Property Management Growth with DoorGrow

Do you ever look at other property management companies and wonder how they were able to grow and scale to thousands of doors?  In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull share insights they gleaned from successful founders and CEOs of multi-billion-dollar companies. You’ll Learn [00:59] Execution is More Important Than Good Ideas [11:51] Narrowing Your Focus to What You’re Best At [19:41] Ask Your Target Market [30:33] Everyone Should be Focused on One Goal Quotables “There's no shortage of ideas. It's execution that's the hard part.” “Everyone thinks… if I scale, I've got to do more. And actually, you have to do less to be able to scale…” “A lot of times we get caught up in creating systems, inventory, things that actually cause waste or over-optimizing each individual department or each individual step, but it actually reduces the overall goal of optimizing.” 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/] Transcript Jason Hull (00:00) a lot of times we get caught up in creating systems, inventory, things that actually cause waste or over optimizing each individual department but it actually reduces the overall goal of optimizing for making more money.   All right, I'm Jason Hull. This is Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world and 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. Now, let's get into the show. Okay, so we recently kind of split paths, right?   so that you could go learn some stuff and I could go learn some stuff. So we usually do everything together. So, but we had, which I love, but we had two really cool opportunities. One I was very much more interested in than the other, because I was learning about AI, which I've been geeking out on. And then you went off to go to a profit event. And was really cool. We went to the first day together, but the second and third day I was in.   AI workshop, geeking out with some of the best on AI. Cool. I would love to hear what you took away from this event and what you learned, and maybe you can share that.   I wanted to go over my notes on one speaker in particular. I was kind of going back and forth between two of them and I think this is the one that I landed on. at a different date I could talk about the other one because you weren't there for either one of them. But on the second day, I'm just gonna call this like notes from a billionaire and not just a billionaire but a multi.   Billionaire and not just multi-billionaire but someone who is the founding member and CEO of I think they said they grew it to like it was a ridiculous number like 740 billion or it was a big it was a big number it was a very large impressive number and he was so nice I actually had a conversation with him before I even realized who he was I was chatting with him I wish I would have known   Like I recognized the name and then I saw him speak and I went man. I would've asked him a different question So I'll do a quick little intro and then I'll kind of share my notes from what I wrote down while he was presenting so intro his name is Jeff Hoffman and For those of you that don't know the name Like I didn't know the name before as soon as I say the name of the company you'll instantly go. okay No, know the company   The company is Priceline. So he is one of the founding members of Priceline. They started it and scaled it to many hundreds of billions of dollars.   This is some of the advice that he had shared with us in his Speech because I got to hear him get up and speak and present to the entire room. So The first thing that I wrote down I Don't know if he can be credited with saying this or if he was quoting someone else But he said it so I wrote it down because it resonated very much was ideas are welcome here But execution is worshiped   And I think that's really powerful because how many times do we all have this great idea, right? my God, I had this idea. my God, I had this idea. my God, we should do this. We should do that. What if we did this? There's no shortage of ideas. It's execution that's the hard part. It's turning an amazing idea into something and bringing that to life and bringing it to fruition. So I love it so much. That's good. Yeah.   too much attention a lot of times on the idea and the planning and all this stuff, but actually executing and actually getting something done, that's really all that matters. It doesn't matter. You can have a million ideas. If there's no execution, then who cares? So, okay. So I think my mom is a great example of this. Everyone, think mostly everyone knows Elf on the Shelf. So my mom, before Elf on the Shelf was a thing, she created it.   She just didn't do anything with it. She only used it like for me and my brother, but we had an elf that would come and visit and kind of keep an eye on us. And he would do fun things and he would pop around to different places in the house. So every time in the morning we would wake up and he would be in a different place or sometimes he would be doing like an activity. He'd be like baking or, you know, riding a bike or whatever. And it was so funny because when you look back on it, I went, mom, like,   that was off on the shelf and it's like multi-million dollar company. And she went, yeah, I wish I knew that. But she was just trying to do something fun for her kids. So she had taken that idea because it was, it was a great idea. And she executed on it, but she never brought it public. Can you imagine what would have happened if the execution was done on a larger scale? So she'll probably hate the fact that I'm calling her out on that. But I think that'll be her.   multi-million dollar missed story. Yeah. Yeah. So some of the questions that Jeff had asked when we're thinking about ideas, because we all have ideas. Some of them are good. Some of them are questionable. And some of them we can say like, yeah, that was a dud. So this is kind of a framework to take you through to figure out, is this worth executing on? One is.   Is this a problem? So you have to ask yourself, is this an actual problem? Like what you're doing, does this solve some sort of problem? And then bonus points if it's a big problem, right? So if we go back to the story of Priceline, many, many years ago, those kiosks that are in every airport that you can just check in on, you do not need to go and talk to a gate agent or a ticketing agent. They didn't used to exist.   You used to have to go stand in line and wait forever to get your ticket and your boarding pass and perhaps give somebody physically give somebody your bag and a lot of times people would miss their flight because the line was so so so long and you never knew ahead of time like is this gonna be a 10 minute line or is this gonna be a two hour line so people would miss their flight   And at one point, he turned around and he was in the airport, turned around, looked at the line and went, wow, this is such a crazy long line. And he decided, I'm going to start interviewing people right here and right now. And he went around asking people individually, how long have you been waiting? Wow, what happens if you miss your flight? Wow, what would you do? Would you think it would be valuable or beneficial if there was some sort of service where you didn't need to talk to the gate agent?   And people were bidding on it. They were bidding. They were like, I'll give you $10 if you can get me my ticket without talking to the gate agent. And then somebody else will go, no, forget $10. I'll give you $50 for that. And somebody else will go, oh, I must get there today. I will give you $70 to get there today. People were bidding on it in line. So he realized, one, there's a problem, but actually it's a big problem. So he knew he was on to something right there.   The second question is, is there a better way to do this? So is there a better way to check in for your flight than waiting in line and talking to a gate agent? Yeah, there sure is. It just hadn't been invented yet. But is that the best way to do it? No, absolutely not. So there was a better way to do something. And the third is, is there a value equation, which all that means is would somebody buy this?   And he knew that one, he had a problem and it was a big problem. Two, there was a better way to do it. And three, people would definitely pay for it because people were bidding on it while he was standing in line. People were like, wait, do you know something we don't know? Like, I will give you money if you can just get me on the front line because I need to get on this flight. So hence how Priceline was born. So those are three questions that you can kind of ask yourself. If you're going, okay, I have this idea, should I?   Should I do this? Should I act on it? Should I create something with this? Yeah. Seems pretty simple. think a lot of times we get really disconnected. you know, we study stuff, we learn stuff, we think we know, but when you actually go talk to your target audience and do a little bit of product research interview, you know, you can find out a lot of things that problems they have, things they need, and actually connect with, you know,   what you're wanting to sell them may not actually work. So yeah, I think that'd be super helpful. All right. So then he kind of gave tips on, well, if you are looking to seriously, massively scale a company because it's not, let's face it, not every company gets to a million, certainly not even to a billion and absolutely not to hundreds of billions of dollars. Right. So   These are tips that he had given the room in order to help you scale. And everyone thinks, you know, if I scale, I've got to do more. And actually you have to do less to be able to scale at that large of a size. he said, find your gold metal product or service. So for them, if you remember, if you would go on Priceline when it first launched, there was different tabs.   the top right you could book a flight you could book a hotel room you could book a cruise you could get a rental car you do a vacation package like they did all the things yeah and they were scaling but it wasn't to the size that they wanted to get to and they went okay if we only did one thing what would it be like what are we the best at the world at and for them it was hotel rooms so they said okay   It's not that we have to cut the other stuff. It's just that we're not going to market it. We're not going to advertise it. We're not going to talk about it. We're not going to put any money, time, or energy into that service. It's just there. But what we will do is we'll go all out on hotel rooms.   because they were the best in class at hotel rooms. So they didn't cut the other things out. Go on there now, you'll still see, but their bread and butter is hotel rooms. So the other things are still available. It's just that they never, if you look at any Priceline commercials, you'll never see anything other than hotel rooms. Why do think that is? Because they're marketing what they're the best in class at. So that is their top service.   Next is find your gold medal talent. So what was their gold medal talent? Any guesses? Don't cheat, don't lie. I know the answer because I was there. I don't know. I would imagine it's related to hotel rooms. So their gold medal talent are probably the best hotels. It was their algorithm. Okay.   for connecting people to hotels. So their algorithm was their talent. They had a talent in that. What is Amazon's? Shipping. Shipping. It's delivery. So if you remember, Amazon didn't start selling everything on the planet. It started as a book store. That's it. They only sold books. And what I didn't know is that when this whole internet   thing was blowing up. were three companies that were kind of becoming rising to the top all at the same time. It was Priceline with Jeff Hoffman and Partners. There was eBay. His name was Jeff and Pierre. Jeff and Pierre. And then there was Amazon. And that's Jeff Bezos. So somebody had asked him, what does it take to be successful in this internet thing? And he said, just find somebody.   who's a really good Jeff. They all had the best, they were the best in class at something and then they had the best in class at a specific talent. So Amazon, they got fantastic at shipping and they only did books. And Jeff Bezos said, you know, when we get, I'm only doing books right now. And then when we get to a certain size with books,   Then I want to branch out and then we'll do everything. But I don't want to do everything first right now. I just want to build our name and our reputation solely on books. Why? Because they were amazing at shipping. And now anytime that you buy something online, usually what's the first thought you think? Amazon probably has that. Why? Because you know they'll ship it. And then you need to shape your brand. That's the third piece of this.   you need to ask yourself what question are you the answer to? So for them, I need a hotel room. Where do I go? right, priceline. Or, they did a lot of this too, I want a $200 hotel room but I don't want to $200 on it, I only want to spend, you know, $100 or $80. Where do I go? Priceline. So shape your brand around that.   And then you've got to, in that arena, you've got to find your brand asset. So everyone goes, know, why should I work with you? I just watched a Jeremy Miner video, like at his live event, and he had a microphone and he went up to someone in the audience and he said, hey, why would someone work with you? I've seen these videos. And he let them answer. And he goes, mm-hmm.   Okay, and then he goes to the next audience answer and he goes, why would someone work with you? And he does it again and he goes, okay, so all of you guys really sound the same. You're in wildly different industries and companies, but you all sound the same. Yeah. Right? So you can't sound the same as everybody else and expect to stand out. So if you could only give one reason that somebody would work with you, what would that one reason be?   It's not about all the reasons, it's about the one reason and that shapes your brand. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought that was really good. If you aren't sure, you don't know, if you're like, I don't know, there's a lot of reasons why somebody wouldn't work with us. Ask your customers. Yeah, like why did they pick you? Why? What is the one reason? Don't just say why did they pick you because then they'll go, because of X, Y and Z. Great, was it X or was it Y or was it Z?   What is the one main reason that you decided to work with us? And do that ask 10 people. If you don't have 10 people, then keep selling until you can get 10 people. Because that data will tell you what is it that your customers have found in your messaging even though maybe you didn't do a great job at delivering it. So I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, that's good.   They talk about broadcasting versus what they call narrow casting So this is focusing on the right people not just any person Because for every product for every service for every brand There are the right people and Then there's everybody else So if you're trying to close every deal, it's almost like an impossible game Who do you target?   Will we target people? Everyone. People? Really? Who do you target? Well, I work with real estate investors. Well, geez, okay. There's only like hundreds of millions of those in the world. Which ones do you target? Yeah. Right? So some of this goes into our client-centric mission statement when we take our clients through their company culture stuff. But we want to get really, really clear on who are my people.   Not just who are people that could buy this. What are the right people to buy this? To work with me, to choose this, right? There's a difference. Right.   I mean, this makes sense. know, yeah, you got to really be specific because if you target everybody, you target nobody. Then then you're just more noise in the marketplace. So if you want to be, you know, like we're pretty niche at DoorGrow, we target long term residential property management companies in the U.S. Like that's our target audience that do third party property management. So that's our...   Do we get other types of clients? Sure, but that's our bread and butter. That's who we focus on and that's very specific. Those are the people we know we can help. And I'd say we're the best in the world at that. yeah. Right. So I think Sharan calls it a dog whistle. Right? Speak to your people and anyone who isn't your people, they won't hear it. It's not for you. Go ahead, I don't want you to hear it.   Just the dogs, Just the right ones. They'll hear it. Okay. This I liked a lot. He said, focus on your second slide customer. So find your yeses instead of overcoming nos. Every sales training in the world goes, let's overcome objections. Let's overcome no. Let's work a no into a yes. Let's see what we can do to turn it around. Overcome objections. No, don't overcome objections. Just find the yeses.   Second slide. Yeah, so you know when you have like a whole presentation prepared. Yeah, and The example he gave is he said he went out with one of his sales reps And there was like a 20 slide presentation that they that was like their pitch deck, right? so he spent the day with a sales guy and the first meeting they went to He got through all 20 slides and the woman was like, yeah, this sounds really good. I'm gonna think about it   I think we need to go back to you. like, yeah, yeah, like it wasn't a solid yes, because she didn't commit, she didn't sign up. But she was open to it. She's like, yeah, let me think about this. Like, let me take it up to management. We'll do something. So he got out of that meeting and he said to the sales rep, said, how do you think that went? Sales rep was super proud. He went, yeah, that was a great pitch. She's definitely going to buy. Like, she's going to come back around. Like, that's a deal that'll close. It's like in the pipelines.   about to close. Jeff said, yeah, I just didn't say anything. It's like, I just didn't say anything. I'm like, I'm not going to skew it. I just want the data, right? So he goes into another sales pitch, same sales rep. Slide two out of 20, two. They look at each other and went, oh my God, you're exactly what I needed. We're ready.   And the sales rep was like, well, wait, let me tell you more about the rest. And he's like nudging the guy. He's like, sign them up. They're ready. They don't need more information. They don't need anything else. They're ready to go right now. Stop trying to complete the pitch. It's done. You don't need the other 18 slides. They already said yes, and they said yes on slide two. Find your slide two yeses. Don't try.   to keep on going, don't try to turn the nose and do yes, don't overcome their objections, find your slide two customers. So what they actually did, this I thought was so interesting. This lit up my brain because I like data so Okay, I'm going to pause you. So nice little hook. Now we're going to go to our sponsor and then everyone can hear what you're about to Oh, that's so good. All right, so this episode is sponsored by Blanket.   So really like the team over at Blanket. Blanket is a property retention and growth platform that helps property managers stop losing doors, add more revenue, and increase the number of properties they manage. Wow your clients with a branded investor dashboard and an off-market marketplace while your team gets all the tools they need to identify owners at risk of churning and powerful systems to help you add more doors. So check it out, it's an amazing property retention platform.   Even if it's switching owner hands, you keep the property. So check out Blanket. what he did is he profiled people. know that sounds like nowadays we're elect. Don't profile that. No, profile our best customers who your best ones. Okay. That target audience. Who were your easiest sales? Who are your biggest fans?   Right? Figure out what do they have in common. They all have something in common, but what is it? So for them, they figured out that a rep that worked at the hotel chain that went, huh, we have all these extra hotel rooms. What do we do with them? Like, how do we sell them? That was their job. It's just to figure out how do we sell more rooms. Those were like his target audience. The reps that were brand new.   like one to two years on the job.   That was not it. Because they're so new that they're not willing to take a risk yet. So they were not very likely to close. It's not that they wouldn't close. not that you couldn't close them. It's that it wasn't like almost a guarantee to close them. Also, reps that have been in the job for like 15, 18, 20 years. Yeah. Also not it. Why? Because they know how to give a shit.   He's like, they're out the door, they're for the door, they're about to retire. They don't care. They don't care if they sell more hotel rooms. They just care that they keep their job until they can retire. So they're not, again, they're not almost practically guaranteed to close. So if you were in this bracket or in this bracket, he was like, yeah, it's not you. I'm not gonna target those people.   It's the people in between. It's the people that have been there for like three to, you know, somewhere between like that three to fifteen, three to fourteen years. Those people were amazing because they're not afraid to speak their opinion. They're looking to kind of make a name for themselves at this point. And they're not afraid to take a risk. But they are looking to do something big. Those were his people. How do think you figured that out?   as he profiled his best customers again and again and again. And you went, huh, look at that. The new ones, they don't do it. The old ones, they don't do it either. It's only this slot in the middle. And those, those are our people. Got it. I like that. Yeah, right? Makes me think, like, with our clients, who is almost always a guarantee to close? That's the profile of the target. Yeah. That's exactly what you want to do, because you want to profile the ones.   It's like a shoe in. If I didn't close this, it would be insane. Right? They even took it a step further. actually created a 100 points scoring chart. Yeah. And there were different questions. One of the questions was that one, for example, like how long have you been with your company? So if you're like one to two years, he would give them like negative 20 points. yeah. Right? So now it's like, your score just went down. now you answered this way. Your score went down again. Your score went down again.   Same thing with those, you know, the older ones. They would be like a negative 40 though, because they really didn't care. It's easier to close the newer ones than it is the older ones. So like, oh, I've been here 18 years. He's like, cool, negative 40 points. In the middle though, he might go, okay, there's like 25 points. Maybe there's 15 points. They just scored 15. Now what else? So you have to ask these questions and what his team got so good at doing once they implemented this hundred   100 point score sheet is They can ask a couple questions do the math in their head and then immediately decide is this worth my time? So if you knew you were talking to a 40 Go to lunch It's not you're not gonna close it. It's a 40 out of a hundred like go home That's it. But when you would get your 80s when you get your 90s, you'd be really excited. Yeah. Oh man. Okay. Let me invest in this   So they created this whole scoring chart. I thought that was so brilliant. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty standard feature in a lot of CRMs is lead scoring. coming up with a rubric or an algorithm for scoring your leads can be pretty significant. So yeah, it's a difficult thing to figure out, though. You've got to really know why which customers are good. So you can kind of figure out how do I score someone to duplicate these people. Right. Yeah. So good.   And this is probably something that will help you figure out how to score people and what questions to ask and what do they all have in common. He said, spend a day in the life of your customers and do it often. So the story that he told us, there was a company that when it launched, he knew the guy. He was having a conversation with him and he said, Hey, why did you launch your company the way that you did?   when every single market expert said it wouldn't work and you did it anyway and it worked and it was wildly successful but what made you go no I'm gonna do it anyway and the answer was well that's easy I didn't even ask the market experts so I didn't know that they didn't think that it wouldn't work because I didn't bother asking the market experts Jeff said well what did you do?   He said, well, I asked my audience. Sure. I asked my customers. That's it. He said, OK, well, how did you do that? So in this little town, across the bridge on like the less nice side of town.   The owner of this company, and I'll tell you the company in a minute, but the owner of this company, he would be in his office with his team all day. His team had MBAs, they were finance executives, they were accountants, right? Not, not his target audience. So he would get changed into jeans and a flannel shirt and a John Deere hat. He would go across the bridge to the bad side of town.   and would sit in a diner all day long. Every Friday he would do this. And he would just talk with people who would come in there. He would just make friends with them. He would chit chat. He would ask them questions. And he would just gather data. And he used that data for his lunch. Do you have any guesses? Did I tell you? I think I told you this story. You probably did. Do guesses on who it was? Uh, no. Walmart. Oh.   Sam Walton. Yeah, so this was Walmart. Okay. Every single expert said that will never work. And he said, yeah, I don't need to listen to experts. I need to listen to my customers. Right. Because the customers are going to tell you what they want. Yeah, they're the ones buying. So they know. So it doesn't matter what experts say. It matters what the customer says. Yeah, absolutely.   It was so good, right? And he really, he got to know these people. So it doesn't matter what the market says. It doesn't matter what the expert says. It matters what your customers say. If your customers are going to tell you what they want, you shall listen. And now you'll have a successful product, regardless of what the experts say. The experts don't understand everything like your customers do. Listen to what they're telling you.   So if you just get that data that allows you to do things that even other people would say, you're crazy, don't do that. And he didn't think it was crazy. He was like, no, I just, they're telling me what they want. I'm just going to do that. And he did. And it's still around today. Huge brand. Sometimes customers don't tell you what they want, but if you are connected with them enough, you can see what they're having problems with and what they're struggling with. And sometimes they just,   think that that's normal. They're just like, yeah, this is, hiring's hard, you know? And then I'm like, cool, we built a hiring system that solves this problem, right? And so, but a lot of people just kind of say, yeah, it's, you know, it is what it is. And they don't really think that it's a solvable problem sometimes. So that's, that's where I think, you know, you need to ask your customer, but you also need to, sometimes your customers are wrong. Like they don't know. And you have to be able to be creative enough to figure out what.   would they want if it was, you know, if they recognize this problem. And then sometimes you have to sell them, you attract, it's like we attract a lot of people at DoorGrow that think they want leads and they think they want digital marketing and they think they want SEO. And then we have to guide them towards what they actually need and sell them what they actually need, which is totally different. Yeah. So that's, that's, that can be a challenge. Maybe we'd be smarter if we just sold them what they were asking for, but.   they wouldn't get as great of results. Yeah, I feel like though, I personally, I just don't feel good about doing it. Yeah. Because to me, that's just a money taker, right? Right. That's an order taker, that's a money taker. That's like, hey, I really need to grow my business and like, I think this will work. And then that's like, yeah, give me your money. sell you that. just give you a whole bunch of leads. And months go by and...   Well, how come my business didn't grow? I only closed like four deals. Well, I just don't, I don't think I can really get behind that with integrity. Yeah. Yeah. It's not exciting to me. I know there are companies out there that will, and especially now with AI, like just be super careful with SEO. Be like extra careful at this point with SEO because SEO is literally dying.   Like thing. Yeah, the whole game's changed. With AI. The whole game's changed. More people are using chat GPT than Google. It's been a huge disruptor. It's such a big disruptor that the antitrust lawsuit against Google has dropped.   I mean that's massive. for those that don't know, just sum it up, the antitrust lawsuit. Well, Google was being sued because they had almost no competition. They dominated the search market like nobody could compete. And the closest competitor was like a small fraction. And so the government was going after them with an antitrust lawsuit. And then ChatGPT broke. All these AI tools and platforms came out. And now Google is no longer viewed as   viable you know threat of a monopoly yeah and they may be losing this whole AI race which is super wild right yeah they're fighting they've got their AI tool all over the place Gemini is pretty good it's really good for a lot of things but it's not winning   Yeah, yeah. yeah, with like, chat GPT was something nobody knew that could happen. Like we didn't even realize this was something we all wanted. We all wanted like some almost genius thing that we could talk to all the time to get all sorts of information. Yeah, quickly without having to dig and try and do our own research. So, well. Okay, we'll go one more story and then I've got a closing quote.   So I think we all know at this point the brand 1-800 flowers they're huge now So before they used to be huge because they weren't always Jeff went out to go visit one of their shops And everywhere everywhere in the shop they had posters printed up like slopped on the walls every wall   in every room, in the hallways, in the bathroom, in the garage, in every single room. And it was just printed up on the walls, sell more flowers. Why? Because that is what we're all about. That is the only thing that we care about is selling more flowers. We don't care about anything else.   We are only here to sell more flowers. And every single person in this company exists for one reason and one reason only and that is to sell more flowers. So every single person, every single minute of every single day needs to be thinking, how can I sell more flowers? So it doesn't matter what their role was in the business, they need to be thinking, how can I sell more flowers? So he's walking down the hall and there was an admin.   She did a lot of paperwork, answering the phones, things like that. She's got this huge stack of papers and she's walking down the hall with a stack of papers. And the owner says, hey, whatever her name is, Susan, hey Susan. And he points up to the wall and he goes, what are you doing right now? And she goes.   puts the paperwork down, turns around, walks away. And Jeff said, well, what on was that? And he said, if you're not, we have a rule, if you are not doing something, that can somehow be connected to how does it help us sow more flowers? My rule is you do not do it. Ever. So whatever she was doing, clearly, was not connected to sow more flowers. So therefore, I reminded her, sow more flowers.   And she stopped, promptly, what she was doing and went back to what she should be doing, which is sell more flowers. So they continue on this tour. They get back into the back of the shop, into the garage where they've got their van for deliveries. And they have a mechanic. The mechanic is underneath, one inch away. And he goes, hey. He goes, watch this. He goes, hey, Joe.   He points at the wall. He goes, what are you doing right now? And Joe says, oh, well, I was installing this new filter on all of our vans because this new filter, it saves us X money dollars in gasoline per tank. I think it was $8. So we save with this new filter. We actually save like $8.   per tank of gasoline. So I'm going to install each of the filters on our vans. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go inside and tell marketing to print up some coupons for $8 off.   of a bouquet of flowers and we're going to run that as a promo because if we just saved eight dollars that means we have eight dollars extra so we might as run a promo and that'll help us sell more flowers. And he goes, yeah, it's brilliant. Do that. So the mechanic is thinking all day every day how do I sell more flowers? Now would a mechanic generally be thinking about selling flowers? No.   He'd be thinking, how do I wrench on this? How do I fix that? What about the oil change? What about the tires? What about the spark plugs and the brakes? He's not thinking about selling flowers. But it wasn't lost on him because all day, every day, he's staring at a big sign that says, sell more flowers. So it doesn't matter what you are doing. If it's not connected to helping us sell more flowers, what you're doing does not fricking matter. This goes along with a book called The Goal by Elihu Goldratt. And The Goal, spoiler for everybody that wants to read this.   operational book is to make money. And so a lot of times we get caught up in creating systems, inventory, things that actually cause waste or over optimizing each individual department or each individual step, but it actually reduces the overall goal of optimizing for selling more flowers, for example, or making more money. And so sometimes   team members standing around doing nothing is more effective than them building more widgets for the next step because it just creates more waste or more inventory or like constraint. And so that's the idea is the goal is to eliminate all the constraints to create momentum so that you get that that money coming in and everybody should be focused on that goal because it's very easy to get caught up and like he could be super caught up and I'm gonna make the cars run hyper effective and efficiently but   Maybe that just causes more financial spend or maybe that doesn't help them sell more flowers, for example. And so when everybody understands the overall goal and how they fit into that puzzle, then instead of just focusing on, I did my job or I'm doing this, they're focused on, is this helping the goal? And so I love that. I love that idea. And I think that's super important to get everybody on the team to focus on. Cause a lot of times everything's siloed. They focus on their little department.   They focus on their little role and they forget the overall goal of the company is to make money. Right. So even like your property managers, your leasing agents, your operator, like everybody who's on what I would call like back end, they have the same job, which is to get more properties to manage. So even if you're not in sales, it doesn't matter. Salespeople, it's very obvious the connection.   It's like, yeah, so close more contracts and close more deals and then I have more properties, duh. Great, but how does that apply to your leasing agent? How does that apply to your property manager? How does that apply to your receptionist who's answering the phone? How does that apply to your AI tool? So everybody and everything is aligned with the one goal of the business, which is I don't care what we do unless...   we sell more flowers. I don't care what we do. don't care. There is no point in changing the tires if it doesn't help us sell more flowers. Right? So I don't need to hear just for that thing. If we don't sell more flowers, I don't need to change the tires. So they've got to be connected. And that was a great example of how somebody even so far removed from the back end of the business. He's like,   Back end of the back end is the mechanic. And he's still focused on top-lingle. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you talk to your team and you ask them, what are you doing? And you had to sign up the set, like, you know, get more property management clients. A lot of you aren't focused on that. A lot of them are like, well, I'm just talking to every tenant all the time. I'm talking to every owner all the time. Is that helping the goal of you getting more clients? No, a lot of things aren't.   Is it helping keep clients? Cool. That is part of getting more clients, is keeping the clients. But yeah, if it's not related to keeping clients or getting more clients, managing more properties, then there's a lot of bloat and a lot of waste in property management companies. We see it all the time. So much. Yeah. And we're really good at helping you see it. So if you want to make more money and you've got a decent number of doors, you've got 200 plus doors, come talk to us.   Our program will be paid for, but probably just the first stuff we help you with in the first month. It's a no-brainer. Okay. Okay, then I'll close it out with this. Okay. He said, as a quote, don't chase money, chase excellence, because excellence follows money. I like it. Yeah, right? It's okay. Because a lot of that's people want. They're like, I just want to make enough money. I want to make more money. It won't matter if you're not excellent at what you do. Yeah.   Yeah, well cool. Well, those of you listening, if you have felt stuck, stagnant, want to take your property management business to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com. And if you want tips, tricks, ideas to learn about and to learn about our offers in DoorGrow, subscribe to our newsletter by going to doorgrow.com slash subscribe. And if you found this even a little bit helpful,   Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on whatever channel you found this on. We'd really appreciate it. And until next time, remember, the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

We are living in a post-trust era. Trust is at an all-time low, and people are more on guard than ever. How does this impact the property management industry? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Darryl Stickel of Trust Unlimited to talk all about building and maintaining trust. You’ll Learn [01:30] The Foundations of Building Trust [06:51] Where Uncertainty Comes From and How to Eliminate it [11:37] The Golden Bridge Formula [21:27] The Role of Vulnerability in Building Trust [31:49] AI and the Post-Trust Era Quotables “Sales and deals happen at the speed of trust.” “Trust is the willingness to be vulnerable when you can't completely predict how someone else is going to behave.” “There's three levers within us as individuals, and those are benevolence, integrity, and ability.” 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/] Transcript Jason Hull (00:00) This is really what property managers sell. They sell trust. They don't really sell property management.   Darryl (00:03) Yeah. Jason Hull (00:05) All right, I'm Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of businesses, helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profit, simplify operations, and build and replace teams. We are like bar rescue for property managers. In fact, we've cleaned up and rebranded over 300 businesses. We run the leading property management mastermind with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. And at DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world and that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. 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. Now, let's get into the show. And today, I am hanging out with Darryl Stickel of Trust Unlimited. Welcome, Darryl to the DoorGrow Show. Darryl (01:26) Thanks for having me, Jason. It's a pleasure to be here. Jason Hull (01:29) It's great to have you. So I'm really excited about the topic of trust because I talk about this all the time. In fact, one of my most common phrases that I say to clients when talking about sales is that sales and deals happen at the speed of trust. And so I'm excited to get into this. So give us a little bit of background on you and then we'll get into the topic at hand. So tell us a little bit about Darryl and how you sort of Darryl (01:45) They do, yeah. Jason Hull (01:56) arrived at Trust Unlimited. Darryl (01:59) Yeah. So I was born and raised in a small town in Northern British Columbia, Canada, fairly isolated community, harsh winter conditions. And so people learned that they had to pull together and it meant that you needed to look out for your neighbor and that if you could help someone, you should. And so growing up in that background, I had a sense of responsibility to others, desire to be helpful. When I was 17 years old, I was playing hockey in a neighboring community and I was attacked by a fan at the club. And he shattered my helmet, knocked me unconscious. I ended up with a severe concussion and I had a visual impairment. I knew that I was going to become legally blind, which I am now. So my plan had been to think for a living. Jason Hull (02:32) I ended up with a severe concussion. And I had a visual impairment. Hmm. ⁓ Darryl (02:46) And now all of a sudden I had the attention span of a fruit fly and I couldn't think. and so this experience promoted a sense of empathy for me because there were such feelings of, of helplessness and hopelessness. And fast forward a few years and I'm studying psychology and moving towards becoming a clinical psychologist. And people would just come up to me and.   Jason Hull (02:52) And so this experience promoted a sense of empathy. I like... Yeah. Darryl (03:08) start telling me their problems. I'd be sitting on a bus and a complete stranger would sit down next to me and say, I'm really having a hard time. And so I wanted to understand why that was happening. And I went and did a master's degree in public administration, worked in native land claims in British Columbia. And they would ask me these sort of deep philosophical questions like, what is self-government or what will the problems look like 50 years after claims are settled? Jason Hull (03:15) So I went to understand why that was happening. And I went to do the master's degree in public administration. I worked in native land claims in British Columbia. They would ask me certain questions like what is self-government? What will the province look like 50 years after claims are settled? The last question they asked me was how do I condescend people who have shafted for over 100 years and should trust us? I thought man, that's Darryl (03:35) The last question they asked me was how do I convince a group of people who have shafted for over a hundred years, they should trust us? I thought, man, that's a good question. So I went to Duke, wrote my doctoral thesis on building trust in hostile environments. Um, had a couple of leading experts in the field of trust on my committee. And when I finished, they said, you know, when you first started, we first came to us, we had a conversation. We agreed too big, too complex. He never solves it. Jason Hull (03:43) So I went to Duke, wrote my doctoral thesis on building trust in hostile environments. Had a couple of leading experts in the field of trust on my committee. And when I finished, said, you know, when you first started, when you first came to us, we had a conversation. We agreed, too big, too complex, you never saw us. Darryl (04:03) We'll give him six months and then he'll come crawling back to us and we'll let him chisel off a little piece of this and that'll be his thesis. I said, six months in, you were so far beyond us, we couldn't help anymore. All we could do was sit and listen. And here we are years later, we think you've solved it. And so I went and worked for McKinsey and Company, a big management consulting firm, and got to start applying the concepts that I'd learned. Jason Hull (04:03) gave him six months to come from the back to us. we just left with a piece of this. would be the thesis. He said six months in, you were so far beyond us, couldn't help it. All we could do was send him us. And here we are years later, we're all sold. And so I went and worked for McKinsey Company, a big management consultant for him. Yeah. Darryl (04:25) And then on the way to a client side, was involved in a car accident, ended up with post-concussion syndrome again, and couldn't work those kinds of hours anymore. So I just started a small company called Trust Unlimited and started helping people better understand what trust was, what it is, how it works, and most importantly, how to build it. Jason Hull (04:36) started helping people better understand what trust was, what it is, how it works, and most importantly how it goes. And that's quite the journey. That's quite the story. And so now this is what your, this is your gig. This is what you focus on. You focus on helping people understand trust. Yeah. Darryl (04:52) Yeah, it's what I've devoted my career and my life to. And so for the last 20 years, I've been helping nonprofits, private sector, public sector, Canadian military got me to help them figure out how to try to build trust with the locals in Afghanistan. Yeah, so I've been trying to help solve problems. Jason Hull (05:10) Well, let's make this one of those opportunities for you to help some people that are listening figure out this challenge of trust. Because trust, really feel like, is fundamental and foundational to any relationship and to sales and to growing a business and all of that. Darryl (05:27) It is. It's so critical for your audience because they need the trust of the property owners, but they also need the trust of the tenants. They act as an intermediary and so they need to be experts at building relationships with others. Jason Hull (05:36) Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I'm sure this is, I don't know if this can be answered in a short time period, but give us an idea of how do we create trust from scratch? How do we make this work? What did you figure out? Darryl (05:56) Yeah, so we start with the definition, trust is the willingness to be vulnerable when you can't completely predict how someone else is going to behave. And that definition has two elements in it. It's got perceived uncertainty and perceived vulnerability. And those actually multiply together to give us a level of perceived risk. So we've got uncertainty times vulnerability gives us a level of perceived risk. We each have a threshold of risk that we can tolerate. Jason Hull (06:03) Okay. Darryl (06:21) If we go beyond that threshold, we don't trust. If we're beneath it, then we do. And so.   If we want to understand trust, need to understand where does uncertainty come from? Where do perceptions of vulnerability come from? And how do we take steps to manage those? Because early in a relationship, uncertainty is really high. means we can only tolerate a small range of vulnerability and still fit beneath that threshold. As that relationship gets deeper, the uncertainty declines, the range of vulnerability we can tolerate starts to grow. Jason Hull (06:41) Right. that relationship gets deeper, the uncertainty declines, the range of vulnerability increases. And so really, for your audience, it's going to be about how do I take steps to understand somebody else's uncertainty. Darryl (06:51) And so really for your audience, it's going to be about how do I take steps to understand somebody else's uncertainty? How do I help reduce it? Jason Hull (07:00) What are some typical examples of uncertainty that people might have? Darryl (07:06) Yeah. So uncertainty comes from two places. comes from us as individuals and it comes from the context we're embedded in. And so for owners, their uncertainty is what are the tenants doing? How are they treating the property? Is it going to be well maintained? Are they going to pay on time? And so property managers can help manage that by helping them set up contracts, helping. Jason Hull (07:17) Hmm. Yeah. Darryl (07:31) by reviewing the property on an occasional basis, monitoring behavior patterns for tenants, understanding tenant behavior in a way that most property managers don't have the opportunity to, or property owners don't have the property, because you see a much broader swath of humanity than the typical property owner does. You're more engaged, you're on the ground. And so, Jason Hull (07:35) monitoring behavior patterns for tenants, understanding tenant behavior in way that most property managers... Because you see a much broader swath of humanity than the typical property of the country. You're more engaged, you're on the ground. And so if we start to think about how we reduce uncertainty, uncertainty comes from me and it comes from the context. Well, what are the things that I can do as a property manager to reduce some of this uncertainty? Darryl (07:59) If we start to think about how we reduce uncertainty, uncertainty comes from me and it comes from the context. Well, what are the things that I can do as a property manager to reduce somebody's uncertainty? There's three levers within us as individuals, and those are benevolence, integrity, and ability. Jason Hull (08:18) benevolence you said in integrity what was the last what was the third one ability ability yeah okay got it I got it okay Darryl (08:19) integrity and ability and benevolence is just ability, competence. Yeah. Can I do the job?   And so Jason, we, all have the ability to build trust with others. Just some are better than others at it. Those who aren't very good have a lever that they pull and they pull that lever over and over again and just hope it lines up. Those who are better have multiple levers. Those who are really good have multiple levers and they know when to pull which one. And so. Jason Hull (08:37) This one. Hmm. ⁓ So what I do is I walk people through the different levers and help explain how to pull them. So benevolence is just the belief you got my best interest. Darryl (08:54) What I do is I walk people through the different levers and then help explain how to pull them. So benevolence is just the belief you've got my best interest at heart and that you'll act in my best interest. Jason Hull (09:03) Right. Darryl (09:06) So as a property manager, you're thinking about what does the property owner's best interest look like? What does success look like for them? How do I help them get there? Integrity is do I follow through on my promises and do my actions line up with the values that I express? Jason Hull (09:16) integrity is do I follow through on my promises? ⁓   Darryl (09:22) And so what are the both the explicit promises I'm making to people and the implied promises, the things that they're expecting from me. And then ability is, I actually have the competence to do the job? And a lot of times when we pull the ability lever, we make assumptions about what excellence looks like, but we don't include the other person in that conversation. Jason Hull (09:41) Hmm. Okay. Darryl (09:41) So as a property manager, you may think having the right forms in place and, you know, having a scheduled set of routines and you've got an idea of what excellence looks like. But if you actually included your stakeholders in that conversation, you might come up with a different list of things. And that's both the property owner and the tenant. Jason Hull (09:49) scheduled set of routines and you've got an idea of what essence of something. But if you actually included your stakeholders in that conversation, like both the property owner and tenant. Darryl (10:03) So including them in that conversation can be really eye-opening. Jason Hull (10:03) So including them in that conversation could be really helpful. Yeah. Yeah, just making sure you're both on the same page. Darryl (10:09) And then exactly. And we interpret the world through stories. one of the challenges that your audience faces is that they may have a story about what's going on with the property. The owner might have a different story and the tenant might have a third story. And that's where we run into conflict. Jason Hull (10:14) What are the challenges that your audience faces? they may have a story about what's going on. Yeah. Right. And so if we're not active, you know, a lot of times I'll talk to owners and senior executives and I'll tell them about those three levers and they'll say, well, I do all Darryl (10:29) And so if we're not active, you know, a lot of times I'll talk to owners and senior executives and I'll tell them about those three levers and they'll say, well, I do all those things. And my response will always be says who, because if it's me telling you I'm benevolent, Jason, it doesn't carry a lot of freight. You have to actually believe it. Right. So I need to include you in the conversation to understand. Jason Hull (10:42) And my response will always be, says who? Because if it's me telling you about the devil, Jason, going to carry a lot of freight. Right. I need to include you in the conversation to understand what are your best interests? How do I help you be successful? What are your best Darryl (10:56) What are your best interests? How do I help you be successful? What are your values? What are your, what's your understanding of my values and the actions I take? And can I tell a story about each decision I make and how it aligns with my values? Am I transparent about following through on my commitments? Do I say to you, I'm going to check the property every three months or every six months or once a year. Here's how I'm going to do that. Here's how I'm going to monitor.   Jason Hull (11:11) Okay. Am I transparent and I follow through on my commitments? Do I say to you, I'm going to check the property every three months or every six months or once a year? Here's how I'm going to do that. Here's how I'm going to monitor it. And then do I follow up with the owner and say, Darryl (11:28) And then do I follow up with the owner and say, as per our agreement or as per my commitment, this is me following up on the promise that I made. Jason Hull (11:31) As for our Okay, so Darryl, I love this. This aligns a lot with a book that I'm writing right now called The Golden Bridge Formula. And this Golden Bridge Formula is something that I've used in creating trust quickly in order to facilitate sales. And it's a formula that I've taught my clients. And I think it aligns really well with this. And the basic formula is, Darryl (11:44) Okay. Okay. Jason Hull (12:00) It's based on the idea that everybody trusts others to follow their own motives, to do what's in their best self-interest. We generally can trust that. And so the Golden Bridge formula is basically in simple form is me sharing my personal why, what drives and motivates me, connecting it to the business and the business's why, and then connecting the business why to the prospects why, or your targets why, like what they want. Darryl (12:07) Okay. Jason Hull (12:26) which means you have to figure out their why first, right? You gotta figure out and ask questions first and then you can share and reveal. You know, once you figure out what they want, you can share and where they wanna go. You can share your motives. so, the more extended version of the formula is personal why, what that means, plus the business why, what that means, which is where we get into the values of the company, stuff like this. And then connect it to the prospects why and what that would mean for them. And this is... Darryl (12:47) right. Jason Hull (12:52) One of my greatest shortcuts for getting somebody that's terrible at sales to do sales in an authentic way and dramatically increase their close rate. Because any objection really always boils down to, I don't trust you. That's really the only true objection in sales. I don't trust your product or your service enough to believe that it's worth the price or that it's actually gonna work or it's gonna benefit me. The one thing people trust is for others to be selfish. Darryl (13:00) Nice. Right. Jason Hull (13:20) They trust people to do what's in their best interest. So if I can share my motivation, my golden bridge, and the actual bridge is the business. The business is this vehicle that gets me what I want and it gets my client what they want, right? And so if I can relate that, it creates this connection where we can both trust each other because if I'm selfish, I am able to help them and I get what I want. And so I'll give you my example. Darryl (13:34) Right. Jason Hull (13:46) personal why is to inspire others to love true principles. And so what that means is I love learning what works and sharing it with other people. I would do that for free for fun. I love paying for it. I take it coaches and mentors and door grow secretly not so secretly exist because I love being able to spend a lot of money on coaches, mentors, programs to be able to learn new stuff that I can turn around and then benefit and share with other entrepreneurs, with my clients. Darryl (14:12) Great. Jason Hull (14:13) And they can trust that if I continue to do that, I'm going to benefit them. DoorGrow exists because everyone on my team, our why at DoorGrow is to transform property management business owners and their businesses. And so everybody on my team buys into that. We want to see our clients win and we want to change their businesses. And so that's why they come to us. And so they know if they come to us that I'm going to continue to learn, I'm going to continue to share the best stuff that I can find. in hopes that we achieve this business goal because it selfishly feeds my addiction to learning and it's going to benefit them. It's a win-win-win for everybody that's involved. Darryl (14:46) Right. Yeah, that's a powerful approach, finding shared superordinate goals, right? Finding the overlap between wins for both of us. And partly that requires, you're right, the conversation with the other to find out what their goals and objectives are, how we help them be successful. It also requires an awareness on our part of what our goals and objectives are. Right. And I mean, for me, I'm trying to have a positive impact on the world. Jason Hull (14:55) Hmm. Yeah. It also requires an awareness on heart rate.   And I mean, for me, I'm trying to have a positive impact on the world. I get a charge out of it. Trying to make the world a place. And so I'm trying to get the signal through the noise. There's a number of folks who've said I'm one of the world's leading experts on trust. There's a couple of well-placed people who said I'm the guy. I'm just really trying to have as much positive impact as I can. Darryl (15:15) I get a charge out of trying to make the world better place. And so I'm trying to get the signal through the noise. There's a number of folks who've said, I'm one of the world's leading experts on trust. There's a couple of well-placed people who've said I'm the guy. Um, and I'm just really trying to have as much positive impact as I can. And you're right. It's selfish. I've got two sons that are 24 and 21. I want the world to be a better place for them. And I like it when people are able to be successful and have powerful, productive relationships because I believe that that's one of the few things we actually control. It's how we show up in the world, how we engage with others. Jason Hull (15:49) I love it. Yeah, great stuff Let's pause there and I'll share a little word from our sponsor and then we'll get back into the topic of trust because I really love this topic. And I know that this is super beneficial because This is really what property managers sell. They sell trust. They don't really sell property management. All right. So our sponsor is CoverPest. CoverPest is the easy and seamless way to add on-demand pest control to your resident benefit package. Residents love the simplicity of submitting a service request. Darryl (16:18) Yeah. Jason Hull (16:33) and how affordable it is compared to traditional pest control options. Investors love knowing that their property is kept pest free and property managers love getting their time back and making more revenue per door. Simply put, CoverPest is the easiest way to handle pest control issues at all your properties. To learn more and to get special door grow pricing, visit coverpest.com/doorgrow. That's coverpest.com/doorgrow. All right, Darryl. back to trust. Cool. I love this idea. You talked about benevolence, integrity, and your ability, and figuring out how to relate those in a way that is believable to others. I shared a little bit about my Golden Bridge formula. I'm curious what you think of that because you're the expert on trust. Maybe I'll have to quote you in my book or something. Darryl (17:04) Yeah. Right. Yeah. that'd be awesome. Yeah. So I think part of the DoorGrow principle or part of the golden bridge principle is finding a way to be benevolent and have it be transparent. Right. Because what I, the conversation I convince, or I get my clients, my coaching clients to go through is find someone to practice with. Cause that's how we really learn and have the following conversation. Jason Hull (17:37) Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Darryl (17:52) I heard this guy, Darryl, he was talking about trust. He said that benevolence is really important, which is just a fancy word for having someone's best interest or having their back. And I think I do that, but it doesn't always seem to land that way. Have you ever experienced that? Jason Hull (18:00) Sure, yeah,   Darryl (18:07) Yeah, and just what everyone has. And so... Now we get curious and we ask the other person, can you think of an example of when you tried to act on someone's behalf and it backfired or they had the wrong story? And it creates this conversation and it starts priming them. Then we narrow the funnel and we say, has someone ever really had your back? Have they ever really looked out for you? What did they do? How did it feel? Jason Hull (18:12) Now, we get curious and we ask the other person, can you think of an example of when you tried to act on someone's behalf and it backfired or they had the wrong story? And it creates this conversation and starts priming them. Then we narrow the funnel and we say, has someone ever really had your back? Have they ever really looked out for you? What did they do? How did it feel? Now we're priming them even more. Darryl (18:36) Now we're priming them even more and we're getting a chance to get some hints about what benevolence looks like for that person. So that when we do try to pull that lever, it really lands. Then we narrow the funnel further and we say, a success for you. How do I help you get there? What would it look like if I had your best interest at heart? And that's what you guys do every day when you're trying to help companies grow the number of doors that they sell. Jason Hull (18:38) And we're getting a chance to get some hints about what benevolence looks like to that person. So that when we do try to pull that lever, it really lands. Then we narrow the funnel further and say, what's success for you? How do I help you get there? What would it look like if I had your best interest and heart? And that's what you guys do every day when you're trying to help companies grow the number of doors that they sell. You're trying to help them be successful. Darryl (19:04) you're trying to help them be successful. And so. Jason Hull (19:08) Absolutely. It sounds like almost a variation of a common sales question that some call the crystal ball question, which is like, 12 months from now, if we were to work together, how would you know that this was a success? What would success look like? If this was a win for you, what would have been true for you to feel like this was really a great decision? Darryl (19:23) Right. Right. And then here's how I'm going to help you get there. And it opens up the opportunity for us to be transparent moving forward. Because we can say, you remember when you told me this is what mattered to you? This is what success looked like? This is me doing that. So there isn't room for misinterpretation or a crossing of the wires. Now context is the other element of uncertainty, right? It's the rules of the game. Jason Hull (19:41) This is me doing that. So there isn't room for misinterpretation or crossing the border. Now, context is the other element of uncertainty. Right? It's the rules of the game. And you just talked about pest cover. That's a way to change the context so that there's a structured system in place where people can respond more consistently. It reduces uncertainty. Darryl (19:55) and you just talked about CoverPest. that's a way to change the context so that there's a structured system in place where people can respond more consistently. It reduces uncertainty. Similar with the programs that you develop for your clients. was listening to one of your podcasts around leadership. You have offerings that help them change the context. So it becomes more automated, more consistent, which creates a greater consistency for property owners and for clients or tenants that you're interacting with.   Jason Hull (20:09) Similar with the programs that you develop for your clients. was listening to one of your podcasts around leadership. You have offerings that help them change the context so it becomes more automated, more consistent, which creates a greater consistency for property owners and for clients or tenants that you're interacting with. And so you're taking steps to reduce uncertainty. Darryl (20:34) And so you're taking steps to reduce uncertainty. So how do we have a conversation with property managers about doing that same thing, about putting rules and regulations in place that govern their behavior, that push them towards a more consistent place? Jason Hull (20:38) So how do we have a conversation with property managers about doing that same thing? About putting rules and regulations in place that govern their behavior, that push them towards a Yeah, yeah, could be, I mean, it's a lot of factors go into this, right? Like their company core values certainly is how they might go about doing this. Their policies and procedures goes into more specific tactical implementation of those values. And then you're getting into like, what's the motive behind it? Which is where we maybe define like some sort of external focused client centric mission statement. Which. Darryl (20:57) Yep. and the incentive structures and the job descriptions, right? Jason Hull (21:16) relates to that benevolence. Yeah,   so even with individual team members having really solid job descriptions where there's clear outcomes defined. Yeah. Darryl (21:27) Then we go to the vulnerability side of the equation. Sometimes a sale doesn't happen because people feel too vulnerable. They want to find a solution that's cheaper or easier. Think about ice cream stores that let you try a sampling of different flavors before you buy. Or retail outlets that have return policies that are very generous. These are all ways for them to reduce your perceived vulnerability. Jason Hull (21:27) And we could They want to find a solution that's cheaper or easier. Think about ice cream store. Yeah. Darryl (21:52) So if I'm trying to grow doors, partly I want to get referrals, but partly I also want to have an opportunity for people to try me out a little bit so that they can reduce that uncertainty so that we've got varying levels of vulnerability that they can experience with us so that our relationship with them can grow over time. And so does that mean that I'm having conversations with them, sharing information with them, giving things to them for free? Jason Hull (21:53) So if I'm trying to grow doors, partly I want to get referrals. But partly I also want to have an opportunity for people to try me out a little bit so that they can reduce that uncertainty so that we've got varying levels of vulnerability that they can experience with us. So that our relationship with them can grow over time. So does that mean that I'm having conversations with them, sharing information with them, giving things to them for free? Darryl (22:22) so that they start to get a better sense of who I am and what my why is, and they can see the consistency between my values that I've expressed and the actions I'm taking. Jason Hull (22:22) so that they start to get a better sense of who I am and what my line is. And they can see the consistency between the lines that I've expressed in the actual company. Darryl (22:32) Once we've made the trust decision, we have what I call perceived outcomes. So we can have exactly the same experience, but have dramatically different interpretation of what's just happened. And we, in the outcome section, we have two levers. There's was the outcome a success or a failure and who gets the credit, who gets the blame. And because we interpret the world through stories, if we're not active in the creation of the narrative, Jason Hull (22:32) Once we've made the trust decision, we have what I call perceived outcomes. So we can have exactly the same experience, but have dramatically different interpretation of what's just happened. And we, in the outcome section, we have two levers. There's, what is the outcome of success or failure? And who gets the credit? Who gets the blame? And because we interpret the world through stories, if we're not active in the creation of the narrative, Darryl (23:01) we run the risk of people coming up with a completely different story from ours. And that perceived outcome then feeds back into our next interaction with that same person. Jason Hull (23:02) we run the risk of people coming up with a completely different story from ours. And that perceived outcome that feeds back into our next day of rationing that same person. True. Yeah. In the middle of all this, Jason, is our emotional states. So 99 % of the trust research treats people like rational actors. You've met people, right? Darryl (23:13) In the middle of all this, Jason, is our emotional states. So 99 % of the trust research treats people like rational actors. You've met people, right? Jason Hull (23:24) Yeah, they're not rational actors. We're not. We're emotional actors. Yeah.   Darryl (23:25) we're not always rational. And the more emotional, yeah, the more emotional we become, the less rational we are. Right? And so we, need to find a way to reset those emotional states before we pull these other levers because otherwise we're just wasting our time. Jason Hull (23:35) Yeah. Right. So we need to find a way to reset those emotions. Right, yeah. If we start trying to attack their story or start trying to attack when they're already preloaded or angry with logic, it's not generally gonna be super effective. Darryl (23:55) doesn't tend to work. And so the research that I do and the doctoral thesis that I wrote is different from most of the trust research in a few different ways. One is I include context, which the other work tends not to, which helps explain why we trust some people without knowing anything about them, right? Go to a doctor's office. Doctor says, off your clothes and, and you do, right? Jason Hull (24:11) Hmm. Yeah, they're kind of an earned authority in some people's minds. They've got the lab coat and they are the person we were shown to after we got through the lobby. And so we're like, I guess I will do what they tell me to do unless it gets weird. Yeah. So now take that and shift it from a doctor's office to a gas station restroom. Same two people, guys wearing the white lab coat. Darryl (24:20) Yeah. Yeah. So now take that and shift it from a doctor's office to a gas station restroom. Same two people, guys wearing the white lab coat.   Same conversation, take off your clothes. goes from credible to creepy in a heartbeat, right? Jason Hull (24:42) Right, context is definitely going to have an impact. Darryl (24:46) And then I include vulnerability, which most of the trust research doesn't, which means that trust is a continuous variable, not a dichotomous one, right? Dichotomous variable means that it's like an old time light switch. It's either present or absent. Reality is we trust some people more than the others and the trust can grow and evolve over time. Yeah. And so what I do is I try to help people learn how to build deeper relationships. Jason Hull (24:51) which means that trust is a continuous forever. The conness variable means that it's like a Right. It's on or off. Yeah. Yeah. It's a spectrum. Darryl (25:15) so that they're more resilient. So that when something goes wrong, you don't lose clients. And when things go wrong, because they inevitably go wrong, right? Jason Hull (25:20) Right. Darryl (25:27) Our response is given the most positive story you can. Tenants who leave for one reason or another aren't bad mouthing our company or are less likely to. That's what trust buys us. Jason Hull (25:28) Our response is given the most positive story you can.   Tendents to leave for one reason or another aren't bad. likely to, that's what trespassers. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They give us the benefit of the doubt if we, and I think, you know, a lot of this is established even before the sale, during the sales process, that's how we get to the sale. And then afterwards, how we onboard them can have a massive impact so that they don't have buyer's remorse. And, you know, it's that beginning of the relationship because it's so fresh and new, it's where we're kind of establishing. Darryl (26:00) Yeah. Jason Hull (26:07) and showcasing benevolence, integrity, and ability, right? Darryl (26:11) That's right. And we're setting that story for the future interactions that we have so that they look for confirming evidence. Jason Hull (26:18) Yeah, because if we create some confirming strong evidence in the beginning and then something is out of congruence or there's something seems off to them, they may give us the benefit of the doubt. They may look at this and go, well, they've always been good to me in the past. So maybe something's off here. So they might be a little more open to having a conversation to understand why things went the way they did. Right. Darryl (26:39) Right, they might give you the opportunity to retain their business rather than just leave it. Jason Hull (26:44) Yeah, got it. Cool. Well, yeah, this is really fascinating. I really have enjoyed this. Is there anything in wrapping up that you feel would make a big impact for people that are wanting to increase this? Maybe how do they know how vulnerable to be without making themselves look like they're incompetent and hurt the ability thing? Yeah. Darryl (26:44) Yeah. Yeah. So share, don't scare, right? Yeah. ⁓ a lot of times when I talk about building trust, I talk about small dose of vulnerability, share, don't scare, you know, acknowledge that you're not perfect or that you don't know something or that you're curious about the other party. and heavy dose of benevolence. So Jason Hull (27:09) Yeah. Hmm. videos Darryl (27:26) really trying to find out what's in the best interest of the other party. ⁓ I think if we do it right, if we engage with a small dose of vulnerability to start, it triggers a natural response in the other party to want to respond the same way. Jason Hull (27:29) Right. I if we do it... gauge with a small dose Yeah. Well, I have a good example. So I have a client and I thought I was being benevolent. He felt he hadn't really utilized our services for a couple of months or a few months because he was focused on other things. So he was looking to cancel. So I said, hey, why don't we discount your monthly fee down to like a third and to take care of you and make sure you're getting the benefit. And Darryl (27:44) And yeah. Okay. Jason Hull (28:07) I got on a call with him and he hadn't really fulfilled his part of the deal, which was he was gonna work on adding another 25 units in outdoors and I was gonna sponsor him or lower our fee for two to three months. And he came back and he was like, well, I thought you were gonna let me continue this indefinitely until I got 100 doors. And I'm like, but you're not doing any work. So he's frustrated, I'm frustrated and he's wanting to cancel and... Darryl (28:30) Great. Jason Hull (28:35) I want to let him cancel because I feel like he's taking advantage of me and our team's goodwill. But I can see he feels that we'd sort of made some promise, even though we misunderstood it, that we would just help him indefinitely until he got to 100 doors, regardless of whether he's doing the work or not. Darryl (28:51) Right. Yeah, and sometimes being benevolent isn't being nice. Right. Jason Hull (28:52) Yeah, and sometimes you... Hmm. Yeah, yeah, sometimes people what people need is a punch in the face metaphorically. Yeah. Darryl (29:02) Right. Or a kick in the butt. Yeah. So my, my son wanted to get a baseball scholarship and he told me that. And I said, well, to do that, you need to have good grades. You need to work hard. You need to play well. You've got to be a good coach, a good assistant to the coach. Like the coach needs to like you to advocate on your behalf and you've got to be a good teammate. And so I, I said, I'm going to.   Jason Hull (29:08) Hmm. Do that. Yeah. ⁓ on your behalf. And so I said, I'm going to ask you about all these things. so I'm like, are you eating right? you doing your homework? Are going to get good grades? Are you working hard? And so I'm asking him all the things that parents don't ask their kids, except that he perceives it as me having his back, not being on his back. so holding into a count in that moment, similarly, if we've got Darryl (29:29) ask you about all these things. And so I'm like, are you eating right? Are you doing your homework? Cause you gotta get good grades. Are you working hard? And so I'm asking him all the things that parents normally ask their kids, except that he perceives it as me having his back, not being on his back. And so holding him to account in that moment, you know, and similarly, if, if we've got people in our office who want promotions, well, Jason Hull (29:54) in our office who want promotion. Well, that means that you need to show up like that. Darryl (29:58) That means that you need to show up like that new role. Right? I need to be confident that you can handle that role before I give it to you. So that means I need to ask more of you. I need to hold you to a higher standard. Need to push you harder. And if your client says he's going to get 25 doors and he hasn't... Jason Hull (30:03) I need to be confident that you can handle that role before I give it to you. So that means I need to ask more of you. I need to hold you to a higher standard. I to push you harder. And if your client says he's gonna get 25 doors and he hasn't... Darryl (30:23) then the response may well be, want you to be successful, but right now I'm just enabling you to kind of coast. And I may not be the right solution for you at this moment. Jason Hull (30:23) then the response may well be, I want you to be successful, but right now I'm just unable to cut costs. And I may not be the right switch for you at this point. Yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I don't need his money, so I generally wanna help him grow, but yeah, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, I guess. But you can't the roads, right? Darryl (30:43) Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so if you really want to have his best interests at heart, it starts to become a conversation of what's getting in the way. How do we help pull away some of those barriers that you're experiencing? And if, if we're just part of the noise, then we probably need to stop for awhile. Jason Hull (30:48) I don't know. Yeah, and so if you really want to have these best interests at heart hmm it starts to become a conversation of what's getting Yeah Right is there something else that would help you be more productive and if you Darryl (31:11) Is there something else that would help you be more productive? And if you really had his best interest at heart, you might have other solutions or suggestions that you could offer to him.   Jason Hull (31:17) If you really have his best interest in art, you might have other solutions or suggestions that you can offer him. Yeah. And I have, yeah. He doesn't want to do the sales. So I said, you need to get a salesperson and you need to hire. Yeah. Yeah. So, Well, Darryl, I really appreciate this. This is really interesting. I'd like to stay connected. think, I think your, you know, your message and I would be very interested in reading your book. What's the name of your book if people are looking? Darryl (31:29) Yeah. Yeah. It's called building trust, exceptional leadership in the times of uncertainty. Jason Hull (31:48) That's good for today. Yeah, we're living what a lot are calling the post trust era. Darryl (31:49) Yeah. Trust levels are the lowest we've ever measured. And if you think about the model that I proposed, our vulnerability hasn't really gone down, but our uncertainty is bouncing all over the place. it makes asking people to trust us just a little more hard, a little more difficult than it has been in the past. Jason Hull (32:01) Yeah Yeah, I think one good final question is how do you perceive trust being impacted by AI? Because a lot of people are trying to leverage AI, use AI. They're pretending that it's them that did something and they're using AI. What do you see for the future of trust related to this AI revolution that we're going through right now? I think it's going to be an extreme challenge. think social media has caused problems to start with. Yeah. Darryl (32:29) I think it's going to be an extreme challenge. think social media has caused problems to start with. ⁓ Our relationships tend to be a mile wide and an inch deep now. They're not as resilient as they used to be. Jason, when I grew up, I could be an idiot multiple times in a row and people were stuck with me. And so I learned. Now people have this feeling that if I make one mistake, I'm done. Jason Hull (32:42) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Disposable friendships and relationships. Darryl (32:56) And I'll just find somebody, some other group to hang out with on the internet. we need to be more right and isolated and lonely and talking to AI, like it's a real human being. And so I think we need to be more intentional than we've ever been about building trust. And that's, that's why I do the work I do. Jason Hull (33:00) And then we end up in these echo chambers for sure. Right. And isolated at moment, not in AI, like it's really easy to be. Okay, yeah. And so I think we need to be more intentional than we've ever been to build trust. Yeah, yeah. And that's why I do the work I do. Yes, I think it's more valuable than ever. more valuable than ever, yeah. Darryl (33:21) I try to teach people how to build stronger relationships. Yeah. Jason Hull (33:27) Yeah, and I think it'll become more valuable. I think that our failings and flaws as human will become more valuable because we're imperfect. And I think that humanity is going to be, or just our humanness is gonna be a premium. It's gonna be a premium experience to be able to be with a human. And so I think that relationships will matter even more and trust certainly. Darryl (33:50) Yeah. Jason Hull (33:52) And there's a lot of people that are trying to eliminate the need for trust. It's like forced blockchain stuff and tech and things are defined and there's no way they could steal, or lie. And like we force it so we can eliminate the need for trust. And maybe there's a little progress that can be made that way, but I think for sure trust will be a premium. Yeah, it's, it may eliminate. Darryl (33:58) Yeah. Yeah, it may eliminate our need for trust, it doesn't eliminate the need for us to be able to build trust with others. We still need to engage with other human beings. Jason Hull (34:18) Yeah. Yeah, well said. Well, Darryl, how can people get in touch with you or find out more about what you do? Tell us a little bit about what your offerings are and how they can get in touch. Darryl (34:23) Yeah. Right. So I offer executive coaching, consulting, uh, training and development, uh, workshops, those kinds of things. Uh, the book was written because I don't want what I know to go away if I do. and they can find me on my website at trust unlimited.com. Uh, there's a blog section there with plenty of articles and topics like rebuilding trust with the police or. Jason Hull (34:45) because I don't And they can find me on my website at trustunlimited.com. There's a blog section there with plenty of articles and topics like rebuilding trust with the police or Darryl (35:01) Trust in parenting or trust in leadership. ⁓ I have a podcast called the imperfect cafe. ⁓ Jason Hull (35:02) trusting parenting or trusting leadership. I have a podcast called The Uperca Cafe. Darryl (35:09) and they can reach out to me directly by email at Darryl at trust unlimited.com. Jason Hull (35:09) and they can reach out to me directly by email, darryl.trusthumbln.com. Perfect. Darryl, it's been a pleasure. Appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for being here. Thanks for the opportunity. Absolutely. All right. So for those of you that enjoyed the show and you maybe have felt stuck or stagnant and you want to take your property management business to the next level, you can reach out to us at doorgrow.com. Darryl (35:22) Thanks for the opportunity, Jason. Jason Hull (35:37) Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com. And if you want tips, tricks, ideas, and to learn about our offers, subscribe to our newsletter by going to doorgrow.com slash subscribe. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. And until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

How often do you say, “I don’t have time?” This is a common excuse we hear from property management business owners and their teams. The truth is, we all have the same amount of time. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the myth of not having enough time and the true issue: having the wrong priorities. You’ll Learn [01:28] Time: The Biggest Excuse for Staying Stagnant [06:02] You Don’t Make Money on Bad Clients [10:20] Building Trust with Clients Without Overcommunicating [19:35] Finding the Bottleneck in Your Business Quotables “Don't optimize for the wrong things. You have to make sure you're optimizing for the right things.” “We all have the same amount of time every day.” “The issue is not time. The issue is priorities.” 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/] Transcript   Jason Hull (00:00) most of you listening have some properties and some owners in your portfolio that are losing you money. Your operational cost on them is higher than   you being able to pull profit on them.   All right, we are Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we've brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of businesses.   helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profit, simplify operations, and build and replace teams. At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world and 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. Now, let's get into the show. All right, so what are we chatting about today? Sarah? Time. Time. Time. Why are we chatting about time?   And this is where most people mess it up because it's so precious here's the little captain's face   It's precious. Okay, Captain for those listening is a little dog that we have. It's one of our dogs. Okay, so the reason we're talking about time is because time is one of the biggest excuses that we get. Are you working and growing your business? I just don't have time. Or have you been making the calls that you need to make to get your business growing? I don't have time. I'm so busy. I'm so overwhelmed. And so it's everybody is out of time.   Nobody has time. Nobody's so busy. There's a meme that it's old, but it's like classic. Ain't nobody got time for that. Ain't nobody got time for that? Yes, you do. So time, time is an issue. Why is time an issue? We all have the same amount of time every day. We get a whole new 24 hours the next day, every day. The issue isn't time. And we've talked about this, think, before, but the issue is not time. The issue is priorities. You're prioritizing the wrong things. And one of the things we've noticed   with clients. We just recently wrote for our clients a time optimization playbook for property managers. It's got some brilliant stuff in it. A lot of it from her brain, some of it from my brain, and it's really good. But one of things we've noticed, Elon Musk has these principles for how he goes and optimizes businesses. He's made businesses way more efficient. When he came into Twitter and rebranded it to X he cleaned house, thousands of   wasteful employees that were just bloat and not really contributing to code, not really updating it. One of his key principles is don't optimize for the wrong things. You have to make sure you're optimizing for the right things. And a lot of people are optimizing when they should have been cutting stuff out first. So they didn't ask the question, should we even be doing this thing at all? And most property managers we find are optimizing for the wrong thing.   They are optimizing for how do I take every phone call from every tenant and how do I take every phone call from every owner and how do I please everybody and do all this stuff that I have to do instead of what?   Instead of saying, should I even be talking to these people at all? Your owners don't really want to talk to you. They really would love if they could just trust you to do your job and do it well and not have to talk to you. Like that's really what owners want. When they feel anxious because they don't trust you because you aren't doing a good job or you've set incorrect boundaries or you haven't made them feel safe from the beginning or you onboarded them poorly, they now feel anxious. They want to talk to you all the time because why?   They now believe they need to manage the manager. They're trying to manage you. How ridiculous is that? They hire you to manage their property and then they manage you to manage the property. They just traded their job for another job instead of offloading it to you. so we need to optimize for the right things. And so we need to start questioning things. And so some of the things we'll have people do is we'll have them audit their time by doing a time study.   And ours is a little bit different. It focuses on identifying the five currencies of time, energy, focus, cash, and effort, which is a framework I got from one of my mentors, Alex Charfen. And so the idea of the time study showcases all of these. It shows all of these. Sarah's, used to say it didn't show cash, but Sarah was like, you should add cash. And so now it has the money piece in it too.   just said.   You're trading your time. Right. And this is thing I to my clients all the time. I say, if your time was worth, let's just call it a low amount like $50 an hour, you just traded $50 an hour for $13 an hour. It was not a good trade. Yeah. Of course it wasn't. Not a good trade at all. were you doing those things? Instead of using $50 an hour time to do $50 or $100 or $1,000 an hour work, you're using $50 an hour time.   to do $13 an hour work, you have to just look at the things that you're doing and place a dollar sign next to them and then kind of compare that with what your pay rate is and what you want your pay rate to be, not just what it currently is. So I just said, just put a dollar sign next to them. And we did. We updated it. So you might be thinking, how do I deal with all my tenants and all my clients? And maybe you should be asking   Should I even have all of these tenants, properties, and clients? After all, a lot of our clients, when they first come to us, are not making money on every property. They're losing money on some of the properties. They're losing money on some of the owners that they're dealing with. If you actually ran a P &L, a profit and loss statement on every individual owner, every individual unit that you manage, some of them in your business are losing you money. Would you manage for free? Would you do it for free?   People came to you, hey, could you do this? You won't make any money, but I'd like you to manage this anyway. I'll pay you nothing. You would probably say no to that, right? If they came to you and said, hey, I would like you to manage this and you will actually lose money, but it benefits me. Would you do it? You're like, Jason, that's stupid. But right now, most of you listening have some properties and some owners in your portfolio that are losing you money. Your operational cost on them is higher than   you being able to pull profit on them. And so it's the 80-20 principle. 20 % of your properties and 20 % of your owners probably cost you 80 % of your operational costs, right? They're eating it up. So one of the principles we share recently, we've been sharing at some of our Jumpstart sessions because we onboard clients in person. We have them come out to our Jumpstart sessions is this idea of, well, do you remember?   The Hamburglar. Do remember the Hamburglar? The sneaky, shady guy with the bands and over his like this little thing around his eyes and he's sneaking around stealing burgers, right? Well, there is a burglar sneaking around your business and you can't even see him. He's invisible. And he is the interruption burglar. He's just sneaking around stealing money and time throughout your business all day long.   the interruption burglar. One interruption costs between, depending on the studies, you look at 18 minutes to maybe up to 26 minutes of productivity and your team members and you are getting interrupted constantly throughout the day. And then they have to like reset their mind, get back into the flow, get back to what they were doing. But if they're just dealing with interruptions all day long, you are losing probably half the amount of labor that you should be getting.   This is why Sarah was able to run her business so efficiently when she was a property manager and why some of her clients have just as many doors as her, but they have a whole team. A huge team. Yeah. They have a whole bunch of people. Between me and my assistant. And they're not making much money. I didn't even have one full-time equivalent. And you were working maybe 20 hours a week. You had 60 to 90 % profit margin. And these were C-class difficult properties, right?   But Sarah optimizes. She optimizes for the right things. I hate wasting my time. Yeah, she values her time. biggest pet peeve out of everything in the world is wasting my time. So Sarah values her time. One thing Sarah did not give out, Sarah did not give out this magical check that all of you tend to give out to all of your clients and your tenants.   This is this big, giant, glowing golden check that says, steal all of my profits, call me anytime. And you give this to tenants, every tenant and owner, you give them this blank check to steal all of your profitability. I had a client come to me once with 600 units and he was making zero dollars in his business. How is that possible? That's exactly what I asked him. said, there's a previous podcast episode, you can check it out.   It's with Preston Brown. I think he was out in New Mexico and he had 250 units that probably they shouldn't been in his portfolio out of the 600. He fired them. It's almost half. Then he fired half of his staff. Now you think, oh, maybe his workload, his got kind of half. No, it went down dramatically like 80-20 rule. Like he had way more profitability available. He was making a lot of money then. He had a healthy business. So   It's not just about doors. It's about profit. It's about optimizing for the right things. There's no point going and getting more doors if your pricing is terrible, if your time is messy, if you don't have priorities set correctly. Okay, so what else do we run into with clients with time that we'd like to share here with the audience? I think the biggest thing that they tell themselves is just, I'm so busy.   Yeah.   piece of the business they're focused in, they always just say, my God, like I'm just so busy and I can never get everything done. That seems to be the thing that we hear again and again and again. I mean, we even had, he's a former client, but he had asked me several times. We were actually helping him implement his daily huddles after he hired a new team because he completed an acquisition. And he said, okay, what we're gonna track on the daily huddles.   He wanted a 98 or 97 % call answer rate. Optimizing for the wrong things. And I went, okay, I won't say his name, but I said, that's the worst idea I've ever heard. And he's like, no, it's really important that we answer the phone every time that it rings or almost every time that it rings. Because if we don't answer the phone, then people won't trust us because they can't get ahold of us. And then that shatters everything that I'm trying to do and everything that I'm trying to build.   And I think the big misconception is that those two things go hand in hand. For people to trust me, I must always be available. For people to trust me, I must be at their beck and call. For people to trust me, I must get back to them immediately. Okay, well some are freaking out right now. Some are going, I don't believe what Sarah's saying. Because the number one reason in most studies why people supposedly, why they leave property management companies is   a lack of communication or poor communication. Correct. But I think that's a red herring. You can over communicate, and we've had clients do this too. So you can over communicate. You can tell your clients every little single thing that you are doing in whichever method or manner you feel like is appropriate. So you can call them, you can text them, you can send them emails, you can have your system automatically send them notifications.   You can do whatever, but you can tell them, we did this today, and we did that today, and we did this many showings, and we got this many leads, and we're working on this many applications, and this 10 a call, and we did this, and this, this, this, this, this. Can we agree that that is excellent communication? Sure. Do you think that doing that though makes somebody more likely to trust you? I would argue that it doesn't. I would argue that it makes them   less likely to trust you. And the reason is because you're inviting them to babysit you. You're inviting them to be a watchdog. You're inviting them to question you and want to micromanage and monitor. And go, ⁓ what is Jason doing today? What did Jason do on my property today? How many of my tenants did Jason talk to you today?   ⁓ What about how many showings did Jason do today and then if all of a sudden? Well, why wasn't there a showing at my property today Jason? I don't understand now. It seems like he's not doing anything, right? So you're you're training people the wrong way by over Communicating with them and you are teaching them to not trust you because they are inherently Question you   So I love this because the idea in these surveys and a lot of people at NARPM and people in property management have said, communication is key. We answer the phone, which is cool. Answer the phone. You still don't need to optimize for reducing the phone calls. How do we eliminate as many as possible? And so I think it's a red herring. I think it's a false idea that communication is the number one reason because there's something that comes before communication.   and that is you set bad expectations, you set poor boundaries, that leads to anxiety in the tenants and the owners, and then communication becomes this crazy thing that they need more of instead of being able to trust you. The lack of trust is the real problem. It's not communication. There's plenty of investors out there that have good property managers that do not want to talk to them ever.   I just had Dustin Heiner on a previous episode of our podcast. Very savvy investor. Every investor listening to this should probably listen to that guy, a really good friend of ours. He goes and finds a property manager first before he finds a property and he says, I will even pay them a little bit more if I have to because I don't want to ever have to talk to them. I don't want to have to deal with the property. I want to be able to trust them to do job so I can just live my life. He wants it to be passive. He's a good investor.   You're creating bad investors and you're making them anxious by not setting healthy boundaries and setting expectations and making sure that they can trust you. And so they trust you less and less over time because they're anxious. And then what happens? Then they have to and call more and more and they have to babysit more and more. And then they have to watch over your shoulder and then they want more reports and then they want more communication. then it's this constant. And then you have to hire more people. Now they need more.   And now that they've had more, now that they're more anxious and they trust you even less, now they want more of that. And you're just getting in this cycle that's eventually going to be the death of you and your team and perhaps your entire business. It gets worse because yeah, you have to build out this whole team of people you don't even need. You hire a bunch of extra people and these people are not, like if you're hiring that many people, you can't afford to pay them all super well. So you're not getting the most amazing people.   And these are the frontline people that are dealing with your tenants and owners. And then they're frustrated with them because they don't have all the answers and they don't sound confident and competent. And so then they want to talk to you. And so you're getting escalations constantly. And so now you're having to talk with them even more to calm down the anxiety because Susie at the front desk had no clue what they were talking about. And then all of a sudden you have this whole team that's not capable of running the business without you.   So now everything is still coming to you, but you're paying everybody to do things and it doesn't matter because they do things, they fail, people aren't satisfied and they still go, yeah, but I'm still putting out all the fires all day. You're right, you are. And that's because of how you are training people. And you know you have the wrong team if one of your key questions is, why won't my team just think for themselves? If you constantly are asking that question, why won't they just think for themselves? It's because you.   have bad leadership. You've set it up incorrectly and you have not created the right team. You've built the wrong team around the wrong person. You're showing up as the wrong person. You're over involved and you have not been able to create, but you created the wrong environment. And that started with picking, know, setting up the game incorrectly with tenants and owners and not setting good boundaries and not setting good expectations. And it doesn't even mean that you have bad clients. No. It doesn't mean you have bad clients. You're making them bad.   bad properties, doesn't even mean that you have bad tenants, it just means that you're training them to treat you that way. And you're allowing them to treat you that way. And then you're wondering why it's so hard to manage them and why everyone goes, Sarah, how is it possible that you ran 260 units and you were part time? I just don't understand how it's possible. And most people wouldn't understand how it's possible because they're making so many mistakes.   with their time and throughout their entire day, that almost the entire day, I would be willing to bet that about 80 % or more of the average property manager's day is bullshit. Yeah. Complete bullshit. So that's why when you're spending most of your day doing stupid things, yeah, no wonder why I can outwork you. And it's not even hard to do. It's just hard when you're trying to do everything.   And it's hard when you're not training your team, your clients, your tenants. They're all like puppies. You just, have to train all of them. If you want a dog that's going to go to the bathroom outside, you've got to train it. If you want an owner that's going to trust you and not question you and not consistently bother you and wonder what's happening on my property today, you've got to train them to do that.   And some of them may have come to you with those intentions. And then because of how your system is set up, you broke that. And now they're just used to, okay, well, they're gonna tell me every day or every once a week. Now I'm gonna get on a phone call once a week. Here's our weekly call. Here's my weekly email. Yeah. There's several other things related at a time. One that I'll...   related to what Sarah's talking about is if your goals are too low, like your goal right now is a shitty goal, like your goal is survival, or how do I just deal with all this time? That's an awful goal. That goal yields really terrible results. That's not a goal that's going to get you to think differently. It's not a goal that's going to get you to innovate or find a better path or to be able to grow and scale dramatically faster. That's a really low level goal. And so it doesn't raise the floor high enough. And so you're dealing with all this low level garbage in your business.   And that relates to priorities. Time is not, everybody has the same amount of time. It's not about time. It's about prioritization, as we mentioned at the beginning. And so you are intentionally filling your, uses a golf ball analogy. Do you want to share that? No. No. Okay. Well, I'll just, but basically you're filling up, you're filling up your day with all of the riff raff and the little stuff instead of prioritizing the main thing. And so I'll share this.   You need to figure out what your biggest bottleneck is. Anything other than that, there's only one bottleneck in your business. There's always one. It's one at a time. That's your biggest constraint is the bottleneck. And you have to always focus on what is the bottleneck that I need to be dealing with right now. I recently heard Alex Hermosy talk about this and there's lots of different leaks and lots of different constraints in the business, but   You need to figure out where is the biggest bottleneck. That's the priority. You need to prioritize the right things. Right now you're prioritizing the wrong things. Go back, find a previous episode where I talk about the six core functions of business. That will help reveal to you which of those six is the priority. And then you can figure out where's the bottleneck inside of that area of the business, that constraint. These are like six children you need to feed and take care of. And I guarantee you've got your fat healthy favorite. You keep shoving.   food down its throat, and then you've got the other kids that are starving, emaciated, sitting in the corner that you're neglecting. And that means you're not prioritizing the right thing in the business. You're being a bad steward over your own business. And so you've got to make intelligent decisions based on where's the constraint, where's the bottleneck. And that's how you should prioritize your time. And the rest has to fit elsewhere. And you need to set boundaries for your own time because you're not productive.   as often as you're working if you're working a ridiculous amount of hours. Some of your hours are probably a tenth as productive as some of your early morning hours where you're sharp and you're working on things effectively. And so it's not about more time. It's about prioritizing and it's about being more productive and more effective. Some say working smarter instead of harder. And so if you would like to do that, reach out to Sudorgo. We can help you with that.   little bit more about bottlenecks and speaking of bottlenecks, a lot of property managers they end up telling us that maintenance is probably I would say arguably the biggest bottleneck in their entire business because everyone seems to struggle with maintenance and unfortunately it is part of being property manager but it's definitely the most time-consuming yeah   What if you could cut that workload by up to 85 % and even some of our clients have gotten up to 95 % automation for their maintenance coordination? that's exactly what Vendoroo has achieved because they've leveraged cutting edge AI technology to handle nearly all of your maintenance tasks. That's right.   From initiating work orders and troubleshooting to coordinating with vendors and reporting, the AI doesn't just automate, it becomes your ideal employee. It learns your preferences and executes tasks flawlessly, never needing a day off and not quitting. This frees you up to focus on the critical tasks that really move the needle for your business, whether that's refining your operations, expanding your portfolio, or even just taking a well-deserved break because we all need one of those.   Over half the room at last year's DoorGrow Live conference signed up with Vendoroo right then and there. One year later, they're not just satisfied. They're raving about how Vendoroo has transformed their business. Don't let maintenance drag you down. Step up your property management game with Vendoroo. You can visit vendero.ai slash door grow. That's vendero.ai slash door grow today to make this the last maintenance hire that you're ever going to need. All right.   There's the word from the sponsor. Okay, so yeah, there's a lot of different time hacks that we could get into. You know, we help coach clients on this all the time. It's always this constant excuse, oh, I don't have time to work on growing my business. If your business isn't growing, it's dying. And if you're just burning yourself out on the hamster wheel, thinking you're making progress, but you're not, and there's no focus on growth, that's a really   stressful drain. That's a really terrible goal. That's a survival goal. We've got to get you dreaming bigger. We've got to get you seeing bigger. We've got to get you prioritizing better. We've got to get you eliminating a lot of stuff that you're prioritizing and that you're optimizing for that doesn't even need to exist. There's a lot of work in your business right now that doesn't even need to exist. It's just being created because of bad boundaries and bad set up.   If you'd like some help with this, reach out to us at DoorGrow. Anything else you want to add about time? I would say time is not something that you feel like you have a plethora of as a property manager. Then that tells me there are some shifts that you can make, relatively simple shifts that you can make in your business. I will admit I was bored as a property manager. Yeah. Running.   260 C-class properties, I was part-time. I was bored. That's why I'm here at DoorGrow That's how I convinced her. I was like, you got some time? Come help us optimize things Most property managers don't say that they're bored throughout the day and don't go, geez, what am I going to do for the next eight hours? I have no idea what to do. If you would like to figure out how you can run your business in only a few hours a week, that's definitely something I can help you with and it's super fun for me.   I like helping people optimize their time because I know that I can make you a lot more money. And that's exciting for me. I like making people more money. So if that's something that you're struggling with, and if you feel like, hey, I would really love to learn how I can be a part-time property manager, making a lot of money and not pulling my hair out, not hitting my life, then contact us. We can chat with you.   our sales team would be very happy to answer any questions that you might have. this is one of the biggest things that we can do for you here at DoorGrow is clean up your time and then you get to use that time to make more money, yeah. To make more money. Perfect. So if you feel stuck, stagnant, you want to take things to the next level, visit us at doorgrow.com. Also join our free Facebook community. You can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com.   We only let in business owners and property management companies. And if you want tips, tricks, ideas, and to learn about our offers, subscribe to our newsletter by going to doorgrow.com/subscribe And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. It helps us out until next time. Remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

If you’ve ever worried that changing your pricing structure or raising your fees would scare away your property management clients, you are likely not making enough money for the work you and your team are doing. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull dive into the psychology and strategy behind the innovative 3-tier hybrid pricing model.  You’ll Learn [01:08] Addressing the Common Fears of Changing Pricing [09:10] Creating 3 Pricing Tiers Based on Psychology [16:58] Shifting Your Mindset Surrounding Money [21:12] Distinguishing Your 3 Pricing Plans Quotables “Unless you want to be the cheapest and deliver the most cutthroat, like awful service, and just target the cheapest owners, which have the highest operational cost and the lowest margins, and just hemorrhage money and not be able to grow your business, that's the game you can play.” “That psychological impact of investing in yourself financially, doing something to financially invest in leveling up you and your business creates this unconscious perception that… you are worth being invested in.” “If you have good pricing, you have a really optimized pricing model, and you know how to sell it, it actually changes your portfolio. It incentivizes you having better properties.” 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/] Transcript Jason Hull (00:00) What would happen   if you doubled your pricing and half of your clients quit. well, then nothing would happen. Nothing would change. then I say, what would happen to your operational costs?   All right, we are coming to you from Mexico. We are Jason Hull and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of businesses.   helping them at doors, improve pricing, increase profit, simplify operations, and build and replace teams. At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world and 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.   Now let's get into the show. All right. So we're going to be chatting about what today? Pricing. A little bit about pricing. we have coached and consulted property managers on pricing for a long time, like over a decade. And we've brought some innovative strategies. Like we were first to bring to market really and push   into the industry the three tier sort of pricing model having three plans. And this was based on the psychology that there's three types of buyers, cheapos, normals and premiums. You know who they are, right? You've dealt with them. And so, and then more recently in our evolution, we've been pushing a hybrid model. I got that idea originally from Scott Brady. Shout out to Scott, smart guy. And we innovated on that and developed   our own model for clients to make that really effective. And so this is something that we've coached quite a few people on. we consistently see some challenges come up over switching their pricing. first, what are some of the fears or concerns that come up, About switching pricing? Yeah. Everyone's always worried, oh my god, what if I lose all of my clients? Right. I'm going to change my pricing, and everyone's going to leave me. And we've helped a lot do that.   they lost all their clients. No, it never happens. It never happens. No, if they lose any, it's typically their worst clients. And then they end up finding that that was a blessing. Yeah. So they end up making money by getting rid of those and they're charging more money. So really they're increasing their revenue. So a lot of times to get them over that hurdle, I usually use this example. I say, What would happen   if you doubled your pricing and half of your clients quit. Like we did something crazy and extreme. So we go to the extreme. And what do people usually say at first? well, then nothing would happen. Nothing would change. I'm like, really? So then I have to ask deeper questions. So what do mean nothing would happen? Well, I'd still bring in the same amount of revenue. I've doubled my price, half the clients quit. I still have the same revenue. And then I say, what would happen to your operational costs? So they start thinking.   So you probably already figuring this out right now, listening to this. So what would happen to your operational costs? They'll say, it'd be cut in half. I'm like, would it? If you lost all of your worst properties and worst owners, like the most difficult, what would happen to your operational costs? It would probably be a fraction, because this is the 80-20 rule, right? 20 % of the properties, 20 % of your owners are eating up 80 % of your team and staff's attention. And so it might be a lot greater than that.   And so what would happen then to your profit margin? then they start to figure this out, right? And they say, look, we're not gonna do something that extreme. We're not gonna go that extreme. But if we raise your revenue a bit and we decrease your operational cost a bit without changing anything else, even if you lose some clients, you're going to have more profit. That's what actually matters. So that's one of the first initial things. It's just a mindset thing. And some are really afraid, like my owners won't.   They won't go for it. Like, I can't do it. No, I can't change the price and then they'll all leave. And that, I've noticed, it's very scarcity mindset. Right? Your owners aren't with you because you charged the least amount of money, hopefully. And if that's why you have clients is because you're the cheapest one, then that tells me that you have a lot of the cheap clients and you have a lot of clients that don't actually value you or your team.   or your services or anything that you do. And that feels like a really impossible game to win. Because then to win the game, all you have to do is just be the cheapest one. So there's another company that comes along and says, you know what? I'm going to be even cheaper. Well, what's going to happen? You'll lose almost all of your clients then. If it's only about the money, you'll lose almost all of your clients. And the only way to win that is what? A race to the bottom. That is nowhere to be in business.   And so some of the other challenges we deal with when helping our clients figure out their pricing, you know, we give them everything. We're like, here is how to do this weird hybrid model. Here are the things to include in your three plans. Here is a spreadsheet to figure out and compare to your competitors pricing to make sure you're in the realm of reality. We give them all the stuff and then they'll come back to us sometimes with what? A mess. Yeah.   It's like they don't and we have a training we have a training called pricing secrets where we explain all this and the principles that you need to make sure you're aligned with to make sure it's effective and then we'll get this really overly complex complicated messy model where they've got every fee is a different dollar amount for each of the three plans and so somebody looking at this would be like this one is a percentage and that one is a dollar amount and that one's back to a percentage and that one's so then in order for someone to   look at that and go, well, what would this actually cost me? It is now this very complex math formula that the further you go down your pricing sheet, the more math you have to do. You have to go, okay, well, this percent of that number, but now plus this flat fee and now, it's another percent of a different number. And then it's going to take you minutes to try to calculate what is my actual cost on this one plan? And then you have to do that three times because you have three different plans.   then it's so complex that it's hard to understand, it's hard to explain, and it's definitely going to be hard for people to sell, which means it's going to have a really low adoption rate. And then it's going to be something, well, that didn't work. It didn't work because it was too complex. So we need to find the balance. I don't want it to be so simple that it's just, you know, we charge 8%. But I don't want it to be so complex that   Someone just easily by looking at it can't go, okay, I have a pretty good gist of how much this is actually going to run. Yeah. We have an advantage too, because you know, there's concerns. There's concerns. Like everybody's like, well, we can't talk about pricing because of the antitrust stuff and NARPM rules and all this kind of stuff and it's collusion. So what's cool is I'm not a property manager. I'm not anymore. You're not a property manager.   We can talk about pricing with anybody. And so when we're coaching our clients, we can talk about their pricing. We're not colluding. And so we have that advantage that we can coach and help. that not just that, but we have a pretty good idea of what pricing, because the hundreds, the thousands of property managers that we've talked to over the last decade and a half, we have a perspective. Like I can pretty much know based on...   market or when you tell me the average rent, like where pricing should be, what is normal, what other companies are probably charging that market. We still tell our clients to do some competitive research and analysis to figure out what their competitors are charging. Cause that helps them feel more comfortable with pricing. And one of the key things I've noticed is they'll pay attention to, I mean, there's really only two types of pricing that really matter in each market. It's the most expensive company.   and the cheapest. The middle's the fuzzy gray area where it doesn't matter. Your pricing isn't really the issue where you're not really competing effectively on price. But if you're the most expensive, people trust and expect and believe that you're the best, which is a great place to compete and be. If you are the cheapest, then that's a hard game to play. And so we're usually coaching our clients, don't play the game of trying to be   the cheapest company in your market. That's not a fun place to be business-wise. And it's really difficult to deliver great service. And so unless you want to be the cheapest and deliver the most cutthroat, like awful service, and just target the cheapest owners, which have the highest operational cost and the lowest margins, and just hemorrhage money and not be able to grow your business, that's the game you can play, but that's not the game we coach our clients on playing.   So we teach them how to be perceived as the best in their market, and how to compete as the best in their market. And pricing is one of those psychological indicators that buyers look at to figure out, they going to be good? Are they better than the other guys? Are they the best? And so there's a lot of psychology that goes into pricing, which is how we kind of deal with it. Any other issues we should touch on that we notice with clients with pricing? So you.   In short, what Sarah was talking about is we need to make sure the pricing is easy for them to make a distinction between the three plan options, if you have the three plans, and it's not overly complicated so that they don't have to do a bunch of math to figure out which plan should I choose and which one's going to be best. And it's obvious. it's not going to be based. The thing I've noticed lately though is a lot of clients, when they get into the pricing, they mistakenly think the three plans are based on   It's based on money and it's not psychologically the premium buyers don't care as much about money the cheapos do and so the plans are not based on money and so if they what they're trying to make different in each of the three plans is dollar amounts so like if you spend more on our plan you get discounts on all these individual fees and that is that the most premium clients that are premium buyers don't care about discounts they're not worried about the money and so I know when a property manager is presenting pricing like this   they're a cheapo. They're in that category. They're viewing everything through the lens of money instead of being taken care of a premium service or status or what premium buyers look for. And so that's the other blind spot or challenge we've noticed in pricing is that in order for us to coach clients effectively, often we have to figure out which of the three types of buyers they are and what their inherent blind spot is and get them and if they're a cheapo, which is why they have cheap pricing and they're not getting   enough and they're not being taken care of well enough by their business, we have to get them to change their mindset and get them to stretch and stop asking for discounts and coupon codes and get them to be somebody that is willing to spend full price so they expect others to be willing to pay for a service full price. And that's a bigger challenge. Yes. So essentially what we get to do is figure out where they're at so that we can help kind of coach them on the opposite. Because it's hard for   a cheapo buyer to understand the premium buyer because they're just not in that mindset. the opposite is true. The premium buyers, they don't understand the cheapo buyers at all. Like, don't understand why you can't just pay, why are you so worried about $10? I don't understand why that's an issue. I mean, you spend $10 and you shouldn't have to think about it. I don't know why that's an issue. usually where the meat in the middle is kind of that middle plan.   So I think a lot of people get their middle plan dialed in really well, and then they struggle with their opposite. And that's, think, sometimes why they get a little bit stuck on their pricing. Because they're either trying to do too much with it, they're making everything really complex, they're not really understanding the opposite type of buyer that they are.   That's okay, don't fully have to understand that when you have your coaches to lean back on. The question we get most of the time, what do I put my premium plan? What am I supposed to do in a premium plan? I don't know. Should I do this? Should I discount? Should I add this? What would I put in the premium plan? And that tells me that if that's where they're struggling, it just means that they haven't...   really adopted that psychology of premium buyer yet. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're cheapo. I think it just means that they're perhaps in the normal category. Because same thing, if you're a normal buyer, it's going to be hard for you to understand the premium, and then it will probably also be hard for you to understand cheapo. So I usually compare it. This is, I think, an analogy people can kind of understand, is when you go to book a flight.   So right now we're in Mexico. If we go, hey, instead of going back to Austin, let's go to California and visit Jason's family. Okay. Well then we need a flight from Mexico to California. How would we do that? We would go and book, right? But when you book, there's different ways to book a flight. You can just go right to the airline. You can go on Google flights, or you can go like, what are those, know, kayak and the discount prices. So.   Maybe you're thinking, okay, I'll get a last minute ticket and we won't get to sit together, but it's okay. They could throw me. How many times have you heard people say this? they could throw me in the baggage compartment. I   Right? Because they're like, I am just trying to pay the least amount of money and still get the thing that I'm looking for. So the cheaper buyers like that, they're like, hey, I want the discount code. I'll do the red eye overnight. I'll do the early morning. I don't care if I have to wake up at 2 AM for like a 430 flight. I'm OK with that. I'll sit way in the back. We don't need to sit together. I'll pay for my baggage as extra. I just won't pack baggage. It's OK.   Like I'll shove everything in a carry-on. That's one way to book it. Or the other way to book it is, I'm just gonna go and do the search and then whatever looks like a decent option for a decent price, I'll book that. Or the other option is, I want to make sure that this is the most convenient and easy thing for me. So if there are multiple flights at different times,   Sometimes the early flights might be a little bit less expensive than a flight midday So someone might go yeah, the midday flight is more expensive However, the midday flight means I don't need to be up at 2 in the morning 3 in the morning 4 in the morning and I would rather pay more money so that I don't need to be up at 4 a.m. That's a trade-off   I would rather buy the first class seat because then I know for sure I'm going to be in first class. I'll get the premium snacks or I'll get a meal. I might get a hot towel. I will be more taken care of. I know that I will have more room. I'll get to board first. I'll get to get off first. And they know that they're taken care of. And they're OK to spend more money because they know that they will be taken care of. So depending on what psychology you have, that will probably be.   how you decide to make many, if not all, of your purchasing decisions. Yeah, so I think our advantage, you know, some people have grown up as a premium buyer. They grew up in a premium sort of silver spoon in their mouth environment. That's not me. It's not you. Not me either. Right? Some people have grown up in a really, really cheapo environment, right? And...   And so the challenge is that kind of creates this inherent blind spot. The advantage I feel that you and I have as coaches is one, we've been in the cheap environment. I remember my mom like packing cans of food when we would take a vacation because, and cereal, because she wanted to make sure we had, you know, supplies and food to eat rather than going, doing expensive stuff, right? Which is just funny to think about, right? Now.   Me and my brothers, joke about this. So I think the advantage is we've been all three and we now are, you know, we're hanging out in Mexico, we're having a very premium sort of buyer experience and I don't even think about what things cost. I don't think about the money, I just think about what experience I want to have and so, you know, there's been that shift. But I can empathize and connect and go back to understanding how a cheapo thinks or how in more normal.   buy our things. But in general, my default is I'm not really thinking about the expensive things. I'm thinking about what am I going to get and how is it going to help? Because there's a lot of things we do that make us a lot more money than they cost, even though they're very expensive. And so one of the things that helped me to do that, and I don't know about you, but one of the things that's really helped me shift my mindset was getting high ticket coaches. It's getting coaches that could help me.   I was investing and spending of what I felt like was a lot of money. And we're not cheap at DoorGro, right? We're, some would say very expensive, but I was spending money and then I was getting a return. I was getting a return on that investment with coaches and that psychological impact of investing in yourself financially, doing something to financially invest in leveling up you and your business creates this unconscious perception that   you are worth being people spending money on. You are worth being invested in. And it's difficult to go to your clients and try to convince them and make, you feel like they, want them to give you money and invest in you when you won't even invest in yourself. This is a big deal. And so if this is one of the things that not only can we help you with the, the, some of the money mindset, but just by investing or joining a program like Door Grows Mastermind, that's going to...   be a strong signal to you that you have invested in yourself and it puts a little pressure on you that you now need to perform and get a return from this. You've got to take action. And the bigger piece is though is we give you clarity because if you don't have clarity and that's what coaches do they give you clarity which shortens the path to get to the result. Otherwise you're experimenting, you're testing out growth strategies, you're trying different things, you're wasting time, you're wasting money, you're wasting energy.   You're wasting all your different currencies, time, energy, focus, cash, and effort. And so if we can help you collapse time on that, you get to an ROI faster. You get money faster. And it's very easy to offset thousands of dollars a month even in property management. It's very easy. That could be 10 new doors, 20 new doors. And we have some clients doing that on a monthly basis. They're adding doors once they get their engines installed and work with us on growth.   And so it's very easy for us to offset the cost of our program, which is why we're one of the few programs or coaches or vendors in the property management space that doesn't have an annual contract or an annual term or an annual agreement. We're month among. We earn our place. We don't need to get people to sign on the dotted line that they're committed to us for a year and force them to stay with us. Clients stay with us for years.   because we get them an ROI, we make them more money. It's like it's a no brainer and that's what good investments should be. They should give you an ROI. So if you wanna level up your mindset, level up your pricing, make more money, make it easier to work in your business, then reach out to DoorGrow. We can help you out. So I'd like to mention our sponsor for this episode. Speaking of making things easier and better.   So let me tell you a little bit about Blanket. Very cool, very cool client retention platform. So Blanket is a property retention and growth platform that helps property managers stop losing doors. It's not just about what you bring in, it's about what you also keep. So decreasing churn. Add more revenue and increase the number of properties they manage. Wow your clients with a branded investor dashboard.   and an off-market marketplace while your team gets all the tools they need to identify owners at risk of churning. They're thinking about leaving you. It has indicators and powerful systems to help you add more doors. This is something we want all of our clients to use. I think it's a brilliant system and platform. I've hung out with Lior, the CEO, a blanket, really great guy. I believe in their product. think it is something that we're always focused on the front end. We're focused on growth.   but a lot of times we don't focus on the retention, the backend, and even if a client sells a property, Blanket will help you keep that property in your portfolio and get another one of your owners to own that property. That's how it's really a brilliant system, so check it out. Okay, so back to talking about pricing. Any other things we should touch on before wrapping up about pricing that we've been noticing with clients? I think those are the two that stick out to me the most.   And you touched on it, we didn't go too deep into it, was the second one was there's just not enough of a distinguishing factor between two plans or sometimes between all three. Sometimes you look at pricing and you go, so what's the big difference between the lowest plan and the highest plan? And it might be like $50 difference or like a $100 difference. And then you go, okay, why would somebody...   pay $100 less over here to pay the higher percentage. It doesn't make enough sense. So there's not big enough of a difference. Yeah, that's a good point. You brought that up earlier, but we didn't really. Yeah, there needs to be a really strong distinguishing contrast between your cheapest plan, your middle plan, and your premium plan. It needs to be obvious to the, if a cheapo looks at these three, they're like, I want this plan. If a normal,   buyer, which is the majority of the marketplace, like 61 % study say, but maybe two thirds like an in property management, probably even more because the cheapest cheapos self-managed, they don't even will, they won't even work with you. So it's skewed more towards the premium side. And so they, the pre the normal buyers would go towards the middle and then the premium buyers would go towards the premium option. It would be obvious to them. They're like, I want all of this peace of mind. I want all this. And the cheapos are like, I want the cheapest price.   And then you've got in the middle, and we call that the Goldilocks principle. And we have some other principles like the bandwagon principle and some other principles that we teach related to pricing. So you can really understand this and you know how to sell it. That's the other big piece is you got to know how to sell the pricing effectively. And if you have good pricing, you have a really optimized pricing model and you know how to sell it, it actually changes your portfolio. It incentivizes you having better properties.   better owners and less work over the really high operational costs, difficult owners. So it gets you out of what we've talked about many times, the cycle of suck. Where you take on crappy owners, you've got then crappy properties to deal with, which leads to crappy upset, frustrated tenants, which leads to crappy reviews and reputation, which sums up the whole industry. And if you have a crappy reputation and reviews, then you attract more crappy clients and the cycle continues. So this gets you out of the cycle of suck.   and it gets you into a trajectory of having a lot more space, a lot more margin, a lot more ease in your business. And, you know, I'll throw this out there as well. If you have the right growth strategies, you attract less of the cheapos because the wrong growth strategies, internet based, digital marketing based growth strategies leads to the cheapest owners. Those are the people searching on the internet. The best owners are captured earlier in the sales cycle. So reach out to us. We would love to help you with that. All right. So.   In wrapping up if you have ever felt stuck or stagnant or you want to take your property management business to the next level reach out to us at door grow calm also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners not team members at door grow club calm and if you found this even a little bit helpful don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review we really appreciate it and If you go to door grow calm slash subscribe You can join our newsletter and our emailing list. We would love to have you   join us and get tips, tricks, updates on our product services and offers and the stuff that we can do to help you. And until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

Seth Williams (00:00) I was able to buy a lot of land at dirt cheap prices. So there's no mortgages or anything on it. And when you buy anything for a small fraction of its actual market value, it's not hard to turn around and sell that thing and make money on it. Jason Hull (00:14) All right, I am Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of property management businesses, helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profit. simplify operations and build and replace entire teams, we are like bar rescue for property managers. In fact, we have cleaned up and rebranded over 300 businesses and we run the leading property management mastermind with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world and 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. Now, let's get into the show. And my guest today I'm hanging out with is Seth Williams. Welcome, Seth. Seth Williams (01:28) Hey, Jason, good to be here. Thanks for having me. Jason Hull (01:31) Yeah, it's great to have you and of REtipster. so Seth, let's get into a little bit of your background. You've done a lot of different things connected to real estate. Give us the background on your journey and how you got it kind of got into entrepreneurism and what made you start all this crazy stuff. Seth Williams (01:48) Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, my journey kind of starts back in about 2005, 2006 when I was still in college. And like most people, I was trying to find houses I could buy that I could flip or rent that kind of thing. Just get into the real estate game. But I didn't really know anything about how to do it. I had no competitive advantage. I was looking on the MLS. That was the only place I knew I could look for to find deals. And there weren't any deals. It was horrible. I spent hundreds of hours and found nothing that made any financial sense. And I was just like, man, how do people do this? Like, how do people find good real estate deals if I can't find them? I was looking everywhere and there was nothing out there. And it was around, you know, after struggling with this for a couple of years, I discovered two things that kind of worked hand in hand. The first was the land business. So buying vacant land and Like most people, when I first heard that I was like, what? Picket land? Like, why would I do that? That makes no sense. It's just dirt. Like, where's the cash flow? Where's the income? The other thing that I discovered though was how to find deals off market through something called the delinquent tax list. And this is basically a list of property owners that every county has of properties that are currently back due on their property taxes. This is not the same thing. Jason Hull (02:52) Yeah. Seth Williams (03:11) as the tax sale list. So it's not the list of properties that's going to go up for auction soon. It's people who still own their property, but they're back doing taxes. If they don't pay them off soon, they're going to get their property taken from them. And these two things together, land and the delinquent tax list, I was able to find and contact people who had land with delinquent taxes on it. And because there were delinquent taxes, they're in a situation where it's like, Jason Hull (03:18) Yeah, they're just behind. Seth Williams (03:37) You got to pay off these taxes in like weeks or you're going to lose everything. So why are you in this situation? Is it because you don't care about the property? Like what is the issue? And in many cases, that was it. Maybe they just inherited it. Maybe they bought it 20 years ago, but for whatever reason, they didn't care about the thing. And I'm sitting there saying, Hey, I'll pay you a few hundred dollars, maybe a few thousand dollars, and I'll pay off your taxes and I'll make this problem go away. And because a lot of these people didn't want their property anyway, and I was kind of taking care of a nuisance in their life, I was able to buy a lot of land at dirt cheap prices. And I could also buy it free and clear. So there's no mortgages or anything on it. And when you buy anything for a small fraction of its actual market value, it's not hard to turn around and sell that thing and make money on it. So that was the business I got into. And it's been awesome. It's changed a lot over the years, but It's just been a really great way to, you know, without needing a whole lot of cash, finding properties, getting them for a very cheap price, and then making money without having to change anything on the property. Jason Hull (04:45) Yeah, got it. Okay, cool. Is that still the go-to strategy? Delinquent tax lists. Seth Williams (04:52) So, it's definitely still effective, but the drawback of the delinquent tax list is that they're kind of a pain to get, and then even when you do get them, they're kind of a mess to sort through. So, if you're willing to go through the nuisance of getting the list and sorting through it, there's a ton of value on that. But there's another way that's actually easier through a data service that I use called the LAN portal. And it's basically just a much more streamlined Jason Hull (05:04) Yeah. Yeah. Seth Williams (05:20) seamless, organized way to get lists of landowners. They don't necessarily have delinquent taxes, but I can find specifically the types of properties I want and then either send the mail or a cold column, that kind of thing. So both ways work. They both have pros and cons. The delinquent tax list is more of an annoying way to do it, but it's probably the more effective way. The land portal is a lot easier, but you get a little bit less motivation on that list because people don't have this delinquent tax problem. Jason Hull (05:48) Yeah, less of a mess to clean up, but probably a little quicker. so cool. you're going to unpack today the secrets of building wealth through land investing. This is like your number one specialty. And we'll chat a little bit about self storage. And I'm sure there's some property managers that are listening that might be like, haven't done that yet. Like I have not gotten into. That sort of investment and most of the property managers listening you if you're on a property management business your number one goal Should not be to just manage other people's properties. It should probably be to build up your own portfolio of stuff and and make some money That's probably a bigger better play and leveraging your company to attract deals and to attract Real estate so let's get into this. Where do we start? Seth Williams (06:37) Yeah, well, what I just described, there's kind of the high level view of how you find properties in the first place. And I mean, in terms of like people out there who are property managers who might invest in houses and that kind of thing, there's only one tax list or the land portal can work for those kinds of properties to the main difference is that you're going to find usually less competition when dealing with vacant land, because most people aren't thinking about land, thinking about houses. They think that's the way they have to do it. And that's fine if you want that. But the problem with houses, as you probably know, in property management, there's a lot more wrinkles. There's a lot more people problems. There's things falling apart that are broken and get stolen and destroyed. With land, there's none of that. It's a much simpler animal to deal with. But if your strategy is to find rentals or something like that, you could certainly scope out rental properties using the same method. You would just be targeting different types of property owners than I do. Jason Hull (07:10) Thank got it. So how does this connect to self storage? Seth Williams (07:34) Well, self storage is a totally different business than buying and selling vacant land, but there is some crossover. So back in 2021, I found a piece of land that was zoned residential. It was 6.7 acres and I bought it and I rezoned it to commercial. And then I got approval to build a self storage facility because I had always wanted to get into this business. A land business is great for generating big influxes of cash. It's like a cash generating machine. But self storage is a little bit different. At least the way that I do it, it's more of a cash flow play. you know, all in all, took me a couple million dollars to buy the land and build this facility. It took me basically a year to design it and build it. And it's comparatively speaking, more of a trickle of cash, cash flow, but it's permanent cash flow. There's also a lot of depreciation write offs. It's also very scalable. So it's easy to increase every single person's rent by $5 and the value effectively goes way up because of that. But like nobody moves out because it's just five bucks and most people don't care about a $5 increase per month. So it's a very different business. And for me, my long-term goal is to do more of that because the benefit of self-storage is that unlike land, it's not like a thing that you have to keep peddling for it to keep working. Land is a very active, you know, got to keep peddling or the cashflow is going to stop. Whereas self-storage is, well, you can buy one facility and the management is not terribly difficult for that, at least compared to like a rental property and the cashflow will come in for as long as you own the thing. So that was why I made that shift. Jason Hull (09:12) Nice. well, tell us a little bit about cell storage. How does that work? How can maybe property managers potentially get in? Seth Williams (09:21) Yeah, well, it's when I first got into it, what I tried to do is buy an existing facility from somebody within like an hour driving radius of where I lived. And I think that's probably the best first move is to do that if you can, because you don't have to deal with all of the work of construction and there's cash flow on day one. So like right when you buy the thing, money is already coming in. Whereas when you build a new one, it takes months for the thing to fill up. So that was what I tried to do at first, but problem was in my market, I couldn't find anybody who wanted to sell their property at anywhere near a reasonable price. People wanted like twice as much as what their facilities were worth. And people were paying it like it was just crazy. You couldn't find good deals. And when I saw that, was like, wow, I would normally never build something. But if people are being dumb and overpaying for self storage facilities, I could probably give this a go. And even if I screw it all up, I could still sell it and get out if I needed to. So that was why I decided to do that. And it's nice in that you get to design it and lay it out the way you want, but it's also a much longer runway required to put the cash in and then wait for it to fill up and start cash flow. Jason Hull (10:29) Yeah, this is our market to building these things out and then just selling them even though they're empty. Seth Williams (10:35) Yeah, that's what some people do. Selling them empty. I mean, that's not the ideal play. The real value of these things comes from paying tenants, that kind of thing. Maybe what most people would do is build them or maybe even buy an existing one that's half empty and then fill it up. Like do whatever you have to do to get tenants in there, whether it's changing the pricing or advertising more. And then once it's at least reasonably full, then you could cash out and do whatever you want. Buy another one or do something else. Jason Hull (10:39) Right. Got it. Okay. Got it. Cool. So vacant land, self storage, and then you're also like, you do a lot of content creation stuff in the real estate space. So tell us a little bit about that. Seth Williams (11:12) Sure. Yeah. So I started a website called REtipster back in 2012. And it was really kind of a place to store a lot of the lessons and knowledge that I had gained from my experience in land investing and in owning rental properties and everything I had done to that point. And I didn't really know what the plan was. I just knew, like, it's kind of fun for me to take my ideas and thoughts and things I've learned and distill them down into like bite sized chunks and help other people. figure out how to do the business from where they're at. And it turned out to be a lot of fun. And it didn't make money for like probably the first year that I was running it. But eventually I found ways to monetize it. Started a podcast, a YouTube channel. And a lot of what we talk about is land, but we also talk about self storage and occasionally rental properties, other things that are ancillary related to real estate investing. Jason Hull (12:07) Okay, well cool. Let me do a quick word from our sponsor and then we can get into a little bit more. So our sponsor for this episode is Vendoroo Many of you listening tell me that maintenance is probably the least enjoyable part of being a property manager and definitely the most time consuming. But what if you could cut that workload by up to 85 %? That's exactly what Vendoroo has achieved. They've leveraged cutting edge AI technology to handle nearly all of your maintenance tasks from initiating work orders. and troubleshooting to coordinating with vendors and reporting. This AI doesn't just automate, it becomes your ideal employee, learning your preferences and executing tasks flawlessly, never needing a day off and never quitting. This frees you up to focus on the critical tasks that really move the needle for your business, whether that's refining operations, expanding your portfolio, or even just taking a well-deserved break. Over half the room at last year's DoorGrowLive event conference signed up with Vendoroo right there. And then a year later, they're not just satisfied, they're raving about how vendor is transformed their business. Don't let maintenance drag you down. Step up your property management game with vendor. Visit vendor.ai slash door grow today and make this the last maintenance hire you'll ever need. All right, cool. So, Seth. Where should we go from here? We've been talking a little bit about vacant land, a little bit about self storage, talking a little bit about RE tipster. What do you think would be of the most benefit to property management business owners that are exploring some of this stuff? Seth Williams (13:42) Well, you know, maybe we could have a little conversation, you and me. So I've got a few questions I always go to when I'm talking to other real estate investors that are always kind of brings out some interesting perspectives. How long have you been in real estate, Jason? Jason Hull (13:55) Well, so I've been involved with coaching and consulting property management companies. So I'm more of a business coach for like since 2008. Seth Williams (14:04) Mm OK, gotcha. Well, interesting. Here's a question for you. What's one thing that you see new property managers focusing on that you think is actually a distraction from long term success? Jason Hull (14:09) so while. That's a good one. So the most common thing that I see that's a big distraction from long-term success is digital marketing. So a lot of property managers think in order to get more doors or get business, they need to do SEO. They need to do Google ads like pay per click, content marketing, social media marketing. The problem is the dirty secret marketers don't want to tell property managers because they like making money off of them. is that there's very little search volume of people looking on the internet for property management. So they can go on Google trends right now, put in property management backdated to 2004 when Google started tracking data and metrics to the present. And what you'll see is there's very little search volume. And if you compare it to any other term, like compared to AI is a good one lately, it has the same search volume of AI a decade ago. Whereas AI has this meteoric rise. Seth Williams (15:13) Mm, sure. Jason Hull (15:15) And compared to AI, property management is just a little line at the bottom. It like doesn't even register. And so there's plenty of business out there of people that don't want to manage their own property. There's no shortage in the U.S. There's no scarcity, but they're not looking for a property manager actively because they're either not aware that property managers are a viable option or exist, or they are aware, but most property managers suck. So they've written it off. Seth Williams (15:44) Yeah. So how do you find those people then if you don't know where they're looking or maybe you do know where they're looking. Jason Hull (15:44) and they're not really looking. We get them to do crazy things like pick up the phone and call non owner occupied property owners or like connect with real estate agents and create relationships to help the real estate agents get more deals from investors, stuff like that. So. Seth Williams (16:02) Yeah. I'll tell you, there's a ton of power in somebody who's willing to pick up the phone. I mean, so many people don't even want to think about that. But if you can do that, man, you're already way, way ahead of the crowd. Jason Hull (16:09) And there we go. Yeah, I mean, it's the one thing that we can teach clients that they can create business on demand at any time and not have to hope and pray that a market is able to give them something. yeah. Okay. Seth Williams (16:20) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, here's another question. What's something that you hear novice property managers or critics of property managers complain about that makes you roll your eyes? Jason Hull (16:35) Well, the first that comes to mind is a lot of novice property managers complain about the potential clients being cheap. yet they're cheap. And so that's kind of the blind spot that I think there's a lot of property managers that have. They're like, like, I had a client once and he was complaining that, about, you know, I'm tired of getting all these people wanting discounts or asking for us to lower our pricing, all these people that are so cheap about related to property management. And then I saw the same person post in a Facebook group for property managers saying, hey, does anybody have a discount for this? property management software or this then like, what is it? A maintenance software that exists because I don't want to pay full price. And so the irony wasn't lost on me. you know, usually the blind spot that we have is we, you know, kind of project that and create that in others. And so if you're cheap and you have a cheap mindset, then you're going to attract cheap clients. It's far more likely not only that, but you're going to be a lot more sensitive to it. It's going to impact you differently. Seth Williams (17:16) Hmm. Jason Hull (17:36) and people will pick up on that and they'll feel more anxious and be more price sensitive because you are. Seth Williams (17:40) Yeah. For those property managers who are willing to pick up the phone and call around and find their customers, what do they do to avoid those cheap clients? Is there some red flag they can look out for to say, you're not a good fit. We're going to go look here instead. Like, how do you find people that are willing to pay what they have to pay? Jason Hull (17:58) Well, I think I just had Dustin Heiner on as an interview. And yeah, I know him from some masterminds that we're in together. And Dustin's a really cool guy. Dustin had this, we did this great episode where he's like our client's ideal client, really. Because he's like, the first thing I do is I try to find a property manager before I even get a rental property. Seth Williams (18:03) Yeah, Essence Mm. Jason Hull (18:24) And I want to ask them where I should get a rental property and ask them for their advice. And I want a good property manager I can trust before I go find a property. But it's like, usually everyone does it backwards. They go get a realtor, they get a property. Then they go and try and see if there's a good property manager. And he wants to be hands off. He doesn't want to call his property manager. He doesn't want to be involved in it. He wants them to just take care of stuff. That's the ideal. So I think the challenge is when property managers are looking on the internet for clients. They're like getting them through SEO or pay per click. These are the worst investor clients. They view property management as a commodity. They think all property managers are the same and they're not right. Not all property measures the same and most property managers are not very good. So to find the exceptional ones, usually you're going to find the better clients for a property management business by doing stuff that is Seth Williams (19:11) Mm-hmm. Jason Hull (19:20) more towards the strategies that we would rely on, which are warmer leads, warmer connections, so that you're not getting the crappy scraps that fall off the word amount table that are now searching on the internet looking for the cheapest manager. And if you build your portfolio off of digital marketing and the cheapest and most price sensitive owners, then you're going to have the highest operational costs, more than my clients at least, and it's going to be expensive to run your business. So. Seth Williams (19:43) Yeah. Yeah. What do you think makes somebody a good property manager? Because I've had my share property managers that were terrible. had one that was pretty, pretty decent. And in my case, I thought what made them stand out was just really good communication. Like I was always in the loop. I was never questioning where things were at. Like I just, I just felt like I knew what was going on. I don't know if that's true for everybody, though, in your mind, like the ones that really stand out and just kill it in this business and have no problem. finding clients and keeping them happy. Like what is it they're doing that makes them so good? Jason Hull (20:16) Okay, this is a great question and I love that you shared your perspective. And tell me a little bit more, what do you think makes a good property manager? And then I'll share my thoughts, which might be a little different. You said good communication. Seth Williams (20:28) Yeah. mean, I just kind of mentioned that. Yeah. And I will say one thing, you know, one of my nightmare experiences with a bad property manager was and maybe this is just foolish on my part, but I relied on them to find some subcontractors to, you know, make some improvements and repairs on my property. And they just found horrible people that totally screwed up the property. And and they just kind of walked around all flustered, like, I can never find good people. And like. I don't care. Like if he can't do it, then don't don't do it. Yeah. Like tell me you can't don't just, you know, find somebody who's going to ruin my property. So that really annoyed me. ⁓ Jason Hull (20:59) to the next. Hmm. Yeah, that's yeah, that's hot. Okay, so I mean, according to studies and surveys, the number one reason that people leave a property management company is communication. And so I think a lot of property managers mistakenly think they need to over communicate. But I think what a lot of property managers do is they give their tenants and their owners a blank check to steal all their profits in some instances, because that's The number one source of financial leaks that I've seen in companies is interruptions. so they just, every phone call from every tenant, every owner, constant interruptions means they need way more team, way more staff. This is the business. What I've found is really effective property management companies aren't communicating all the time. Good communication is what the clients want if they don't trust the property manager. Seth Williams (21:41) Mm-hmm. Jason Hull (21:55) If they trust the property manager, they want zero communication. So that's very different. So the best property managers, what I think is they set really good boundaries. It's different. It's not like, hey, I'm going to talk to you all the time. So for example, my wife, Sarah, she managed 260 units part-time in 20 hours a week, basically by herself. She had one time, one part-time person boots on the ground, C-class properties, average rent below a grand, difficult tenants. and she had plenty of time and she had 60 to 90 % profit margin in her business. One of the most ridiculous like case studies I've ever seen. Like she was really successful, very profitable, but she basically had a conversation with her owners at the beginning said, hey, it's been great getting to know you, getting to know your property from here on out. You're not going to be hearing from me much. If I call you, if my name shows up on your phone, I'm asking for money because there's a problem. So you're probably not going to want to hear from me. And she was said as a joke, but she was setting boundaries and they would laugh. But that was how they trusted her. They trusted her because she set really strong boundaries. And so that reduced their anxiety and it lessened the amount of times they had to call. They weren't like, hey, Sarah, did we get that tenant yet? Who's looking at the property? Anyone look at it this week? Like what's going on with the maintenance? What happened with this? Are we getting this handled? Like they weren't anxious. They trusted her to manage and she was good at managing. So one, you got to be good at managing. Seth Williams (22:57) Mm Yeah. Jason Hull (23:17) Like you've got to have good vendors. You know, you've got to have good resources. Otherwise, why would they use you? Why don't they just do it themselves? As a good property manager, you should be way better at it than your clients. You're the professional. Which means you're not relying on them to tell you what to do. They should not be micromanaging the manager. They didn't want, they didn't hire you to micromanage you if you're a property management business owner, right? And so I think that there's good communication. Seth Williams (23:27) Yeah. Jason Hull (23:44) This is the superficial thing that everybody sees. The better thing is having really good service and really good boundaries is even better. Seth Williams (23:52) Yeah. Well, it seems like the boundaries thing works as long as you are good at your job, right? I mean, if you do let a place sit vacant or if you do find a subcontractor who screws the property all up, your trust is gone now and they are going to be harassing you. Jason Hull (23:58) Yeah. Yeah, you can't say, don't call me. I'll let you know when I get this taken care of, you know, because their anxiety is going to go through the roof. Right. Yes, exactly. You have to be on top of your stuff and you have to be good. but the conversely, you can't be good if you are over communicating with everybody. It's not it's not a scalable business. You just can't do it. And so if you are giving everybody all the attention all the time, Seth Williams (24:12) Yeah. Jason Hull (24:31) it's going to be very little attention and it means you're not going to be able to pay attention to and focus on the things that actually matter and do a good job. So setting boundaries is required in order to do have a really healthy business that does perform well. Especially if you're a business owner. Seth Williams (24:43) Yeah. Yeah. I guess like say if you're managing a property that's in the armpit of town and it's going to take a long time to find a tenant. I mean, maybe it's starts by just telling that property owner, hey, it's going to be a while. Like set the expectations. Like don't make them think it's going to happen fast when it's not. Is that what you do? Jason Hull (24:55) Good expectations. Absolutely. Yep, setting good expectations, setting good boundaries is absolutely critical. And I think that goes for any business. Any business that involves humans, right? If they can land, there's not a whole lot of people involved, but maybe in the deal, you need to set boundaries and expectations, right? In self storage, same thing. You have tenants, there are people involved. It's a little less than dealing with toilets, and termites, but. Seth Williams (25:17) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jason Hull (25:27) There's still humans that are involved and you have to be willing to set boundaries. know, there's self-storage places in LA that have a problem with homeless people trying to build homes inside of them. Right. Like that's probably outside of like what you wanted to be selling, you know, it's not probably legal for them to live there. Right. And so, yeah, setting boundaries, setting expectations. And they say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And that's probably true in any business. Yeah. Seth Williams (25:51) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I'm wondering if you could wave a magic wand and fix anything about the real estate industry right now, what would that be? Anything come to mind? Jason Hull (26:03) Ooh, fixing the real estate. Seth's interviewing me now, everybody. and yeah, you are. You are good at this. so, well, why don't you go first? This is a great question. So Seth, what would you wave your magic wand and change about the real estate industry? Seth Williams (26:07) Yeah. I'm pretty good at this. Yeah, mean, mine would be mostly related to the niches that I'm in. So like land and self storage and on the self storage front. So the way that we manage our properties, the software is a huge component. mean, it's it's a very, very important. It's how we assign gate codes. It's how we get people's payments. It's how we communicate with them. Like it's a big deal. But a lot of the software out there is terrible. Like it is just garbage software. It looks like it was designed 20 years ago and it's It's like antiquated, but it's expensive. And the problem is, once you start using it, they kind of hold you hostage. So like, even though it's bad, you got to keep paying for it and rewarding this broken system. So it's just a it's just a pain. So if I could wave a wand, I would probably make it super easy to jump ship and switch softwares without them holding all of my customers information hostage. That's what I'd fix. Jason Hull (26:55) Yeah, you're in bed forever. Got it. You might be able to wave that one now with vibe coding and AI. It's probably possible. Get a nerd, they create a prompt for you. They could probably import the API or the data or the information from an existing company software, or at least get a CSV export and you could probably create your own software from scratch. It does exactly what you want. And kids are making software every day now. Somebody just made vibe coding software and some women made this app. Seth Williams (27:17) Cool. Jason Hull (27:41) called T or something like this. And it was like rating men for dating. So women could say, this guy's like not a great guy to date or something like this. and it was like at the top of the app store, like you can, you can create stuff now through AI. And the only problem with that app is they had a big security flaw that some guys probably didn't like what was on the app about them easily hacked it. And they doxxed all of the women's Seth Williams (27:51) interesting. No. Jason Hull (28:09) Credit or not credit cards, but their drivers licenses that they had submitted to verify their profiles and they made it all public Right. So if you're doing vibe coding people make sure you have somebody take a look at the security side of it All right. Yeah, so but that you know that could be that that could be a magic wand that could be waived My magic wand in line with what you said I would selfishly do something towards the property management industry is I would change the licensing requirements throughout the US, because the licensing requirements in each state to be a property manager have nothing to do usually with property management. Usually you have to have a real estate broker's license in order to manage rental properties, and that doesn't qualify them to manage rental properties at all. But it does create a big hurdle for them to be able to do it, and so it keeps probably some good actors out. Seth Williams (28:48) Yeah. ⁓ Jason Hull (29:03) and probably makes people feel overconfident to do something that they probably aren't prepared to do. And very few states have a separate property management license. So, yeah. Seth Williams (29:12) What is the connection there? Like, is it because you have to effectively list properties? Like, you're not selling it, but you have to list it publicly and then respond to people who are interested in that kind of thing. Jason Hull (29:19) Yeah, I think it's related to leasing and renting properties. The number one source of complaints at most board of realtors is related to leasing, not real estate. so, yeah, so there are some things in which, but there should be separate licensing, separate rules specific to property management and that maybe raise the bar for property management so that they come in, you know, understanding some things legally. Seth Williams (29:29) Mm-hmm. Hmm. Jason Hull (29:46) that are related to that because there's a lot of real estate agents that are doing some stuff that's probably not legal when it comes to leases or having conversations or probably breaking laws, you know, and so that can be dangerous. we have one of our lead magnates that we have that we have clients build out is a 411 on leasing course. And it's basically a course property managers can download, put their branding on and go scare the shit out of real estate agents in handling leases. And so that these agents will refer business to them, which isn't hard to do because a lot of real estate agents are dabbling in leases and they should not be messing with it because it puts the real estate license at risk. So. Yeah, so that would be my magic wand. Well, that's to tell us a little bit about your podcast and some of the stuff that you're up to lately and how people can get a hold of you. Seth Williams (30:26) Yeah. Hmm. Interesting. That's cool. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, the REtipster podcast, it's really creative name, just REtipster podcast. I've been running it since 2018 and every week, just talk to people that I find really fascinating. Sometimes they're in land, sometimes self storage, sometimes neither. They just have a really cool thing going on and I like to grill them and ask them questions and really get to the bottom of like how they're doing what they're doing. So not surfacey questions, but like really getting into it. It's a ton of fun. So Yeah, feel free to check it out or anything at retipster.com. That's kind of the home base where you can find all the stuff I have out there. Jason Hull (31:18) Perfect. Very cool. Well, Seth, it's been fun. Appreciate you asking me some questions. That's always a surprise. And it's great having you here on the the DoorGrow show. If those of you listening, if you've been stuck or stagnant in your property management business, you want to take it to the next level, reach out to us at door grow dot com. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at door grow club dot com. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. And until next time. Seth Williams (31:22) Yeah, likewise. Jason Hull (31:46) Remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.