#DoorGrowShow - Property Management Growth

The Myers and Briggs Foundation

Telegram Messenger

National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM)

Transcript

All right, we are live. Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker.

DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.

At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business 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. Now, let's get into the show.

Okay. Today, what we are going to be talking about—this was prompted by a question that I saw posted on Facebook. Somebody asked a question like, what do you wish you could do differently now that you run a property management business? If you could go back in time, what would you do differently? There were lots of jokes, hahaha, from people saying I would start a pizza company or pizza place, or I'd do something else like I wouldn't do it.

It is a common joke. There's pain underneath those statements because there are a lot of property management businesses that a) suck, and that b) because they have miserable business owners. They're not happy. I just want to point out that I don't believe it's because of the industry. There are miserable business owners in any business, in any industry, or in any business category.

I think the challenge is that the business owners that are not happy out there, which there's a lot in a lot of industries, there's a lot in the property management industry. But the ones that are not happy are the ones that are not in alignment with the four reasons, which I talked about in an earlier episode. Go back and check that out. If you're out of alignment with that, the real issue is that you are doing the wrong things in the business. You are in the wrong role. So that's the challenge.

I want to talk about 13 tips that you should know if you're a startup property manager. These are probably 13 things you wish you had known or should know if you're starting a property management business. Some of these are really practical and some of these are a little bit more high level, mindset, or whatever.

I just made a list of the 13 most common mistakes that I see people make starting property management companies. I've made a pretty decent living in helping property managers either start up their businesses or most of the time, helping clean up the mistakes they made during the startup process. It's a lot of what I do at DoorGrow.

So I've talked to thousands of property managers. I've gotten to see inside a lot of businesses. I get to hear what actually goes on behind the scenes—the pain, the sorrow, the sadness, and the joy when we get things figured out and dialed in. So let's get into these. These are in no particular order or priority. These are just how they came into my head.

One of the biggest mistakes that I see, number one, is choosing property management software based on what's cheapest. That's a mistake. A lot of times, property managers either don't use the software in the beginning or choose something cheap or less expensive. My recommendation is to choose property management software that you can live with forever.

The reason being, if you can choose software that you can live with forever, that software is going to save you a lot more money in the long run. You're going to end up spending a lot of money on staffing costs instead. So if you go cheap on software in the beginning because you're like, hey, this is a lower price, those costs get translated and pushed on to staff.

Don't pick it based on what's cheapest and the same, get the most expensive software but get the software that can do the most, that's going to give you the most leverage. I typically like to recommend Rent Manager simply because I hear the most positive feedback on it. It's not an investor-backed company where their primary goal, if they're honest, is to please their financial backers. That's not their goal, some software out there.

It's not owned by some bigger conglomerate or company, as far as I know. They have one of the best property management conferences I've heard in the industry. But clients seem to just really love Rent Manager. They love that software.

I've seen it used by really large enterprises that have thousands of doors in multiple markets. I've seen it used by startups. It seems to work for a variety of different types of management. It has an open API. It connects and integrates with everything is what that means, generally. So that would be my recommendation. Don't push the cost on the staff because staff are far more expensive.

All right. Number two, don't give out your direct real cell phone number to tenants and owners. It's so easy to do early on. Real estate agents are absolute horrors with their cell phone numbers, that happens all the time. Every guy or gal in real estate just gives it out to everybody, puts it on park benches, puts it up on yard signs.

For property management, that's a whole different game. You need to insulate, protect yourself, and not be reachable all the time by cell phone. So you need to get some other service or you might get something like Talkroute, which works great with cell phones, low latency, voice over IP system that allows you to use your cell phones. It works really well and it's low cost. You can build out a phone tree, protect yourself, and route it to different services that you bring on later.

You can even go and just get some sort of phone app in the App store to get a second phone number that can allow you to do text messaging, phone calls. I've heard of some people using an app called Burner and some of these. Have a different phone number than your real cell phone number and just save that for those that you really want to be able to reach you—family, friends, not clients and customers.

Number three, learn how to win the online reviews game before you start to play it and are losing, which is the default. If you're a restaurant in the restaurant industry, this is critical. You start up a business, you're hoping that it's going to make money, you put on some investment into it, you start getting some bad reviews initially because you make some mistakes, and suddenly, it just compounds, piles on, you just get more and more bad reviews, and you're not getting good reviews. The business could die.

Now in property management, the default also is that you're going to get bad reviews from tenants and owners. They're going to be frustrated, tenants especially, if they don't get their deposit back or whatever. You need to know how to play this game.

In DoorGrow Academy, we have a training called Reputation Secrets and then teach clients how to win at this game, but you need to have a strategy for this before the reviews just start to happen. Because the default is you will lose and that is a significant impact.

A lot of people mistakenly assume they'll just get good reviews if they just do good service, and that is not the case. That's not how the review game works. So before you start to play that game, you need to know how to win that game, and it's not a hard game to win.

Number four, one of the biggest mistakes I see, my really big tip here is do not price yourself as the cheapest. Do not be the cheapest in your market. Do not price yourself at the low end of the market or at the bottom. There's already a race to the bottom.

This is a fast track to building a business. It's not sustainable, that's painful, that's uncomfortable. It helps you attract more and more of the bottom of the barrel, the worst clients, and residents. That's not the type of business that you want to get caught up in. Price yourself at the top of the market.

It's better to be the most expensive than the cheapest, in my opinion. There's a lot more nuance to that and pricing psychology and strategy that we get into in our Mastermind program that I love to coach clients on because I have not yet had a property manager come to me that had really effective pricing. It's always something we can optimize, improve, and then they can close more deals at a higher price point more easily.

That price sensitivity, that sense of scarcity that they're getting pushed back on, that price sensitivity and pain that they're dealing with with owners, there are lots of ways to mitigate that, remove it, or capture better prospects that are not like that, like the cheapos of the world. That's the default. That's what most property managers do. They try to be the cheapest or they try to charge what everybody else is charging in their market. They're all making similar mistakes.

Number five, make sure your business name ends with property management. It's one of the most common mistakes. Almost every startup seems to have real estate or realty in the name, or they choose something generic so they can do it from multiple industries like properties. They might even put rentals, which is weird.

So real simple, when it comes to branding, we've helped rebrand hundreds of companies—redoing their names, redoing their logos, hundreds. We are the world's leading property management branding and design agency. Nobody's done more rebrands than us in the property management space.

The most common mistake that we see is just not ending your name with property management. Just end your name with property management and be a property management company. Be a master of one trade instead of a jack of all trades and a master of none.

All right, number six. Learn to create a business without paid advertising and you'll never struggle with growth, and you will save a [...] ton of time and money. Cold lead advertising takes a lot of money. It wastes a lot of time because you have to nurture these leads. There are far better strategies for growth.

What do I mean by cold leads? I'm talking about SEO, pay-per-click like Google ads, content marketing, social media marketing, and pay-per-lead services. You do not have to do these things in order to grow your business. In fact, there are faster and better ways. I'm not saying don't do those.

All of those can be effective if you do the right things, but they can be costly, and that's not where you should start spending your time and energy. The number one way that almost every business owner I've talked to ever in property management, I asked, where have you gotten the majority of the doors you have now? It's always word of mouth. So figure out how to play that game, figure out a way to create it. to intentionally make it, and to be outbound about it instead of just inbound, which means waiting for stuff to just come to you.

So we have an outbound partner prospecting program that we teach in DoorGrow Academy and in Referral Secrets in our Mastermind program. This has helped some of our clients to have hundreds of doors in a year's time without spending any money on advertising. It just takes time, but it takes less time than it would be if they were just being spoon-fed a bunch of cold leads. It takes less time and they get more doors. It's a no-brainer.

The next item, number seven, don't take on shady clients or properties. I've talked over and over again about what I call the cycle of suck. Take on a shitty owner, you have a shitty property, you have a shitty tenant, you're going to get a shitty reputation in the marketplace. This is the cycle of suck.

Escape the cycle of suck, filter at each stage, and the most important is be careful about the types of owners that you take on. This is the most important thing because this starts the entire cycle. Be careful about the properties that you take on. Of course, screen the tenants—you all do that, and have a strategy in place.

We've already talked about reviews. Have a strategy in place to get more good reviews and to mitigate, filter, or prevent negative reviews. If you are able to do this, you will have significantly lower operational costs than most property management companies, which means you'll be more profitable and you'll be able to invest more into growth, into your team, and into scaling your operations. So don't take on shitty clients and properties. Really simple.

In the beginning, a lot of people think they need to take on everybody. This is one of the most common mistakes and they do it at too low of a price point. They're needy, needy is creepy, and it prevents you from getting on a better business.

All right, the next item. The next tip for startup or starting a property management business is do not hire until you are clear on your culture, which means your values, what matters to you, and you've created that in a tangible way, which means it's written, it's documented, and you are clear on what you should be doing in the business. Meaning, you are clear on the things that bring you those four reasons. You know what gives you more fulfillment, more freedom, and more contribution so that you can get more support.

You need to understand yourself. Because if you don't understand yourself, you're going to do the wrong things as a business owner. You're going to wear every hat in the beginning. The hats you need to get rid of are the ones that are minus signs for you. They are not energetic plus signs. They do not give you life and energy.

You need to strategically focus on that. I talked about time studies and things like that in our program, ways of figuring out which things energize you versus draining you. I talked about the five currencies of time, energy, effort, focus, and cash. Figuring out what is going to give me the most fulfillment and freedom. What's going to bring me more joy? You need to understand what that role is that you're going to be moving towards.

You don't have to do anything in the business in the long run. You could offload everything, but there are certain things that are going to bring you joy and fulfillment and that's why we have businesses. That's one of the main reasons. So you need to figure out what is that for you so that you can build the right team around the right person.

If you're showing up as the wrong person, you start to build a team, and you don't have the culture, and you only have yourself clear, you're going to build the wrong team. You're going to be frustrated with them, and you're going to be like most of the 200–400 door companies that the business owner is in a state of constant burnout and frustration. Just frustrated that they cannot get their team members to think and make decisions because they've set up their business the wrong way, they are annoyed, and they are micromanaging everybody even though they don't want to admit it.

So make sure you get clear on that. That's something that we help clients with. Clients give me feedback. They dial this stuff in that that was the most important training and material they went through in our Mastermind program, which is what I call Purpose Secrets and getting that clarity. It helps them build their dream team so they can have their dream business. If you don't have the business of your dreams, as one of my coaches and mentors would say, then you are not yet the person that can run it yet. That means you just don't have clarity on yourself.

All right, the next thing is number nine. Tip, starting a business. When we start a business, we all have a fantasy. It is so sexy, it is so seductive that we're willing to take a risk against the advice sometimes of family and friends, and we start a business. We spend money, we spend massive amounts of time and energy to do this, to go towards this fantasy. Everybody has a fantasy when they start up a business.

You have to be willing to kill the fantasy. So this tip is to kill the fantasy early. You know that you're delaying this death of the fantasy. What I mean by killing the fantasy is if you want a reality, if you want a real business that actually pays you, because fantasies are sexy, nice, and they make you feel good, but they don't pay you. They don't actually give you a real-life result.

The fantasy just makes your brain feel good and gives you some chemicals. But if you want to have a real business, you have to get a reality business, you have to kill the fantasy if you want that. You have to let it die. So kill it early. What I mean by this is some business owners delay this. They mentally masturbate as one of my mentors or coaches would say.

They don't take the right action and they spend a lot of time doing all the action that's safe. I'm going to work on my branding, my business card, my logo, or my website for 100 hours. They're doing all this stuff, and they're not getting clients and they're not getting paid. You don't need any of that stuff.

The only thing that you need in order to have a property management business. There's one thing that without it you don't have a business—clients. That's the one thing and you can just get clients. I've seen people have hundreds of doors without a website, without a good brand name, without a logo.

Certainly, these things can help improve things and make things go faster. But you don't need t-shirts printed, you don't need a cool brick and mortar building. You just need some tenacity, some work ethic, and to take the right action.

That's the first thing I start clients on if they're in a startup stage or they want to grow their business, we start them down to what I call the Grow Program First. It lets you add doors. Then we can clean up branding, website, and your sales pipeline, and then it'll go faster. But there's no point having something that's going to help you go faster if you're not even moving yet. Let's get you moving and making some money first.

Kill the fantasy early, do the uncomfortable hard stuff first. If it's uncomfortable, if you're avoiding it, if you don't want to do it, it's probably a sign that that's where you should go. Lean into the pain early in the business and the business will be less painful forever.

All right. What is next? Number 10, make property management the focus. At least during the startup stage. I've seen so many that have it as a side hustle. It's a side hustle for years where they sometimes come into my program, it's a side hustle, and they don't even choose to focus on it. Then after about three or four months, they realize they finally get honest and connect to reality, they're not going to do the work.

Because they don't really want to invest in that business or focus on it, and then they just give up, quit, stop the business, or just leave it where it is, and they don't make it a focus or priority. So if you want just to succeed and go fast, give it a real chance of success. If you have a baby that's born, you need to take really good care of that baby, at least for the first little while, first few years. Because otherwise, that baby is not going to be able to feed itself, change itself, take care of itself.

That's your business. Your business is this baby. You need to take care of it in the beginning. Eventually, you can build a team, you can build systems, you can offload things, you can focus on other passions or other businesses if you want to, but it needs to be a focus if you want this to work.

One of the biggest challenges I see is they don't make it a focus and they artificially keep feeding into this business from the resources, revenue, and staff in their existing healthy business. So then you end up with this cancerous tumor on the side of a healthy real estate company, for example, that's a property management business, and it's not profitable.

I had one client that had 600 doors when he first came to me and was making $0 in his business. That's painful. Too many expenses, too much staff, too many resources, and a cycle of suck. All these things were going on, lack of technology, et cetera because a healthy company would have had to make significant changes at about 100 doors or so or earlier just to break the 100 door barrier.

They were able to artificially skip past that in terms of door count because they had another business they could siphon resources from. Make sure your business can stand on its own two feet and make it the focus.

Number 11, protect your time and offload as early as possible emergency or after-hours maintenance calls. You need to value yourself and protect yourself. You could get a service like Abodia, Latchel, or EZ Repair Hotline I've heard good things about. You could sign up, eventually, once you get maybe 50–100 doors.

It might make sense to get a service like Property Meld and they work really nicely, I guess with EZ Repair Hotline under their full-service plan. I've heard great things about Property Meld service over and over again from clients. But as soon as possible, offload emergency or after our mains maintenance calls. You're the business owner and protect yourself, protect your time, and protect your time with your family.

When you start to value yourself and value your time, other people will start to value you and value your time. That means they’ll want to pay you, they’ll want to give you money because you're valuable. You have something to offer them. Don't be low value.

All right, so the next thing is the number 12 tip when starting a property management business. One of the biggest problems I see with entrepreneurs is this distraction of opportunity. We see opportunities everywhere as entrepreneurs. So my big tip is to reduce variations as soon as possible. Variation, what do I mean by that?

I mean shift your focus towards simplicity and doing as little as possible, like one thing, one main business. You will go faster. Reducing variation means having less types of management that you offer. Don't try to do commercial, residential, multifamily, trailer parks, and storage units. Pick a niche and really focus on it, reduce variation.

Don't have custom contracts that you're trying to negotiate every time. Get a lawyer, get your contract tight, determine this is what it's going to be, and improve it over time. Don't fold on it. They're looking for an expert that they can trust. Be that expert that they can trust. Don't fold. Don't cave in.

Reduce variation in the business. The more variation you have, the more side hustles you have, the more random things that you're trying to do, the more service you think might be a good idea that you're trying to incorporate, if you do those at the wrong time, it just creates speed bumps. It slows you down, so try to reduce variation.

My business, we basically have one product, one service, one sales pipeline. Our growth has skyrocketed as a result. In the beginning, I had this company called OpenPotion. It was OpenPotion Website Design and Business Solutions.

I was like, I'm going to set up computer networks, set up businesses' phones. I could do their websites, I can help with logos. I was going to do everything because I thought I could do all this stuff. Overtime, we've done less and less and less and made ourselves more and more focused.

Even focusing on a niche in becoming DoorGrow so that we can become more effective and reduce the amount of variation in the business. It allows us to go deeper, help our clients even more, and reduces the complexity so that we can service more clients more quickly and provide better service.

Number 13, do not be a know-it-all and collapse time by getting a coach. Now I know you're like Jason, you're a coach, come on. This is biased. Transparency time here. I was that guy. I tried to do everything myself in the beginning.

I tried to watch the YouTube videos and read every book. I thought, I'm so smart, I can figure anything out. I am smart enough to probably eventually figure everything out, but it takes a decade to go that route when you could collapse time in a year if you worked with somebody that already has invested a decade into this.

I started this business in 2008. I've been helping property managers since then. It's over a decade. I've also been able to incorporate knowledge, wisdom, and ideas from hundreds of clients, thousands of property managers that I've talked to, and being able to pull in the best ideas. I'm really good at piecing together various pieces, ideas, and creating new things. It's just kind of my area of genius.

As an ENTP, if you're familiar with Myers Briggs, I'm always looking for truth and looking for what works. That's kind of my skill set, but the trap in that is I always thought I could figure it out. But when I got coaches, I started actually go fast. Nothing helps you collapse more time than getting mentors or coaches that know what they're doing. They can help you move forward a lot faster.

When I started getting coaches and mentors, and I'm very careful about who I choose as mentors or coaches nowadays because I'm at a level to where a bad coach or a bad mentor could do a lot of damage. One of the things I look at is, do I want to be more like that person? Do they have a lifestyle that I would like to have more of in my life? Do I feel like they're a good person? Do they have values? That's important to me.

Do they have knowledge that they can share? Are they sharp? Get a coach, get resources around you, get mentors. It's going to help you collapse time far faster. This takes humility. It's hard for us as business owners, especially early on because we think we know a lot.

Over the years, a lot of pain, failures, and mistakes helps us learn we really have no clue. We're all just winging it. There's a lot of people that are far beyond where I'm at that I could learn from. Don't be a know-it-all. Get a coach and collapse time.

If you feel like I might be able to be that coach and might be able to help you grow and scale your business, we have over 80 businesses in our Mastermind, which means over a hundred people in our Mastermind program that we are coaching, mentoring, and helping move their business forward. You'll get access to me with one-on-ones. You'll get access to me through video, voice, text message through Telegram messenger.

We do two weekly calls each week, and we have a repository of training material I built out in doorgrowacademy.com that you get access to as well. Then you get the support and help from my team. We included a website in the program and branding. All this is just part of this mastermind experience.

My goal is to keep clients forever so that I'm adding value. It's very easy for me to help a client offset the cost of this program by double, so that this program feels like it's now paying you. Very easy, no brainer. So if you're interested in the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind, reach out to us, reach out to us, reach out to my team, check us out at doorgrow.com. Join our Facebook group at doorgrowclub.com.

We would love to talk with you and see if you might be a good fit for our culture, for our program, and for the types of clients we want to help and service. There's nothing I enjoy more really in my business than helping coach the clients. It's super fun.

It's Wednesday. I got to do one of those calls today. It's super rewarding being able to hear all the wins, people adding doors, hear the questions, and be able to support these people in growing their businesses. I'd be honored to be able to support you. It's my passion. It's what I love doing.

With that, those are the 13 tips for those that aren't in the startup stage. If I were to add a bonus one here, I would say, get around other people doing what you want to be doing. Join NARPM, get around other property managers, get to know your local competition. It's a friendly space. Create some relationships and be connected.

Don't be an island in your business. Our mastermind can be a support or channel for that as well, but make sure you're connected to people. I'll leave it at that and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Download this Episode

DGS 148: The 3 Dominos To Knock Over To Close More Property Management Deals 0

Dec 7, 2021

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about three dominos that you need to knock over to close more property management deals.

Jason discovered the three dominos concept in sales from Russell Brunson, a New York Times bestselling author that popularized sales funnels and co-founded ClickFunnels to help entrepreneurs get their message out to the marketplace quickly.

You’ll Learn...

[01:25] Three Dominos Concept: How to pitch property management services.

[02:19] The three dominos are the vehicle, internal beliefs, and external beliefs.

[02:39] Domino #1: The vehicle is your service to get to what people want.

[03:29] Competition: What are all the alternative vehicles for property management?

[04:55] Lead Gen: Cold leads are costly and warm leads cost time but less money.

[06:33] DIY Option: Takes much longer to do everything and get the same results.

[07:12] Domino #2: Tackle all of the customer’s internal beliefs by offering support.

[09:58] Domino #3: Deal with all external and false beliefs that concern customers.

[11:05] Logical Conclusion: Only thing left is to sign up with you and your service.

[13:45] What is sales? Helps people get what they want, and what you desire, as well.

Tweetables

“There’s three dominoes that you need to knock over in order to get somebody to buy your services and to sign up with you as a client.”

“If you knock over all three dominos, the magic that happens is the only logical conclusion they have left and decision they have left is to work with you.”

“Safety and certainty is really what these people want.”

“I’m building trust, creating relationships, and I’m helping them see reality, and really, I think that’s what sales is all about.”

Resources

DoorGrow Academy

DGS 147: The Cycle of Suck in Property Management Business 0

Transcript

So today's topic, I was hanging out with my coaching clients today. We had a great call, lots of people, and we had a brand new client. He was asking about, how do I pitch? Basically, the question was, how to pitch property management services? One concept or principle that I related that I would like to relate to everybody listening today is the concept of the three dominoes.

I don't think I've chatted about this before. If I have, then you can hear it again. Anyway, the three dominoes concept in sales, I got that idea from Russell Brunson. I've heard him talk about it. I just grabbed one of his books off the shelf here. In this book, he mentions it. He probably mentions it in his others, but there are three dominoes that you need to knock over in order to get somebody to buy your services and to sign up with you as a client.

These three dominoes are the vehicle, internal beliefs, and external beliefs. If you can knock over all three dominoes, the magic that happens is the only logical conclusion they have left and the decision they have left is to work with you.

Let me explain these. So the vehicle is the first domino. This is important. The vehicle is your service. Your service is the vehicle for them to get to what they want. If you're selling property management, the vehicle that you're selling or offering is your business doing their management. For me, the vehicle is our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind, that's the vehicle that we offer.

Now when looking at vehicles, if you want to knock this domino over and accomplish the goal of them recognizing it, your vehicle is the best vehicle for them to get into. You have to throw stones at all the other vehicles. You have to destroy all the other vehicles in their mind so that the only logical vehicle left standing is your vehicle.

So if you want them to use your business for property management, you have to look at what are all the alternative vehicles? Write these down, figure out what are all the alternatives. They can self-manage. They could go to a real estate agent and ask them to do it. They could go to the big box company and franchise company down the street. They could go to the small mom and pop company that competes with you that's down the street. There are lots of different vehicles.

After you've looked at what are all the possible vehicles that exist for management and you make a list of these, you have to figure out, how can I throw stones at these? Why is my vehicle better than them self-managing, than them using the big box company down the street, the small mom and pop shop down the street that I compete with, or whatever?

If you don't have a good answer to that question, then you don't have maybe the best vehicle. How can you make your vehicle better? Sometimes you just need to work on your product and improve it. So you need to have the best vehicle.

With my vehicle, the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind and the coaching program that we offer, the alternative vehicles people have for growing their management companies could be hiring some other coach, it could be doing SEO, it could be doing pay-per-click, it could be doing content marketing, it could be doing social media marketing, or it could be pay-per-lead services.

In my training that convinces people to sign up with us and work with us, I go through and explain why all of these vehicles generally are all cold lead advertising, and why cold leads are not as effective as warm leads. Why the close rate is typically 10%, or worse for most property managers with cold leads. Why cold leads are really expensive. You have to pay for these marketing services. You have to pay agencies, then you have to pay for ad spend, and it's really costly.

I contrast that to our opportunity, our vehicle, which is based on warm lead generation, which is based on things that don't really cost you money. It does cost time, but it actually takes less time than dealing with cold [...] leads and prospects that are just time wasters and tire kickers, that are at the end of the sales cycle, that are searching on Google, that are super price-sensitive, and are the worst. They're the scraps that fall off the warm lead or word-of-mouth table that my clients get to eat at.

This is how I attack the vehicle. For me, that's easy because it's true and it's obvious, I feel like. So I explain it, and then when people get it, they go, wow, that vehicle does sound better than these other vehicles and you might have written in some of these other vehicles. You might have tried them and you know from experience, they're not working really well.

In fact, most of the companies that are trying to do those other vehicles to grow their business are losing more doors than they're getting on right now due to the sell-off that's happening in the marketplace. A lot of the larger companies are down at least 200 doors over the last couple of years. That might be you. So the vehicle, so you have to know how to attack all the other vehicles.

I also have the alternate vehicle that is challenging or that I deal with, that clients will focus on which is DIY, just like you as property managers. We have people that are like, I can just read business books or I can just watch a bunch of videos on YouTube, I'll do it all myself. Awesome, I used to be that guy too. You could do that. And it will take you 10 years longer to get the same result.

I've seen it and I've been that guy. I've been that guy that thought I knew everything and could do it all on my own. Until I started getting coaches and mentors that collapsed time. So I'm attacking that vehicle. You have to figure out how do I destroy and attack all the other vehicles.

Once your vehicle is the only vehicle left standing, the next domino that needs to be knocked over in order for them to work with you is the internal beliefs. These are beliefs about their own internal self, beliefs about their own abilities to execute on this opportunity, beliefs about their concerns internally. You need to figure out what are all the internal beliefs and concerns that might prevent them from becoming a customer and from working with you, becoming a client, and signing the contract.

Any internal beliefs like, well, I don't know, maybe they have a need for price anchoring. They don't know what the price should be for property management, you've told them your pricing, and they don't feel safe. So you need to solve that challenge. Maybe they don't know what your values are or things like this, and they're nervous that they might be blind to something or missing something.

You have to figure out, what are all the internal beliefs that come up for your prospects? Make a list of these and you have to figure out, how can I throw stones and knock all of these internal beliefs down during my pitch? You've already knocked down all the external, third-party, and alternate vehicles. Now you need to deal with all those internal beliefs.

A lot of times, internal beliefs have to do with levels of support. In our program, we deal with the internal belief, concern, or challenge like maybe I can't do it. Maybe this works for others, but maybe I'm not good enough, maybe I'm not charismatic enough, maybe I'm not cool enough, maybe I'm not smart enough, or maybe I'm lazy. We have to figure out how can we attack those internal beliefs.

One of the ways is we focus on support. You get direct access to Jason. You can schedule a one on one with Jason as part of the mastermind. You're going to get telegram access to Jason so you can send him messages through Telegram—video, voice, and text throughout the week.

If you get stuck or have questions, we also have Adam, Maddie, and others on my team that are supporting you as you move through certain processes like branding, web design, or some of the things that we help clean up in a business. They're there to support you as well. What other internal beliefs?

Maybe I need to learn more. Awesome, we have DoorGrow Academy. We have a repository of training material we built up over the last decade of stuff that you can learn if you need to learn more in order to get the results. Cool, what about action? We have accountability and we have weekly check-ins that you're filling out each week to figure out whether you're doing it.

We've taken a look at all the internal beliefs that we could think of that clients had challenges with or that were preventing clients from getting results, and we figure out, how do we tackle that and how do we deal with that? We're always looking to improve in that area. Once internal beliefs are handled, there are no internal beliefs left, then people tend to go external.

So now the last domino that we need to knock over are all of their external beliefs. These are all the false beliefs they have about outside forces that could keep them from having success, things beyond their control. This could have to do with time, which keeps rolling on. It could have to do with the economy, which could be shifting. It could have to do with the real estate market at large. It could have to do with local laws and municipalities. It could have to do with the federal government.

All of these are external beliefs, COVID hitting. What if this happens? What if that? All these external things that they might have concerns about, how will this be dealt with? What will happen here? If you can tackle all the external beliefs that this investor might have and knock all of those down, you make a list, like I said, of the previous two dominoes. Make a list, figure out what all of them are, and figure out how am I going to deal with these so that I can make them feel safe.

Once you've eliminated all the external beliefs, you've thrown stones at all of those, the only logical conclusion left. They know that there's only one vehicle that makes the most sense. You've dealt with all their internal beliefs and concerns. You've dealt with all the external beliefs that they might have. The only logical conclusion left once those three dominoes are knocked over is to sign up with you, is to use you. There's nothing else that would make as much sense.

So if you build trust through this process, safety and certainty are really what these people want. This is a big secret for sales and property management. Nobody gives a shit about property management. This is not what they want.

They do not want to buy property management. They don't wake up in the morning and say property management is sexy and awesome. They don't read blogs about it and follow social media accounts about it. Unless they're property managers, they want safety and certainty. They want peace of mind. That's important for them.

So having the best vehicle, having dealt with all their internal beliefs, and dealing with all their external beliefs, they're going to have a high level of trust, safety, and certainty in you and in their ability to work with you. They know that you're going to be able to deal with all the external factors that they were concerned about. So there's nothing left to really prevent them from signing up.

Then you just say, if I can deal with all your concerns—internal beliefs and external beliefs—and I can explain why our vehicle is the best, would it be fair to say that you'd be wanting to sign up today? Is that fair? They'd say, yeah, probably.

If I can help you see how we're the best company in the market for you, how we can make sure that you feel safe and taken care of, that we can make sure that all of your external concerns are dealt with, and we have answers to those, would you be willing to sign up today? Is that fair? Then you say, yeah, that makes sense.

That's basically it. So put together your pitch. Go to the drawing board, you could write out each belief on a post-it note and get a whole list of all the internal, whole list of all the external, and figure out where all these vehicles—internal, external. Get clear on this.

You could build it out on a Trello board on trello.com and have each of these. This is how I put together my framework and my training for DoorGrow Secrets or the Seven Frameworks training that we give to potential clients for free that sells them on signing up. Some watch that training and then they just sign up.

It's like two hours long and I'm teaching a bunch of concepts, frameworks, and ideas for free, and adding value. I'm building trust, creating a relationship, and I'm helping them see reality. Really, I think that's what sales is really about. Sales isn't about manipulation. It isn't about control. It's about helping people see the real issue, the real problem, and helping them see the real path and how you can help them get what they want.

Sales really isn't about you getting what you want. It's about them being able to get what they want and you get what you want. This is that mutual thing. Your business is this magic bridge between your desires being fulfilled and their desires being fulfilled.

Hopefully this is helpful if you want to compound this. Once you have your pitch put together, add some images to it to drag this home. Don't fill it up with a lot of text, but some people have a hard time digesting all of this. So you'll notice in my training, I have slides and I have images to help people see and get these concepts quickly. So making a visual can help them understand these things quickly.

Have an image for each vehicle, have an image for each internal belief, each external belief, and you can crank right through these, explain them, and they'll get it. By the end, they'll feel like they have a lot more clarity than if you had no visual imagery. So you can put together a little slide deck or pitch based on these three dominoes. Then, of course, you can end it with a close or a call to action to solicit that.

Hopefully, this has been helpful for those listening. If you're wanting to take things to the next level, you want to become a badass at sales, you want to feel like you could close anybody that you talk to if you want them, and you want to shift from being the person that's trying to get everybody on to being the sexy guy or girl at the bar that does not feel the need to get with everybody, but you're a high value and people want to be with you.

If you want to shift that, then reach out to us at DoorGrow, and let's get you that Seven Frameworks training and our DoorGrow Secrets training and get you moving into our program hopefully. You'll be learning how to be really effective at closing more deals more quickly and doing things that are far more efficient than all those other vehicles.

I'm Jason Hull. I hope this was really helpful for those of you that are struggling during your pitch, losing deals. If you're dealing with anybody that is not a hot, warm lead, and your close rate is lower than you want it to be, then try applying this three dominoes principle to point them towards your ultimate opportunity or vehicle to help solve their problem. That's why businesses exist, to solve a real problem in the marketplace.

What if they don't have a problem? Then they don't need you. So you don't even need to pitch to them or sell to them. So identify the problem and then go into this pitch with your three dominoes. Knock them over and get some doors. I'm Jason Hull and I'm out. Bye, everybody. Until next time to our mutual growth.

You just listened to the DoorGrow show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrow Club. 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.

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 at doorgrow.com. 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.

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Nov 30, 2021

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull explains the cycle of suck in property management. It’s incredibly costly, stressful, and competitive.

The “cycle of suck” is a phrase and concept inspired by one of Jason’s clients that noticed as he got rid of bad doors and bad properties, he actually became more profitable. The cycle of suck concept is true, powerful, and effective. What are the four steps of the cycle of suck in property management, and how can you avoid, escape, and reverse it?

You’ll Learn...

[02:32] Step 1: You take on any client/owner or you take on a crappy client/owner.

[03:05] Step 2: You take on crappy properties, which means you have difficult tenants.

[03:37] Step 3: You have crappy tenants to manage if you have pushy property owners.

[04:44] Step 4: You have crappy reviews and a bad reputation in the marketplace.

[06:26] Don't get with everybody. Attract people you want because you are the prize.

[07:25] Protect Yourself/Team: Set standards, boundaries, limits when selecting clients.

[08:24] Sense of Scarcity: When competing based on price, it creates artificial industry.

[09:21] Reverse Cycle of Suck: Qualify clients, properties, tenants/owners, and reviews.

Tweetables

“The reality is, you don't want every client or you shouldn't want every client.”

“The owner is causing you to have more problems, more drama, more stress, and more challenges that are unnecessary simply because they're making things difficult.”

“You're going to have crappy tenants that are difficult, frustrated, and unhappy.”

“The best way to ensure that you're going to have really great tenants is to take on really great properties and really great owners.”

Resources

The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz

Transcript

At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and 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. It was tough for me to read that intro this time for some silly reasons. I have a bunch of things going on in the background on my computer and it distracted me. All right, so let's get into this. I was trying to think about what to talk about today. I want to go back to a concept that I've talked about for a long time now. I've mentioned it in several episodes, but I don't have an episode dedicated to it that I can push people towards, and that is the cycle of suck.

This is a phrase and the concept that I put together after talking to some clients. It was inspired by one of my clients who had mentioned that he noticed that as he got rid of bad doors and bad properties that he actually became more profitable. I had clients tell me about when I started to relate this idea of the cycle of suck. People would tell me about this book called The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz, which is a good book, and an author that's been on the podcast before.

This concept is true. It's powerful. It's really effective. Let me explain to everyone the cycle of suck in property management. If you google cycle of suck, it tends to be that my old DoorGrow article about it comes up. Let's talk about this. The cycle of suck is pretty simple. It's four steps.

The first step is you take on any client or you take on a crappy client. That's one of the big challenges. If you take on any client, the challenge then is that you're going to end up with a door. You're going to end up with bad clients. The reality is you don't want every client or you shouldn't want every client. If you're taking on every client, your operational costs are going to be a lot higher. So the very first step in the cycle of suck is crappy owners. You take on crappy owners.

The second step is that you take on crappy properties. If you take on crappy properties, you're going to have a much more difficult time. That means you're going to have much more difficult tenants. You're going to have a difficult situation. If the owner’s pushing back on things, even if the property is a nice looking property or a nice property, that property becomes a crappy property in your portfolio.

If you have crappy owners and crappy properties, which is the second step, third step in the cycle of suck is you're going to have crappy tenants. It doesn't matter how much tenant screening you do if the tenants have A-grade credit. If those owners that you are representing are pushing back on things, delaying things, and making things difficult for maintenance, coordination, and getting things taken care of in the property, these tenants are going to become bad tenants for you to be managing.

These residents will be super frustrated at you. You then end up becoming basically a [...] show for a slumlord, which means now you are in between the tenant and the owner. But the owner is causing you to have more problems, more drama, more stress, and more challenges that are unnecessary simply because they're making things difficult.

At this stage, you're in the cycle of suck. You're going to have upset and frustrated owners and difficult and challenging owners. You're going to have difficult properties, challenging properties, and sometimes just actually crappy looking and crappy maintained properties. You're going to have crappy tenants that are difficult, frustrated, and unhappy.

The fourth step is you're going to have crappy reviews. You're going to have a bad reputation in the marketplace. This kind of sums up the entire property management industry in aggregate, as a whole. There's a lot of property managers that are just taking on any client. They're trying to get on any property they can. Most people know that most property managers suck. Most come to me and they say, I'm going to start a property management business and all the other management companies in my market suck, which is why I'm going to start a property management business.

The challenge is this is the default for the industry. A lot of people fall prey or fall into this cycle of suck. The temptation is, they feel a sense of scarcity, and they feel like they need to take on every client. How do you escape this? How do you escape the cycle of suck?

To consider, the cycle suck is incredibly costly. Your operational costs on a bad property and a bad owner could take how much more time? Ten times the amount of time. Can one of your bad owners and one of your bad properties easily take 10? Maybe even it's 100 times more stressful, or 100 times more effort.

I don't know if it gets that extreme, but it can be significant. It adds up if you have multiple doors, multiple properties, and multiple owners that are part of the cycle of suck, that are not really what you deserve, what you should be managing, and what you should be dealing with. If you had the business that you wanted and the business of your dreams and types of clients you really wanted to be with and work with.

You have to recognize that you are the prize. I want all of my clients to recognize that they are the sexy girl at the bar or the sexy guy at the bar, meaning they don't get with everybody.

Here's the reality. Let's compare this to dating. If you get with everybody, you're low value. You're not going to attract the type of people that you want or the type of clients that you want in business. So don't get with everybody. Don't be that type of person. You know what they call somebody that gets with everybody, right? You don't want to be that. That's not interesting to the really great people that you want to be working with.

The cycle of suck is stressful. It's really stressful. It means you are forcing and subjecting your team—if you have a team—to really difficult people and really difficult situations. It’s a display or it's you showcasing to your team that you don't care about your team. If you really cared about your team and you protected your team, you would have standards. You would have boundaries. You would have limits. You would not take on every client.

If your team members aren't protected, if your team members don't feel supported, they're not going to stay. You will keep some team members, but they will not be the kind of team members that really can help you grow and scale your business. The type of team members that you really want to be around, these are going to be people that are willing to be walked all over or willing to take garbage and deal with difficult situations constantly.

I get that property management can be difficult, and I get that there are going to be difficult situations. But if you are artificially inflating that by taking on situations that you know deep down you shouldn't be, you're not going to be able to keep and retain team members as well.

The next thing I want to point out is how the cycle of suck is competitive. If you have a reputation online, then you compete with all the other such property management companies rather than being the standout. Because the good ones are all taking all the best clients and you're stuck getting everything at the bottom of the barrel. Then at that stage, you compete based on price. If you're competing based on price, that's not really a great place to be.

This is what drives the entire industry to feel artificial like there's a sense of scarcity. You don't want to be in a situation in which it feels like there is scarcity. Scarcity is what causes the entire industry to have pretty not great pricing, and property managers are not getting compensated well enough. It causes the entire industry to have a bad reputation. Most of the property management businesses in your market, it's why they suck.

How do you escape? If we reverse the cycle of suck, if we take this in reverse, and add each of the four stages, that means that you're going to qualify your clients. In the sales process, you're going to determine what are you willing to take on and what you’re not willing to take on. What do you really want? How do I build the business that I want to have instead of the business that I can build? Those are two very different businesses.

The second thing, the next step is you need to qualify the properties. What type of properties am I willing to take on? What situations are we willing to take on? What do I want our portfolio to look like? You need to be the sexy guy or girl at the bar that does not get with every property.

The next is qualifying tenants, so step three. Everybody tends to screen tenants. You know that even if you do all the tenant screening in the world, you're going to run into some issues, but you need to qualify tenants.

The best way to ensure that you're going to have really great tenants is to take on really great properties and really great owners. Even if the property is amazing, if you put a tenant into it that has A-grade credit, you've done all the screening in the world, and they are not able to get taken care of the way that they want.

The owner’s pushing back on things. They’re dragging their heels, things are difficult, it takes two weeks to get a water heater replaced. It takes over a week for the heater in the winter to get fixed. They're going to be upset and you're going to deal with a lot more stress and a lot more phone calls. Your team is going to be battered by this. It's going to be frustrating.

Then the fourth thing is you need to figure out how to play the game of reputation or reviews. You need a strategy in place for filtering. Each of these is filtering—filtering clients, filtering properties, and filtering tenants. You need a strategy for filtering out the negative reviews and getting more good reviews, which means capturing feedback proactively and preemptively before they get to the heightened state where they go nuclear and want to destroy your business online.

Also, by taking on really good clients, really good properties, and really good tenants, you're going to end up with a lot better reviews, by having a process in place to consistently get good positive reviews, which we talked about in our reputation secrets training that we have in DoorGrow Academy for our clients. We talk about how to implement a strategy of warm outreach to facilitate that and make sure that you're getting good reviews. Good reviews can be more effective than having the top spot on Google because it's going to feed you warm leads that have a really high close rate.

Then guess what happens. If you're getting really great reviews, and you have a good reputation in the marketplace because clients are happy with you and telling people about you, tenants are happy and telling people about you, and you have great properties, then you have a good reputation. You're going to attract more quality clients. You're going to attract more quality tenants. You're going to attract more quality properties to deal with in your portfolio.

I remember when I was living in Santa Clarita, there were two major property management companies that seemed to have all the doors there. It was very clear in talking with people in the community, they knew one company. They were talking about being really bad, and another company they were talking about being really great.

They had very different experiences. I talked to people that had dealt with one company for maintenance versus the other when they moved into a new property and how dramatically different it was for them as a resident. These kinds of things get around to owners and show up on their reputation as well.

Moving forward, if you want to get free from the cycle of suck, which means you need to come into your business and your sales process with a lot more confidence with recognizing that you have value, with recognizing that you are the prize that solves their problem, and you want to be more effective at sales, reach out to us at DoorGrow.

This is one of the foundational mindset things that I like to push into clients' heads to get them to recognize that you can have the business that you want. But you have to become the person with the right mindset, with the right thoughts, and with the right sales process that can have the business of your dreams. If you don't yet have the business of your dreams, as one of my mentors would say, then you're not the person that can run it yet.

My goal as a coach in this industry, in property management, is to help you become the entrepreneur that can have the business of your dreams. If we can support you in any way, if you would like some help with your business, reach out. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. Bye, everyone. Until next time, to our mutual growth.

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DGS 146: The 6 Core Functions of Business 0

Nov 23, 2021

Generating revenue must outpace expenses and the gap between the two is cash flow. Where are you at and what function do you need to focus on most to grow and scale your business, right now?

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about the six core functions of a business. It’s a concept he has expanded based upon what he learned from his mentors, Alex Charfen and Tim Francis.

You’ll Learn...

[01:22] Core Functions: Jason took what he learned, applied it to property management.

[02:14] Rate and Rank 1-5: Assess your business through the lens of core functions.

[03:16] Function #1: Lead Generation - get contact info from potential prospects.

[03:39] Function #2: Nurture - take and follow-up on lead opportunities to build trust.

[04:30] Function #3: Conversion/Sales - deal w/ objections, convince others, close deal.

[06:36] Function #4: Delivery/Fulfillment - do property management work promised.

[10:03] Function #5: Customer Lifetime Value - increase long-term retention.

[11:08] Function #6: Finances - internal cash flow, revenue, expenses, and profits.

Tweetables

“Finances was the additional function.”

“You cannot have all of these areas be great at the same time.”

“Your ability to convert and convince people during the sales process is a skill that develops over time and gets better and better and better the more you do it.”

Resources

Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

Transcript

DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.

At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business and their 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.

Today, I wanted to talk about what I would call the core functions. This is a concept that I built upon that I learned from one of my mentors, Alex Scharffen, and he had what he would call the five core functions of the business.

To me, it felt a little bit incomplete for myself and so eventually in working with Tim Francis, another mentor and coach and friend of mine here in Austin, I realized there was something else missing because I was focusing on those five core functions, but still, financially, I had some challenges. That's why I was working with Tim. He's a really good financial coach. He's one of the financial mentors that I've worked with. Finance was the additional function.

I'm going to take you through these core functions and this is a way you can assess your business. As you're listening along, feel free to assess your business through the lens of the core functions, take notes, and identify each of these core functions of the business, and rate them on a scale of one to five. One being the worst, five being it's amazing.

The most important thing I think to know about the core functions of the business and recognize is that it's impossible for all six of these core functions and the six core functions to be a level five at the same time. It's impossible. You cannot have all of these areas be great at the same time. As you grow and level up the business, you're going to notice deficiencies or you're going to want to level these areas up.

There are levels to each of these six areas in which you can get better and better and better over time. That being said, when something is doing really well, other things are going to feel constrained and be a challenge.

The first function that we'll chat about is lead generation. I call it lead gen for short. With lead gen, this is getting contact info and there are lots of different ways you can get contact info of potential people that might be interested in property management or potential prospects. In general, that's lead generation, so go ahead and rate that.

The next function that you want to focus on is nurture. This is where you take these leads, these opportunities, and you nurture them, which means you warm them up or inject more trust. You create more of a relationship to warm up these leads to move them towards the next function, so go ahead and rate your nurture.

Nurture relates to follow up, it relates to your ability to warm up these leads to build trust, to build relationships, and it could relate in your business the systems and processes related to this like whether you have a sales CRM like LeadSimple or something. Whether you've got the processes built out, you've got a good sales pipeline, you've got workflow you've got follow up, maybe having a follow up assistant, or needing one relates to the nurture category.

The next category is where nurture leads them to, which is conversion or sales. This is where you're closing the deal. Number three, conversion or sales. Go ahead and rate your ability in conversion or sales. This is to deal with objections, close the deal, convince them to work with you instead of the other company they're maybe talking to or the other companies they're vetting.

Your ability to convert and convince people during the sales process is a skill that develops over time and gets better and better and better the more you do it. Go ahead and rate yourself there. These first three relate basically to the front end of the business or sales. What I will hear a lot is people say, oh, my close rate, I'm like 90%. I'm a badass at sales, but then you ask them, where are you getting your leads? And they're like, they're mostly referrals, they’re referrals. Cool.

If you have a close rate less than 90% probably and they’re warm hot referrals, you probably have a problem. That's the cool thing. If you get the right type of lead generation, nurture almost becomes unnecessary. You don't really have to warm them up. Then conversion also is largely dealt with because you're going to get the deal, you just don't screw it up.

Now, when you start dealing with colder leads and colder prospects, my goal with clients is to make sure that you are a badass at conversion or sales and that you notice if that function feels weak right now because you've started maybe focusing on colder leads, or you're just not closing as many of the conversations that you've been prospecting or working with as you want. Maybe that function is weak. We can improve that significantly.

One of the easiest ways to collapse time on these first three functions is to just focus on warmer lead opportunities instead of advertising or cold lead opportunities. Cold leads would be like SEO, PayPerClick, content marketing, social media marketing, pay per lead services like [...] et cetera. Those take a lot more time and I've talked about that in other trainings and other podcasts, I'm sure many times.

Number four, this is more shifting into the back end of the business or behind the paywall. Once they've converted into a customer, they've signed the contract, they're now a client. The next step, item four, would be delivery or fulfillment.

Delivery, fulfillment largely is connected to operations. This is everything that you said you were going to do during the sales process. This is screening tenants, working to find tenants and tenant placement. This is maintenance, coordination, everything. All the work of doing property management. That is what is included in delivery fulfillment—dealing with tenants, all that kind of stuff. Generate reports, owner payouts, all of this that's all under delivery fulfillment operations.

What I'll notice a lot in the industry—for those that are struggling to grow—is they won't have operations delivery fulfillment. They'll have number four out of five or a really high level and yet then lead gen is like a one. If lead gen is one and delivery and fulfillment is like a five, you're making a big mistake in the business because what that tells me is you consistently keep focusing on the wrong things in your business. You're doing the wrong things.

Any function that you're focused on of these six functions, which we'll finish and go through in a second, any function you’re focused on primarily and trying to maintain it to five, that is not your weakest function. That's where your time, energy, focus, attention, cash, effort, et cetera are going, you are making a mistake. That means you are distracted.

Those are distractions because what the business needs most right now is whichever of these functions is weakest, that's where your five currencies I talked about time, energy, focus, cash, and effort should be focused on. This is where all that should be going so that you can get a return and you can level that up.

The goal is to level up the weakest function, and then if that's now a strength, now your other functions will appear to be weaker in relation. Now those you’re going to rate at a lower level and you're going to want to level those up.

This is the juggle of running a company and running a business is figuring out what do I need to focus on most right now. If you are at the helm, you are the entrepreneur, you are the leader, you are the business owner, you need to provide this leadership to the business to your team. You need to help them figure out what is our weakest function to focus on.

Too often, the business owners continue to focus on the function that they're already good at, that the business already has at a five, and they try to keep it as a five. You have to be willing to let a five slip in order to get something from a one or a two, and that's okay. Get those up to a three, a four, or maybe even a five. If delivery or fulfillment, for example, operation slips to maybe a three in relation because now you're getting so much business, it's uncomfortable, you can't onboard everybody, and things are starting to slip, cool. Now it's time to shift your attention and focus to that function. If you assess this regularly on a quarterly basis and brainstorm with your team through these functions, you will be able to make really good decision-making.

The next function after delivery fulfillment or operations, number five, is the customer’s lifetime value. The customer lifetime value or CLV includes retention, it includes resell, it includes upsell, and it includes your pricing. You want to make sure that your fee structure is good. That you've got really good fees in place so you're getting paid really well for what you do. That you're maximizing the lifetime value of these clients in that way.

Also, you're able to focus on the right types of clients in your lead generation and in closing that are going to have a lengthy retention rate. You're able to retain clients long term, or you're able to convert short term property management clients, not sure short term rentals, but accidental investors, for example, into long term buy and hold investors. You have some process maybe for that.

You want to increase the customer lifetime value. If you're losing a lot of customers due to sales right now, then that's the area to focus on right now. There's a weakness maybe on your CLV, for example, or maybe you just need to increase lead generation in order to counteract that.

Number six is finances. The financial area of the business means the internal finances for you as the business owner and for the business. This means cash flow, revenue, expenses, profit, reporting, financial decision making. If you do not feel like this is your strength or this is a weakness in the business, this is something that you will need to work on.

One of the initial baby steps I like to recommend is usually implementing profit first. You can check out my previous episode with the author of the book Profit First, Mike Michalowicz. You can just search for Profit First DoorGrowShow on YouTube if you want to pull that up or on iTunes, podcast app, or whatever.

I'm a big fan of Profit First. We operate with the Profit First system. We've taken things financially beyond that to another level in working with some of the financial coaches and financial books that I've gone through. I think that's a really fantastic starting place. It gets you out of the feast and famine of cash flow cycles getting scarce, then trying to make money, and the hunt and the chase constantly of trying to escape.

The way I like to compare finances is, the analogy I like to use is Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones running from the boulder. Everybody remembers this iconic scene in Indiana Jones and I believe the Temple of Doom and he's running from the boulder. He's just taken the statue, it set some sort of booby trap off, and now this boulder is chasing after him. He's running for his life.

Indiana Jones running is generating revenue, that's revenue. Revenue has to outpace that big boulder, which is expenses. The gap in between Indiana Jones running and the boulder coming after him, that gap, is cash flow. Some of that cash is already spent so there's really just free cash is the real gap.

Some of that cash is already going to be spent, you know expenses are coming due, you have to have it set aside. Profit first is going to help you kind of get this in alignment a little bit more. It's going to help you get better cash flow and it's basic. Some of you are basically borderline accountants, so this isn't maybe as big of an issue. Maybe the finances are tight.

A lot of entrepreneurs are more visionary-oriented, they're dreamers. Sometimes they're hiring staff too quickly. They're starting to focus on some of the other functions, building up operations maybe, and they're spending more money. All of these things go hand in hand. Finances also relate to the type of lead generation that you can do, all of these things interplay with each other.

My goal for those listening to this episode is to take a look through these six lenses of your business to figure out what does the business need most right now? What does the business need most? For those that are like why does he add the six functions of finances?

One of the things that's absolutely possible in some businesses is to generate enough deals, enough sales, and enough business to where you can't deliver quick enough on it to get the return or get paid on it and you can actually run out of money by doing too much sales.

Just focusing on revenue all the time in a top-down just revenue focus goal is not always the most effective financial goal in a business. It's the most typical, but that's not always the most effective. You can actually go too fast and grow too quickly if you're not taking into account the financial aspect in relation to the other core functions.

Take a look at your business, chat with your team, go through and assess your core functions. We have a more formal brainstorming methodology that will take clients through these functions to really assess their business. At a quick easy glance at your business, you can look through and just ask yourself, where are we at in relation to these functions. You can ask your team as well to get a perspective, and you will then have some pretty good eye feedback and a pretty good idea of which function you need to focus on most in your business.

If you find that operations are a big constraint for you right now, what you'll find then is lead gen and conversion will be heavily impacted because you won't really have confidence in your product, in your service, in your offering because you lack integrity.

If you are delivering fulfillment of three or less, and you're trying to go out and create new business, you probably feel like you're lying to people by saying, hey, we're really awesome. We're the best property managers. We do a great job. When deep down you're like a two in doing a great job on a scale of one to five. All of these impact each other.

Let's figure out what's your weakest function that you need to focus on right now and where does your attention needs to go. If you could use some coaching or some help, we'd love to get you into our DoorGrow & Scale Mastermind. Reach out to us, you can check us out at doorgrow.com. You can also join our free Facebook group by going to doorgrowclub.com.

Facebook's getting a little weird lately with censorship and craziness, so we're seriously considering exploring, shifting out of the DoorGrow Club to maybe Telegram or something else. Let me know your feedback on that if that sounds interesting because I think there's going to be more outages with Facebook, more censorship, and more challenges. I'm less and less of a fan of Facebook every day.

Let us know, but currently, our internal groups are in Telegram so we're solid there because it seems to be really reliable. Anyway, reach out to us. We're happy to help you figure out how to grow your business and scale your business. We can help you with getting things in alignment on the operation side. DoorGrow OS, building these systems, building a planning cadence, helping to get operators in the business, helping to get people to take stuff off your plate and to offload. There are solutions for each of these functions that we can point you towards as we coach you and as we help you scale and level up your business, so please reach out.

That's it for today. As always, my goal is for everybody to grow. To our mutual growth, everybody. Until next time, bye.

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DGS 145: Are You Ready For A Property Management BDM? 0

Nov 16, 2021

Do you enjoy sales? If you feel like you don’t, then you’re not good at doing business development. Why not just hire someone to do it for you? You have to get good at sales to be a business owner.

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about and answers: When are you ready to get a property management business development manager (BDM)?

You’ll Learn...

[01:19] When are you ready to hire a BDM? Wait until you are ready.

[01:58] How to know when you are ready to have a BDM to gain freedom and success.

[03:08] Business Owner: Learn how to sell, close to train your BDM to be successful.

[04:04] Partnership: If you’re not willing to do it, bring in experienced and proven BDM.

[05:33] Exception: Clients with BDM invested in and values business to get results.

[07:24] Sales can be fun, once you learn how to do specific actions and get good at it.

[08:47] Level Suck: You have to do the work. You have to suck. That’s where you start.

[10:34] 4 Reasons: Live your purpose to get fulfillment, freedom, contribution, support.

[11:16] Right Type of Person: Give them your knowledge, experience to surpass you.

[12:18] Jason’s Recommendation: Do the work because there are no shortcuts.

[14:45] Sales Challenge: Figure out how to make it easy and not painful, uncomfortable.

Tweetables

“Sales is the lifeblood of the business. This is where money and revenue flow into the business.”

“Usually, we don’t want to do it because we aren’t good at it. When we’re not good at something, it’s not very fun.”

“You have to do the work, and you have to suck, and that’s where we all start.”

“I know what good looks like, and I know what great looks like, and great is better than me.”

Resources

DGS 144: 3 Magic Questions To Close More Property Management Deals 0

Transcript

One of the things I wanted to talk about is a common question I get asked and a common situation is when are you ready to hire a BDM? This question came up this week. One of my clients thinks they want to get a BDM. I've heard lots of people hire BDMs and fail. This is more common than hiring BDMs and having success. This is the default.

Anytime I hear somebody excited, they hire a BDM. BDM either quits, it doesn't work out. You may have tried to do this yourself. The challenge with this is that a lot of people tried to do this, but they weren't ready. Let's chat a little bit about how to be ready to have a BDM and how you know when you're ready to have a BDM. If you feel like you don't enjoy sales, you're not good at doing business development. BDM stands for business development manager. It's basically a salesperson in a property management business.

If you feel like you don't like doing sales, you want to bring somebody in to do this, and you're thinking, well, I suck at this. I don't want to do this. This is uncomfortable so I should just hire somebody. The challenge is sales is the lifeblood of the business. This is where money and revenue flow into the business. If you are making that mistake, you need to realize you are not ready to get a BDM because you cannot train them. You cannot onboard them. You don't have the scripts. You don't have the ability to bring them into the business in a way that they will be successful.

I probably touched on this before, even recently, but I want to reiterate that if you feel like you're not good at sales and you don't know how to do it, then your only option is to bring somebody in that is already really good and proven at this or you have to learn to do this. For most of you, that means you need to learn how to sell. You need to learn how to close. I know a lot of times there's resistance. Maybe it's that you feel like it's uncomfortable for some reason.

That discomfort is something as a business owner and entrepreneur, really, almost everything is sales in some way, shape, or form, which is just convincing people to do what's in their best interest, which is helping people and benefiting people, getting your kids to eat their food, getting your kids to do their homework. That's all sales. You have to get good at sales to be a business owner. It doesn't mean you have to be the salesperson.

But if you're not willing to do it, then you need to bring in another business owner. You're going to need to share some sort of relationship or create some sort of partnership with somebody who is a proven BDM that's added hundreds of doors to a property management business.

They will come in, but this is not going to be a cheap person that's a brand new first-time BDM who's never done this, that you can just go find somebody that knows how to do sales, bring them into the business, and they'll have success. That's not reality. You need to create a partnership. If you're really not the person to do this, you need to go find somebody that's at your level. They may want half your business if you're just starting out. If you are experienced and you have a good sizable portfolio, maybe you can bring them in some sort of percentage of the revenue or percentage of the business.

It would need to be a pretty tempting situation for them to come in. There needs to be an incentive. These are people that could probably build their own business up. I know BDMs that have added 700 doors to a business and then gone on to another business and did something similar again. These are rare unicorn people that have had the experience that has done this. If you don't know how to do this, you're not going to be able to bring somebody in that's starting from scratch and really be able to support them and convince them and tell them what to do.

Now, the only exceptions that I've seen to this, I have seen some clients come to me with a BDM. This BDM showed up and was invested in the business value, the success of the business, showed up to all coaching calls with me, got involved in the content in DoorGrow Academy, and they learned as if they were the business owner. They wanted to become good at selling, good at promoting the business, good at prospecting, good at driving revenue, and good at their job.

They were invested in it so they put in the work and the time to do it. They followed my advice and they were able to get great results. One client had, in just a short period of time, three maybe four months or less, had 300 doors, largely through creating a really good partnership with one owner that had a lot of doors, which is a dangerous situation normally.

Normally, I probably wouldn't recommend doing that. They were aggressive and they were able to start adding doors. Then they landed a partner that is going to bring to the table hundreds of doors in the long run. That's a really high level of investor.

Like I said, that can be dangerous, right? I'm sure many of you can guess why. You're putting too many eggs in one basket. That owner has a little bit too much power over you. Then later, they had to have a conversation about setting some boundaries and some clear expectations to really determine this relationship and to be willing to walk away from that relationship. They're in a position of power to be able to be a business owner instead of this person, this investor’s employee. It's possible and I've seen BDMs come in and do really great work, but it's rare. It's rare to find somebody that's willing to do and that wants to do that.

If you are wanting to go the more typical route, which means you need to learn how to sell. Usually, we don't want to do it because we aren't good at it. When we're not good at something, it's not very fun. It sucks to go play a sport like basketball if you suck at basketball. Once you get good at basketball, basketball is a lot of fun for people that play basketball.

Golf, maybe you sucked at golf, initially. If you're a golfer, once you got somewhat good at it, it'd be a lot more fun. Maybe you found a way to make it fun even though you just still suck. Here's the thing, you need to get to the place where you have put in the reps, you've done the work initially, to get good at sales, to figure out what works, what scripts to say, you have to get past that pain and that discomfort. Otherwise, you're always going to project that onto your team members.

You're never going to be able to guide them in the right way. You're never going to be able to know if they're doing a good job or not because you don't even know what a good job looks like because you haven't been able to do it.

If you're expecting to push just results on them like get these results and I'll give you a commission. You're setting them up for failure because they need specific actions. They need the scripts. They need the language. They need to understand the target audience. They need to know the objections and how to deal with those. These are the things you learn by sucking and doing the work. You have to do the work and you have to suck. That's where we all start. We all start at level suck.

If you are willing to suck, you don't suck for very long because something's uncomfortable. There's pain and you change. You change quickly. You learn and adapt. That's why you're an entrepreneur. You are an entrepreneur because you are highly adaptable. You can change quickly. You can pivot. You can learn. You may have been rejected at some point in the past. Maybe when you were young, you got your feelings hurt, somebody rejected you or made you feel small or whatever.

Now, approaching people, starting things, or initiating seems threatening and dangerous to your brain. But your brain is a liar. Your brain is lying because it's trying to protect you. But if you actually do the work, and if you do the prospecting tactics and methods that I share in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind and you do the work, then you're going to get results. It's inevitable. I’ve seen clients come in over and over and over again that were terrible at sales. They’re not good at it and didn't think they liked it. They learned. They learned how to be good at it.

The common phrasing I hear is, it's become like a game to me. It's become fun. It's fun when you have the skill and the knowledge to be able to be good at it and then it becomes fun. It's like playing. You realize it's not about being pushy or whatever beliefs you have about sales. It's not about manipulating people. It's not about bothering people, prospecting, it's not. You are offering them some benefit. You're solving people's problems. You are making a difference in the world. That's really what sales look like.

Sales become fun because it allows you to live your purpose and to make a difference and get those four reasons I've talked about before. You're getting more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and you're making a difference and more support.

Then eventually, if you have other things that are more fun for you—they give you more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, more support in the business. What you really love and want to be doing, maybe it's on the operation side, maybe it's on the accounting side, or maybe it's just not sales.

Once you are marginally good at it, a little bit good at it, you can bring in somebody else, get them probably to your point. If they're the right personality type, the right type of person that can be good at this, you can give them your knowledge, help share with them what's working, give them your experience, and they will then surpass you. They will supersede you.

I have team members on my team and I've done every role that exists in my business. But I have team members now that are all better at what they do than me. I've done it so I know. I know what good looks like and I know what great looks like, and great is better than me.

I bring in people that are better than me at doing these things. I'm actually in this situation now that I have somebody over sales and marketing on my team. Now he is offloading and bringing on and we're training two new salespeople. I'm rebuilding my sales team, so to speak, and I'm no longer doing the sales. I've been doing the sales for the last little while as we launched a new product and service, this mastermind that we've had for the last year.

My recommendation is to put in your reps, do the work, there are really no shortcuts to this. If you're willing to experience that pain, challenge, or whatever your brain is telling you a story, I think you'll realize it's never as bad as your brain makes it out to be.

I've seen entrepreneurs in property management with hundreds of doors that are down about 200 doors due to sales over previous years, which is very typical of the larger companies right now. They’re feeling pain and worried that they're not going to be able to pay team members. They’re going to have to lay some people off and try to hire a BDM through a BDM placement company. Then that person spends time and money trying to get them into the situation, expecting another company to be able to train them, bring them in and it didn't work.

I've seen small companies hire BDMs and bring them in, and it didn't work. You have to do this. My recommendation is to tell your brain to shut up. It's trying to lie to you and protect you. Sometimes you have to do the thing that's uncomfortable, even though it feels like you don't want to. You need to be willing to say, [...] to your feelings and do it deep down, you know you should do. If this is resonating with you, you deep down know that you need to figure this out. You have to eventually figure this out. You don't have to do it forever. You don't have to be the best at it. If you're going to run a business, you have to be able to sell your business or services. You have to be able to figure out how to do that.

A lot of you are the salesperson, you are the BDM for your business. If you're doing great, awesome. If I can help pour a little gasoline on that fire, that'd be even better. I love being able to do that. I love being able to double a client's close rate, increase the amount of deals they’re closing, help them figure out how to get more deals at a higher price point to eliminate the scarcity that exists in the industry, and eliminate the race to the bottom in terms of price. I can help you do that.

If you are not that personality type and you are avoiding sales, you find it uncomfortable. You don't want to do it. My challenge to you is let's figure out how to make it easy, and it doesn't have to be uncomfortable. I'm really good at helping people figure out how can we make this easy, not painful, and help destroy those lies that your brain’s telling you that people are going to be mean to you, people are going to feel uncomfortable, people are going to reject you, or whatever it is your brains trying to scare you and tell you that's true. Those are stories.

You can either keep those stories, or you can get results, but you can't have both. You can't keep these stories that are holding you back from doing sales or being successful at sales. Then also try and offload the sales. Train somebody else that doesn't know how to do it when you aren't in a state of integrity or know how to do it yourself. Let's get you great at it. It's not that hard to do.

I really believe sales is all about creating trust. It's being real with people. It's caring about other people that have been so caught up in your own head, worried about what you think, what you sound like and look like, how they're perceiving you, and/ all that uncomfortable stuff. You really just need to start getting out of yourself, focusing on other people, and caring about other people. I can help you make that shift.

Hopefully this is helpful for those of you that are considering getting a BDM, thinking it's some gateway to freedom and success. You aren't ready for that gateway of freedom or success until you have all the ducks in a row to be able to really support this person so that if they are good, they're actually going to stay. Because if they're good and you don't give them the support they need, they're going to be out of there. I hear a lot of people complain about BDMs and fire BDMs. When I really dig deeper and ask questions, it wasn't probably the BDM’s fault.

They sounded like a typical effective, probably good salesperson who just wasn't given the proper support, wasn't given the leads, wasn't given the attention, wasn't given the scripts, and wasn't given the knowledge of how to go out and create a business. They were expected to just magically figure it all out without any real guidance.

Property management is a different industry than a lot of industries. Just because somebody was successful in sales in another industry doesn't mean they'll necessarily be successful in this. It means they have the capacity, but they also need guidance. If you don't have the guidance to give, reach out, and let's get this figured out for you.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful for those that have BDMs that aren't really performing up to speed or you haven't really gotten up to speed in your own role as a BDM. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

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Nov 2, 2021

When you're competing for a sale or deal to close, to get a property management contract, or to get a referral partner, whatever it is you're trying to do, you need to take things to a deeper level than your competition.

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about three magic questions to ask during a sales conversation. When you ask these questions, potential clients will know that you care and want to help them, and you're going to close more deals far more easily.

You’ll Learn...

[01:50] Pendulum Principle: There are two extremes when it comes to salespeople.

[02:21] Middle Ground: Find the middle to be much more effective and productive.

[04:16] Question #1: Why now, what's changed? Client identifies, explains pain point.

[06:54] Question #2: What’s the biggest challenge with your rental property right now?

[08:42] Question #3: What result would you hope to see to know this was a success?

[11:02] Default vs. Creative Future Close: Depends on what challenges clients want.

[15:39] Primary Goal: Most people seek safety and certainty as their higher priority.

Tweetables

“You have to figure out where the middle is. The middle is the greatest place of power. It's where you should be. It's the point of truth.”

“Sales and deals happen at the speed of trust.”

“A business exists to solve a problem. If they don't have a problem for you to solve, they don't need you. There's no point.”

“You are selling safety and certainty, not property management.”

Resources

DGS 143: It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy in Your Property Management Business 0

Transcript

All right, we are live. Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker.

DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.

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

In today's episode, we are going to be talking about three magic questions. I was doing my coaching call today, and yes it's a Tuesday. It's a day early because I'm going on vacation tomorrow. We did our group call a day early and one of my clients, he was talking about sales, and had some questions related to sales, and was having some challenges going into the conversation and being confident.

I talked about a principle called the Pendulum Principle which basically—a quick version of it, we could do a future episode on this maybe—if you recognize that there are two extremes. On one extreme you could be hyper-confident, maybe pushy as a salesperson, and a little bit too much. Then on the other side you could be a little bit not aggressive enough, too docile, not ask for the sale, and not try to close them that sort of thing.

You have to figure out where the middle is. The middle is the greatest place of power. It's where you should be. It's the point of truth. You need to figure out where you are and he was on the side of being a little bit too maybe nice, friendly, but not aggressive enough. He recognized it so I said, take the step into what feels like the complete opposite, being a little bit too aggressive, because if you aim for that, you'll actually hit middle and you'll be much more effective and productive.

We talked about how it doesn't have to be mean, or you don't have to be pushy or aggressive to go for the close. One of the things that he then got into were these three magic questions. I'm going to share these and we can talk about some other cool stuff related to sales maybe in a future episode. These are three magic questions that I find to be very powerful that I use during a sales conversation to take things a bit deeper.

If you want to beat out your competition, when you're competing for a sale or a deal to close a client, to get a property management contract, to get a referral partner, whatever it is you're trying to do, you need to be able to take things to a deeper level than your competition.

Things need to get a little bit more intimate, a little bit more relationship-oriented. There needs to be a little bit more connection because that's where trust exists. Sales and deals happen at the speed of trust, I often say. Here are three questions that I use in order to deepen the conversation and take things to a more real or more raw level.

Question number one that you should ask that I brought up is, why now? If somebody comes to you and they're like, hey, I've been looking to getting a property manager. I've had this property for many years, or hey, I got one of your mailers and it's from a year or two ago. A really great question to ask in the sales process.

For example, if you've been listening to my podcast for many years now, and then you get on a sales conversation, you're like, hey, now I'm interested. A great question to ask is, why now? Why now? What's changed is kind of the additional part of that. Why now, what's changed?

You've been looking at doing this for a while, or you've obviously had this property for a lengthy amount of time. What's changed recently that's caused you to be interested in property management? Or why now are you looking at getting a property manager? What's changed? Help me understand that.

That's where really deep stuff tends to come out. I've heard crazy why now responses from potential clients. I've heard things. I had one potential client say, I'm dying, I have this health issue, and I need to get this business healthy and ready quickly for other people to take ownership of it.

I've had people say that they just recently got divorced, so now they're looking to make a move, change things, and improve the business. You never know what's going to come out, but when you give them the opportunity to tell you, well, hey, something must have happened recently because things have changed. Why now?

Even just saying, why is now the time for you to do this? They shift into trying to explain, well, this is why it's important to do this now. Just understanding that is going to reveal some pain. In sales, to close deals, you need to know what pain or discomfort they want to move away from and what pleasure they want to move towards? Where's paradise for them?

If you know those two things, that's really the crux of all you need to know in order to close the deal. Can I then help move them away from that pain? Can I help them move them towards that paradise that they want, that pleasure that they want? If I can do those two things, then all I have to do is future pace them and paint this roadmap for the future in which they can do that.

The next question I love to ask that is relevant to uncovering the pain is the biggest challenge. What is your biggest challenge in dealing with this rental property that you're experiencing right now? I would usually ask, what is the biggest challenge you're experiencing in your property management business right now?

Cool, I can help you with that. I've heard it before. I've dealt with hundreds and hundreds of property management businesses, gotten to see on the inside. It's rare that I ever hear a problem that's new. You probably have heard of all the same things in property management, all the similar problems. You're probably not going to hear anything too new from an investor, so can you solve that problem? Yeah, you probably can. That's why a business exists to solve a problem. If they don't have a problem for you to solve, they don't need you. There's no point.

If I have somebody come to me and I say, well, what's the biggest challenge in your business? And they say, well, honestly, our business is really great right now and I don't have any problems. I say, cool. I'm totally open to that. I don't know how I can help you then.

Then I might ask a follow-up question, well, why are we talking? How do you think I might be able to help you? Well, I was thinking maybe you could do this and help me do this. Okay, cool. Maybe I can, depending on what they say. You need to figure out what the challenge is, the pain, or the problem. What's the biggest challenge you're dealing with right now with this rental property with your tenant, or with your investment portfolio? That's a really powerful question to ask.

The third question that can be incredibly powerful is what I call the crystal ball question. This is a question that is helpful for creating a potential future and future pacing a client that includes you. The crystal ball question usually looks something like this, usually, you're going to use the one-year timeframe. Maybe you even use three or five years, depending.

The crystal ball question would look like this, hey, Mr. Owner, let me ask you a question. Just thinking about the future, if we were to work together a year from now, looking back on this moment, if you signed up with us a year from now looking back, what would have had to have happened for you to realize this was a great decision? Or what result would you be hoping to see to know that this was a success?

Then they start to use their imagination, which is powerful. They start to imagine a future. They're imagining they signed up with you because you brought that into the conversation, and they're imagining this potential future timeline a year from now that exists with some great result. There's enough time to get to a result. They're imagining that you were a contributor to that, and so they're creating all of this in their head.

The brain's super powerful. It's an amazing supercomputer at doing this kind of thing, so they're going to imagine this and then they're going to tell you what this is, what this looks like. Which is basically saying—you're just asking—how do we know that we can help you? What does winning look like if we were to work together? What does that look like?

They might say, we're getting all of our rent collected, finally. We've got great tenants in place. The properties are all updated. Everything's going great, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can then say, that sounds awesome. I'm confident we can help you do that. Let me share some stories or examples that are similar to that we've already done so you can see this can be a reality for you. We've created this reality for other clients.

I usually call that close the default future close versus the creative future close. The default future, this is what you're going to continue to get more of—more challenging tenants, more situations like you've dealt with. You mentioned these things that are challenging.

If you do not work with us, this is probably what will happen or maybe they've had bad experiences with another property manager because there's a lot of sucky property managers out there. If they mentioned a bad experience when you're asking these questions like, why now, and what's your biggest challenge. You say, hey, well, you can continue to go down that path and choose another bad property manager and another bad one, or you could work with us, and here's how this would work out differently.

First of all, we're not going to do custom reports for you and we're not going to let you micromanage us, so we're not going to do things the way these other companies worked with you because you're trying to run them from the back seat. We are going to be in control and in the driver's seat in helping take care of this property, and that will allow you to trust us more. We're going to take ownership of this and we're going to be really good at this. This is what we do for clients that are in your situation.

They're going to go, cool, and they'll say, but I want this. You'll say, we are not going to do that custom report for you and here's why. We're not going to do that for you and here's why. Or there's a fee for this, or there's a fee for that.

Once you explain why they're going to go, oh, this person is on top of stuff. They know what they're doing. I can finally relinquish control and give up all that safety and certainty I'm trying to force to create in them. They're going to just provide it for me. I can trust them, and I can lean into their frame that they're going to do a great job and provide good service.

If you know why now, their biggest challenge, and the crystal ball, you've asked those questions, you've got those answers, if you know that, you should have a pretty deep conversation with them and really understand how you can best help them. If you connect that to other tactics I have like the golden bridge formula and other things to create trust beforehand, you ask really great qualifying questions, this should be very easy for you to create a relationship with these people, if you want it.

Anyway, that's my tip for today is to ask those three big questions. Start asking, well, why now? Very easy to ask. Why are you doing this now? Why didn't you do this a year ago? You’ve had this property for a while, why are you doing it now instead of later this year? Why is now the time to do this? Why now? You'll get really interesting answers.

Ask what's the biggest challenge that you're dealing with right now because that's going to help you understand their current immediate pain. Maybe there isn't anything really major or really immediate, but help them that you could go deeper and say, well, what challenges have you dealt with that you don't want to deal with in the future?

Then the future pacing question is a crystal ball question. Looking forward, if I had a crystal ball or you had it and you could see a year from now and you would sign up with us. We're working together and we've done a really great job, what would that look like to you? Where would you be a year from now? What would your life look like? How would that be different with us having been a part of it?

Hopefully that's helpful to all of you listening. I hope that you find those questions as useful as I've found them to be in the sales process. These were born just out of a real desire to care and take care of my clients, to really understand what they were going through, and figure out how can I help them, what do they need, and can I help them.

When you start to ask really good questions like that, they will know that you care, especially if you're coming from a space of wanting to help them and you're going to close more deals far more easily. Because a lot of companies are spending way too much time trying to sell property management and they don't give a [...] about property management. They don't care about you or your business, they care about what they need, they care about their pain, their challenges, what they want, and outcomes they want.

If you can help them see that you can help them get out of the pain and get the things that they want, they're going to want to work with you, they're going to want to sign up with you, they're going to feel safe with you, and trust you. Remember, their primary goal usually is safety and certainty. That's more important than the four reasons, which I talked about in a previous episode of fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support. They want safety and certainty.

After that, then they would like those things. But for most people, safety and certainty is a higher priority. That's why they want and get a property manager. You are selling safety and certainty, not property management. Just make sure you get that.

That's it. Hopefully this has been helpful, and until next time, to our mutual growth. I'm Jason Hull of DoorGrow. Reach out if you would like some help growing and scaling your property management business.

Quickly, just got off the phone with a past client, he was like, are people losing properties like doors due to sales right now? I said yes, everywhere, but not the clients that are in my mastermind, which you should join. The clients that are in my mastermind, one of our clients has added over 200 doors since joining in November. That would be impossible by spending money, doing advertising, doing SEO, doing pay per click, doing content marketing, doing social media marketing.

We would get you doing things that actually work that are far more effective and it costs him nothing. It actually took him less time to get those doors on than it would take if you spent a whole bunch of money on cold lead marketing because then those cold leads take more time than warm leads and you get less results.

If you would like some great results and you would like to start adding doors, scaling your business, getting out of the day-to-day operations, having more fulfillment, more freedom, more fun in your business, reach out. I love helping clients get that. That's what I live for. That's what I get to do every day. I love doing it, and we would love to help you grow your property management business. All right. Bye, everyone.

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Oct 26, 2021

Does it feel like your property management business is crazy, overwhelming, or maybe too much? It doesn't matter how big or small the property management business, it can be crazy or calm. It’s your choice to make.

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about his goal to eliminate the crazy. Business owners need to be calm for their team to feel that sense of calm in the workplace.

You’ll Learn...

[02:41] Basecamp: CEO runs calm workplace by eliminating and reducing interruptions.

[04:03] Entrepreneurial Myth: Crazy work is a badge of honor, not a badge of failures.

[04:31] Adrenaline Addiction: Workplace doesn’t have to be crazy or stressful.

[05:20] Planning: Communication in business focused on high-paced growth is critical.

[06:15] Tactical vs. Strategic Leadership Role: Who has enough vision, clarity on goals?

[08:14] Don’t be involved in everything. Stay in your area of genius and offload the rest.

[10:08] Key Ingredient: Create synchronous communication system to write, think, post.

[11:24] Four Reasons: Build great team to get fulfillment, freedom, contribution, support.

Tweetables

“All this painful stuff that we go through as entrepreneurs is some sort of badge of honor. Really, it's actually a badge of failures.”

“Good planning in business actually decreases communication that's necessary. It increases the calm. It increases clarity.”

“The idea is you want to create systems in place that protect you and insulate you from immediate urgency that is unnecessary.”

“Create calm workplaces. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. It can be calm. The business really should be fun.”

Resources

Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried

It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried

Transcript

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

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

In today's episode, we're going to be chatting a little bit about fun. I asked in my mastermind group today—we had a pretty good group turnout today—and I asked by show of hands, how many of you feel your business is crazy right now? You would categorize it as crazy, overwhelming, maybe too much, whatever. At least half the hands went up, which I can't say I'm surprised, but my goal is to get people out of crazy.

One of the things I wanted to talk about today—what I chatted about with them—is eliminating crazy in the business. One of the things to realize is that it doesn't matter how big the business is, it doesn't matter how small the business is. Your business can be crazy or it can be calm, and this really is just a choice. Is it possible to have a calm business even if it's really large? For your experience as a business owner to be calm in the business and for your team to feel that sense of calm from you and it to be a calm workplace, yes it is.

I had a business once upon a time. Same business but it used to feel a bit crazy. I hung out with the CEO of Basecamp, Jason Fried. I won't go into how we got on a call, but basically we were in some sort of chat. I was watching some live stream and I made some comments. He said he wanted to do a call with me, so we did a call together and I hung out with him.

This guy is what I perceived as a high-functioning CEO of a multimillion dollar company. He's written books on remote teams. He's got a book called Remote Work, virtual teams, software, and running companies. He hung out with me for probably about 90 minutes. He just showed me how he ran his business, how he basically ran a calm workplace, and how it was quiet. It shifted my perspective so dramatically. The biggest perspective shift I had was eliminating and reducing interruptions.

Years later, he came out with a book kind of recent. His book is called, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. For those watching the video you can see this here, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. It's got this on the cover. It's got crossed out 80-hour work weeks, packed schedule, super busy, endless meetings, overflowing inbox, unrealistic deadlines, can't sleep, Sunday afternoon emails, no time to think, stuck in the office, all-nighters, and chat blowing up.

There's this entrepreneurial sort of myth that it's the hustle, the grind, hard work, tenaciousness, tenacity, and all this painful stuff that we go through as entrepreneurs is some sort of badge of honor. Really, it's actually a badge of failures. It’s really what that is. It's showing that you are creating a stressful environment for your team, and you're running a stressful workplace. You probably—if you're honest—are addicted like a lot of entrepreneurs to the adrenaline and the stress.

Our body gets accustomed to things we crave and want more of whatever emotion we tend to feel a lot. We get better and better at craving it and feeling it. Our brain actually wires differently over time to experience more of that chemical reaction of whatever emotion that we're experiencing, whether it's anger, fear, stress, or whatever. It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. This is a really great book. He came out later talking about some of the stuff that he taught me on that call.

Now, I don't agree with everything in this book. The one thing I really don't agree with is eliminating meetings and what he talks about not having planning or something like that. I believe that having really good planning in business actually decreases communication that's necessary. It increases the calm. It increases clarity. Planning, I believe, is critical in a business, especially one that's focused on high-paced growth, has a lot of moving parts, and communication is really important. It actually significantly decreases your communication.

If you have an annual planning meeting, quarterly planning meeting, a monthly planning meeting where you're breaking down these things into smaller and smaller bite-sized chunks, weekly planning meeting, or maybe a 15-minute daily huddle, these are the things we talked about in DoorGrow OS. If these things, the ultimate operating system for a business, especially for a property management business, if you have these meetings, you can run your entire company in a small number of hours a year. That's all you have to do.

Anything outside of that, you are really stepping into more of a tactical role overall or you're being more like an employee in the business and doing work. But in a strategic position of leadership, if you have a really good executive team, that's all the time you would really need to be involved in. You may not even have to do that if you have really good executive team members to run things for you, and they have enough vision and clarity on the goals. They can move this business forward.

A lot of times, we have a lot of ego as entrepreneurs. We think it's all up to me. Everybody else isn't as smart as me and my team members need me to tell them what to do and to guide them. I'm so brilliant. We don't really know because we don't really involve them in the planning and communication process.

I want to point out that business should be fun, and it should be calm. One of my mentors that I'm working with currently that's a coach of mine, he talks about work being boring. He talks about how, when you have a multimillion dollar business and your business is scaling, you then eventually get to a state where you no longer have any major trauma or major glaring problems. You're insulated from these things if you built your team and systems the right way. Now you're just doing the boring work and you need to be willing to do the boring work.

His wife who really runs their company and his brilliant and brilliant operator also talks about how if you're doing the boring work and the business gets boring, that's a good sign that you're doing things right. Then it's time to just maybe get a hobby. What most business owners do is they make the mistake and go start something new, or create more drama, either in their personal life. Sometimes they're cheating on a spouse or they're starting a company, or they're burning their existing company to the ground. They create some more drama.

One of the things that we have to do is wean ourselves off the addictiveness of having to be so involved in everything, having to have so much connection to everything, thinking that we're so important in the business, and to be willing to allow calm to happen. It doesn't matter if you're just a small company with a small number of doors and you have one assistant. Your business could be calm.

Or you could have a really large team and tons and tons of doors, and your business still could be calm. If you have the support at the level that you need, you have the systems that you need, and you allow yourself to be protected from the things that create crazy, you really are able to stay in your lane and in your area of genius and offload the rest.

I do recommend this book. It's a really good book. It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. It just is kind of a manifesto for the future of business. Businesses are often connected to analogies of war in competition and fighting, and these massively stressful situations, but calm companies are very efficient companies. They're companies in which people are able to get in the flow work state. They're able to be calm, things get really quiet.

My business is very calm now. It's very calm, especially for me. It's very calm. It's very quiet. We don't have a lot of communication that has to happen among our team. Most of our team members are in the flow of doing what they love to do each day. There are little things that pop up here and there but we tackle them maybe in our 15-minute morning huddle. Usually I just ask where they are stuck. Those things all get dealt with then and there might be a little bit of communication in our messaging app that we use each day. We don't have situations, in general, that are immediate or that are urgent.

One of the key ingredients is to create a synchronous communication system in the business, which means people can write stuff out, think about it, and post it for the rest of the team to look at later. We can send a voice message to a team member or multiple team members for them to listen to later. Unless something's immediate and urgent, we don't call the team member. We don't walk into their office. We're virtual, so we can't do that. The idea is you want to create systems in place that protect you and insulate you from immediate urgency that is unnecessary.

As a business owner, you really want to get to the place where you don't have immediacy and urgency ever bombarding you, attacking you, or disrupting your day. You should be insulated from emergency maintenance requests at three in the morning. You should be insulated and protected from an angry or upset owner as the first round. Maybe you deal with those things after somebody else but your goal eventually is to be the owner of the business, not the property manager.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful. Create calm workplaces. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. It can be calm. The business really should be fun. Like I talked about in one of my previous episodes, four reasons. You want to get more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and more support in your business. You need to build a really good team.

It's a lot easier to get to the place of having a calm workplace in a property management business once you're in that category where you can afford to have a team, and that's usually in the 200–400 door range. Usually at that stage, you'll see business owners by then they have a team. If you do this correctly, this can be one of the calmest stages ever in your entire business. Most do not do this correctly.

I call this the second sand trap because they built their business the opposite way. They built the business around the wrong person because they are the wrong person, which means they're showing up doing the wrong things in the business. They are spending their time doing things that really are not their greatest strength or their greatest area of genius, or give them the greatest peace and calm, or the most fulfillment, freedom, joy, contribution, and support in their day to day. So they're building the wrong team around the wrong role, the wrong person, building a support system and mechanism around the wrong center, sort of the nucleus of this business, which is yourself.

They have a false perception of you that is overwhelmed, overworked, stressed, and doing the wrong things, then you're building a team to work with that person. You then have the wrong team which adds more stress, anxiety, and challenge to you. You have the wrong business that's built around them. It all starts with you getting really strong clarity in yourself, which I'm really good at helping clients get clarity on, focus on themselves, and figure out what really brings them the most joy or stresses them out, which things are they doing that are tactical versus strategic, or which things are energetic plus signs versus minus signs.

If that is a challenge for you, and you feel like your business is crazy. Maybe you're getting enough doors, maybe you're not. We can help you but maybe you're getting enough doors. Maybe your business feels crazy, and your team feels stressed and crazy. You feel stressed and crazy, and you're not having fun. You're not enjoying your day to day. That's a strong clue that you're out of alignment with those four reasons. You're doing the wrong things. You probably could use an objective perspective and get some support.

If that is the case, we will be glad to help you over at DoorGrow. Reach out to us. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. If you feel like it's crazy at work, maybe you need to be honest and recognize there's a part of you that enjoys that. There's a part of us that tends to like the drama and the challenges that we deal with. If the majority of you don't, you don't have to live with it.

I've seen businesses dramatically change in a very short period of time. Even in a single quarter, we can have you in a very different role, very different position, way less stress. The right team members, we can reassess your team or redeploy your team in different positions. We can get you your first assistant or whatever. We can help you get into that state to where you are in a place of calm. Just remember, it doesn't have to be crazy to work.

Hopefully that's beneficial to everybody. I'm Jason Hull, and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

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DGS 142: Growing Your Rental Business & Lowering The Cost Of Vacations With Rick Bennett 0

Oct 12, 2021

Do you wish that you could travel more often, but it’s just too expensive to find a place to stay? Investors and property managers are eager to get into the short-term and long-term rental market in popular vacation destinations. How can they grow their rental businesses and lower the cost of vacations?

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks to Rick Bennett about BookingWithEase and TripAngle, which puts control back into the hands of property owners.

You’ll Learn...

[02:14] Business Plan: Why Rick wanted to make vacations more affordable for all.

[02:56] Thought Process: Lower the cost of vacations by eliminating overhead costs.

[03:08] TripAngle: Tools for owners to efficiently, easily rent properties, lower overhead.

[03:44] Systems and Services: Grow organically, save money, gain exposure for rentals.

[05:04] Differentiator: Only site that guarantees no double bookings; easy to use.

[07:10] Property Management: Fully automated, 100% customizable with parameters.

[09:42] Plug-n-Play Integrations: Change anything, anywhere with the TripAngle system.

[14:13] Why Rick prefers property management companies more than property owners.

[17:08] Software Learning Curve/Support: People know how to list their properties.

[19:22] DoorGrowShow Listeners: Try TripAngle by using representative ID code - 2167.

Tweetables

“How do we lower the cost of vacations? What we came up with is eliminating the overhead to the owners completely and lowering the cost of their travelers significantly.”

“We built tools for the owners to be able to rent their properties easier, more efficiently.”

“We’re the only site that can guarantee no double bookings because of the way we built our system. It’s just much easier to use.”

“We’re just growing everybody’s company. That’s all we care about is growing the owners’ rentals.”

Resources

DGS 141: What Should I Pay A Property Management BDM & How To Onboard Them 0

Transcript

Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker.

DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.

My guest today, I am hanging out with Rick Bennett. Rick, welcome.

Rick: How are you today?

Jason: I'm doing fantastic so I'm really excited to have you here. We haven't had a lot of guests talking about the short-term rental space and the vacation rental space. A lot of property managers are getting into this. It's becoming really hot. We've got shows on Netflix about it now. Everybody is abuzz with this market. Lots of investors want to get into this space. Property managers, even in the long-term space—if they are in coastal areas or have really popular destinations—have vacation rentals they are also managing and dealing with.

You've been an expert in that industry for a while. Why don't you give us a little bit of background on you, how you got started with this, and then we can hear more about Booking With Ease, TripAngle, and all these cool things that you've got going on.

Rick: The reason we started this whole business plan is because my mom passed away when I was younger. One of the last things she told me was that she wishes she could have traveled more often, but it was so expensive. The reason she mentioned that is she had a really good job, and they flew her everywhere. But to include me, her son, who she wanted to bring me to several places—she took me to Philadelphia, Boston, you name it—it would cost her the full price to bring me. Her company paid for her.

I remember pretty much every time she would tell me man, I would love to take you to Charleston. I just can't. She was very apologetic. That's one of the last things she tells me. She wishes she could have travelled more often.

Our thought process was how do we lower the cost of vacations? What we came up with is eliminating the overhead to the owners completely and lowering the cost of their travelers significantly. We came up with TripAngle. TripAngle actually merged with a company called Keys to the House that's been around for over 25 years. We've been in the industry forever.

We built it from the ground up. We have our own MailChimp, and we built tools for the owners to be able to rent their properties easier, more efficiently, and once again, lower their overhead big time.

When you rent through some of the big boys online with the vacation rental listing sites, it can be quite costly. The reason being is they keep outbidding each other to buy the top spots. What we do is we grow organically. We spread by word of mouth because everybody loves to tell everybody the money that they're saving. We work in conjunction with everybody else. It's a way to just gain more exposure for their short-term rentals.

Some of our customers use our features, some don't. We offer free accounting and scheduling for cleanings. We even have where instead of putting our business on all the receipts, you can upload your logo, and all emails sent to your customers have your logo on them. It looks more professional. It's to grow your rental business. We just grow by word of mouth, and we love saving all of our owners' and customers' money

Jason: People can white-label this. People can use your tools and services. They're going to save a lot of money versus using these systems that have been a monopoly (it seems like) to some degree. You've got Vrbo. You've got the HomeAway things. You've got Airbnb, of course. How do you stand out in this market of all these big guns? Why would property managers be inclined to leverage and use your system instead of these big networks?

Rick: They can use them in conjunction with it. It works well. It keeps the calendars in tune. We're the only site that can guarantee no double bookings because of the way we built our system. It's just much easier to use.

What happens is people will sign up with us. They'll use other people mainly. They'll use us a small percentage, but they'll use us. Once they start seeing how much money their customers have saved and how easy it does everything for them, they start transferring everything over to us.

We just had a lady sign up with us. Vrbo upped her booking fee to $470. Using our system, on average, her booking fees are about $100. What's neat about that is she makes $20 extra, meaning it's 100% customizable per property. She added the dollar amount. Some people add a percentage amount.

Jason: So you can add your own markup.

Rick: To the processing fee, right. Her customers went from Vrbo paying $470, and now, they're paying $100–$120 and she makes $20 every booking on top of that in addition to saving the customers $300 a pop. Not to mention that Vrbo also charges her to rent it out. They charge a percentage and things of that nature.

Most of our owners collect their own income, their own credit cards. If they collect, our services are 100% free.

Jason: Okay. For those listening that are property managers, they can do this and act as the owner for and on behalf of their owner-clients and do the same thing.

Rick: Absolutely. Property managers, condo complexes. We've helped a lot of people basically get out of the restraints of property management.

I spoke to a town in Texas just recently. They just signed up with us, but the woman told me that they only have the same three property management companies. They've gone through that list about five times because they'll pop somebody, get tired of it, fire them, and go to the next guy, but that's all they have access to.

Now, with our system, it does everything for them. It's fully automated. Once you set up your parameters, it's 100% customizable, meaning some of our owners collect $1 amount at the time of reservation. You can set it up per listing. Others collect a percentage of the rental. Some of them charge the remaining balance—which it does automatically through our system once you set that parameter—two days prior to a guest's arrival. Others have it 60 days prior to the guests' arrival. Just whatever it is, it'll run automatically.

Somebody lists with us. They say, put $20 down, they'll make $20 extra every reservation, and their customers are saving quite a bit of money. Another thing that they save money on is through Vrbo and Airbnb, they charge $60–$65 for $1500 worth of damage protection on their property. We sell $39 for $3000 worth of coverage. We make sure that all of our owners are covered. We built this to grow the owners' companies.

They can add as many fields as they wish. The way it works is let's say they put it in there and say, run the remaining amount 10 days prior to the arrival. Let's say they put 50% down at the time of reservation. When somebody books that, that amount will charge for 50% down. It will shoot them a receipt with their logo on the top and check-in instructions with their logo on the top. Nothing to do with us.

Ten days prior to the arrival—if that's the parameter they set—it'll run it in full, it'll schedule it to be cleaned, and it'll alert the cleaners. The cleaners even have it color-coded, knowing if there's an out and in that day. They can make notes. All those notes are sent back to the owners once they're cleaned.

Whenever it runs it in full, it'll send them all that info. Two days prior to their arrival, it will send them again that receipt showing paid and check-in instructions because some people make a booking a year ahead of time. Then, a couple of days before, they'll get reminded, this is how you check-in. Our customers can do anything they need. Sometimes, somebody will say, hey, can you send me that receipt again? All they have to do is log in to our website and send it back to them.

Another great feature is if they collect their own credit cards, more than likely, they use a company called Authorize.Net. All Authorized.Net is just an online credit card machine. That's it. Whenever people go to log in Authorize.Net, they make you change your login all the time. It can be somewhat frustrating. Through our system, they never have to log in to Authorize.Net. They can refund, they can charge extra, they can do everything through our system.

We're integrated with RemoteLock. We're integrated with Authorized.Net. We just helped integrate BookingPal, Vacasa. We've got some big tentacles out there, and we're just growing everybody's company. That's all we care about is growing the owners' rentals.

Jason: Awesome. For those listening, a lot of property managers who hear this will go, wow, that sounds really great. Maybe it'll replace me. Maybe you could touch on that. Is this something that the property managers listening to this could use for and on behalf of their owners to be really effective, have better tools, better pricing, and maybe be a better profit center for them?

Rick: We have a ton of property managers that use us. What it's done is it helped them eliminate more than half of their staff. It really helps do that. We do hate that a lot of people are getting let go, but it helps make the owners more money. That's what it's all about.

Jason: Business owners, I don't think, would be sad to hear that they can't. They don't need as much staff. Staffing is always the most expensive resource in a business generally, so every business owner would be happy to hear that they can operate with less staff.

That doesn't mean they're just going to fire everybody, but maybe it means they now can afford to spend more on acquiring more properties to manage, doing more marketing, and shifting their team members' efforts towards building the business up instead of just trying to deal with what's coming in.

Rick: We just talked to an owner in Texas that signed up with us not that long ago. This was about a year ago. I remember her specifically saying—and it blew me away—how her property management company at the time used software, meaning that if anybody made a change to a reservation or anything, she would have to go to the office to make everything. From our system, you can change it from your cell phone, tablet, or computer—you can change it from anywhere.

We've taken as much out of the owner's hands as possible. Let's say they have it where it charges 10 days prior to their arrival. It'll schedule it to be cleaned. It'll do all that stuff. Let's say somebody calls and says, hey, I want to change my dates or change my condo or home. You can change it in our system with just one click of a mouse. It'll change the cleaning for them. It'll change the calendars on both their properties. It does absolutely everything for them. It's really a simple tool to use.

Another great feature is we have search by availability for owners' websites where it will only go through their rentals. We offer rate tables, calendars, custom-built widgets for owners' websites to more efficiently run their rentals, and tape charts.

Jason: Rick, let me clarify some of this for those listening. Most of my property management clients and property management business owners refer to their clients as owners. I just want to make sure for those listening, it sounds like what you're saying is when you're saying owners, you're talking about the business owners really. It could be the property manager or the direct owner of the property, but you're talking about the business owner.

These business owners have these tools available for them to integrate your system with their website for bookings, to manage their business, to send out white-label emails with their own branding on it—all this stuff.

Rick: Yeah. Mailchimp can send specials to everybody they've been with, but as far as the clients go, property management companies love using us. They've been able to grow their businesses and like I said, cut their costs. It's a very simple tool to just plug and play. We've helped a lot of property management companies really get over the hill, so to speak.

Jason: You showed me around a bit and had me take a look at stuff. My feedback was initially, it's not the sexiest, prettiest thing, but it sounds like it does everything. It has lots of bells and whistles. You guys have put a lot more attention on the backend, on integrations, on features, and really, it's very client-centric. It sounds like your business is really taking care of your customers and making sure you're building the best product that can do a lot of cool stuff.

My feedback to those who are listening to this is give it a check out, take a look at it, and don't judge the book by its cover. Really get into the features and the benefits that could be really beneficial for your business.

Rick, what are some of the biggest questions that a property manager who has never used your system? You're selling to them, what are some of the biggest questions that they’re concerned about or they want to know?

Rick: We prefer property management companies as opposed to individual owners. We serve everybody. We have tons of different clients. But if an individual owner comes to us, they have one property, two properties, we answer those questions. Once they've asked those questions, they know how to use the system so we don't ever have to hear from them again. We prefer a property management company with 500 properties asking those 1 or 2 questions and then learning the whole system. They're off and running 500 properties as opposed to 1 or 2.

It's fully accountable. It's 100% customizable per property. If you put 10 properties on our website and you wanted all 10 properties' money to go to a different account for each rental, we have that option available to you. You can set it up per rental.

We have it to where some you charge tax, some you don't. We even have features in Florida, if they stay 180 days or longer, it's considered a homestead. If you book a rental for four months, you have to pay taxes on those four months. Those taxes are usually about 17%, 18%, 19%.

In Texas, it's 30 days. If they stay 30 days or longer, it's a homestead, so there are no taxes. Whenever they set it up with us, they could say, I want to set up city tax at 7%, hotel tax at 6%, convention center at 2%, and only charge if they stay 29 days or less. If they stay 30 days or more, don't charge taxes.

It automatically does the calculation for them. It does it all right there. They book it, they get sent their receipts, and it really helps our owners out because they see where the taxes need to go. It's all itemized right there. They can edit their spreadsheets on our system. Some pay for extra cable, and some like to add in their homeowners' dues. It's just got every feature you could think about.

Another great tool for our property management companies—I'd say 70% use the tool this way, whereas 30% use it this way. Some of them, the 30%, make it to where their owners can change things. I have an owner in Virginia that has a property in Florida. They may want to change some pictures on their listing or they may want to change the cost of the property. They can log in themselves through TripAngle, edit that one property, and it will change it on the property management company. That's about 30% of our property managers.

The 70% don't like them being able to touch anything, and that's understandable. They could show everything through there. But once again, we made our entire system 100% customizable for whatever their requests are.

Jason: Usually, with software that has so many options, features, levers, and buttons, it gets a little bit confusing. How steep is the learning curve? What's the support process like in terms of getting onboarded?

Rick: The support is we will hold your hand and walk you through everything. People know how to list their properties. They've done it on Vrbo and on Airbnb so they know how to do all these things. We get very few questions. We should probably get more questions, but people seem to figure it out pretty easily. But people will cancel their reservation. They will change.

Our system would be 100% automated if it wasn't for this, but since people do change and they'll call, we'll show them how to click a button or two on our website, and they've got it. You've got a section for all active listings.

We even have a feature if you want to set it up to approve the booking. Some people have their property listed on so many different websites. They don't even really know how much they have it listed on so they don't like to take the instant booking, which I understand because it could have already been booked and you just didn't think to put it on there.

Our calendars will stay booked. If you have it synced with Airbnb or Vrbo, it will stay in tune. But a lot of people don't like to use calendars on any of them, and they like to approve a booking. A booking will come in, and they have 24 hours to approve it. I'd say 90% of the bookings that come in are approved by our owners.

Once again, they can just make it as customizable as they want, but it's really easy to use. It's really simple. It's all about keeping it simple, stupid. We learned that a long time ago and man did we not make it easy getting to that point through professionalism and luck. We have some partners that can do anything. Our team has really been on top of the ball in just putting everything together. If there are ever any questions or any problems, we fix it within hours. We don't have any.

Jason: This sounds really great. How can people get started with this? How can they find out more? What would be the next step for those that are curious of taking this for a test drive or maybe taking a look at it?

Rick: What they can do is they can go to either one of our websites, bookingwithease.com. You can look at our features. It just answers some of your questions, the general information of every company. It gives you links to be able to click on where it'll divert you over to TripAngle and you could sign up. It's free to sign up.

Once you sign up, we recommend putting a RepID number. You had a RepID number for us because I wanted to have a RepID number in there to make sure that the people from DoorGrow get taken care of. What was that RepID number again?

Jason: Rick, had me set up an affiliate code or a RepID number. My representative number is 2167. I guess if they go in once they're going through the registration on tripangle.com, towards the bottom, there'll be a representative number. If you put in 2167, Rick's going to do some special for you, some discount or something like that.

Rick: Absolutely, yeah. We take care of all of our customers. We'd be happy to reach out to them once they put in that representative ID number. That's how we've grown our business is word of mouth. Most people like to tell others of the great deal that they found. Once they realize what they make on it, they love it. We pay 10% of what we earn. We're doing strength by numbers.

The reason our numbers are so low compared to everybody else is because they're trying to compete with each other. We're doing it organically through each other's websites and spreading by word of mouth.

As people sign up with us—let's say somebody enters in the 2167 under you, what that will do is on your dashboard, you'll be able to see who's signing up, what bookings are coming through, and all that good stuff. When you have a customer sign up through DoorGrow, they go in there, they sign up, they can agree to our affiliate program—just like you did—they'll be assigned a number, they can tell their neighbor to go sign up, and they'll get 10% of every bit of our earnings per property.

Jason: Very cool. They can go to bookingwithease.com which also links to tripangle.com where they would register. They can also just go to tripangle.com to check that out. Cool.

Rick, before we wrap this up, is there anything else you feel like a property manager should know regarding TripAngle?

Rick: They're in the process of uploading all of them, but we just signed about 3000 properties in Colorado where I know for a fact that they're offering it through an affiliate either breckenridgelodging.com or mountainskitrips.com. If you go to those websites, it'll have our link to be able to book their rentals. You can pick out their rentals, but they're offering 15% off right now for the first month. They just signed up with us.

Any properties you find in Colorado on our website should be through those companies—Breckenridge Lodging or Mountain Ski Trips. They're offering 15% off right now on top of their already lower rate.

Just to give a quick example, I spoke with a lady the other day from Airbnb. She was a traveling nurse. She asked if she could book one of our rentals. She said she could only afford $1400. If she would have booked directly through TripAngle, it was $1275. She would have booked for less. But through Airbnb, you can't really discuss information until after the reservation's made.

I went in there and I adjusted it to where she should have been at the $1400 range. I told her. I said we did the $1400. I don't know what they charge. She looked at it and she said, I'll never use them again. She wanted to book it for four months.

They were charging her $2350 a month, meaning they were making $950 a month to use our system when I'm the owner and I'm only making $1400. That doesn't seem like it's the right thing there. If they would have charged (say) $950 upfront, maybe a one-time fee, even that is too high if you ask me. But that's the point. The cost of vacations has definitely skyrocketed since Airbnb has been introduced. We're here to get owners more exposure. They use us in conjunction with Airbnb.

The one woman I just told you about from Vrbo for $470, she stopped using them quite some time ago. Airbnb can be fun. Let me tell you that. That can be exhausting at times. I feel that Airbnb has taken a lot of control out of the owners' hands—a lot of it. Our system gives owners 100% control over their listings. If they want to go in and do anything through our system, they can do it.

I had a woman who, through Airbnb, booked for September 20th because I had somebody checking out on September 20th. She let me know just now that she actually has to be here on October 18th. She thought she booked it on the 18th, so I went to the Airbnb to switch it out.

It wouldn't let me change anything. It was the most difficult process to get her. What I finally did was she agreed to pay me cash when she shows up. There shouldn't be anything like that on Airbnb. With our system, you can adjust the rate. You can adjust everything. You can offer percentages for discounts.

One thing that a customer of ours just brought to our attention that they absolutely loved is they have over 2000 rentals. They use another website, but they have to go through on all 2000 rentals to add a discount for that rental. We offer—where you can do that—a master discount so it goes immediately on all 2000 of their rentals. That's so much easier.

Jason: Yeah. Rick, I'm sure you could probably tell us features. You just spout these off the top of your head, but you could probably go on for an hour just telling us all the features and benefits of this. It sounds really awesome. Again, I recommend everybody to check it out. Go to tripangle.com or bookingwithease.com, and take a look at that.

Rick, I appreciate you coming on and sharing this with us. I think it's cool. I'm excited to expose my audience to this. They're always looking for some cool hack or something that might keep more money in their pocket. I hope your continued success against these companies.

Rick: One quick thing I do want to say—and this is all thanks to you—is I do love how you're a straight shooter. Love it. You told us that our logo on TripAngle was awful. I don't know if you know this, but I worked with your team, and they developed it.

My business partners and I were cramming, collaborating, and all over the place. What logo that we came up with doesn't even hold a candle to what you all came up with. I even gave your team specific instructions envisioning in a certain way. What they did was 100 times better. I'm so glad they really didn't listen to me because I was wrong. If you go to TripAngle right now, you can see that new logo. There's one at the top and at the bottom.

Jason: I like it.

Rick: That came from you guys.

Jason: Yeah. My team does good work. That's really cool.

Rick: They do great work.

Jason: I appreciate you being open to feedback. I'm a little rough but hey, if I see a business owner that has something cool but there's something on the surface that would be super easy to fix that would make business easier, I'm going to call it out. That's what I do. Kudos for taking some advice from me. Sometimes it's not comfortable to be told your kid's ugly, so to speak. They need plastic surgery.

Rick: Right. That's why they have braces.

Jason: Awesome. Cool. I appreciate the little plug for my brand-new team. Rick, I'll let you go. I appreciate you coming on the show. I'm excited to see what you do.

Rick: Absolutely. Thank you so much. I look forward to growing with you guys.

Jason: Awesome. If you have a crappy logo, you're not really proud of your brand or how things look, you are being perceived falsely as mainly a real estate company, but you do property management, or there's something off with your branding, let us teach you how to clean that up. Let us help you clean that up.

We've rebranded hundreds of companies. We are the world's leading property management, branding, and web design agency in existence. Nobody else has probably rebranded more companies in the property management space than us. Nobody else has designed more property management logos than we have. We've done hundreds and hundreds.

Reach out to us. We'd love to help you out. We're always excited to help clean up businesses. The level of growth they see before and after we rebrand, clean up their website, and get their pricing and everything in alignment are always far more profitable and the business comes far more easily. You don't realize what leaks you have until they're no longer there sometimes.

Reach out. Check us out at doorgrow.com. As always, if you want to join our community, it's free online. Go to doorgrowclub.com and join our Facebook community. We'd love to have you there.

If you're interested in growing your business, reach out. We have an awesome mastermind program. We've got over 70 businesses in it, and they are having phenomenal results. We're really enjoying coaching and mentoring these clients, and helping them move their business forward.

We have three paths we focus on: we focus on growth and adding doors, we focus on scaling it and figuring out operations, processes, hiring, systems, all that, and then we also have our seed program which is all about the ultimate foundation, branding, website—everything on the frontend sales pipeline of the business.

Once you have all three of these things dialed in, you'll have a very profitable company. You'll be outpacing your competition, you will look like the best in your market, and you'll probably be the best. Anyway, that's it. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

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Oct 5, 2021

What is a BDM? How do I pay a BDM? Why call them a BDM and not a salesperson in a property management business? Why do I need to make sure a BDM has the right personality type and how do I onboard them correctly?

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks all about BDMs. If you do all the vetting right, then the real challenge is supporting and training them to be successful.

You’ll Learn...

[01:42] What is a BDM? It's a Business Development Manager.

[01:46] Why a BDM and not a salesperson? Sales gets convoluted or confused.

[02:00] Why? Most of you do real estate and have a brokerage side to the business.

[02:50] Mistakes: Feedback from companies that help you find/place a BDM isn’t good.

[03:24] A business owner not good at sales or onboarding doesn’t give the right support.

[05:24] How can you properly support a BDM or salesperson? Know what works.

[06:02] How to pay BDMs: If you pay on commission, offer an initial bonus structure. [08:17] How to onboard BDMs: Start them as a sales assistant to double capacity.

[10:00] Motivate BDMs: Driven salespeople like money, give them part of commission.

[13:32] What sales is/isn’t: Once you start winning deals, sales becomes fun, not pushy.

Tweetables

“BDM is really just a fancy word for somebody that's supposed to help you grow your business, supposed to come in, supposed to do sales.”

“If you are not good at sales, my recommendation is you have to figure this out. This is one of the biggest key areas of the business.”

“I love seeing that shift in clients where they have the confidence that they know they can get pretty much anybody on if they want them because they're that good at sales.”

“It doesn't make sense to pay people based on commission unless the commission payout is big.”

Resources

DGS 140: How To Attract Motivated & Inspired Team Members In Your Property Management Business 0

Transcript

DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.

What are we chatting about today? In continuing my series of doing this every Wednesday, we're going to be chatting today about BDMs. What is a BDM and how to pay them? This is a really common question I get, how do I pay a BDM? How should I pay them? So that I don't have to answer this question anymore, I'm going to make a podcast episode about it. Here we go.

First, what is a BDM? It's a Business Development Manager. Why do we use that term instead of a sales person in a property management business? Because a salesperson, or sales, or anything connected to that usually gets convoluted, or confused, or mixed up with brokerage because a lot of you also do real estate and have the brokerage side of your business.

I think what's happened over time is the industry has sort of adapted that a property management sales person is called a BDM. And we get that from the Australians. They seem to call them BDMs or Business Development Managers, and I think it's just so we don't get them mixed up with the real estate sales people or people that just do sales. On the real estate side, anything related to sales tends to be considered real estate. In the real estate industry, even if it's property management, it gets mixed up.

BDM is really just a fancy word for somebody that's supposed to help you grow your business, supposed to come in, supposed to do sales. There are a lot of mistakes I see people make. I have not heard good feedback on companies that help you find a BDM and place a BDM. I don't think it's those companies' fault, I don't think that it's their fault. They probably do find people with the right personality type, maybe they're on a DiSC profile, they're high D, high I, maybe they have an economic score on a value index on a DiSC, maybe they love doing sales, maybe they're good at sales.

I think what really ends up happening a lot of times is that a business owner is not good at sales which is why they're hiring them, or the business owner is not good at onboarding a sales person, which if you're not good at sales you're not going to be good on onboarding a sales person and giving them the right support that they need anyway.

Let's touch on that first. If you are not good at sales, my recommendation is you have to figure this out. This is one of the biggest key areas of the business. If you cannot generate revenue on demand, you cannot figure out how to bring in business, you need to figure that out. You don't have to do it forever, otherwise you need to bring in a partner into the business that is already an expert. Not just hiring some salesperson you're going to try to convert into a BDM. You're going to have to find somebody that successfully added hundreds of doors as a BDM into the business and partner with them or bring them in into your business. Otherwise, just getting a sales person, trying to turn them into a property management BDM is not going to be effective unless you know how to do it yourself.

My recommendation is put in the reps, take the time, become an expert at this and figure it out. If you struggle with that, I'm really good at helping people improve that area, get really good with that, and we do that in our program. It's awesome to see the transition of people going from, well, I'm not really super great at sales or my close rate isn't really high, to them saying what I typically hear is, I feel like I can get anybody on that I want so now I'm picky and I don't want everybody. That's a huge shift. I love seeing that shift in clients where they have the confidence that they know they can get pretty much everybody on if they want them because they're that good at sales.

I won't go into sales in detail on this podcast. We're not going to go into this episode into sales, but you need to make sure that you can properly support a BDM or sales person coming in. What does that mean? That means you know what works. You have successfully proven that you can bring on business, you have scripts, you have language, you have recordings of calls, you have examples to give them. They can shadow you. You know how to deal with all the different objections and challenges that tend to come up. If you have that, then maybe it's time to bring somebody else in.

There's another challenge. The other challenge is a lot of BDMs are expected to just get paid on commission. A lot of people say, how do you pay them? If you're expecting them to just get paid on commission, the challenge with that is you're basically expecting them to starve for the first onboarding period of the first 30, 60, 90 days if they're just purely commissioned.

You can have some sort of initial bonus structure that you're going to give them that they have to pay back maybe, but that puts them in the hole from the get-go and that can help them get over that hump initially. What I find is it doesn't make sense to pay people based on commission unless the commission payout is big. In real estate, it's pretty big for the amount of work that you do. That becomes really big.

You have a big payout so it's worth it to do all that work and stuff like that. In property management, commission is going to be smaller and if you're expecting the BDM to not just close, but you're expecting them to do the follow-up, the prospecting, the nurturing, and all this work, it doesn't get them paid on the front end. They only get paid when they close the deal. Then you're expecting them to just do all of this work that they don't get paid for when they really want to spend their time doing what they really get paid for.

You need to have a couple of options. If you're going to do commission only, my recommendation is they're just closers. That means you have lead generation, follow up, all that handled by somebody else. Or you bring them in and pay them a base that's based on them doing all of that follow-up, prospecting, and everything else based on that. Then there's a bonus or commissions structure, maybe a little less than if they are commission-only that's attached to the winning of a contract or getting on a client.

That is probably more ideal in most situations because then they're getting paid to do all of this work, to build up the sales pipeline, and then they do have that reward that they can get once they start getting business on and they're closing deals. That's going to be, generally in my opinion, a far more effective structure, is to have base plus salary.

Now how do you onboard them, how do you start them out, my recommendation is you take this BDM and you start them initially as a sales assistant. Just getting a sales assistant if you're currently the business owner and you're closing the deals, could double your close rate. It could double the amount of capacity that you have.

They're going to operate more like an appointment setter, then you're going to be the closer. Setter and closer allows you also to use an effective strategy that one of my mentors calls the double barrel close—which can be really effective—in which they comprise the closer, make them more important in the mind of the prospect, and help you increase the close rate. You're really going to love what Jason has to say once you get on a call with him. He'll be able to answer all the other questions, but first I need to make sure that you qualify to talk to Jason.

That's what a setter can do for you and it significantly increases your close rate, it increases your value in the mind of the prospect if they do that effectively and they can preframe some of these sales tactics; future pays, preframing, stuff like that.

Now, you start them as an appointment setter and that means they're just learning the CRM, they're doing all the follow up, they're helping you to schedule appointments, they're booking things on your Calendly, or whatever scheduling thing you do, then you can show up and close, close, close. It's going to increase your close rate. This helps them learn how the sales process works and they can eventually start shadowing you and listening in on those sales calls that they booked, being part of those, they can learn how you're doing it and they can get to the point where they then want to take those calls directly.

How do you motivate that? If they're a driven sales person and they like money, then the way that you do that is you're going to take your commission. My recommendation is you figure out a flat fee commission structure. Flat fee is generally better than a percentage for sales people, in my opinion, because it gives them something concrete. They know each door I get, I'm going to get X number of dollars.

Then you're going to take that commission structure and you're going to cut it in half maybe or even a third depending on how big that fee is going to be that you're going to pay them that commission. If you're going to pay them a half commission, for example, let's say you do 50%, they get 50% if they set and they get the other 50% if they close it.

If they're just setting, they will start out just getting a half commission. If they set them up really nicely and you're able to close the deal, then they get it. This gets them the incentive. Once they start to taste that and they get these commissions, if they are the right personality type to drip in, they like money, they're motivated by this, very quickly they will be pushing to get that second half of the commission.

What do I need to do to get that? What else do I have to learn? They're going to start asking questions. They're going to be very curious. You want them to be pulling to get more money from you and wanting to step into that. That shows that they're driven and they're the right personality type.

If you find that you're trying to push them into it and trying to move them along, hey, when are you going to be ready? It's been a few months now. You're ready to do the calls on your own? They're probably not the right personality type so maybe you didn't vet them correctly during the hiring process and looking at the DiSC profile, Myers Briggs, some of the things you might use to figure out if they're going to be the good fit naturally for this.

That's some of the stuff we chat on today's call with clients that are in my program. If you have questions about BDMs or things like that, join our program, happy to chat with you more or feel free to ask questions inside the DoorGrow Club. I'm sure a lot of people have experience in there at doorgrowclub.com about BDMs. In general, make sure they have the right personality type, make sure you are onboarding them correctly.

Now to point out, I had a client which I met today who fired a couple of his BDMs, but these were probably the first two he had hired. Usually, if a BDM isn't working out, most of the time it is because they weren't supported right. If you do all the vetting right, then the real challenge usually is because they weren't supported right. They didn't have scripts. They didn't have proven things that work. You weren't able to showcase that you knew how to do it and teach them how to close deals, be successful, deal with objections, and everything else.

They didn't really have a chance. They didn't have the right support plus the pay structure may not have been the way I described and may have not incentivized them correctly so they weren't really on boarded or supported correctly. That's what I've seen a lot of times with companies that go and hire a company to get them a BDM as the challenge.

Figure out how to do it, don't avoid it. It's something that once you get comfortable with that feels great, it doesn't feel uncomfortable anymore because once you start winning deals and getting on business, sales becomes fun.

Then you realize sales is not anything pushy. It's not anything unethical, whatever sort of mindsets you have around sales. Sales really is just about helping people see their problems accurately and then helping them see how you can help them. That's it. It's not about getting people to buy something they don't need or want. It's about getting them to buy the exact thing that they really need to help them solve their problem, and that's you. You're the solution to that.

Hopefully that's helpful. This will be a short episod today. Check out doorgrowclub.com if you want to join our Facebook free community and there are a lot of great property managers in there. They're willing to help out and answer questions.

If you want to take your business to the next level, start growing, start adding a lot of doors, having success, and you're ready to be challenged and take things to the next level, then reach out to us and we will give you access to a free training, my seven frameworks on how you can grow your property management business, and the things that are holding you back, why most companies suck in the industry, so that you are not the next sucky company, and you can be great too. Hopefully this is helpful, and until next time to our mutual growth, everyone. Bye, everybody.

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Sep 21, 2021

The most important part of hiring is to filter out and bring in the people that you truly want to attract to your business.

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks about how to attract motivated and inspired team members in your property management business.

You’ll Learn...

[01:33] How do you motivate people to get them to do what you want?

[02:04] Finding Good People: It takes more than a job posting and interviews.

[02:55] Time Study: Start by figuring out where your time goes.

[03:06] Job Description: What you want somebody to take on that drains your energy.

[03:52] R Document: Responsibilities, resonate, and results.

[04:31] Cultural Fit: Bad hires don't share your values, ethics, morals, or how you care.

[05:44] Purpose Secrets: What’s your personal and business ‘why’ that motivates?

[09:34] Myers & Briggs, DiSC: Know different attributes of profiles and personality types.

[12:00] Micromanagers: Whenever we fail to inspire, we always control.

[15:17] Pleasure vs. Pain: Most people are motivated by money or recognition.

Tweetables

“A big mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make is they assume that if they just put up a job posting with the job requirements and they do a bunch of interviews, they're going to find good people.”

“You need a much better filter because what that formula means is you're going to end up with a lot of turnovers, a lot of team members, and have to kiss a lot of frogs.”

“You can teach people skills. You can teach people processes. You can teach people tactical things. But you cannot generally teach your team members values.”

“The result is what gets you paid. The result is what grows the business. The result is what makes it worth it for you to shell out money to have this team member. Results are the most important thing.”

Resources

DGS 139: You Are The Prize In Your Property Management Business with Jason Hull 0

Transcript

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

All right. We're continuing my weekly series of just saying whatever I want to talk about today. So today, I got a question about motivating people. We had somebody in our group that was really struggling to hire and find good people in their market. Also, we had another team member that was asking how do you motivate people to get them to do what you want. So we're going to chat about teams a little bit today and about motivating people.

What I told the lovely lady that asked the question on our group call today about finding really good people is, a big mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make is they assume that if they just put up a job posting with the job requirements and they do a bunch of interviews, they're going to find good people. I have found from my own experience and being connected to a lot of entrepreneurs that that is not the case.

You need a much better filter because what that formula means is you're going to end up with a lot of turnovers, a lot of team members, and have to kiss a lot of frogs by bringing them into your business, training them, wasting time, and they're going to be terrible, not really show up to work all the time. They're not going to do a great job. You're going to have to start over again.

Let's talk about the hiring process just a little bit so that you can have great people, and then we'll get into maybe some stuff related to that. If you want to bring really great people onto your team, we usually start in the DoorGrow & Scale mastermind. I usually start by having clients do a time study to really figure out where the time is going.

Based on that, we build a job description for somebody to take the minus signs, the things that are energetically draining them. They don't enjoy the things that are tactical, which are maybe more like lower-level work, or things that are just not strategic in general where you're not functioning as a business owner. You're functioning and doing the employee-level type of tasks—emailing, calling work, et cetera.

We want to shift and take the tactical minus signs off your plate, so we build a job description. What would be the ultimate next hire for you? So you can free up your time, energy, attention, focus, et cetera so you make more cash. What would it take to do that? You build out the ultimate job description. I call that an R document. I got the original idea from one of my coaches and mentors, Alex Scharffen. He had what was called a four R’s document. For me, I found that there were some R’s missing.

I'm not going to go into total detail explaining an R document, but I will say three of the R’s. Most job descriptions have one of the R's in a document, which is they have the responsibilities. This is a typical job description. They'll just have the responsibilities listed and they think, well, people will look at this and go, I could do that job. What's the pay? Okay, I could get paid to do that job. That does not mean they're going to be a cultural fit.

Usually, if you have bad hires, it's not because they can't do the job. It's usually because they don't share your values, your ethics, your morals, what you really care about, and how you care about your customer. If you bring on the wrong people, they're not going to share your values. Even if they can do the job, you're never going to trust them. They’re not going to show up, be, and act the way that you want so that you feel safe with them and safe giving up these things off of your plate and giving them to somebody else on your team.

You need them to share your values. This is more important than them having the skill to do the job. You can teach people skills. You can teach people processes. You can teach people tactical things. But you cannot generally teach your team members’ values. Those come hard-wired in. They got those from their parents. They got those from society, from their upbringing, from their religion, and from the culture they've been a part of, but they have those values. So you need to find people that are a value match for you and your business.

Your business needs to have the right cultural foundation. In our program, we have a training called Purpose Secrets. In that, we get into figuring out your personal why—what really drives and motivates you, your business why—what really motivates the business? What is your client-centric mission? This mission that you have for the business really gets you inspired and excited, and can inspire and excite your team and your potential customers.

We get into company core values. Making sure those are clear and defined, and some other stuff. This allows you to create culture. You cannot have a healthy culture in a business, bring people in, and expect them to fit your culture if you don't make that really transparent from the beginning, from the get-go.

We have—on our job application at DoorGrow—our cultural values, client-central mission statement, and these sorts of things so that people can go through this if they care, and we can attract the right fit. Otherwise, you're really playing Russian roulette, you're just gambling. Then you have to have a really good R document. You have to have a really good job description.

This goes far beyond just the responsibilities. Here's the most important part of a job description. It’s the portion in an R document, the first portion I call resonate. This is the portion where it's copywriting or sales-related language to convince people and to discuss the position in a way that they will read it and self-identify. Does it resonate as being them?

As an example, if I were hiring an executive assistant, I know the personality type that I would generally want for that. They're going to be very detail-oriented, et cetera. It could say, are you our next executive assistant with COO potential? Do you color-coordinate your closet? Are you the type of person that makes sure everything is tidy on your desk and in your house? Are you the person that really is critical of others when they get things wrong, but you really are also really critical of yourself if you make a mistake? Then you might be our next executive assistant.

You're going to describe the personality in a way that they're going to read then go, oh my gosh, that's totally me. That is me, me, me, me, me. Not oh, I could probably do that, and you could pay me to do that. You want people that read this and they go, oh my gosh, this is me. I would love to be part of that.

The second part of a job description—that's the most important part, I believe when hiring because it helps filter out people and it helps you bring the people that you really want to attract that are going to be excited about the job. They are the ones that are willing to jump through all the hoops you might put in their application or interview process that will filter out the majority of people. So you don't get a bunch of garbage applicants that are like oh, I’m applying to 10 different jobs.

You want somebody that reads this and goes, that's the job I want. I want to be part of that kind of team. They're going to read that on your application, your values and your culture. Then you'd be like, I want to be part of something like this, something bigger.

You want to attract believers, not hiders. The standard American employee that you hear about that complains about their boss, and they think it's funny and culture. These people live for the weekend. They just want to make fun of their boss and their job and be miserable. Those are hiders. Those are not believers. They do not believe in that boss. They do not believe in that company's mission. They haven't been given, sometimes often, anything to believe in.

You want to make sure that you attract believers, not hiders. It needs to be the role that they know, this is me. So you have to understand the personality type. You need to know the Myers-Briggs type. You need to know the DiSC Profile type. You need to know different attributes about what this person is really like that would be naturally inclined to do this job and that would be really good at it.

Now, here's the R in the R docs. It's the most important once you hire somebody. Once somebody is hired, the most important part is the results portion. The results portion is the portion where it talks about what they are responsible to accomplish? What are they expected to accomplish and get done? Because if they're not getting the results, it doesn't matter if they're fulfilling all of the responsibilities that you might have, which are also important to have in there. But if they're not getting the end result, it doesn't matter if they're doing all the other responsibilities if the result isn't achieved.

The result is what gets you paid. The result is what grows the business. The result is what makes it worth it for you to shell out money to have this team member. Results are the most important thing. I don't care what else is in there unless they're getting the results done. That's the most important thing in the job description once somebody is a team member.

They need to make sure they're achieving those results. Otherwise, they're not going to stay on the team. That way they know, these are the results I'm expected to accomplish on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, and on a yearly basis. These are the results. Results don't lie, right? Results reveal the truth. Results are reality and reality is god. Reality, always is what is. It's the truth.

That's kind of the beginning. If you do that, just those things alone, you will be far less likely to have difficult, crappy, and bad team members. They're going to share your values. They're going to enjoy being part of your culture. They're going to believe in you as a boss. They're going to want to please you. They're going to know how to please you because they know the results that you're looking to get. It'll be very obvious having this yardstick by which to measure their performance on a regular basis as you meet with them, and say, hey, how are the results going?

A lot of times, a business tries to micromanage and control their team members through KPIs. I'm not as big of a fan of that. I don't see that as necessary. When people really are the right role for the job, you don't have to force them. You don't have to coerce them. You don't have to micromanage them. They want to do a good job. They want to do those things if they're the right personality for that position. If they're an A-player that believes in your values, they believe in your company, they believe in you, and they're inspired to work with you, you don't have to control them.

One of my favorite adages is basically whenever we fail to inspire, we always control. If you are focused on lots of metrics, KPIs, and these sorts of things, you’ll feel that you always have to follow up with team members to find out and get information. You've built a system in your business in which you are micromanaging. You are a micromanager. That is what a micromanager is. Most people say, well, I'm not a micromanager. I don't want to micromanage my team. I hate micromanaging and I hate micromanagers.

Most people are micromanagers that say that. If you have a performance-based culture—a culture in which people are doing what they really enjoy doing—they are inspired, they want to get great results, they are going to just do it. You don't have to push them or motivate them because they're going to want to do it. That's fun for them and it feels good. They get a sense of respect and value out of doing this and a sense of status maybe. They feel recognized for doing the things that they're supposed to be doing. They love their job. They love their life. They love your business. They get better and better at it.

If the focus is on results, it doesn't matter how they go about doing to get those results as long as they do it within your values, your ethics, your morals. If they follow your values and they believe in your values, then you can trust them to get to the result in the right way.

It doesn't matter if it's different from how you would do it. It doesn't matter if it's unique. You're going to find that if they know to focus on the result, they're going to get innovative, creative, and they're going to figure out clever ways to do it in less time to get it done faster. But they're going to do it as long as they're doing it with your values at heart and they're getting those results, you're going to be very happy.

This relieves you from having that burden to think for them and make decisions for them, where you get tons of questions from them constantly. Like how do you do it? Should I do this with this person or that? Follow the values and you'll start to trust them more and more. They'll start to learn to trust themselves and their own decision-making. Then you're going to have leaders, not just followers and sheep in your business.

The other question that popped up today was, how do I motivate people? The gentleman in the group was like, how do I motivate people on the team? One of the things that I really like is DiSC assessments. I like the values index that are in some of the more detailed DiSC assessments. The values index has different values like political score, economic score, aesthetic score, charitable score, and stuff like that.

The one you want to look at when it comes to motivating people is the economic score. Now, that sounds a little weird. But all of these will help you understand somewhat what their values are and what they value. The goal to motivate somebody is you either need to know what they want to move away from or what they want to move towards, which is, what pain do they want to avoid and what pleasure do they want to experience?

Most entrepreneurs mistakenly assume most people are motivated by money. Here's why—entrepreneurs tend to have a high economic score, which means they value money. Most people on the planet though, most of our team members, do not have a high economic score. It's going to be a low economic score. That means they value recognition. Recognition is more important than just getting bonuses. Entrepreneurs and typically salespeople tend to have a high economic score.

If you see somebody having a low economic score and they have a high charitable score, actually paying them more money, excessive amounts of money, too much money, or even sometimes more money than they would normally be paid because they did better performance, a lot of times, those people will feel guilty.

Some of these people feel guilty about getting more money. They have a high charitable score. They want to help people and they care about the poor. They want to volunteer and do this sort of thing. You just throwing money at them makes them feel like you just care about money. That actually hurts performance.

One way to not motivate people is to pay them more money, give them bonuses, or incentivize things financially when their economic score is low. You need to be careful of that. If they’re motivated by money, then this is why those types of team members (salespeople) generally have part of their pay connected to performance, bonuses, commission structures, and stuff like that.

If the economic score is low, they are recognition-motivated. Just having a really good culture of accountability and a really good strategic planning system in the business. We have what we call DoorGrow OS, which I believe is better than EOS, which has some fundamental flaws I've talked about before. A lot of entrepreneurs are into us, traction, and this sort of thing. In DoorGrow OS, it’s really an entrepreneur-centric system where it's built around you instead of built around the idea of an integrator, et cetera.

I could go on talking about the flaws of EOS. But generally, our clients that come from the EOS system and implement DoorGrow OS have seen much better results. They feel a lot more calm and quiet in their business. Things get a lot less noisy. They have team members that are far more accountable. The team is part of the communication and culture and the planning process, and buy-in instead of it being very top-down.

They're a lot more motivated especially because B-players—instead of A-players—that are hiders, they do not want to be in a situation or a system in which they are accountable and everybody gets to see them.

But A-players—people that are not hiders, the believers—love to be recognized and they love to be seen. They want recognition. That's more important than them getting more money. They want to be recognized. This allows them to be seen, allows them to experience status, allows them to feel recognized, and does a good job. That kind of culture is a performance culture and it will filter out the riff-raff. It will prevent you from having bad team members.

The other thing you want to recognize when trying to figure out how to motivate people is you need to understand your team. This is why before we even interview somebody, we have them—in our application process—jump through a bunch of hoops to get them to do a bunch of different assessments. I won't go into all of the different assessments that I often do, but I usually have people do at least three assessments just to go through our application process.

If you have a really good R doc that really resonates with them, gets them really excited about the job, and really they get excited about the culture and your company, they'll be willing to do all of the work in your application, and jump through all those hoops. Most people won’t.

If they're just tire kickers, time wasters, people applying to lots and lots of different jobs, and they don't look at your job and go, I want that job. That's the job I want. I want to work for them. Then they won't go through and fill out everything on the application.

I like the DiSC. I like Myers-Briggs. I understand those systems. I've taken time to learn those. I know what sort of roles will do well, which sort of personality types will do well based on those in certain positions. I would recommend those. Then there are others that I'm into or that I like to use. Having them do assessments, you're going to know beforehand, just by looking at all applicants, that person would likely be good at this. That person may not. You may still want to interview some people based on their past experiences.

Maybe there were mistypes. Maybe they filled it out wrong or tried to answer it the way they thought you wanted them to be or to look. But that'll be really helpful for you to have assessments to be able to know these team members and to talk with these potential team members about themselves to figure out, does this resonate with you? Is this accurate about you what it says on your DiSC, what it says on your Myers-Briggs, and what it says on these other assessments? They can then chime in. A lot of times, you'll find they're like, wow, yeah, it's really spot on. Or they might say that part, no, I'm a little different than that.

This helps you to understand whether or not that personality and that person would be a good fit and really enjoy that role. That's going to prevent you from wasting a lot of time, a lot of money training, onboarding, and bringing in somebody that's a bad fit. You won't have to motivate that person because they will naturally be inclined to do that and do a good job.

That's a little bit of what we chatted about on today's call. If you're interested in joining about 70 entrepreneurs that we have in this mastermind, then reach out to DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com.

If you are enjoying this podcast and you want to be part of our free community that we have online, feel free to join the Facebook group, which is doorgrowclub.com. You can join our social media group there where you can ask questions of other property managers. There are lots of really helpful people.

That's all I have to share with all of you today. Until next time, to our mutual growth, and I hope you have a lot of success. Bye, everyone.

Download this Episode

Sep 14, 2021

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks about being the best prize to your potential clients.

A lot of times clients have this perception that you need or want to get them on as a client. Needy is creepy. Don’t fail to see and show them that you are the prize.

You’ll Learn...

[03:00] Who is the prize? You or your prospective client? You are!

[03:06] Why? If you have a legitimate business, you solve their problems.

[03:52] Three biggest complaints? Tenants, landlords, and rental properties.

[04:18] Why most property managers and property management businesses suck.

[04:48] If you do a good job, you make better tenants, landlords, and rental properties.

[05:10] Real Estate Investing: It's easy until your first challenge with a tenant.

[07:17] Cycle of Suck: Crappy clients lead to crappy properties, tenants, and reputation.

[08:01] Mike’s Pumpkin Plan: Allegory of what it takes to have prize-winning pumpkins.

[08:43] Be Picky: Get clients you want to be with, enjoy working with, and value you.

[10:10] What’s for sale? People want to buy safety, certainty, and peace of mind.

[11:45] Ideal Clients: Qualify them by figuring out - what do you really want?

[12:37] Rules of Engagement: Value self, maintain confidence, realize you’re the prize.

Tweetables

“You need to realize this—you are the prize. That means they are not the prize.”

“If you aren't able to maintain a frame of confidence, you then hurt the number one thing that people want to buy from you, which is safety and certainty.”

“The best clients are not the ones that are the cheapos.”

Resources

DGS 138: Four Reasons (For Starting a Business) by Jason Hull 0

Transcript

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

All right, this continues these episodes where it's just me talking. I'm certainly going to be doing some interviews in the future. But this episode today, I'm going to start blocking out time each Wednesday so that I can consistently get these episodes out. I have a consistent call with clients each Wednesday and Friday currently that I enjoy doing. I'm just going to block out time every Wednesday to do a live call and talk about whatever my heart desires that day.

Something that came up on today's call with my coaching clients is just a little passing phrase that somebody had mentioned, but they had said they were talking about the week and the wins. Everybody was sharing their wins and one client mentioned they were going to be meeting with some people that are prospective clients. They said they're going to see if we will be a good fit.

I wanted to touch on this because I think there's this mindset challenge that I noticed a lot of times with clients and I say this multiple times. I've said it multiple times on my calls with clients. But a lot of times clients have this perception that they are needing or wanting to get the client on and they fail to see that you are the prize. That is what I'm titling today's episode, You are the prize. I would normally swear when I say this, but I want to make sure I get the widest reach possible, but you are the blankety blank prize.

You're the prize. You're the freaking prize. You need to realize this—you are the prize. That means they are not the prize. Your prospective client is not the prize, you're the prize. Why is that? Because if you have a legitimate business, you are the one that solves their problem.

You're not trying to get them on to solve your problem of making money or because you need more clients. Needy is creepy. You have to have the mindset and recognize that you are the prize, that you solve their problem, that they're the one with the challenges. Look at this, you solve three of the biggest problems in real estate as a property manager. You are absolute super superheroes.

Nobody seems to realize this, but nobody else does this. What am I talking about? Let's talk about what are the three most complained about things in real estate? Most likely, possibly these three things—tenants, landlords, and rental properties. Three of the most complained about things in real estate and you solve all three of those challenges as a good property manager.

I know you and I both know that most property managers suck. Most property management businesses suck. You know this. I hear this from everybody. Everybody comes to me and they're like, well, we're starting a property management business. Why? Because everybody else in my market sucks. I hear this all the time.

I'm sure you're listening right now and you're thinking, yeah, my competitors do all suck, but I'm great. Let's just agree that most property management businesses suck and we should change that because it hurts the entire industry as a whole. But if you're doing a good job, you make tenants better, you make landlords better, you make the rental properties better. You are improving the world. You really are the superheroes of the real estate investing industry.

A lot of real estate investors get into real estate investing. They hear everybody's talking about this buzz of real estate investing. It's a great place to put your money. It's so turnkey and so easy. Until they have their first challenge with a tenant, until they realize how much time it takes to place a tenant, until they realize maintenance coordination is a part-time job, even for a small portfolio.

You take all of this off their plate. On average, you get them more rent. Even if you just get them a certain percentage more rent and you're collecting rent a certain percentage more often, your fees are well covered. During the pandemic, the feedback I was getting from a lot of people that were self-managing is that their rent collection was down like 50%. I heard from some investors, only half of my tenants are paying rent. Property management clients though, I was asking them, they were maybe down like 2%, 3%, maybe 5% of the rent. They really didn't see much change.

The ones that were really smart about how they dealt with it really didn't see much change at all. It was the same people that weren't paying rent before that weren't paying rent, so they didn't really see a shift.

The smart ones were the ones that didn't proactively assume that people are going to have a hard time paying rent and put out a message to that effect. They just assumed people would keep paying rent and they didn't put out some preemptive strike to say, hey, I know you probably have problems, here are some resources. Usually, those property managers had a harder time because then those tenants thought, well, yeah, maybe it's tough and maybe I don't need to pay rent because of the pandemic.

Anyway, you solve these three big challenges. You are the prize, you're the prize. When you recognize this, you can shift your mindset in sales, in closing a property management contractor deal, and you're going to look at them, do I want this client? Do I want this property? You're going to be picky.

Many of you have heard me talk about the cycle of suck. If you want to know what that is, you can just google cycle of suck, and maybe even at DoorGrow, it should usually come up right at the top. The cycle of suck basically means you're taking on crappy clients. So you have crappy properties, then you have crappy tenants, and then you're going to have a crappy reputation. This sums up the entire industry in aggregate.

If property managers recognize that they are the prize and were pickier about the clients they take on, they would have a better business. They would have much more profit in their business. They'd be far more profitable. Their operational costs would be a lot lower. They'd be able to do a better job servicing clients. I had Mike Michalowicz come speak at a conference that we threw and he talked about The Pumpkin Plan.

He's an entrepreneur. He's been on the podcast multiple times. If you check out his book, The Pumpkin Plan, he talks about this allegory of prizewinning pumpkins and what it takes. You have to lay the right foundation. You have to have the right seed for this business. But you also have to get rid of all the rotting pumpkins in the pumpkin patch. Otherwise, the whole patch will go bad. That means you also need to not let certain things grow, fester, or come into the pumpkin patch that are going to cause problems. That's these crappy clients.

When you recognize you're the prize, another analogy I like to use with clients to really drive this home is the idea of the sexy girl at the bar or the sexy guy at the bar. Whatever you're into or whatever you want to be, either one. If you're the sexy girl at the bar, you have options, you have choices. Guys are hitting on you, people are coming and approaching you, but you get to be picky.

You don't get with every guy. You don't get with everybody. Nobody wants that person. We'll reverse this in case anybody thinks that's sexist. I want to be the sexy guy at the bar. Let's say you're the sexy guy at the bar, you're not going to get with every girl. If women know that you're getting with every girl, you're not the sexy guy at the bar. You're the garbage.

Don't be the garbage that gets with every client. You want to make sure that you're getting with just the clients that you really want to be with, that you really enjoy working with, that you really feel like they value you. When you do that, it puts out a different message in the marketplace and puts out a different perception about you and your business. Not just that, even if they don't know anybody else, your air, your demeanor, how people perceive you, and how you come across during the sales process is going to be like the sexy guy or the sexy girl at the bar.

You're going to be able to maintain a frame of confidence. If you aren't able to maintain a frame of confidence, you then hurt the number one thing that people want to buy from you, which is safety and certainty. This is really what's for sale. Nobody wants to buy property management. That's not sexy. That's not interesting. They don't care about property management. Your clients don't give a [...] about property management. They're not interested in property management. What they really want is safety and certainty. They want peace of mind.

For most people on the planet, safety and certainty are one of their highest priorities. For most entrepreneurs, I've talked about the four reasons in a previous episode, but they want fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support. But for most of your clients, most people, and your team members, they're going to want safety and certainty. That's more important. If you recognize that, then that’s what you're selling is safety and certainty.

Guess one of the easiest ways to destroy safety and certainty during your sales process. That's to fold on your pricing, to cave in, to not maintain a masculine or dominant frame in which you are the trusted authority (whether or not you're male or female). They're coming to you looking for guidance, they're looking for authority, and they're looking for leadership. You have to maintain that frame that you are the sexy guy or girl at the bar. You are the prize.

That means you are going to have a conversation with them to see if they will be a good fit for your business. I want to see if your property and you would be a good fit for our portfolio, Mr. Owner or Mrs. Owner. That's the idea. You have to shift the conversation that you're qualifying. This is one of the biggest things in sales, the biggest mistakes in sales, but also the biggest factors you'll hear sales trainers or salespeople talk about. You have to qualify the prospect, which means you don't want every prospect. You don't want every client.

If you start actually qualifying them, sit down and figure out, what do I really want? What is my ideal client? Look at them through that filter. Ask them some questions. Make them qualify. Have some requirements that are essential in order for them to be allowed into your portfolio. Hey, Mr. Owner, let's have a conversation to see if you and your property would be a good fit for us to manage.

When you shift that and you turn the tables that way, it changes their perspective too. You're setting the rules of the engagement or the game to be, I'm going to see if you're a good fit. You're welcome to see if you like me as well. But I get to be picky because I recognize that I'm one of the most attractive people at the bar. I'm one of the most attractive businesses that do property management. They're going to perceive you as such because you value yourself as such.

The second you fold on your frame, which means you cave on your pricing, you come down, you use language that's not confident, or you make concessions, you shift immediately out of being the authority and the expert in their mind, which is who they want to feel safe and certain into being basically in their mind, somebody they're going to have to micromanage. You become an employee or a child to them in their mind. They're like, oh, I'm going to have to tell this property manager how to do their job. Then they're going to want custom reports, they're going to want custom concessions, and they want you to fold in your pricing and change things. They're going to want you to customize your contract.

When you maintain a frame that says, this is what we expect and you can take it or leave it. You can do things our way or you can go find another company. We're good because there's plenty of business for us out there, then you are the sexy guy or girl at the bar. You recognize you are the prize.

Help your potential clients make that decision. Make the right decision by having that safety and certainty by being certain in what you are, and that you are the best. If you lack that confidence deep down because deep down you aren't really sure if you're good, you aren't really sure if you're really providing value, then you have to start taking care of that. That's stuff that we get into in our mastermind a bit as well is talking about how to actually be the company and know that you're the company that does a really great job. That you get to be the sexy guy or girl at the bar. That's going to give you a lot more confidence.

If you are having trouble or challenges with any of this, you know you're showing up with a lack of confidence. You don't have confidence or certainty in your language. You are not able to maintain a frame that you're the expert, that you're getting a lot of really price-sensitive people or cheapos in the marketplace, you're doing something wrong. My clients are not doing these things wrong after they've been working with me for a while.

If you're struggling with these things, you may be interested in joining some of the most badass entrepreneurs in property management on the planet, which are in our mastermind. We have about 70 businesses in this mastermind. It's relatively new. We have 70 businesses in this mastermind, which is awesome.

It's amazing to hear their wins and the results each week. In fact, the ones that are having the most wins, they're not even able to show up to the calls because they're so busy, which is just awesome. There is no scarcity in the industry right now. There's plenty of business available. There's plenty of opportunities.

The best clients are not the ones that are the cheapos, that are at the end of the sales cycle, that are searching on Google trying to price shop you. Those are the worst. We don't want to build portfolios based on the worst and set your pricing in the industry. Throughout the industry, it's usually based on the worst, the cheapos of the industry, the cheapo investors. We want you to capture people earlier in the sales cycle that are better, that you really enjoy working with where you can be a lot pickier.

Cool. All right, if you're interested in that, check us out at doorgrow.com, reach out, and let's get you on a call with my team and see if we can help you grow your business. That's all I have to share today. A short little episode to share with you that you are the prize. Take some action and pay attention in your interactions throughout today and throughout the week recognizing that you are the prize. Establish yourself as the prize and maintain the frame that you are the prize and you will find that people will treat you very differently.

Just like that dating analogy, if we apply this to a real-life situation, it starts to become really obvious. Nobody wants to go get with the person that gets with everybody. Don't be that person. That's all I'm going to say for today. I am out. Until next time, everyone, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

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Jul 27, 2021

Why should you start a company or have a business? Making money should not be an entrepreneur’s primary goal or only reason. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks about four reasons for starting a company or having a business.

Many entrepreneurs mistakenly think the goal is to exit and retire early. However, if you follow my four reasons, you won't want to leave because you’ll be giving up something that's really important to you.

You’ll Learn...

[02:20] Money: Doesn’t always make a successful business owner happy but miserable.

[03:09] Four things are probably more important than money for having a business.

[03:19] Side Effects: Being a big bottleneck or cutting operational costs.

[04:36] Jason’s four reasons for starting a company.

[04:47] Reason #1: Fulfillment: It should be a vehicle to give you fulfillment in life.

[05:30] Reason #2: Freedom: It’s what you achieve, why you want to be entrepreneurs.

[08:04] Reason #3: Contribution: Businesses should solve real marketplace problems.

[10:31] Reason #4: Support: It's a vehicle to create contributions and change the world.

[10:55] Business Model: Resources, money, staff create contributions, make difference.

[12:17] Why not start a business? For most people, it’s safety and certainty.

Tweetables

“There's something more that entrepreneurs need to be focused on than just making money.”

“If you have these four things and you're in alignment with these four things, you then have a business that you love.”

“The reality is there's nothing in your business in the long run that you have to do. There's nothing. You can offload any pieces of the business that you don't enjoy.”

“Entrepreneurs—we really want to make a difference in the world. We want to contribute. We want to feel like we're adding value.”

Resources

DGS 137: Implement Leasing Automation in Your Property Management Business with ShowMojo 0

Transcript

At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses 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. Now, let's get into the show.

I'm going to do something a little bit different. Usually, I interview people, first of all, because that makes me feel a bit more secure. It's just a comfort thing. It feels a little bit weird to just sit here and talk all by myself, but my team has been pushing me to do this for years. You need to create your own episodes just you talking, sharing some of your ideas. That's really what people want to hear, and so here it goes.

This episode may be one of the most important pieces of content or information that I've put out into the marketplace. We're going to be talking today about what I call the four reasons. These are Jason Hull's four reasons for starting a company or for having a business. This is something that is just formulated in my mind over the last decade of running a company and coaching business owners, just realizing and seeing that there's something more that entrepreneurs need to be focused on than just making money.

There's something more that's important because I've had so many. I've talked to thousands of property managers, I have hundreds of clients, I've spoken to a lot of business owners, I've been in a lot of different masterminds and programs. One of the things that I've realized is that there's something a bit deeper that a business owner needs in order to have a successful business than just making money. At some point, money is no longer really an issue, but they could still be miserable.

One of the things that I've noticed is that instead of money being the primary goal, there are four things that are probably more important than money. These are the four reasons for having a business. What I've noticed is if you have these four things and you're in alignment with these four things, you then have a business that you love. If you're out of alignment with these four things, then you have a job that makes you somewhat miserable or maybe very miserable. You then are basically the biggest bottleneck in your business, you are the most critical employee in your business, you will be more and more frustrated, and you'll want to escape.

A lot of entrepreneurs mistakenly think the goal is to exit, the goal is retirement. Here's the thing, if you have these four reasons, you don't really want to retire because then you give up something that's really important to you.

The other side effect of having these four reasons is that your operational costs when it comes to staffing is usually cut into a fraction. Usually cut maybe down to a third of what most property management companies or most businesses spend on staffing costs, which means you'll be able to get about three times the output from team members because you'll be in alignment with these four reasons. That means that they can be in alignment with these four reasons. Let's get into the four reasons for starting a company.

Reason number one, the primary reason, the most important reason to start a business has to be fulfillment. Fulfillment is the primary goal or reason for a business to exist. It should be a vehicle to give you fulfillment in life. You're going to be giving up the majority of your life on this thing. Probably the largest portion of your day goes to your business or towards your work. Probably the largest portion of your week goes towards your business or towards work. You should be getting something in return, besides just trading your life and giving your life away in exchange for dollars.

You should be getting life, you should be enjoying your life, and you should be getting fulfillment. That's primary goal number one. Primary goal number two, the second reason for having a business needs to be freedom. This is why we become entrepreneurs. We want to achieve and get more freedom. You can make more and more money as your business grows. Most businesses do, but most business owners have less freedom and less fulfillment in their day-to-day. They become more and more a slave to their own business, and the business is then their master.

As entrepreneurs, we want more freedom. That's usually why we want more money. We think, man, if I had more money, I would have more options in life and that should be true. If you have more money, it should give you more options in life, and you should then have more freedom. Most business owners usually within the first year of their business, a very short period of time, they have very little freedom and very little fulfillment.

The thing is with fulfillment, reason number one, if you're doing everything in the business wearing every hat in the business, you can't really be in a state of fulfillment. You also can't really feel like you're free because you're doing things that you really don't enjoy doing. I find a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners mistakenly think that there are certain things they have to do because they're business owners.

What's really odd is this is different for each person, but it's some sort of conditioning. Maybe it's things they learned growing up, learned their jobs, or they've just decided they can never hand off certain pieces. A lot of business owners hold on to things that they don't have to do.

For example, if you hate accounting, but you feel like I have to do all the accounting in my business. Maybe you hate sales but you're like, I have to do all the sales in my business, or I hate talking to people and connecting with people, but you are talking and connecting with people constantly. Really, the reality is there's nothing in your business in the long run that you have to do. There's nothing.

You can offload any pieces of the business that you don't enjoy. The problem is a lot of times, entrepreneurs will offload the things they do enjoy, which give them fulfillment and a sense of freedom. Then they hold on to the things that take that away, that are really minus signs in their day instead of plus signs energetically.

The third reason for having a business is contribution. The goal of a business should be that it solves a real problem in the marketplace. That's a contribution. If a business doesn't solve a real problem in the marketplace, then it's basically bullshit. It's snake oil, it's stealing people's money. I find entrepreneurs—we really want to make a difference in the world. We want to contribute, we want to feel like we're adding value.

One of the reasons I'm inspired to work with property management entrepreneurs is you have a real impact. Most property management businesses suck. I'm sure you're like, yeah, that's true. If you look at your market, you know it. You know that this is true. Most property management businesses suck. It's not because these business owners woke up in the morning and said, man, I want to have a shitty company today. I want to start a business and have it suck. We'll get back to why so many suck at least one part.

Good property management business owners, their business solves three of the biggest challenges in real estate. What are three of the most complained about things in real estate probably? Probably number one, landlords. You just hear lots of people complaining about landlords. They get a bad rep. Number two, a lot of people complain about tenants. All these renters, they're the worst and you hear people complain about them. You also hear people complain about rental properties.

Good property managers are the superheroes of the entire real estate investing industry and they make all three of those things better. Nobody else does that. DoorGrow hacker, property management entrepreneur, you deserve to get paid well if you're one of the good ones. That's a real contribution. That's why businesses exist to solve a real problem in the marketplace, and you deserve to be compensated well for that. That's reason number three.

Entrepreneurs, we want to contribute and make a difference. We feel like we're doing something good in the world, and that feels like fulfillment to us to be contributing and benefiting other people. The business is a vehicle for fulfillment, it's a vehicle for freedom, and it's a vehicle for contribution for the entrepreneur. The fourth reason is so important that if you don't have it, you can't really have the first three, at least not fully.

The fourth reason for having a business is support. Having a business, it's a vehicle to create contributions and change the world. There's probably no better vehicle that could exist. Charities aren't even as effective or as efficient. Entrepreneurs have figured out a model, which is a business, which allows them the resources, money, the staff in which they can create contributions and make a difference. In order to do this and have more freedom and have more fulfillment, you can't be wearing every hat as I talked about earlier. You need support.

Having support in the business means that you have an awesome team. It means that you are able to offload all the things and the hats that you don't want to wear. You find people that enjoy doing those things, that will be better at it than you, that you can trust, that share your values. When you're supported, then you're going to feel like Iron Man in your super suit. You're a normal person, but you have this magical increased super capability because you have a team, which gives you more time, gives you more ability. You need support.

Here's the cool thing. If you have these four reasons—you have fulfillment, you have freedom, you have a contribution, you have support—then that means that you can have team members that also have those four reasons. Looking at these four things, what's interesting to note is that most people on the planet do not care about these four things more than they care about a higher priority. A higher priority than these four things for most people is safety and certainty.

This is important to recognize, especially as a property manager. Safety and certainty are the highest priority for most people on the planet. They want to feel safe and certain. This is why they don't go start businesses. This is why they're willing to give up and not have fulfillment, freedom, a sense of contribution, or even a lack of support in their day job. This is why the standard American employee often just complains about their boss, lives for the weekend, and wants to go out and drink. They're just trying to escape their life.

If you are in alignment with these four reasons then you can build the right team around you. When I see those, a lot of entrepreneurs are not in alignment with these four things. As they expand and break past the first sand trap of maybe about 50, 60 doors, and then they get into the next sand trap of maybe 200–400 doors, where they have a team, usually they have the wrong team.

Why? Because they are not in alignment with these four reasons. They're doing the wrong things. They're showing up as the wrong person that's less happy, has less fulfillment, less freedom, less contribution. They are not going to feel supported because they're doing the wrong things. They're going to build a team of people around them that supplement their miserableness, and so these people around them are also not going to have a sense of freedom, fulfillment, contribution, and support.

The operational cost on those types of team members is usually going to be three times higher. What I mean is if you have a team member that has a sense of fulfillment in the business, they feel fulfilled in their day-to-day, they feel like they have autonomy and freedom, they feel like they're making a difference in benefiting people, they feel supported by you, and they feel like they get to support you as the entrepreneur, they are going to give you three times the output I find. A-player team members, really great team members, will give you three times the output of a typical employee, which means that's going to significantly decrease your operational costs.

This is the most expensive thing in business is staffing. That resource is the most expensive. If you want to be a profitable company, you want to be one of the good property management businesses, and not be one of the sucky ones, a lot of times the reason they're sucky is because their operational costs are too high.

They don't have a really good team because they aren't really showing up as a really great boss. They are miserable and their team is not very happy. Their customer service levels drop because they can't really support people as well because their operational costs are too expensive so they're not able to get as much done.

One of the most common questions I get is, how many staff members should I have per the number of doors? Is there a ratio that's right? There are so many variables that come into this that it's an impossible thing to answer. You need a lot less staff per door if you are in alignment with these four reasons and your team members are in alignment with these four reasons.

Hopefully, this concept of the four reasons is helpful. This is the foundation of my philosophy as a property management business coach. With my clients, this is my primary goal. I reiterate this on our coaching calls that we have each week. I reiterate this in my one-on-one with clients. My goal is to get you more and more in alignment with these four reasons. I have processes and ways of helping people do that, that maybe we'll get into on a future call.

Basically, we want to see what are the plus signs in your day-to-day, what are the minus signs? How can we become really conscious of that? I usually use time studies to do that. I have a specific process for taking clients through to identify that, how to figure out how to feel safe to offload. In order to do that, you're going to have to create the right culture so that you have people that share the values that you can trust with people, trust with your clientele, and not just people that know how to do the job. Cultural fit is more important. We can get into that more, maybe in another conversation.

Anyway, if you want to get in alignment with these four reasons, you feel like you're out of alignment with them right now, reach out to me and reach out to my team at doorgrow.com. Check us out, join our Facebook group, doorgrowclub.com. You can go to doorgrowclub.com. Apply and join our Facebook group if you are a property management entrepreneur. Let's see if we can get you more in alignment with those four reasons.

Life's too short. You should be enjoying your day-to-day life. I want you to have a job and a business that you don't want to escape and retire from. Because if you did, you would be giving up one of your main vehicles for fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support in life. You want to keep that. You then can choose how much you want to do in that business. I want you to always be able to hold on to the things that give you freedom, fulfillment, contribution, and support.

Anyway, with that, I'm out. Until next time. To our mutual growth everybody. I'm Jason Hull, and I hope that you found this beneficial. If so, leave comments, give us a review, and some feedback. I would appreciate it. Thanks.

You've just listened to the DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrow Club. 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.

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 at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subsribe. Until next time. Take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

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Jul 13, 2021

Looking for a system that will help you automate the entire residential leasing process?

Today’s guest is Abi Wasserman from ShowMojo, a complete leasing automation platform that handles scheduling coordination and showings. Abi explains ShowMojo as automating everything that happens in the pre-leasing experience, from the moment a property is available and hits the market to the moment a prospective renter is moving forward with an application.

You’ll Learn...

[02:24] ShowMojo: What it is, what it does, and how it's different from other options.

[04:14] Touch Points: Automated communication confirms, follows up leasing process.

[05:22] Property managers fit business needs and leasing processes into one platform.

[05:50] Other Options: Some companies do showings or open houses differently.

[06:29] Independent Experience: Know calendar availability for each team member.

[07:58] COVID Pandemic Hold: Starting to get back to first normal, busy leasing season.

[08:48] Walk the Talk: What to do when renting property to somebody site unseen.

[10:21] With so many property management tools, why choose ShowMojo?

[13:30] FAQ: Focus on syndication, customers, security, and platform comparisons.

[17:00] Determining Factor: ShowMojo’s success is because of relationships.

[18:40] Pros and cons of occupant, self, and accompanied showings.

[23:54] Common Problems: Time wasting calls? Use the automated ShowMojo phone.

Tweetables

“Your platform should allow you to be able to customize your needs, stack appointments up together, calculate drive time, and take that into account in between showings.”

“That's going to turn into maintenance nightmares for you down the road or a tenant nightmare for you down the road because they haven't seen the property.”

“The first place that somebody sees a difference with the way that ShowMojo operates, is really in that prospective renter experience.”

“That prospective renter experience is important for them, but it's also important for you.”

Resources

ShowMojo

Abi Wasserman’s Email

Abi Wasserman on LinkedIn

DGS 136: Save Time and Money in Property Management with Andrew Lebaron 0

Transcript

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

Abi: Hey Jason. How are you?

Jason: I'm fantastic. I'm doing really well. How are you?

Abi: I am good. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

Jason: I've been wanting to get ShowMojo on the show forever. They've been on my hit list for a long time and I finally just gave up. Then suddenly, you showed up on my calendar, which is awesome. I’m glad you came.

Abi: I have a magic touch. It's like we have mojo or something, I don't know. It might be in our name.

Jason: Yeah, maybe. Some ShowMojo. Abi, maybe give us a little bit of background on ShowMojo, if you could. Then maybe we can chat about what it is, what it does, and how it's different from the other options on the market.

Abi: ShowMojo is the leasing automation platform. We have been around for over 10 years. My understanding of how DoorGrow got started originated out of this need for the property management industry, started from an entrepreneur and an entrepreneurial mindset. Our founder and his wife who owned property management units saw this need for automation to exist in their life. To stop them from taking away from their day-to-day life and what time was getting spent with the kids or at family dinners, those tasks, those phone calls, those emails, that coordination that typically comes with the leasing process, that pre-leasing process. What was bothering them and not conducive to that family time, it ended up turning into ShowMojo and this scheduling coordination. Eventually, self show as well but the entire leasing automation platform that is ShowMojo.

Jason: Got it. I think ShowMojo really pioneered on the market the scheduling sort of aspect. Then it looks like Rently copied that. They had the lock boxes and now ShowMojo’s got the lock boxes, too. Then you've got Tenant Turner and they seem to have a similar product. Why don't you explain for people that have no idea what ShowMojo is? They aren't aware of these. What it is and then maybe we can get into the differences.

Abi: I like to explain ShowMojo as thinking about automating everything that happens in that pre-leasing experience, from the moment that a property is available and hits the market, to the moment that that prospective renter is moving forward with an application. What our platform and what ShowMojo does is it empowers that prospective renter to really self-drive their way through a prospect-driven leasing process. It allows them to really empower that process from start to finish, giving them that immediate touch, that immediate response that they crave when they're trying to schedule a showing.

Giving them that automated communication throughout the process. Making sure that they have confirmed the showings or giving them the ability to automatically reschedule a showing. Giving them automated communication on the back end of that. Following-up after a showing. Following-up with the application process after the showing. Really making sure that there are just all of those touch points, and giving property managers that customizable platform in it where they can fit it their business needs, their processes, how they do leasing and not making a property management company have to fix their processes to a platform mix, if that makes sense.

Jason: Yes. Could you give us some examples of how companies might do it a bit differently maybe?

Abi: Some property management companies, for instance, will do great showings especially as we move more out of this pandemic, there are property management companies that will do great showings or open houses. Maybe they'll do clustered individual showings where you only want to go out to a property maybe once a day and you want to cluster your showings together where you've got five back-to-back showings. Your platform should allow you to be able to customize your needs, stack appointments up together, calculate drive time and take that into account in between showings.

Know what calendar availability is there for each one of your team members, crosscheck maybe a third-party calendar like Google or Outlook, be able to send those invites back and forth between those calendars easily, and make sure that each one of your team members can also have that independent experience. If you and I were working together and you were showing a few of the properties and I was showing a few of the properties, we have independent schedules. Maybe we even both show one property and our times overlap, but the platform can still take that into account.

Jason: I love the idea of group showings because it really would collapse time for the property manager. It could put so much work on their plate, but the tenants are often willing to move around your schedule and to do things that you want them to do because they're really trying to get into a place. If you can get 10 or 20 people to show up to a particular unit, even if you're just having them—if they're pandemic-scared—go through one at a time and they're waiting outside, that allows you to increase the perception of demand, it allows you to just get a bunch of applicants right away, and then you can go through screen and figure out who we should put into this place. I know property managers that they do one open house, one showing. They get plenty of applicants and then they get the thing rented out.

Abi: And that is the case. I think one of the things that I've seen most recently as we've come out of this pandemic hold, which I think we've been in for a good 16 months of this, I don't know what's going to happen with my vacancy because of the pandemic. Now, we're coming out of that holding pattern where moratoriums are lifting and things are starting to get back to our first normal leasing season, busy leasing season. Now, what property managers are seen all over the country (I think) is that they're putting a property on the market and they are getting immediate applications, site unseen, where they will put a property on the market and they’ll get 10 applications for it.

I also have those conversations with property managers who want somebody to walk that property. You don't often want to rent to somebody that hasn't looked at that property because that's going to turn into maintenance nightmares for you down the road or a tenant nightmare for you down the road because they haven't seen the property. I didn't know that this was here. I didn't know you expected me to change my filter. I don't know where to change my filter. I never saw that. There's so many things that come up.

Even with the market being the way that it is where you've got 10 applications coming through, then how do you set up the showings so that at least you're getting your top five applicants through that property and down the line through your application process?

Jason: Right. It's Russian roulette, you're playing a dangerous game if you don't have people view the property. How does the ShowMojo compare, because I know there's a lot of tools out there. I see this question pop up in the DoorGrowClub, our Facebook group constantly. People are asking it on our mastermind all the time. Which tool are you using and why? Everybody has different opinions. How can you help people make the decision to choose ShowMojo over something like TurboTenant, Tenant Turner, Rently, all these different tools that exist out there?

Abi: You know me and you know I've been around a really long time. I've got friends that work at other companies. Whenever I'm asked these questions, whenever I’ve been asked at a different company and against a competitive company there, my goal is never to sling mud. My goal is always to just talk about the differences or where I feel we have an advantage or how we do it and I like the way you do it. I will say that the first place that somebody sees a difference with the way that ShowMojo operates, is really in that prospective renter experience.

With ShowMojo, when a prospective renter goes to schedule a showing, the experience for them whether it's on a desktop, whether it's on their mobile phone, it is all happening on one screen. They don't have to sign up for an account with ShowMojo. They don't have to pay a fee. Even if they're validating their identity with a credit or debit card, we're not charging them a fee for an account with us. They don't have to remember a username or password.

I don't say this because I think that it's a bad user experience to do that. There are a lot of sites that I will sign up for recurring business. But when I'm renting, I don't really want to do that until I’m filling out an application and logging into a portal. I don't want to give anybody but that property manager my contact, like login details. I'll give you my contact details, but I don't want to do that. That's my preference as a renter because I have been one for too long because I can't do the math right now. As I get closer to my 35th birthday, I can't do math on the spot.

I know you and I both have one coming up, if I remember that correctly about us both, we have one in I think the same week. But that prospective renter experience is important. Making it as easy for them to actually schedule that showing is critical. You also, for the property manager, if I'm a property manager, I want to own that rental lead. I don't want them signing up for an account with the service that I'm working with and then owning that data. I want to own that rental lead. I want them to be my rental lead.

I don't want them seeing properties for somebody else's company. I want them being cross marketed properties that I have on the market. If something changes within my portfolio, I want them to be notified of it. I don't want them being dripped with other properties from other property management companies. I worked very hard to get those people over to my website or to get them to my listing. I want to own that data. That prospective renter experience is important for them but it's also important for you.

Jason: I'm curious about what are some of the questions that prospective users of ShowMojo tend to have when they're coming to you during the sales conversation?

Abi: A lot of the questions will circle around the syndication network that we have, whether if they are new customers, will it compare to what I'm doing with my software provider? If they are switching over from a different platform, does it compare or does it exceed what I already have? Oftentimes, it exceeds what they already have or it is an even match for.

Jason: Let’s explain syndication for those that don't know what it means.

Abi: When we have listings through ShowMojo, what we do is we will push them out to internet listing sites. Things like apartments.com, Zillow if a customer is paying for it, rentals.com same thing as Zillow, realtor.com, Zumper, those kinds of ILS or the listing sites to get additional visibility and rental leads back in for our customers. With ShowMojo, we automatically respond to those leads pushing them over to get them to schedule a showing, but it's typically the same as or greater visibility than wherever they may have been coming from before.

Jason: Got it. One of the strengths of ShowMojo is really good syndication.

Abi: Yes and the email response and the communication afterwards.

Jason: What are some of the other questions that people have when they're curious and vetting ShowMojo as a provider for them?

Abi: I would say it probably will come in where the lock boxes and self-show is concerned and how do we handle security, how do we handle preparing for fraud because it doesn't happen frequently. It's going to happen in the property management industry. It's a factor of doing self-show and doing lock box showings. It's more of those questions of how do we prepare for it, so outside of the normal tech things that our team does by searching and preparing and preventing known scammers from being able to schedule, we don't advertise any of our listings as self-show or lock box showings.

We don't distribute codes until the showing has been confirmed with that prospect or we have the additional step where they have to actually confirm their location is at the property. They have to use location enablement on their cell phones. We also follow up after every showing to make sure that that prospective renter has locked up and left the keys at the property. If they don't then we notify our customer of that. We have multiple different checkpoints in place for our customers on that side.

Jason: Got it. Now, is that different from other providers when it comes to lock boxes?

Abi: There are some providers that are very forthright about how much self-show they do, even advertising through video the entire self-show process on their customers’ websites. I'm not sure where that checkpoints are in terms of checking back up with a prospective renter, so I'm not sure where the follow up process is necessarily with other companies.

Jason: What do you think is the determining factor for people to go with ShowMojo then? How are you closing these deals, Abi?

Abi: I would say number one, because of relationships, like I always do. At the end of the day, it is a more customizable platform to fit property managers’ needs. It is cost effective, and we have a lot more bells and whistles to really be able to, so it ties back in with that customization but we have more bells and whistles to really fit it to the existing process. Customizing it from that first moment that they interact with the listing to the moment before moving forward with an application. Without going through a full demo, it's everything from cost to benefit and that value and between.

Jason: Cool. ShowMojo sounds like a really awesome tool for property managers. Some are a little bit nervous about the lock boxes and self-showings, so what's your perception on who decides to do that and who decides not to? Because it seems like there's two solid camps there. I could never do that. It's too risky, and I love it and it's amazing. It seems very polarizing, I notice, whether or not to do lock boxes.

Abi: I would say we are definitely fans of in-person showings because there are questions that you're not going to be able to… Number one, the first thing is that you're not going to be able to show occupied units. You're never going to be able to show occupied units on a lock box showing. The obvious benefit to doing a company showing says that you can stay pre-leased, and show occupied units, get them leased before they even go vacant. You can also answer questions that you're not going to be able to answer during a self-show. You can get a feel for those prospective renters. There are a lot of benefits to an accompanied showing.

Jason: I'm curious about the pre-lease situation, how to ShowMojo handle the existing residents of the property and make sure that's communicated, because that's usually seems to be one of the most difficult sticking points with trying to do showing. Sometimes they're really resistant to having people come into their place. The communication back and forth. Then you're trying to negotiate times with them and with prospective renters. That communication gets a little cumbersome. Does ShowMojo try to facilitate that?

Abi: A couple of things. One and I've had this conversation recently, so that's why I say a couple of things. I would have ordinarily just started with showing acceptance, which is where you can put in the residence information and they have to accept the show times or reject them. But the reason I say a couple is because I've had this conversation twice in the last couple of weeks. The response from the property manager was the same. That won't work. They will reject it every time.

I said okay. Then in my brain, the way that I creatively think about this, is it goes back to the way that calendars are set up and ShowMojo. There is a way to set up a specific time window for each property. That is the only time that that property can be shown. I said, okay, well then, great. If they will reject every time, then you don't necessarily need to do showing acceptance with them. What you need to do is you need to say I will be showing your property, because you've given notice. Tell me what day of the week and what time frame will work for you for the next 60 days or 30 days or whatever notice they’ve had to give.

Block it out for that recurring week notice. Maybe it's Friday from 2:00–5:00 are their window that you are allowed to show their unit. Then that way that is the only time that the showings will get booked for that property. Either way there is an option in ShowMojo. Chances are there's a way to accommodate it. There's the showing acceptance where you can put in the residence information or the owners, if its owner occupied. You can put in the owner acceptance too. You can put in there showing acceptance or you can block out the certain time windows for the property, so either way.

Jason: Sometimes it's easier to tell people that it’s going to happen, instead of asking for permission.

Abi: Exactly.

Jason: I like that. But the showing acceptance thing, that's pretty cool. This software has been around for a while. It really was I believe the first on the market that really did the scheduled showings model. It sounds like they've been optimizing and innovating since then and adding features. I think that is the niche that it's quite customizable which I think is appealing to property managers. It sounds like you have really good syndication. You also have the lock boxes thing. Anything else anybody should know about ShowMojo?

Abi: If you've got questions, if you're thinking that it could do something, I wonder if it does this, odds are it does. We've worked with real estate listings. There's ways to do maintenance checkups. We use ShowMojo for our own demo scheduling platform. When somebody comes on our website to schedule a demo, we use ShowMojo for that. The way that it can be customized to fit whatever needs you have, it is endless. We just rolled out occupant-led showings.

If you're actually having a tenant do a showing for you, a renter, with some of the people that may have been under more lock down restrictions. I know that sometimes you move towards the things that you have to do. I can sit here and rant and rave about ShowMojo for a while.

Jason: That occupant-led showing is an interesting idea. I talked to the property manager and he had (I think) 1000 tours or more at a conference. He said that his company never did showings. He said, we just pay the occupants to show the property and we give them some sort of kickback if it gets rented. They’re incentivized to sell the place.

Abi: That's a great idea.

Jason: The biggest complaint or challenge that you hear in leasing is just the time wasting phone calls. This is just such a time suck for property managers. You have people calling up and saying what's the square footage on this listing that I'm looking at right now, that has the square footage on it. Stuff like that. Does ShowMojo facilitate phone calls or work well with the solution that does?

Abi: We do. We have our ShowMojo phone which is automated, that's included with all of the way that we do things which allows prospective renters to always get schedule a showing link or view all of the available listings and a gallery. It also will determine if somebody's running late for a showing and cancel it if they're running too late and follow up to reschedule. But we also have live answers available to our customers that are additional, but very affordable, very cost-effective.

They can turn it on or off at any time but it's with our call team and they will answer basic questions just like you mentioned if it’s something that they missed in the listing detail, they can schedule showings. If somebody calls to follow up on an application, they can answer that question. If it’s a potential owner, they can answer those questions. They can take messages and forward them over to the team. It’s something that they can turn on outside of office hours if they want to have their team handle it during office hours and have somebody else answer outside of office hours. We do have the ability to help with that.

Jason: Where's the call center team based out of?

Abi: We have virtual call centers, but they're both US and out of the US space. Odds are, if you call during daylight/evening hours, you're going to get somebody in the US and then outside of that, 2:00 AM, you may not get somebody in California.

Jason: It’s a 24-hour thing.

Abi: Yeah.

Jason: All right, any questions I missed?

Abi: I don't think so. I don't like to control the flow. I feel like we had a good chat. I feel like it was good.

Jason: Cool. How can people find out more about ShowMojo?

Abi: You can always come to showmojo.com and connect with us there. If you want to send me an email, you can also always reach me at abbey.wasserman@showmojo.com. You can reach us on our website. Find us on LinkedIn and all that fun stuff.

Jason: Cool. Well Abi, I appreciate you coming on the DoorGrowShow. We finally got ShowMojo in the books.

Abi: Thanks for having us.

Jason: Now I can point people to a podcast episode when they ask me about ShowMojo.

Abi; There we go.

Jason: All right. I appreciate you being on and I'll let you go.

Abi: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Jason: All right. Property managers, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you want to add doors, you're wanting to grow your business, reach out to DoorGrow. We've got this new mastermind that we started towards the end of last year, which has been really awesome. That's probably why you're wondering why I haven’t been doing very many podcast episodes. I've been really enjoying coaching clients and helping them grow. It's what I'm passionate about. We've got about 54 businesses in our mastermind as of today.

Our goal was to hit 50 by the end of June, so we hit our target and we've got some really awesome clients, really awesome businesses in the program. One of our clients, a really hard worker, put in 3–5 hours a day using one of the strategies that I gave them. It cost them zero dollars, it’s just time, and he's added 125 doors in six months. He was stuck at about 80 units before coming to us. He tried SEO and some other things.

We've got clients that are showing up. One of our clients in the last weekly checking call said that they're adding 100 doors from one owner. The week before that, 21 doors. We’ve got another client that's been with us in the mastermind for coming up on maybe about a year, but at a previous call checked in adding a 25-unit complex, a 35-unit complex and these are by doing zero dollars in advertising.

One thing I want to point out is if you want to grow your business fast, right now, the largest companies in property management are losing more doors than they're getting on. They're spending thousands of dollars a month on internet marketing. If you want to shift away from internet marketing, which isn't even working for the biggest companies, and getting cold leads that are time-wasters, tire-kickers, and have a low close rate, let me share with you and teach you how to grow your business rapidly by going after the blue ocean using that strategy. The 70% that are self-managing, creating warmer lead opportunities. Warm leads have a 90% close rate or higher typically for most property managers.

I'm going to teach you how to facilitate that, how to make that work really well in your favor. You have other people feeding you more business, you're getting more from online reviews, and you're able to target groups, things that are high leverage that will feed you warm leads. Check us out at DoorGrow, schedule a call with us, and chat with us about the new DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind.

Our guarantee in the mastermind is that within the first 30 days, the very latest by the end of the first 60, we will have double offset the monthly cost of the masterminds. You're making twice as much money in residual income. Otherwise, I'll continue to coach you for free.

We've not yet had to have anybody use that guarantee. That's if you're willing to keep our three commitments, which means one hour strategic time in the morning, being a business owner instead of saying I’ll work on my business tonight or on the weekend like a lot of business owners tend to do which doesn't generally happen. That's the garbage scraps of your time.

Second commitment that's required is two hours a day, a tactical time to work on growing the business and implementing the strategies that I give you. That's less time than it would take to deal with cold leads. You're going to get a much bigger return and result.

Then the third commitment is to show up to one of our two weekly group coaching calls that we have on Zoom. Those are on Wednesdays at 11:00 Central Time, noon Eastern. 9:00 Pacific, 10:00 Mountain. Those are on Wednesdays and Fridays. Wednesdays, we focus on adding doors, growth, sales, referrals, reputation, prospecting methods. We talk about websites, et cetera.

On Fridays, we get into operations DoorGrow OS, which is better than EOS retraction. We've had several come from that sort of camp. It's the ultimate operating system for property management business. We get into DoorGrow ATS—applicant tracking system and hiring system.

My goal is to build rapidly companies that can handle rapid growth, quickly hiring, off-loading in making sure that the business gets more and more in alignment for you, giving you the business owner more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, and more support so that it becomes more fun the bigger your business get. I'm really good at helping business ownership towards that. If you're frustrated, stuck in the operation side or in the growth side, talk to my team and let's get you maybe on board with the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind.

I appreciate everybody that's tuned into this or that's been paying attention to us on iTunes or on YouTube. Be sure to like, subscribe, give us positive reviews. We love all that kind of stuff if you got value from this. Until next time, everyone, to our mutual growth. Bye everybody.

Download this Episode

Jun 29, 2021

Are short-term rental businesses coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and being resurrected? Do owners love the return on investment (ROI) and income, but tired of the turnover, logistics, and moving parts? If you’re doing it all on your own, hand it over.

Today’s guest is Andrew LeBaron with BuyMoreTime, a flat-rate property management solution for short-term rentals. Andrew began his real estate journey by being the marketing director and a guest on Joe Fairless’s Best Ever Real Estate Investing Advice Show. Then, Andrew started buying, selling, wholesaling, fixing, and flipping properties and got licensed to go even further.

You’ll Learn...

[02:13] How Andrew went from greeting big-name podcast guests to becoming one.

[05:15] Hoteling 101: Managing a hotel is not time and freedom. It's a lot of work.

[05:54] Team Effort: If you don’t have a team, you will not thrive (or sleep).

[09:23] COVID: Great for short-term rentals, not for property managers or owners.

[12:40] Questions: How much could my property rent for? What needs to be inside it?

[16:23] Mistakes: Give gifts and leave notes for guests to make a big difference.

Tweetables

“Shorter rental management is big bucks.”

Hoteling 101: Owners of short-term rental properties just wanted more time and freedom, and managing a hotel is not time and freedom. It's a lot of work.

“There's so many facets to this. There's legal, there's inventory, there is coordination with cleaning and maintenance. Then, there’s guest responses. It's literally 24/7.”

“When you have a short-term rental, you're not selling a place to stay. You're selling an experience.”

Resources

The Best Short-Term Rental Management

Andrew LeBaron on Facebook

Best Ever Real Estate Investing Advice Show with Joe Fairless

JF1896: How To Grow Your Property Management Company with Jason Hull

DGS 135: The Power of Technology for Real Estate Professionals with BetterCapital 0

Transcript

Jason: Welcome DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker.

DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.

I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. Today's guest, I'm hanging out here with Andrew LeBaron. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Andrew: Thank you.

Jason: Andrew, you're with an organization company called BuyMoreTime.

Andrew: That’s it. We are a short-term rental property management solution.

Jason: Cool. Andrew, we don't have a lot of vendors and people on the show typically related to the short-term rental industry. This will be interesting because I have been getting a lot more calls related to that lately. Maybe a lot of people are starting to resurrect these short-term rental businesses coming out of the pandemic, where there's a black swan event that squashed the industry temporarily. Let's first get into a little bit of background about you and how you got into this industry.

Andrew: Yeah, sure. It's funny. We're on a podcast right now. I actually started a long time ago as a marketing director for a podcast. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Best Ever Real Estate Investing Show with Joe Fairless. He buys multi-family apartments. That's his main gig.

Jason: I think I was on that show. I've been on a lot of podcasts back in the day.

Andrew: I wouldn’t be surprised. Heck, maybe, I reached out to you some years ago, who knows? It's the world's longest daily real estate podcast. I mean his work ethic is insane. Years ago, I got into real estate. I jumped into (of course) Bigger Pockets. I jumped into Joe Fairless’s podcast. On one of the podcast episodes he said, I am looking for a marketing director. Someone that can help connect me with more guests. If that's you, send me an email.

I'm like, I want to try that. I sent him an email. I'm like, I don't care if he pays me. If he pays me, great. If he doesn't, so what? I was his marketing director and I got to meet some of the coolest people—Grant Cardone, Gary Keller, some really big names. I didn't get to speak to Barbara Corcoran, but I got to send an email. There were some pretty big names on that podcast and I was actually able to be a guest.

I was starting my real estate journey and from there I started buying and selling properties, wholesaling, buying, fixing, and flipping. I started buying small apartments, 6 units, 10 units and so on and so forth. Then I got licensed because I wanted to take it a little bit further. I thought, okay, if I'm not going to buy these, I'm going to either manage them, and so on and so forth.

Then I realized about 3½–4 years ago from an accident, actually, that shorter rental management is big bucks. In fact, we bought a house that we couldn’t sell. We tried everything we could to move, the property just wouldn't move for some reason; it was just a weird property. I told my partner, whatever. Let's furnish it. We went to goodwill. We got these truckloads of just random furniture and we loaded up into this house—we’re such rookies—and we put it up or lease or we set it up for Airbnb. I kid you not, this lady wanted to rent it for a week for $250 a night. I was like, it’s got to be a joke. There's no way. She's like, no, I’d love to stay here, me and my family.

From there, I thought, the short-term rental space is where it's at. We started buying more, furnishing more. Then all of our friends said, can you help us manage ours? We're like, okay, we can help you. It's hoteling 101, but that's how we became BuyMoreTime. We noticed that owners of short-term rental properties just wanted more time and freedom, and managing a hotel is not time and freedom. It's a lot of work.

Jason: Right. I don't think there's any industry that takes more time and more customer interaction than the hospitality industry. I think that's rated at the top. Property management is second to that, they say, so it's right there.

Andrew: It's pretty insane. There's so many facets to this. There's legal, there's inventory, there is coordination with cleaning and maintenance. Then there’s guest responses. It's literally 24/7. There is no sleep. If you don’t have a team, you will not thrive.

Jason: Right. Tell us a little bit about BuyMoreTime. What is it exactly that you do?

Andrew: BuyMoreTime is a flat rate management service for short-term rentals. We are a service-first company. If you have a property on a short-term rental platform, say, Airbnb, VRBO, if you have a motel, small apartment building, you want to do a couple of apartments and you want to maximize your ROI by leveraging the short-term rental platforms and its traffic, then you can hire us. We will manage that for you. We’ll set it up. Most of the time we're looking for clients that already had it built, but we can set it up. We will set your teams—you're cleaning team, your maintenance team. We’ll handle messaging 24/7. We will take over your hotel. That's what we do.

Jason: Okay, the hotel. Awesome. Cool and I checked my inbox. I was on the Joe Fairless podcast back in May of 2019. It's been some years, but I was there at one point.

Andrew: That’s so cool.

Jason: But I didn't even know it was that big of a deal. I guess that was pretty cool for me in hindsight.

Andrew: That is really cool.

Jason: Awesome. What would you say to people that might be tuning into this on the short-term rental side that are doing this themselves currently? Why would they want to get in partnership with you?

Andrew: Well, just like our name prescribes, if you are tired of wasting or you're trading your time for money and you love the ROI, you love the income, 2–3 times than average rents across the nation is what you can expect from a short-term rental. If you're getting $700 rent in the south, you could get double that. You can get triple that. Depending on where you are. There are many variables. But if you're tired of handling that yourself, you can literally hand it over to our company.

Our sales team will answer all your questions. We’ll link you up into our software. We will hit the green button and you sit back and simply watch the interaction between your guest and our team and obviously your bank account. There is no touching it. I mean we literally set it up in the beginning so you don't have to manage it all. We have your team. We have your inventory. We would restock your toilet paper, paper towels. Sheets. There's just so much to say. It'll hurt your head if you think about it.

Inventory management and supply chain, that's what we do. We handle all that. That's what your listeners can glean from our company. That's what we can do for them.

Jason: Now, you had mentioned a little bit of info about how appealing it might be to get into the short-term rental game, 2–3 times the amount of income coming in. But what about those that have been burned by Covid? They said this was too painful. We weren't prepared for this. Money just stopped. Vacation rental market was just decimated. They're just afraid to get back into the game.

Andrew: You know what's funny? Covid actually was great. I think that's the only thing I'll say about Covid as far as short-term rentals go. For a property manager or for an apartment owner, for property owners, Covid was not great because you have the moratorium. There's a lot of struggles there. For us, for the short-term rental gamers, it was wonderful. People couldn't leave. No one could go anywhere.

We saw a decline in March of 2020. We saw a slight decline in occupancy. Our typical occupancy is hovering around 92%. Occupancy inside the short-term rental game is very different. You got 30 nights out of a month, depending how many nights you booked, that's your occupancy rate. It dipped I think just 70% flat, 70% or 73% flat. After March, we started exploding. It was quite the opposite. People couldn’t go to Europe. People couldn’t go to other countries, so they had staycations.

In the beginning, this whole journey there's kind of like this Airbnb belief that when you have a guest that wants to go from one side of the city to stay in your place, that’s a big red flag because it’s probably going to be a party, probably going to be a kid. But at this moment, with Covid, it was like, look, I'm a tired mother. My husband and I would just want to get away. We got a babysitter. Covid shut us down, can we come stay?

We haven’t changed our [...], yeah sure. We don't discriminate, but at the same time, we would stop asking all the prying questions. Are you in college or not? College parties are the worst. But we would allow them to. We actually exploded really well during Covid.

Jason: Interesting. I would have thought it would have been the opposite. Now, is BuyMoreTime location-specific? Is this all over the US? Is it beyond? Where do you guys do this at?

Andrew: We’re in five states right now and two countries. We’re in Canada, in here, and five states. We can do this anywhere. We could pick up anywhere. Obviously, you need to qualify. We have a qualifying call. It's called a discovery call where we discuss what your property is like, its condition, your needs, and so on and so forth. See if we’re a good fit. Not everybody's a good fit, obviously. Not every property is a good fit. Not every area is a good fit. We just want to make sure that it's going to be a win-win situation for everybody.

Jason: Are you wanting listeners that are listening to the DoorGrowShow, to this episode, regardless of where they're at to just reach out, or are you looking for specific areas?

Andrew: Regardless of where they're at to reach out, absolutely.

Jason: Cool. What are some of the biggest questions that potential clients want to know when talking with you?

Andrew: Number one question, how much could my property go for? How much could my property rent for if I was to work with BuyMoreTime? My answer is, when you come to BuyMoreTime, you should already be established. We're not a coaching company. We're not a let's boost your traffic. You should already be established, description, photos, 5-star reviews and you say, look, I got this in the bag. I just need to hand over the reins. That's all I want to do. For the costs, less than paying a VA every month, you're going to hire our team and we’re going to run all of your operations.

Jason: So this is for those that are just tired of the turnover, tired of the logistics, tired of making sure all the moving parts are happening. You'll handle all of that.

Andrew: Correct.

Jason: It sounds like you do it quite affordably.

Andrew: Yup. $349 a month is our price and it doesn't fluctuate. The good news is we built this to service our property, to scratch our own itch. We're investors first. We have short-term rentals. We buy property. I'm sitting in one right now, up north. I've only been here for a couple months, brought my family into it. This will eventually be a short-term rental up in the pines.

We wanted something where I didn't have to pay 20%, 25%, 15% of my profits. There's a lot of other companies out there like us where they have this really cool software and service—services, in my opinion, are subpar—but you pay out 20% of your profits on your highest month. It's like you're being penalized for using their service.

To me, I would want some sort of program that I know what I'm paying for every single month. Every single month is the same rate, no matter what. In that way, I can easily predict my income for my highest months. Everybody’s got the highest months. Austin's got a high season. Arizona, all over the place, they have a high season and low season. Florida, they have a high season. For us in AZ for example, it's going to be March and April. From other places, it is that same month or those months.

These companies rob you 20% of your total proceeds. I thought that's not cool. Let's give the profits back to the owners and we’ll just take a small fee for managing their property.

Jason: All right, so the first the main question everyone wants to know is how much could they get and probably what is the cost. What else are they curious about, usually?

Andrew: They usually want what I need in my property? What should be inside it? Especially, if you haven't done this before. Let's say you manage apartments, or you own a building, or whatever it may be, and you're talking to some partners or your client about setting up an Airbnb. That's probably one of the biggest questions is what goes inside of it?

The one thing I need to tell people is when you have a short-term rental, you're not selling a place to stay. You're selling experience. I don’t know, Jason, if you've ever stayed in a property on Airbnb before, but I just…

Jason: I have.

Andrew: You have? Just scrolling, you're looking for beautiful photos. You're looking for awesome amenities. You're looking for 5-star reviews. You're not looking 4-star, you're not looking for 3-stars, you want the best. You're looking for a very awesome experience.

I think the biggest mistake that a lot of short-term rental managers go through is they're just trying to just fill it with stuff. That's not the case. If you have the ability to stock the fridge, stock the fridge. If you can leave a note for your guest, leave a note. If you could set up a system to leave nice things for your guests or send an extra message saying, we're so glad you're here, do it because that's what it's about.

Jason: Yeah. There’s a really great book called The Giftology, and in this book he talks about how just little gifts and little things actually make a big difference. And that makes a big difference giving something because that just makes it novel. It makes it stand out. It makes it different. I really enjoyed the show on Netflix called Stay Here. I don't know if you've seen that.

Andrew: Yes.

Jason: They're making these properties ready to be really amazing experiences, and that was a big part of the show is all about this experience. People are coming to Austin and have a certain type of experience. There needs to be a barbecue and some of these things. People are going to different areas in order to have the experience of that area and kind of tying that in. They made it really hyper relevant. Any other questions people tend to ask?

Andrew: I think one other question they ask is how do I stand out? How do I be different? Everybody has got a condo on Airbnb. If you go to airbnb.com right now, looking at Austin, look in your zip code, you'll see thousands. How do I stand out? I think the biggest tip I have for those people that want to know how to stand out is, what is something that is going to make your place so memorable that people will be talking about it and they’ll come back?

There's a really easy way to do this by asking yourself what do people not offer that I can offer? What do they not have that I have? Some people have this huge TV, surround sound, just crazy entertainment, amazing sofa. That's good, but what is extra? I've seen some people add movie tickets or tickets to some amusement parks. I don't know how cost-effective that is, obviously, but depending on your budget versus how you can stand out, that's going to predict how you stand out.

Jason: Interesting, cool. Well, how can people get a hold of you that might be interested?

Andrew: This question always comes up in podcasts. I sometimes tell my cell phone number, but there's a link that actually you have, Jason, where you can get a hold of us. I'll just let you add that to the show notes. I'm going to just defer that back to you. Other than that, you could reach out to me on Facebook.

Jason: Awesome. Yeah. He gave me an affiliate link, everybody, which is cool. I appreciate that. We'll put that link in the show notes. We’ll link that on the podcast episode, online on our blog as well.

It's been great getting familiar with you here a little bit. I really enjoyed the different perspective on Covid about the short-term rental industry. I know that I had lots of clients in the long-term game that were able to convert several into long-term during that time period in areas that they had challenges, but that was interesting. I didn't consider the staycation part, but I think a lot of people got really anxious, cooped up inside, and were looking for just a change of scenery, even if it was nearby. That makes a lot of sense.

I appreciate you coming on the show, and until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes and tune into the DoorGrowShow on YouTube as well. And if you are interested in growing your property management business, we're having some really great success with our new DoorGrow and scale mastermind. We have one of our clients John [...] join in November, in the middle of the winter months, during the pandemic, in Boston. He added 125 doors in the last six months just using one of my strategies, and it cost him $0. He didn't spend any money on advertising. Anyway, reach out if you're interested. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. Bye everyone.

Andrew: See you.

Download this Episode

Oct 13, 2020

Do you want to become a better investor? Appreciate and understand property managers—the unsung heroes that make better tenants and owners. Good property managers can change the world.

Today’s guest is Bobby Sharma from BetterCapital, a portfolio measurement and management tool for real estate investors. Bobby started his real estate career in Riverside, California, and his first foray into real estate was through house hacking.

You’ll Learn...

[02:14] House Hacking: Buy a house, but get roommates to pay most of your mortgage.

[03:58] Bobby’s Background: Software developer that wanted to be in Silicon Valley.

[04:47] 2010 Market Collapse: Bobby bought some homes that needed some work.

[05:03] Meetup Group: Bobby started a real estate meetup group in the East Bay Area.

[05:40] Becoming a landlord, buying out of state, and working with property managers.

[06:18] BetterCapital: Management/measurement portfolio tool for real estate investors.

[07:47] Measurement: Tracks deposits, loan balances, ROI, and equity growth.

[09:00] Management: Stores documents, adds reminders, and runs math formulas.

[09:53] Real Estate Results: One of the best ways to invest, grow wealth, plan for future.

[10:35] Preferential Partners: Property managers/realtors project property performance.

[15:00] API/bank integration? Scrape data into systems or pool data w/API connection.

[19:41] Three Ts: Tracking, training, and transaction.

[24:13] Education: Property managers should explain challenges to investors.

[25:48] Property Managers: Unsung heroes that make better tenants and owners.

Tweetables

“I love my property managers. Without them, I wouldn't be successful. I totally get the importance of property management.”

“We want people to see how much wealth they have created, or how much equity they've created because we want to encourage them to purchase real estate assets.”

“If you look at it across a long period of time, it turns out that it's one of the best ways to invest, to grow your wealth, and to plan for your future.”

“We want to provide education to make them a better investor. They will appreciate the role of the property manager a little bit more.”

Resources

DGS 134: Mobile Home Investing with Andrew Keel 0

Transcript

DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.

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

My guest today is Bobby Sharma. Welcome, Bobby Sharma.

Bobby: Thank you, Jason.

Jason: Bobby is with a company called BetterCapital. Bobby, you have quite an extensive real estate experience. I grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, Alta Loma, California. We were touching bases for the show. You got your start in real estate somewhere in the Inland Empire.

Bobby: In the Inland Empire, yeah. Riverside, California. I did what's called house hacking. Back then, there was no such term. I was 24 years old, worked in Corona, California, and lived in Riverside, California. That's how I got my start in the real estate world.

Jason: Define house hacking for those that are not house hackers.

Bobby: I was single. I ended up buying a house—three bedrooms, two baths—with the intention of maybe I'll get a couple of roommates, and they'll help me with the mortgage. I put an ad in the Riverside Enterprise, I don't know if you recall that newspaper. This is the late 1980s, early ‘90s.

I got two roommates, great guys. They were my roommates for a long time, also single. One was a plumber, one was an X-ray tech. Long story short, they helped me pay for most of my mortgage. Not quite 100%, but most of my mortgage.

Jason: Nice. All right. And that was your first foray into real estate investing. This sparks something for you. You thought of it, but your roommates, apparently, didn't. They're willing to pay rent.

I lovingly refer to the Inland Empire as the armpit of California.

Bobby: Absolutely.

Jason: I had a good childhood growing up there. Now, I'm in Austin, Texas which I'm really enjoying. I got out just before the craziness of the pandemic, and California's gone insane. It's gone insane with all the stuff that's going on right now.

Bobby, give us a little bit of history since that first experiment and give us a little background—qualify yourself. Help the audience understand your experience in real estate or surrounding the property management rental industry.

Bobby: Absolutely. Thank you, Jason. Since then, I was 24 back then. Then, I had to take a break. I got married. I didn't do much in real estate. But about 10 years ago, when I saw the market really collapse—that was in 2010—I moved up to Silicon Valley. I was a software developer back in Southern California. But I always wanted to be in Silicon Valley, work for one of these technology companies that Silicon Valley is famous for. Sure enough, I worked for one of them.

In 2010, I just saw the market collapse here in the Bay Area as well. I said you know what? I have some savings, so I started going out and picking up some homes that needed a little bit of work. Long story short, I also started a real estate meetup group in the Bay Area, in the East Bay. We call it the East Bay Meetup near Oakland. There weren't a lot of meetups going on, but most of them were in San Jose or San Francisco, and the people were fighting the commute.

Long story short, I ended up starting a meetup in the Oakland area. Fortunately, that meetup has now become the largest real estate meetup in the Bay Area. I've got about 5000 members. We used to meet up every month.

Out of that, I ended up becoming a landlord, buying out of state, and working with property managers. I love my property managers. Without them, I wouldn't be successful. I totally get the importance of property management.

We own a bunch of rental properties—a lot of single-family, a lot of multifamily, but a lot of it is out of state for cash flow reasons as in cash flow in California. We ended up with several hundred doors out in the Midwest, mainly.

Jason: How did BetterCapital come about, and what is it?

Bobby: Just like a lot of people in my meetup group, we're active real estate investors. I have rental properties. I'm a private money lender. I have syndications. In a couple of properties out in Ohio, I do what's called seller financing. We own a bunch of rental properties, a bunch of real estate assets.

I was tracking everything through Excel, but that was just not cutting it for me. You can't store documents inside of Excel. Things were scattered all over my computer, in my Gmail, and in my Dropbox—leases, insurance, tax bills, reminders, and everything.

What I did was I worked with a technology partner of mine, and we put all the essential tools to track your portfolio. We're not AppFolio. We're not Cozy. We're not TenantCloud. We're not a property management software, but we talk to a bunch of property management systems. We are like a portfolio measurement and portfolio management tool for real estate investors.

Jason: Explain the measurement part.

Bobby: Yeah. What we do there, Jason, is if you bought a property five years ago, you're getting your checks every now and then. Your property manager is depositing the checks in your bank account. Sometimes it's not what you expected because there was a repair, or you don't know what your loan balance is on the property.

What we do is we track the actual deposits in your account. We track your loan balances. We track the equity in your properties across the board, and then we give you a return on investment. What did you invest in that property, and what's your annual return on investment? What's your equity growth?

The analogy I like to draw is if you log in to your Schwab, E-Trade, or Robinhood account, you can see the equity of your stocks. How much did you gain in your stock if you bought Apple five years ago? Or you bought Amazon 10 years ago, how much have you gained? We didn't have something like that for real estate investors.

What we built was a tool. It has the ability to store documents. It has the ability to put reminders to track your equity growth, to see in a graphical manner how this property performed over the past year, this year, over the past five years, and then since you bought it.

We have a lot of mathematical formulas that run in the background and then you can track. We want people to see how much wealth they have created, or how much equity they've created because we want to encourage them to purchase real estate assets.

Jason: I would be curious if they can measure this better, and they can see the performance, do they tend to invest more?

Bobby: Exactly. That's the whole idea, right? Real estate over time has so many benefits. Sometimes, especially property managers, they are so busy with day to day operations that they forget to remind the investors, the landlords, about the benefits of owning real estate.

Yes, there are bumps in the road. There's going to be a turnover here and there. There's going to be an eviction here and there. But if you look at it across a long period of time, it turns out that it's one of the best ways to invest, to grow your wealth, and to plan for your future.

What we want to do is we want to help property managers and realtors—those are our partners. Property management, which is your audience, as well. If we could help your current set of landlords grow their doors, maybe you bring a portfolio of new assets that they can purchase. But you can demonstrate that, look, if you bought this property with us in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in Dallas, Texas, or El Paso, Texas. If you've owned this property, here's how much equity you've gained. Here's how much your cash flow was last year. Here's how the property performed.

Then, you can then have a really strong case to go back to them and say, listen, here's another similar property that is available on the market. Would you like to maybe consider adding a door or a couple of doors to your portfolio?

Jason: It sounds like this is a largely effective tool for the investor. You have a way that investors can see and manage their entire portfolio. They have, say, 100 properties, or maybe they have like 20, 30 doors or something. They can see this portfolio. Then there's a way they can invite their property manager in to also see this portfolio, keep this updated, or to connect to it?

Bobby: Absolutely. The property managers and realtors play a very important role. The owner can always invite their property manager to see the property in the system or communicate with that property manager. The other is that the property manager can invite the landlords to the system as well.

When they upload a list of their landlords, we create what's called a preferential relationship and the exclusive preferential relationship between the property manager that loaded up the landlords in the system. That way, if you have a new portfolio that you want to maybe broadcast to your existing landlords, you can broadcast it to our platform.

You can also let them know that, hey, listen. Here's a similar property that gives you the same kind of returns. It's in the same area. You may want to consider looking at purchasing this one. We want to help the property managers and the realtors have that exclusive kind of relationship with the landlords.

Jason: There's this performance side of it. Maybe if an investor is looking at getting into a property, is there any forecasting that's similar? Is there a forecast inside? Like, here's a possible future roadmap of what this investment could do.

Bobby: Very good question, Jason. That's on our roadmap. One of the things we want to do is forecasting or projecting the performance of a property that may be on the MLS or it may be in the portfolio of the property manager. Maybe somebody's looking to sell that portfolio.

In the future, we will have what's called a forecasting calculator. You can submit that property. You can punch in all the numbers, and then the system will forecast. Within our platform, they'll be able to see the projections.

We also have a way for the user to say, okay, if the application is forecasted at 3%, they can adjust that. They can say, what if it only appreciated 2%? Or if the rent appreciation was 5%, what if it was only 3%? And so on. We will give them that tool, but yes, that is on the road map.

Jason: Very cool. Now, does this have an API integration? Because a lot of property managers, they are not going to want to go in and up the second system. They've got their property management back office. They're using Rent Manager, AppFolio, Buildium, or Propertyware typically. Is there a way of either scraping that data into those systems or maybe through an API connection pooling all that data in?

Bobby: Very much so. We talk to the most popular property management applications out there. Most of them have APIs. If they don't have APIs, we allow the user to import an Excel file. Very easy to do. It takes about less than two minutes to set up a property in the system. Once they get really good at importing data, it takes about five minutes to import the data if they're new. But once the property is set up in the system, then it literally takes 30 seconds to update a property every month.

Once a month, what are the main items that you're looking at? It's once a month, typically. Maybe sometimes twice a month. You're looking at, did your rent come in? Did you pay your mortgage? Did you pay your insurance and taxes? Did you pay your property management fees? But it's really very simple to bring that data in.

We have bank integration. You can also pull the data from a bank. By the way, the property manager doesn't have to do this. The landlord can do this. The only thing the property manager has to do is load up the client list the first time and then reestablish that. The first property manager to load that landlord into the system gets the exclusive relationship. That's the first-come, first-served relationship that they have. But after that, the landlord should be able to go in and update the system. And it's very easy to do that.

It's in their best interest to see the performance of their assets, right? So they do a bulk of the data entry.

Jason: That exclusivity sounds really exciting (I'm sure) to the property management business owners that are listening. Because this could be something that they could upsell as a feature for their more invested investors, those that have lots of doors. It can be an upsell or a premium price point on their premium plan that they offer for the more savvy investor clients.

Now, related to that—and I don't know if this is a possible future feature request or idea—but a lot of property managers love owning their brand. Would it be possible to white label this service that it's their thing if they have that?

Bobby: A very good question. Our service is free to the landlords. As long as they're not over 15 or so doors, it's free. But to answer your question, we do plan for the larger property managers to have their own white-label co-branded service. Not a problem. It's available.

Jason: Okay, very cool. What else can this do?

Bobby: We built this platform for investors like myself. Look, I'm a big champion of real estate agents and property managers. Their jobs are often thankless. We forget how much work they do behind the scenes. Managing properties, not an easy task by any means.

We are big cheerleaders and supporters of property managers, of real estate agents. At the same time, the landlords need to be able to track their system a little bit better. Our goal is, we call it the three T's.

Tracking. To my meet up for the past 10 years, I've been providing education. I've been an evangelist for better real estate investing. We bring in experts on whether it's fix-and-flip, buying remote properties remotely, syndications, private money lending, asset protection for real estate investors—just about any topic that has to do with real estate. We've been teaching that in our meetup.

We're going to embed that into the system. If the landlords, the property managers, and real estate agents want to become better at something, we're going to have an expert present once a month. Tracking, training, that's our second key.

The third T is the transaction. If the property managers, realtors, have a deal that is what I call investor-grade that they want to send out to their members, then we want to enable transactions. We're not Redfin. We're not one of those sites. But we allow them to communicate about it. It could be a pocket listing. It could be a property manager where the landlord is retiring or doing a 1031, but he wants to sell off his portfolio without putting it on the MLS, for example.

Let's figure out how to communicate within the system to the potential buyers because the people that are in the system who are happy with their performance and their relationship with their property manager, they will want to acquire more doors. Those are our three Ts—tracking, training, and transactions.

Jason: It's almost like a trading platform. Is this essentially like the E-Trade for real estate investments instead of the stock portfolio?

Bobby: It is. That's very much our vision. The training is there. The transaction piece is not there. But that's what we're building right now.

Jason, in a nutshell, it is E-Trade for real estate because we don't compete with the AppFolios, the YardEase, the Buildiums of the world, but we partner with them. We don't want the property managers to change what they're doing. Whatever they're doing is fine. We will learn to live alongside the systems they have in place.

Jason: This seems to be just such a missing piece to give investors a real tool. Most property managers are just so caught up on just at least, at the very bare minimum of giving their investors a statement or a report at the end of the month. But there's a big difference between managing as a real estate investment and just looking at the expenses for the month, the rent, and whatnot, and seeing a report. Seeing it as an actual investment, and maybe even seeing a chart to see what's actually going on. You get a sense of whether you're losing or gaining.

It seems like such a simple, brilliant, missing puzzle piece in the ecosystem. Kudos to you for coming up with this. Now, are there other things like this out on the market?

Bobby: I think people are finally realizing that a similar tool is needed. There are a couple of players out there. What we have done is we have taken a comprehensive approach to real estate investing. What are people interested in?

They're interested, obviously, in tracking, like the performance of their assets. That's done in Excel, and it's done on a very ad hoc basis. It's not real-time, and it's a lot of keystrokes. What we want to do is we want to automate a lot of that so that once you put the property into the system, then a lot of the updates are done automatically.

The other piece is nobody's providing education. I truly believe that as property managers, it's equally important to educate the investors about the challenges, right? If there are evictions, if there are turnovers, let there be some transparency. What we want to do is we want to prepare our users to become better investors. Part of that is understanding the challenges or the opportunities that property management companies and realtors face.

A property manager's job is not easy at all. You have to be really thick-skinned to be a property manager. Well, let's appreciate that so that when your rent is a little bit lower than expected, or you have a turnover that's taking a little bit longer. If the investor, the landlord is better educated, maybe they won't get upset as much. They will understand, okay, you know what? This is winter in Michigan, and it's going to take a little bit longer to put a tenant into the house or the property.

We want to provide education to make them a better investor. They will appreciate the role of the property manager a little bit more.

Jason: That's the role of the property manager. I mean, property managers are the unsung heroes of the real estate investing category or industry. They make tenants better. They make the owners better. They hold everyone to a higher standard, and they make properties better all around. Good property managers really do change the world.

I love what you're talking about how the education piece is going to improve the quality of clients. It's going to take their client from where they are now, give them a greater understanding, which most likely increases their logical need to use a property manager. They understand, oh, this is a bit more complicated than these home TV shows and reality shows made it out to be flipping a house or renting it out.

This is worth touching on because I think there are some small-minded, scarcity-minded property managers. Maybe they're newer to the industry, but they're thinking, oh, no. The only reason people will need me is if they're not educated. But I think the reverse is true. The more educated a client becomes, the more they can see clearly the liabilities involved, the dangers, the potential pitfalls, the time, and they don't want to touch it. They want to let go of that piece. They want to be an investor. They don't want to be a shitty part-time property manager.

Bobby: Exactly.

Jason: They do that full time.

Bobby: You nailed it, Jason. Your perception is right on. The better-educated, the better-informed, the landlord, the investor is, the easier it'll be to work with them versus a total newbie who thinks it's just very simple to hire a property manager. That every month, magic, a check will show up. It just doesn't work that way, especially now in the pandemic era that we're living in, it's even more challenging.

This is the time when property managers need to communicate more, not less, about what's going on in the court systems, the eviction process, and so on and so forth. You're right. The members in my real estate meetup group, the ones that are well-educated about investing are the ones that are buying more rental properties. The ones that are not educated, they just bought their primary home, and they never buy a rental property. The extent of their real estate investment is their primary home.

Sometimes, they outgrow that primary home. Then, they buy another home, and they keep the old one as a rental. They're not proactive in going out there and learning about rental properties and the benefits of rental properties with the tax advantages and so on. That's where our partners, real estate property managers, realtors, and educators can really come in and help out.

Jason: I think the tempting mistake that a lot of software people coming into this industry is that they try to cut out the property manager. I've seen this over and over and over again. They think, well, we could replace this critical relationship and negotiation piece with software. That can't be done in the hospitality industry, it certainly can't be done in the property management industry, and it also can't really be done in the real estate industry significantly because these are relationship things. There are negotiations, there are people involved, there are feelings, there are humans, and there's a lot that software can do. But software really should be enabling and facilitating those things. Not trying to replace those things.

I love that you're incorporating property managers. I think this a wise move as you're moving forward. It allows you to connect with a lot of people that have investment portfolios. And it doesn't try to cut the property manager out of that in which we end up with a whole bunch of [...] then we end up with a bunch of crappy property managers, which are just people DIY-ing their management, and not really doing a great job.

Then they have software tools that are supposed to say that it makes it easy, but things have fallen through the cracks. Laws are getting broken, tenants aren't protected, owners aren't protected, and silly stuff is being done. Very cool stuff.

Is there anything else you'd like the audience to know about BetterCapital before they go? If so or if not, how can they get ahold of you? And how can they try this thing out?

Bobby: Thank you, Jason. First of all, it's a pleasure to be on your show. I really enjoyed it. I've watched your videos, so thank you for doing what you're doing for your community, which is your audience of property managers. You're doing a fabulous job. Thank you for that.

Look, our goal is very simple. We want to serve the real estate community in general. From newbies to seasoned investors, we want to give them tools. I'll be the first one at any of my meetups. If they're buying a property remotely, they need to engage with a good property manager because it's literally a marriage between you and the property manager for the next 10, 20 years. However long you hold that asset, that's how long that relationship needs to last.

It's very easy to get a hold of me. It's bobby@bettercapital.us. We couldn't get the dot-com, so we got the dot-us. It's bettercapital.us. Look, we're in what's called a beta version right now. We're coming out of the beta version. We'll go live very soon. But we'd love to get your feedback. We'd love to incorporate your feedback into our product. We'd love to make you a partner. We'd love to see the property management companies that choose to work with us, we want to see them succeed. We'll highlight them, we'll showcase them, and we'll work with them.

Jason: Awesome. Property managers, if you're listening, this is your chance to help shape this tool to be something you really want. You can be the ultimate beta tester, and then you'll have the ultimate product that would really serve your needs. Take him up on that offer.

Well, Bobby, I appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you for your gracious words. I hope you have some success with this.

Bobby: Thank you, Jason, and likewise. Hopefully, we'll stay connected. I'll keep you posted on our progress.

Jason: Awesome. All right, check them out at bettercapital.us. For those that are somehow new to this show because you just stumbled upon it. I was going to say, it was interesting hearing, thank you for doing the podcast. I was thinking, sometimes it's a thankless job. But I'm like, wait a second, he's thanking me. But sometimes, it is a thankless job. I'm putting out free content. We pay a good chunk of change to have this podcast produced and to put out there. My team does social media marketing to get it out there as well. We do make money, don't get me wrong. We get paid really well to help property management businesses get paid really well.

But if you want to do something to reciprocate—besides becoming one of our clients—make sure to like our stuff. Follow us. You can subscribe on YouTube and follow. Leave us a review on iTunes. We'd really appreciate it.

If you're looking to grow your property management business, you are struggling or trapped in one of these growth sand traps, maybe around 50 or 60 doors. The solar [...] sand trap. You can't figure out how to get ahead. You don't have the revenue to hire your next person. You can't seem to get more doors than you're losing and you just stay stuck there. Or maybe you're in the second sand trap, 200-400 doors, and you just can't figure out how to get the right people to do what you want them to do.

You're getting overwhelmed because your team is always asking you all the time, all the questions. You're feeling overwhelmed, and you realize you are the biggest bottleneck in your business. There is a roadmap out of that. Very easy to get out of. You can listen to some of the previous episodes. But reach out to us at DoorGrow. We would love to have a conversation and see if you'd be a fit, see if we could help you grow your business and be the property managers making a difference out there in the world.

Until next time, everyone. To our mutual growth. Bye, everybody.

Download this Episode

Sep 22, 2020

As a property manager, have you considered investing in mobile home parks? Not interested? Not your thing? Some people won't touch it with a 10-foot pole.

Today’s guest is Andrew Keel of the Keel Team. Andrew’s here to convince you otherwise. He talks all about mobile home park investing as an attractive and appealing asset class.

You’ll Learn...

[02:00] Sticker Shock Stigma: Why investing in mobile home parks is a good idea.

[02:48] Longing to be a Landlord: Leverage other people’s money to buy properties.

[03:30] Yellow Letter: Knew nothing about mobile homes, but knew it was a great deal.

[04:00] Shoutout to Lonnie Scruggs: Learned how to make money with mobile homes.

[05:10] Temp to Forever Cashflow: Use capital to buy and manage mobile home parks.

[07:07] Three reasons why to invest in mobile home parks:

Highest returns out of any form of real estate.
Demand for affordable housing is off the charts.
Supply is limited.

[12:40] Bottleneck in Business: Finding good quality deals big enough to move on.

[14:54] Boots on the Ground: Third-party property management for mobile home parks.

[18:58] Utility Infrastructure: Most important aspect and most expensive to replace.

[20:12] Tax Shelter: Mobile home park business of depreciation and improvements.

[20:57] Models: Community owners own homes vs. every home is park-owned rental.

Tweetables

“Some people won't even touch it with a 10-foot pole. That artificially creates a moat to this investment class.” Andrew Keel

“I knew I wanted to be into real estate. I knew I wanted to be a landlord, but I didn't have a lot of money.” Andrew Keel

“The demand for affordable housing for this country is off the charts.” Andrew Keel

“The stigma of living in a mobile home is not as strong in the midwest as it is in other parts of the country.” Andrew Keel

“We are looking at a more scalable model to have the tenants own their homes. Then, we just have lot rent.” Andrew Keel

Resources

Keel Team

Deals on Wheels: How to buy, sell, and finance used mobile homes for big profits and cash flow by Lonnie Scruggs

Mobile Home University (MHU) Boot Camp

HUD

NARPM

DGS 133: Reduce Overhead Costs and Streamline Time Tracking with Timeero 0

Transcript

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

Today's show is going to be all about Mobile Home Park Investing. My expert guest is Andrew Keel of the Keel Team. Andrew, welcome.

Andrew: Thank you.

Jason: Andrew, before we get into this idea of Mobile Home Park Investing which, I'm guessing a lot of property managers right now are like not my thing, I'm not even going to listen to this one. I'm going to skip this episode.

Before you do that, Andrew's going to convince you that it might be a good idea.

Andrew: I'll give them my best shot. I think one of the reasons why I like the asset class so much is because of that stigma that a lot of people see. That initial sticker shock of the asset class. That's a huge part of why the industry is so attractive, some people won't even touch it with a 10 foot pole. That artificially creates a moat to this investment class.

Jason: Right. Just a little protection built in, okay. Some of them were thinking that's kind of like having a trash heap around the property. Nobody wants to come in. Maybe it doesn't look very appealing.

Before we get into that, Andrew, tell everyone about you. You've got a lot of things going on. Give us a little background of how you got into real estate investing, property management, how did all this start for you?

Andrew: Yeah, sure. I started flipping houses around Central Florida and wholesaling residential contracts. I did that for about two years. I was trying to become a landlord but I started with nothing. My parents went bankrupt when I was in college, lost the house I grew up in. I knew I wanted to be into real estate. I knew I wanted to be a landlord, but I didn't have a lot of money. I initially thought, hey, I need to have a lot of money to be a landlord because I can't afford to buy these properties. That was before I learned how to use other people's money and leverage other tools.

I started flipping houses and I got a deal through a yellow letter that I mailed out on two mobile homes in Ocala, Florida. That's just a couple of hours north of where I live in Orlando. These were nice, vinyl-sided, single roof homes that were manufactured in the mid-1990s. I could buy both of these for $2200 cash.

I was like I don't know anything about mobile homes but this is a great deal. I just knew it. I had two titles, I left that day. I gave them the cash.

I came home and got on YouTube. I typed in how to make money with mobile homes? I was like I don't know, there's got to be a way to make some cash off these things. I came across a guy named Lonnie Scruggs. He used to teach this class, and he has a book called Deals on Wheels. It talked about buying mobile homes, fixing them up, and selling them on contract to an end buyer. That's exactly what I did with those two mobile homes. I was able to fix them up, just clean them up basically. Some new paint and some new flooring.

I sold them for $3000 down and $250 a month for five years. I did that on both of them and I only paid $2200 cash for both. I was like wow! This is a great model. It's not forever cash—that was my end goal—but this is great, temporary cash.

I ended up doing that 19 more times and bought individual mobile homes through various parks throughout Central Florida. I sold them on contract. After doing that, I met some mobile home park owners. Again, I had this idea in my head that you need to be extremely wealthy to buy mobile home parks—the whole community.

Through talking with them, they gave me that epiphany of using other people's money. I could be the sweat equity that would manage the properties. That was a huge Aha! moment for me. I immediately became glued to the asset class, read every book, went to every seminar, went to the MHU Bootcamp a few times, and just became a sponge for the asset class. That was a defining moment for me—getting into that industry.

After I went to one of the bootcamps, I met a passive investor there that was just looking to invest and didn't want anything to do with the operations. He happened to be in the finance industry and worked really long hours but had a ton of cash that he wanted to deploy into this asset class.

He partnered with me, and we bought the first mobile home park. It ended up being a really huge success. After that, we ended up buying four more communities since that one went so well. Since then, I have brought on more investors from friends and family to others outside of that. We do syndications now. We aggregate money from a pool of investors and then purchase these assets into a single purpose LLC.

It's been a very awesome ride. It's been exciting. It's been blood, sweat, and tears into this at this point. Now, we're at 23 communities which is amazing and a blessing. We have a ton of people that work for us now and are awesome members of our team. That's a little about how I got into where I am today.

Jason: You never just woke up when you were a kid and said I want to grow up to do mobile home park investing.

Andrew: No, that's not how it went at all. I just kind of fell into this but I believe mobile home parks are a mode of investment for a few reasons. One of those that's really important is it has the highest returns out of any form of real estate. Right away, I was attracted to it.

Number two, that makes it that much better, the demand for affordable housing for this country is off the charts. I think you can talk to any real estate expert and they would tell you that.

Number three which is the main reason, number one, put it on the top of your list of why mobile home parks are a great asset class to invest in is because the supply is limited. Any other asset class whether it's self storage, multifamily, whatever, it's easier to develop those and get those approved.

Where mobile home parks have this stigma, there's this not in my backyard initiative where people don't want a mobile home park built right next to their subdivision. It's very hard to get zoning approved for a new mobile home park development.

Number two, from an economic standpoint, mobile home parks are loss leaders for municipalities. On average, they cost around $11,000 a year to put a child through public schooling with the cost of the school, the teachers, et cetera. In mobile homes, the owners of the mobile homes, they only pay maybe $50-$100 a year in their personal property taxes on their mobile home that they pay at the DMV just like you would pay taxes on your vehicle, or both, or so forth.

The taxes are very low, but say a family of four that has two kids in elementary school, that would be a huge loss to the local municipality every year for having that family in their municipality. That's a big reason, the supply is shrinking. On average, there's 10 mobile home parks across the country that are torn down every year. It's continuing, it's getting more than that. More and more, they're torn down and put into better land uses for multifamily and whatnot. It's very rare, if any at all, are being developed from the ground up. It's very interesting from a supply standpoint.

Jason: Are you involved in getting them developed?

Andrew: I'm not. There's lower hanging fruit in communities that are already established, to be honest. It's less expensive to go in and fix the existing infrastructure. The majority of mobile home parks, I think 80% of them, are owned by my mom and pop owners. It's not an institutionalized asset class like multifamily and self storage.

With that, you're able to come in and increase value very quickly through increasing that operating income, whether that's through modest rent increases, billing back utilities, increasing the occupancy. A lot of these communities have been owned by a mom and pop for 30-40 years. They have a lot of equity. A lot of these are paid off pretty clear.

With that, we've been able to acquire five communities with stellar financing because they're able to be more flexible since they don't have some of the restrictions that a bank would have on a mortgage.

It's a very exciting asset class. It's new to a lot of people but it's definitely a mode of investment. It's not something that you want to go to the country club and brag to your friends about. It is also very unique in that aspect because that stigma does keep some investors out of it and keeps cap rates significantly higher.

Jason: Okay, okay. The first thing you mentioned is it has the highest returns. Qualify that a little bit, compare it maybe just a little bit, let's back this up. Some people listening, maybe their ears perked up when they heard that.

Andrew: Yeah. If you're familiar with commercial real estate, properties are valued off of their income, there's the income model. Cap rates for mobile home communities are typically between 8% or 12%. If you compare that to multifamily, you're not able to get as big of a spread between the interest rate you're paying on your loan and the cap rate that you're purchasing the property for.

The cap rate is the net operating income divided by the purchase price, for those of you who aren't familiar with that. Basically, we aim to get at least a 3.0 spread between our interest rate that our loan we have in the community, and the cap rate that we're paying. If we're able to create that Delta, we can offer our investors 20% cash on cash return annually.

Jason: All right, okay. I’m taking notes. If you can offer investors that, it's not too difficult to get investors you're funding?

Andrew: Yeah. We've been very fortunate to have a lot of people reaching out to invest with us. At this point, I would say the bottleneck in our business is finding good quality deals that are big enough to move the needle. There's a lot of communities that are between 50 and 100 lots that are a good place to play in. The communities that are bigger than that offer even more economies of scale in terms of expenses versus income. Those are the ones that are getting eaten up by institutional buyers at this point.

Some of the REITs, some of the large private equity firms, are now playing in this space because they've seen high returns. They know supply is limited and demand is off the charts. They're going after those larger properties. Those are harder for us to compete with because those cap rates are getting compressed.

Jason: This is just in your local market that you're willing to work and target? Is that correct?

Andrew: We have communities all the way from Georgia to North Dakota, all the way down to Tennessee, and all the way across Pennsylvania. We're right in the center for the most part—the center of the United States. We did that for a couple of reasons, it was mainly strategy. Hurricanes primarily don't go across the midwest. However, there was a polar vortex last year, that was absolutely crazy. Hurricanes, it's protected against those.

The stigma of living in a mobile home is not as strong in the midwest as it is in other parts of the country. For the most part, we aim to purchase communities in the middle of the United States.

Jason: Got it. How difficult is it for somebody that's currently focused on single family residential, or maybe they're doing commercial, or maybe they're doing multifamily, to add this in as another business—basically another arm of their business and to work on this?

Andrew: That's a great question. First off, I think we should say that third party property management for mobile homes communities, that's like across the nation, it's basically unheard of. There's like two or three companies that do it and they're not doing it at a high level. It's very tough because it is management intensive.

Even though a lot of these communities don't own the mobile homes themselves, they just own the dirt underneath them, your maintenance costs less. There's just other reasons why it's a little bit difficult to manage these communities on a large scale because of the turnover and things like that that do happen.

Jason: You're managing just the parks, you're not managing individual rental properties.

Andrew: Correct. We get a lot of rent off the ground. Now, as a necessary evil of the business, when a home goes up for sale or say we come to own one of these homes, we have to then sell it to the tenant for them to become a tenant-owned resident and rent out the land to them.

There's probably about 20% of our total units that are homes that we've sold to the tenant on contract. They're still responsible for maintenance but it's sold to them like a rent credit program, is what we call it, where they're making payments monthly to then pay off the home. Then, eventually, they will just pay lot rent.

Jason: We didn't say this at the beginning, we probably should qualify you a little bit more by saying how many units are you over right now? How many are under management?

Andrew: We are at 1497 units right now. That's across 23 parks.

Jason: All right. How critical it is to have boots on the ground in all of these 23 locations?

Andrew: It's paramount, in my opinion. We have an onsite manager at every single location. That's typically a resident that had the nicest home, we converted them into an onsite manager. All they are is just basically an eyes and ears person that communicates with our corporate office. It keeps us abreast of what's going on in the community. That has been really important for us to just be able to understand what's going on.

Typically, we go after someone that has a fixed income like Social Security and they have one of the nicest homes in the communities. They're retired and they're home. They're like the community watchdog. They keep us up to date on what's going on. Then, our corporate office which we have 14 corporate offices, offsite management employees, handles everything from the financials, to the project management, to collections, to bookkeeping, et cetera.

Jason: Got it. These are all parks that you have some sort of an ownership in, correct?

Andrew: Correct. We only manage parks that we have ownership in right now.

Jason: Got it, okay. For those listening, if somebody has a property management business, maybe they're a real estate investor and they're wanting to get into this, what advice would you give as the first initial step?

They're looking around. They notice there's a mobile home park or two that probably could use a little love. Maybe the mom and pop owners would be willing to have a conversation. What's the first step that you think they need to be aware of? What knowledge do they need to gain first?

Andrew: Yeah, that's a great question. I would say you need to go and get educated. You need to go to the MHU Bootcamp that's offered by Frank and Dave. That's like the industry leading educational platform that teaches everything from how to find deals, how to value them, and how to manage them.

Within that class, you'll learn about the utility infrastructure. The utility infrastructure is by far the most important aspect of these communities because that's the most expensive to replace.

For example, a community that's on the city water or the city sewer is more attractive because there's less risk on that half. Versus a community that's on a well and septic. A well and septic, there's a lot more testing involved. Now, you're servicing a community that is using that water supply. You have to make sure that there's certain chlorine, certain tests done on a consistent basis, to manage that water system.

The same thing if you're on a septic or waste water treatment plant. Wastewater treatment plant can cause $500,000 to replace. You have to make sure that they're maintained on a high level. If they're not, you could be front of the bill for a very expensive project.

Jason: A lot of what makes a mobile home park work is underground is what you're saying?

Andrew: Correct.

Jason: Okay. It's not just land, there's infrastructure that's really critical underneath.

Andrew: Very, very, critical. Those are all items you're able to depreciate and we love that part of the business because mobile home parks are also a known tax shelter because of those improvements.

Jason: Interesting. You said that Frank and Dave over MHU?

Andrew: M as in Mary, H as in Harry. Mobile Home University.

Jason: Got it, all right. I thought I would make sure. Cool. What else should they know about mobile home park investing that we haven't covered so far?

Andrew: I'll just give a vague overview of it. There's a model where the community owners will own all of the homes and basically operate it as a flat apartment community where every home is a park-owned rental. That is not the model that we follow. We are looking at a more scalable model to have the tenants own their homes. Then, we just have lot rent.

There's a couple of reasons. Obviously, repairs and maintenance would be a lot less. Your expenses will be a lot less. Also, your turnover on a tenant-owned home unit is approximately 4%-5% annually where the turnover on a park owned home unit is closer to 50% annually.

From a management side of things, if you have a tenant-owned home community, you're going to spend less time dealing with turnover compared to a park owned home community. There's communities out there that have done both ways but we prefer the tenant-owned home model.

In regards to mobile home park investing, it is affordable housing. If you're familiar with affordable housing in multifamily, HUD housing, or things like that, you can deal with a lot of the same residence but there's also different classes just like in any asset class where there's very high end mobile home communities that have swimming pools, community centers, three golf courses. Then, there's communities on the lower end that are just not taken care of very well. The homes are really close together, there's a lot of older homes. We try to aim right at the middle.

We're looking at the C class parks that maybe we can bump up into a B. That's typically where we play.

Jason: Got it. All right. For those that heard all of this and still thought there's no way I'm going to touch this. There's no way I'm going to go to MHU. I don't want to do any of this stuff, but those returns sound pretty sweet. Maybe I should talk to Andrew. Maybe there's a mom and pop that's listening, they're like you know what? I'm tired of this garbage. I'm tired of dealing with this place. I want out. It's time we retire from running this mobile home park. They're like maybe we can have a conversation with Andrew.

Who are the people that you're wanting to get in touch with you? Whether it's investors, whether it's potential people that can create a deal with you? What are you interested in?

Andrew: All of the above. If there's a wholesaler that comes across a mobile home park and they want to assign it, or it's a property manager, or maybe it's someone that wants to partner on their first deal because they want to learn the operations before just jumping in with two feet. All of them should reach out to me. My website is keelteam.com. I'd be happy to chat with you. I love talking about mobile home parks, you won't have to pull my leg too hard to go on the phone with me.

Jason: I could tell. Andrew, I appreciate you coming on and sharing a little bit about mobile home park investing, helping open my audience’s eyes to that just a little bit. Maybe you'll get a few phone calls, maybe some people will get into this. Who knows? Maybe there'll be some sort of a hybrid where deals even workout. Are you looking at expanding outside the midwest at all?

Andrew: Yeah, we've looked at some deals in many different areas. Not in California but outside of that state we've looked at several deals. You have to hit a certain number of units for it to make sense for it to go to a new market. You don't just want to go after a 40 lot mobile home park in Idaho when the rest of your communities are all in Ohio or Pennsylvania.

We definitely looked at other places. I've JV'ed with people that brought me a deal that they didn't have any money but they just found this great deal. I found things like that and I'm totally open to sharing what I know on the operation side to others that bring a deal to the table.

Jason: Awesome. Andrew, I appreciate you coming on the show. I wish you continued success.

Andrew: Jason. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you having me on the DoorGrow Show.

Jason: All right, cool. Make sure you reach out to Andrew if any of this sounds interesting, you are curious about this in working with him, or getting into it yourself. That was keelteam.com.

If you're looking at figuring out how to grow your property management business, I had so many calls this week from new clients that have come onboard with us. There's this common challenge that property managers tend to deal with at various stages. I've noticed that you've got that first sandtrap at about 50, 60 doors in the single family residential space where you're dealing with how do I start to get ahead? How do I create some leverage in this business so I'm not just trapped as a solopreneur here forever? How do I start getting more doors than I'm losing so I'm not just breaking even every year in terms of growth? If you're dealing with any of those kinds of challenges, we're really going to help you break through that initial barrier.

Then, there's that second sandtrap which is usually if you can break in a healthy way past 100 doors, if you haven't done that yet, talk to us. If you break past 100 doors in a healthy fashion, which means you're not just a real estate broker. That's really healthy and you've got this unhealthy property management business on the side, we can help you with that too. You do it in a healthy fashion.

Then, you'll end up usually in the 200-400 door category and then you get stuck. This is where I see a lot of property managers stuck in NARPM. A lot of property managers are struggling. There are specific things that you need to break free from that sandtrap.

Usually, the challenge is they're not getting the right thing members. They're not able to retain team members for a long time. They're trying to build and systemize the business, build a team. They just don't have a business that's scalable. Even if it were fed a lot of potential business, or a lot of deals, or a lot of leads, once they approach that 400 or maybe up to 500 units space, the business owners feel really stressed out.

They built a team usually the way a solopreneur thinks. They built a business based on what the business needs, not on what the business owner needs to lower their pressure noises through the roof. Every person that they have on their team is coming to them for everything and asking questions. First, it feels really exciting when you're small. As you scale and as you build, it feels really suffocating. You become the biggest bottleneck in the business.

If you're experiencing that, then reach out. We would love to have a conversation so that we can help you break past that second sandtrap as well.

Anyway, I'm Jason Hull over at DoorGrow. Make sure you also check us out. We've been really pumping up Instagram and getting going. Follow us on Instagram, it's just @doorgrow. Make sure you get into our community at the DoorGrow Club Facebook group. You can go to the DoorGrow Club. Just go to doorgrowclub.com.

Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Download this Episode

Aug 18, 2020

The next time you play golf on company time make sure insights into how you spend your time on the job out in the field is not being tracked.

Today’s guest is Barima Kwarteng from Timeero, a GPS app that reduces overhead costs and streamlines time tracking. Basically, Timeero started to prevent golf (at least on company time) because it’s expensive!

You’ll Learn...

[01:52] Barima’s Background: Originally from Ghana in West Africa, but attended BYU.

[02:35] Timeero: Some employees work in the field. How do they spend their time?

[03:01] Drunk Coworker Confesses: On company time, they play golf on Fridays.

[03:35] Software not from Scratch: Acquired cold base from Texas cop and rebuilt it.

[05:00] Theft Prevention: Timeero tracks time, location, mileage, and much more.

[06:10] Screenshot Safety: Pressure to prove work is being done to get paid.

[06:58] Big Brother? Find out if employees are being accountable or taking advantage.

[07:22] Bottom Line: Companies save 5-15% payroll costs by tracking employees’ time.

[08:16] COVID Cash Crunch: Tighten belt to offload employees not pulling their weight.

[10:00] Technology and Time Management: Paper timecards/sheets take too much time.

[12:07] Timeero: How the Web application works after downloading app on smartphone.

[15:06] Geofence: Reminder to clock in and clock out as soon as you arrive/leave work.

[16:36] Better Culture within Business: Nobody likes to be micromanaged. Trust me.

[20:49] More Money? Most are more motivated by recognition than monetary benefits.

[22:05] Simplicity vs. Tech-Savvy: Get people to use new things or do things differently.

[24:10] Why is Timeero different from other apps? Gives outside team more insights.

[30:42] ROI: Timeero is $5 per user per month, plus $10 base fee for business account.

Tweetables

“If golf is helping the bottom line and helping you get revenue, great, but otherwise…” Jason Hull

“People right off the bat think, ‘Oh, it has a little big brother feel to it. What we're seeing is, it's actually helping the bottom line in terms of payroll.” Barima Kwarteng

“Technology saves you a lot of time. As a business owner, you can dedicate those hours or time to something more beneficial.” Barima Kwarteng

“The app only tracks time and movement while you're clocked in. The moment you clock out, it stops tracking you because we really value privacy.” Barima Kwarteng

“It helps people track time more efficiently and more accurately.” Barima Kwarteng

Resources

Timeero

Brigham Young University (BYU)

DGS 132: The Cashflow and Chaos of Managing Student Rental Properties with Peter Tverdov 0

Transcript

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

My guest today, I'm hanging out with Barima Kwarteng. Did I say it right?

Barima: I think you got that right more than most people.

Jason: Okay, awesome. Barima has a company called Timeero. Before we get into that, I'm excited to hear a little bit about this. I was checking out your landing page for your software. It looks like it's kind of unique with the GPS stuff and some of those kinds of things.

Before we get into that, why don't you introduce yourself to those listening or watching this later? Just help them understand what brought you to Timeero, and share a little bit about your entrepreneurial background here.

Barima: Yeah, absolutely. I'm originally from Ghana, a country in West Africa. I'm not sure if many of you listeners know where that is. I originally came to school out here in the US at BYU. At BYU, I was able to learn a little bit more about entrepreneurship and starting businesses. It's something I've always wanted to be able to do. That opportunity presented itself with Timeero.

The whole idea behind Timeero was that many businesses out there have employees out in the field. They have teams out in the field. They want to have a little bit more insight into how their employees or team members spend their time. Timeero provides you that opportunity to be able to have more insights into how your outsight spends their time.

One of the events that really triggered this was I have a friend who owns a construction company. His employees, every Friday, they would bring their golf clubs and check it in their truck. On company time, they will play golf on Friday. The company didn't know about this. They only found out during a company party that they were playing golf on company time. One of the employees was drunk and finally spilled out the secret about what they were doing.

He needed a solution to be able to track again and have insights into where his employees were spending their time. Working with him, that was how the whole idea was born. I initially did not build it from scratch. There was a company out in Texas that the owner of the company wanted to sell his software.

I remember thinking to myself, you know what, this is what Brad wants. This is the kind of solution he needs. I actually ended up acquiring the initial cold base from this guy out in Texas. He was a cop. He just wanted to get rid of it and focus on something else.

What we ended up doing was rebuilding the whole system again and making them much better. That's a little bit about how we got started on Timeero.

Jason: Timeero started to prevent golf, basically.

Barima: I have a problem with people playing golf. When you're doing it on company time or when you're playing when you're not supposed to be playing, it gets pretty expensive. We’re on company time.

Jason: Yeah. If golf is helping the bottom line and helping you get revenue, great, but otherwise...

Barima: If it's helping the bottom line, yeah. Exactly.

Jason: Okay.

Barima: Sometimes, it feels like it has a big brother feel to it, but you'll be surprised in many ways that people use it. It tracks time, location, mileage, and a whole lot of things.

Jason: My company's virtual. One of the challenges I’ve noticed over the last decade or so that I've been running a virtual team is you sometimes get people that are not full of integrity. They come into the business, you think they're going to do a good job. If there isn't a level of accountability that needs to be in the business, people sometimes will take advantage of that.

The challenge is that I've had people stealing time from me in the past. Eventually, you find out. Eventually, you figure out they're not getting stuff done and you're paying for that time. That's a challenge people deal with. It's theft in the business. It sounds like we're talking about preventing theft.

One of the side effects I've noticed in having time tracking and time software for some of the team members, contractors, or people that I hire, some of these do screenshots, some of these do things like that. It's created safety for my team members or as contractors as well.

One of the challenges a lot of contractors deal with is they have to prove that they're doing something and they feel that pressure. It could very easily be somebody that hired them to say I don't think you did anything, or I don't think you did enough. I don't want to pay you.

There's also the issue of if there are interactions or dealings with customers, so having accurate records protects the customer, it protects the employer, the team member, and it protects entrepreneurs, the CEO, or the boss of the company. I think people forget that and they sometimes like to focus on it feels so big brother.

I generally found that I only get that feedback from people that want to not have accountability.

Barima: I think you hit the nail on the head. That's exactly what we're seeing as well. There are a whole lot of uses for it. Generally, people right off the bat think, oh, it has a little big brother feel to it. What we're seeing is it's actually helping the bottom line in terms of payroll as well.

One of the things I haven't really mentioned is just with time theft, it's natural for us to have our times. I may come up to you and say I work from 8:00 AM-5:00 PM. The reality is I probably worked 8:13 AM until 4:42 PM. Five minutes, 10 minutes here and there start to add up all the time. It starts to affect the bottom line. We're seeing companies saving anywhere from 5%-15% payroll cost by just having a system in place to help them accurately track more time and also have more insights as to where the employees are spending their time.

That's one of the few statements that we're giving businesses that you’d also have to [...].

Jason: I think one positive advantage that has come from the whole coronavirus, COVID-19 epidemic is in March, everybody sort of experienced the significant cash crunch—most businesses did—and they had to tighten their belt.

What we saw is a lot of businesses laying people off, a lot of property managers were tightening the belt because they worried rent wasn't going to come in. That created this massive mass cleanse of wait, bloat, and fluff inside of companies. There was just this offloading of that.

That makes people really conscious. I think people, more so now than ever, are really conscious of the fact that a 5%-15% reduction in payroll cost is significant because that's typically the largest expense in a business. That could be a significant reduction in expenses, which means you have a lot more cash flow health.

If cash flow goes into the business, the business is dead. The second cash flow is gone, the business is done, unless you get loans or something to squeeze out and get a little free cash available. Cash flow is king in a business, and payroll is going to directly impact that.

Barima: Right. I think you're spot-on on about that. What the coronavirus and everything going on, as a business owner, your natural instinct is to try to cut down costs. Like you mentioned, most people may be looking to lay off people.

A lot of times, as business owners, we’re so focused on bringing in more business. How do I increase my revenue? It also makes sense to look at your bottom line and figure out, how do I cut down costs using technology? I think it's easily forgotten by a lot of team leaders or business owners. In figuring out how to cut down on costs using technology, you can dramatically cut down on costs and help improve your bottom line.

In terms of time management, let's just focus on time management. There are a lot of companies out there who still use paper timesheets, they're having their employees to text in their time, or using some form of [...] system. What we're not even talking about is the amount of time that's involved in processing your payroll.

First of all, your employees may not be turning in their timecards on time. Depending on how often you’re running payroll, you may be finding out two weeks later how many hours they may have spent on a job. They may not have the greatest handwriting and you're spending a lot of time trying to figure that out. Or you may have to open a call and try to get everyone to turn in their time card in a timely fashion.

Today is Friday. The last thing you wanted to do is to spend your Friday afternoon or evening trying to chase people for their timecards. If you're using a system like Timeero, you don't have to sit around and wait for any of that. We're talking about cutting the amount of hours anywhere from 30 minutes to even 5 hours for some companies or more to minutes or even seconds. You can just pull up a report of how many hours have been worked, how much mileage, and have insights to where they've been.

Technology saves you a lot of time. As a business owner, you can dedicate those hours or time to something more beneficial. It might be spending more time with your family or other areas of your business. It definitely does help save you a lot of time and money as well.

Jason: Okay. We talked about some of the benefits of saving time. Let's talk a little bit about how it works. Say, a property management business owner has some boots on the ground, has an agent or a person at the field, a property manager, and they're doing showings. They're going to open up a property for somebody in getting a lease handle. They're moving around and doing stuff.

But they're not sure if this person is going and just picking up the gates in school, hanging out and watching Netflix for an hour here. They want to verify this, how does this software work?

Barima: The way it works is that you have your web application, which you can run on an iPad or a normal desktop machine. Your employees are going to have their smartphone. We have mobile apps that they can download on their smartphones. Once they have the app on their smartphone, they can log in using the credentials that they’ve been assigned.

Whenever you're ready to start with it, let's say we'll start at 8:00 AM for me. I come in, I punch in, and it starts tracking my time, my location, and my mileage. Whenever I travel around it logs my positions. Let's say I clock in and decide to drive off to go play golf. Now Jason is going to come in and see that I'm at a golf course.

That's probably where I'm not supposed to be—at a golf course. You're going to see a trail path of where every single employee has been while they're on the clock. Managers can review that and ask questions. Why were you at the golf course? Or were you supposed to be there in the first place?

Jason: For the manager that's looking in the app—managing their staff that is tracking their time—they will see a map for this?

Barima: They will see a map, exactly. There's a Google map. For every time entry, there's a Google map that shows your trail path of where you’ve been while you were on the clock. Again, the app only tracks time and movement while you're clocked in. The moment you clock out, it stops tracking you because we really value privacy.

We're not interested in knowing what you were doing off the clock. It's only while you're in the clock that it tracks your trail path, where you've been, and any information that’s needed

Jason: Great. If they have a maintenance person going around doing maintenance in some properties, they can say, hey, this tenant called me. They said you haven't shown up yet. Where are you at? Oh, yeah, I'm on my way. You check and they're at the golf course. I know that's not the case.

It creates some accountability, which I think lessens the temptation for people to lie, steal, and do things. It also creates more accuracy because they know that their location is being entered in. Now, say somebody forgets to clock out. They go do an errand at the grocery store. They're like, oh, I forgot to do that. Are they able to edit their time entry to remove that portion and eliminate that pin from the map?

Barima: Absolutely. You're able to go edit your time entries and change all of that. One of the things we're doing or some of the few things we've got is to make sure we can remind people to clock out as well. Not just clock in, but also to clock out.

You can set a reminder. For instance, we use a technology called geofence. We can set a geofence around your work area. The moment you leave your work area, it notifies you to clock out because you probably may have forgotten to clock out, you're leaving off for lunch, or leaving off.

The other thing we're coming out with is an automatic clock in and clock out. Whenever you arrive at the job site, it automatically clocks you in. When you leave, it also automatically clocks you out. These are optional settings you can turn on and off.

Again, it helps people track time more efficiently and more accurately. Now, you don't have to worry about forgetting to clock in and out. It just handles that for you if you turn on those options.

Jason: Yes. I'm a big fan of creating or implementing systems that can do the job of managing certain pieces rather than micromanaging your team. I love when information's pushed to me instead of me having to go and ask them, and get it, or find out, or that sort of thing is. You may want to know, as a boss, what were you [...]. What were you doing this time?

If you go and ask them all the time, if they are doing the right thing, they're going to feel invaded. They're going to feel like you're not trusting them. Having a system like this, I can see the advantage in being able to check and say okay. It can alleviate those fears you have in the back of your mind. Oh, they were on the job site. They were doing this job at this property. They were in the office this time while I was on vacation when I checked.

It just allows you to lower that pressure, those noises, those fears, and those doubts. And it allows you to facilitate greater trust in your team.

Barima: Absolutely. Speaking of micromanaging, I'm not a micromanager at all. I don't like environments where people feel micromanaged. Sometimes using the software may come off as micromanaging.

One of the things we do is we like to train our users to have a better culture within your businesses, within your companies. Foster an environment where people feel trusted. And also, using tools like this to foster more accountability. You can have a great accountability system without micromanaging people.

Sometimes, people don't think those two things go together. You can have good technology in place, make sure people are held accountable, but then also avoid micromanaging people.

Jason: Yeah. This is an ironic thing in business or some people think these things don't go together. But really, when you create really good accountability systems inside your business, first of all, it's going to prevent the hiders or the people that aren't real believers in you or in your business from being able to get away with theft, stealing time, or being lazy. These are the team members we sometimes have in business that just want to leave for the weekend, complain about their boss, and they hate their job. None of us want those people on our team.

Ultimately, we want people that are believers, people that buy into our vision, that want to enact the change that our business' mission is focused on. Those are the people that we want working for us—people that are inspired rather than controlled.

What I found is that those types of people love accountability systems because they get recognized. They want recognition. But when you're hiding, when you're trying to steal, when you're trying to do as little work as possible, and just get a paycheck, you don't want accountability or recognition. You just want to fly below the radar.

For my team members, we have a weekly commitment meeting. We show up and everybody says what they got done that week based on what they committed to doing in the previous week and what they didn't. My team members love being able to say, I got these things done. Everybody can see it. Great job you got these things done.

Nobody wants to be the person that has a bunch of things that are in the red that they didn't accomplish, that are nos on the to-do list and want to feel like the weakest link. It creates a performance culture in which there's positive peer pressure. I could see how some people would resent this system and some people would respond well to it.

Ultimately, as entrepreneurs, we want those that respond well to accountability and they love the recognition. The big mistake we make a lot as entrepreneurs is we think that they just want more money. We think they want bonuses. That's going to incentivize their behavior. Most people, besides entrepreneurs and salespeople, are more motivated by recognition than they are by increasing monetary benefits.

Barima: I totally agree with that. It's very easy to think money motivates. Not everyone is solely motivated by money. Money helps but there are so many other ways to motivate people. It comes down to figuring out what each person on your team values. Recognition is one of them. It really, really, helps to help people feel recognized. It helps them feel that a good job is very important.

There are many ways to motivate people outside of money. I've seen it go both ways where money motivates people. Actually, I've also seen it not motivate people. You just never know. It's up to you, as the leader, to figure out what motivates each and every single person.

Also, like you've mentioned, there are some people who just are not ready to work. They will be the ones complaining about accountability systems, and they will be trying to figure out ways to beat the system. With those people who fall in that bucket, you have to forego different ways to work with them.

Jason: Now, when it comes to technology, the biggest challenge with the team is adoption, which means getting them to use it. This is usually the biggest challenge with software is getting people to use a new thing or do things in a new way. What's your experience with people being onboarded into Timeero and getting their team members to use this?

Barima: It's been on a wide spectrum. Overall, one of the big reasons why people go with us is because of simplicity. We put a lot of effort into making sure that our software is very easy and very simple to use. We know that not everyone is very tech-savvy. We really invest a lot into the design. Simplicity is always at the very top of what really shapes the design.

When it comes to onboarding, it's very simple. We try to make the process extremely simple so that with a few clicks or a few taps you’re in the system and you're starting to log hours without very much help. We also invest in a lot of our customer support. You can get on the phone with us and talk with us. You can get on live chat. We’re happy to do a video call and help anyone get onboarded.

There are few players out in the space. In software in general, it's a well-known fact that it's not that easy to get support when you need it. Sometimes, people will put you through an email system and you may hear back from them several days after. With us, we really invested a lot in our customer support, so you can get on the phone with us in the live chat.

I can tell you, Jason, once you put out your request, you can expect to hear from us within 10 minutes. That's it if you're within our core hours of the business. We really take that. It's a high priority for us in giving people the support they need.

Jason: You mentioned that there's a lot of other apps in the time tracking space. Customer service and being intuitive are two areas in which you stand out. What are some other features or benefits we haven't touched on yet? Or is there anything else that leans people to using your software to do this rather than whatever they're comfortable already or that they're using currently?

Barima: When it comes to time tracking, time tracking has been around for a long time. You have companies that have been doing this for over 30 years or probably even longer. It's a very saturated space. There are so many time tracking apps out there. Some of them are free and some of them are paid as well.

Where we separate ourselves from the gazillion apps out there we are mostly focused on helping you give your outside team more insights, having more insights into how your outside team is spending their time.

We have a lot of property management companies that use us. Also, we help you track mileage. There are few apps out there. I can only probably count two apps I know that probably do that—track your mileage and track your time.

Many companies will want to track your mileage. Perhaps you reimburse employees for mileage driven as well. They may probably be paying also for a separate time tracking app with GPS tracking capabilities. What we've done is we’ve matched those two. You don't even have to pay for two separate apps. You get time tracking, your mileage tracking. You're also getting scheduling and your host of other things we want to come up with like expense tracking as well.

We've been able to mash all of these different technologies. It's very appealing to a lot of property management companies, businesses, and even property managers with one or two employees will use us. It just saves them a ton of time.

As a business owner, you're focused on trying to grow your business. The last thing you want to be doing is trying to chase paper timecards, figuring out mileage, and whatnot. With technology, you're able to do all of these very, very quickly, and much more easily. Your time can be focused on what's supposed to be important.

There are several things we do: time tracking, mileage, GPS tracking, scheduling, and a few other things. Again, with our software, you have a lot more insight into how your outside team is spending their time.

Jason: Awesome, that's great. There's a lot of property management business owners that have property managers that are spending some time in the office, some time out in the field. They'll be able to assess whether they're out, in, or not. They'll be able to see how much time they’re spending at the office. They'll be able to see that they are going to the properties at the times they're supposed to.

I'm sure every property management business owner has heard, I showed up for the showing and nobody was there. Usually, the assumption is this tenant is totally out there. But it may be the case that you have team members that are not really measuring up, being fully honest, or doing the things that you need them to do. That level of accountability is going to keep them at that high level.

Barima: Right, exactly. You probably end up getting a bad review from a customer that says, They never showed up. As a business owner, you can go to their system and say, Where was John at 3:00 PM on this day? It will pull up that system and tell you.

Jason: Yeah. If they were there, then that could be your comment on that review online. We use GPS technology to track. That's a selling point. That's a feature. We use GPS technology to track each of our team members that are out in the field, and this team member showed up at 2:58 PM—two minutes before and was there. We have this verified.

You have facts and data. This will protect you legally in certain legal disputes. You'll be able to verify the things where people were in certain places when they were supposed to be. If you were supposed to be there to deal with a constable, an eviction, or a policeman. Any of these things, there'll be a record that somebody was there at that time stated and you'll have history.

If you end up in a courtroom, some sort of a challenge, or a discrepancy with an owner or a tenant, you've got verification. You've got validation from a third party showing that there is a GPS time tracking being done.

Barima: Absolutely. Jason, it's very interesting with my experience just talking with different business owners. What I'm seeing is the businesses that are investing in technology are the ones starting to get ahead. Over time, they'll start to get ahead because it just gives you such a huge advantage. It's tremendous the amount of advantage that technology just gives you.

Sometimes, you have some business owners that just want to stick with the old way of doing things because that's what they're used to and it works. Yes, it might work, but your competition is just getting ahead, miles ahead of you just because you're investing in the right technology. The ROI that you're getting from using technology is so much bigger than what you're paying for.

Jason: Yeah. You're saying that this can save people on average between 5%-15% in payroll?

Barima: Exactly. 5%-15% of payroll. That's just the payroll side of it. Now, there's the human. We're not even talking about your time spent trying to do payroll and capture people's times. We haven't also talked about the errors that happen from getting the payroll log. The last thing you want to do is overcompensating people or under-compensating them.

Again, you use technology that takes care of that. You don't have to spend your time worrying about, did I end up overpaying this person or did I underpay them? We're talking about tremendous time-saving costs as well.

Jason: Okay. I'm looking at your website. The pricing looks really affordable. Let's just do some quick math for property managers here. Say, you've got one team member. They’re maybe between $15-$20 an hour. They're full time. You've got one team member full time. That could be anywhere from $3000-$4000 a month that they're spending on this person. 5% of $3000 is $150. Your software is not going to cost them $150 a month. Not even close.

Even if it just helps them a little bit, it sounds like it can easily pay for itself right out the gate just by reducing a little bit of extra fat that people are padding accidentally on to their timesheets.

Barima: Absolutely. It pays for itself right out of the gate. Again, looking at the ROI, you were paying this amount of money and you're saving this amount of money by using our system. It pays itself off right away. In a lot of ways, you can say it's a no-brainer to use that.

Jason: All right. Is there anything else we're missing?

Barima: Our pricing is very simple. It's $5 per user per month. It doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. In the future, we'll eventually introduce extra pricing tiers as we add more technology as well. We do have a $10 base fee for your accounts. The $10 base fee just covers your whole company account.

Let's say you have 10 employees in your company. You're going to pay 10 times your $5, so that puts you up at $50. Then, there's the $10 account base fee that you pay every month. In total, you're paying $60 a month to manage your 10 employees—whereabouts, the time entries, the mileage, the scheduling, and a whole bunch of things—only for $60 a month.

Like you mentioned, you can look at how much you're saving in payroll costs by using that. Purely just for payroll cost, you can—

Jason: If it only helps them save 1%, even just a single percentage in staffing cost, it would be a no-brainer.

Barima: Yes. It is a no-brainer, but you'll also be surprised not everyone finds it to be a no-brainer. You get it, but not everyone might get it that way. Yeah, it's very interesting.

Jason: Very cool. Barima, it's been great having you on the show. We haven't had anybody on the show yet talk about anything like reducing or tracking time with GPS out in the field. I think this is a common issue that property managers run into, or it's a blind spot they just have they've just not been paying attention to.

Something like this would probably create a little bit more safety and certainty for them. It sounds like it would also lower some of the effort, pressure, noise, work involved with timesheets, payroll, and dealing with people that are out in the field or in-house vendors. People that they have maintenance, people inhouse, property managers that they have out in the field, people doing showings. I think there are a lot of benefits here for property managers. I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing this with us.

How can people find out more about Timeero? Get in touch with you? Plug your stuff.

Barima: Yeah. You can visit our website at timeero.com. Visit our website. Use our live chat. You can also call into our office. If we’re in, we will answer it. If we're not, we'll respond back to you.

Please do visit our website and use our live chat. Get on with one of our support agents or a customer sales agent who will get in touch with you and help you solve problems. We're here to solve problems. Get on and talk to us. We'll figure out if we'll be a good fit for you or not. If we're not, we’re happy to recommend any other solutions that might be a better fit for you as well. We look forward to hearing from you.

Jason: Awesome, Barima. Thanks for coming on the DoorGrow Show.

Barima: Thank you. Thanks for having me on, Jason.

Jason: All right. We'll wrap this up. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, you want to make a difference, all the things we talked about in the beginning, in the intro, be sure to reach out to DoorGrow.

We've been having great success helping clients, coaching clients, helping them clean up their business, clean up their branding, clean up everything that's preventing them from getting the deals, and the leads that they really believe they should or could be getting.

The reality is that SEO won't save you. Can SEO help your business? Absolutely, but there is not a lot of search volume for property management for this industry. The best deals and leads are snatched up before they start searching on Google.

You need a game plan, you need a system in place that you can grow your business, and not be waiting and relying on having the top spot on Google in order to grow. We want to help you get there. We want to help the best property manager succeed.

Reach out to DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com. And be sure to check out Timeero. You can check it out at timeero.com. Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Download this Episode

Jul 21, 2020

It’s that time of year as college students start or return to school. They may think they know it all, but really know nothing. How many students does it take to change a lightbulb or turn the heat on? It’s time to grow up in the real world!

Today’s guest is Peter Tverdov of Tverdov Housing. Although student rentals are management intensive, Peter actually enjoys dealing with students. It’s prepared him to take on other types of tenants to diversify and grow his business.

You’ll Learn...

[02:18] Rutgers University: Becoming a landlord in New Brunswick and loving it.

[02:53] Student Housing Side Hustle: Accumulate more and manage them for others.

[03:24] Hindsight is 20/20 in 2020: Bad timing to start business and quit day job to grow.

[04:41] Decision to deal with students and student housing led to diverse tenant groups.

[06:15] Peter’s Portfolio: 65-70% student rentals, 15-20% low-income families, 5-10% middle-class/workforce housing.

[08:10] Onboarding Students: Educate and set expectations to limit excuses later on.

[11:00] Happy Tenant, Happy Owner: Second largest lead generator is tenant referrals.

[12:57] Broken Windows Theory: Dumpy/dilapidated areas attract crime and trouble.

[13:45] Tverdov Renovation Consultants: Improve properties to attract better tenants.

[14:47] Avoid or Acquired Taste? Riches are in the niches as a student rentals landlord.

[16:33] Other Options? Rules/laws for room rentals, individual leases, boarding houses.

[20:55] Responsibility: How to be landlords and hold each other accountable.

[23:35] What’s next for Tverdov Housing? Track KPIs, achieve goals, and grow doors.

Tweetables

Landlord Business: Slowly and discreetly acquire more properties, get your hands dirty, and deal with people.

“In business, it’s good to diversify.”

“Managing student rentals, it really gets you battle-tested for managing other tenants.”

“We’re not for everybody. We’re fair, but firm.”

Resources

Tverdov Housing

Tverdov Housing on Instagram

DGS 131: Property Management Growth Strategies After COVID-19 with Mark and Anne Lackey 0

Transcript

All right, today's guests, I'm hanging out with Pete. I’m going to see if I can say your last name right, Tverdov. And I'm going to unmute you so you can actually respond to that. Did I say it right?

Pete: That was awesome. Pete Tverdov of Tverdov Housing. Pete, before we get into the topic, I want to introduce you, have you introduce yourself a little bit, but we’re going to be talking about student rental properties and the title is The Cash flow and Chaos of managing student rental properties. That sounds kind of fun. Let's get into the cash flow and chaos after we hear a little bit about your background, how did you get into this, and tell everybody who's listening about Pete.

Pete: Sure. Happy to be on the show, thanks for having me. I got into it, my wife and I moved back to the Central Jersey area about six years ago and in the process of moving back we were looking to buy a multi-family, live in one unit, and it brought us to New Brunswick, where Rutgers University is. We both went to school there, we both played sports there, became a landlord, and really enjoyed the process of becoming a landlord.

As I wanted to try to accumulate more rentals, I had the idea to begin managing for the people as it's something I really enjoyed doing. I enjoyed just getting your hands dirty and dealing with people. I started to do that on the side a little bit in that neighborhood, very slowly, very discreetly, and then little by little, I was just nibbling and getting more people under management because I was doing a pretty good job.

About a year ago, it grew into a large enough business where I was at a crossroads with my regular job. I said you know what? I feel pretty good about this. I'm just going to dive in and really try to grow my business. That has been a bit rocky because I did that officially in January. I say rocky because of Coronavirus. The business has been good. It's been fun. I enjoy being an entrepreneur. I enjoy trying to grow the business each day and I'm happy to be here.

Jason: Yes. Looking back, hindsight being 20/20, pun intended, so here in 2020, would you have chosen, if knowing that this would all happen to start your business, would you still have done it?

Pete: It's such a hard question to answer because I had grown a business enough to that point where there was really no turning back. I just had a breaking point because I was working 24 hours a day. I was working in New York City. So it's just really challenging to try and juggle both really and I couldn't at that point. So was the timing the best? Definitely not.

Jason: Okay, so you started getting into doing this yourself. Then you started doing it for others. At what point did you start deciding it would be a good idea to deal with students? I mean, this is your college hometown, right? It's a college town, your wife's college town, there is a college there, and it seems probably pretty obvious that you should be dealing with student housing. Were you already dealing with students with your own rentals?

Pete: Yeah, that's exactly right. Every rental we owned was student housing and something I had a lot of familiarity with. For a while, I didn't want to do anything else but student rentals. About a year ago, I started to diversify that and try to pick up other tenant groups to manage, which we have, thank God, because in business it's good to diversify.

But for me, anything with investing or my advice to anybody with investing is to go with what you know or the areas you know and then you branch out from there, which is what we did with the business. Again, student rentals are something we're super familiar with, super comfortable with and now we're at the point where we're happy with how much we have in the business and we're actively looking.

We don't really even market too heavily to student rental landlords just because we have a sizable amount and because we know what chaos comes with managing them and how management-intensive they could be. As I said, we're trying to diversify the business. In addition to being well-known for student rentals, we want to [...] things as well.

Jason: Give listeners a little bit of idea of what your portfolio looks like right now.

Pete: Of our business, 65%–70% is student rentals. Another 15%–20% is lower-income families, and then the remainder is middle-class housing, workforce housing, yuppies. What's funny is managing student rentals really gets you battle-tested for managing other tenants because the other tenant groups really are a breeze. Student rentals are very management-intensive because they're 18- to 21-year-olds, so young adults. Most of them know nothing and what's worse is they think they know something which compounds the problem sometimes.

I was the same way and maybe you were as well. You don't really know much when you're that age. They don't understand that they're responsible for changing light bulbs or if the heat's not working in the house, maybe it's because no one checked to see if the thermostat was even on. Stuff like that is really low hanging fruit.

Jason: Yeah. Like you're saying, before anybody has kids or business or any of that, we're all experts on parenting, business, and how the world should work. I love it when my teenagers tell me how to be a better parent. I love that. That's always a really fun conversation. Everyone's an expert until they do it and then they realize they're like everybody else winging it and trying to figure out what's next.

You started with the most difficult type of housing. It sounds like it was more difficult renters and tenants than anything else. It felt like it was just downhill. From there it was easier.

Pete: That's right. As I said, it's just a very management-intensive group. What do I mean by that? They never signed a lease before. Some of them have never paid rent before. They've never written a check before or they don't know how to pay rent online. They don't really know what a security deposit is. They don't really know the process of getting it back.

I think our business grew because we really tried to help the tenants understand the process and how it works. With students, for example—I would recommend this to anyone managing students—we usually sit down with them for 20–30 minutes and go over the lease with them, go over all the points in the lease, and set expectations upfront. We try to really limit the excuses for a tenant, like I didn't know that. What do you mean? We sat with you in person and went over that. That's one of the things.

Some of the management items that I was talking about beat the properties up a little bit more so the repairs are higher and things always just mysteriously break. It was never their fault like something happens and nobody wants to admit it. I got a taste for managing other tenant groups. I realize how intense the students are and it's not a bad business to be in because, for people who own the rentals, the cash flows are higher, but with higher cash flows comes a set of their own problems.

Jason: Aren't these things just common in property management in general? Like the advantage of you having a business like this is that you're almost educating these people through the process. That would work well for any new client because even if they've rented multiple places before, you have your way of doing things, they still may not want to follow things, have misinterpreted things, or they may claim they read the lease and understand it. All of these things sound like a really good baseline for how to onboard all of your renters.

Pete: What I realized early on with the way I conduct business is we're not for everybody and that's because we believe in holding people accountable. One of the gentlemen who help me out hits me on the head. We're fair but firm. We're very fair. We don't try to nickel and dime people, but we're firm. The lease is the lease or the code is the code and this is what we have to do in order to ensure that the property is running smoothly, to ensure you're happy as a tenant, and to ensure the owner’s happy as a client.

As a property manager, you're getting hit from both sides a lot of the time, but that's what I try to do to tenants. Honestly, we try to give as good of an effort as we can to make sure that they have a good experience because what's pretty cool about our business is the second-largest lead generator for us is tenant referrals which is awesome. That's free. That costs nothing. For that to be number two, it tells me we're doing something right, even though it feels like we're not sometimes and I want to continue that.

Jason: So tenant referrals, meaning the tenants are referring the owners to your company?

Pete: They're referring other tenants to our company. It makes the amount of advertising we have to spend on finding tenants less.

Jason: Right. Do you feel like that's a challenge and student housing is finding people to rent the place?

Pete: I must say it depends on the demographic. What's unique about Rutgers is it's split between two towns in New Jersey, New Brunswick, which has a population of 55,000 and Piscataway, which (I couldn't tell you) maybe it's 30,000 or 50,000. It's not a small town either, but it’s very old homes, especially in New Brunswick.

What a lot of landlords in that area are realizing is people don't want to live in a dump anymore. They're willing to pay a little bit more. The house needs to be nicer. That's what we've done with stuff that we own. Most of the clients we have take a little bit of convincing, but after a while, they trust us to spend some money on their property because it makes it easier to rent.

I went out to Rutgers, I majored in Criminal Justice. There's this thing called Broken Windows Theory and for people who don't know that it is, it's what it sounds like. When you have a dilapidated area with a bunch of broken windows, it attracts crime and attracts people looking to get into trouble. When you have that same place and it's all cleaned up, all the windows are fixed, the outsides painted, and the sidewalks are redone, the crime statistically usually has gone away.

We took that same theory with housing. So if you have a dump, you're likely going to attract tenants who don't care about the place. They're just going to beat it up even more. If you have a nice place, you usually attract nice tenants, and even with the students being as management-intensive as they are, we've found that to be true.

What's interesting is within the property management business—I did this right in the middle of the pandemic—I said screw it. I’m going to start another business. So we created what's called Tverdov Renovation Consultants. We basically do project management for our clients. We tell them, listen, we could help you rehab, bathrooms, kitchens, additions, roof siding, blah-blah-blah. We have a whole portfolio of the work we've done on Instagram.

That's been good for the owners because it makes their property easier to rent. They get more rent and make our property worth more. We're happy because we've found a better tenant. The town's happy because we've improved the property and it's really a win and win across the board.

It's just a matter of convincing other owners who are stuck in having lipstick on a pig or they don't want to spend a lot of money on properties and now we're at the point where I don't really want clients like that. I want clients who want to have a well-run property.

Jason: Got it. Do you feel like tenants are an acquired taste in property management? My perception as other property managers avoid dealing with student housing, with those types of tenants. They feel like they're more difficult to manage unless they feel like in their market they need to. Do you feel like you would maybe in general convince these property managers in some way that there is a benefit or an upside to focusing on a tenant or better student housing?

Pete: I think if you know it and you know the area, you could do very well and we have done very well. If you don't know it, it's pretty obvious to people who don't know it. You get beat up because you don't know what you're doing. The challenging part is every school is different across the country. When tenants begin to look when the lease is run and there are a plethora of questions to answer. If I was going to invest in another state, it's a whole different set of rules if you're going to try to be a student rental landlord in that state.

For me, the riches are in the niches. Again, that's what I knew and I grew it. Now we're looking at expanding into more residential options. Still single family, two to four families, small apartment buildings. That's our bread and butter. That's all we want to do. We don't do commercial. We don't do HOAs or anything like that. That's what we focus on and that's what we're trying to grow.

Jason: Now, the financial upside that I've heard from some people that get into this is some have convinced owners to take a property and to rent it out the room instead of renting out the entire property to a family. They're renting it out by the room in these sorts of situations and they're able to get a lot more rent at the property by doing such. That seems to be that there would be a potential financial upside, especially if your fee structure is based on percentages or each renter rather than being just connected to a flat fee per unit, for example.

Pete: Maybe it's a little off-topic. We charge a percentage base and we'll always do that. I really don't know how property managers make money doing a flat fee. I think it's tough so we'll always be a percentage-based company. Renting by the room is, you're correct, that is the way to make more money. Again, I keep saying this phrase, but management-intensive, renting by the room is even tougher for students where we put groups together. We put a bunch together last year.

We had a kid from Singapore, a kid from India, a kid from New Jersey, a kid from Pennsylvania and they don't know each other. When you're renting by the room, it's even worse because now you almost have four tenants, not one tenant, or six tenants, or however many people you're putting in a house. That creates its own set of problems.

Again, this is based on jurisdiction. You cannot do individual leases because that would be considered a boarding house unless it's a licensed boarding house, you really shouldn't be doing that. We don't do that, so we had to rent by the room. We put them all on one lease. We say, listen, you're all legally responsible for damage in the common areas, and so on and so forth. It's challenging.

What's funny, though, is I actually want to try to add a boarding house to manage because we get a lot of people just looking for a room. Just looking for a place to live, not just an apartment or a studio. We get a lot of inquiries like, hey, do you have a room?

Jason: Is this boarding house law something that is common in just your state? I haven't heard from this, but it makes sense. Is this in other states as well?

Pete: I'm just speaking about New Jersey.

Jason: Interesting. It's something to those listening if they haven't dabbled in student housing or they're thinking of renting by the room or something like that, they probably should check with their local laws to make sure whether or not there's any sort of rules against doing such.

In New Jersey, what does it take to become a boarding house then or to set one of those up? Is it on an individual property basis or is it a licensing sort of deal as a property manager?

Pete: You need to have (they call it) a rooming house or a boarding house, but you need to have a license displayed in the property. I've been in enough of them. It's pretty obvious if it's a boarding house or rooming house because there'll be a kitchen with a bunch of labels on each cabinet. Like, this is John's cabinet, this is Max's cabinet, this is Pete's cabinet, and there's a common bathroom or two. Then all the other doors are just shut with locks on it.

If you can imagine, that's what they look like and then they'll have a big license in the hallway or stairwell that'll say this is a New Jersey-licensed rooming house or boarding house. That's how they work. But again, those are challenging.

Jason: Do you find in those situations you end up sort of having to play parent between roommates?

Pete: Yes and no. We had to do it last year with a group of girls we put together. It was a little aggravating and a lot of girl drama. I stepped in and I spoke with them and tried to give them some words of wisdom. Most of the time, what we do with student rentals, I don't care how many kids are living in the house. It's one tenant and I explain to them you're all jointly responsible for rent and all the lease obligations. So it doesn't matter how many people are in the house. At the end of the day, you guys are all responsible.

The other thing is we manage nearly 400 students. Some of these are very nice people, but we can't talk to 400 people. It's just not possible. What we do is we make a house manager or captain, or house mom, dad, whatever you want to call it and that's the person we speak with now regarding any tenant issues. We usually recommend somebody else in the house be responsible for submitting rent. So rent is submitted in one payment. Someone else is responsible for utilities. What it teaches these guys is responsibility, how to be accountable, and hold their roommates accountable.

In theory, what's cool is we are actually teaching them how to be landlords because they have to make sure rent is collected. Something's broken, they have to find out who did this. Now, I have to tell Pete or for repairs to be made, coordinate with them to schedule it.

That's why I said earlier, we're not for everybody because somebody who needs their hands held or mommy and daddy to wipe their mouth, we're not for you and that's okay. Our system usually winds up attracting tenants who are a bit more mature, a bit more independent and if they're not, they get there by the time that they're done with us.

Jason: Right, I like it. You’re part of their educational process of the real world. That might be a good selling point for getting tenants. We'll make your kid actually grow up. I hope you're excited about that. I'm serious. I'd be like, I'm going to send my kids into one of those properties, right?

Pete: I might try that.

Jason: It's worth a shot. Pete, I think this is really interesting. I'd be interested in those that are doing student housing when you see this posted or see this inside the DoorGrow Club Facebook group at doorgrowclub.com. I'd be interested to see other people's comments on what you're doing, what's working, and what's not working in student housing.

This started as a side hustle. It's evolved into a business doing it for other people. It's now growing. What do you feel like is next for you and your business moving forward?

Pete: What I start to do from watching podcasts like this is to track our KPIs, which is really cool. I love that side of the business. It's like a quarterly visit if people think of it. It helps me to understand where we should be spending money, what's working, what's not, and tweaking things. Because we're in the growth stage right now, 100 doors is cool, but there are people who are 500, 800. Those are huge, huge companies.

We won't get there overnight, I understand that. The goal of my business is we want to cover three counties in New Jersey. So we're based in Central New Jersey. If anybody from New Jersey is listening to this, Central New Jersey really doesn't exist. That's the inside joke. But the three counties we cover probably have about 2.6–3 million people in them. Those are within a 30-minute radius of our office, so we're very comfortable being within a 30-minute radius of home base.

The goal is just to continue to add doors under management. Single-family, 2–4 families, small apartment buildings in those areas. There are certain towns that are rental towns and certain towns that are not. What we've been doing on the marketing side, we've been working on SEO, we have our own website, we blog, we're very active on Instagram, then we do mailers, which maybe not a lot of people do. We do some cold calling, too, and just constantly trying to tweak and figure out what's working, what's not, and how we could generate more leads.

On top of the property management, because in New Jersey you have to have your real estate license. So right now, me and a few people, my team are realtors. Eventually, I would like to have my own brokerage. Really rural housing is three companies, so it's realty services—we can help you buy and sell investment properties; that's all we do—we could help you manage the property, or we could help you rehab the property.

We have some clients where we help them buy the property, we help them rehab the property, and then we manage the property. Then, one day when they want to sell it, we'll sell the property. That's about creating multiple income streams for our business within the same business, which I think is pretty cool.

Jason: Makes sense. Cool. Pete, it's been great having you on the show. I wish you success at Tverdov Housing and for those that are listening, if you have questions about student housing or getting this, or if people listening are interested in getting a place from you or whatever your goal is, how can they get a hold of you?

Pete: My website is tvdhousing.com and also my Instagram, Tverdov Housing. You could look at the last name on the DoorGrow Show. It's Tverdov Housing. We're constantly posting what we're doing on Instagram, so it's usually properties we're rehabbing, or some crazy management story, about just some crazy stuff that's happened and probably will happen in the future, stuff that we're selling, so we're very active on there.

Jason: Cool. All right. Pete, thanks for coming on the show.

Pete: Pleasure being on.

Jason: All right. Those of you that are interested in getting into student housing or that have been dealing with student housing, I'd be really curious, like I mentioned, to see your feedback inside the DoorGrow Club Facebook group so inside the DoorGrow Club. Let us know what you find is working or not working. It sounds like a challenging thing. I think any of us that have gone to college and remember some of the crazy stuff that either we did or that we saw other people doing, recognize that could be a really challenging thing, but it's necessary. Like their student housing is a need. It'll be interesting to see how things go moving forward with COVID-19 and Coronavirus, and things shifting to online. It will be interesting.

Check out the Facebook group, doorgrowclub.com. If you are interested in growing your business and your property management company, making some changes there, if you are feeling stuck, struggling, whatever, reach out to DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com We'd love to help you out. Until next time. To our mutual growth, Bye everyone.

You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. 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. 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 at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you’ve learned and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Download this Episode

Jul 7, 2020

As some freedom returns to society following COVID-19, don’t miss out on potential opportunities to implement property management growth strategies.

Today’s guests are Mark and Anne Lackey from HireSmart Virtual Assistants (VAs). Mark and Anne are broker-owners that manage almost 200 doors in Atlanta.

You’ll Learn...

[03:47] Trends: Property management pivots and changes during economic downturns.

[07:10] Hire Virtually: Save money, get better employees, and increase productivity.

[08:22] Wake Up: Don’t resist remote work; realize office space may be unnecessary.

[11:14] DIY vs. Professionally Managed: Ramp up sales/funnels to serve customers.

[15:26] Problems are always opportunities to grow business by offering solutions.

[21:11] Customer Service: Don’t disconnect. Focus/follow up for retention/satisfaction.

[27:02] Professionalism: Set expectations. Don’t badmouth landlords via vendors.

[28:29] BDM: Do you need a business development manager?

[31:33] Time, Energy, and Effort: Resources required to rent properties to tenants.

{32:28] Referrals grow businesses. No referrals represents customer care problem.

[35:29] Gamechanger: Save time and money to get things done or do more yourself?.

[38:30] Wrong Person, Role, Tool, Time, and Money: Hire based on owner’s needs.

[40:57] Off-the-Shelf vs. Customization: How to hire and build teams takes time.

[46:50] Remote Challenges: Communication, operations, and management problems.

[48:22] Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Get work done based on expectations.

[50:15] Think, Invest, HireSmart: Know avatar to grow property management business.

Tweetables

Opportunities are available to make sales and buy, manage, and invest in more properties.

You don’t have to have your employees in an office. You don’t even have to have an office anymore.

Property managers are immune to guilt and the heroes of the rental industry.

Referrals grow businesses. No referrals represent customer care problems.

Resources

HireSmart Virtual Assistants (VAs)

DGS 69: HireSmart Virtual Assistants with Anne Lackey

Transcript

My guests today are Mark and Anne Lackey from HireSmart. Welcome you two.

Anne: Hey, good to see you. It's been a while.

Mark: Hey, it's good to see you.

Jason: It's good to have you back. I noticed you're displaying that beautiful logo in the background.

Mark: Isn't that wonderful?

Anne: Yes, that is of course a DoorGrow special. They helped us with that on our website.

Mark: The logo, the renaming, all of that was a DoorGrow impression that was right for us and is great for our clients.

Jason: Yeah, I like it. Cool. We're going to be talking about property management growth strategies after COVID-19. This Coronavirus is just starting to clean itself up. I just rode a road trip from Pennsylvania to Austin over the course of multiple days. People were not wearing masks anymore. We were eating at restaurants. It was awesome. It was like we are back to having freedom again.

Most places are open here in Austin. I went to the hardware store yesterday, though. Everyone was wearing masks and I felt like I was in trouble. I thought we were over this already, but apparently not at Home Depot.

Anne: Some places are, some places aren’t.

Jason: I think the national chains and the national stores have to accommodate the lowest common denominator nationally. They got rules in place for everything. What are we chatting about today?

Anne: First of all, I want to make sure everybody understands we are broker-owners ourselves. We manage doors in Atlanta.

Mike: Nearly 200 doors in Atlanta since 2005 for other people and for ourselves, since 2001.

Anne: We've been talking a lot to our friends who are in the property management business. We are, of course, NARPM members, affiliates, and affinity partners with them. We hear a lot around the nation of different things.

Just like your trip from Pennsylvania. You saw different parts of the country where things were more open than others, so we want to talk about a couple of different things as we see them. For property managers that are thinking what's the next thing.

I want to back up just a little bit and talk a little bit about historical trends and changes. Mark, why don't you get us started on that?

Mark: This will show my age. That's one thing if I've mentioned this. In the 70s, we had lines to get gas. Not everybody out there remembers that, but there was an oil shortage. There was a gas shortage and at that point, everybody said we're going to run out of oil in a couple of years.

It was a crisis, so out of that came what? We got into solar energy, more on to hydroelectric. Things pivoted, things changed. In the 80s, the savings and loans went down. Things pivoted on how we got mortgages. The dot-com buzz, the 90s, the tech blow up. All those things and what most everybody remembers is the meltdown that we had in the economy and mortgage market that occurred just 10–12 years ago.

At that point, it required pivoting and Anne and I are really good at our business about looking to see what the trends are going to be. What's going to change and how to pivot. That's what we want to talk about today. It's not the end of the world like everybody said, March 15th or whatever date it was when everybody went to hibernation. It's like, it's the end of the world.

Anne: Nobody's going to pay their rent.

Mark: We thought that 12 years ago when Lehman Brothers shut their doors. It all seems like it's the end of the world, but it's not. It's an opportunity. It's learning to pivot. Look at where the puck is going.

Anne: We wanted to talk about some of the trends that we see and the opportunities that property managers should be looking at in their business. You obviously don't hop on every trend and everything that comes along, but it is always good to put it in perspective. Mark, let's talk about some of the trends that we've seen in real estate in general. We're going to talk about how you can take advantage of that.

Mark: In the last few months, we had property managers and friends that were investors that had Airbnb. They were making 5–10 times the amount of rent I was off of a property. Suddenly, they made nothing because all the bookings shut down. They’re looking. A lot of them said hey, let's sell. Let's go long term. A lot of things changed there. Through them and through those changes of people not having as much disposable income at this point because there's a slow down in jobs, second homes aren’t popular right now.

Two, with all the laws that are coming about with the changes to protect the renters that are coming out of state legislators and the national, there's a lot of change and as property managers, we keep apprise to that. But these DIY (do-it-yourself) landlords don't. So, we're going to talk about some opportunities to make sales, to get some additional properties, to manage some opportunities for investing, too, if you're into that area.

Jason: When COVID hit and it was March, March was brutal for us at DoorGrow. Sales stopped. Every property manager just tightens their purse strings, freaking out, there's this cash crunch. We experienced a serious cash crunch so we had to get lean. I think a lot of businesses had to get lean and in the long run, that is a really healthy thing for business. Everyone was trimming the fat and [...] was effective.

Anne: We saw that in HireSmart because now everybody is a virtual employee. This is a perfect time to write stuff. People that have been hesitant to hire virtually have been in our doors now because they are like, wow, we can save some money. We can have better employees. We can have different strategies and approaches. Now, it was no longer important because it wasn't allowed to have people come into the office. Actually for us on HireSmart, it actually expanded our business.

Mark: There was resistance before from property managers that wanted to walk down the hall and lean over Joe or Joan's shoulder and see what they’re doing, see what they're working on—literally, not figuratively—to be there, to have that conversation face-to-face.

They were very hesitant about working and they didn't have the resources to figure out how to work remotely. With what’s come out of COVID-19 has become the realization that you don't have to have your employees at an office. You don't even have an office anymore.

Jason: I've known this for well over a decade. Interesting to see that mass transition of people realizing they can use tools like Zoom and move away from having somebody right there in their office. I did some polls online asking people during this. I asked how many people would renew their business lease at the end of the term and a lot of them said they're going to, at the very least, downsize, maybe to a smaller office base, or they may even not renew.

I also did some polling on what people have noticed as a result of people working from home. Some of my clients were saying that they've noticed that they were surprised that their team members became more productive. They're getting more done. I guess because there are fewer interruptions they were saying. There are fewer distractions. Maybe they're more comfortable. But some of my team members are doing better.

I have heard some people say I hate it. My kids are there all the time. I'm going crazy. But in general, I think the world has to wake up and realize when you have to get work done, you can try this. Then they tried this and they're like, hey, this works. Why are we spending so much money on this brick and mortar location that is outrageously expensive to have all these people in it when we can eliminate that crazy expense and it's unnecessary.

Mike: Yeah. It was shocking, like you, we immediately drew into our shell in March, and let's save. We don't know what's going to happen. People are going to let people go. But in April and May, we had the most requests for information about our services. The most orders we've had in five years.

Jason: I'll bet.

Anne: Without any [...]. That's the funny part for us [...]

Mike: We’re not traveling.

Anne: It's been interesting and we do a lot of community teaching and speaking even online. We always have to help people understand what opportunities are there. A lot of things that we're promoting or that we're seeing right now, specifically in property management, is now’s a great time to ramp up your sales and funnels. Again, because the DIY's are so lost. We already know that there are so many DIY landlords compared to professionally managed.

Mike: Eighty percent of the US are do-it-yourself landlords. That's a lot of opportunity.

Anne: That's a lot of opportunity. I know you talk a lot about that, but how do you reach them? How do you engage with them? How do you attract them? Of course, they outgrow a platform, obviously, as a key component to that, which is wonderful, but you have to have the human-to-human or human automation to back it up.

I think where we're coming to as a society is if you don't have a physical office where people can walk in anymore because you're closing your doors. We've had a closed-door policy for 19 years. I think people are very surprised that we've never let anybody in our office ever.

Mike: We have a small office of three.

Anne: We've never let anybody in our office even when we had seven people in our office, we didn't have people in our office because it's a distraction, that interruption. What happens is you need to serve your customers. You need to be talking to them. You need to be serving them.

Now, the residents and owners don't just want to be served 9–5. We're seeing that they want answers seven o'clock at night, eight o'clock at night when they're online. When they have questions they would like to have some interactions with someone from your office.

How do you do that cost-effectively? Of course, we have the solution. A full-time dedicated virtual employee that works as the second shift or the split shift is there to take care of chat. They're there to answer the questions and help people guide them on applications.

Mike: Then guide the people that are coming in to bring you properties to manage.

Anne: Right, and to talk to owners about how I work with you. Because here's what's going on in the marketplace. Again, in a lot of places, you do have people that aren't able to pay their rent right now because they have lost their jobs. Do you have owners that are concerned about what I do? How do I do this? We've had an increase in our inquiries for property management recently as well because they just don't know the rules. They don't know the laws.

Mike: It's not the time to withdraw. We're all sheltered in our business in place, too, and when we withdrew that opportunity to find new business went away. The companies, the far-sighted future thunking property managers, business owners, and the brokers that are now looking at making some investments. Not just sitting on their dollars, but actually making some investments in the right people, the right tools, business development people to help grow the business, doing outreaches.

One thing we were talking about just the other day was—we haven't done this yet—we should have a seminar that we invite all the DIY landlords to share with them all the fears of all the new laws that have come out.

[...]. We have that seminar and some of them are going to come out and say, okay, now I can do things differently because I have information on what I can and can't do. A lot of them are going to come out and say I just can't do this anymore. I'm tired of doing it. I'm going to hire—in case—us because we've been in that seminar.

Making those types of investments, and granted that those seminars aren't always live, they're maybe at this point virtual but reaching out to those. Those are the ways now to grow your business for tomorrow because over the next six months until we get to the end of this year, there's opportunity abound for forward-thinking.

Jason: That's what problems do. Problems are always opportunities. Let's talk about the problem. Here are some of the things I noticed. I won't say who it is, but I got a call from one of my business coaches and he has rental properties. He was like, what do you see in the market place right now because I got a small portfolio of properties and only 50% of them are paying rent. I said at least 98% of most of the rent is being collected by my clients. That's what I'm hearing.

Also, what I noticed happening is my clients are saying that their owners were calling them and saying if tenants don't want to pay rent this month, we'll let them not pay rent. They're like no, they're going to pay rent.

The thing is people felt guilty. They're almost ashamed but feel guilty, but property managers, you guys are over that [...]. You guys are completely over. You've heard all the excuses. You've heard all the stories. Some residents right now, due to the unemployment benefits and stuff that are going around, are making more money, especially the low rent markets. They're making more money than when they were working. But some of them are still trying to use the excuse that they need to not pay rent or whatever.

The news kind of made it look like that. It made it look like people trying to collect rent are evil, bad, sick, or wrong. A lot of homeowners are just feeling guilty. Property managers are immune to guilt.

Anne: That's because we've heard it all.

Jason: We've heard it all. We heard all the stories, the excuses. You know how to help people. You know what programs are available because you guys are on top of this stuff. You guys aren't having trouble collecting the rent.

In general, I haven't heard anyone in the single-family residential space or even multi-family having real trouble collecting rent. Rents have gone down just a little bit. You got people that most would have heard it's the same people that we're always troubled paying rent. We just couldn't evict them, but that's coming.

Mike: Your coach needs to reach out to a professional manager. You see that, but he doesn't. Seminars, webinars, something.

Jason: They don’t see the problem. That's the challenge I've always experienced in DoorGrow. I'm selling a solution to a problem that most people can't see. They can't see the leaks on their website. They can't see the challenges that their branding is hurting word of mouth. I have to educate people to see the problem.

The same thing is what you're talking about. If you can create the gap and show the contrast between what challenges and problems they're dealing with and what they could be experiencing, what successes your clients are having, they're going to see this gap and that gap is what creates pain.

People want to solve pain. People want a pain killer, not a vitamin. People will pay even more money to get out of pain. They want a solution, but they don't know a lot of them that there's a solution out there. I do think there is a massive opportunity. There's no scarcity in property management. There's no shortage of people that are in pain or have problems or challenges they are dealing with.

Not only that, but I think property managers can hold their heads up high because good property managers, I really do believe as I said before, can change the world. There are millions of renters. Even here on my own property, I'm renting (I just moved to Austin), my kids were without a water heater for two weeks. The landlord sent out two different plumbers because he didn't like the feedback that the 13-year-old water heater should be replaced even though the pilot kept going out.

I didn't even know my kids were taking cold showers because they got it before me and they can't get on Xbox until they take their showers, so they 're just doing it. All they're thinking about is can I get on the Xbox now? I'm like, yes, go ahead. But then my daughter's like, I haven't taken a shower in four days because the shower's freezing.

I didn't know this and the younger ones, I went to them. That doesn't make sense because they've been taking their baths and their showers. I went to my son, Hudson, and I'm like, how's the shower been lately? He's like, cold. I'm like, what? Why didn't you tell me?

Mike: It’s virtually a summer, right?

Jason: Then I said to my daughter, she likes taking baths, you've been taking baths? She's like, Yeah. How are your baths been? She's like, they're really cold. I'm like, what? But you guys protect families. You guys also protect owners. You guys are like the middle person that makes everything okay and you take care of people. It lowers the pressure and noise.

Property managers even do things like increasing the number of pets that families are able to have because you guys recognize that usually, it’s the kids that are causing more damage than the animals. [...] to get more rent because of pets. There are so many benefits to property management that positively impact families, homes, and lives. You guys are really the heroes of the rental industry. Property managers are the heroes of the rental industry.

Mike: And unlike your property manager there that evidently has trouble with customer service.

Jason: He's not the property manager, technically. He's just a landlord who doesn't want to do anything.

Anne: You got a DIYer.

Mike: Yeah, a DIYer.

Anne: Sounds like a great lead.

Mike: But that gets into the consideration of customer service. As property managers, we worried over the years about customer service to our owners but we haven't worried as much about customer service to our tenants. For retention and to continue to have tenants that want to refer people in, raising your level of customer service at this time specifically because I know I ordered something that didn't come and it was then delivered to Valentine, Nebraska instead of here where I am in Georgia, so I sent a response online and I got an auto-reply that says call this number. I call the number and it says we're too busy. We're not answering phones now. Just send an email. Customer service has failed specifically right now.

Anne: I'll actually tell you something that we did on our property manager which I think has really impacted our renewals and we are getting increases in rent even now.

Mike: On everyone.

Anne: Let's just talk about it. Again, people pay for when they feel taken care of. One of the biggest gaps that we saw, this is probably two years ago, in our business was exactly what you're talking about. Tenant isn't taken care of, it's taking too long, the contractor is giving all kinds of excuses as to why they can't get there, tenant's going here, contractors going here. There's this big disconnect.

Our virtual employee, Bonnie, is charged literally with every day every work order that comes in, she's calling the vendor and saying vendor, did you get it? Because we want to make sure it didn't get—

Mike: Lost. You know how emails are.

Anne: That's the first thing. Then the next day, she's calling the resident and saying resident, we assigned your work order to contractor B. Have you heard from him? Well, no. What happened?

Jason: That's better than being ghosted and then eventually not having your calls answered, then eventually maybe getting a text or response half a week later.

Anne: She says okay, you haven't heard from contractor B. Here's contractor B's information. We have already approved them to go out. Then she calls contractor B and she says contractor B, I heard that you haven't connected. Why haven't you connected? Oh, they haven't returned my call. Okay, I just got off the phone with them. They are available. Call them and they are expecting your call.

She closes that loop, that hand-off because we assume contractor B is doing his job and we assume tenants are never wrong, they never change their phone numbers or anything else.

Mike: Then the contractor goes out like he did to you and assesses the work. Many times there's not a follow-up, so what does Bonnie do then?

Anne: Bonnie, as soon as she gets the date it was supposed to be scheduled from either the tenant or the contractor B, she follows up the next day and says my understanding is that contractor B was supposed to be there yesterday. Did they show up?

Mike: Jason, did they take care of the water heater for you.

Anne: Are you satisfied with the repair.

Mike: And Jason says no.

Anne: No, I still have… Now, we have another feedback loop. This is a maintenance process that we never could have done without having a virtual employee do this. It's too time-intensive and we have other work to be done.

Mike: Then the flag goes up to tell the owner, owner, you got to provide hot water. You want an ACH or do you want us to loan you the money at an 18% rate?

Anne: Yeah, put it on a credit card, however you want to do it. The reality for us is our tenant satisfaction has gone through the roof because we showed that we care, we're not letting it go, and literally, I as the broker get the list of not only what the outstanding work orders but where they are in the process and what she's done to move it forward.

If we have a resident that we haven't been able to get in touch with, the contractor hasn't been able to, we have an escalation process. I don't manage, Bonnie manages. Again, total game-changer.

Mike: The benefit out of all of that, we don't get pushed back when we're raising the rent. We started with our process in the middle of March. We do it in the middle of every month with notification of our rent increases and property. Most property managers that we know said you're crazy.

We're either going to hold it. We'll tell them they don't have to pay an increase. We went out there and we got resistance from one tenant over the last, March, April, May, June. We got four months into our belt of increases and we have one pushback.

Anne: Of course when you have rent increases, that increases our profitability, too. The owner makes a little bit more money, we make a little bit more money. It's still very reasonable. One of the things I'll say about rental rates is we don't do it arbitrarily. We do a full competitive market analysis. We make sure it's on the market. We don't raise all the way up to market if it's a significant jump, we'll do it at the average appreciation rate.

Mike: We want to stay just below the top of the market.

Anne: Correct because we don't want to give them a reason to leave.

Mike: But we got happy tenants that don't want to leave. They go oh, I can't rent down the street for what I'm paying here because we always stay right below that.

Jason: There's another hidden killer, too, I noticed in the scenario because when these vendors came to my property here and talked to me, they were basically bad-mouthing the landlord. They were like this guy is cheap. I've told them he needs to do this.

In your scenario, the vendor is going to feel like they are getting taken care of. They are going to feel like they are on your team and on your side, and they are working with you, whereas these vendors feel more loyalty to me because they know the landlord isn't' doing the right thing.

Anne: That goes back to having a contract with our contractor of standards of professionalism. Our vendors actually sign a document that says these are our expectations to be a vendor for us, and one of them is to not bad mouth as part of that.

Mike: All these things combined, give us opportunities to shine. We get referrals every week. People come to us and say we hear great things about you as a property manager, and we're forward-thinking. We have opportunities there where we reach out to try to bring in business. Like what we're talking about earlier, a lot of the property managers are just sitting back. They are scared. They are afraid to do anything. That's the wrong thing to do.

Anne: A lot of them are looking to bring on a BDM. Remember last year was the year of the BDM. Do you need a business development manager? Okay, maybe you do, maybe you don't. We tend to be our own.

Mike: We are our BDMs.

Anne: But again, we are high salary people like if you are paying somebody. Our time is very valuable, but we are seeing the smart property managers are supporting that sales effort through follow-up with the virtual employee, a virtual assistant that is literally a full-time doing this grinder follow-ups because we all know in sales—I don't care what industry you're in—you have to reach out seven, eight, ten times.

Sometimes, property management specifically, it's pain point-related and some of the pain points only come up once a month. Some of the pain points come up once a year. Some of the pain points only come up periodically, so if you don't have a system to reach out to them, again it can't just be an email anymore.

I think people are tired of tech, tech, tech. You need to have tech. You need to have a chatbox on your thing that's manned by a live person, in my opinion, but you also need that human-to-human automation. You need somebody that actually shows that they care a little bit about not only your company but the people involved. Having that sales support, a virtual employee to do that, really allows your BDM to be their most successful self and to do the things that they like to do. People don't realize that.

BDMs don't want to do a whole lot of phone calling. They want to be in relationship management. If you can get them in front of the customer more times, if you can keep prospects warm and in the hopper so that when the prospect is ripe and ready, and your BDM can come and close, you are maximizing your ROI for that person.

Mark: Yeah. They actually go to our website and ask for some of our tools or some of our information. It auto delivers but then they get a phone call, I want to make sure you got 21 questions or our technical information, and when they get that phone call, they're shocked.

Anne: I'll tell you one other thing where people are going to have some issues. We all know about the Zillow. Zillow and they're charging for leads. That’s always been a hot topic. Zillow is rerouting leads. They're rerouting them to their call center in some areas, not to all areas, but into some. You don't have somebody actually calling those leads proactively when you get the email because even if you syndicate them, specifically if you syndicate them, you still get the email that says so and so is interested and they give you the phone number. But if the person proactively calls, Zillow is going to try to give them to people that are paying them, not necessarily to those of us who are syndications.

If we're not actually outbound calling those leads as they come in, we are missing opportunities for tenants. This has been a big change probably in the last three weeks. This is fresh information that again if you don't have somebody in your office that has the time, energy, and effort to be calling in addition to responding back via email, you are missing an opportunity to get your properties rented. Again, we have literally five properties come on the market on June 5th, all but one are occupied now. That's how quick we are to get these things done because we have a dedicated resource and our virtual assistant. Literally, that is her only job to focus on.

Jason: I want to touch on a couple of things you mentioned that you threw out that I think are important. One, you were talking about referrals. This is one of the number one ways to grow any business generally. I talked to a client I think yesterday, I was coaching a client and they were like our business is so great. We’re great. We got all this process dialed in and they said, but we're not getting any referrals. If a business is not getting any referrals, it's probably not as great as you think it is.

Property managers have blind spots. We all do. For those listening, if you're not getting referrals, you got some customer care problems that are likely going on. You should be getting referrals. You should be getting referrals from your vendors. You should be getting referrals from your real estate friends. You should be getting referrals from your property management clients. You should be getting, maybe referrals from some of the vendors, but people should be talking about you. If they're not, there's some sort of blind spot that needs to be shored up.

The other thing you mentioned (I think) is really smart. A lot of people, yes, they're like, I need a BDM. I need somebody to do sales, but they can't afford it. A lot of people can't just go out and afford to get some high-grade wonderful salesperson. But most business owners are not willing to also acknowledge that they are a part-time shitty salesperson. The time they're willing to dedicate or have sometimes is maybe an hour or two a day. That’s part-time. it's 10, maybe 15 hours a week, maybe they can dedicate up to 20 hours, but if you really want to grow and scale your business, there probably needs to be a little bit more time or you need just business being referred to you all the time, so it's super easy.

One of the easiest hacks I implemented when I was a solopreneur and was doing all the sales, the web design, branding stuff, and everything myself, I got an assistant. I had that person operate as a sales assistant and an appointment setter. It immediately multiplied, not just doubled probably, but it multiplied my capacity to close deals. All I did was show up for appointments. I just met with people and sold. I wasn't doing any of the follow-ups. I was a solopreneur and my assistant was calling—she had a British accent—and saying hello, this is Helen, the assistant to the CEO Jason Hull of DoorGrow. He was wanting to get back together with you.

It also set me in the mind of the prospect as something higher than maybe I actually looked like at the time being a solopreneur, sitting at home, trying to work in my living room. There's power in having a team. A lot of people say I can't afford to hire anybody. Maybe you just need somebody to start, just somebody that you can start with and they could be full-time or part-time, but they can start doing a piece of that thing that you need help with. They don't have to be able to do everything. Maybe it's the piece that you least enjoy. Maybe doing the follow-up, the cold calls, and whatnot.

Anne: That's the great thing about virtual assistants and personal employees. You're looking at less than $20,000 a year for full-time dedicated help. That's a game-changer. You can't afford not to do that. I think that that's where people get sideways. Where we really help our clients in helping them define their staffing needs, and what's the best ROI for them to bring on board first. We’re talking about trends and the things that we see, but that's one of the services that we provide, helping them figure that out because sometimes it's like you said, sometimes this is a generalist. Somebody that can do a little bit of everything. Sometimes it's a sales support person. I know I need leads. Sometimes it’s accounting, sometimes it's leasing line, sometimes it's in marketing.

A virtual assistant through HireSmart, because we're full-time, dedicated, and we specifically recruit for our clients. We don't have a room full of VAs that we go, here you go. I actually go and curate the contacts for you, and then I personally work with them for 40 hours afterward like that one-week job interview to make sure that they're amazing. Anybody that has hired and day two you're like, ugh, they just aren’t amazing. I take care of that for the clients.

Mark: It frees up so much time. If it frees up 10 hours a week, how many deals can you close, how many new properties can you bring on in 10 hours? You invest maybe two hours where somebody else is making all the calls, set the appointments, you got that two hours invested. Your return on that is tremendous because you're going to make an offer that’s equivalent to $100, $200, $300 an hour for your investment of time.

It goes back to, you've got to make those investments. You can't not hire now, you can't put your head in the sand or pull back in your shell and say, I'm going to do it myself. Especially if you're not happy doing it because if you're not happy, you're not going to get it done.

Jason: Therefore, a lot of people that have been shifting to doing more themselves. I have to lay off team members now, I'm doing everything myself. Now I'm doing stuff that I don't even want to do.

Let's touch on one thing that you just mentioned. I think this is really important for everybody listening to understand. I've seen this in hundreds of property management businesses and businesses in general, but one of the most painful or dangerous things I think a business owner can do is hiring the wrong person, the wrong role, spending the wrong money at the wrong time.

A lot of people hire based on what they think the business needs instead of what they need in order to create more space and eliminate the number one bottleneck in the company, which is you the business owner, it's the entrepreneur. You taking the time to figure out what they actually need to get the best ROI is huge for them because they've seen lots of people, they hire the wrong person they didn't need. Now they're spending this money, or they just hired a bad person in general which not just cost them the money they spent on that person and the time they spent to get that person, but they're now losing money in secret places.

I've had team members that stole from me. I've had team members that stole time. I've had team members delete and stuff after I fired them. These are problems that entrepreneurs learn painfully over time trying to build a team. A lot of property managers are in that first trap. They're the 50–60 door mark, they don't know how they can afford to hire that first person, and this is a solution for that.

This is a very obvious solution for that. You can help them figure out who they really need right now and to take the next step forward, because if they spend the money on the right person, they make more money. It makes it easier. They then can reinvest. If they spend it on the wrong person, or the wrong tool, at the wrong time, it could be the right tool but it's at the right time, or they're getting software prematurely that they didn't really have to have at that point, or whatever it might be. If you spend money at the wrong time even though it might be the right tool for the future, you're hurting your ability to get to that future.

Anne: I totally agree with that.

Jason: Cash flow. If you run out of cash flow, the business dies. It’s like the Indiana Jones boulder rolling after you is the cash monster trying to get to you. If the boulder catches you, the business is game over. You’ve run out of money, run out of cash, you're dead. People started to feel that in March. You have to always be outpacing that boulder. If you spend, the boulder gets bigger and faster, but you can get faster if you spend it on the right people.

Anne: One of the things I tell a lot of prospects that I'm talking to is most property managers (specifically) were never trained on how to hire or how to build teams. That’s not something we learn at school, it's only by trial and fire. A lot of property managers have fallen into it.

Mark: There's not a hiring 301 class in college.

Anne: One of the things that I tell them is, just like you're the expert in finding the right tenant for an owner because you've seen enough applications, you've gone through the process, you've done all that, you are the expert there, we’re the experts in hiring. I know I have a profile for hiring, I know what's successful, I know what's not successful. I save my clients from hundreds of hiring mistakes because it's not that they can't do it, a DIY landlord can do it, but they can't do it as well as a property manager.

I say the same thing. You can hire. It’s going to take you more time, you don't have a process, you don't do it enough, I have done thousands. Just in the last six months alone, I have evaluated over 9000 applications. You say that gave me some data points.

Jason: You know the BS, you know how to spot the scammers, you know which people are gaming the system, you know which people are feeding you a story, you know what questions need to be asked. In the Philippines, you got to ask about their internet connection. You got to, you can't just trust that they have one. You got to ask about where they're working. Where are you working at? Where are you working from?

That was part of the thing that I really enjoyed working with you guys. I always look at everything through a certain filter, and I'm skeptical, and I want to see how I can help people. As I went through your process, I'm like, they do this. They already do this. This is stuff I've learned over a decade in my own painful experiences hiring in India, Bangladesh, Russia, the Philippines, Bolivia, and of course the US, which ultimately most of my team are in the US now. But I have Filipino team members.

I can personally vouch for your hiring process making a lot of sense. It’s solid and it works really because it's very similar to my own. There are so many similarities. Okay, they've got this down, but you have some advantages. We talked about this in the previous episode. You guys should go listen to that where we talked about their processes and some stuff they do, but you have vetting, background checks, and stuff that people don't just have access to if they're just trying to DIY this.

Mark: It’s like the difference, if you're getting married, you got the bride and the groom, and the bride wants a custom-made dress, not one off the rack. The groom really wants a tux that fits them. We are the custom dress, we are the custom tux for that couple versus walking into Neiman and pulling one off the shelves, this looks good, or getting a dress off the hanger and putting it on like, this almost fits, let's go get married.

Jason: It looks like your dad handed you down a suit or something.

Mark: Right. That’s the difference in what we do. We are custom for our client. We are not off the rack.

Anne: Right, and outside of that is it takes time. It takes us 3–4 weeks to literally curate the right people. I always say if you need to hire somebody just the first person off the street, good luck.

Jason: You guys are bespoke. It’s bespoke hiring.

Anne: We have a guarantee and all of those things, and we can back up what we're saying. But again, if you're trying to grow your property management business right now, you need to look at your staff. Here’s the other thing. Not all staff members are coming back. You may think they're coming back. They're not coming back. You’ve got to look at who are your top liners? Who are the ones that you’ve got to keep? You need to be investing in a relationship with those people first of all.

If you're not talking to them on a regular basis, if you're not feeding them, if you're not taking care of them, you need to take care of them now. Who’s part of your med tier? The kind of people that are like, if they come back, great. If they don’t, what's the impact that’s going to happen? What are the people that you really know you just need to not have come back, and you need to deal with that pretty quickly.

Mark: For our best person, we got a VA to assist that person so that they can do even better at the best that they were. That’s the important thing that people need to take away from changes that are coming out of COVID. It’s supporting your staff and letting them work at the highest and best use. Maybe that's taking away some of those phone calls and emails by hiring an assistant for them and to give you the opportunity to grow. It’s an assistant to you for the business development to make those calls and to set up those appointments, so that you can just close.

Doing those things is the job that Anne enjoys so much is finding the individual to match. What does Jason need exactly? Even though Jason doesn't know exactly, she'll draw that out of you, and I'm just picking on you on that.

Anne: That’s a puzzle for me. There's nothing better than when I see my clients six months in, years in, we have our clients for five years now and seeing them and they’d say, Mitch has been the best thing ever in my company. She's really allowed me to be amazing and do what I want to do. Literally, these are comments that we get when we survey our clients. It has been a game-changer. If you're open and able to change.

I don't know how much time we have, but there are a couple of things that you need to look at, regardless of whether you use virtual assistants, employees, or whether you are looking at that which are some of the challenges that come from working with a remote team, because remember, even if you're planning to go back to an office, your staff is going to want to have more flexibility. Let’s just call it what it is. Not everybody wants to commute anymore. There are some that miss being in that environment, there's a lot of guys that are like…

Mark: We’re happier.

Jason: Yeah, why should I spend time commuting? Why should I spend time driving to this? I think there are a lot fewer people doing face-to-face appointments, and they'll just do it through Zoom or they'll do it through Google Hangouts, Meet, or whatever.

Anne: Whatever works. What we're finding is it is truly illuminating management problems. It’s illuminating communication problems. If you had a communication problem in the office, now you have a tremendous communication breakdown outside of the office.

Mark: If you have an operations failure in the office, boy, the failures are even bigger.

Anne: As managers, we need to look at what tools do we have on our tool belt. We help our clients with some of that because we understand years ago that we needed to equip our people to be good at this so that they would keep our people.

Mark: It is in software, it’s tools, it’s technology. There's a lot of different pieces that go into that.

Anne: Looking at your management style and we like to manage personally using key performance indicators (KPIs) because that takes [...] work out of it. I don’t have to worry if they're working eight hours as long as the KPIs are done and they can get their job done in six, I'm happy to pay them for eight and let them do what they want to do, as long as my stuff’s getting done to a level that I expected.

That's the easy button for management, if you don't know about key performance indicators, I certainly encourage you to learn what that is, and how to do that, but it’s one of the things that we teach our clients to do very easily. There are some easy methodologies to do that, but we are seeing some communication breakdowns from people that don't use us. We’re seeing some issues with management. The manager that was the nice guy, that was able to get people rah-rah-rah in the office because she was able to see them, that’s now changed. Now, work is starting to do great.

Mark: They can't hide behind the curtain.

Anne: They can't hide behind that personality anymore because work’s not getting done. That’s one cautionary tale that I will throw out to your listeners.

Jason: Results don’t lie.

Anne: They don’t, but it’s difficult to have conversations if you don't have data, and a lot of times, people don't want to track data because they think it's too difficult. We teach our clients how to do it very simply, very easily, and very quickly. That's the other thing. You’ve got to be able to get feedback daily to keep on top of it. If you wait for weeks or months, you are now in this huge hole of garbage that is very difficult to get out of. Make sense?

Jason: Makes sense. It's been awesome having you here on the show. Maybe we can take just a few minutes, let's talk about some opportunities right now and ways you think property managers have an opportunity to grow after COVID. We’ve touched on maybe doing webinars, I think you threw out there, the Airbnb. I think I have one client that added 24 doors in a month just from former Airbnbs by cold calling them and reaching out.

Obviously, you got to convince them probably to get the furniture out of the place, and make sure that these are good opportunities to manage, and that it’s going to rent effectively compared to what they're paying because some of them were making a lot of money.

Mark: They were. You can offer a turnkey for that. I know you've got furniture and all, I'll take care of making the donation, or I'll get the local company that buys furniture and resells it. I don't know if there's a market for that right now, but I'll get it picked up by Salvation Army or the kidney people, and you'll get the receipt. I'll take care of all of that and make it easy for you to let me manage your property long-term. The property managers that think that way are the ones that will be successful. We’ve been seeing that happen in Airbnb and a lot of them are coming back out of service.

Anne: One of the things we always recommend when we're consulting with clients just in general is know your avatar. If you're a short-term rental person and that’s your avatar, then you need to create a different marketing strategy around that, like how are you going to deal with that. If your avatar is long-term rentals and you want to gain business by going after short-term to convert them to long-term like Mark said, have a package, have a system, get your relationships put together. Right now interestingly enough, we have investors that are scared to death and are selling, and we have investors that are super excited and are buying.

Mark: [...] sales transaction. Though the property manager doesn't have a sales component in their business, they need to have an alignment with the referral program to somebody that does sales. I mean I'm selling two houses a month this year.

Anne: Without trying, without marketing.

Mark: Yeah, these are my investors. They just say I want to sell, and I’ll say I want to make the commission. No problem.

Anne: It's about having a strategy, being able to implement that strategy. and figuring out what are the resources that you need to create that strategy. We think using virtual employees and virtual assistants is a great way to maximize all of that because right now, it is kind of intense. If you're going to do research for short-term rentals, there's not a database you can necessarily easily pull from. You’ve got to go search for them, talk to them.

Having that marketing strategy based on what it is that you want to do, having a value proposition that speaks to the pain that the person is dealing with, all are very important. Having a website that actually can capture those leads and make you look professional which is what you guys do is also part of that. You have this well-rounded marketing plan.

Mark: We have our VA do all the research. Maybe it’s calling everybody that's on Craigslist or ads out there and saying, you may be tired of being a manager, you should go to this webinar we have coming up. It’s how to be a better manager and how to deal with the current [...]. We can do all those invitations to get people into our webinars that are going to show them they don't need to be doing this anymore. There's a lot of different ways that property managers can grow their business right now, but they need to think smart and make those investments.

Anne: And HireSmart.

Jason: And they need to HireSmart. Awesome. It's great to see you guys again. I'm glad you guys are doing well there over near Atlanta. Keep me apprised as to your next idea.

Anne: We always have them.

Jason: You always have them. That’s as crazy entrepreneurs. We always are coming up with new stuff. I'll let you guys go and I appreciate you guys coming on. Your website is?

Anne: www.hiresmartvas.com

Jason: All right. Thanks, Mark, thanks, Anne.

Mark: Thank you very much.

Anne: Welcome. Thank you, Jason. We appreciate you.

Jason: Awesome to have them on. If you are a property management entrepreneur, and you're wanting to add doors, and you're wanting to build a business that you actually enjoy, that you love, that is built around you, this is what we do at DoorGrow. Reach out, I guarantee that we’re going to make your business better in some way, shape, or form, and you're going to love it.

Even if you feel like you hate it now, maybe you're thinking you want out of it, you're feeling like it’s uncomfortable, you're probably just doing the wrong things in that business, and you may need some VAs that might be a solution for sure. We can help clean up the frontend of your business and help you get the business in alignment with you.

Reach out, check us out at doorgrow.com, and make sure you join our Facebook group. We've got an awesome community there, and people that are helpers, that are givers, and you can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com. Mark and Anne are in that group. We've got lots of other really cool property management entrepreneurs that are willing to contribute and help you out. Until next time everyone. To our mutual growth. Bye, everybody.

April Fools Day is coming. Prank your friends opening a never ending fake update screen on their computer. Sit back and watch their reaction.

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DGS 130: Productivity While Working From Home with Thanh Pham 0

Jun 9, 2020

What can you do to be more productive, efficient, effective, and get stuff done while working from home during the COVID-19 crisis? No matter how much work you do or get done, there’s always more to do.

Today’s guest is Thanh Pham from Asian Efficiency, which has helped more than 15,000 clients worldwide. Also, Thanh hosts a growing and flourishing podcast called, The Productivity Show.

You’ll Learn...

[01:53] Asian Efficiency: Positive stereotype and memorable name for company.

[02:55] Thanh turns hobby of documenting productivity processes into a business.

[03:47] Groundhog Day: Businesses operating from home lose time and progress.

[05:06] Work/Life Balance: Nothing going on, no way to work, long days, and no variety.

[06:33] Planning: Take it to the next level via different dimensions, contingency options.

[07:23] Productive vs. Interruptive: Seek clarity to set one goal a day to accomplish.

[09:10] Sense of Momentum: What you want and why it matters should drive your life.

[12:15] Structure/Strategy: Create own schedule, design ideal day, and set cutoff time.

[14:57] Five Whys: Identify root cause and motivation. Money, freedom, flexibility?

[17:55] Energy vs. Time: Don’t do everything, do what you like and others do the rest.

[25:44] Ideal Day: Map it out the night before to start the next day right away.

[27:08] Do’s and Don’ts: Don't eat at your desk; do step away from your office or home.

[32:05] What keeps you up at night? Entrepreneurs are known for worrying too much.

[34:40] Chinese Proverb: The palest ink is better than the best memory.

[35:41] Analog vs. Digital: What’s the difference? Depends on personal preference.

Tweetables

Restore order in your life to gain a sense of relief and energy to help you recover.

“Whenever we're working from home, one of the most important things is to plan our day. That's such a simple thing that we can do, but most of us kind of skip that process.”

“Set one goal a day. If you accomplish just one goal a day, no matter how big or small, you had a productive day.”

“If we don't have energy, if we don't have any of that when we're starting our day, it's just so much more challenging to be productive.”

Resources

Asian Efficiency

The Productivity Show

The ONE Thing by Gary Keller

DGS 129: Get More Realtor Referrals With Your Own Mobile App 0

Transcript

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

I have a special guest with me today. Just down the street in Austin hanging out. This is Thanh Pham. What's up, Thanh?

Thanh: Hey, Jason. Good to be here. Thanks for having me and I'm super excited to chat with you here today about productivity and anything that we can do to be more productive.

Jason: All right. Did I say your name right?

Thanh: Yeah, you did. First time, first attempt, 100% correct.

Jason: I thought I did, but I thought I would make sure. I'm really excited to have you. You have a great sense of humor. We're chatting it up before the show and your company is called Asian Efficiency, right? Is this correct? Asian Efficiency?

Thanh: That is correct. That is a positive stereotype that we have going on here in most of America and the Western world so I thought, “You know what? That's such a funny name. Such a name that sticks out and is memorable.”

So we started off as a joke in a way because I just want to document my journey of being more productive. I remember one time I was staying at a house in Miami with some friends, all fellow entrepreneurs. We went out for one night, then we had a few drinks. We had a great time, then the next morning I was being productive in getting stuff done; waking up really early. By the time it was noon, I was done with my day and everyone else was waking up really late. I said, “Oh my gosh, Thanh. You're so productive. That's some Asian efficiency right there,” and that's when the name was born.

Jason: So this almost became a theme around you or a nickname attached to you before it was a business.

Thanh: Yeah. Honestly, it just started as a hobby. I just wanted to document how I did things as I was learning about productivity and how to be efficient, be effective, managing my time better, and I just started to blog about this back in the day in 2011. After a while, it just started to grow and took a life of its own after about six months. Then people kept asking me, “Thanh, this is so helpful. I'm learning so much. I would love to hire you. Do you have any courses or products?”

And I said, “Actually I don't. But that's a great idea.” I accidentally turned this into a business, and now, almost nine years later, we helped over 15,000 clients all over the world. We have a podcast that's growing and flourishing, and just continuously impacting people, people that are listening here today as well.

Jason: Awesome. Our topic today is productivity while working from home, which a lot of people are doing right now. Due to the Coronavirus, COVID-19, a lot of people are on lockdown. A lot of people have been stuck at home. Businesses are operating, some are still operating, but they're doing it from home, and a lot of people are joking right now. The big joke is it's all one big day that's been running forever.

Everybody feels like there's no difference between one week to the next. The month has gone on for three months now. We're kind of losing a sense of time, it seems to be the theme, and things just keep repeating so we lose a sense of because everything seems so similar each day and we're lacking variety in our day to day, it feels like we're not making any progress I think, maybe subconsciously as well.

What are you doing to stay out of that Groundhog’s Day sort of movie type of scenario in your own mind, cognitively?

Thanh: I think one of the interesting things that are happening now is some of those are working more than others and some of those are going the complete opposite route. We don't have a job. There's nothing going on and there's no way for us to work. In either spectrum, it feels like days are so long as a result because as you said there's no variety. It's nice to be able to go to work and then come home relax and do nothing.

When we miss one or the other, it feels like we're completely out of balance or some of us are just working all the time. If you've been working from home for a while, then you're just working more now because there's nothing else to do. You can't leave your home. You can't go anywhere so you just work more. For those who don't have a job right now, or not working as much, or can't work, you are stuck as well. You can't do anything else but stay at home and relax and do relaxing activities.

Jason: And binge Netflix.

Thanh: And binge Netflix, yeah. I've watched so many shows. Money Heist was one of my favorite ones that I just finished. A great show, watch that one.

Jason: I just went through that too. My girlfriend and I were watching that one and it was good.

Thanh: Oh my gosh. Season Four, that really got me. But that's a whole completely different podcast.

Jason: I wasn’t mad at the cliff hanger left at the ending though. My girlfriend was upset and I was like, “No, that makes me excited about the next season.”

Thanh: [...], you just have to watch it whenever you have time.

Jason: I'm sure the character, the professor, you'll get excited about. He's got everything planned out. He's incredibly efficient and he always finds a way to make things work. It seems like when nothing else seems like it'll be possible, he finds some [...]

Thanh: I thought I was a planner until I saw this character. Then this guy takes planning to a whole nother level because I thought planning a vacation was great, fun, and easy, then this guy takes planning of the robbery to five different dimensions, so you go whoa, this is crazy.

Jason: Right. He's got all the contingency plans. He's got names for all of them and something happens, he's like, “No problem. We're just going to bust out plan C,” and they just pop it out and everybody knows what to do.

Thanh: That's a beautiful thing and when we're working from home we can take the same approach. Whenever we're working from home, one of the most important things is to plan our day. That's such a simple thing that we can do, but most of us kind of skip that process. If you're listening to this and you feel like most of your days are unstructured or you go about your day and you feel like, “Man, I wish I was more productive,” or, “I wish I had that one particular thing done.”

I know many of you who are listening probably find it very challenging to schedule stuff. You want to say, “You know what? I want to work on this particular task, or call this particular tenant or client at 11,” and then something comes up. A fire, someone calls you, you got an important email, you're on call the whole time, you have an email client open, interruptions coming all the time, you feel like you're on edge, and it makes it very difficult to focus. It makes it very difficult to concentrate and have focus blocks where you're actually working and doing stuff.

When you're in that kind of situation, one thing I've found is when you're trying to work with people who have that interrupt-driven day, one of the best ways you can approach that is to set one goal a day. If you accomplish just one goal a day, no matter how big or small, you had a productive day because the rest of your day is typically driven by interruptions and things you have to deal with anyway. But if you can make progress on one goal, or one big outcome, or one big task, that's a really productive day, so let's aim for that.

Jason: That reminds me of Gary Keller's The ONE Thing. He's got his one thing question which is, “What's the one thing that, by doing it, everything else will become irrelevant or easier?” That one thing question, so maybe that's something the listeners can ask themselves. What's that one thing that if I do this, it's going to get me a sense of momentum today? It's going to make me feel like I've done something. I've accomplished something. I moved the needle just slightly on my goals.

Thanh: I think a great reframe to add on top of that to help people because one of the things I see people struggle with is, “Jason, I have five million things I have to do and they all have to be done. How do I pick one thing to work on?” Oftentimes, we ask ourselves that question. It's a sign that you don't have any clarity about your goal or the destination you want to go towards.

So, when you don't have that, everything feels equally important and whenever you get that sense when everything is equally important, that's a sure sign that you don't have clarity about what your goal is or what your destination is.

I want to challenge you as a listener to say, “Hey, what is the goal that I'm trying to accomplish?” Because once you know what that is, prioritizing or finding the one thing or the few things you have to do becomes so much easier.

As an example, if you're publishing a book, that is your big goal for the year, then if you have a to-do list that says I need to redo my finances, organize my closet and write chapter two. One of those three sounds more appealing because it's aligned to a goal which is just writing chapter two. That doesn't mean redoing your finances and organizing the closet is not important, they are important, but they're not, in relationship to the goal, important enough for you to prioritize over something else.

Once you have absolute clarity about the goal, this is what I'm trying to accomplish, you start to notice that certain tasks on your to-do list stand out because they will help you get you closer to your goal. That makes prioritizing them really easy and that makes it easy for you to say, “Okay, this is the one thing or maybe the two things I have to do today, and if I do that then I had a really productive day.”

Jason: I love that. I think some of the coaches I've worked with in the past, one of their big questions would always be to ask what do you want? What do you want? That first gut reaction deep down that we're going to respond to that. What do you want in your business? What do you want I think is really important because it's very easy I think for us to just end up becoming a slave to our business or doing things for other people.

I think a simple question of what do you want, then the follow-up question was always why does that matter? Because if it doesn't matter, we're not really going to do it. There has to be a why behind it especially if that’s work, if it's painful, if it's difficult. So what do you want and why does it matter. Really, that ultimately should be driving our business. It should be driving our life. All these things are vehicles to serve as. They're all vehicles to make us happier, or more fulfilled, or give us a sense of momentum.

Let's get into some specifics. People are listening and are like, “Thanh, I've got my one goal but how do I create this structure for my day that you've talked about? How do I do this?”

Thanh: If you're working from home, one of the best things you can do is to create a schedule for yourself because after working from home since 2009, I've consulted so many clients over the years. There's a lot of different strategies out there when it comes to being productive and trying to be efficient working from home, but the one strategy that I see that is most effective for most people is creating your own schedule.

You want to design your ideal day and one of the biggest things that you want to pay attention to is that again, one, you want to have one big goal for today especially for people who are listening to this who are interrupt-driven schedule, you want to create that. Then the second thing is you want to make sure that you have the cutoff time for when you stop working as well.

I know that's going to sound crazy for a lot of property managers and you go, “Thanh, I can't do that. I'm on call 24/7 and I need to be reachable whenever people contact me.” I totally get that, but if you want to have some sense of balance in your life or if you feel like you're always on call, you're tired of being that way, you want to then start creating some systematic solution around that so that if people do call you after a certain time, it's still being handled.

When I'm working with a lot of owners and operators, their main fear is, “Man, if I stop working after six. I'm going to lose a lot of business. I'm going to get a lot of complaints.” Those are rightfully so in the beginning, I would say, but what if you could hire someone to be able to work even part-time to deal with stuff outside of your normal office hours? To be able to handle that request and things that people need so that you don't have to do that.

You can pay someone else to be able to do the things that need to be done while you have time for yourself. As you're growing your business and have specific boundaries for yourself, it makes it easier for you to have that work-life balance because most of us who are entrepreneurs and are working all the time, after a while we get so tired. One of the main reasons businesses stop existing or quit is because the owner is tired. They're just like, I'm so done with—

Jason: They’re burned out.

Thanh: Yeah, they have this burnout. So we want to create boundaries. We want to create systems in place so that we don't have to work all the time. When we do work, we can work on the things we have passion about or we're really good about, that are in alignment with what you were talking about earlier which I love is the whole why thing. If you've never done that exercise, it's called the five whys.

Basically you ask yourself why five times, you start to come down to the root cause, the root motivation for you why you started this business. Oftentimes it's not because you wanted to make more money even though that was I'm sure a strong motivator for a lot of people. Oftentimes, it comes down to having your own freedom in your life. Having a flexible schedule. Having quality time with your family and friends.

Once you really connect with that, you start to realize I don't have to work 18 hours a day. I can accomplish everything I need in six, or seven, or eight, and the rest of the time I can spend it with my family because that's why I started my business. To be able to spend time with them, not necessarily work more until midnight fixing stuff or trying to attend to tenants, even though that is important. Someone else can do that as well and get paid for it. You employ someone and that's a beautiful thing too.

Jason: I think ultimately when we boil anything down, it comes down to usually a feeling that we want to have. Somebody just says I really want a Tesla, or I want to drive. I want this car. When you really boil it down, people always want what we think we will feel when we have that.

How would it feel to have a business that runs itself or I had the freedom, the time? Ultimately, it boils down to some sort of feeling that we want to have. Then if you work it backward, once you figure it out, once you get to that bedrock why, then the question is can I have this why without that? Or is there a faster vehicle or a way to get to that in that?

If I just want to feel powerful, are there other things I can do to feel powerful besides what I was thinking about how to look this one certain way? One coaching or program that I went through, this phrase they always drove into us was, “It doesn't have to look a certain way.” They recognize it. Everybody always gets so attached to things looking a certain way. We want a specific outcome and we want to get there in a specific way. It has to look this way. No, no, no. It has to be like this.

Sometimes we end up becoming control freaks and I'm sure sometimes productivity can become a control freakish mode for people to get into. They're micromanaging every second. They're doing too much. Planning everything out in so much detail that they kill all the life and spirit of their life, fun. Ultimately, that could lead the burnout, unless people really just thrive on that situation.

I'm a big fan of energy management over time management. Spending your time doing the things you really enjoy like you're talking about and that's going to help you avoid getting burnout because if I'm doing the things that I love, I can work crazy amounts of hours in a week because I love it. I'm not getting burned out on it. I'm far less likely to get tired. People aren't going to annoy me or frustrate me in those situations because I feel alive. I feel like I'm doing something that brings me joy, life, and momentum.

I think ultimately everybody needs to find that in their business because I think the great secret that nobody talks about is that as a business owner, you don't have to do all the stuff people say a business owner has to do. You can do whatever you want. If you want to be the receptionist in your company, you can be the receptionist. It's your choice. It's your company. If you want to do accounting and you love that, you can do the accounting. If you want to do customer service, you can do that being the business owner.

Let's go to the cutoff time. I really like this idea. I like this idea because there are so many beliefs that prevent us from stopping and cutting it off. I had a job working for an internet service provider and I started managing their support department after being there for a short period of time, then I was moving up and then I was just underneath the two owners. I was working really crazy long hours. I had to commute sometimes during that job, like two hours because I was driving into LA (Los Angeles), and traffic was crazy. And then driving out.

S.o I would just stay even later and I was working, working, working. The thing I realized is that no matter how much work I did there was always more. There's never an end to finishing all work that could or possibly will be done. There's no exact stopping point that you'll eventually find that all the work you need to do as a business owner or even just as an employee is done. But creating a healthy stopping point when it hits this time, I'm going to stop my day and pick it up again tomorrow.

It's always going to be there waiting for you. It's still there and what I find is, is it the Pareto principle? It is the idea that if you constraint your time to a certain limit, “I'm going to be done by five o'clock. Five o'clock I'm cutting it off.” What happens is you start to become more productive because you start to innovate. You start to be creative. You're forced to constraint and because of that constraint, you have now to innovate. Without a constraint, it could be endless.

You give somebody in your team an endless amount of time to do something, they can take weeks. You're like, “No, I need this done by Friday.” Then they start to innovate. “It's not possible the way I currently do it to get done by Friday. Okay, what can we do to change that?” Every week you can have this done. Then, you start to get innovative.

I think there are secret benefits to doing that cutoff time that psychologically feel backward but we're going to become more productive as a result of creating that cutoff time. Do you agree?

Thanh: I one hundred percent agree because there are actually multiple benefits to setting that cutoff time. You mentioned one [...] of them right there which is like setting a deadline first. We know that there's nothing better than having a really good deadline that forces you to get a lot of things done in a shorter period of time. Having that cutoff time every single day is like having a deadline every day for yourself to say, “Okay, I need to get all of these work done before a specific time,” and if we don't have that, then we take up the whole day and even more than that to get the things done that we need to get done.

That goes back to what you're saying early like Parkinson's Law. Something takes up as much time as we give it to. If we say, “I want to have this done in two weeks,” it can be done and if you tell yourself it can be done in one year, it will be done in one year. It's just a matter of how much time we give ourselves to get something done.

By having a daily cutoff time, by forcing ourselves to do the things that need to be done, especially if you focus on one or two major things like the one thing or the two smaller things and say, “Okay, I need to have this done before five,” then you will find ways like you said to get it done.

The other big benefit of that is that when you have that balance to say, “Okay, after five I'm going to stop working,” you can then go to bed earlier. You can enjoy time with your family. You can spend time with your kids or you can do some personal hobbies. You can run some errands. You can do all these different things that restore order in your life. They give you a sense of relief. They give you a sense of energy to help you recover.

Guess what? You're going to show up as a better owner, as a better property manager the next day because if you're sleeping well, you're eating right, you have the time to do all the things you need to do, you're going to show up the next day feeling refreshed and having more energy. Like we talked about and like you mentioned earlier, energy is such an important factor. It's such an important currency for productivity and when we have the energy to focus and do the things we need to do, we are so much more productive than without it.

It's like if you have really nice sports cars sitting in your garage, you're the perfect driver. You know exactly how to drive it. You know every single feature, but the car has no gas. Guess what? You're not going to go anywhere even if you have the right tools, you know exactly what you need to do, you have no gas? Guess what? You're not going to drive that thing anywhere.

It's the same thing for us. If we don't have energy. If we don't have any of that when we're starting our day, it's just so much more challenging to be productive. Then we have to caffeinate. We have to drink more coffee or tea getting ourselves ready. That's not a success [...] for us to be able to focus and be productive for the rest of our lives. We want to be able to start our day, get things done that need to be done, and have the energy to focus and do the best work that we're paid to do, essentially.

By introducing that cutoff time, it has so many benefits that come with that. Just think about all the benefits that come with having more energy. Sleeping better, running the errands you need to get done. Having that sense of order in place because you can do all these different things. It makes it so much easier and makes you so much happier as well. That's going to be reflected in your work you do the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that.

Jason: I think ultimately what all of these creates is presence. It allows us to be more present or more there when we need to be there. If a property manager is communicating with a tenant, they need to be on when things get difficult or sticky. They need to be on with an owner and they need to cognitively have the ability to make decisions, and move quickly, and think.

All of this gives us power. It gives us power when we're able to be more present because if you're tired, you're not present, not nearly. If you're cognitively burned out, then you're almost in a situation that is painful that you're forcing yourself to do something. Forcing your body to do something that is uncomfortable. You're done and you keep going.

Let's go back to the idea of this ideal day. How do we create a map for our ideal day? When do you do this?

Thanh: Ideally, you want to plan your ideal day the night before. That's something that is such a simple habit that I teach and very few people actually do. But once they do it and follow through with it, they start to know this huge productivity jumps because it allows you to start your day right away, as soon as you're done with your morning routine or you're sitting down on your desk instead of just starting your day where you're scrambling, trying to figure out what to do.

Also, the other benefit that comes with planning your day the night before is that you can go to bed knowing that everything is being addressed and is going to be addressed the next day as well. You can feel relaxed and not stressed out as much because you know anything that needs to be addressed needs to be done the next day, so you can sleep a lot better. It has so many energy benefits as we talked about earlier.

Planning your day the night before is one of the first things I would recommend people do. The second thing is to have one big goal. One big win for the day, then the third thing is the cutoff time. You have those three pieces in place, plan it the night before, one big goal, and having a cutoff time. You will have an ideal day figured out for yourself.

If you're working from home, one of the things I would also recommend that you don't eat at your desk. Actually leave your office or your home. This applies also if you're working on an office because most of us are just sitting at our office or desk the whole day and we get so burned out by just looking at a screen, being on Zoom meetings, or being on the phone the whole time that it's actually nice to be able to step away.

Go for lunch for an hour and go for a walk. By the time you come back, get outside. Get some sunlight, some vitamin D and you feel so much better. Your mood is elevated. You have a new sense of urgency, a new sense of energy. Stepping away from your desk to have lunch, as simple as that sounds, will make a big difference.

I was working with this coaching client. He had all these big goals and we were committed for a three-month engagement. The only thing we did is I told him to go for an hour-and-a-half every single day because he was working at a big bank. He was super busy. He felt like he just had to work 80 hours a week. The only difference that we truly implemented was just going out for lunch because it's like a mid-day reset for him.

I gave him a new sense of energy, a resurgence of focus. He was able to work from going to 80 hours to 55 hours, which was a huge improvement for him. The only change was because he had a longer lunch and is going outside. Going out for lunch away from his office. As a result, he was just more focused, had more energy, and knew exactly what he needed to do. He had more time to think about stuff. So, instead of just sitting there all day at his desk feeling lethargic and just sitting there for the sake of sitting there, he wasn't actually truly productive.

Again, plan your day the night before, have one big win, set a cutoff time, then definitely go out for lunch outside of your home and office.

Jason: I love it. It's like breaking up your day into two chunks to tackle. It's a lot easier than doing an eight-hour chunk. The night before, why not do planning in the morning? Maybe you can touch on that. Some people do this. They get up in the morning. They sit down. They're like, “I'm going to plan out my day,” and they do it in the morning. Advantages? Disadvantages? What are your thoughts? I'm sure you've had clients doing that.

Thanh: Yeah, I've done both for many years. Planned the night before and I also planned the morning of. One thing I found is if you're somebody who is a morning person, you have the energy you have in the morning, then planning the night before gives you the most benefit because you can just start your day right away and just use your energy and focus on the important task that needs to be done. You just get started right away. You're not wasting time or energy planning something. You already did that the night before.

If you're a morning person, then I would say that's the way to go. I would say for a majority of people that applies too, even if you're not a morning person. Even if you're somebody who starts a little bit later, let's say 10, 11, or 12. It's still beneficial to plan the night before because you can go to bed knowing that, "Okay, I have an idea what to do."

Also, there's the sense that once we know what we need to do the next day when we go to bed we can just feel assured that we're going to do this, but also, our brain will start thinking about how do we solve this particular task or problem or knowing exactly what we need to do the next day.

That's very powerful as well whereas if you plan the day off or the morning of, often it's easy to get distracted, or to have an excuse for something, or just continue to lay on the bed a little bit longer because we wanted to. Because there's no sense of urgency or clarity about, "Okay. I need to do this today," because that planning process still hasn't come up.

I think for many reasons and for many people planning the night before is more of a preference, ideal, something that you will make a habit of because I do think it has much more impact. But if you're somebody who doesn't' really get started until two or three o'clock in the afternoon, then I'd say it's okay to do it in the morning because you're not going to be as focused anyway. Those are some of the pros and cons, but if I were to work with a client, I would always recommend doing it the night before.

Jason: I like the idea you touched on there that if you do your planning the night before, you're then allowing your subconscious to work out a lot of the details. A lot of entrepreneurs operate based on their gut, their intuition. It's things that they're subconscious, or deep down are coming up for them, or they’re figuring out. I think that gives them more of an opportunity to use that supercomputer that our subconscious mind is. That makes a lot of sense.

I'm going to play around on that. That sounds cool. You always hear the phrase, “What keeps you up at night?” Entrepreneurs are notoriously known for being kept up at night because they're worried about something or working on something.

Maybe just the act of offloading everything at the end of the day and saying this is going to be a plan for tomorrow, instead of leaving it there feeling like you need to work on it, that's going to allow your subconscious to work on it, but also create the space so that you can get good rest and you aren't kept up worrying about things. It'll allow you to lower that anxiety or that pressure, noise, or that stress that every entrepreneur tends to carry.

Thanh: Yeah, that's why I always recommend that people journal at night as well because when we have so many thoughts before we go to bed, it's just so hard to fall asleep. I've been really geeking out on this even further because I have an Oura ring, one of those fitness trackers, and one thing I've [...] is that when I journal and I put all my thoughts away, my REM sleep goes up significantly. REM sleep is when [...] frustration for our brain, for our mental health, and when I don’t journal, the number of minutes of REM sleep goes down quite a bit.

I think it's really because when our brain is occupied with all these different things, it cannot actually relax as much because there's just so much going on. But when we journal and put it on paper, put it away from our head and actually put it on paper, our brain can relax knowing that we don't' have to use this as memory or store anything. It's on paper. It's there.

If we need it, we can access it. We don't have to worry or stress about it. You can actually focus on recovery while we're sleeping. It also helps you to sleep better. You feel less stressed when you do that. It's a nice winding down routine for you as well to decompress and just destress. I like to journal in the morning as well just to reflect and think. Also at night before I go to bed just to honestly put my stray thoughts away.

If I wanted to do something, or I had a particular task, or I had an idea that I don't want to lose, just write it down real quick. It's out of your head and as you know, our memories are terrible. I've had so many ideas and then go, “Oh, what was the thing I was thinking about? That was such a brilliant idea.” Or I had a catchphrase and I was like, “Oh, I should use that on my podcast or marketing copy. Oh my gosh. I forgot what that was. I wish I had written that down.”

Our memory is as not strong so it's always a good idea to write stuff down as quickly as possible especially before you—

Jason: [...] about the palest ink?

Thanh: That I don't know.

Jason: It's the palest ink. I'm being Asian Efficiency now. It's my turn. There's this Chinese proverb that the palest ink is better than the best memory, or something like that.

Thanh: Oh, I've never heard of that. I might have to borrow that from you.

Jason: You could look it up. I don't know who said it, maybe it was Confucious, he says everything. But anyway the faintest ink is better than even the best memory because it's there, it’s tangible, it can't be forgotten, We know our brains are not really great at accuracy or remember things, so I love that idea.

Related to that, Mr. Asian Efficiency, how do you feel about typing versus writing? Because what you're saying is writing in my journal, writing in my journal. Are you actually writing or it sounds like it can be more digital, nerdy, tech, whatever way of typing everything. A lot of people are, “Type it all. Type this note. I'll type it on my phone. Type, type, type.” Do you find there is any difference? Are the things you feel like writing is better suited for? Do you write anything? How does this work for you?

Thanh: I think this whole analog versus digital is an interesting conversation for many people. What I have seen in my own personal life and amongst thousands of our clients is that there's no one best way to do something. It's really a personal preference. You can have a paper to-do list, or a physical planner where you write your to-do list, or you can have a digital one. I tend to prefer to use a digital planner myself, but when I'm writing notes down or journal, I usually like to do it on paper.

There are scientific studies that show if you write something down, you tend to remember better. Your retention is a little bit better. There's some value in that as well. You also need to look at the functionality, utility value that comes with that because you leave a piece of paper at home, you can't really access it anywhere whereas if it's something in the Cloud or Evernote. If I write it down on my computer or write it down on my phone, I always have it with me whenever I need to.

I like to have a combination of both so for example my to-do list is digital, I use OmniFocus as an app for that. Then in my company we use something like Jira, a project management tool. For notes and just storing ideas and just random stuff I use Evernote. That's on my phone and also on my computer and available on the web. That's an easy way to access stuff very quickly too.

But when it comes to journaling, I like to have a physical planner. I use something like a five-minute planner or just a self journal which is a physical planner. I use it every single night and every morning to either plan my day, to think about stuff, or to just write down and just put some thoughts down or ideas that I have. Whenever I am traveling, I'm also carrying one with me. If I don't have it with me, then I'll store it in Evernote real quick.

Most of the time, I like to use something physical because it allows me to disconnect from my computer. I'm sitting behind my computer most of the days and when I'm sitting there, I'm just not as creative because I'm associating computers and screens with work. Sometimes, if I want to be creative, I have to actually step away from that to be able to go to my whiteboard. That's another tool that I use which is physical or pen and paper-ish. Just go to my whiteboard and start mind mapping, brainstorming ideas, or creating a quick list of things I need to do or want to remember because I can be so much more creative when I'm away from my computer.

The same thing with pen and paper. Sometimes, if I'm doing thinking questions for myself then I say, “Thanh, what will it take to double my business over the next six months?” That’s a simple question that I ask myself. If I do that behind my computer, I get easily distracted. There's notification popping up. “Oh, let me just quickly check this email. Someone's messaging me on Slack or Microsoft Teams. Oh my gosh, I'm getting so distracted,” whereas if I'm away and I have my favorite beverage. I'm sitting at a nice coffee shop or something, I see beautiful people walking around, there's a nice atmosphere, and I'm just sitting there and thinking, there's a different level of engagement, commitment, and clarity that I get from doing that.

I like to use a combination of both. Again, there's no perfect solution for everyone. There's no one-size-fits-all, and a lot of times people have to figure out on their own what they prefer and also depending on their lifestyle, but I think everyone can benefit from digital and paper.

Jason: Yeah. Like every podcast episode, I'm writing down notes. This is just this episode, that's page one. I'm already on page two. Thoughts as they come to me, things I need to do, like I just wrote down I need a cool box for my mic like you have because I don't have that. That's kind of cool. I'm always thinking and the brain is always going, so writing things down (for me) is a big deal.

I use all kinds of digital stuff to keep track of things. Keep track of tasks, keep track of what my team is doing, tons of software and my business so I get it. Then even on my iPad, I have an iPad with an Apple pencil so I can write on that and it's digital. There are a whole plethora of different ways. I guess ultimately it's what works for you. What's going to actually help you feel creative, feel the momentum, and get your thoughts out. I do think there's magic in writing.

As nerdy, as digital, and tech-savvy as I am, I think there's magic in writing. They found that even when you write stuff out, if you lose your main writing limb and you start writing with your other hand, your handwriting will eventually be exactly the same once you get used to it again. Handwriting analysis, if you geek out on some of those stuff, is actually like brainwriting. It's like a brain to paper. I think there's some magic in writing that I think there's also something therapeutic about writing for me that I just don't get by typing something.

Thanh: Absolutely. I have a beautiful pen that was gifted to me. Someone gifted me a Mont Blanc pen and the really funny story about that is like four or five years ago when I got this gift. Someone gave me this pen and when I got this pen, back in the day I didn't know anything about pens so I'm like, “Wow. Okay, this is a nice gesture.” So I put that pen away.

I didn't really think much of it and a few months later, one of my employees comes here and says, “Thanh, is that a Mont Blanc pen?” and I go, “I have no idea. What does that even mean?” He says, “Oh my gosh, this pen is like $700, Thanh. Did you not realize that?” I was like, “No, but let me use it because it's so expensive.”

That's when I started using my pen and that's when I realized wow this is really actually a beautiful pen. The weight of the pen, the way you hold it, then I actually started writing down stuff a lot more as a result of that. As you said, it's kind of a therapeutic thing. It's a beautiful tool that I have that I like to use. It's really smooth and sits nicely in my hand. Because I'm away from my computer, there's no crazy stuff going on. There's a lot to that.

If you make it really enjoyable for yourself where it's a therapeutic fun thing for you, you have tools that you use that you enjoy, then it makes it really easy and fun. Something that I always talk about in my podcast is called minimalist luxury. How can you have very few things, but the thing you do own or the best quality that you can afford is absolutely the best thing that you want to own and have?

For example, having one really nice pen allows you to do so many cool things with that. Writing a contract, or agreement, or journaling every single day. It's a fun process for you because you love to use that pen or maybe it's a really nice jacket that you love to wear and anytime you wear it, you feel so much more confident. Going back to that feeling that you want, that you're looking for, it's like if you want to feel powerful you wear that particular jacket. There's one jacket that I have, anytime I wear it I feel so powerful. It's my favorite jacket and every time I go to speak, that's the one I always like to wear because I associate it with being powerful.

Jason: I think I saw the post on your Instagram or your Facebook. Your power jacket, does it have a little shield on it?

Thanh: Exactly, yeah. All these different things that we can buy and there's not many things that we need, but the few things that we need or want to make sure it's the best one that you can afford because oftentimes it will last longer. It's better quality. You'll enjoy using it more. That's something I learned from using that pen because I don't want to use any other pen, that's the one pen I want to use and every time I want to use it I feel so happy using it.

Jason: Yeah. Thanh, we can probably talk about this stuff for hours. We can go on and on and I'm sure there's lots of stuff that you can share and teach people. Maybe we should wrap this up. How can people learn more and what things do you teach or share at your company?

Thanh: Absolutely. Thank you first and foremost for serving your listeners and audience. If people want to find out more about me and what we do at Asian Efficiency, we have a podcast called The Productivity Show; it’s the number one podcast on iTunes. Also, you can go to asianefficiency.com. You can find anything there about productivity, being efficient, automation, what kind of tools to use. There's so much free content there that I would love to share with people, so just go to asianefficiency.com and we'll take care of you there.

Jason: Awesome, alright. Thanh, it's been great having you here on the DoorGrow Show. I appreciate you being here.

Thanh: Thank you.

Jason: All right. We will let Thanh go. Check his stuff out. Really cool guy. Anybody that is focused on something as much as he has, has some really cool ideas to share and it's fun to have people like that on.

If you are a property management entrepreneur, and you're wanting to add doors, you are wanting a better website, a better presence, you are wanting branding that makes you feel confident to look good when you go showcase your business to other people, helps you improve your sales, whatever you're looking to do for your property management business so that you can improve your growth, we can help over DoorGrow.

Check us out. Go to doorgrow.com and we look forward to having you as a client and supporting you in your growth. We love our clients. We have some amazing, awesome clients. Check us out at doorgrow.com and be sure to join our community at doorgrowclub.com and that's it for today. Until next time, everyone, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge in 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 at doorgrow.com. 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.

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May 26, 2020

What’s an easier way for realtors to get referrals to property managers? A free mobile tool, rather than just another app on your smartphone.

Today’s guest is Vitaliy Merkulov from Renter Inc., a company that builds software for realtors and property management businesses to be relevant, knowledgeable, and engaging.

You’ll Learn...

[03:05] What’s next? Building mobile app to generate leads.

[03:50] #1 Source: Property management businesses grow via referrals.

[04:57] Purpose and Point of Development: Mobile app gives you more realtor referrals.

[05:47] Features and Benefits: Realtors request free rent analysis, receive push notifications, provide referrals, and view referral status.

[08:10] Rent Analysis: Property manager is first to know who’s leased property, what property should lease for, and what the market suggests for time it takes to lease it.

[11:40] Relationships: Get customers when they’re hot. Provide a tool that gets them there, gets them faster for more chances to turn them into leads.

[14:09] Resource: App also offers latest trends, news, and events in specific areas.

[15:18] Fear and Future Opportunities: Evictions and moratoriums will be lifted, and the real estate/property management industry tends to do well in these situations.

[17:37] Open Rates: App is opened more than email; provides easy access to people.

[19:44] Installation and Onboarding: Enable permission to receive push notifications.

[21:30] Transactional and Global: Two types of notifications.

[22:45] Status of App: In development phase, planning to be released mid-June 2020, and four beta testers in place.

Tweetables

#1 Source: Property management businesses grow via referrals.

People shift from buying to renting. People transition to being accidental investors.

The property management industry may have a season of significant growth.

To get people to give you referrals, you have to show them value.

All the features have been defined, they're ready, and they’re in the development phase.

Resources

Renter Inc.

Info@renterinc.com

DGS 71: Automate Giving Landlord References with Vitaliy Merkulov of Renter, Inc.

Mynd Property Management

RentPros

Real Property Management Preferred

DGS 128: Navigating the Cash Crunch with Tim Francis 0

Transcript

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

My guest today is Vitaliy. Vitaliy, welcome to the show.

Vitaliy: Thank you.

Jason: You’ve been on the show before. Your company is Renter, Inc. For those that aren’t familiar with you, why don’t you give us a quick background of you are, and then maybe give us an update on Renter, Inc., and then let’s get into this new thing that you’re here to talk about today, which is how realtors can start getting referrals to property managers in a more easy way.

Vitaliy: All right. Thank you for having me here again. Last time I was here I believe it was about a year ago. Renter, Inc. is a software company that builds multiple software. One of the ones that I was here for last time is called Rental Verification software. What that does is it automates the process of giving rental verifications to your tenants that are leaving your property.

You have tenants that are there, they’re getting ready to leave. That new prospective landlord contacts you, asks you for references. Usually, it takes 10-15 minutes to do that, and then you have to chase—make sure that they give you consent forms and all that stuff. With our software, Rental Verifications, you’re able to integrate with Propertyware and AppFolio, and it automatically generates their rental verifications for them so you don’t have to spend your time on that.

The last time I was here, I was saying hey, we need some beta testers for AppFolio, and we were able to get them because of this show. Right now, it’s up and running. Everything is good. What I want to talk about today is this mobile app that we’re building. This came from talking to property managers, asking them what their real problems are. Some of them came back and said our biggest problem is not really automation right now. Our biggest problem is getting more leads. That’s where this app idea was born. I’d love to talk to you guys about that.

Jason: Let’s get into it. The number one source for most property management businesses in growing businesses, if they have a healthy property management business, is always word of mouth—it’s referrals. If you build up a business that has lots of doors, it’s a machine that builds itself. It just naturally starts to grow as you have more tenants and more owners, and you’re doing a good job, and providing good service, more and more people are referring. It kind of takes on a life of its own.

For a lot of property managers, this is a real problem. It’s a struggle to get this machine going, to get that engine going. Then even for the larger ones, they’re always like how can I pour more gasoline in this fire that is our biggest fire? How do we make this work? You and I have been talking about this software quite a bit, right? We’ve gone back and forth, and I guess you could say I have consulted and given you a bunch of ideas on this as well. Where are you at with this, and what have you come up with? Let’s tell people about it.

Vitaliy: Let’s try to get into what is the point of this app first, and then I’ll tell you where we are in the development of this app. The main point of this app is it will give you more referral apps—realtor referrals. The way it works is instead of you going to realtor events, meeting realtors, and giving them your business card and beg for referrals, you would simply give them your own app with your own logo, which will have very good tools in it that you would provide to these realtors. That they would simply go to either App Store or Android store and download your own app.

This app will have capabilities such as realtors will be able to request free rent analysis directly from you, and you would be able to respond back inside your own app with your own rent analysis. They will receive push notifications, you will receive push notifications, and everything is done through the app. The other feature is going to be referrals. Realtors will be able to give you a referral from the app. You will see and get a push notification saying that there is a referral coming in.

The big part here, the realtor will be able to see the status of the referral. For example, is the referral converted, has it been dropped? All of that will be able to be seen in the app. The other benefit that this app has is it’s not only an app that is useful for you, the property manager, it’s also a tool for a realtor to be basically an expert in investors’ type of world. You will be able to push important information to them. For example, local laws and regulations that these realtors need to know when they’re working with an investor in the area.

It makes you relevant, it makes you more advanced in knowledge, and it gives them this free tool rather than just another app on their phone. It also gives you push notifications, which is a much, much more chance of them interacting with you. The other biggest thing out of them all is the fact that it’s a mobile app, it’s on their phone and you can send them push notifications. They will be on top of your mind compared to all of those property managers who gave them their business cards and begged them to follow up with them.

Jason: Let’s touch on some of this real quick because I’m sure we’re going to lose people if we’re just throwing out all the features and benefits. When you first came to me with this app, I was really negative about it. I mean, let’s be honest. I was like nobody wants another app on their phone. Realtors aren’t going to want to just download some app and give referrals. The missing piece, which you just threw out there like it was not that big of a deal, but I want to point out it’s a big deal—that rent analysis.

Realtors really do want to be able to say to their investor clients here is an expert analysis, but they have no idea. They have no idea they could go to Zillow, they could go to these places, but they’re inaccurate, and they have problems. Nobody knows better than a property manager who’s leased out two or three properties in that neighborhood what that property should realistically lease for, or what they could get, or what the market is suggesting based on the time it takes to lease a property. All this kind of stuff.

They have all these anecdotal data in their head that you’re just not going to be able to pull in sometimes because they’re the boots on the ground. They see this. This gives agents a resource that they can come to you, provide, basically, a lead to you like here’s this property. Here’s the owner’s detail. Here’s the stuff. You’ll be able to provide that service. They’re going to feel safe that you’re going to give this person back to them when it comes time to sell because you’re going to be, as a property manager, the first to know when this person wants to sell. Why?

Because they’re going to reach out, and they’re going to want to know what the property may be could sell for. They’re going to have this need, so you can then refer them back to the agent. The idea, once we figured that out, there’s an incentive, there’s some benefit for the agent to look like an expert, to keep the client, to receive that, and then I was like all right. Now, this is starting to make sense, Vitaliy. This is something I could sell people on. I could say hey, you should do this. This will be a good idea.

The idea that agents can see the transparency, they can see where a lead is at, almost like a CRM. They can see where it’s at in the step in the process. Because this is one of the concerns, if I send somebody a referral, I want to know if they’re being taken care of, I want to know how it’s going. I want a little bit of feedback. Did you get them on as a client? Are you going to pay me a kickback for this? Is there like this? That’s what the property manager and the real estate agent, they want to see all of this stuff. This app facilitates all of that.

The agent’s going to want to keep this app on their phone because they’re going to have this easy resource they can go to. It’s a tangible anchor. Psychologically, anytime they’re stuck on anything, they’re like oh, well, this person is a real estate investor and they want to turn this into an investment property. The next step is we need to figure out what could this property rent for if they buy this property? You can start building that, connect that relationship. It allows the agent to look even better, to look like they have a team of resources, to look like they’ve got things at their disposal, and you get to be that resource as a property manager.

Did I sum that up, somewhat? Is that okay?

Vitaliy: Yeah, of course. Let’s imagine this. The realtor is out there showing the property to investors. They look at this property, 123 Main Street, and the investor says how much can I get rent for? Instead of you waiting, going to your office, and then reaching out to your favorite property manager, the realtor can take out their phone, and go to your own property management app, and request a rent analysis right there and then, and forget about it. It depends on how fast you are, you’ll get a notification or a push notification into your own app, and you’ll be able to provide a rent analysis within seconds or minutes.

Jason: This rent analysis is going to have the property owner’s info on it, right? You request that from the agent. If the agent wants to request this info, they’re submitting their client’s info like here’s the client’s name, here are their details, so that you get a lead as a property manager. Then you can communicate with the agent and with the owner.

Vitaliy: Yeah. Much faster and you always got to get your customers right when they’re hot, and this is when they’re hot. They’re looking at this property, they want to know what is it going to rent for, and if you can provide them with the tool that is able to get them there, get them faster, there are more chances it’s going to turn into your own lead.

Jason: You start building that relationship, and at that point, you’re just being helpful. Ultimately, you don’t have to be salesy, you’re just providing value, you’re being helpful. Here’s the rent analysis. Here’s what you might want to do. Then if you’d like us to come out and check out this property and give you an idea of what changes need to be made, we’d be happy to do that in order to get it ready. You can start to build this and start this relationship without having to start selling.

The agent is saying this is a trusted resource, I’m going to connect you with this company. They’ll give you a rent analysis, they’re going to do all of this, and they come with that authority already established.

Vitaliy: Most property managers do offer this free tool on their website, but once the realtor is on the field, they're not going to pull up their phone, and try to go on your website, and request rent analysis there. It might be harder to do. If it's on their phone, there are more chances they're going to do it through your app rather than finding and looking for a website of another property management company. Hoping that that website is accessible through their phone.

Knowing that it is a resource because this app will not just have rent analysis and referrals, it will have latest trends, latest news, and events that are happening in specifically your area, there are more chances that they're going to already know about your app because you've been pushing push notifications to them about the latest events. They will have you on top of mind, and they will know to go to you rather than to another property management company.

Jason: Right now, with coronavirus COVID-19, all the drama that's going on, there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of uncertainty, there's going to be a lot of shifts—evictions, moratoriums are happening. Once these things start to lift, there's still going to be a lot of questions. People are looking for answers, and there's a massive opportunity here coming in the future. If the real estate market doesn't recover quickly from all this complete pause that's happened, then maybe a real estate industry may suffer and struggle, and then the property management industry, usually by default, tends to do well in those situations.

People shift from buying to renting, that people transition to being accidental investors. They can't get places sold as the market tanks. The property management industry may have a season of significant growth coming here in the next several months or next several years. This would be a tool that would allow you to get that info out like here's the update. Here's what's going on. We even see the president of the United States. He has an opportunity right now to do daily briefings, and his ratings are higher than anything else going on right now, from what I understand.

Everybody wants to know what's coming from the top. You're the expert in your market, you're the expert when it comes to rentals, and so the agents—maybe even landlords might start tuning into this if they’re another audience added into this app. Am I jumping the gun there?

Vitaliy: No. That’s perfect. The main point here is in order to get people to give you referrals, you have to show them value. If you're just going out there and giving everyone business cards and begging for referrals, you're not going to get them. You have to give them something back first. With this app, you are giving them a resource that is specific to that specific market. Once you show them that you've given them resources, and you've given them information that has been valuable, for example, the latest news, and trends, and eviction laws specifically for your area, they will most likely go to you because they've heard from you, they've seen you.

This app will be opened up much more than an email would. That seems to be the trend, and that is one of the biggest reasons why mobile apps are being developed by larger corporations—is to have that easy access to people. Once a push notification goes out, the open rate is 95%. People will open up that little ding on their iPhone or their Android phone, and they'll see that red one next to the app, and they will want to open it and make sure that they see what's going on. The technology has been proven that the fact that the mobile apps do get opened up much better, and they do bring a top of mind much better than anything else out there.

Jason: Let's compare it to other things. Email open rates are pretty low. We use a software called Drip currently for our newsletter, for example. We have, actually, what's considered a really high open rate on our emails, but even still, a really good open rate on email maybe is 30% on a bulk email. Maybe, right? If you get 20%, some people still consider that pretty decent. That means the vast majority, if you're looking at the 80-20 rule, are not looking at the emails. The way inboxes are now set up, they go into weird folders, or categorizations, or spam. Email deliverability is just not a great way to maintain communication or a relationship.

Text messages have really high open rates, push notifications really high open rates. That's what you're talking about. There's a big difference if you can do push notifications versus that. Is there a challenge with getting people to opt into the push notifications, or is this just something they'll need to educate each realtor they're bringing into this like make sure you say yes to the push notifications as you enable this app.

Vitaliy: That's a good point. When the realtor does install this app, it goes through what we call an onboarding. A few pages where we explain to them the point of push notifications first before we give them a pop-up and say hey, allow push notifications, so they will know to enable it rather than just pushing it to them, and most people just say no, I don't want push notifications. We do think that there is going to be more people enabling those notifications.

I haven't thought about this, but in the future, what we could do is if there is a notification that comes in, we will display some message saying hey, be sure to enable your push notifications. But if they do open the app, they'll still see that notification, it just won't be a push notification. It's still a much better open rate in that. Does that make any sense?

Jason: Yeah, it does. You're going to constantly solicit or get them to open permission to do the push notifications if they haven't done it yet. That makes sense. It will be one of those annoying little red icons probably on the phone app set with a number like oh, man. I got to look at this. What's going on here?

Vitaliy: I wanted to say that there are two types of notifications there. One is when it's transactional, so for example, there's a new rent analysis available. You have given them a new rent analysis, and then they get a push notification saying hey, 123 Main Street has responded with their rent analysis. That's one type of push notification.

The second type is what we call a global notification, and that is what a property manager of this app is able to send out to everyone. It could be something like hey, if you give us a referral this month, we'll give you double the price, or something like that. It's more like a promotional push notification just to get into on top of mind of people.

That is where you have the potential to send it to everyone who has their push notifications enabled, and it will also show up in their notifications screen on the app even if they don't have the push notifications enabled. They'll still see it next time they open the app. People are able to use that as a promotional also. There are those two types.

Jason: Perfect. Okay. Where are you at with this app? How far along is development? Do you have people using it? Beta testing? Where is it at? Those that are listening, what would be the next step? If they're interested, which I'm expecting people to be pretty interested in this, why don't you give people a state of the union on this app.

Vitaliy: Currently, the app is in the development phase. It's planned to be released mid-June 2020. Right now, all the features have been defined, they're ready, and they’re in the development phase. We have currently a few beta testers. RentWerx, which Brad Larsen as one of the beta testers. We have Mynd Property Management as one of the testers. We have another property manager called RentPros. They manage about 1000 doors, they’re a beta tester. Then we have one of the Real Property Management Preferred, beta testers. Currently, we have four beta testers, and the majority of them are in over 1000 doors. Currently, they're working on expanding in their referral program, and that's why we were excited about this.

Those who are interested in becoming beta testers, we are only going to offer the beta to 10 beta testers. After that, the beta program will close until it's available for everyone else. The beta users will get 20% off and then will not get that if you sign up after the beta is over. The benefit of being a beta user is that you obviously get the discount, and also, you're the one who will determine which features will be developed in the next phase. That's a really good benefit there.

It will be out mid-June, and then we'll probably test it for about a month or so, and then July or so, it's going to be available for everyone.

Jason: I don't think you'll have any trouble getting some beta testers with all the people that listen to the show. You'll get 10, so that's not going to be an issue.

Vitaliy: Whoever gets in there first is going to get it. We're not going to allow more than 10 beta testers because we want [...].

Jason: Then make sure they're good ones. Find some really tech-savvy guys because they'll give you some good feature requests, or gals. Guys or gals, right? All right. Awesome. Vitaliy, this sounds really great. I know I've got several clients that would be interested in this. Hopefully, they're listening to this. On some of my calls that I do with my clients, some of the gals and guys there were keenly interested in something like this.

We're going to throw this out. By the time this makes it to the podcast, they'll already be filled, I'm sure. How do they get in touch with you to get on the beta program? For those that aren't going to make it into that, how can people find out more about this, and where you're at with this, and maybe even sign up? How do people communicate with you?

Vitaliy: The best thing to do is go to our website renterinc.com, and then there's a tab on top that says Other Products. Once you go to that, there's a Realtor Referral App. It'll take you to a specific page where it doesn't talk a lot about the app but allows you to schedule a call with us. That will tell us that you're interested in specifically the Realtor Referral App. We'll get on the call to see if you're a good candidate for a beta tester.

If you are, you'll join, we’ll get your logo and your company information, and you'll have your own app mid-June. If you don't make it to the beta test, we will still be able to get you on the call, get you set up, and then once the beta program is over, we'll get you set up with your own app, hopefully somewhere middle of July.

You can either go to renterin.com, or you could just email info@renterinc.com, and then just tell us you're interested in the Realtor Referral Program. I'd encourage everyone else to also take a look at our other software that we have. We also have an integration with AppFolio that allows you to request rental verifications and get them back in 24 hours or so. We do that through our Chrome extension that we’ve just built. Take a look at that. We’re excited about the referral app, but our other tools are pretty good too.

Jason: You’re a humble promoter of your products and services. I appreciate that. Vitaliy, thanks for coming on the show. Keep us updated on how this goes.

Vitaliy: All right. Thank you so much. Talk to you later.

Jason: Awesome. We’ve had lots of conversations about this. He’s been picking my brain. Anyway, check that out. If you are a property management business owner, and you are struggling, you’re having difficulty, you want to feel like you have somebody in your corner, we’ve got some great coaching programs available. We also are launching websites. Every week, we’re launching a new website for clients, so check us out. At DoorGrow, I believe we build the best websites in the property management industry, hands down.

If you are feeling even a little bit confident or insecure about your website, go to doorgrow.com/quiz and test it. Grade your website, and see where it’s at. If you get an A, then I guess you need to have a conversation with me or my team. But if you don’t, if you get a B, or what’s common—a C, or even more common—a D, or you fail outright on this quiz, then you owe it to yourself and your business to make sure you’re not missing out on website leads and deals every single month.

One deal is probably worth $6000 lifetime value. That’s maybe $2000 a year on the door. Maybe you’re making $2000 a year, and you can keep going for maybe three years, maybe $6000 lifetime value. If you’re missing out on just two or three of those every month, that could be $18,000 in future ROI that you’re missing out on every single month. That can be a very expensive thing if you multiply that by 12 months over the course of a year. Websites are not that expensive. They’re just not. One door would cover it, so reach out to us.

Anyway, I’m Jason Hull with the DoorGrow Show. Thanks for hanging out with me. Until next time. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

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May 12, 2020

Are you a business owner who wants to get good at financial decision making and CEO-level accounting? How can you build a runway to opportunities? By navigating mindset, expenses, and cash.

Today’s guest is Tim Francis from Great Assistant and Profit Factory. Tim’s training, Know Your Numbers, shows how businesses can deal with cash crunch and cash flow.

You’ll Learn...

[02:48] Free Upcoming Event: Navigate the Cash Crunch.

[03:20] Entrepreneurs: Like Indiana Jones, running as fast as possible from expenses.

[06:00] Pre-built Spreadsheet: Adding and subtracting, red boxes and green boxes.

[06:40] Beyond Profit First: In motion and cutting expenses when DoorGrow sales stop.

[10:23] 3-Step Method: Navigating mindset, navigating expenses, and navigating cash.

[11:29] Mistakes of sloth, and mistakes of ambition.

[12:19] Step 1 - Navigating Mindset: Be good to your body, protect personal and professional relationships, and early action is crucial.

[22:51] Step 2 - Navigating Expenses: Business's profit margin and bloat factor involves how many dollars to be sold at top line for $1 at bottom line to spend/buy something.

[30:08] Survive and Thrive: When sales go down, create a situation where you don't have to sell as much. You can meet it at a lower sales level and still get by.

[31:52] Step 3 - Navigating Cash: The Cash Flow Forecast figures out how much cash can you touch now? There's a big difference between cash and free cash.

[45:38] Opportunities for Growth: If your business doesn't cash flow, it will fail. Cash flow first, then focus on growth. Cash comes from different places.

Tweetables

Entrepreneurs confuse revenue, sales, top line, or top of the P&L statement with cash.

There's actually a way to navigate the cash crunch, even if revenue is going down.

Property management industry has a massive opportunity due to big shift in the market.

Panic isn't productive. It's important to be urgent, not anxious.

There's a big difference between cash and free cash.

Resources

Navigate the Cash Crunch with Jason Hull and Timothy Francis

Tim Francis on LinkedIn

DGS 127: Using a Virtual Assistant to Scale Your Property Management Business with MyOutDesk 0

Transcript

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

I am hanging out here with Tim Francis. Tim, welcome to the show again.

Tim: Good to see you Jason, again.

Jason: Tim and I just started trying to do this on Crowdcast the normal platform. It didn't work out. The internet gods were not kind to us for some reason so we're starting it over. I wanted to introduce Tim to this audience again. Tim has been on the show before because he was talking about his company, Great Assistant, a fantastic company. I've hired assistants through it for US based assistants.

His parent corporation, or company, or whatever you want to call it is Profit Factory. I recently went through training with him called Know Your Numbers. One of my goals for this year was to get really good at this learning financial decision making, maybe more business owner, CEO level accounting. Tim is the go to guy for this. He has a program on this that I went through. He had a really cool thing that he showed us how to deal with cash crunch and cash flow.

He reached out to me and is putting this out to audiences trying to help businesses out right now. I'm excited to expose my audience to this idea of how they can navigate the cash crunch. Tim, welcome.

Tim: Thank you so much for having me.

Jason: We're going to do an event here in about a week. I'll just plug that now up front, just get that out of the way. It's for free and we're going to go into greater detail about these things. You're going to be sharing your screen, showing spreadsheets, helping them figure this out. But let's start with talking about the problem. What's going on with the market right now, the cash crunch, and why is this relevant?

Tim: Yeah, you bet. If you think of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, there's this amazing boulder scene. Jason, I have to give you credit for giving me this visual of this boulder rolling behind us as entrepreneurs. We're running as fast as we possibly can, and that boulder, that's expenses.

Jason, full credit to you, every time I use this analogy now I'm giving you credit. A bit of the secret here is that there's actually a simple three step method that we can actually turn this into a different Indiana Jones scene. In the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones, there's this like leap of faith scene where he's standing on the very edge and he's looking at this massive chasm between him and where he needs to go.

It looks impossible, it looks impossible that he’ll possibly be able to cross this chasm, but then he gets this idea. He takes some sand, and he throws it out and it covers, and there's this hidden balance beam, it's invisible, this invisible balance beam to walk across. That's exactly the three step method that I teach as a passion to entrepreneurs. I think a lot of entrepreneurs confuse revenue, sales, top line, or just that top of the P&L statement with cash.

The thing is that they’re two extremely different ideas. Yes, one can lead to the other, however they're not necessary. There's actually a way to navigate the cash crunch, even if revenue is going down. I've helped many, many companies, I think I’ve had 139 board meetings now. I've helped over 70 companies, and at least 7 of them I've helped to escape bankruptcy, including that with them following the exact process that I'm going to teach today.

Whether someone despises accounting and numbers, feels pretty good about them but maybe not a pro, or even if someone's an absolute pro at numbers, I think the perspectives that we share today are going to be really, really powerful. Also just in case anyone's afraid of like oh, my god, here we go, numbers and accounting. I hate that topic. I avoid my accountant like the plague. I'll tell you what, I was rejected from Business School three times. I couldn't finish calculus. I don't know my brain wasn't wired that way, and the good news is you don't need any of that to be able to navigate the cash crunch.

If you know how to add and subtract, in fact Jason, you don't even need to be able to add, subtract. If you know how to use a calculator to add, subtract, we can make this happen. The tool that I'll go more in depth with you on our webinar coming in about a week from now, everyone will actually get access to a prebuilt spreadsheet.

All you got to do, it takes maybe 20 to 30 minutes to put your own info in. Literally where you see a red box is a crisis line, and where you see a green box, you're good to go. That's it. It's adding and subtracting, and red boxes and green boxes, that help you to navigate. To build your very own—personalized to your business—path to navigate the cash crunch.

Jason: Before we get into this, I want to touch on and create a little transparency in this. A lot of entrepreneurs are fearful. There's a lot of shame around admitting that something doesn't look perfectly successful. There's a lot of shame around finances and money. Like oh, no, I've got debt or I've got this.

I'm going to share what we're experiencing at DoorGrow. Leading up to this, one of my goals for this year was to get control of finances, really understand and get into financials, which is why I did a training with you, Tim, and I'm working with you on different things, because that's a step beyond the Profit First.

I've got my Profit First coach and accountant that I work with as well. I've been doing lots of calls with her getting all these different loans that are coming out, getting everything going. I'm glad that I was already working on this stuff prior. We started cutting expenses dramatically, we started doing shifts. As I was getting control of things, I was like why are we paying for that? If we weren't in momentum already—you used the analogy of the airplane flying over the trees—we probably would have hit some trees. We probably would have crashed.

We were already in motion. Sales, March just stopped. Property managers stopped buying products and services from DoorGrow because they were holding their wallets tight, they were scared, and that's about half of our revenue. We had to tighten our belt really quickly. We weren't really ready for that, we haven’t budgeted the beginning of our month to do that, so we had to get really creative. Using some of these strategies helped us to keep that plane above the tree level, navigating the cash crunch, or in my Indiana Jones analogy, outpaced the boulder so that we were able to make it through the end of the month.

I'm really excited to share this property management. I'll point out that I believe the property management industry has a massive opportunity right now. There are property management companies, especially in California, Florida, and Hawaii, that they are growing. March was one of their biggest growth months in adding new doors, in acquisitions, period, simply because there is a whole big shift in the market.

A lot of people are going to be needing property managers. We won't get really into that now but there's a lot of opportunity right now. Property management is a really safe place to be hedging against the market right now. Most property managers will probably have pretty good cash flow.

It's only the third and we're already seeing most people are paying rent on single family residential. They're not noticing much of a difference. They've had a few people reach out for payment arrangements, but all things, I'm saying is that it's basically normal. They're a little concerned about May, so this May become even more hyper relevant in the next month or beyond. I want everyone to pay attention to this.

Property managers, you guys are blessed right now, while a lot of businesses are just done. They're failing, their revenue is cut to zero, especially luxury markets, vacation markets, restaurants in a lot of situations. Businesses are closing, failing. This also is the perfect excuse for entrepreneurs that are not really committed to their business to get out, perfect excuse. A lot of people are going to take it. If you are not one of those people, and you're committed to making this work and you want to grow, reach out to DoorGrow, I want to make sure we help you capitalize on all this. Tim, let's get into these three things that we need to pay attention to.

Tim: There are three things to navigate, navigating mindset, navigating expenses, and navigating cash. I don't normally share this piece, but because of what you just so wisely shared just around the shame that sometimes entrepreneurs feel around money or like oh, I'm a failure or whatnot.

I'll tell you what. I think that being a leader is a lot of responsibility. Even if you're a leader of 1 or 100, it doesn't matter. It's that classic man in the arena story. It's not the critic who counts. I think that there's actually something incredibly skilled when an entrepreneur sees that things have changed, and they're ready to change with it. I think that that's actually a sign of prescience is the word, when we can see things that are coming and to act accordingly.

I also think that Verne Harnish has a great expression, he says, "Growth sucks cash." If you've been spending a lot of money to grow your company, and that's why you don't have a lot of cash to show for it, there's no shame in being ambitious either. There are mistakes of sloths, and there are mistakes of ambition. Mistakes of sloths are when we make mistakes because we're sitting on the couch not going for it and life passes us by. Mistake of ambition is when we were really going for it and things didn't work out.

Mistakes of ambition, it's even arguable to say that it's even a mistake at all. I just think if you're in a position where you’re a little tight on cash, or maybe a lot tight on cash, I get that the shame narrative is available and I don't know that I'd go there. First of all, it's not accurate, and secondly, it's not productive.

This leads us into our whole first of our three steps mindset, navigating mindset. Before anyone decides to tune out and say mindset is going to be the secret or some law of attraction, maybe more airy type topic. I assure you, it is not. I assure you that it is not.

In 2008 I had a real estate portfolio of my own, not a big portfolio, just four houses, but I ended up losing around $100,000 mostly of other people's money. Around that time, I also had a mentor who ended up being one of the two leaders of a $12 million Ponzi scheme. Didn't start as a Ponzi scheme but it became a Ponzi scheme, that's typically the way they go. His business partner is convicted in court, barred folding securities for 25 years, and ended up actually leaving the country. This is in Canada, where I'm from. It was extremely exhausting and stressful to go through all that and to see everything that was happening around me. It led to me developing an illness called Erythema nodosum.

Erythema nodosum is something there's no real cure for. You just have to wait it out. It's just bed rest. Your body really swells up and becomes so painful to walk that you can't, then it becomes so painful that you stand that you can't, and you end up just lying in bed every single day.

50% of cases are stress related. There's no way to know for sure, but I'm pretty sure mine was stress related. If you think an economic collapse like 2008 is bad, or an economic collapse like 2020 is bad... I'll tell you what's even worse is having economic collapse and also having a health collapse, where you actually can't do anything about your situation because you're in bed.

Thankfully, at the time, I had very, very, very few dependents, I had no teammates and so the impact, the blast radius was small, it was just on me. Had my mom not paid my mortgage for me for three months, I would have gone double bankrupt, my personal finance, my business finance.

Talk about an eye opener, and I was only 28. I was only 28 at the time. When I talk about the importance of managing mindset, this is absolutely crucial that we manage stress. I'll tell you, I've been not just through economic collapse, economic plus physical collapse, and it is not a pretty situation. You do not want to go through that.

Along the lines of how do we go about managing mindset, I think that there are a few important perspectives in addition to some of the obvious practices. I'll just start the obvious because it's pretty straightforward. Make sure you're getting some exercise even if it's just a walk on a treadmill, or a peloton bike, or something like that in your living room, whatever the case may be. Get some sunshine if you can, even though we're all locked indoors, that sunshine is super important. Diet, take care of that. Make sure you’re getting lots of water, maybe ease off on the booze a little bit too if you're someone who enjoys to imbibe a little bit.

Be good to your body. Probably the biggest of all, for most people, is actually sleep. Sleep is something that we can lose very quickly in times of turmoil and stress. You might need to turn to things like small meditation, reading, journaling, or something before bed to help take your mind off of some of the challenges of the day.

I'm telling you that it's absolutely crucial. When I look back at my sleep habits and actually have been keeping track of my sleep for years and years and years. Jason, I'd sleep for four hours and lay on the floor next to my computer, sleep. I'd work till 5:00 in the morning, I'd sleep four hours on the floor next to the computer and I would stand up, go pee, and go back to the computer and start working again. Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures, but there is such a thing as too high a price to pay.

Remember that this too shall pass. September 11th came, the world changed, and we got back to business in a new normal way. The housing crisis came, the world changed, and we got back to business in a new normal way.

Jason: Tim, I'm going to touch on what you just said real quick, interject. These are really basic things but they're showing some significant correlations between COVID-19 and melatonin, and nitric oxide in your blood, vitamin D. These are the basic principles of health. I have training for our clients called health secrets and it's these basics.

We talk about getting sleep, that's when melatonin starts to get produced in your brain. It's much higher in children, it gets less. You may want to supplement with that but getting good sleep, getting some sunlight, finding a way to get sunshine and sunlight on your body is going to be a big deal that releases nitric oxide from your skin into your blood, if vitamin D gets produced, these are basic. Sleep, nutrition, some physical activity, exercise, some sunshine, water and hydrate. This and all of that lowers your stress levels and it lowers our pressure and noise significantly.

I love that you're sharing that. Keep your stress levels as low as possible and start physiologically.

Tim: I think along with stress is this idea of engagement. I don't know if I need to share this part, but I'll say it just to be responsible. If someone is not engaged enough right now, you're not paying attention to what's going on in the world. If you're only at about a 6 or 7 out of 10 engagements, goodness gracious, it might be time to pick it up a bit.

If you're also to 9 or 10 engagements it's probably too high, you're over stimulated, you're over engaged. We need that 8 out of 10 where we're focused, pupils dilated just a little bit. Eye on the prize. I always say that panic isn't productive. It's important to be urgent, not anxious, to be urgent, not anxious.

Jason: I'm too Agilent right now. I'm excited and that's where I'm at. I love chaos, let's be honest. Maybe there are other entrepreneurs like that but when chaos happens, that's opportunity. That's where we get to be a light and we get to stand out, so I'm enjoying this even though it's uncomfortable.

Tim: Very nice, very nice. I think that two other mindset pieces, one is that it's important to actually protect relationships. Yes, I mean the personal relationships that we have in our life because they can be such a source of security, joy, and comfort. I also mean business relationships. We're going to get to the other side of this, and unlike other past catastrophes that were measured in years, I think, yes, our economic catastrophe is going to be measured in years on this one for sure. I think that in terms of months, I think this pandemic is going to be measured in months, not years and years and years.

One of my questions at each point is what is the state of the relationships of suppliers, vendors in the case of property managers, tenants, if you're managing on behalf of other people like your clients, your investors, and owners. What's the state of those relationships going to look like in three months from now, or six months from now when we're on the other side of this.

You might make it through, but do you still have people that respect you? I heard a story the other day of an entrepreneur that just cancelled all their credit cards and said well, everything's just going to fail in terms of expenses and I'm going to add back one by one the few things that make sense. It's a shortcut to just cutting expenses.

That's a way to go about it, but are you going to just supremely piss off everyone in the process? I think that protecting relationships is important to keep in mind. That doesn't mean that you're always bringing good news to everyone along the way, especially in the cutting expenses part of our presentation today. I think to be respected for being accountable, navigating agreements that you have with people rather than just abandoning them.

My other mindset piece is that early action is crucial. If you discover that you need to get alone, act now before more businesses are closing, and possibly soaking up some lending capacity, or even just work capacity that bankers have to fill out applications and whatnot.

If you discover you need to reduce a teammate's hours, tell them as early as possible so they can start making plans of their own personal and family finances. So that if a dip comes for them income-wise, they're prepared for it. If you can help them find a new opportunity elsewhere, do what you can to manage those relationships.

I got an interesting perspective from someone who used to have a business helping individuals, not businesses, but individuals navigate bankruptcy. He said one of the most common patterns he saw with people going through bankruptcy is they didn't cut expenses deep enough or soon enough, deep enough or soon enough.

I think that that's a very interesting perspective and maybe a usable guideline would be to say anything that's not going to help increase the profitability, and specifically cash coming into your business in the coming six months, I'd probably delay it. If you're thinking of a new website, if that's not going to immediately give you a bump in cash in the next six months, then let's put that on pause. We'll see if we can renegotiate it, put it on hold, delay it, or even cancel it.

I think that's a really powerful way and maybe for you, the number isn't six months, maybe it's three months or eight months, whatever. But if we can keep an eye on what's going to bring cash in, in that timeframe, that really makes decision making a lot easier around what expenses you can continue with and which do not.

This leads us to our second of the three steps of what we need to navigate and that is expenses. I think that something I'd say in my path of learning accounting and I even went and took night classes at the University of Alberta. I finally did go and take University accounting classes. It was not for credit though, they wouldn't let me into the for credit version, but they'd let me still sit in the classes and study. You know what, Jason, I got 100% of my midterm. I wanted to throw up my middle fingers as I walked into the room.

I can't complete calculus, I can't get into business school, but here I'm getting 100% of my midterm. How about that? How do you like them apples? One of the big ahas that I had is that in my brain, because we all grow up thinking about personal finance. I think in personal finance, we think if I make $1, I can spend $1, and $1 in is $1 out. If I want to go buy a car, a pair of jeans, or a pair of shoes, I just need to get that amount of income to be able to pay for the shoes, the jeans, or the car.

When it comes to business finance though it's a little bit different. To be able to buy $1 of expenses, we can't just make $1. It's because there's other expenses in the business. That's why we always talk about profit margin.

If I have $100,000 in revenue, and I've got $50,000 in expenses, then I have $50,000 in profit. My profit margin is 50%. What that means is at the end of that year, or quarter, that month, for me to have an extra dollar to go buy something the next month, quarter or year, I don't need to make $1, I actually need to make $2 because my profit margin is only 50%.

I have to make the $2 at the top, 50% gets stripped away by expenses. I'm left with $1 to now go and spend in the next month, quarter, or year. There's this idea, I invented it, it's called bloat factor. How many dollars do I have to sell at the top line to have $1 at the bottom line to be able to use and go and spend and buy something else in the coming month, quarter, or year?

It's very simple math. If you're at 50% profit margin, which very few businesses are—very, very, very, very, very few businesses are—then you'd have to earn $2 to have $1 at the bottom to be able to go and spend in the coming period. If I've got a 25% profit margin, I have to make $4 at the top to have $1 to go and spend. If I'm at a 10% profit margin, which a lot of businesses around that 10% margin mark, I have to go make $10 to be able to have one at the bottom.

Jason: This is super important for people to realize. A lot of us entrepreneurs, we look at our bank accounts and we think well, I've got $1 that we made. Now I can go buy this thing for $1. They think it's a one to one relationship. That's a huge mistake.

Tim: Whatever your business's profit margin is, you got to figure out the bloat factor. Let's just say for example, you're at a 10% profit margin, that means you have to make $10 to keep $1, your bloat factor is 10X. If you cut $1 of expense, you now don't have to sell 10X that in revenue to be in the exact same place.

For example, this is actually an extraordinary story Jason, this going to blow your mind. I talked to one of my private consulting clients here. He and I had like uh-oh, the crisis is coming call like three weeks ago. He cut $9,000 a month in recurring revenue. Does that mean that he doesn't need to sell $9,000 in the coming year? Well, of course not, because it's recurring expenses.

Jason: I was going to say he lost them?

Tim: No, no, no. He cut $9,000 per month of expenses. At his profit margin, his bloat factor is 8.7. $9,000 times 12 months in a year times 8.7, he does not have to sell $944,882 in the coming year. He cut the need to sell a million dollars just by cutting $9,000 a month in expenses. That is mind expanding.

Jason: We have pretty healthy profit margins at DoorGrow, we’re pretty tight. We're a virtual team but we cut a ton of expenses. Maybe if we have time, I could list some of the crazy actions that we took to help make sure that we cash flowed. It makes a ton of sense to me.

Tim: Big time. I'll just take a super simple example. I actually set up a calculator which we'll play with in the free webinar you and I will do. We'll play with the bloat calculator a little bit. If I have a profit margin of 10%—not uncommon for businesses—my bloat factor would be 10. If all I removed was $250 a month, that's it, $250 a month of recurring expenses, canceling subscriptions, canceling unused services, access to different websites and whatnot, I would not have to sell $30,000 in the coming year. $250 a month does not sound like that much to cut, and yet a 10X bloat factor, that's $30,000 you do not have to sell anymore.

You tell me what's easier, finding $250 a month and cutting it, or going out and generating $30,000 in new revenue in the coming year?

Jason: Especially right now for us. My accountant was really impressed with me. We cut $10,000 in monthly expenses, depending on what our profit margin is. That can be pretty significant for us as well in terms of how much sales we don't have to do to make it each month. That's made it breathable for us significantly.

Tim: When you talk about being able to survive and thrive even when sales go down, you just created a situation for yourself where you don't have to sell as much. Even if sales go down, you can still meet it at a lower sales level and still get by which is really incredible.

Jason: I met with my accountant last night and we mapped out the month with all the recurring revenue that we have coming in. If we do no sales this month, we will make it.

Tim: I love that.

Jason: We’ve pivoted quickly and reduced the expenses, but right now it’s a great opportunity for property managers to grow and we're offering some crazy deals. Hopefully, we'll also be doing some sales this month and making a big difference.

Tim: I love that. I think you were sharing offline about how all these Airbnbs are now switching to long term rental. They got smoked out of the market and now they just want to go back to traditional long term rentals. So there's all this flood towards property managers. For a property manager that knows how to convert an Airbnb into a standard long term rental, ready to rock, and knows how to find those deals, goodness gracious, this could be a really revolutionary time.

Jason: There are several channels right now for growth and each one is going to get bigger. Property managers right now, they can capitalize on it. We're pushing our clients aggressively to start taking action on these things right now.

Tim: That's so exciting. There's another way that we can navigate the cash crunch even if sales go down. It's not just by managing expenses but it's also by navigating cash. Let's get into the third and final step in navigating the cash crunch. The free webinar that we're gonna do in approximately a week from now, we're actually going to do live exercises. We're actually going to share screens and you're actually going to see this spreadsheet in action. It's super simple. Anyone can do it. It can be a game changer.

Of the multi-million dollar companies that I've helped save, some of them I didn't even do private consulting with. They just came, they know your numbers, or they heard me talk about just this one tool, The Cash Flow Forecast. They use it religiously when they're in a tough spot and it helps them get through. It's very exciting.

There's actually two parts to this. The very first is actually understanding how much cash can I actually touch right now? There's a big difference between cash and free cash. Cash is the amount of money that's in the bank if you add up your checking and savings accounts. That's cash. Free cash on the other hand, we have to deduct some money out of that total cash to get the free cash to know what we can actually work with. From our total cash amount, we need to set aside committed costs.

Committed cost is any amount of money you've promised that you're going to pay. Let's say for example a website, I've signed a legal agreement to get a new website done. If I don't manage that agreement to delay the project, I'm on the hook for it. If that's a $10,000 cash outflow that's coming up in two weeks from now, that is a committed cost. I haven't received the service yet but I've committed to receiving the service or the product for that matter.

Jason: It's money that's earmarked. It's money that is going to disappear. If you can't pay it, it could cause some serious problems.

Tim: Big time, getting all the way back to that whole topic about managing relationships even through the tough times.

The second category that we need to earmark some cash is payables. Let's say that you already had the website built. It was finished last week. You've enjoyed the service. You've received the service or the product for that matter. You're on net 30 terms or net 60 terms and now you got to pay that person. That's a payable.

Now, one of the biggest payables that is unavoidable is death is taxes. Thankfully, the payment deadline in the United States has been extended, which allows for some cash flow breathing room for entrepreneurs, which is very important right now. I would do my best to get clear and make sure that I've got a separate account for tax. I actually have a separate bank account. It's a little profit first esque or Richest Man in Babylon esque that there's a separate account for income tax and that's where I would hold my income tax.

Jason: I have that too. The idea is to have it at a bank that is difficult to get into. That's completely a normal thing.

Tim: You don't know the pin. You give it to someone else. Two keys to authenticate and turn to open the vault.

Jason: The worst online bank ever or something like that.

Tim: Or the brick and mortar bank that has no online, something like that. After committed costs and payables including income tax, we also need to remove or set aside any deposits that we've got. This is huge in property management because we have deposits from tenants. You can't really spend that money, it's not money that you've earned. It's just money that you're holding as a deposit so we got to park that on the sidelines.

Then from there, whatever amount that you've got to pay in credit card debt or any other very short term, high interest debt. Most credit cards are 10% more. If you've got all kinds of rewards on your card, you probably are facing 19.99% or 21.95% interest. We really want to make sure that we're getting that paid off at the end of each month or else we're facing colossal interest rates. I would earmark that money to hold to the side as well.

Then from there, there's two more. The next one is ultra-short term debt that you need to pay. Short term debt in accounting refers to any debt that's due this year. A Tim Francisism ultra-short term is in the next 30 days. If there's any portion of debt that you need to pay down in the next 30 days, I would earmark that cash as well because if you don't pay it, a lot of small business loans have liens or guarantees against your house. You might lose your house if you don't pay it, or you don't renegotiate that payment because there are some circumstances now where banks and different lenders are allowing you to skip the payment right now because of what's going on.

Our last category where we need to earmark and subtract cash, I actually have a whole separate account in my bank for this particular category, is what's called Unearned Revenue. I don't think that's as big in property management candidly. For example, for someone who's offering other services, unearned revenue can be the difference between life and death to know what is earned and what's not. For example, if someone hires me for a year of consulting and they pay in a block amount of money at the start of the year, they pay the whole year in advance, I can only touch 1/12th of that with each month that goes by because it's unearned revenue until I've delivered that guidance for the year.

Understanding our starting point of actual free cash is the first part of managing cash, and then the second part is to build out what we call a cash flow forecast. It's very simple. It's 13 weeks which is 90 days, just three months. We simply plot into the cash flow forecast where we've got cash coming in and cash going out. Jason, would it be appropriate for me to just show a screenshot of a cash flow forecast or should we wait until the webinar?

Jason: The podcast listeners won't see it so let's get that, we’ll show it on the webinar. They'll just be listeners but it's pretty cool. I'll give you a testimonial related to this. I met with my accountant. We're mapping out all the recurring revenue that we have at DoorGrow and figuring out what expenses. We basically went through this. She started doing this manually in a spreadsheet real time, basically doing exactly what your spreadsheet does. She was figuring out which things are going to hit, what are the due dates for these. We're figuring it all out. I was like that's so funny because Tim has a thing that does this.

She took me through it manually to make sure that our cash flow situation is going to be good because it's not just hey, this month we're going to make X number of dollars. We're going to have X number of expenses and we're okay. It's maybe at the beginning of the month, you have a whole bunch of things that are running and you're making that revenue later in the month or however it might work. You need to make sure it's all going to be timed perfectly. That's the brilliance of your cash flow thing because if it ever dips below zero, you're dead. It goes into the red, that's death. You have to make sure that you always know when things are going to hit and this is what your spreadsheet does, which is pretty brilliant.

Tim: I agree. I totally agree. I'll tell you, when people are calling you every single day to collect money, 29 days is an extremely long time. It is an eternity. Being clear about when money is arriving, not just by the month to your point, but to the week. To be very clear about when cash is leaving to the week, and making sure that not you or anyone in your team is sending cash out the door too soon especially without other people like a bookkeeper helping or an executive assistant helping to pay different bills, if you don't direct your team on when to pay bills, people in your office or on your team, they might just pay the bills when they come in. They just might pay it exactly the same day that they open the envelope or they get the statement online. They're like oh, well, I was just doing my job. I was just paying this because it came in.

You got to give your teammates leadership, guidance, vision, and direction on items like this especially in a cash crunch. People oftentimes ask me Tim, this tool is brilliant. How often should I be looking at it? I say that you look at the tool as often as you need to, relative to two factors.

Number one, how low is your plane flying relative to the treetops? This is just the analogy we talked about earlier. If your wheels are clipping the tree tops and those trees might take your plane down, then you're looking at that cash flow forecast possibly every single week to make absolutely damn sure that you're getting the money in that you're expecting on that week, and you're not sending money out any earlier than you're supposed to on that week.

Jason: Even daily.

Tim: A hundred percent. The clients that I have that weren't had multimillion dollar businesses which can have a lot of complexity, moving parts, people, teammates, products, clients, and all the rest, they would literally have it open every single day just to make sure things were coming and going, that all the trains are running on time because there was no margin for error.

The other reason why you'd want to have your cash flow forecast updated in front of mine regularly is if there's a lot of turbulence in the air. Whether you're flying close to the trees or not close to trees. If you got a lot of altitude, that's great. But if there's a lot of turbulence, that can do a lot of damage to your plane as well. Maybe you're not looking at it every single day, maybe not even every single week, but at least once a month. I hate making absolute statements because there's always an exception to the rule, but more or less 100% of entrepreneurs are in turbulence right now because of the climate that we're operating in. This is not a situation, it's limited to a city, a state, or even a country. This is worldwide.

The cash flow forecast is how you make sure that you've got oxygen in your tank and that you can keep moving. Without that oxygen in the tank, doesn't matter how big and fast your flippers are to generate revenue. You got to have the cash in the oxygen tank.

If you do hit any spots where you've got red on your cash flow forecast and you need to manage that crisis line, there are a lot of different strategies. Some of the more obvious strategies would be applying for some of the SBA loans. The only downside to that is we don't know when they're going to arrive.

Secondly, bank lines of credit or if you've got access to them already and they're just sitting unused, that becomes an option. There's raising money from family and friends or an investor. If you wanted to, this is maybe less attractive for most entrepreneurs, we can actually sell shares in your company to raise money. There's also just the simple renegotiating if you need to pay something. Let's say it's $5,000, it's in three weeks from now, and that's when your first red square hits on the cash flow forecast, that's your crisis line. If you're going to be short just $1,000 or something, maybe you could call that person that you owe the money and say can I make it in two payments? I'll pay you in three weeks half, and then one week after that the other half. Lo and behold, just by splitting to 2 payments over 14 days instead of once, all of a sudden you've made up the difference and now all your squares are green. Now you've got not three weeks of safety, but five weeks of safety.

Jason: The plane can fly through all of those and knock at the trees.

Tim: Hundred percent. The thing is there's a lot of conversation out there about how we have to pivot our businesses and how we have to change our sales and our marketing. I think that is all extremely important conversation to have, absolutely crucial conversation to have. Inevitably, if we're going to pivot our offerings in any way, shape, or form, it's going to take time to roll them out. If it's going to take, say, four weeks to come up with a new offering of some special for an Airbnb owners that want to convert into long term rental, if you need to create a marketing campaign to identify those people, if you need to train up your staff to call certain Airbnb to see if they're distressed. Whether it's people, projects, processes, offers that you're rolling out, it's going to take some time. Even if you do it really quickly, it will probably still take at least a month, if not a few months, to be able to make that pivot and to make that implementation.

It doesn't matter if you've got the best idea. It takes four weeks to roll out, but you only have two weeks of cash. That's like building a brand new airplane that's the world's fastest, sexiest, coolest, most comfortable, smoothest plane in the world, but if you only give it 100 yards of runway, it's not going to take off. It's just not.

Jason: To boil this down real simple for those listening, all these opportunities for growth, it does not matter if your business doesn't cash flow. It's going to fail. Cash flow first and then let's get you focused on growth.

Tim: Cash can come from different places. It can come from loans and other places, not just from revenue. To your point, Jason, I just think there are so many opportunities on the other side of this. We just have to make sure we have enough runway. Surprisingly, amidst this entire thing, I'd say the thesis of all of this is that the most important factors in navigating a cash crunch is actually not cash itself. It's actually time. Time is what we're playing for and cash gets us time.

By getting time, we can now get out of panic. We can get back to being calm, clear because we've got a cash flow forecast. You can see what's coming down the pipe. We're confident because you know the exact steps you need to take and because we're clear, confident, and calm, now we can be creative to take advantage of the opportunities that are coming down the pipe. That is the name of the game. Those three steps, navigating mindset, navigating expenses, and navigating cash are how we build the runway that we then can launch off whatever the new opportunities are to take us into the new economy.

Jason: I had Michael McCalla on the show. I've worked with Al Sharpton as a coach. One of the things Al would say is if you lower the pressure noise for an entrepreneur, that's where their brilliance and genius comes out. One of the things Michael Mccalla talked about is that when we have constraints or limitations which this market is creating, it's going to create innovation. If you give somebody the Pareto principle, if you give somebody an endless amount of time to do whatever, they don't have to innovate.

We're innovating crazy inside DoorGrow. My team members are getting new ideas. We release some contractors. Our salaried staff are figuring out new ways of doing things, ways to save money, ways that are more efficient, ways that are faster. These are big opportunities right now for you and your team to give them some constraints, have them work with you on lowering expenses, solving the cash crunch crisis that you may be experiencing, and allowing innovation creativity to happen. If you can keep your presence calm, your team will be there as well. This is a step towards that.

Tim: Did you want to share with folks maybe a little bit about our presentation we're doing next week? We're actually walking people through building a cash flow forecast.

Jason: Yeah. Let's just touch on the details. It's going to be on Thursday, what day is that?

Tim: April the 9th.

Jason: It's going to be on April 9th. It's going to be 11:00. Our time, we're both in Austin, Central, which is 9:00 AM Pacific noon Eastern. What are we going to be sharing during this? What are you going to be sharing with everyone?

Tim: You bet. First of all, folks, go to navigatethecashcrunch.com/doorgrow. I know podcast listeners won't be able to see this, but Jason, I'll just share my screen so you can see it. We've got Navigate the Cash Crunch with Tim Francis and Jason Hull. It's happening Thursday, April 9th, 2020 at 11:00 AM Central, which is Chicago time just like Jason just shared. In it, we'll be sharing the three step process we've talked about today. We're not going to go into as much detail into mindset because we talked about it here today already. We'll cover a few tools around expense management. The real star of the show is building your very own cash flow forecast.

You can register for that webinar at navigatethecashcrunch.com/doorgrow. What you'll get is access to the training. You also get the cash flow forecast template as well, which you can just drop into your very own computer and get to work with seeing where your crisis line is. Hopefully, it's not too close and from there, seeing the exact path to navigating safely.

If you happen to be listening to this podcast episode of the DoorGrow Show after the webinars already happened, so after April the 9th, 2020, no problem. You can still go back to the exact same URL. You can see the resources and the replays there so that you are not left in the dark.

Jason: navigatethecashcrunch.com/doorgrow.

Tim: Yes, indeed. Absolutely. Maybe you guys can throw that in the show notes or something like that for anyone listening to the podcast.

Jason: Absolutely.

Tim: That's that. I think that somewhat as a final thought on my end over here. It's just that deep down inside, we as entrepreneurs, we take on a lot to be great leaders. I do view property managers as entrepreneurs. I hope they do too, because they are there. They're doing the courageous things of entrepreneurs every single day. Sometimes leadership isn't easy. Sometimes it has uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes it has uncomfortable moments. I think that there's something really beautiful about getting clear on where we are.

Oftentimes we talk about our goals and what's the most important to us, but we also have to be very clear about where we are. Getting to Austin, Texas is very different if you're starting in Chicago versus Waikiki. Knowing where we are right now with free cash, and then from there being able to map the path with our cash flow forecast, it really creates calm, it really creates clarity. Therefore, it really creates confidence which then creates creativity that we can now take on this new economy.

Something I am very sure about is not anyone including myself could have specific data around this. I just know my gut, Jason, that the economy that we had two months ago, it's over. It's gone. I don't just mean bull versus bear. What I mean is the way we did business once upon a time is forever changed. I'm very nervous for what kind of discomfort is coming for anyone who thinks that how we used to do things is coming back to what it used to be.

As we chart into these new territories, I think being able to be calm, clear, confident, and creative is the path. It takes courage and just a couple simple tools to be able to have that. I think that if we're operating from clear facts and confidence, we become lighthouses that can attract what we need to attract into our worlds, and also fend away what we need to fend away. We're not left making super emotional decisions.

One of my mentors, his name is Keith Cunningham, he talks about emotion and intelligence often working inverse of one another. The more emotional we are, which is really saying the more that we're in our amygdala, the less that we're in the frontal lobe of our brain, the less our executive functioning is there and the less that we're able to make intelligent, clear, confident decisions.

On the flip side, the more that we can make calm, clear, confident decisions, the less that we become really emotional about what's going on. That's not to say we're not passionate. We are so passionate about our businesses. Yes, emotion has its right place. We just don't want to get stuck making decisions or taking action that we may regret down the road.

Jason: Absolutely. Tim, thanks for coming on the show. Everybody else, make sure you tune in when we do our presentation. For those listening, watch the replay. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

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May 5, 2020

The COVID-19 craziness has caused people to stress out and scramble to work remotely. This crisis is pushing everything forward technologically. Why not hire a virtual assistant (VA) to scale your property management business?

Today’s guest is Daniel Ramsey of MyOutDesk. Daniel is a real estate investor/broker who loves doing deals, and property management is a way to connect with others and create communities. But he also wants time to take a vacation with his family!

You’ll Learn...

[02:52] MyOutDesk: Property managers find talent to inexpensively scale their business.

[04:05] MLS Porn: Scrolling through new investment properties on the market.

[05:05] Remote Reality: In 2018, 5% of America worked remotely, now it’s 50%.

[07:58] Work Culture: Maintain good team, quality interaction, and customer service; and reduce operational/overhead costs.

[15:00] Steps to Scale: Assess business, compound leverage, develop plan, craft outcome, start interviewing, launch, and training.

[25:48] Match Values, Not Personalities: Define who you are as a person and company.

[33:15] Go Remote Guide: Tips for working remotely with new technology.

[35:08] Push vs. Pull Leadership: Communicate, don’t micromanage.

[44:15] MyOutDesk Mission: VAs need to be indispensable and irreplaceable.

[46:15] Pricing vs. Cash Crunch: Do you need help? Can you afford MyOutDesk? [53:52] Care ROI Concept: Emotion is what creates memories.

Tweetables

I had a need in my own real estate practice. I hired a virtual assistant. I was like, ‘Wow, this works.’

Leverage is compound interest and entrepreneurs’ biggest swing.

When I hire somebody, I'm hiring them to grow my revenue. I'm hiring them to save money. I'm hiring them to own an entire process for my business.

The biggest cure for the economy is businesses and entrepreneurs staying productive.

Resources

MyOutDesk

Go Remote Guide (text MOD to 31996)

MLS

Mark Spain

Bluefishing by Steve Sims

DGS 126: Streamline Inquiries in Your Property Management Business with LetHub 0

Transcript

Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker.

DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.

Today, we have a really cool guest. He is Daniel Ramsey, over at MyOutDesk. Daniel, welcome to the show.

Daniel: Thanks for having me, Jason. I'm so glad to be here.

Jason: Daniel and I were talking a little bit in the green room chatting up a little bit about what's going on. It's a little bit crazy right now, with COVID-19 and Coronavirus, and all this stuff, the real estate market looks scary. We may get into that a little bit in the show, but our topic today is using a virtual assistant to scale your property management business with MyOutDesk. Before we get into that, Daniel, what I want to hear about your background, your entrepreneurial journey and that should lead us right into the inception of MyOutDesk.

Daniel: Yes, sure, man. I love the show. I'm really grateful to be here. I agree, I'm a real estate guy. I love doing deals and property management is just such a great way to connect and create community, and also, it's a great place for deal flow if you're a buyer and want long-term wealth. I love being here. I'm a real estate investor, myself, real estate broker, contractor, mortgage guy, developer, broker, this is my world. I love it.

In fact, you'll love this story. My wife and I, we've got two little girls who will drive in the neighborhood and I'm like, "baby, baby, open house, I gotta go look at it," and she's like, "fine, just go." I'm a real estate guy, I love what I do. We help property managers basically find talent and inexpensively scale their business. The topic is timely.

Our business was started because I had a need in my own real estate practice. I hired a virtual assistant. I was like, wow, this works. My wife and I went on our honeymoon, and as many entrepreneurs, I brought my laptop on my honeymoon. I'm in Guatemala in a rainforest, and I'm at the bar at like 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and the bartender in Spanish is making fun of me. He's basically saying things like dumb Gringo, his wife's here, beautiful woman just married, why is he still working? At that moment, I knew something had to shift in my world, and that's when we started to scale and really use leverage at a high level.

Jason: I would imagine that most of our partners as entrepreneurs go through quite a bit, and they don't always appreciate us doing things like that.

Daniel: My wife calls it MLS porn for me, because at night, I'm scrolling through all the new investment properties that came on the market. I'm really lucky to marry her, and she's understanding. But at the same time I wanted to stay married, and I wanted to have a kid, and a family, and I knew I needed leverage in my business. I wanted to be able to take a vacation.

Jason: I'm sure you have kids at home right now.

Daniel: That's right.

Jason: Me too, it's crazy. One of them just came in to hand me an Xbox controller so I could give them access because I control that, crazy. I'm on air, they don't care. They're like, dad, this is important.

Daniel: This is the deal. This is what we're in, and it's crazy timing because we have this call like a month ago, and we're in a crazy place. In 2018, 5% of America worked remotely, 5%. Last week, that number went to 50%, in one week.

Jason: The rest are probably not even working.

Daniel: Yeah. Here's the thing, as a company, one of the things that we've been doing is we've been remote for 13 years, 100%. We're about 1300 people. If you're listening right now, we figured out how to scale a business remotely with 1300 people, and serve clients like property managers, real estate brokers, investors, flippers, that's what we do.

In the last couple of weeks, we've helped more companies just understand the tools required, what systems you have to put in place, how to communicate with your people when they're not physically in your office. We put together a whole like go remote guide that we're going to give away in the show, basically, just to help things like what you just said.

We were just on a conference call with our largest client and his two and a half year old son just, hey, daddy, I need more Cheerios. This is just how it is now.

Jason: Yeah, that is what it is. There's all these funny videos you'll see online where you've got like some guy on the news and his kid walks in, in a diaper, and then the wife's crawling on the floor because she thinks she's not on camera trying to pull it out, these things. The world we live in, we're fathers, we run companies, there are moms that run companies, and I don't think there's anything that needs to be hidden.

It's not like there's something shameful that you have kids or that you have a personal life. For those that are watching this or listening, just own that. It's totally okay, everybody likes to see that you're a real person anyway, instead of just a suit and a tie stuck behind a desk all the time. It's a lot more relatable I would imagine. I've got four kids. I'm slightly insane, I think, and it's crazy, and they need to be quieter, hey guys be quieter.

Daniel: That's awesome.

Jason: I started my company Open Potion the corporation back in 2008 right around the time everything was falling apart then. I've just worked from home. I've been virtual, my team members are in Toronto, New York, wherever. We've got some in the Philippines. A while ago, there's always a stigma connected to those that were remote, especially if they were not in America.

I think that we're going to see some crazy shifts that are going to be happening. One, every company that’s like, “We can’t have people working from home, how will we know that they're actually going to do work?” These things, these concerns, now you have to. If you want them to work, they're working from home. Your office is shut down, you're not doing business.

Everybody's figuring out in this new environment, and they're scrambling. I'm sure companies like Zoom are just going to go gangbusters, but this is the new world that we live in. I think it's going to push everything forward technologically which is exciting, and it's going to cut out a lot of bullshit. All the fluff that was just bloated in companies is just eating up resources, like people are just going to realize after this why do we need this $20,000 a month office space for this big corporate building?

All these things are going to be shifting, and we're going to have this new culture as a result of everybody being forced to stay indoors and work from home. I think that's going to open people up to the idea that, hey, I can have team members and they don't have to be right geographically near me. I can find the best that are anywhere, and find people that are lower costs, and figure this out. People are going to be a lot more open that have been closed to it before.

I imagine this will be really good for companies like yours, to be able to help people out and help people see that you can still maintain a really good team, and quality interaction, and customer service, and you can lower your operational costs, or at least make a more healthy cash flowing business by reducing some of these overhead expenses that you have in the company.

I was hanging out on a really great course with training over the last few days with a financial coach. One of the phrases, I don't know who said it but he made this joking comment that overhead walks on two legs. Basically saying people are the biggest piece of overhead a lot of times that we might have in a company.

I want to point out, that was a really humble intro you gave, but in the written intro I have here you've got 10 years of experience serving more than 5000 clients, including over half of the real trends, top 10 Real Estate teams.

Daniel: Right.

Jason: Your company has already got a who's who list of clientele as far as real estate businesses go.

Daniel: Yup.

Jason: You've built real estates' number one staffing company, and it says you've worked with some of the top clients in the industry from sales organizations like the Mark Spain team to tech providers, like the Zillow Group, Keller Williams, and RE/MAX, and so you sound like you're a pretty cool connected guy as well.

Daniel: Maybe connected. I don't know about cool, though. What we do, and I love this. We have a property manager who's in Austin, and I really love this guy.

Jason: That's where I'm at.

Daniel: Okay, cool. You guys are neighbors. He manages half a billion dollars of commercial real estate, and he's like one of these guys that's just freaking brilliant. I'm like, hey, what are you doing? He's like, I'm sitting with my son and looking at deals. He's middle age, and he's really had a lot of success, but he called us because he had four property managers, a bookkeeper, and an office manager. Five people running half a billion of real estate, and he's like, hey, my people are overworked. I'm worried that nobody's taking vacations. Everybody works on Saturdays and Sundays, and our systems aren't tight.

Jason: Burnout is coming.

Daniel: Exactly. They had a system that didn't have all the information in it. They had basic terms, but every lease is different. Some tenants are paying for maintaining their HVAC, some are not. He had all of these leases that nobody had actually put into the system. Every time somebody called and said my roof is leaking, he'd be like, okay, we'll call you back, and then they have to dig up the lease, and we have the lease and say, who do we call? Is it our responsibility, or is it their responsibility? Five hours later, they're responding to what could be a really big deal like damage everywhere for the tenants.

We started working with him about two years ago, and we started helping him with SOPs, Standard Operating Procedures. We started helping them take their leases and get him into the system, which is any basic scale a business grows, a business scenario.

We gave him a book like an AP, AR person, so now his really talented bookkeeper who's managed his whole financial world for his entire career has time in her day to think strategically, and save money for the company. What we did is all the property managers got in the system. We basically gave them somebody to run their system so that there was a person who could enter data and just make sure the system was clean.

The bookkeeper got an assistant, and now all of a sudden he's poised for what are some phenomenal growth years that he's had in the last couple of years. It didn't change his world. It really didn't, because we're $21,000 a year for a full-time employee. If you think about that, half a billion dollars making all the rents, literally for almost $100,000 now he's not going to lose his team.

That's our story. That's what we do for really big companies like Zillow, and all the way down to small investors who own 5 or 10 properties and just need somebody to help the day to day, keep things running.

Jason: Let's get into how this process works. Let's take a typical listener of the show, they're probably maybe a property manager, entrepreneur. Maybe they've got about 200 to 400 doors that they're managing, largely single family residential. They might have a property manager by now or two. They've got maybe somebody having maintenance coordination, and everybody on their team is telling them that they're maxed out on time, because that's what always happens. Every team member is maxed out on time, and they feel like I can't afford to hire anybody right now. Every appointment back on time, and then they call you up.

Let's go through the process here of what it would look like maybe for one of these clients to start a conversation and work with you.

Daniel: Sure, Jason. I don't want this to be a commercial for us. What I want to do is if you're listening right now, like what the steps that I'm going to go through are the steps to determine how to scale your business. Even though these are our steps, you can actually write these things down and go through the step by step process. Whether you hire us or not, this is the process that we know works, because we've done it 5000 times.

The first step is just really assess your business. We do a strategy call with all of our clients where we do a one on one video conference, just like you and I are right now on video, and we go through things like who's on your team, what are your systems. When I say systems, like where are you putting all the information?

Do you have a voice phone system so that when people call, you can transfer that number around. A lot of property managers do but some actually don't, and you can imagine during this Coronavirus what happens if you're a property manager and you had regular phones tied to an office that you can't go to anymore.

What do you do? We're looking at who's on your team. We're looking at what your systems are, what tech do you have right now to operate, and then we're looking at what your processes are. Talk to me about what happens when you have to turn a tenant over, talk to me about what happens when you put a property out to lease, what's the step by step process. Who owns that process, and so we'll go through those three things in our first strategy call and really identify what's your highest value leverage, and we have this process and I liked it. I love thinking like this.

Leverage can be just like compound interest. You can have compound leverage, meaning you as the business owner, or your managers, or the people on your staff can offload some of the not very valuable process based day to day repetitive stuff that you just don't need to do, and then you get two or four hours back of your day, and then you can take those hours and help build your business, and then you get a compounding effect with leverage.

That's the next step is what do we need to do to start taking advantage of compound leverage? If you or your team gave up some stuff, how would you then drive revenue for your business or increase your value for your customers? What would you do to really scale and grow if you got half your day back?

Jason: You do the strategy call. You figure out team systems attack, you're going over their processes. You're identifying the highest value leverage, I think it's a cool idea of compound leverage. And then what would you do next? What would you recommend next?

Daniel: It's developing your plan. From that guy that owns half a billion dollars in property to the person who's got 100 homes, every single person has opportunity. It's standard blocking and tackling in business. We're doing a needs analysis for you. We're saying, okay, what do you need to do now, or who do you need to hire on your team now? It's always been developed with the plan moving forward.

Any company like ours who says, oh, we'll just hire somebody for you tomorrow, be scared. Just be scared, because as an entrepreneur, leverage is your biggest swing, it's where you can get the most value for your dollars, you really have to be strategic about it. Step two is what's my plan? What systems do I need in order to do this virtual thing like what we're talking about going remote? Who do I need? What do I need? What conversations need to happen for my internal team?

What planning do I need to make? Let's create an outcome statement. You could call step three crafting an outcome. Another thing that's unique about our businesses is we don't do job descriptions, areas of responsibility. I don't say anything wrong, there's nothing wrong with that, but what we do is we create outcomes. For instance, when I hire somebody, I'm hiring them to grow my revenue, I'm hiring them to save money, I'm hiring them to own an entire process for my business. We will help you craft and create a plan that really adds value to your business, so that you're getting a 3 or 4 times return on the $21,000 that you're going to pay us.

Jason: You're crafting an outcome, you've developed the plan. You've done the strategy call, you develop the plan. You've crafted this outcome, and then what's the next step?

Daniel: At that point, we know exactly what you want to accomplish. As a company, what we'll do is we'll take that outcome, we'll craft a series of interviews with somebody who has experience doing that thing. One challenge that we have in the outsourcing virtual assistant world is you can go on Upwork and hire somebody from India for $3 an hour, and that's what most people think about when they think of outcomes, or outsourcing, or virtual assistants.

The thing is we're a virtual professional company. We are very strategic, we hire people who've done it before, who've been there before, who have served that outcome in the past. If you need somebody to answer the phones and be a prospector for you, or handle like client calls or tenant calls. We're going to find somebody who they've been 10 years doing that. They may not be property management, but they've been 10 years on the phone handling concerns and being a support mechanism for businesses similar or very like yours.

The next step is to get three to five people right in front of you, so you can interview them, and you can choose somebody who is a great cultural fit plus an expertise and experience.

Jason: I love the idea because I think cultural fit is the most important piece to look at first. A lot of people, well, they're great for this job. They look great on paper, they know how to do this job, but if it's not a good cultural fit, and I find as an entrepreneur if you don't feel comfortable around them… There's a great book by a really cool guy called Steve Sims called Bluefishing, and he talks about it in it. He calls it The Chug Test. He's like, what I want to go chug a beer with this person, if the answer's no, like then there's a disconnect, there's a problem. He uses the chug test with clients and different things.

I think on our team, it's really important that everybody on our team exists to lower our pressure and noise. They exist to help move the business forward towards our outcomes. If there's resistance there, or discomfort there, and you're adding more and more team members like that, you're building a business you don't even feel like being involved in. It's very important, I think, for us as entrepreneurs to be really conscious of how we feel around our team members.

Daniel: I can tell you I've hired people before and you have it too. If you're listening right now, it's interesting because I think this is a mistake that we make as entrepreneurs, we either hire people that we really like, or we hire people who know the job, and have expertise or experience doing the job. The reality is you need both. You've got to enjoy them, or at least feel like there's a fit in who you are and what you think, but they also have to be an expert at what they do, or a professional in our world.

I can always tell when I'm talking to somebody who understands growing and scaling a business because they say what you just said, Jason. I appreciate it.

Jason: I'll add, I think one of the biggest mistakes I've seen entrepreneurs make in trying to grow, or scale their business, or hire in their team is that the biggest mistake we make is that we try to hire somebody like our self a lot of times. We have a natural rapport for people that are like us. In NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, they teach if you mirror or communicate at the same pace of these sorts of things, then you can build artificial rapport, or build real rapport perhaps really quickly. But, the challenge is we also tend to have a blind spot and hire people that are like us.

A lot of times, the people that we need to do a certain job, or not the entrepreneurial, visionary, cowboy personality type, or whatever personality type you are as an entrepreneur. You might need a different personality type for that role, and sometimes we're trying to get people like us, which we don't even want to do those things, and we're trying to put them into that role. We need to find people that love and enjoy doing that particular thing that we don't want to do. Somewhat, they need to be different from us, but we need to be able to have a relationship with them that feels comfortable and feels good and that we value. We enjoy being around them or having them on our team.

Daniel: Some things I'm going to add because I'm a nerd. I love people, I love growing and scaling. I think there's another possibility which is when values match. If you're very clear about what your values are as a human and a business, then you can be with somebody who maybe doesn't match up with your personality, because you feel like you at least have that commonality and value.

Jason: You guys trust them.

Daniel: Yeah, exactly. One of our values as a family is we take care of our people. I teach my kids, we don't give up. I naturally gravitate to people who care about people, and who have a bit of grit. Defining who you are as a person and defining who you are as a company, and having those values can help you in selecting somebody who you may not love hanging out with, but there's a value match, and they have an expertise match. Things just jive as a company.

Jason: I find that's one of the biggest flaws that I see in property management businesses, probably any business. As entrepreneurs go from the stage of solopreneur to building a team, they build a team around them but they're operating like a solopreneur. They're trying to micromanage them. They're viewing these people as people that are supposed to be extensions of them in some way, and instead of building a team around them, of people that are taking things off of their plate and their jobs to lower their pressure and noise, they're hiring people for jobs, people for roles they think the business needs instead of what they need.

In order to hire a team and build a team around you that is what you need as an entrepreneur, there needs to be clear values. Those need to be defined. That's one of the foundational things we coach clients through is getting clear on their business, why we get entrepreneurs personal why, how those connect, creating, figuring out their core values. If they don't have that, they don't have culture. Culture comes from the entrepreneur, and it's the business that is supposed to exist to serve the entrepreneurs needs in some way, and it's also supposed to exist to solve a problem in the marketplace.

If they have those things in alignment, it significantly affects their ability to close deals and create trust. That speeds up rapidly. If they don't have that, then not only are they having challenges with that, but they also have a team around them that they have to micromanage, that they always feel like they have to tell what to do, and that are not believers in them or in the business because they've never given them anything you believe in.

Having a team of believers feels great. You feel like you're Iron Man. You feel like you've got the super suit, you've got all these people supporting you. We had an issue this morning, there was a client that had a product or something and they were frustrated or upset because they didn't do any of the work and they didn't get the results, obviously. They didn't do some things that needed to be done, didn't show up any calls, that didn't do anything.

We want this client to get a result. One of my team members is brilliant at coaching and helping clients just feel the negative energy and transform it. He's just a brilliant coach in that, and he talked to this client for like 60 minutes. The client was like, okay, I'm excited to work with you guys, I'm not going to sue you now. My approach probably would have been a little bit more hardline and hard nosed.

I've got another team member, and he deals with the clients directly. He's super diplomatic, and I'd be like just do it this way. But he's like, why don't we say it like this? I'm like, that's better. Our team members protect us. They protect the business, especially if they believe in you. You always feel like you're being supported. God, it is so stressful. It's worse having a team than being a solopreneur if you have a team that isn't there to believe in you, to support you, and lower your pressure and noise, it's worse.

Daniel: Agreed. Agreed.

Jason: You want to talk about the next step? You've got this outcome crafted. I love that idea because ultimately what matters is results, the outcome is what matters. A lot of people will hire just to fill a wall. They're like, "We need this." They think that's the outcome, we solved it, we got this person.

The real outcome is them helping the business achieve a goal, achieve the outcome, that's involved. I like the idea of crafting outcomes. What's next?

Daniel: You know what? I have to follow it up with the outcome. I want clarity for your audience around why we do that, it's really important. When you have a person coming into it and you give him a job, they could do a job and not get a result.

Jason: Absolutely.

Daniel: That's the challenge. When you craft an outcome and there's massive clarity between you and the employee about what the outcome is, how to do the job is well informed. It's like, "Look, we are going to need you to book X, Y, and Z so that the clients have this result." They're like, "Well, I booked it." Yeah, you booked it but the client didn't get this result. This is a challenge.

Outcomes just align the interests of the entrepreneur business owner and the employee so that the coaching conversations and the interactions are super, super, clean. There is some responsibility on the entrepreneur because I can't say, "Look, I want to fly to Pluto one day. I'm going to hire you to help me do that." That's just not a possibility right now.

We have a lot of clients here who are like, "I don't know how to do that. I need to hire somebody. Daniel, can your virtual professionals help me?" I'm like, "Absolutely not, we can't help you. You don't even know how to do it. How would we know if you don't know?"

The military has this great concept, "You can't give one unless you have one." They don't promote from outside. You're not going to get a two star General who used to work at Coca-Cola, they're not just going to make him the general. They have a process of rising through the ranks because that experience is so important.

When our clients say, "Hey, I want to try this thing out." We're like, "Hey, we can't help you because we're not a try-it-out company. We're a professional organization that helps entrepreneurs get time freedom in their life and high caliber leverage." We're not going to experiment something with you, we're not going to try to create the shift that's going to go to pluto. We just don't know how to do that.

That's some clarity on the outcome.

Our next step after an outcome, we start interviewing. Then, it just moves into the launch which is why we have the Go Remote gift for your audience which is really timely because 50% of the world is now working at home. How do you do that? What are some of the technologies? How do I communicate?

Jason, you're going to love this one. You and I, we've been working remote for a while. Most people would be on a chat platform, "Hey, I got to go to the bathroom." Nobody wants to see that, but we're all humans. What do you say? In our Go Remote guide we're going to give out, you type ‘bio.be right back.’ It's just a little bit better to see that on a chat platform in your corporate office, maybe 100 people.

We've got a lot of tips, tricks, what's the right etiquette, and all that. After you interview, which is about a launch, that's probably where all the magic happens—the first 90 days.

Jason: Yeah. I just saw on Facebook, it went viral, that all these people are working from home now. People are doing Zoom meetings and stuff. Some lady in her team of 20 or 30 people on a Zoom call forgot that her camera and her mic was still active while she was going to the bathroom. She said, "I'll just go to the bathroom," and took things with her. How awkward would that be? They need to understand some basic etiquette dealing with this new technology.

Daniel: Sure. The fun thing about it, we're all humans. We all have kids, we all go to the bathroom, we all need a lunch break, and the rules are different now working at home. If you find yourself as a manager or an employee, you have to hyper communicate now because nobody can see if you're actually working. If you find yourself as a leader, you have to give people the benefit of the doubt, and really communicate, communicate, communicate. This is a time unprecedented in history. Nobody can plan for needing to take your entire team remote in a matter of seven days. It just can't be planned for.

Having a little bit of grace as a leader, and also increasing your communication for your employees as a leader is really super important right now.

Jason: Yeah. One of my coaches, Al Sharpton, gave me the idea that the best way was push communication rather than pull in which as a leader, you don't have to go to hold them, stand over their shoulder, and ask them, "Hey, did you do this? Are you doing this? Where's this at?" That's pull communication. You're always trying to get things from them but you set up systems in which the system, they're reporting, submitting things, and providing the information to you so you'll feel comfortable, and you don't feel the need to micromanage them that way.

Daniel: That's a great point. Part of our onboarding is helping people understand what a start of the day report looks like and the end of the day report looks like. Each of our folks, 1300-ish, 1200 or 1300 people, are doing a start of day report where they're like, "Hey, these are the seven things I'm going to accomplish today." And an end of the day report, "Hey, those seven things I knocked out five of the seven. I did three others and these two are pushed to the next day."

Again, if you've got those communication systems well-oiled, one of the things because we've been virtual for so long, we have a tech platform where all of our virtual professionals enter their time. They start their day and they do their start of the day report in our system. At the end of the day, they report in our system. It keeps tabs and track of our virtual professionals so that we have a system of knowing, "Hey, they took a break." They enter into a system, "I'm taking my lunch break," or, "I'm taking my 15 minute break."

We have a system that reports to our clients everything they do throughout the day. Our clients can login to that portal and just see it. We've been doing that because that's normal. Now, everybody's like, "Hey, how do I do that?" That's another example. You just have a start and end of day report so your managers and your people have a clear way of communicating what their day looks like.

Jason: Yeah. That same coach I mentioned, I once asked, "How do you know if somebody in your team is a believer?" He just said, "They're getting their work done. You've got the outcomes and the things they're supposed to be doing. They're reporting that they're getting these things done. The performance is there and you're getting the results that you want. You don't have to micromanage them, you don't have to live in fear. They're getting things done.” That's ultimately what you want. You want to pay money, you want them to help you make more of it. You want them to get it done.

Strategic call, development plan, crafting an outcome, interviewing, and you said launch. The launch is then setting, you've got these systems in place. For your clients, they can login, they can see what the team members are doing.

Clarifying question. There's two types, I've noticed, of assistant companies or outsourcing companies where they're like, "Hey, we'll answer your phones and we've got 50-100 people here in a call center. Some random ones are going to answer the call." Or, you've got Raymond who's assigned to your phone and he's going to do this, he's going to do this job for you. Maybe you could help the listeners understand what MyOutDesk and this relationship looks like.

Daniel: Yeah, make sense. The first example is for major corporations. Our business is designed for SMBs—Small and Medium Sized Businesses. We think of us like an extension of your business. You get to interview them, you get to onboard them. They report everyday to you. It's like, "Hey, Jason. I'm here. Daniel's here. I'm ready to login. I'm going to rock it. Do you need anything today? Here's my start of the day report."

Every single day, they login. We typically do Monday to Friday. Some of our clients will have multiple schedules depending on coverage needs. LIke over the weekend, late night calls, or emergency phone numbers. Just think of us like an extension of your business. We're giving you leverage. We're a real estate staffing company that is specific to property managers, brokers, busters, mortgage companies. Our whole world is around helping you grow and scale.

After the launch, it goes through training. Most entrepreneurs who ever hired somebody realizes that in the beginning, I liked this X. If you've been watching us on video right now, I'm doing an X. In the beginning, it's low value because they're brandnew to your business. They don't know your culture, they don't know your customers, they don't know your value proposition. There's just not a lot of value in the first two weeks.

At some point, the value goes up. The amount of time you have to spend with somebody is high in the beginning because you need to tell them everything that's in your brain. That all of this tribal knowledge that you need to impart and give to them. You might already have it documented, you might not.

The first 90 days is really teaching them how you want them to serve the business. Communicating, giving around like, "Hey, here's how to use our system. Here's the training platform. Here's all the team members. Here's all the systems you need to learn." The first 90 days, it's just getting them up to speed. After that, typically our clients are recording a 60% or 70% savings with the exact same result they were getting prior. It's pretty awesome.

Jason: Now, these team members, is it hourly or are you dedicating a monthly? Fulltime? How does this tend to work?

Daniel: There's a couple of things. We're different. Obviously, they're virtual professionals so they're working full time. We're a subscription based business. You pay us, we pay them. We also carry their healthcare, their vacation time, and all their benefits. Most companies, they're making a very razor thin margin. Honestly, 90% of what you guys pay us, what our clients pay us, actually goes to benefits for their virtual professionals—benefits, vacation, health plan, we do conferences. We have an entire support system, team, tech, and all that kind of craziness.

The point is they're our people. We're helping you get up to speed so they can help you grow and scale your business. At some point, we all become a team. Meaning, the company is here to support the virtual assistant, support the client, and everybody wins. That's what I love about working here. I'm going to help people find jobs in the Philippines, that's where we operate. I get to help businesses scale and grow. It's like the coolest place to be especially because we’ve helped over 5000 clients. I’ve gotten to see growth plans, org charts, systems.

It's just so exciting every day to see so many Small and Medium Sized Businesses really see under the hood—profitability, who's on your team, what are some of your struggles. It's just really awesome for me and my team because every day, we're just serving our community.

Jason: Love it. What are some of the frequently asked questions that people have that maybe we haven't covered? That somebody might be asking during the process?

Daniel: A lot of people are like, "What does my commitment look like? How long do I have to stay in contract?" I'm a real estate guy and very firmly believed in value. We don't lock our people into any long term contracts. Every two weeks, every single one of my clients is voting with their credit card, honestly.

Imagine if your business, 100%, runs on adding value for others. That’s how our business works. One of the missions that we've embraced at a really high level is our virtual assistants or virtual professionals need to be indispensable to your business. That's the guiding light, it has been from the beginning. If they come in and they take things off of your plate, you have all this time freedom, all of these opportunities to crack, and grow your business, then we just created an indispensability, it is irreplaceable. That's our whole mission as a company. We're really excited.

Jason: Very cool. Do we talk about pricing? What is it going to cost? Typically, I know that the people listening, that's the big question. They're like, "Can I afford this? Would this make sense for me?" Most of them are thinking, "I can barely afford the team I have now. Is this something I can do to get to that next level? Maybe this will help me bridge that gap."

For example, in property management, what I call the first sandtrap is the property manager that's maybe broken about 50 doors, they broke that barrier there. They're between 50-100 doors, they can't break the 100-door barrier. They're operating as a solopreneur, they can't afford to hire their first team member. Their pricing is too low, they've taken on too many crappy properties to manage. They've got a lot of leaks. They're trying to figure out, "How do I get ahead?"

They can change some of these other things but one of the things is, "I need another person." Maybe you can touch on that and give people an idea of what they should budget for and make this work.

Daniel: Step one, three, or five, is 100% free. If you're listening right now and you're like, "I need support," or, "I need help," I just want you to jump on our website, myoutdesk.com. Just go and schedule a consultation, go through the process. Worst case scenario, we walk away as buds. We high five each other, say, "Congratulations," and we walk away. Best case scenario, we find a way to make it a win-win where you're getting time freedom back into your world and you're able to focus on growing and scaling your business.

If you decide to move forward with us, I always like to say, "Look, it's $400 a week. It's $400 and some change." It's not a super expensive value proposition in our world. It's $1747 a month, all in—benefits, vacation time. Like an entire team supporting you. All the systems and processes that we’ve developed over the years will help you.

This Go Remote guide we're going to give out is 12 pages and 5000 clients later worth of really good this-is-how-you-run-a-remote-team guide. We're going to give everything away for free because that's what we do. Including our time, energy, and effort.

We were just on the news last week. We basically gave out consultations to help business leaders, C-suite people, and entrepreneurs figure out how to go remote. There's this bottleneck in California. Everybody got shelter in place. California went down, people were scrambling. We helped our insurance broker, we helped our attorneys. We were just helping people figure this out and give them some confidence in this.

If you're listening right now and you think this might be an avenue, I would just encourage you to reach out because it costs you nothing but your time. You'll walk away with a lot of value.

Jason: Another major issue right now is the cash crunch. Every business is feeling a cash crunch. Cash is just shortened, people are laying people off. Companies are furloughing people, their team members can collect their employment insurance. This is a painful time period. They're having to figure out how to cut expenses. Some businesses will not be the same after this.

This might be another option if they're having to layoff staff and they're not able to fund or keep cash flow positive. The big challenge then is how do we keep some sort of level of service? How do we still deliver to our clients if we cannot afford that overhead anymore, and we need to lower the overhead.

For those listening, that's what you need to do right now, to cash crunch, and solve that problem. If you can be healthy there, then you can get on some higher level problems to deal with like how do we keep the [...] economy or what not. You've got to solve the immediate cash crunch issue. That might be an SBA loan, that might be some of these things coming out. Maybe having a conversation with your team might help facilitate that.

Daniel: We have a good friend of mine who owns a recruiting firm. One of her right hand women has a 1 year old and a 3 year old. They're all at home. She needs support now, not tomorrow, because she's contractually obligated to add value to her clients. If she doesn't, they have the opportunity to walk away and cancel. We're seeing a big uptake in people who are like, "Hey, we're having staffing issues right now. I'm not sure. We need support in X, Y, and Z.” We're happy to go through that process with somebody and say, "We can help you here," or, "No, this isn't what we specialize in but these people are your best option."

There's a lot of companies like ours. There's lots of resources out there where the SBA thing, that's one of our free gifts in the Go Remote right now. When we give that away, we have a guide to getting the SBA disaster loan there. We have a guide for what's happening with the taxes right now. We have a guide for what you are saying to your clients right now in this weird, uncertain time.

You can't say you want to buy or sell, this is an odd time to be a sales person but it's a great time to have conversations, ask questions, and connect people on a human to human basis. We put together a little guide for people in that space. We should give it away. What do you think, Jason?

Jason: Let's do it. How do we get it?

Daniel: All you have to do is text MOD—MyOutDesk—MOD to 31996. Anybody that wants it can go there. You'll get a link to our Go Remote stuff, all those free guides are down there.

Here's the other thing, normally, you understand marketing, we date our content. Normally, we help people register and do a bunch of stuff so that we know who they are. Because of this disaster and because of everything that's happening in the world, when you text MOD to 31996, we're giving that stuff in a Word format. Meaning, you can take the Go Remote guide, put your logo on it, and give it away to your customers and clients. You can put your logo on our disaster recovery plan.

We have a CEO mindset conversation. It's time to adapt your value proposition for your customers because we're in a new world right now. All that stuff is given away free because we're all in this together. The biggest cure for the economy right now is businesses and entrepreneurs staying productive.

Jason: Right. I'm texting it right now so I can check it out. It's 31996 and I just do MOD.

Daniel: That's right. I can't wait to see Jason from across my phone. It's going to be awesome. There we go. Boom! "MyOutDesk is your partner in going remote!" That's exactly it, brother. Right there.

Here's the thing, we were on TV. I think it's an important message. I think we can wrap it up with your audience with this one thing. As entrepreneurs, as business leaders, it is our job to stay productive. It's our civic duty right now. Our economy is going to be challenged. The people at the bottom who have the normal middle class jobs, they're going to go through pain. As a leader in my community, my job is to help everybody I can stay as productive as possible. That's what's going to shift, that's what's going to change this world.

That's why we put together a guide. That's why we're giving it up free. I hope it's valuable to you guys, your audience, and Jason—even you guys.

Jason: Awesome. I just did a training just last week. Property management and property managers are going to be even more critical during this time than ever before. This is an opportunity for property managers to plant seeds for the future. I taught a concept called Care ROI. Right now may not be the time to focus on financial ROI but Care ROI will lead to that in the future as things shift. In turn, people will remember. Because emotions are heightened right now, anything that we do, and it actually takes a communication that we do as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, will be magnified times 10 in the mind of our customers or consumers because emotion is what creates memory.

It's the difference between what you were doing the day before 9/11 or the day on 9/11. People's memories are very different because of the emotions attached. Right now, you have the opportunity to get a 10x ROI on positive things that you do out to your customers, to your audience, and your potential clients. That is massive.

Everyone listening, make sure you checkout the training that I did and leverage that Care ROI. I want to thank you for coming on and doing this even though it's crazy right now. I honor you for putting out this awesome guide to help people out. That's awesome. I look forward to having some more conversations with you in the future, Daniel.

Daniel: Jason, thanks for your time, man. We really appreciate you today.

Jason: I'll say one more thing, Everybody, businesses exist to solve a problem. That's why businesses exist. If the business is not solving a problem, it's taking people's money and not delivering results. There's no higher purpose or cause that entrepreneurs can do right now than to solve people's problems and to also make money. Making money helps you help the economy, it helps everybody. It helps you help your team. Find ways to help people solve their problems and to make money.

I don't think there's anything wrong. Some people try to guilt and shame right now. They're the people that are just taking from the system, don't worry about them.

The other thing I'll point out is if you're an entrepreneur, you don't like your business, you've been looking for your out. You're an entrepreneur, this is your perfect out. This is the perfect opportunity to choose out of your business and just not do it anymore. You have the perfect excuse.

For the rest of us that are driven, that we’re passionate about what we do, if you are a property management entrepreneur, you're still wanting to grow, still wanting to be part of the community, check us out at doorgrowclub.com. Get inside our Facebook group community there. There's lots of helpful things going around, property management trying to solve problems for each other, and figure out what to do with things. Make sure to have a conversation with us at DoorGrow. Our goal right now is to plant those Care seeds, ROI as well, and help you out in any way that we can. Check us out at doorgrow.com.

Daniel, thanks again for coming and hanging out.

Daniel: It's been my pleasure.

Jason: All right. We'll let you go.

Everyone check out his website. It is myoutdesk.com. Make sure to do the text message thing. Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. 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.

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Apr 14, 2020

Are you a property manager who spends too much time struggling with leasing requirements? It may be time to automate rental property management and focus more on how to grow your business.

Today’s guest is Faizan Khan from LetHub, an AI leasing assistant service for property management businesses. LetHub utilizes AI to interact with renters, resolve their problems, and get them to the doors.

You’ll Learn...

[03:40] Why LetHub? Opportunity to use AI to automate rental property management.

[04:21] Myth: AI is a simple chatbot with multiple threads of what needs to be done.

[05:00] Reality: AI goes beyond basics by understanding how the human brain works.

[05:26] Good vs. Genius AI: What’s the difference? Ability to learn and fix mistakes.

[06:39] How to build an AI: Data scientist, algorithms, machine learning (ML), and supervised learning approach are needed to get started.

[07:29] LetHub’s Goal: Make experience for renters and landlords very easy.

[07:55] Property Management Problem: Difficult to get a rental apartment. Demand is high. Everyone is looking. AI can help.

[09:05] Why LetHub uses AI? AI is not going to replace humans, but it’s a substitute.

[09:19] Retention Rate: Property managers want to get the best tenants and keep them.

[10:25] LetHub’s AI: Replies to questions, books tours, provides CRM, handles emails.

[12:15] LetHub’s Automated System: Requires less staff and time to generate results.

[15:35] Pre-call Process: Top four questions focus on pets, moving date, student or employed, and tell me about yourself.

[17:25] API and Integrations: Connect to Buildium, Yardi, or other account.

[20:00] LetHub Listings: All channels have Web link; connect email with Web platform.

Tweetables

LetHub’s goal is to make the experience for renters and landlords very easy. Get people to the door.

A good AI understands; a genius AI learns from its mistakes.

AI won’t replace humans, but be a substitute for property managers to focus on growth.

People like to chat. They don't want to call. They want instant replies.

Resources

DGS 125: Premature Expansion in Property Management - Part 2 0

Transcript

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

Today's guest, I'm hanging out with Faizan Khan. Faizan, how are you today?

Faizan: I'm good. How are you?

Jason: Welcome to the DoorGrow Show. I'm doing great. Faizan Khan has one of the coolest names that we’ve ever had on the DoorGrow Show. We were joking in green room that it sounds like he’s a gangster rapper, just cool. Actually, you made that joke, because I’m a nerd I said it sounds like some badass [...].

Faizan: That’s right, yeah. It’s a different name. I haven’t heard this name myself before.

Faizan, I'm really excited to have you. You have a service that we're going to be talking about today called LetHub. I know nothing about it. I'm excited to ask you a lot of questions. I get curious. Before we get into that, let's talk about you. Where this guy with this cool name came from, what your background is, and why people should listen.

Faizan: As a child, I had been involved in entrepreneurship stuff and starting businesses small or big. I'm originally born and brought up in Dubai and Pakistan, considered like a mixture. Then I moved to the UK for a bit and after that I have been living in Canada. I've lived in five different countries throughout my life. I love traveling. Whenever I get a chance, I try to go to any other spot that I can go to, provided there's no Coronavirus over there. I'm really interested in real estate. I've had a bunch of start-ups before. I saw this opportunity of using AI to automate rental property management, so I started this company called LetHub.

We are in our start-up phase but we're doing pretty well working with a few clients in Canada and States. We're trying to help people to automate all of their leasing requirements so they could sit down and focus more on how to grow. Right now, we're using a very sophisticated AI to interact with renters, resolve their problems, get them to the doors, and all that stuff. We can get deeper into that. That's my background of why I started and who I am.

Jason: This sounds really interesting. A lot of people talk about AI and you hear that thrown around. I think the term can sometimes be used very loosely. Their version of an AI is they're creating a chatbot with multiple threads of what they need to be done.

Faizan: That’s a very good question. I think a lot of people are sort of sold on the idea that AI is basically just like a pre-made thread of questions or a pre-scripted bot. But the truth here is that it understands something in a similar way as a human would, like the sentences or words I'm saying to you, your brain is breaking them down, understanding the context of that, processing it, and then replying. That's how our brain works.

A good AI would understand that, even a better or a genius AI would really learn. If it creates a mistake, you can teach it what to do or it could teach itself what to do next. An example would be if someone says hey, do you allow pets, or hey, do you love furry friends? The AI would respond saying that, hey, we do. This is our pet policy. The renter would say, hey, is a small dog or cat okay? The third thing that the renter says is context. The context is do you allow any pets. Truly, I would not understand that, but an actual AI would understand the context.

Jason: How does one go about starting to build an AI thing? Is there an AI system that you are leveraging to build? Is that how this works?

Faizan: Yeah, that's a good question. You need a data scientist, number one, and you need to build some algorithms. You need to understand how machine learning works. It's a lot of techy-techy stuff to get data, to train the AI from an infant to a child to an adult. It's a simple process like any other human would be trained, how we grow up, we learn a few words, and then we're taught a few things. Pretty much like that. We use a supervised learning approach. It's a very sophisticated machine learning approach. Our goal is to make the experience for renters and landlords very easy. From our tests, we see that a lot of people ask the same questions. We cut that down, get people to the door rather than them giving you a call or sending you hundreds of emails.

Jason: Let's talk about the problem first. What problem have you seen to the property managers you're dealing with that you thought maybe AI can help with this?

Faizan: First and foremost in a very dense city where I was living in Vancouver, it's very hard to get a rental apartment. The demand is high. Everyone is looking. For us as renters, it was getting impossible. It would take two months to get something, that's how I started. I was like, why is this process not solved? If I send an email to a landlord, why am I not getting a reply? If I show up there are 20, 30 other people, I need to fill out a new rental application every time. If you go into 10 units or 10 different spots or places, it will be 10 different applications and that's all while you're working 9:00 to 5:00 as a professional. That's how I started.

Why do we use AI? AI is not going to replace humans, but it's going to substitute a lot of their work that they do so they can focus on other stuff. A lot of the problems that property managers face are mostly around getting the best tenants and then keeping them. What's the retention rate? That's one of the bigger problems in multifamily and also single family.

I believe that you can cut that whole process down to finding someone from a listing, to getting them to the door, and to sign the lease. You can cut the time down by around 60 to 70%. If you're spending four to five hours a day, if you have a lot of vacancies or spending a lot of time just on replying to people with the same questions and it gets monotonous, you might lose focus. You're not that happy talking to people. That's where an automated system comes in.

People like to chat, especially millennials. They don't want to call. They want instant replies. Our product comes in there and solves this problem. It replies to everyone's questions and books you a tour right away into the leasing team's calendar. It provides a nice CRM for property managers just to have a look at who's coming when, weather details, do they qualify, all that good stuff. It also handles emails coming through. We see that 50 to 60% of property managers get emails than calls. Emails and texts are the king right now in terms of communicating. We deal with that as well.

Jason: LetHub is handling emails?

Faizan: Yes.

Jason: It's dealing with text messaging too?

Faizan: Yeah. Apart from calling, everything. Our AI assistant is dealing with all the online web chat. You can put it on your website or you can just post it on ours. It would reply to your emails. It would reply to the text. It will send reminders, all that good stuff. Honestly, there's a lot of companies that have already built this, but the automation piece is missing. There's always some manual work. We built it in a way where you can just click a button and start using it. There's no need for a three week training. I hate that.

Jason: What are you seeing in terms of how this is impacting the clients that you brought on some of your initial prospects? What are you seeing? What are they noticing? What's different for now?

Faizan: I don't want to jump the gun on this one, but I think it's helping people not to hire more which is scary. An example is one of our clients, they used to hire interns who would take calls, reply to emails, and then give the lead to a leasing agent who would go out there and show the unit, do a tour and then sign the lease and all that stuff. They stopped hiring an intern because now the system’s so automated, they’re getting good results. From a leasing agent’s perspective, they’re leasing faster. Those hundreds of emails they get, because it’s automated, they can filter through renters faster and get signed leases faster. The rate of listing to lease, the timeline has decreased. We've been measuring that very specifically. Minutely looking at is that the USP, is that actually the time spent by a leasing agent, but it's both. If someone spends on these activities, that goes down and the time to lease goes down as well.

Jason: Let's go through the lifecycle then. I want to understand which pieces of the lifecycle of dealing with prospective tenants, showing the property, getting the lease, then on boarding, how much of this is LetHub connecting with and helping with?

Faizan: Our goal is to get people to the door.

Jason: It's getting people to the showings and getting showings scheduled and that sort of thing?

Faizan: Yeah. It's answering our questions, dealing with increased, pre-qualifying people, and getting them to the door according to your schedule. Just get them to the door and then after that you could do the rental application or whatever you'd want to do, but also we get feedback as well. We're getting them to the door. If they don't like the property, we're getting some feedback as to why they didn't like the property or something like that.

The goal is to get them to the door fastest with good pre-qualification, answering all their questions that they might have, and booking tours in a smart way. If you manage more than 400 units, 1000 units, or even 2000 in our case, then your time is money in that sense. There'll be no shows. There'll be people who are not that qualified. You'll always be dealing with not a higher quality of tenant like prospective renters.

Jason: Give listeners an idea of the pre-call process, like some of the questions you might ask or what property management might have connected or built out in that piece.

Faizan: I've built the algorithm myself with the help of my CTO. It's highly customizable. Obviously staying within human rights, there's some questions you cannot ask but it's customizable. You put your criteria and river our AI. We'll make sure she gets those answers from people.

Jason: What are some of the questions that it's asking? You had mentioned earlier like maybe pets, maybe if they've had an eviction before.

Faizan: You could ask anything from if you had an eviction, do you smoke, do you have any pets, how many people are moving in, why are you moving, are you a student. A lot of people ask this. We suggest people not to ask more than four questions, otherwise, that drives renters away. The top four I'm telling you is number one is pets, what's your moving date, when do you want to move in, are you a student or do you have a job, that sort of thing, and then the fourth is please tell me a bit about yourself. Generally, tell us whatever you would want. Though you can keep the criteria strict. If they don't fall under your criteria, they don't actually book a tour. We'd show them other properties.

Jason: I understand the idea of decreasing the amount of time wasting type of calls where they're just asking details about the property. Will this be able to pull in some of the data on some of the properties through API or connect, because most property managers have all this in their property management software? If somebody's getting into your chat tool or the system and asking what's the square footage on this property or where is this located, how many of these things can it feel?

Faizan: All we ask people to do is connect their Buildium or Yardi account and then go from there. We are constantly working on improving the integration and it will have enhanced integration with time. Right now if you as a property manager want to have a taste of LetHub, just let us know and we'll add a few of your properties. You can have an experience and then we can attach your integration and all that stuff. But we're not really partners with any of these companies, we just want to be clear. These are one off requests from property managers where they say this software, can you integrate so that we help them integrate. There's some softwares that do not have APIs.

Jason: What manager has a full API, I guess property now has an API?

Faizan: Yeah, probably Rent Manager. I was talking to the folks at Rent Manager as well. We're in moving talks with them soon. We'll meet with them at the conference as well. With Buildium, they don't really have an open API, same way as bigger companies like Yardi or RealPage. They have a paid API so they have this whole program. But we're happy to work with anyone. The key is to cut down the time it would take to on board anyone if they are using a very sophisticated software. We're happy to work with them and help them set that up while not changing anything. That's the important part. They keep doing what they're doing, we're just going to be working on the side getting them into leads.

Jason: LetHub can operate as a chat tool on their website for people that are coming there. How does it help them via their listings that are out on the internet on various channels?

Faizan: All the channels, email, text, and just having a web link, when you list your property, all you do is you just connect your email with our web platform. When you list your property just in the description and say, hey, click here to book a tour, or you can just redirect users to your own website. If you spent a lot of money on branding and making your website amazing, which a lot of people have, just redirect them to your own website and the river would just pop up and guide the user to book a tour or answer any questions.

Jason: What questions are property managers asking you that are a little bit curious or wary or whatever? What are some of the most common questions they're asking about LetHub before they're willing to take it for a full spin and utilize it?

Faizan: That's a good question. I think it depends on the size of the company. We were in talks with Aimco which has 10,000 units, bigger company, and multifamily. Their number one problem is integration so they would want integration with their current software which is totally fine. Make sense, bigger companies, got more complex. With the smaller property managers, I think their major concern is that will people be okay chatting with an AI versus a human.

I want to be clear on this that nobody's replacing nobody over here. We're just helping people and we've got the tests to show you that that's the future. There's a lot of banks using this technology and you can order a pizza. I don't know how smart it is, but you can order a piece of pizza through an AI assistant.

Jason: Anything else you want to let people know about LetHub before we wrap this up and how can people get in touch and maybe check this out?

Faizan: Yeah, for sure. I think if you're a property manager who is looking to automate things so you don't have to run after renters and if you're looking to really use the latest and greatest tech, then please get in touch with us. Our website is lethub.co. You can email me at faizan@lethub.co, I'll be happy to do a demo myself or one of my team members would do it for you. Happy to chat about your problems and see if we can build a more customized solution for you. Yeah, that's about it. Keep growing I guess.

Jason: Faizan Khan, really great having you on the show. I appreciate you hanging out with me today and we'll let you go.

Faizan: Awesome. Thank you so much.

Jason: Awesome to have him on. Check out LetHub and let us know inside the DoorGrowClub Facebook group what your experiences are if you decide to try them out, what you think. We'd be really curious to hear about your feedback. Go post an update inside the DoorGrowClub. Get to that on doorgrowclub.com. That's our community for this property management podcast. If you are wanting to figure out how to grow your business, you're struggling to grow, you're running into issues, reach out to our team. Check us out at doorgrow.com. Until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Download this Episode

Apr 7, 2020

Do you have a coach to help guide you to grow your property management business? If you want to excel at what you're doing, you must have somebody who's playing a bigger game than you.

Today, Jason Hull and Jon Ray of DoorGrow continue their discussion on premature expansion in property management. Besides putting planning and process documentation systems into place to be more efficient, they focus on the third system: Communication (internal and external).

You’ll Learn...

[01:33] Interruptions and Inefficiency: Every interruption costs 18 minutes of productivity.

[02:13] Pay to Play: Learn from coaches how to protect and guard against interruptions.

[02:40] Cut the Slack: Chat tool that creates interruptions and crushes team productivity.

[03:15] Under-Communication: Creates interruptions that prevent momentum and flow.

[04:07] Communication System: Only involve those internally that need to know, and find ways to improve external client communication.

[06:01] Organizational Structure: Clear line of communication for delegation.

[08:15] Who does what? Pair effective visionary with brilliant operator to get things done.

[18:18] Sales solves all problems—not always true. Growth feeds business.

[19:25] Get things in place, and then it's not premature.

[21:00] Jack of All Trades, Master of None: Entrepreneurs find opportunity everywhere.

[25:34] DoorGrow OS: Consolidate systems, processes, professionals to be successful.

[31:10] Three Currencies: Growth involves time, money, and effort.

Tweetables

Every interruption costs about 18 minutes of productivity for one team member.

Under-Communication: Creates as many interruptions that prevent momentum and flow.

Every team member you add lowers your pressure and noise. Every team member you add makes your job and life easier.

Get things in place, and then it's not premature.

Resources

Jason Fried of Basecamp

Warren Buffett

Slack

Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)/Traction

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm

HireSmartVAs

Anequim with Mexican VAs