Have you been looking for ways to improve your owners’ experiences as property management clients?
In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with Matthew Kaddatz from Appfolio to talk about elevating the owner experience in property management.
[01:35] Getting started in the property management industry
[05:18] Improving relationships with owners and investors
[10:24] What does your ideal client look like?
[18:31] Why you get stuck doing things you hate
[26:25] How elevating the owner experience helps you
“Once property management gets you, you're stuck. You're not going anywhere.”
“I think one of the biggest mistakes property managers make by not having clarity on who their ideal customer is they try to get everybody.”
“‘No’ is often better than ‘yes’ if you're being careful and focused.”
“I don't think that you can really figure out a lot about your clients and what they truly want, what's really important to them, if you're unclear on what you truly want.”
[00:00:00] Jason: I think one of the biggest mistakes property managers make by not having clarity on who their ideal customer is, is they try to get everybody. Then they're taking on a lot of accidental investors and they churn out like after a year.
[00:00:12] Welcome DoorGrowers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrower.
[00:00:28] DoorGrower property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, along with Sarah Hull, my wife, co-owner and COO of DoorGrow.
[00:01:11] Now let's get into the show. All right. Today's guest. We have Matthew Kaddatz from Appfolio. So Matthew, welcome to the show.
[00:01:22] Matthew: Yeah. Thanks for having me excited to be here.
[00:01:25] Jason: So we have not yet had somebody from AppFolio, but we have a ton of clients that use AppFolio and we've heard great things about it. The perception has always been, it's the Mac of the property management software out there.
[00:01:37] So, Matthew, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about you? How did you get into property management into this industry? And and you know, what do you do at Appfolio?
[00:01:48] Matthew: Yeah. So, I've been in property management pretty much my whole professional career. I studied computer science in college, realized I didn't want to be behind a computer all day and knew some developers developing some land, and they were looking to turn over the management and there weren't a lot of local operators. And I was like, "Oh, I could do it." You know, naive, 22, and 2006, right? So that all thought the best way to make money is real estate. It's 2006, everyone was making money right at the brothiest point in the industry.
[00:02:23] And I went down and started the property management company. These developers were my first contract and I ended up really liking the business, building the business. I grew it in the local area, did property management, community association management, a little bit of short term rentals, small, little, mostly second home market. And had a fun time growing it. Ultimately, I ended up selling it to an outfit out of Texas called Associa, and was looking to do something else and found my way to AppFolio.
[00:02:58] Jason: All right. Now you are then, based on the numbers you shared, you're about to hit the big 4-0, right?
[00:03:05] I am. And did you ever think as a kid when you turned 40 someday that you're going to be doing property management stuff?
[00:03:13] Matthew: No, never. Even when I sold my business, I stayed around for two years and was looking for something else. I looked hard to get out of the industry. I wanted something different and the furthest I could get was a technology company that provides software for the industry.
[00:03:31] And you know, I joke around once property management gets you, you're stuck. You're not going anywhere else.
[00:03:37] Jason: You know, a lot of property managers joke about it and they complain and they throw out memes like about drinking wine is solving their problems, you know, and stuff like this. But I fell in love with the industry because I love how, 1. MRR is a beautiful business model. Yes. It's monthly residual revenue, right? It's the ultimate business recurring revenue, monthly recurring revenue. And I love the residual income of a coaching business and property management is similar.
[00:04:07] And so what I love about the property management industry is that it is it's similar to me, right? The people that I get to serve and they're my people. They're a little bit nerdy sometimes. They tend to like technology to some degree, or they have to at least use it. And they they're entrepreneurial and they're not just the sales oriented person that's just hunting and chasing the next deal they want to build. That recurring revenue.
[00:04:35] Matthew: You know, the SAS business model, like technology, like AppFolio is very similar as well. The parallels and just how we think about our customers and how our customers think about their customers are wildly similar, which I think gives us some insight into just how to build great software.
[00:04:54] But I too am obviously attracted to the business model. It's a really good business model. You're not always hunting for that big fish to get or whatnot. You have predictable revenue and that gives you some comfort to take a step back and kind of think about what I truly love is like strategic priorities.
[00:05:16] Jason: Yeah, it creates some stability. So the topic we're going to get into today is elevating the owner experience. And so, where should we start with this?
[00:05:27] Matthew: Yeah, good question. So I've been my job at AppFolio is to really focus on small business property managers and make sure we're building product for them. And I've been doing this for two and a half, almost three years now here. I've had other jobs AppFolio, but this recent gig has been really focused on the small business property managers and you know, six to eight months into the job, I realized the owner of the property is just so fundamental to how the SMB industry works, which is less true as you go high up market into like large multifamily. The relationship between the property manager and the property owner is just so important, and I think really understanding that dynamic from my perspective, like helped us think through how we're going to innovate and build software to make those relationships better to leverage software. But what got me more excited was just learning how great property managers think about this, how they think about acquiring these people, how they think about onboarding these people, how they think about retaining these owners and how the group of property owners, it's not a homogenous group, right? Like there are different subsets.
[00:06:50] A person who owns five four plexes is going to think and operate different than a person who had to leave town for work and is giving their house over to property manager because they had to leave town for work for a period of time. So just understanding the dynamics there is really important.
[00:07:13] And the great property managers, I think do that well, but it's amazing how many people don't think carefully about who their clients are, what their interests are and how diverse they can be.
[00:07:24] Jason: What do you think are some of the most common mistakes people are making? In the small business category with their owners?
[00:07:32] Matthew: I think they're pushing to either one of two polarizing extremes, right? Like one size fits all, my services must fit for everyone in which like they don't because it's not a homogenous group or, I will be everything to everyone which doesn't scale. And that's probably the more dangerous thing. I think property management tends to attract people great at customer service who like to say yes and hate to say no, and it's hard to not be every thing to everyone. If that's just sort of your disposition that got you to be very successful at providing great customer service, you can't grow a business that way.
[00:08:15] You can't scale a business that way. Once you have to hire people to manage owner relationships.
[00:08:20] Jason: Yeah, we see these problems as well. The one size fits all usually relates very simply to how property managers are pricing. Like everybody's like, "we'll just charge 10 percent or we'll just charge a flat fee."
[00:08:32] And one of the things that we teach is this three tier hybrid pricing model where you're focused that psychologically on at least three different types of buyers based on their motivation or based on their pain psychologically so that it's not just one size fits all. It's tailored towards the pain threshold when it comes to spending and it's tailored towards, you know, the level of service or safety and certainty when it comes to like what they're hoping to spend money on.
[00:08:58] And so that's really interesting. And then you mentioned: don't be everything to everyone. So I have this slide and one of my slides in my pitch deck says "you're not Burger King." " your way right away," right? And so "don't be Burger King" is what it says. So, and the opposite is like to be the lighthouse, right?
[00:09:16] The lighthouse is guides, but it doesn't move, right? It has boundaries and standards.
[00:09:22] Matthew: Yeah. So many great operators have done too much of everything to everyone and they get to what, 300 ish units and they can't figure out how to get beyond. They just can't figure out how to scale because. It actually costs a bit of money to go from 300 to 600 units.
[00:09:40] You have to like reorganize a bit.
[00:09:42] Jason: That's funny. We call the stage between two to 400 units, the second sand trap.
[00:09:49] Matthew: Yeah.
[00:09:49] Jason: Interesting. It's basically the swamp of success. We call it the team sand trap because usually it's because staffing costs are so high at this stage, they end up stuck and it's usually they think they need more processes.
[00:10:02] But what they actually need are better team members.
[00:10:04] Matthew: Yeah, and I would argue higher degree of focus. Yeah, the way I like think about my customers is I get very clear on who they are and what they care about. So, you know, AppFolio is a large company.
[00:10:19] We have lots of customers and as much as we'd love them to be homogenous, like all the same property managers are very diverse group of small businesses. So it's really important for me to understand the profile of business that I'm solving for what type of product and service are we building for that specific profile? So much so that I want to be so intimate with that profile of customer that if I meet them, it's easy for me to have a conversation with them. I know what their common pains and challenges are. I know what they care about. Like I could talk to them for two hours and they were like, "Oh, it felt like I've known you forever." That's how like close I want to understand their types of businesses.
[00:11:04] And I think that's similar for property managers as they reach out to different types of owners. So you have accidental landlords that care about something very different than an like mom and pop investor that's trying to grow a real estate portfolio. And depending on your market might depend on which one of those or both of those you focus on.
[00:11:26] But having a degree of focus and on that specific buyer or owner that you fit best for is really important to scale because then you can build systems and processes around that. You can build what you mentioned earlier, pricing and packaging around those people. And you're not trying to do everything for everyone.
[00:11:49] You're focused on solving the needs of. A specific like group of people. They, I think it's Seth Godin who talks about a thousand true fans. And I think his point is to be very successful in life, you just need to have a thousand people that really love what you're doing and want to pay you to keep doing it.
[00:12:09] You think about it, like people are looking for massive scale, but you can actually have an incredibly successful business just by solving the needs of a thousand people.
[00:12:19] Jason: So when you said be everything to everyone, I was immediately thinking, "Oh yeah, some property managers just like are doormats."
[00:12:25] They're trying to do everything. What you're talking about, I think is also super powerful, which is this, having this, a higher degree of focus, which you said. And I was thinking we'll focus on what, right? And you're talking about like really getting clear on their avatar, like really getting clear on who they want, what their ideal customer looks like.
[00:12:42] Sarah does a lot of work right now with our clients in our rapid revamp program, focusing specifically on this.
[00:12:49] Sarah: Well, I think one of the things we do and actually we're going to be getting into that in a couple of weeks right now, what we're focused on is figuring out their why and their business why.
[00:12:59] And I don't think that you can really figure out a lot about your clients and what they truly want, what's really important to them, if you're unclear on what you truly want. It's like that saying, like if you can't love yourself, you also can't love another person, so don't get into a relationship. It's kind of like that.
[00:13:20] So if you're unclear about what you're doing and why you're doing it. And why... the big thing is, why does it even matter? Then if you can't answer that question and feel really solid in that answer, then you're never going to be able to figure that out about other people either. Because if you can't start with yourself you're never really going to absorb the information the way that you need to in order to create a really powerful relationship with a client.
[00:13:47] Jason: Yeah. Powerful. If you get into a relationship with somebody and they have more clarity on what they want than you do, they win. Totally. You are giving up what you want because you just never got clear enough on it. We all have things we want. It's built into us. Like we have desires. But a lot of us aren't willing to just want things like the, a book I read recently on 10x is easier than 2x kind of talks about this a little bit on the audio book.
[00:14:15] They were talking about wanting and how important it is to want, but society, religion, everything kind of conditions us that, "well, you don't need that." And that's what we always hear. "You don't need that. What do you need that for? What do you need that for? Why do you need a house?"
[00:14:29] Matthew: You know, I think about what I've noticed is a common theme of the skills that got you here aren't going to get you there. And, what I mean by that is like a lot of people do fall into property management by accident.
[00:14:42] Yes. Yeah. I, for one, can definitely relate to building a business that tried to do everything for everyone. And that helped me get a foothold into the market. It helped me build a reputation of a doer. I was really successful at creating customers who really liked me. But I sold the business before I ever learned to scale it.
[00:15:04] Effectively. I've learned those scaling skills working in a software company but I've had to go from highly successful doer to slowing down, thinking strategically, getting to the why and being careful about choices and realizing like "no" is often better than "yes" if you're being careful and focused.
[00:15:28] And I think that set of skills is, at least for me, it was incredibly hard to go from doer to strategy is kind of how I talk about it or think about it. And that is how you get a business from working very successfully, but working 60 hours a week to growing. And maybe you're still working 60 hours a week, but you're not unclogging a toilet because you can't get ahold of a maintenance person and you have a plunger in the back of your truck or whatever, you know, you're building systems and procedures to allow things to grow sustainably.
[00:16:09] Jason: Yeah, there's a really good book. We've had the author on the show and he's spoken to one of our conferences.
[00:16:14] Mike Michalowicz wrote a book called The Pumpkin Plan in which he talks about this analogy of growing a business is akin to like growing prize winning pumpkins in a pumpkin patch. One of the principles is it's impossible to grow the business that you want if you plant the wrong seed. You cannot grow a prize winning pumpkin if you plant a pumpkin pie pumpkin for example. It's just not going to be big enough. Right? And I think you'd mentioned accidental investors. I think one of the biggest mistakes property managers make by not having clarity on who their ideal customer is they try to get everybody. Then they're taking on a lot of accidental investors and they churn out like after a year.
[00:16:52] Right. And churn is it's impossible to outpace with adding more doors and growth, a bad churn rate. That's really a grind. Like that's brutal and painful. And it actually takes less work to work with 10 year buy and hold investors, less work to convince them to use you, less work to do stuff versus you know, working with accidental investors.
[00:17:14] And so if a business builds a business off of the back of accidental investors, they're building a business that has a high churn rate, the MRR model gets destroyed, and it's a grind, and their business will more likely fail or stay stagnant for years.
[00:17:31] Matthew: That makes total sense. What I think about too is like, how do I build software tools that help the property managers elevate the conversations they're having with their intentional investors, mom and pop investors, or how do they convert an accidental investor into a more active investor? Like How do we help them show property performance and move the conversation beyond the like three bids we got for the last maintenance issue to what's the overall longterm value of this property and what type of return should it produce? And what's your ideal investment, what types of returns are you looking for? Does this asset actually fit what you're looking for? because property managers, they could underwrite markets better than anyone else can in terms of property investment.
[00:18:30] Jason: And I think they're connected to reality. You know what actually works and they know which things need to be improved or change on a property to get the best rent rate. They like, they know all this. They're the best equipped to handle investors, period.
[00:18:44] Matthew: And they're stuck having these, like, what arguably are low level, like not important conversations around, "do we like this maintenance bid or that maintenance bid or like the tenant paid three days late. Are you sure we should renew the lease?" Like, like stuff that's like fairly insignificant for the overall, like performance of the assets.
[00:19:06] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Like big focus on the minuscule things that really aren't that significant or that important. And a lot of times it's, they've just set up a relationship that involves way too much communication. Just unnecessary and irrelevant. And then I think that's just has goes to setting boundaries. I mean, Sarah was able to set amazing boundaries when she ran her property management company, like her stats and metrics were ridiculous from what I've seen inside thousands of property management companies.
[00:19:37] And so, I mean, she had like 60 percent profit margin, 260 doors, C class properties and ran it remotely part time with one part time person boots on the ground. Like it's insane. And then we see clients that are like the complete opposite. They're like working like a dog with 50 units and like stuck in the first sand trap.
[00:19:57] Sarah: I hear them say like, "I have 37 and I work like 58 hours a week." I don't even know what you're doing. What are you doing? How?
[00:20:03] Matthew: I can relate to that.
[00:20:05] Sarah: I don't understand what you're doing. I don't get it.
[00:20:08] Jason: The testament to having a really sharp operator in a business. She makes us a lot more efficient. So, so how does Appfolio help with all of this?
[00:20:17] So you've mentioned you know, having some clarity on the customer and, you know, getting clear on who you want. How is Appfolio software facilitating these owner relationships?
[00:20:29] Matthew: Yeah, our main channel is the owner portal that we have, right? That's the main channel that we can build technology in that allow property managers to communicate better with their owners.
[00:20:44] So we've been making a lot of investments to bring property performance into the owner portal in and visualize it via dashboards to give more insight to the property owner about how the property is performing. I think the first problem that we solved rather successfully based upon customer feedback is how can I get data to my owners so they stop calling me about things that are low value and relatively trivial?
[00:21:16] So like getting all of that, like did they pay their rent on time? Approving maintenance work orders, like simple things that most of the time can be just a click of a button and happen via technology that's been like, now we're looking at like, what are other ways we can help visualize the performance of the property so that property managers can, if they want, have what I would call like a more asset management conversation as opposed to a like operational conversation.
[00:21:49] What I believe is going to continue to be true is there's going to be more consolidation of single family, and there's going to be less accidental landlords over time and more people that are actually looking for real returns on their assets. And so property managers are going to have to learn how to have asset management type conversations which talk about cash on cash return, IRR, those types of things that might sound intimidating.
[00:22:22] They're really not that complicated if you spend some time learning them. We basically want to empower our customers to have those conversations easier and try to be thought leaders for the real estate investing space, which they serve and typically are their best customers.
[00:22:40] Jason: Yeah, I love that.
[00:22:42] Sarah: So the, I feel like our ROI calculator does a really good job of that. And that's something that's new. So most people have no idea what that is. because we just rolled it out. But we gave early access to some people who had attended an in person event last month with with us. And they all really loved it.
[00:23:02] But what I think I like the most about it is a lot of property managers, they have great knowledge. They have great understanding and they have great data. Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes there's a little bit of a gap. When an investor or there's a little bit of an like just the clench, right?
[00:23:20] When an investor, like a really savvy investor calls, any property management owner and says, "Hey, you know, I'm looking for, you know, properties with X cap rate," or, you know, I'm, you know, looking to get this kind of right. And sometimes they're like, "Oh, I don't know how to approach this conversation. I just don't. Maybe I know some of the data and I just don't have all of the data. But I think our ROI calculator really helps with that because it kind of breaks down. You just enter it and it's really easy. You can get it from the MLS. So literally anyone can do it. You just, you don't even have to be a real estate agent. You just pull the data from the MLS. And there are certain things you might need a property manager's guidance on things like, you know, how much might the rehab take and how much is market rent for this property or this area.
[00:24:11] And from there, it'll show you, you know, does this property cash flow well? And what kind of tax benefits do you get from owning and holding the property? Because everyone, I think when they think about real estate investing, they think, Oh, it's cash flow. It's not always about the cash flow. There's so many other ways to actually make money in real estate.
[00:24:37] And cash flow is a small little chunk of the pie. So I think the ROI calculator really helps empower property managers to have these really great deep conversations with realtors and with investors and do so confidently, not just, "Oh, well, I think this will be a good property to invest in, or I feel like this is probably a good..."
[00:25:03] We know because now we have the data and now it just comes down to: do the numbers work or not?
[00:25:10] Matthew: Yeah. What you're talking about sounds really familiar to what I call like underwriting. And that's really common in multifamily. Every single multifamily operator or investor underwrites a property before acquisition so that they have a pro forma.
[00:25:28] They know how it's going to operate and that will happen more in single family over time. It's just been such a fragmented market that is less mature, but the returns and yields are higher. And that's why you have invitation homes and other big, large owners that own nationally in this single family space, because if you can figure out how to buy in a market that's working, has the right fundamentals and is working, can get quite a good return. And so, yeah my belief is everyone in this space needs to learn how to have these conversations. And our part is to build as much technology as we can to make it easier for people to navigate.
[00:26:16] What I view is a world that will continue to change and mature and get more sophisticated over time.
[00:26:25] Jason: Well, love it. I think to wrap this up, I think it's really an interesting thought to, you know, when people are picking property management software, I don't think the owner portal is at the top of their list.
[00:26:36] I don't think it's their main focus. They're like, "how is this for me? How is this for me?" Instead of the person that's going to pay them, you know? And so I think this is an interesting take or an interesting concept that Appfolio is placing some attention to focus on. You know, optimizing the owner portal and maybe innovating there to improve the owner's experience, which in turn will benefit the property manager and hopefully help them retain clients longer or showcase the value maybe depending on how you develop it, even convince accidentals to turn into buy and hold long term investors, you know, like, because they can see some numbers and some stats and go, "why would I like give this up?"
[00:27:14] But I think it's an interesting concept and And it also adds some validation to our ROI calculator that we brought to the industry to, so, well, Matthew, it's been great having you on the show. How can people find out more about Appfolio and any parting words for our listeners?
[00:27:29] Matthew: Yeah, go to our website. I'm also pretty available on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. So look me up. Hopefully my name's in the show notes, Matthew Kaddatz at appfolio.com is where we got. I love having conversations with property managers about just what they're experiencing in the business. So always happy to have a conversation with anyone.
[00:27:50] Thank you both for your time. Really appreciated the conversation. Excited what you guys are up to. Sounds like there's some overlap and parallel, which is always a good thing.
[00:27:59] Jason: Well, awesome. Great having you on the show. Thanks Matthew for being here. All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur, you're wanting to grow your business and you are interested in that ROI calculator that Sarah mentioned, make sure to reach out.
[00:28:13] Sarah: It's live now so everyone can get it.
[00:28:16] Jason: So basically it'll show the the ROI on a property, so they can contrast this to like investing in stock or anything else and generally the property is going to win, right? You know, on almost anything. There's no way people can get these kind of returns if they invest. And tax benefits. The tax benefits.
[00:28:35] Sarah: The tax benefits, like this is where it's at people, the tax benefits. And the nice thing, I will also plug this too, is it shows you on a particular property, if you were to buy it cash versus if you were to finance it because sometimes one or the other like totally wrecks the deal Or sometimes one or the other you're like, "well, this is what I want. This is what i'm really looking for tax benefit wise or cash flow wise." Well, okay, then if that's what you're looking for now, I know as a property manager or as a real estate agent. Now, I know which way does the deal make more sense for you? Because perhaps it doesn't make sense if you buy in cash, if you're looking for cash flow or vice versa, right?
[00:29:17] So it kind of gives you the, you know, here's if you do it this way, this is what it looks like. And if you do it this way, this is what it looks like. And it shows you the benefits of both really of both on one report. And it's it's really great. I think it makes it I think it's streamlined everything that make things super simple and it makes these I think one of the big problems really is there are some investors that know how to do this.
[00:29:43] Like we, we talk to them sometimes and they can just, they spit out. They're like, "Oh, I know based off of this data, this is how the taxes would work." But I would say the majority of people, they aren't as familiar with the tax code because it's not a very interesting read. So if they're not as familiar with the tax code, they might not look at it through that lens, or they might miss something.
[00:30:10] This is really nice because it will show you exactly, you know, here's all of the tax benefits, and here's actually what it looks like on this particular property with these particular numbers. Yeah.
[00:30:20] Jason: So special shout out to John Chin for working closely with me on developing this. He has a certification for real estate agents to become investor savvy, all the certified residential investment specialists or Chris.
[00:30:34] So, you know, check that out. And we, I work closely with John for months developing this tool and getting it to work in a certain way that it outputs a nice, pretty PDF. And what's really magical about this is that this is a lead generation tool so that you can provide these documents to on each property.
[00:30:56] You can provide an assessment for real estate agents, and it's branded with your brand and you can give this to real estate agents. They will come and fill out a form and submit a property so that they can get this. You will give it to them. You can create a video about it and send them the video and this document.
[00:31:13] We have give you a script for this as well, and you then have this tool or this resource and they're giving it to their investors, the investors. It's already got property management factored in as part of the investment strategy. And so it's part of the conversation. It's an assumed given thing. So this allows you to get property management clients is the bottom line.
[00:31:34] This is why we developed this for our clients to help them grow faster. And our clients are loving having conversations around this. Yeah.
[00:31:41] Sarah: And they're like, "I'm going to plug this on my website. That way I can just get all this traffic on my website. I can get people right there. Easily accessible. I can promote it right from there. The data goes right to them." It's fantastic.
[00:31:51] Jason: Yeah. This allows you to help real estate agents look smart and look good with investments because most really aren't that good with investments. They aren't familiar. A lot of real estate agents don't even have a single investment. And so 50 percent real estate agents didn't even do a deal last year.
[00:32:05] So let alone with an investor, right? So this allows you to help some of them become more investor savvy and feed you more deals as a property manager. So pretty awesome. So anyway, reach out to us at doorgrow.Com to get access to the ROI calculator. And I guarantee it's going to make you a lot of money if you use it effectively.
[00:32:23] All right. So that's it for today until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:32:29] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:32:56] 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.
Kent Hardman is a property management entrepreneur who took his property management company from zero to over 120 doors in less than a year!
In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with Kent to talk about the mindset changes and routines he implemented to kickstart and grow his property management company.
[04:51] How your personal life impacts your business
[08:23] Shifting your mindset toward growth
[17:44] 10x-ing your business
[24:48] Changing your life and business
“Self-care is the foundation. You’ve got to start there. Put your own oxygen mask on first.”
“When it's somebody's doing sales and they start to get evidence, that's when magic happens because then we have our confidence.”
“You’ve got to have that long-term vision to get through that kind of rut of a week.”
“If you have more than 3 priorities in your life, you have 0.”
[00:00:00] Jason: Self-care is the foundation. You got to start there. Put your own oxygen mask on first.
[00:00:05] Kent: Yeah. The plane's going down. You're supposed to put your mask on first. You know, how can I help my daughter if I can't even help myself
[00:00:12] Jason: All right. Welcome DoorGrowers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrower. DoorGrower property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings.
[00:00:36] Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management, business owners and their businesses.
[00:00:52] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management, growth expert Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, along with Sarah Hull, the Co-owner and COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.
[00:01:12] And we're hanging out here with Kent Hardman. Kent, how you doing, man?
[00:01:16] Kent: I'm doing well. Glad to finally be here.
[00:01:19] Jason: It's good to have you. So you've been a client for how long now?
[00:01:23] Kent: About a year.
[00:01:24] Jason: About a year. And this has been quite a journey for you. You're in a very different place you were, you know, now from a year ago. And so why don't we go back and why don't you give the listeners a little bit of your background and history so they get an idea of who you are and what got you into property management.
[00:01:40] Kent: Sure. Yeah, so I'm here in Cincinnati, Ohio. I grew up in Cincinnati. Won, the parent lottery had a pair of awesome parents, and I grew up in this old tutor and from a young age, just I was fascinated with architecture, real estate. Went to Miami University here, close to Cincinnati had what I refer to as my real job for a couple of years worked for a manufacturer. In the marketing department and I just knew it wasn't for me.
[00:02:06] I always wanted to get into real estate. And you know, it was about 2006. I was networking with real estate companies. Nobody was hiring because of the economy. 2008 happened and literally I got into real estate in September of 2008, you know, people were running for the doors and I was running into a burning building.
[00:02:25] And started out, I got my real estate license first, because that was the easiest thing for me to do. And did the realtor thing for a little bit, nothing against real estate agents, but I just, I had bigger ambitions than that. And got into buying rental property in Cincinnati and at the time my father retired financially, he had some cash to throw at some investments and me and my dad started buying apartment buildings and how I got into property management was just learning by doing, doing it for myself. Bought a bunch of apartment buildings, a lot of 10 families.
[00:03:00] That then evolved into doing some urban development in Cincinnati. Cincinnati has recently gone through a great renaissance, so I was also in charge of doing the property management, but then also putting deals together development type deals, specifically in historic type shells that me and my dad would buy and, you know, build new on the inside.
[00:03:19] And going back, so I'm 44 right now, going back two years ago, I was trying to kind of figure out what my second act is going to be, and, you know, I just identified how much I enjoy property management. Everything that you listed at the beginning of of your podcast, that's why I'm in it. And, you know, I love the flexibility, the freedom. I just enjoy the different people I meet, both from landlords to tenants.
[00:03:43] And, yeah, so then I joined DoorGrow about a year ago. And it changed it from just a thought to me actually being serious. Like, yeah, I'm actually doing this.
[00:03:53] Jason: So where were you at when you joined DoorGrow? What was going on that made you decide, "Hey, I need to get some help or I want to join a coaching program." what was going on?
[00:04:02] Kent: You guys found me on Facebook. You know, some ads start popping up. I'm like, you know, "what is this?" And clicked on it. And immediately, you know, in the original video, I saw you just jumped right into mindset and I was like, "wow. Okay. This is, you know, a property management type coach with mindset." I'm like, "that's a pretty potent mix. And yeah, just at the time, personally, I was in a really rough spot that I'm happy to dive into if you like. And yeah, DoorGrow just helped me just get the momentum to start making some phone calls. You know, I was sitting there having the idea to do it, but not doing it.
[00:04:37] And I was like, "well, I'm going to join this." And by doing that, it just gave me the confidence to, you know, start reaching out to people and "hey, I'll manage your property."
[00:04:47] Jason: Yeah. So, well, cool. You had mentioned you know, you were struggling with some stuff. What was going on in your life at the time that you joined the program?
[00:04:55] Kent: Sure. Yeah. A lot from what I remember. Yeah, so, long story short, I was in a mentally abusive relationship with somebody, and we were not married, and something happened that I was able to get her out of my life, well then, our daughter, we share a daughter together that I basically raised by myself, in the state of Ohio, women have all the rights over children. And she got at me, and I didn't see my daughter for about six months. I compare it's about the closest thing to losing a child that you can, you know, get to my sense.
[00:05:26] I didn't, but it was basically on that level.
[00:05:29] Jason: There's nothing to make you value your kids like somebody taking them away from you So, my kids are what got me into entrepreneurs and that's really what drove me to be able to have the flexibility to control my day and my life and my weeks so that when I had them, I could spend time.
[00:05:43] It was a big deal to me. So, but their perspective is probably "dad's always working because he's working from home," you know? Being able to be an entrepreneur and have that freedom was what really drove me to do what I do. So yeah, I remember us having some pointed conversations, like you were struggling, I think, just cognitively or mentally with everything that was going on with you. There was a lot of stress. You were dealing with a lot of stuff. And my perception, from the coach's perspective is that your confidence was kind of shot. You just like, you had the skill, you had the knowledge, and we could teach you the stuff to do, but in the beginning you really weren't believing in yourself.
[00:06:23] Kent: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I mean, you know, mentally, I'm struggling just to get out of bed. I mean, it was a challenge just to face the day, you know, and I'll never forget at the time. I went to go see somebody a therapist talk to and she said, "oh, what are you doing?" I'm like, "well, I'm trying to do this property management thing."
[00:06:39] "Well, what do you do on a daily basis?"
[00:06:41] "Well, I call people that don't want to, you know, hear from me" and, you know, and she's like, "probably need to get another job." I'll never forget.
[00:06:49] She said, "well, why don't tomorrow you call one person and then from there, you know, try to do better the next day." And at the same time, I reached out to a good friend of mine, probably my closest friend.
[00:06:59] And I just said, "Hey, man, I'm not doing good, you know, like, what should I do?" And he said, "man, concentrate on the little things. You know, "are you taking care of yourself? You know, are you eating good? Are you sleeping? You know, are you keeping a regular routine with the sleep schedule?" I wasn't doing any of those things, you know, and so just--
[00:07:15] Jason: One day, we had a similar conversation.
[00:07:17] I'm like, self care is the foundation. You got to start there. Put your own oxygen mask on first. Yeah.
[00:07:23] Kent: So, yeah, you know, exactly. Yeah. The plane's going down. You're supposed to put your mask on first. You know, how can I help my daughter if I can't even help myself and, you know, it just started just one day I got out of bed and took a shower and I'm like, wow, that's more than I've done in a couple of weeks. And then I picked up the phone and the next day I called somebody else. And then it got into a point of me just, you know, I'm not naturally a outgoing sales, salesy type person. And you know, then I just start killing it. I just enjoy the numbers game. I enjoy that I could have, I could call 50 people and it wouldn't bother me 49 of them wouldn't want to talk to me.
[00:08:02] It'd be that one, you know, just that feeling of just, you know, that home run that you hit, like, man, that was worth it, you know. And that's how I started. I just started calling strangers. I have a specific geographical area that I targeted and I had a way that I hunted down their information. It was a lot of data mining, but it was just the dialing
[00:08:20] for dollars is how I got my start. Yeah.
[00:08:23] Jason: So what shifted being involved in the coaching at DoorGrow? What do you feel like really had an impact for you and how did it help you? And how many doors did you have when you started with us? Let's start over there.
[00:08:34] Kent: Zero.
[00:08:35] Jason: Okay. Zero doors. How many doors are you at right now?
[00:08:38] Kent: 107.
[00:08:38] Jason: That's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you. And so, you know, where do you think you would be if you didn't have DoorGrow? How, how did DoorGrow contribute? How would this be different?
[00:08:49] Kent: Yeah. Well, you know, the first question you asked, you know, how did DoorGrow help me? Sense of community is the first thing that came to mind.
[00:08:56] The fact that I was joining forward thinking property managers. You know, I felt like I was at home because it's something that, you know, I believe in, I believe the industry is a little behind the times and a couple of different areas. Technology being one and, you know, we can dive into all the other areas, but just.
[00:09:13] I felt like I was in a place where people understood what I was trying to do professionally. And, you know, that was a big thing, the community, but then another big portion of it was having somebody holding me accountable you know, I'll never forget Morgan reaching out to me, "hey, how can I help? How can I help?" I'm like, hey check in with me, you know, make sure I'm calling my 50 people a day, you know, just do that weekly, you know, because then I'm telling you, I'm doing it. If I'm not doing it you know, I feel a lot more responsible if I'm telling somebody I'm going to do what I need to do.
[00:09:43] Jason: So, yeah, I think you put in the work and it's awesome to see that. You know, we can give clients the strategies. And the stuff that we give people to do works, but not everybody does it. A lot of people listening are like, all they're hearing is like, "Kent makes a bunch of phone calls."
[00:09:57] They're like," I don't want to do that." You know, what's different about the strategies that you're doing with DoorGrow versus what you maybe would have tried on your own then. I would have just been kicking tires
[00:10:07] Kent: if it was just myself. You know, it still would have been idea,
[00:10:10] "hey, I'm going to do this. You know, it's really just, it just gave me that confidence, you know, even jumping on the weekly calls and talking to people kind of sharing the war stories. You know, it's like, oh, you know, I'm not the only one having these struggles, and it's been great to, not that I like hearing people struggle, but it's, you know, it's nice to hear other people are going through the same thing I was, and that goes back to kind of that sense of community that I got from joining DoorGrow.
[00:10:36] Jason: Did you go through the rapid revamp class? I did. Yep. And so what changes did you make to your business going through that pricing, your sales pitch, brand new website, any of these?
[00:10:48] Kent: All of them. But the one that really stands out is my pitch. You know, that was something that, like I said earlier, I'm not naturally a very confident person.
[00:10:58] I'm a very empathetic he's some love type person, you know, and the idea of being a very salesy person intimidated me. But you kind of alluded to it. It was just a lack of confidence. You know, I know I can do what I need to do. It's just having that confidence and believing and yeah, just really defining my pitch, it was the biggest thing I took from that course. You know, website was an amazing, you know, pricing, all that stuff. But that was the one big thing I took from
[00:11:24] Jason: it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it really is. It's pretty significant that the level of confidence that you go into in sales when you just know that what your pitches and you know why you're doing what you're doing and you know that you can benefit people.
[00:11:39] And and that's what we teach. We teach authentic sales and, you know, seeing you shift from thinking you had to be a salesperson to shifting into having a solid pitch and just knowing that you could help people and being able to go out and do that. It probably made it a lot easier to just even make the phone calls and reach out to the right partners and the right people that could do some business with you.
[00:12:02] Kent: Oh yeah. You know, having that confidence and you know, another big thing that I'm thinking of coming through the year with us talking here is just the the whole concept of momentum. I would call get one person, okay, let me get another person. And just that idea of just, let's keep the ball rolling. Let's do a little bit better the next day.
[00:12:18] Jason: Yeah, it starts to give you evidence. When it's somebody's doing sales and they start to get evidence, that's when magic happens because then we have our confidence. It becomes real, then we can see that we are getting results. We can see that the needles moving for, you know, in a positive direction and that can be really significant.
[00:12:36] Sarah: So Kent, do you mind kind of talking about like the financial situation that you were in and kind of like your journey through all of that? Because, I think that's something that a lot of people really struggle with is like, business is not easy. And sometimes, you know, we either underestimate or really overestimate, like, what it's going to look like.
[00:12:58] Very rarely, I think, are we accurate in our planning and our methodology? So if you wouldn't mind, like, you know, it's just sharing some of the. You know, the financial piece, like, what did this look like, you know, from the start to like, where you are now.?
[00:13:13] Kent: Yeah. You know, what I've described to people is when I said what I do, you know, I said, "hey, you know, growing a property management company is not impossible. It's a difficult thing to do, but I did it with two, my two arms tied behind my back, you know, because I was struggling just to get out of bed," you know, is where I began. And, you know, it's just. I knew that I could do it. Once again, going back to the confidence and the routine of doing it, but yeah, you know, the, at the end of the day, I enjoy this business for multiple reasons, but from a financial piece, I enjoy the residual income that comes in. I enjoyed the flexibility that this job allows. And yeah, you know, my expectations coming in, you know, I had my spreadsheet on what it would look like and, you know, my goal was 100 doors. I'm going to be at 100 doors and I know Jason, you shared that's a lot of people when they start up their goal and I'll never forget. It was right around Christmas time last year. I'm like, "well, I got to call somebody" and, you know, I started calling people and after my first day, "I said, my goal is 100 doors by the end of the year, 1 year from now." Yeah. Well, I was able to reach that last month September 13th and it was a very good feeling that day, kind of walking on clouds, like, man, did I really just do that? You know, and just looking back yeah, I just had to put in the work. At the end of the day, it was a challenge to call that first person, but I just knew, I told myself, I'm going to have to pound these phones for six months. Is what I told myself and you know, so I'm like, all right, May, June, I should start getting some income man. It was right on the dot. I mean, literally day one of the second half of the year, client number one, client number two, you know, but it's like you got to have that long term vision to get through that kind of rut of a week of without securing anything, you know, you just got to.
[00:15:07] And once again, going back to DoorGrow gave me the confidence. I mean, you know, if I didn't have DoorGrow, I'm sure I would have gave up like, yeah, this is not going anywhere.
[00:15:15] Jason: Yeah. So, I mean, it's been awesome seeing your growth and where are you at now? Like we know you've got more doors, what, but how does life feel different for you? And what I mean is in the beginning, struggling to get out of bed, like life was difficult, zero doors in the beginning. Give us some contrast, help us understand where, what's life like now for you.
[00:15:34] Kent: I mean, night and day, you know, I love the quote.
[00:15:37] I don't know who said it, but "if you have more than 3 priorities in your life, you have 0," and right when I heard that, I'm like, man, what are my 3 priorities? Well, my health, because if I don't have my health my longevity, I got nothing, you know, that's the foundation. So, taking time to work out, to exercise, to bike you know, family is the second one.
[00:15:57] You know, my daughter, my parents and then the third is work. And just having that focus has given me great clarity. You know, I don't have time for anything else outside of my three priorities. You know, I, you know, I'm going to, I went to bed last night about eight o'clock. I was dead tired because I busted my butt on my three priorities.
[00:16:17] So, you know, to answer your question, how's it switched? It's just I'm so thankful for what I went through because it's given me extreme focus on what's important to me, what I need to do to survive and to thrive.
[00:16:28] Jason: Yeah. We had a good conversation about 10x. I remember. What did you take away from that coaching call?
[00:16:36] Kent: Yeah, it's so funny. We talked when you originally and you started with health, you know, "hey, man, make sure you're working out. Make sure you're taking care of yourself. I mean, I took a lot from that, but that was the biggest thing. I wasn't taking care of myself. And I got better over this year, but I made that priority.
[00:16:53] Number 1, you know, I prioritize sleep. I prioritize going to the gym and you know, the other big thing I got from it was I was kind of messing around. Like, I didn't realize how close I actually was, you know, I thought it was gonna take me forever to get where I wanted to be door count wise. And it was like, to the day, like, maybe not even a week when I went from 30 doors to 105 doors, And all that was I, you know, it was easier or what I took from the conversation. It was easier for me to, like, try to be a professional athlete than trying to be like a college athlete. You know, so what I did was I started calling people in my database with more doors. You know, I started stop messing around with the 2 families, and I was going 4 families and up and just there was things just started gushing in.
[00:17:44] Jason: Yeah yeah, we chatted about that. And for those listening, the conversation was something like it's easier to do 10x and 2x, which comes from that the book with the title 10x is easier than 2x by Ben Hardy. Which is he's teaching Dan Sullivan's principles in that book. And but the idea is there's very few things that can get you, that you can do to 10x.
[00:18:06] And when you think about that, and there's a lot of things, infinite things you could do to 2x your business, right to have incremental growth. So. I just, I challenged you. I said, I want you to sit with that question and think, what could I do to 10x? And when we just start exploring that question, we start to change your behaviors.
[00:18:22] And you've found some ways you're like, well, I'll go after people with more doors, people with more doors secretly for those listening, the people with more units and more doors are better clients, they value you more typically, and they are easier to get on, you know, than the one offs in a lot of situations.
[00:18:40] And so, you know, we can choose our ideal customer and go after them. And you started shifting your focus, which is interesting. And then you started seeing a shift in your door count significantly.
[00:18:52] Kent: And, you know, it's worth repeating what you said there, you know, the higher door count people, the more sophisticated investors are way easier than some of the mom and pops with, like, a 2 family, you know, for every reason you just mentioned right there.
[00:19:07] Jason: Yeah, they get so emotional about their property. They maybe used to live in it. They're like, "Timmy etched his height in the wall, like, since he was, you know, a little kid and like, we need to maintain it to like, it has to stay the same forever," and they don't want to treat it like a rental property.
[00:19:22] Yeah. So, yeah, well, Kent, you know, we've really appreciated having you as a client. It's been great to see your growth and success. Where do you see yourself in a year from now?
[00:19:31] Kent: Yeah. So there's kind of two things going on when I'm thinking, you know, I've just seen, you know, my number one priority right now, I'm where I'm at the door number that I wanted to be you know, I want to make sure my highest priority right now is make sure I can deliver to what I told the people I can do so, yes, I have greater ambitions of growing doors, but me servicing what I already have right now is of my number 1 priority and number 2 and I've mentioned this to you, Jason.
[00:20:02] I've mentioned it to a couple other people. You know, me getting up to 1000 doors. Is going to be easier than what I just went through over the past year to get to 100. And, I'm using the last part of this year to kind of button up my processes with the things that I'm servicing right now and going into the next year My goal is going to be to let me double what I did.
[00:20:23] Let me try to get 200 doors, you know And just see where that goes But then I, you know, I say that it's like, wow, screw that. I'm going to go after a thousand doors. Why am I selling myself short? You know?
[00:20:35] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I think you're, you know, that's interesting. I think a lot of people listening to this might have less than a hundred doors.
[00:20:42] And if you do reach out to DoorGrow, let's get your business fixed up because having less than a hundred doors is not really a profitable business. Like it's really difficult. To make money when you have like 20 doors or 30 doors, right? 50 doors. And a lot of people get stuck right there as a solopreneur.
[00:20:59] And and they've already made usually a lot of mistakes related to pricing and branding and everything else. So everything feels so uphill. And then a lot of times they're losing more doors sometimes than they're getting on or about the same. So they're just, they have this high churn rate where they're losing clients every year.
[00:21:13] And then getting some clients and they're like, "I'm not growing." That's a painful grind to be in. And that's way harder than if you break the hundred door barrier in a healthy way, which you did and you know how to grow, which you do. And you know how to grow independently of ads. You don't, you're not beholden to some marketer to advertising agencies.
[00:21:33] Like you can just go out there and create business. And it actually takes you less time than it would to follow up on cold, crappy leads that you were buying. And so you're doing things in a smarter way than most property managers do, because most probably are listening to this going, "well, I don't want to make phone calls.
[00:21:48] I'm going to go be stupid and spend a bunch of money on ads and try and do a bunch of advertising instead," because they want to avoid something that's going to actually work well and get them warmer leads that have a higher close rate that they're not competing with the low price property manager, you know, out in the market.
[00:22:05] Sarah: I think it's the perception of pain. It's all, it's not, you know, people aren't like, "Oh, I want to do this way instead." It's just that it sounds painful where it sounds a lot easier just to be like, "Oh, I'll just pay for ads. I'll pay a marketer. And then like leads will come to me." It sounds easier.
[00:22:23] And it's so deceptive because it's so hard. It's so hard. But it sounds, I think when people hear like, "Oh, well, I have to talk to people and I have to make a bunch of calls and I have to reach out to a bunch of people? I have to do a bunch of work?" Then they go, "Oh, this is like this hard thing." But what they don't realize is that if you, like, if you're spending money on ads and you're advertising, like, and you're getting leads that are coming to you, you still have to make a bunch of calls. You still have to talk to a bunch of people. You still have to do a bunch of work and you're actually doing more work because these people don't know who you are and you're just spending money. Like hopefully this works! I hope it works. So, like, is that something that was like hard for you to get over that hurdle and just like start doing the work. Was that hard for you?
[00:23:07] Kent: Oh, yeah. I mean, I you know, I procrastinated forever, you know, it's you know, I spent so much time, "I'm gonna do this with you know, trying to find leads and you know," basically I was just prolonging the pain, you know, I'm then finally one day. I'm like just call somebody, you know I think the best example was it was right around Memorial Day. It was that Saturday And I got up, I'm like, all right, "I'm going to call my 50 contacts or my 50 buildings." And man, I was pacing around my computer cause I did not want to do it. You know, I came up with every excuse.
[00:23:44] "Oh, it's a holiday. Nobody wants to talk to me." You know, there were some curse words that I just started saying to myself, like just trying to hype myself up, like, "man, just do it." Finally, I sat down and did and started calling and call number one. So I reached out to 50. Prospects 50 buildings call number 1 was a home run call.
[00:24:03] Number 50 was a home run. Everything in the middle was a dud, but I was just like, I got off. It was so funny to have that 1st 1 and that 50th. I was like, wow, that was a lesson right there. You just don't know what's around the corner. But yeah, Sarah, yeah, definitely procrastinated to finally pick up the phone.
[00:24:21] But once I, you know, talking about that momentum, once I started getting some first base hits, those then turned into double plays, and then they got a couple of home runs out of it, but you just got to start.
[00:24:32] Sarah: Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for sharing that.
[00:24:34] Jason: Cool. Well, can any parting words of wisdom for people that are, or were are right now in a similar spot to where you were when you first came to us?
[00:24:44] Or maybe they're dabbling like 20, 30 doors are struggling?
[00:24:48] Kent: Yeah. I mean, it's been, you know, there's been a couple of things in my life that were like moments. I'm like, man, that, that changed my course. And one was joining DoorGrow. Professionally. And, you know, the second Jason's the call that mean you had, you know, maybe a month or two ago when I shared what I went through.
[00:25:05] You know, that was just 2 things that just, you just get tattooed in my brain. And I know I've said this a few times to you even, you know, I'm like, "Oh, I could have got where I am right now, but DoorGrow helped me do it quicker." I'm confident in saying I'm even going to remove that from my vocabulary.
[00:25:21] I would not have been able to get to where I am right now. Yes, I did put in the work, but DoorGrow was great on showing me little tricks of the trade, some different technologies I can implement that just compress that time from a very long time into a very short time. So, yeah, you know, if anybody's on the fence about joining you guys I'm a customer for life.
[00:25:44] That's good stuff. We're ending right now. That's like, that's it.
[00:25:48] Sarah: That's it. That's all we need to hear. My day is complete. Thank you. And because this is what we do. This is what we do and we like doing it. Like I'm, this like really fulfills me. This is what I'm really passionate about doing is making that change and making that impact.
[00:26:03] Jason: Yeah. Can we be real? So like yesterday was a rough day for us, right? Business can be rough sometimes, like, you know, we get stressed out. We like feel overwhelmed. Things change in the business. Things change with the team. You know, sometimes you get bad news.
[00:26:18] Like business is not easy. It's a new day, you pick yourself up, you get to work, and Kent, it's been awesome seeing you put in the work, get the results, and that's really what we value as coaches, we need clients that are willing to do the work required to get the result, we will just help them with the system, and when we get great people, and they have a system, they're going to win.
[00:26:46] There's no question. Our system's proven. We love when we get to connect with the right people that are ready for a good system. And those of you listening, when you really want success, when you're really committed to success, and you're willing to do the work required, and you just do it, even if you're sucking at it, the system will become clear.
[00:27:06] You will find the system. And that's when greatness starts to come. That's where success starts to come. So put in the work, put in the effort. And then when you're ready, reach out the DoorGrow, we've got the system and then we'll help you get going. So Kent, thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate you.
[00:27:20] Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for your time. We'll talk to you again soon. All right. Sounds good. See you guys. All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur, that's wanting to add doors and make a difference in everything that we talked about, then, you know, reach out. We would love to support you.
[00:27:37] Just go to doorgrow.Com. Also go to doorgrowclub.Com, join our free group and community. We give away a lot of value. Hopefully that'll get you up to the point where you can afford to work with us. And and when you're ready, we're here to help you take things to the next level. So bye everyone. Until next time to our mutual growth.
[00:27:54] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:28:21] 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.
Do you feel comfortable where you are at in your property management business? You might have achieved your initial goals. You started the business, you got the number of doors you wanted… now what?
Today, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about growing beyond the initial goals you set as a business owner by leveling up your mindset.
[01:30] Don’t be a slave to your own business
[04:11] You can achieve more
[09:28] The 3 different levels of want
[16:33] The 3 things necessary to achieve
[20:15] Only YOU know what you are capable of
“You know, deep down whether your business is great or not.”
“You're able to make a bigger impact and a bigger difference if you have a successful healthy business.”
“Find a way to justify success because success allows you contribution.”
“You spend your whole life trying to fit in when really you need to spend time trying to stand out.”
[00:00:00] Jason: Are you a "kinda" property manager or business owner or entrepreneur or are you non-negotiable, you refuse to be in an industry and not be one of the best. You're going to be great. Like you've committed to being great.
[00:00:14] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.
[00:00:51] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management, business owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. All right.
[00:01:14] So, a lot has been going on. Last episode, Sarah and I talked about how we had just come back from an event. We had a whole bunch of different ideas. This last week, then her family came to visit, so I haven't been able to implement a lot of these ideas, but it was super great seeing her family.
[00:01:30] And, you know, one thing I was really grateful for during the last week, at the end of the week, I said to Sarah, "you know, it's really great that we have a business that allows us that when we want to, we can have those moments with family. Like family had come to visit, we can spend that time with them." And she agreed.
[00:01:48] And so. This is something that I want all of you to be able to have an experience too. Hopefully you have this already in your business. If you do not, if you're struggling, if you're like, man, "I haven't even taken a vacation, let alone a few days off to spend with family. I haven't taken a vacation or a few days off to spend with family or anything like that in a while," then you have built the wrong business. You didn't build a business for you. You didn't build a business based on what you wanted. You built a business based on what your clients want maybe. You built a business that you let take over and become its own boss. And the business is now in control of you. You are now a servant or a slave to your business, and you should be the one in control, the one in charge. And so if you're in that position, you know, I want you to get out of this. I want to give you an escape route. So I just did a masterclass on the biggest secret killer or thief in a business, and that's interruptions. And I talked about doing a time study, and this is also the beginning gateway to escaping your business and creating some freedom is to do a time study.
[00:02:58] And you can use our time study. If you'd like, reach out to us. We can give you our time study document. Just DM me on social anywhere and just say time study or something like that. And my team will say “what am I supposed to give them? Give them the link to our time study document." But the basic idea is that you're going to track your time every 15 minutes.
[00:03:19] You're going to figure out where your time's going. You're going to figure out: "What am I doing that gives me fulfillment and what am I doing that's taking it away like it's draining me?" And so you're either going to have a plus sign or a minus sign that you're going to write next to every 15 minutes of where your time goes.
[00:03:36] So if you're doing something where you feel like you're in the flow and you really enjoy it and this is fun for you and whatever it is, plus sign if you're like, "man, if I never had to do that ever again, and I had a team member to do that thing..." minus sign. Put down a minus sign. I have a special guest Welcome, Sarah.
[00:03:55] I'm giving up.
[00:03:55] To the DoorGrow show. She was waiting for somebody to show up at our door They didn't show up.
[00:04:00] So, all right. Nope. I was mentioning that if they haven't been able to take a trip or vacation a while, that they should maybe do a time study. So that's kind of where I've gotten so far.
[00:04:11] All right. Cool. So I was thinking at funnel hanging live at the event that we went to, I really enjoyed Eric Thomas. Yeah. And here's my notes from that, but I was thinking we would touch on that for the remainder of the episode.
[00:04:25] Yeah. That's cool. Cool. And it's kind of related. He's an inspirational speaker, this gentleman named Eric Thomas. And he's gotten to speak to Warren Buffett and billionaires and, you know, stuff like this. And he was sharing this idea about this concept of these three levels of desire.
[00:04:42] And he started out by talking about, you have to give yourself permission. So if you want success, you want to achieve, and I want you all to crack your mind open and be open to the idea of having massive success in your property management business. I don't know why you would want to suppress that anyway, right? So be open to the idea that a thousand doors would be a lot more fun, give you a lot more money and be a lot easier to do as a business owner, because you have a great team than doing a hundred doors. Right. And some of your dreams, like a hundred doors, I want you to 10x that. They need to go big, and we also got to hear Dr. Ben Hardy who wrote 10x is easier than 2x, which is a great book that I read. I really love that. So why don't you think 10x bigger, but give yourself permission to dream and the level of your ambition dream and set that level higher. Not to the level of other people's expectations.
[00:05:32] And it talks about this in 10x and Eric Thomas touched about this, but it's the idea that a lot of times we are too afraid to just want, we're too afraid to just want something bigger. And so we feel almost guilty for wanting what we actually want or wanting something big. And so instead we hear this feedback from the world that says, "well, that's nuts. You don't need all that. You don't need a nice car. You don't really need a nice house. You don't need this." And that's other people's expectations. But that might not be what you want. And I really believe God puts desires in our heart for a reason.
[00:06:06] Like, so the first question he asks is "what do you want?" Not what do other people want? Like, what do you really want? And whatever you want is okay. You get to want whatever you want. And then he asked, "why are you here? Why are you here?" And I've heard other coaches ask, what do you want and why does it matter?
[00:06:23] But there needs to be a why. I like, "why are you here?" Because this speaks to your purpose. We have a purpose and what you want and your purpose are probably aligned in some way. Like having, you know, your dream life and being able to benefit others and have success. They're all interconnected. So, and he talks about three levels of want.
[00:06:44] So I don't want to do all the talking. Do you want to talk about the three levels of want?
[00:06:48] Sarah: Yeah. Well, there's something too that I want to kind of add in because I've heard this my whole life and I've been different for a long time and I'm totally fine with being different. Like even, you know, elementary school, high school, like I've just always thought differently.
[00:07:03] I've done things differently. I don't like fit in with like the popular kids. I'm weird. Yeah. I'm weird. And I'm really good with being weird, but sometimes people aren't. And especially when they're in school and they're young and everybody's like, "Oh no, you must conform and you must like fit in."
[00:07:19] You spend your whole life trying to fit in when really you need to spend time trying to stand out, trying to be different. So, I've, like I said, I've always just done things a little differently. And a lot of times when I make a decision, you know, people will ask me like, why do you need that?
[00:07:36] Why do you need that? You know? And I'm like, I don't need it. I want it. And that's been my answer every time. Like my whole life, you know, like I bought, so I refused to my very first home that I ever bought. I bought when I was 26. And until then I had just been renting, but I bought my very first home on my own by myself.
[00:07:55] No help. I did have a mortgage. Yes, but like I didn't get money from my parents or like money from a spouse. Like it was me. I just did it. And I refused to buy a starter home. I was like, I am not going to buy a house that I want to live in for, you know, a year to three years and I'm going to just make it work.
[00:08:15] And then I'm going to like upgrade and, you know, do the normal thing that people do. They're like, "Oh, I'll just start here and then I'll upgrade later." I refused to do that. And so I bought a home that I could live in for anywhere from like five to 10 years, I was like "I'm not doing this stupid game that people do."
[00:08:33] So I just did what I needed to do in order to make that happen. And everybody was asking me like, well, "why are you doing that? Like, just buy a house that's smaller, just buy a house that's less expensive. Just do this. Just like, why do you need all that?" And I was like, "I don't need it. I don't need it. I want it, and it's okay to want big things and it's okay if the things that you want are not necessarily the same things that other people want."
[00:09:01] So I really want to Mention that because I think we get this like pressure sometimes to conform to, you know, societal norms and just, you know, do just do what you're supposed to do. Just do the thing that everybody else does. And there's a lot of times I don't want to do the thing that everybody else does because it's not exciting.
[00:09:22] So it's okay to like think outside of this box that everybody's trying to put you in. But anyway, so, there are three different levels of want. This is one of the things that he was kind of talking about is if you kind of want something and you're like, "Oh, that would be nice." Right. This is what I'm going to call like, "Hey, I'm like, I'm fantasizing" like, "Oh, it'd be nice if one day we could take this amazing vacation and go to Italy for like three weeks and like, you know, tour everything and like just like forget about all of our stresses at home. Oh, wouldn't it be nice if one day we lived in like a million dollar home? Wouldn't it be nice if one day I had a Maserati, right?" Like, and we all do this. Every person on the planet does this.
[00:10:04] Like, "oh, it'd be really awesome. Like, this is like my dream life. Like if I could just snap my fingers and make something happen, like it'd be great if I lived in this mansion, right?" That's when you like, kind of want it. You're like you can think it, you can maybe say it out loud.
[00:10:17] There's nothing solid behind that. You're just like speaking it out and you're like, "oh yeah, it'd be cool if this."
[00:10:23] Jason: Yeah. He said I can't, he says when you kind of want it, it's, but only if it isn't too difficult or inconvenient, I want it. That's how bad I want it. I want it enough that, yeah, it'd be nice, but only if it isn't too difficult or inconvenient.
[00:10:38] That's the lowest level. What's the next level?
[00:10:41] Sarah: So then there's something when you really want it. Now, when you really want it versus when we kind of want it, when you really want it, you're like, "Hey, I'm going to do things, I'm going to make this happen, like I'm going to take some action, you know, I'm going to make some, maybe some choices a little bit differently."
[00:10:58] This is like, "Hey, I'm going to take the thing that I want and I'm going to connect it to action." And that's, I think where most people live, is in this I really want it stage. They're like, "Hey, I really want to make this happen. Like, I'm going to start the business. I'm going to, you know, like make the calls. I'm going to reach out to people. I'm going to promote myself. I'm going to do what it takes." Right. "I'm going to do it." And I think this is where a lot of people think they live right here. You're like, "I'm doing the thing. Here I am like, I'm showing up, I'm doing the thing." Right. And I think what happens a lot of time is this is where we get comfortable because we're doing it. You're like, "I want to start a property management business." And then you did it and now you have clients and maybe you have a team and you've got like, right, you've got money coming in and you're like, "I did it. I did it." Yeah. Cool. Like first, are you dreaming big enough? Like did you started a property management business?
[00:11:47] Maybe you have a couple of doors, maybe you have a hundred doors, maybe you've got 500 hours. Right. But are we thinking like as big as we should be or, and are we living in this like "I'm just kind of doing it" stage. Like I'm doing it. I want it. I wanted it. I really wanted it. I made it happen. And now here I am doing it.
[00:12:03] And I think stage two and stage three are really different. And stage three is when the thing that you want is an absolute non negotiable thing. I don't remember if it was I don't remember if it was Eric or if it was Namaia. I don't remember which one it might've been. It might've been Namaia.
[00:12:21] Jason: Eric is Namaia's mentor.
[00:12:22] Sarah: So yeah, they probably both said it, so, but one of them said, "listen, I have to do this. Like, I want to do it. I want to. Yeah, I want to. Like, I'm committed. I, like, I have the desire. I have the dream, but I also have to do this. I have an obligation to do this. And I have to do this because if I don't do this... he's like, I retired my mom.
[00:12:44] I retired her. She's been retired for 10 years. If I don't do this, if I stop doing this, my mom has to go back to work and that can't happen is like, if I don't do this, my wife has to go get a job and that can't happen. If I don't do this, my kids see me quit and they see me stop and they see me playing small, and that can't happen. So when you want it so much so that it's an absolute non negotiable and you're willing to do anything that it takes, obviously ethically, anything that it takes until you get this thing and then you keep going That's I think a different level than like I just really want.
[00:13:25] Jason: So yeah Eric said that non negotiable level when you want what you want, like you want to breathe, then you'll have it.
[00:13:34] And I thought about that. I mean, you have to want something pretty bad. I know what it feels like to want to breathe. Right. And I mean, that's serious desire. He then got into the three levels of why, cause we talked about why. And again, there's kinda, really, and non negotiable.
[00:13:48] And you know, we have a motive and it's like, "well, I want, you know, kind of as maybe, well, it'd be nice to have some extra cash or whatever." That's not a big enough motive. Really want it, man. "I'm really hurting for cash right now, maybe," but non negotiable is like, "I 100 percent committed. I'm all in on this because this has to work. I have to make this happen. I feel calling inside myself. This is my purpose and I need to fulfill it. I need to achieve it. You know, no matter what the cost." there's always the one way that's going to get us there to make it work, and it's not going to be unethical. It's going to be the right way. And so I think focusing on what do you really want and figuring out what would be a non negotiable for you? Like I'm going to have this and what's a really solid why for some of you, like we were able to, I think last year, like a charity reached out and we donated like four grand to this charity to help, I don't know, homeless people or something.
[00:14:46] And, you know, if I was in a financially difficult spot with cashflow in the business, and personally, I wouldn't be able to just drop money to charity like that and benefit a group, right? And as a company we wouldn't be able to do that. Are you able to benefit groups? Are you able to do good things for other people then you need to be making more money if you're not able to So find a way to justify success because success allows you contribution.
[00:15:13] We talked about the four reasons: Freedom, fulfillment, contribution, and support. Contribution. You're able to make a bigger impact and a bigger difference if you have a successful healthy business. And one of the things that Eric said that I wrote down, he's a inspirational speaker,
[00:15:29] and so he said, "I'm going to be the best inspirational speaker. I'm going to study it. I'm going to do whatever it takes. I'm going to speak before Kings and rulers, you know, I'm going to be the best." He said, "I refuse to be in an industry and not be one of the best in the industry." He said, "be great." So are you a kinda property manager or business owner or entrepreneur?
[00:15:50] Are you like, you know, you really level or you non negotiable, you refuse to be in an industry and not be one of the best. You're going to be great. Like you've committed to being great. I've always had this commitment at DoorGrow. Sarah shares this with me. We've always had this commitment to being the best, and we believe we are the world leaders.
[00:16:12] Nobody else has what we have in property management coaching. We're the best. And I'm committed to staying the best. And this is why we invest so much into the business. In terms of learning, investing in other masterminds, getting coaches, getting mentors. We spend more on that than other programs probably make, you know, other coaches probably make.
[00:16:33] So you talked about three things that are necessary in order to like achieve what you want and have the success. And these three things, I recommend you write these down. First, you need desire. So we kind of talked about that. You have to really want it and you have to have a why and that's that, and then he said, you need an A team.
[00:16:52] You need a really awesome team, like of A players. And then he said, you need a system. And what he shared these examples. He's like, Michael Jordan was, you know, an amazing basketball player. But until he got Phil Jackson as a coach, he was not able to play super well with others and he wasn't able to get championships.
[00:17:11] He needed a system and Phil Jackson created a system that allowed Michael Jordan to win and succeed multiple times. But before then he was just getting lots of points, but he was not winning championships. He then talked about Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson needed a system and then he found Quincy Jones and started to have a ton of success.
[00:17:32] And he shared some other examples. People need a system. And I got really excited when I heard this. I think I leaned over to you and said something. I think I was like, "we're the system." We are the system. I was like so excited. I'm like, that's us. We are the system! We just need to find the Michael Jordans and the Michael Jackson's out there.
[00:17:52] Like the property managers that are like the greats, the ones that want to be great.
[00:17:57] Sarah: And can I say too, because I already know what's going through at least like three quarters of y'all's brains right now, they're going, "well, I'm better than everybody else in my market. So look, I am great." Yeah, and that's fantastic, right?
[00:18:13] But if you're the best one in the market, and you might be, so I'm talking to you right now, because I was the best one in my market, hands down. There was like no competition but I was still playing really small. I got up to 260 doors because I was in that really want it. I wasn't in this, Hey, I'm like going to make this a non negotiable.
[00:18:32] And I know, like, I was very aware. I knew where I was. Jason's like, you could make this a thousand door company if you wanted to. I know that I could, and it would have been really easy. I already know what I would have done. I could have doubled my business overnight and I know that. But I wasn't in this stage where it was a non negotiable.
[00:18:47] So was I the best one in my market? Hands down, but am I really playing full out? No. And I knew I wasn't so if you're thinking like, yeah, but I am the, like, I am the greatest already. You might be but I think the one thing that I would say here because I realized this Actually when I was working at an insurance company, you can't compete with other people That is not don't and we all do this.
[00:19:16] Like this is super common for us to do We go, "oh, well like my neighbor over there just got a new ferrari now I have to get a new ferrari." No, you compete against yourself. So every day you need to be better than you were yesterday.
[00:19:29] That's the game you have to play. You can't worry about what your neighbors are doing, what your competition is doing and what other people in your market are doing. Who cares what they're doing? Let them do whatever they're doing and you worry about yourself. And if you are, you're like, "Oh, I'm already the greatest one in my market."
[00:19:47] Fantastic. Then you got to keep going. So if you're the greatest one in your market like me and I was at 260 doors, don't stop at 260 doors. Don't be like, "oh, I already did it. Like look at me." Keep going. So at 260 doors, double that and then double it again And when you're really on this path, like that is how you become really great.
[00:20:10] Don't just say like, "Oh, I'm already the best in my market. So I'm there." You have not arrived yet.
[00:20:15] Jason: So I think those listening, I mean, you know, deep down whether your business is great or not. Whether you're really delivering the level of service and you know there's flaws. You know you're not at that great level yet.
[00:20:29] And to Sarah's credit, she was running a really effective business. I mean, you had 60 percent plus profit margin and you were part time. She's flexing here. So, but she fell in love with coaching clients at DoorGrow. She was like part time and she was like, "Hey," and she fell in love with something that she then really wanted to be great at.
[00:20:50] Here's the thing. You need to know who you are, ET talked about this. You need to know who you are and you need to become great. Not just the best in your market, if the bar is really low, but you need to become where, you know, deep down is great. And that level you know, Ben Hardy, who wrote the 10X is easier than 2X said the only person that knows your potential, that's between you and God and everyone else might say, "Oh, what you're doing is amazing. It's great." But you might know if there's more and no one else is going to be able to set that higher bar than yourself. You need to know what great is and decide what that looks like, and you need to become great. And what he said when you become great, the system that you need will come like Michael Jordan invested and became great. And then you're The right people were attracted to him. He found Phil Jackson, right? Michael Jackson found Quincy Jones, right? Then when you become great, you will, then the system will come.
[00:21:44] The system is out there. It's available and you will find the right system. And then once you have the system that you need, then you can leverage greatness. Then you can really leverage that greatness and truly showcase your greatness. And you don't have to be the most talented if you got the right system. You don't have to be the smartest
[00:22:04] if you have the right system, you don't need to be different, you just need be a better version of yourself and compete with yourself. And you know, that's it. You just really need the right system. And I got excited because at DoorGrow, we've built the system. We built the system for the best property managers.
[00:22:22] That was our intention. And I was really excited because I'm like, "we're the system! We've got the system." We just need to find those that really want to be great. And so I'm challenging everyone listening. I want you to want to be great, but you've got to want it. No one else is going to do it for you.
[00:22:35] And Sarah wants me to wrap up. You want me to wrap up? We'll wrap up. So only you can do the work, but doing it alone is a choice. That's what he said. So find he had this scripture. He said, find a man that's diligent at what he does. And he will stand before Kings. Nothing can stop you.
[00:22:51] Only you can stop you. You owe you. And then he said, he had people chanting, "I can, I will, I must." And so when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you will be wildly successful. And we would love to be part of that journey. I'm a conductor with my pencil. All right. I'm just getting excited.
[00:23:12] I'm going to poke somebody in the eye here.
[00:23:13] Sarah: It's going to be me.
[00:23:16] Jason: "It's going to be me." All right. So anyway, reach out the DoorGrow. We would love to support you. And until next time to our mutual growth, bye everyone.
[00:23:25] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:23:51] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
If you have ever gone to big, in-person coaching events, masterminds, or conferences, you’ve probably come back to your team with a TON of ideas you want to implement.
In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about how to bring new ideas back to your business and implement them without totally overwhelming your team.
[01:22] Why we invest in coaching ourselves
[05:47] New ideas take time to implement
[09:37] You need better hooks!
[10:39] How to avoid overwhelming your team with new ideas
[17:54] The best live event for property managers
“People give up long before they get results in anything.”
“If you quit before you get the results, it's never going to work.”
“You can guarantee failure if you stop.”
“We grossly underestimate the amount of work that people put into something to achieve success or to get a result.”
[00:00:00] Jason: It's difficult because we come back from an event and then we pull the pin on a grenade and throw it into the middle of the room with our team. We're like, "Hey, here's this really exciting thing!" And it's exciting for us. But for them, they're like, "I already have all this work that I'm expected to do, and you want to like change everything now?"
[00:00:19] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings.
[00:00:44] Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses.
[00:01:00] 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 owner and COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. All right. So we just got back from doing what?
[00:01:25] Sarah: We went to two events back to back, which is a little crazy, but we did it. So we went to a Mastermind right outside of Nashville, Tennessee. And right after that, we went to a big event down in Orlando. It's Funnel Hacking Live.
[00:01:41] So we were gone for like a whole week.
[00:01:45] Jason: Yeah, a whole week of travel and events and how'd you like it?
[00:01:50] Sarah: I loved it. So it was a lot in a short amount of time especially with the travel. So we did four cities in three days. So that was kind of crazy, but it was really great.
[00:02:02] And then it was funny because we did our mastermind event and right after that, then we went to Funnel Hacking Live, and on the way to, and like from both of these events, we were then watching like an online course from Alex Hormozi. So it was just like information overload.
[00:02:21] Jason: Yeah so much. We have a lot of ideas. We do. We took a lot of notes. We have a lot of notes, a lot of ideas, and it can be a bit overwhelming. A lot of you probably feel like that when you go to events. You get a lot of ideas, a lot of stuff. And so we talked about how we need, like when we have some space, because we're getting caught up in all the work that we missed and everybody needing us.
[00:02:45] We need to block out at least a day or two to really just digest all of the stuff that we got and to prioritize it and figure out where's this going to fit in with what we're doing. So for you, what are some of the key takeaways that you got that you feel like you are motivated to work on as a result of all the stuff that we just downloaded?
[00:03:07] Sarah: Well, there's so many things I think if I were to have to choose right now and prioritize, I think probably like building my own personal brand would be on the top of the list. And doing the thing that I hate the most, which is social media. Yay. I hate social media so much. I just hate it, but it's a thing that you've got to do, I guess.
[00:03:31] Jason: Yeah. So a lot of people I think make the mistake of trying to build up the business brand on social media. Which generally is a lot less effective because people want to interact with people and most of the people that you follow are not a business, they're a person, right? And so I think that's one of the things that took away too, is I need to really focus on building up my personal brand.
[00:03:54] You need to focus on building up your personal brand and those two personal brands combined, you know, if we're focused on a business brand can feed that, but really, people want to connect with people. And so I've been really putting a lot more effort into short form video, cranking out a lot more content so that I can build a bigger and bigger following.
[00:04:14] And the one thing that really stuck out to me related to that is the importance of consistency and doing a piece of content every single day, rain or shine and so this is something we're trying to get in place so that we can crank out something every single day.
[00:04:34] Sarah: Every day. So I'm going to go from not doing social media to doing social media every day. It sounds horrible.
[00:04:44] Jason: Yeah. And I mean, from the first event we went to, one of the things that I took away is I need to go live a lot more often I need to be really contributing and adding value to our free Facebook group, which if you're a property manager, make sure you're in it. DoorGrowClub.Com and just providing value and not being so worried about everything looking perfect.
[00:05:08] You know, one of our mentors, he's just like driving, he's in a t shirt, like he just goes live in that group all the time. But then also putting out like nicely branded content on short form videos, something that I took away from the Funnel Hacking Live event that we went to, and putting that out every single day.
[00:05:26] And they showed these examples, right, of, you know, women and men that had done something every single day for a year, and how things just started to explode. Yeah. Eventually, once the algorithm learned they were going to be there, and they had a topic, and they were consistent, and they started to build an audience, then they started to get featured, and then they started to explode.
[00:05:47] Sarah: And then also, the other thing, too, is there are a few examples of this, where I don't remember which girl it was, maybe it was Jodi, maybe Jodi, I don't remember, but she was saying "Well, my brother was going to start this business and then he started doing social media content and then he stopped and I had asked him like, 'Hey, how are things going?'
[00:06:04] And he's like, 'ah, yeah, I stopped doing that.'" And she said, "well, what do you mean you stopped?" And he's like, "no, I didn't, it didn't work. Nothing happened from it." And he had only done it for a very short period of time, so he gave up. And I think that's what happens is people give up long before they get results in anything.
[00:06:23] And it's not just social media it's oftentimes in anything, you know, they're, you know, trying to make relationships with investors or with other real estate agents or their neighbor property managers you know, and they're like, "well, it didn't work, you know, I called, you know, I sent 500 emails and I did, you know, 100 calls and it didn't work."
[00:06:40] Yeah. And then if you quit before you get the results, it's never going to work, right? So you can guarantee failure if you stop.
[00:06:48] Jason: Yeah. I think one of the things I realized is that we grossly underestimate the amount of work that people put into something to achieve success or to get a result. And so, like, we learned this watching one of the Hormozi videos.
[00:07:06] He was talking about the sample size sometimes is just too small. He was like, " I did 300 flyers and I didn't get any calls." and he said, how many, did the guy do a day? 5,000. He's like, "I do 5,000 a day." He did 3,000 one time, like in a month. And he was like, "oh. This is what I thought was required. It's actually this."
[00:07:27] Sarah: Think about it, like if you're doing 300, if you contact 300 people, yeah, did you tap out your market? And the answer to that is probably no. Are there more than 300 investors in your market? I bet there are.
[00:07:39] Are there more than 300 real estate agents where you are? Unless you're in a tiny little podunk town like I was, you probably are.
[00:07:47] Jason: Yeah, so that's something that really stood out to me is I'm not doing enough. And so the level of work and the level of commitment that some of these entrepreneurs had in their businesses.
[00:07:59] really created some contrast for me. I was like, "wow, I'm not doing that." So what did I do? Like we're back. It was Monday yesterday. And I was like, all right, I got up at like four in the morning 4:30 in the morning. And I just worked on connecting and reaching out to a hundred people. So I sent out like a hundred voice messages to Instagram followers.
[00:08:23] That's my goal is to just crank out connecting to a hundred people every day and just do this. And that will create some connection and that will start to build stuff up. And if I put in the reps doing that, and then maybe get some support, I also challenged my team, like, see if you can reach out to a hundred people each day.
[00:08:43] So we'll see if we start to see some results. And I already started having conversations just from the initial outreach. So if I just do that every day, that should have a significant impact on the business and it compounds over time. And so then I'm also cranking out a lot more videos like this morning, you know, I'm took my daughter to school. On the way back where I'm not having to listen to Taylor Swift or I listen to her talk about Taylor Swift and tell me all the, like, theories and ideas about Taylor Swift. Like what's her cat's name. Right, like, all this stuff about Taylor Swift because she's like a Taylor Swift fanatic.
[00:09:17] Like, as soon as she's out of the car, I started recording videos while I'm driving. So then I have some, like, I've got my phone, I know how to get home, so, like, It's recording videos and I'm just talking about some different things. Hardest is sometimes just think, what should I talk about? So sometimes I'm asking chat GPT, like, "what should I talk about?"
[00:09:34] You know, And generating some prompts. And another thing that I learned about, or that really kind of sunk in a little more effectively was the idea of having hooks. A lot of people think they have a lead problem or a lead magnet problem or a lead gen problem. And really what Steven Larson, a friend of mine mentioned is you really just have a hook problem.
[00:10:03] You just don't have a good hook to capture people's attention in the first three to five seconds, that hook on a phone call matters on your marketing matters more than anything else. And so not having a good hook in the beginning can really cause you to lose a lot of money if you're spending money on advertising.
[00:10:21] So I'm now trying to be more conscious of the hook at the beginning of my videos that I'm creating and being more effective at creating hooks that capture attention or that are a pattern interrupt to get people to pay attention. Because if I don't do that. It doesn't matter how good the content is.
[00:10:39] Sarah: So I think one of the other things too is, and this happens every time we've seen it over and over again with our clients too, is they'll come, they'll go, especially one of our events because we jam pack stuff. So they'll come to one of the events and then they're like, "yeah, but I have so many great ideas. I don't know how to implement all of it." Or they're like, "yeah, but I don't know if my team will go for that. Like, I want to do that, but like, I just don't know if my team is going to go for that." And I think it's really common when someone goes to an event and they were there. So they had that experience. They saw everything they experienced at all. Like it sunk in, it hit them and they're like, "oh yeah, like it's super clear to me why we have to do this." And then they want to come back and they want to change things in the business and their team didn't have that same experience. Yeah, so the team wasn't at the event.
[00:11:27] The team is like, "hey, we're just holding down the fort while you're out, you know, doing this event," and then you come back like a crazy person and you're like "guys, we're going to change the whole business model! We're going to start doing things like this. We're going to do things like this instead and we're going to do all of this and I got all these great ideas and here's what we're going to do!" And the team was like, "what are you talking about? Why?" Like You come in hot like a crazy person. And I think there's kind of a better way to approach it. The one of the things I think that's really helpful. Is having some sort of strategic planning system like we use DoorGrow OS. That's our operating system. It's also available for you guys. If you're interested, it's like 97 bucks a month but it's a really great planning system so that instead of coming back with like 20,000 ideas and going, "yeah, I'm going to implement all of them."
[00:12:15] Realistically, you're not. Realistically, there are going to be things that are going to be priority and they take precedence and then there are going to be things that maybe you never do. And they're going to be things that you want to do, but they're going to be way down the line. And you need to really find a way to like organize all of this stuff and then prioritize.
[00:12:32] What are we actually going to do right now? Like, what would be the biggest thing that we could do right now to move the business forward? So something like that would help and having your team involved in that is a really great way to make sure that your team is actually bought in Instead of you coming back and coming like "hey, we're going to do this. We're going to do that this, and we're changing this and we're like going to hire these people and maybe we're going to fire, you know, John over there." Then the team is like "whoa!" like they feel like railroaded because they didn't have the same experience that you had.
[00:13:03] So having a meeting, we're going to do this to o, having a meeting with your team and just sharing the ideas. And you're not saying, "we're going to do this." All you're doing is just sharing the ideas that you learned. And that way it's like, "hey guys, I like, I learned this really cool thing and it kind of sparked an idea. I'd like to talk about that and see if it makes sense. Like, what do you guys think about this?" And that way you're involving your team in it instead of just saying, "we're going to do this." And they're like, "oh, I don't want to do that." We have to keep in mind that people don't like change. Change is scary.
[00:13:37] It's different. It's like you're getting them outside of their comfort zone and outside of their box. But if they're part of the conversation, and they feel like they have input, and like their opinion in the whole discussion actually matters and counts for something, they'll be a lot more bought in to whatever ideas you actually decide to implement and move forward with.
[00:13:59] Jason: Yeah, I think that's really important. It's difficult because we come back from an event and then we pull the pin on a grenade and throw it into the middle of the room with our team. We're like, "Hey, here's this really exciting thing!" And it's exciting for us. But for them, they're like, "I already have all this work that I'm expected to do, and you want to like change everything now?" And so our team members, they're not entrepreneurs for a reason, right? They want a job that gives them safety and security. They want peace. And we get a kick out of innovating, doing new things, changing stuff a lot of times. And we have this big picture vision and we're risk takers to start a business.
[00:14:38] We're cowboys and cowgirls. We're wild, right? And that can really be disruptive to the business if we don't get them gently to buy into the vision. And there's a way to do that, right? We do that through DoorGrow OS and through how we plan here at DoorGrow. You and I will probably talk about a bunch of ideas.
[00:14:57] We've already been talking a ton about all these different ideas that we got and all the things we could implement, all the things that we can do. And then we can figure out what we want to prioritize before we just go bombard the team with everything. And then we have a cadence of planning. So the things that do matter to us, we can start to mix into our cadence of planning, but there's a lot of things that we got from this that you and I can just take action on right away. Yeah. Without messing with the team at all. But it doesn't impact the team in any way, well, maybe inadvertently, but if I just start creating a whole bunch more videos, right? That's my time or I can spend..
[00:15:36] Sarah: Madi will hear this and be like, "really it doesn't affect the team?"
[00:15:39] Jason: Yeah, I know. My daughter who does the video editing and social media.
[00:15:43] Madi, I'm with you.
[00:15:44] She'll be editing this episode and saying "right, right"
[00:15:48] Sarah: Her face yesterday. Yeah. You're like, "I want to do a short form video every day," and she goes like, "every day? Like every...?" And she's like, "how soon are we going to do that?" And he's like, "as soon as possible."
[00:15:58] Jason: That was kind of a grenade. Yeah. And that may mean you, you need to build out the team a little bit. Maybe we need additional people, who knows, but.
[00:16:05] Sarah: So I think one of the things too that Aaron pointed out in the first part of our mastermind event that we went to is. Your team really needs consistency and your team needs to know that who they're working for is like, you're a safe bet because there's a lot of jobs out there.
[00:16:24] They can go work for just about anyone, and they're with you. They need to trust you to of course, change things and move things forward but do so in a way that doesn't completely disrupt, you know, their sense of safety. So doing things slower than probably we would want to do them is really important, right?
[00:16:48] Because then if you come back and you just. Yep it's a great analogy, just throwing the grenade in. It's, that is not safe. That is not steady. That is not slow. That's like, "hey, we went to this event, we were gone for a week, and in the week we decided to change everything about the business." The team's like, "what?"
[00:17:06] that means every time that you go to an event, your team is going to be panicked. Your team is going to panic. They're going to go, "oh god. They're going somewhere again. Oh crap. Now what?" And if we have this kind of sense of like impeding doom in the business then you can implement all of the ideas or none of the ideas or just one it won't even matter what you do because your team, they need to be bought in and they need to feel safe, so that they're on board with actually doing things However you're going to do them, it doesn't matter, but if you don't have the support of the team, and you aren't doing a good job at holding the, like, a good container for them, then you're not doing yourself any favors.
[00:17:51] Jason: Yeah, good stuff. Well, we have an event that's coming up in May. Which will be DoorGrow live. So people have plenty of time to get ready for this. So if you want to be part of An event where you get a bunch of ideas and you can get a grenade to throw at your team, I'm joking, then make sure you come to our DoorGrow live event It's it really is an awesome event.
[00:18:15] Okay, cool. Well, let's go ahead and wrap this up. So if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're wanting to add doors and you're wanting to grow your business and you're wanting to figure out operations because adding doors is starting to get uncomfortable for you, either of those issues, we can help you. Reach out to us at DoorGrow.
[00:18:33] And until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:18:37] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:19:04] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
When you are creating a team in your property management business, the culture that you create will make or break your business and your ability to grow and scale.
In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with property management entrepreneur and DoorGrow client Brian Mullins to talk about hiring, culture, and processes.
[05:33] Why culture is important in a business
[12:07] Importance of humility and showing gratitude as a business owner
[19:48] Having processes makes everything easier!
[24:18] Setting goals in your business
“If I could just clone myself, then all my hopes and dreams would come true because I would make that clone of me do all the stuff I don't want to do. Guess what? They wouldn't want to do it either.”
“People that can do everything do not make great team members. They make great business owners.”
“Don't be the property manager, be the property management business owner. Hire the property manager.”
“Whatever we focus on with our team and are grateful for, they get better at that.”
[00:00:00] Jason: They say pride cometh before the fall. So if you're not humble in business, usually you get your ass handed to you at some point, and then you are forced to be humbled. And so you either humble yourself or you get forced to be humbled.
[00:00:12] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management, business owners, and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management, growth experts, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, and Sarah Hull, co-owner and COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.
[00:01:19] And our guest today is Brian Mullins. Brian, welcome to the show.
[00:01:24] Brian: Thanks for having me.
[00:01:25] Jason: Cool. So Brian, give us a little bit of background on you for those listening, how you got into property management, why you decided to do that crazy thing, and yeah, share a little bit about your journey in entrepreneurism.
[00:01:39] Brian: Okay. Well, it goes back a long ways. I I'd always had an interest in real estate. I grew up in high school during the ramp up to the great recession and was fascinated by it, and graduated high school, wasn't sure exactly where I wanted to go. I was leaning towards technology or entrepreneurship, finance business, and started computer science, said, "Oh, hell no, I'm not doing this," and then switched over to finance. And in that time, I was also working for a collection law firm as my college job. So I switched to finance, fell in love with that, and then I got an opportunity to take some electives in finance, and real estate was actually one of the departments under finance.
[00:02:20] And so, like, well, I can get a minor and fulfill my electives in real estate, or in finance. And so I took my first real estate class, and that was the point which I decided that this is where I wanted to be, and this would have been in 07, 08, and I set myself as a goal to go through college, graduate college, work five years for somebody else, and then start essentially a investment brokerage, doing property management acquisitions, the whole nine yards. So I went all the way through school, graduated in 2010, which is a really crappy time to find a job and I said, "I'm not going to go do some of these jobs that are actually available," and I went and got my MBA instead, graduated in 2012, worked 5 years for a regional automotive group, and I was in charge of all their real properties, and so I was doing a lot of commercial real estate at that point, building buildings, and also managing the various assets that they owned. And then after one week, should I have my five year anniversary? I quit, made a little bit of a shift. In hindsight, probably wasn't the best idea. I went more towards retail brokerage, and ran with that, never had a ton of success, survived made a decent chunk of change, but I was never super satisfied with it, recruiting agents is not my jam.
[00:03:32] And so during COVID, I saw the handwriting on the wall, I knew that the market was going to collapse, you know, you can't live with interest rates as low as they were, and it's a pendulum that's going to swing the other way, and so we made the conscious shift at that point, and I took a few key members of my retail brokerage and said, we're going to go into property management, and this was in early 2021. So, at that point, I had, I owned like 17, 15, 17 doors, something like that myself. I managed a couple others, so we're at about 20 doors. And then we quickly expanded, we got up to our peak was about 150 doors that we got up to, and then that was about the time that we joined DoorGrow and we ended up firing our largest client.
[00:04:14] It was an apartment complex, but it was just an absolute nightmare, and then we've been rolling ever since. And then also during this. I actually had an investor reach out to me and say, we want to grow a real estate portfolio, and so we shifted from when we originally signed on with DoorGrow to really looking for clients to more, we need the process and the culture so we can grow this business because we've got essentially, you know, a big portfolio of properties coming on and we need to be able to scale it. So that's the short story of how I got into it. I've always loved it. All my work history has led up to this. Working collections for 10 years through high school and college is a really good transition into property management because it's the same thing.
[00:04:54] Yeah, it is. You're dealing with the people who don't pay their debts are a lot of mostly tenants, you know, to somebody. And so you have to deal with that type of clientele, and it's that balance. And I really appreciate my lawyer that I work for. He really taught me a lot of like, how do we balance being compassionate, but also being firm because that you can be a jerk, right? Or you can be a, you know, somebody just gets rolled over. It's like, you need to find that in between. So I learned a lot from that and working real estate from five years and then even doing, I learned a lot being on the retail brokerage side.
[00:05:27] Jason: Awesome. Yeah. So it sounds like you have a lot of experience that you really can leverage to benefit your clients. So the topic we are discussing today's how process and culture can make or break your organization. So what what have you learned about process or culture related to this? What conclusions have you been arriving at?
[00:05:47] Brian: So, yeah, so for me, I'm an only child. I was always raised, you know, very independent, and I can do it myself. The problem is I can't grow an organization like that. Yeah. The kind of my first real inclination of this was like when I read the book Good to Great, right? It's, you know, and then that's even on a big scale, but like, how can I be a leader to grow an organization because I can't do it all myself? I could, but I'm never going to be able to scale to where I want to. I'm always going to be capped out and I'm going to have a job and not a business. And so, you know, whenever this investor came on and we were really starting to grow, like we were at 150, we were feeling the growing pains and we noticed this like with the retail brokerage, like keeping people was harder. Like I could recruit, I'm a good salesperson. Whatever I want to do, I can get somebody in the door. But then keeping them long term because people are looking for something different than what I would be. That's one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that not everybody's like me. If I'm an employee, I don't care as much about culture. Even though I do in the background, but like, that's not my main thing. Like I'm very goal oriented enough. I'm going to get my job done, but that's not what the majority of people are looking for. And so we need to be able to set that culture.
[00:06:59] And so that was the first piece that we were noticing, but we didn't really realize it. And so like when we came to DoorGrow and especially when I got this investor, it was processes too, because I, like you said, I have so much experience and all of this, and I've done this for so long. I'm a hell of a property manager. I can manage all day long. I don't like doing it necessarily, but I can't grow, I could probably manage a hundred 150 doors on my own. But then I'm tapped out. And so how do I take what I'm doing and make it a process so I can replicate it? And once I replicate it, you know, even here in this market, how it should be something I can replicate in other markets as well.
[00:07:39] So that's where we've been going and we've been working really hard at getting those processes documented, getting as much automated as possible. So that way we don't have to worry about it. The system just runs on its own and, you know, and we're getting to that point now, and once we fully execute everything and we feel really confident in that, it's just going to be plug and play on grip.
[00:08:01] Jason: Yeah, yeah. I think it's a big mistake that entrepreneurs make early in their journey. And it's super common to assume that people are like them, right? We all start there. A lot of times that's our goal with hiring in the beginning, I call it the clone myth.
[00:08:15] It's this belief, maybe those of you listening right now are thinking this, "if I could just clone myself, then all my hopes and dreams would come true because I would make that clone of me do all the stuff I don't want to do." Guess what? They wouldn't want to do it either.
[00:08:27] And so they go out hunting for a clone. They're like, "I need to find somebody like me because I can do everything. If I just had somebody amazing like me, they could do everything..." and then leave and go start their own business is the reality, right? And so, but everybody thinks this and you can wear every hat in the business.
[00:08:44] Entrepreneurs generally can do that. We're very adaptable. But people that can do everything do not make great team members. They make great business owners and you don't love doing everything right? Like you just said, I don't like being a property manager, which for those listening could mean two different things, right? Your clients would probably not want to hear that, right? But when you say that, you like having a property management business. I like dealing with the owner. In which you're a property manager, but then for some, being the property manager means doing the actual property management work, which is the property manager you hire as a property management business owner.
[00:09:18] Yep. Well, those are two different statements, right? And so we encourage everybody listening, like don't be the property manager, be the property management business owner. Hire the property manager. So you've gone through this journey. You started working with us and defining your culture, getting your culture materials defined, and in the beginning, you're like most entrepreneurs. They're like, "what's this culture stuff? This sounds like fluffy woo woo BS. Like I don't need this. I just, I want results. Get the job done. I pay you. Just do the effing work." So, yeah. So what conclusions have you come to then with your team and with culture?
[00:09:52] How does this shift your team and, or how does this shift who you hire? Like, what have you realized?
[00:09:56] Brian: So, we've been working really hard on that hiring piece. And so whenever we're looking to hire, like we've got to make sure we hire the right person. And, you know, we've had like some team players that, you know, maybe aren't the best team players.
[00:10:10] And then you try to hire someone that can put up with them. Well, that's not a good option because you end up hiring somebody just like that. And then you've got two people that are like that. And you're like, we can't do this. You know, that doesn't really work in the organization and it's going to completely destroy stuff.
[00:10:23] So, you know, we have to look for people who are willing to be team players. And so there's a book that I read The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni, and he mentions in the book three virtues. And I think it's a really good summation of what we're looking for when we hire. And those three are humble, hungry, and smart. We'll start at the bottom. So smart is not intelligence. It's emotional intelligence, right? It's can you handle yourself with clients? Can you handle yourself with the coworkers? Do you know how to make a smart response to things? And hunger obviously drive. You know, we don't want people that are just here to get a paycheck and go home because that's not going to succeed.
[00:11:00] We're not an assembly line and this business is a 24/7 business. So I don't need someone at 5 o'clock that they fall off the face of the earth and maybe they're the only ones with an answer that we need to get ahold of. And then humble is the hardest thing to hire for and humble is where I struggle the most because naturally I am not a humble person my wife likes to make fun of me about that. But it's true. I'm not. I've always known that I'm decent at what I do and I walk and talk like it. So those three things is what we're looking for. And so we're very intentional when we're hiring now at looking for these aspects because you're right. When I first started hiring, I wanted to hire people like me, but all that would do is create tension, and they would eventually leave and start their own business and that's not a way to grow the business. I need people that fit in their role, who know their role, but also there's only so many people that can be the entrepreneurs only some people that can be the leader, right, of the organization. That's just the way the world turns. And so, like, we're hiring people on culture. We're also hiring people for the right position that fits their personality.
[00:12:07] Jason: So let's talk about humility. Let's talk about this. because I think this is a challenge and there's benefits to being humble. There's significant benefits to being humble.
[00:12:16] Humble means that you are teachable. It means that you are able to get new information. They say pride cometh before the fall. So if you're not humble in business, usually you get your ass handed to you at some point, and then you are forced to be humbled. And so you either humble yourself or you get forced to be humbled.
[00:12:34] And so the advantage, and a lot of people think humility is debasing yourself or putting yourself down or saying that you're not great. And I don't think that's what real humility is. That's like false humility maybe. I don't think that's what humility is. I think my definition or how I define humility is that you have the ability to recognize others hand in your own success, whether it's God, whether it's your team, whether it's your mentors, just being able to recognize that other people played a part in your success is the key to humility and it's also what opens the door to you being able to be more successful because if you think it's all you, you always are limiting your ability to have more success.
[00:13:20] Brian: Yeah. It's the people that are around you and that's why whenever I hire somebody, like if they think they're all that and that no one can touch them, they will never work because they lose their hunger too, right? Because they think it's all them and they lose their smart communication. They think they're all that and that they're always right with how they communicate. And that's not true. Everybody makes mistakes. I make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. And you have to be able to admit that humbly. And, you know, one of the things that we've always done, even from day one is I want to make sure the client's taken care of, and that is being willing to admit when we've effed up and take the hit, there have been real estate deals in retail time, there's been, you know, there was a tenant that we placed recently that just went completely downhill real fast and within like a month and we took the hit on that, but that's not my client's fault, right? Should we have done that? I don't know. It's a really good client but you know, we need to make it right to the client and we need to say, "hey, we shouldn't have placed this tenant in here," and I told the client that, and I told him "we'll make sure you're taken care of so and that's what we do.
[00:14:32] Jason: Being transparent. I think you know, I put a lot of research into this a long time ago because, you know, I grew up in this religious culture in which you were always taught to be humble. But I was like, how do you humble yourself? Like, how do you become humble? And eventually, I had this epiphany if humility is recognizing other's hand in your success, the secret key to unlock humility and all the juicy benefits that everybody talks about that humility gives you true humility is gratitude. And so just learning to be grateful. And the way I think we can facilitate that with our team is to recognize their hand and to be grateful. So one of the things we do in almost all of our team meetings, especially our daily huddle, we do 'caught being awesome' or gratitude and like, 'what are you grateful for?'
[00:15:16] And in our daily planning that we give the clients to do, we're like, what can you appreciate? And there's a double entendre there or meaning right of increasing in value, but also recognizing gratitude. And whatever we focus on with our team and are grateful for, they get better at that.
[00:15:33] Brian: And for me, like it was, it's not my natural instinct to say, "Hey, you did a good job." I have forced myself to be like, "Hey, you've done a good job," and then I make sure my management team below me does the same thing with their people. We're not big enough that I don't see it, right? Like they're pulling around the office and I hear it and I will call the manager out and say, "Hey, you know, you should talk to your people and make sure they know that, you know, that they did a good job."
[00:16:01] Sarah: That's one of the things we do in our team review meetings. Well, I run them. But like, I talk about like, "hey, you know, what's going well. And then are there any challenges?" And then I always just leave space at the end. Like, "do you have just any ideas?" Because maybe every day you do this thing and you're like, "Oh, it would be so much better if we could do it like this," or "it would be easier if we could do it like this."
[00:16:23] Well, tell me that. And then I always want to make sure that I'm bringing out. Like, the opportunity just to be thankful for what they do. And especially because I don't have to do it. So if I didn't have you on my team, it would be me, it'd be me and Jason. So like I'm appreciative, you know, for the team members that we have and for the care that they really show our clients.
[00:16:45] And that to me is big. But our team members consistently, like they just go above and beyond like all of them and they'll be like, "oh no, I already handled this" or, "oh, well, hey, I found this problem, and then I figured this, and then I just took care of it" and we're like, " okay, we weren't even involved in that. Thank you for doing that." And I think that's a really good, like the daily huddles are great. And then that one on one too is also really really important for them to just to hear that because it's always nice to hear "thank you," and especially in an industry like property management, where your tenants are not calling you going, "Hey, Brian, I just wanted to tell you how amazing you are. Thank you so much for being so great. I really appreciate everything you do. I've never had a property manager that really cares like this." They're like, " why wasn't this done? And I'm angry about this and rah!" Right? Like this is what we deal with. And this is what our front end staff deals with. So having something to counterbalance the like ball of hatred that's presented to us every day is huge in this industry.
[00:17:46] Jason: Yeah. I think what's really cool when Sarah's running our meetings, what we'll see because we've led it by example, and Sarah's much better at this. She points out every team member that like, "thank you for doing this" and this sort of thing. The team now do it for each other. So when we have our little stage in our morning huddle that we do, it's, you know, caught being awesome or, you know, anyone do anything praiseworthy? Then, you know, team members now are calling out other team members.
[00:18:17] "Hey, thank you for Adam getting answers to me so quickly. He's always so responsive," things like this. And so the good in that in being grateful, you're magnifying all the good. And so all my team members want to do more. They're getting rewarded. And what I find most team members want more than money. Most team members want recognition more than money once their basic needs are met. And that's weird for us. That's weird for us because we like money, right? We like money probably more than recognition. We're like, "well, let's get paid. You know, cool. I have some accolades. Get me paid, right?" Salespeople may be like that. The rest of your team probably really would just like to be recognized, but everybody likes being recognized.
[00:18:58] So I'll recognize her. She runs our meetings and does an amazing job and I would not be nearly as good at this. And she facilitates this and gets everybody talking. Sometimes I don't even talk like the whole huddle was like, "Hey, everyone," you know, and I'm not as connected to a lot of the team sometimes.
[00:19:16] So I can't even think of things sometimes to call people out for being awesome because I'm probably mostly interacting only with my assistant or sometimes with Sarah. And so, you know, that's it. And so my team members calling each other out creates this sort of culture of gratitude and appreciation, which increases the positivity and the positive results and that work environment, it becomes this almost like a feedback loop, a positive feedback loop. It grows my team members' skill and ability.
[00:19:48] Brian: And I think with this, like, because yeah you have to have your team and you will retain your team more, but then that also goes ties into the process side of things, because if you do lose a team member, if you have your processes lined out.
[00:20:00] It's not as stressful if somebody were to leave because it's plug and play, right? Like, "okay, this is your job." And we've been working on recording videos of how you do certain things. And they're short. We try not to make them, you know, an hour long videos. And that way it's like, you know, you can go find that little piece that you need instead of having to like watch hour long video, but you find that and then now it's plug and play. And so that way you can easily hire somebody that maybe they're not, they don't have the perfect skill set, but they have the humility, they have the hunger, they have the smarts, they have the right culture for your organization.
[00:20:35] And then the process is there. Where if they have that culture piece, they can be trained pretty easily in the process if it's documented properly.
[00:20:44] Jason: Very cool. So what's next for you in systems, process, developing your culture? What do you see on the horizon for your team?
[00:20:52] Brian: So, right now, what we're working on is finalizing everything that we have been working on. I've got an intern who's been incredibly helpful and getting everything set up. And so here in the next month or so, I'm going to have him sit down and go over everything that he's built in the process. And we're going to tweak it. But we've got everything written down on paper, and we've gotten most of it into the computer systems.
[00:21:14] And then we're going to have a team meeting and make sure everything is running like it should. And then from there, we're going to make sure all those videos are up and going. And then we're going to work on expanding the team. So the thing is like with my investor who wants to really push this, like he wants to get in multiple markets.
[00:21:31] And so what we're going to be doing is expanding with him. And so what we're doing is we're going to be looking for acquisitions. So we're hopefully we'll start with an acquisition and somewhere in our market. Because that way it's a little easier. I don't care how huge it is, even if it's 30 to 50 doors.
[00:21:48] That would be stellar because it gives us an opportunity to learn the acquisitions piece. And then the next thing is we're going to go, because we're in Oklahoma City, next thing we're going to go up to Turnpike and start looking for acquisitions in Tulsa. And then we'll essentially set up a separate base in Tulsa.
[00:22:03] But once we have all of our systems here and our cultures here. You know, it's going to be pretty easy to set. It's a 90 minute drive up there. So it's not the end of the world to have to run up there. And then from there, we're going to be going into other markets out of state. And that becomes more of an issue because we have different brokerage laws and I don't sit for my broker's exam or someone who would in another state.
[00:22:23] So that's where we're continuing to grow is to go regional with this. And, you know, and the side that doesn't, isn't directly related to property management is like. We're tasked with bringing on doors. And so these things, the same pieces, the culture and the process follow with any business, it's not just property management.
[00:22:42] And so like me and Mallory, my operator, we are having a meeting this morning. It's like, "okay, we've got this ball rolling. We need to start looking at the next thing, which is how do we increase our acquisitions of properties?" Not of actual real estate acquisitions. And so we're taking these exact same pieces and say, "okay, we need to line out the process," and then we can hire people to do it because the two of us can do it.
[00:23:06] We don't have the time to do it. We need to get the processes lined out so we can put the right person in the seat and make it happen.
[00:23:12] Jason: Yeah. So we've touched on the three systems that are really needed to make the business infinitely scalable, as I say. So you need really good people. You need a good people system, need a good process system, and then the next big piece is a really good planning system. Sounds like you have a plan and getting that plan built out in DoorGrow OS so that it's no longer just your vision and you have the entire team helping you move this forward will take a lot of weight off your shoulders and allow your operator to make sure that this all happens.
[00:23:44] And then you have a predictable future, which is really amazing. It's like, you can see the future and you can see the future growth of the business and your team helped make it all a reality.
[00:23:54] Brian: So one of the things that I really took away from the regional automotive group that I worked for the founder of it he passed a few years ago, but I got to know him. He was essentially retired, but I got to know him. And one thing he always did, and this is obviously before computers, because this was in the 70s, or what we have today, he wrote, I think it was three to five goals, and he wrote it on a piece of paper, and those were his goals for the next year.
[00:24:18] And he would accomplish them and it's easier to accomplish what you have set. I had a teacher in junior high and she told me, and it's always stuck with me. You will get further if you set your goals high and don't reach them versus setting your goals low and easily reach them. And so that's the philosophy I've taken with my whole life.
[00:24:40] Like, I'm going to set these goals, and whether I get there or not, you know, I'm sure going to try, but I know I've made it further than if I set my goals really low.
[00:24:48] Jason: Yeah, it's like the old quote, it's better to aim for the stars and miss than a pile of manure and hit, right? I love this idea for entrepreneurs.
[00:24:58] The challenge though, a lot of times with team members, one of the things we coach on is that can sometimes demoralize the team because they have to be winning. And so I say entrepreneurs set your big hairy ass goal, keep it a private from your team. And then with your team set a goal that there's zero chance they can not hit by the end of the year, zero chance that they don't hit by the end of the quarter.
[00:25:19] And that they're very likely hit by the end of the month. And it's because you want to teach them to be winning constantly. And this gives them you the ability to recognize them. And they actually increase their results because they're winning. And if they learn to lose, teams get very comfortable with losing very quickly, right?
[00:25:38] They don't hit a sales goal that month. "Well, we'll get them next time," you know, and then they just get worse and worse. And so really big, I'm making sure like hit those goals, but back the goals down low enough that you'll hit it for sure by the end of the year and then see as a team, can you hit it sooner?
[00:25:55] Then. Winning bigger.
[00:25:56] Brian: Yeah, I think that comes to knowing your people too, because there's some people that are going to be more ambitious, right? And so you can maybe knock circles up a little bit more than you would somebody that needs that fulfillment that, "hey, I've accomplished my goal."
[00:26:08] And so that all comes with knowing your people and pushing that down the line as, you know, for me as entrepreneur and owner, pushing that down the line to the rest of my team members and my management team, and they push it down.
[00:26:20] Jason: Cool. Well, Brian, we appreciate you being in the program. Do you want anyone to reach out to you from this or get in touch with you or..?
[00:26:27] Brian: Yeah we're in Oklahoma City Metro. If you have anybody that is looking to expand their real estate portfolio, feel free to give us a holler. You can find us in 1907investments.com and, or you can find me online. I'm all over the place. And you know, we really take pride and take care of our tenants, treat our tenants as clients, because then you're going to have a more successful business.
[00:26:47] Because if you want your real clients, your owners should succeed. You got to make sure the tenants stay in and are happy.
[00:26:53] Jason: Awesome. Well, Brian, you're a sharp guy. We appreciate you being in the program. Thanks for coming on the DoorGrow show.
[00:26:58] Brian: Appreciate y'all.
[00:26:59] Sarah: Thanks, Brian.
[00:27:00] Jason: Thanks. See you. All right.
[00:27:01] So if you are a property management business owner, and you are at the place where you are stressed out, you're struggling, you're frustrated, maybe you're thinking like, "what's my business worth?" Keeps coming up in your head because you're like, "maybe I should exit this." You want to get out of it. Maybe in the next two to three years is your plan because you don't really see a light at the end of the tunnel, then reach out to us at DoorGrow. We can help you get out of that, out of a business that you don't enjoy and turn it into the business of your dreams, a business that you do enjoy. Help you get the right systems installed so that it becomes easy, comfortable, and maybe even fun, right? Let's have a little fun.
[00:27:39] And if you would like that, reach out to us at doorgrow, you can check us out at doorgrow.com. Bye everyone.
[00:27:44] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:28:11] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
Owning a property management company can be expensive, risky, and stressful. Property management business owners often surround themselves with the wrong team members.
Today, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with Pete Neubig with VPM to talk about building effective and efficient property management teams.
[01:58] Having a business in “Chaos Mode”
[09:02] The importance of core values
[14:45] How VAs help your business thrive
[23:18] Accountability, KPIs, and training
[30:06] Creating company culture with VAs
[37:07] Getting the right people in the right roles
[41:30] VAs for property management companies
“When you're in high growth, you seem to be in chaos mode, and when you're in chaos mode, you don't make any money.”
“When you're not proactive in your business and you're reactive, you're losing trust and churn goes up.”
“If you don't have your org structure correct, it doesn't matter how many whistles and bells you have.”
“I think every business owner needs to build the business around themselves.”
[00:00:00] Pete: If you don't have your org structure correct, it doesn't matter how many whistles and bells you have. If your org structure is not correct, It all goes to hell in a handbasket.
[00:00:09] Jason: All right. Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager.
[00:00:28] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management, business owners, and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win.
[00:01:03] I'm your host, property management expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, along with Sarah Hull, my wife. Co-owner of DoorGrow and the COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.
[00:01:16] So our guest today, we've got Pete Neubig back on the show with VPM Solutions. Welcome Pete.
[00:01:23] Pete: Welcome Jason, sarah. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:25] Jason: Yeah, good to have you. So now Pete, you were an operator of a property management company.
[00:01:31] Pete: That's correct.
[00:01:32] Jason: With Steve Rosenberg and you really helped to dial in the operations there and build that up. And now you're helping people do this in their property management business with your VA company. So we're going to be chatting about today is the number one way to increase productivity and profitability, so this should be interesting. So Pete, what is the number one way to increase productivity and profitability? Let's get into the subject.
[00:01:57] Pete: Sure. So before I jump right in, I'll talk about just a little brief history of Empire Industries, which was the company that we owned. So, we came from the investor side, Steve and I, we partnered up, we owned about 31 homes. Bought too many, didn't know how to manage it.
[00:02:12] We love the idea of buying the deal. We hated the idea of managing it. So we went out looking for management firms and then realized we felt we could build a better mousetrap, which we ended up doing. Our original vision, I know you talk a lot about vision in your coaching, our original vision was we were going to own 500 homes and manage them ourselves, and within a year, that vision went to crap and we ended up managing 60 homes and I owned 37 of them. I'm like, "Steve, how are we managing these other homes?" And we were third-party managing all of a sudden. Because he felt that everybody needed help. And so we started third-party managing. So that's how we got into it, and we ended up building a better mousetrap and we created a third-party management firm and we took it from those 31 doors that we had all class D minus stuff, which is a whole other podcast. And I think you've actually listened to one of yours recently about something like that. So we ended up taking it to about 980 single-family homes and nothing more than four units in Texas, single families, one to four units and we went to three markets. We were in Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth. And what happened was with us, our vision was no longer aligned. Steve wanted to take the property manager firm national. I wanted to literally just stay in Houston and get like 1500 homes. And so that fractured the partnership to the point where we decided to sell the business. Long story short, I couldn't afford to buy him out and he didn't want to buy me out. So we ended up selling to My Management, took a job with them for a couple of years, and realized I was no longer employable and that's when I started VPM Solutions. So that's the short version of it, but we were in chaos mode for many years at Empire.
[00:03:43] When you're in high growth, I don't know if you've seen this with your clients, but we were in high growth and when you're in high growth, you seem to be in chaos mode. And when you're in chaos mode, you don't make any money. We didn't anyway. And so what we had found was our number one challenge was payroll costs. So the number one challenge that I've seen, and I've talked to a lot of people across the country, your number one challenge is either growth or payroll costs. The interesting thing about property management because it's a service-based industry and because it's so service-based that you almost have to stress your team out to make money.
[00:04:16] Right? So you're on this kind of seesaw where I don't really have that many doors, but I need the people. But so the salary cost is so high that there's no money for me. As I grow the doors. Right. Now I don't hire anybody, but now I'm making money, but my team is now completely stressed out. They work in weekends, they work at nights, they're taking phone calls. They don't give the great customer service. And so payroll costs, what we saw was with us, our payroll costs are about 56%. Which is really high. A business should be around 30 to 36% is what I was taught by my business coach. I don't know if you've seen anything different in the service space, but that's what I've heard. So I had to figure out how to get my payroll cost down from 56% all the way down to about 30%. And I'll tell you how I did it with virtual assistants, so I'll let the cat out of the bag, right? We got it down to about 34%. So from 56 to 34%, and every percentage that you save in payroll costs is a dollar in your pocket.
[00:05:11] But then you'd be like, "Well, Pete, if you have less people or, you have less payroll, typically you have less people. And if you have less people, your team is stressed," and I get all that. But let's talk a little bit about what happens when you have a stressed team. Okay. So when you have a stressed team, the little things go out the window, right?
[00:05:27] All of a sudden, you're not making those calls to get those online reviews. All of a sudden, you're not making the calls and your communication goes downhill. And when a landlord owner or an owner client calls you to find out what's going on with the problem, whether it's maintenance, lease, you know, lease renewal, whatever it is, they feel like they're managing you.
[00:05:43] So when you're not proactive in your business and you're reactive, you're losing trust and churn goes up. At Empire, our churn was around 34%, which is insane, right? The average churn in the business, my understanding is like 18 to 20%. Right.
[00:06:00] Jason: And that's his annual churn.
[00:06:02] Pete: Yeah. So it's high, right?
[00:06:03] 34%. And I can tell you that the majority of it was people were unhappy with our service. Yeah. Right. So it wasn't good churn, right? Because you have good, neutral, bad, however you want to define it. We had mainly bad churn. People weren't selling houses and like, "all right, we're out of here, we sold." No, they were taking them because they were not getting the love, the communication really from us. So by having these payroll costs so high, I couldn't afford it. I couldn't afford people. So what happened, especially after 2020 with that pandemic is that the cost of hiring people got incredibly high, right?
[00:06:34] So I call them low-level, low enjoyment jobs. Let's take a maintenance coordinator, for example, right? That's the number one job that is posted on VPM solutions today. Is the maintenance coordinator. So that's the first thing people look for typically. Well, a maintenance coordinator in Houston, Texas, back in 2018, 2019, was about a $35,000 a year job. Well, after 2020, people that want to do a job, they want like about $50-55,000, right? And the company just can't absorb that. They can't afford to hire people. On top of that, the type of people that we were getting were GEDs or high school, diplomas, no longer college-educated people wanted that job. Most of those people have challenges in their life and they bring them into your business. So, this all came to a head. I had a lady named Sharon, and Sharon was my front office coordinator. This is back in a day when we had these things called offices and office space.
[00:07:22] Jason: Yeah.
[00:07:23] Pete: So I remember those days. In 2019 and before so people would walk into our office, drop off, rant or whatever. Right. And Sharon was this, she was like this angry lady. And I'm like this tells you what my hiring process was back then it was not very good. And some of the things that you teach, I'm like, man, I wish I would have known that back in 18, 17 and 19. So she's the wrong person. She was the wrong person and she was the wrong fit. But in my mind, I'm like, "Well, she's mean." I'm like, "She'd be great for a maintenance coordinator, right? She can tell people no all the time." So I decided instead of firing her, I decided to promote her, right. Which was a terrible mistake. So I promote Sharon to maintenance coordinator. Now, unfortunately for Sharon, she was my maintenance coordinator. I was actually managing properties back then at the time. And so just for that, she probably should've got some hazard pay. So I get that. I'm not the easiest guy to work for, especially when I'm managing properties. So Sharon comes and within one week, Now I gave Sharon a raise, so I moved her from front office to the maintenance coordinator. She was making about $35, I gave her like $ 40,000.
[00:08:20] She's making what I think is decent money. That's not great money. I get that, but it was good money at the time. Within one week, she comes to my office. She tells me she needs more money. I'm already just scraping by as the business. Just scraping by, single-digit profit margin. So that's when I realized that I could eliminate her position. I can hire three people that are overseas for the same cost as one Sharon. But here's the big difference. Those three people, they're obviously bilingual, right? And here I'm in Houston and Dallas and Fort Worth at the time, Spanish is like, a lot of our tenants, about a third of them didn't really speak English. A lot of our vendors, Spanish was their first language. So I can get bilingual people, I can get college-educated people, I can get people that are ready or knowing that they want to work from home. And here's the most important thing though. I can get people that were not just a J-O-B to them, but a career and they were excited about the opportunity to work with us and for us. And so the attitude and all of a sudden I can find people that align with our core values.
[00:09:18] Jason: Yeah. That's significant to be able to find people that align with your core values. Yup.
[00:09:22] Pete: A hundred percent. But now I have three people doing the work. So now what happened is I had a little hesitation from my property managers, right? Because property managers are designed to be taskers. Right. So I had to take my property managers and I had to lift them up. And we actually changed the name. We said, you're no longer considered a property manager. You're a client relations specialist. Or an asset manager. I like asset manager better, but that was one of the fights I lost with Rosenberg. If anybody knows Steve, he's 6'4 full of muscles. So we arm wrestled and I lost on that one. We call them client relations specialists.
[00:09:55] Jason: But you wanted to call them what? Asset managers?
[00:09:58] Pete: Asset managers. I think an asset manager just has a little bit more cachet. And if you really think about it, right? How many clients do you have, like you're listening, that call you up and tell you how to manage their property, even though you're the expert? I felt the property manager, I call them gophers. I felt the property manager, they had to take these calls from these owners all the time and say, "Hey, go to my property, make sure the water in the pool is being filled up. Go to my property. Gas man's going to come there. I want to know about this $12 expense." meaningless and small conversations. You would never have those conversations with the guy managing your money, right? Imagine calling your Smith Barney guy and say, "I don't like the way you made this trade. Like you should make this trade different." no, you just let the guy do his thing. So how do you let us do our thing? Well, words are powerful and property manager to me has lost its luster. And it just reminds me of a gopher.
[00:10:45] Jason: I think also the phrase property manager in the property management space has become like saying " miscellaneous role" and that like it doesn't have meaning a lot of times there runs into this a lot with coaching our clients.
[00:10:58] Sarah: Like, "what does your property manager do?" And they're like, "they pretty much do everything." "Okay..."
[00:11:02] Pete: And that's a problem And the reason why they do everything is because they can't afford more people because the margin is so slim. Right, so we got to the point where our property managers got elevated, made them client relations specialists. And what does that mean? It means that they had to learn a new skill. They had to manage by reports. They had to manage people because now all of the low level property management tasks were being done by my team in the virtual assistant world. And when I mean everything, but by the time Empire was done now, granted, we're almost a thousand units. But at that point we can hire some people. Everybody had one hat, which was a beautiful thing because now you can have your job description really set. You can have your KPIs really set. You can have your DISC profile really set. And you know who to hire.
[00:11:43] And they have one or two numbers and they end up doing a much better job than the manager who's doing all of it. So over the course of your growth, you have to change your infrastructure, right? You go from portfolio to hybrid, hybrid to departmental to pod and all that good stuff. I got to departmental, we never got to pod and then we sold. That was probably going to be the next move for us.
[00:12:05] If you don't have your org structure correct, it doesn't matter how many whistles and bells you have. I could have property meld and I can have Zapier and I can have lead simple. I can have all these things. I can have a bunch of VAs, but if your org structure is not correct, It all goes to hell in a handbasket, just even quicker, right?
[00:12:22] Cause now you have all this stuff happening even faster and it just gets crazier. And so with us, what we did is we had the structure, right? So now the managers, they're not taking those first phone calls. what was happening, Jason, is that when people would call, right? An owner client would call, my manager would pick up the phone. And as they're talking to this person, they're literally online and doing 14 tasks, responding to 18 emails. And people can hear that, they can see that and they can feel it over the phone. And so what do they do? Well, you don't really have enough time for me, I'm going to go take my property elsewhere. Or if you mess up, you know what, not only do you not have time for me, you mess up, right? So now what we do is we have everything happening on a low level.
[00:13:01] My managers told me, and I've talked to other managers since, my managers told me that maintenance took 80% of their time, right? And so I've heard that time and time again. So that was the first thing. So everybody always asks " okay, if I do hire a virtual assistant what's the first thing I should hire?" And the answer is, it depends for me. I knew my churn rate was directly related to the way we handle me.. I knew it. I didn't have to have a consultant come in and tell me that, right?
[00:13:27] I just getting beat up every day by it. So I ended up hiring I was going to hire one remote team member, I ended up hiring four, right? And I trained them, figuring that somebody is going to drop off, but I wanted to train them all together. Now I did the training. Training is like literally the most tedious thing ever. And nobody wants to train. Everybody wants to hire somebody that they know exactly how to do it and they know exactly how to do it your way. It doesn't work that way. You have to take one step back to two steps forward. What people don't realize is the time you spend training your people, you get back in perpetuity forever. Because if you train your people correctly and you have good core values and you have a great culture, they ain't going to leave, right? People are so worried. I'm going to transfer, isn't going to leave. Yeah. If you're running a crappy company. Right. If you're running a crappy company and yeah, I'd be freaking worried too.
[00:14:11] Right. Yeah. Make sure you're running a great company. You train the people. And then here's the great thing. As people moved on, whether they moved on and got another job or they moved on because I promoted them, guess who did the training for the next batch? My team did the training for the next batch. By the way, my churn rate for my remote team was way less than my churn rate in my US team. Right. Right. Incredibly different.
[00:14:32] Jason: Churn rate of retaining clients, of team members?
[00:14:36] Pete: Team members. Retaining team members. Churn rate of clients and you have churn rate of team members, right?
[00:14:39] Jason: Yeah. Their loyalty is just a lot stronger because they don't get these kinds of opportunities as often.
[00:14:45] Pete: Correct. Correct. So once my maintenance team was on board, now my manager, I literally saved with the narrow minds 80%, but here's the funny thing, right? So as I'm training. I had a director of operations. Her name was Margo and I still talk to Margo today. I love Margo. She would come to my office every day for 90 days. She came to my office with her cup of coffee every morning and said, "I don't think these VAs are going to work. I don't think these virtual assistants are going to work." Okay. Because when I was training right now, I did the training, not Margo.
[00:15:12] I was training them, but when I was training them. What we had to do is every work order had to go to the property manager, then to the virtual assistant, then the virtual assistant would talk to the resident, the owner, bring it back to the property manager because they were getting, they were training, right? So they had to learn what to do in each situation, which caused my property managers more time, right? So that 80 percent went to 90 percent or even a hundred percent or 110. Now they're working extra hours. So they hated it. On day 91 I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I shit you not, day 91, she comes into my office and she has our same cup of coffee and I'm getting ready to listen to the spiel and she goes, " do we have maintenance anymore?"
[00:15:47] Yeah. And I laughed and it took 90 days, but I got it. Yeah. The point where, so all of the work orders were being done by the remote team that nothing was getting escalated anymore. Only very little things right? So my managers do say, what do they do? Well, they take on all the escalations. Now imagine. What brain power, right? My team in United States, they were the ones that were the experts, right? So, but imagine if they only are dealing with high level escalations, not all the other little, because how many times did I have all these little things get done, but then we missed the big thing.
[00:16:18] And then all of a sudden what happens is I call them taps, two by fours, and mack trucks, right? A tap is basically a maintenance request. That's going unanswered for, let's call it 15 days. Okay. That's a tap. The two by four is now the resident bypass you calls the owner. Now the owner knows that it hadn't happened or the resident blasts you on social. And then the mack truck is the lawsuit that gets across your desk, the tech, the report the complaint to the the real estate commission. Right. Or you're just getting, or you lose a client, right? Yeah. Those are two of those. So my team was so busy that they were missing the taps that they were becoming two by fours. And these are called fires. All right. And all we're doing is trying to deal with this fire. And then of course, every once in a while you get a mack truck, right? And it's what the heck? So now that my managers are not doing the day to day stuff, they're able to be proactive. So they're looking at reports. They're literally looking for taps. And now they're solving those taps. What that means is now the owner clients not calling you to find out what's going on. You're calling them, you're reaching out to them, you're letting them know, or you're taking care of it before they even, before it even becomes an issue.
[00:17:18] And so by, by having your high dollar people that are licensed and they have experience by allowing them to not do the low level, low enjoyment stuff they actually became not only do they take all the escalation, but they actually became internal salespeople. All of a sudden, and this is stuff that we didn't anticipate, all of a sudden, though, like my company's name was empire property management in realty. That 90 percent of my customers had no idea that we could buy and sell homes for them. We're called realty and no idea. But once I got my property managers to be client relations specialist, guess what's happening. All of a sudden people are going to buy houses and they're buying them through us.
[00:17:54] All of a sudden people want to sell. They want to sell through us. So all of a sudden our revenue goes up, right? Then all of a sudden they're like, who do investors hang out with? They hang out with other investors, right? You're the, you're like the five most, what is it? It's the old saying that you hear you're the average of the five people you hang out the most. All of a sudden they're getting, we're getting referrals. We never got referrals. So now we're getting a bunch of sales. We're getting a bunch of referrals. We're getting people to buy stuff where the agent, right? And when you're the agent, you get, you build that, that relationship.
[00:18:18] And so now all of a sudden our churn rate dips down to, I think it was 22 percent from 34%. Right. So the interesting thing is I told you when I first started, right, I went from 54 percent to 34 percent in payroll costs. My payroll actually stayed the same. It was the churn rate that went down, increased my revenue.
[00:18:36] It was the other clients, right? And retaining people and getting more clients. That's what, that's where the difference was. And now my managers. We're incredibly happy. They're no longer working nights and weekends. They're no longer stressed. Right now. And so now they are they're having the best life ever.
[00:18:53] And my VA team, my remote team, they're making more money than they've ever made before. And it was easy to, and then they all had KPIs and they were all like. People want to inherently do a good job. They do. Right. And so, but they don't know how to do a good job unless you tell them what that looks like. And that's the job description. And they want to report card and that's KPIs. And my team down there, we had them in Mexico cause they're the Spanish speaking. But what happened was again, another thing that we didn't realize was not only the team do the work, they hit the KPIs, they exceeded the KPIs and we create a bonus structure around the KPIs.
[00:19:26] So if you hit the KPI, you got a firm handshake. Thank you. Right. But if you exceeded the KPI, you got a bonus. And if you were part of a team, everybody in team added the KPI or you didn't get the bonus. And what I like about with the virtual team is the bonus was a hundred dollars a month. If you hit a certain level, you got a hundred dollars for us wasn't a lot of money, a hundred dollars to somebody in the US. Like literally would get mad at me. That's a little, that's too little of a bonus. It doesn't even fill up my car. Right. And they throw it at you. Somebody in the Philippines or Mexico or Costa Rica it's an extra couple of days of work per month.
[00:19:58] So they were really appreciative of that, of the opportunity to make more money. What happened was everybody started exceeding their KPIs to the point where I couldn't make the KPI any more difficult. Like it just is what it is. And they were just doing it. And then here's the magic.
[00:20:11] What happened next? was they ended up updating or changing the process. So my deal as the business owner was, I am the policy maker, I make the policy, but you own the process. And when somebody comes in and says, "Hey, I changed the process." And I use this example a lot. I had Jessica who was running all my lease renewals.
[00:20:30] So we had about a thousand units and I have one person doing all lease renewals, inspections and lease renewals. Our policy was that you could not do a lease renewal unless an inspection was done, an annual inspection was complete. And we used to start the process 60 days out. Jessica moved it to 90 days out. And when I was talking to them, I'm like, Jessica, I'm just curious what made you, and I don't, I try not to ask why questions because why questions put people blame, excuse, denial below the line and they get defensive. I asked, what made you decide to move it from 60 to 90 days? And she goes, "well, with 90 days, I can do X and Y. Like I can get to the owners faster. I know if the, if the residents do it" and she laid it all out. I'm like, amazing. She was doing a better job than I could have done because that's what her core focus was. Yeah. She was just on that. So then what people will say to me is Pete.
[00:21:13] Okay. Well, how do you know she's just not doing the lease renewals and not the inspections because she wants to hit our number. Right. That's the first question I get all the time. And I say, "well, we hire people based on our core values. And one of our core values was integrity. And so if you hire people with integrity, they're not going to do the loop around."
[00:21:30] I was able to run reports very quickly that determined all the lease renewals and if they had an inspection done so I've been reporting it. It was very simple to, to make sure that I was, I hold them accountable. Yeah, that's another core value of that we had is we hope people get, we run our business by numbers.
[00:21:48] We hold people accountable. And so that's so, so because we did all of that, we were able to solve our challenge of no profit or single digit profit margin to, double digit and eventually get to about that 20 percent profit margin, even though we, even while we were still investing in a lot of money, growing the business.
[00:22:07] Jason: Yeah, so we've, I love all the stuff you've been talking about. I think we've had some phenomenal results getting clients to improve their profit margin. And we've got clients easily getting up to 40%. Sarah ran her business over 60 and I think the three biggest profit levers are building a really solid process system, a really solid people system, and a really solid planning system and the planning system we call DoorGrow OS.
[00:22:33] But that was really where we started to motivate the team to think in terms of outcomes and get them to think more strategically like business owners. And so that strategic work is what moves businesses forward. That's where they're innovating. That's where they're improving a process and so those kind of goals, if we give a team member an outcome and we say, "figure out however you can best do this, within our values with integrity. Figure out a better way," then I'm not concerned about micromanaging them. I we're less involved in managing the team. They're now managing themselves because they're trying to achieve the outcome. And a lot of team members in a lot of business don't even have job descriptions. So they don't even know what outcomes they're expecting.
[00:23:15] Pete: If you're not sure what they're supposed to do. How do they know what they're supposed to do?
[00:23:18] Jason: Right. And if you ask anyone listening to this, if you ask your team members. This would be a curious and interesting experience for you or experiment. Ask your team members, "what are the outcomes that you think are most important for your role?" and compare that with what you think they are. I think you might be surprised. These should be agreed upon and defined, right? That should be in the job descriptions. Pete, I really appreciate all your transparency and sharing, because a lot of times everybody wants to, especially with like coaches in the industry, I see a lot of people coaching mentoring, but you don't get to see how the sausage is made and you don't really hear the challenges they have, but they might be really charismatic. They might really be good at speaking, but there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. And then what a lot of coaches in the industry do is they try to get people to build the business the way they did, which may not even be working. And so I think what's important, I think every business owner needs to build the business around themselves. It needs to be built to allow them the maximum level of fulfillment and freedom and contribution and support in their own business and that fifth reason of safety and certainty.
[00:24:25] And that means every business is going to be unique because every business owner is unique. If you started a property management business right now, it would be run very differently than some others, because you're very operationally minded and you would build your team very differently than somebody that's very visionary sales oriented, right?
[00:24:41] And I think it's important to get the right team built around you. And a lot of times I think the foundational challenges, a lot of business owners aren't clear on themselves. And then they start building a team and they're miserable. They have an entire team and they're still miserable. They've built the wrong team.
[00:24:55] Pete: Well, I think every new business owner does that, right? They don't feel like they deserve good people. So they self sabotage sometimes. Right.
[00:25:04] Jason: They don't believe the good people are out there. A lot of times they just don't even believe there's good people. They're like, "Oh, everybody's terrible." so guess what they attract? Right. And what's surprising the truth is just like you had mentioned, when you find good people, they will exceed you doing that role. Especially if it's one of your minus signs, it's not one of the hats you enjoy wearing, they will be better at it than you, if they enjoy doing it. A hundred percent. And that's super humbling for these early stage entrepreneurs, because they think they're the best at everything initially.
[00:25:33] Pete: There's two thoughts, right? So when you hire somebody, there's the whole abdication of it. And then there's a delegation and then there's the micromanagement. And so, what I find is that when people hire people in the United States, they abdicate a lot of times when they hire people that are remote, they want to micromanage for whatever reason, even though they've invested a lot more money in the person in the United States. Right. And then there's people that just, they just abdicate regardless.
[00:25:58] And what I mean by abdication is, I'm a property manager. I'm doing a whole bunch of stuff myself. I hire an assistant and I just throw up on them and say, here's all the things that I'm doing. Go ahead and do it. There's no direction. There's no accountability. There's no management.
[00:26:11] Right. And then they get excited. " Oh yeah, I'm a great delegator." No, you're an abdicator. You're not a delegator because you're not giving them the tools and the guidance that's needed. And then what happens is the VA or the person leaves and " well, I don't understand. I can't find any good people, so I'm just going to keep doing it myself." the first thing is when you hire somebody, you have to understand, you just can't just abdicate. You have to make time for them, especially in the first couple of months, right? They're learning you and your culture. At the end of the day, if you are the sole operator and the business owner each one of us have core values, right? We have our personal core values. Most of those are going to be embedded into the company that we built. They should be anyway. You shouldn't change your core values for your company. If I'm full of integrity, I'm not going to create a company that's not, that doesn't have a lot of integrity, right?
[00:26:55] So these people are going to learn by you training them or your team training them, right? Core values always get pushed down. If you're listening to this and you do not have core values in your company, you have core values in your company they're just not yours. The team created core values. They push them up and they may or may not be the ones that you want. Right. But when you hire somebody, it's important that you spend a lot of time with them to train them properly so that they understand what they're doing. What I have found is that most jobs can be trained within two to three weeks. Especially if you're wearing one hat. The more, what I call decision points or if then else's, and the biggest one that I've found is in maintenance coordination has a lot of decision points. What if it's over the threshold? What if it's a home warranty? What if it's an emergency? What if it's cosmetic?
[00:27:39] Right? You go on and on. That's why it took me 90 days. Because we had to go through every one of those scenarios and I had to train on. And it's just a little bit more in depth. My least renewable person, I was able to train her in two to three weeks. And you're right. And so by the training and by creating the KPIs and then by having a weekly meeting with structure.
[00:27:57] Right. So nothing gets me more fired up than having a meeting, just to have a meeting. And then we sit there and we sit there for an hour and I literally just wasted not just my time, but everybody else's time all because we don't have any structure. So I'm a big fan of EOS. I'm sure that you have something that's very similar to a meeting structure.
[00:28:15] Jason: We call it DoorGrow OS.
[00:28:16] Pete: DoorGrow OS. So DoorGrow OS. So if you're not part of DoorGrow, join DoorGrow and get on the OS. That's like number one, right? Because if you just get your meetings in order, you will see an increase in productivity just like that. So by the way, the maintenance team that I built, they always reported to me, even when I sold, until the day I sold the company. I just had a soft spot for them. I like maintenance. I know I'm weird that way, but I really did. And so they reported to me. My other team, I had other supervisors. I actually had supervisors in Mexico that were managing the other team members in Mexico. And that supervisor report to somebody in the U. S. or to report directly to me. But I still had my weekly meeting with my team every week. And we had our OS and one of the questions I asked every week, there's two questions that were always number one was always. "What can I do as the business owner to make your job easier?" I think there's a, I think there's a sphere, a circle, right? My job is to take care of my team. My team's job is to take care of the client. The client's job is to take care of the business and the business job is to take care of me. That's the circle right? So no the client is not always right. And let's do what we have to do to make sure that if we did mess up, we want to make it right. And I get all that. But how can I make my team's job easier? And that could be, I need to go talk to Sandy in accounting because she's not doing something or it means, "Hey, can you create this report for me?" I need a whatever it is. What can I do? Then the last question I asked on every meeting was what is your stress level on a scale of one to 10? And this was really important because it does two things. Number one, if somebody is a 10 plus for three weeks in a row, they are ready to punch out. Yeah. No one wants to work in a stressful environment for more than if we can see that Hey, it's summer, we're a little short staffed, you're going to be stressed for next, six to eight weeks, but there's a, but we're going to do X, Y, and Z to get out of it, I get it and people will handle stress for a short period of time.
[00:30:05] The second thing is, believe it or not, sometimes people are stressed out and has nothing to do with you or your company. I know we all think it's about us and our company, but personal stuff. So one time I actually. And so if anybody's 10 plus and I want to talk to them, I do it off the meet. Like we have a one on one say, "Hey, stay on everybody else. Get off the meeting, whatever." Yeah. And I had this one lady 10 plus and I said, "Hey you're usually a two what's going on. My brother got hit by a car right now." What this does is everybody's always asking me how how can I, how can I bring my team, my remote team into our culture. This is a great way, right? Because at the end of the day, just like you, you want to give time to your owner clients and you want to build relationships, you want to build relationships with your remote team. And so by, by taking an interest in them as human beings.
[00:30:52] Right. It doesn't mean you have to give them, I'm not going to, I didn't fly down and give them a whole bunch of money. I just listened and I cared that her brother was doing okay. I would ask, and it was just an emotional human thing. My team, if your team, if your remote team know that you actually do care about them. So if your remote team knows that you care about them, they're not going to leave you for a 50 cents more or a dollar more an hour. They're just not. Because most of the time, if you're paying them a fair wage. They are making more than enough money to cover their, what I call their nut, just to cover their living expenses. So they're not going to leave because the grass isn't always greener and they are freaking happy.
[00:31:28] If you make your team happy by asking them, how can I help? How can I make your job easier? And letting them know that you care about them as people. That's the, that's like a number three question I get, right? Number one is how do I train them? Number two is where do I find them?
[00:31:41] Number three is how do I make a part of the team? This is how you make a part of the team, right? By, by advocating and just throwing a bunch of throwing a bunch of stuff on them and letting them go. That's not how you do it. And by micromanaging, I'm saying, I want to see all the screenshots. I want you to write down everything you did from this time to this time.
[00:31:57] And if you take a 15 minute break, I need you to punch out and punch in. Right. You said it earlier. You manage by results. That's what I do. Do I care if you put 40 hours a weekend? I really don't. I'll pay you for 40. But if you get if if you're available and I need you, right. So I have managed on availability first, it had to be available.
[00:32:16] So we have policy. We use Slack. If I Slack you, you Slack me back within 30 minutes. If I email you, you email me back within four hours. If we have a meeting, you're on video and you're in your home office. None of this Starbucks crap, none of this on the beach crap, like you're in your home office, you're working, right?
[00:32:30] So availability is number one. Then number two is KPIs. Are you meeting or exceeding your KPIs? Number three, and if I have the right KPIs, I can just look and if it's green, I know that position is doing well. And then number three is escalations. Am I getting calls from our clients or from internal members of the company saying that you're not, that you can't, that you're not doing your job or you're not getting back to them or whatever.
[00:32:53] Those are the three things I need to know. I don't need to know that you're moving your mouse every 30 seconds. I could care less on that. If I got those three things, I know, and again, I know I have the right people because I hired them based on my core values or the company's core values.
[00:33:06] Jason: Yeah, totally. We do a lot of the similar things at DoorGrow. Like one of my mentors would say, cadence is culture. And I really believe that the cadence of your meetings creates the culture. It really does. And this is where you're able to set the culture with your team. And we ask questions like, where are you stuck? How can we support you? We do caught being awesome. We, and I think what team members really want more than money, a lot of entrepreneurs, we like money, right? We don't hate money. And so we assume mistakenly that's the highest priority for all of our team members. Well, I'll just give them bonuses or I'll pay them more. The reality is most team members. With the exception of maybe entrepreneurs and salespeople, most everybody else on the planet would prefer once their basic needs are met, financially would prefer to be recognized rather than get a bonus. And so creating the right cadence and creating a system like DoorGrow OS allows the team to be seen and recognized for their accomplishments strategically and moving the business forward.
[00:34:03] And that prioritizes that we find that if you can get those three systems in place. The planning system, that's DoorGrow OS here at DoorGrow. The people system, we've got DoorGrow Hiring, Applicant Tracking System, etc. And the process system, we've got DoorGrow Flow and some other stuff. If you have these three systems in place, these are three of the biggest profit levers you can get in place.
[00:34:23] And a lot of times people try to skip those three and jump right into profitability and micromanage through just more severe actions, more severe KPIs, and trying to control more. Thinking they can squeeze more blood from the stone when if they did these three profit levers, we've got clients that are hitting amazing profit margins.
[00:34:42] They don't even have KPIs because they don't even need them because they trust their team members so much and their team members are really great culture fits and really motivated. And so focus on those three profit levers first, and you're going to make a lot more money. And really what happens is you get three times the output from good team members.
[00:34:59] Easily and they can be anywhere. And what's, what I love about being able to have a remote team, we've got team members all over the place. Some of the U S Canada, Mexico, one's in London now, Philippines. I'm able to hire the best. I'm able to hire the best, no matter where they are. And I'm able to also for certain roles, get, make sure it's really affordable for the business.
[00:35:20] And so we're not, I'm not too particular about where they're at or what they're doing. It just needs to be a price point that we can afford. And I need a really good outcome. And if we can get that, then that's the ideal. And it's easier for me to run things remotely than if everybody were interrupting me coming into my office all day long, it's a lot quieter.
[00:35:42] And I feel like everybody's able to get more done, but we're able to create that connection in our daily huddles. We check in with everybody, ask where they're stuck. We do one on ones like you were talking about. All these things to figure out where everybody are at. The one thing that we do that I think is really impactful is we have our team members do time studies, not as a punitive measure, as a way to support them and figure out how to get them additional support and help.
[00:36:05] And this is where we figure out which, what are their plus and minus signs. So Adam, who's been on my team for almost, I think almost a decade now. Yeah. I'm like nine years. And he started as a content writer and he's done multiple time studies and every time he gets really honest with me, he's these are the things I don't enjoy doing anymore.
[00:36:21] I'm not enjoying doing all this writing. I'm, what do you enjoy? I enjoy interacting with the clients. He now manages our entire department for websites, branding, all this. He's got a whole team under him. Whereas nobody initially would have thought, Hey, Adam is a manager, but he by default naturally became one because we just got him the support he needed.
[00:36:40] And so he's been, he, and that's how we've been able to retain Adam. And the cool thing about retaining team members is they're like wine. They get better with time. Better and better. And so Adam knows lots of ins and outs in the business. He's super adaptable and versatile, and we're able to use them for billing related stuff and website stuff.
[00:36:58] And there's so many things over time that he's developed and absorbed and learned. He can run significant pieces of the business for me if necessary.
[00:37:07] Pete: Well, I'll give you a funny story because, here I am teaching and telling you, oh, here's how hire people. Right? So when I first started VPM Leon, who is our onboarding guy now came over and he was with me at mind and he was with me at empire.
[00:37:20] So I've known Leon and I knew he had our core values, right? And so we're like, maybe eight months in and I go to one of my business partners and I go, "Hey man, I don't think Leon's working out," and he's like, "really?" he did the, I called the Mongolian reversal, right? Because he basically takes my words and he puts them right back at me.
[00:37:34] He goes "let me ask you what's his job description?" And it's crickets. So I'm like, "yeah, he don't really have a job description." He's " what's his KPIs?" I'm like, "yeah, we haven't really got to that." So he's like, "how much have you trained him?" And I'm like, "all right, enough."
[00:37:45] Basically, Leon was the right guy. I just didn't know what he's supposed to do. So how did he know what he's supposed to do? So then I got serious about the job description. And then what we realized is Leon was running about two hats, maybe three hats. It's really like he, he was good at one of them.
[00:38:01] So we ended up hiring another guy, Angelino, and gave that hat away. And now Leon just runs and now he is. Thriving and exceeding all of the metrics that we put in his place. And he's the happiest he's ever been. And even though, this stuff, sometimes you have to continuously, make sure that you're doing it.
[00:38:20] Jason: Oh yeah. We had a conversation last night about a team member that we realized they weren't doing some things right. And Sarah put it back in my face. She's well, did you train them on this? And I was like, No, I didn't. I made a mistake in training. I thought they would understand it in my superficial explanation.
[00:38:38] And yeah,
[00:38:39] Pete: it's shortcuts, right? Those three things that you put out there, the hiring and the process, it sounds so easy, right? But we know it's tedious. And there's, that's a, that's the reason. Why most entrepreneurs who are most of 'em, are visionaries, right? A lot of guys start business with visionaries.
[00:38:53] They're not in the details. They don't like doing that. It's not natural, right? I need an integrator. They need a, they need an integrator. I'm guessing Sarah's the integrator. I'm the integrator. I'm guessing you're the visionary, right? So they need an integrator to, to literally do that stuff and you get, like I said you, when you do it you get it back in perpetuity, like it just, once the system is complete, it's just tweaking. It's not rebuilding, once, and and but a lot of visionaries, they skip that part because they don't like that part.
[00:39:18] Yeah. I agree. It's from hire a consultant or hire the, hire somebody that, that likes that stuff.
[00:39:23] Jason: Yeah.
[00:39:24] Sarah: And I love that you just keep like, thank you for continuously driving home the point. Like you have to train people. You have to. And a lot of times what we see is we see doesn't matter your location.
[00:39:34] Doesn't matter your size. Doesn't even matter what industry you're in. People hire out of pain, which makes sense, but they're in so much pain that they're like, Oh, they think as soon as they hire somebody, they're like, Oh, like I'm, it's solved. It's not solved yet because you haven't trained them.
[00:39:48] It's still your problem until they are properly trained. And it does take time. So for a period of time, when you hire somebody, your life is going to get worse. You're going to be taking on more if you want them to do a good job That is what has to happen because if you hire somebody and you're like, "here just have it like baptism by fire figure it out go ahead and do it."
[00:40:09] It's not going to work out. You're going to be frustrated They're going to be frustrated and it looks bad for both people and then you guys are both frustrated at each other and you're like Why are they not working out? And this person is like I didn't even get training. I don't like you're mad at me all the time.
[00:40:22] And I just I don't even know what to do, but you didn't tell me what to do. Help me.
[00:40:25] Pete: I'm not going to hire people because I just, there's no good people out there. Right. It's just, when I was telling you that story about training the maintenance team, I was trained about two hours a day on the maintenance, which is a little too much, probably an hour and a half is probably the maximum we can take.
[00:40:37] But I was doing two hours. That didn't mean that my 10 hour day. was still a 10 hour day. It became a 12 hour day because I still had 10 hours of work. I had to do, I just took on more, two hours of training. And a lot of times they ask more, a lot of times it's even more than that because as you're training, what I have found, and maybe you guys see the same thing is as I'm training, I actually learned a lot more about my processes and about my company, and then I realized, oh.
[00:41:00] There's no policy here. Oh, there's no field for that. Oh, that's just in my head. However, I feel that day I'm going to, I'm going to judge on that. And so I, there was a lot of work that I ended up having to do as I'm creating the, to training, oh man, this process is not exactly at all what I thought.
[00:41:16] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, Pete, this has been an awesome conversation. We appreciate you coming on the show. Why don't you tell everybody just a little bit about VPM solutions. Do a quick plug and how they can reach out and connect with you.
[00:41:30] Pete: Yeah. So, thanks for that. So VPM solutions is an online platform that connects property management companies with remote team members.
[00:41:38] It's a direct hire, so they don't work for VPM. They work directly for you. You negotiate the hourly rate. There is no upfront cost and there's no fee to use the site. So it's all free for the company managers. The way VPM makes money is the virtual assistant. Pays 10%. So when they apply to a job, they have a breakdown of this is how much hourly rate that I'm applying for.
[00:41:59] It is how much that BPM charges a platform fee. And this is how much that I'll get. We also have about 20, I think 23 free training. So, there's training on the site from fair housing to marketing, social media, to pro we have a flagship property manager, one on one courses. It's about nine 12, 12 courses, nine hours of content.
[00:42:20] Wow. And it's there just to teach folks the basics of property management. No, you're not going to hire them and they're going to be able to run and be a property manager for you, but they're going to know the ins and outs of the verbiage of just the life cycle, like high level stuff. But it's our attempt to get people trained up so that when you, so that when you get them, they're not like that, at least they're crawling.
[00:42:44] Right. Yeah. They have a little bit of deal, a little bit of information. And then we also have we also have some free resources that are on the side as well. Like we have I think we have 50 job descriptions with this profiles that we assume, assume assumptive this profiles.
[00:43:00] We also have like org charts, like what you should, or chart should be as you grow your business. And then we also have just a list of all the vendors and resources and all the different Facebook groups and all of the conferences that are out there for profit management.
[00:43:13] Matter of fact, you're actually on that site by the way, as a vendor. So, yeah. So. That's what we do. And then we also offer what we call the white glove service. It's a free service that helps you go through the hiring process. Because we, what we realized early on, it's a do it yourself platform, but what we realize is most people don't have a hiring process and no idea what to do.
[00:43:34] So we guide them. Now your team your clients probably have a good hiring process, but we'll offer, like we'll offer that free white glove service to them as well, if they want to come in and just. Need a little bit of help. What should they ask before they interview? There's some red tape.
[00:43:47] Like we say, you get a disc profile, and then the, we have these courses that they take, they get certifications, you can search based on those certifications. So it's really the only platform literally built for property management.
[00:43:57] Jason: Love it. Yeah. Very cool. We'll check it out. So everybody make sure you check out Pete Neubig's VPM solutions.
[00:44:04] Take a look at that. And Pete, thanks for being on the show today. It's good conversation.
[00:44:08] Pete: Yeah. Thanks guys. Thanks Jason. Thanks Sarah. Appreciate you.
[00:44:11] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur, you're wanting to grow or add more doors or you're struggling with dealing with your team, reach out to us at DoorGrow.
[00:44:19] We can help you with this. We do this all the time. We would love to support you. We have clients that are easily going from, we can help you scale anywhere from zero to a thousand plus, and anybody can do this in the next three to five years. We would love to support you, help you scale your business and help you save collapse a lot of time and not have to go through a make.
[00:44:37] So many mistakes in your business. And so until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
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