Does it feel like your property management business is crazy, overwhelming, or maybe too much? It doesn't matter how big or small the property management business, it can be crazy or calm. It’s your choice to make.
Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about his goal to eliminate the crazy. Business owners need to be calm for their team to feel that sense of calm in the workplace.
[02:41] Basecamp: CEO runs calm workplace by eliminating and reducing interruptions.
[04:03] Entrepreneurial Myth: Crazy work is a badge of honor, not a badge of failures.
[04:31] Adrenaline Addiction: Workplace doesn’t have to be crazy or stressful.
[05:20] Planning: Communication in business focused on high-paced growth is critical.
[06:15] Tactical vs. Strategic Leadership Role: Who has enough vision, clarity on goals?
[08:14] Don’t be involved in everything. Stay in your area of genius and offload the rest.
[10:08] Key Ingredient: Create synchronous communication system to write, think, post.
[11:24] Four Reasons: Build great team to get fulfillment, freedom, contribution, support.
“All this painful stuff that we go through as entrepreneurs is some sort of badge of honor. Really, it's actually a badge of failures.”
“Good planning in business actually decreases communication that's necessary. It increases the calm. It increases clarity.”
“The idea is you want to create systems in place that protect you and insulate you from immediate urgency that is unnecessary.”
“Create calm workplaces. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. It can be calm. The business really should be fun.”
Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried
It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried
Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and your 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 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.
In today's episode, we're going to be chatting a little bit about fun. I asked in my mastermind group today—we had a pretty good group turnout today—and I asked by show of hands, how many of you feel your business is crazy right now? You would categorize it as crazy, overwhelming, maybe too much, whatever. At least half the hands went up, which I can't say I'm surprised, but my goal is to get people out of crazy.
One of the things I wanted to talk about today—what I chatted about with them—is eliminating crazy in the business. One of the things to realize is that it doesn't matter how big the business is, it doesn't matter how small the business is. Your business can be crazy or it can be calm, and this really is just a choice. Is it possible to have a calm business even if it's really large? For your experience as a business owner to be calm in the business and for your team to feel that sense of calm from you and it to be a calm workplace, yes it is.
I had a business once upon a time. Same business but it used to feel a bit crazy. I hung out with the CEO of Basecamp, Jason Fried. I won't go into how we got on a call, but basically we were in some sort of chat. I was watching some live stream and I made some comments. He said he wanted to do a call with me, so we did a call together and I hung out with him.
This guy is what I perceived as a high-functioning CEO of a multimillion dollar company. He's written books on remote teams. He's got a book called Remote Work, virtual teams, software, and running companies. He hung out with me for probably about 90 minutes. He just showed me how he ran his business, how he basically ran a calm workplace, and how it was quiet. It shifted my perspective so dramatically. The biggest perspective shift I had was eliminating and reducing interruptions.
Years later, he came out with a book kind of recent. His book is called, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. For those watching the video you can see this here, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. It's got this on the cover. It's got crossed out 80-hour work weeks, packed schedule, super busy, endless meetings, overflowing inbox, unrealistic deadlines, can't sleep, Sunday afternoon emails, no time to think, stuck in the office, all-nighters, and chat blowing up.
There's this entrepreneurial sort of myth that it's the hustle, the grind, hard work, tenaciousness, tenacity, and all this painful stuff that we go through as entrepreneurs is some sort of badge of honor. Really, it's actually a badge of failures. It’s really what that is. It's showing that you are creating a stressful environment for your team, and you're running a stressful workplace. You probably—if you're honest—are addicted like a lot of entrepreneurs to the adrenaline and the stress.
Our body gets accustomed to things we crave and want more of whatever emotion we tend to feel a lot. We get better and better at craving it and feeling it. Our brain actually wires differently over time to experience more of that chemical reaction of whatever emotion that we're experiencing, whether it's anger, fear, stress, or whatever. It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. This is a really great book. He came out later talking about some of the stuff that he taught me on that call.
Now, I don't agree with everything in this book. The one thing I really don't agree with is eliminating meetings and what he talks about not having planning or something like that. I believe that having really good planning in business actually decreases communication that's necessary. It increases the calm. It increases clarity. Planning, I believe, is critical in a business, especially one that's focused on high-paced growth, has a lot of moving parts, and communication is really important. It actually significantly decreases your communication.
If you have an annual planning meeting, quarterly planning meeting, a monthly planning meeting where you're breaking down these things into smaller and smaller bite-sized chunks, weekly planning meeting, or maybe a 15-minute daily huddle, these are the things we talked about in DoorGrow OS. If these things, the ultimate operating system for a business, especially for a property management business, if you have these meetings, you can run your entire company in a small number of hours a year. That's all you have to do.
Anything outside of that, you are really stepping into more of a tactical role overall or you're being more like an employee in the business and doing work. But in a strategic position of leadership, if you have a really good executive team, that's all the time you would really need to be involved in. You may not even have to do that if you have really good executive team members to run things for you, and they have enough vision and clarity on the goals. They can move this business forward.
A lot of times, we have a lot of ego as entrepreneurs. We think it's all up to me. Everybody else isn't as smart as me and my team members need me to tell them what to do and to guide them. I'm so brilliant. We don't really know because we don't really involve them in the planning and communication process.
I want to point out that business should be fun, and it should be calm. One of my mentors that I'm working with currently that's a coach of mine, he talks about work being boring. He talks about how, when you have a multimillion dollar business and your business is scaling, you then eventually get to a state where you no longer have any major trauma or major glaring problems. You're insulated from these things if you built your team and systems the right way. Now you're just doing the boring work and you need to be willing to do the boring work.
His wife who really runs their company and his brilliant and brilliant operator also talks about how if you're doing the boring work and the business gets boring, that's a good sign that you're doing things right. Then it's time to just maybe get a hobby. What most business owners do is they make the mistake and go start something new, or create more drama, either in their personal life. Sometimes they're cheating on a spouse or they're starting a company, or they're burning their existing company to the ground. They create some more drama.
One of the things that we have to do is wean ourselves off the addictiveness of having to be so involved in everything, having to have so much connection to everything, thinking that we're so important in the business, and to be willing to allow calm to happen. It doesn't matter if you're just a small company with a small number of doors and you have one assistant. Your business could be calm.
Or you could have a really large team and tons and tons of doors, and your business still could be calm. If you have the support at the level that you need, you have the systems that you need, and you allow yourself to be protected from the things that create crazy, you really are able to stay in your lane and in your area of genius and offload the rest.
I do recommend this book. It's a really good book. It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. It just is kind of a manifesto for the future of business. Businesses are often connected to analogies of war in competition and fighting, and these massively stressful situations, but calm companies are very efficient companies. They're companies in which people are able to get in the flow work state. They're able to be calm, things get really quiet.
My business is very calm now. It's very calm, especially for me. It's very calm. It's very quiet. We don't have a lot of communication that has to happen among our team. Most of our team members are in the flow of doing what they love to do each day. There are little things that pop up here and there but we tackle them maybe in our 15-minute morning huddle. Usually I just ask where they are stuck. Those things all get dealt with then and there might be a little bit of communication in our messaging app that we use each day. We don't have situations, in general, that are immediate or that are urgent.
One of the key ingredients is to create a synchronous communication system in the business, which means people can write stuff out, think about it, and post it for the rest of the team to look at later. We can send a voice message to a team member or multiple team members for them to listen to later. Unless something's immediate and urgent, we don't call the team member. We don't walk into their office. We're virtual, so we can't do that. The idea is you want to create systems in place that protect you and insulate you from immediate urgency that is unnecessary.
As a business owner, you really want to get to the place where you don't have immediacy and urgency ever bombarding you, attacking you, or disrupting your day. You should be insulated from emergency maintenance requests at three in the morning. You should be insulated and protected from an angry or upset owner as the first round. Maybe you deal with those things after somebody else but your goal eventually is to be the owner of the business, not the property manager.
Anyway, I hope this is helpful. Create calm workplaces. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. It can be calm. The business really should be fun. Like I talked about in one of my previous episodes, four reasons. You want to get more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and more support in your business. You need to build a really good team.
It's a lot easier to get to the place of having a calm workplace in a property management business once you're in that category where you can afford to have a team, and that's usually in the 200–400 door range. Usually at that stage, you'll see business owners by then they have a team. If you do this correctly, this can be one of the calmest stages ever in your entire business. Most do not do this correctly.
I call this the second sand trap because they built their business the opposite way. They built the business around the wrong person because they are the wrong person, which means they're showing up doing the wrong things in the business. They are spending their time doing things that really are not their greatest strength or their greatest area of genius, or give them the greatest peace and calm, or the most fulfillment, freedom, joy, contribution, and support in their day to day. So they're building the wrong team around the wrong role, the wrong person, building a support system and mechanism around the wrong center, sort of the nucleus of this business, which is yourself.
They have a false perception of you that is overwhelmed, overworked, stressed, and doing the wrong things, then you're building a team to work with that person. You then have the wrong team which adds more stress, anxiety, and challenge to you. You have the wrong business that's built around them. It all starts with you getting really strong clarity in yourself, which I'm really good at helping clients get clarity on, focus on themselves, and figure out what really brings them the most joy or stresses them out, which things are they doing that are tactical versus strategic, or which things are energetic plus signs versus minus signs.
If that is a challenge for you, and you feel like your business is crazy. Maybe you're getting enough doors, maybe you're not. We can help you but maybe you're getting enough doors. Maybe your business feels crazy, and your team feels stressed and crazy. You feel stressed and crazy, and you're not having fun. You're not enjoying your day to day. That's a strong clue that you're out of alignment with those four reasons. You're doing the wrong things. You probably could use an objective perspective and get some support.
If that is the case, we will be glad to help you over at DoorGrow. Reach out to us. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. If you feel like it's crazy at work, maybe you need to be honest and recognize there's a part of you that enjoys that. There's a part of us that tends to like the drama and the challenges that we deal with. If the majority of you don't, you don't have to live with it.
I've seen businesses dramatically change in a very short period of time. Even in a single quarter, we can have you in a very different role, very different position, way less stress. The right team members, we can reassess your team or redeploy your team in different positions. We can get you your first assistant or whatever. We can help you get into that state to where you are in a place of calm. Just remember, it doesn't have to be crazy to work.
Hopefully that's beneficial to everybody. I'm Jason Hull, and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.
Do you wish that you could travel more often, but it’s just too expensive to find a place to stay? Investors and property managers are eager to get into the short-term and long-term rental market in popular vacation destinations. How can they grow their rental businesses and lower the cost of vacations?
Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks to Rick Bennett about BookingWithEase and TripAngle, which puts control back into the hands of property owners.
[02:14] Business Plan: Why Rick wanted to make vacations more affordable for all.
[02:56] Thought Process: Lower the cost of vacations by eliminating overhead costs.
[03:08] TripAngle: Tools for owners to efficiently, easily rent properties, lower overhead.
[03:44] Systems and Services: Grow organically, save money, gain exposure for rentals.
[05:04] Differentiator: Only site that guarantees no double bookings; easy to use.
[07:10] Property Management: Fully automated, 100% customizable with parameters.
[09:42] Plug-n-Play Integrations: Change anything, anywhere with the TripAngle system.
[14:13] Why Rick prefers property management companies more than property owners.
[17:08] Software Learning Curve/Support: People know how to list their properties.
[19:22] DoorGrowShow Listeners: Try TripAngle by using representative ID code - 2167.
“How do we lower the cost of vacations? What we came up with is eliminating the overhead to the owners completely and lowering the cost of their travelers significantly.”
“We built tools for the owners to be able to rent their properties easier, more efficiently.”
“We’re the only site that can guarantee no double bookings because of the way we built our system. It’s just much easier to use.”
“We’re just growing everybody’s company. That’s all we care about is growing the owners’ rentals.”
Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you 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.
My guest today, I am hanging out with Rick Bennett. Rick, welcome.
Rick: How are you today?
Jason: I'm doing fantastic so I'm really excited to have you here. We haven't had a lot of guests talking about the short-term rental space and the vacation rental space. A lot of property managers are getting into this. It's becoming really hot. We've got shows on Netflix about it now. Everybody is abuzz with this market. Lots of investors want to get into this space. Property managers, even in the long-term space—if they are in coastal areas or have really popular destinations—have vacation rentals they are also managing and dealing with.
You've been an expert in that industry for a while. Why don't you give us a little bit of background on you, how you got started with this, and then we can hear more about Booking With Ease, TripAngle, and all these cool things that you've got going on.
Rick: The reason we started this whole business plan is because my mom passed away when I was younger. One of the last things she told me was that she wishes she could have traveled more often, but it was so expensive. The reason she mentioned that is she had a really good job, and they flew her everywhere. But to include me, her son, who she wanted to bring me to several places—she took me to Philadelphia, Boston, you name it—it would cost her the full price to bring me. Her company paid for her.
I remember pretty much every time she would tell me man, I would love to take you to Charleston. I just can't. She was very apologetic. That's one of the last things she tells me. She wishes she could have travelled more often.
Our thought process was how do we lower the cost of vacations? What we came up with is eliminating the overhead to the owners completely and lowering the cost of their travelers significantly. We came up with TripAngle. TripAngle actually merged with a company called Keys to the House that's been around for over 25 years. We've been in the industry forever.
We built it from the ground up. We have our own MailChimp, and we built tools for the owners to be able to rent their properties easier, more efficiently, and once again, lower their overhead big time.
When you rent through some of the big boys online with the vacation rental listing sites, it can be quite costly. The reason being is they keep outbidding each other to buy the top spots. What we do is we grow organically. We spread by word of mouth because everybody loves to tell everybody the money that they're saving. We work in conjunction with everybody else. It's a way to just gain more exposure for their short-term rentals.
Some of our customers use our features, some don't. We offer free accounting and scheduling for cleanings. We even have where instead of putting our business on all the receipts, you can upload your logo, and all emails sent to your customers have your logo on them. It looks more professional. It's to grow your rental business. We just grow by word of mouth, and we love saving all of our owners' and customers' money
Jason: People can white-label this. People can use your tools and services. They're going to save a lot of money versus using these systems that have been a monopoly (it seems like) to some degree. You've got Vrbo. You've got the HomeAway things. You've got Airbnb, of course. How do you stand out in this market of all these big guns? Why would property managers be inclined to leverage and use your system instead of these big networks?
Rick: They can use them in conjunction with it. It works well. It keeps the calendars in tune. We're the only site that can guarantee no double bookings because of the way we built our system. It's just much easier to use.
What happens is people will sign up with us. They'll use other people mainly. They'll use us a small percentage, but they'll use us. Once they start seeing how much money their customers have saved and how easy it does everything for them, they start transferring everything over to us.
We just had a lady sign up with us. Vrbo upped her booking fee to $470. Using our system, on average, her booking fees are about $100. What's neat about that is she makes $20 extra, meaning it's 100% customizable per property. She added the dollar amount. Some people add a percentage amount.
Jason: So you can add your own markup.
Rick: To the processing fee, right. Her customers went from Vrbo paying $470, and now, they're paying $100–$120 and she makes $20 every booking on top of that in addition to saving the customers $300 a pop. Not to mention that Vrbo also charges her to rent it out. They charge a percentage and things of that nature.
Most of our owners collect their own income, their own credit cards. If they collect, our services are 100% free.
Jason: Okay. For those listening that are property managers, they can do this and act as the owner for and on behalf of their owner-clients and do the same thing.
Rick: Absolutely. Property managers, condo complexes. We've helped a lot of people basically get out of the restraints of property management.
I spoke to a town in Texas just recently. They just signed up with us, but the woman told me that they only have the same three property management companies. They've gone through that list about five times because they'll pop somebody, get tired of it, fire them, and go to the next guy, but that's all they have access to.
Now, with our system, it does everything for them. It's fully automated. Once you set up your parameters, it's 100% customizable, meaning some of our owners collect $1 amount at the time of reservation. You can set it up per listing. Others collect a percentage of the rental. Some of them charge the remaining balance—which it does automatically through our system once you set that parameter—two days prior to a guest's arrival. Others have it 60 days prior to the guests' arrival. Just whatever it is, it'll run automatically.
Somebody lists with us. They say, put $20 down, they'll make $20 extra every reservation, and their customers are saving quite a bit of money. Another thing that they save money on is through Vrbo and Airbnb, they charge $60–$65 for $1500 worth of damage protection on their property. We sell $39 for $3000 worth of coverage. We make sure that all of our owners are covered. We built this to grow the owners' companies.
They can add as many fields as they wish. The way it works is let's say they put it in there and say, run the remaining amount 10 days prior to the arrival. Let's say they put 50% down at the time of reservation. When somebody books that, that amount will charge for 50% down. It will shoot them a receipt with their logo on the top and check-in instructions with their logo on the top. Nothing to do with us.
Ten days prior to the arrival—if that's the parameter they set—it'll run it in full, it'll schedule it to be cleaned, and it'll alert the cleaners. The cleaners even have it color-coded, knowing if there's an out and in that day. They can make notes. All those notes are sent back to the owners once they're cleaned.
Whenever it runs it in full, it'll send them all that info. Two days prior to their arrival, it will send them again that receipt showing paid and check-in instructions because some people make a booking a year ahead of time. Then, a couple of days before, they'll get reminded, this is how you check-in. Our customers can do anything they need. Sometimes, somebody will say, hey, can you send me that receipt again? All they have to do is log in to our website and send it back to them.
Another great feature is if they collect their own credit cards, more than likely, they use a company called Authorize.Net. All Authorized.Net is just an online credit card machine. That's it. Whenever people go to log in Authorize.Net, they make you change your login all the time. It can be somewhat frustrating. Through our system, they never have to log in to Authorize.Net. They can refund, they can charge extra, they can do everything through our system.
We're integrated with RemoteLock. We're integrated with Authorized.Net. We just helped integrate BookingPal, Vacasa. We've got some big tentacles out there, and we're just growing everybody's company. That's all we care about is growing the owners' rentals.
Jason: Awesome. For those listening, a lot of property managers who hear this will go, wow, that sounds really great. Maybe it'll replace me. Maybe you could touch on that. Is this something that the property managers listening to this could use for and on behalf of their owners to be really effective, have better tools, better pricing, and maybe be a better profit center for them?
Rick: We have a ton of property managers that use us. What it's done is it helped them eliminate more than half of their staff. It really helps do that. We do hate that a lot of people are getting let go, but it helps make the owners more money. That's what it's all about.
Jason: Business owners, I don't think, would be sad to hear that they can't. They don't need as much staff. Staffing is always the most expensive resource in a business generally, so every business owner would be happy to hear that they can operate with less staff.
That doesn't mean they're just going to fire everybody, but maybe it means they now can afford to spend more on acquiring more properties to manage, doing more marketing, and shifting their team members' efforts towards building the business up instead of just trying to deal with what's coming in.
Rick: We just talked to an owner in Texas that signed up with us not that long ago. This was about a year ago. I remember her specifically saying—and it blew me away—how her property management company at the time used software, meaning that if anybody made a change to a reservation or anything, she would have to go to the office to make everything. From our system, you can change it from your cell phone, tablet, or computer—you can change it from anywhere.
We've taken as much out of the owner's hands as possible. Let's say they have it where it charges 10 days prior to their arrival. It'll schedule it to be cleaned. It'll do all that stuff. Let's say somebody calls and says, hey, I want to change my dates or change my condo or home. You can change it in our system with just one click of a mouse. It'll change the cleaning for them. It'll change the calendars on both their properties. It does absolutely everything for them. It's really a simple tool to use.
Another great feature is we have search by availability for owners' websites where it will only go through their rentals. We offer rate tables, calendars, custom-built widgets for owners' websites to more efficiently run their rentals, and tape charts.
Jason: Rick, let me clarify some of this for those listening. Most of my property management clients and property management business owners refer to their clients as owners. I just want to make sure for those listening, it sounds like what you're saying is when you're saying owners, you're talking about the business owners really. It could be the property manager or the direct owner of the property, but you're talking about the business owner.
These business owners have these tools available for them to integrate your system with their website for bookings, to manage their business, to send out white-label emails with their own branding on it—all this stuff.
Rick: Yeah. Mailchimp can send specials to everybody they've been with, but as far as the clients go, property management companies love using us. They've been able to grow their businesses and like I said, cut their costs. It's a very simple tool to just plug and play. We've helped a lot of property management companies really get over the hill, so to speak.
Jason: You showed me around a bit and had me take a look at stuff. My feedback was initially, it's not the sexiest, prettiest thing, but it sounds like it does everything. It has lots of bells and whistles. You guys have put a lot more attention on the backend, on integrations, on features, and really, it's very client-centric. It sounds like your business is really taking care of your customers and making sure you're building the best product that can do a lot of cool stuff.
My feedback to those who are listening to this is give it a check out, take a look at it, and don't judge the book by its cover. Really get into the features and the benefits that could be really beneficial for your business.
Rick, what are some of the biggest questions that a property manager who has never used your system? You're selling to them, what are some of the biggest questions that they’re concerned about or they want to know?
Rick: We prefer property management companies as opposed to individual owners. We serve everybody. We have tons of different clients. But if an individual owner comes to us, they have one property, two properties, we answer those questions. Once they've asked those questions, they know how to use the system so we don't ever have to hear from them again. We prefer a property management company with 500 properties asking those 1 or 2 questions and then learning the whole system. They're off and running 500 properties as opposed to 1 or 2.
It's fully accountable. It's 100% customizable per property. If you put 10 properties on our website and you wanted all 10 properties' money to go to a different account for each rental, we have that option available to you. You can set it up per rental.
We have it to where some you charge tax, some you don't. We even have features in Florida, if they stay 180 days or longer, it's considered a homestead. If you book a rental for four months, you have to pay taxes on those four months. Those taxes are usually about 17%, 18%, 19%.
In Texas, it's 30 days. If they stay 30 days or longer, it's a homestead, so there are no taxes. Whenever they set it up with us, they could say, I want to set up city tax at 7%, hotel tax at 6%, convention center at 2%, and only charge if they stay 29 days or less. If they stay 30 days or more, don't charge taxes.
It automatically does the calculation for them. It does it all right there. They book it, they get sent their receipts, and it really helps our owners out because they see where the taxes need to go. It's all itemized right there. They can edit their spreadsheets on our system. Some pay for extra cable, and some like to add in their homeowners' dues. It's just got every feature you could think about.
Another great tool for our property management companies—I'd say 70% use the tool this way, whereas 30% use it this way. Some of them, the 30%, make it to where their owners can change things. I have an owner in Virginia that has a property in Florida. They may want to change some pictures on their listing or they may want to change the cost of the property. They can log in themselves through TripAngle, edit that one property, and it will change it on the property management company. That's about 30% of our property managers.
The 70% don't like them being able to touch anything, and that's understandable. They could show everything through there. But once again, we made our entire system 100% customizable for whatever their requests are.
Jason: Usually, with software that has so many options, features, levers, and buttons, it gets a little bit confusing. How steep is the learning curve? What's the support process like in terms of getting onboarded?
Rick: The support is we will hold your hand and walk you through everything. People know how to list their properties. They've done it on Vrbo and on Airbnb so they know how to do all these things. We get very few questions. We should probably get more questions, but people seem to figure it out pretty easily. But people will cancel their reservation. They will change.
Our system would be 100% automated if it wasn't for this, but since people do change and they'll call, we'll show them how to click a button or two on our website, and they've got it. You've got a section for all active listings.
We even have a feature if you want to set it up to approve the booking. Some people have their property listed on so many different websites. They don't even really know how much they have it listed on so they don't like to take the instant booking, which I understand because it could have already been booked and you just didn't think to put it on there.
Our calendars will stay booked. If you have it synced with Airbnb or Vrbo, it will stay in tune. But a lot of people don't like to use calendars on any of them, and they like to approve a booking. A booking will come in, and they have 24 hours to approve it. I'd say 90% of the bookings that come in are approved by our owners.
Once again, they can just make it as customizable as they want, but it's really easy to use. It's really simple. It's all about keeping it simple, stupid. We learned that a long time ago and man did we not make it easy getting to that point through professionalism and luck. We have some partners that can do anything. Our team has really been on top of the ball in just putting everything together. If there are ever any questions or any problems, we fix it within hours. We don't have any.
Jason: This sounds really great. How can people get started with this? How can they find out more? What would be the next step for those that are curious of taking this for a test drive or maybe taking a look at it?
Rick: What they can do is they can go to either one of our websites, bookingwithease.com. You can look at our features. It just answers some of your questions, the general information of every company. It gives you links to be able to click on where it'll divert you over to TripAngle and you could sign up. It's free to sign up.
Once you sign up, we recommend putting a RepID number. You had a RepID number for us because I wanted to have a RepID number in there to make sure that the people from DoorGrow get taken care of. What was that RepID number again?
Jason: Rick, had me set up an affiliate code or a RepID number. My representative number is 2167. I guess if they go in once they're going through the registration on tripangle.com, towards the bottom, there'll be a representative number. If you put in 2167, Rick's going to do some special for you, some discount or something like that.
Rick: Absolutely, yeah. We take care of all of our customers. We'd be happy to reach out to them once they put in that representative ID number. That's how we've grown our business is word of mouth. Most people like to tell others of the great deal that they found. Once they realize what they make on it, they love it. We pay 10% of what we earn. We're doing strength by numbers.
The reason our numbers are so low compared to everybody else is because they're trying to compete with each other. We're doing it organically through each other's websites and spreading by word of mouth.
As people sign up with us—let's say somebody enters in the 2167 under you, what that will do is on your dashboard, you'll be able to see who's signing up, what bookings are coming through, and all that good stuff. When you have a customer sign up through DoorGrow, they go in there, they sign up, they can agree to our affiliate program—just like you did—they'll be assigned a number, they can tell their neighbor to go sign up, and they'll get 10% of every bit of our earnings per property.
Jason: Very cool. They can go to bookingwithease.com which also links to tripangle.com where they would register. They can also just go to tripangle.com to check that out. Cool.
Rick, before we wrap this up, is there anything else you feel like a property manager should know regarding TripAngle?
Rick: They're in the process of uploading all of them, but we just signed about 3000 properties in Colorado where I know for a fact that they're offering it through an affiliate either breckenridgelodging.com or mountainskitrips.com. If you go to those websites, it'll have our link to be able to book their rentals. You can pick out their rentals, but they're offering 15% off right now for the first month. They just signed up with us.
Any properties you find in Colorado on our website should be through those companies—Breckenridge Lodging or Mountain Ski Trips. They're offering 15% off right now on top of their already lower rate.
Just to give a quick example, I spoke with a lady the other day from Airbnb. She was a traveling nurse. She asked if she could book one of our rentals. She said she could only afford $1400. If she would have booked directly through TripAngle, it was $1275. She would have booked for less. But through Airbnb, you can't really discuss information until after the reservation's made.
I went in there and I adjusted it to where she should have been at the $1400 range. I told her. I said we did the $1400. I don't know what they charge. She looked at it and she said, I'll never use them again. She wanted to book it for four months.
They were charging her $2350 a month, meaning they were making $950 a month to use our system when I'm the owner and I'm only making $1400. That doesn't seem like it's the right thing there. If they would have charged (say) $950 upfront, maybe a one-time fee, even that is too high if you ask me. But that's the point. The cost of vacations has definitely skyrocketed since Airbnb has been introduced. We're here to get owners more exposure. They use us in conjunction with Airbnb.
The one woman I just told you about from Vrbo for $470, she stopped using them quite some time ago. Airbnb can be fun. Let me tell you that. That can be exhausting at times. I feel that Airbnb has taken a lot of control out of the owners' hands—a lot of it. Our system gives owners 100% control over their listings. If they want to go in and do anything through our system, they can do it.
I had a woman who, through Airbnb, booked for September 20th because I had somebody checking out on September 20th. She let me know just now that she actually has to be here on October 18th. She thought she booked it on the 18th, so I went to the Airbnb to switch it out.
It wouldn't let me change anything. It was the most difficult process to get her. What I finally did was she agreed to pay me cash when she shows up. There shouldn't be anything like that on Airbnb. With our system, you can adjust the rate. You can adjust everything. You can offer percentages for discounts.
One thing that a customer of ours just brought to our attention that they absolutely loved is they have over 2000 rentals. They use another website, but they have to go through on all 2000 rentals to add a discount for that rental. We offer—where you can do that—a master discount so it goes immediately on all 2000 of their rentals. That's so much easier.
Jason: Yeah. Rick, I'm sure you could probably tell us features. You just spout these off the top of your head, but you could probably go on for an hour just telling us all the features and benefits of this. It sounds really awesome. Again, I recommend everybody to check it out. Go to tripangle.com or bookingwithease.com, and take a look at that.
Rick, I appreciate you coming on and sharing this with us. I think it's cool. I'm excited to expose my audience to this. They're always looking for some cool hack or something that might keep more money in their pocket. I hope your continued success against these companies.
Rick: One quick thing I do want to say—and this is all thanks to you—is I do love how you're a straight shooter. Love it. You told us that our logo on TripAngle was awful. I don't know if you know this, but I worked with your team, and they developed it.
My business partners and I were cramming, collaborating, and all over the place. What logo that we came up with doesn't even hold a candle to what you all came up with. I even gave your team specific instructions envisioning in a certain way. What they did was 100 times better. I'm so glad they really didn't listen to me because I was wrong. If you go to TripAngle right now, you can see that new logo. There's one at the top and at the bottom.
Jason: I like it.
Rick: That came from you guys.
Jason: Yeah. My team does good work. That's really cool.
Rick: They do great work.
Jason: I appreciate you being open to feedback. I'm a little rough but hey, if I see a business owner that has something cool but there's something on the surface that would be super easy to fix that would make business easier, I'm going to call it out. That's what I do. Kudos for taking some advice from me. Sometimes it's not comfortable to be told your kid's ugly, so to speak. They need plastic surgery.
Rick: Right. That's why they have braces.
Jason: Awesome. Cool. I appreciate the little plug for my brand-new team. Rick, I'll let you go. I appreciate you coming on the show. I'm excited to see what you do.
Rick: Absolutely. Thank you so much. I look forward to growing with you guys.
Jason: Awesome. If you have a crappy logo, you're not really proud of your brand or how things look, you are being perceived falsely as mainly a real estate company, but you do property management, or there's something off with your branding, let us teach you how to clean that up. Let us help you clean that up.
We've rebranded hundreds of companies. We are the world's leading property management, branding, and web design agency in existence. Nobody else has probably rebranded more companies in the property management space than us. Nobody else has designed more property management logos than we have. We've done hundreds and hundreds.
Reach out to us. We'd love to help you out. We're always excited to help clean up businesses. The level of growth they see before and after we rebrand, clean up their website, and get their pricing and everything in alignment are always far more profitable and the business comes far more easily. You don't realize what leaks you have until they're no longer there sometimes.
Reach out. Check us out at doorgrow.com. As always, if you want to join our community, it's free online. Go to doorgrowclub.com and join our Facebook community. We'd love to have you there.
If you're interested in growing your business, reach out. We have an awesome mastermind program. We've got over 70 businesses in it, and they are having phenomenal results. We're really enjoying coaching and mentoring these clients, and helping them move their business forward.
We have three paths we focus on: we focus on growth and adding doors, we focus on scaling it and figuring out operations, processes, hiring, systems, all that, and then we also have our seed program which is all about the ultimate foundation, branding, website—everything on the frontend sales pipeline of the business.
Once you have all three of these things dialed in, you'll have a very profitable company. You'll be outpacing your competition, you will look like the best in your market, and you'll probably be the best. Anyway, that's it. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.
What is a BDM? How do I pay a BDM? Why call them a BDM and not a salesperson in a property management business? Why do I need to make sure a BDM has the right personality type and how do I onboard them correctly?
Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks all about BDMs. If you do all the vetting right, then the real challenge is supporting and training them to be successful.
[01:42] What is a BDM? It's a Business Development Manager.
[01:46] Why a BDM and not a salesperson? Sales gets convoluted or confused.
[02:00] Why? Most of you do real estate and have a brokerage side to the business.
[02:50] Mistakes: Feedback from companies that help you find/place a BDM isn’t good.
[03:24] A business owner not good at sales or onboarding doesn’t give the right support.
[05:24] How can you properly support a BDM or salesperson? Know what works.
[06:02] How to pay BDMs: If you pay on commission, offer an initial bonus structure. [08:17] How to onboard BDMs: Start them as a sales assistant to double capacity.
[10:00] Motivate BDMs: Driven salespeople like money, give them part of commission.
[13:32] What sales is/isn’t: Once you start winning deals, sales becomes fun, not pushy.
“BDM is really just a fancy word for somebody that's supposed to help you grow your business, supposed to come in, supposed to do sales.”
“If you are not good at sales, my recommendation is you have to figure this out. This is one of the biggest key areas of the business.”
“I love seeing that shift in clients where they have the confidence that they know they can get pretty much anybody on if they want them because they're that good at sales.”
“It doesn't make sense to pay people based on commission unless the commission payout is big.”
Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker.
DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.
At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business 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.
What are we chatting about today? In continuing my series of doing this every Wednesday, we're going to be chatting today about BDMs. What is a BDM and how to pay them? This is a really common question I get, how do I pay a BDM? How should I pay them? So that I don't have to answer this question anymore, I'm going to make a podcast episode about it. Here we go.
First, what is a BDM? It's a Business Development Manager. Why do we use that term instead of a sales person in a property management business? Because a salesperson, or sales, or anything connected to that usually gets convoluted, or confused, or mixed up with brokerage because a lot of you also do real estate and have the brokerage side of your business.
I think what's happened over time is the industry has sort of adapted that a property management sales person is called a BDM. And we get that from the Australians. They seem to call them BDMs or Business Development Managers, and I think it's just so we don't get them mixed up with the real estate sales people or people that just do sales. On the real estate side, anything related to sales tends to be considered real estate. In the real estate industry, even if it's property management, it gets mixed up.
BDM is really just a fancy word for somebody that's supposed to help you grow your business, supposed to come in, supposed to do sales. There are a lot of mistakes I see people make. I have not heard good feedback on companies that help you find a BDM and place a BDM. I don't think it's those companies' fault, I don't think that it's their fault. They probably do find people with the right personality type, maybe they're on a DiSC profile, they're high D, high I, maybe they have an economic score on a value index on a DiSC, maybe they love doing sales, maybe they're good at sales.
I think what really ends up happening a lot of times is that a business owner is not good at sales which is why they're hiring them, or the business owner is not good at onboarding a sales person, which if you're not good at sales you're not going to be good on onboarding a sales person and giving them the right support that they need anyway.
Let's touch on that first. If you are not good at sales, my recommendation is you have to figure this out. This is one of the biggest key areas of the business. If you cannot generate revenue on demand, you cannot figure out how to bring in business, you need to figure that out. You don't have to do it forever, otherwise you need to bring in a partner into the business that is already an expert. Not just hiring some salesperson you're going to try to convert into a BDM. You're going to have to find somebody that successfully added hundreds of doors as a BDM into the business and partner with them or bring them in into your business. Otherwise, just getting a sales person, trying to turn them into a property management BDM is not going to be effective unless you know how to do it yourself.
My recommendation is put in the reps, take the time, become an expert at this and figure it out. If you struggle with that, I'm really good at helping people improve that area, get really good with that, and we do that in our program. It's awesome to see the transition of people going from, well, I'm not really super great at sales or my close rate isn't really high, to them saying what I typically hear is, I feel like I can get anybody on that I want so now I'm picky and I don't want everybody. That's a huge shift. I love seeing that shift in clients where they have the confidence that they know they can get pretty much everybody on if they want them because they're that good at sales.
I won't go into sales in detail on this podcast. We're not going to go into this episode into sales, but you need to make sure that you can properly support a BDM or sales person coming in. What does that mean? That means you know what works. You have successfully proven that you can bring on business, you have scripts, you have language, you have recordings of calls, you have examples to give them. They can shadow you. You know how to deal with all the different objections and challenges that tend to come up. If you have that, then maybe it's time to bring somebody else in.
There's another challenge. The other challenge is a lot of BDMs are expected to just get paid on commission. A lot of people say, how do you pay them? If you're expecting them to just get paid on commission, the challenge with that is you're basically expecting them to starve for the first onboarding period of the first 30, 60, 90 days if they're just purely commissioned.
You can have some sort of initial bonus structure that you're going to give them that they have to pay back maybe, but that puts them in the hole from the get-go and that can help them get over that hump initially. What I find is it doesn't make sense to pay people based on commission unless the commission payout is big. In real estate, it's pretty big for the amount of work that you do. That becomes really big.
You have a big payout so it's worth it to do all that work and stuff like that. In property management, commission is going to be smaller and if you're expecting the BDM to not just close, but you're expecting them to do the follow-up, the prospecting, the nurturing, and all this work, it doesn't get them paid on the front end. They only get paid when they close the deal. Then you're expecting them to just do all of this work that they don't get paid for when they really want to spend their time doing what they really get paid for.
You need to have a couple of options. If you're going to do commission only, my recommendation is they're just closers. That means you have lead generation, follow up, all that handled by somebody else. Or you bring them in and pay them a base that's based on them doing all of that follow-up, prospecting, and everything else based on that. Then there's a bonus or commissions structure, maybe a little less than if they are commission-only that's attached to the winning of a contract or getting on a client.
That is probably more ideal in most situations because then they're getting paid to do all of this work, to build up the sales pipeline, and then they do have that reward that they can get once they start getting business on and they're closing deals. That's going to be, generally in my opinion, a far more effective structure, is to have base plus salary.
Now how do you onboard them, how do you start them out, my recommendation is you take this BDM and you start them initially as a sales assistant. Just getting a sales assistant if you're currently the business owner and you're closing the deals, could double your close rate. It could double the amount of capacity that you have.
They're going to operate more like an appointment setter, then you're going to be the closer. Setter and closer allows you also to use an effective strategy that one of my mentors calls the double barrel close—which can be really effective—in which they comprise the closer, make them more important in the mind of the prospect, and help you increase the close rate. You're really going to love what Jason has to say once you get on a call with him. He'll be able to answer all the other questions, but first I need to make sure that you qualify to talk to Jason.
That's what a setter can do for you and it significantly increases your close rate, it increases your value in the mind of the prospect if they do that effectively and they can preframe some of these sales tactics; future pays, preframing, stuff like that.
Now, you start them as an appointment setter and that means they're just learning the CRM, they're doing all the follow up, they're helping you to schedule appointments, they're booking things on your Calendly, or whatever scheduling thing you do, then you can show up and close, close, close. It's going to increase your close rate. This helps them learn how the sales process works and they can eventually start shadowing you and listening in on those sales calls that they booked, being part of those, they can learn how you're doing it and they can get to the point where they then want to take those calls directly.
How do you motivate that? If they're a driven sales person and they like money, then the way that you do that is you're going to take your commission. My recommendation is you figure out a flat fee commission structure. Flat fee is generally better than a percentage for sales people, in my opinion, because it gives them something concrete. They know each door I get, I'm going to get X number of dollars.
Then you're going to take that commission structure and you're going to cut it in half maybe or even a third depending on how big that fee is going to be that you're going to pay them that commission. If you're going to pay them a half commission, for example, let's say you do 50%, they get 50% if they set and they get the other 50% if they close it.
If they're just setting, they will start out just getting a half commission. If they set them up really nicely and you're able to close the deal, then they get it. This gets them the incentive. Once they start to taste that and they get these commissions, if they are the right personality type to drip in, they like money, they're motivated by this, very quickly they will be pushing to get that second half of the commission.
What do I need to do to get that? What else do I have to learn? They're going to start asking questions. They're going to be very curious. You want them to be pulling to get more money from you and wanting to step into that. That shows that they're driven and they're the right personality type.
If you find that you're trying to push them into it and trying to move them along, hey, when are you going to be ready? It's been a few months now. You're ready to do the calls on your own? They're probably not the right personality type so maybe you didn't vet them correctly during the hiring process and looking at the DiSC profile, Myers Briggs, some of the things you might use to figure out if they're going to be the good fit naturally for this.
That's some of the stuff we chat on today's call with clients that are in my program. If you have questions about BDMs or things like that, join our program, happy to chat with you more or feel free to ask questions inside the DoorGrow Club. I'm sure a lot of people have experience in there at doorgrowclub.com about BDMs. In general, make sure they have the right personality type, make sure you are onboarding them correctly.
Now to point out, I had a client which I met today who fired a couple of his BDMs, but these were probably the first two he had hired. Usually, if a BDM isn't working out, most of the time it is because they weren't supported right. If you do all the vetting right, then the real challenge usually is because they weren't supported right. They didn't have scripts. They didn't have proven things that work. You weren't able to showcase that you knew how to do it and teach them how to close deals, be successful, deal with objections, and everything else.
They didn't really have a chance. They didn't have the right support plus the pay structure may not have been the way I described and may have not incentivized them correctly so they weren't really on boarded or supported correctly. That's what I've seen a lot of times with companies that go and hire a company to get them a BDM as the challenge.
Figure out how to do it, don't avoid it. It's something that once you get comfortable with that feels great, it doesn't feel uncomfortable anymore because once you start winning deals and getting on business, sales becomes fun.
Then you realize sales is not anything pushy. It's not anything unethical, whatever sort of mindsets you have around sales. Sales really is just about helping people see their problems accurately and then helping them see how you can help them. That's it. It's not about getting people to buy something they don't need or want. It's about getting them to buy the exact thing that they really need to help them solve their problem, and that's you. You're the solution to that.
Hopefully that's helpful. This will be a short episod today. Check out doorgrowclub.com if you want to join our Facebook free community and there are a lot of great property managers in there. They're willing to help out and answer questions.
If you want to take your business to the next level, start growing, start adding a lot of doors, having success, and you're ready to be challenged and take things to the next level, then reach out to us and we will give you access to a free training, my seven frameworks on how you can grow your property management business, and the things that are holding you back, why most companies suck in the industry, so that you are not the next sucky company, and you can be great too. Hopefully this is helpful, and until next time to our mutual growth, everyone. Bye, everybody.