shift in income and dealing with investors, despite technology.

[07:20] Love it, or Hate it: Learn something new every day in property management.

[08:05] When’s the right time to grow and expand? Adding doors in multiple markets.

[09:42] Sand Traps: Think outside the box to grow property management business.

[11:15] Educate Clients with Market Knowledge: Direct investors into markets where they can make money and purchase more doors for AHI to manage.

[12:03] Game Changer: Diversifying existing portfolio and dealing with accidental landlords who leave when it’s a good time to sell.

[13:40] Recipe for Success: Gain momentum and referrals by building partnerships and relationships with sister companies, third-party providers, and contractors.

[19:57] Four Ds to Revenue: Deals, Doors per deal, Duration, and Dollars.

[24:30] Focus on Funnel: Multiple sources serve as supply line for incoming clients.

[26:07] Strategies and Approaches: How to expand and operate in multiple markets.

[27:13] False Scarcity: There’s plenty of opportunity to create business and follow up because 70% self-manage single-family residential properties.

[29:10] Remember Me? Make sure to have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy to keep track of clients and properties.

[36:07] Bryan’s Biggest Piece of Advice: Keep an open mind, don’t be afraid, but focus on multiple funnels and opportunities to develop client relations.

[38:03] Generational Change in Property Management Profession: Think about technology, bring awareness, and open people’s minds.

Tweetables

Let your entrepreneurial spirit fly.

Recipe for Success: Gain momentum and referrals by building partnerships.

Four Ds to Revenue: Deals, Doors per deal, Duration, and Dollars.

Resources

AHI Properties

AHI Properties Email

National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM)

MLS

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

IMN

Five Star Conference

Roofstock

Deb Newell of Real-Time Leasing

Matthew Whitaker of GKHouses

DGS 75: Bridging the Gap Between Inside and Outside Sales with Jennifer Stoops of Park Avenue Properties

DGS 86: Utilizing Remote Assistants with Gwenn Aspen 0

Transcript

Gentlemen, welcome. I’ve got here hanging out with me Bryan Jenkins and Jonathan Cooks. Which ones which?

Jonathan: I’m Jonathan.

Bryan: And I’m Bryan.

Jason: Hi Jonathan. Hi Bryan. Jonathan, Bryan both of you have some experience in growing your property management business and I’d love to get into your background. Whoever wants to go first, share a little bit about your background, how you got into property management, into the space, and maybe a little bit about why somebody should listen to you today.

Jonathan: Bryan is much more impressive. You go ahead, buddy.

Jason: All right. Let’s go, Bryan. He threw you in.

Bryan: I’ve been a property manager now for 19 years and we started this firm ground-up but tied into a corporate housing company, where we do fully-furnished corporate housing for guests that are relocating. We operate that model in 12 different physical locations in 6 states, servicing 14 markets. With that, we had brick and mortar locations.

I came online in 2000. We started buying residential single family homes to facilitate our corporate housing needs. From there, we actually acquired a property management company here in Birmingham, Alabama back in late 2003. Since that point, we’ve been growing. That’s the only acquisition we’ve really done through the years.

We’ve first acquired that management company. We had 109 properties and that portfolio that we acquired. By that time, we purchased 52 of our own properties and eight classifications for corporate rentals and lease back. With that, we’ve grown over the years to five locations now and it worked in two states with our property management platform. We’re managing just shy of 1100 single family homes now.

I personally came from a military background, 9 years active service, got into real estate. My parents have always been entrepreneurs. I’m part of this operation and really got plugged in. Probably my big cook kick off and the expansion piece of it really took flight after I found NARPM back in 2011. I got plugged in there with the Atlanta chapter. I’m the past Atlanta chapter president. I’m currently the NARPM National Member Services Committee Chair and I just dropped my application for RVP. So, see how that one plays out, but a lot of experience. We’ve got a team. Including myself, we’ve got 23 property managers working on our operation and Jonathan is our business development. I’m going to segue that into him.

Jonathan: I got my real estate license in 2007. I was the youngest realtor in the state of Alabama when I got it. I was 21.

Bryan: Fun facts.

Jonathan. Yeah. Fun facts. But my entire life I have been surrounded with real estate. My step dad owned a real estate company. He was in construction for a long time even before that. My mom’s best friend is a real estate agent in the area that has always owned properties, has her own rental company.

After highschool, it just became my secondary job for the longest time of being her property manager. I don’t want to drive out to my 15 properties or how many she ended up having at that time. “I’ve got this property. I need you to run over there. Get rent. Get this. Make sure you maintain this. Paint these walls. That tenant’s out. That tenant’s in. Call the newspaper.” This is early 2000s. Before I even got my real estate license, I was still trying to do the maintenance piece of it. Then when I got my real estate license, I was doing real estate and had a...

Bryan: Work field tech.

Jonathan: Yeah, like a field tech. I had this halfway working knowledge of what property management was, I thought, supposed to be, but I was a realtor at that point. So, I was like, “Yeah, I’ve got an idea.”

When the real estate market crashed in 2008–2009, there was not the source of income that I was used to. I started dealing with investors with the slight little piece of halfway working knowledge that I’ve built up with my family, like rentals, trying to figure out how the single family rental market works, and start cherry-picking areas because I had access to NLS and I could look up where properties were.

At that time, there was no internet documentation. I couldn’t send documents online and have them signed. There was no electronic signatures at all.

Bryan: It was that long ago.

Jonathan: It really was. I was having to drive offers on HUD homes from Birmingham where I’m at, in an hour-and-a-half away to the closest HUD office which is in Anniston, which is a whole another city in Alabama. It was an hour-and-a-half. I had to drive and had to have ink on page. “Here. This is an offer. Will you take it?” Then you end up, “Nah. Get out of here.”

Jason: So needless to say, things are a little bit more efficient now.

Bryan: A little bit.

Jonathan: My wife actually works for AHI for years before I did. I just started as the Business Development Manager in October of last year after my wife begging me for years. “Would you please go with AHI? You know what we do here.” I’m like, “Yes, it’s property management. I know how to do that.” Oh, I had no idea how to do that. Then I got here and like, “Oh.”

I got plugged into NARPM. Started learning all the extra pieces, ins and outs that I didn’t even know that I didn’t know here at AHI. I learn on a daily basis from Bryan and from everyone out here in the office and it has just become, “I get it now.” There’s always going to be stuff that I’m not going to know.

Bryan: That’s the challenge. That’s the beauty of property management. I always say, you love it or you hate it, there is no really gray area in between. As long as you’re learning something everyday and solving issues, that’s what keeps me coming back daily. It’s kind of us.

Jason: Like I said in the intro, the people that like this like the unique challenges, the daily variety, they like the opportunities, and ultimately if you’re an entrepreneur, you like freedom. And you’d rather be working 80 hours for yourself than 30 for somebody else.

Bryan: That’s right.

Jason: We’re crazy like that. Let’s get into how you guys have grown. You’ve mentioned there was an acquisition, there’s a couple of little things that you’ve done, but let’s get into how are you adding the bulk of the doors into your business. I guess the conversation topic at hand is supposed to be about multiple markets. How do you manage doing multiple locations and when do you feel it’s the right time to go into a second location for most managers that are listening?

Bryan: I’m going to say that, based on what I said earlier in our history, is we’re probably a little more unique than a company that’s trying to open a market from scratch in an outside area. Our growth strategy is actually to come alongside our corporate housing company, utilize the brick and mortar they already have. Then we just come in with client, we come in with systems, and hire local talent. With that, we’re ready to go operational, handling back office out of our main hub here in Birmingham. That allows us greater freedom and greater flexibility and movement with our client base.

Our most recent acquisition was Oklahoma City and we opened in December of 2017. We went out there basically with a client that took us out there with 24 properties to get us started. Hired a single property manager and now we’re managing 158 properties on the ground there. Some other clients have become along the way and have been clients we’re working with in multiple markets as well.

Jason: Let’s give some of the listeners some tips or some strategies here for growing their property management company. We’ve got two kinds of sand traps that people fall into. The first one’s maybe the solopreneur stuck at 50 or 60 units. What would you recommend to somebody that have 50 or 60 units if they’re wanting to add doors and build up a portfolio?

Bryan: Let your entrepreneurial spirit fly, first and foremost. I would say, be willing to take some risk. You have to be able to do that. What I see in property management is, I see people that are stuck in the box. What I mean by that is they’re happy signing accidental landlords on a daily basis and dealing with the one-off homeowner that by default is the landlord.

Jonthan: They called you because they’ve seen your side.

Bryan: Right. Jonathan just talked to one earlier today and the expectations are totally off scale. They have no investment mindset whatsoever and they’ve got a strong emotional attachment to the property.

Jonathan: And in my opinion, if you start taking in those kinds of clients, it’s going to keep you at that rate because they’re going to require way more attention. They’re going to need hand holding for every little thing. They don’t have that entrepreneurial mindset.

Jason: If they’re only going to stay a year, that means every year, you have to get a new one to replace them. Plus another one if you want to grow and add something new. If you build your business on accidental landlords, it can be pretty difficult unless you’re magically able to convince them to switch to buy-and-hold.

Jonthan: Generally, you’re not directing them into the markets that they can make money, which will in turn allow them to purchase more doors for you to manage. That’s one of the things I like to help our investors there is identify markets. I think that’s super important for any property manager no matter where you are. Knowing your markets, knowing them really, really well like the back of your hand, and being able to educate owners and investors from all over.

Bryan: Yeah, whether investors gain experience whatever. Jason, I would say that the big game changer for us was really about 3½ years ago, maybe even 4 years ago. Looking at the diversification of our existing portfolio and then realizing we had a heavy concentration of accidental landlords, and hearing the same information being repeated back to say, “You know what? A lot of the property managers I know, their managed inventory were shrinking and consistently shrinking year after year as the sales market started to gain momentum.” And that’s what happens to your accidental landlords to say they jump ship when it’s a good time to sell.

Jonathan: And get my money back out.

Bryan: That’s right. Some of those we did over the years, as long as we’ve been at it, we’ve had investors that have actually started off as accidental landlords and then they’ve converted to buy-and-hold and then they’ve had another property, and another property. They’ve educated themselves and they’ve become real estate investors.

In my opinion, they’ve done it the right way. They’re learning as they go the right way for them, I guess. They’re educating, taking a step, they’re not taking too much time to take the step because otherwise, you’d miss the opportunity. What we focused on was, we want to understand not only what is going on in our local market, but we want to get a broader national picture and see what markets are hot markets, why are they hot markets, what types of return on investment are investors realizing particularly after we looked at that focus on the time period after 2010. After bottoms have been hit and you’re starting to get some upward momentum again with property values and such.

We started attending outside events such as IMN or Five Star, started to align ourselves with some funds, some small REITs, and property owners that have portfolios that weren’t necessarily internalizing their management operations. They were small enough, they needed a professional partner to partnership with, to make their operations run as efficiently as possible, and focus on key metrics. That’s where we started focusing our education piece and then started signing those clients. Really, that’s been a wonderful piece.

From that, we’ve added another piece to our business which we have an internal insurance agency which we opened up last year that focuses on the investment product. They can insure in 50 states. If they’re buying property in one of our existing markets or even a couple of them, that’s the beauty of having multiple markets. They focus on investment in three- or four-year markets but then they’re buying elsewhere. The insurance piece will pick up their properties wherever they have them in the country. That’s been a really powerful piece for us and that has come online especially we opened it last year but we’re really been gaining momentum in the last six months with that piece.

Jason: This is a third party tool, or resource, or vendor that you guys have signed on with?

Bryan: No. This is a sister company. It’s Birmingham Insurance Group and their carriers are third party. They use national carriers that are backed by Lloyds of London and a few others.

Jonathan: It’s downstairs.

Bryan: Yeah, just downstairs in our office building. They are truly a sister company and my partner is a shared owner in that entity. It’s been a nice value add for us both ways. They’re referring people into us, we’re referring people out to them, handling the renter side of it. The big thing is the master policies with the insurance. That does make it nice and easy for investors, again, no matter where their stuff is, to add or take away property as they need to from online portal systems. It works pretty well.

My partner and spoke on a couple of podcast, investment network podcast and got invited out to the West Coast to speak to some folks and from there, that opened the door to three or four buyer networks, basically. They were focused on Alabama already and then Oklahoma City. Then aligning ourselves with turnkey providers and partnering with some local contractors to be able to facilitate that piece ourselves. That’s been the growth cycle.

Back to that spread your entrepreneur wings, I think that somebody that really get stuck in a box and only want to do property management per se may handcuff themselves a little bit. I think you can’t be the master of all things, I understand that, but understanding what industry you’re in and how you can be most effective and partner with people. For example, I had a phone call with a real estate agent here locally that I’ve known for 15 years and all of the sudden, April 1, he just called me up today just to say, “Hey, April 1. I partnered with a rehabber, I partnered with a guy from a hedge fund, and we’ve got a couple of funds going. I’ve got some inventory to rehab and I hear you guys have some investor clients…” there’s partnerships all over the place.

At the end of the day, I think it all comes down to the relationship piece. Getting in front of people and just building those relationships. Maybe they’ll do it. The one sit down at the bar and have an hour a bit, maybe it’s the third one or the fourth one, just consistently following up. I found that a lot of these guys, if they’re shopping you and shopping your competition, what happens is they’re not really ready to pull the trigger that day. But if you stick with the follow-up, just stay in front of them, stay consistent, and know your metrics, then a lot of these guys will circle back to you and they’ll give you an opportunity. That’s been our recipe for success for the last three years.

Jason: All right. You threw out a lot of things really quickly. I need a recap and I have notes here. For those that are watching, let’s cover some of these. First, you said, make sure you identify the good markets with the best investments. Get really familiar with your market even nationally taking a look at which markets are hot. Most managers are working in the market they’re in, but the advantage of looking nationally would be to understand maybe how their market fits in, play with the national scene to see if their market could be savvy to market investors outside of your geographic area. That sound about right?

Jonathan: We’ve recently had a lot of out-of-state, out-of-market investors coming in because they’ve heard nationally in Birmingham. They come in and some of that information sometimes is going to be a little bit old but it’s taking them in and being willing to, and having the knowledge to help them understand the differences. Birmingham is big. How do we separate that into areas of, “Let me explain this area, then this area, then this area,” and then compare it to whatever markets that are used.

Bryan: There are macro versus micro views. I think that gives you common ground to speak to the investor. If their coming out of the Indianapolis market, then all of a sudden they’re looking at Alabama. It gives you some common ground to start with.

Jason: That first one ultimately what’s really helpful is to have context to give them, these out of state investors, to see how your market fits in with the national scene. I think that is wise. Know your own markets, know the little neighborhoods in your market, but also see how you can fit into the macro view of the nation and beyond.

The second thing you mentioned is to shift away from accidental landlords, just recognizing that. I talk about this concept called the 4Ds to revenue. The first D is deals. The second D is the number of doors per deal. A lot of times people just lump those together and they think a door is a door. The third D is duration. That’s how long you can keep them on. There’s a massive difference between a one year accidental and the 10-year buy-and-hold. Ten times difference in revenue return. Then, the last D is dollars, making sure you get fees in place. A lot of people don’t focus on each of these things individually. They’re just like, “I just need to get doors on.” It’s just about the doors. There’s a such a big difference between those. So I think that’s wise to shift away from accidental landlords.

The third thing you’ve mentioned is identify partnership opportunities. There’s a lot of different ideas here for partnerships. You had mentioned partnering with an insurance product or an insurance company, bringing in a value add and partnering with them, getting on investment network podcast, then connecting to buyer’s networks, turnkey providers for partnerships. Then you’ve mentioned follow-up over and over and over again.

Bryan: That’s right. One other thing I’ll add to that would be your preferred vendor partnerships. One we allude to all the time is we work with Roofstock, which I don’t know if you had an opportunity to speak with those guys in the past.

Jason: I haven’t.

Bryan: Great product especially if you’re buying anywhere coast-to-coast but as roofstock.com—shameless plug there—be sure to check that out.

Jonathan: It’s not for us.

Bryan: No, it’s not for us, but what they do is they come online, they certify their property management partner and the same thing with the wealth networks. Once they’ve certified you as a vendor and a partner in that capacity, then you’re a trusted resource. It makes the closing of the transaction that much easier.

Jonathan: One of the things that I really like about Roofstock is if you are able to direct your own internal investors, if you don’t have enough time to go through an actual buyer’s agency with an investor that does want to potentially grow more doors and you’re busy being a property manager, you don’t have time to walk down every single property with them, you can direct them to Roofstock and say, “Hey, grab your properties from Roofstock. Bring them to us.” That helps take that portion off of it, so they’re buying properties that you want to manage.

They’re buying properties that are already set-up. They’re already getting vetted out. They have an idea of what they’re going to get. They’re not coming to you with some uninformed number of “I saw a house and I have no information about it so maybe can we put [...] in there?” No, this house has [...]. This is how much I’m paying for. This is the ledger. This is what is already making for rent. This is what it should make for rent. Whatever.

Bryan: It allows you to control that potential client so you keep them inside your little circle if you will, to ensure that they’re going to be coming back to you. Just based on people we referred to them over the last couple of years, the relationships are really tight. They take really good care of them and they do come back. They asked the property managers to perform to certain levels and the properties, as we mentioned, they’re vetted out in advance. A lot of the due diligence piece done, we still always encourage our clients to do their own due diligence but a lot of that is done on the front end for them. It’s a nice value add.

Jason: That’s a great tip. Property managers listening should go get connected, if they can, to Roofstock so that they can have that vendor partnership. They can be listed as a preferred or recommended vendor. Are there other channels or how would somebody identify their channels that they should be looking at to become a certified partnership, or a preferred vendor as a property management company?

Jonathan: Local REIT, REIs, and stuff like that. Any sort of investor networking. Most cities will have a local chapter and sometimes it’s going to be wholesalers. That’s fine. You need wholesalers if you are trying to bring in homeowners that are going to be growing their business and growing their doors which in turn is growing yours. You’re going to have to have some product to give them. It’s not bad to have a few wholesalers that you know and you know the product that they have and you can stir. Maybe you get an extra commission off of that, who knows, but you’re least adding to your own business by adding to theirs.

Bryan: I think my biggest tip in this arena right here would be, I view everything as a funnel. You’ve got to have multiple sources pouring into the funnel that’s going to push out to you on the end. I guess the tip to it all is develop the multiple networks and the multi approach to just having a supply line for incoming clients.

We all know about the renter side; that’s pretty easy. What I think has been underdeveloped over the years in the property management arena has been the client-based side of it and trying to attract the clients back in instead of being strictly out of necessity, such as the case with an accidental landlord.

There’s so many factors to focus on but ultimately, we are big on having probably no less than 10 different sources pouring into our funnel and then we give them points. So, there’s always a trickle effect and then you’re maintaining those relationships along the way.

In our operation, with five locations I’ve got five different property manager brokers that are actually running the operations. We actually have an education piece each month which we push out all of our brokers. We have a mastermind call group each month that we work through problematic areas within the individual operations corporately and then on the local market level. All these things help us stay consistent in our team approach.

You had Jen Stoops on recently, right? With Park Avenue? We love Jen. We did a show with Jen and Deb Newell after the Five Star event in Memphis, March, I think it was. We were talking about Jen’s approach with John in Park Avenue. He’s always been that hub approach. They have their back-end office piece and then they spoke out and she explained it to us. That’s been fascinating to me because we have brick and mortar in each location and a lot of it depends on what your state requires.

Again, there’s a couple of different strategies on how you do those operations and how you expand out and operate multiple markets, but both of them work and both companies are successful at it. Again, I just think don’t put all your eggs in one basket. My grandpa used to tell me that a long time ago and just growing up with entrepreneur parents I [...] that, exampled out to me on a daily basis. That’s probably the biggest approach. Don’t be fearful and don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Just be mindful of the relationships.

Jason: Yeah. I love this because I feel like the stuff that you’re doing is foundational to growth. This is what the property management industry needs right now. We’ve got 70% self-managing in single family residential. There’s plenty of opportunity. There isn’t scarcity in this industry, yet. Yet, there’s this false scarcity that’s been perpetuator-created. I think it’s just so refreshing that you didn’t mention, yet, it’s all about SEO, it’s all about doing pay-per-click ads, it’s all about social media marketing, it’s all about content marketing. You’re actually going out and tapping into that 70% and you’re creating business. You’re walking out the door, the business is there and you’re getting the business while everybody else is fighting over the coldest, crappiest, worst leads that fall off your table.

Bryan: I’m going out also to say everything you just addressed is important, too. I’ll let you be going on in the background but the resources have been beaten to death over the last several years.

Jonathan: We get those too. We get plenty of those and you have to call.

Bryan: That’s right.

Jonathan: You have to. You have to still call them.

Jason: And follow up, and follow up, and follow up.

Jonathan: You have to.

Bryan: The funniest thing and I know you can probably relate to this but we see it all the time. Any property management firm operator, or property manager just listening, they have seen it on multiple occasions. You’ll get there’s tire kickers that come to you, they’re checking out your services, your rates, your reputation and all these stuff. Then they’ll say, “Okay, I’ll call you when I’m ready.” You follow-up with them and then eventually they come back 12, 15 months later, “Okay, I’m ready to go. You remember my property?” We looked at thousands of properties since then.

Jonathan: “Remember, you saw it? You saw it.”

Jason: Yeah.

Bryan: We do make it apprise, “Hey, save that information. There’s a good chance he comes back around.” That’s just experience of it all, but again, those are going to be your accidental landlords, your one off homeowners that—not being negative—aren’t really investors. They’re just investors by necessity only.

Jonathan: Or they just want to know what their property potentially can list for.

Jason: That’s why it’s important to have a CRM and to keep track. I’ve talked to hundreds of property managers and it’s so funny because I always hear, “You remember me?” and sometimes—I’m honest—I’m like, “No, I don’t. But I have really good notes here from when we talked and I can refer to that,” and that’s enough.

Bryan: It is. We’ve seen you around at events and such, and everybody’s intertwined in our industry, at least to the NARPM scene and a couple of other organizations we belong to. At the end of the day, it is about the relationships. I always said, the thing I love about NARPM—not to turn into a NARPM commercial—I always felt like the analogy that I would beat my head against the door jamb every single day and it was quite painful. I got tired of learning from my own mistakes. The opportunity came up to learn from other people’s mistakes, so that made it much more appetizing. I enjoyed it.

Jason: Let other people bang their heads and you can watch.

Jonathan: They already have. They’ve already banged their head on whatever problem you’re about to have. They’ve already done it. Here’s an answer for you already. It’s easy.

Jason: We see that a lot inside of our Facebook community as well, the DoorGrow Club. It’s a resource, everybody’s super helpful, you can just ask a question, and you get at least several really solid answers. You don’t have to be alone as an entrepreneur. I think as entrepreneurs, there’s this myth that’s created in our minds that we’re alone. It does feel like that a lot of times because our teams are a little bit different than us. There are people that want to see the uncertainty or they’re crazy freedom people. Most of the people, I think, in the world are not entrepreneur personality type, so we feel like we’re aliens sometimes on a foreign planet. But if you can get around other people through organizations like NARPM or through the DoorGrow Club and connect with other people, you start to recognize that there’s nothing wrong with you and you’re normal.

Bryan: And you’re not alone.

Jason: And you’re not alone. There’s plenty of people willing to help. I think as entrepreneurs, we are contribution-focused people. We get momentum by helping other people. That’s why we do what we do. I think everyone’s always so surprised if they’ve been disconnected from other people like them, other entrepreneurs at how helpful entrepreneurs will be. They’re so helpful, so giving. I think really, a rising tide raises all ships. This industry really needs more collaboration. We’re not at the point where there’s any sort of real scarcity, or competition really is fierce. There’s so much business available and there’s lots of room for growth. I think the industry is going to start to see that here in the next several years.

Jonathan: I think before I came to AHI, one of the things that I learned on day one was before being at this company, I did have that mindset of, “I can’t, I don’t want to share any of this stuff, I got to do all this by myself.” Once I’ve been at AHI, one of our biggest competitors, we refer to them all the time. We refer people to them constantly because they might handle this better than we will in this instance. The competition is such friendly competition in this industry.

Bryan: Are you talking about Matthew?

Jonathan: I am talking about Matthew. It’s so collaborative. We’re having him in an event in a month.

Bryan: You know Matthew Whitaker, right? Matthew Whitaker with GK? GKHouses?

Jason: Maybe.

Jonathan: He’s got good notes on him.

Bryan: Anyway, Matthew’s a contrast to my vision and what we’ve done with growth. He’s been growing through acquisition.

Jason: Very different strategy.

Bryan: Yeah. Homevestors, franchise holder, and then converted, internalized to PM operations after 2007–2008 and then went to work. Basically, he’s growing from Birmingham to Nashville, Chattanooga, Little Rock, Arkansas, then Denver and Fort Collins, Colorado. He’s done it through acquisitions. He’s a sharp mind. He’s cutting-edge guy, but we got along famously and have been friends for years. We’re actually hosting a PM summit coming up in a month, in June.

First thing that we put on in the State of Alabama—NARPM doesn’t have a chapter in the entire State—we’re trying to do a kick-off event and get some property managers in, geographically from Huntsville all the way down Montgomery, and just have a nice panel discussion. I’ve got some professional managers coming over from the Atlanta chapter, Matthew and myself. It would be a great event and we’re looking forward to it. I think it’s going to lead to bigger and better things.

My big piece, I think you [...] upon it, is just make our industry better and raise the bar for crying out loud. If nothing else, what that does for operators that are raising their bars, those that refuse to do it, there’s such a difference between the two companies. It’s easy to select the [...] that’s doing it bigger, doing it better and more efficient, and giving more value back to our clients and customers. That’s our focus.

Jonathan: One of the things that I see with these smaller realtors that are doing property management individuals is we all know similar stuff. It will be those stories where it’s like, “Oh, I had this client that was doing this and I knew they shouldn’t have done it. We just let him and it was an issue.” Okay, well, that’s not education piece. Inform your client instead of just sitting there and holding it. That’s the thing that I see. They’re afraid to lose that business so they’re afraid to step on those toes to educate their clients.

Bryan: Yeah. I’ll make it a point to empower my team members. When you empower a property manager, you always see analogy of the guardrail system. Our procedures are guardrails and if they stay within the guardrails, they can have their own little flavor. That empowers them to make certain decisions and do things that are instantaneous and beneficial to everybody involved instead of having to go through red tape.

Jason: Yeah. Let’s wrap this up. If people want to connect with you, find a little bit more info, or they’re curious about what you’re doing for growth, how can they get in touch with you? Any final words to those who are struggling with growth right now who are looking to grow their property management business?

Bryan: My final thoughts going back and recapping this thing is just keep an open mind, don’t be afraid but focus on multiple funnels, if you will. Look at multiple opportunities for you to develop client relations. I think our strategy ended up originating from the need for self-preservation. Is not that we are in danger. We just saw that the market was going to change and has changed and will change again. We want to be better prepared for that and allow ourselves better diversity in what we’re doing.

If they want to reach us, we actually do a podcast ourselves. We have an email set up for that podcast@ahiproperties.com and that ties directly to both of us. We just love to answer any questions. I’m always open and available by email and phone. I’ll be happy to connect and just give my two cents worth. Again, I always like to give back to the industry. It has been good to me and I like to give back.

Jonathan: I second everything Bryan said. He’s got it.

Jason: All right. Perfect. Bryan, Jonathan, grateful to have both of you here on the DoorGrow Show. Appreciate what you guys are doing.

Bryan: Thanks for having us.

Jonathan: It’s a pleasure.

Jason: It’s a good message for everybody to diversify your interest and how you’re bringing in business. It’s exactly what I coach clients to do, so I love that you’re reinforcing what I teach which is a welcome, refreshing unexpected thing. I appreciate you guys being here on the show.

Bryan: We appreciate you having us. We thank you very much. I just want to actually thank you for what you’re doing for the industry because I think it’s a wonderful thing.

Jonathan: Yes. It makes everything better.

Bryan: Yup.

Jason: Oh, thanks. Everyone says that and I’m going to ask you, what am I doing for the industry?

Bryan: Here’s the deal. I’m an old dog but you can teach me new tricks. There’s a generational change in the property management profession and I think as the level professionalism comes up, we see our younger generation of property managers coming in behind. I don’t want to say transitioning of the guard but it is a change of mindset from what was old. Think about the technology piece and the systems pieces that have kicked in, stuff that’s happened since 2012 is crazy. We were server-based.

Actually, what Jonathan was alluding to early on with the ink on paper scenarios. I think that’s the biggest piece. It’s bringing awareness and just opening people’s minds such as myself. The new line of thought process and focusing on efficiencies and systems and the benefits of what’s out there and available to us. I think that’s a huge help to entrepreneurs everywhere.

Jonathan: When you spread this message out to everyone through the internet and it becomes national and worldwide that people can get this information, when you’re going to partner with another property manager in a different area, at least we can start from a place where we can both springboard off of, we were able to send people to you and just, “Listen to this. That’s the information you need,” as opposed to us having to go, “We’re going to have to teach you all this stuff.”

Bryan: It’s fun to do to educate, but it is an education piece for your in-bound clients. You’re using all of that to really set them up for success with the organization. The reason we got into our podcast, specifically, was the first one my partner and I were on was a guest on one of the investment wealth networks and we actually signed 52 houses off that one episode, of clients coming in from out-of-state. That prove the value of it and then the education piece.

If you’re like me, if you travel, I listen to podcasts all the time and come outside my own little world. It just really open that up. People are listening on a more regular basis and it’s definitely an education piece. It’s on demand for you. That’s the beauty of it.

Jason: Great. It’s been great connecting with you guys. Love what you’re doing. Again, I appreciate you being here on the DoorGrow Show and I will let you guys go now.

Bryan: All right.

Jonathan: Thank you so much.

Bryan: Thank you.

Jason: All right. You heard it from those two gentlemen. The strategy for growth, really, you need a diversified approach and there’s so much available potential business out there. I really feel like the industry has so much potential for growth. I think it’s a really exciting time for property management. There are tons and tons of people that are self managing, they’re frustrated and they’re not searching on Google according to Google Trends.

Anyway, reach out to us at DoorGrow. If you’re struggling with any of these challenges, you feel like, “Hey, I’m ready to be coached. I’m coachable. I’m open. I’m ready to grow my company. I’m ready to make some painful difficult changes in my business,” then, I might be able to help you. Reach out to DoorGrow. You can check us out at doorgrow.com and make sure you join our Facebook community so you don’t end up getting stuck on random questions. You can ask questions in there; doorgrowclub.com. Until next time, everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Download this Episode

Jul 9, 2019

Today, I am talking to Gwenn Aspen of Anequim, which offers remote assistant, Rent Manager call center, and Rent Manager software consulting services. Also, Gwenn and her husband, Jeremy, own the Wistar Group, a property management company.

You’ll Learn...

[04:40] How helping a friend, helped property management companies hire employees.

[05:20] Currently, 150 employees in Mexico work remotely for property management companies in the United States and Canada.

[06:25] Connections and Relationships: Life is all about taking care of and looking out for those you know and love.

[06:50] Internal References and Cultural Differences: Holding each other accountable results in low turnover/high retention.

[08:20] Managers Managing Remotely: If you manage someone who works remotely, get to know them as a human being.

[10:51] Webcam: Teams founded on trust and transparency should be seen and heard.

[14:50] For better or worse, Anequim and Wistar Group are unique and original company names that could be patented to prevent being sued.

[16:45] Finding a Good Fit: Anequim helps potential clients identify things that they don’t like to do and give them to someone who does.

[20:51] Time vs. Energy: Avoid burnout by identifying what fills or drains your energy.

[22:20] Onboarding Training: Includes four ways to not die in property management.

[26:12] Vetting Team Members: Extensive process of selecting candidates for clients.

[29:47] Working in Mexico: No background checks possible or databases available.

[34:09] Progress, not Perfection: Help property managers move forward and feel confident in making a commitment.

[38:21] Anequim Structure: Assistants, solution agents, and others handle 1,200 units.

[42:36] Every business needs systems: Planning, process, documentation, and communication.

Tweetables

Power of the Webcam with Virtual Teams: Just be there, and be seen.

Time and Attention: A manager’s most important resources; use them wisely.

Word to the Wise: Keep your clothes on when training employees.

Our job is to make sure people are happy with their candidates.

Resources

Anequim

Gwenn Aspen on Facebook

Gwenn Aspen’s Email

Wistar Group

DGS 76: Outsourcing Rules for Small, Medium and Large Companies with Todd Breen of VirtuallyinCredible

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently

Zoom

Myers–Briggs Type Indicator

Fair Housing Act

Americans with Disabilities Act

Culture Index

Traction by Gino Wickman

Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey?

DGS 85: Landlord Protection Insurance with David Holt of Surevestor 0

Transcript

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.

Today's guest, I'm hanging out with the fabulous Gwenn Aspen of Anequim. Gwenn, welcome to the show.

Gwenn: Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Jason: I'm excited to have you. It's really fun hanging out with you in the green room and you were showing me your nerd glasses.

Gwenn: That I carry around with me everywhere I go because there's always a need. They’re literally nerd glasses, you guys. They're from Hobby Lobby, I got them for an event I had to go to because we were revenge of the nerds and I bring them everywhere because that's how nerdy I really am. But we can have fun too, we can be fun nerds. Right, Jason?

Jason: Yes. Maybe. It's probably possible. A lot of people think I wear all these weird, different glasses especially the orange ones. People notice I wear this orange glasses and they always come up to me and they think I'm trying to be so cool. Their like, "Why are you wearing this glasses? Are you trying to be Bono?" Which is funny because Bono wears them to block blue light, right? He's not wearing them just to be cool but he is cool. Way cooler than me. Then I go into this diatribe of why I wear them and how they block blue light and how it helps set my biorhythm patterns, helps me get good sleep, and then they’re just sorry they asked.

Gwenn: Well, that's what’s in your nerd shows Jason.

Jason: And then they realized they are nerd glasses, so they realize I'm a nerd.

Gwenn: Yes, because they bring out your inner nerd when you wear them and people ask about them.

Jason: Yeah. So, I got some less orange ones. This are my nerd glasses. This make me look a little bit smarter.

Gwenn: I think they look good. I like them a lot.

Jason: They're a little yellow to them but I don't have the tape. I have to get the tape and maybe add the tape at some point just to look more nerdy. Alright Gwenn, let's get into this. Give us a little bit background, so you run this company doing remote assistance from Mexico and you said they're not virtual assistance because they're not robots, right?

Gwenn: Right. No. They're not.

Jason: You manage Rent Manager, the property management back office. You manage Rent Manager's call center, so you have a call center for Rent Manager people.

Gwenn: We do.

Jason: Then you also have Wistar Group which is a property management company in Omaha, Nebraska.

Gwenn: Yes. That's all true. My husband and I started Wistar Group back in 2006 so we've been doing this for a long time. In 2008, a friend of his called him from Mexico because he lived in Mexico before I knew him for five years doing something totally different, transportation and logistics. The friend called and she said, "You think the economy is bad in the United States? Well, you should come down to Mexico. Things are really bad down here and I lost my job. Is there any way I could work for you in some capacity from home?" Because it wasn't only about the economy, but it was pretty dangerous at that time and my husband is the most loyal person you'll ever meet, for better or worse. That's right when VoIP phones came out so we sent one down to her, we figured how to make it work and she started answering the calls for Wistar Group—at that time, it was called Certified Property Management. She's taking the calls and it works awesome. We love it. She loves it. It's great.

Then we just started, as we grew, hiring all her friends for all the other jobs that we had. We just operated like that because it works for us for many years and then in 2016, our friends from Boutique Property Management in Denver, we were hanging out with them and they're like, "Hey, this Mexico thing is working out great for you guys. Can you hook us up with people from Mexico?" I was like, "Sure." Then I got them some employees from Mexico and they loved it. My husband and I were like, "Maybe we can help more property managers with this," and so it grown like wildfire since then and now we have almost 150 employees in Mexico working for property management companies across the U.S. and Canada. It's just a win-win for everyone and it's just so exciting and I love my job so much.

Jason: Okay, great. This sounds very similar to [inaudible 00:05: 37] who we had in the show except they do the thing in the Philippines. It sounds like a very similar sort of etymology or story behind how you got into this and it really was filling your own need and starting by helping a friend and it grew into helping all these different property managers. That's the interesting thing I've heard from those that have Mexican staff is that they hire one and all of a sudden, all their family and friends start becoming team members too.

Gwenn: Yeah.

Jason: That must be a culturally different thing, I think with Mexico versus the Philippines. I think they are both very family-oriented, but I think there's something about Mexico that they're like, "Hey, hire my brother." Or, "Hire this family member," and they're connecting people.

Gwenn: Oh my gosh. Yeah, the connections that they have, don't we all love that? Isn't that what life is all about? Is connections and taking care of the people that you love, that you know. It's just yet another thing to love about all the people I know in Mexico, is just how much they care for one another and have each other's back and then also hold each other accountable. That's the other things are that we grow a lot through internal references from one employee to another. If someone has a problem and they were the one who referred them, man. They hear it from the other employee. I mean there are that many cultural differences, but that's been a fun one. It really ends up keeping the turnover really low because they are happy, our employees work from home, and they love it, that's a huge advantage. They have this great connection with each other and we have Christmas parties. We're going to have a summer picnic with everybody. It's added a lot of richness to my life, just getting to know the employees as well.

Jason: I was going to bring that up. A while back, I read a book called First, Break All the Rules. I believed it's pulled up by the Gallup Organizations that does the pulling. They did a whole bunch of surveying companies trying to figure out what makes a really good team and what creates retention with the team. One of the number one indicators of retention whether somebody was going to stay in the company was whether they have a friend in the business or somebody they are connected to personally on the team. So, that makes a lot of sense. It increases retention, significantly.

Gwenn: I would say that's our job. If we’re going to hire someone remotely, if we’re the managers of this person, it's imperative that you get to know them as a human being to get that retention and to get that buy-in and to get them on your same mission going in the same direction. I feel like I know you much better right now just because we are in a Zoom Conference and that doing what with cam...

Jason: Now, we're totally homies because we are in Zoom.

Gwenn: Yeah, now we’re homies and we have the nerd glasses together, I mean. Those little things add to the relationship so if you make a point, I only communicate with people from Mexico using webcam because we have this amazing connection then and we feel like we know each other better. If you use a webcam, I swear it makes all the difference and getting buy-in from a remote employee.

Jason: I absolutely agree. I've done a lot of remote hiring in the past and there's a huge difference, but it got to a point where eventually, I have a policy in our company called the Webcam Policy and everyone is required to have a webcam to be on the team and to communicate and show up and turn on the camera when we do meetings because it ended up being, at one point I remember showing up having team meetings and there's 5-10 people without their webcams on and there's just me putting on the show.

Gwenn: I love that. I don't have an official policy, but not that you said it, I'm adding it. But I also have another employee from a totally different industry, he did a lot in banking and he was told to never have his webcam on. It was such a cultural dissonance when he came on the team because we were like, "Put your camera on. I can't see you. I don't know what you're doing. I need to see you." It was hard for him. It's good if you're somebody who requires webcams and state it at the beginning because some people, it takes them a while to get used to it.

Jason: Yeah. It is a part of my onboarding process that they have to review the webcam policy and read it. Do you want me to tell you some of it here?

Gwenn: Yeah. I think it's so important because whether you do remote employees from Mexico, whether you have someone in the Midwest, you know a lot of people hire people from rural Nebraska to work for their company because it's a lot less expensive.

Jason: Alright. I'm going to share an internal secret here.

Gwenn: Understanding the power of a webcam is crucial for the relationship working in my opinion.

Jason: Alright. Here's our webcam policy for those listening. We are a team founded on the values of trust and transparency. It is important in a virtual team to be able to see one another on our virtual meetings since we often can't meet directly in person. As a team, we don't care about your hair, makeup, clothes, etc.during internal meetings. Just be there. Not having a webcam during internal meetings can feel like talking with someone behind a reflective window. It causes humans to try to assume and guess too much because they lack nonverbal cues we have evolved to rely on. Why address this? And then in bullets: to promote an environment of trust and transparency, to improve the efficiency of company communications and shorten meetings by effectively communicating with the full spectrum of verbal facial expressions and nonverbal cues, to reduce multitasking, right? Because they [...], they're like, "Oh yeah. I'm listening."

Gwenn: Right. Totally.

Jason: To reduce the anxiety of those speaking on camera, and then having the expectation. It is expected that all team members will join OpenPotion, that's our corporation, virtual meetings on video in order to fully engage in team and one-on-one meetings, this promotes collaboration on multiple levels and it allows each individual to feel heard as they see and receive nonverbal cues from their peers. This also increases productivity and reduces anxiety as ideas are better understood when they're coupled with facial expressions, gestures, and other forms of nonverbal communication. When meeting with clients, we appreciate you doing your best to make yourself and your background presentable, but that is not required. We just want you fully present and visible. Then I have a quote and it says, "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said," Peter Drucker.

Gwenn: Oh, I love it. I love it although I would push back on the not caring what you look like because I've had people show up, not very often, but I had a guy and he looked like he'd just been to the club, and just rolled out of bed, and I was like, "Man." Also, you have to know your audience. We have a screenshot and keystroke that we record of everyone that's working for us while they're working not when they're not. We had one guy who was at a webcam conference and he had his hat sideways and my assistant was like, "Is that okay?" If you live in California that might be okay, but if you're with an older team in Omaha and you have your cap on sideways, it just might not work. I was like, "No. They're in California. It's totally fine." She was like, "Oh, okay." You have got to know your audience, better know your audience.

Jason: I think it all boils down to what the entrepreneur wants though too. Before the call, I'd ask you what your Myers-Briggs Type was and you're an ENTJ, so you've got that J in the end.

Gwenn: So, I’m Judgy? That means I'm judgy, right?

Jason: Yeah. You're judgy which means you're a planner. You want things done a certain way. This details matter to you. I'm a P so I'm all over the place. I'm a bit more open-minded and I love taking you Js and cracking you open a little bit to expose you to some things you weren't exposed to before.

Gwenn: I need people like you in my life too because I can't be too in the box. It's so nice to have that fresh [...].

Jason: J from the box for sure. Ps have no box and Js look at us like we're crazy. Some of the Ps that are perceiving, that's what the P stands for, they will take in things from all different sources, all different ideas, and to most Js, that's being so open-minded, their brain is falling out. It's how Js kind of view us sometimes but we need each other. All these other different types. I definitely need Js on my team to run my email, handle my calendar, do all the planning stuff that is not fun for me. You do this virtual team thing, how does somebody start with you if they come to you and they're like, "Hey, Anequim." First, where did that name came from? What does this name mean?

Gwenn: I'm going to give you the real answer. We used to be a certified property management and then [...] wanted to sue us because they were like, "We have a certified property manager distinction," or whatever.

Jason: Designation.

Gwenn: Designation. We were like, “Well, we wanted to rebrand anyway,” because we started from nothing and took any piece of garbage that had a roof on it and then as time went on we became more sophisticated, and wanted to take out nicer properties, but in the local market, we were the low end. We already were going to rebrand, but we didn't want to get sued or threatened of a lawsuit again, so we were like, "We have to have something that's totally unique." Well, it's very hard you guys. It's so hard to find something completely unique. My husband's a pilot for fun and so he loves this airplane called Anequim and it means mako shark in Portuguese, anyway that was like a word we could use that was unique. We got Anequim and then Wistar Group. Wistar is my middle name and they were unique enough that my best friend who is a patent attorney approved them. For better or worse we're Anequim and Wistar Group.

Jason: There you go. Alright. Portuguese mako shark.

Gwenn: It's also an airplane.

Jason: Which has nothing to do with Mexico whatsoever. They don't even speak Spanish.

Gwenn: But I'm not going to get sued for it, so you know.

Jason: No, it's perfect. It's a unique and original name which is helpful in branding, right? Okay, cool. Now, how does somebody get started with you guys. Somebody comes to you and say, "Hey, I’ve got a problem." How do you know that you can help them? Because I'm sure there are clients that you don't take on and there are clients that aren’t a good fit.

Gwenn: There are. In fact, there were two clients yesterday that called me and I was like, "You know what? I think you guys just need to wait for a minute." And that is my thing. We don't sell. We try to make a relationship because if I sell you and then it doesn't work for you, then it creates a lot of heartache and drama for me because I want the person in Mexico to be happy and I want the person in the United States to be happy. What happened yesterday was, this one guy was buying another company, and they already had two employees there, but he hadn't really worked with them yet. I was like, "Hmm." He was going to be managing 400 properties. I felt like his people count was good enough for 400 properties, so I said, "Just take on these two new people. Measure processes and procedures together, make sure it works, and then when you get a handle on them then call me." He was like, "Okay. That's a better idea. That's what I'm going to do."

If you call me and it's not going to work for you, I might tell you to do a few things first. Then the other guy called me and I thought again that his head count was already too high. I thought you could make more efficiencies in his software because a lot of people only use 5% of the software that they have purchased. If you have five really expensive employees and 400 units, I kind of think you should work on being more efficient first with your software and then call me.

Jason: Yeah, right.

Gwenn: Unless, you’re going to transition things—but these were obviously, longer conversations, I'm giving you the shortened versions—so if someone calls me and they're like, "No. I need somebody. I'm working my butt off and I need some relief." Then we'll talk about a job description first because I need to find the right person for this role. I need to know what kind of tasks you want. For instance, if you want someone to be doing a lot of cold calling then that's going to be a different person than someone's who's going to be helping you associate the right invoices with the right property and the right owner, right?

We have to make sure we have a good job description. Also, your training is going to be better, it’s going to be a smoother onboarding process if you are really clear about what your needs are. Now, a lot of people will call me and they are just overwhelmed and they'll just be like, "I need a personal assistant." A lot of the times I push back on the personal assistant and I say, "Why do you need a personal assistant?" And they'll be like, "I just hate taking the phone calls. " I say, "Okay. Well, let's find someone to take your phone calls." Really, if you want a personal assistant because you are overwhelmed, think about the things that you hate doing that don't bring you joy, that don't fill you up, and let's give those to someone who's a better fit for those roles, that loves doing those things.

Usually, it starts with a conversation about what the pain point is and what people really need, who they already have in their team, and what software they are using. We come up with a plan that would actually help them get what they want. That's kind of my goal. It maybe me, it may not be me, but my goal because I come from the property management world is just to prevent burnout from whoever's calling me. Whatever that looks like.

Jason: Yeah, so you're helping them a little bit “KonMari” their time, right?

Gwenn: Yes.

Jason: And you we're talking about that before.

Gwenn: Oh my gosh. Well, I love that. Maybe I should use that, but you have so many things that you have to do. Some people are coaches and that's really important to them, their property managers, and their families. Your time and attention are two of your most important resources and everyone on your team needs you to be using those wisely if you’re the one steering the boat.

Jason: Yeah. I'm a big fan or proponent of energy management over time management...

Gwenn: Yes.

Jason: ...and really identifying what energies you as an entrepreneur versus what drains you because we really afford doing the things that energizes us, we have an endless amount of energy. Like our life and our businesses fills us but if we are doing things that drain us, burnout sets in and it's inevitable, it becomes really difficult. I think it's really important for people to pay attention to their time and what really is giving them momentum. I tell property managers all the time, “Anything that's been sitting on your to-do list for more than a few weeks, you're probably not the person that should be doing it. Let's be honest.”

Gwenn: Right. Absolutely. There are people like, you and I we are just talking about how our personalities are different. Find someone who you like working with. Who you enjoy spending time with because it isn't actually an employee essentially just living far away that compliments you and can do the things that you struggle doing. Our role is to help people do that and we also train them on the first day so I have very high anxiety. I take care of things that make me anxious. I always go over the four ways people can die in property management on the first day, carbon monoxide poisoning, natural gas explosion, fire, and a technician being mistaken as an intruder and getting shot, and the importance of asking permission to enter.

Those are four things we go over, which is really funny because when we turn over the training to the client, my assistant will always be like, "So, what did you learn in training?" And they're like, "How not to die in property management." The clients are like, "What?" I mean, I told them that we were going to talk about that with the agents but people forget and they're caught off guard.

Jason: Four ways to die.

Gwenn: Four ways to die, but those are really, really important and it really does happen. And our industry, there's been a number of deaths that we're all aware of, and so it's really important whether you're going to hire someone remotely or not to really discuss what bad things can happen, and how to make sure they don't happen in on-boarding training.

The other thing we cover is Fair Housing and American Disabilities Act. That really should be trained every year if that's not on people's schedules for training. Domestically, I don't do this with the remotes, but domestically at our property management company, the other one is sexual harassment prevention training. We have a 70-year-old sales guy and then we have a 21-year-old front office lady. When you have multi-generational employees especially what they think is appropriate is totally different. It's important to discuss that because people aren't trying to be jerks, and they're not trying to be bad people, and they're not trying to offend anyone, it's just that what was totally appropriate in 1950 to talk about in the workplace is different. Also, on the 21-year-old side. I mean, 21-year-old sometimes think everyone's their best friend and they’re hanging out at the bar and it's not true. Having that conversation at the beginning of a relationship with any employee is important.

Jason: Okay. Fair Housing and Disabilities Act, sexual harassment training, and four ways to die in property management.

Gwenn: Yeah. If you're going to be using webcam, here's another thing. I did have a client who thought that it's totally appropriate to train his new employee without any clothes on, so a word to the wise, keep your clothes on if you are going to be training somebody. People, sometimes just don't know, they just don't know. I'm sure it was hot, it was summer, maybe went out to the pool and came back. It was really not okay. It's another thing to keep in mind.

Jason: Policies improve overtime. You know there's something interesting if my webcam policies say, "Don't be naked." It doesn't say that yet. We haven't had that come up yet, but if it does happen, we'll definitely have that in.

Gwenn: Yeah.

Jason: Yeah.

Gwenn: I mean, I had no idea that's going to be an issue but...

Jason: Right. You never know until it happens. I think that's how all of the property management contracts evolved over time. Like, "Oh, this one's a weird new situation. Let's avoid that in the future and write that into our contract."

Gwenn: Right.

Jason: Okay. Somebody comes to you, you start them with some of these things, how are you vetting these Mexican employees, these team members? What are some of the things you go through to ensure that you're getting a good match, you're finding somebody who's really a good fit for a position? Help those that are listening feel safer using Anequim to find them a team member.

Gwenn: Sure. The first thing is that they have to fill out an application and upload a video of themselves speaking in English about their hobbies. You find out a lot about people when they think it's appropriate in a video to say about their hobbies and how good their English level is. It also demonstrates that they have some technological ability because they have to upload a video.

Jason: Right.

Gwenn: We get rid of a lot of applicants right there. If they make it through those two steps, then we have them take a personality test. We use the Culture Index, and the Culture Index indicates whether people have detail orientation or not. Generally speaking, unless I'm hiring for marketing position or outside sales or something, we are going to need detail orientation. We look for that. There are few personality types that we just don't hire at all and we also have a logic-emotional continuum. Anyone who's really low on logic also not pass to the next level.

After that if the make it there then they do an initial interview and it's a pretty tough interview. Ensures they have the qualifications and the seriousness that we are looking for. Generally, the pool of candidates that we are looking for have worked previously for a large corporation. So, in the towns where we primarily source our candidates, they work for Nissan or GE or Hewlett-Packard or TATA Consulting, and there's some really big names where they've already one through a lot of the training that you wouldn't need to train a brand new person on. But they've already been through it so they know how to talk on the phone, they know how to deal with conflict in a professional manner, and they know how to write an email. We do benefit from all that corporate training many of our folks have already been through.

Jason: Okay.

Gwenn: If they make it through the interview then we are going to start calling their references and just make sure those show up well. After that, our clients, if they've made it through all the interviews, we’ve decided this person is worth this amount of money. We have a paying scale based on education level, work experience and we know what kind of job they would fit into then we match them with our clients we have who are looking. The clients get to look at three different candidates, and see if this is a cultural fit for them and if this is someone that's going to work on their team, and that they're going to feel comfortable with on a day to day basis. We always do the interviews in threes. Hopefully, we do our job well enough on the first three know exactly who we want, but if you want to do another round, our job is to make sure people are happy with their candidates.

The one negative about working in Mexico—and this is going to be with a lot of the country that you would source from—background checks, it's not the same, there's no government database and even if there was it probably won't be accurate in the way that you and I would expect, so there's no background check policy or way to even do that if you wanted to. We rely a lot on internal references and those networks or people want to give us their best friend and then they internally hold them accountable as well.

Jason: Yeah.

Gwenn: We haven't had any issues with it, but I would suggest with anyone working remotely, you manage your privileges and your software. Rent Manager allows me to obscure social security numbers, credit card numbers, and we have a policy that nobody working from home has access to those, and you have to be in the office if you are going to be taking credit cards or looking at social security numbers. If you have good tight privileges, you don't really have much to worry about by hiring someone remote, and it's just a good policy anyway.

Jason: Yeah. Alright. That is kind of the match making process.

Gwen: Mmm-hmm.

Jason: Then once they pick a candidate, what's the transition like this on the onboarding sort of process and how far does Anequim gets involved? Because I know some property managers are not probably used to having a virtual team member, they are probably going to make some mistakes, they might just say, "Hey, this virtual stuff doesn't work. I don't get it." How do you ensure that the transition is going to be healthy?

Gwenn: First of all, we try to get a good plan on before we even get to that place. We have documents on ideal first two weeks of training and talk to them about what that process looks like, talk to them about technology, what kind of phones do you use. We recommend that you listen to calls if you're going to have someone who's the face of your company, and you're not going to be able to overhear them when you walk in the office. Here's a form on monitoring calls and here's the portal so you can see their screenshot and their keystrokes. We try to do all of that before the commitment takes place.

Talk about what that looks like, so that when the commitment like, "Yes. I want to move forward," happens they've seen in their minds, "I kind of have an idea what this looks like." We don't want for either the client or the agent to get to a place where it's the first day and they just look at each other in webcam and go, "Okay, what do I do now?" We try to avoid that situation as much as possible, which is why we’re not trying to hard sell anyone. We want someone to be committed to the process and feel somewhat confident.

Obviously, you're going to be a little bit nervous if you've never done this before, but that's why we are here to hold your hand, and give you that documentation and talk you through it so that you feel more confident before it actually happens. But then, on the handover meeting you're going to get all of them setup on their computers. You're going to get them to know everybody on your office, taking the laptop around and you're going to say, "Tell us something that people don't know about you." Or, "What are you grateful for today?" You know, a little icebreaker and then you'll get into the tasks.

The great thing about working with Mexico is that they're on your time zone. Do you have to be perfect? Do you have to have the perfect documentation? No. Because like any other employee that you hire, you can just say, "Okay. I'm going to show you how to do this." They know it should be written down but it's not, "But you're going to help me write it down because I never had time to do this before. Here's the software where were writing it down. Here's how you're going to get a screenshot using Snagit. I'm going to video record myself going through this process and then make it a pretty process for me and then when it's done and it's all pretty, then you're going to do it." That's possible. Some people are further along in their processes and procedures than others, but by no means you have to have things perfect to move forward to the remote assistance.

Jason: Yeah. The Myers-Briggs people with Js a lot of times get really caught up to being perfect before they move forward. They're like, " I have to have every process documented before I could grow my business."

Gwenn: No, that's not the real world. I would say progress not perfection, right? I mean, you have to move forward. I'm reading this great book called the Billionaire Coach or the Trillionaire Coach, I think is what’s it called. It's really good. It's on my audible right now. But the guy is like, "Okay. Once you have things down, you have to go, and you have to go fast." I think that sometimes the people who are really into perfection lose sight of go, go fast, so it's always that balancing act. If you're not good at processes and procedures then hire someone to help you do that and just show them on in a video and say, " Okay, for the next three hours you're going to write this down. Okay? Then I'll check in on you in three hours and see how you're doing."

Jason: Yeah.

Gwenn: That's totally okay.

Jason: I like that. Progress over perfection, so what I teach clients is, "Done is better than perfect." It's very similar.

Gwenn: It is.

Jason: Done is better than perfect. Get it done, you can always redo it later. You can make it better the second time around but having something is better than not having it. The other thing that I'll throw out there, sometimes is that perfect businesses are out of business. So, don't try to make everything so perfect before you move forward. It's the businesses that fail, that make mistakes, that rapidly prototype, that try stuff out and see what doesn't work, they're the ones that move forward faster.

Gwenn: And when you have that hard day where things really did fall apart then just go back to the values. Like, "Okay, it fell apart, but I'm suring it up as a value, as a person with values. So, what does that look like?" If you have your values strong and you’re connected to them then when you mess up, if you just go back to that, you'll be fine.

Jason: Right.

Gwenn: That's how I look at it at least.

Jason: That's the foundation.

Gwenn: Yeah.

Jason: A really strong why and set of values for the business. That's what creates culture in a company. Well, cool. What are some of the questions that property managers ask you that I haven't asked yet? Some of the frequently asked questions, concerns, considerations.

Gwenn: The main thing is the role. People are just like, "Okay, everyone's doing VA and I know I should be doing it because I'm just supposed to be more profitable than I am right now, but where the heck do I get started?" Usually, when people ask that, I just tell them because we've been doing this since 2008, how our company is organized because I do feel like we do remote labor as high of a level as you could. You might structure it slightly differently but just to give people an idea because the thing is in people's minds and eyes, they remember virtual assistance. They think, "I need my processes to be perfect. This is someone who can only do route activities, can't think outside the box." All of that is not true. These people from Mexico, can be, if we hire for it, highly educated. We even have some professors on the team. We have some attorneys on the team. Highly-educated people who most certainly are capable of thinking outside the box. Guadalajara, where we source a lot of the people, it's the tech capital of Mexico. When I go to the Christmas Party in Guadalajara, people are speaking Spanish, English, French, Portuguese. It's like an international gathering, like any European city that you'll be at or anything like that.

Here's how we're structured. We have 1200 units that we manage. We have three customer service people residing in Mexico who take all the front line calls. We actually call them Solutions Agent instead of Customer Service Agents because they're job is to provide solutions. They don't just read from a script, but they can also talk to tenants about their statement and what it means, what's this maintenance service issue, maintenance charge is for, and help people break a lease, give them information about breaking a lease, changing roommates, tell them if they could have a puppy or not. Actually solve problems that give solutions. They also take all the maintenances services issue and troubleshoot.

The great thing is that you don't have a PhoneTree when you call into our office. You just get a person which is a really good customer service. Most property management that I call have a PhoneTree and then you still can't get a hold of everybody. Thinking about what the experiences of an owner calling your main line, and what that feels like, maybe important in many of the markets that people are in.

Once someone takes their phone call, any elevated issues will go to the assistant property manager. Let's just take a simple thing, it's not even elevated but like a service issue. We’ll go from customer service agent, we'll take everything from the service issue then it goes to what we call the virgin list, the assistant property manager review that—and we have three of those, by the way, one for each property manager has an assistant who's a true assistant—and they look at all the service issues that come in and decide whether our internal maintenance team can handle it or if it needs to go into a vendor.

If it needs to go to a vendor then they're in charge of putting a budget on it, and based on the contract, whatever the owner wants, and then signing it to a vendor and then following up on that. If it goes to our internal team, then another woman in Mexico who's the Maintenance Dispatcher decide whose list it goes on out of the 15 maintenance people that we have. Her job is to manage those guys' schedules and make sure they're busy. Make sure they have work and make sure that they're going to a place that makes sense.

Then other people that we have is accounting. We have two people in accounting and collections. They don’t just do accounting but they're also are like, "Why is this maintenance guy going to store three times in a day?" He's like actually analyzing the invoices and saying, "This price doesn't make any sense." We have two people there. We have Applications Underwriter who does the applications in Mexico as well and a marketing person in Mexico. I feel like I'm forgetting somebody. I think that's it.

Jason: Anything on the sales BDM side?

Gwenn: No. My market, we get a lot of business just coming in the door so we don't have a BDM. We have some sales people that are on a commission basis but we don't have an official BDM role. We actually decided not to get one this year which is weird because sales always pay for itself, but when we look at the numbers in our market, it didn't make sense to get someone at that price point. Instead we’re buying a company in another market and growing that way, but that deal's not totally done yet.

Jason: Right.

Gwenn: Those are the people that we have in Mexico. Internally, we have a front office lady, a leasing agent, operations manager, a maintenance manager, and right now, we only have two property managers. And then my husband runs the company and puts his finger in everything. That's pretty lean for 1200 units, it's pretty a lean shop.

Jason: Yeah, that's really lean. Then you have a pretty decent process documentation, I would imagine as well.

Gwenn: We use SweetProcess, where we house our processes and procedures and we’re kind of obsessed with it. We use EOS so we’re using the traction book. We've been doing that for 2 ½ years now and love it. That's how we stay organized and set our goals and priorities and make sure that we don't get lost in the day to day task and know where we’re going on a daily basis.

Jason: Yeah. I think every business, eventually, as they evolve, they need a planning system which you had mentioned EOS. Every business also needs a process system, some system for documenting process and leveraging these processes. We use Process Tree internally, which works out really well.

Gwenn: And I like Process Tree, but it's more expensive than SweetProcess. It depends on what your needs are, but I would recommend looking at both and determining what's better for your organization. But yeah, I like both those systems a lot.

Jason: Every business needs some sort of communication system in the business as well. As a team, we use Basecamp as our communication platform to communicate internally, and then you need a client supporting communication system. A lot of people are using Help Scout or Intercom, or one of these knowledge based support systems. There's probably other systems. I'm forgetting off the top of my head, but business really need all these different systems in place. Once you have these systems in place, it facilitates and enables your team to really do well and communicate and understand where the company is headed and get in alignment with your vision and your goals. It's a big deal.

Gwenn: Yes. There's a lot to take on, but again, people don't have to be perfect.

Jason: Yeah.

Gwenn: Because when you say that it's like, "Oh my god, that's so overwhelming." But it doesn't have to.

Jason: One thing at a time. Yeah.

Gwenn: One thing at a time, Yeah.

Jason: Cool. Cool.

Gwenn: That's why I like EOS though because it takes that overwhelming. The, "Oh my god we have 10 million things we have to do this year," and it forces you to say, "Okay. How much energy do we really have and what are the priorities out of my list of million things that I'm going to do in these three months?" It actually helps you get more of that done than you would if you just look at the long list.

Jason: Yeah. It has an etymology that's very similar to a lot of business planning systems and most every business planning system has annual objectives, quarterly objectives, monthly, and these things break down and the idea is, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."

Gwenn: Right.

Jason: It’s like these elephants, you break them down in a 90 day, 30 days, and then even weekly commitments as a team. But a lot of business don't have any sort of planning system in place, so they're hitting zero objectives because they really don't really have any, and there's no clarity around it. They’re just winging it and the entrepreneur's, they're crazy. Entrepreneurs come into the room and says changes every week, "Hey, guys. I got this great idea." And they lob a grenade in the middle of the room, pull the pin and lob this grenade and walk out. They're excited and pumped out and the team are like, "What are we going to do with this thing?" Having those systems in place can be really helpful especially if you have virtual team members because then it makes a lot of difference for everybody to be on the same page.

Gwenn: People, historically, have thought like, "Oh, were going to do all these planning and then we'll tell them later what we planned." But I recommend having the virtual team members in on all of those meetings.

Jason: Yeah.

Gwenn: Here's one tip that has really helped us. We have the three customer service agents. Every morning at 10 o'clock they meet with the Operations Manager and just say, "Oh, this person is out of the office today. They have a dentist appointment at 2:00 PM and it's whoever's birthday. Our swing thought for the day is people can hear you smile. In the call monitoring, I've noticed that there's not been so much smiling on there, so let's keep that in mind for today. Today's contest for online reviews, we’re still giving $50 certificates to anyone who gets an online review." Whatever you have going on and just touching base for 10 minutes a day makes all the difference for someone whose remote. When you have your weekly EOS meeting, include them and what you're talking about. If they feel included in the process and in your mission, people don't leave. We've had the same employees at Wistar Group for six, eight, I think, is it nine years. I think we have two employees who've been with us for nine years.

Jason: Yeah.

Gwenn: That's the key to getting the virtual or the remote members totally immersed in your culture.

Jason: Yeah. They need to be a part of it, ironically, right?

Gwenn: Absolutely.

Jason: Yeah. I'm a big proponent of making sure that your team members are involved in outcomes instead of being micromanaged. Give them outcomes and let them innovate and you'll be surprised with what they can come up with. It might not be the way you would do it, it might be better. A lot of times, as entrepreneurs, we think we have it all figured out. We need to tell our team members, "Here are the steps. Do this exactly this way."

When it comes to goal setting, goals are outcomes. Assign an outcome to somebody, let them own it, and I think you'll be surprised at the results they can create. Getting your team all involved in it, some of those meetings have been really eye opening for me because I had my set of ideas. I thought this is how the whole world looks and then I went around and asked my team members, "Here's this outcome. What ideas you guys have that can do it?" My graphic designer has a totally different idea than I would have. My head of fulfillment has totally different ideas than I would have. They bring this perspective and all these ideas were really good. I'm like, "Yes. We should do that, maybe not that, that one's great." I think you don't want to be the emperor with no clothes running a company. That's how you do that, is by allowing your team members to have a voice and be involved in the process.

Gwenn: I love that. Actually, we teach a version of that on the first day of training. Its form this article that you can get on the internet called Who's Got the Monkey.

Jason: Okay.

Gwen: It's the number one reprinted article from the Harvard Business Review of all time. I only came across it out of massive failure years ago. Where I took my team members out to lunch and I thought they would tell me how much they love their job and they were like, "No! We don't love it. You guys never listen to us." I was like, "What?" They're like, "Yeah. We don't even bring up ideas to you anymore because you are never going to listen to them anyway." I was like, "Oh my god. This is terrible."

I found the article on the internet and we came and have a change management process. We asked our team members to own their ideas. The first steps are people come to meeting and say, "Hey, not all ideas are good ideas, but here's my idea." That allows people to save face and be vulnerable and say what they're afraid to say in the meeting. Then they have to bring everything to the meeting—the subsequent meetings—to move the idea forward...

Jason: Yeah.

Gwenn: ...so that the decision maker can just say yay or nay. Sometimes, there's a little homework on the decision maker’s part, but we try to make it as minimal as possible. I take it from sale, in sales people are always eternally optimistic and they think everything's going to close. My way of determining if it's going to actually close or not is, "Is your name on the prospect’s calendar for another meeting? If it's not, then your deal is dead." Just black and white.

Jason: Yeah.

Gwenn: If it's not there, you can revive it, but you better get a meeting out there. Same thing with ideas, "If your name in this meeting is not on anyone else's calendar, your idea’s dead." Just know that because when people feel badly about their job, when they get vulnerable, they say it and their manager is like, "Oh, that's a great idea," and then they wait three months and nothing happens to it, that really hurts morale. Giving them the honest, "Hey, it’s not moving forward if there's not a meeting"

Jason: Yeah.

Gwenn: And having them own that helps give them agency over their idea.

Jason: Yeah, I love it. Cool. Let's wrap this up, Gwenn. I think this has been really helpful. I think we talked about some really cool ideas. I think, hopefully, some listeners are a little bit more open to having some team members that are not sitting in their physical office. How can people get in touch with you if they are interested in learning more?

Gwenn: Well, I'm on Facebook. If you want to send me a message at Gwenn W. Aspen, I'd love to meet you there. Additionally, we have a website anequim.net and you can fill out a form, we'll get right back to you there, or you can email me at gaspen@anequim.net. But we love to help people, and like I said, if you just want to bounce ideas off whether this is a good idea or not, we can talk about your specific situation.

Jason: Awesome. Gwenn, thank you so much for coming into this show.

Gwenn: Thank you, Jason. It's been so fun. I really appreciate you having me.

Jason: Alright. We'll let you go now. Alright. Bye, Gwenn.

Gwenn: Bye.

Jason: So, there you have it. Check them out at anequim.net. For those that are listening for the first time or checking us out, we really appreciate you subscribing. If you’re listening on YouTube or watching on YouTube or listening on iTunes, we would appreciate—if you are on iTunes—you give us your feedback. We would love to hear your real and raw feedback. Again, give us a review on there. It will be really helpful especially if you liked the show. We would love that, that gets us excited. Then make sure you get inside our community which is doorgrowclub.com. This is a Facebook group where you get to hang out with other property management entrepreneurs, all the Door Grow Hackers, connect with us, and see future episodes. We livestream these episodes into that group so you won't miss a beat. Check us out there at doorgrowclub.com. If you are interested in growing your business then reach out to us doorgrow.com. We would love to help you and see if we can help you grow your business. Until next time everybody, to our mutual growth.

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Jul 2, 2019

In the United States, millions of residential properties are owned and rented out by individual landlords, not professional property managers. Why not protect yourself from painful experiences with tenants, have peace of mind, and leave it to the professionals?

Today, I am talking to Dave Holt of SureVestor, which provides Scheer Landlord Protection. This insurance plan financially protects landlords and property managers from tenant-related risks. SureVestor is at the forefront of leading a trend that can significantly help grow the industry.

You’ll Learn...

[01:45] Passion for Property Management: Dave joined NARPM nearly 30 years ago and has gone through its entire chain of command.

[02:51] Reasons why Scheer Landlord Protection was brought to America:

Significant growth impact on property management industry in Australia
Way to make, but not lose money
Opportunity to turn self-managed landlords into professional property managers

[05:22] Is the United States ready for similar level of growth? Whether companies grow exponentially, or at their own pace, insurance can help them get there.

[07:06] Can't control what happens in people's lives; when bad things happen to good tenants, property managers experience frustration and stress.

[08:05] Who’s to blame? Things happen that create a financial burden; Scheer Landlord Protection covers income loss for landlords and property managers.

[09:32] Malicious Damage by Tenants: Insurance covers holes in walls, cabinets ripped off walls, sand poured down drains, etc.

[09:47] Blanket of Coverage: Indirect and direct benefits create safety for all parties.

[13:45] Property manager requirement helps insurance company mitigate risk.

[16:33] Competition: Focusing on criteria of quantity over quality. Most property managers don’t have an insurance license; be compliant and legal to protect industry.

[22:40] Tiered Pricing: Clients know the cost to be protected.

[24:58] FAQs: How do I market this to my owners? How can I implement it? Follow SureVestor’s steps to success.

Tweetables

Scheer Landlord Protection: Grow exponentially, or at your own pace.

When bad things happen to good tenants, property managers get stressed out.

For most landlords, rental property is their most expensive investment.

Scheer Landlord Protection: Covers malicious damage, eviction costs, and loss of rent.

Resources

SureVestor

Dave Holt’s Email

Dave Holt’s Phone Number: 612-465-0421

SureVestor’s Blog

National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM)

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)