Property Management Growth with DoorGrow

DGS 331: From Missed Goals to Momentum

When you don't hit the goals you set for your property management business, it's easy to fall into frustration, self-doubt, or the feeling that the year was a failure… but what if you're looking at it the wrong way? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull break down why entrepreneurs often focus on the gap between their goals and results instead of the gain they actually made. They share how to process the disappointment of missed targets, how to recognize the real progress you achieved, and why your biggest breakthroughs often come after a year that felt like a setback. They also discuss the difference between a default future and a created future, why most business owners stay stuck repeating the same results every year, and practical mindset and planning strategies to help you reset, regain momentum, and build a stronger year ahead. You'll Learn (00:50) Setting and Achieving Goals (08:03) Recognizing Progress and Wins (13:36) Creating a Positive Future (17:17) Rewiring Your Mindset for Success Quotables "There's really only one thing you can do with a feeling, and that is to feel it." "Your default future for 2026 is your 2025, which was probably also similar to your 2024." "IFocus on the progress that you had made instead of that gap between, I didn't make it to where I wanted to be." 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) All right, here we go in five, four, three, two, one. 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 have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. 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 the topic we decided to chat about today is... Oh, okay. So she was talking with one of our clients named Jay and he was. Oh, I remember now. Okay. Then what is it? We were, we were going to talk. in 2025. Yeah, because, know, this is a common theme for entrepreneurs. We have big goals. There's a book about this. There's a book called The Gap and the Gain. And the idea is we're really good at looking at this future that we want to create. We're visionaries. We can see and create the future in a lot of instances. But sometimes our eyes are bigger than our stomach. Sometimes we see this big picture of the future we could create and we don't we don't achieve it. And sometimes our goals are just too big for us and we don't, we grow, we learn, but we fail or we just learn as I call it. And so if we don't achieve these goals, it's really easy to get discouraged. It's really easy to beat ourselves up. It's really easy to maybe think we're not enough or put ourselves down. And so a lot of you just wrapped up 2025. We're recording this in January. This will go live a little bit later, but You may be thinking, man, 2025 was not the year that I wanted it to be. I really wanted it to be bigger. It's just, I didn't achieve what I was hoping to. I got derailed. There were so many things that got in the way. So we're going to chat about that a bit today. How do we get past that hurdle? First of the belief part of like feeling like putting ourselves down or thinking we should do better. And then how do we actually set goals and big dreams and hit those targets. And how do we have a better 2026 than our 2025 or a 2024 or a 2023? Maybe you haven't been making progress over the last several years. So we'll talk about that. Where should we start? Okay. I'm dying. So one of the things that I think is really easy for us to do, especially as business owners is to focus on, I set this goal, I wanted to be here, I fell short of it somehow, in some way, and for some reason. And it could be a multitude of reasons. My team quit, the market shifted, all the clients sold, some crazy competitor came in and started stealing on clients, whatever it might be. So if you didn't hit the goal for whatever reason it is, I think it's so easy to just kind of dwell on that and to get caught up in the, I didn't do it. And it's that disappointment. It's a little bit disheartening. It's, you know, you're just feeling bound out that I was hoping I would be here. I didn't know how it was going to happen, but I just had faith and did what I could do and man, I missed it. So. One of the things that is really good, and it is mentioned in the Gatlin game, is instead of focusing on, this is the goal that I had and I fell short of it somehow. Look to the beginning and look at all the progress that you have made. Yeah, look at the game. Right. So instead of saying, I'll just give you an easy example. If you started the year 2025, with 100 doors and you said, all right, I wanted to add another 100 doors. So at the end of the year, I would be at 200. And you didn't get to 200. Maybe you added some, you lost some, you added some, you lost some, you're in that, you know, kind of up and down cycle. And by the end of the year, you ended up at 145. So lots of us would look at that and go, wow, I wanted to be at 200 and I'm only at 145. Wow, I fell so short. It's not even like, ⁓ I almost hit it. We were so close. That's pretty far short. Yeah. So it's very easy for us to just get trapped in this cycle of feeling badly for ourselves. And for some of us, maybe many of us, to be a little bit hard on yourself and go, you know, was it me? What did I do wrong? What could I have done better? Did I make some mistakes? Where did I mess this up? Was I not the leader that I needed to be for my team? Did my clients not like working with our team? Are my processes not good enough? Are my prices not good enough? What is it? And it's so easy to go internal with that. And instead of looking and then concentrating so much on that, first, I feel like you do need to acknowledge it. You don't need to feel it for long time. But it is important to acknowledge, hey, I'm feeling disappointed. I'm feeling disheartened. Maybe I'm feeling like, I kind of got the wind knocked out of me a little bit and I just wasn't expecting to be here. I really thought we were going to pull it together. I thought this was going to be our year. So it's important to at least acknowledge the feeling that you're having. but then don't dwell on it. Don't get stuck in feeling badly for too long. So just identify whatever feeling it is that you have. Allow yourself to say, it's okay that I feel like this. And then you have to get yourself out of that loop. So an easy way to get out of that loop is to go, right, well, I did add 45 doors, right? So that's progress. I didn't end up with less than 100 doors. So I didn't start with 100 and then at the end of the year, now I only have 70. Right? So you still did make some progress, even though it isn't the progress that you wanted, you still made some progress. But what else happened? Because a lot of us just look at the KPIs and metrics that are associated with the goal itself that we had set, which would be doors. what else had happened in the year? Did you make changes to your team? Did you make changes to a system? Did you make changes to processes? Did you either expand into a new market or change your pricing? Did you shift things dramatically inside the business that would count as progress even though it didn't directly yet lead to doors? Did you develop yourself as a leader? huge progress and many people never even get to do that. So perhaps you didn't get the 200 doors that you wanted. Now you're not at 200, you're only at 145. But if you can say, all right, well, I made shifts to my team. I let things go that needed to be let go. I brought people in that needed to be brought in. maybe shifted people around. implemented a new software. I started working with a new coach. I learned a new growth strategy. made new connections. I grew myself as a leader. I grew myself personally. There was some growth and some learning and some personal development there. Does that directly equate to doors? Yes. It's just that it didn't happen yet. So it will. It just didn't happen yet. So 2026 might be the year. that all of that work and all of that growth and that foundation building, 2026 might now be the year that allows you to have that growth and expansion that now you're ready for because of the shifts that you had made the prior year. So focus on the progress that you had made instead of that gap between, I didn't make it to where I wanted to be. Love it. I have a bunch of things I want to share, but first I'm going to do a quick word from our sponsor, Blanket. So, and you're going to like what I'm going to share, so stay tuned. So Blanket is a really cool tool. I recommend everybody uses it. That's not part of the script, but I've also it is very cool when we're talking about, right? We added doors and I lost some doors and I had doors and I lost some doors, which is very normal. Blanket's a retention platform. Business ever. So those doors that you lose. get Blanket and you won't lose them. Yeah, yeah, so I'll read this. So Blanket is a property retention and growth platform that helps property managers stop losing doors and 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 highly recommend you check it out. Go take a look at Blanket. I think it's an amazing system. I recommend all my clients use it. All right. So let's talk about some of the things that Sarah was touching on. I think these are really important. I think one, when you first have this emotion and you're in that negative space, I think it's super important to feel it. A lot of times, if you're a thinker, if you're more analytical like Sarah or myself in a lot of instances, what you'll tend to do is you'll try to avoid feelings by finding a way logically to avoid feeling. But there's really only one thing you can do with a feeling and that is to feel it. You cannot logic a feeling. You cannot create enough mental tools and resources to prevent yourself from feeling anything ever again that's uncomfortable. Part of being an entrepreneur is learning to feel the uncomfortable things. The good news about feelings, if you allow yourself to actually feel them, you don't feel them forever. But if you avoid them, you can avoid them and keep feeling them forever. And so take some time and yes, feel it. Feel through it, go into it, allow yourself to feel the disappointment or feel the shame or feel the guilt or feel the failure or whatever you think it is. But then what I want you to do is while you're feeling this, I would write out what you're feeling and write out why. I want you to list out all of the beliefs because feelings are created from your beliefs, the things you say in your head. I should have had doors. I should have worked harder. I should have, you know, taking care of my clients better, whatever it might be. Make a list of all of these beliefs and then what I want you to do once you have all the beliefs, these beliefs are what are causing you to have the problem. So this is my analytical way of dealing with this but look at all these beliefs and I want you to challenge them. I want you to look at each one and say, is this belief 100 % true? I should have had 200 doors in a year. Well, here's the reality. If reality is in Conflict with what you you wanted your reality is you didn't get 200 doors, then it's not a true statement That you should have had it. It's not true. You didn't have it. Maybe you didn't do it was required So this is where you can give yourself some tough love but list out everything and evaluate whether it's true or not and Then you can figure out was I really committed? Obviously not if you didn't achieve the result there were other factors So look at those other factors and I think this is where then it can lead into what Sarah's talking about is Now make a list of all of the accomplishments, all the wins. We do that in our planning system cadence with our team. We call DoorGrow OS that we also coach clients on and we look at the wins for the year. We look at the wins for each quarter. We look at the wins and recognize our team for each month, for each week related to the company goals. And so you are probably lacking. a system that allows you to see and recognize wins, but also to actually achieve them. Because if you don't have a system in place, feelings and desires and goals are basically just potential failures. You have to have a system for making sure that you can predict and create the future accurately. And that's what DoorGrow OS allows us to do. That's why we can innovate and create so many things. No other coaching or consulting firm in the space can keep up with the amount of things that we're rolling out or innovating. We're rolling out all this AI stuff, we're rolling out a new community, rolling out the door machine, you heard me talk on a previous episode, we're rolling out a BDM launch pad, we're rolling out so many new things. And these are just the ideas we got in the last, what, month or two. Like last month, I think. And so ⁓ AI websites, we're doing a lot of really cool stuff that we have planned for the future. And... ⁓ And we're able to move really quickly, one, because we have great people on the team, two, because we are able to plan and it's not just chaos, we're not just winging it, we have objectives. And we break those big objectives and goals down into quarterly, down into monthly, down into weekly chunks, and people are assigned to them, and we know what we need to be working on as a team, and there's just a lot more clarity. And then everybody gets recognized for the accomplishments. It shifts our brain to every meeting, every planning session that we're like, what are our wins for this period? So gets everybody in the habit of focusing on the gain, focusing on the positive. That's why DoorGrow is a really positive place to be or to work. That's why clients like feel attracted and stay with us for years. That's why our team members stay with us for a long time, because we've created a really positive culture of winning and success. And what you focus on grows. And so we shift our focus intentionally onto these things is how we do this. And so if you didn't have the year, ⁓ well, you probably have something you're dying to say. No? Because I would love to talk about the creative future default future. And then I'll tell them how to have the 2026 that they want. Okay. I'll end with that. All right. So if you're listening to this, I want all of you to understand you have a default future. It's inevitable unless you get some sort of injection of new ideas or fresh blood or new people or a coach or something, you are going to do what I call your default future. Your default future is basically what you've seen yourself accomplish in the past. Your default future for 2026 is your 2025, which was probably also similar to your 2024. and your 2023 and on and on and on. And so, and your default future may not be really exciting to you. You may feel a little depleted. So you need a creative future. And one of the things we're really good at helping our clients do is get out of, there's, I talked about three different tiers of goal setting. And the client we were talking about, Jay and others, like Jay, when he came back to us after he'd had a whole bunch of growth, was struggling, because he had lost a bunch of team members. So he was in what I call that first level of survival. Terrible goals, right? Survival is like the worst place to be. It's a hard place. Getting new team members, rebuilding the team. The next level goal is like realistic. Realistic goals. And we rarely achieve the realistic goals. We work with our clients on determining what I call impossible goals that get your brain to think differently. It becomes a tool. to get you to think outside of your current limitations and your current reality. So you have to have what are called impossible or unrealistic goals. And that's where things get exciting. That's where your brain has something juicy to work on. That's where you get into that visionary state and you start coming up with new things and you find shortcuts and new pathways to get there that you couldn't see otherwise because you were being so realistic. So those are some things that we would focus on with clients. So if you want a created future instead of your default future, then I recommend that you come hang out with us. You work with DoorGrow, you come talk to us at DoorGrow, even in our initial conversations, before you pay us anything. We will help you create a better future and you'll be able to see it. We'll show you how we can help you. We'll give you free training material. Some clients have added 10s, 20s, 30s, 41s doors, one client added just from our free stuff that we'll give you. We wanna prove and show to you how we can help you so it's not like you're guessing, well maybe this'll work. Our stuff's proven. It's been proven over and over again. So we want you to reach out, connect with us, and we will create a new future together. And some of the new stuff we're launching will allow us to really go deep into some clients' businesses and grow them. And we're gonna be creating multi-million dollar property management business owners. No question. And that's our goal. So we're gonna be kingmakers in this industry. And because we've got everything dialed in, I just need people that we can partner with that will allow us to do what we do best. And so that's what our next hunt is. So I think that's all I wanted to say. Default future versus creative future. So create a different future. You can't be doing what you've always done. And this is why I always get new coaches. I always have new mentors because it helps me level up faster. Okay. to figure out, how am I supposed to do something? And I'm kind of feeling like. done that. Now what do I do? How do I set this goal that I don't even know confidently that I'm going to hit in 2026 given that I haven't done it in past? So here is a hack that I have that will get your brain into a more positive loop. What you're going to do is you're going to take a piece of paper and I want you to write this. Don't type it out because neurologically there's a different response in your brain when you hand write something versus when you type it out. So I want you to get a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil and physically write it out. I don't care if it's line paper, printed paper, whatever, but get a piece of paper and a pen. And what you're going to do is you're going to start writing numbers next to every single number. You're going to write things in 2025 that you have accomplished. Little things, big things, personal things, business things. things in your life, things in your relationship, things in your friendships, things with your kids, maybe places you have traveled to. I don't care what it is. it. Anything. list as much as you can. And your goal is to fill up that paper. So you're going to write the things that you did accomplish. I wanted to celebrate my birthday this year. Well, I did that. I wanted to eat chicken parmesan from, I don't know, a certain restaurant. for dinner. I did that. Put it on the list. Why? Because you're going to fill up this list. So I know, see he made a face, those who are watching, he made a face when I said, boy, I chicken parmesan for dinner because I woke up today and I said, hey, I want chicken parmesan. And guess what? That is a goal. My goal is to have chicken parmesan for dinner. Is that a big goal? No. But is it a goal nonetheless? Yes. So if my goal was to eat chicken parm for dinner, And then I had chicken parm for dinner. I reached my goal. So it could be anything, anything at all. I drive the car that I want. I live in the neighborhood that I want. I put my kids in school. I got to learn something new. I made new friends. I have a great relationship with my spouse, whatever. List all of the goals that you had. Big, small, and in between. and everything that you have accomplished, right out and fill out that entire sheet of paper. When you're done, you're gonna flip it over, and you're gonna do the same thing on the backside. When you are done, you will have a sheet of paper entirely filled with things that you have done. Some will be bigger things, some will be smaller things, but your brain doesn't care if it's a big thing or a small thing, because when you're done, you get to walk away with a sheet of paper of evidence. And proof, I know how to reach my goals. Okay. And now you have this whole sheet of evidence that you get to go, no, I know how to set a goal and I know how to reach it. And this will rewire your brain to get out of that loop of feeling badly or feeling disheartened or feeling like, I'm kind of bummed because I didn't get what I wanted. And it will positively rewire your brain. you into a positive loop and while you are in the positive loop now you're going to set your goal for 2026 and when you have that feeling of I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this you're going to look at that list and go I will be able to do this because I have a bunch of evidence right in front of me that I know how to reach my goals and that will very quickly get you out of that I kind of feel bummed out phase so that for me is one of the easiest things to do is just remind yourself of the things that you have done. And it really doesn't matter if they are big things or small things because your brain does not know the difference. Your brain is just looking at a whole bunch of things on a piece of paper going, wow, that's a lot of things. ⁓ more things on the list, the better because we want to get rid of that, that kind of almost the sadness, the grief of the loss. You have to feel that you have to acknowledge that and then you need to rewire and this will rewire so that it allows you to step into a more positive mindset so you can set a new goal. And then you can go hit that goal. And when you are hitting the goal, yes, you do have to do different things. You can't just keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That's the definition of insanity. So when you have that new goal, now you're going to look and go, what do I need to do differently in order to reach that? and then go do the thing. Okay. So some people listening might be thinking, I don't have any grief over it. I don't feel sad. I just didn't hit my goals. Well, to that I would say your goals didn't really matter enough. Like if you didn't feel not hitting your goals, then you really didn't care that much about your goals, which is why you don't hit them. You have to have goals you actually care about. They need to matter to you. So you have to take the goals for 2026, take your goals, and you have to connect them to emotion and to feeling. You have to connect what you don't want and what you wanna get away from to feeling into what matters and what you do want to feeling into what matters. We have a tool for this. With videos of me, it's free. Go to doorgrow.com slash clarity to do our free clarity assessments so that you can get clarity on this because without clarity, goals, actions, none of it really matters. ⁓ The other thing I would say, are not achieving the goals that you want, find somebody that has. Find somebody that's helped somebody do that. We've helped lots of people at hundreds of doors to their business and scale their business. We help people get ops dialed in. We've helped people accomplish all sorts of things. And you'll be around other people in our mastermind that are doing this actively right now. And so belief is transferable. You're obviously not around enough people that believe that they can do what you want to get done. And if you're not achieving it, there's probably a beliefs issue. So, ⁓ Lee, hey. I think, hey, could you jump back in in just maybe in like 10 minutes? Leigh Angman (25:26) cannot use. Thank you. Jason Hull (25:44) Okay. Leigh Angman (25:47) Can you guys hear me? Jason Hull (25:49) We can hear you, but we're right in the middle of recording an episode. We were supposed to meet with you like an hour ago. Leigh Angman (25:55) I had a Google meet link from Broadcaster Authority, which I had agreed to. Now I've fired your podcast. My apologies. Jason Hull (26:00) yeah, they gave you the wrong link. Yeah, no problem. you, we'll edit this part out. Could you pop back in in like 10 minutes? Sure. Okay, we'll see you in just a bit. All right. Sorry about that. Yeah, no worries. Okay, so little interruption. So we're recording multiple episodes today. So, okay. Well, yeah, we were talking about grief. were talking about belief is transferable. Talking about getting wins. Anything else that we need to add? No, we do need to wrap up. Okay, let's wrap up. Leigh Angman (26:11) Sure. My... Okay, sorry about that. Jason Hull (26:36) ⁓ Well, if you are a property management entrepreneur, you've ever felt stuck or stagnant in your business, you want to reach the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com for free training on how to get unlimited free leads. Text the word leads to 512-648-4608. 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. Until next time, remember, the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

DGS 330: The AI Illusion: Protecting Your Reputation in a Manipulated World

When your property management business isn't growing, hiring a salesperson might seem like the obvious solution, but what if that's actually where most owners go wrong… In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull break down why most BDM hires fail, the critical mistakes owners make with commission-only roles, and the exact systems required to make a salesperson successful. They dive into DoorGrow's Three Fits framework, the three non-negotiable ingredients for BDM success, and tease a game-changing new growth model designed to help property managers scale without burnout, bad leads, or broken systems. You'll Learn (00:00) Introduction: The Three Fits for Hiring (01:16) The Challenges of Hiring a Business Development Manager (BDM) (02:42) The Three Key Ingredients for BDM Success (04:40) Mistakes in BDM Compensation: The Commission-Only Pitfall (05:40) The Three Roles of a BDM and the Problem with Buying Leads (09:54) The "Door Machine" Teaser: The Easy Button for Growth (14:39) Advanced Community, AI, and Final Thoughts Quotables "A BDM has zero chance of success if you hire the wrong person." "If they're not all three, they will fail. Or you'll fire them. Or they will leave you because they're not making enough money." "If you do not have the right system to plug a BDM or a salesperson into, you can hire as many of them as you want, and they will still not work." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind [https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/courses/mastermind] DoorGrow Academy [https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/] DoorGrow on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC1mGYT2Sw0LOe32hO_QdNg/featured] DoorGrowClub [https://doorgrow.com/] DoorGrowLive [https://doorgrowlive.com/] Transcript Jason & Sarah Hull (00:01) Five, four, three, two, one. 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 have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. 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, you can probably hear our dogs losing their mind in the background. Maybe not. It was perfect time. Yeah, great time. You started the episode and then they decided. And then they started barking. Well, somebody's outside. That's why they're barking. Okay, they're protecting the house. All right, so what we wanted to talk today about is protecting you a little bit. And so. One of things that's been going viral lately all over social media is this Molt book. So if you haven't heard of Molt book, it is a social network, supposedly. It's a social network created by AI bots. It's basically just only people that have access to it supposedly are AI agents and they go in there and they're talking about their humans. And this is this new AI tool that was originally called Claude, spelled like a claw, which is not the Claude. by anthropic, ⁓ but it's different Claude bot. And then they got sued by Claude for name infringement or confusion. And they changed their name to something else and then to something else. And now it's called open clock. But basically there are these, it's like an AI tool that you can build or put on your computer and it runs locally and it proactively tries to do things for you. There's a lot of security risks with this AI tool because it has access to all your stuff and it can figure things out and start to buy things for you and like do things for you. And so ⁓ it has access to all your stuff. And so you got to be careful with this. However, there's been a lot of false hype and fear mongering around multbooks. So we wanted to chat about this. And so if you've seen these scary posts about multbook, this AI social network, here's what's actually going on. So what this social media network is. you been seeing posts? Have you heard about this? Only from you. I don't follow any of that stuff, you sent me a post that was talking about all of these AI things, I guess, and the chat room that they created, and they were talking to each other and interacting with each other and asking each other questions and kind of talking about their humans, human... users, I guess, so to speak. And I went, yeah, I don't know if I'm believing all of that hype. So I had asked chat, Chippy Tea about it. And it essentially said, no, AIs do not work on their own. They are human prompted. They are user prompted. So if there is such a thing, it might exist. but it's not something that the AIs are just going and creating their own little community and having discussions as humans would have their. So let's about the hype. So their mold book is claiming and bragging that they have 1.2 million agents registered, but only 10,000 verified humans using the tool or something like this. And we know like at least a million of those agent accounts came from one guy. He ran a script, he posted about it on X on Twitter. And he said, FYI, this isn't what everybody's claiming it to be. The MoteBook has a REST API. Anybody can literally post anything they want using that API. So if anybody knows how to use any AI tool now to create any sort of code or software, like using Cloud Code or even Cloud, you can create software in pretty much anything now that has access to this API that can go post there. And so it's not, are there agents posting there? Yes, there are some agents, but some of the articles on there are probably created by, nerds that think it's funny to create posts that say my user is cap. People are capturing things with screenshots or my, my, my owner is like telling me to do unethical things. And so it's hard to know what, which of any of this stuff is true, but definitely the stats are not true. When this guy sent a million verified accounts he created to the founder of Moldbook who's a human and said, are these accounts, like here's this security flaw you have, this really isn't legit, but I don't think they care. I think they like the hype, they're getting business from the hype. And so this points out a bigger problem. And the bigger problem is with the advent of AI and with all of the AI slop, as people are calling it, you have to now verify things. People are using AI to create content, to beat the algorithms and to manipulate humans. And so A lot of posts that you see, a lot of news article posts on Instagram, they're fake. It's sensationalized, it's you AI slop BS, and it they make these sensational claims because sensationalism gets people to go, wow, I can't believe this. This is so noteworthy and newsworthy. I'm going to share it with other people and people aren't verifying this. So these things go viral and it's giving that account. clout and attention and algorithm and they can use that to make money and they're just manipulating people. And so this is this bigger problem that now things being shared on social media that are going viral are just being engineered algorithmically based on sensationalism, not based on truth. And a lot of them are just complete lies or complete fabrications and algorithms are rewarding fear, they're rewarding outrage instead of truth. And so a lot of things that you're out or noticing or things that are manipulating you, it's not even true. It's not even valid. And you're in this, get caught up in this echo chamber politically or algorithmically that really is just messing with you and playing with your emotionalism that you have hardwired into it because you're human. So I think it's really important to start to not. that you have to really question and disbelieve almost everything you see and then verify it or validate it. And this shows up in a lot of ways. Like we were talking about ⁓ all the products that we see for sale on Instagram. That you see. You get targeted. I love the buy stuff. Yeah. I know. It works really well. I like buying gadgets and gizmos aplenty. You know, I'm like the little mermaid. All right. So. So all of these things, though, if you go take whatever product or item you see on Instagram, you're like, man, that sounds really cool. It sounds like something I would love. I would need that algorithm already knows it knows you. knows everything you slow down on and look at. It knows everything you click on to check out. So it knows you what you'll you'll buy before you know you'll buy it. And it feeds the stuff up to you and it'll feed it over to you or retarget you over and over again until you actually buy the thing. Here's the thing. a lot of these products that you see, if you go look up the same product up on like amazon.com, you'll find the same product with a different brand name, because they're using maybe the same source in China to like, and then they're white labeling it with their brand name, but you'll find the same product for 50%, sometimes 25 % of the costs that you're seeing. So they're just taking products that are doing well on Amazon. They go and like find us the source of this product. And then they go do really good marketing and advertising to manipulate people, sell it on Instagram or meta ads, and they are selling it at this insane markup. People think they've got the exclusivity and they're the only way you can get this product. And they're selling it for three times the amount or at least double the amount of what you would pay normally. And if you go and got it from the source, like through Alibaba.com or something like this, you probably pay a small fraction of that. And so people are overspending on this and they're manipulating you to spend more money. So just another example of how you need to go verify or find these things maybe elsewhere. And so you need to do your own research is the basic idea. And so. ⁓ Some of the things that I have started to do is I use AI to research the things that I'm finding online to find out if they're true. So this could be health claims, product claims, product ideas. ⁓ If a product looks good, I will go send it to Grok, one of my favorite research AIs, because it's really good at doing really good research quickly. You can use perplexity to do research, but I'll say analyze this. landing page, this product, is this hype or is this a legitimate product? Do research on this. And a lot of times we'll come back and say, this is overhyped. Their product claims are not valid. It's based on studies that indicate certain things, but it's not totally true. But every now and then it's like, this product sounds legit. And then I'm like, well, do I really need this product? And then sometimes it's like, no. Right. And so you can go now leverage AI and you need to use AI to battle with AI so that you can not being manipulated or taken advantage of. So you need to do your own research. Analyze the truth of this. Go ask AI to analyze the truth and give it a link. ⁓ Grok can access Instagram and Facebook posts and things like this. It can access social media currently. ⁓ Claude, ChatGPT, some of these tools are not able to access certain links because they're blocked by those social media platforms. They don't want other AI tools looking at it. So far, I've had success using Grok to analyze Instagram posts, Instagram videos. So if you see something on Instagram real or a post, you can go post it to Grok and it can analyze the truth of it, which is super helpful. Not only that, but Grok has access to the entire X or Twitter database to do research and to find people, what they're saying and stuff like this, which I've found to be very helpful. Now we all have an internal compass and I think this is the most important thing of all. is you have to use your own brain and use that voice within. think one thing that makes us different than just AI is we have this intuition or this knowing or this higher faculty of just our mental capacity and we have this ability, or some would call it spiritual gift of intuition or of natural knowing or of, what would others call it? ⁓ The voice deep down within, sometimes deep. how I know this thing deep down, but it or some would call it the gift of discernment. You know, it's kind of a biblical gift of the spirit it talks about. Some would call it the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit or whatever. But we have this quiet voice deep down that tells you that something doesn't feel right when everybody else is sharing it or. And so, you know, start to get in tune with that, start to listen to that and to get clarity on that, because not everything that's sensationalized is true. and you need to trust that little voice within because you might go, this sounds like pretty incredible. Is this valid? Before you go share it and pass it on to other people, which is like spreading a virus, you know, it may not be a positive thing to spread this thing that's not accurate or true. So that's my two cents about this. so with this, the Malt book is an example of. something that's going viral that everybody seems to just be believing and it's not totally valid. So. OK, let's connect this to property management. OK, so that it's relevant for anyone who's going, how are they? How are they going to link this? So one of the things that I had heard recently, there's well, one of them I heard a couple of months ago and one of them I just heard. There's two examples that I can cite. That connects it directly to business. One was. I don't remember where they were located, so forgive me for that. Do your research. One of them, they wanted to see if they could use AI and all of the tools that are available, Google and SEO and the algorithm, to hype up something that isn't real. So what they did is they created a restaurant. using they did have some photos. They took a couple of photos. The food wasn't even real. I remember this. Do remember this? They were taking photos of food and people eating the food and wow it looks so amazing. It wasn't even real food. Yeah. And they used all of these photos and then somehow used bots and AI to leave a bunch of great reviews. for this amazing restaurant. And then the algorithm and Google started getting all of this data going, wow, people must love this restaurant. We should promote it. So showing up in searches and they had a wait list for a restaurant that did not ever, at any point in time, ever exist. No real restaurant, no real location, no real food, no real people, no real business, and no real reviews. All of it was completely fake online. However, the algorithm did not know that it was fake. The algorithm thought, wow, this is a real business and people love it, so let's recommend it to other real people. So real people are getting recommendations from the algorithm, hey, you might like this restaurant. And then real people are going, oh, I wanna go to this restaurant, this looks amazing, look at all the incredible reviews. And it's fake. And you can't even go there. That's example number one. Oh yeah, look at that. It's a bleach tablet. So let me share this. So you can look this up. You can just Google like fake restaurant or something like this. The article that came up was on vice.com but. ⁓ I made my shed the top rated restaurant on TripAdvisor. So what he had, he works for Vice now, I guess, but before he started working for vice.com, he had a job where restaurant owners were paying him 10 pounds, 10 British pounds ⁓ to write a positive review of their restaurant on TripAdvisor, despite never having eaten there. So was like, this is like fake. And so he became obsessed with monitoring the ratings of these businesses and their fortunes would generally turn and This was a catalyst. then he was like, TripAdvisor is this false reality, he thought. And so these meals never took place. The reviews were written by fake people like him. And so he was like, well, maybe I could just create a completely fake restaurant. He just decided to try it out. And so he took his shed, his shed in the backyard, and he built, made it the number one restaurant. And he called it the Shed at Dulwich. and ⁓ created this cool name and this was back in 2017. And ⁓ he got a burner phone, he created a phone number, built a website, bought a domain, and then he created some images that looked like delicacies. And what he used to create the images was ⁓ runny honey, ground black pepper, and Gillette shaving cream, and bleach tablets, and just made these photos that look kind of like food. See, Nevada actually looks pretty good. Right. And yeah, it's just got coffee beans. Like he just he made shaving cream, bleach tablet, cup of coffee beans on top with ⁓ with paint. Brown gloss paint. Yeah, that's supposed to be chocolate syrup. He just made fake images and. It's so ridiculous. So then he went and then he started creating reviews and getting reviews and then having photos from people. ⁓ Like he just climbed the ranks and then he actually started opening it up for reservations and started getting reservations for this. And then a bunch of people came and actually, and then he used like other companies to make the food. and brought it in and then fed it with the food and because their perception was this was a high end thing and a kind of a secret thing and it's hard to get into, people were like, this food's amazing. then they were giving him even better reviews about it and the food was just taken from other places that he had like kind of brought in. And so it got really, it was just super ridiculous. And so ⁓ he built this whole thing out. So that's that story. What was the other story you wanted to other one is what I just heard. I'm still struggling to understand what the flaw is here. don't know why this is illegal. Maybe someone can help me. ⁓ I don't remember what platform they used, ⁓ but a guy somewhere in the US used a lot of AI agents to create music. Real music. Yeah. But it was created by AI, not humans. And then what he did is he took the music and posted it to a platform. Now, I don't know if it was something like Spotify or Apple Music or whatever it is, but he used a platform, a similar platform. And instead of waiting for people, to hear the music and like the music and for it to grow. He went, huh, how can I speed this up? So what he did then is he created a bunch of AI bots to go and listen to the music that his other AI bots had created. That's where it's illegal. Because people play for licensing. rankings and listen to the songs and the albums 24 hours a day on repeat. multiple, multiple, multiple bots. So all of a sudden there's this fake music. Well, it's not even fake. It's real music. It's just created by AI. And then AI bots are listening to that music, which is pushing the rankings. Fake news or listenings, yes. Well, I mean, they're just bots. They're just not human listens. They're listens, right? But just AI's done. And these platforms pay you. for each listen. Spotify, Apple Music, paid out him because he's getting so many listens. Of course. I believe he's getting sued for $10 million. He stole $10 million in fake listens, basically. Right. had AI create the music, had AI listen to the music to then make real money. Now, I don't know, but I think he's getting sued for things like money laundering, which I don't... quite understand how that's money laundering because the platform is designed as such. So any platform, and this is my point in telling you these stories, any platform that is designed and built on attention, things like likes, comments, views, clicks, engagement, which is almost every social platform in existence. can now be manipulated. yeah. Now what does that mean for you as a business owner? It means two things. One, despite your best efforts, anyone can now create fake things that will outrank you. So when it really comes down to it, does your Google ranking or your SEO ranking, does it actually make sense and is it real? Because you can take a fake business or even a real business and now promote, get all these, you know, clicks, views, likes, attention. And then all of a sudden the algorithm goes, ⁓ people like this, I should serve it to more people. Now, if your competition starts doing this, what does that mean for you? Right. So again, don't be one of these people trying to manipulate. others with AI. Like you need to be upfront about it. Nobody wants it because the one thing you have is your reputation and your brand. And if you destroy that, I mean, you could get in trouble legally. But if you do something unethical or you trick people into thinking that it's a human when it's AI or stuff like this, you destroy trust and trust is the foundation of business. And in the future, people are going to it's going to be really difficult to trust anything because the majority of posts now on Facebook are probably written or drafted by chat GPT now. A lot of people are using different things. So you have to be careful. ⁓ And do we want to use these tools? Yes. Use the tools, create some leverage. It's smart. But you also need to make sure that you find that right balance of what's true, what's actually you, what's verifiable, ⁓ and not do things that are unethical. And so this is where Property managers, you gotta be careful. You do not wanna use systems to create fake reviews on your profiles. You don't wanna get other property managers to give you reviews on your property management business and trade reviews. You gotta stop doing the shady shortcuts and focus on real connection, real people, real reviews, real results. Focus on real stuff. And this is why. We've always focused on getting real video testimonials from our clients, ⁓ real results. And you can get in trouble. You can get in trouble with the ⁓ FCC with false claims. You can get in trouble like people can sue you over stuff. you be smart. Like you do real stuff. Don't look for the shady shortcuts. It's tempting. I know it is because you're like, man, it's hard. But if things are hard, and you're trying to do shady shortcuts instead of doing the right things and doing the real things that work, there are things that work. So I guess that's our message to property managers is like, do things the smart, ethical way and don't be the shady person trying to manipulate others taking those shortcuts. So and, but use AI, you should be using tools to, you know, shorten time, collapse time, make things more effective, improve your writing. learn, but make sure things are done your way in your voice, that you've done it, and work on improving yourself. So AI could either be making you better all the time, or it can be making you dumber and dumber. Kind of like that movie, Idiocracy, where... I'm sorry that I watched that movie. I really am. Yeah, it's pretty dumb. watched that. But yeah, mean, the idea is if we just continually use AI to do all our thinking for us and decision making for us, which is the one brilliant piece that we have as humans ⁓ and that creative spark that's within us, we can use AI as a tool. But some people are just using it to do everything for them and they can't think anymore. They're unable to make decisions. You take away their access to a phone or to AI and they're like, whoa. Right? So don't become dumber. Use AI to improve your thinking, to improve your ⁓ thought analysis around things, to help challenge you and challenge your thinking so that you grow. It can be a phenomenal growth tool. Like, what am I missing? Here's my current thinking about this. And it can give you some different ideas. ⁓ I didn't think of that. Then you can get curious. You can ask questions. You can do more research. And AI could be a tool to help you collapse time on becoming a better human, or it can... replace you maybe, but then you're obsolete. And if we don't need you, then your job's going to be, you're going to be out of a job. You're going to be not usable or necessary in the future that's coming. So that's basically it. So, um, so if you are a property management business owner and you're struggling to figure out how to make things work and you're feeling tempted to do some shady AI stuff or whatever, then maybe you just need a little bit of extra support or help. So reach out to us at door grow dot com. We would love to help you grow your business, help you figure things out ⁓ for a free training on how to get unlimited free leads. Text the word leads to five one two six four eight four six zero eight and we will send that to you. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at door grow club dot com. And if you want. tips, tricks, ideas to learn about our offers or about DoorGrowth's programs, 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 to us and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. Until next time. Remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. everyone. All right, and we're out in five, four, three, two, one. Bye everybody.

DGS 329: The Power of Impossible Goals

When you set "realistic" goals for your property management business, you might actually be limiting your growth without even realizing it… In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull challenge entrepreneurs to think bigger, much bigger. Inspired by their experience flying a fighter jet and the concept of "impossible goals" from The Science of Scaling, they break down why realistic goals keep you stuck in current thinking, how unrealistic targets activate visionary leadership, and why 10X growth can actually be easier than incremental growth. They explain how impossible goals shift your brain from grinding harder to thinking differently, why realistic targets often become a yardstick to beat yourself up, and how visionary entrepreneurs use bold thinking to collapse time, find new pathways, and unlock opportunities that logic alone would never reveal. They also share how to handle naysayers, protect your vision, and use doubt as fuel instead of letting it shrink your ambition. If you're ready to stop playing small, stop chasing "safe" growth, and start building something that transforms your market — this episode will challenge the way you think about goals, leadership, and what's actually possible in your business. You'll Learn (00:00) Introduction to DoorGrow and Unrealistic Goals (07:37) The Importance of Unrealistic Goals (15:54) Overcoming Doubts and Limitations (22:56) Visionary Thinking and Future Goals Quotables "I want to tell everybody to be unrealistic." "You need to decide, I can do the things that I want to do." "The slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together." 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 & Sarah Hull (00:01) All right, five, four, three, two, one. All right, everybody, 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 have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. 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 today's topic, Sarah wanted to talk about. I want to tell everybody to be unrealistic. We're going to talk about unrealistic goals. She wants you to be unrealistic. I do want you to be unrealistic. And I also want you to clear all of this off. OK. Yay. Happy. Yeah. Slightly. All right. All right. So one of the things that we got to do very recently is something that I never, never thought we would be able to do because it was seemingly unrealistic. And that was to fly a fighter jet. And by fly a fighter jet. Yes, it was a real fighter jet. It's an L39 Albatross. For those of you that are familiar, it was not typically equipped with fighter equipment. It was mostly used as a trainer. However, it can be armed and therefore is classified as a fighter jet. And yes, we actually got to fly it. We didn't just go in it and take a look and see. Both Jason and I, one at a time, of course, got to. fly a fighter jet and do some aerobatic maneuvers. Which was insanely fun. Right. So we took a trip to Australia and to visit my parents in Brisbane. And we saw a billboard that said, fly a fighter jet. And I was like, what? And Sarah's super into flying. So was like, hey, there's a thing. It says this. And she's like, what? I don't think so. And I'm like, yeah. So it turns out there's, guess, the person there that runs it told us there's three countries in the world that allow you to do this because normally you can't fly one of these planes or go in as a consumer to fly one of these planes because, you know, there's all these rules because it's then a commercial flight and a commercial flight. have all these legal requirements and things you can't in the U.S. They cannot. You cannot charter or pay for a chartered pay for a flight and then not have all these safety things in place. And this is not like, it's not the same, right? Like he's teaching us at the beginning how to eject. He's like, if we need to eject, this is what you need to do and like do this. And I'm like, what? And so there is not an ejection seat on it. There's no ejection seat. So what we'll do is we'll fly up really high and then you're going to. do this thing and do this and the canopy will fly off and then you gotta push off. then once you're in the air and you've then pulled this thing, if your parachute doesn't automatically deploy, you wanna grab this. And I'm like, if I don't remember all this, I die? Like what? Yeah. So. It's just two levers. Could you imagine if you're on. It's two levers to open the canopy and he's gonna fly and you don't have to jump. You're like, have to launch yourself. right, you don't have to launch yourself. You pretty much will just wait for the plane to fall out from under you while you float in parachute. Could you imagine you're like, get herded in like cattle into Southwest and you're like, you're on the Southwest bus, right? And you get your seat. Actually, they're going to have assigned seating now, I guess. But before I was just free for all. you're like, get in and you're like, and they're like, hey, by the way, here's how to. like find a parachute and here's what all the steps you need to do in case there's a problem. Do you have this down or you die? You ready? We're like, wait, what? Yeah. They're just like, here's a flotation device and your seat and like here's how to use your seatbelt and then breathe in this thing if you need to. And otherwise, like that's it. But yeah, like parachute down. Because on the airlines, it's like, if you survive the crash, then we'll tell you what to do after that. Don't worry about it. OK, so. Sorry. Yes. So no possible goal. It's very, very safe to fly on the airlines. is. it's it's consistently getting more and more safe. This is slightly different than flying on an airline. This was it was really cool. Super fun. He let us take the little joystick control and like. The little joystick control. What do you call it? What is it called? The little joystick control. It's between your legs and it's a joystick. Don't get any ideas. just called But you grab this thing and like, yeah, you take the stick. like, do you want to do it? He's like, all right. He guided me through doing, I got to do a barrel roll. Yep. And I got to do a loop. Yep. Which I call a loop-de-loop. Yeah. But I got to do a loop-de-loop. And it was really, it was crazy. Like I'm like doing, I'm like, and we got a video like on his DJI camera, like a GoPro, like the whole thing was recorded. So there's evidence that I did this. Right. But yeah, it pretty wild. was really wild that we could go do that. And apparently if you spend enough money and you're in the right country, you can do maybe anything. I don't know. There are certain places, upon further research. There are certain places in the US that will let you fly certain jets. And the Albatross is actually the most common out of the ones that you can fly in the US. The is finding someone that will allow you to fly it. that's a bit different. Yes. Like if you get to control it. Because, yes, exactly. Yeah. And sometimes ⁓ these are owned by private owners. So like if you know a guy and you go, hey, can you... Can you take me up? They might let you take the controls. might let you do it, you know, but there's also schools. I think there's one. Oh, I forgot where it's called, but it's called like Jet Trainer Center or something like that. The guy that runs it is Larry and they have an albatross is one of them, but I think they have like six different actual jets that you can fly and learn as well, which is really cool. But then there's schools. So it's not impossible in the US. It's just there's a few extra hurdles that you might need to cross. it's something though that I thought I would never ever get to do. Like when you look at these crazy jets, generally I don't think you look at it and go, yeah, I could fly that one day. We went to that air show. During any of that point, were you looking at those planes going, yeah, I could fly one of those. Yeah, I wonder what it would take to fly one of those. No, I was not thinking that. right, because you just don't usually think that it's possible. You think, oh, wow, those are probably owned and many of them are by museums. or by some sort of club that's funded to keep this thing airworthy and maintained and flying, they probably aren't going to let the public fly it. Okay. So why is it important to have unrealistic goals? Well, I think you should be very unrealistic in your goals because if you're realistic, if you go, okay, I just want to do things that I know that I can do. Then it almost takes the fun out of it, number one. And I think that's, for entrepreneurs, that's half the battle is, it fun? What was the journey like? Or was it something that you can just go, yeah, I did it, but everybody else can do it too. Where's the fun in that? Yeah, Cindy Lauper said girls just want to have fun. ⁓ So we had to make sure she had some fun. ⁓ Yeah, guys, we want to have some fun, too, right? So it was yeah, was super cool to be able to do that. I think the way I view this, I've been explaining the idea of unrealistic goals or impossible goals, ⁓ which we got the idea from Dr. Benjamin Hardy and his book, The Science of Scaling. And we got to hear him talk about this at a mastermind. The idea is that our. know, realistic goals are based on our current limited level of thinking. And so that means our brain already knows how to do it. And it usually is just do what you already know how to do. But because that's not enough, just do more, work harder. And that's not a great strategy or great path is to just work harder because that's not really exciting. That's not super. That's not fun. Like, hey, work, work, do what you're doing already, but work harder, which is less, more uncomfortable. just. More effort. Work 22 hours a day instead of 18. Yeah, yeah, more hours. And so Impossible Goals, our brain, I view as this magical like quantum computer. Like it can create whole realities instantly in our head while we're sleeping. And it can do all these amazing things. And our unconscious mind or subconscious can be working on problems and crunching and chewing on challenges and figuring stuff out and coming up with ideas. that bubble up to the surface. But if we focus on realistic goals, it shuts down. It doesn't have anything useful to do. It's going to figure out why is this so hard? Cool. Here's all your reasons. Let's just make it harder. And how do we avoid pain? Well, I'm going to convince you or cause you to have challenges in just even doing this because this sounds uncomfortable. It doesn't sound fun. So I'm going to give you all the excuses and BS stories and reasons to not do it. So our brain actually starts working against us. And so when we get in, so usually realistic goals become this yardstick by which we beat ourselves up with over the head, right? And we measure ourselves by it, but then it really just becomes a tool to beat ourselves up. Whereas when we shift into impossible goals or unrealistic thinking or unrealistic goals, it doesn't matter if we hit these goals. It just matters that we have this amazing new tool or resource to convince or get our brain to think differently and to come up with new pathways. And so our brain becomes this awesome tool to find new pathways or new ways of thinking. And it gets us to think differently. So even if we don't achieve the goal, we're far more likely to get good results because we're thinking outside of our current limitations or the current box. And so we use goals as a tool or we use time as a tool. We either shorten the timeline for the outcome to where it becomes impossible or unrealistic, or we just 10x or increase the goal amount or what. result we want to achieve in the timeline we had set. And so time becomes a tool or the goal becomes a tool and we find new pathways. We find new ways of doing this. And I've seen clients do this. I've seen this in reality. We've started doing this in our own business. And this is why we're able to innovate, come up with new ideas, because our brains are alive. This is where you actually shift as an entrepreneur into being a visionary entrepreneur. Because if you're focused on realistic goals, there's no vision. You already know what to do. You know it all. You already know what to do. And so you're not focused on anything different or anything new. There's no vision there. And the Bible says where there's no vision, the people perish, right? You got to some vision. That's leadership. So now you're a visionary, you're a leader. And visionaries and leaders throughout history have always had some sort of goal that everybody said, that's not going to work. That's impossible. Why are you trying so hard? Just focus on something realistic. And the cool thing about these impossible goals is even if you don't hit it, you're not going to beat yourself up. Like if your goal is a thousand doors in a year, but you hit 300, are you going to cry like a little baby? No, you're not going to cry. You're going to be like, Hey, this awesome. You're going to be excited. And so you're still like, I didn't hit the goal, but I won. But if you have a realistic goal and you're like, I want to get a hundred doors this year. then you're going to feel like garbage when you don't hit it. Cause you're like, it's so realistic. know I could have done it and I didn't do it. And then you start beating yourself up and I didn't do it this year, Jason. And I should have signed up with door grow and I just didn't do it. And I would have achieved my realistic goals or maybe some impossible ones. And you drop the ball. You messed up. You should have got with us and we could have helped you out. All right. You messed up. Isn't that from A.A. You done messed up A.A. Ron. Yeah. Okay. Key and peel. right. So here's how to not mess up your maintenance though in property management. OK. That was a segue to our sponsor. was. gave me like three of them and that's did we go with this? OK, cool. So ⁓ yes. So how do I turn that on? boy. All right. Right over here. Many clicks. wait. No, no. I got it. I got it. All right. So. Yeah, you made me close this. because you said it was in the way. Right on the screen. Because you got to like. right. All right. Here we go. Sponsored by this episode, sponsored by vendor. So many of you tell us 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 percent? That's exactly what vendor is achieve their leveraged cutting edge AI technology. Use that to handle nearly all 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, 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. Don't let maintenance drag you down. step up your property management game with Vendoroo. Visit vendoroo.ai ⁓ slash door grow today and make this the last maintenance hire you'll ever need. All right. It was a smooth transit, smooth operator. Cool. I'm leaving this up because I need the outro. Fine. No. Okay. I can't. Sorry. Well, I said no. all right. Cool. So here's what I was thinking originally, right? is... boy. I know. So when you start to think about the things that you want to do... You know when you have that half second where you just dream a little bit? Yeah. And it's almost like you get transported back in time where when you were a kid and people would ask you, what do you want to do when you grow up? And you can say anything. Yeah. And it doesn't matter what you say. You can say anything in the world. I'm going to be leader of the free world. I want to be an astronaut. President of the United States. you should be an astronaut. I wanna be a doctor that operates on, I wanna be a brain surgeon, right? And people go, yeah, you should do that. That's amazing. That's so great. We need to get back to more of that in adulthood though. So now it's like, hey, what do you wanna do with your business? And for some reason, instead of this outlandish, unrealistic, seemingly impossible, crazy thing where it's like, you know what? I wanna take over an entire state. or wanna dominate the entire market, or you know what? Actually, I think what I wanna do is I wanna get so big that I purchase all of my competitors and all of the slumlords properties and I turn them around. And then I completely eliminate bad property managers and slumlords in my market and I'm gonna do that. Man, that's exciting, but we don't allow ourselves to do that anymore as adults because we're so nervous about, but. Can I do that? And what will other people think about it? And will people believe that I can do that if I say this crazy thing? Do you think that it would have been crazy for me to tell people, hey, one day I'm gonna go fly a fighter jet? Yeah, people would have laughed at me. They would have been like, yeah, sure you are. Sure, okay, Sarah, sure. So here's my current goal. And it's not a new goal. It's on the list, but it's definitely staying on the list. My goal is to fly a Boeing 737 without being an airline pilot. You don't want to work for the airlines. So if I went to the airlines, it would be really easy. It's like, oh, okay. I mean, it's not that hard, right? Because you're choosing a path that you know is going to get you there. I don't want to work for the airlines, but I really want to fly a Boeing 737. So without working for the airlines, that seems pretty much impossible. And in fact, I have shared this online on social media and pilots, pilots are telling me that it's impossible. They're like, yeah, good luck. You'll never be able to do that unless you work for the airlines or you could go fly a simulator. Why don't you just be happy with the simulator? So when we share these crazy goals and people go, you can't do that. That's never gonna happen. Are you insane? Like, who do you think you are? That's my favorite one. I'm like, you don't even know who I am, right? Who do you think you are? You can't do that. I'm like, watch me. Watch me. Just watch. So for me, like that's fuel. For other people, it's so crushing. For other people, when people have this huge goal and they're like, ⁓ I'm so excited about this. I'm going to do this. And other people, nay, nay on that. And they go, no, no, no, you can't do that. Let's keep you down here. Let's keep you small. I don't know. You're dreaming too big. Like that's not, it's not going to happen for you. Sometimes that feels really crushing and it takes the wind right out of your sails. And then you go, you know what? Maybe they're right. I shouldn't even try. Okay. So you can either use it as fuel. If you're somebody like me who likes to prove people wrong. then that's great fuel. If that doesn't fuel you, then you need to be very selective with who you tell your goals to. So if you know that, I'm gonna say this thing in the first second that I get pushback or questions or doubt or people who are just fearful and not as confident as I am in my dream and in my belief, and that's gonna shake me and that's maybe not gonna help me. pursue this goal that's going to deter me and bring me down and slow me down, yeah, then you need to be very selective with who you're sharing that goal with. And sometimes you have people around you that are really supportive and sometimes you don't. So the message in this is one, have the goals that just seem like... They are impossible. Like Sarah, there is not a way to fly a Boeing unless you work at the airlines. And I laugh at it. When I see people personally, when I see people commenting like that, I go, ⁓ that is a cue to me. It tells me how small their vision is. Their thinking is limited. So. Yeah. It's kind of it's once you're on the other side of it. Once it's like once you see something you can't unsee it. So once you're on the other side of that and now you hear somebody saying you can't do that. That's not possible. That's not realistic. That's never going to happen. That's not how things work. Who do you think you are? I can't believe you would even think something like that is possible. Is that a good idea? Right. All of those things. Then you start to go home. Well. for someone like that, yeah, it would be impossible, but not for someone like me. So you need to decide, I can do the things that I want to do. And as soon as you make that decision, like flying a fighter jet, super cool. How much effort did we put into making that happen? No, we made a phone call. We paid money. Yeah. He saw a billboard. We put on a jumpsuit. We climbed in the plane. That's it. He saw a billboard. And then we didn't try. didn't. And then I grabbed the little stick thingy. Oh, God. And then I just did it. The joystick. So we didn't try to hunt people down. We didn't try to find a place that we do it. We didn't do a bunch of research. We didn't spend a lot of time talking about it or researching it or. trying to find people who know people. We didn't do anything. We saw a billboard. So sometimes when you have an unrealistic goal, it's okay if you don't know how it's going to happen because it very rarely happens the way that you think it's going to happen anyway. Because once you decide... and once you're confident, once you're solid in that goal and you go, I am committed to doing this crazy thing and I don't care if people think that I'm crazy for wanting to do this thing, I'm going to make it happen. All of a sudden, doors start opening for you, phone calls start happening, connections start happening. Derek and I were just talking about this last week. It's the things that you can They don't know who Derek is. Derek Morton is one of our amazing clients who's taking over the state of Utah. So it's very often the things that you would never expect, you would never plan, you would never be able to sit down and think in like, you know, your 150 step plan to get me from A to B, it wouldn't make the list because the things that will happen to you, they will just come to you. Things will just happen. The right opportunities will show up. The right people will show up. The right connections will show up. Things will just start falling in place and happening for you, but it all stems on one thing, and that is your belief in your ability to do things that are seemingly unrealistic. There you go. Cool. All right. So I concur. I agree. Have impossible or have unrealistic goals. Why? Because when you shift into that level of thinking, no longer is it that yardstick. Now you're in playground. Now you're in this fun space of like imagining, having vision, and it doesn't matter if you hit it or not. It just, it shifts you into a healthier space of thinking. And then you'll find new pathways. You'll find new ideas. You'll find ways to collapse time. ⁓ Ben Hardy calls it finding wormholes. You find these ways to get to the result in a much shorter period of time that takes way less steps. It's not as much work. He wrote a preceding book before that, that was called 10 X is easier than two X. And in that he's talking about how It's actually easier to go bigger than to focus on smaller growth goals because smaller growth goals, there's a lot of different ways to do it and it's a lot of hard work, but there's very few ways to grow big quickly and it's usually less steps and less work. So a of people think, well, it's going to be so hard. It's actually easier if you do it right. So have some impossible goals. Okay. Anything else we need to add to this? One last thing is we have a... Seemingly impossible goal right now a door grow that we are yet again Making a reality. It will be something that changes the entire property management industry forever and No one has done it. No one has done anything like it and it seems crazy it seems like Insane to even really think about it. However... We're gonna make it happen. And 2026, we are launching something that really will take over the entire industry. So stay tuned. Watch our crazy journey. We've talked a little bit about it. ⁓ Watch our crazy journey and see what happens when you too set yourself some pretty impossible goals. Cool. So if you felt stuck or stagnant, and want to take your property management business to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com. For free training on how to get unlimited free leads, text the word leads to 512-648-4608. Also, join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners by going to doorgrowclub.com. And if you want tips, tricks, ideas to learn about maybe some of our offers as well, go to... ⁓ dorgor.com slash subscribe and subscribe to our newsletter. And if you found this episode even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe on whatever channel you're watching this on 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. All right, we're out.

DGS 328: Why Property Managers Miss Millions in Syndication Deals

When your corporate job feels "secure" until it suddenly isn't, real estate can become the Plan B that turns into your best move… In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, DoorGrow founder Jason Hull sits down with John Casmon (multifamily syndicator, host of Multifamily Insights, and co-creator of the Midwest Real Estate Networking Summit) to break down how corporate professionals can transition into multifamily investing without becoming a stressed-out landlord. They dive into how John went from corporate bankruptcies to building a multifamily portfolio, what passive investors actually need to know before putting money into a deal, and why trust + clear expectations matter just as much as the numbers. Jason and John also unpack what this means for property managers: how to align with investor goals, why the best operators project calm control (even in chaos), where syndicators hang out, and how PMs can position themselves to win more multifamily doors. You'll Learn (00:00) Transforming Property Management: An Introduction (00:59) John Casmon's Entrepreneurial Journey (02:56) Transitioning to Multifamily Investing (04:33) Understanding Investor Types and Property Management (05:48) The Role of Property Managers (07:49) Investor Control vs. Trust in Management (09:33) Challenges in Property Management (11:17) Aligning Goals with Property Managers (14:19) The Real Product of Property Management (17:14) Managing Investor Expectations (19:50) Syndication: A New Avenue for Property Managers (23:44) Legal Considerations in Syndication (26:41) Calmness in Chaos: The Key to Success (31:40) Partnering with Syndications (33:54 The Role of Property Management in Syndication (38:29) Finding Syndicators and Building Relationships (42:24) Understanding Passive Investment in Syndication (47:45) Identifying Your Investment Goals (51:54) Assessing Risk in Real Estate Investments (55:15) Choosing the Right Market for Investment (01:00:12) The Three C's of Raising Capital Quotables "The first C is confidence. Confidence comes from preparation." "The investment itself, we got to go out there and execute. But that investor psyche is a completely different game." "It is not your job to hope. Your job is to analyze the information in front of you and make an informed decision." 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 (00:01) All right, five, four, three, two, one. 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. And for over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. 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. So my guest today, I'm hanging out here with John Casman, a multifamily syndicator, host of the multifamily insights podcast and the co-creator of the Midwest real estate networking summit. And in today's episode, John's going to break down how corporate professionals can transition. into multifamily investing, how to find the best markets, how to raise capital effectively, and what separates successful operators from everyone else. John, welcome to the DoorGrowth Show. John Casmon (01:10) Yeah, Jason, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Love the intro, your intro, not my intro, ⁓ but excited to be here and share as much as we can on our journey to help all of your listeners reach their goals. Jason Hull (01:22) Cool. So John, ⁓ it's great to have you. I would love for people to hear about your entrepreneurial journey. How did you get to where you are now? And then we can get into your business. John Casmon (01:34) Well, the short answer is bankruptcy, right? I worked for a couple of different companies that went through bankruptcy and that really made me consider my other options. You know, I was at General Motors back in 2007, 2008, 2009 when we went through bankruptcy and I was there and I watched what that did to a lot of my peers. I one day in particular when we were going to have a lot of layoffs, I went to work as late as I could. But when I got there, I had a red message, a little red dial on your phone. for anybody who's worked in corporate and remember voicemails. So I had a red dot on my phone, picked it up, pushed the play button and my heart skipped a beat because I thought maybe I was getting to the can, right? And it was actually a colleague of mine who sat kind of kitty corner in front of me and he had been let go. He, you know, was diabetic. He didn't know I was going to pay for his medication. He just was venting in his voicemail. And I just remember feeling empathy for him, but also a sense of I just never wanted to be in that situation. So it made me really start to think about Plan B. Eventually I moved to Chicago, realized real estate was going to be that path and learned everything I could about investing. So it kind of took me down that pathway to say, you know what, I need a Plan B because no matter what you do, when you work in corporate America, you do not control your future. You know, there's politics, there's policy, there's a lot of different things involved that you do not control. And sometimes it does just come down to someone not liking you for whatever reason, or they think you're a threat. And I didn't want to spend the rest of my career navigating those issues. So I figured I had to take more into my own hands. Jason Hull (03:16) got it. And so you start taking things in your own hands and what was the result? John Casmon (03:20) Yes. So we landed on multifamily investing, started with small multifamily. My first investment was a two unit building. We house hacked it, which is a common popular phrase now. But back then it wasn't quite as common. But we lived upstairs. We rented out the first floor unit and it worked great. You know, it worked so great that we went to refinance and we had created enough equity in that first investment to pull out a six figure line of credit and go out and buy another property. So. Jason Hull (03:45) Nice. John Casmon (03:47) That really got the ball rolling. bought a three unit building, we bought an eight unit building, and at this time I'm still working in advertising, still working in corporate America, and I enjoyed what I was doing, and I just had my second child, but the agency I was working for also went through bankruptcy right at this time. We had expanded, we were growing, and we had kind of combined with a few other agencies and kind of became this little conglomerate, and it just eroded just as quickly as it grew. I remember again, just sitting there and I've got some real estate. I've got a little bit of cashflow, but not enough to pay all my bills. New baby. And I just realized this real estate thing is working, but the exact strategy I'm employing doesn't allow me to insulate myself from these economic changes and shifts. So I had to change my strategy and that led me to syndication. Since then, we've acquired over $150 million worth of apartments. We've partnered with busy professionals to buy these properties and give them some passive income. And that's what we've been doing ever since. Jason Hull (04:50) Got it. So your area of genius really is helping these people that were similar to you, they're in the corporate environment transition into being an investor in real estate. John Casmon (05:01) Yeah, exactly. And I would say too, it doesn't have to be you're going to quit your job and do this full time. And in fact, most people don't, you know, but most people do want a little bit more control over their life. You want a little bit more flexibility. You want to earn and start building up, you know, your net worth. You want to have a little bit more liquidity. You have to look at your investments to say, what should you be doing? I think most people know that their 401k, their, you know, company issued life insurance. probably not enough to really get you on the fast track to retirement. So what else could you do? Certainly you can invest in the stock market. Lots of folks do that. But real estate is a proven vehicle. The challenge is, I don't know anyone who really wants to be a landlord, right? ⁓ Certainly you want the benefits of real estate investing, but very few of us want to get those 2 a.m. phone calls. So the shortcut there is, ⁓ hire a property manager. Great solution. But now you have to be able to manage property managers, right, which is this whole other business. And if you don't have enough scale, then it's hard to get that person really focused on your business. So we offer an alternative, right? You get all the benefits of real estate investing, all the ownership perks without any of the headaches of being the landlord yourself. So it really is a great marriage of being in real estate without having to do the heavy lifting yourself. Jason Hull (06:15) Okay. Okay, so ⁓ the target audience of this show are property managers. So if they're not gonna use property managers, then what's the alternative? How does this work? John Casmon (06:29) Well, first of all, what we do is not always for that individual. So I think that's the key, right? You've got to understand who you are from a psychological standpoint. So when it comes to investors, there's two types of investors. One wants control, right? They're not willing to be passive. And some people think they want to be passive until they're in a passive situation and then they're calling and they want to know why you did this and why you did that and how come you did do that. That's not a passive investor. And that's fun. Jason Hull (06:45) Yeah. Yeah, they're anxious. Yeah. Yeah. John Casmon (06:58) And if that's you, you should be active, right? And you should work with a property manager, but you also want to work with the property manager who is going to be right for you, right? Because sometimes that is not how they operate. So you want to understand that. And that's a process to understand who you are as an investor, what kind of investment strategy fits you and what's going to be right there. When it comes to property managers, though, I think there are a couple of things. And as a matter of fact, we just left out of meeting with property management company yesterday. They have 2000 units. We talked about some other services that we offer. And one of things that stood out to me was just understanding some of the challenges that property managers face. And one of them is property managers are really in a position to think like everyone. They're supposed to think like an investor. They're supposed to understand maintenance and kind of the construction arm enough to understand what needs to happen at a property. But they are really little CEOs, right? Because for Our stuff, the large apartment stuff, those are typically million dollar annual revenue businesses. And this person is in charge of that asset of that business. They are making the day to day decisions. They are the face for the residents, aka the customers of that business. They are the face and their experience with that individual is how they view that business. So it really is an important role. And if you're working with property managers, it's really important to understand how to find the right people. to connect with them and have them represent your business, your brand, company in the right light. Jason Hull (08:30) So now you left an open loop that I want to close. So you said there's two types of investors, those that want control and maybe should go find a property manager, you said. And then what's the other type? John Casmon (08:34) Yeah. The other type is those who don't want control and they trust someone else to handle that. And for them, there are a couple of different ways of investing. One is investing passively with a group like ours. The other is turnkey investing where again, you hire a property manager, but you really entrust them to manage the property. The only thing I would say for either one of those groups, myself included, is you want to trust but verify. Okay. You've got to do a lot of your due diligence upfront. You want to understand how they operate. You want to talk to some of their other clients, some of their other investors, because you need to get a really good sense of what to expect. And a lot of people are great at selling themselves upfront, right? I can tell you everything you want to hear upfront. You want to know what is it like once you sign the paperwork? How often are we going to talk? How frequently am I going to get updates? And at what point am I able to weigh in and make decisions? Because if, if you are someone who wants to be more active or be heard, or you've got thoughts and opinions, Jason Hull (09:18) yeah. John Casmon (09:35) You want to make sure you have a voice in your investment. Otherwise you may get really disappointed or you may bring on someone who has a different perspective of what that relationship looks like and that never is going to work out. Jason Hull (09:47) Yeah, there's a big challenge in the industry and that's that most property management companies suck. so most investors that have dealt with property management to some degree are they have some scar tissue, they've been burned a little bit. They've a lot of property managers that started their businesses that come to me for help to grow their business. They started because they were investor and they couldn't find anyone else to manage the property good enough. And that's why they started their business, but it can be a difficult business to run. so none of them start their business saying, I want to suck. But that's kind of the default unless they get some really good support or figure some things out through a lot of trial and error. And so that's where DoorGrow comes in. We help them with that. But one of the things I coach my clients on a lot is that they need to shift into being daddy over these rental properties. They need to like tell the owner, hey, you need to trust me. And they need to be able to have a really effective business so that they can lean into that trust. because a lot of people are anxious. They'll come to them with concerns, but generally if a property manager is good, they're much better at this investing stuff than most investors. And they're much better at coordinating maintenance. They're much better at handling leasing. And so when an owner tries to micromanage a property manager, it kind of doesn't make sense to hire somebody to manage your asset just so you can manage them to do the job. And so I think the secret is finding a really good property manager that you can let go of control because you can trust them. And but yes, you need to verify that they can do the job that you need them to do. And so a good property manager will take ownership of it and they'll take control and they will, they'll display a lot of certainty and confidence in how they communicate and they won't allow you to micromanage them is what I've seen. So. John Casmon (11:37) Yeah, Jason, and I'll add to it. There's a two way street there. And I think it's easy for people to say, ⁓ most property managers suck or they're not good or whatever. And listen, there's certainly a lot of challenges there. A lot of folks who are not living up to par to the standards. But I will go back to this. We ask property managers to do the work of generally like a CEO. Right. I mean, again, they're managing million dollar businesses in many cases, yet they don't have that training. They don't have that experience. They don't have the ability to navigate. all of these various things. So part of what owners and investors need to also understand is that you play the role of asset manager. And that means giving clear direction of what success looks like so that that property manager has a framework to make decisions. It's not to micromanage those decisions, but to help them understand how their decisions impact the greater good. And part of that is like, again, just sitting down with annual goals. What are revenue goals? What are our goals on? Occupancy, what are our goals on in a lot? And this may seem simple, but I promise you a lot of folks don't do this. And if you don't do that, then that property manager is going to default to, for instance, I'll give you a great example. I've got a property manager. She's awesome rock star. But she always gets nervous when occupancy is not at like 96 or 97 percent of this property. So she is, you she starts apologizing profusely and all I did this or done that and like. Jason Hull (12:58) Yeah. John Casmon (13:04) Occupancy is one of our KPIs for sure. It's important, but that is not the KPI. I am focused on my net operating income. And if we're going to push rents, the impact of that is you're going to have higher vacancy and she is not comfortable with that. And that's probably because she's used to working with owners who want that thing fully rented and they are comfortable having 100 % occupancy. Jason Hull (13:13) Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. John Casmon (13:33) if they're leaving 50 bucks, 75 bucks, whatever it is of rent on the table. And that's the part where you've got to really align with your vision versus their vision, because what they have in the back of their mind may not completely align with what you have. Or they have residents in their face who are coming into the office. They want something fixed. They want it done quickly. They want it done right. They want it done yesterday. Jason Hull (13:49) Right. . John Casmon (13:59) So they've got that pressure of this person in their face. So they may go out there and spend the money or authorize the money to get spent. And maybe they're not picking the most cost effective measure. So you have that. And I'll give you one third one. A lot of times when you run into the flip side of that is maybe occupancy is low. They say, hey, we need to increase our marketing spend, right? We got to increase our marketing budget. know, ox is down to 88 or 90%. We got to spend more money. And we're not necessarily. really zeroing in on what the specific issue or challenge is at that property. So for an owner, your job as an asset manager is to partner with them and to help them see what the options are, help them work through with some of those challenges and solutions are and partner with them to find success. It's not to micromanage them and tell them what to do, but it's really to understand the situation better and give them that perspective. Jason Hull (14:49) Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. think, you know, one of the things I've seen is that I've noticed a lot of property managers, they make the mistake of thinking that the goal or the product that people want to buy from them is property management. But investors don't wake up in the morning and go, man, I'm so excited to get property management today. The thing that they want. And so the way I describe it to them as they say, property management is like the flight to Hawaii. It's not Hawaii. and you're trying to sell the flight. That's not the exciting part. You need to figure out what the investor wants, what their goal is. Where do they want to go? What's Hawaii for them, right? What's paradise? And then how do we optimize for that? And how do we help them create a path for that? Because the actual product that a property manager is selling is not what they do. It's not property management. The actual product is them. It's them and their values and their belief system and how they create trust and the team they build and the system and mechanism they build around them. That's the actual product the property manager is selling. so a lot of property managers make that mistake. They sit there and talk to you about maintenance coordination and leasing and inspections. And meanwhile, you're just wondering as an investor, can I even trust this person? Like do our values align? Yeah. So I don't know what your thoughts are on that, but. John Casmon (16:11) I think you're spot on, right? Because, I mean, ultimately, as an investor, you are only as good as the team you can build. And that property manager is in charge of the day-to-day aspects of the business. especially when you, you know, I've heard horror stories of folks who have done like turnkey investing, right? Where the property manager, someone owns it, they buy it, they fix it up, and then they rent it back to... an investor. And I've heard horror stories where that property was not being well managed. And that's the fear. If you're not in that marketing, you can't come and see it. So if you got an out of town investor, you really are trusting that property manager. So that is the most important thing, right? Everything else are tactical, daily situational things that can change. But it comes down to do I have the right people, people that I can trust, people who are going to make the right decision based on the information they have. because they may not know what I know or maybe something shifted and changed where they would have made a different decision. We can't, you know, ache on that. It really comes down to are they doing their best? Are they making good decisions? If they're not making good decisions, is it because they didn't have the correct information, which again, could fall back on you as the investor to say, hey, are they aware of what your goals are? Are they aware of maybe this situation, these tools, these resources, whatever it is? And that's on you to sit and collaborate. But trust is absolutely paramount because at end of the day, the thing that I think most of us are concerned with is who we partner with. And there's a great book I'm reading right now. And it gets into decision making and the fear of decision making for most of us and why deals stall. Why didn't you hire somebody? Why didn't you, you know, go with the vendor or go with the contractor or with the company? And the biggest thing is we are scared of making the wrong choice. All of us in decision and no action. Jason Hull (17:43) Absolutely. John Casmon (18:04) is better than the wrong action for many people because they once they take action. Well, now they're blaming themselves because you didn't pick the right person. Why did you hire that guy? You should have like now this starts to go on in their head versus doing nothing. Well, at least it's you know, it's not going to get worse, you know, it will in lot of cases get worse. So for a lot of people, that is the scariest thing. So if you can take that fear off the table as far as being the right person or being someone who is trustworthy. Jason Hull (18:07) Right, yeah. John Casmon (18:32) everything else gets easier. So if you can do that, that's, you know, the best thing you can do as an investor or as a property manager. Jason Hull (18:38) Yeah, I agree. think one of things that I talk about a lot is that clarity has to come before action because if you don't have clarity and you start taking a bunch of action, doing stuff, every action you take is a little bit wrong. Sometimes it's a lot wrong. so, yeah, we need to get that clarity first before we start ⁓ making moves. And you talked about, I love the example of your property manager that is trying to optimize maybe for the wrong thing. They're like, want to optimize to the, making sure their vacancy is super low. But that might not be the goal. That's not the primary goal. The goal is money, you know, and there's a really good book is by Elihu Goldratt. It's a good book for operations people, but it's called The Goal. And spoiler alert, the guy's trying to figure out the goal through this whole book, the story and it's money. That's the secret. The goal is the of the business, should be making making money. And what happens in this book is that people are over optimizing individual pieces in this flow at this warehouse. And it's actually not helping to make money. It's causing more constraint. And so if we over optimize at one stage, it actually creates waste, bloat, inventory, additional work for the next stage. And so sometimes the best thing certain departments can do is slow down and do less in order to get the outcome to be maximized outcome. And there's some really great examples in that that I think are really powerful. But I think the if you're optimizing for the wrong thing, then you're not making it effective. So you want to make sure you're optimizing for the right thing. Otherwise. ensues. You get mad at somebody, but nobody understood what the goal was. And so I think, yeah, getting a greed upon set of criteria of what what the outcome is and asking the property manager, can you help me achieve this? And they know, they know if they know what the problem is, usually they can, they know how to help you get whatever goal that you have. And they know whether your goal is probably realistic or not, because they've helped probably a lot of people do this similarly. And so, but yeah, I think it's very important. Make sure you know, where's Hawaii and maybe property management is the vehicle. Now you had mentioned like, I'm really curious about this idea of, you know, maybe creating syndications. Some property managers are now starting to think, maybe I should create a syndication. What's your criteria for, what's a good syndication and what are some of the, I'd be really curious to get into if some of the property managers listening were wanting to do kind of a little bit of what you do, how they might be able to get started in that. Like what are the beginning steps to make sure they don't make the mistakes you probably already figured out in the beginning? John Casmon (21:27) Well, I think the first thing is, you really want to get into it? Right. Because for a lot of people, you got to understand it's a different business. Now you're not talking about real estate investing. You're not talking about property management. You're really talking more about, you know, investment management. You're talking about bringing on private investors who are looking for a return. That is communication skills. That's building up a network and a database of Jason Hull (21:35) Mm-hmm. Right, returns. John Casmon (21:54) prospective investors, it's understanding the return projections that they're looking for. And it's really kind of managing the investor expectations, not necessarily the investment. And to give you a great example here, I had a deal where the investment went great, but it was slightly lower than what we initially projected. And I had an investor who was upset. Jason Hull (22:07) Yeah. Yeah. John Casmon (22:23) about that. And we had communicated all throughout the entire process where things sat and he wasn't too upset, but he still made it a point to let me know, hey, well, this is less than what you initially thought. And that's challenging because the market shifts, right? Anybody who's bought properties in 2022 and beyond knows the market has shifted drastically over the last three or four years. So those projections made in a 2021-22 environment Have a hard time standing up in a 25 26 environment We still make good money on that deals double-digit returns for investors ⁓ But you know there was that that was that feedback I got from one of the investors conversely We just exited deal a couple months ago, and we completely exceeded our return projections You know we delivered on a almost a 2.7 equity multiple Hit all you know mid 20s on the IRR completely unheard of stuff in this environment And I have one investor call me and say, hey, John, I just checked my account. Is this right? And I'm like, yeah, it's it's right, man. He's like, my gosh, you guys killed it, man. my. Like, this is amazing. And it's great to hear. But again, that is separate from the investment. Right. Happy to manage the investor expectations and concerns. But that was an up and down investment where we had, you know, a moment where we actually had to put some of our general partner capital into the deal to keep it going. Jason Hull (23:27) Yeah. Yeah. John Casmon (23:48) We have floating rate debt. had to refinance out of that. And we had to kind of rush to do that before rates started to go crazy. We had moments where our construction or renovation costs were much higher than we anticipated. So there are a lot of things that we had to navigate. And I think what happens for a lot of operators, a lot of people who get into syndication, they know the real estate and want to do the real estate, but they do not understand the perspective of the investor. And when you don't communicate to investors on a frequent basis and a clear, transparent nature, Jason Hull (24:19) Yeah. Yeah. John Casmon (24:19) They fill in the blanks and the first concern every investor has and they won't say it. Most of time they don't say it, but I promise you they're thinking it after they make that investment. my gosh, did I make a mistake? Am I going to lose money? Is this person going to run off? Is this going to be some sort of fraudulent thing? Is this deal going to fail? These are all that we're wired like that. This is caveman stuff, right? We're wired to protect ourselves. Jason Hull (24:36) Hmm. Right. John Casmon (24:45) And when you make an investment, and by the way, our investments are typically $50,000 and up, right? So these are not small investments. So when you make that investment, people start to second guess that decision. So my job when it comes to this side of the business is to keep them grounded that, hey, you've done your research, you've made an informed decision, you've picked a good partner, we've done this before. ⁓ Jason Hull (24:50) Yeah. Right. John Casmon (25:13) And it's really to make sure that they feel comfortable with that decision. It has nothing to do with the investment, right? The investment itself, we got to go out there and execute. But that investor psyche is a completely different game. So first thing I would tell any of your property managers when they get into this business is understand, do you actually like people? Do you want to manage investors? Are you comfortable managing people's money? ⁓ And then beyond that, you have to do it the legal way. There are a lot of regulations around accepting capital from other people. Jason Hull (25:31) you John Casmon (25:42) So you can do it as a joint venture. The more common way of doing it, the more accepted way of doing this is by doing a formal syndication, which requires you to file SEC documentations. ⁓ know, there's regulation D and regulation A and there's some couple others, but typically it's going to be reg D 506 B or 506 C filing, which basically is the the structure that allows you to offer ⁓ passive investment opportunity or a security to investors. So again, for some people, It's overwhelming. they're like, nope, never mind. But for some people, they love it. They want to get into it and they can learn more about that process. Jason Hull (26:19) Got it. Yeah. I think I love your idea that it's more about managing expectations rather than the investments. And I think, I think that's good advice for all the property managers listing. This is something we spend a lot of time coaching clients on because they think their job is to manage properties. But really, if they're not strong in managing expectations and managing the relationship, it's 10 times to 100 times harder to manage the properties. their operational costs go through the roof because owners are getting anxious. They're asking more questions. They're getting all these interruptions and calls, tenants, owners constantly. And if they had just managed the relationship and expectations and set strong boundaries at the outset, everybody would feel calmer. And I think really for business owners, I think the thing that really stood out to me that I've been focused on, and this is I've done some personal coaching and this is just nervous system regulation. If you can, and John, seem like you're pretty chill and pretty calm and I'm sure the investor feel safe with you, which is why you've had success. If you are a person that is anxious and you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off, you're going to have, you're going to struggle in leading anybody, especially in relationships to your spouse and like everybody else. so having a calm, regulated nervous system allows your investors. to entrain to your nervous system and to feel safer and to calm down. And that's not something you can pretend or you can just fake. You have to be that and they can sense and they can feel that it'll come across in your tone and in your body language and how you communicate. But if you can make sure that you're in that space and that you're able to regulate your own system, you're able to stay calm when other people are coming at you. and other people are angry and other people are emotionally heightened. And you recognize this isn't really you. It's just that's them. And you can maintain that calm. You will be able to create a lot more safety. And that's really what people want to buy. Most people out there, their primary basic need is safety and security. Most people. That's why they aren't entrepreneurs. That's why they don't go start jobs. That's why they aren't like you and me. And if you're a property management business owner listening to this, Most people are not like you. They want safety and security. That's why they get a property manager. They want peace of mind. And so, and I'm sure investors in a syndication, they also want some peace of mind because this is a big chunk of change. John Casmon (28:55) They do. And I will say to most of the property managers I come across thrive in chaos. Right. They're used to stuff getting thrown at them. Right. And when you talk to them and get to know them, you learn very quickly. They like it. They do. They like the fact that they don't know what the day is going to bring. It could be a. Yeah, yeah. Could be a tenant coming with some crazy issue. It could be something from it's never boring and they thrive in it. However. Jason Hull (29:00) Yeah. Yeah. They like the variety and unique challenges that property management brings, for sure. It's never boring. John Casmon (29:25) What happens then if you if they're going to look to work with investors and particularly raise capital and kind of do their own syndications, they have to understand that while they may thrive in chaos and uncertainty, most other people want organization. You want everything you said right. You want to have the calmness. You are looking for a captain to steer the ship. And for that part of the personality, they're going to have to tap into a different side of it to demonstrate how they handle chaos. Jason Hull (29:37) Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. John Casmon (29:54) not that they are chaotic. And I think what happens a lot of times when you're working with property managers is that they don't project that level of control. It just feels like they're reacting. So part of it is that, and they're really, really good ones. The ones who make it to that next level who are the regional managers and get those promotions, well, that's what they do. They manage the chaos and they manage up. They do a great job of telling the owners, Jason Hull (30:06) Yeah. Mm. John Casmon (30:23) the leadership, whoever they need to talk to, they're telling them, hey, here's how here's our process. Here's how we're managing the situation. Here's what's going on. Here's what we're into. Hey, we had a water main burst here. Here's we bought. call three companies. We've got three quotes, but it's calm, right? It can be the worst. I'll give you a real example, right? At a fire, one of my properties and I was going to meet a property manager and I just happened to have a meeting with her that day at the property. She called me. I was literally about to get in the car. She called me and said, Hey, I just want to let you know we've got a fire going on at the property. I'm not sure if you still want to meet. You're happy to come. We already have, you know, the fire department's here. They're they're putting the fire out right now. We already have another company that's coming in. They're going to walk through the damages once this is kind of settled. And I've already talked to the residents. Residents are good. We've got them hotels for the evening. We've checked with insurance. This is covered in your policy. So they're good to go. So you're happy to come down and talk and all of that if you want to. Or we can let things settle down and maybe we can meet next week. This is a fire, right? This is like a scary situation. She called me. Jason Hull (31:26) Right. A literal fire. Yeah. And there's plenty of fires in managing properties. The literal ones. John Casmon (31:33) Her calmness, she was so calm. Not only was she calm, she had handled 90 % of it, right? It was the stuff you could handle in the moment. She handled it. So was like, hey, I don't think it makes sense for me to because I'm probably just going to add more anxiety to the situation at this point, right? It seems like you've got it under control. Why don't we let things settle, literally let the dust settle? And then once it's there, I'll come down. We can assess the damages, figure out what else needs to happen, what other next steps need to take place, right? Jason Hull (31:41) Yeah? huh. question. Yeah. John Casmon (32:03) but had it handled like a rock star. Now, a lot of other folks would have saw the flames, called immediately, my God, there's a fire. ⁓ my God, what are we gonna do? So now you freaking out, everyone's freaking out, no one's controlling the situation, right? So now everyone's mind is just spinning and going. it does really take, kind of go back to where we started the conversation, that mindset of someone who was the boss, who was leading. Jason Hull (32:05) Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Freaking out. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. John Casmon (32:32) who is going to take charge, even though it's not their property, they're going to take charge. Here's what needs to happen next. Maybe you have an emergency response plan already put in place, but you have these things already scheduled and ready to go. So when they happen, you're not shocked. You're not surprised. You're not asking questions that maybe you should have figured out upfront. And that's what a great property manager does. And if you convey that to owners, you're going to stand out above and beyond your competition because most people cannot convey that level of control, the level of planning and the level of expertise that it takes to truly and effectively manage properties from the front, being proactive as opposed to just reacting to whatever the issue of the day is. Jason Hull (33:13) Got it, okay. So ⁓ I'm reading, I just read, well, I didn't just read. I read in the past a really great book called Extreme Ownership. Really good book. Yeah, phenomenal book. ⁓ I'm going through their newer book, which I think is even better, called The Dichotomy of Leadership. leadership is what we're talking about right now, is that that, John Casmon (33:23) Yeah, I think I got it like right here. It is right there. Absolutely. Jason Hull (33:38) creates a huge impact and there's a lot of misunderstandings of what leadership is, like it's control or it's being aggressive or, but yeah, it's really that calm presence of letting people know I've got it. Like we can take care of this. We've got a plan and staying regulated and calm. So I love that. ⁓ have a, so another question I have is how can the property managers listen to this? How could they maybe target or partner with, if possible, syndications like you, like people that are doing what you're doing. Is there a chance that they could be a resource or do most syndications just in-house and do, they are a property management business? John Casmon (34:19) No, no, most ⁓ most that I know work with third party manager companies. So I would say first and foremost, if you and syndications, I mean, it sounds like a big, huge, fancy word. But I mean, honestly, anytime you work with passive investors is technically a syndication. So it really comes down to figuring out who is looking for third party management and whether or not it's technically a syndication or not is really irrelevant. You want someone who is going to be managing or owning the property. Jason Hull (34:24) Okay. Yeah. John Casmon (34:49) They want third party, but you have to understand their plan, going back to understanding the goals, right? Most syndications are looking to sell in a three to seven year timeframe, typically five to seven years. Most buy and hold owners have not decided or have not identified their exit strategy. So that's probably the biggest difference is when you have, let's just call it an individual investor or maybe it's a Jason Hull (35:01) Okay. Right. John Casmon (35:17) a family or whatever that's buying and they want a third party manager, they don't know the exit. They haven't predetermined that they're going to sell in five years. So they are buying and holding it. And that goes back to the the I think the separation of understanding the objective, because for that person, having a full property is great. It means they're maximizing the revenue potential today. When you are syndicating. most syndicators already assume 5 % vacancy. That's that's in everyone's underwriting. So you being at 100, they won't even give you credit banks don't even give you credit for it. So all of these things are already assumed. So for us to be above that is actually a miss, because it means we're not being as aggressive on the rent. So just understanding the mindset of a syndicator, which is they are looking to sell typically they're looking to double their money over a five or six year period. So how can you create value? And that's something most property managers don't fully understand. But I would sit and I would talk to that syndicator. And if you want to be a syndicator or partners, not just be a third party vendor, but you actually want a partner, which we have seen a lot of folks look to do. You want to figure out how you can bring value to the table, because now we are aligning your interest with that syndicators interest. And now you've got a great partnership. because every syndicator is going to need property management and they're going to need construction management to drive value. So if they can bring those people in as partners, that's a great opportunity for you. And if you're a property manager, you may have phenomenal relationships. You may already have contractor or the vendor partners that you trust in that marketplace. And if you could then take that and get a slice of the equity, that makes you very valuable for both sides. Jason Hull (37:08) Do syndications, do they also need investors in capital or do most of them have that, are they really good at that? Okay. John Casmon (37:15) Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. mean, I mean, syndication at its core really just comes down to the need of capital. If someone had the capital themselves, they would probably just buy it directly and not go through the process of syndication. Because the syndication is literally just raising the money from passive investors. And in that scenario, again, being able to manage that, manage the communication, ⁓ that's really what a syndication truly is. Jason Hull (37:42) So a really good property management partner could bring property management, some of the construction elements and investors and capital to the table. So it could be a nice little. John Casmon (37:51) That would be amazing. I'll be honest, man. That's because I don't want your listeners sitting here like, oh, I don't have one of those. I don't know if I've ever met one that had all of those. If you do have all of them, yes, you should consider syndicating yourself because you got all the pieces to the puzzle. Typically, what happens is a property manager has the property managers. I'll give you a great example. I got a 54 unit down in North Carolina. OK, so I came in as a key principal. I've got a. Jason Hull (38:03) Okay. Okay. John Casmon (38:20) to my coaching clients. It's his property that he found. He asked me to come help him with the loan, which I did. One of the members, one of the partners is the property manager. So that's kind of their role to the table is they're managing the property. That's what they kind of came on. They had a couple of relationships, but their main role is the asset and property management side of it. So that's a great way to come to the table. But. Just like anything else in business. Jason Hull (38:33) Mm-hmm. John Casmon (38:49) It's very hard to find someone who checks every single box. I mean, that's like finding the marketer who's a CMO, who's also the CFO, who's also the COO, who's also the chief of human resource. very like no one, people don't really have like top notch excellent skills at every single one of those, right? Like you might be great at business, great at sales, great at marketing. You're probably terrible at finance, right? Like you just, you just forget to do your expense report type person, right? So it's hard to find someone who's checks all those boxes. And I think typically when comes to property management, you want someone who's great with people, can resolve issues, but also has to be somewhat, you know, sufficient when it comes to the numbers, tracking all the data, tracking all the, you know, the rent roll, the leases, the income and expense statements, things like that. So usually they're not going to do every single box. But again, if you can find someone or that's where partnerships make sense. Jason Hull (39:24) Mm-hmm. John Casmon (39:43) If you've got that awesome. And again, I'm not saying a company doesn't have that. I'm just saying a single individual doesn't, which is why it's great to partner. If you can find someone who maybe brings a set of skills that you don't have, whether they're joining you in your property management business or they're partnering up where you're bringing your property management skills to the table with their investing or their networking skills, that makes for a good partnership. Jason Hull (39:43) Mm-hmm. Yeah, I got it. Well, we've got several clients, you know, all over the U S that are really good at property management. They're really good at handling the maintenance stuff and they obviously have a pool of investors as clients and, and, know, and they know that they can't do everything. So we coach them in making sure that they would do time studies. They figure out which, what their purpose is. We start to align them towards more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution and more support in their business. John Casmon (40:32) Yeah. Jason Hull (40:38) And they start to build the right team. So they're getting operators, they're getting BDMs, they're getting the things they're not like strong in. And so we just make healthier businesses. So for those of maybe my clients listening that have healthy property management companies. And, but they don't want to do syndication. They're just like, man, that's a whole nother business. If I stay in my lane, I can grow that faster. How do they find syndicates? Like, how do they find people like you? Cause you've got a lot of properties connected to you. and they would probably love to chat with somebody like you. Where do you syndicate people hang out? What's the title? Who runs a syndicate? What are they called? Do they have a specific title? John Casmon (41:15) You Yeah. Yeah, great. Great question. Multifamily syndicator is is kind of the name just syndicator. We're all over. So I've got a podcast called Multifamily Insights. I interview like minded individuals. I've been doing that for a long time. We've done our seven hundred and seventy plus episode. So lots of people, lots of syndicators there. Definitely conferences. So if you look up any multifamily conference in your city. Jason Hull (41:25) Okay. Nice. Okay. John Casmon (41:46) meetups, lot of meetups in different cities as well. Those are great places to find syndicators. I think the biggest thing though is this. Figure out who your avatar is. Because while we're talking about syndicators, ultimately, if you want to scale your property management business, I presume you're trying to scale with folks who are looking for third party management and the best option for that. OK, and let me back up. had one of the guests out of a podcast some years back, ⁓ Ashley Wilson. Love Ashley. As you said, something really changed when I thought about the business. And she said the best way to find any vendor, any vendor is to figure out who relies on that vendor next and ask them for referral. So if you think about it, if you want a great drywall person, ask a painter. A painter is going to know who's great at drywall because they're going to know who makes their job easy and they can come in and just start painting versus a drywall guy who maybe doesn't, you know, you know. Jason Hull (42:38) I like it. John Casmon (42:55) mud the drywall properly or doesn't sand it down. So they got to do all this extra work before they start their process. Right. So a painter is going to know a great drywall guy. And in this case, it's really hard on ⁓ the property manager because you guys are the ones who do the work. But if you are looking for syndicators, OK, well syndicators, person who buys the deal. Well, who sells the deal? A broker. Find brokers. Go to a broker, commercial multifamily broker and ask them, hey, Jason Hull (43:01) I love this. Yeah. John Casmon (43:25) Do you know some groups or you have properties that you're going to list? Here are the kind of deals we want to do now on the flip side of that. You got to be good at your job, right? You got to sell yourself and share what you do. So if you've got a great track record, a great resume, showcase that, bring that broker through and let them know, hey, we're looking to scale our property management business here. Here are the kind of assets that we want to manage. If you come across any of these that you're going to list, would you mind keeping our main name out there or referring us or giving us introductions to any of those buyers? Jason Hull (43:53) Yeah. John Casmon (43:54) so that we can throw our hat in the running to manage these properties. That's a phenomenal way to do that. And it allows you to shine and expand your relationships in your core networks and in your core markets. Jason Hull (44:06) Brilliant. think I love the, I love Ashley's idea that you shared, you know, the drywall. Yeah. The painters, like they don't want to be painting over a crappy drywall. They're like, this is a mess. Like this doesn't even look good in my job. Now I'm going to look bad. Yeah. So the brokers know who maybe those best syndicators are. And so they could just go to the brokers and say, Hey, who's, who's doing deals like this? Who who's got things going on? Like who could you connect me with? And I avoid maybe. John Casmon (44:36) And on top of that, keep in mind, too, like what are the times when? Yeah, but think about to like when is a property hiring or bringing on a new property manager? Right. So it's either a current owners firing the existing property manager or the property is being sold. Right. So, I mean, if you can get in during that transition phase, that's going to help you tremendously. And if even if they're firing their existing property manager, you can think through, OK, how do I? Jason Hull (44:51) Yeah. Yeah. John Casmon (45:06) work myself and get my name out there. And a lot of times, again, you're going to ask, right? You're going to ask other investors. If I were going through that process, I'm going to call my buddies into space, right? And say, hey, man, having a hard time, my current PM is not working out or we're not hitting our objectives, looking at some other options. Do you have any experience with these guys? What do you know about these guys? Or do you have anybody you could recommend? It's word of mouth, right? So that's what's going to start happening as well. So you kind of have to get out there and network and let folks know who you are, what you do. But you want to be someone who people can say, yeah, these guys are amazing. You know, they, they only had an eight unit, but they crushed my eight unit for me. I'm sure they kill your 25 unit or your 50 unit. And you've got to start building that rapport and building your reputation in your market. Jason Hull (45:44) Yeah. Nice. This is good advice, my friend. So, cool. For those that maybe are investors listening to this show, ⁓ I'd love to hear a little bit about what you do, how you do run your syndication, and how they can ⁓ make things more passive, if that's what they're looking John Casmon (46:08) Yeah, man. So there are lots of different ways to get in. If you are looking to be more passive, ⁓ high level, here's how it works. OK, so first and foremost, me and my team would go out. We look for the deals. We focus on a really tight radius. So we're in Cincinnati. We like Cincinnati, Columbus, Louisville, Kentucky. Really a two hour radius of the Cincinnati market is where we focus. And right now we actually think there's more opportunities locally. So we're really honed in on Cincinnati right now. But we focus on that once we find a deal. We reach out to folks in our network. So we have folks in our investor list. ⁓ Once they're on our list, we kind of have a quick vetting process and then we can share opportunities with them. Once they see that opportunity, they get a chance to review it. We like to have a webinar where we answer any questions about the deal. I think for new investors, it's a great way to learn because we have a lot of experienced investors who ask very intelligent, thoughtful questions that Many first time investors probably would not even think of. And that's a great way to learn, right? And ultimately when it comes to this space, it's really about education. know, it's educating yourself, understanding how you think about risk, how you mitigate risk in your investment choices. And those webinars are a great chance for you to learn about that the first time. Once you've done that, you can go ahead and fill out our official paperwork with our SEC documents. Jason Hull (47:30) Mm-hmm. John Casmon (47:30) And then once you're through there, you can make the investment. But the first thing is just to get on our list, you can have access to the deals. And before you do that, we've actually put together a guide that can help people because I found that when I have these calls, people don't ask great questions. Sometimes they do. But I want to make sure that you are informed and well educated because this is a big investment. You know, this is not a 599 thing. And if it doesn't work out, OK, well, I just wasted six bucks. No. Jason Hull (47:54) . John Casmon (47:59) We're asking you to make a pretty large investment, whether it's with us or with others. If that's what you're looking to do, I want to make sure you're well informed. So we put together a guide. It's seven questions you must ask before investing in apartments. You can get that on our website. It's casmancapital.com slash seven questions, but it gets into questions around the market itself, the operating team, what you should be looking for, the deal. What is the story of this property? What's the business plan? And it helps you identify different levels of risk because the reality is Anything can work, but you want to mitigate risk as much as possible, particularly when you're a passive investor, because you are basically saying, I'm trusting these people to find the right deal and execute. And you want to make sure that you are finding and identifying the right individuals who have a proven track record doing the thing that they are asking to do. When I hear about people losing money in real estate. At least 50, if not 70 % of the time. Jason Hull (48:35) Hmm. John Casmon (48:57) It is someone doing something for the first time. It is the first time in the market, first time doing this kind of deal, first time doing this kind of business plan. And. I can't tell you how frustrating it is because it's a big red flag, and it's not to say they can't do it and can't have success. But if it's your first time, I want to see how you're mitigating that right. You want to partner with someone who does have the experience you want. Like there are lot of things that you can do to put the odds in your favor. And when you're a passive investor. Jason Hull (48:59) Mm, yeah. John Casmon (49:26) It is not your job to hope. Your job is to analyze the information in front of you and make an informed decision. So this guide can help you do that. Jason Hull (49:34) Yeah, love it. I'm going to run a quick word from our sponsor real quick. Our sponsor for this episode is Vendero. And many of you tell me that property management 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 percent? That's exactly what Vendero has achieved. So they leverage cutting edge AI technology to handle nearly all your maintenance tasks from initiating work orders. Troubleshooting, coordinating with vendors and reporting. This AI doesn't just automate, it becomes your ideal employee. Learning your preferences, executing tasks flawlessly and 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. Don't let maintenance drag you down. Step up your property management game with Vendero. Visit vendero.ai slash door grow today and make this the last maintenance hire you'll ever need. All right, so John, this is super helpful. love you've got your list. ⁓ You got your webinar, you've got your guide. I would recommend property managers listening to this. If they're curious about the world of syndication, that they start getting into your stuff and seeing how an expert like you is doing this and maybe even get involved in some of the deals with you or something might be a good idea. And they can kind of get a feel for how this works. And then maybe they'll say, I don't want to do what John does. And I'll just find people that do, but they'll at least understand how they could partner with people like that. then, or they may decide, you know what? John's clever, but I'm clever too. I might be able to figure out how to do this too. And maybe they'll do it too. And, but I think there's a solid opportunity for property managers that want to be in the multifamily space and do multifamily management to find third party people that are doing these syndication deals. They need good property managers and property managers want more doors and they want to grow. And if you don't, because your business sucks and it's uncomfortable, then reach out to me. I'll help you out. We'll get you dialed in. But ⁓ John, what else would you say to the investors that are maybe they're familiar with this and they've done some real estate investing and they've worked with some syndications ⁓ and they get on your list to do the webinar. What would you say to them next? John Casmon (51:56) Yeah, I think the biggest thing is understand what you're looking for. You know, I think one of the biggest challenges for investors is when you can't pull the trigger, it's typically because you haven't figured out what you're solving for. Are you looking for passive income? So you're just looking for a cash flow? Are you looking for long term wealth appreciation? Are you looking for tax benefits and to reduce kind of your tax liability? Do just want to diversify? Maybe you got feel like you have too much in a stock market, just like we put something somewhere else. So. Figure out what you're actually solving for. Understand your risk tolerance, you know, because every deal is different. In our case, we do value add B class deals. That's a fancy way of just saying we like properties that already making money that are solid, solid tenant based. Think of when I say B class, I'm thinking of all stuff that was built maybe 30 years ago, maybe 40, maybe 20 years ago. Stuff that. your teachers, your firefighters, your police officers, places where they might rent. So desirable locations, not luxury, not super high end, not, you know, super courts, everything. ⁓ But, you know, places that you would want your kid, your kid was in college, places you would be fine with your kid living, right? So you're thinking about that stuff. That's, you know, I don't say affordable stuff. That's not crazy price. So that's kind of what we focus on. Jason Hull (53:15) So would that be like, is that how you find the best markets then? John Casmon (53:21) That's part of it. That's our strategy. There are different strategies that people utilize. I have found for us that is a sweet spot where we can take those kind of assets, modernize them and create value for potential renters. Some people like to focus only on they call it core plus right where they're buying newer stuff, stuff built five years ago or three years ago. And maybe it was, you know, leased up and they're just going to go in and hold it longer. You'll find other ways to add more money through amenities. Jason Hull (53:35) Okay. John Casmon (53:50) So some people do that strategy. Some people like older properties where they're buying more distressed or much older properties and are trying to fully renovate them and bring them up. There are strategies out there, something like new construction, stuff that doesn't exist. They want to build from the ground up. So it really comes down to you. Every investing strategy has a different level of risk. This has nothing to with real estate, right? This is investing in general. you're buying, you know, know, value stocks versus growth stocks versus Internet, it's the same stuff, right? So you just have to figure out your level of risk. We like value at B-class multifamily deals. Once you understand your level of risk and balance that with your return expectations or projections, that's when you can figure out which investments actually make sense. You know, I have some folks who they like to invest in what we call trophy assets. And... They may not know that right away, but when you send them a couple of deals and they look at the property like, ⁓ it's okay. They want something. They want something they can brag about. They want to drive you by like, see that building over there? That's me. And if that's fine, if that's what you want, understand what comes with that, right? That's going to be a lower term, right? Because these are, there's not much value to create, right? You've got a brand new property. It's A class, rents are $2,500. There's not a whole lot you can do there. And because of that, Jason Hull (54:49) Yeah, they don't want to show that off. Look what I'm connecting. OK, right. Thank Yeah. John Casmon (55:13) There's not as much risk. So you're going to get less return because there's less risk. That's fun. Some people want to maximize their return, right? Hey, I don't need this money. I want to let it ride for 20 years. So they might want to do new construction or they might want to do a deep discount, highly distressed vacant property that needs, you know, $50,000 per unit to renovate it and turn around because the upside is there. So it just depends on that investor and your level of risk. Right. And most of us fall somewhere in the middle. Jason Hull (55:27) Thank John Casmon (55:43) which is kind of our strategy. figure

DGS 327: AI, Survival & Property Management's Future

As property management faces rapid technological disruption, what happens to the businesses that refuse to adapt… or the ones that go all-in on AI and eliminate the human element entirely? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with Joe Oliveri in Brisbane, Australia to unpack the accelerating AI revolution and what it means for the future of property management. With over 30 years in the industry and 16 years as an international real estate business coach, Joe shares why he believes the next three years will determine which companies survive, and which disappear. They explore the shift from traditional property manager roles to data-driven client relationship managers, how AI can transform processes like lease renewals, the risks of deepfakes and security threats, and why the winning formula will be a strategic blend of technology and human connection. You'll Learn (00:00) Introduction to AI in Property Management (00:40) The Evolution of Property Management (01:58) The Impact of AI on Property Management (05:35) Integrating AI with Human Interaction (10:30) AI's Role in Tenant Management (14:17) The Need for Verification in AI (16:30) The Future of AI in Property Management (21:44) Consequences of Ignoring AI (25:43) Finding Balance: AI and Human Roles Growth Quotables "If this industry does not change and truly understand AI, we're going to be irrelevant." "Three years is all we've got to make the changes." "AI isn't something that they can go back to their office and say, we're going to build this AI. Let the experts do it." 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) that companies will need to be able to make to keep up and really frankly, survive. It's recording. We can time up. Shifts in layout. Let's count. All right. You think it's going to work there or should we hold that? Well, we'll probably have to do this. All right. Cool. No introduction. Well, no. Just do it. I'm saying not the full intro that you normally do the way you read the entire thing. Just do a quick. You're not going to have all that when we're going to send it. OK. Do an intro, but you're not going to do the normal intro. All right. Put those somewhere. Hang them on your shirt or do something. Okay. That's very Brisbane. Well you have to fit in. When in Brisbane, do like Brisbane. Right, so we are... It wasn't pretty. Okay. Five, four, three, two... If you can see the camera, it can see you. Can you see the camera? can. You don't... can. Okay. Alright, you ready? Five, four, three, two, one. Alright, so I'm Jason Hull. This is Sarah Hull with DoorGrow and we are Hangout with Joe Oliveri. And we're in Brisbane. Brizzy. Brizzy, yeah. And you can't see but we're overlooking the beautiful city and the river right now. And what is this, a wine room? Yeah, this is our wine cellar. Private wine cellar. Private wine cellar. Okay. And so we're going to be chatting today about AI, the future, and how that's going to impact and affect property management. So, Jill, why don't you give people a little bit of background on yourself and who you are and how you got into property management. Yeah well that's a long story but I'll make it short. So I've been in the industry for about 30 years now so it makes me feel old when I say that. ⁓ But for the last 16 years I've been a real estate business coach and I've been lucky enough to coach people in Australia and the USA so I get a really good oversight of what's going on in the world. ⁓ But you know my focus for the last 16 years has been where is this industry going and how can we help businesses to get there and what do need to do? So basically, yeah, for the last 30 years, I've been doing property management and yeah, I think it's exciting where it's heading and through that journey, I met you guys, which is wonderful. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, fantastic. We've been able to have you out at one of our conference events and have you speak and yeah, it's been delightful. ⁓ I know, I mean, in 30 years, you've seen a lot of changes, but it's speeding up. Like we're in the middle of this AI revolution right now. Everything's changing dramatically. And so what are some of the things that you're noticing? And you have a process software called Thrusos, which we use to run our own operational side of our business. ⁓ What are some of the things that you are right now? thinking are going to happen and you're trying to figure out. Yeah, well, I'm actually concerned about the future for property management in a positive way. If you can kind of like say that. Because what I'm seeing is we are going through rapid change. I remember when I started in the industry 30 years ago, we were just introducing property management software. Everyone was still using spreadsheets and you know. paper documents and all sorts of things. ⁓ Carbon copy leases, know, that's how far back we go. And there was major pushback on property management software. And the pushback probably took about five years for the industry to completely transition to understanding you had to use software. Well, we don't have the luxury of five years anymore because my belief is it's changing so rapidly. And it's the consumer expectations that are going to force change that if this industry does not change and truly understand AI, we're going to be irrelevant. So I believe in three years time, we're going to see completely different roles in the way that we do things. in the next, like leading up to that three years, I believe that in the first year, we're going to see probably about 40 % of businesses starting to struggle and disappear. They're losing managements, clients are going elsewhere because they're expecting AI and seamless processes and interactions and tasking. And then that will speed up. And by the second year, we'll see 80%. And then we'll only have a small percentages. I know this seems like doomsday, but it's a reality. Only a small percentage of existing businesses that are around today who will be around in three years time. If they do not adopt AI and AI is very broad. So they've got to understand AI, but you know, that's my belief. That's what I'm seeing as well. So yeah, you know, we've got to sit up and take notice. Yeah. And I think a lot of the things that I've been noticing, some people kind of shift right away and some people are a little bit more reluctant to shift. Yes. And I think the ones that it's almost you need to find the balance. You don't want to go all in and all AI and you don't want to have no AI. You want to kind of find the right balance and that happy medium and really figure out what is the best way to utilize AI. and have a human component. Because I do not believe it will be able to be all AI. I just, think when it really comes down to it, it is a relationship business. It's a human to human contact business. really when things go wrong, humans want to talk with other humans who understand. They don't want, have you ever been on the phone and you're going, agent, agent, representative, and it's not. understanding and you're like, just get me to the human. do I, what button do I need to push? What option is it that I the human? And I think that will continue, that will prevail. However, AI is such a powerful tool that I think we just need to figure out what's the most complimentary way that the humans and the AI can interact together to provide an amazing experience so that the tenants are happy and the clients are happy and the property management business is happy. really be able to figure out what's the best way to do this. And something that you were telling me yesterday, I went, ⁓ she is so smart for doing that. Can you talk a bit about your, ⁓ tell us first about Flusos and what it is and how it works. And then tell me what you were chatting with me about at dinner last night about what you're going in and updating in Flusos because of all of the advancements in AI that are happening. Yeah, yeah, so you're 100 % right Sarah, you know, there will always be the human element. It's necessary. We're a service business. So people want the customer relationships. They want that person who lets them know, hey, this is all right. You know, we're going well here. But the role of the property manager has changed. There will always be a role for property managers, but not in the way that we see it today. And that's where we've got to make that transition. But one of the simplest flows to talk about, when I talk about flows, Flusos is workflows on all of the various tasks that we do. To help people understand how AI integrates with the human side of property management is if we look at a tenancy renewal. So when we're doing that renewal, there's so much that AI can do that takes away that you know, that personal kind of like input ⁓ into the task as in like if a property manager doesn't like a tenant, then you know, like it becomes personal. ⁓ If they do like the tenant and they've built this relationship with the tenant, where the tenant is making them feel like if the rent goes up, that the tenant will lose the home, the property manager gets too involved personally and emotionally. So to take away that very personal and emotional element and deal in the facts, if we look at, you know, a tenant renewal, AI has the ability, and this is what we're building into Flusos. So AI has the ability to go through and say, these renewals are due. It will then look at the tenant history to say, you know, how's the tenant pay the rent on time? Let's look at the in-resident inspections that we've done and we can see that the tenants looking after the property, abiding by the terms and conditions. Everything's going great. We can see in the system where the tenant has, you know, kind of like mentioned that they would like to renew, that their children go to the local school and they want to stay there through the primary. We've got all of this data that's built up. So AI will be able to go in and say, yeah, you know, like this tenant has mentioned they want to stay on. We look at their history. It's all good. We're also going to look at the market. And the market is determining that we can increase the rent to this much or it stays, it remains as it is. And we should offer a lease term of this length because AI will be able to determine what's going on in that marketplace. There could be infrastructure rebuilds going on, which could push people away from moving there. You know, just because we've got infrastructure being built, there is a building period that turns people off. So AI can look at all of that and then say, okay, this is what we should offer the tenant. Now, the property manager then looks at that and they can say, well, you know, this owner has this property as a ⁓ full-time ⁓ or permanent investment property, but we need to talk to them and say, hey, as an investment property, this is where we recommend that you, you know, take the property, increase the rent, offer renewal because of this. ⁓ And then the owner can make a decision. Now AI jumps in, does all the lease renewals, sends off the documents, updates the system. And the property manager's next role is talking to the owner and saying, congratulations, the tenants have signed the renewal. AI has then given them updates on your property is now achieving this in comparison to market. This is what the increase means to you in terms of dollars and percentage. And we become that voice of, you know, like ⁓ reason and congratulations and service. And the owners look to us for that because all the information that's given to them is not based on personal, ⁓ you know, thoughts on what's going on or emotion. So, yeah. And it makes it seem either that's the thing. No, I guess not. Oh, I think they're building over there. So maybe it'll be good and yet they're supposed to build a new stadium and that'll bring in. It's really figuring out things that we just don't know what the impact will truly be. And I love that it's kind of like, OK, have the human monitor the AI and have the AI do the heavy lifting. and then you kind of watch it, make sure it's doing the right thing, and then you get to be the human to human connection. Exactly. Let me be the one who calls the owner, but AI has done all the things for me, so it's kind of prepped it, gotten it ready, wrapped it up in a pretty package that now I can present to the owner, and I get to be almost a bearer of good news instead of the bearer of bad news. Exactly, exactly. And know, owners don't want to hear that you should renew the lease because they're a good tenant. Well, what constitutes a good tenant? They have to pay their rent on time. They have to look after the property. They have to look after the garden. So they've got to abide by the terms and conditions. It doesn't mean they're a good tenant. So owners don't want to hear that. The owners want to hear that they've abided by the terms and conditions. So we see no reason why they shouldn't be offered a renewal. I think one of the interesting challenges that are that's going to come with AI is that AI can make anything now. I can take a photo of you, I could use AI to make you say stuff and match your voice. And so the danger with AI is that I think we're gonna get to the point where people will only trust human in-person interactions to begin things or to end things or just, you know. And so there's gonna have to be this human element of verification unless there'll probably be some people that work this out. like some sort of verification system. You can load it up on your phone and verify that this is a real thing that you're talking to on Zoom or something. you know, that with all the AI slop as they're calling it and all of the fake videos and it's now becoming nobody believes anything. And so it's hard to know, is this really true? Is this actually the property manager that I'm talking to that is, you know, that I have this property and I'm the owner and you know, are they real? And so, am I giving them access? And so I think there's gonna need to be some sort of verification system in order for people to trust because people will trust, I think it'll get to the point where we'll just trust this. Like I can shake your hand, I can touch you, I you're real. I mean, we might all be fake on the I you don't know we just took a photo and write the whole podcast and do it and yes But they're really in Ulston That's right. Yeah There's been so much that's happened with deep fakes there've been yeah millions of dollars scammed and Now there's it it's getting so aggressive that it's recommended that if you are a human that recommends or that interacts regularly with another human, like you and your husband, for example, or you and your children, that you have a a safe word, a password, a verbal safe where if you get a phone call from what looks like and sounds like your daughter saying, mom, I'm stuck on the side of the road, please send me money, I need help, what's the word? What's the word? And then you know if that word isn't said, that is not my daughter even though it looks like it sounds like it. And I think that's going to be something that we need to kind of incorporate as well and for that reason I agree. I think that in-person, personal relationship will be more important than ever. Yes, I agree with that and this is something that's interesting you bring that up because I always had a safe word with my children. It was given. ⁓ It's something that I think property managers take for granted. They call owners and tenants and talk about all sorts of things without any sort of security check. So, you know, like if we're talking to the banks or, you know, anyone, we get a telecode or we've got to like key in what our personal sort of verification. Exactly. So I think that's another area, and I'm glad you brought that up because it's another area where industry has to step up. We've got to protect the data that we've got. We've got a lot of sensitive data there. So we've got to really look after that. But there will always be that human element in property management because people want to know that they're making the right decision. People want to chat about it. They want to go through and say, based on that data, would I be wrong in increasing the rent? It's like, no, a property manager is like, that's what the market is determining. So if the market determines a rental increase, then that's what the market is saying. Holding back rent only impacts every other investor in that market. I think it'll be interesting. So I think moving forward in the future, if we start to leverage AI, but we build our processes around things. you know, initiated in a way that it starts with a human and that sensitive touch points are done as a human and that we come up with our own verification methods, we're going to avoid some of these traps and our processes will have a longer life span. Yes, yes. You know, we won't have to, man, we have to change everything now with the, all these scammers are doing this one thing where they call up and pretend that they're you, you know. And so, yeah, because you can go on 11 Labs right now. You can upload your little recording of your voice and then you can have your voice and you can have it say anything. so, yeah, so I think that's going to be a challenge. And I think we're going to have to figure out a way to how do you how do you on a Zoom call with a remote owner that's out of state or out of country verify that each of you are an actual real physical human being. Somebody needs to invent that device that verifies it's like taking a blood sample. It's like they're human and it's it's like, this is the, this is actually Joe I'm talking to across the pond. So yeah. Okay. Yeah, it is important. And I think the other thing for the industry to understand is that, you know, AI isn't something that they can go back to their office and say, we're going to build this AI. ⁓ Let the experts do it. Let the experts who understand process and know, Sarah is a real expert on process and to have that level of expertise, it takes a lot of knowledge and a lot of like building and rebuilding and understanding and it's tweaked, you know, for different companies. But you know, like they shouldn't be taking this on themselves. Let the experts do it. And when we talk about, you know, our tech. We need tech stacks and there is a lot of different technology out there that we've got to build it all in together. Property managers can't do that. A lot of business leaders can't do it either. know, have faith in the experts. That's what I'm saying to the industry is have faith in the experts because, you know, they are doing a lot of work behind the scenes on making sure that AI is not a negative. impact to the industry is only making our industry sustainable and relevant into the future. mean that's going to be one of the temptations and dangers is that anyone can now go create any software. can load up lovable or any of these other tools and they can say make me a CRM or make me a property management software. But yeah the problem is you then have to become some sort of expert that's constantly communicating, fixing bugs, tweaking it, figuring it out. And if you can't or something breaks or something gets hacked, then you're at risk. Your whole business is now at risk. And yeah, so I think that, but in the future, everybody will be able to create anything. So I think the people that really thrive and survive and keep a job while AI kind of takes over, I believe will be those that are the artists. So we're going to shift away from it being about being a nerdy programmer. It's going to be those that have this creative thinking that they can think, how can I combine these tools? How can I connect these? How can we innovate this? And that's been one of the most fun things for me in playing with AI is now I get to be an artist with building systems and building things and creating things. Cause I can create things so quickly. Whereas before I would just think about all the things I wanted to do. And I'd be like, that'd be nice if somebody made that. And I'd be like, that's way too much work. I don't want to do that. but yeah, it's now you can just create anything and you can edit things quickly. You can have things reviewed. And so there's a lot of things that everybody's probably already using some of the AI tools right now, you know, like chat GPT and maybe Claude and perplexity and some of these things, but there's a lot of, you know, more advanced tools that are coming out that are going to make things even faster. And now AI is building AI and things are just speeding up. Jason Hull (22:01) is that we're gonna have a lot of tenants out of work. I think there's gonna be a lot of tenants that are like, hey, I just lost my job to AI. And so we've already replaced some roles and some functions of our team and maybe even a whole team member with some AI tools already. And so that's coming very quickly. And I think Elon Musk just said that in the next three to five years, the best surgeons in the world will be robots. And those are high paying, high functioning jobs that people put a lot of effort into, but he says they'll be better, more accurate. And so, do you want a really seasoned, older surgeon with maybe, he's human steady level hands, or do you want somebody that has laser precision that gets it right every time that's overseen by that person? I think the best blend is both. I want the AI laser precision with the human with all of the knowledge and experience to watch it and make sure that it's the right thing. if you did it that way, if a doctor just had a monitor, it eliminates the need for many of them. You now need one doctor to... multiple AI robots. Because you've got beta. think everything that's going to shift, AI is going to change so many things, which is great. It's still not going to be able to, I mean, how comfortable would you feel? Open heart surgery and that's the AI robot and you go, ⁓ do I want that thing cutting me open? ⁓ What's its track record? What if it glitches? What if it breaks down? Is it going to do the right thing? it know? What is it, you know, is it programmed? What if it dies in the middle of the surgery? Does it have a battery? There's a lot of things to think about. And does it care? Right. is it, what if it that eye robot where it's scanning and going, oh, it has an 11 % chance of survival. I'm done. Well, wait a second. Hold on. Do we, you know, do we keep going? So I think everything is going to come down to a blend. of AI and human and there's got to be both of those components. So can you maybe chat about, let's chat about kind of both ends of the spectrum here. What might happen to some property management companies that refuse to adopt AI? Where they go, I'm just not doing it. I'm not using AI. I'm staying old school. We don't want to learn anything. We don't want to do anything else. might you be a, what would you think the prediction would be on companies that just will not? Yes. Use it. That's a really good question because we kind of saw that with what happened with these old school companies ⁓ where they refused to have anything but the property management program, you know, where you store your data. ⁓ And they eventually were out of business. I mean, I'd go into these offices and they just have files everywhere, files covering the desk, they didn't know where anything was. But they refused to, you know, ⁓ use anything else than go to that paper file. And it was a mess. mean, how do you find paper? ⁓ So we saw those businesses gradually get out of business. They didn't have a business to sell, basically. So they might have been mighty in their day, but they were no longer mighty when technology just over. Now that took a long time to happen in the past. It's going to be more rapid now. So those businesses that refuse to adapt or adopt AI or understand it because a lot of them think we've got AI. It's like you don't have AI. GPD does not help you to manage process better. So if they don't then We're seeing it already Sarah and Jason. We're seeing that these companies that used to manage 500 or more managements are down to half of that and I'm selling one at the moment where they had 600 and we're just on the final figures today. They're down to 342. That's a lot of money that they've lost because they refuse to adapt new methods and they let the property managers determine what technology they would use. Because what happens if we allow staff to determine what technology we will use, then the staff just create or justify a reason for their position. We can't do that anymore. We've got to identify the task that a property manager does. And there's much less than what, you know, they did in the past. A property manager is basically just a client relationship manager now. They're reviewing data and interpreting that data to have conversations with the clients. And that's the way we've got to do it. And the other thing is, investors are changing too. So we're getting a lot of institutional investors. So institutional investors don't want to deal with, you know, mother head and type, you know, like, ⁓ the tenants are lovely and you know, you don't want to lose them and... you probably can't afford to do the maintenance and things like that. Institutional investors just want the facts so they can make a decision and quite often they don't want to make a decision they want the property manager to do what's needed. And AI will determine the necessary steps so the property manager becomes that person this has been done or they can look online through their portal. in I'm like, that's a long answer to your question. But you know, like I believe hand on heart and don't want to seem like I'm doing so sorry, I'm hitting the mic. that three years time is three years is all we've got to make the changes and to identify the tasks the property manager does. Because it's not the same anymore. I agree. And I think it's about shifting that shifting. It's about making that shift. And then conversely, let's talk about the other end of the spectrum because, okay, if you go, you know what, I'm sold, I'm doing everything AI. I'm firing my entire team, I'm letting AI do everything and we've seen some companies try to do this before, but now there's a lot of changes and AI can do a lot of things that before was not possible. So what would you say to the companies that are gonna go all in and they're gonna do all AI? Is that the solution? No, it's a happy blend of technology and team. So if you don't have the team there, property management is a service industry. So we have to remember that, you know, and our service is helping the clients to feel confident about decisions that they're making or instructions that they're giving. ⁓ So it is definitely a blend of ⁓ technology and team. but the team's role has changed. please don't think you can go in there and chat GBT is going to, you know, create all the conversations and, and, know, they're going to answer the phone and, and, you know, talk to the client and record it all. No, there needs to be human element. But again, I'll go back to it's the experts that will help you create that because it's very, very difficult to understand how to blend that technology and team. ⁓ without the kind of like the team having their say in it too. A lot of business owners let the team say too much and they make decisions based on team. We've seen that, or they take a vote. A vote, yes. My team, I hear that from our clients, and they go, well my team voted and what? Your team voted? No, no, no, no. that's good. They don't ever vote. Like, yeah, you know, eliminate my job. I'll vote yes for that. Yeah, yeah. No, no. Yeah, the challenge with team members is that they are not usually money driven the way entrepreneurs are. They're not focused on the money side of the business and they're focused on safety and security. And as AI comes, that's going to take a lot of that away. And so yeah, you don't want to have your team vote. This is, it's not like a It's not democracy. No, this is business. I believe in democratic principles, it's the business. But yeah, you can't place the burden of decision making on people that are wired to make decisions in a way that's not conducive. Yeah, it's all about them. And, you know, like it's important to understand how the team is thinking so that you can then help them adjust to it or no. that person's not going to come through with me. So you can make the decisions. no, know, team will always justify why they are needed in a business. Yeah. mean, the day may come with all the AI stuff and humans really, we tend to like each other. We like humans a bit. You know, we'll probably have labels on our business made with real humans. Real humans at our business and a real human answers the phone. No AI. You know, I mean, it might happen. So that could be interesting. So. One of the things that I also though, am thinking and maybe I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist or a little crazy, I don't know. But ⁓ when Trump went into Venezuela and extradited or took out that dictator that had taken over the government there and was causing a lot of problems, the people were very happy. But what was really interesting, what was unsaid or I didn't hear people talk about it much is the US government. Military whatever went in had the ability they turned off all the power to the entire city There were not even backups were working everything went out and went black. Mm-hmm and That's wild to think that we have the ability to just wipe out power and electricity I don't know if it was an EMP thing or Some people say solar flares can do this and maybe the government can do this kind of stuff. Who knows but the fact that technological data, power, electricity, all that can just shut off in an instant. How would we deal with that in a world where everything has become digital and everything has become AI? Will we have backups? Will we have keys? Will we be able to find things? ⁓ Will we know stuff? there's, think there, I mean, if that happens one time, it will be like change everything forever. Just like the pandemic changed everybody's perception forever about.