Ever wondered what a Declaration of Independence document would look like for property management entrepreneurs? Jason did, so he fed ChatGBT his mission statement and core values.
Join property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull as they go through The Property Management Declaration of Independence.
[02:44] Article I: Liberation from Limiting Beliefs
[09:40] Article II: Autonomy from Bad Clients
[11:54] Article III: Emancipation from Inefficient Processes
[13:12] Article IV: Freedom of Experimentation
[20:26] Article V: Independence Through Education and Collaboration
[29:01] Article VI: Allegiance to Our Core Values
[31:36] Article VII: Pursuit of Holistic Success
“There's few things that will steal more of your sense of autonomy and freedom than bad clients.”
“If you have limiting beliefs, one of the best ways to get liberated from it is to just be around somebody that doesn't hold those same limiting beliefs for you.”
“If you say, "Oh, it won't work because of this and this and this." You are right.”
“If you have a shitty mindset, just know it will hold you back and you will only accomplish what you believe you can accomplish.”
[00:00:00] Sarah: if you believe that you have the knowledge and the ability and the resources to be able to figure out how to make the shifts that you need to have the business that you want and run it the way that you want, then it's absolutely possible.
[00:00:16] 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 in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust, gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO along with Sarah, the COO of DoorGrow. I know, I need to rewrite this intro for when you're here, because sometimes you're here-- and now let's get into the show. All right.
[00:01:24] Sarah: You stumble on that every time. So funny. I know. I have to like wing it. He's like in the middle of reading it. Okay. " And her over there."
[00:01:33] Jason: Let's get into this. All right, so it is Independence Day. It is the 4th of July in which United States declared its independence and fought for freedom, right? So we'regoing to be talking about property management entrepreneurs declaring your independence. So, this is something that I think is important because you've heard me talk before about the four reasons: fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support. Entrepreneurs, we want freedom. And so let's talk about a declaration of independence for property management entrepreneurs. So, I actually have been really having fun playing around with chat GPT and I gave it a bunch of info of how we kind of do things and our philosophy and I had it create a Declaration of Independence. So this should be interesting. So we can go through some of this and we can chat about some of these ideas. And does that sound good? All right.
[00:02:34] Sarah: Well, I guess so because that's what we're doing.
[00:02:36] Jason: Alright. This is what we're doing. She had no clue. She just walked in here. No, and I'm like, this is what we're talking about.
[00:02:42] Sarah: I just show up.
[00:02:44] Jason: She just shows up. Yeah. because she can do that. All right, cool. So, declaration of Independence for property management entrepreneurs. "In the spirit of entrepreneurial growth, the pursuit of freedom in the property management industry." We need to queue up like some patriotic music.
[00:03:02] Maybe. I'm just kidding, Madi, maybe you'll add that.
[00:03:05] "We, the United Community of Property Management entrepreneurs solemnly declare our independence from the constraints, inefficiencies, and setbacks that have bound us for too long. We assert our dedication to a brighter, more prosperous, and thriving future."
[00:03:20] "Article one, liberation from Limiting Beliefs." So one of the number one things before I read it. One of the number one things clients say that they get from us is mindset. It's just mindset shifts. because that changes everything of how they do things, how their business runs. All right, this is what it says.
[00:03:37] "We vow to liberate ourselves from self-limiting beliefs that hinder innovation and growth. We pledge to foster a growth mindset and no longer allow the words, 'I can't,' or 'it's not possible' to define our reality." So, what have you noticed about limiting beliefs with clients?
[00:03:55] Sarah: Well, I think whatever you think is possible is exactly what is possible. So if you think like, "oh, I can't do it that way," or "This won't work," or like, "oh, my team can't do this," or " I don't have the right tools," then you're absolutely right and it won't happen the way that you want it to or the way that it could. I think some of the biggest shifts I've seen in clients is when they open their mind to different possibilities and when they start to do things just a little differently.
[00:04:27] Jason: So most of our clients are pretty good at believing in us. I think we've gotten really good at convincing them through the sales process and once they get on board, we've got plenty, tons of case studies. But occasionally we get a client that comes in and they are skeptical about everything and maybe somehow they missed all the details during the onboarding and the sales process, and they don't believe. They have these limiting beliefs, "this stuff won't work." What do we notice in terms of results between those shitty clients and everyone else?
[00:05:00] Sarah: Well, first, I don't think it's fair to call them shitty clients.
[00:05:03] Jason: Okay. Maybe we don't. Shitty mindset clients.
[00:05:05] Yeah. I think it's fair to say
[00:05:06] Sarah: like, "Hey, your mindset is shitty." Yeah. And I get that like my mindset used to be completely different. Totally different. Like I grew up in a place , where. Anybody that was making a million dollars a year, like I just didn't know it. Like, I was like, "oh, like, Hollywood. That's like what happens there, like when you're famous and you're like, this is just what happens out there. Or like, maybe big cities but not here. And because they didn't have any kind of example or anything tangible to say like, "Hey, they did it so I can do it." I just didn't believe that it was possible. And when I got out of that area, and now I'm in an area where it's very entrepreneurial based and business friendly and people just have a different kind of thought process around here, and we spend a lot of time with people who they're elevated in their thinking. And now I'm like, "yeah, it's a hundred percent possible." Absolutely possible. So I think first is if you have a shitty mindset, just know it will hold you back and you will only accomplish what you believe you can accomplish. So if you think, "oh yeah, none of this stuff is going to work for me," and we've heard it all, like, "oh, my market is different," or like, "my team won't do that," or like, "oh yeah, my clients will never go for that," or like, "my tenants are different. My properties are different." And like all of the reasons, what they're doing is they're like giving us all of the reasons why it's not going to work for them. And they're correct on every single reason.
[00:06:39] If you say, "oh, it won't work because of this and this and this." You are right. What we need to do is like change your mindset to believe like, "Hey, this can work for me and it can work in my market and it can work with my team and it can work with my clients and it might mean that I need to make some shifts. It's not just going to be, "oh, I believe it and now it's true." we need to make a couple shifts and it can be true, but if you believe that you have the knowledge and the ability and the resources to be able to figure out how to make the shifts that you need to have the business that you want and run it the way that you want, then it's absolutely possible.
[00:07:18] Jason: Okay, so some clients come to us. We have quite a few actually, that they don't believe in themselves. And one of the things-- this is a confession on my part-- one of the things that I failed with clients in the past, because I couldn't see this-- is that sometimes clients come to us and they're lacking hope. They don't have belief in themselves, and my mindset at the time was, "well just do the stuff and you'll see that it works". And the clients that would do it, they would get results and it would work, and some clients just wouldn't put in effort. They'd say they did, but they would blame us and like stuff like this, and they don't realize it takes like three months to get something really well dialed in. So they'd try it for like a couple days. Right. So I think one of the things that I've realized since from some of my coaches and mentors is that, we as coaches get to believe and provide hope and faith into our clients that are lacking it.
[00:08:16] And so I think we're much better now at helping clients that lack that mindset and lack that belief and have limiting beliefs in themselves or even in like the strategies. If we give them enough belief, they still start to get results and that belief it rubs off on them. And so instead of blaming clients, I now take accountability more and say, "all right, I'm not giving them enough belief. I need to be more in their corner. I need to believe in them more." And I see them energetically change real time while on a Zoom call with them, like I just start feeding them belief like, "somebody else did this. You can do this too. They're not more special than you. They're not more charismatic. They're not better looking than you. They're not smarter than you. You know how to do property management. If they can do this stuff, you can do it too." I believe that I believe in them. And then they start to go, "wait, maybe he's right. Maybe I can do this." And then it starts to help their belief.
[00:09:16] And so I think if you have limiting beliefs, one of the best ways to get liberated from it is to just be around somebody that doesn't hold those same limiting beliefs for you. They believe in you. They believe in you. Do you believe in me?
[00:09:27] Sarah: Yeah. Of course. I believe in you.
[00:09:29] Jason: Sarah believes in me. I believe in her. Do you feel like I believe in you? Yeah. Yeah. So, and that creates momentum. That creates momentum. All right, let's go to the next one. Article two, autonomy from Bad Clients. "We assert our right to work with clients who respect and value our expertise. We shall not allow our business to be dominated by clients who undermine our values, ethics, or the standards of service we strive to provide."
[00:09:58] So this goes along with our concept I, this of the cycle of suck and not taking on bad clients, which--
[00:10:04] Sarah: we should give this to our clients. And just like--
[00:10:06] Jason: have them sign it? Yeah.
[00:10:07] Sarah: This is your new declaration. We're doing it.
[00:10:10] Jason: ChatGPT is really good if you give it good data, like garbage in, garbage out. Right? I know. So, yeah, I gave it our whole client avatar document. I gave it our DoorGrowShow manifesto. I gave it our client-centric mission statement, and then they give it all that and this is what it came up with. So it's pretty cool. Pretty good. So yeah, I think this is involved with, our previous episodes where we talked about the cycle of suck or not taking on bad clients, but yeah, you deserve, you have the right to choose who you work with that value, your expertise. Why would you tolerate anything less? This is your business. You can build it however you want. You can build it full of a bunch of clients that don't value you, or you can build it full of clients that share your values, your ethics, your standards, want you to be able to do your best job and are willing to pay you for it. Anything else we should say about that?
[00:11:03] Sarah: I think we covered this a lot in our program, but what's really nice is to see when clients start to make that shift for themselves. Like we've had a few clients say like, and it was very clear to me that this is not the client that I wanted to work with. So like, sometimes they turn it down, sometimes they just know like, Hey, if I get the deal then, I'll consider taking it on if it seems to be a decent enough fit. But like, this is not my ideal client, so I'm really just not going to put a lot of time and energy into this because I can see like, this is just not what I'm looking for.
[00:11:38] Jason: Autonomy from bad clients. I mean, really there's few things that will steal more of your sense of autonomy and freedom than bad clients. I mean, that's a real strong thief, so you deserve freedom from that. Declare your independence from bad clients.
[00:11:54] All right, article number three, emancipation from inefficient processes. "We declare to free ourselves from inefficient, archaic, and time consuming processes. We will actively seek, implement, and embrace technology and systems that streamline our operations, enhance productivity, and allow us to serve our clients better."
[00:12:16] Sarah: Like that. These are these shifts. We got to make some shifts. If you're expecting your business to just change overnight and without really changing anything in it, then it's like, the definition of insanity. Like we're doing the same thing over and over, but we're expecting different results.
[00:12:35] Jason: Yeah. We've got a lot of software tools and tech that we use with clients to facilitate them having a greater sense of freedom and emancipation from inefficient processes. So yeah, technology can help with that. Okay.
[00:12:52] Sarah: Well, so can a great team though. Yes. Not everything needs to be technology because I've seen property management companies that they're like," we just rely on technology," and like humans are very rarely involved and it just doesn't work the way that they want it to work.
[00:13:07] Jason: Systems, right? Systems. Yeah. Building systems. Okay.
[00:13:12] Article four, Roman numeral iv. Okay. Freedom of Experimentation. "We recognize our freedom to experiment with new approaches and marketing strategies. We will not be shackled by "this is how it's always been done," shall embrace the diverse, evolving landscape of our industry." So I think innovation is a big part of what we focus on at DoorGrow. We're always like adding new things and coming up with new ideas and pulling in the best ideas from our clients that are also working towards innovating and making a difference. And I think innovation comes from. Innovation. And so as our clients are doing these new ideas and these new things, they're seeing little ways to improve. because that's what entrepreneurs do. Like, Hey, we could do this, we could do that. And so, and us sitting on top with a bird's eye view of all these clients that are doing all of these things that we've helped to bring to the industry or to innovate, they're also helping us to make this better for everybody else as well.
[00:14:16] And so this innovation incubation system that we've created at DoorGrow is pretty powerful, I think. So, I mean, just some of the ideas that some of our clients have presented at some of our conferences have been pretty awesome, so, yeah. All right. Yeah. Anything else about that?
[00:14:32] Sarah: I think the only other thing I would add is like, the way that we implement things in our business. because we just move so fast. Yeah. Like Jason and I, we don't like to waste time. We don't, him and haw, we're not like, oh, is this the right decision? Like, what do we do? I don't know. Let's take like four months and figure it out. We see something, we make a change and we're like, let's just do it. And if it's the wrong thing, then we'll undo it because we'll see it very quickly. But we take action really quickly. We just went through our annual planning and from just one year. Our business is completely different. Like our model is different, our coaching is different, like what we offer is different.
[00:15:10] Totally. Like literally every piece of it is completely different. It was like we took our old business model and we just blew it up and we were like, Hey, how can we make this like 20 times better? Yeah. And we did it. And we did it all in less than one year. So it was so funny because when we were going through, we start off with wins, we're like, Hey, what wins do we have from the last year? And it was like, we had so many wins. Like, it's like hard to even think like, Hey, remember a year ago when our business was like this? So what's nice about that is we get to pull up like what the business looked like last year in the system. We were like, oh yeah, we totally forgot because it was so long ago to us. We're like, oh God, I like totally forgot it used to be like that. We used to do things like this, and these are all of the things that we changed or improved or added in order to make things that much better. And I think just being able to like add a new piece or do things a little bit differently is something that sometimes doesn't feel super comfortable for people because they're so worried about like, is this the right decision?
[00:16:14] And it might not be. It might not be the right decision, but the inaction will keep you like tethered to the ground for a really long time. So if we just worry all the time like, oh, I don't want to do it because I just don't know if it's the right thing, you are never going to know if it's the right thing. Unfortunately, like no one makes a crystal ball yet. We don't have like the answer to predict the future at this point in time. So sometimes you just have to make the leap and guess and know that if you make the leap and it's the wrong one, we can always change it because your business should be this like ever evolving, ever changing thing. It shouldn't be like this stagnant old like pond, with like murky water that never gets any movement.
[00:17:00] Jason: So, I think one of the things that has facilitated the speed and the innovation and the experimentation, which is the Article four that we're talking about, is DoorGrow OS, like having this really strong planning system, which you mentioned we just did annual, quarterly, monthly, and weekly planning. We did it all in a week. It was like planning week. So this planning system, really, and not all technology is software. Not all technology is software. This is a piece of technology, which there is a software aspect to it, but really the technology of this is this system that of planning that we're able to create this cadence of momentum in the business that gets everyone on the team moving it forward.
[00:17:51] It's probably the most important system we have in our business. It creates our culture, it creates our business, it creates our results. It creates an immense amount of speed. No one can keep up with the level of changes like Sarah's saying, if you worked with DoorGrow in the past, like three years ago, or even one year ago. Even one year ago.
[00:18:10] Sarah: If you were a client with us like one year ago, yeah, you have no, is not, you have no idea what DoorGrow is now because it's just so different.
[00:18:18] Jason: This is like a newer. Way more improved company and clients that worked with us maybe five years ago or maybe even 10 years ago. They have no clue what DoorGrow is even about or what we do anymore. It's even one year ago transformed so much one year in what we do. It's like, so it's so very different. Totally.
[00:18:36] Sarah: One year ago we had one program that was it. Like we had one program and we had like a baby scale program with like a little bit in it. But it's really flourished. So now we have like three different three different programs and like so many things that are available that we just didn't, we didn't have at all before.
[00:18:57] Jason: Now you said we don't have a crystal ball, but if there was something that was as close as you could get to a crystal ball, it would be having a planning system like DoorGrow OS because we are creating the future. We map it out and there's a super high likelihood we're going to achieve it because of how it's all broken down. And it creates predictable results. Like we consistently are able to scale our revenue, scale our programs, and get the things done that we want to do at a really high pace. And we're able to create predictable results we can, we create and see the future. A of entrepreneurs have a vision of the future and they try and throw that vision to their team, like a grenade with a pin pulled. And the team are like, what? What? Okay. Sure. And then they teach. A lot of entrepreneurs don't have a good system like this, and so they teach their team to lose.
[00:19:44] They're like, Hey, we're going to hit this great goal this month, and then they don't. And they're teaching their team to be comfortable with losing, and they get more and more comfortable with failure. Our team's pretty comfortable with winning, right? Yeah. Like if we don't hit an objective, something major happened. Like painful. Yeah. Something major happened. Yeah. And so our team are used to winning and we win early. We set goals and we hit them usually early. Is the goal. DoorGrowOS is one of the systems we in help clients install. This planning system better than EOS, better than traction, better than whatever else you've, like, experimented with. You'll get far bigger results from your team and you'll get a lot more momentum and money.
[00:20:26] All right, so let's go to article number five. Article five. Independence through Education and Collaboration. This is something we are a big part of that we believe in.
[00:20:37] "We commit to continual learning and collaboration, understanding that our strength lies in the collective wisdom of our community. We pledge to share insights, strategies, and experiences with our fellow property management entrepreneurs for the greater good of the industry."
[00:20:54] A lot of people are worried about the competition and they don't want to share their ideas. Yes. And how small is their thinking?
[00:21:01] Sarah: Oh yeah, I know. There was somebody just yesterday that said, "oh my God, like, this is such an amazing program. And like I, I've been part of multiple coaching programs on the real estate side and this blows all of those out of the water. Obviously we're focused on property management, but he's like, this blows all of this out of the water." And he is like, "I just hope that my competitors don't find out about this and start using you guys because that would be really bad for me." And like, I get it. I do, I understand it. Because--
[00:21:30] Jason: this is a new client.
[00:21:32] Sarah: Yes. Yeah, he's newer. They'll figure it out. Yeah. He's newer. So I get it because I used to think that too, like, oh God. Like it's like that we have to have like this abundance mindset, like a, there's always enough to go around. And b, we say it like a rising tide raises all ships. So if you are like, oh, I can't, like, I can't tell my secrets to my competitors.
[00:21:55] I must keep everything like you, I'm not telling you anything that you do. I, and I used to be, I used to be like that. So I, I do understand it because I used to be like, I'm not telling anybody what I do. Like you do what you do and I'm justgoing to do what I do, and you don't need to worry about what I'm doing over here. And I've gotten out of that just because. My mindset has changed. And I realize there's so much more than like our brains can even fathom. If you think, hey, like I can make, a hundred thousand dollars a year and this is what my business can look like, there's more to be had and there's always more like to go around. If you're like, Hey, I know I can do a hundred thousand. I feel like I'm in the mindset where I could do two 50 or 500 or a million dollars a year. I can have multiple locations. Like I can just keep acquiring businesses. I can grow and grow. with a client this week that has 1300 doors. Let's pause there for a second, because a lot of times, 1300 doors is really hard to even get to, and most property managers don't even reach that level. And he's at 1300 doors and he goes, I haven't even like made a dent. Like I haven't, I'm just a drop in the bucket. Of where I want to go and where I want to be. Why is that? Because his mindset is open. Like he's opened his mind to realize there is, there's more if we think of it like this, like, hey, You are just like this tiny little pinpoint on the map because when we expand out, it's like, here's me and my business.
[00:23:26] But if we expand out, you are in an entire like city. We expand out more. You're in an entire state. We expand out more. You're in an entire country. We expand out more like we're in an entire planet. If we just keep going and going, like, the universe is just so infinite. And if you're, sometimes it's just so hard to conceptualize because your brain is like this is what I'm doing and like, this is what I can see, touch, and feel around me.
[00:23:53] But if you, once you realize like, Hey, there is always, there's always more. You're not going to worry about what your competitors do. Not at all. You're not even going to be concerned. Like, I don't really care what Johnny's doing down the street. He could do all of the same things that I do, and I'm just not worried about it because I know that there's so much abundance to go around that I'm, I don't care what he is doing.
[00:24:17] Jason: So when your vision is small, you see the competition. When your vision's bigger, you see a lot more opportunity. And we really try and push the idea mindset wise and with our clients and here on the podcast, collaboration over competition, right? When we get our clients collaborating, like we just talked about before, innovation starts to happen, the whole industry can move forward.
[00:24:42] Two thirds are self-managing, there's like 70% or so that are self-managing. There's no scarcity in this industry. If you feel like there's scarcity. And it's because you're playing a game that is not very winnable. You're probably doing the wrong things to try and grow. If it feels scarce, get with us and we'll help you see bigger opportunities.
[00:25:02] So once we get clients in our system and they're focused on adding doors, and they start adding doors, and they start to do this in the blue ocean, instead of doing it in the red, ugly bloody water through SEO or pay per click or content marketing or social media marketing or pay per lead services. They realize there's plenty of business. It's not hard to grow, and they become completely like, like, it's like not even paying attention to, or not even caring about their competition. Yeah. They're like, they're so busy adding doors and making money and trying to get their own stuff together to be able to handle the growth.
[00:25:37] They're not even paying attention anymore to the competition.
[00:25:40] Sarah: Exactly. Like Mike with a 1300 doors seat, like no. Never ever at that, like at any point in our conversation did he say like, oh, but I'm like, I can't do this because this person. Never, like he, he's worried about what he's doing. He is like on this one track, and he is like, this is my mission and this is what I need to do and this is where I'm going. And I don't care about anything else. Like, I don't care about anything else around me when, like, they put blinders on the horse, right? We've got to put our blinders on and just run towards that goal as fast as we can. You don't care about what's going on over here or over here. You just get to the point where it's completely insignificant.
[00:26:21] Even our smallest clients, once they get into momentum of growth and they see how easy growth can be, I mean, it takes work, but once they see that it's super doable and it's repeatable and they're adding doors like crazy, that goes away. Like I think there's always a competitive nature in our clients, and I like to leverage that in the beginning. So I, in some of my content in trainings, I'm like, Hey, if you want to crush your competition, do this or do it this way, or do this. And that brings out that competitive entrepreneurial side of themselves. But once they start getting into it, our challenge sometimes might be with some clients they like lose the drive because they start to see this is not so hard.
[00:26:58] But hopefully they get inspired and excited to like, take things to the next level. Right. Okay.
[00:27:03] I don't think they so much lose drive. I think it's just that it's shifted. It's a like you versus me. Versus like, I'm just doing what I'm doing. It's me versus me now. And that, like, that's happened with me in my business a couple times where like I'm like, oh, it's me versus my competition.
[00:27:21] Like it's me versus that guy down the street. It's me versus like every other like management company and my area. And it's not, it's only me versus me. I have to outdo what I did yesterday or last year or last month. Like it's it just changes because you start playing a game with yourself instead of trying to worry about like, I'm, I've got to beat you.
[00:27:44] Jason: Well, your power and achievement. So this all makes a lot of sense, hearing how you think, but some of our clients are not, and like one of our clients like Mark and Brandon, they had gotten to a point, they'd been adding doors and then they got comfortable and they were like, and I think what happens is they had this big goal to like leave their day jobs and get a bunch of doors and they did that and then they were like, well, then they lost a little bit of steam. So I think what happens with a lot of entrepreneurs is we have this away motivator. Like we're trying to get away from something. We want to get away from a job we don't like, or we want to get away from scarcity or starving or whatever. Right? We have this, we're trying to run away from this saber tooth tiger that's chasing after us each month, and then we have to shift towards some sort of toward motivator.
[00:28:31] So with them in my coaching call, I had to like help them identify what is? We talked about their why, which is their personal why, which is something that we get into deeply with clients and each of their, what they want. And how do we connect their why to the business now? Like what do they want more of or what do they want to move towards? And so that kind of lit them up again. And so we have to find that toward motivator. And we've gotten off track the education and collaboration, but, all right, but that's the idea. All right, so let's go to Article six vi. All right. Allegiance to our core values. "We affirm our allegiance to the core values that guide our business. We will strive to uphold integrity, transparency, excellence, and client centricity in all our operations, and we shall not waver in times of adversity." I love the shalls. All right, so we're big on core values. We help our clients define their core values. We even took a look at our individual values and then figured out what should they be for the business and took a fresh look.
[00:29:41] And they were, we had a lot of alignment and we didn't really change much, I don't think we changed any, anything on the company core values.
[00:29:49] Sarah: No. We added like one, one sentence. Yeah. But I think mine, if I were to add one is just. Do whatever it takes. Right? Do whatever it takes. Like we have a do whatever it takes mindset and if that means you have to come out of your comfort zone, you come out of your comfort zone. That means you have to make phone calls? You make phone calls. Yeah. If that means you have to, do whatever. It's like ethically, of course. But if you have to do things that don't. Seem fun or like, these are not my normal job duties.
[00:30:20] Well, that's okay. Like, we're going to, we're going to do it because that's what we need in the business.
[00:30:26] Jason: So I think it's important for property managers to be really clear on their values. So, so you, as an entrepreneur, if you're listening to this, you need to be very clear on your values. Not like 10 values or 20 values or infinite values. You need to figure out what are your, like top three maybe four values that if everybody on your team believed these, they would be great team members. They would fit you. And that's something we help clients work on. But I think it's super important to have values in the business because it that's the how you go about doing everything in the business.
[00:31:02] And if you're worried about how your team members are going to do things, it's because they don't share your values. You can work all day on the whats. You can define every process and try to micromanage, but you cannot control how you need people that fit your culture. You cannot create that in them. You have to find the right people that have the right culture and the right values. Values come from mom and dad, God, religion, whatever, right? DNA, I don't know, genetics, but people have their values somewhat hardwired, and you're not going to really move the needle on their values. So you got to find people that fit them
[00:31:36] All right article, what are we up to? Six. Seven. Seven, okay. Article seven. All right. Pursuit of holistic success.
[00:31:47] "We vow to pursue not just financial success. But the overall wellbeing and fulfillment in our personal and professional lives. We will commit to creating balance that nurtures our personal growth relationships and contributions to society."
[00:32:03] All right. It's pretty good. So a holistic success. I mean, this really is I've never, I don't know, like. I used to like tag myself on Facebook when I would create a post, that'd say, holistic business coach or something like this. Because that's the idea. Holistic means it encompasses our personal life, our business, and that's why in our podcast intro it says " and our mission at DoorGrow is to transform property management, business owners and their businesses." So we have a strong holistic approach.
[00:32:34] Sarah: Yeah. For sure. I was it Ed Mylet that said it at Funnel Hacking Live last year? It might have been Ed Mylet. I'm going to have to look it up. Sorry Ed, if it was not you. So I think he said if the game for you is making money, if you're just in this to make money and that's all you care about, you are not going to make very much of it. You just won't because that's the only thing you're focused on and you don't care about anything else. But if instead, oh, it might have been Russell Brunson. Oh God, I owe one of them an apology.
[00:33:03] Jason: We heard it. We heard it at Funnel Hacking Live Conference. It was Funnel Hacking live at conference. So I can tell you that for sure. So, and it was either Ed Millet or Russell Brunson. I can tell you that too. They probably both said something similar.
[00:33:13] Sarah: So credit to both. But if you're only focused on making money, you're not going to make very much of it. You won't be very successful. However, if your focus is on helping people. Now you're going to be successful and you'll make a whole bunch of money. So if money is the thing that you're after, it's just going to feel like really hard.
[00:33:34] It's going to be really, really draining for you. But if we're focused on like, Hey, how can I, primarily, first and foremost, how can I help people? That's the thing that's going to unlock all of the money for you.
[00:33:47] Jason: This is where your business mission becomes client-centric. This is where it becomes outward focused and our personal why should be outward focused as well, right? This is where we start to have that impact, but everybody wants to have some sort of different impact. We're all unique, so I think it's important to discover that. We talk about the four reasons, like moving towards more greater fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support is why we have a business as motivators, and if you're moving towards that and you're committed to creating a balance in your business and personal life and personal growth and relationships and contributions to society, right, then you're going to have a much more profitable business. You're going to enjoy it more. Your team are going to be more inspired to work for you and be part of this vision and this mission.
[00:34:39] So I like this article. It's a good one. That's the last one. So this ends this way. "Let this declaration serve as a compass that guides our actions, decisions, and collaborations with resolve and unity. Let us forge a path that transforms not just our own lives, but the entire property management industry for the betterment of the communities we serve. Signed your name and all fellow DoorGrow Hackers." All right. So I like that. Yeah, we're using that. That's pretty good. We're going to keep that. Maybe we'll post that somewhere. Yeah. All right. And that's basically it. Anything else we should add? I mean, we want, we all want more freedom and there's probably something that you feel like right now is holding you back.
[00:35:22] You don't feel free. You wake up in the morning and maybe you don't feel like you are excited to go to work or excited to take that next phone call or excited to do property management. You may not feel a sense of freedom right now. You may not even think it's possible in that industry, so I promise you it is absolutely possible. We've helped lots of clients do this, and it can happen a lot faster than you realize as well. So you can have freedom and you can have freedom from bad clients. You can have freedom from bad deals. You can have freedom from bad phone calls. You can have freedom from bad team members. You can have freedom from all the bad stuff that you want to have freedom from.
[00:36:02] So, all right, what should people do? Let's give them a call to action.
[00:36:07] Sarah: Well, I think the easiest thing to do is work with a great coach. Might be us, might be somebody else. I'm a bit biased.
[00:36:16] Jason: It should be us and you should reach out to DoorGrow. Go to DoorGrow.com and join our Facebook group, which you can get to at...
[00:36:25] Sarah: I don't know.
[00:36:25] Jason: DoorGrowClub.com. doorgrowclub.com. Join our Facebook group community, and this will start getting you connected and indoctrinated. We're going to convince you to believe in yourself and we're going to convince you to also believe in DoorGrow. And then we're going to help you win through DoorGrow and we're going to change your life. This is what we do at DoorGrow. So, If you want some help. Otherwise, join our Facebook group and eventually reach out once you realize that you want our help. And until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:36:57] Jason Hull: You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:37:24] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
Working with amazing, hard-working property management entrepreneurs is what makes being a coach worth it.
Join property management growth expert Jason Hull in today’s episode as he interviews DoorGrow client Jeff Garner. Jeff went from 150 to 420 doors in 4 months! Learn how he did it.
[02:35] Why would anyone get into property management?
[12:40] Fixing the foundation of a property management business
[15:14] Importance of culture in a business
[25:05] Why you need a coach
[27:34] Navigating operational issues
“No matter what market we're in, it's good. If we're going to the moon, management's great. If we're crashing, it's even better because people can't sell their properties and they go, ‘Oh shoot, we'll turn them into rentals.’”
"Go where they won't go and do what they won't do. That's where the money's at,"
“It all starts with your mindset.”
“Weekly commitments, and you'll start to see the momentum build big time when the team are all visible and can be seen and there's accountability and they get recognized because you have that system installed, performance sometimes goes up.”
[00:00:00] Jeff: I have 420 doors and I have more peace of mind, more direction and I know where I'm going to be and where I'm going and how to get there.
[00:00:12] 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 in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not
[00:00:38] because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bss, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert Jason Hull the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.
[00:01:08] And today's guest is Jeff Garner. Jeff, welcome.
[00:01:14] Jeff: Thanks man. Glad to be here.
[00:01:17] Jason: So Jeff, what's the name of your property management business?
[00:01:19] Jeff: Homes Stretch Property Management
[00:01:21] Jason: Homes Stretch. All right, cool. And why'd you pick that name?
[00:01:26] Jeff: I feel like real estate investing it's a long-term play. It builds wealth over the long haul. And for our home stretch of our life, whether you decide your home stretch starts at 40 because you retire early, or whether it's 60 or 70, if you are buying real estate, really it, you know, It's about letting the tenants pay down, you know, principal balance, pay down, depreciation, tax, write-offs, appreciation. Sure cash flow's nice every month, but you can make millions over, you know, 20 year period, 25 year period. And so I see the real value in real estate is being that, so we want to get our owners to the home stretch and, you know, that's kind of how we look at it. So we want to improve and maintain your property so that someday you can either sell or refi and it's in great shape and it's an easy process. Or you just want to keep it in cashflow forever. So our job's to give you freedom and peace of mind knowing that your properties are being taken care of better than you can or anyone else so.
[00:02:29] Jason: Nice. Love the brand. So Jeff. Why don't you give people a little bit of background on you. How did you start getting into real estate and what made you decide to do the crazy thing of starting a property management company? How did this all happen?
[00:02:43] Jeff: Yeah, it was the crazy thing because-- so I'll tell you a little bit about me. Real estate's the only business I've ever been in. I got my real estate license when I was 22. I was going to be a real estate agent. Found a niche working with investors because when you're 22, you know, growing up doesn't come overnight. And so when you're got all your, "oh shoot, I'm showing property today," and you have to crunch the beer cans and put them under your seat. because you just turned 21 a year before, you know, it can be a little awkward putting the 40 year old mom and dad and their kids in the car to go show them property.
[00:03:18] Right. Which I did okay at. I did fine. But I found a niche in working with investors because you could sell them one house and most of the time they don't even want to get in your car. Half the time, once you get know what you're doing, you just give them a lockbox code and tell them to call you back and tell you what you think, and they give you a number and you write it and put it in. You could sell them 10 or 20 houses. So I developed a niche at that. I got really good at finding deals and I would send them to my guys. Shortly after that, I decided that I was on the wrong side of the table, you know, three or four years of that. I go to closing, I collect my $2,500 commission check, and he gets a check for $20,000 because he flipped it, right? And I just thought, wait a minute, I'm finding the deal. I'm calling him up, I'm telling him what number to put it in at and he's making all this money. What am I doing wrong? So I got into that side of the business, you know. So, 08 hit crashed. All of us really put me in a position to where I to make a decision on what I wanted to do because all my investors were gone. Right?
[00:04:17] They were trying to stay alive. Yeah. You know, in 08 for the people that didn't go through it, was like If you worked in Walmart and all of a sudden the next morning you woke up and no one will shop at Walmart again.
[00:04:31] Jason: Right?
[00:04:31] Jeff: Yeah. Never walks through the door.
[00:04:34] Jason: Yeah. So must have been scary.
[00:04:37] Jeff: Yeah. And so, I thought, "well, this investment thing's really what I want to do. So I'm going all in. It's time to restart. So that's what I'm going to go all in at." So I really looked at what happened and I realized that history, you know, tells the story and that everyone was riding this wave and had no idea it was a wave because no one does the research to, you know, see what the cycles are. I didn't know there was a cycle. I was young. Yeah. And so the common sense thought came, well, we were at a high. If I was a real investor and I was really good at what I did, I would've been taking vacations, waiting for this crash to happen, and then I'd go out and buy everything I could find and hold it. Yeah, so I did that. I bought 110 rentals over a three year period, all at, you know, probably 20% of what the market is today. And outsourced the management a couple times. Horrific. Cost me more money than you know, one, when I was at 110 properties, I had to take them back overnight because I realized that I had 16 vacants and they didn't even know about half of them.
[00:05:42] Really? Yeah. It was horrible. They just they got overwhelmed and so I built a management company overnight to manage my own properties and had zero desire. It was the last thing on the absolute planet I wanted to deal with was tenants and toilets. I did not get into rentals to deal with tenants or maintenance. It didn't, yeah. So I put together a makeshift management company and decided I'd never take on another property of anyone else's. I'd only do my own, because I was going to do this, it was going to be for myself. There certainly wasn't going to make a hundred dollars a month on a property and do all this for somebody else. Right. That's, that was my thought on being real. And a few years went by '16, '17, realized that I'd gotten tons of equity and I had properties sitting there with 50, 60,000 in equity and I'm making 200 or 300 a month. And I thought, this math doesn't make sense anymore, right? So I sold off over a two or three year period, about 50 of them. But everyone apparently, everyone knew management is a tough gig and there's not a lot of good management companies out there. Why? Right? There was no DoorGrow then that I'm aware of at least. Right? So everyone in the management business just thought, "this looks like we can make some money, let's do this."
[00:06:57] But they had no idea. The machine, it has to be to run well. Yeah. And so they said, "well, I'll buy that property. I'll even give you retail for it, but you have to keep the management." So to this day, I still manage all 110 of those properties, even though I only own 60 of them. Right. So to get the money I wanted, I had to keep the management. And then I just kind of started looking at it is in the last couple years when I realized that we could potentially be getting to another place. If you look at the charts and you look at history that we're you know, we're at a high now, will it last four years longer? Probably. So I had to kind of reevaluate what I wanted to do and I looked at all my businesses, flip business, wholesale, you know, my rental portfolios and my management company, I went, wait a minute, what am I doing? I'm focusing all this energy and chasing down deals and having all these, you know, taking all the risk on everything I buy and just grinding away constantly. For over 20 years now. And I got this management company, although it's not sexy, everyone tells me it's the worst thing in the world to do. Yeah. You know, I realize it was the one thing that was repeatable, scalable, and I could predict. And no matter what market we're in, it's good. If we're going to the moon, management's great. If we're crashing, it's even better because people can't sell their properties and they go, oh shoot, we'll turn them into rentals. I thought, "wait, what am I doing? I'm looking at this all wrong." I just started to look at it and so I started working on getting really good at it and filling all the holes on my own, right, with my own. And it's, you know, and I realized that with the right team in place and the right mindset, you know, which is we want to help landlords, right? I want to take 20 something years of resources and try to convert over this management company and give them to everyone else-- that it could be a great business. And then I realized, like I preach, because I did some coaching in the real estate space throughout the years "go where they won't go and do what they won't do. That's where the money's at," right? So if everyone's going after retail flips and a really nice b and b areas, then go look in the C areas because they're being neglected. If everyone's after all the C properties because the cash flows, so well then go up to your A or B areas and start doing flips because those are being neglected. Nice. Certain town everyone's afraid of? Good. Let them be all fighting in one place and you go there. And so I realized that was what was going on in the real estate market for the management business. So I decided that's what I wanted to focus my energies on. So I literally burned all the other boats, man. No marketing, no wholesaling, no flipping.
[00:09:40] Jason: Wow. You went all in on property management?
[00:09:42] Jeff: All in on property management, period. I got online, I did what I did 15 years before, after 08 happened, and I thought, "I'm going to redo myself. How do I do this?" And so I just got online and I started digging around and trying to teach myself things and I got coaches back then, and even though I knew 90% of what they were trying to teach me, because I got coaches in the flipping side, right? I knew you know, 80, 90% of what they were teaching me was that 10 or 20% where I knew would bring me all my money, right? So I did the same thing here and that's how I came to DoorGrow is I found you guys really were the only real system oriented, you know, nuts and bolts teach the how and not just the why. You know, a lot of people want to tell you why you do. Oh, well, you know why? They want to give you the why on, you know, but they don't want to give you the nuts and bolts of the how and tell you connect A to B to C to D and you'll get your results, right? And so, I found you guys, and I knew that's all I was missing to having success because the rest of the management companies all had bad raps. You couldn't talk to a landlord that really loved their management company. Yeah. So I knew I could fix, put those pieces together and really treat it like a business based off of giving people their freedom and peace of mind, knowing that their properties are being taken care of better than theirs.
[00:11:10] If you can do that, anyone listening to this, if you can wrap your mind around being of service. No one else is doing that in the management business. Right? Yeah. You will dominate, it's like I used to say when I had lots of rehab crews going, if someone shows up and does what they say and has half of the talent that I need them to have, they could be rich. That's all they have to do. Just not be the best, but do what you say and show up so it's predictable and we can communicate well and get stuff done. So if you did that, and you can do that with a mindset of, "I want to be of service to the industry." Be the best. You'll dominate, end the story, but you have to wrap that around your mind, you know, and it'll come out in your calls. It'll come out in your conversations at the grocery store. It'll come out everywhere.
[00:12:00] Hell, I pulled 16 doors out of my gym in the first 30 days after joining DoorGrow because I just got the structure when we went through mindset and and some sales stuff of. Really taking what was in my mind and putting it in paper and going through the process of splitting the page into four spots and right. You know, going through everything. I got to dial it in and then boom, that was it. There's nothing else to talk about, but what I came up with there, you know, home stretch was the name of the business because it fits what I'm trying to do. I know what our mindset is, the culture for my company and you know, we started just plugging in systems and processes.
[00:12:40] Jason: So let's talk a little bit about it. because you said nuts and bolts, but to most property managers, they're like, "nuts and bolts means how do you like do maintenance and how do you plunger a toilet?" you know, like it's like the practical stuff where you know how to manage properties. Yeah. You know how to deal with tenants, you know how to like do all that. What challenge were you dealing with that brought you to DoorGrow and how did that help?
[00:13:04] Jeff: It's really hard to explain that. What I really had was is I had a business and it functioned and I did okay, but I did not feel at 150 properties, I did not feel I could bring on 10 more doors. I felt like it would all crumble and break because I had no idea what I was doing really. Right. I had nothing to model. I had just said I got maintenance, my maintenance was horrible. I had all these guys that that was one of the hardest parts to find. But I had all these just subcontractors and every once in a while we'd find someone to come on full time, but you'd have to trust them to be out there all day doing what they said they were doing. And I didn't know how to run that. I didn't know how to manage that. I didn't know how to systematize that where I knew what was going on at all times. And I didn't feel comfortable going any bigger because, I felt like I could see why other management companies had problems, and I don't think they want to suck, right? No, I don't think so. But they just don't want to say no to the money.
[00:14:06] "Hey, I got 20 doors." oh, we're going to do a great job for you. Let's bring it on. And they're already struggling with what they have. Yeah, right. Just think it's magically you're going to work, or, you know what? It'll give me more money in that way. More money will mean I can do more things. And no it doesn't. It creates more problems that cost more money. So I needed the systems, I needed the processes. Those are the nuts and bolts I'm talking about. Got it. Who to hire to do what and to, because that's it.
[00:14:34] Jason: I mean, so what's changed then? Like you had 150 doors, you came to DoorGrow and we started helping you change a lot of stuff, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, what things have you changed since joining DoorGrow? Yeah. What are some of the first things we start working on with you?
[00:14:51] Jeff: Okay, well, really it was just getting my mindset right was the biggest one because once my mindset was correct and I knew and I had our, what we were trying to do, where we could be of service, that opened my mind up to, " how do we do that then?" Right. So that's sort of answering questions for me, you know.
[00:15:14] Jason: So with mindset, what you're saying is I believe you're talking about all the culture stuff that we took you through stuff. Just the culture stuff and just kind of, I mean, that's the core foundation of the business. Like if we want to make this business built around you, we've got to figure that piece out, right? So we started with that and that probably had a significant ripple through everything.
[00:15:33] Jeff: Imagine like this, you have children, you all of a sudden you, "I'm going to be the best dad ever and I'm going to have kids." Next thing you know, you got two or three of them, they're under five. You have no, literally imagine your parents weren't good. I don't know. They didn't model worth a crap. Okay. Like, how do I do this? Like, I can feed them, I can put them to bed and I can keep them from killing themselves, but do I really know how to raise them to have commitment, how to be honest, how can I make a five year old a strong member of society at 28 years old, right? But if you have a culture and a mindset, you know, "I want my children to be like this. I want them to have this belief system," and how do we give them that belief system? Okay, "well, let me look into that. Okay. Well, if we go to this school, it'll give them these values and then I can back them up at home. And then with bedtime and, oh, I did a little research here. If I put them to bed at this time, get them up at this time. Oh wait, the sugars and dyes are bad. It makes them spastic and oh, well I'll take that out." And you start learning, right? But it all starts with your mindset. Right. And so my mindset changed and it started making me go down the rabbit holes that are all in DoorGrow of, "Okay. Leasing-- my leasing person that we're just winging it and working out of this software that we really were just doing all workarounds and spreadsheets because we really didn't know how to use it. Watch this. Watch these videos on leasing, watch these videos on placing tenants." And then I would watch them and then we would meet and put together a process and a system on how it's going to go instead of just winging every call we got.
[00:17:17] So I started building it out position by position. I went and I found a new property manager that had the capacity to be a really good property manager and grow from some of the-- I'm still new inDoorGrow. I'm only six months in. Right? And honestly over the last month I've had a two months, I've had a really hard time getting into DoorGrow because I.
[00:17:42] I'm up 420 in doors. Right.
[00:17:45] Jason: So, yeah. So, and let's get to that. That's interesting. But so the children, in your analogy here, this is your team you're talking about, and this is my team. Yeah. And you were in it for what, maybe a couple months and then you started replacing the entire team?
[00:18:00] Jeff: The entire team is gone except for two people. And one of the two was almost gone. Because of just be all of a sudden having this parent mindset, I kind of coached him, or you know, raised him in a way in this little short period of time to where he's changed. Nice. And he is just, and the reality of it is, what I found out is he was so unhappy because of how screwed up systems were that everything rolled down to him that once I realized that I got to take things away, put them create and find out what was broken on his role. And he was a main construction manager that we created a different systems and now he's probably one of my strongest pieces. So everyone knew the whole team is new.
[00:18:50] Jason: So new team, you installed a good culture, you're then able to work with us on the hiring piece and getting good team members in place. Absolutely. You've leveled up some team members because you have culture and you know, like what you deserve and want as a business owner and what have the type of team and we want to build around you. Absolutely. Most business owners build teams around the business, and that's probably what you did before.
[00:19:15] Jeff: Absolutely a pure necessity. And I, I didn't but hire people that fit the culture or what I was looking for. I just hired a warm body that seemed like they would work, and I thought, we'll just teach them what we need them to know. Yeah. And their mindset or what they did in their off time or their goals didn't mean they were their business.
[00:19:36] Jason: Right. Yeah it's amazing. Some simple frameworks like just understanding the three fits to hiring. Yeah. Like culture fit, skill fit, personality fit can shift hiring significantly. So then you started working pretty quickly with one of our coaches on acquisitions. You went out and found a deal. And in four months you were at 420 units.
[00:19:59] Jeff: Yeah. Yep. 420. And I've got probably we're I'm just, we might be at four 40 or four 50 because we have 20 or 30 vacants that Okay. That are under, that are kind of on make ready that we took over that we haven't been able to fill yet because we have this construction backlog, not on our end, but on his backend. The guy that I bought the management from, which was part of the deal, and one of the reasons he sold was because he had done exactly what everyone else did. He got too big and wasn't saying no, and got backlogged and yeah, he was starting to provide really horrible service, so I went in, bought it from him at a really good price for me, but I think it was still a good price for him because if you're at a point to where you're going to, it's stressing you out, you can't get it all done.
[00:20:46] It's affecting anything, all your other revenue streams and people are getting ready to start leaving you. Someone walks in "wait, you can take this off my hands and give me money? Okay. Where do I sign?" You know?
[00:20:59] Jason: So what are the things did you do with our team? Have we done a website for you?
[00:21:03] Jeff: You did a website.
[00:21:05] Jason: What about your branding? Did you change your brand at all?
[00:21:08] Jeff: Yeah. Hell, hell yeah. I was starting point property management. I changed my brand. We rebranded a week before this acquisition, which I was like, I'm going to put this rebranding thing off because that's another, and then we sat down and I was talking to the team and I don't think they loved it, but they agreed that doing it before we transition all these new owners and tenants over was going to be the way to go because then we would have to change it all up in a couple months anyway when we rebranded and had them in a new website and portal and such so.
[00:21:38] Jason: How about pricing? Did you change your pricing?
[00:21:41] Jeff: I'm on the hybrid pricing. Okay. The three plans. The three plans now, which is exactly from you guys. Which was another thing that really helped me because with changing the pricing and doing the hybrid plan and going through that training, and it was, once again, it was all the why's we're doing it. I got to design the plans that fit our culture and provide the service we wanted to provide. It gave me more confidence, honestly, in what we were doing, even though I was going to be charging more now. So yeah, we're on the three tier pricing, hybrid pricing.
[00:22:19] Jason: So you've changed your team, you changed your branding, you changed your website, you changed your pricing model. You've probably made some adjustments to your pitch. Do you do the Golden Bridge stuff?
[00:22:31] Jeff: I didn't have a pitch before. You didn't have a pitch? I didn't have a pitch. I'd just say, "Hey, we do management. Can we manage your properties?" And I just like, that's what I'm saying, when I didn't know, like I couldn't wrap my mind around, because I'd been flipping houses and wholesaling. I had that down to a science. I am a fricking ninja in that. Yeah. But the management side, it was just, "Hey, we manage properties." Yeah. This is what we charge if you want to come over. Cool. If not, I got to go. I got other calls with me, you know, and to have a pitch. So it was literally everything and the pitch made it. That's what I'm saying. I pulled 16 doors out of the gym. Yeah. Just "what are you doing now? Oh, I'm doing management and it's--" 'boop,' just going into my pitch casually, just real casual because we're at the gym. "Do you know anybody that manages any properties? Yeah, I do. I got this buddy. Cool. Could I talk to him? That was it.
[00:23:23] Jason: So I love clients like you, Jeff. because you implement, like you went through the rapid revamp and you did it rapid, like you got that stuff done. Yeah. Pretty quick. And then you start working on acquisition because you saw that opportunity with our acquisitions coach and you're like, "I'm going to do that." and you're just doing stuff and I think that's a testament to you. You know, this is part, I think when we work out more often at the gym, and I think our brains work better. I think that's science, like that's been proven. Like there's something released in our muscles. And you're a big dude. I got to get to your point. I'm trying to work out to catch up to you.
[00:23:59] Jeff: I'm going to be pitching you on coaching you in that area.
[00:24:02] Jason: But I think I appreciate that you've been implementing this stuff rapidly and I asked you at DoorGrow Live, I was like, "where do you see yourself, you know, do you think you could get to a thousand doors?" And you were like, "yeah, probably a year and a half." Like it's nothing. Like it's nothing. And you're like, "well, maybe two years." And I was like, "do you know how ridiculous that sounds to most people?" Yeah. So, but I believe it. I believe it for you. I believe it's possible for you. And I believe any of our clients could do it if they just. Take action and implement. And in order to do that, they've got to trust us. And I appreciate you putting your faith in us and trusting us and just putting your head down and doing the work.
[00:24:41] So what would you say to other property managers that are maybe like the company that you bought or maybe like the way you were before if they've just been watching DoorGrow on the sidelines and they think they know what we're about and they think we're just marketers or something that like have a decent sales pitch, but they don't know if they can trust us? You're behind the paywall. What would you say to them?
[00:25:04] Jeff: Well, I mean, besides being behind the paywall and doing it and having experience with it, I know coaching and I know that space, and so I recognized DoorGrow immediately from watching your marketing and just digging in a little that you guys taught the business. It wasn't a marketing ploy to get people to sign up to you. Actually, it wasn't like I was just going to get a bunch of motivation, "go out there and do it!" right, right. Because I motivated it was, like I said, it was the whys and the hows and and the all the processes and systems. And so man, it's all there for you to just do it. You would just do it. You would literally just go, "okay, I'll start at one and work to 10." I had a management company already. If I had to redo it all when I got real life processes and systems, and then I saw that there was people in it that had a hundred doors, 500 doors, a thousand doors, and I'm like, "that's what I need." I need to be surrounded by people that are at a higher level of success and have been where I am and now are where I want to go. And so if you are watching and you have management already and you are struggling, and it sucks. Whether it's for you or your customers, or both? I have 420 doors and I have more peace of mind, more direction and I know where I'm going to be and where I'm going and how to get there. And more time to myself if I wanted to take it. I don't take it because I still have big goals and so I'm working a lot. But then I did with 150 doors. That's awesome. I had more certainty with 3x almost than I did where I started. I got the team in place. I watched them problem solve all day long on the chat and working systems and the processes and everything happens the same over and over again.
[00:27:01] So it's really a business in a box, but you have to do it. You can't question yourself. You can't make excuses. You just have to do it. It'll be really easy if you just one foot in front of the other and take the steps. It's all there. And I had to stop because I can't wrap my mind around everything until I get to another place. Right. Yeah. Like I can only do so much and it's growing and working and so like, I've got to pause and then I'm going to dive back in and I don't know I'm still in DoorGrow obviously regularly.
[00:27:34] Jason: Well, let's do some co coaching live on air. Let's figure out what's your next step? Ready? Okay. Yeah. You open? Okay, cool. So you're at 420 units right now. Yeah. Yeah. You've finally got a good team, you've got good culture. Yeah. So the next level to get to, you know, to break past that next kind of major barrier, which maybe is 600 doors, you have to have a great team, but you got to get three major systems installed. Those three major systems are going to be, you have to really get a good process system installed. Not just process documentation, but a system to where they're running the processes each time. So we've got DoorGrow flow. You can use that, lead simple, process street, something, but you need a good process system. That's one piece. The other piece you need is you need a really good people system. So you've started to create the culture, you've started to install that system. Then we want to make sure-- and did you use DoorGrow hiring and do grow ATS and work with Sarah on some of that stuff?
[00:28:32] Jeff: I watched the coaching and implemented some of the things I learned just like I did with Clint. So yeah.
[00:28:38] Jason: So we want to make sure we have a solid system so that as you scale, you can get the right people and get those people quickly. So it sounds like you've done some work on that. And then we want to make sure you have a really good planning system. So once you have a team of people you trust to execute, your executive team, then we want to install a planning system. Now these three systems should not be run by you because as a visionary and an entrepreneur, it's not fun for you to do this. So the key person, the most important hire you will have on the team will be an operator. Somebody that runs the operations. Do you feel like you have that key person right now?
[00:29:15] Jeff: I do, but she is one of the people I brought on the most valuable hire I've made after I came to DoorGrow. And it was to have that operator, but she's a CFO. Okay. And she's grown another insurance company to probably where we're at now from scratch, which, you know, I think I'm blowing her mind a little on where we want to go, how fast we're going. But yeah, my goal is to make her the operator. She's the CFO. And so you know management's an accounting business, really at the end of the day, and so we are doing so many changes to our software and our accounting to make sure that all those processes and automations are in place that she is buried every day, but she helps with the team. She helped on the hiring. And she's going to be the operator to try to shorten that. We're working her into that role because as she figures pieces out, we hand them off. So it frees her time up and she's not doing the 15- $20 an hour work because they're paying her more than that. Handing it off and it's freeing up her time and she's. Then we're putting in place some of that more operation stuff, so in process.
[00:30:23] Jason: Nice. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. So when she's ready, one of the things we'll want to do is start to get her to show up on the Friday coaching call, which is operations, and to do that super system breakout and work with her and you to get DoorGrow OS installed. Once you get DoorGrow OS installed, the planning system is that next level system. This is going to allow you to have your team start to function like a visionary, like the entrepreneur, they're going to start to innovate and move goals forward without you having to, you know, push them. And she will run that system. She'll run the meetings, and then you'll be able to set goals and break them down from quarterly to monthly to weekly commitments, and you'll start to see the momentum build big time when the team are all visible and can be seen and there's accountability and they get recognized because you have that system installed, performance sometimes goes up. When I first install a system like that, we grew 300% in a year. And so that is kind of the next level I think for you guys is when she's ready for that, we start to get DoorGrow OS installed and get that planning system and cadence. Because cadence in a business is the communication, cadence is the culture, cadence creates all of this, and it gets everyone rowing the boat in the same direction. So instead of you saying, "Hey, let's do this to everybody, watch this video at DoorGrow," et cetera. They will start to innovate and move outcomes forward because they're given goals and deadlines and then support instead of tasks. And that's where you'll start to see your team really perform. This is where you get like three times the output from your team members. This is where your operational costs drop significantly in relation to the number of people you have per door. And so that's what I see next level for you guys. And once you have that system installed, 600 doors is going to be a piece of cake.
[00:32:17] Jeff: Yeah. The other thing too is that I know we need a sales funnel. The funnel right now is this mouth, that's it right now.
[00:32:27] Jason: We got to get you out of that. So what'll be next is either we get you, if you don't have this already, we get you an assistant, a setter, or a sales assistant. And that person will then help you double your capacity currently. because they'll be doing all of the follow up, getting you on calls to close and you can use tactics like the double barrel close and some of these things we talk about. That's maybe, that's like level one, baby step. Level two, we just get you out of doing that all together. We get you a full-time BDM. Just like James Wachob 's team installed Brad, he's been showing up to each of our Wednesday calls where we support the BDMs or the people working on growth and I think he's helped him add like 250, something like that. They've added 400 doors organically in less than a year.
[00:33:18] Jeff: Is that Brian Bouler guy?
[00:33:20] Jason: Yeah, Brian Bouler's their operator. And he's, he actually just, yeah, he's a stud. He just became the director of the property management. So he's running all property management and he just hired an operator to replace himself from a Fortune 50 company. Right? So this is like once you have your operator fully functioning as an operator, you get her out of CFO role and you get her into being an operator, then we can start to install DoorGrow OS, get that team to the next level. And part of that plan, I think for your 90 days would be to start to focus on that sales side. If you're ready to ramp up lead gen and growth, then we get you maybe a setter initially, and then we get you a full-time BDM or you can jump straight to getting a BDM and we help you find somebody that can just crush it at sales. We identify the right personality type, they're great at this, and they will go out and just make it rain and create business for you.
[00:34:13] Jeff: I got the hiccups all of a sudden, so I'm like, this is going to look great in the podcast.
[00:34:17] Jason: You're just so excited about the future. Excited. Yeah. And you know, and that BDM could also, and then I think what you would do, if you want to focus on the growth side, if that's still fun for you, you just go out and find more acquisition deals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. You can even get your BDM to start hunting for acquisition deals as well and feed them to you, and then you do double barrel close that way. They're feeding you to close it. Right? So, anyway, I think that's going to be the next level for you and, you know, maybe what I would maybe have your CFO do is do a time study and maybe you do a time study if you haven't done one for a while, so that you can see where can you support her even more and more quickly to get things off of her plate. What are you doing? Which things do you love the most? Which things don't you? And start to take some things off of her plate and give them to other team members as quick as possible. So, and then you'll know like, this is what she spent her time doing over the last two weeks. You're like, cool, we, these are minus signs. These are things that are lower level dollar an hour work. Let's define these processes and we make that a goal and all that. When you have a cadence and a planning system, you can plug all that into your goals. Like one of your quarterly goals would be transition CFO to operator, for example. Yeah. So we could start to build out those systems even right now with her, we just need to get you and her on board with that. And then you'll see things start to go even faster because you're already working a plan. When we put the plan in a way that everyone else can see it and everyone can contribute, the whole business starts to go faster. Otherwise, it's you pushing her and her pushing everybody else, and it's very top down. When you create a bottom up system, you'll start to feel a lot of momentum. Okay. It's a weird feeling when you start to feel the team pulling you forward instead of you pushing them forward.
[00:36:10] Jeff: So, when you say that, what does that, what do you call that then? Like when you're saying bottom up, you know? When you, everything you just said, like, what is that? Like, what do I call that?
[00:36:21] Jason: So I call that the planning system or DoorGrow OS, the operating system. The operating. So we want to get this operating system installed so that there's this planning cadence and communication. So I'd start with by doing a six core functions assessment with your team brainstorming session. That'll be quarterly planning and it'll take like an hour and a half or two hours. First time you do this as a team.
[00:36:44] Jeff: That's all in os. That whole process is an OS. The step-by-step on that. That was my direction. I need OS, and I need Flow, and I'm like, oh, another thing I got to plan.
[00:36:53] Jason: Yeah that's DoorGrow OS. The planning system. What's cool about it and, if you do the math on this, right? Let's say you do in your annual planning, you spend maybe an hour, a half. Your quarterly planning, you do four times a year. You spend maybe an hour, a half, two hours, right? Each of your monthly planning meetings, which you have 12, that adds up to 12 hours, maybe an hour each, right? Then you're doing your weekly commitments meetings every week. Maybe you'll do about 50 of those a year. Maybe those take an hour, sometimes even just 30 minutes, depending on the size of your team and the aggressiveness of your goals. And the goal on a weekly basis is to hit 80% of your weekly commitments. That's a lot of goals getting achieved. This is outside of the tactical work, outside of the day-to-day work. This is innovating and moving the business forward towards your core functions and what the business needs most and what you need most.
[00:37:49] If you stack and add all this up, maybe even add a culture meeting here or there, and you add your daily huddles with your teams that are like maybe 15, 20 minutes, all that combined adds up to, you can run the entire business on 300 hours a year, and it eliminates a massive amount of 'got a minute?'s, sneaker net communication, interruptions, and it makes the business far more efficient.
[00:38:14] Jeff: And that's all lined out in OS. Like I start OS, it's like everything step by step. I can do this. How?
[00:38:22] Jason: Yes. However, my disclaimer is, this is not stuff that you're going to want to do. This is stuff that your operator will probably enjoy doing. Okay, but not you. Okay. Like me, I hear a bunch of meetings. My initial gut reaction is like, "oh gosh, shoot me now." Right? Yeah. Like that sounds like a cumbersome and a waste of my time. It actually speeds you up and speeds up the business and gives you more time, but you don't want to run it. You need somebody else to run it because otherwise you end up as the emperor with no clothes because everybody's going to agree to you, say "whatever Jeff says," you need somebody else to run it. And you're last to speak in all these meetings. Yeah. Then you'll start to see the magic and the genius of your team. because some of them are more closely connected to some of the things that need to shift or move or be innovated or move forward than you are, right? Your maintenance coordinator can see what's going on in maintenance and they probably have ideas. And so this will allow them to start to, you know, bubble up some of these ideas and it'll allow them to innovate. When team members don't get deadlines and outcomes that they're given to achieve. And then they can see that there's need for improvement, instead of innovating, they go and try and spend more of your money. Yeah, exactly. And so the team gets more expensive. And then you, if you give them a blank check, they'll just spend like, "let's go buy this new thing and let's buy that. And that might do this," right? When you give your team a deadline and some constraints and an outcome, they will start to get creative and innovate, and you want your team members to start to think like that. That turns them into intrapreneurs. So getting this system installed, I think will be the big next level thing, and we can start getting that installed right away so Sarah can help you get that set up. And set up a call with you and your operator and you're already working on some goals. So let's just get those goals into a system where everyone can see and make sure you start to move the plan forward, create the plan, work the plan, and you'll start to see the team move forward way faster.
[00:40:16] So I'm excited for you man.
[00:40:19] Jeff: Can you believe I got the hiccups? I get hiccups like once every 10 years. I get in the middle of the podcast. Yeah, I'm very excited about that because here's the truth is you're right, like you get to this place at, you know, 150 doors on my own right, that's capacity really no capacity would've been much higher. But doing it well, capacity was 150 doors. Now I'm at 400 something and we're going, well, yeah. I think I could add another a hundred doors before anything breaks, but I know we're there. We're 50 to a hundred doors away from having to do new stuff again. Yeah. I can feel it. And so that's exciting, but dreadful to think, to have to implement myself.
[00:40:59] I think that's why I've kind of like, "let's just wait till we get everything we're doing dialed it perfectly before I get into that," but I need to just suck it up. I got to call with Sarah coming up the next couple days and I just need to tell her, okay, let's do OS, whatever. Tell me what to do next. Let's go.
[00:41:14] Jason: Yeah. And really we're just going to start working on creating a plan. Then we'll put in the software and you'll start to see when you start having these weekly meetings with your team, you're going to start to see stuff move forward. Like our goal, we sometimes have like 40 things in a single week that we're working on as a team outside of our daily work, like 40 tasks that are assigned to different team members.
[00:41:38] And my team members do not want to show up with a red 'no.' Yeah. And this increases their performance level, like you would not believe. They want green yeses when they show up on Monday for our weekly commitments meeting. And that means we are really likely to get all of our 30 day goals done, which means we're really likely to get all of our quarterly goals done because they're all connected.
[00:41:59] Yeah. You'll start to see your business move forward really quickly. This is a next level thing. So I'm excited for you to get that installed. because first, you got to have an operator. because I've tried to do it on my own without an operator and I really, I get lazy because I just don't like it. Like, I don't like running the meetings. I'm like, "all right, anyone's stuck on anything? Let's move forward faster." And I just skip steps and I tell people, do things, but when the team starts to run this, your operator will start to run the business. The business will start to run itself. Things will start to move forward without you, and then instead of you feeling like you're the entrepreneur pulling your entire team up the hill in a wagon, which is what it feels like until you get a system like this, you're going to start to see them moving forward ahead of you, and you're going to be the one that is in the wagon and they're pulling you up the hill. You're just going to be there like giving some feedback, coaching them, supporting them, but you'll start to see the business move forward. I'm the biggest constraint on my team. Sarah and the team are using DoorGrow OS, and they're moving the whole business forward constantly. And they're like, "Jason, keep up. We need more from you." And so they're keeping me accountable now. I don't need to keep them accountable because I've got A players and I've got a system that brings that out in them. So that's the next level. Cool, man. Awesome. Well, hey, thanks for coming on the podcast and being vulnerable and sharing some of your struggles and your wins.
[00:43:23] Really appreciate you as a client.
[00:43:25] Jeff: Yeah. Appreciate you too, man. It's been a huge life changer. So cool. Well, keep pushing me.
[00:43:32] Jason: Yeah, we'll keep going. We'll get you to that next level as well. So, thousand doors, here we come!
[00:43:37] Jeff: Here we come. All right.
[00:43:39] Jason: All right, thanks. See you. All right, so if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're wanting to get some coaching, you're tired of not having anyone in your corner, maybe nobody's believing in you, maybe not even your spouse is believing in you right now, and you need some hope, you want to have some results like Jeff, you're wanting to move your business forward. We would love to coach and help and support you. Join our mastermind. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. If you're looking like to get nurtured and warmed up a little bit more and you're not really sure about those DoorGrow people, then go to doorgrowclub.com. Join our free Facebook group. We give out better free stuff than most coaches in this industry give out that's paid, and you're going to get access to our master classes and some really cool stuff in there. Join that and you're going to see that we care and we want to see you succeed. And that will hopefully be a nice pathway into you becoming a client and working with DoorGrow and taking your business to that next level. And finally getting what you deserve, getting paid what you deserve, and having the business that you dream of having.
[00:44:47] Until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:44:51] Jason Hull: You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:45:18] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
With the real estate market shifting, more and more real estate agents are going to be starting property management companies. Is this you? If you are starting a property management business, this episode is for you.
Join property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull as they discuss the best way to build the foundation of your property management business in the current market.
[01:18] The Trends in the Market and What They Mean
[07:10] Why You Should Start a Property Management Business
[10:09] Building the Right Foundation
[15:03] The Product Research Strategy
[17:39] The Next Steps for Your Business
“The biggest challenge usually getting started is just taking action to actually get the business going.”
“When you're in that dreamer or that fantasy stage, a lot of times we are very good at looking at all the upside, and we're very good at ignoring the difficulties or the downside.”
“Property management, like I mentioned in the intro, is the ultimate gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.”
“A lot of the people that are the least qualified to be doing it, they're going to be the ones that get hurt the most because they're not paying attention much to the market.”
[00:00:00] Jason: the biggest challenge usually getting started is just taking action to actually get the business going, and they get caught up on wasting a lot of time on stuff that doesn't really matter when the only thing that really matters is getting your first client, right? That first door is the hardest.
[00:00:16] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, along with Sarah I'm the founder and CEO she is owner and COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.
[00:01:17] Alright. So today's topic, we've been noticing there's some trends and some changes in the real estate industry, which is going to probably create some shifts. So what are we noticing?
[00:01:29] Sarah: Well, so some of you may have realized real estate isn't quite what it was a couple months, even a year ago, certainly not what it was two years ago. Things have a shifted a little bit in the market. There was a point where you can list a property, you would get, you know, multiple offers in one to two days, and it would sell for a whole lot over asking and it was very easy. It was simple because the market was just on fire. Things have changed just a little bit. They've slowed down. And we wanted to talk about what happens when the real estate market slows down.
[00:02:14] Jason: So, historically what I've noticed is anytime real estate kind of takes a nose dive or slows down or there's some sort of recession or something like this, I see a lot of real estate agents quit. There's a lot of real estate agents that don't renew their license. They leave, they quit, they give up. And a lot of these are the newer ones or the ones that came in thinking it'd be really easy when things were great and we had years of feast and now that there maybe is coming famine, they're out. And so we see a lot of that. I also see a lot of real estate agents decide to become property managers because they're struggling to get real estate deals. They're like, "what else could I do? I'm going to start a property management business because all of the other ones around me aren't that great."
[00:03:00] And so historically DoorGrow, we get a lot of clients coming to us, looking for new websites and starting a business when the market takes a nosedive or there's a shift in real estate. So the other thing, I just saw a video that was pretty interesting data, and it was showing how there's been this huge spike in inventory in Airbnbs, but the revenue generated on average by Airbnbs has dipped in some markets to like 50% of the revenue generated per unit or per owner. And so the revenue's dipping significantly, but there's a lot of inventory of Airbnbs. What's going to happen is that bubble is going to burst, it's going to collapse because a lot of Airbnbs are going to sell. I talked to a property manager here locally in Austin, and he said he already saw the writing on the wall. And shout out to my buddy and friend, Brett Koster. He said that he already saw the writing on the wall. Oh, Koster, Koster. I said his name wrong. He did. All right. Koster Kingdom-- sorry-- on Instagram. I got you. All right. I think Koster sounds cool, but it's Koster, it's not "coaster." So yeah. Sorry Brett.
[00:04:07] All right. So Brett said he already saw the writing on the wall and he went to his short-term rental clients and he said, Hey, let's convert these into long-term rentals. because this is what I see coming. So I think there's an opportunity for property managers out there. There's an opportunity for real estate agents to get into property management that brings a lot of unqualified people and people that are going to not be very great and make a lot of mistakes perhaps unless they have their own investments, they've been dealing with property management a little bit. We can help you do this correctly and we'll talk a little bit about our DoorGrow Foundations in a little bit, but those of you that are established property managers, there's going to be an opportunity for you to capitalize maybe on this bubble, this Airbnb bubble, and convert some of the short-term rentals or convince some of the short-term rentals to convert the long term.
[00:04:57] Otherwise, they're probably going to sell an exit. For real estate agents, that's your opportunity is maybe to identify those Airbnbs that really need to just get sold so that they don't end up losing out. A lot of unqualified people came into the short-term rental situation as a result of the pandemic and everything else thinking, "Hey, there's a bunch of opportunity here now afterwards, and they are, you know, a lot of the people that are the least qualified to be doing it, they're going to be the ones that get hurt the most because they're not paying attention much to the market.
[00:05:30] Sarah: And there's a lot of like coaching things for like, "oh, here, I'll teach you how to like, run an Airbnb or like a short term rental business." and I think it's a really great idea. It is. I think what oftentimes happens is people significantly underestimate the amount of work that it takes. Significantly. Like Jason and I, we were just at Melanie's event last week and we were talking with someone who manages two short-term rental properties and she is already done. She's completely overwhelmed. She hates it. And that's only at two, two properties. And she's like, "everything is just urgent. They need it right now. You know, you can't wait, and sometimes people have very unreasonable expectations and thoughts as to what is an emergency and what needs to be done right now." so if you're in that short term Rental game. Our advice to her was, "you need a property manager," like, and one that does short-term rentals like on a consistent basis, not one that is just able to say, "Hey, I can do short-term." When you get into the short-term game, your short-term game and your long-term game are completely different.
[00:06:39] They function like two very separate businesses, and we have a few clients that do both short term and long term, and they realize very quickly that they are not at all the same thing. They have to operate very differently just because of that quick turnover.
[00:06:57] Jason: Yeah, so I'm doing a webinar later today with a friend of mine that basically does some coaching stuff to the real estate industry to real estate agents. So I'm going to be talking to real estate agents about how they can double their real estate commissions by leveraging property management and there's an opportunity here. Real estate agents can either start their own property management business so that they can keep their investor clients or they can partner with a property manager locally, which could be you listening, and that could help them as well.
[00:07:34] I've had several clients that if they make the property management arm of their business, when they also have brokerage, double their brokerage commissions simply by making sure property management is healthy, that they're acquiring new clients, that there's healthy flow, and that has fed them a lot more real estate deals. A lot of companies get their real estate deals from the tenants that are looking to get into buying a home from owners that are looking to buy or sell, they're getting real estate deals and commissions and property management, like I mentioned in the intro, is the ultimate gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. And so there's an opportunity there for those listening to either start your own property management business if you don't have that yet or to partner with a property manager, and there's ways they can help you generate revenue, get more deals if you have a good relationship. Especially those of my clients because they know how to help real estate agents get more real estate deals and make more money.
[00:08:37] We teach them how to do this. So why don't we talk about to those that are looking to maybe get into property management or have been thinking about starting it up. Okay. Okay.
[00:08:48] Sarah: Okay. So if you're thinking about starting a property management business, I think it would be a very good time to do that because we aren't quite sure where the real estate market is going. Are we heading into a recession? Are we already in the recession? Is it going to continue to tank? We don't know. So I think it's a really great time to start a property management business. I actually started one years ago just kind of by mistake, and I learned some hard lessons along the way. So what we've done is we've created a course called DoorGrow Foundations for people who are starting, or who have recently started a property management company. So by like startups, we mean that you might already have a few clients, but you are just really not, you know, a big large company at this point. What we've done is we've kind of, mapped out.
[00:09:45] Jason: Or you have zero doors? Or like purely nothing.
[00:09:48] Sarah: Yeah. Started, I started by saying that, okay.
[00:09:51] Jason: Just to clarify, a lot of the people that I talked to that have started their property management business, they started it because they were an investor.
[00:09:57] They already had 10, sometimes even a hundred units that were their own. And then they decided to start doing it, third party, and then they were actually starting a business. So before that, they just considered themselves an investor. So why don't we tell them a little bit about our Foundations program
[00:10:12] then?
[00:10:12] Sarah: Yeah. So what we've done in DoorGrow Foundations is we have created an entire course that you can go through that talks about all of the things that you're going to need to know when starting a property management business. We go into all of the mistakes that we see a lot of people make right around this point.
[00:10:32] And I've leveraged my own experience as well to help people avoid making some really common mistakes. So some of the things that we've talked about are, you know, what do your bank accounts need to look like and what should your financials look like? And, you know, how do we prioritize, like how do we get started? What should my day look like? Like all of these types of things are usually questions that people have when they're starting up. And unfortunately, sometimes if you don't kind of set that up the right way in the beginning, then it comes around to kind of bite you later. So we've put all of this into a course and we've made this available because a lot of times we get people contacting us who don't yet have a property management business.
[00:11:20] They're like, "Hey, I want to start this. I want to get into it." But they haven't actually done it yet and made that leap. So we thought, 'Hey, let's help people by leveraging what we know, what we've seen by talking hundreds of property managers and my own experience in starting a property management company, let's put all of that into a course that people can have access to, and that way it'll help you kind of get things off on the right foot.'
[00:11:47] Jason: So in our DoorGrow code, a lot of. At the very earliest stage, we call those dreamers. These are people that have this dream of starting a business and we call them fantasy belts. You know, we have this belt system, so they're not even a white belt yet. When you're in that dreamer or that fantasy stage, a lot of times we are very good at looking at all the upside, and we're very good at ignoring the difficulties or the downside. And so there are a lot of potential pitfalls and mistakes that they make when getting started. and the biggest challenge usually getting started is just taking action to actually get the business going, and they get caught up on wasting a lot of time on stuff that doesn't really matter when the only thing that really matters is getting your first client, right? That first door is the hardest. And so our program is focused on helping you get that first third party door as quick as possible, getting the right things in place, that you need systems in place. And then we even have some upsells or upgrades in the program, so you can get a website and some of these other add-ons that you might want in starting your business. Let's talk about what the program costs.
[00:12:54] Sarah: Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about it. So the monthly investment for foundations is only $297 a month. And we price it this way because some people, it might take only a couple months to get through and some people might kind of hang out here for quite a while. So sometimes we see people really go through things like we have clients in our program. They go through things super quickly. They're rapid implementers. They get the knowledge that they need and then they just implement, move forward. And if that's you, then you can get through this really quickly. You might only be in there for a few months and at that point you might qualify for our mastermind if you need a little bit more time because. You maybe have another job or you've got, you know, other things that are requiring your attention. So you want to be able to do this so that you don't miss out on the opportunity, but you can't fully dedicate yourself to it, then that's okay too. It might take you a little bit longer, so it's only $297 a month. And that way as long as it takes you or as quickly as you get through it you still get all of that information and you can kind of work at your own pace.
[00:14:06] Jason: Cool. Let's talk about what you get with this program. So first you get access to the Foundation's training in DoorGrow Academy, which is going to help you make a lot of the right moves in getting this started. You also get a ticket to DoorGrow Live, which is easily worth the value of, you know, probably several months of paying for this program. But you get a ticket to DoorGrow Live, you get to attend in person, connect with other property managers, maybe make some connections, a friend or two, maybe find a mentor. And we've got some really great mastermind members in that, that are always coming to those events. You get access to DoorGrow CRM. So this is a tool that's going to help you to be able to keep track of potential deals and leads and to be able to move those forward more easily. And it has phone calling and texting and a lot of cool features. So DoorGrow CRM.
[00:15:00] Sarah: Branding pages, automation, all that kind of good stuff.
[00:15:03] Jason: So you get access to that and then we have a growth strategy that we teach in this as well. That's perfect and ideal for startups that we call product research interviews so that you can go out and have a reason to talk to investors or people that can connect you to investors and how to leverage that and how to have the right conversation. We give you the scripts, everything so that you can use this tactic to get your first clients, which are the most difficult to get. And if you do these product research interviews and you do them correctly, you'll get some clients. And this is how we actually use this strategy to start our mastermind and several other programs that we've had at DoorGrow is this strategy of product research interviews, which gives you an excuse to talk to somebody. Sometimes I call this the Trojan horse to selling, but basically you're interviewing people and able to then convert them into clients.
[00:15:58] And that can be really effective for startups because it's also going to teach you, by doing these interviews, you're going to learn the language and the objections and the pain and the pleasure, all the stuff you need to understand in order to sell effectively to clients. So this is going to help you collapse time on selling to clients so that you will be able to sell as effectively, or maybe more so than some people that have been in the industry or at this game for a long time. There's some knowledge that we need to collapse time on, and this is one of the strategies that will help with that. We also have a upsell to where you can, if you want a logo and you want a website, you can pay a little extra to get access to our team to do those things for you. We're the world's leading property management, branding and design agency, we've rebranded more companies than anybody else. Period. Hundreds. And we can help you with making sure you don't make some significant mistakes on the brand, which can cost you a lot of money in the long run. And I think that's about it, right?
[00:16:59] Sarah: Oh, they do the masterclass too? They get access to the masterclass.
[00:17:02] Jason: Oh. We also have a masterclass that we do once a month where we do a cool training on something related to helping you grow and scale your property management business. Trainings in the past that we've done, you will have access to is we did a training on creating the ideal pitch deck, how to create a really good pitch deck to increase your close rate. We did a training on the three systems you need in order to make your business infinitely scalable so you can scale quickly. And any others? We've done some others. We just did your priorities. We did, yeah. We just did a training on increasing your profitability by changing the priorities in the business. Stuff like this.
[00:17:39] So, yeah. So the Foundation's program is a really great stepping stone to enable you to get the funds and get in gear so that you can join our Mastermind. Now, if you've already got the funds, maybe you've got a healthy brokerage, we would recommend you start with our lite version of the Mastermind, and that would be a much better program to be in because it includes the foundation stuff, but then you get coaching and we take things to the next level. You get our more advanced growth strategies, and we do a full rapid revamp on your business, which includes the branding, the website, all that stuff's included. Based on the price points for those things, those upsells being included, it makes it a no-brainer you should do the lite version of the Mastermind, because you'll probably save money that way. So you'll definitely save money that way. Yeah, we would recommend that.
[00:18:31] Program is a one year program or a 12 month commitment, and if you're 200 doors + maybe $20k revenue and plus, then you probably are at a point now where you know how to add doors. Your business probably has a team, you're probably ready for our super system level of the Mastermind and that would be the that next level that we would recommend for those of you that are 200 plus. At least a hundred doors, but maybe 20 K in revenue, plus maybe to be in that level. So depending on what you need and where you're at, we can help figure out what do you need most and how can we best help you? So, yeah. Cool. So if you're thinking about getting into property management, my usual joke is, If you're considering it is, do you want us to talk you into it or do you want us to talk you out of it? because we can do either one. So reach out to us and we can help you with that. Anything else that we should say?
[00:19:24] If you are interested in talking to us, you are struggling in your property management business. You are wanting to take things to the next level. You really haven't grown much or significantly over the last year. Let us inject a little bit of juice and rocket fuel into your business and get you to that next level. We're really good at that. Reach out to us at doorgrow.com and join our free Facebook community. We have some free gifts and we will help funnel you through to working with us as a client. If you need a little time to be nurtured, go to DoorGrowClub.com. We have a lot of great stuff, free content. You get access to some of our master classes and the goal is to convince you that we know what we're doing and to get you to the point where you're working with us as a client. And we'd love to see you in there. So, and that's it, right? And you'll get some free gifts for joining. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:20:12] Jason Hull: You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:20:39] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
Even though a vacancy can be painful for an investor, leasing doesn’t have to be the biggest hat a property manager has to wear.
Join property management growth expert Jason Hull to talk about the topic of the property management Summer busy season with Tim and Larry from Tenant Turner.
[02:55] When is the right time to automate?
[07:52] Why being cheap leads to bad clients
[14:34] Staying competitive in the slow season
[18:04] The multifamily market oversupply
[22:13] Lockboxes and self-showings
“The most important currency related to growth is not cash, it's focus.”
“It's really stupid, in contrast, to hold onto the moldy peanuts in the monkey trap because you don't want to let go and not get your hand out because you just want to be cheap.”
“I find that cheap business owners attract cheap clients and they don't grow and scale their businesses.”
“Even if you only have, you know, one door, eight doors, 10 doors, any vacancy is painful.”
[00:00:00] Jason: I find that cheap business owners attract cheap clients and they don't grow and scale their businesses. And so if you're listening to this and you're like, "well, I'm being cheap and I'm being frugal, and that's smart." It's not smart when it comes to business, and it's not smart when it comes to growth.
[00:00:17] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate, think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, along with Sarah Hull, the COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show, and our guests today are Tim Wallace and Larry Hancock of Tenant Turner. Welcome you two.
[00:01:27] Tim: Thanks for having us.
[00:01:28] Larry: Yeah, thanks for having us.
[00:01:29] Jason: So does everybody there have red hair now? Is this the thing?
[00:01:32] Tim: We're slowly taking over the world.
[00:01:34] Larry: Like it's just-- gingers unite-- job application requirement.
[00:01:37] Jason: That sounds like a really good t-shirt.
[00:01:40] Sarah: I like it. Yeah. "Are you willing to dye your hair?"
[00:01:43] Jason: That'd be the strangest thing. Yeah. "It's part of the, it's part of the uniform." All right. Awesome. Well, it's good to have you both and you know, we really appreciate you being a sponsor for our DoorGrow events and doing some cool stuff with us. And Tim, you actually sold Sarah Tenant Turner previously. Oh, Larry did. Larry sold Sarah Tenant Turner. Yeah. You can't have the credit, Tim. Sorry. It's Larry. Larry did this. He closed the deal in Sarah's property management business that she's since sold, but they're still using Tenant Turner.
[00:02:17] Sarah: They do use tenant turner.
[00:02:19] Jason: There you go. So awesome. So our topic today is scaling up your leasing process during the busy season, which is right now, right? It's summer, things heat up. And what's interesting, if you do go onto Google Trends, trends.google.com and look at the keyword "property management" and you backdate it for like a decade and you'll see these, it just spikes. It doesn't go up like it's not growing in search volume, but property management spikes every summer and goes down in the winter. And that's probably how leasing works as well in property management. So what, where should we start with scaling up your leasing process during the busy season?
[00:02:59] Larry: So what's interesting is it's almost like a catch 22 for our customers. So for folks that aren't using any kind of automation, they're like, "I really need your services, but I'm just too darn busy to even consider it." I'm like, "ah! Why didn't you talk to us just a few months earlier?" And then you got the opposite side where some customers are like, "I'm not busy enough to consider your services." so we're always trying to, you know, have these conversation with these people why automation's beneficial for them. Whether they're in a stage where they're just, you know, drinking from a fire hydrant and they're just trying to just figure things out while they're in the busy leasing season. Or maybe you are using automation and it's just a matter of creating efficiencies. So that way you can continually grow your business. So, typically that's how we'll start our conversation is kind of where are you at right now? Are you kind of just struggling to stay afloat and you need to add some automation into your life, or do you have the automation and it's just creating those efficiencies in your business?
[00:03:53] Jason: So how do you help people that say they're not busy enough justify leveraging and getting tenure turner?
[00:04:02] Larry: Yeah. So from there it's really. Trying to get them more in the head space of like, "I understand that for now. But let's figure out how we can create value here." So maybe I'm getting them in a place of, you know, let's build the building blocks. "We're not going to create your account just yet, but in a perfect world, when you are busy and need our services, let's kind of back out what the steps are to get there." Sometimes maybe their portfolio isn't large enough. So then that would be a time when I would recommend to someone like you, Jason, where it's like, "Hey, you need to be a part of a program where you can, you know, grow your portfolio because he's going to help you grow your portfolio and then you're going to need us because you're only one person." so I'll try to get them in that kind of head space. But it's really almost building their tech stack. So while we're an important piece to that whole thing there's other moving parts to the entire system. So that's usually how I start. It's really more playing a consolidative role.
[00:04:55] So I'm trying to consult them, figure out where they're at in the process. And if they're not a good fit for us that day, that's okay. Maybe they will be. And then I'm going to set a reminder to reach out before they're busy losing season basically.
[00:05:07] Jason: So where is that kind of cutoff point to where they've achieved, you know, Tenant Turner readiness status?
[00:05:17] Larry: So sometimes people will view it from like a portfolio size. I think it's really more about the entrepreneurial mindset. I met some people where they have just one door and they're like, "Hey Larry, I'm going to be a hundred units by the end of the year." I'm like, "that's awesome man. You know, it's great you're kind of trying to build this plane before you're trying to take off," where sometimes I talk to customers, they're like, "Hey, We're flying this plane. The wings are about to fall off. And I just don't know what to do." I'm like, "okay--"
[00:05:42] Jason: I'm going to build it in the air. I'm working on it.
[00:05:45] Larry: I know. It's like, "all right, well I appreciate you, you know, diving ahead first, but you're probably really stressed out right now." So, typically in our world, our pricing model, month to month, no contracts. So one to 50 units you're fine. We're going to talk to you. We're not going to be like, "oh you're too small for us, man. Like, I just can't talk to you." We have a great culture in that way. We try to be that partner with them. But typically our general rule of thumb is if you expect to have any vacancy, whether it's one throughout the entire year, you should at least consider us. Even if it's only one month out of the entire year we'll still talk to you.
[00:06:16] Jason: Yeah.
[00:06:17] Sarah: Yeah. And I think something that people don't always realize is even if you're like, I don't need it right now, I'm not ready, I don't have enough. It's going to make it so much easier if you have systems in place already, so that you can scale so that when you scale, you're not now in massive amounts of pain. And even if you only have, you know, one door, eight doors, 10 doors, any vacancy is painful. Yeah, any vacancy is painful and it's going to help you massively, not only just in your time and your effort, but it will make your clients happier. Like when I implemented Tenant Turner, my vacancy rate like took a nosedive. Now, not that I had a high vacancy rate. But like just trying to like market and figure out where to put these things and answering all the messages and doing a gazillion showings for people that might not even qualify. You know, it was taking sometimes like weeks to fill a vacancy. And when I implemented that, it went down dramatically. So clients are much, much happier and you and your staff are going to be much, much happier because now it's a lot less work for you.
[00:07:28] Larry: Yeah and kind of building on that, Sarah, we kind of find our solution is almost like a an aspirin approach. So people are kind of taking that aspirin when they have a headache in the form of vacancy. And there is a time and place to pop the aspirin, but usually what's a lot better is kind of plan ahead of, "oh, I know I could have headaches during this time of the year, so I'm going to be a little bit more you know, I'm going to prepare, I'm going to be more proactive." where I see people have the right mindset in regards to software is usually what they'll do is they'll annualize the cost and then figure out how to generate enough ROI. So if I'm able to save. Five hours per week, you know, and I annual analyze the software in such a way I don't need to worry about it because I've looked at the 12 month period and I know I'm going to get my value that way. It's a little bit harder when you're trying to convince people when they're kind of penny pitching and it's like you're wasting all this time on that part and that time worrying about it, you just wasted where you could be attracting new owners. So the mindset really is kind of analyzing the software, but trying to build the ROI into that.
[00:08:31] Sarah: I have to say like I was hesitant for a while because I was like, "well, this is easy and like I have this streamlined process" and really, I said this to you. I was like, "I just don't spend that much time." I had 200 and like some odd units, like 260 I think at my highest. And when I was talking with you, I was like, "you know, I just don't spend that much time doing it. So is there a benefit to it? Yes, but how much time am I really going to save? Because I feel like it's already something that is simple for me." And even though I had this streamlined and I had processes to find and I maybe was spending a couple hours a week doing, you know, messaging and email and confirmations and stuff like that.
[00:09:14] I was still spending time doing it. When I implemented Tenant Turner, then I was like, "oh, I don't have anything to do." Like every once in a while I have to just pop in and you have to like manually approve somebody. And then once, like I updated my showing schedule once a week. So once a week I had to go in and update the showing schedule for the upcoming week, which took all of maybe four minutes. And other than that, I was just popping in and kind of like manually approving people. And I was spending, I went from maybe a few hours a week, which I still didn't think was a lot to minutes per week. And I was like, "oh wow. Okay. I see it now. I see it." But sometimes they think you have to experience it to see it. Because I was like, "I just don't know!" And I was really glad that I did it because it really like, it took so much. And sometimes when you make a change like that, then you realize how much work you are actually doing. Because we rationalize, we're like, "it's not that hard. It doesn't take me that long. Like I just send a couple emails," and then when you realize, "oh, I don't have to do any of that anymore." it was like mind blowing to me. I was like, "oh, like this literally takes me like 10 minutes a week and that's it." So all my leasing was done in 10 minutes.
[00:10:33] Jason: I think that's one of my favorite ways to justify an expense is you have to look at the opportunity cost because if you're just looking, you're like, "okay, well it costs me this much money and if I do it myself, then it's free. But your time is the most valuable resource you have in a business-- not free-- and the most important currency related to growth is not cash. It's focus. And if your focus is diluted as a business owner away from what can generate more revenue, then the opportunity cost is huge in two to three hours you could be closing deals that are worth tens of thousands of dollars over that year. So it's really stupid in contrast to like hold onto the moldy peanuts in the monkey trap because you don't want to let go and not get your hand out because you just want to be cheap.
[00:11:22] And so I find that cheap business owners attract cheap clients and they don't grow and scale their businesses. And so if you're listening to this and you're like, "well, I'm being cheap and I'm being frugal, and that's smart." It's not smart when it comes to business, and it's not smart when it comes to growth. You need to let go of those moldy peanuts. There's bananas in reach and the farmer's going to come along and chop off your head. And this is why most businesses fail. Most businesses fail in the-- or they get stuck-- first year or the first five years. A lot fail and property management is tough. And I see, I see a lot.
[00:11:55] Sarah: They get, they just get stuck and they're trapped. "I don't have more time. I can't do anything else. Like, I don't know what else I can do in making these little changes." Like I'm going to be honest with you, I like, I bought into the product and I still wasn't like, "ah, I think that's going to be amazing." I was like, "it'll help me." And it helped way more than I thought it was going to help me. I would say this is like 1. Was implementing a property management software and 2. Was implementing tenant Turner. Those are the two things that like made a massive shift in my business for me.
[00:12:28] Jason: Nice.
[00:12:29] Sarah: And I almost wish I could have told myself like, "Hey, remember when you had 260 units and you were doing it all yourself? You should have been talking to Tenant Turner.
[00:12:37] Jason: There was some guy that had mentioned these things to you.
[00:12:40] Sarah: I know!
[00:12:40] Jason: He's pretty smart.
[00:12:41] Tim: I think even if you are in that cheap mindset, like at the end of the day, like vacancy is what's going to cost your owners the most money down the road too. Like one day on the market can cost them anywhere from what, 50 to $200 depending on what they're paying for their mortgage and everything. Like those costs add up and it's as property managers, it's your fiduciary duty to help them recoup that money. And if you're spending too much time on those types of things, even if you're focused on your business and spending time on that, you could still be losing that money by having those extra days on market without this type of system.
[00:13:11] Sarah: Absolutely, and I think the conversation that I have with people over and over again is you need to figure out what this particular task is worth in dollars. So if this is like a $10 an hour task, a $20 an hour task, Is it something that you, as a business owner need to be doing? Is your time worth more than 10 or $20 an hour? And if the answer to that question is yes, then you need to not be the one who's doing this.
[00:13:35] Jason: Yeah. If a business owner, and a lot of business owners are the BDM, they are the business development manager. They are the person that's doing sales and generating revenue and growing the business. And if you do not as a business owner, have a full-time BDM.
[00:13:49] You have somebody focused on this and it's on your shoulders, then you're a shitty part-time salesperson. You're maybe investing, I find one, maybe two hours a day. That's like 10 hours a week focusing on growing the business. And so everything else other than that should be offloaded that you can everything else. Give up the leasing stuff as much as you can, give up the maintenance stuff as much as you can, like you need to be focused on generating revenue until you can offload that piece and focus. Otherwise, you're not going to grow. And if any business owner is listening to this in property management, if you haven't grown significantly over the last year or two or three, it's because you are doing the wrong things as a business owner in the business. Plain and simple, there's no way around that. So we chatted about justifying it for those that are already, they have lots of doors and they're, you know, how do we deal with making things scalable during the busy season? And then things really for leasing tend to really cool down in the winter months. And so what are you typically seeing with clients that come to you that are maybe at a 200 plus doors or it's obvious that you can serve them.
[00:15:02] Tim: I mean, even if you do have 200 doors sure, summertime's going to be the busiest, where generally speaking, you could have anywhere from what, five to 12% vacancy rates and whatnot with turnovers and whatnot. During the wintertime, there still might be one or two that hit every month. And what we're noticing with customers that size is that throughout the year we kind of keep things with that month to month rate really low for everyone.
[00:15:24] It's based on portfolio size for us. And so most people are keeping that active because even one listing, like you're saying, if you're working on one listing, spending two or three hours on that one listing, even getting to go back and forth with the messages, the emails and everything like that could still be costing you more than what your monthly rate for subscription might be. So a lot of people do keep us going year round and have the lock boxes and things like that in service for vendors and stuff that might need to come and go for properties as well. So, there's lots of different little solutions that we provide there too that kind of help keep the business flowing smoothly, but generally speaking, we're there when they need us and any spot in the road where if it's crazy or if it's just a little bit, we try to keep the system smooth all year for them.
[00:16:10] Larry: I guess to add to that so typically when things are slow, usually people are saying, "I'm not getting enough leads." really what they mean is they're not getting enough leads from, you know, Zillow, Trulia, the big networks. And when they come to us and say, "Hey, what do I do? What can Tenant Turner provide?" That's usually when I tell them like, "you're really going to hunker down and how are you going to be different than your competition?" and that's also times when like, you know, "let's look at your website. You know, are you being an industry leader in your market?" So maybe they're not going to the Zillows, but when they search, or, you know, what is your web, your presence in your market? Automation's great and you definitely should automate, but then there's also times to be that personalized touch. So when things are slow, what aren't your competitors doing? If they're leaning really heavy where they can't talk to a person at all maybe you should go to what we call the 'take request model,' where we're automating things, we're pre-qualifying, and then we're setting, you know, a couple days and times. But before an appointment's approved, you get to talk to that lead. And really what you're doing, you're leveraging yourself. You introduce yourself, you say why you're great and you're market maybe some key differentiators. And then you schedule an appointment. And you do a couple things. What I like to say is you're doing what's called a vibes test just to make sure both of you are, you know, a good fit, rather to rent the property and that type of stuff. And also you're making sure they have a heartbeat. Making sure, you know, if you're using self-guided tours, it's another security layer to everything. Because at the end of the day, I'm a big fan of it's the, a book called Rework by the guys who created Basecamp. And the whole philosophy is that it's not that in a world where people saying, "I need more of this," whether it's "I need more leads" or "I need more tools," it's more utilizing the tools that you already have more efficiently. So when we look at things like lead flow, maybe it's not necessarily a top of the funnel problem, it's more of a bottom of the funnel conversion problem. And then when you use personalization to a lot of interesting ways, like I mentioned.
[00:18:04] Jason: So one of the things that I think is happening a bit throughout the US and I've had some podcast guests touch on this, is that in some markets-- and I've heard some some property managers anecdotally share this with me as well-- they're having a difficulty getting tenants because the inventory as a result of the pandemic just went up, skyrocketed. A lot of people are like, "Hey, let's build, let's create a bunch of investments." Now there's a surplus of inventory and that creates a scarcity of tenants, and so they're having to get a little bit more aggressive. What strategies Have you guys seen, or you know, because you're connected to a lot of people that are doing leasing, how are they becoming more attractive to tenants than their competition?
[00:18:48] Tim: You want to start or? So there's a lot of different things out there, like different solutions, whether it's providing something like a benefits package to your residents, things like that really making your listings stand out. If it's better photography, if it's better marketing in general for stuff. But generally speaking, we are kind of seeing that trend as well, where days on market are expanding a little bit. It's kind of a trend that's-- we were kind of in a goldlock zone for the last couple of years with rentals. Like it's been amazing and pre covid it wasn't ever really like that either. Like that we're kind of seeing the ebbs and flows of the market, and that's just natural in real estate. So, we're coming back to the time where people are like, kind of hunkering down and making sure that their properties are as good as they can be to really attract the best tenants for them. So while there might be a few extra days on market, there's a couple things you can do around there. Like Larry's saying, adding those personal touches in there. Setting up notifications so that as soon as someone gets to the property, you can still have that personal touch by making a phone call as soon as you can see they got into the property. Or if maybe some people are doing a few more in-person showings, if that's the case. Generally speaking, that's putting more time on the property as well, which, like we talked about, costs opportunity costs.
[00:20:00] If you got the team to do that, and that's kind of their role as a leasing agent or whatnot, great. They can have that personal touch and then go a little bit further with them. But if you're also focused on self showings having that additional personal touch, some additional marketing on the property or whatnot, I can kind of help draw that process out a little bit sooner. And really with our system, it. We really try to provide as much immediacy as possible. So when someone sees a listing on a site like Zillow, for instance they're clicking request information. We're sending them an email right away that they have the opportunity to come into Tenant Turner and click a link and schedule a tour right away. If they're calling into us, they're not going to a voicemail. They're going to be sitting there waiting three days for someone to respond to. I know that's a trend of the industry. A lot of people have massively filled inbox inboxes that they just can't handle. So tenant leads never hear back from anyone because they kind of pick and choose. We're responding to every single one of those leads as they come in and making sure that immediacy is really driving that engagement.
[00:20:59] So if we keep that engagement up for everyone the goal is that, generally speaking, that alone will really help drive. What's, I think there's a statistic out there? If you respond within five minutes, generally speaking, you're going to get 80% more acceptance in terms of a conversation. Yeah. There's that click or an actual phone call, things like that, like providing that immediacy is a massive, and it goes a long way for impressing tenant leads on the consumer side, but also in, in business. We all know B two B sales and even BDMs like calling their owners. As soon as you see a click on a website, you want to call them. So we want to keep that trend going on our side as well.
[00:21:33] Jason: Yeah, this is the TikTok generation man. They have attention spans of like two minutes, you know, it's like really short. So I love these ideas. So pushing owners to improve the property I think is a great strategy. Increasing your availability and your responsiveness and that immediacy, quick, beat, slow for sure in business. Increasing the ease Tenent Turner helps with. And then making sure that you are able to be super responsive within the first five minutes. So yeah. Love it. All right, cool. What else should we chat about related to scaling up your process during the busy season? Did we miss anything?
[00:22:12] Larry: We got it. I know typically the elephant in the room, so a lot of times, you know, self-guided tours is the golden child of, you know, why you should consider it and how it's helpful, whether it's busy or slow and this, that, and the other. But one of the things that we had is for people that aren't using it and it's like, "I would never consider that or I'm scared to use this or I can never get owner buy-in." And that's kind of always the elephant in the room. I know Tim, you have some very interesting data of, you know, while, you know, like anything in business there are inherent risks, but as business owners every day we are willing to kind of, you know, improve or, you know, try to tackle these risks. And there's usually a pot-- not all the time, but you know, a pot of gold can be waiting for you. So was there any data that you wanted to share, Tim?
[00:22:56] Jason: Before we get into that, let's kill that objection real quick. because I hear this all the time too. So I say, "Hey, maybe you should be using Tenant Turner or something like this," and they say, "well, I don't want to do lock boxes." And my response is, "you don't have to." like, there's a lot of benefits besides that piece. In fact, there's plenty of benefits besides that piece. And so maybe you can address that real quick and then we can talk about is that even really a valid concern or not? And are there markets that are better for lockbox versus others? Some are like, "I can never do that in my market. I'll have squatters all over the place." you know, they're concerned. So let's address that, that elephant in the room.
[00:23:34] Tim: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you guys know your properties best. You're going to know which areas might have a high potential for negativity happening. Whether it's someone coming in and stealing wires, the horror stories of people stealing appliances and stuff like that. At the end of the day, if someone wants to do something bad, A lockbox or a keyless lock isn't necessarily going to stop someone in that scenario, right? We all know areas where people aren't afraid to break a window and get in, steal a refrigerator. Like the fact that a property isn't known to be vacant is a big enough red flag alone that most people that want to do something nefarious will go ahead and do it. But at the same time on our side of things, if we can block as many of those instances as possible with our abilities to kind of keep track of known scammers and squatters and things like that. We've got some stuff built into our system, but really at the end of the day, if someone wants to do something bad, it's going to happen. But generally speaking, most people that are doing showings, that type of scenario, if you're, you know, your area, if you're doing your own kind of awareness inspections periodically and you're on top of the property yourself, we barely hear of any instances of negativity happening with those scenarios. Like self showings, we can come up with the horror stories, but at the end of the day, in our experience, they are really few and far between and we're not having major issues, at least more than what you would on average. See, with any property that's being marketed, it's vacant. Like that's, it's going to happen.
[00:24:56] Jason: And there's some serious advantages because, I would imagine the best defense, period, against all of those type of problems is just getting it leased out as quick as possible. Yep. It's decreasing vacancy, and so if a lockbox can help them get into it right away, get a showing right away, whatever, decreasing the vacancy time is probably your best, you know, defense.
[00:25:18] Sarah: Yeah. The other thing I'll add to this too, is if there are people who are kind of scoping out the property and they notice, hey, like every Tuesday at six o'clock people come and then that's it. They're not going to come at Tuesday at six o'clock. They're going to come at other times. Yeah. So if we do have a lockbox on it, and now we don't really know, like when people are going to come because they're coming whenever is like convenient for them. So it might be earlier in the morning or in the afternoon or late at night. We don't know for sure. There's not so much predictability in the schedule. So I think that's something that would help as well is if there's someone who's " Hey, that house over there is vacant. Let's like check that out." But they consistently see people in and out of it, that is a little bit of a deterrent as well, because you never know, like, "Hey, if I go over there because I want to steal that refrigerator, am I walking into someone who's already there?
[00:26:14] Jason: Now you can not have a big old sign on the property out front that says, "Hey, this is vacant right now. Do you want to see this?" You know, but you can still market it online without like giving out the address until they're ready to do a showing probably.
[00:26:29] Larry: Yeah, so there's some kind of tips and tricks that we've found. So one thing is not advertising it as a self-guided tour. If you're going to use verbiage in the marketing description, use contactless showing. Because that could mean virtual tours, it could mean other things. But really for us, I like to describe ourselves as a closed loop system. because usually leads are only interacting with our platform if they find out through your website or through a syndication site. So it makes it much more harder to shop for homes because they really don't know, you know, but if they inquire, then that's when the automation will engage. Some interesting things, you know, kind of like Sarah said, one thing deterrent is they see activity, but you know, we find that a lead isn't going to put a government Id answer some questions and go through this process. Why would they do that when they could just go to the front door? You could go to YouTube and learn how to pick a lock and under five minutes, and then no one's going to know I'm on the radar. It's so much easier to do that. Especially in the age of TikTok. I'm sure there's a TikTok, within two minutes or less you'll learn how to pick a lock or pop open a lockbox or something like that too.
[00:27:34] Sarah: Or break a window.
[00:27:35] Larry: Or break a window.
[00:27:37] Jason: Yeah, it's a little bit quicker probably. All right, cool. So, how can people get in touch with Tenant Turner and reach out to you guys?
[00:27:48] Larry: Yeah, so obviously if they want to learn a little bit about our services, tenantturner.com. My name's Larry, larry@tenantturner.com. Feel free to email me directly. I kind of deem myself as a software nerd so you know, any questions about whether you use this or not, that's fine. You know, I'm always happy to share tips and tricks of how to automate your process, so that's kind of how you learn some more.
[00:28:12] Tim: So Larry's on the sales side of things for tenant Turner. I'm on the marketing side too, so if you ever need any additional materials or data and statistics around the self showings, if you want to help market to your owners and whatnot, if you've already signed up with Tenant Turner, happy to kind of jump on that side of things. You can email me at tim@tenantturner.com.
[00:28:26] Jason: Awesome. I'm sure that's a big part of it is really if they understand how to sell it to their clients, then that's probably the biggest hurdle. Is just being able to confidently say, here's why this is a good idea and how it's going to benefit you and to sell them on it. So, awesome. Well it's been great having you both here on the show. We appreciate Tenant Turner. We get great feedback on tenant Turner from our clients, so we've always felt very confident pushing our clients towards you as one part of their growth strategy and and I hope you guys have an awesome week.
[00:28:59] Larry: Thanks. You as well. We appreciate you guys and thanks for including us.
[00:29:02] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur that is wanting to grow your business, reach out to Tenant Turner and make sure you reach out to DoorGrow. We are really good at helping our clients scale if you feel like you need more doors to be able to afford Tenant Turner or to be able to justify tenant Turner. We're really good at helping people do that. Anything else we should add? I don't think so. Let's tell them to join our Facebook group. Join our Facebook group.
[00:29:28] There you go. DoorGrow club.com. Join our Facebook group community. We have some free stuff in there. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:29:37] Jason Hull: You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
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