#DoorGrowShow - Property Management Growth

Many of our property management business owner clients are focused on hiring or restructuring their teams right now. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the most important parts of the hiring process and offer a little bit of “tough love.” You’ll Learn [04:39] 1. Finding the right person for the role [11:04] 2. The importance of training your new hire [24:41] 3. Implementing accountability for your team [30:20] Review: what does the initial training period look like? Tweetables “We need to be clear on what results we're expecting.” “Any ambiguity or fuzziness, then you're going to get fuzzy outcomes.” “You cannot ever hire somebody and just say, "now my problems are solved." They're not solved yet.” “If you skip onboarding or if you don't have a very solid onboarding and training process, it's going to cause just so much friction.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind [https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/courses/mastermind] DoorGrow Academy [https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/] DoorGrow on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC1mGYT2Sw0LOe32hO_QdNg/featured] DoorGrowClub [https://doorgrow.com/] DoorGrowLive [https://doorgrowlive.com/] TalkRoute Referral Link [https://cp.talkroute.com/signup?refkey=911664155] Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: You cannot ever hire somebody and just say, "now my problems are solved." They're not solved yet.  [00:00:09] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently than you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners, and their businesses. [00:00:53] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:11] Sarah: All right. [00:01:11] Let's do it. Before we do anything, we have an announcement for those of you that have not yet heard. Our foster dog Hans has been officially adopted. So we didn't do a podcast since he was adopted. So this is our first podcast that we don't have Hans kind of hanging out in the background. And I miss his little face, but he has an amazing family. [00:01:32] Jason: I miss Hans. I don't- [00:01:35] Sarah: love him so much.  [00:01:37] Jason: I don't miss him chewing my stuff in my office, but I do miss his little face as well. All right. Yes. Yeah, so he's adopted All right So the topic today and if you want to check that out, you can go to doorgrow.Com right at the top. There's dogs click on that see all our stories. Maynard got adopted. [00:01:55] Sarah: Maynard is adopted. Yeah, he now lives in California.  [00:01:59] Jason: This dog was like on death's door multiple times. Well, many times. Now he's living it up with a wealthy dude.  [00:02:06] Sarah: Who just fell in love with him.  [00:02:07] Jason: Guy in California.  [00:02:08] Sarah: Maynard just captured his heart, loved him so much and wanted to provide him an amazing life, so. [00:02:15] Jason: He's got a new name.  [00:02:16] Sarah: He's Bodhi.  [00:02:17] Jason: Bodhi.  [00:02:18] Sarah: Bodhi. So he's now driving around in a convertible in California. That's one of the pictures they put on there. Oh!  [00:02:25] Jason: All right. So  [00:02:25] Sarah: Maynard has a great life now, too.  [00:02:27] Jason: So you can check that out at doorgrow.com/dogs. All right. So our topic today that we're going to be chatting about you said that it came up a few times in You know this week with some of our clients dealing with some new team members We've got we're doing helping a lot of people with hiring right now. [00:02:45] Sarah: Oh my goodness so many. I built so many DoorGrow Hiring accounts in the last week.  [00:02:49] Jason: Yeah, so we're setting up this hiring mechanism and machine and system so that people can have some consistently good hires. But that brings us to kind of the next challenge. So what have you been hearing?  [00:03:00] Sarah: Okay, so one client asked me, he's about to hire. [00:03:05] He's going through the hiring process. So he doesn't have anybody lined up yet, but he's It's about to start this whole process. And he had asked me, "Hey, what about expectations for when they start when they come on?" And specifically this is a BDM. The second instance of this happening this week is a client who has already hired and his BDM is now about 60 days in. [00:03:31] And he sent me a message yesterday and he said, "Hey, listen, I really need to talk with you before the end of the month. I need to make a decision on my team." So I said, okay, let's. Let's figure out what's going on? And he said "yeah, I'm kind of pissed because my BDM is like 60 days in, and last month he didn't do anything at all. And then this month he started like he hasn't closed anything yet," and by he didn't do anything at all, what he means is he didn't close anything.  [00:04:00] Jason: Okay. Not that he wasn't working. No deals yet.  [00:04:01] Sarah: Yeah. Okay. Not that he wasn't working. He was working. And this month now is his 60 day mark and he hasn't closed anything, but he's, you know, making calls and he's starting to, you know, get some things kind of ready and warmed up in the pipeline. [00:04:16] He, he said, "man, should I just let him go? Like, is he just not the right person? I feel like it's 60 days, like, I should see some results at this point."  [00:04:26] Jason: Okay.  [00:04:26] Sarah: So I'd like to, I'd really like to talk about that. And this is going to be, whatever episode this is "Sarah's Tough Love episode." So here it is. [00:04:35] Jason: Got it. Okay, I mean, let's get the basic stuff out of the way, right? First, we need to know that we have the right person. So, we need to know what those expectations are. So, that's where we define that. Usually, we call them R docs, but in this ultimate job description. So, we need to be clear on what we're looking for. [00:04:51] We need to be clear on what results we're expecting. We need to be clear on, you know, what outcomes we're hoping for and they need to be clear on this, right? Like if we're bringing somebody in, they need that clarity. So if there's anyone listening and there's any ambiguity or fuzziness, then you're going to get fuzzy outcomes. [00:05:09] And those aren't good, right? And so there needs to be at least, and you need to be on the same page. Literally, the way we do that is with a page called an RDoc. And so you make sure you're on the same page. And all those young Gen Z people, notice how I used the word literally, correctly like it's an actual page. [00:05:28] Sarah: I was just thinking that.  [00:05:29] Jason: Stop saying the word literally. It drives me fucking nuts. So, all right.  [00:05:33] Sarah: Literally.  [00:05:34] Jason: I literally, like if, yeah, nobody's confused about it being figurative, then don't, you don't need to say the word.  [00:05:41] Sarah: I literally died yesterday when I read that text.  [00:05:43] Jason: No, you would be dead. [00:05:45] You would actually be dead. All right. So, Now the next piece is we need to make sure we've got a person that fits that job description, right? They actually are the right personality. Well, let's talk about the three fits real quick. They have to match all three or they're not going to be a good BDM. [00:06:01] Sarah: Or it's never going to work out. And it doesn't matter if it's a BDM, an operator, a property manager, an assistant, a maintenance coordinator. It doesn't, name the role, doesn't matter.  [00:06:10] Jason: So, first, they have to be the right personality for the job or they'll never be great at it. They'll never be motivated to do it. [00:06:18] You bring in somebody to be a BDM, for example, and they're not the right personality to go out and want to talk to people and connect with people and network and that's not fun for them, they're always going to resist it. They're going to avoid it. They're going to do a bunch of time wasting stupid activities They're going to train everything else other than what really should be done, which is to go connect with people and have conversations. So they're going to be like "well I'm trying some marketing thing and i'm trying this thing and like and-"  [00:06:47] Sarah: "I sent 5,000 emails I don't know why none of them came back." [00:06:51] Jason: "We did direct mail to, like, 7,000 owners." [00:06:56] Sarah: I've heard that and it's because this is a true example. "I sent 5,000 emails." [00:07:00] Jason: Yeah.  [00:07:01] Sarah: So essentially you did nothing. That's great. Right. Good to know.  [00:07:05] Jason: Yeah.  [00:07:05] Sarah: Thank you.  [00:07:06] Jason: Lots of emails, right? So. So,  [00:07:09] Sarah: you know how many junk emails we get in a day? What happens when you get junk email? [00:07:13] Do you open it? Do you read it? Do you respond to it? No. That's what you just did to somebody else.  [00:07:19] Jason: Yeah. It lacks depth. All right. So we can get into tactics later, but they need to match the personality for the role. Which means they would love succeeding at this. They would love doing it. They would enjoy it. [00:07:32] They get some fulfillment out of it. And so that's personality fit. They need to be the right the right culture fit, which means they need to actually believe in your business and in you and in the product. They have to believe in this. You cannot sell effectively if you lack belief. And that goes for everybody on the team. [00:07:53] Like, if your operator isn't a believer in you or the business, they're not going to want or care to make sure that it runs well for you. If your executive assistant isn't, you know, a believer in you or shares your values, they're never going to do things in a way that makes you feel safe or that you trust them. [00:08:09] Cultural fit means they do it the way that you would want it done, that they share your values. The big clue we talked about this at our last jumpstart event where we had clients and somebody had a team member. And I just asked, I said, well, do you feel better when they're around? [00:08:25] Do you feel calmer when they're around? And they were like, no, I'm like, yeah, then they got to go.  [00:08:30] Sarah: He said, oh, well, a lot of our communication we do over the phone because that's better.  [00:08:36] Jason: Because there's such a high degree of conflict.  [00:08:37] Sarah: Jason says, better than what? Awful?  [00:08:40] Jason: Yeah, and then he laughed. [00:08:41] Everybody laughed in the group and he was like, well, yeah.  [00:08:44] Sarah: Well, I can't talk to this person in person. I can't be around them. Because when we're around each other, there's too much conflict. It's just too, it gets, yeah, it gets too feisty. Well, that's not good.  [00:08:55] Jason: Yeah, that means that person's not a good fit for that person for that particular client. [00:09:00] Sarah: And let's be clear. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with this particular person. No, it doesn't make them a bad person It doesn't mean, you know, all the they'll never succeed No, it just means that they are better suited in a different environment That's all. It means not everybody like when you're dating, you don't want to date everybody. You want to date people that you like generally and there are certain people that you like and there are certain people that you just don't mesh well. The businesses work the same way.  [00:09:31] Jason: Yeah. They've got to match your values. Because regardless you get somebody that's amazing BDM, for example, or an amazing operator for your business, they don't share your values, you'll never trust them. Like you just can't. And then the third fit is skill fit. So they have to have the skill or the ability or the intellectual capacity to learn and develop this skill quickly. And so if they don't, then you'll invest a bunch of energy into trying to train them and they're just too stupid to get it. [00:10:01] Or they just can't figure it out or maybe you hire somebody and they've got bad habits or they can't adapt. So they need to have that skill fit. They got to be all three or they're not going to be a good fit. So let's assume if we've helped them with DoorGrow Hiring, we focus on these three fits. [00:10:18] We have a whole hiring mechanism. Make sure these generally go well.  [00:10:22] Sarah: Yeah. So I can tell you, I don't think that's any of those are the problem.  [00:10:26] Jason: This person. Yeah. So in these situations, the person is the right fit. Yeah, usually that's the problem is they're not even getting the right person. [00:10:33] Most of y'all doing hiring, you're playing Russian roulette hiring and you don't have good fits.  [00:10:38] Sarah: Or it's, oh, this person had the experience and they came from such and such a Yeah, we hear that all the time.  [00:10:43] Jason: Yeah. Well, they're so experienced, and you feel uncomfortable around them and you don't trust them. [00:10:50] Yeah. So let's assume that, you know, with our clients, we've helped them find people that match the three fits. So now we're past that hurdle, that's very typical for most people, well, now, if it's not them, then who is it?  [00:11:04] Sarah: Okay. So here's where the tough love comes is. This is always my question. [00:11:08] And I'm very, very particular about what happens when you hire someone. You cannot ever hire somebody and just say, "now my problems are solved." They're not solved yet. I know it feels like you've gotten through it and now things are better and you should just be able to rely on that person. You're not there yet. [00:11:33] You will be. But you're just not, you're getting closer. You're just not fully there yet. And this is what happens a lot of times and they go, "Oh, okay, so I know I need to train this person and then I'll probably train them for like a week or two and then they'll just be good." [00:11:48] Absolutely not. So especially with a new person and it doesn't matter. Here's the other thing that I hear all the time, especially when somebody has the experience. Oh, well, you know, they have a sales background. They know how to sell. Great. They don't know how to sell for you. They don't know how to sell what you've got. [00:12:05] They don't know how to sell your values and your mission. They don't know how to sell that yet. They don't quite know. So you can take any salesperson in the universe and plug them into your business. Do they have the skill? Yes. Do they have the experience? Of course, but they still have to be trained. So having the experience does not mean "Oh, I don't have to train them," or, "oh, I don't have to train them as much." [00:12:32] You still have to train them a lot. There is a lot of training. And I hate to break it to you, but your life when you hire gets worse. So your life is bad, you know you need to hire, then you hire somebody, your life is now worse for a short period of time. The reason being is everything that you were doing, you still have to do it, and in addition, you now have to train somebody. So nothing has changed except that you just added another responsibility for yourself for the next 30 to 90 days. And there is no way around that with hiring. So if you hire and you fail the train, it is probably not going to work out. They will not get the results. [00:13:16] They will be frustrated. You will be frustrated. And at some point, you will get back into the cycle of, "Oh, well, now I guess I have to hire again." And then you live in hell forever. And it's not a good place to be.  [00:13:31] Jason: Yeah, so unless you hire somebody that is an amazing 'who,' right? There's a book called Who Not How it's a great book. [00:13:40] Unless you hire an amazing 'who,' like you bring in somebody, they're a sales trainer and an expert closer, and they've had tons of success and they can teach other people's sales, then I think, in any role, you have to assume you need an assumption that they're going to do it wrong. You have to start with that foundational assumption that they're going to do everything wrong. [00:14:01] If I hired an operator cold, they're doing it wrong, that I need them to install my operational system. If they are coming in as a salesperson in the business, I know they've been trained poorly because most sales training out there doesn't work anymore. There's a new model and a new way of selling and all the old stuff. [00:14:20] All the salesy guys that are sales trainers and sales coaches largely out there that push. Doesn't work anymore. It's outdated. And we don't push that stuff at DoorGrow. We've had to shift how we sell and we teach clients differently, even in the last year. And so my assumption is that they're going to do it wrong, but. [00:14:40] What I do assume is if they've done it well before, they have the ability to learn it. They have the ability to be a good operator. They have the ability to be a good BDM. But there needs to, you can't assume because they have done it before, that you're just going to rely on them to do it.  [00:14:56] Sarah: It's not plug and play. [00:14:58] "I hired them now they're just going to go do it and they're going to sell a bunch of stuff for me." No.  [00:15:02] Jason: Right. You're always going to be disappointed with most everybody if you come in with this assumption and they're going to feel unsupported and untrained and frustrated.  [00:15:13] Sarah: And they will inevitably either quit or get fired.  [00:15:16] Jason: Yeah, they'll go find a better situation.  [00:15:18] Sarah: No matter what, it will not work out. So here's a good moment to talk about Vendoroo.  [00:15:25] Jason: We'll talk in just a minute. We're going to talk about the onboarding and then some of the next steps that are really important. But quick word from our sponsor. If you're tired of the constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination, meet Vendoroo, your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish. Triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection, and coordination built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations, where every dollar is accounted for, and every task is handled with unmatched reliability Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today at vendoroo.ai/doorgrow and experience maintenance done right. Okay. So check them out.  [00:16:10] Sarah: Speaking of doing things right, let's talk about what happens after you hire somebody.  [00:16:15] Jason: So the next step after you hire it, it has to be onboarding. There needs to be a good transition of bringing somebody out from the wild, this untrained wild creature, getting them to be something that is going to work inside of your business and fit you and fit what you want. [00:16:33] It's onboarding.  [00:16:34] Sarah: And if you skip onboarding or if you don't have a very solid onboarding and training process, it's going to cause just so much friction because I'm sure that you can think back to a previous job that you've had back when we all had job jobs, right? Have you ever just been hired and then kind of just, it's almost like train yourself or figure it out or, well, "I'm going to train you a little bit and then the rest is up to you. Well, what do you mean? I trained you for a whole day. Now I'm done." [00:17:06] "Oh, okay. So that's it. That's all the support I'm going to get. All right."  [00:17:10] have you ever been hired and then you don't even truly know what you're supposed to do? I don't know. I'm supposed to sell stuff.  [00:17:16] Jason: So here's the challenge. Here's the challenge with this with entrepreneurs, I've been thrown into job situations where there was terrible onboarding, terrible training, but I'm an entrepreneur personality type. [00:17:27] I then innovated, figured it out. And in some situations where at a job I then quickly was put into leadership and sort of managing others. But I had initiative. I had drive, like I had adaptability and I find entrepreneurs are incredibly adaptable and they make the mistake of assuming that everybody else is like them and they're not, they're like, "well, I would just figure it out and I would just ask enough questions. And if I didn't know something, I would just like, and so you can't assume that everybody is like you, if they were like you, they wouldn't work for you. How many of you would go work for somebody now? Like, you're unemployable. Like, let's be real. You would suck as an employee, probably, right? I'm unemployable at this point. [00:18:10] I'm not going to like sit around and let somebody just tell me what to do all the time and whatever. Right. But they're not the same as you. And if they were, then they might just, you know, start a business and leave your business. Right. So they're willing, if they're willing to work for you, you need to assume that they are not the same as you and that they need to be guided. They need support. Now that doesn't mean they can't learn or they're not adaptable. That's the skill fit Don't make the assumption that they'll just wing it and figure it all out unless they're just incredibly driven and incredibly patient And they're really a strong believer in you. [00:18:45] Some of them may do that, but you don't want to lose a good person simply because they feel like you don't care or you're not invested.  [00:18:52] Sarah: So this is There's so much time that goes into hiring and this is why I say don't waste the time that you've spent trying to find the right person and screening applications and interviewing and you put a whole bunch of time and probably effort into this and now you found the person, don't waste that opportunity. [00:19:18] So you need to onboard them properly. And what does that mean? We need to make sure that they have access to all of the systems that they're going to need. And that they know all of the systems that they're going to need. So, oh, what are the tools that I use? And then, do I know how to access it? And, do I know how to use it? [00:19:36] Right? Don't just assume that they'll figure out, Oh, well, this is how I use this phone system. Train them on it. Just show them that. So, there's got to be training for those sorts of things. If they're in sales, then, well, How do I sell? How do I reach people? What am I doing? Am I just doing the fit call, figuring that out? [00:20:00] Am I doing the full pitch? Am I closing? Am I setting them up for you and then you're going to close? What exactly am I doing? So train them on every single thing that they need to know. And I know this sounds so silly, but most people do not do this. So, what do I say? What do I do? Do I have a script? Do I just make it up? [00:20:22] Where do I find people? Am I in the office? Am I driving around? Am I, like, meeting people at events? What am I supposed to be doing all day? Because I'm brand new and I know nothing. So I'm completely reliant upon you to tell me what to do. So if they don't know, don't assume that they're just going to go and figure it out for you. [00:20:44] You have to show them and they have to shadow you. So for the first 90 days, this is all training. So when you hire any person, now some of them will pick it up a little bit quicker and some of them will take the full 90 days and either way it's all right. But just in your head, tell yourself it's going to take the full 90 days, right? [00:21:07] So in that 90 days. With any position, but especially in sales, don't expect them to come in and then just start selling. Oh, wow, they closed a bunch of deals. That was awesome. That's so cool. So there's kind of a ramp up period in every position, but certainly in sales. So shadowing is very important here. [00:21:31] They need to be all over you. All the time. So you need to meet with them every day.  [00:21:40] Jason: Or whoever is the person they're learning from. Sometimes it's not going to be you, eventually. In the beginning, it's always you, right? Which leads us to, like, availability and access is huge in the beginning. Like, if a team member doesn't have access to you, or you are unavailable because you're so busy. [00:21:58] They're going to feel stuck. They're going to feel unsupported. They're going to feel fearful in what they're doing. And so they need to have availability. This morning, I got a phone call. Like a call came in through Telegram. She called me and she's like, "Hey, I'm supposed to do a triage call right now? I have a scheduled appointment, and I'm trying to load Zoom and it's saying, it's waiting for the host. And I'm supposed to be the host." And I said, Then just call them, like pick up the phone, just call them. It's a quick call anyway, but it probably has to do with maybe you're not logged in or you click the link somewhere else and it doesn't realize you're logged in. [00:22:31] It happens to me sometimes. And she said, okay, yeah, I'll just call them. You know, if she were in that situation, this is her first triage call and she's like totally stuck and I'm like unavailable and she's freaking out, then she's going to feel, you know, people go through all sorts of emotions like anger, shame, guilt, fear, like, you know, stuff like this. And so we don't want to put our team members on this emotional rollercoaster of discomfort when everything's uncertain in the beginning. So that's important. Once we get through and the onboarding period, my general rule for onboarding is 90 days, like you said, then the first the first 30, I'm usually meeting with them maybe for an hour a day and I'm highly available.  [00:23:12] Sarah: Every day. [00:23:13] Jason: Yeah. [00:23:14] Sarah: Every day.  [00:23:15] Jason: That's usually the goal. And then after that, I might the next month, maybe it's a shorter time period every day if I'm over like consistently training them like a BDM especially. But otherwise, it might be that we start backing it off to maybe meeting weekly. And then depending on the role of whether or not I'm their supervisor directly, or if they're kind of owning a piece of the business, I then might back it off in the last month or eventually for the future to meet with them monthly to support them or whatnot. Like you kind of gradually step it down and it'll be obvious because you'll be getting on calls with them and like, Hey, what else should we talk about? What else do you need to know? What other questions you have or hey, I want to make sure you know this and you're going to start to run out of ideas. And they're going to start to not need you as much. And so then it's pretty obvious. Well, okay, then I guess we'll end this early. And that's a clue. Well, maybe we don't need to meet as often now. And they'll let you know. You know, do you think we need to keep meeting all the time like this? Like, well, it is helpful, but I don't know that we need an hour, maybe 30 minutes. Okay, cool. If we could just meet 15 minutes each day so I can get unstuck on a few things. Awesome. Right. So I meet with my assistant every day for a short amount of time. [00:24:26] But they're directly responsible to help and support me on things as an operator, like you run our weekly meeting and our daily huddles. Right? And so there's different things like there's sort of a cadence of structure, even regardless. So. I think after we get through onboarding and you've got good access, good availability, they feel supported and they're succeeding, they need to be getting results. [00:24:50] So I think the next step in my mind is there needs to be accountability. So if you're letting somebody just run and it's 60 days in and they are not succeeding or getting results, like cool, how many calls has the BDM made? "I don't know." Okay. How, like, how often have you met with them? "Well, you know, not often." If there's no part of meeting with them is to create accountability. [00:25:13] Like, Hey, what are you working on today? What do you feel like is next? What are you going to be doing? And to make sure that you're guiding them towards what they should be working on. So accountability means, you know, metrics if they're a bDM.  [00:25:26] Sarah: You need to know the metrics.  [00:25:28] Jason: How many networking events have they gone to in the last week? [00:25:31] How many phone calls and outreach have they made to potential referral partners or real estate agents? How many investors have they reached out or called? Are they on top of all of the follow up tasks and deals that are in the CRM? Do you have a CRM, right? Like there needs to be accountability. So there's a record. [00:25:50] Are they keeping notes? Are they, are the calls recorded? Can you listen to their calls to help them improve? Like if there's no transparency or accountability, there's almost no likelihood that they're going to succeed. Like it's because they're not being watched. So, basically, you're sending the signal, it doesn't matter. [00:26:08] You might get somebody that's an amazing self starter.  [00:26:11] Sarah: Go figure it out. Well, shit, I don't know. I guess I'll just make it up. But then when they make a decision and now their decision is different than your decision, now, you didn't tell them what to do. They just made something up and now you're not happy with the results. [00:26:28] Jason: Yeah, and they're lacking leadership and if they're lacking in your jobs to be the leader and they're lacking leadership, then they have no accountability and they have no, there's no transparency or visibility in what they're doing. You won't know. If what they're doing is working or not working. And so they'll just keep doing what's not working. [00:26:48] Because if they still get paid either way, that's a bad situation for most team members. Most team members will continue to get paid whether or not they're really performing at an exceptional level or a decent level. And with a BDM, their compensation should be directly connected to getting results, so they should really want it. [00:27:06] But if there's no accountability or transparency in the beginning, They're probably going to do a lot of stuff that isn't working and they're going to be frustrated and they  [00:27:15] Sarah: know why it's not working  [00:27:17] Jason: Yeah,  [00:27:18] Sarah: they'll come to you and say hey like I'm doing what you told me to do. You told me to make all these calls I mean all these calls. It's not working.  [00:27:26] Jason: And this is one of the ways in which DoorGrow can assist. [00:27:29] We can assist with this, right? Like they can show up to our Wednesday coaching call if they're a BDM focusing on growth. And the BDM can come to the call and say, Hey, I'm trying to do this and I'm getting this result. It's not the outcome I'm looking for. It's not working. Cool. Maybe you need to change this. [00:27:44] Or how are you saying it? Or what are you doing? Or could you send us a call recording? So all of these things that we teach, we know work. They can work. If it's not working, then it's obvious that it must be what they're doing. They're not doing it correct. They're doing it maybe in the wrong way or maybe they're not saying the right things or maybe their tone is off or maybe They are turning people off and they sound like a telemarketer or they're creating the sales ick or the sales resistance in people by how they're approaching people and these are easy changes These are little things that are very easy to tweak or change. [00:28:22] I mean just listening to one sales call from somebody, I can give them a lot of feedback and it's like they grow so much faster and quicker. And that's one way to add some visibility or accountability into the equation. But as a business owner, you need to know their metrics. They need to have metrics and be accountable for that, right? [00:28:40] They need to know what are the leading actions that I need to be taking that are going to get the business development results? What are the daily activities that I need to be doing in order to succeed? So that's my take  [00:28:53] Sarah: for sure. And I love listening to the call recordings because then sometimes when you're in the moment and this happens to all of us, sometimes when you're in the moment, you have a certain perception of how things went and then when you go back and you listen to it later, you'll catch something that you weren't aware of in that moment. [00:29:14] So maybe it's something that they said, maybe it's something that you said, maybe you. Didn't explain something the way that they understood it, but you'll hear things that you may have missed in the moment and Especially with salespeople, this is a training opportunity. So a lot of times people go "what am I supposed to train them on? Like they know how to use the CRM? they know how to use the phone system. They know what to do. They got to just go do it." Okay? Well Are we honing in skills? Are we improving things? Or are we just saying like, "Go do it! Go make a thousand calls this week!: Okay, well, if I make a thousand shitty calls  [00:29:53] Jason: Yeah, you're just wasting energy and you're wasting your leads or your opportunities. [00:29:58] Sarah: So there's always this fine tuning that we have to do. And very rarely are people able to do it for themselves. Sometimes they can go back and listen to a call recording and then go, Oh, you know what? I'm going to improve that. But a lot of times it's really good to have two people listening to the call recording for that reason. [00:30:20] And then the last thing that I do want to talk about is what does the 30, 60, 90 day period look like? So I always tell people in their first 30 days, this is nothing but training. This is deep training, you really do need to be meeting with them every day, not when it's convenient, not when you have time, not, "oh, well, I skipped that day because this happened." [00:30:42] Every single day, every day, they need to have the correct resources, the correct knowledge, the right support, the questions need to be answered, you need to be available to them. They need to have all of this because they're brand new. So a lot of times what happens is people hire somebody and it's like a little baby bird and then they push the baby bird out of the nest. [00:31:08] The bird can't fly yet because you didn't even teach it what its wings are, right? So we can't do that yet. So in the first 30 days, really expect nothing. Really, they just need to be training. If they close something in their first 30 days, that's awesome. Great! I mean, they should be doing the activities. [00:31:27] Jason: I expect work.  [00:31:28] Sarah: Yes,  [00:31:29] Jason: I expect to actually and work like if it's to make calls, I expect them in like a BDM should be making some outbound outreach and calls right away.  [00:31:39] Sarah: Absolutely.  [00:31:40] Jason: Otherwise, how are you going to know that  [00:31:41] Sarah: if it's going to, yeah,  [00:31:43] Jason: they shouldn't just be like, just learning. So it's like, I want to get them on the phone and get them making calls. [00:31:47] Sarah: No, but in sales, let's be really clear here. Training. This is hands on training. This is like trying to say, "Hey, I need to go learn how to drive a car. But I'm never actually going to get in the car. I'm going to meet with you on Zoom or I'm going to sit with you and you're going to tell me about how to drive a car." [00:32:03] No, honey, you gotta go get in the car. So, yes, you have to actually be doing it, doing the activities.  [00:32:09] That is training.  [00:32:10] Jason: There's no amount of manuals or videos you could read or watch that would teach you how to drive a car. You have to drive the car.  [00:32:17] Sarah: Yes. So, if they close something in their first 30 days, that's awesome, that's gravy, that's a bonus. [00:32:23] But sometimes people go, "oh man, it's been 30 days and I haven't closed anything. Like, man, they must suck." They're new. They're learning so much and when you implement a new thing, you're probably not going to be very good at it. Especially a new strategy or a new way of doing sales because the way that we teach our clients to sell is different. [00:32:43] It's different. We're not hardcore closing everybody. We're not doing that. So it's, everything is different. They don't have their bearings yet. They don't even have their footing and their foundations, right? So 30 days, if they close something, that's great. But I still, I want them to be training and I want them to be doing some sort of, you know, whatever it's going to be. [00:33:04] If you have them doing events or presentations or calls or a mixture of all of them, great.  [00:33:10] Jason: There should be progress. You'll see progress. And if that's the thing you don't want to tolerate somebody being in the business for 60 days, 90 days, and you're not seeing progress or action, and you're trying to push them. [00:33:23] If you're having to push somebody to do something. Probably they're not the right personality fit. If you feel unsafe with them doing things, and it makes you uncomfortable, how they're doing things, probably not a culture fit. They're not doing it according to your values. [00:33:36] The "how" they go about doing it is different than you. If they're just not doing the right things, then that's a training issue. Or they're just not intelligent enough to learn the skill. So that's a skill fit. Okay,  [00:33:48] Sarah: so then 60 days I do want to see some progress. They might close something. [00:33:55] They still might not it depends. I can't say yes or no Oh, they should definitely close. I can't you can't say that because everybody has their own time frame, right? And investors sometimes they work on their own time frames. You can't control that but I do want to see I want to feel like things are happening, and I want to feel like, Hey, we've got some stuff in the pipeline, we've got some stuff that I feel like might close. [00:34:20] If you say, Hey, what do you have that's about to close? Do you feel like anybody's close? And they go not really. Oh... [00:34:27] Jason: are they getting appointments? Are there relationships being built? Are there deals now kind of get in the pipeline at some of the earlier stages? Like you should start to see the sales pipeline mature and build. [00:34:37] Sarah: So then 90 days they've been doing that. Now they understand everything. They know what to do. They know how to do it. They've gotten their feet wet. They've now tested things and then also made some improvements. They're like, Oh, well, when I say it like this, it doesn't work. It doesn't resonate. [00:34:53] But if I say it like this, it's better. Oh I have to switch this and this, right? Now you're making those little tweaks, those little improvements. So 90 days, they should be able to close something at this point. And same thing with the pipeline. I need to see the pipeline moving forward. I need to see more being added in the pipeline. [00:35:11] I need to see them further along in different stages in the pipeline. Things need to start kind of really moving forward at this point. And then after the 90 days, Now, you get to push the bird out of the nest, right? Now, you're a baby bird, go push him. You should now have everything that you need to be able to soar, as long as we did our job. [00:35:34] But a lot of times, I get it, it's hard, because you're running a business, and you're an entrepreneur, and you're busy, and it's crazy. And now you want me to train somebody? Yep. Yeah. Because once they are able to do it for you, now you can relax into it. But if we skip the training, what's going to happen is you're going to go, man, they're just not getting me the results. [00:35:55] Or they might get frustrated and go, man, my boss sucks. Like they don't train me on. Anything, and it's just not, it's not a good place here. I know, I'm going to leave because I know that if I don't, then I'll eventually get fired. So regardless, they're going to leave. And then you're going to have to go, God, well now I have to go hire somebody. [00:36:11] And then you're going to hire somebody. And then you're going to be in this whole hiring cycle of hell for the rest of eternity. And that's not a fun place to be. It's not. It's really painful.  [00:36:21] Jason: Yeah, a lot of people wait until they're in pain to hire instead of hiring strategically with a plan or, you know, in advance. [00:36:29] And so once you get to the place where you need a new team member, and then you hire, and now you're going to have to, you're kind of shot in the foot, and you're going to have to like go backwards time wise, like then you're in a worse spot, like that's not the ideal place to be hiring. And then later you'll create more freedom you know, eventually, but yeah, you want to make sure that you are kind of aware of your capacity and starting to like get your hiring systems, get your new hires in place in advance before you need it. [00:37:01] And this is why it's super important to make sure you're making the right decisions in the business. So we have frameworks for how to decide what you need most in the business and frameworks for how to decide what the business needs most. So you're making healthy. financial hiring decisions because making wrong decisions that way can really hurt cash flow and can, you know, especially early in the business can really be dangerous. [00:37:22] So, well, is there anything else you'd say to maybe some of our clients or people that they've gotten a new hire. It's probably a good hire and they need to make sure they're doing their onboarding and taking care of this new hire correctly.  [00:37:36] Sarah: Yeah, get it on your calendar. Don't just say you're going to do it. [00:37:40] It has to be scheduled time where it's dedicated. And also, don't half ass it. Don't be like, oh yeah, I'm going to be on the phone with Joe while I'm like over here. They know. That's not dedicated. That does not feel good. We've all been on the receiving end of something like that. So, don't make people guess. [00:37:59] Don't make them figure it out. It's not going to work out well.  [00:38:03] Jason: Alright. That's our episode for today. So I think that this should be pretty helpful for some of our clients that are getting into new hires And hopefully it was helpful for a lot of you listening if you're struggling with hiring or building your team or systems or profit, all this relates to the people system in your business. You need people, planning, and process and that's our super system. If you're needing some help with this, reach out to DoorGrow and we can take you to a whole nother level by getting helping you get these systems installed and you'll have a business that you actually enjoy being in. So until next time to our mutual growth. [00:38:42] Bye everyone. [00:38:43] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:39:10] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

How do you figure out the most accurate market prices for rents on your properties?  In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Nathan Jackson from RentFinder.ai to talk about how you can level up your listing game. You’ll Learn [01:24] The creation of RentFinder.ai [05:06] An AI tool for finding rent prices [09:17] Making the switch from one tool to another [13:00] Customizability and integration Tweetables “You come up with something cool and you show it to your friends, then other people are going to want it.” “You can either have it done accurate,  cheap, fast, but you can't have all three.” “I think early adopters to it are going to reap a lot of rewards and a lot of benefits financially and otherwise.” “Once the entire world catches up, you know, and adopts these things, then it can be a bit more competitive, a bit more of a challenge.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind [https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/courses/mastermind] DoorGrow Academy [https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/] DoorGrow on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC1mGYT2Sw0LOe32hO_QdNg/featured] DoorGrowClub [https://doorgrow.com/] DoorGrowLive [https://doorgrowlive.com/] TalkRoute Referral Link [https://cp.talkroute.com/signup?refkey=911664155] Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: I think early adopters to it are going to reap a lot of rewards and a lot of benefits financially and otherwise. Once the entire world catches up, you know, and adopts these things, then it can be a bit more competitive, a bit more of a challenge.  [00:00:14] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:32] DoorGrow Property Managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not. Because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:14] Now let's get into the show. So today I'm hanging out with Nathan Jackson. Welcome Nathan.  [00:01:22] Nathan: Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.  [00:01:24] Jason: So Nathan, is with RentFinder.ai and so Nathan, before we get into talking about RentFinder, which I think is a super cool tool. I've gotten to take a look at it, play with it a bit. [00:01:36] I want to get into the audience hearing a little bit about your background. How did you get into playing around with property management related stuff. What's your history here.  [00:01:47] Nathan: Yeah. so my background is really you know, kind of growing up as a kid, technology was kind of my life, the most important thing to me. [00:01:52] But as I got towards that age for college, I was more interested in the finance side of things. So I went to school to get a degree in finance and investments. I lived in Manhattan for a little while, and then I also ended up starting my workout for a property management firm doing data analytics. [00:02:07] That was kind of the first thing I started doing. And when I got in the door, it was one of those things where I just slowly started gravitating more towards the data analytics and technology at the same time. And as the company I was with called ONEprop got acquired ultimately by a company that rolled up into HRG, I kept being more on that analyst side role, but then also doing more with automation technology. [00:02:28] And that entire side of the business you know, obviously the space, even five, six years ago was very immature from a tech side. And so I saw all sorts of opportunities to kind of get into that space. And then after being with the company that was acquired by HRG I came over to a company called Specialized Property Management and that's where I've been for about five years. [00:02:47] And then I've been leading all of our technology efforts here at Specialized Property Management. So even with the background in finance, I kind of gravitated back towards my roots, which is tech and all that space. So that's what I've been doing here. We've been building software internally, building sort of, integration type stuff and all sorts of cool tools here at Specialized. [00:03:04] And then RentFinder was born out of Specialized. So it's kind of where we are today.  [00:03:08] Jason: Got it. And so I know Chuck Thompson and he's, is he CEO of Specialized or? Yes. Yeah. He's CEO. Yeah. So He used to be part of the RPM franchise and he was a client of mine and helped him with websites and, you know, some other things early on. [00:03:28] And he's got some other like former RPM people that are part of his his organization as well. And that are connected to this like Rod Schifferdecker past client as well. So, I mean, it's really cool to see, like, I've got clients creating stuff now that can benefit my clients. Like, that's really awesome.  [00:03:45] Nathan: It's great, great circle of life there. Yeah.  [00:03:47] Jason: Yeah, it's really cool. So, RentFinder.ai was developed to solve what problem? What was the problem that Specialized was having with all the other rental tools? Because there's a bunch of them out there.  [00:03:59] Nathan: Yeah, so fundamentally that's a great question. [00:04:01] We built this solely as an internal tool to begin with. We had no intention of launching this as a product whatsoever. We were just going to all the different sort of rental evaluation tools that were out there, whether it was a Zillow, whether it was a Rentometer, whether it was a RentRange, a RentFax, there was just fundamental problems with every one of them. [00:04:18] And with a lot of my work that I've been working on with Specialized, we got really heavy into the, you know, AI statistical modeling and deeper science behind how to do some stuff with data. And I said, Hey, I think I can build a better tool, build a better mousetrap to do this. And it was one of those things where just kind of organically, we started building out internal models to price out for our own agents. [00:04:37] We started sharing it with some key clients and one day we had a key client say, Hey, you know what? I would love to share this with my investment partner. Can we go ahead and get an account for them set up? And all of a sudden we went from checking five, 10 a day to, you know, within a few months of just building internally, running hundreds and hundreds. [00:04:53] And it's just sort of been off to the race ever since then scaling the same space. So.  [00:04:57] Jason: I mean, you come up with something cool and you show it to your friends, then other people are going to want it. Yeah, that's true. And so you guys have built the better mousetrap. You guys have built this cool tool. [00:05:06] So tell everybody, like, what is RentFinder.ai. Let's start there.  [00:05:10] Nathan: So fundamentally, if you know those tools like RentRange or rentometer we're fundamentally providing a very similar service. The key differentiators of what we do specifically versus them is that we are taking in just say a monstrous amount of data, the price out of home. [00:05:23] You know, we're not looking at just like the recent comp, plus the beds, bathroom square footage. We're looking at hundreds of data points per property, all the little things that you don't necessarily think about on any sort of listing that you see, we're looking at photos of the property. We're doing an analysis of what exactly the inside of the home looks like if we have them as well as a virtual tour scan. [00:05:41] We're basically trying to look at the nitty gritty about what really makes a home rentable. And when you find what makes a home rentable. You can really hone in on that price because it's pretty easy to look at two homes on paper, a 3, 000 square foot, three, two next to a 3, 000 square foot, three, two and say, Oh, they're the same. [00:05:56] But we all know that's not the case when you walk in the door, right? One home is a lot prettier and a lot better than the other. And fundamentally that was the aspect that's been missing. So we've added that into our analysis. And we've been able to really hone in on very, you know, precision rents by going that route and just going way beyond the limited amounts of data the other tools use. [00:06:14] Jason: So you said there's like hundreds of different data points. Can you give us an example of what maybe some of the other tools might not be looking at?  [00:06:22] Nathan: Sure, like, we'll be looking at like, how recently were the new wood floors installed in the kitchen, right? What color are the wood floors? How are the wood floor colors in this area of the neighborhood renting compared to this over here? [00:06:32] Because we're looking at all the other homes, like little tiny details like that. We're looking at, you know, do you have a pool? If you have a condo, are you facing the north or the south side of the building? Just all the How are you getting all  [00:06:41] Jason: this data though? Where does all this data come from? [00:06:44] Nathan: So generally, I joke with my team that we're kind of like a data vacuum. We get data from anywhere and everywhere that we can. We buy data from sources. We find data online in publicly available places. And if we can't find it or buy it, we generate it. We do things where we're taking data sources like photos, for example. [00:06:59] Photos are a very rich source of information. They're just not really normally easily extractable, right? But if you look at photos and analyze them in a smart way, you can get data out of those photos to be able to do an analysis from there. That's kind of what we're doing.  [00:07:12] Jason: And you're leveraging the AI to do this? [00:07:14] Like AI is looking at photos and going, "Oh, they have hardwood floors."  [00:07:18] Nathan: Yes. Yeah. We have some trained AI models that we've done. You can do visual analysis on the photos and it'll basically take a look at a photo and say, you know, here's the types of floors. Here's what's going on in the kitchen. Here's what we think it was most recently updated. [00:07:30] How up to spec is it? How is it spec wise compared to the rest of the neighborhood? Things like that.  [00:07:34] Jason: Okay, that's pretty cool. So I know when I was using the tool, I tried it on my property. And so I was curious and then what's cool about your tool is you can chat with the tool, so then I can ask it, like I'm talking to the AI, I can ask it to make some changes. [00:07:52] Like I told it, I said, "well, some of these in the comps that you've got listed below are don't have a golf course view of the backyard like my property." So I was like, "can you only show ones that have a golf course view," and then it adjusted it, right? And so yeah, so if somebody's like my property special because of whatever or this property special they can ask the ai to just show the properties that like where that criteria fits And then it was like, yeah, no problem. [00:08:19] I'll do this and then it changed it. [00:08:20] Nathan: Yeah, I know that's one of the features that we've been baiting right now that we've had a lot of great feedback from our customers is that ability to kind of give the really holistic analysis that we provide to the client, but then give them the interactive ability, whether they want to be changing something on the analysis or asking the question about it, you know, being able to take that data. [00:08:36] It just makes it much more personal, more real experience to understand how we got to that number. It's not just a black box that you can only see. Here's the number, take it or leave it. You can give your input. You can say, hey, a lot of customers like to say we're going to add in a new bedroom to this home, or we're going to convert the garage, or we're going to change the kitchen over to fully update it. [00:08:53] How much do you think that'll impact the rents based on everything else in the area? So you can use it as kind of an analysis and evaluation tool to understand, you know, what really is worth doing or not. So we've had a lot of customers that have really enjoyed doing that. Got it.  [00:09:05] Jason: So they can sit there and play around with it and try and figure out, oh, how do we get the most rent? [00:09:10] Would it make sense to convert the office into a room or like, yeah. Okay. Got it. That's very cool. So, everybody listening they might already be comfortable cause they've been using some sort of tool like the several that you mentioned they're already using, they're like, it's all, it's already doing an okay job what would you say to them? [00:09:30] I think the things they would be like concerned about would be price, one of the things that I notice is your tool seems to be a lot more affordable to do a lot more reports than the others, probably because the leverage of AI. [00:09:42] Nathan: So when we launched the tool, my idea behind it was I wanted to be the best, I wanted to be the most accurate, I wanted to be the cheapest, and I wanted to be the most user friendly. I said, I want to give no one any reason to stick around to the older tools to make it to where it's very easy to switch. [00:09:55] So from a price perspective, you know, even if you're getting a really sweetheart deal with some of the biggest competitors on the market, we're almost always going to be way cheaper, right? We can get down to, you know, about a dollar per report, depending on the volume that you're doing. And we have packages that kind of range anywhere the highest price you can possibly pay for a report is 3. 50 per report. And that is still way below, you know, like the rent range, for example but they market as well for their advertised price. Okay. And then also the biggest thing that matters most is accuracy. That is why you come to us first and foremost, is that when you look at a large section of a portfolio, when you look at what this home actually rented for, you look at a rent range report, you look at a RentFinder report, you look at a rent fax report and a rentometer. [00:10:31] We're going to be the closest every single time. We have a lot of data sets to validate this. We work with very large firms that have done large analyses on thousands of properties to say, Hey, you know, definitively RentFinder is the best rental tool for pricing on the market. And so if you want accuracy, that's why people come to us. [00:10:47] Jason: You know, they usually say it's kind of a joke. You can either have it done accurate, cheap, fast, but you can't have all three or, you know, stuff like this. And you're like, yeah, but we figured it out.  [00:11:00] Nathan: You know what? It's funny you mentioned that. I've said that a few times myself. That's, that was one of our goals. [00:11:03] I wanted to make it that easy and that quick and it makes it a no brainer, right? When it does meet all those goals, it makes it easy to switch. So you're exactly right.  [00:11:10] Jason: And you know, it's really AI that's kind of allowed all that to happen. Right? Like AI, we're in the middle of this AI revolution right now. [00:11:17] And I think early adopters to it are going to reap a lot of rewards and a lot of benefits financially and otherwise. Once the entire world catches up, you know, and adopts these things, then it can be a bit more competitive, a bit more of a challenge. But property managers right now that adopt some of these AI tools, like we've had some really cool new tools that are coming to the market like, Vendoroo. [00:11:40] Which is one of our podcast sponsors. They're doing the maintenance coordination, AI maintenance coordinator, which is just super cool. We've got tools like RentFinder.ai. There's all these different AI tools that are coming out right now. There's Super hiresuper. com I think is the website that does like an AI inbox for property managers. [00:11:59] Like there's all these tools right now that where there's this innovation that's being able to happen that just. Wasn't possible earlier, and it really cuts the cost down for property managers. And so if you're able to decrease costs and increase output and do things faster and better, then that gives property managers more margin. [00:12:20] Nathan: Yeah, absolutely. Right. I definitely agree with you. I think the landscape of the AI tools, especially is fascinating. You're able to see a lot of new things come to market that really were not possible before, right? Like you said earlier, you know, we're gonna find, we're gonna find there's only possible because of the AI set of things, right? [00:12:34] You know, what we would do today. Would not have been possible whatsoever, you know, 10 years ago, by any means. And so I really do think it's interesting when you can get these tools off the ground and into people's hands sooner, it allows PMs to be able to move a lot more quickly. And as I mentioned before, you know, we started, I still am a PM myself, right? [00:12:50] So I understand the industry very well. And I always, I'm looking for new tools to be able to bring into that side of the business as well. And it's a very interesting landscape right. [00:12:58] Jason: Now. What else should people know about RentFinder.ai?  [00:13:04] Nathan: So the big thing is that what we do fundamentally is provide that price but we provide you that price in however many ways you need it, right? [00:13:10] We can connect to you through Zapier. We've got a fully built out rest API for companies that are needing large amounts of reports and have their own technical integrations. We've got systems built out to allow you to do bulk uploads of reports and things from like default Appfolio and property reports. [00:13:24] We made it very simple. So whatever your workflow, you can fall into what we do for you. You know, we have full white labeling as well. We love people to put their brand and logo and colors on that report. And then also share that really nice interactive report with their end user, whoever that client may be, just to make it to where it's very easy to switch. [00:13:39] And there is no barrier from going from like a rent range or rentometer and making it to where you can immediately start day one using our tool and integrating it into your current workflow. And a lot of people also love the. Biz dev integration. We've got like the, you know, get my free rental analysis widget that you plug into your website and you can take those leads and pump them right into lead simple right into HubSpot and have them just go directly to your email. [00:14:01] And then your client can get that nice report while you also get that this dev side of the things as well. So all of our clients that have integrated that have had very great success and it's something that people really like.  [00:14:11] Jason: Yeah, I like the rent analysis website, which that's cool. So, you mentioned api for those that are not as nerdy as maybe you and they can't figure out what to do with an API, but they like things connecting. [00:14:26] Do you guys have in the works, is that Zapier connection or make or anything like this?  [00:14:31] Nathan: Yep. We do have a Zapier connections invite only right now, but if anyone is interested if you sign ,up we can invite you to be able to start using it. Make you something as well that we're also in the works with. [00:14:40] I've been working with them pretty closely to get that online. And then if you don't have any one of those that you want to go down, Our API is very simple. We try to make it to where it's very plug and play to where you can just start up with, you get your API key and you can just submit just the single line address and we'll do everything in the background. [00:14:56] You don't need to give us 12 other data points to determine what property your property is. You can just very quickly, one button, one address, and then it'll work via the API. So very quick and easy.  [00:15:06] Jason: That, yeah, that is really cool. This is largely for long term. Could this also apply to short term? [00:15:12] Nathan: Right now, we don't do short term. We focus solely on long term SFR as well as basically we don't price apartment homes, right? We don't price large. 400 unit apartments. We'll price condos, townhomes, mobile homes, basically needs to be SFR of some sort. And you're like, even like a 10 or 20 spot apartment complex will price, but there be honest with you that there are better tools in the market for the large apartment pricing, that's just not what we do. [00:15:34] So yeah, we're SFR focused. Got it. All right, that's largely our target audience that of this podcast.  [00:15:42] Jason: So very cool. Well, I thought the tool was really cool. I love that. It's cheap and that it shows you all the properties that are connected to that particular report. I mean, it makes it really easy to show to your potential client or your existing client. [00:15:59] Hey, this is what your property probably could easily or should rent for and with some serious accuracy and at a level that the other tools just wouldn't be able to do. Yeah, so very cool. How can people, Nathan, get in touch with or find RentFinder and what's the best way?  [00:16:19] Nathan: Yeah, sure. [00:16:20] So if you go on Google and search RentFinder.ai, you can type that in and you'll see, we'll be the first result on Google, or you can visit us at home. RentFinder.ai directly and just click the login or sign up button. And if you click that, you'll get free reports just to start out and play with the tool. [00:16:34] You know, I like to put my money where my mouth is. You don't have to give us a credit card or anything just to start trying it. You can go in right now. Start running reports for free to see how you like us compared to what you're doing today. And so you can do that and just see how you like it. And then from when you're in there, you can hit the contact us button and reach out to me, or you can email me directly by you'll see my contact information on our page as well. [00:16:53] Reach out there. But most of it's all very self service. You should be able to just get using it today right away. And we've worked out a deal with you and your team for those who want a discount, if you use the code DOORGROW15, DoorGrow one five, you can get 15 percent discount off the publish rates. [00:17:09] Jason: So, yeah. So check that out. Really excited about this. So Nathan, appreciate you coming and hanging out here on the DoorGrow show. And I hope you guys have a lot of success with this.  [00:17:21] Nathan: I really appreciate it. No, thanks for having me. It's been a great time talking to you. All right. Awesome. We'll let you go. [00:17:26] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, you're struggling, you're finding things difficult or maybe you're just struggling with the operational side. You're like, I can add doors, but adding more doors is not making my life better anymore right now. It's making my life more stressed. [00:17:42] Then you need a really good operating system in your business and that's something DoorGrow can help you with as well to make your business what I call infinitely scalable. You just need to get that Super S ystem of systems in place. And so reach out to us at DoorGrow. We would love to help your bdms scale and grow your business. We would love to help you as a business owner function like a bdm and scale and grow your business. And we would love to help you be able to you Have the ops and the backend and the support that you need in order to comfortably scale your business without it making your life worse. [00:18:13] So reach out to us, check us out at doorgrow.Com and you can learn more about us there, or make sure if you're a fan of the podcast, you're enjoying this, join our free community for the podcast, which is our Facebook group, the DoorGrow club. It is the best property management Facebook group, hands down. [00:18:32] We reject 60 to 70 percent of the people that apply to join this group. We only let in property management business owners. Check out this group. It's an awesome group. Great resource. If you are wanting to be around others that are growth minded, that are crushing it and be more connected to DoorGrow, go to DoorGrow club. com and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:18:55] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:19:22] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Those who listen to this show likely either manage or invest in rental properties. There are several different types of real estate to choose from, but have you ever considered self-storage units? In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with the “OG” of self-storage real estate investing, Scott Meyers to talk about an opportunity to invest in real estate without the common challenges of residential properties. You’ll Learn [01:22] Switching from residential investment properties to storage units [08:35] Investing in self-storage without the management [12:15] Pros and cons of self-storage [14:51] Self-storage education Tweetables “When you have just a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” “Be honest with yourself, and sometimes the best cook in the world can't fix a broken recipe.” “Once you get behind in habitational real estate and rental real estate in general, you know, it takes double the effort to get caught back up again.” “The more valuable you are to your property management business the less valuable your property management business is to everybody else.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind [https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/courses/mastermind] DoorGrow Academy [https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/] DoorGrow on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC1mGYT2Sw0LOe32hO_QdNg/featured] DoorGrowClub [https://doorgrow.com/] DoorGrowLive [https://doorgrowlive.com/] TalkRoute Referral Link [https://cp.talkroute.com/signup?refkey=911664155] Transcript [00:00:00] Scott: Self-storage really found me instead of me finding self-storage. Which I just felt it's a simple, predictable business model that you can replicate over and over again without as many moving parts and that human factor.  [00:00:11] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:28] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:09] Now let's get into the show. All right. So. I'm hanging out here with Scott Meyers. Welcome Scott.  [00:01:18] Scott: Thanks. And so good to see you again. How are you?  [00:01:20] Jason: Good. Good. It's good to have you. So, why don't we get into your background, how you kind of into this, but Scott, you're a self storage investment expert. Is that fair to say? [00:01:33] Scott: That's fair to say. They call me the OG in self storage now. And I guess I can step into that role.  [00:01:38] Jason: All right. The OG, the original gangsta. All right. So tell us a little bit how you got into this.  [00:01:44] Scott: So like many people got into real estate by buying one single family rental house. Of course, this is a back a little ways now back in 1993, I bought a single family house. with an assumable VA mortgage on it. So I took out a home equity loan from my own home and bought this one, no money down, just like Carleton Sheets, the other OG in the real estate space taught me how to do. And so I bought that house, we rehabbed it to refinance it, rented it out. [00:02:11] So the BRRRR method before everybody called it the BRRRR method. And then we went out and bought two more. And then that turned into four, six, eight, and my wife and I got married along the way and brought my wife into this hobby. I was working for a fortune 500 company at the time, and this was really just to supplement retirement until it kind of took on a life of its own. [00:02:29] And that was because in 1999 with the dot com crash, when all of our tenants were then able to buy a house shortly after that, because the presidential administration at the time reinstituted the Community Reinvestment Act and allowed anybody who could basically fog a mirror to buy a house while all our tenants left and they were doing so. [00:02:49] And so at that time, we were now rehabbing a second time so that we could sell our houses just to be able to keep up with what the market trend was at the time. Well that just about broke us. And so we decided then to get into multifamily and all we needed to do was get some economies of scale, work a little harder, work a little smarter, and we'll make this all happen. [00:03:08] But really what I found is that we just had more doors, we had more tenants, we had more toilets. And to be honest with you, Jason you know, we made a lot of money in residential real estate and growing that side of the business. I mean, we were very big, we got up to just shy of 450 doors. But I realized that I don't think I was cut out for this. [00:03:24] I understood the math, you know, the real estate math and everything that went into it. But I found even though we had property managers and property management companies, I was finding that I was becoming less loving of my fellow man and women, because they were destroying our properties and stealing from us, as well as our contractors and some of our staff. [00:03:40] And so at that point, I began to look around the landscape and, you know, we love real estate because of all the reasons to love real estate. It appreciates, we can depreciate it. We can borrow money to buy it. And then our clients pay down our basis. I mean, there's no other investment like that. So as I looked at the landscape and real estate, that really only left parking lots and self storage if I really didn't like the tenant and toilet business. [00:04:01] So. I looked into storage and loved what we saw in terms of the fundamentals of the historical, the track record of performance of the asset class. And it was right under my nose all the time. It's just this ugly, you know, stepchild of commercial real estate that nobody was really talking about. So I researched it and spent a lot of time understanding the nuances bought my first self storage facility in a partnership. [00:04:22] And then yeah, the light bulb went off and recognize after owning it from the operation standpoint, that It was truly what everybody had said that it was. And what we found is it was all the benefits of real estate without the hassles of tenants and toilets and trash. And so we began simultaneously selling off our houses and our apartments and then going forward into self storage. [00:04:41] And here we are today at about just shy of 5 million square feet of self storage, 28, 000 doors nationwide and growing. And then along the way, also built a sizable education and consulting and mentoring and coaching and event business that only not only teaches people how to get into the business, but also became a funnel, a conduit for a lot of partnerships and a lot of deal flow into our organization. [00:05:01] So that's either the long winded version on a podcast or the short winded version however you want to look at how we got started in the business.  [00:05:07] Jason: Yeah, love it and qualify yourself help everybody understand like where are you at right now with storage and rentals. I mean you got some impressive numbers. [00:05:17] Scott: Yeah, so we're sitting at about we've done over 5 million square feet We're sitting at about three and a half just maybe three and three quarters million square feet right now assets under management So we're right now jason, we're basically a syndication company where we're a financial services company that raises capital and layers that on top of debt and then deploys it in nothing but self storage. [00:05:37] And so many of these projects, these partnerships, these joint ventures in our funds, they have a shelf life and they expire in four to five years because that's when we can capitalize and pull our chips off the table, if you will. And we have a capital event by way of sometimes a refinance, but usually a sale of the property or properties within that fund. [00:05:55] And then we just go out and buy more. So it ebbs and flows when some are going out the door, we have more projects coming in the door as well. I only own two residential properties. One of them is an Airbnb and the other one is the one that I live in. And that's it. Everything else is 100 percent self storage at this point. [00:06:10] Jason: Got it. How many units of storage do you represent then?  [00:06:14] Scott: Yeah, so 28 to 29, 000 overall is what we've invested in and we're sitting at about 20, between 20, 000, 21, 000 right now in asset center management. Awesome.  [00:06:25] Jason: Wow. Okay. So for those listening that are in residential property management, and they're listening to you what would you say to them? [00:06:34] Like, maybe there's some of them that they're like, "man, I don't want to deal with toilets, tenants and trash anymore." And, you know, "I'm starting to love humans less. And I love real estate," but what's kind of your message?  [00:06:49] Scott: You know, in the education side of our business, Jason, of course, when there's a room full of folks interested in self storage, it's really easy to say that you know, I think everybody should have a self storage facility, one in their portfolio, if you're in real estate and, you know, all roads lead to self storage eventually, because I think everybody gets to that place where they do get frustrated and it could be just a day. [00:07:06] It could be, you know, in terms of, "wow, that was a whole lot coming at us." But it doesn't mean that, you know, my recipe is the catch all, you know, when you have just a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And I'm not saying that anybody should go out and do what I have done because we made a lot of money you know, on the residential side and commercial multifamily. [00:07:21] I just found for me, that this self storage really found me instead of me finding self storage. Which I just felt it's a simple, predictable business model that you can replicate over and over again without as many moving parts and that human factor. And so for a knucklehead like me, I think it was the perfect fit to be able to go out and just master this practice and that business model and the standard operating procedures. And then just at scale and at speed go out and just make a go of it. And we grew really fast and never really get over our skis. It was just it's a manageable model as well. And so it just fit for myself. But I would say Jason, when business gets so difficult that it's just absolutely no fun anymore, and it's drudgery... I see many people doing it right now, they're just throwing good money after bad. Well, you know, be honest with yourself, and sometimes the best cook in the world can't fix a broken recipe. And if they find that is the recipe is your business model or just your business in general, then get help. [00:08:13] Or, you know, maybe it's time to take a look at some of their asset classes like self storage.  [00:08:17] Jason: So if somebody's an investor and they're wanting to get into this, there's probably a learning curve. There's probably potential pitfalls. So like, yeah, I've tried my Airbnb. That was kind of difficult. I didn't like having to mess with pricing constantly. Like maybe I should try self storage. I'm curious about what you would say to them and then, you know, if somebody's just an investor and they're just looking to just invest, but they're not wanting to really actually manage storage units, then what path would you recommend? [00:08:45] Scott: So sure. Two paths, but also some folks just take a one and end up achieving the same result. So if this is something that you're looking to do actively you know, of course, Jason, I own, you know, I run an education company. And so we're always going to tell you to get education because the cost of not, you know, you pay the dump tax. [00:09:03] And sometimes we've seen people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the dump tax. And that just means that they've gone out and they've watched a couple of videos read a book and all of a sudden they're experts in masters and this is commercial real estate. There's a lot of nuances to it, no matter what the asset class you pick within commercial real estate, but also because it's commercial real estate, there's lots of commas and zeros to profit from it, which is fantastic. [00:09:23] But also if you make a mistake. Those mistakes in underwriting and in other areas also come with commas and zeros behind them as well. And we've seen many a good investor that maybe it was a little prideful or maybe thought that, "Hey, this is an easy asset class compared to what I've been doing. You know, I can do this with one hand tied behind my back." And then they find out that this is an operating business on top of real estate. And there's more nuances to this and they need to dig in and understand what that looks like, because as you know, once you get behind in habitational real estate and rental real estate in general, you know, it takes double the effort to get caught back up again, and if that goes on for a quarter, sometimes people just can't recover. So, you know, we can go into all the reasons why and the mistakes that people have made, but I think just understanding you need to educate yourself. Now, if you're looking to do this passively, in other words, you don't want to take on the credit risk, you don't want to take on, say, the construction risk or a lease up risk of a turnaround or a development project then you can invest passively. [00:10:20] There's a number of REITs out there and we have funds and individual syndications and joint ventures that we do with folks where they come in as a limited partner. They still get equity. They still have ownership. They have a piece of ownership of this property. So they get the depreciation, they get a share of the cash flow, and then the profits upon the sale. [00:10:38] But they don't take on the lease up risk, the development risk, the risk of a project going south no matter what, and or have to go out and create a business, you know, and a team to be able to do so. And along the way, many folks, Jason, they start as passive investors either with one of our projects or others, and by, by just following along, you know, you get that education. [00:10:59] You know, we hold webinars once a quarter and we send out monthly reports and we send out updates as to what's happening with our projects. And so by def facto, our passive investors are getting an education and they earn while they learn the business.  [00:11:11] Jason: Got it. Earn while they learn. Like it. [00:11:15] And that's probably a better path to start out as is to first explore doing it passively to figure out should they jump in and do it more actively.  [00:11:24] Scott: I don't know better. That's not my decision to make. I think some folks, if they have a team in place, you know, they can make that pivot just by learning the business, but it just really depends on where they're at. [00:11:34] I would say that it's It's certainly the safest. And if you have a small amount of capital to set aside to invest in a project, that's the best way about doing it. Because once it comes time to do your own, it's going to take a larger chunk of capital to be able to do so unless you're raising private equity. [00:11:49] So you know I can say that is the best and probably is for most people, but not everybody.  [00:11:54] Jason: Got it. Yeah. Well, a lot of people listening already have some sort of business, a lot of them, they won't just throw it in, jump right into storage units, maybe. But I think a lot of them, it would resonate with them. [00:12:06] "Hey, then maybe this is another way to diversify my portfolio, another way to invest. I would love to do, try it out passively, and then maybe even get some education." for those that maybe heard the beginning of this and they're like, "Man, I don't have to deal with toilets, tenants, trash, and it's real estate. And it sounds so easy." What are some of the things that maybe they have a blind spot to? That somebody, you know, they would learn once they start doing this, it's not all, you know, stars and rainbows and roses with this as well.  [00:12:38] Scott: Right. So, you know, outside of the front end and the due diligence that needs to be done just to make sure that you've bought a solid property from an operational standpoint, which is what you're referring to, you know, what we found is that, you know, a million bucks, 5 million bucks goes a lot further, meaning you buy more doors you buy more square footage and it allows us more doors because these are metal boxes on concrete slabs and they're not, you know, multifamily that has drywall and plumbing and, you know, a lot of HVC, it just goes further. [00:13:03] So that means that there are more units to be able to keep track of. You know, the good news is there's software and we do have property management companies and property managers to handle that and a lot of it is automated, but at the end of the day, you know, it's a large amount of units and a large amount of rental tracking that needs to be done to make sure that the dollars come in the door. On the flip side of that, just because I am a bright side up, kind of guy, you know, we have the ability with our leasing structure within self storage that, you know, it's a 30 day lease automatically renewable. And so anytime that we want to raise the rates, we don't have to wait. It's not an anniversary. It's not an annual lease. It is a month. And so that means on month seven, if we see that the market is changing and the demand is higher and there's a whole lot of development going on, then we can raise the rates in seven months. [00:13:46] We can do it in four months. We can do some nuisance increases in between, you know, either way, and we're very flexible when it comes to that. But then also, the good news is even if people do fall behind in the rent, you know, we have the ability to, or we have the power behind us of the lien laws instead of habitational or versus habitational real estate in which you have tenant and toilet courts. And so when I used to walk out of there, I had a pink piece of paper and very little ability to be able to get my money back and to be able to you know, execute on getting that the money back in the door. [00:14:18] But with self storage and the lien laws. We can put a lock on their unit, lock them out and we don't have to go to court within 60 or 90 days depending upon the state, my manager or an auction company will cut the lock off and open it up for bids on the date that we have an auction and I can recoup my back rent to my late fees and, you know, we are the judge and jury so we don't have to wait. [00:14:36] I know you asked for the pitfalls but, you know, the good side is that you know, even though there's a lot of units to manage the, just because of the nature of the industry and the safeguards that we have in place, it's much, much easier and simpler to handle.  [00:14:48] Jason: Awesome. Cool. Well, yeah, this is very informative. [00:14:51] Tell us a little bit about your education company, what you do there and and maybe how people can get in touch if they're curious.  [00:14:58] Scott: So on the education side, you know, when I got into business, you know, there wasn't an education company out there. There wasn't anybody that I could go to to learn the, you know, the A to Z to the nuts and bolts of the business. [00:15:10] I could certainly go to the trade shows and some of the industry events and I can learn about doors and how to build these facilities and some of the, you know, the bolt on property management software. But there wasn't anybody teaching about the investment side of the business. And so, you know, we scraped as much as we could, you know, leaning on and building on the foundation that we had in commercial real estate already by owning multifamily and office buildings and warehouses. [00:15:30] But just digging into this business and talking to as many people as possible. And I hired a consultant to fill in the gaps and spend a day with him touring his facilities and others that he managed for other investors. And, you know, that's how we grew our you know, bank of knowledge and created our standard operating procedures, at least the foundation of it. [00:15:48] But then after we got into the business a little further down the path and buying facilities I used to run the Real Estate Investor Association here in Indianapolis. And we had 600 folks in the association. And about 300 of them wanted to know about self storage after they saw what we were doing. [00:16:04] And so we started holding workshops and then some of the agents that represent the national speakers in the industry, again, there wasn't a person speaking and experts on the industry. And so they contacted me and one of them assisted me in setting up presentations, the ability to sell tools and resources for folks, and then helped us to create a live events, and thus, our education industry was born. It was really just out of a, I guess, like any good entrepreneur, you see an opportunity in the marketplace and a hole to be filled, and we stepped in and filled that. And so it's evolved from just a home study system, which is, you know, that's such a guru, you know, term to use that what we developed, what we put together was a very extensive business plan with all the tools, the resources and links and software, you know, and everything you need to find, manage, purchase a self storage facility. And that is the name of our home study system. And then that evolved into live events, three day events, which is an immersive workshop and then also for folks that are looking for either one on one or a group coaching and mentoring, you know, begin offering that. And to this day, still offer that. And so we have you know, we're the nation's leading education company in the space. [00:17:14] We've taught more people how to get into the business and grow and scale the business and than anybody else out there in any other organization out there and still going strong at this is what we'd love to do is, you know, we love to take people from zero to 55 miles an hour in storage. [00:17:26] And then in our mastermind and in our other areas, we like to take them from 55 to a hundred and build partnerships and do syndications with them as well. Awesome.  [00:17:35] Jason: Yeah. Sounds very much like our goal here at DoorGrow for the residential space. So what's the name of your education company?  [00:17:44] Scott: Self Storage Profits is the name of the education company. [00:17:46] SelfStorageInvesting.com is the website for all the tools and the resources, a ton of free information, pull downs, white papers, a whole lot to not only just dip your toe in the water, but really to help you get started, and then anything else that you would want or need with regards to coaching, mentoring, attending our live events, it's all located on that page as well, including access to our passive investments as well. [00:18:11] Jason: Very cool. Awesome. Cool. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show, hanging out with us here on the DoorGrow show. It sounds really interesting. I think there's a lot of our clients that are involved in different types of management. And so this may be another one that everybody should maybe take a look at that could be interesting. I think it's fantastic. Or as to do management, you know directly so very cool. Scott, thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate you.  [00:18:39] Scott: My pleasure, Jason. Good to see you again  [00:18:41] Jason: Good to see you. All right So if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're dealing with frustrations, you can go start a storage unit business as well. So appreciate Scott for being on the show. If you would like our help in cleaning up your business so that you don't hate it and getting you out of that first level of exit of doing the frontline work and getting out of the next exit and the next exit until maybe eventually you decide to sell that business, we can help you with that because the more valuable you are to your property management business the less valuable your property management business is to everybody else. And what I find with clients is as we ascend them through these levels of exit, It becomes more and more business that they would enjoy keeping perhaps And so let's see if we can ascend you and get you past that first exit at least, maybe the next exit where you're out of managing the people in the team and you've got an operator and things are really smooth and so if you would like our help here DoorGrow reach out to us at DoorGrow.com And until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:19:45] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:20:11] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

F You’ll Learn [02:01] The Team Sandtrap + Cycle of Suck [12:20] Why You Might Have the Wrong Team [20:54] Building the Business Around You [29:40] How to Escape the Cycle and Level Up Tweetables “If your business isn't healthy and growing, it's dying.” “Here's the reality: it takes 10 people to clone yourself in a business.” “How did you build it the wrong way? You built it around what you thought the business needed, and you didn't build it around what you needed.” “If you have capacity less than a hundred doors, then the odds of you getting another a hundred doors in the near future is slim than none.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind [https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/courses/mastermind] DoorGrow Academy [https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/] DoorGrow on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC1mGYT2Sw0LOe32hO_QdNg/featured] DoorGrowClub [https://doorgrow.com/] DoorGrowLive [https://doorgrowlive.com/] TalkRoute Referral Link [https://cp.talkroute.com/signup?refkey=911664155] Transcript [00:00:00] Healthy business owners have healthy businesses have healthy team members and feel very well supported. And the only reason you're not there is you just don't know yet what healthy business owners know.  [00:00:11] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. [00:00:38] Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. [00:00:56] 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, Jason Hull, the ceo and founder of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. All right, so before we get started I wanted to just mention our sponsor Vendoroo. We've seen some great results with these guys. [00:01:22] So if you're tired of constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination, meet Vendoroo, your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish, triaging, troubleshooting vendor selection and coordination. Built by property managers. for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. [00:01:47] Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today at Vendoroo.ai/DoorGrow and experience maintenance done right. All right, so let's get into the show. So what has been going on in the DoorGrow universe or in DoorGrow world? So, one, we are raising our rates, our fees, because we are taking better and better care of our clients and getting them better and better results. [00:02:17] And so this is something that we coach clients on all the time. Are you taking your business to another level? Are you confident in raising your fees? Or have you kept them small or competitive, or even worse, low in your market? Are you striving to provide and deliver more value? Are you taking things to that next level in your business? [00:02:40] We meet regularly with business owners in this industry. So in the last week or two, I've met with several businesses that are stuck in what I call the second sand trap. This is where maybe they were a client a long time ago in the past. We helped them figure out how to get growth. They've gotten to maybe the 200, maybe somewhere 200- 300 door range, maybe even up into the 400 doors range. [00:03:05] And they are now experiencing the second sand trap of constraint. And so some experience this even earlier. I have had people come to us, people that have joined our program recently, that are having these second sand trap problems around just over a hundred doors, like 150. And they're already in this painful spot. [00:03:26] And there's a few reasons for this. One, they could be caught in the cycle of suck, which means they've taken on too many shitty clients that are You know, too high of operational costs. And so they have too many difficult properties to be dealing with which makes the tenants more difficult, and so they've kind of created this mess in which their entire portfolio that they're managing and dealing with are a lot more difficult than most of my clients' situations. [00:03:53] And so their operational costs are really high and they're making a lot less money because of that, their profit is down. And then what that means is it's a lot more difficult to deliver customer service and be effective. So I have a partner with me today, which is a dog we're fostering named Hans. [00:04:12] And he is trying to chew a toy right at my feet. So what's up Hans. And if you haven't seen our previous dog episode that we did go to DoorGrow. com Click on "Dogs" up at the top. We've got a little dog emoji on our website. Check that out and learn a little bit about Sarah and my passion in helping dogs. And this is to be fair, mostly Sarah's passion. I like dogs definitely more than cats. I like dogs, but Sarah loves dogs. She really loves dogs. [00:04:40] And so this is more her thing. So check that out. And that lets, you know, a little peek into the our reality here in our home with DoorGrow. So you can also check out our funny videos at the top right there as well. That'll give you a perspective on how goofy we are and we try to incorporate our dogs in these videos. [00:04:58] Hans made it into one of our recent ones that will be released. You'll see it. So this second sand trap, the challenge here at the second sand trap is that these property managers have figured out how to grow. They know they could probably double in size. Most of you that are at the stage, you know, you could probably double in size door wise. [00:05:16] You could easily go get more doors. You could attract more owners if you felt comfortable. So here's a question you need to ask yourself. This is something I love asking people that are at the stage so I can see how bad is it? How bad is the problem? So some of them get at this stage, business owners get really burnt out, like really stressed. [00:05:38] We're talking like I had a lady say to me, "I fucking hate my business. Can I be real with you?" That's what she said. "I fucking hate my business." And she's having a ton of health issues and stress. I don't know if it's all related directly to this, but stress can eat you alive, right? Basically every health situation gets worse if there's high stress. And so she's dealing with a whole mess of stuff, right? And this is a challenge. This is a challenge in business. We deal with a lot of stress as business owners, but property management can be especially stressful. You're dealing with sometimes really upset angry people and a lot of that stress doesn't have to exist If you're not in that cycle of suck the other challenge at this stage besides maybe being caught in the cycle of suck Is not being paid well enough. [00:06:28] And so Not only is your operational costs high because of the cycle of suck, but then also your pricing may not be optimized or very effective. You may not have a premium offering for premium buyers that may exist in your portfolio. And so they just go with your cheaper option, which is the only option that you have. [00:06:45] And then there's also this weird race to the bottom in terms of price where everybody's priced like similarly, like 10 percent in most markets in higher rent markets, maybe like 8%. And then in some markets, it's like really grotesque with flat fee, you know, property management and stuff like this. [00:07:01] And so the challenge then there's kind of this race to the bottom in terms of pricing. And so you may not be getting paid as much as well. And so sometimes if you can just increase the amount of money that you're bringing in and decrease the amount of operational costs in the business, you could easily double your profit margins. [00:07:22] We've had clients go from 25 percent margin, which is good to 50 percent profit margin by getting some pieces dialed in. Now, the three biggest profit levers we find at this stage are people planning and process. Why? Because they're all connected to the biggest expense, which is. People, right? Which is staff and whatnot. [00:07:43] So we need a really good people system, which means a hiring system and a really good existing team so that we can always maintain really good personnel and team members. Then we have a healthy team that buy into our culture, that have the skill and intelligence to do the job and have the personality type that is a fit for the role. [00:08:01] I call those the three fits culture, personality, and skill. You need all three in order to be a good team member. If you have team members right now that don't match all three, you are spending too much money on this person and you're getting too little output. If you're caught in the cycle of suck, you are spending too much money on all of your people and getting too little output. [00:08:22] If you don't have a good hiring system, you can't replace, confidently, the people on your team to get good people. And so you don't have a system or mechanism to do this. And so most businesses at this stage usually spend five to 10 years playing Russian roulette to get a decent team so they can finally break 600 doors. [00:08:42] A lot of them by that time, even before they hit that, just give up, they sell the business, they exit. And so the time can be collapsed on this significantly. So here's the question that I ask. I asked people that are caught in the second sand trap, "what is your current capacity for adding more doors on that you believe right now? How many more doors do you think you can handle with your existing team before things start to get uncomfortable, maybe fall apart, or maybe break?" A healthy response would be, "we could double in size," which means they are not concerned like, "we could easily add another 200 doors, and it doesn't break. It's not an issue." Okay response would maybe be "I think we could add another hundred." That means they're already experiencing some challenges and constraints. They think they could squeeze to another hundred units or so and there might be an issue. Really bad is if you're like, "we could probably handle 50 more units and then I would have to change something dramatically, get a key team member, change something significant or that would really max out my stress." [00:09:42] So if the capacity is 50 doors right now, if your future capacity that you can envision is 50 doors or less right now, it's even worse, like 25 units or something like that, you are already in a dangerous and uncomfortable spot. You need to get out of that dangerous, uncomfortable spot. If you have capacity less than a hundred doors, then the odds of you getting another a hundred doors in the near future is slim than none. [00:10:09] Like you're just not going to do it. Even if people were throwing business at you, you would start to lose doors because things would start to fall apart. Clients would lose trust and you would lose business. You need to create the capacity, the space to be able to easily handle another couple of hundred doors or double in size, or no confidently we can get higher people very quickly and get people up to speed without making a bunch of mistakes, without thinking that the, that all people are crappy and it's difficult to hire, and there's no good people out there. There aren't good people in my market, or I have to have people that have property management experience. Then you need to have the confidence to be able to get them up to speed quickly, which means you have a really good process system. You have processes, you have a mechanism for getting them up to speed and in place, into position quickly, and that you know you've got the right people. [00:11:03] So that they, and they now have the right processes and tools and resources that they can get training and get up to speed rapidly, which is your process system. And then you need a really good planning system to get the entire team moving in the same direction to rowing together as a business, as a team, to use a rowboat analogy, that they are all moving and headed in the same direction instead of in conflict or at odds or just focus on their tasks. [00:11:34] We need a strategic planning system so that there are goals and planning to move the business forward so that you have a solid annual plan broken down into quarterly plan and quarterly goals and then you have your monthly goals and plan which are broken down into your weekly goals and commitments that each team member are taking on that are to move the business forward strategically so that the business is moving towards strategic growth instead of just transactional leadership where you're giving them a task and waiting for them to come back and say they've done it. So transactional leadership is this leadership style that demotivates your team and gets them to perform worse. Many of you live in a very transactional process system.  [00:12:20] So the other challenge at this stage is what I call the process myth. Everybody that's stuck at this stage believes they have a pretty good team. [00:12:29] Because you have a team, you've built some sort of team, but you built it the wrong way. How did you build it the wrong way? You built it around what you thought the business needed, and you didn't build it around what you needed to get to the next level and having more fulfillment in your day, more freedom, and less stress. [00:12:45] Each team member you've added has built more stress and added more questions to your day and you're involved in every single role. And so you have not built the team based on what you needed. You built the team based on what the business needed, which means the business now is evolving and becoming a monster that is like a high chair tyrant flinging food in your face and it's in control. [00:13:06] Instead of building the team and the business around what you need. So you have more calm, more freedom, more fulfillment, more support. And so we need to shift this. So you built this entire team the wrong way, and you think you have a good team, but if you are showing up, if you have an entire team and you are showing up in this business, not in a role in not doing the things that you love doing, not in a role and a position of fulfillment and enjoyment, in your own business, you are in charge of, you created, and you are miserable in your own business, then by default, you have the wrong team. [00:13:44] Zero question. This is as if you started with the wrong puzzle piece and went and found puzzle pieces to attach around your business to build out your team. You were showing up as the wrong square puzzle piece when you really are probably a beautiful round peg or round piece. And so you've built the wrong puzzle pieces around you, the wrong team. And I guarantee you're getting probably half to maybe a third, the output of a mediocre team like that, then you would, if you had a rockstar team and you may think "my team's pretty good," but if this is all you've experienced so far, you have no idea how amazing a team could be if they were really motivated and really performing well, and they loved doing what they got to do and they believed in you instead of just believed in getting paid as a transaction for work done. Here's the thing, entrepreneurs need to realize this. Entrepreneurs are money motivated naturally. Most of us are motivated and we love money. We don't hate money, right? You probably don't hate money. If you look on a disc assessment, there's usually a section called the values index or something like this, and there's a score called the economic score, this index and the economic index or economic score for most people is low. [00:15:00] It's below average. Which means they're not motivated economically, they're not motivated by money. They don't love money, right? It's not that big of a deal to them, which means once their basic needs are met, throwing money at them does not increase performance It doesn't motivate them giving them bonuses giving them pay just in exchange for doing tasks does not motivate them to perform well or better. Money's not a motivator really for them so If you have a high economic score and you view everyone else through that lens, and the only people that generally have a high economics score are entrepreneurs and salespeople. Well, good salespeople should like money because you want to reward them and incentivize them to want to bring in more money and they get paid if they bring in more money So that your interests are in alignment. So you need salespeople that are in alignment with compensation like commission structures, stuff like this that are motivated to make you more money and if they're not making you more money, then you're not having to spend as much money on them, right? There needs to be proper alignment incentive wise. Everybody else on your team though, are not going to be motivated by bonuses and money. And the mistake entrepreneurs make is they try to reward bonus them, compensate them for money. "Hey, if you get us some more positive reviews, we'll give you this bonus." [00:16:13] "Okay." [00:16:14] Right stuff like this and if you hire people that are- I want you to really listen to this if you hire people that are not money motivated, and their only motivation for working for you really is to get paid by you, then you have hired a dangerous person in your business. Let me make this clear I'm going to say this again, maybe in a little bit different way if you hire people and the exchange you're giving them is, their whole motivation to work for you is largely they just want to get money. That's the only reason they're really working for you. And you might be thinking, "what else would it be?" I'll explain that in a second. But their only motivation is to work for you to get money from you because they want money, but they're not money motivated necessarily, then they become dangerous to your business. [00:17:05] These are the people that steal. They steal time. Maybe they have ethics and they have some values and they're not going to actually steal money. But I've seen property managers repeatedly have their trust accounts depleted by people on their team before coming to us. I've seen people that handle their accounting and finances, steal money from them. [00:17:28] These are people that are not as money motivated. But their only motive is money. And so they are bringing people that maybe don't have the same value system as them, and they're not good fit for their business, et cetera. Okay. [00:17:42] If you bring in people that believe in you, let's talk about the opposite. [00:17:46] If people believe in you. They believe in your culture that you've established for the business. They believe in your company core values. They are inspired and they want to work for a business that has a greater purpose than just extracting money from tenants and owners. They want a mentor, A business owner that they can believe in that they feel like is going to help them grow and become even better person. [00:18:08] They want to be part of a business that is having a positive impact in people's lives and in the community. Then if they're not money motivated, it's okay. If their economic score is low, that means they're recognition motivated. So they also are motivated by being part of a team that has a positive culture of wins and recognition, which is part of the planning system that we would install, which is an accountability and recognition system that increases motivation among the team. [00:18:37] It inspires creativity, inspires innovation, inspires motivation among the team, especially team members that are not financially or economically motivated. Then you will get three times the output from these team members. You get way more output from these team members. They are willing to work for you because they're getting so much value in other ways. [00:19:00] They feel like they have a greater sense of the four reasons, as I've talked about on this podcast before of fulfillment, freedom, contribution, support. They feel like they get more of these four things because they're working for somebody that has these four things. Then they also get that fifth reason of safety and certainty because they're working for a business that is safe. [00:19:17] It's stable. It isn't crazy. It's a calm workplace because the leadership is calm. The leadership is in control. There is leadership there where they are leading from a space of having fulfillment and having freedom and having contribution and feeling like they're contributing, making a difference in the world and where they are supported. [00:19:39] And if you don't feel those four things in your business, you've built your business incorrectly. You may have taken good care of the tenants. Maybe you've taken good care of the owners, but you gave yourself a shit deal. You weren't taking care of yourself. And the whole reason the business exists for you is to provide you with fulfillment in your day to day. [00:19:59] You enjoy doing what you're doing. You're having more and more freedom and autonomy to make the choices and do the things you want to do in life. And that means you're making more and more money. And if you're making more and more money, you should have more and more freedom and fulfillment. [00:20:13] But most of you, if you're caught in the second sand trap are as a business are making more money than the business has ever made. But a lot of instances you're making less per unit or door than you've ever made, you know, profitability wise, and you don't really have more fulfillment and freedom. You are losing it. [00:20:32] Every door you add in every team member you add steals fulfillment and freedom from you steals a sense that you're making a difference and contributing in the world and makes you feel less supported and makes you feel like you have to support more. And so you're building your team and your business the wrong way. [00:20:49] And so this is the mess that DoorGrow helps businesses climb out of.  [00:20:54] How do we escape this? We need to do things like have you do a time study, have you figure out energetically, which things are bringing you more freedom and fulfillment, which things are your plus signs, which things are your minus signs. Then building out your job description. Like what is your actual job description and what do you want it to be? And then figuring out, all right, what role do we need to hire or bring in or get to build the team around you to make sure you're supported. Usually this means the first person you hire should be an assistant that just helps you. [00:21:24] Not a clone, not somebody that has all the same attributes as you, but somebody that's opposite and complimentary to you. To help you with all those minus signs that fits that personality. A big mistake, a lot of entrepreneurs make in building their team initially is they try to first go follow the clone myth and go hire somebody like them. [00:21:43] Here's the reality: it takes 10 people to clone yourself in a business. Just roughly, it takes about 10 people to match all of the skills and things that you do when you're wearing all the different hats in a business. It takes 10 different personalities. Because you don't enjoy wearing every one of those hats. [00:21:59] You need to find people that enjoy wearing each individual hat as you build that out. So just get that idea in your head. It's going to take about 10 people to clone you. So kill that clone myth and don't go try and find a mini me or somebody like yourself. That's a huge red flag and mistake when you hire somebody that's like you. [00:22:15] These are usually the people that have the same skill set, capacity, intelligence level as you and an entrepreneurial drive as you. That go and steal portfolios, steal clients and go start their own property management business. Because really be honest with yourself as an entrepreneur, you are probably now unemployable. [00:22:35] You probably couldn't just go work for somebody else. You probably wouldn't want to. So you're not going to do that, right? They don't want to work for somebody either if they are entrepreneurial. They eventually start seeing flaws in how you think and how you do things. They're like, "I could do this better. I want to do this differently. I can see all these different things I would be good at I could change," and they go and start their own business and then steal whoever's loyal to them if at all possible, because that's the easiest thing for some of these people to do. Right? "Well, yeah, that guy's, or gal's a bad boss. You should come with me. We're going to do things differently." And they're like, "yeah!" And that's like people that are not a good culture fit. They're not loyal to you. All right, if they're not a good culture fit if they're not a right personality fit, they're not they don't really love the role or position and if they're not the right skill fit or intelligence level, they don't have the capacity to do the job or they don't have the training to do the job Right, so you need all three. [00:23:32] All right so If you want to escape this second sand trap and escape having this business that is frustrating and difficult, just recognize you can do this. Like you can have the business of your dreams and you don't have to change the industry. You don't have to give up on property management in order to do that. [00:23:53] You just need to align the business with what you most enjoy doing in it. So let's say you love doing sales. You could be the bdm in your own business. You could do sales. A lot of business owners do that Let's say you hate sales, but you love the accounting. You would just love to spend more time doing that you could do that It's your business Let's say, you love doing the operational pieces and the tech and geeking out on systems you could just focus on that and you could bring somebody else in to be the bdm and to make everything like grow, right? There's nothing you have to do you could even get to the point where you do nothing in your business if you wanted to, and you wanted to get to that level of exit where you exit or leadership, and you're no longer involved in the business. [00:24:35] That's possible, too. But then, for most entrepreneurs, you would probably be bored, right? This is another factor that I think is important. If you're stuck in this next sand trap, a lot of times the reason people end up really frustrated, really demoralized, really stressed is because they don't understand these different levels of exit that exist. [00:24:56] And so this is a concept that I got from a gentleman named Roland Frasier. He's an interesting dude. He's an attorney and he's a couple of different things if I remember correctly, but what he generally teaches is about buying and selling businesses and stuff like this. And one of the things I picked up from him and from Ryan Deiss, who are both connected to a program that we were in called Scalable, is the more valuable you are to your company, the less valuable your company is. [00:25:27] So if you're ever looking to exit or sell this, that's important to recognize. The other thing that I thought was really interesting is this five levels of exit that I learned from Roland Frasier. So the first exit is exit the line. This is where you go from worker to manager. In property management frontline work is handling tenants doing all the property management stuff. [00:25:48] That's difficult And if you can't exit level exit one. You can't exit one and you think the only way to escape that is to sell the business, then you have a really unhealthy mindset and you're probably super miserable in your own business So you need to be able to exit level one. If any property management business owner that doesn't exit level one, they're still a property manager and they're not the entrepreneur or the business owner. [00:26:11] They're not truly an owner of the business. They're the, they're an employee in it, right? Number two is to exit the staff. This is where you go from manager to CEO. So you're no longer doing like the frontline lowest level work. Then you're exiting the staff, which is maybe the managerial sort of level work. [00:26:28] And now you're a CEO where you have managers. You have people you trust to oversee departments. Like you have a head of maybe maintenance coordination and you have a head of property management, you know, whatever. Right. The next is to exit the org chart. So you go from CEO to maybe being an advisor, being on a board, you're on the board of advisors. [00:26:48] And now you have a business, it, you're an owner, it pays you and you've exited the org chart. The next would be to exit the board. You're no longer like really having to like steer the business, you know, from behind the scenes, you're no longer involved. You trust that there's a whole group of people that make this work and there's a board and you just own it. [00:27:11] You're just taking cash, like you're just getting paid. And then the fifth level of exit is to exit ownership. It's to leave the business. So one of the things that's super important is for you to recognize where is your best level of exit you want to be at right now? If you've been in pain a while, you're probably thinking "exit five. Like I want to sell this thing. I hate it. It's awful." I talk to a lot of people that are like that and I'm like "you're just doing it wrong let's get this fixed" because The myth that people believe is that if you're at this stage of misery in your business It's "I should go start another business, something else I'll do something else." I guarantee if you go start something else, you're going to start with less knowledge, less skill. You're going to have to go through the pain and the lessons and everything. And you're going to get to the same stage in the video game where you have the same boss to beat. He's just got a different outfit on but it's that same giant gorilla that you got to fight or whatever it is in Donkey Kong and you've got to beat this beast of a gorilla and it is building the right hiring system, the people system, the right planning system and the right process system. [00:28:16] And you still have never figured this out. And so you're going to end up miserable building the wrong team around you again. You're going to end up in the same place, just in a different industry. You have to learn how to solve this boss. And that's what we do at DoorGrow. We help you figure out how to beat this level boss. [00:28:35] We've helped lots of people do it. We've replaced entire teams. We've helped install hiring systems. Hiring is a problem at any level of business. I've seen multi million dollar very wealthy business owners In lots of different industries and masterminds have been in hiring is still consistently a problem for these individuals and so we want to make sure that you're able to let go of that. That you're able to not have to deal with that. [00:29:01] So figure out the level of exit that you most desire to be at. If you're in a healthy state, most of you would probably not want to just be out of the business and retired. Most of you would be bored. You enjoy maybe dealing with certain things in the business and you enjoy maybe running the business. [00:29:19] If it were healthy and you had a good team, so we need to restructure the business around you. So it's giving you what you want. Then it can start to give the team members more of what they want. And you'll have better team members that will stick around because they're not working for somebody that is making bad decision making and making bad choices and running the business in a state of chaos and misery. [00:29:39] Right? Healthy business owners have healthy businesses have healthy team members and feel very well supported. And the only reason you're not there is you just don't know yet what healthy business owners know there's just a little gap in knowledge and maybe a gap in some systems that could easily be given to you, learned and installed rather than having to play Russian roulette, take lots of risks, spend tons of time through trial and error and reading books and watching YouTube videos, wasting time and money and focus and energy and all the other currencies. [00:30:15] Our goal at DoorGrow is to help you collapse time and figure out what works. I've made all these mistakes. I've done all the mistakes that we've talked about. I've done it. And I've worked and I've shelled out a lot of money to operational coaches, to relationship coaches, to fitness coaches, to, I mean, you name it, sales coaches. [00:30:35] Like I've spent. I'm still always learning and I've invested so much into figuring these problems out. My goal is to help you not have to waste all that time, energy, money, to collapse time and just help you go faster. I believe everyone listening to this, if you really are an entrepreneur, you can figure all of this out on your own. I like I have no question. You can absolutely do this. I did it, and I was super clueless in a lot of areas I was super clueless in financials, super clueless in sales like I've had to get coaches and mentors in all of this stuff, super clueless in relationships. I'm on my third marriage. Like I've studied relationships in an insane amount, right? [00:31:17] There's nothing like pain to cause you to learn right? My goal is to help you collapse time on all this because all of these things affect your business All these things affect your revenue all these things affect your team All these affect your ability to lead and if I can help you collapse time on this, just with some clarity and some direction and some systems, you will go so much more fast, so much more quickly, add so many more doors, so much more revenue, have so much more space, so much more freedom, so much more happiness and joy in your business. [00:31:51] It doesn't have to be this hard. And our program in my opinion, even though we raised our pricing is so much cheaper, so much less expensive than the cost of tuition of learning that I've paid to get to the point that I'm at in business. And it's so much cheaper than the price of tuition and stress and money you're going to have to pay in challenges and mistakes in order to get to that level and learn. [00:32:17] I'm going to help you collapse time. Our programs, even if they cost thousands of dollars a month on some of our most expensive ones, are easily offset. They're so easily offset. Like sometimes we offset that in our first jumpstart session that we do in person with new clients. We offset that. That expense right away you have enough doors we can easily find another couple grand or a few grand in the business monthly just because of some of the challenges that exist, and then our program is paid for then even if you a lot of you if you add 10 20 or 30 new doors, which is not hard to do. There's no scarcity out there in the marketplace. It is so easy once you get things in alignment to bring a new business and to attract new business without spending any dollars on advertising, we can usually eliminate two to three grand a month, just in expenses in advertising that larger companies are doing that doesn't even need to exist. [00:33:14] Just that alone would like pay for the program and it would be easily offset. And then you'll actually grow faster using the strategies that we give you. So there's so many ways in which making the decision to work with DoorGrow is not an expense. It makes you money. Otherwise clients don't stay with us. We don't have any sort of term limit or contract where you have to stay with us, like even over a month, like you don't have to, you can quit and cancel at any time. [00:33:42] And the reason we don't have agreements and contracts, like a lot of the vendors you work with like in property management space or tools that you use or software or whatever, you've got contracts and agreements with a lot of different people. We don't need it because clients stay with us longer. [00:33:56] They stay with us for years. So we've eliminated that. We knew if we could just keep people for a year in the past, we could get them great results. And so we had agreements in place. We don't even need that anymore. We are super low risk. We have more testimonials and case studies than any other coach or consultant in the industry. [00:34:13] They can't keep up with us. And we have such a great system because we have our planning system and we have a great team and these systems in place that I'm speaking of on this call. Nobody can keep pace with DoorGrow's level of innovation and what we're adding to our program consistently. We just rolled out these new client workbooks. [00:34:31] We just rolled out recently in the recent years, we rolled out a new martial art style belt system for clients to level up going from a white belt with zero doors. Well, one door up to a black belt with a thousand doors quickly. And we've consistently keep rolling out new and better systems and resources. [00:34:50] And so nobody can catch us. That's why I'm confident in saying DoorGrow is the best, most comprehensive coaching and consulting program for property managers in the space. Period. If you are, especially if you're doing third party property management, but even if you're like, you know, an owner operator, if you're at that next level, we've got operational challenges we can help you be able to increase your capacity and get to the next level. So this is all I wanted to say today. This is my, a bit of a rant, but I want you to understand there's hope. You can do this and you could do it on your own. Doing things on your own is the stupidest path to growth. I've been that idiot. [00:35:31] I have done that. It was slow. It was grueling. It was frustrating and it was demoralizing. And when I started getting coaches and mentors, every decent coach I had because I had the belief that I was going to get something out of that program, come hell or high water. I was positive active in my mindset. [00:35:50] I was positive. Like focus on what's the positive outcomes I can get from this and I was taking action and being active I always made my money back on anything that I did or any program that I did I was making even more money than what that program cost me and that's what we want to help you do. We can easily offset the cost of our program. [00:36:08] So I don't believe DoorGrow is an expense. DoorGrow has legit roi. DoorGrow is a value add to your business so. If you're not an idiot and you're intelligent and you want to collapse time and you want to work with DoorGrow reach out to us we can help you do this. It doesn't have to be so painful. It doesn't have to be so hard We have proven this over and over again that our systems, our growth strategies, our ops stuff all works. We've proven this. We use our own op stuff internally. [00:36:41] We have proven that this stuff works and we know it can work for you. We've done this with multiple clients. The only question I have is, are you going to do the work? That's it. I can't do it all for you. I can't do it for you. You've got to do it, but you're already working hard. If you would like to work less hard in the future and more smart, reach out to DoorGrow. [00:37:02] You can reach us at DoorGrow. com or make sure to join our free Facebook group doorgrowclub.com where we will nurture you, give you some value until you're ready to work with us to grow your business and get it to the next level. And if you're comfortable, it's time to get uncomfortable because when you're comfortable, you're at risk. [00:37:22] There's risk. There's challenge. If your business isn't healthy and growing, it's dying. If your business doesn't have the right systems in place and you lose a key team member, it's at risk and it's in danger. You need to get these systems installed, regardless of how healthy your business feels right now. [00:37:38] If you do not have a people system, a planning system and a process system. Then your business is at risk. You are in a dangerous position and you're acting like the ostrich with its head in the sand, hoping that if you ignore the problem. You will always be good. And that's not going to be the case. You will get hit with something. [00:37:56] This happens. I want you to have a safe business. I want you to take care of your team, take care of your family and set some protective barriers in place. You need these systems installed in your business so that you have a healthy business continually. And you become what I call infinitely scalable, which means your capacity is no longer a hundred doors, 200 doors, you know, you could get to a thousand doors and nothing's going to break or fall apart because you'll be able to handle it because you've got the support of an expert team DoorGrow. [00:38:25] And you've got systems like people planning a process, the super system, and you're able to continually scale and get to that next level. We've helped clients do it. We want to help you and it gets easier and better the more doors you have if you do it in the right way, not worse and not harder and not more stressful because you get better team members, you have better systems, you have more money and revenue. You can take more vacations. You'll have more freedom. Let's make that happen for you. Reach out to us. Check us out at DoorGrow. com until next time to our mutual growth Bye everyone, and I'm out. [00:39:00] Jason: you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:39:27] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

For those who manage short-term rentals, which tools and pieces of software do you use to keep things organized and running smoothly? In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull brings on Jacob Mueller, founder of Renjoy to talk about using technology to help manage short-term rentals. You’ll Learn [01:36] The creation of Renjoy [16:55] Software and systems for STR [25:38] Building out systems using Airtable [34:20] Strategic planning systems Tweetables “One of the things that's different about short term rentals is that it's constantly changing.” “You have to be on top of your game. You can't just do the same thing you've been doing.” “It's kind of like you've got a swiss army knife or one of those multi tools, and it's not the same as having a toolbox of high quality.” “The only thing I want to share with all the property managers out there is keep on doing the hard work.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind [https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/courses/mastermind] DoorGrow Academy [https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/] DoorGrow on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC1mGYT2Sw0LOe32hO_QdNg/featured] DoorGrowClub [https://doorgrow.com/] DoorGrowLive [https://doorgrowlive.com/] TalkRoute Referral Link [https://cp.talkroute.com/signup?refkey=911664155] Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: It's kind of like you've got a swiss army knife or one of those multi tools, and it's not the same as having a toolbox of high quality. [00:00:08] Jacob: That's exactly right. To be able to have like specific specialized tools, you then have to know what you're doing to accumulate those tools and have them all talking and speaking to each other, but if you do it right, very powerful.  [00:00:21] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Property Managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:22] Now, let's get into the show. All right. Today's guest, I'm hanging out with Jacob Mueller from Renjoy. Jacob, welcome to the DoorGrow show.  [00:01:33] Jacob: Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. Jason.  [00:01:36] Jason: Glad to have you. So Jacob, give us a little bit of your background in maybe entrepreneurism and how you eventually got connected maybe to rentals, property management, and and then we can get into Renjoy. [00:01:51] Jacob: Sure. Well, I won't give you the full backstory. It goes all the way back to a college class I took, but I really started getting into real estate right at the perfect time, beginning of ZIRP, zero interest rate era. And I was actually a commercial broker for a little while. I did about six months of leasing and realized I did not enjoy that. [00:02:09] And so then I transitioned to a residential property management firm based out of Denver that focused on investors. When I joined them, Atlas Real Estate, they're in, I don't know, five or six states now. But when I joined them, they were only in Colorado. They managed maybe 2, 500 doors and I was kind of their regional broker in Colorado Springs, which is where I am. [00:02:30] And they are now, I think north of 10, 000 units under management and have grown tremendously on the management side. But I learned a ton from these folks. I learned how to flip property. I learned to invest in real estate. I learned a lot. And so that's kind of where my real estate investing career started. [00:02:46] That was about four or five years ago. And since then I've acquired single family homes some small multi units. And then I've also diversified in my income streams from just long term tenants to also short term tenants. And that's kind of where the story of Renjoy begins. One of my clients and I worked with, as a broker, happened to have quite a few Airbnbs, short term rentals. [00:03:09] And he was buying properties like every six months. And I was trying to figure out how is this guy, he's my age, how's this, you know, 28 year old buying so many properties so quickly back to back? So I started learning about his process and his insights into the industry. And I thought, man, this guy's got, a peg on this industry. [00:03:25] And of course, during ZIRP, Airbnbs were easy, making money was easy, everybody was doing it. And so I saw this interesting opportunity, decided to partner with this client of mine, and another client actually. And we formed Renjoy together with our own portfolio to start.  [00:03:40] Jason: Nice. Okay. So what is Renjoy?  [00:03:45] Jacob: Yeah, so Renjoy is kind of an unintended consequence. [00:03:48] It was not our plan. It's a short term rental property management business. But when we first started the company, it was just to manage our own portfolios. And people started asking us to manage theirs because short term rentals and long term rentals are complex and difficult and a lot of work. And so owners are constantly looking to handover management for these things. [00:04:09] Jason: Yeah. And that can be a challenge. You know, with those short term rentals. I mean, everything has to move quick, right? You're having to check and adjust prices every day to make sure you're getting the, you know, the best rate possible. You need to communicate like immediately all the time with all the guests and then, you know, then like you're trying to figure out how to make sure you're getting as many people through this property as possible But not getting it damaged and then maintenance stuff hasn't dealt with like super fast Or people get really frustrated and upset and so it's a difficult game and then for you know for people managing short term rentals It's almost like a cleaning talent acquisition business more than it is a property management business And so, how does Renjoy help with this stuff? [00:05:02] Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. There's so many ways we can go with this, Jason. A lot of what you were saying, you know, resonates with me. I think there's an increased complexity on the stakeholder relationships that we have as a manager. All property managers have this complexity where they have their tenant who is a stakeholder. [00:05:18] They need a tenant to pay rent. And they also need to have properties with which to have a tenant pay rent on. And so all of the property managers have this balance they have to walk between these stakeholders. They have to serve their tenants and they have to serve their landlords, their property owners. We're the same, but one of the challenges is our tenants leave us reviews. [00:05:38] Every single time they stay and so there's this increased out of, shall we say, accountability almost on how we manage our relationship with this key stakeholder, the guests that are coming to the properties, the tenants, but also the owners too. And then this all leads to the same challenges all property managers have, which is balancing meeting your tenant's requests for service, for maintenance, kind of meeting their expectations while also keeping costs as low as possible and trying to meet the owner's expectations. And you have to constantly balance that when you're thinking about maintenance and your service level agreements and how they can get impacted by the occupant versus the owner. [00:06:16] So that's one thing that's really complex. But there's a lot of things we can get into with short term rentals. We are a full service short term rental management company. This is another pretty big distinction between long term rental property managers and short term is that the suite of services provided varies quite a bit from one short term rental manager to another. [00:06:36] Not to say that long term rental managers are all the same, but generally speaking, there's a pretty similar core group of services that all long term property managers provide for their clients.  [00:06:47] Jason: Got it. So, Is Renjoy a service that those that listening that are running a property management business are you their competitor or is there a way that they can work with you or how does that work? [00:07:00] Jacob: Great question. I do not believe we're competitors. We don't do long term rental property management and we refer out for that. And so we actually kind of have a lot of good relationships with our property managers, mutual referring relationships, actually, in the markets in which we serve.  [00:07:16] Jason: So what you're saying is long term residential property managers, if they're not wanting to deal with the complexity of short term property management, is there a way they can sort of partner with you and maybe get paid? [00:07:28] Jacob: Absolutely. Yeah. We have a referral program. And for everybody who signs a contract with us, it's a thousand bucks. Easy peasy. And if the property manager happens to also be a practicing broker, we actually do work to execute exclusive right to lists in our property management agreements, which is assignable. [00:07:46] And so we just assign, should that client that you've referred to us choose to list their property, we can actually reassign that exclusive right to list back to you as the property manager slash broker.  [00:07:56] Jason: Got it. Okay. So that's an additional benefit. They can keep the real estate deals.  [00:08:00] Jacob: That's right.  [00:08:01] Jason: Got it. [00:08:03] Okay. So for those that are investors listening and, you know, we have a lot of property managers and they should be investors as well if they believe in real estate investing, right. And they're servicing people doing it. So they're probably investors as well. If their primary focus is longterm residential management, but they're wanting to, you know, get a couple of short term properties in their market, but they don't want to do short term management. And they're buying these properties. Why should they choose you to do it instead of having the side job or why do investors tend to choose you instead of doing it themselves? [00:08:38] Jacob: Yeah. That's a good question. In general, actually, Jason, what I would say is if you are depending on your life and what all you have going on in your life, generally speaking, I recommend folks who are buying their first Airbnb to run it themselves because there's just a lot of things you need to learn and understand. [00:08:55] And I actually would say the same thing about long term rentals. I would say you as the homeowner or the property owner should try to manage it yourself. Because then you understand the challenges that, you know, your property manager might face and you know what to look for in a good property manager. [00:09:09] Same thing applies for short term rental management as well. So if your listeners are looking at acquiring their first one, my recommendation is do it first of all. And then second of all, learn the ropes, do it yourself, understand the challenges and the complexities, and then go and shop around for a manager because it's expensive to switch. [00:09:28] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. So my wife and I, we got a short term rental so that we can do client events at it and stuff like this. And, and so we'll bring clients in and we'll use that and then in the like in between we'll just we'll use short term rental it and send it out for other people to use right and so, but even with this one property like to make this to manage it well, we've got a whole suite of tools in order to like make this efficient and, you know, sarah my wife she runs it and she went through a whole university and a course and like all this stuff to like, learn how, learn the game and learn how to do photos different than typical real estate photos and like all this stuff. [00:10:11] And so, you know, to figure everything out to get this working and it's working really well, but. It just seems like a lot. It seems like a lot of stuff. So what competitive advantage do you feel like Renjoy like affords over people that eventually they figure out how to do all this stuff. They've got all these tools, but it still takes a bunch of time and they don't want to do it. [00:10:30] Jacob: Yeah, I know. That's right. It is actually very complex. It's also not static. One of the things that's different about short term rentals is that it's constantly changing. For acquiring the guests, meeting the demand out there, capturing the existing demand for short term lodging, you have to be on top of your game. [00:10:47] You can't just do the same thing you've been doing. In fact, we see quite a few property owners now who are kind of getting off that ZIRP high, you know, 2020, 2021, 2022, when people were spending like crazy, and now their properties aren't cash flowing very well. They're not capturing the demand that's in their market nearly as well because the game has changed. [00:11:04] They're saying, Hey, I'm doing everything the same I did before, but my revenue is going down. I don't understand why.  [00:11:10] The reality is, you have to compete you're competing with actually folks like us who have this professionalization of the industry, which I think is going on right now in short term rentals. [00:11:20] And one of the big challenges with an individual owner operator is not only do you have to message your guests promptly, you have to make sure they check in, check out okay. You have to check for damages after the stay, you have to organize the cleaning, you have to organize the house or the maintenance, you have to do all that. [00:11:35] But on top of that, the big thing that I see people miss is that you have to be on your pricing every day. I mean, you have to not just use algorithmic based pricing with some of these tools like Price Labs or Wheelhouse or something like that. You have to be doing it every day. And when you're looking at your pricing every day, you can't just look at your property. [00:11:53] You have to compare it to all your comp sets and see, hey, who's booked on these, you know, next 10 days and at what rates and where do I sit in that comp set and what do I need to do to my prices today to capture the existing demand before somebody else in my comp set captures that, that guest or that demand. [00:12:11] And it's very hands on. And so one of the big advantages of a property manager like us is we have, you know, two people full time looking at pricing for every property.  [00:12:20] Jason: So, and how many properties do you guys over right now?  [00:12:24] Jacob: We manage about 165.  [00:12:27] Jason: Yeah. And so with 165, you, two people are able to handle all the pricing checks and updates on a daily basis. [00:12:34] Jacob: That's right. Because not every property is unique, right? We have comp sets. So if you have Let's say 15 two bedroom, one bath units that are all, let's say, basements or, you know, attached ADUs, and they're all in the same geographical area, we could do a lot of pricing at the same time for all 15 of those units because we're trying to capture that segment of the demand. [00:12:56] Jason: Got it. Got it. Okay. So, so for those that are listening, they're managing short term rentals. And maybe they're not doing that, that one missing piece very effectively. What would you recommend that they do?  [00:13:11] Jacob: You have to, I mean, I think you have to do that, right? I mean, big part of the value proposition of a property manager for short term rentals. [00:13:18] This is key for all your listeners who are thinking about buying a short term rental too. Short term rental property managers are expensive. And so, you want to ensure whichever manager you choose to hire is going to exceed or excel or expand beyond what you might otherwise earn in revenue to offset that cost. [00:13:35] And so, if there's a property manager out there doing short term rentals and they don't have a sophisticated pricing strategy, I would say your value proposition is very weak because you're going to charge, you know, a large percentage of commission on what's already coming in without necessarily increasing the amount of revenue coming in to offset that cost for your property owners. [00:13:53] And I think you're going to end up in a tight spot when your owners aren't making enough money. And another manager can increase or boost their earnings. So I would say get on it. There's no reason not to. There's a lot of access to global talent who knows how to do this kind of stuff. So it's not a lack of talent or even that they're terribly expensive. [00:14:11] You can get a pretty good program implemented. Okay.  [00:14:15] Jason: Well then let's allow you to poison the well a little bit against any of your competitors. So let's talk about then what, how do you find and vet a good short term rental management company? I mean, everybody, when they hear what I do, if I'm at a cocktail party or an event or anything, I hear people all the time. [00:14:34] Oh, I had some rental properties, but man, it was a nightmare. And I got rid of them. And I'm like, maybe you should've just got a property manager, but in short term, like if they're not cash flowing, or it's not making money, or it's not working out it could sometimes be the property manager. [00:14:50] Especially based on what you're saying. So what would be the biggest initial filter? Would it be that? Would it be, Hey, how often are you checking the pricing on the property? And what's your pricing strategy?  [00:14:59] Jacob: You know, it's tough because you can, you know, with anybody, they can tell you whatever they want. [00:15:03] You have to like verify. And so I would always say there are a lot of like basic ground rules, questions similar to what you're saying, Jason, where, Hey, tell me about your pricing strategy. Tell me about how you will price my property. Tell me about how you'll handle work orders when things come up. Like tell me about your communication strategy with guests. [00:15:22] Tell me about your philosophy on refunding for issues or how you handle cancellations or how do you handle damages? Like all of these like key components, you'll weed out a lot of crummy property managers that way. Actually, if you just go through, Hey, here's the 15 core things you got to do just to be a worthwhile candidate for property management for me. Here's the 15 main things, but to go beyond that's when you have to start doing things like show me your Airbnb account that has all your reviews and going through that list and pick, you know, out of the last three months, find a bunch of reviews and ask them to explain what happened on those poor reviews. [00:15:59] Hey, this guest said this thing happened. What all what happened on your end? And just literally do your due diligence on guest reviews to see how the guest stakeholders are impacted by this manager. And then furthermore, try to find another owner. There's kind of a reputation game here where you need to understand, Hey, has this owner been with you a long time? [00:16:19] Why are they with you? Are they happy with you? Have they considered transitioning to another manager? Kind of a lot of stuff you would expect. And it is a lot of due diligence, I will say, but I think it has a very large impact on the performance of your property.  [00:16:32] Jason: Yeah, no, I think that's significant. [00:16:35] So you've kind of built a platform for your business, correct? With Renjoy. And so tell us a little bit about that. How is that unique? Maybe some others listening might get inspired if they're doing short term management, but explain how what kind of your, maybe that's your competitive advantage. [00:16:55] Jacob: I would say it is. And this actually, I think Jason would apply for all of your audience, even long term rental property managers. One of the things that we've been thinking really carefully about with our business as we're growing is who owns our data our property data, our guest data, our owner data, like where's that data being held. [00:17:16] And if it's being held by a third party, like our property management software provider, in our case, guesty, in your case, you know, at folio or whatever, when you think carefully about where that data is going, you have to ask yourself, am I okay with this third party data provider being the one who's going to initiate, you know, improvements to how we interact with our data? [00:17:39] Am I okay with them developing all those features and all that kind of stuff? Or do I want to have control over that based off of my needs and what I see in the market?  [00:17:46] Jason: Yeah.  [00:17:47] Jacob: And I'm not saying this is for everybody, but because we are more, I would say, tech focused and tech forward as a company, we've decided to keep that data in house. [00:17:56] And so, we use a third party tool called Airtable. I'm sure some of your audience members will be familiar with this tool. All right.  [00:18:02] Jason: Airtable geek.  [00:18:03] Jacob: Oh yeah, we love it.  [00:18:04] Jason: We run our business off of it.  [00:18:05] Jacob: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. We do too. And so, we use our property management software because you need it. [00:18:12] Right. We use it to handle our reservation data, all the calendars kind of, it's where we actually push all of our listings to market them to acquire the guests and all of our reservation data flows through there as well. But it all flows from our property management software tool into airtable. And some of it flows back and forth. But what it allows us to do is we can pull in all of our work orders from another software. We can pull in all of our accounting from another software. We can pull in whatever kind of data we want into Airtable. And we can relate the data in ways that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do, if you're using a single tool. [00:18:46] For example, Guesty, our property management software has work orders in it. It has review management in it. It has accounting in it. It has everything in it. But the problem is If you use the full suite of services within your main software provider, your property management software provider, typically, each of those ancillary services are not best in class. [00:19:08] And so, you're constrained on what you can do with the tool that you have. And we very much want to be constrained with, you know, our own kind of creativity and our own ability to create efficiency in our business  [00:19:20] Jason: It's kind of like you've got a swiss army knife or one of those multi tools, and it's not the same as having a toolbox of high quality. [00:19:28] Jacob: That's exactly right. Yeah, but it's complicated and it's costly I mean you have to be able to have like specific specialized tools. You then have to know what you're doing to accumulate those tools and have them all talking and speaking to each other, but if you do it right, very powerful. [00:19:44] Jason: Got it. Okay. So, and you're using guest CSPM software and then you've paired it up sort of with Airtable, it's feeding data into Airtable and then because you have it in Airtable, you're able to probably notice patterns more, run reports with the data. You then can create automations and things that happen from, you know, Airtable, maybe, are you using Zapier? [00:20:08] Jacob: Oh, of course. Yeah. We use Zapier and make as well for certain things. We also do have a little bit of Python scripting, but that's, it's very powerful.  [00:20:17] Jason: That's getting really nerdy.  [00:20:19] Jacob: So yeah, it's not me. Let's put it that way. It's not me doing it.  [00:20:23] Jason: Right.  [00:20:24] Jacob: But let me give you an example, Jason, of how these things work together and are really powerful. [00:20:28] So we have a lot of our housekeepers are actually in house now. They're W 2s. They're paid hourly. One of the big challenges is You can't have a manager inspect every single turnover. I mean, we've had like 72 cleans in a single day on Labor Day weekend. So there's no way you can cost effectively have somebody inspect every single clean. [00:20:49] Like it's just not possible.  [00:20:51] Jason: Right.  [00:20:51] Jacob: And so how do you hold cleaners accountable? How do you actually rank them? How do you know whether they're doing a good job or not? Other than after the fact, the next guest says, "Hey, this place is terrible."  [00:21:00] Jason: Right.  [00:21:01] Jacob: What we actually do is we do that. When the review is generated. [00:21:05] From a guest stay. Okay, now if that review mentions any kind of cleanliness issue or whatever, the review is an object in Airtable, then gets linked to the person, that is the cleaner, who is also in Airtable, and we can say, hey, who cleaned before this review? And we can actually tag that review and tie it to the cleaner, the person, and we can rank them. [00:21:26] And so we can say this person has an overall ranking of 4. 9 out of 5 on their cleanings over the last however many cleans. We can actually go back and look at every single turnover they did and what was the guest report afterwards. And by that, we can eliminate cleaners who are not doing a good job. [00:21:43] Anybody below 4. 9, you just eliminate and then you refill that pipeline. And Yeah, by having that connection, it's really powerful. That accountability happens way faster. That's what you're trying to do. If you're trying to speed it up,  [00:21:55] Jason: right? Because you have the data, you've got the timestamp of the review. [00:21:59] You can then check who was the cleaner before this review and, you know, and. You know, figure that out and then you can link to the cleaner and then you've got a database of all your cleaners I'm sure in air table and all the cleaners in Airtable. You've got these Cross links to all their reviews that are affiliated with them And then you've got a rating that you can see and so each cleaner is rated in your system yeah. [00:22:24] Yeah, so you're connecting the reviews to the cleaners  [00:22:27] So you with that data you're able to make much faster decisions as to whether, and it's not just like, you know, the really noisy, greasy, squeaky wheels that you're kind of paying attention to. Wow. This cleaner is really horrible. Who did this? [00:22:42] You know, you're able to just look at it almost like a spreadsheet and see, all right, these cleaners are performing at the top. These are not so much. We're going to send more work to these ones, maybe less than these ones are gone.  [00:22:53] Jacob: Yeah, that's right. You gamify it too. They enjoy it. I mean, it's a little bit of a friendly competition too. [00:22:58] Cause what we do is we display with a dashboard. Hey, who are the top 10 cleaners this month? Or like, it's actually live dashboard. So like, Hey, who are the top 10 cleaners? You know, we have 35 or 40 cleaners. And so, you know, if you're not on the top 10, you know, you're not on the top 10, but those who are on the top 10 are constantly competing with each other to be the best. [00:23:17] And there's a lot of shuffling going on. So yeah,  [00:23:20] Jason: I love that. That's great.  [00:23:22] Jacob: That's just one example. There's a lot of things where if you own the data, you can connect it and gain insights in ways you would not otherwise gain from a lot of tools because the people who build the software are not managing property. [00:23:35] So, they don't know what you're trying to understand about your property. They just say, Oh, you need accounting? Here's some accounting. It's like, well, but they don't understand the complexities around trust accounting and how I'm spending money on behalf of the owner. So, they don't make it easy for me to send and receive invoices within their accounting software. [00:23:50] I have to do that outside. Then I have to reconcile it with their trust accounting module. It's like, they just don't understand what you're doing. And so, their tools are often pretty, pretty weak.  [00:23:59] Jason: Okay, cool. Yeah, I love Airtable, man. We geek out on it. We use it for our client success database. We use it for our planning system. [00:24:09] We built DoorGrowOS in it. We built our applicant tracking system and hiring system in it. And built a bunch of stuff in it. So if you're a property manager and you're using Airtable, then let me know, like reach out to me. I'd be curious to see what kind of things other property managers are doing in order to you know, leverage Airtable. [00:24:30] And how they're using this in their business. I know there's some out there doing it. I've seen it in some of the groups and they're leveraging Airtable to keep track of things. So. All right airtable is really cool. Basically for those that aren't familiar with Airtable, it on the surface, it looks like a Google sheet sort of, but the difference is It's beyond just spreadsheets. It's a database software and really it's now considered no code software because to have software, you need input, you need data storage, and then you need output and so you can build in air table forms or things to entry under data or you can even connect it to zapier or other automation softwares or tools to feed data into it so you have input and then you have data storage and you can build really complicated databases of stuff where things are cross linked and then based on that then you can create dashboards or extensions or output or feed data to other systems based on that data. [00:25:32] And so, yeah, so there's some really cool stuff that you can do with Airtable. So, yeah, so give me another example of something cool that you do in Airtable that you think is may be relevant to property managers.  [00:25:44] Jacob: Yeah, we actually incorporated our CRM into Airtable and the main reason for that is because Oh,  [00:25:52] Jason: Airtable is your CRM? [00:25:54] Yeah.  [00:25:55] Okay, got it.  [00:25:57] Jacob: There are some limitations with it, of course, but because we're not doing like mass, we're not doing like really mass marketing, we have really good lists. So we're not targeting like a ton of people because it's very B2B.  [00:26:07] Jason: Yeah.  [00:26:07] Jacob: And we don't necessarily want everybody short term rental. [00:26:09] Like we're very particular on which properties we want to manage. So anyway, one of the benefits of it is when you're going through the sales process, right? A lot of that process is discovery of property data. Not just owner data, owner problems, whatever. It's also property data. And so, we noticed this huge inefficiency in a lot of sales processes where the salespeople learn all about the property, they get them signed, and then they hand them off and they don't communicate all of the things that they learned about the property. [00:26:38] And then you have to relearn and the owner's like, I already told you this. Like, now I have to tell you about this furnace again, and this AC unit again, and this hot water heater, and this thing about the backyard, and this thing about the sprinkler. This thing about the neighbor, this thing about the, like, there's just on and on. [00:26:49] It's a lot of work for the owner. And so what we've done is we've built that data intake to your whole point about what software is for that data intake that the sales person is collecting through the whole process gets built into the system. So that when that lead converts, that opportunity converts into a client. [00:27:07] All of that data goes straight into the property data, and the onboarding team just has to fill in the gaps. And so it really smooths the transition of data from sales to operations.  [00:27:18] Jason: Yeah we sync and merge our CRM, our sales CRM, which is our tool for communication and our text, email, phone, everything fees through our CRM with our existing clients with perspective clients, all that, but we have it sync to our client success database for our existing clients that are in our mastermind and our coaching programs. [00:27:42] And it feeds data across. So for example, we'd like to track how many doors our clients have. We have them complete a weekly check in form. The air table and they're providing their monthly revenue, their door counts. We capture this data and we use this to build what we call proof bombs later that are like visual testimonials that people can absorb seconds, which is an idea I learned from Sharran Srivatsaa, which is the CEO of real and brilliant guy and he taught this to Alex Hormozi. [00:28:13] Alex Hormozi used it in his book launch. As they're showing all these people getting results And so we have the data to prove that our clients are getting results over time and we can show the time period so it just feels more credible. And that data syncs over to our crm and updates their door count updates these things So when we're talking with them in the crm We can communicate with them. [00:28:36] And so we've we're always geeking out and optimizing our system, our client success database, everything so that we can better take care of our clients. Like we have a photo of every client's face in our database. We can learn who they are and know who they are and know their names. So when they show up, Recognize them and yeah, so we stalk them a little bit to get a photo or we capture their face on one of the Zoom calls that they show up on or something, but my team are responsible to make sure Every client has we have a photo. [00:29:06] We have the name. We know their current door count. We know what they're working on and and then yeah, we've got some other really cool things that we've done recently as well so we're always improving this and. Because our key system we run our entire business on is called DoorGrow OS. [00:29:21] It's a planning system that we've built out in Airtable. We coach clients on how to do this as well. And it really, I believe, is our greatest competitive advantage.  [00:29:30] Jacob: So do you, like, white label an Airtable instance for those clients?  [00:29:33] Jason: So what we do with our clients is we have an enterprise Airtable account and then we give them, we create or duplicate some of our proprietary Airtables that we built for clients and give them access to these. [00:29:47] Jacob: I think this is brilliant. I actually think if there's any property managers out there who are thinking about this, the value that Jason's offering actually through pre building or pre packaging an Airtable setup on how your processes should flow accordingly. That's actually extremely valuable. It's fascinating that you're doing that, Jason, because we've been thinking about it ourselves for a short time. [00:30:07] Jason: So we never really built the process system, because we partner with Flussos, another company that has this brilliant flowchart process software,  [00:30:16] Because I think there's three levels of process I've talked about, but the level one is process documentation, which is really shitty because people don't really read processes. [00:30:26] It's like the owner's manual in the glove box of your car, right? Then there's the next level is checklist and that's okay. We've used process street stuff like that in the past. Some will use lead simple. Checklist has its own inherent flaws that the more complicated the process the more only one person understands how to change it or edit it or make it work and then there's like the next the third level which is is visual workflow and this is where everybody understands it and they're clear on it. So visual workflow, what that's done is it's allowed me the nerd to not have to do processes anymore. My team all understand them. They can see them and they can be crazy complicated because it's like playing with flow chart, Visio. [00:31:06] And that's where the processes are built. So that's been a game changer for us, but everything else, like our planning system, and our hiring system, this is where I think Airtable really magically shines because we can custom tailor their hiring system for particular needs. Like we have a client who's adding like 114 doors in like, like a month or two, or like he's just has this ridiculous. [00:31:30] And so his biggest constraint is hiring maintenance technicians. And he lost two he had four. So now he's down. He was down to two He got on a call with me and he was using our DoorGrow ats our applicant tracking system and we talked with him about cloning the application form reducing it to get more maintenance text to flow through, reducing the difficulty and then giving them working interviews and my coaching for him was you need to be probably hiring four techs a month and firing two or three. [00:32:01] That's right. That's exactly right. Which is very different. And so I explained to him, I was like, you are no longer property management business because your business now, your biggest constraint, your business now is, and you need to swallow this pill that your business now is a maintenance talent acquisition company. [00:32:19] And once he's like owns that, then he'll move on to another level boss in the video game of business, you know, but that's the business he's in now. It was originally, it was like, Oh, we're in the business of trying to get clients. And then he was in the business of trying to deal with getting on clients. [00:32:34] And now it's maintenance, right, technician. And hiring and keeping that going. So just like short-term rentals is largely a game of cleaning, and hiring. Yeah. No, I mean, we have a recruiter managing cleaners.  [00:32:48] Jacob: Yeah. We have a full-time recruiter. I mean, yeah, we have a constant pipeline of cleaners. Same with maintenance techs. [00:32:53] I mean, yeah, it is. It is. And you have to be shedding them, just like you shed property owners too sometimes.  [00:32:59] Jason: Yeah, we also built a rental property analysis tool that our clients use with real estate agents in air table We had some programmers do some custom coding to do some of the more complex formulas that you can't do an air table like amortization schedules and stuff like this And so they're able to create these really cool one page reports for a rental property that are branded with their branding and have their pricing built into it as a property manager, that they can get the real estate agents that are working with investors, they're working on deals, or trying to attract investors, that they can then put on their rental listings to show how that property could either cashflow or in the long run would be a better investment than maybe investing in the stock market. [00:33:41] Jacob: So it's a great idea. We do something similar. Again, part of our sales process is we, when a lead converts to an opportunity, we basically have this template pro forma that gets generated from fields within air table, but it's a Google sheet template. So it allows us to do more is what we want in the Google sheet because it's not just a single page. [00:34:00] It's, you know, there's quite a few pages because short term rentals are very complex in terms of setting them up. Your setup costs, your startup costs are quite large and having a reliable, accurate number for startup costs is actually remarkably difficult. With Airbnb, so similar process, you end up with kind of the same result. [00:34:18] Here's an accurate projection.  [00:34:20] Jason: Awesome. Well, cool. Well, maybe we'll have to hang out off out and geek out on some air table stuff. So, but yeah, this has been our competitive advantage. Largely is our planning system and cadence of annual planning, quarterly planning, monthly planning, and have a database where it's all late cross linked. [00:34:37] And so we In our system team members, and clients that use this their team members show up and there's we're keeping track of all the wins. So there's this culture of winning and Nobody wants to show up getting a red no on their weekly commitments. They're getting they want to get a green Yes, and so this is outside of our daily tactical stuff, this is our strategic goals. [00:35:00] And so it gets my entire team focused on innovation on moving towards goals and outcomes moving forward instead of just their daily tactical work, which we're using DoorGrow Flow or Flussos that visual workflow tool. And so that's allowed us to I think that's our strongest competitive advantage is that [00:35:19] other businesses, usually the entrepreneur comes in, throws out a bunch of goals and ideas and it's like a pulling the pin on a grenade. If they get back from a conference to their team and their team trying to do their tactical daily work and they're like, how are we going to do all this? And there's no real plan or clarity and they rarely achieve any of their goals or outcomes that they're aiming for. [00:35:41] And we, on a weekly basis, our goal is we have sometimes four somewhere between 30 to 50 commitments between everyone on my executive team And they've committed to that week that are going towards our 30 day goals And we get at least our goal is to hit 80 percent and we do that with consistency. Now, years and 80 percent of our goals. [00:36:03] And which means our 30 day goals are largely almost always achieved. And which means our quarterly goals are almost always achieved and annually hit our goals. And so we move really fast. We get a lot of stuff done and we innovate a lot in our coaching business. And I don't think there's. And I work with some of the best coaches in the industry. [00:36:23] So we've really built something. I think that's pretty amazing. And we just, we roll out new things like every month. And that innovation has, that system has allowed it us to innovate. And I'm the way we've set up DoorGrow OS and Sarah runs this, my, she's our operator and my wife, she's always like, we vote on things. [00:36:43] We get feedback on things. And she's like, not you, Jason, you're last. Like I'm always last to speak. So I don't end up as the emperor with no clothes in my own business. So anyway, yeah, Airtable is pretty cool. So, yeah, that'd be interesting to see if there's some other ways in which our clients could leverage or use Airtable for keeping track of their own clients because that's not something we played around much with, but.  [00:37:06] Jacob: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.  [00:37:08] Jason: Cool. Well, Jacob, for those that are interested in getting their property managed by you, what, which markets do you cover and how do they get ahold?  [00:37:18] Jacob: Yeah. So we do have full service management in Colorado, kind of, Southern Colorado, so South of Denver, Colorado Springs, and then further West. [00:37:27] And we also manage in Gulf coast, Florida between Tampa Bay and Fort Myers. So, we're in these two geographic areas for full service, but going back to the pricing thing, we've realized that there are a lot of property owners who love the hospitality side of the Airbnbs, but not the pricing side. That's not why they got into it. [00:37:46] We actually do have a pricing service. Where we market and distribute your listing on a bunch of different booking channels. So a lot of people are seeing your listing and we do the daily pricing for your property. So you don't have to do that. And then you do the cleaning, the maintenance, and the interaction with the guests. [00:38:03] You take care of the property. It's your account. They're your reviews. They're your guests. We don't interact with them. And that is global, a global service.  [00:38:11] Jason: Oh, so that's a service that property managers could use, self managers could use. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Great. In fact,  [00:38:17] Jacob: we do have some small property managers using it. [00:38:19] .  [00:38:19] Jason: Alright, cool. So, how does that work?  [00:38:23] Jacob: Yeah, so it really depends on the client. Like with a property manager and some property managers are for their own portfolios. Some, you know, are managing for others. It really depends on the property situation and the setup that's currently in place. But the most common thing is there's an owner operator who says, Hey, I don't want to do the pricing. [00:38:40] I'm getting crushed by my competitors because I'm not doing this algorithmic based pricing and I'm not reviewing it daily. So we come in and we say, okay, great. I see you're on Airbnb or I see you're on VRBO or I see you're just on Airbnb and VRBO. What we do is we come in and we create a bunch more booking channels for you and we aggregate it into a white labeled property management software. [00:39:00] It's not guesty actually. It's a different software tool. So the owner only has one place to go for their calendar, for their messaging. It's all in one place. They don't have to do anything. And then we create those listings and then we market them and then we continue to price them on an ongoing basis and to reset their prices. [00:39:16] to compete whichever market they're in.  [00:39:18] Jason: Got it. And is this a fairly affordable service? It is.  [00:39:22] Jacob: Yes, it's very low cost compared to full service short term rental management. And it also doesn't have any, like, contracts or anything. It's just day to day.  [00:39:29] Jason: Okay, devil's advocate, what if, some listening might be like, well, why would I trust them to price my property when they might have properties in my market? [00:39:38] Like, if they're in a market that you're in, like Colorado, what if they're going to Price there's better or more competitively than my own.  [00:39:45] Jacob: That's a great question. Yeah. No, it's a great question. And actually it's related to kind of one of the things that we set out strategically for our market. [00:39:53] Like Colorado Springs, we manage about 120 properties in Colorado Springs out of about 3000 Airbnbs. And we kind of set our market cap at about, or sorry, as large, our market saturation at about 200 units in the Springs. So, we actually won't go above managing 200 properties in Colorado Springs for this very reason. [00:40:10] The cannibalizing of market share. Now, that gets even more detailed where it's not just properties total, but also comp sets. So, if we have more than, let's say, 10 percent of the two bedroom properties in Colorado Springs, we're going to start cannibalizing our own market. And so, we actually have limits on the sizes of properties within our specific markets. [00:40:30] So, right now we actually are pretty, we're pretty darn close to being capped out at one bedrooms and two bedrooms. So, we don't really take on those units anymore.  [00:40:38] Jason: Got it. Just 10 bedrooms now.  [00:40:41] Jacob: Yeah, that's right. 3, 4, 5, 6. We don't have any 10s. We have a 9, but that's the biggest.  [00:40:48] Jason: Yeah. You're not in some giant family reunion markets? [00:40:52] Jacob: No, we are. We're in Two Springs. I mean, that place sleeps, I'm talking to a lady now. She's got a place that sleeps 60. So, that'll be That would be a family reunion for sure.  [00:41:02] Jason: Well, cool. So that sounds like an interesting service. Maybe I'll have Sarah check it out. So, cause I know she's checking the pricing every day. [00:41:09] I think she kind of enjoys it though.  [00:41:11] Jacob: Yeah, that's totally fine. Yeah. If you enjoy it, then we are not, you know, like it's for people who is like pulling teeth, right? Like I hate doing this. I don't, or I'm not like really into the whole game theory around pricing. Like that doesn't interest me. That kind of thing. [00:41:25] Jason: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it'd be interesting to have her do a demo with you guys and see how it compares to what she's doing and whether she would trust it or not. Yeah. That'd be interesting. I mean, she's checking  [00:41:35] Jacob: it every day, Jason, she's probably doing, you know, she's already like 85 percent of the way there. [00:41:40] Yeah.  [00:41:41] Jason: Yeah. I don't know, but I think it's interesting. There's you know, there's a lot of property managers that do short term rentals that they're not doing anything like this. And they just not, and they basically set it sort of at a rate that's similar and maybe occasionally they'll adjust it, but they're trying to just let it happen and yeah. [00:42:02] And then the owners get frustrated because they're like, why isn't this renting out as often? Or, you know, it's renting out a lot, but why am I not getting paid very much? You know?  [00:42:11] Jacob: Yeah. It's this passive versus active approach, right? I always tell owners like, Hey, there's two kinds of demands. There's existing demand for short term lodging. [00:42:20] These are people who are coming to your market no matter what. They're already coming, now they're looking for lodging. But there's a second kind of demand that's really important, which is the generated demand. These are people who aren't coming to your market and wouldn't otherwise come to your market if you hadn't reached out to them first. [00:42:34] So you're generating demand by marketing, essentially. And so we have a pretty sophisticated system for marketing to very specific or very likely customers to then book and come and stay because of your property that they wouldn't otherwise have come. And so that's a really big distinction with a lot of property managers. [00:42:52] They just look at existing demand and try to capture their share of existing demand versus generating net new demand. So as an example of how we do this. We require our owners to have our tech package in their property. And part of what is included in that tech package is a commercial wifi router system. [00:43:10] So every guest, not just the one who books the property, but every guest who comes to the property and wants to access the internet has to give us their phone and email. And so we build a massive database for marketing towards for guests, direct guest marketing.  [00:43:23] Jason: Wow. Okay.  [00:43:24] Jacob: A lot of managers don't do that. [00:43:26] Jason: So, the managers out there that would, these pieces, they don't even enjoy doing it. Like the advanced pricing service. And maybe there's some other little things you can help them with as well. They can reach out to you and get this and you said you mentioned white label does that mean they're able to still maintain their brand and people aren't in your business name. [00:43:46] And yeah.  [00:43:46] Jacob: Yeah, absolutely  [00:43:48] Jason: Okay, very cool. Yeah, cool. Anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up?  [00:43:54] Jacob: The only thing I want to share with all the property managers out there is keep on doing the hard work. For those who are outside the industry, they don't understand the challenge of the beat down that can be property management. So just keep it up and do the good work that it is. [00:44:07] Jason: Yeah, it can be challenging. Well, All right. Thanks for Somebody jump on I don't know who that was All right. Thanks for hanging out with us until next time everybody to you know until next time to our mutual growth if you're interested in getting connected with Jacob. How do they reach you? [00:44:24] Jacob: Just go to www. renjoy. com and just fill out a form and you'll get ahold of me.  [00:44:30] Jason: Okay. Awesome. Well then, if reach out to them and then if you are interested in growing your property management business and scaling it and getting some support in how to reach out and attract more owners to do third party management, check doorgrow. [00:44:46] com and make sure to join our free Facebook group at doorgrowclub. com. All right. Thanks, Jacob. And bye everyone. Thanks, Jason. Bye  [00:44:53] Jacob: everyone. Bye. [00:44:54] Jason: you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:45:21] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.