Being a business owner can be incredibly stressful at times, and property management entrepreneurs know exactly how stressful it can be.
Today, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss how property management entrepreneurs can reduce and manage their stress.
[03:07] Why property managers are so stressed
[12:18] The secret to stress relief is… going for walks!
[13:42] The magic of mini breaks
[19:42] Taking care of your physical health to reduce stress
[22:52] You put too much pressure on yourself
[27:41] The problem with starting multiple businesses
“You put up with whatever situation you create.”
“The beautiful thing about having a business is that you can create the business. You can build it around you and you can structure it in a way that allows you to reduce your stress, especially once you start to build a team.”
“The business can take as much of you from you and your life as you're willing to allow it.”
“In order to have more than one successful business, you must first have one successful business.”
[00:00:00] Sarah: You put up with whatever situation you create and the beautiful thing about having a business is that you can create the business, you can build it around you, and you can structure it in a way that allows you to reduce your stress especially once you start to build a team.
[00:00:17] 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.
[00:00:33] DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.
[00:00:51] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win.
[00:01:05] I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, along with Sarah Hull, co owner and COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.
[00:01:19] All right. So today I reached out to Morgan, one of our coaches on our team, and I said, "What should we talk about on the podcast? What are you running into with clients lately related to coaching?" Should I just read what she said or...? I'll sum it up. So basically she said a lot of property managers have a lot on their plates. A lot of y'all have a lot on your plate and you're not taking care of yourself. And, you know, this might sting a little to hear for some of you are not taking care of yourself right now, you know, you should be, maybe you should be eating better, you should be getting more sleep, you should be having less stress, should be like stepping up more as mom or dad, taking care of your kids, being part of the family, whatever it is, but you're just, you're not able to really be there in a lot of different ways because you are too busy being a martyr, too busy being a martyr, allowing property management to take over your life, allowing tenants to take over your life, allowing owners to dictate your life, and you're trying to please all of these other people. Probably matter a lot less to you than your family does, right? So that's what we're
[00:02:39] chat about today. We're going to talk a little bit about today, about how it's possible to have it all. You can have a successful business. You can manage your time well, you can get support. You can have the space to work with DoorGrow, have time for coaching. You can have it all. And she also mentioned other big challenges is related to this is juggling multiple businesses. So these are some of the things we can get into today. Where should we start?
[00:03:07] Sarah: Well, I think a good place to start is Let's address the elephant in the room, which is like stress. Stress in property management is super common because it is a very stressful business. It's a high pace, like fast moving business. Typically it's not something where hey, we have, you know, 18 days to figure this out and we could just take our time. Oftentimes it's like a fast moving, high pressure industry in general.
[00:03:38] And I think that there are definitely ways to kind of help like reduce and mitigate stress. I just don't know how often people actually do it, and for a while I was in that bucket too. I really, I was like experiencing burnout and I think that's really common for people is just to go, "well, this is just normal. Like I own a business and this is normal and this is what owning a business is. This is what property management is, you know, this is what it's like. I have to just put up with it. And you don't. You put up with whatever situation you create and the beautiful thing about having a business is that you can create the business you can build it around you and you can structure it in a way that allows you to reduce your stress especially once you start to build a team.
[00:04:29] Jason: Yeah, I think In building a business, any business, any industry, the business can take as much of you from you and your life as you're willing to allow it. And so it's really about setting healthy boundaries. And boundaries really aren't so much about telling everybody else, this is how you need to treat me necessarily.
[00:04:53] Boundaries are really just about what you are going to do and not going to do. That's it, like it's in your wheelhouse. A lot of times people think boundaries are about like trying to control somebody else or telling somebody else you're not allowed to do this to me or say this or do... that's controlling.
[00:05:10] That's not necessarily boundaries. Boundaries really are, "if you do these things..." If the tenant's going to treat or talk to me this way, I'm going to, you know, do this, or if the owner is going to treat me or talk to me this way, then this is going to be the consequence I'm going to do this since about what you're going to do.
[00:05:28] And one of the ways you can easily set a boundary you know, back when I had a job, which is a while ago, I'm pretty much unemployable now. I think most of the entrepreneurs listening would agree they're unemployable now. You just wouldn't probably be able to work for somebody else. You're enjoying too much freedom as a business owner, even if it's your stress and your problem, it's yours, right? But one of the things I had to do is I had a job where I was managing an entire like tech support team and I got all the escalation calls and the work was never done. It was endless. It was never gone. It was never like, at the end of the day, I completed everything.
[00:06:06] And could just go home and it was all done and I'm sure property managers feel they feel a lot like this.
[00:06:12] Oh, yeah.
[00:06:12] It's just it's never done.
[00:06:14] It's never done.
[00:06:15] Always outstanding stuff.
[00:06:16] Always more to do...
[00:06:17] ...work orders waiting
[00:06:18] Sarah: ...more you could do, where you're like, "well, okay i'm done, but let me try to see if I can get these things in" or like, "Oh, maybe now I have some time to focus on, you know, this thing." and it's this never ending loop. It's a never ending cycle.
[00:06:34] Jason: And when you know you have this endless to do list that you're always adding to. So it becomes a to die list because you're just making it bigger all the time. Probably there needs to be a cutoff, right? And so one simple boundary is you can say, "I'm done at 5 p. m." Like I'm going home and "I'm going to be with my family and I'm not going to work." Right. "I'm done." And now you need to set some things up, some systems in place so that you can be legitimately done by 5 p. m. Maybe it's you have an after hours call center. Maybe it's you've got somebody else on your team that has a phone, maybe the after hour stuff, you've got Filipino team members where it's like during normal hours for them, whatever, but you have some way of saying, "I'm done at five." Then from there on out, I get to be dad, I get to be family member, I get to like, feed myself, and I think this is like, in my study of like, men and women, I think men need this way more than women, but probably everybody needs this, but we need a time gap between work and family to transition.
[00:07:42] I mean, at least like 30 minutes to an hour to decompress, especially when we first walk in the door. So like, guys, you need some way to become human again, because you're in like focus work mode and Sarah knows, like, I'm not good in that space. Like if she tries talking to me in that period. Like I'm not listening well, I'm not present and I'm like everyone's frustrated Like it just it doesn't go well.
[00:08:10] Sarah: There's usually a lot of "hello??"
[00:08:12] Jason: Yeah, and I'm like ruminating on the last thing somebody said or something else and I'm just I mean I'm in problem solving mode And I have to like get out of that space.
[00:08:23] Sarah: Yeah, like you're physically here, but you're just mentally like yeah elsewhere. You're not, and it's weird because people in your life don't know that, especially like if you work from home or if you have kids are like, if you're here, like you're here, I should be able to talk to you or call you or walk in your office or, right?
[00:08:44] And it's about kind of training. It's like, "Hey, I'm here, but just pretend like I'm not, I know you can see me, I know you can hear me, but during work hours, you got to pretend like I'm not here because a lot of people work outside the home. So just pretend in your brain, like unless there is an emergency, like I'm not here," but it's weird because when you can see someone and they're physically there, you just kind of expect them to be, you know, available.
[00:09:12] So it's I think what something that you could probably do a little bit better is like in that transitional period. Like just either hang out in your office or like go upstairs to the media room or go take a walk or something so that gives you space to like decompress and then when you're ready then come around me because women, I think our brains work just a little different than men's do but like if you have computers like it's like we have like a thousand tabs open at all times. Now they're open like they're doing stuff in the background But maybe there's like three tabs that you're actually looking at right now, but all the other ones, they're just like back here, kind of spinning. And all of a sudden one of those tabs is like, "Oh, ping! Hey, we need you!" And we're like, "Oh, pull that tab open. Like, let's go into that." And he's like, "Whoa, I'm not even paying attention yet."
[00:10:00] Jason: I've heard it described that women's brains have what's called diffuse awareness, which basically means they're way better multitaskers than us, but they're aware of everything going on at the same time.
[00:10:12] The disadvantage is pretty prominent when it comes to like war or like focusing on one thing right then and trying to shut out all the extra noise and all that like crazy craziness. That's where guys really tend to excel because we're singular focus in our brain. We can literally stop thinking. We can actually just not think about anything.
[00:10:34] Sometimes women are like, "what are you thinking about?" And we're like, "nothing." We can actually do that. And women don't get that a lot. I don't get it. I don't know. Like, how do you not think? Yeah.
[00:10:44] Sarah: I think in my sleep too. Like I wake up with ideas that I didn't have the night before. And it's like just something was spinning around in my brain overnight.
[00:10:52] Jason: So another thing I've noticed is I'm a lot more burnout by the end of the day if I don't get breaks. And a lot of times we have this, we get this obsessive need, like "I need to hustle, I got to do." And we become less and less effective. We're less and less present and we're less and less efficient and we're getting actually less done.
[00:11:13] And so I find that for me, taking little breaks throughout the day, which I've been trying to do when I take little breaks throughout the day, it allows my brain to kind of unwind a little bit. It's like they say, if you keep a bow strung all the time, it loses its spring and you can no longer shoot arrows, right?
[00:11:31] It's no longer effective as a tool. You unstring the bow when it's not in use. And so finding times throughout the day to give a little bit of break I think also as a way of setting boundaries for yourself and saying, I'm not going to just hiho silver all day long... and that's a Lone Ranger reference, but hiho silvering is where you're just, "I'm going to go! I'm going to solve the day! I'm going to do everything blah, blah, blah!" And you just go. And you're not really effective. You're just running around, go, go, going, you're not taking time to think, plan, meditate, chill out. You're reacting. Yeah, you're very, yes, you're very reactive instead of in control. So so I think that's another way to mitigate stress.
[00:12:18] One of my biggest secrets for stress is just going for walks. It's a form of bilateral stimulation. It gets both sides of your brain to go back and forth. There's a form of therapy called EMDR therapy. I did, I worked with an EMDR therapist for a year, just from all the stress and trauma that exists in being an entrepreneur. My business coach at the time was like, "you need to go get EMDR therapy." And I was like, "okay, I'll go do it." And it was really helpful. But then I realized, you know what? The light moving back and forth or the vibrating paddle or having them move your eye back and forth. Bilateral stimulation also happens when you just go for a walk, and you just focus on feeling your feet while you think about whatever's stressing you out. And so, we like to go for walks.
[00:13:04] Sarah: Yeah, we do. I love walking. I feel better after walks, and I feel like I do a lot of really good thinking, on walks too. It's it just because I'm away from everything, like I'm not in front of a device. I don't have my phone in my hand or I probably have it like on me, but I'm not like on it. I'm not looking at something. So it allows me to just. Focus on the thing that I want to focus on instead of whatever is calling my attention at that particular time. So, you know, if you've got emails piling up, like, and you're not looking at your email, you don't know that you have emails piling up because it's not in front of you.
[00:13:40] So I really do like going for walks. I do want to circle back to the mini break thing. I have really great story to share. So years ago in my former life, I sold insurance. And I was newer to the insurance company and there was a woman, there were a couple women, but there was one woman in particular at this company.
[00:14:02] She hated my guts, like oh my God, she hated me so much. I think to this day she still hates me. It's funny to me. I laugh about it. Oh man, she was so mean to me. She was just nasty, like sweet to my face awful behind my back in a lot of different ways. So one time she did not think I was at my desk and I had returned to my desk and we had like little cubicle desks and she was kind of around the corner talking with another woman who didn't like me at the time, ended up liking me, but didn't like me at the time.
[00:14:32] And I hear her say, " I don't even know why she has a job here. She doesn't do anything all day. All she does is walk around. She's never at her desk. She just walks around all day long and she talks to people." And it was hilarious to me, like so comically funny to me. The better part was when she turned around to walk by me and realize, because she said that like a minute earlier and walked by me and realized, "oh shit, she probably heard that because she was at the desk."
[00:15:03] And she's in a way, she had a point. What she missed is the big picture. So her point was like "she walks around a lot" and I do, I have to walk around a lot. I always have to, like, even I work from home now. I'm like, let me get the dog's treat, let me get the dog's out, like I'm going to just go take a lap, I'm going to get up and go, you know, get a drink of water, or I'll make myself a juice, or a coffee sometimes, like, there's certain days, I do laundry, so like, in between things, I'm going in and doing laundry, even if I just get up, sometimes, like, I have a bathroom in my office, I don't use that bathroom, I will get up and walk across to the other side of the house to use a different bathroom, why?
[00:15:42] Because it gives me a mini break. So I'm really big on taking mini breaks. I always have been. And something I learned recently, I didn't know that I was doing this, but mini breaks are so good for you because they allow you to like, just kind of decompress take a break of like. First of all, it gives your eyes a big rest because now we're no longer staring at a screen.
[00:16:05] Second of all, if you get up and you're walking, now you are getting that bilateral stimulation. And you're also like getting, if you're, if you sit too long, it's just not good for your body. Like sitting too long is not good. Standing too long is not good. Walking too long is not good. So we have to find that balance. But though, for those of us, like property managers who are not out in the field, We're the ones who are like hey, maybe we're, you know, at the desk and maybe we're doing sales that a lot of times it's at a desk. Jill, get up like every so often get up, but I would get in that office. It was funny.
[00:16:40] It was a three story building. We owned all three floors, well, they owned and then I would like, I would go down in the basement and like, go talk to somebody for a few minutes. Instead of calling them on the phone, I would go walk down and talk to them and get what I need and then come back up. Upstairs was the kitchen. So I would go make myself a coffee, come back down. I would walk to the other side to go to the bathroom. That way I'm giving myself a mini break. But the funny thing about this is I was the most productive agent month over month in that company in what I did, which is personal lines.
[00:17:11] So they're big performer and I'm not going to mention names, but they're big performer, she was great. And she's amazing. She's so great. I came in and I blew her out of the water every single month over month. And I quote unquote did nothing. So it was funny for me because I just laughed at that.
[00:17:28] I was like, "Oh, this is rich."
[00:17:30] Jason: Right. Yeah.
[00:17:31] Sarah: But I was able to outwork and outperform anybody, and I still am because my stamina is just like I have now trained my body and trained my brain. But part of doing that is taking a break. If you say Sarah, you have to sit down for the next eight hours or four hours or three hours and just sit here and focus and do work like, I can't do that.
[00:17:53] I need mini breaks. So even like in between coaching calls or in between sales calls or when I was doing property management and I was doing sales calls, I wasn't sitting at my desk. I was on my phone. I only ever talk on speaker. Everybody knows this about me. I only ever talk on speaker. So I was holding my phone.
[00:18:10] It's a little annoying sometimes
[00:18:12] ...holding my phone like this, but I would be up. I'd be pacing. I'd be walking around. Sometimes it was just back and forth in a room. Sometimes I'd go like in my closet and I'd come out. I'd go like down the hall. I'd come back. But I was always up walking and that gave me like a little mini break and I wasn't getting sore.
[00:18:30] Like my hips get sore if I sit too long. So I think these mini breaks. There's gold in there. So make sure and if you are someone who lives and dies by your calendar, that's fine. Like at least every two hours schedule yourself like a five to ten minute mini break. Now this doesn't have to be long.
[00:18:50] Sometimes people are like, "Oh, I can't take a huge break because then I'm like sacrificing time and I'm not getting enough done." You will get more done and these are mini breaks. I wasn't up like "hey, I'm going to go gallivanting for like you know, 20, 30 minutes. It's a 5 to 10 minute mini break. It gives your brain a rest.
[00:19:10] It gives your eyes a rest. It gives you a chance to get up and move and you will get more done that way. Do you gallivant? I used to gallivant a lot.
[00:19:20] Jason: I don't even know what that means. I mean, I picture you like, I picture somebody like Monty Python or something. You should know that word. I've heard the word.
[00:19:29] I just can't picture what you gallivanting would look like.
[00:19:33] All right. So, so what's interesting is some people say sitting is the new smoking. I don't think, I don't know, but maybe it's that bad. But I, what I do know is my Oura ring and which measures my heart rhythm and heart rate and stuff and my apple watch, which also does this stuff are constantly telling me that I need to stretch my legs or I need to stand up.
[00:19:58] I get notifications. It can tell that my heart rate is being and my heart is being affected and my health is being affected when I sit too long. So there's, you know, this is a legitimate thing. So getting up and moving around, I have a standing desk and it's typically up unless Sarah's in the room.
[00:20:17] Yeah. I don't stand.
[00:20:18] Otherwise I'm sitting on a ball chair. And for those watching the video, I put this on my treadmill. I have a treadmill under my desk that I'm normally I'll walk on and I can get 10, 000 steps very easily just at my desk. And I find the days that I actually walk. I work. At the very least stand.
[00:20:36] I have a lot more energy. I was really fatigued yesterday because I didn't stand or walk and I was like super tired at the end of the day. And so, one thing I want to point out is the days that I exercise and anyone that exercises consistently knows this is true, the days you exercise, you have a lot more energy.
[00:20:57] It gives you a lot more in the tank and it doesn't even have to be long. It could be a seven minute workout. Google seven minute workout. It could be a 15 minute workout, which I do with my X three bar bands, which I think are really cool, or it could be going to the gym and like going to the gym after work.
[00:21:16] A lot of guys will do that because it'll give them that space to become human again and get back into their body and become present and kind of work out, you know, the stress of the day, but working out is a proven phenomenal way of decreasing stress. And it gives you more time. It gives you more time back. Anytime you invest into exercise is going to give you more time back. And people that work out know this. Some of the most like effective brains that I follow in entrepreneurism are very fit. And it's been proven that when you contract muscle tissue, it pumps chemicals from your muscles that feed your bloodstream and in your brain and make you able to function more cognitively effectively. I think also the effect of discipline because it takes discipline to exercise. If you can discipline your body and discipline yourself in exercise and working out, Sarah works out, I work out multiple times a week, right? That discipline translates into business.
[00:22:22] I think a lot like it's a big deal. And I've noticed that people that can focus on their body and focus on their health, their business becomes a reflection of that to some degree, and are there really fat, unhealthy, overweight people that making a lot of money? Sure. There's always exceptions.
[00:22:42] However, I know that for me, I'm a lot more effective in business if I'm taking care of my health. So, and that lowers my stress. So should we talk about the idea of putting too much pressure on themselves?
[00:22:59] Sarah: Yeah, I think we could talk about that. And I think this kind of boils down to, it's like the age old problem of like, "well, I own the business and it's on my shoulders. Like I'm the one that has to do it. Or like, I can't get somebody to do that piece." Like even if people hire, they'll hire out for things, but they still hold on to things that they don't like or they really wish they could offload, but they, for whatever reason, they have this like mental roadblock and they're like, "I cannot, I can't give that to somebody else.
[00:23:32] It has to be me. Like people want to talk to me. It's got to be me. Like, oh I have to know that part of the business. I have to do that part of the business." And it's complete fallacy. So you don't need to do any one particular thing in your business. You can set your business up so that you do the things that you actually like and enjoy and build the business around those things and those things might change.
[00:23:58] So in the beginning, I was just talking about this on the scale call Friday, I think. So in the very beginning, when you're like a solopreneur and it's all you, yeah, everything is going to fall on your shoulders because it's just you. When you start to hire though, you can start to give away things that you really don't enjoy doing.
[00:24:18] Most of the times, this is what I see people do is they're like, well, I really like this piece, so I'm going to keep that piece and I'm going to give away these other pieces. But every once in a while, I still see people that they're like, oh, well, I'll ask them like, "what do you do in your business? Like, what do you do?"
[00:24:35] And sometimes I'll get answers like, "well, I do everything. Like I do all of it. Ha." And like they laugh about it. It's not funny to me at all. That's pain That's like pain coming through and they're trying to like use humor to disguise it and That sounds pretty freaking awful.
[00:24:51] Jason: Sometimes laughter is the stage Before crying, so sometimes it's the stage before crying for a lot of people they're like...
[00:24:58] Sarah: yeah, so even these people they have a team and I'm like, well, what do you do? And they're like, "well, I do everything," like yeah, but then what does your team do and they're like, "well They do these things and I'm like, and what do you do?"
[00:25:09] They're like, "well, I do everything else."
[00:25:11] " So do you enjoy doing everything else?" Most of the times it's, they say, "no."
[00:25:16] "So then why are you continuing to do it?" And they have this idea like planted in their brain that it has to be them. And it doesn't, it does not have to be you. You do not need to put all this crazy amount of pressure on yourself to be like, it's not all you.
[00:25:33] You don't need to be the face of the company. You don't just because you own it. You don't need to be the face of the company and there will be, absolutely, there will be stages in your business where you are the face of the company There will be stages in your business where you are the company. It's you're like, "well, let me talk to the leasing department... that's me. Let me talk to maintenance. That's me. Let me talk to accounting. That's me," right? But at some point those things are going to shift and you're going to keep hopefully just the things that you really enjoy doing And if it's not something you really enjoy doing, you've got to be able to offload that and trust your team to handle that. That's also going to reduce your pressure noise a lot.
[00:26:09] Jason: That's a big challenge we see it a lot. And the default for every entrepreneur is you move through the solopreneur stage, doing everything yourself. You build a team the wrong way, typically, which is you build the team based on what the business needs instead of what you need.
[00:26:25] And then you're more and more miserable as the team scales and the business scales, your name is in parentheses next to every person on the org chart, because they all come to you with questions. And if you're dealing with that frustration, you really should be talking with DoorGrow and letting us help you get out of that. We're really good at helping people restructure their teams and get out of that pressure and noise. And if you're listening to this, you probably can't see it. You can't see how you're doing things wrong. You just know it doesn't feel right. You're like, "I'm wearing hats that I don't want to wear. And I have an entire team."
[00:27:01] And a lot of times it's because we have some false beliefs, like "I'm the business owner. So I have to do the accounting. Or I'm the business owner. So I have to like be the person doing sales." There's nothing you have to do. If you own the business, you're king or queen, like you set the rules.
[00:27:18] You can decide what you want to do. You can be the receptionist if that's what you want to be. That's your dream. You can outsource or like hire for everything else. Right. You can't see those sometimes accurately who you are and the things that you really do enjoy and what your purpose is. And so this is one of the things we help clients get really clear on and then restructuring their team so can be really helpful.
[00:27:41] So related to this, a common scenario or problem is a lot of business owners put more and more pressure on themselves simply by starting more and more businesses. And this can be a big challenge, like entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs. And they're like they love starting stuff. They're like, let's start some shit.
[00:28:00] They want to start more stuff all the time because starting is fun and sexy and exciting. And you can have this fantasy for the business and this new idea, and then making all that work and doing everything and all that is not so fun and exciting. So they're jumping to the next fun thing, and then they have the next thing they know, they have like nine businesses, you know?
[00:28:21] Sarah: Yeah. And I think the other thing I see a lot is, especially with property management, there's a lot of crossover, right? They're like, "well, I could do property management and that goes hand in hand with real estate. And then that goes hand in hand with doing appraisals, and then that goes hand in hand doing inspections, and that goes hand in hand with insurance, and that goes hand in hand with being a notary, oh, and I could start a maintenance company, and now I could do like a cleaning company, and I can do this, and I can do this, and I can, and you and yourself.
[00:28:50] Jason: Cool maintenance, roofing. Yeah.
[00:28:51] Sarah: And we've seen that, and a lot of times when we see that, It's like, it's completely premature because in order to have more than one successful business, you must first have one successful business. So you can't have a business that's like, eh, and then go, "well, I'm just going to start another successful business."
[00:29:15] Well, if the first one isn't working out so well, how you do one thing is typically how you do everything. So if you have a business that isn't going super well, and then you're like, "Oh, I'm just going to start another one." Well, your other one is probably going to mirror very closely what the first one looks like.
[00:29:33] Yeah. Right. So I think that's, it's like it's just like temptation and it's like opportunity and it's just because there's so much that you're like, "well, I don't need to pay somebody to clean houses. Like I could just start a company and then my company I'll pay myself." But the problem is, and I'm not saying I am like, so not saying do not start multiple businesses.
[00:29:58] What I am saying is only look at starting other businesses once the main one or your first one is super solid. Like when it's running really well, it really doesn't need you. If you can go for like a month or two without really handling or touching or doing anything in that business, So if I can take you and I can pick you up and drop you off on a like desert island and you come back and your company is just fine, now you can look at starting another business.
[00:30:30] That's not the case? Don't do it yet.
[00:30:33] Jason: Yeah. The company should be better than how you left it if you have a good business. Should be better. It should be growing. It should be healthy. Yeah, so we're going to wrap this up. But the first first thing I want to say related that is I've talked about the five currencies in the past.
[00:30:50] The currency of focus. Which Sarah is talking about is the most important currency related to growing and scaling a business. The less you're focused on, and the less you're distracted by, the more you can help that business grow and grow faster. And so, just keep that in mind. At DoorGrow, we can help you become more of that entrepreneur that can solve all the gaps and all the problems with your one business, and it makes you a better entrepreneur for all the others.
[00:31:18] We've seen that happen a lot of times with our clients. And that's our goal is to teach you to be the entrepreneur that can have the business of your dreams. The only reason you don't have it yet is you're not yet that person. So one of my mentors said, "Jason, you don't have the business of your dreams yet because you're not yet the person that can run it yet."
[00:31:36] Which was a punch in the gut at the time. I was like, he's right. So, and the other thing that I've learned is that opportunity entrepreneurs, we see it everywhere. It's everywhere. "Oh, there's a problem. I could solve that. There's a problem. I could solve that. Oh, you need a pool maintenance person? Well, you could start a pool maintenance company to for property management."
[00:31:56] Like you, there's a million things you could do. That doesn't mean you should. And Entrepreneurs, some of the most powerful things that we can do as an entrepreneur in focus is to just say no and turn things down and to not do things until we really get things solid, like you were talking about. So, all right.
[00:32:15] So for those that have been watching us for a while or listening to the podcast for a while, I mean, I've, I talked to somebody this week that was like, "I've been listening for like three years" and it was like the first conversation I'd had with them. If you're sitting in the wings, listening to us, when is it going to be your turn? When's it going to be your turn? When do you get to be the person that gets to be the person getting these awesome results that our clients are getting? Why don't you believe you deserve this? Why are you being so hard on yourself and making things so difficult? Why don't you reach out? It's one thing, like there's some great free stuff that we give out.
[00:32:56] We want to coach you. We want to mentor you. We want to help you. We want to support you in getting your business to actually become the business of your dreams. Have the day to day that you want, lower your stress, lower your pressure and noise, be more of what you are meant to be. More mom, more dad, more family, better pet owner.
[00:33:17] I don't know, whatever you've got, right. Taking care of the people around you. Like we want to help you become the person you were meant to become when you started this business if you're doing it correctly and we want to help you do it correctly. So reach out to DoorGrow. Have a conversation with us.
[00:33:36] If you have at least 20, 30, 50, 100 doors, we can start to help you. We can help you eliminate some of your crazy expenses, run lean. If you have 200, 400, or more doors, we know that this is a significant challenge place point for most people. They're sometimes the least profitable per unit they've ever been.
[00:34:00] They're the most stressed they've ever been. They have an entire team. We can get you out of this like we can help solve this. This is a more fun problem for us to solve than even just getting doors. Getting doors is not hard. We can help you do that. For those of you that have the challenge, getting doors is no longer a challenge.
[00:34:16] How do we deal with all these doors? How do we deal with all these team members? How do I become profitable? We want to help you with that. We can help you with that significantly. And if you have. 600 doors plus, you've got an awesome team, maybe even a thousand doors plus. And you're like, I really want to get more from this.
[00:34:34] I want to optimize this more. I want to support my team more. I want to invest in them. I want my BDM. I want my operator to be working with DoorGrow and to take things to the next level. I want to feed into them and give them success. Then reach out to door girl. We've helped clients go from 600 to a thousand doors.
[00:34:53] We've helped clients over a thousand doors, clean up stuff they should have done when they first started their business. Reach out to us. We want to help you out. There's no reason not to. Anything that you do with us. You're going to get an ROI that's far greater than our system is paying you. It's a no brainer and just goo DoorGrow. com and that's it. So anything else? All right.
[00:35:18] I hate when you do that.
[00:35:19] I know but I want to give you the opportunity to have the last word But all right until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:35:26] You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:35:53] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
Last time we talked about the difference between cold and warm leads. So how do you take this information and use it to grow your property management business?
Join property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull as they reveal the top strategies and DoorGrow secrets for growing a property management business.
[01:09] Strategy 1: The Neighbor Strategy
[07:33] The 3 kinds of neighbors to target
[11:59] Strategy 2: The Review Strategy
[16:26] Strategy 3: Real Estate Agent Referrals
[20:26] Strategy 4: Presenting to Groups
[25:32] Strategy 5: Product Research Interviews
“Not all leads are equal.”
“There is just so much abundance, and if you put yourself in a scarcity mindset, you're going to experience that for sure.”
“There is no shortage of business if you're a property manager.”
“This like scarcity mindset, we have to kill it. We have to get out of it.”
[00:00:00] Sarah: Especially in the U S like there is no shortage of business if you're a property manager.
[00:00:08] 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.
[00:00:23] DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.
[00:00:42] 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, co founder and COO of DoorGrow now let's get into the show.
[00:01:09] All right. So the topic we decided to talk about today is how to get the best leads for property management. We talked about previously the difference between cold and warm leads, right? So not all leads are equal. And if you missed that episode, go check that out. I highly recommend it. It will save you a ton of money and time, wasting your energy, cash effort, et cetera. So today we're going to talk about some of the best strategies. We're not going to go into a lot of detail. If you want to go deeper with us, you can reach out and we can coach you through this stuff and help you grow your business without spending a bunch of money on marketing.
[00:01:51] All right. So why don't we kick this off and we can tell them a little bit about the neighbor strategy, which we have a really cool training on that we will give to the audience for free. We'll tell you how you can get it. Let's do it. So, do you want to intro that one?
[00:02:07] Sarah: No, you do it, because this is your whole thing.
[00:02:10] You set up the whole page, so you do it. I don't want to miss anything.
[00:02:14] Jason: So, the Neighbor Strategy is a really simple concept. And the concept is, you probably have gotten a phone call before, at your property management office, And somebody said, "Hey, do you manage in X area, in some sort of area?"
[00:02:30] And the answer was no. And you just said "no." Or your team just said "no." And they hung up and said, "nope! We don't. Sorry!" And that is a perfectly good lead that somebody, one of your neighbors would love to have. And you just threw it in the garbage. So the analogy I use, if you go to neighborstrategy.Com and get this free training, you'll learn how to make this strategy work, but it's really simple. Our clients never get told no. They reach out to neighboring property management companies to just explain this. "Hey, sometimes I get calls for your area and I usually just throw that gold in the garbage. Would you like to have it?" And they always say yes. And in that I teach how to convert, even if that's a cold lead that came in for them, I teach you how to convert that or have your neighbors convert that.
[00:03:23] If you share the neighborstrategy.Com landing page with them so they can learn the training how to convert that from a cold lead 10 percent close rate into a 90 percent close rate warm lead. So you're able to refine this gold for them, give it to them, and they can then get this gold and they're getting business. And so we've got clients that are doing that with each other that are in neighboring markets. You can even do this with property management companies that are in your market that focus on a different niche than you.
[00:03:52] So if you do single family residential largely or small multi, there might be commercial companies and they get asked, "Hey, do you, can you also manage my rental home" and "no," and they throw it in the trash. You would probably like to have that, right? And so the neighbor strategy is a simple way and you can stack and add neighbors all around your market neighboring property management companies.
[00:04:15] Capturing some of that rain that they can't capture that could go to you and companies that are in your market that are a different niche than you, and I give you scripts. I give you the language to use and I have drawings and I explain how this all works and how to convert these from a cold lead into a warm lead and how to get your neighboring partners to do this as well. It's really a simple strategy that is super effective.
[00:04:39] So I highly recommend you check out neighborstrategy.Com. Go get this free training. We want to give this out because we know that if you have neighbors that are doing this strategy, then everybody wins. Everybody benefits. This benefits the entire industry, and it's really simple. Like leads should not be getting lost. And we don't want them just going and searching on Google, becoming cold, desensitized, looking at cheap pricing and becoming terrible potential clients. That hurts the entire industry. So this is a way to benefit the entire industry, which is part of our mission here at DoorGrow.
[00:05:16] Sarah: I think with the neighbor strategy, let's just address the elephant in the room because everyone goes, "I don't want people to know what I know. Like I want to be different. And like, I want to keep my knowledge a secret, right?" that's why I hear this all the time where they're like, I don't want anybody else to know. And it's that kind of mindset that really holds us back because there is just so much abundance, and if you put yourself in a scarcity mindset, really, that's like, you're going to experience that for sure.
[00:05:43] Like for sure. Especially in the U S like there is no shortage of business if you're a property manager. Most people do not know what property managers are. The ones that know what property managers are, they might not have a great perception of what property managers do why because they may have been burned in the past. They may have had like a really bad experience.
[00:06:06] They may just go, "oh, well, yeah but you just do like rent collection like I could do that myself," and any of us property managers that have had a conversation like that, it's hard to not laugh when someone's like "I could do it myself." You're like, "okay, do it yourself. Call me when you're ready. Do it yourself, and if you blow it up so bad, I probably won't even want to help you at that point because it's just going to be a huge mess for me." But there's so much that goes into it, right? So we have to also kind of keep in mind that if we really think about it, like you can kind of break this down by almost any sector, right?
[00:06:42] So if you see like a fast food chain, like Burger King, Wendy's, McDonald's, very, very rarely are they the only one in a huge area. They do better when there's more of them, like, packed closer. So, it's funny because you notice this when we drive around. Every time there's like a CVS, we'll see a CVS, and very close by, somewhere there's a Walgreens. Why would that be, right? So, why do these multi million dollar companies choose to put a CVS here and right across the street, a Walgreens? If they were worried about competition, do you think that they would do that? Hell no. They'd be like, "well, if CVS is there, I'm going way over here." But they know that by putting two similar options close together, it's actually going to draw in more business.
[00:07:33] Property management works very similarly. And the other thing to kind of keep in mind with this is I think there are three like neighbors kind of to target. One is neighbors that are outside of your area. So if you cover. Like Austin, but I don't go to Round Rock. Well, then find somebody in Round Rock, right? Like find people who border the area that you cover. That's the first one. The second one is find people that cover the same area that you cover, but in a different sector, like Jason said. So maybe I only do residential. I might want to partner with somebody who does commercial. Because odds are, at one point in time, I'm going to find somebody who wants commercial, and I don't do it, and I'd love to have somebody to pass that on to, and vice versa.
[00:08:20] And the third one, and this is the one where everybody goes, "I'm not doing that," just test it and try it. And I used to do this myself, so I'm not steering you in a direction that I would never have done. Find someone in your area does the same exact thing that you do now. Everybody here goes, "Whoa, now that's scary. I'm not giving business away to my competitors." Well, here's the thing is not all business is business that you want to take. And that's something that you really have to get solid in is what business, what properties, what clients, what tenants do I want to take? And what do I want to have in my portfolio? Because if you work with us at DoorGrow. We train everyone on the cycle of suck. And it's super easy to get like trapped in that. And it's because you just take on everything. You do not want to take on everything. And it doesn't mean that they're a bad client Maybe they're just not a fit for what you do.
[00:09:16] Maybe you could tell like the relationship isn't probably going to be super great. So when I was running my business, I was happy to give those off to somebody else. Why? Because I would rather them work with another property manager, even if it is my competitor, I would rather give that to a property manager so that they at least have some kind of chance with their rental property versus, "well, I'm just going to do it myself."
[00:09:39] And we all know, guys, we all know how that works. So those are the three that you would want to target with the neighbor strategy.
[00:09:45] Jason: Yeah, didn't you get some leads coming from a neighbor?
[00:09:49] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. I got mostly from like neighbors that were outside of my area. My competitors were the type that would just take on anything.
[00:10:00] And it was fun to me because I was like, "well, if they're not a fit for me..." because I was a lot more picky. So if they're not a fit for me, if then I'm not taking them anyway. It's not like, "Oh, well, I'm going to give Jason this lead that I want." No, you're not going to give away leads that you want, right?
[00:10:17] You're just, if you don't want to take the business, if it's not a fit, if you like, it's just not going to work out, then does it hurt to give it away? No. They're going to have a better experience with some property manager than trying to do it on their own. And we want investors to have a good experience with their rental properties, even if it's not with you, because they're going to then buy more investment properties, right?
[00:10:43] And this is going to like promote the industry. So this like scarcity mindset, we have to kill it. We have to get out of it.
[00:10:51] Jason: Yeah, I think one month you have five doors from a neighboring property manager one month.
[00:10:56] Sarah: I got like 17.
[00:10:57] Jason: Yeah Okay. Yeah, so and that's from one right? And so If people are intentional, especially if you're in you know larger markets if you can hit all the people that are around your market or people that get sometimes get called or Asked about your market then you can get a bunch of business, right?
[00:11:18] It can add up all right for sure.
[00:11:20] Sarah: Like we even have clients. We have a bunch of clients like in the like la orange county area, but it's so crazy there with the traffic like, you know, like yeah on the map It says it could take you like 15 minutes but because of traffic it might take you an hour and a half or like two hours, right? So we even have like clients in our program that like refer business back and forth just because they know, because of the traffic, they're like, "well, if it's on the North point, I just don't want to take it." So that's another... and that's people in the same area that do the same thing that they do. And it makes your life easier because now your operational costs are going to be lower because you're not trying to drive like two hours to go do an inspection.
[00:11:59] Jason: All right. Let's talk about reviews next. Cool. So one strategy that's helped some of my clients add easily 200 doors in a year, if they get this game dialed in is online reviews. Now, all of you know this game you think, and a lot of you try to play this game and you think you know how to get reviews, but what we focus on at DoorGrow is focusing on reviews as if it's a sales lead, like putting it into your pipeline, following up and getting the majority of every new tenant and every new owner to give you a review.
[00:12:34] And there's a way of doing this so that it doesn't sound slimy. And it doesn't sound like a used car salesman in a way that they want to help you back and reciprocate. And we have scripts for this. We have ways that we help clients do this. And we have a tool to facilitate that and make the process even easier, which is GatherKudos, which any of you can sign up for GatherKudos at GatherKudos.com. It can integrate with things like Property Meld, and it just makes a review funnel that makes it easier for you to get valid feedback in your business, whether it's good or bad. And if it's good, it pushes them to choose a review site and gives them directions how to do it. So it just lubricates that process, makes it so much easier for your prospects to leave good reviews.
[00:13:21] Because we know that the negative reviewers are highly motivated and the good reviewers need a little bit of motivation, and so we have a training called Reputation Secrets where we teach how this can work super effectively. We've got clients that are crushing their competition in getting more reviews because they're getting almost all of their tenants and owners to get reviews if they really build this growth engine out. They can at least get the majority of each new tenant and owner to give them reviews.
[00:13:51] And if you're growing and adding doors, you're getting new tenants, you're getting new owners, and you can then be also getting new reviews. And if you're crushing it at the review game, that's better than having the top spot on Google because reviews function like warm leads.
[00:14:06] Sarah: And then James and Brian, when they came into the program, like when Brian came on, I think he said they had some online reviews, but they were either like a two something or a three something online. So like not super great, right? Why? Because all the people who were angry were like, "I'm going to be a keyboard warrior." And then they focused on the strategy and they got up to over four stars. And I think that helped them break the thousand door barrier. Yeah. They had added like over 400 doors in one year.
[00:14:35] And this was part of the strategy that helped them do that.
[00:14:38] Jason: Yeah. And less than a year. So the cool thing about this strategy of building this particular growth engine is that this is one that is very easily done by your team. This doesn't have to be your BDM. It doesn't have to be a salesy person. It doesn't have to be the business owner. This one can easily be done by your team and it can be systematized. It can just be part of your tenant and owner onboarding process if you build this engine correctly. So, and I guess that's all we probably need to say about that one. Yeah, it's a really great strategy. Really simple great strategy
[00:15:13] Sarah: It's free. It's a free strategy. This is not costing you any kind of money. You're not, you know spending money on marketing or advertising or ads or nothing like that. And it's really great I had so many clients contacting me or prospective clients contacting me because they're like, "oh I saw your review."
[00:15:33] Jason: Yeah, this strategy also helps boost your local SEO. If you're familiar with local SEO or ranking, Google looks at review diversity. Which means getting reviews from lots of different channels. So GatherKudos, and our method helps with you getting more reviews, not just on Google, but also Yelp and maybe Angie's List, City Search, Thumbtack, whatever you have or using, right?
[00:15:57] And so, review diversity. review quantities, so getting more reviews on each of those channels, and the review ratings, like getting good ratings. This helps filter out the bad ratings as well and helps you capture it locally so you can actually do something to mitigate that and help those people, which is what they usually really want.
[00:16:16] And so it makes the whole process easier. So we highly recommend that strategy. Very easy growth engine to build out if you understand how and we train our clients on that. So let's talk about the one that probably is one of the fastest methods to grow a property management business. I mean, one of our clients that added over 400 doors at another client that I had 310 in doors in just a year. This strategy. If you have, especially if you have a full time BDM, and if you don't, we can help you with the hiring piece and training of a BDM so you don't make mistakes there because we get a lot of people coming from BDM coaching companies and BDM placement companies that do not have good experiences.
[00:16:58] And then we help them clean that up. And people don't even know that we focus on that. So this would be referrals from real estate agents or from a variety of other sources that we talk about. But this can be very effective, but usually is very ineffective. Most property managers try to focus on this and get very few referrals on a monthly basis.
[00:17:23] Sarah: Yeah. And I was lumped in that too. And then back in my insurance days, cause I was doing insurance and I was doing property management when I first started out. And I was like, "Ooh, I'll get referrals from everyone. And it'll be so great." Cause everybody would just send me business. And I was doing everything the wrong way. And I wasn't getting a lot of referrals. And then things started to shift when I realized, "Hey, this is not working the way that I wanted it to work." So I had to make some changes to make it work better. But everyone like, they just always go about it the wrong way because this is like, this is a really common thought is like, "Hey, I'll get referrals. Like this is how a lot of businesses work is on referrals. So I'll just do that." And then what happens is they start to focus on getting referrals. They Don't know exactly how to make it work, but they just think "hey, it's simple like you should just be able to send me business," and then they wait and usually nothing comes in or if something comes in it's like, "thanks, but that's not really what I wanted."
[00:18:24] Jason: Yeah, the secret is you actually have to destroy the idea of getting referrals in the mind of the people you want referrals from and get something better. And so I touched on that on some previous episodes, if you dig around, but this is some of the really magical stuff that we share with clients, how they can get more real estate agents, connecting them to investors and close a lot more deals. And this creates warm leads. They're easy to close. They're early in the sales cycle.
[00:18:54] You can charge more money than typical in these situations. And so it's a win, win for all three parties all the way around. This is a, this is the fastest way I know of to grow a property management business. It works really well, but there's a lot of pitfalls in this. There's a lot of mistakes. We've listened to phone calls of some of our, you know, clients, setters or BDMs trying to.
[00:19:20] Like get relationships created with real estate agents and doing the outbound partner prospecting stuff that we talk about and there's a lot of failures and We have to coach them through this and it this is a and a growth engine that takes probably 90 days to build effectively to get to work effectively. The first 30 days you're going to build that engine from scratch and the second 30 days, we're going to make some major tweaks and changes.
[00:19:48] And then the last 30 days is where you start to hit pay dirt, where we tweak things to get that last 10 percent of dialing things in. That gives you 90 percent of the results. And this is where the magic happens. And most people quit too early, don't do it enough. They just go present to a big real estate office meeting while people stare at their phones and wonder why nobody like gives them leads. And it doesn't work. And they're like, "I've tried referrals. I've tried that," you know, so we hear that all the time. You've not tried it the way that we do it cause it works. And if it's not working for you, you're doing it wrong. That's all I'll say.
[00:20:23] All right. So, let's talk about groups.
[00:20:26] Let's talk about groups.
[00:20:28] Sarah: So can we talk about the big mistake of groups? Sure. . So everyone goes, oh, a group, I'll do a BNI.
[00:20:35] Jason: Oh yeah. wah wah. or a Chamber of Commerce. So we hear this all the time, like, "oh, I go to the BNI or I go to Chamber of Commerce" and I mean, that one's really simple. And to throw people a bone, we get asked this all the time, "well, I'm thinking to join a BNI group." would that be effective? The answer is usually no, because the way BNI works is you're going to have one expert in each category, which means there might be one real estate agent there you might be able to get a referral from. You'll have one of, one property manager, which is kind of nice. You don't have competition, right?
[00:21:09] But the challenge is most of the people there are not your target audience, and a lot of them are not able to connect you to your target audience, and there are better groups available in which you can either create the group and own it, or you can go find groups that exist and be part of it, in which you can have an entire group of potential referral partners, or an entire group of potential clients. And that's probably the first big step is just like, if you're going to go hunting, go where the game actually is. So, now groups, we recommend you do groups after you get good at one on one. And the challenge is most people go and try and present to a group and they think this is going to be so great, and they have no way of collecting people's information that are interested in the group. They don't know how to optimize that. They don't know the things to say. They don't understand concepts like trial closes and getting people to buy into things. They don't understand how to create leverage and how to get leads.
[00:22:10] You should be able to walk away from any group situation with leads and appointments. Yes. With scheduled appointments. And we teach our clients how to do this, how to optimize this, and how to identify and capture the people that are quick, early adopters, the people that take a little bit more nurturing, and the people that are a bit more skeptical. And this is something that you do throughout your presentation if you're doing it effectively, but you really, it doesn't make sense to go do a group presentation if you're not good at selling yet, and you're not good at one on one interactions, and you haven't built up, you know, the ability to close deals one on one, because groups, you're not going to close people in a group situation.
[00:22:56] You don't close them. In a group situation, at best, you can get a one on one interaction typically scheduled, and then you can close them. So we need to teach you how first to be really good at one on one. And then you can graduate to doing the group thing, but don't waste a good group opportunity. These are not super common.
[00:23:16] If somebody is like, "Hey, I'll let you come present to my group," and you blow it. Yeah. Yeah. You wasted all, like you wasted probably hundreds of doors of business that you could have gotten if it's a decent sized group. One of our clients went to a group, used a presentation that we gave him and he was able to close in his first time. He went to this group, it was a realtor investors association, real estate investor association, a rea group, whatever. And he was able to present to like 200, 300 people, the group had like 500 and he walked away and he had been stuck at like 60 doors for the first three or so years of his business. He couldn't figure out how to get ahead. He got 20 doors that month from doing one presentation. He got four or five owners. They each give him like four or five units or something like that. And he was able to add about 20 doors a month from just hanging out at this group. And being part of this group, and it's, he spent maybe max about five hours a month investing time into this group.
[00:24:20] That is an amazing return. Five hours a month to get 20 doors a month, right? He was at 300 doors in six months of using the strategy. And then his business started to fall apart a little bit because he was adding too many doors. And back then, way back then, we didn't have the systems that we have to help clients with that problem.
[00:24:42] We're like, we need to help clients solve that problem. We're good at solving that problem now. Like how do I deal with all these doors that I'm getting on? Which is a problem we think is super easy to create for clients to start adding an up doors that it gets painful. So groups can be very effective.
[00:24:56] But make sure you get good at one on one first. You don't waste those opportunities. I've heard so many stories of wasted opportunities presenting to a group of real estate agents And then afterwards they're like, "I don't know. How'd I do? I don't know. I think I did okay. Some couple people came up to me and said I did all right."
[00:25:12] "Cool. Did you get any appointments or leads or anything scheduled?"
[00:25:16] "Nothing," right? So and then maybe a lead here will trickle in like over time, but that's not effective. So a lot of these growth strategies they stack and they compound on each other.
[00:25:28] Let's touch on one more to wrap this up. Last one. This is a strategy we love to use with startups because startups they don't have a lot of confidence. They don't have a lot of knowledge. They're lacking a lot of knowledge about property management, and one of the big gaps in knowledge that they don't have that a lot of you that have been doing this for a long time and you've talked to a lot of owners is they don't understand their prospects' pain.
[00:25:55] They don't understand the prospects concerns. They don't understand the language that their potential clients use, and they don't understand the objections that are preventing them and knowing all that. Sometimes can take people a decade to really dial in. And so our way of collapsing time on this dramatically quickly, like really fast is a technique called or strategy called product research interviews.
[00:26:18] And this is also a great way to get your initial pool of clients, even if you're starting from zero. And so this strategy can work very well. I call this the Trojan horse of selling, but you're going to interview and we have the script for the interview. We have the four phase process for doing this. If you do this correctly, if you interview people that have rental properties and you do this effectively, you will be getting clients because getting clients is about having conversations with your target audience. And this gives you an excuse and an in to be able to get to know your target audience, to ask them questions and allow them to help you and give you advice and to why they are not currently working with a property manager and then be able to deal with all these and learn how to deal with all these objections and then how to do the ultimate pitch and how to solicit them in a non salesy way to do and give you another opportunity to pitch. But you get to pitch during this interview, you get to pitch your services.
[00:27:22] To people that may not have considered property management before. So this is an easy way to get your foot in the door and get some of your first initial clients and build a relationship of trust. And that can be very effective. Did you want to say anything about product research interviews?
[00:27:35] Sarah: No. Michael used it. He was still over the 200 something door mark, and he used it, and I think he said he added like five or six doors in one week, and that was only after doing a few phone calls.
[00:27:48] Jason: He said 10. He added 10. I don't remember. Something like 10.
[00:27:51] Sarah: So, I don't remember exactly how many. I can go back and look at the stats.
[00:27:54] Jason: Yeah, Michael Sullivan, he was on one of our podcast interviews we just did recently, a really great episode. Highly recommend you check it out. But he was like, "well, I'll try this and I'm an experienced property manager." He just came up with a different excuse to interview people instead of saying, "Hey, I'm starting a business and want to get some feedback."
[00:28:10] He used a different strategy and use this strategy. And he was able to add doors from the first person that he interviewed. And we've had clients have that situation happen as well. So this can work. It's not just for starters, but it can work for anybody. In fact, this is the strategy I use when I first started our mastermind.
[00:28:29] I did product research interviews to figure out what, how can I create the ultimate mastermind? Cool. I'll just interview people and ask them, what do you want? It was a little bit more complex than that, but that's kind of the idea. And that allowed me then to say, "Hey, would you be interested in this if I launched it and it had some of what you mentioned and the stuff that I'm pitching you on?" And everybody says, yes. And then I probably closed about half of them. And so that's how I started the mastermind so that I had a nice cohort and a pool of people to kick things off with. So, and this is one of the strategies I've used over and over again.
[00:29:05] With new product launches or new offers to figure out how do I make this as good as possible? And this will help you make your product and your offer and your pitch as good as possible Really cool strategy and we've got the goods on how to do that as well And we've got other growth strategies, but these are some great ways to get leads that costs less money.
[00:29:26] They take less time and they get you more warm leads and you'll close more deals more easily at a higher price point. And then if you do cold lead advertising, so there you go. And that's how to add lead, like get leads without doing SEO, without doing pay per click, without doing content marketing, without doing social media marketing, without doing pay per lead services, internet marketing.
[00:29:50] You don't have to do internet marketing in order to grow your business and to grow faster than those that are. So, and that's it. Anything else? Nope. All right then until next time to our mutual growth, everybody make sure to join our free facebook group Doorgrowclub.Com. We put trainings in there. We give out information, and our goal in that group is to nurture you and warm you up so you can trust us and become one of our clients. We then can change your life and that's what we want to do is to transform this industry. Until next time to our mutual growth, bye everyone.
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