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By Jason Hull - Property Management Expert, Marketing Nerd, Entrepreneur Coach
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The podcast currently has 255 episodes available.
In May, we had our annual DoorGrow Live event! What makes DoorGrow Live different from other property management conferences?
In today’s episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about our most recent DoorGrow Live conference and some of the topics discussed.
You’ll Learn[01:12] What was different about this year’s DoorGrow Live?
[04:48] Tactics vs. Mindset
[06:41] Changing the order of your priorities
[10:17] Hard choices, easy life
Tweetables“Tactics and the how can always be figured out.”
“It's not really the tactics that are the problem. It's almost always the mindset.”
“The hard choice is to not go for what you immediately want, but to reorder and prioritize some things that are more relevant to the long term.”
“If you don't like the results, then it's probably because your priorities are not in the right order.”
ResourcesDoorGrow and Scale Mastermind
DoorGrow Academy
DoorGrow on YouTube
DoorGrowClub
DoorGrowLive
TalkRoute Referral Link
Transcript[00:00:00] Jason: If you don't like the results, then it's probably because your priorities are not in the right order.
[00:00:08] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses.
[00:00:53] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hall, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. Okay.
[00:01:12] And so what we're going to be talking about today is we just had DoorGrow Live and DoorGrow Live was a success. It was a lot of fun and it was a little bit different this year. So how would you say it was different this year, Sarah?
[00:01:27] Sarah: So I think a lot of people were saying, "Hey, it feels like there was really just a lot of heart that went into this event."
[00:01:35] So usually when I think you and I run events, we're very tactical. How do you do this? How do you do that? And let's share this strategy and let's talk about this thing. And this year we changed things up a little bit and you were maybe a little hesitant to follow the formula that I put together, might I add.
[00:01:53] And so maybe on the podcast you can tell people that It worked?
[00:01:57] Jason: It worked.
[00:01:58] Sarah: And? Do you have anything else to say about that?
[00:02:00] Jason: Anyone that knows Sarah knows what she wants to hear right now. You were right. There it is! There it is. There it is. That's what she wanted. There it is.
[00:02:10] Sarah: So this year when I was putting together the schedule and the agenda, there was this whole plan that I had.
[00:02:17] And I was like, "Oh no, we need to order things like this and do things like this. And this is what I wanted." And he's like, " I don't know if that's going to work. And why are we doing this whole thing? And we're like putting this whole thing together. And like, you don't even know if it's going to work the way you want."
[00:02:30] Jason: Is this how I sound?
[00:02:31] Sarah: Yes.
[00:02:32] Jason: "I don't know if it's gonna work."
[00:02:34] Sarah: "I don't know if it's gonna work."
[00:02:36] Jason: That's totally what I sound like.
[00:02:38] Sarah: It was perfect.
[00:02:39] Jason: I'm shaking my head no, by the way, for the listeners.
[00:02:41] Sarah: See you probably, they probably didn't even know that was me talking. They just thought it was you.
[00:02:45] Jason: Oh, yeah.
[00:02:46] You do such a good impersonation of me. I know. It's really quite impressive. I'll go back to my normal voice so that you realize it's Sarah talking. Yeah, for the listeners, we need to make sure there's two distinct voices or they're going to be really confused why I'm talking to myself because you sound so much like me.
[00:03:03] Sarah: I know. I'm so sorry if I confused anyone.
[00:03:06] Jason: Nobody was confused. Okay. So...
[00:03:08] Sarah: so he was giving me a little bit of a hard time about it because I, like, made him sit down and map this out and I was like, "no, there's a formula that we're supposed to follow and this is what I want it to look like." And I think it worked out really well.
[00:03:21] Jason: Yeah, the event went really well.
[00:03:23] Sarah: Yeah.
[00:03:24] Jason: Things ran pretty much like clockwork. That's hard. It's hard to do that in events. Like speakers go over, people don't stop. Like, we had this big, huge red LED clock right in front of the speaker. So it was like super obvious, like, and we, I think we had conversations with all the speakers, like everything worked pretty smoothly.
[00:03:43] The general feedback I got from a lot of clients one of our clients, Ed Golding, came up to me and he was just smiling. He'd been to some previous ones and he said, "this was different, you know, what was different about this?" I said, "what, Ed? " He said, "heart, this one had heart."
[00:03:56] And it was an emotional event. There was lot more emotion at this event. Did we talk about tactics? Yes. I explained how I've been able to leverage social media and different tools and, I've made millions of dollars off social media. And I shared some really cool tools and very tactical stuff.
[00:04:12] That's how I opened up the event. But we got into a lot of mindset and what we've realized over time, that we talked about at the event that most of our clients are not winning or losing because they don't, or do have tactics. Tactics and the how can always be figured out. And I liked Jeff Garner's tattoo he talked about but....
[00:04:33] Sarah: he's funny.
[00:04:33] Jason: He's like, " can I say it? There's children present." I had my kids at the event.
[00:04:36] Sarah: They're my kids. Like they hear it all the time.
[00:04:40] Jason: Yeah, so he's got a tattoo that's FTH Which stands for "fuck the how" so and so a lot of times people are so worried about "how do I do this? How do I do this?" And we do share tactics. We do a lot of that at DoorGrow. However, It's not really the tactics that are the problem. It's almost always the mindset. And so whenever I teach tactics. I always am going into the why behind it and the mindset stuff. And when they start to understand this stuff, then they will actually do it usually.
[00:05:13] So there was a lot of mindset at the event. And then also, there's vulnerability. Like I openly shared how I've been reevaluating my priorities and what those look like and how how that looks. You were sharing about your upbringing and how like the difficult things in life are also the things that make us who we are and help us to enable us to help others and how to view it through a different lens, which I thought was really awesome.
[00:05:39] And everybody's crying. Sarah's making everybody cry. Like I was crying, like...
[00:05:44] Sarah: I made people cry in a very different way this time though. I'm usually making people cry because I'm yelling at them.
[00:05:50] Jason: That's not true.
[00:05:51] Sarah: It's a little true. It's a little true.
[00:05:54] Jason: Not our clients, just me.
[00:05:56] Sarah: No, I don't do, but I do give our clients tough love when they need it.
[00:05:59] And Kelly came to the event and she's like, "this is exactly what I needed." I'm like, "I know that's why I was on you for like three months."
[00:06:07] Jason: Yeah. I think some people had some breakthroughs, which that's the goal. Like we want to change lives. And so there's something just really beautiful about this DoorGrow Live.
[00:06:16] There was a lot of more depth to it and I just feel grateful to be able to be part of it and to see, our clients that believe in us and that, that came in just seeing their progress and, there are people there that have been in our program for years, which is just.
[00:06:29] It's really awesome to see. So, so I thought I would share just a little bit today about what I had shared and this will be a quick episode cause Sarah doesn't want me to go long. So this'll be a quick one.
[00:06:41] Sarah: Back to back today.
[00:06:42] Jason: You got a busy day. So what I shared is I talked a little bit about prioritization and I've talked about this previously, but what what was interesting, one of my breakthroughs recently was recognizing I was basically merging in my mind, the five basic needs.
[00:06:57] Which I don't know who put that out. We learned it from our friend Roya.
[00:07:01] Sarah: But maybe it was...
[00:07:02] Jason: maybe it's Tony Robbins. I don't know. So there's five basic needs and the five basic needs are love and belonging, power and achievement fun and adventure, fun and pleasure, safety and security.
[00:07:15] Sarah: And I'll see when you put them in a weird order, then I don't remember them. Freedom and flexibility.
[00:07:20] Jason: Freedom and flexibility. Freedom. There we go. Yeah. Okay. These are five basic needs and we all have one that's primary. For Sarah, it's power and achievement. Nobody's surprised, right? For me, it's actually love and belonging.
[00:07:33] And a lot of my achievement and a lot of the things that I do. Are to, that's what motivates that we're helping clients working with clients love and belonging and having that connection. That's why I like working with entrepreneurs because I don't feel like such a weirdo when I'm around other people that are that weird, that are also entrepreneurial.
[00:07:51] But what I've come to realize that if I make that my highest priority, I tend to get less of it. And I think this is true for anyone with their basic need. If you really think about it, if Sarah just went after power and achievement. And didn't prioritize like relationships and other things, it could be pretty destructive and it would likely have the opposite desired effect in trying to achieve power and whatnot, right?
[00:08:13] Because we need others. And then for me, if I'm just going after love and belonging, I would be less likely to get it. If I didn't have my own oxygen mass first, if I didn't have financial wealth and health, if I didn't have physical health then it wouldn't be nearly as effective. I wouldn't be nearly as present.
[00:08:31] I wouldn't be able to enjoy much love and connection or belonging, in relationships. I wouldn't be able to feed into relationships as much if I weren't taking care of myself. And so based on that I, I had everybody map out or stack or list their priorities in their life, and then I showed how my priorities were listed and then Like what my natural inclination is placing like love and belonging at the top.
[00:08:59] And then I showcased how I've intentionally consciously listed them and rearranged the priority and how that affects my decision making in my day to day so that I spend more of my time in my day to day moving towards the top priorities, which are not on my new adjusted priority list are not the love and connection related things related to family, sex, relationship, stuff like that. So above that, I've placed God at the top which is, for some of you that might be your highest ideal, whatever that is. And so I want to always be pointed towards my highest ideal. Second, I put power, achievement, impact, and that's related money status, all that.
[00:09:41] And that allows me to have impact. Which leads to me getting what I want. It's a leading sort of thing. And then the next is health. I need to be prioritizing health. And then it gets into more of the relationship stuff in the priorities. Whereas before I was putting family, friends, fun was probably higher on the list, but I felt like I wasn't ever able to do as much of that as I wanted.
[00:10:04] Because I was so focused on the other stuff. And so by reordering the priorities, it takes work. Like it takes effort to go towards what's easy and what's natural usually leads to a harder life. And so there's this stoic phrase that I like that is "hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life."
[00:10:26] And the hard choice is to not go for what you immediately want, but to reorder and prioritize some things that are more relevant to the long term, playing the long game, doing what maybe I feel deep down inside I should do connected when I'm connected to God or focusing on my health, doing the playing the long game instead of doing the short term, right?
[00:10:49] The short term is like eat, Häagen Dazs vanilla ice cream, vanilla bean ice cream. It's like my favorite right now. I love that. Or whatever, right? When we're just trying to please our tongue and our genitals, we tend to have a much harder life, right? And this is the short term. We're just going for the short term gain.
[00:11:05] And so we want to make sure we prioritize the long game, the long term. and give up where that means sacrifice in the short term. That means work. That means effort. And a lot of people just aren't putting in enough work or enough effort in the lazy people in society are the people that are always trying to please their tongue and their genitals.
[00:11:24] Maybe it's crass, my crass way of saying it. Okay. It's a little gross. Okay. So that's what I shared at DoorGrow Live. And so I encourage all of you listening, like make a list. What are your priorities? And what I shared is your results reveal your priorities. So if you don't like the results in your life, write them down.
[00:11:43] Like, what are your relationships like? What's your business like? What are you doing in the business? What aren't you doing in the business? Or what are you enjoying? What are you not enjoying? And if you don't like the results, then it's probably because your priorities are not in the right order. It doesn't mean you give up or change your priorities, right? All of the things that were my priorities before are still priorities for me. I've just rearranged the order and by just rearranging the order, it changes everything. It changes the results that you get and you'll get more of the results that you really desire if you rearrange those priorities in a way that probably will take you more effort and more work, but will allow you to get everything that you want in the long run.
[00:12:28] So that was my message. That's the simple message. Rearrange your priorities figure out your basic need, put that lower on the list, and figure out what needs to come before in order for you to have as much of that as possible because I want you to enjoy your life, but you need to do make hard choices.
[00:12:41] And you need to do hard things.
[00:12:43] But it was an awesome event and make sure you are keeping an eye on doorgrowlive.com for the future and make sure to attend in the future.
[00:12:52] Everybody says our conferences are different than any other property management conference out there. And That's a good thing. Like we do it in a good way. So, I recommend you attend. So you can check out more details about future events at doorgrowlive.Com. And if you are wanting to grow your property management business and have success like our clients were showcasing at DoorGrow Live and grow your business, scale your operations, have a better lifestyle, enjoy your team more, enjoy your business, be less frustrated, have more peace, reach out to us at DoorGrow. You can check us out at DoorGrow.com. We would love to see if we can help you scale your business. And until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:13:36] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:14:02] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
As property managers you likely know a little bit about mortgages. But do you know about non-QM loan strategies and how your clients and investors can utilize them?
In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with Matt from Nexa Mortgage to talk about using non-QM strategies to unlock your portfolio’s potential.
You’ll Learn[05:46] QM loans VS non-QM loans
[16:14] Why Jason and Sarah went with non-QM
[22:07] Which one should you choose?
[26:46] Why should property managers know this?
[32:23] What about long-term rentals
Tweetables“If you have a great manager, it makes sense to get as many properties as you possibly can, knowing that they are in good hands and they are being taken care of because all you're doing is printing money.”
“If you have a way that you can help your investor clients get what they want, which is more deals, it's a win.”
“If you are a property manager, you should also be an investor in real estate.”
“It's great to manage properties and let's do that and build wealth ourselves.”
ResourcesDoorGrow and Scale Mastermind
DoorGrow Academy
DoorGrow on YouTube
DoorGrowClub
DoorGrowLive
TalkRoute Referral Link
Transcript[00:00:00] Sarah: He said, "I am not joking. I had to submit over 100 documents to the company in order to just see if I'm qualified to get this additional loan. And he's like, I just feel like there has to be an easier way." And there is, but sometimes people don't know about that.
[00:00:20] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager.
[00:00:39] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management, growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the CEO and COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.
[00:01:23] All right. And today we're hanging out with Matt Dean of Nexa Mortgage, and we're going to have an interesting conversation about financing and loans and I don't know, and some other stuff, but Matt welcome to the show.
[00:01:36] Matthew: Good morning.
[00:01:37] Good morning. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:38] Jason: It's good to have you. So give us a little bit of background of how you got into the whole real estate industry and give people a little bit of background on you.
[00:01:49] Matthew: Sure. So, after I graduated from college, which I went to college in Missouri, I ended up moving to Austin, Texas, and one of the first jobs I got was with a commercial finance company and that landed me in Lakeway, which is where I reside now, and have been for over 15 years. But the commercial finance company that I worked with was was a fairly new company that came in from California. The owners Had a mortgage background and had gotten into this commercial finance division.
[00:02:15] They had sold off a couple of mortgage companies opened up this division and Lakeway. They were also land developers and commercial finance guys. So they saw a lot of opportunity out here and opened up this company. So anyway, I got in on the ground floor. They were relocating the company here and had a couple year run with that.
[00:02:31] And then in early 2000, the .Com kind of came in and blew up that whole industry. So what we were doing was commercial finance, equipment finance really, and at the time it was a lot of computer equipment and I was working with a lot of Dell sales reps that were taking over some of their overflow that Dell didn't want to finance.
[00:02:49] So, when all that happened, and it blew up the owners who had the mortgage background really saw that "hey, we're going to see a refinance run here. The market's going to crash rates are going to come down. There's going to be a run." And so they immediately just flip. They had a mortgage company here, but it wasn't early. It was dormant. Yeah. And they flipped it open and and just started building that company out. And so that's ultimately how I got into the mortgage business. And, right after that, we had this really big refinance run. We grew that company very quickly to about 35 employees where we were doing 300 to 400 loans a month with a fairly small company.
[00:03:27] And that just, jump straight in and learn the business. And so then in about 2007 ish, 2006 ish, I really got exposed to the investment world, so to speak. I got partnered up with a real estate brokerage here in Austin that focused on investment properties and primarily what they were focusing on was duplexes.
[00:03:47] And so that year in 2006, I believe it closed 152 duplex transactions, and it was mainly California investors coming into Austin. And it really just changed my whole perspective of the mortgage industry as opposed to first time buyers or veterans, which I enjoy working with all those folks, but the commercial or the investment world, it's a different animal in that it's less emotion and more about business. And so I really just gravitated more to working with investors, started buying properties myself managed a few properties myself and then, evolved from there. But I worked with that same group and Lakeway for about 12 years and then moved around a couple of places and work for a builder and and a couple other companies.
[00:04:29] But anyway, that's how I got in it, got started.
[00:04:31] Jason: Yeah, so you've seen it from a few different angles than the whole real estate investment industry, sounds like.
[00:04:37] Matthew: Yeah, I've been through a few of these cycles of ups and downs. Obviously the refinance run early on was, really interesting, but a lot of good, easy money on the table, so to speak, but then we had the crash, which was a very difficult time for a couple of years, although, Austin weathered that storm pretty well relative to a lot of other areas of the country.
[00:04:56] So, even though our volumes were down, our real estate didn't see as big of an equity loss and the job market here in Austin's always been really strong. So, it pulled us back out of it fairly quickly. We're in a situation now where rates are high and property values have gone up.
[00:05:11] And it's a challenge for some folks here to purchase. A lot of folks are just priced out of the market and can't afford it. And property taxes aren't helping that situation.
[00:05:19] Jason: Yeah,
[00:05:20] Sarah: It's so pricey here. So pricey.
[00:05:22] Matthew: But we're starting to see a little bit of pull back on the values and the houses. It's a little bit more of a buyer's market now, but it still needs to come down a little bit, I think in my opinion, it's to balance the market again.
[00:05:34] Jason: Interesting. So the topic today is unlock your portfolio potential, non QM strategies for real estate investors. And for those that don't know what QM is, which I don't. So educate me. What's QM?
[00:05:47] Sarah: So I handled all of this stuff and Jason got to the closing table and he's like, "I'm an owner in the LLC, right?"
[00:05:54] Matthew: It's like, yeah, I barely talked to you along the way, but anyway, yeah, so let's talk a little bit about QM and how that all started. So, after the real estate crash in the 2006, 2007, eight ish area the CFPB was formed a consumer finance protection bureau, which took over the regulation with the mortgage industry.
[00:06:12] It took them a few years, but in 2014 they implemented what was called TRID, which you may have heard that word, but it was where we got rid of the good faith estimate and integrated the new loan estimate and closing disclosure took over. And at that same point in time, the regulations came out and then classified conventional loans or reclassified them as qualified mortgages.
[00:06:35] What that means really is the CFPB was trying to put protections in place to protect consumers and also strengthen guidelines to make sure that people or buyers had the ability to repay. So what that really meant was additional restrictions on ability to repay, debt ratio requirements, reserve assets, et cetera.
[00:06:55] So, if you do a conventional loan, which is Fannie, Freddie. Those are considered qualified mortgages. They have additional protections in that you're maxed at the amount of fees you can charge a buyer. The APR has to be within guidelines within a maximum. So all those things are really for consumer protection, right?
[00:07:14] At the same time, what caused the market crash before was what subprime mortgages. And so at the time, subprime mortgages initially had a place in the market. They really were good for investors because investors were putting money down, they had good credit typically, and they had reserve assets.
[00:07:35] When the market shifted, and they started using subprime loans to qualify buyers for primary residences that really had no business buying homes is where it got in trouble. So after QM was announced or came out with CFPB, then they also had non QM loans. What that means is any loan that falls outside of the qualified mortgage guidelines, for whatever reason, can still be funded or it would fall within non QM.
[00:07:59] Non QM just meant if you're a lender who does those type of loans, you're now required to hold additional reserve assets in your bank or your mortgage company per loan to cover for the potential higher risk and default.
[00:08:12] Jason: Okay.
[00:08:13] Matthew: And it took a few years from 2014. The market started to come out with products in 2015.
[00:08:18] The industry was really not sure how to handle it. A lot of banks didn't want to even dive into it. And then it started to evolve. And "okay, there's a big market here." So now it's one of the fastest growing segments of the market and banks have realize or figured out how to meet the ability to repay guidelines with alternative methods, right?
[00:08:41] So you don't have to have W2s and tax returns and pay stubs, which a conventional QM loan would require. Now, they look at different factor, like, 12 months business bank statements. I can look at a CPA prepared profit and loss statement, I can look at just the rent income on the property and that's what's classified or called DSCR.
[00:09:03] And then also it's asset based loans where we just look at the asset and we turn the asset into a revenue stream. So that's really how non QM started and really what it is. It's just an alternative way of qualifying the mortgages that falls outside of the Fannie Freddie conventional type of loans.
[00:09:21] Jason: Got it.
[00:09:21] Sarah: So what does that mean for investors? Because we have some investors that listen to us and we have some property managers who work with investors. So what would that mean for an investor that is looking to get into more investment properties?
[00:09:39] Matthew: Yeah, absolutely. So, the challenge that a lot of investors run into is a lot of them are self employed and a lot of them start accumulating property.
[00:09:48] So if they fall into either one of those categories, either they're self employed. Or they've accumulated a lot of properties or both, right? The challenge becomes with qualified mortgages is from an income perspective, right? So good CPAs are going to try and shelter income for self employed borrowers and for investors by showing, minimal profits or minimal or losses on their properties.
[00:10:11] And so, as investors start to accumulate more properties, it becomes more challenging to qualify for conventional loans, because for every property on a conventional loan, Fannie and Freddie want additional reserve assets. So that means you start getting 6 properties, you need assets for each one of those properties on top of down payment funds for the purchase property and the reserves on that property.
[00:10:33] So, from two perspectives, either an income perspective, where we have a challenge again, a self employed borrower shows losses on his tax returns for the last 5 years by design, because he doesn't want to pay taxes, or we've got multiple properties also showing losses when I'm looking at income on a conventional loan basis, I have to use the income from the tax return.
[00:10:52] So losses can be a problem. Also, the reserve requirements, so, taking into those two scenarios, you've got a self employed borrower that, let's say they, they have gross revenue of half a million dollars, but they're showing losses of, 50-60-70,000 dollars. We're just looking at 12 months bank statements in that case, which gives us gross revenue and then we back out of a factor of say, 25 to 30 percent for taxes and we use that as revenue or income to qualify. If we have an investor that, let's say, not necessarily self employed they have multiple rental properties that are basically just, showing losses and now their income is diminished to where they can't qualify.
[00:11:32] Then we have the debt service coverage ratio programs. Like, we utilize with your property where we're looking at just the rent on the property. Right? So the rent the market rent or the short term rental just needs to cover the principal interest, taxes, insurance and fees. And so those are 2 products that we use and that's really how, I would say it helps investors in those scenarios.
[00:11:54] The other products that we could look at are P& L products meaning that ACPA provides a P& L statement, and then we can use that income, or if they have significant assets just in investment funds and whatnot, we can turn that into a revenue stream. But the bottom line is it just eliminates the need for W 2s, tax returns, or pay stubs, and we look at other alternative income sources to qualify.
[00:12:18] Sarah: It's funny. I was actually on Instagram the last week, I think. And there's this guy, he has a very large account and I can't remember his name. And he's very big on investing in real estate. And he said, "guys, like, I just need some help. I like I'm going through this whole process and you jumped through 10, 000 hoops." and he said, "I am not joking. I had to submit over 100 documents to the company in order to just see if I'm qualified to get this additional loan. And he's like, I just feel like there has to be an easier way." And there is, but sometimes people don't know about that. I still talk to investors and property managers and they don't know.
[00:13:02] They're like, "I'm just too conventional. That's like what you do. That's like the normal thing that we're all trained and used to doing." So just knowing that there are other options that don't require all of these crazy hoops to jump through and all of this documentation and lots of red tape and underwriting.
[00:13:22] It's not that it's eliminated. It's just that it's a lot easier of a process and especially if you're a savvy investor that takes a loss on your taxes, just because your tax return shows a loss, it doesn't actually mean that you're losing money, right? So there's a big difference there. So that plays a big part too.
[00:13:43] Matthew: Yeah, there are investors. Sorry. I didn't mean to jump in there, but there are definitely investors that lean on that from a documentation standpoint. Right? They've been down this road. They have multiple properties and more properties, you have the more documentation you need to provide to try and qualify for those conventional loans and it just becomes more and more challenging.
[00:14:00] And, even more so if you have a loan officer on the front end of that's trying to originate a loan, that isn't really versed in investment properties and doesn't know how to underwrite the tax returns, they can get in trouble. They look, "oh, I got good credit. I've got down payments." But when you try and pull together tax returns and the income from multiple properties and business losses and this and that, it becomes very complex. And it's honestly, a lot of loan officers don't even know how to look at that correctly. And so they just throw the file up. It goes to underwriting. And then 2 weeks later, they've got a problem. But I just closed a deal actually yesterday and it was ended up going non QM short term rental. And the gentleman is great credit owns his own businesses, owns multiple properties and schools here, but the documentation, because he owns, like, 8 companies and probably 7 or 8 rental properties, and he had a partner in this particular property that, It became so complicated with trying to pull some of that stuff together and also with the partner who wasn't necessarily as strong as him where it just made sense for us to go short term rental and move on.
[00:15:07] And that's what we did. So we just made it easy. He was happy that he didn't have to continue to jump through all those hoops. And we were able to get the property done and close in about two and a half weeks.
[00:15:17] Jason: You said it made sense to go short term rental. You meant to go non QM. Is that what you meant?
[00:15:21] Matthew: To go non QM. Yeah. We went short term rental income, which is non QM to qualify the income on the property. This happens to be a short term rental down on the Comal River and it's got great income. It just he had a private money loan on it when he purchased it needed to refinance the note was coming due and he just has a very complex financial situation.
[00:15:43] And he got involved with a partner on this property that also created some challenges with that particular situation and just made it a lot easier to use him and go non QM short term rental income only and just get it done.
[00:15:54] Jason: So, would that be a DSCR loan going on the short term rental income?
[00:15:59] Or is that different?
[00:15:59] Matthew: Yes, it is technically a DSCR loan, which means debt service coverage ratio. And this is what we utilize with your property as well, by the way. we're looking at either long term rents.
[00:16:10] Jason: We should tell that story, by the way, everyone listening has no clue.
[00:16:13] Sarah: I know, right?
[00:16:14] Jason: Why don't we have Sarah explain like why we went this route, how we ended up talking with Matt and like how this all worked out.
[00:16:21] Sarah: Okay, let's do that. So, Jason, oddly proudly, he's like, "I've never owned a rental property and I've never managed a rental property. And I do this now." And I said, "this is nothing to be proud of. Like you're 46, you should own things. You should have assets." So like I, on the other hand, like I had, in my twenties, I started investing in real estate. So, Jason and I for a while have been saying like, "when are we going to get one together?"
[00:16:48] Because we didn't have one yet and he never had one.
[00:16:51] Then also our circumstances in life have changed a little bit. And we thought " we need an additional property at this point." And we were in a unique situation where right now in Austin, I'll just start by saying long term rental is hard to make it make sense financially.
[00:17:10] You're probably not going to cashflow.
[00:17:13] Jason: Yeah.
[00:17:13] Sarah: Not right now. Anyway, it's just, it's really hard because prices are high. And interest rates are also high. This is where we are. So we couldn't have possibly done a long term rental anyway, because we needed the property to have some personal use on it.
[00:17:28] And we decided, "Hey, let's also use it for some of our DoorGrow events." Because every time that we do an event, We pay somebody else.
[00:17:37] So let's pay ourselves through that. So for that reason, it only can really be used as a short term rental property. So we decided, "Hey, there's these kind of three components."
[00:17:48] And I'm really big on asset protection, meaning I need the property to be owned and deeded and financed in an LLC. So originally I was working with another agent. We've worked with him before on our primary home. He's a really great agent. I had asked him about, "can we fund it in the name of an LLC?"
[00:18:09] And he said, "no you can't do that. It doesn't really work that way." And it seemed like he was just trying to talk us out of it. I even talked with that he typically uses and that we used on our, Home that we live in. And he said, "Oh no, yeah, we don't do properties in the LLC. It'll be in your name. And then after closing, we could do a quick claim and then like change the deed and put the deed in the LLC name." And I said, "okay, what about the mortgage?" And he said, "no. The mortgage stays in your name." And I said, "I'm out." Like that is where I'm out. You're piercing the veil.
[00:18:44] All of my personal assets would now be exposed and on the line. And that completely defeats the purpose of having an LLC. And he was like, yeah, we just don't do that. I really don't think that's going to be a problem. So I said, "okay, do you know anybody now he's been in this business for like 20 or 30 years?"
[00:19:02] "Do you know anybody that can do that?" And he said, "Oh, not really." So that was time to start looking for somebody else because I know that it can be done. I've done it in Pennsylvania. So there's no way that Texas can't do this. Texas is far ahead of Pennsylvania in a lot of different ways.
[00:19:19] Jason: So we found another agent.
[00:19:20] Sarah: So we found another agent who then referred us to Matt and he said, "Hey, I know a guy. He's really great. And I'm pretty sure he can do what you need." So I said, "great. What's his information?" I had a conversation with Matt and he's like, "Oh, well, yeah, we can do that." And I said, "so you can put the loan in the LLC. Not my name, the LLC. He said yeah, we can do that." Like it was easy. So it can be done. Sometimes you just have to look around a little bit. So that was how our deal was structured. So we went non QM and we ended up doing, since it is a short term rental, we went DSCR so that the rents would cover essentially your PITI.
[00:20:00] And this is how we made our deal work. So we closed PITI.
[00:20:06] Jason: PITI for the listeners is...
[00:20:07] Sarah: principal interest taxes insurance.
[00:20:11] Matthew: Yeah, so, I know that was how our conversation started was, " can we do this in the LLC?" And we walked through that and the pros and cons a little bit, I think, and that's one thing that conventional QM loans don't really not really, they don't allow that. You cannot fund in an LLC.
[00:20:25] Now, what happens is a lot of people like you were advised, "hey, fund it in your name, slip it to the LLC later." That can cause some problems because Fannie Mae does have due on sale clauses in their loan documents. So, technically, if there's an ownership change, that note can be called due. Typically, you can just flip it back into your name and stop that process, but it becomes a cat and mouse game back and forth if you have a servicer that's trying to, exercise that for some reason, it doesn't happen very often. It's not a very high risk, but it's definitely something you need to be aware of. On the non QM side, the lenders want these, or most of them prefer them to be funded into LLCs because non QM as a whole is considered business purpose lending.
[00:21:11] It falls outside of the consumer protection, finance protection Bureau oversight. So, it's considered or classified more of like a commercial loan. And so most of them require, or want you to fund into an LLC. There are some that will do them in their personal names. It's interesting. They follow more of a conventional loan program, which I'm not really sure I understand, because they issue a closing disclosure and they look at loan estimates, even though it's considered a non loan. So they just handle a little bit differently. Those companies will allow you to do it in your name and some of them are doing a lot of those companies are also doing primary residences under a non QM basis. So bank statement products for somebody who may be self employed also trying to buy a primary residence. That's where I see it more. Most of the the LLC stuff is for investors and those lenders are going to. Really prefer or require it to be in an LLC.
[00:22:07] Jason: Got it. Okay, cool. So what should investors know in order to make the decision as to which way they should go? Like, how do you make the deciding factor? Like, what are some of the things that kind of weigh into this?
[00:22:20] Matthew: Yeah, I think really it's a conversation initially of can they qualify for a conventional loan? Do they understand what non QM loans have to offer? A lot of investors aren't familiar with the details of non QM loans, how they work, how they can help them. So it's really an education conversation of, what options we may have available. Right? I would always start with the conventional loans typically and, see if we can qualify. If you can go that route and you're putting 25 percent down you're going to get a little bit better interest rates. And then you don't have some of the other key factors that come with non QM loans. So most non QM loans do have some sort of prepayment penalty because they're selling these to a secondary hedge fund investor that wants a minimum return. So, in most cases, you're going to have a prepayment penalty in a conventional loan. Stay out of point. A QM loan legally cannot have a prepayment penalty.
[00:23:14] So there's a big difference there. But as far as qualifying them, it's a really, like I said, an education and a conversation about what their profile looks like. Right? They self employed. Do they own multiple properties? Are they showing losses or profits on those properties? And then, really documenting that, 9 times out of 10, what I'm told on a verbal conversation doesn't match what I get on the documentation that way.
[00:23:38] "Oh, my business makes this," but they're talking about gross revenue, not net income. They're talking about gross rent amounts, not the net income they're showing on their tax returns. So it needs to go the next level. But that initial conversation may determine quite quickly that, hey, we need to go non for what reason or, because they want to fund it in an LLC, because the property is really a short term rental, but it doesn't but they don't have any history of short term rental management.
[00:24:07] And let's talk just a little bit about, how you look at the short term rental. I know that's what we were talking a little bit about before we talked about your loan, right? So there's 2 ways to look at that short term rental and it's either from well, the rental income short term or long term can either come from an appraiser.
[00:24:23] Or from a software program that some lenders are now using. So a lot of lenders will lean on a typical, appraisal to an appraiser to come up with whatever that market rent may be. And like, like, you said, it's difficult to cash flow properties in Austin or in Texas. On long term rents simply because the property taxes have escalated and now with higher interest rates.
[00:24:48] So a lot of times, the short term rental is really from a lending perspective an easier way to qualify the property for 1. But we do have the ability to look at it from two different perspectives and this is what we utilized on your loan. So I'll just talk about a little bit. So I have a couple lenders that will look at the short term rental from a software perspective.
[00:25:05] Right? So in your case. When we had the discussion, it was really a matter of, yeah, "I really want to put 20 percent down. I don't want to put additional money down. That would be more important to me than a little bit higher interest rate. Right?" And so, when we look at different lenders that may be leaning on an appraisal.
[00:25:21] I don't know what that number is for 2 weeks and me personally I feel like appraisers, especially in the short term rental market. Are a little bit lazy and sometimes they just don't have the data. So what happens is I submitted to the lender based on an 80 percent loan to value. And then all of a sudden, my short term rental income comes back low or lower than what we may have expected.
[00:25:42] And now that's requiring you to put an additional 5 percent down to meet their guidelines of a debt service coverage ratio less than one or go no ratio, right? We still have an option, but the option is going to require you to put a little bit more money down. And so. Again, we have two ways to look at it either an appraisals given us that number or with some investors.
[00:26:00] And this is why I like working with some of those in that case. Like I said, your most important factor is 20 percent down. so I took it to a lender that gave me that short term rental number within 48 hours. They ran it through their system. They gave it to me immediately and said, "this is where we should be." As soon as we submitted the loan to underwriting within 2 days, we had an approval and this was confirmed short term rental amount. We didn't have to wait on the appraiser and it didn't matter what the appraiser's opinion was. They already confirmed what we were going to use, which confirmed that I could get your loan approved with just 20 percent down. So, that's a preferred method in a lot of ways, especially if we're trying to keep that 20 percent down number.
[00:26:38] If we have somebody that's putting 25-30 percent down, then it's. A little bit less relevant and we can, decide what option might be best for them at that point.
[00:26:46] Jason: Got it. So why should property managers who are constantly wanting to do more deals, help more investors, why should they have somebody like Matt in their back pocket?
[00:26:57] Sarah: Oh, that's such a good question. Well, I want to think of it kind of twofold. One, I feel like if you are a property manager, you should also be an investor in real estate. Real estate agents just by having access to the MLS. No, that's not where all deals come from. I know that, but just by having access to the MLS and the connections that you have as a real estate agent and property manager, there's no chance that you don't come across amazing deals all the time.
[00:27:23] There's no chance. So capitalize on that.
[00:27:26] You should also be an investor yourself. It's great to manage properties and let's do that and build wealth ourselves. Yeah. So that's number one. But number two is if you're like, "well, I like, I don't know, I'm unsure, or maybe I have one property or two properties and I don't know if I'm ready to continue to build a portfolio."
[00:27:46] Or you're like, "Hey, I have X many properties and I'm happy right here. I don't want any more." I don't know why, but maybe you are. So if that's the case and you have investor clients that very likely would love to get into more deals themselves. And it would be great for you because now if you have an investor and they manage five doors, but that same investor can now manage 10, 20, 38.
[00:28:11] That's fantastic because now your business is growing. So if you have a way that you can help your investor clients get what they want, which is more deals, it's a win because yes, the savvy investors, they're always looking for more deals. Jason's hooked now. He said to me, we closed and he was like, "how do we do another one? like, how do we do another one?" He's like, "how fast can we do another one? Like Sarah, is it possible if we do like one property a year," right? And he did. Yeah, he did. There's a lot of investors like that because once you get it. Once you really get to see all of the benefits and just how freaking beautiful it is to be a real estate investor and make money and get all of the tax benefits that you don't get in almost any other sector.
[00:28:54] It's amazing. So why would you not want more of that? So if you're a property manager, it would make so much sense for you to just be able to educate your investor clients. "Hey, have you ever thought of picking up more properties?" The answer probably is going to be "yes," especially if you're doing a great job for them as a property manager.
[00:29:14] Because that's a tricky part is, "well, I could buy a bunch of properties, but who's going to manage them?" If you have a great manager, it makes sense to get as many properties as you possibly can, knowing that they are in good hands and they are being taken care of because all you're doing is printing money.
[00:29:30] So if you want to grow your portfolio by adding additional deals to the clients that you already have. It's like so simple, right? Why would we not do that? So having options. that not everybody knows about. It's fantastic.
[00:29:47] Jason: So in short, this just gives them a lot more options to work with because investors want to invest, and they may think, "Oh, well, I've only got this much down or I can only do a conventional, I can only do it this way. I need to meet certain criteria" or "I've just declared all these losses."
[00:30:04] Sarah: "Like I have too much debt." Maybe their like debt to income is a little maxed out because we're, keeping up with the Joneses. This is so normal, right? So that and Matt's laughing. He sees it all the time.
[00:30:15] I bet he's like, "Oh, we went a little too high on that one."
[00:30:18] there's good debt and bad debt though as well, right?
[00:30:21] Correct. However, if you own five properties or six properties or seven properties, every additional property that you have that is leveraged, meaning that you have a mortgage on it, that's counting against you and your debt to income ratio.
[00:30:35] Jason: Right. So it gets harder and harder using conventional to get into more property.
[00:30:40] Sarah: Unless you're the Fed and you can just print money.
[00:30:42] Jason: Well, I don't know if they're buying
[00:30:44] Matthew: a lot of money.
[00:30:44] But you bring up a good point and just to clarify when we do a debt service coverage ratio program, I'm not looking at any of your debt.
[00:30:52] I'm not looking at a debt ratio calculation at all. And if you own multiple properties, I'm not even looking at any of those other properties for any sort of rent, income, verification, mortgage, anything. This one is a business, right? Correct. It's it. Well, it's just debt service coverage on that subject property, right?
[00:31:10] Does the rent cover the note? And do we have enough money for down payment and reserves on that property alone? We don't look at reserves for those additional properties like you would a conventional. So you got five properties. I don't care about reserves on those. I'm only looking at the subject property.
[00:31:24] So, yes, debt to income is a big factor and I think, if we're talking to property management companies, it's really just an education or a knowledge of what potentially could be out there. Right? Like you said, they have opportunities to buy all the time. I would think that the savvy property manager is going to scoop those up if they can, but are they aware of these programs?
[00:31:44] Or do they think that? "Oh, my debt to income is too high or I have losses on my tax returns that I'm going to have trouble qualifying." And then you also have your network of investors that you manage those properties for that potentially are looking for additional doors, but they're not aware of these programs in some cases.
[00:32:00] So, yeah, it's just a matter of, I think, education and just getting the information out there. So that some of these people know what options are available.
[00:32:09] Jason: Well, it sounds like it shifts the conversation from, "can we?" Yeah. Maybe it's a no, in their thought, in their mind to "how can we?" Like, there's other creative ways that things could be done instead of saying, "Oh, it's gotta be this one way we've always done it. That's the only way." So, what about for long term rentals? Which like some of the investors listening and a lot of our clients listening may not do a short term.
[00:32:32] Sarah: You can still do a non QM on a long term, especially in Austin. Now, other markets, you might find a cashflow. Like I have a cashflow property in Pennsylvania.
[00:32:40] It's a rare gem guys, but in Austin, it's hard to get something to cashflow, especially right now.
[00:32:47] Matthew: Okay, so there's two ways to look at it again. There's, or I guess, multiple ways to look at it. Not just two, but bank statements if I'm looking at it. So, if they're self employed, and they have a business that we can lean on the bank statements, right?
[00:32:59] That's my income qualifier and no longer care about that negative potential cash flow on the property in the rent. Right? So that's one way. If I'm doing debt service coverage and I'm looking at long term rental, I have a client that wants to long term rented. They're not going to be comfortable stating short term rental on the application.
[00:33:17] They really have no desire to do that. Then I have to look at the short term rent. Now, what that's typically going to end up, at least in Austin, what's typically going to end up happening is that property is going to have a problem cash flowing at 20 percent down or 80 percent equity. Right? So what happens is it now pushes us to.
[00:33:34] A bigger down payment, a larger down payment, 25 percent 30%. And then we have the options with those lower loan values to do either no ratio or lower debt coverage ratio loan programs. Right? So. If it falls below 100%, meaning 100 percent rent coverage with PITI coverage which principal interest taxes, insurance and HOA fees all come into that play. But let's just say it's a little bit short. I've got a PITI of 2000 dollars of my rent's 1800. well, the lender is going to do one or two things. Are you going to say, "well, we need more down to get that to 100%." Or "we're going to reclassify it as a higher risk and we'll do, some of them will go down to 75 percent debt coverage, but it's a little bit higher rate."
[00:34:18] Or "we have to go to a little bit larger down payment and go no ratio, right?" No ratio means we just eliminate that altogether. And it's typically 30 percent down. So, we have options to look at but it is definitely a little bit harder if we're looking at long term rents simply because it's harder to cash flows at 20%, unless again, unless we have larger down payments or larger equity positions, for refinances to soak.
[00:34:42] A lot of these let's talk about that too, you have some of your property management clients that may want to purchase more properties where they could extract equity out of these homes to use to purchase more property. So there's a lot of the refinance going on with those properties to under a non QM basis, because they again, they can't qualify for a full doc for whatever reasons.
[00:35:03] Right? But there are options to pull cash out under a non QM basis and utilize those funds to reinvest.
[00:35:09] Jason: Got it. So say they've got five, 10 properties, it's getting really difficult for them to qualify for a QM loan. They could maybe pull some equity out of their existing properties, do like a cash out refi, and then use that money to fund a bigger down payment to do a non QM scenario.
[00:35:28] Matthew: Absolutely. Absolutely. The challenge right now in the market with refinances in general is a lot of these people have really good rates on those properties. And so they don't necessarily want to refinance and lose that low rate understandably. Right? So. In other states, you have a the ability to do HELOCs or he loans, which are second liens, Texas, it's a little bit limited.
[00:35:47] There's not as many products available, especially on the investment side. There are ways to extract some of that equity and reposition it to be reinvested in other investment opportunities. And I will say that we do have the ability to do the same type of loans on small commercial properties.
[00:36:04] Like, up to I've got one lender that kind of specializes in that small commercial that goes up to 24 units. So, between 5 and 24 unit apartment buildings, we're also looking at a non QM type debt service coverage loan, which is what commercial loans look at in general anyway. Commercial loans are based on cash flow, right?
[00:36:23] It's all debt service coverage based on that. But in that small apartment complex arena, you've got a lot of these kind of more residential lenders that are focusing and specializing in it. Because it's a piece of the market that's left out, right? Your commercial lenders don't want to touch something that's a few 100, 000 dollars. They have minimums of 5Million dollars, 3Million dollars. And so you have these smaller properties that are great investments in some cases that also have challenges getting loans, not because of the property, but because of the size of the loan.
[00:36:55] Jason: It's just not big enough for him.
[00:36:56] So Matt what areas do you cover personally? And then how do people find somebody like you, how did they find somebody like you? Like, this was a challenge we had to ask around what do people look for to find somebody that can help them with some more creative options?
[00:37:11] Matthew: That's a good question. I wish more people would know how to find me. So maybe you can help me with that. But yeah, it's just, it's interesting. There's a lot of loan officers that just don't, I guess maybe they're scared of the non QM space. They don't understand it. They're scared of change, so to speak, and so they just go, "I've never done that. And I don't know anything about it and they don't want to learn about it." it's the fastest growing segment of the market right now. Fannie Mae is pushing a lot of the paper towards non QM from a risk perspective. They want to get away from it. They're making investment rates in terms unattractive, so to speak, so they're offloading it that way. But, I think it's really through the real estate agents is probably the best way to get in touch with somebody like me, if they're familiar with it. But what's interesting is even your agent from McLean that I work a lot with Brett.
[00:38:00] He wasn't 100 percent versed in these products either. So. Fortunately, he got me, right?
[00:38:05] Sarah: Yeah. Thank you, Brett.
[00:38:07] Matthew: But, yeah, as far as if you have somebody that's questions, I'm always available to potentially educate people in regards to these programs. As far as where I do business, I'm legally licensed in Texas and Arizona, meaning national mortgage licensing, which is the, the CFPB license.
[00:38:22] Now, with non QM loans about 35 states don't require you to have a license within that state. So I can do non QM debt service coverage all these type of loans that we talked about in about 34 different states. Just with my national license and because they consider a business purpose use, it's classified as a commercial loan in those states, and they don't have these overbearing laws like California does or Nevada. So there are some states that it's difficult unless you want to jump through a bunch of hoops to do it. And unless there's enough volume, there hasn't made sense for me to do it.
[00:38:55] I just focus on the ones that I can, which is a big piece of the country and we can help folks in those 30 some states, 34 states, whatever it is.
[00:39:03] Jason: So there's maybe 15, 16 states that you can't cover.
[00:39:06] Matthew: It's the New York the Pacific Northwest and California, most of the middle of the country around Texas we can do.
[00:39:14] I know you, you referred me to somebody in Utah the other day, they happen to be a state that requires licensing, but their licensing is pretty reasonable. So, if there was an opportunity or a reason, for some volume to come out of there, I could get licensed fairly quickly.
[00:39:28] And some of these states, because I already hold a national license within them. I passed the test for that, which means you just have to take the state piece of that exam to then get licensed. Be able to do loans there, which is fairly simple. And as long as you're not in New York or California or somebody that has these crazy laws,
[00:39:44] Sarah: What's to invest there anyway, come on, like squatters and all this, like?
[00:39:48] Matthew: I know, right?
[00:39:49] I don't know how everybody does loans in New York. I hear it takes 90 days to close a loan.
[00:39:54] Jason: There's plenty of investors in those markets. I'm sure people listening. All right. Cool. Well, Matt, it's been great having you here on the DoorGrow show. Appreciate you being our guest. How can people find you or get in touch with you?
[00:40:06] If they're wanting to reach out and find out if they're one of those 34 states.
[00:40:10] Matthew: Well, my number if you want my phone number is 512 415 6142. You can Google Nexa my name. I think if you Google my name and Nexa mortgage that come up quite a bit on the Google nexahomelending.Com is my personal website.
[00:40:27] That's probably the two best ways to reach out to me just text or email and I'm more than happy to help you in any way that I can.
[00:40:34] Jason: Perfect. Well, it sounds like this is at least a key or just a tool or an idea that every property manager listening should probably have in their back pocket.
[00:40:44] You should have some sort of connection to a more creative lender than you may have currently. And so, connect with Matt or maybe, I don't know, start Googling non QM lenders in your market. I don't know, but find somebody or ask around to some real estate agents, but see if you can get somebody that can help with getting some of these deals because investors, they have money, they have equity and, but they're not doing deals and they want to probably do more deals and they just need somebody creative enough to help them find some solutions or interesting ways to make it happen.
[00:41:13] So, all right. Well, again, Matt, thanks for being on the show. Appreciate you.
[00:41:17] Matthew: My pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.
[00:41:19] Jason: All right. Well, everybody, if you are interested in growing your business, your property management business, reach out to us, you can check us out at doorgrow.Com. And until next time, everybody to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:41:30] Matthew: Great. Thank you. Talk to you guys soon. Bye.
[00:41:32] Jason: you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:41:59] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
If you have been struggling to grow your property management business, you might have been prioritizing the wrong things…
In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss how having the right priorities and getting support helps with business growth.
You’ll Learn[01:30] Are you prioritizing the right things?
[08:30] Why you CAN’T do everything yourself
[20:20] How prioritizing safety might hinder growth
[27:30] Why you should be willing to take risks
[30:50] Prioritize results and get those results
Tweetables“You may have all the right priorities. They're just in the wrong order.”
“I think a lot of times we hold onto things simply because ‘we want it done right’ means ‘done according to my set of values.’”
“Pain's an inevitable scenario if you keep trying to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome.”
“You can either have your excuses or you can have results, but you can't have both.”
ResourcesDoorGrow and Scale Mastermind
DoorGrow Academy
DoorGrow on YouTube
DoorGrowClub
DoorGrowLive
TalkRoute Referral Link
Transcript[00:00:00] Sarah: Isn't that the definition of insanity? It's doing the same thing over and over and over and then expecting a different result.
[00:00:06] Jason: I think that's what creates insanity. Like, pain's an inevitable scenario if you keep trying to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome.
[00:00:14] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.
[00:00:56] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management, growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the founder and CEO and the COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.
[00:01:25] I did the intro right this time I think. I didn't screw it up. We could just have it prerecorded, people. You never know what you're going to get. Okay. So I was thinking about what we could talk about this morning and I've been doing some reflection and some study and the topic that just keeps coming up in my mind is prioritization and priorities.
[00:01:44] In fact, I'll probably talk a little bit about that and do an exercise with some of the cool people that are coming to DoorGrowLive. Cause I really think if you're not experiencing growth and you're not having the success that you want, you're not getting the results that you want in business and life, then it's pretty simple. It's just that your priorities are out of alignment with you getting the results that you want. And you may have all the right priorities. They're just in the wrong order. And so you're prioritizing something over the thing that if you prioritize would give you the results that you actually want in your life.
[00:02:20] And so I was thinking about this question and I threw it out to Sarah while she's getting ready this morning. And I said, "what are people prioritizing over growth?" Because the people that come into our program, the work with us, they get great results. They are different. They're prioritizing growth over certain other things.
[00:02:39] And so people that don't work with us, why do they not spend money on coaching? Why don't they invest in coaching? And so why don't we go to Sarah and find out, what do you think? Why are people not spending money on coaching? Like where entrepreneurs at in their journey that mentally that's preventing them from spending money on a coach, moving the business forward or working towards growth?
[00:03:05] Sarah: Well, I think there's a few reasons that this could be the case. And one might be that people don't even know what a coach would do, right? Like, "how would a coach help me?" And some people might not even be aware that that's an option.
[00:03:22] Jason: Got it.
[00:03:22] Sarah: I wasn't for a very, very long time. Even when I was running my business, I didn't know, "Hey, there's people that will help you."
[00:03:30] Jason: Okay. That's fair enough. So what cracked your mind open to the idea or possibility of coaching?
[00:03:38] Sarah: Well, honestly, it was you. You're really big on coaching. I had never had a coach in my life. Ever. And when you and I had moved in together, you are so big on coaching and you do a variety of different types and styles of working with coaches.
[00:04:00] And some of it is mastermind style and some of it is one on one and some of it is event type. And I realized, "wow, this is really great." Like, I just did not make that connection and realization that there are people who genuinely want to help other people succeed in life and in business.
[00:04:21] Jason: So I want to clarify what you're saying.
[00:04:26] Clarify something. Some people listening will hear, "Oh, Jason's into coaching. Yeah, we know he coaches people. That's what he does. It's what he's trying to sell." And what you're saying is you saw me getting coached.
[00:04:38] Sarah: Oh yes, working with coaches.
[00:04:39] Jason: Working with coaches, joining masterminds. Like I'm the student.
[00:04:43] Sarah: I knew what you did when obviously when I met you.
[00:04:45] Jason: Yeah.
[00:04:46] Sarah: But I also saw you embody that and you work with a lot of coaches yourself. And in seeing you and the business, our business, work with coaches, that was something I was like, "Oh, wow. Okay. That helps a lot." Because coaches, especially when you work with a coach that's been there, done that... because there's a lot of coaches that they don't really know. They're like, "well, this was a great theory." But when you work with a coach that has. done the thing and gotten the result and had that experience and now they can talk about it and they can share their experience and they can share their knowledge and they can say, "Hey, I tried this and it didn't work. So avoid this," and "Hey, this got me in some hot water, so definitely don't do that," And, "this was really successful and here's how I did it and here's why I did it this way. And I kept testing and refining." And then they can share that knowledge with you. And when I started experiencing that in DoorGrow, With the coaches that we worked with, that was something that I was like, "Oh, well, that would have been nice to know."
[00:05:52] Jason: And Sarah learns super fast. Like I've always been super impressed by how quick you adopt new information or new ideas. Like most people I think it takes a while for people to absorb certain things, but some things you're just like, "yeah." And you're like, "let's do coaching."
[00:06:05] And we've tried lots of different coaches out together. Like some not good.
[00:06:09] Sarah: Some are not good.
[00:06:10] Jason: Right. It's like a...
[00:06:12] Sarah: colossal waste of money.
[00:06:14] Jason: Some really good.
[00:06:15] Sarah: Some really good.
[00:06:16] Jason: Some we weren't ready for. We just like didn't have the capacity or the bandwidth to work with them.
[00:06:21] Sarah: Mm hmm.
[00:06:22] Jason: We just had so much going on.
[00:06:23] Like we took on too much. Maybe we had too many coaches at a time, something like this. Right. Even right now, like I'm onboarding and I'm coaching and training two new sales team members, plus my son in learning setting and sales. But I went and got outside help. So I have a coach right now that's coaching me and them.
[00:06:45] And then I'm spending each day coaching them, but each week we're meeting with a coach and he's an expert in sales and he's helping us go to another level and work on scripts and work on our communication, work on language. And that's been really helpful. I'm always leveling up my skills.
[00:06:59] And I think it's important to never get comfortable. And I think for me, I just try to imagine like if I didn't have coaches or mentors and I'm every day trying to like coach people and sell coaching to me, that would feel like a gross lack of integrity. Feels like I'd be grossly out of alignment, and a lot of the coaches that we have, I found them through coaching programs that we were in with them. Right. And so I know that they believe in coaching and they're in integrity. And I know that they're in the areas, at least that I am seeking help in, they are ahead of me in that game. And and so I can trust them.
[00:07:39] There's evidence they can help get results and they've given some value already. And so I'm like, "okay, I should, we should work with them." And I think that's one of the challenges. And so everybody out there, if you're like, " why am I not spending money on coaching or why don't I have a coach?"
[00:07:52] I think there's a lot of reasons for that. But I think just as a side note, if you're going to get a coach, don't work with a coach that doesn't have a coach , right? If they went through one program one time, they're like, "I went through this coaching program and got a certificate one time." Then do they really believe in coaching?
[00:08:10] No. They just believed in getting the appearance of being a good coach and they're not actually a coachable person. I believe in order to be able to coach others, you have to also be coachable and being able be able to learn. I learned a massive amount just by coaching, coaching clients and supporting them.
[00:08:29] And so let's get into what people maybe are prioritizing instead of growth. If they're not growing. Because some people are listening to this and they're like, "well, I've been stuck at the same number of doors I've been at for like two, three years." So what priority might be off or what are they prioritizing that's different?
[00:08:45] What might be off? What are some of the things they're prioritizing?
[00:08:48] Sarah: I think one of the big things is this need to control everything. And I understand because I am a control freak. I get it. And for a long, long time, I had always said, "if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself."
[00:09:08] So, why would I ask somebody else to do this thing, and then I'm just going to have to go check and see if they did it the right way? And "oh, they made a mistake, so now I have to... it's just easier and faster for me to just go and do it myself!" Right? Instead of teaching somebody or training somebody or just asking them to do it, but then really secretly I'm going to go and check and see if they actually did it.
[00:09:28] So delegation for me was very hard for a very long time. Because I am very detail oriented, and very OCD, and very organized, and I'm very particular in how things get done. So, I believe there's a right way, and a wrong way to do just about every task that there is.
[00:09:49] Jason: Yeah, that's very, very INTJ thinking of you.
[00:09:53] But I'm not incorrect. Most of the time, you're not, right? And so, if you want it done right, you do it yourself. Is that true? Sometimes, right? Like there's a lot of situations where that's true. The challenge is: could it be possible that if somebody else did it, it could be done better than you?
[00:10:12] Right. That could be true too. And so I think getting a coach is you start to recognize where you might have gaps and the ultimate evidence is our results. If we're not getting the results that we want, then maybe we're not the person that should be doing that thing. Because we're not getting the results and we're doing it.
[00:10:29] So it's us, right? But yeah, I think that's a belief that a lot of people have in the beginning. "I want it done right." And I think a lot of times we hold onto things simply because "we want it done right" means "done according to my set of values." There's lots of different ways to do something and the outcome could be similar or could work or could be positive, but we have certain values that we want it done in a certain way to be the right way.
[00:10:54] The right way. Yes. And INTJs very much feel there's a right way and a wrong way for everything. The challenge is a lot of times, if we're super rigid and believing we always have the right way, we can't see around corners. There's certain personality types, though, that can see a lot more opportunity and a lot more variety of options.
[00:11:13] And they usually can crack those strong J's brains open, that are judging, to some new ideas and new possibilities. And eventually they'll adopt those, right? And so that's, I think where we have a nice balance in our relationship is you're usually right. A lot of things and very strategic brain and can figure stuff out and you're like, something's off here.
[00:11:35] You're very intuitive. And and usually right when you're like, "something's not right here." And then also, I'm very good at seeing alternatives, other possibilities, and exposing you to some other options or some other ideas.
[00:11:48] Sarah: Yes. And you're also very good at human emotions.
[00:11:52] Jason: Oh.
[00:11:52] Sarah: I'm not good at human emotion.
[00:11:54] Jason: Right.
[00:11:55] Sarah: You're like, "well, you can't do that because it'll make people feel like this." And I'm like, "so?"
[00:12:01] Jason: Yeah, yeah, this is a constant frustration. You're like, "why won't people just do what I told them to do when I just tell them one time in a very succinct way, exactly what I want?
[00:12:11] Sarah: Right? Like I have all the answers, just listen and then do what I tell you to do! That's it. Like, it's so easy. I feel like life would be so much easier if you just listen.
[00:12:22] Jason: And so the one advantage, one of my maybe few advantages over you cognitively maybe is the idea that I can empathize a bit more with other people and I can figure out what would it take to get this installed into their brain?
[00:12:38] What would make this digestible for them? What would make this palatable? What would make them able to adopt or absorb this idea or to remember this idea or for this to work? And you're like, "just tell them!" Because I can just tell you and you get it. And you'll get annoyed if I start to explain and use analogy.
[00:12:53] Sarah: I got it, I got it.
[00:12:55] Jason: Yeah.
[00:12:55] Sarah: Give me the thing that I need.
[00:12:56] Jason: Those things are very effective. I got it. Other people.
[00:12:58] Sarah: And now I'm going to go and do it. That's how I work.
[00:13:01] I think other people work like that too, but sometimes they don't and it's crazy to me! I don't... crazy!
[00:13:07] Jason: So I think one of the things that people prioritize over growth sometimes is that self struggle. Like there's people that value doing it themselves.
[00:13:17] Like even as a little kid, my daughter, Madi, I would try to tie her shoelaces and she didn't even know how to do it! And she would say, "no, I do it! I do it!"
[00:13:25] Like she wouldn't let me do it.
[00:13:26] Sarah: Hey Madi.
[00:13:27] Jason: Madi edits our podcast, so she'll see this. She wanted to do it. And I'd be like, "okay."
[00:13:32] And she's just sitting there struggling. But she was determined and eventually she figured it out and eventually she might be frustrated enough to allow me to help her. Right? And sometimes we have to allow people to struggle, but a lot of times we're self struggling and it's self imposed and we're not having success in our business or success in growth or adding doors or making more money or retaining clients or whatever it might be. And we're so stuck on this idea of self struggle, which is DIY, right? "I'm going to do it myself." and I've been this guy. I'll watch YouTube videos. I'll read books. I will figure it all out on my own.
[00:14:06] " I'm smart enough. I can do this." And what I want to say to everybody listening, that that's you. You're right. You're totally right. You are smart enough to figure everything out eventually, it's just going to take you probably a decade longer than somebody that goes and gets coaching or gets helped. And I've been that I've done that.
[00:14:24] Jason: I've spent like a decade doing stupid stuff. I'm in my forties. I've spent at least a decade doing some things and struggling with some things before I got help with it. And the amount of time somebody that already has succeeded at this or knows what works can collapse for you in the experimentation, in the struggles, in the financial risks, in the time wasting is pretty significant, like dramatically significant.
[00:14:48] I've had mentors... I have one mentor. I paid him three grand a month and it was the biggest expense ever. Like I signed up for this coach and I immediately was like in a short period of time was making 30 grand more a month. That's a pretty decent return. Right? And I would have been stupid to not have done that, but it was a calculated risk.
[00:15:07] At the time I was in a dysfunctional marriage and my wife at the time cried when I told her I was spending three grand a month, and we've spent a lot more than three grand a month on some of our coaches and mentors.
[00:15:19] Sarah: At the time three grand was a lot and it was scary.
[00:15:21] Jason: Oh, yeah.
[00:15:22] That was my first dive into high ticket coach. Yes. Working with the coach.
[00:15:26] Sarah: Yes, and I think the other thing to point out too about working with someone else is that It's not always about, "well, I must be bootstrapped. I must do it myself. I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to do it all. I don't need any help."
[00:15:40] Sometimes it's not even that sometimes it's, you just think things are really good because we hear that sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes like, "Oh, things are pretty good in the business," but you don't know what you don't know.
[00:15:51] Sometimes you just don't know what you don't know. And you think, "well, if things keep going the way that they are right now, that's okay. Like, maybe it's not my dream situation, but I'm also not really hating my day to day. And I'm not in this massive struggle." So I'm like, "things are okay. So do I actually need help? And do I need to reach out and work with someone?" And a lot of times, even if you think things are pretty good, and " maybe I don't need help." And you're right. You maybe don't need help. Perhaps you just need help to see what else is possible for you.
[00:16:31] Jason: And they may not need help. They may not need it. If you're smart and you have big goals and you want to move forward quicker, then maybe you would want it, right? You would desire it instead of feel like this needy energy, like, "Oh, I need this." I think that's sometimes what limits us is we don't want to feel like we need something.
[00:16:48] We don't want to admit we need something because it's a gross energy to be needy or to need something. It almost feels victimy to some people. I think when we have goals and we know what we want and we see that other people can help us, it becomes a little bit more natural for us to be able to do that.
[00:17:03] Sarah: And I also think, this is another gripe I have with our lovely education system, is that in school, you are taught, "do it on your own."
[00:17:13] "Don't look at other people's. Don't cheat. Don't ask your neighbor." If you're stuck, you pretty much ask the teacher. Refer back to your lesson and figure it out. When you're taking a test, you can't go "hey Joe, I don't know what number 13 is. You know what number 13 is?" You're not allowed to do that.
[00:17:32] Yeah, like getting help is wrong.
[00:17:33] It's wrong, right! So just have it memorized and regurgitate it. So take the information in, memorize it, and vomit it back up on a piece of paper, and then I will give you a passing grade. In the middle of a test, are you able to raise your hand and say, "Hey teacher, I had a question. I'm stuck on this. I don't really understand this. Can you please help me arrive to the answer?" No! No, you cannot! So in school, they teach us the self reliance. And I do believe that that is a very positive thing in one way. And in another way, it hinders our growth. Because in business, you should rely on other people so that you can get better results and go farther faster.
[00:18:17] Jason: So I think also what school teaches us, the way school is set up is there's this one guru expert at the front of the room that we have to listen to all the time.
[00:18:27] And so we learn to be reliant on the leader for all the answers. And sometimes the leader doesn't have them, right? Sometimes they don't know. Sometimes they have blind spots. Everybody's been a student when they've called their teacher out on something that was off or wrong, right? Or seen that happen, and they lose that credibility. And teachers just usually don't tolerate that very well. They don't like being seen as having flawed thinking. Having a wrong idea or being wrong. And so there's this sort of authoritarianism that's like involved in schools. It's like, trust the authority, trust the leader, be this blind, dumb beast and let them lead you around. And that's like the Bible and book of revelations talks about the mark of the beast and the hand and the forehead. And maybe it's just your thoughts and your labor just being controlled by outside unearned authority. And people should earn. their authority, right? I work with coaches because they've earned authority, not because they just told me like somebody like put a gun to my head or forced me or I was in a school system and they said I had to do it this way.
[00:19:30] So I think the irony of self struggle or DIY is that A lot of you are frustrated and thinking "I've got to do everything myself," but then you are probably because of that energy that you are being and creating in the universe and just how you show up with other people, you probably are really triggered and really frustrated with all the people that you encounter that think they could do a better job themselves.
[00:20:00] Because you have the same energy or problem as them, and so they trigger you. So if you're running, you're butting your head all the time with these DIY people in the industry, people that are trying to self manage their properties or people that are trying to micromanage really self manage through you to get you to do the work, it may be because you're carrying this belief of self struggle or doing it yourself.
[00:20:22] So just something to chew on. So another challenge that I think why people don't spend money on coaching or what they're prioritizing maybe over growth is there might be prioritizing safety or ease or comfort. And so what do you have to say about that?
[00:20:38] Sarah: So you have to get uncomfortable if you want results.
[00:20:42] If you want results that are different than what you're currently getting, you can't take the same actions you're taking now and expect to get different results. I think, isn't that the definition of insanity? It's doing the same thing over and over and over and then expecting a different result.
[00:20:57] Jason: I think that's what creates insanity. It stresses people out and makes you start to go crazy a little bit. That's a pretty painful. Pain's an inevitable scenario if you keep trying to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome. Now, everybody, as we age, we tend to move towards more and more comfort.
[00:21:14] I saw a video the other day. I think it was Gary Brecka, this health guy. He said that after the age of 30, most people will never do another sprint again in their life.
[00:21:24] Sarah: Well, I don't want to sprint. If I'm sprinting, y'all better follow me because...
[00:21:27] Jason: right. That's what people are saying. Like, they're like, "yeah, I don't want to. That's uncomfortable. I don't want to be cold. I don't want to be too hot." Comfort is he like described as is what leads us towards death ultimately. We want to be comfortable. We don't go work out at the gym. We don't build muscle, which affects our cognitive functioning later in life. It makes our bones more brittle. We then have a broken bone and like like we're hospitalized till we die right in our later years if we don't do the right things And so we're always seeking comfort and ease, and when we're always seeking comfort and ease, we shift the weight towards others. We Become, what I would kind of phrase as a victim or a blamer. We're a victim. We blame other people. We're complaining about our circumstances constantly, right?
[00:22:17] And instead of doing work or taking action or doing the things that are uncomfortable. And I think there's this stoic phrase that from, I don't know, one of the cool guys that is involved in stoicism or whatever, but the idea is "hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life."
[00:22:34] And a lot of people, I think could go, "that's true." I've seen some people make some easy choices, choices towards comfort, choices towards ease and their life's pretty difficult because they've avoided doing the hard, uncomfortable things, having the hard, uncomfortable conversations with people they should have, doing work, working hard to get the outcomes and a life of greater ease and comfort, right?
[00:22:55] And so I think if you prioritize ease and comfort over growth, what's going to happen?
[00:23:00] Sarah: Not much.
[00:23:01] Jason: Well, you're not going to grow, right? Because growth isn't necessarily about ease and comfort, right? And so, even in nature, if we take a fruit tree or a bush that produces some sort of, fruit, whatever, if we cut that, tree and trim it, it will then yield a bigger result.
[00:23:19] And sometimes if it's overgrown, it can't even produce fruit very effectively because it's too busy feeding everything else, all the branches leaves. So trimming it allows it to produce more fruit. And we're similar in that we need some friction and some intentional discomfort in our life and action in order to produce or bear fruit, in order to get the things that we want in life.
[00:23:42] Having uncomfortable conversations creates greater peace in our relationships. Being willing to take action in our business allows us to have more freedom, more revenue financially, and to be able to take care of our team and ourselves better. And so we can't be a victim and a blamer and complain about the market and complain about COVID and whatever your stupid excuses are, whoever's listening.
[00:24:04] If you've got all your excuses why you're not growing, you can either have your excuses or you can have results, but you can't have both. So which one would you rather choose? Right? And there's a lot of people that would rather choose their excuses because it allows them to not do anything. It allows them, "well, the market's tough, so I just might as well not do anything."
[00:24:23] Like right now, real estate agents, some are like, "oh, real estate market's tough. Can't get deals." Right? And then there's people that are still closing a bunch of deals and making plenty of money. And so our beliefs and our mindset and how we prioritize things shifts things. And so are you prioritizing ease and comfort?
[00:24:40] Sometimes it's not even about our own ease and comfort. Well, maybe it is. Sometimes people won't join a coaching program because their spouse doesn't want to spend the money or their business partner doesn't want the business to grow. We see that like they're an operator personality type.
[00:24:54] They're not really focused on growth and they're like, "no, we have good, stable, residual income. Like why rock the boat? And I'm getting 50 percent of the revenue," or whatever I've seen. And they're like, "why change anything? Don't disrupt my comfort here." And the other person's like, "let's have more doors. Let's go crazy. I'm a visionary."
[00:25:12] And the operator personality type's like, "yeah, but that would make my life worse. I don't need more money. I'm comfortable. Don't mess up my comfort."
[00:25:21] And sometimes the business visionary, or if it's with your spouse, we're not having that uncomfortable conversation with them because it means rocking the boat.
[00:25:31] It's uncomfortable. It means there might be a fight. It means you might get screamed at or get some angry emotion thrown at you. In some scenarios. And so I think it's really important to connect with deep down. Like, what do we really want? And what really should we be doing that we just know is right for us and being willing to step into that discomfort. I made some very uncomfortable choices in my day in order to get to where I'm at now. And sometimes it involved me having to look stupid in front of a group in a mastermind. Sometimes it involved me having to have uncomfortable conversations in relationships or even to end relationships.
[00:26:10] That's super uncomfortable. In order to move forward and do what I felt I was called to do or what I felt deep down. What I think is also interesting is more people are a lot more comfortable with those that are willing to do uncomfortable things and speak uncomfortable words.
[00:26:29] It makes everybody feel safer because they can trust that person. You can't trust people that are always focused on ease and comfort. I don't think they're as trustworthy of people because part of life in order to have integrity, in order to be honest, in order to work hard, in order to benefit the people that you have a fiduciary duty or responsibility to benefit like clients, you have to be willing to do the uncomfortable things.
[00:26:53] Otherwise, you're shifting all the discomfort on to everybody else. "Everybody else around me has to be uncomfortable so I can have comfort." And that does not create great relationships, safety, or create a good client or business relationship in the longterm. So that's my soapbox about that. All right.
[00:27:09] So, another reason people don't prioritize that they don't prioritize a growth is they might be looking at the short term. Maybe it's related to comfort. Maybe it's related to just, "I need to make sure I have cash now and they're giving up the longterm, maybe more cash later, maybe a bigger business later." Any thoughts about that?
[00:27:28] Sarah: This was your thing.
[00:27:29] Jason: I've run into this where I've talked to people and they're like, "well, I don't know. I don't have a lot of money right now," I think this is where you need to be willing to take a risk and bet on yourself.
[00:27:37] Find a system that's proven. We've got plenty of case studies and results to show that our stuff works. It's all proven. It all works. What I find is the only real question people need to figure out is, are they willing to work? Do they trust themselves? Are they willing to bet on themselves? And a lot of people don't.
[00:27:53] A lot of times we've struggled to even do the little things that we've told ourselves that we were going to do. And so we're out of integrity and we don't trust ourselves anymore. Like, "I'm going to work out at the gym tomorrow. I'm tired." Right. We've all done that. I've done that this week. Right. I did work out this morning though. But we've done that. We've all done that. And so it's the making these little movements of taking action towards our own integrity. Like I'm going to do this. And then I do it learning to trust ourselves again. And the one person you can control is you. And so when you have strong trust in yourself.
[00:28:28] Very few things are supremely risky because you're betting on yourself, especially if you're getting support to become better. And so, it may be a cash investment now, but if you can see there's a system and you can see there's results, then maybe the risk is worth it. You should get an ROI if you do the right actions, if it's a proven system. So I think those are some of the things. So why don't we look at the reverse real quick, and then we'll wrap up.
[00:28:54] The reverse would be what are our clients like? What's different about our clients? What do they prioritize that made them decide to work with us? What are they prioritizing differently that said " why would I not spend money on coaching? I should totally do this."
[00:29:08] Sarah: Yeah. Well first I think they believe in their ability to do it.
[00:29:13] Jason: Hmm.
[00:29:14] Sarah: Because if you don't believe in yourself, there's nothing that you're going to be able to do. No coach can help you. You've got to figure that out first. So they believe in themselves and they are also committed.
[00:29:27] And I think that is something that sometimes people are lacking. It's, they're just lacking a actual true commitment.
[00:29:37] Jason: So commitment, I feel like is, maybe it's a choice, but I feel like it's also an outcome of choices, right? So what are they choosing to prioritize? You think that maybe makes them more committed?
[00:29:49] Sarah: You're so cryptic today. You're like, " what are they choosing?" Like...
[00:29:52] Jason: well, I don't know, this is an interesting question I think to chew on.
[00:29:55] Sarah: What makes people more committed?
[00:29:56] Jason: Why are some people committed and some people are not? We're talking about priorities today, so I'm thinking, what are the priorities that they have that leads to being strongly committed?
[00:30:05] Sarah: It's either you're in it or you're out. It's like a pool. You're either in the pool or you're out of the pool. Yeah. That's it. You, like, you're either wet or you're dry. That's it. You can't like, "well, I've got a toe in the pool." Like it doesn't work. It doesn't work in business.
[00:30:19] And if you're finding that, "well, like I have my foot in the pool a little bit, I'm going to pull it out if I have to pull it out," that business will forever be hard. You have to either go all the way in or go all the way out. Because if you're in the middle, it is difficult and it will remain difficult.
[00:30:37] Jason: Yeah. It's really painful to be in between.
[00:30:40] Sarah: So either jump in the pool or jump out of the pool. Neither one is wrong.
[00:30:45] You might go, "I hate this pool. I don't like it." Great. Then find a different pool.
[00:30:50] Jason: So in chewing on this, I think in looking at myself when I'm fully committed to something, it's because I have prioritized the outcome.
[00:31:00] The outcome is clear enough and important enough and motivating enough that I will do whatever it takes to get that outcome. That's when I'm fully committed to something. I'll do whatever it takes to get that outcome because I know what I want. That's one of the things is our clients know what they want.
[00:31:17] Like they know that there's outcomes that they want. You mentioned, they believe in their ability to do it, to learn, to take action. And so they are a hundred percent committed. If you're committed to something and you don't know how to do it, you'll figure it out because you'll do whatever it takes.
[00:31:34] You will struggle. You'll do go through trial and error. You'll fail. You'll make mistakes. And I think that's another thing is our clients believe in their own themselves enough to be willing to make mistakes. Whereas some people prioritize not looking bad or not making mistakes. And so they don't take the action.
[00:31:51] They were like, "I need it all to be perfect and to know how to do everything before I do it because I don't want to be embarrassed or look stupid." And so I think some of our most successful clients are willing to just try stuff. They're just willing to do it. They don't have this need that they have to look so smart or whatever.
[00:32:07] And sometimes those people struggle the most, right? Sometimes they are super smart, but they have to look good and look smart all the time. So I think in short, our clients prioritize growth, they prioritize learning, they prioritize taking risks, experimenting, and this is why they are able to move forward.
[00:32:26] So hopefully this episode helps you reassess some of your own priorities. Like if you're not getting the results, make a list of what your priorities are and figure out like "what am I prioritizing currently that's leading to my current results?" Because if you can't see that, then you can't change it.
[00:32:40] And as soon as you can see it and you shift your priorities, "well, I need to start prioritizing this." Maybe you need to start prioritizing action. Maybe you need to start prioritizing your health more. Maybe you need to start prioritizing learning more. Whatever it is, in order to get the outcomes that you want.
[00:32:55] But if you're not getting the outcomes you want, your priorities are off. And hopefully this is an opportunity and an invitation for you to introspectively figure that out. And I hope that was beneficial.
[00:33:05] If you're struggling with any of this and you want some help getting clarity figuring out your priorities figuring out what you need to do in order to grow, you have a blind spot, you can't see it... like you need some external perspective, we all have problems we can't see.
[00:33:20] And if you're not getting the results, you lack some knowledge. You lack some insight. And so reach out to us at DoorGrow. One of our growth consultants can help you figure this out, help you figure out where you might be stuck, what you need to get to the next level.
[00:33:33] And you probably have some garbage or junk beliefs that are preventing you from being able to take things to the next level. And once those are out of the way, you're golden, right? So until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:33:46] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:34:12] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
Maintenance is often the most challenging area in a property management business. What if you could automate your maintenance workflow with an in-house, expert AI maintenance coordinator?
In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with David from Vendoroo (formally Tulu) to talk about AI maintenance coordination and how it could revolutionize the property management industry.
You’ll Learn[05:25] The AI Revolution
[10:51] What can AI Maintenance Coordination Do?
[20:58] How Vendoroo Handles Work Orders
[27:56] Why You Should Have in-House Maintenance
[37:30] Where do Humans Step in?
[41:37] Handling Worst-Case Scenarios
Tweetables“Property management is a very human business. It's a very relationship-driven business.”
“Is it scalable? Is it burning you out? Is it pulling you away from other duties that you need to be? Are you spreading yourself too thin? Great questions to ask if you have growth objectives.”
“Residents don't want to talk to a computer. They want to feel that they have a connection to their property manager.”
“The first offense creates a little crack between the relationship. The second one, you're losing trust with your owner.”
ResourcesDoorGrow and Scale Mastermind
DoorGrow Academy
DoorGrow on YouTube
DoorGrowClub
DoorGrowLive
TalkRoute Referral Link
Transcript[00:00:00] David: Even people who had in house maintenance coordinators or VAs, good ones, always still feel that they needed to second check all the work. And now when they're seeing the justification and they're seeing the education behind it, they get this sense of like, I can let go. You know why? Because this system is doing maintenance exactly the way that I'm asking it to do maintenance. And they feel that now they're actually back in control.
[00:00:24] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Property Managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high, trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.
[00:01:05] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow.
[00:01:25] And now let's get into the show. All right. So today I'm hanging out with David Normand and Reza Keshavarzi. Did I say your last name right?
[00:01:36] David: We always say it sounds like the great sauce that you would put on a steak. Keshavari. So delicious.
[00:01:41] Jason: All right.
[00:01:41] David: Yes. Cool.
[00:01:43] Jason: So David and Reza are from a company called Tulu, which we'll be getting into, which I think are probably revolutionizing maintenance related to AI and our topic today, we're going to be talking about AI and maintenance coordination, maybe getting into some of the current maintenance challenges, what AI could help with, what should be automated, what shouldn't be automated because I think that's a very important thing to cover and how to turn maintenance into a profit center. Before we get into that, why don't we get into some background? So David, why don't you give us the journey? How did you two get into this? How did you event like, how did you start your journey in the property management space?
[00:02:24] David: Yeah, great. It's crazy to think about it. It just all started probably about 15 years ago. Like many of you, started a property management company with a buddy of mine. I remember we started off with 80 doors. Got our 1st client, was excited. He left his job at Verizon. I was actually in the banking industry, bidding on subprime auto loans and the 2008 crash happened. And so we all knew what happened after that. And so anyway we actually had some tremendous success and in just over four years we added over 600 doors. Which was a phenomenal growth in our market. And we had a lot of people going, "Hey, what's your secret sauce? what are you guys doing?" Right. And the reality was, is that we just cared, right? We cared harder. We had fiduciary duty. And all of these owners were leaving their other property managers and saying, "Hey, Maybe these guys have it figured out," and we were getting conversions and our close rate was like 80%.
[00:03:13] It was really crazy, but something happened and just like many of us, owners started getting frustrated feeling like, the magic was wearing off because at the end of the day, no matter how hard we worked. Those owner statements and those maintenance invoices at the end of the month, I realized were the main source of friction between those long lasting relationships and the same reason why somebody left that previous property manager to come over for the hope of more transparency and maintenance was the same issue that we ran into.
[00:03:41] Right. So that led me on this journey of trying to figure out, how do we standardize our fiduciary duty to owners when it comes to maintenance and help them bring transparency and education and understanding to what I feel is really the cornerstone foundation of what a great relationship is? Because no, the building can be full, the mortgage can be paid, but those maintenance bills still come in and there's still the questions.
[00:04:06] "Why does this cost this much? So I had some great opportunities to work went on with Fannie Mae helped them manage their rental portfolio, but still in the back of my head, wanted to try to solve this issue. And all these years later, I get a phone call from somebody that said, "Hey, you need to meet this guy, Reza. He's in the HOA industry. And he's seen a similar issue with lack of transparency. And I think that you guys are trying to solve the same issue. Hey, why don't you meet up?" And I'll, and I'll preface this. This was the fourth introduction to a guy in a fourth type of tech or a company that we try to part with.
[00:04:40] And it just shows you the journey of an entrepreneur. Like you never know when that right connection that's going to align with your passions, resources, and understanding happens. And I actually had three other techs that didn't work out before. And I didn't want to bring them to market.
[00:04:52] Right. So that's our story. We got introduced to each other and the synergies have been fantastic. And I'm really excited to talk about what we're doing here in the space. So it's been a crazy journey. It's been exciting. Maybe one day I'll write a book down the road about all the things not to do.
[00:05:04] Jason: I think every entrepreneur that has a little bit of success could write that book. I'm sure. So cool. David, where do you think we should start? Like there's a revolution right now, this AI revolution, like it's AI everywhere. And and it's moving fast.
[00:05:21] David: Yes.
[00:05:21] Jason: Like really fast.
[00:05:22] And it's a bit crazy. And. Everything's changing. There's a million software tools and companies coming out. Maybe AI is making all of them. I have no idea, but like...
[00:05:31] David: 85 percent of all content written online is written by AI these days. So yeah, definitely.
[00:05:35] Jason: Right. There's the fake internet theory that like the majority of the traffic and communication and comments on the internet isn't even real. So it's like we're walking around this fake ghost town online. And we're consuming content and we're like none the wiser in a lot of instances. So my quick take, for those listening, as we're going through this AI revolution, it's exciting. There's a lot of change happening.
[00:05:57] We don't want to be left behind. We want to make sure we're paying attention to what's new, what we can use. Everybody's probably used chat GPT once or twice or keeps hearing about it from other people. "They've got a GPT, that thing that you use." Yeah. I used it this morning, right? Like I was trying to figure out something in my Chevy Tahoe.
[00:06:15] And I was like, "how do I do this thing in my Tahoe? Like, can you just tell me?" And it can collapse time, but sometimes it's not useful. I think my take on this is that human interaction is going to be a premium. It's going to be at a premium. It's going to be something that really sets people apart because we're moving away from humanity to some degree by leveraging all this tech and AI and all these tools and property management is a very human business.
[00:06:43] It's a very relationship driven business. And and I think we'll get into this today. We want to be careful of using technology where we shouldn't or trying to trick people. "Well, look, I'm pretending like it's me, but it's AI. Haha. I tricked you." And what's funny is there's little indicators, like, and we know that this stuff's being used in a lot of different ways, like governments are using this now, like, we don't even know what's real on the news or what's like deep fakes or AI, like they're showing people's like doing interviews and people are zooming in and noticing their rings are disappearing and like weird stuff, right?
[00:07:20] David: Yeah.
[00:07:20] Jason: And stuff's going viral on like the internet. And so we're living in this world where we're super skeptical and we wonder if anything's real.
[00:07:28] David: Yeah.
[00:07:29] Jason: Sometimes people are even asking, like, is this AI on a phone call?
[00:07:33] David: Yeah, well, you can't tell the difference now. I'll tell you, our tech team and AI guys they actually played around with me a little bit and they actually use my voice and had me doing work orders and no one could tell it was them.
[00:07:44] Not me speaking and giving triage and doing that type of stuff. And I actually I tested it with my wife and I sent her a message over it and she didn't even blink an eye. Didn't even blink an eye. It was crazy. It was that first like aha moment that really when we talk about our fiduciary duty to our clients and ourselves about the power of this and where it's going, right.
[00:08:01] And to that point. So when it comes to AI, I think people need to understand that really, the way that we look at chat GBT to me is just the new Google, right? It's Google on steroids. Okay. And so, yeah, for sure. Do we use some chat GBT to understand like, how to write the perfect sentence structure? For sure.
[00:08:18] But the cool part about this, Jason, is that what we're doing is: how do we use these models in this education that teach it about fiduciary duty to your owners? That's what gets me excited, right? That's what gets me excited to understand and to think intelligently and to think with thoughtfulness to the owner's pocketbooks when it's considering a decision of how to dispatch for maintenance, right?
[00:08:42] Like, isn't that what we're all looking for? That we need a system that every work order that comes in that it goes to a expert maintenance coordinator that we know what that costs. I'm talking expert maintenance coordinator, a person's been in this job for 15 to 20 years that you can send a work order to and they don't make an error.
[00:09:00] They're intelligent. They're able to educate, they're able to be client facing. Like there's a real skill set there if you put that on a CV for somebody, right? But that's not what this industry is filled with. Actually, this industry is filled with individuals who are under pressure to find the most affordable maintenance solutions and the most affordable ways to try to find people to run those maintenance solutions. We're allocating the least amount of resources to handle what I consider the highest probability of owner dissatisfaction in the property management relationship with the owner, right? So I have a VA who's 2000 miles away that's responsible for spending a thousand dollars in my owner's money.
[00:09:38] And there's all types of potential errors and things that are happening as a result of that. So the way that we look at AI and actually in our business, we just use the word smart a lot. And we try to use that word, that intelligent instead of artificial. Because you know what? There is a lot of human input that has gone into this to teach it how to be smart and to teach it how to consider the fiduciary duty.
[00:09:59] So at the end of the day, I would encourage all the listeners here that are going on this journey with us today to understand, not to be skeptical, how to maximize its value, right? And that's really what we're going to be focusing on today and to show you how we're maximizing its value to help us achieve what we call our dream outcome when handling maintenance.
[00:10:18] Our dream outcome is as a property manager, I'm starting a company or I'm looking to grow, or I'm hitting those next growth objectives, or I'm looking for ways to be more profitable. What is my dream outcome? And that all circles around having an expert maintenance coordination in my office that is reducing trips costs and considering the fiduciary duty to my clients.
[00:10:40] Right? So that's what we'll talk about here today and how we're using AI to achieve that.
[00:10:43] Jason: Got it. Well, let's get into it. So what can AI do and what can't AI do? Like, well, specifically what can Tulu do and what can't Tulu do?
[00:10:54] Where's the line drawn?
[00:10:55] David: Yeah, that's a great question.
[00:10:56] So first of all, I always tell everybody this out of the beginning: we are not an outsourced maintenance coordination solution. We're not an outsourced company. Yeah. We are not a vendor. Okay. We're not bringing vendors to your marketplace. Okay. Tulu is your expert in house maintenance coordinator.
[00:11:13] So if you're thinking of "I'm hiring a maintenance coordinator" or "I'm building a property management and I need a maintenance coordinator," you now have that. That's that ability to add this onto your software, your system. It's a simple plug and play. You get to remain inside of your portal, you don't have to leave it.
[00:11:30] There's not another new portal, all updates, all things are pushing to Buildium and we're pushing to Appfolio. That was a big part of it. There's no new app for the vendors. There's no new app for the clients because we know what's important for them to live inside of there. So what can it do? Well, first of all, it's a leader.
[00:11:43] Okay. And being a leader means that it is going to use the information that we capture about your company to lead your VAs, to make expert triage decisions that always consider your fiduciary duty to the owner. So let's give an example right here to break that down. Right. Say a hot water tank comes in.
[00:12:03] Okay. Hot water tank's leaking. Okay. First thing it's going to want to understand is what time of the day is it and where is the hot water tank leaking from?
[00:12:09] Jason: Okay.
[00:12:10] David: And then it's going to determine based upon the location of the hot water tank, the type of the hot water tank, which type of vendor at which time is the right one to send out. That is the most cost effective that has the greatest probability of resolving that issue for the best price and meets the satisfaction of the resident. Right. Now that was a mouthful right there. Okay. And if you think about all of the potential errors and data points and things that are involved, the smart maintenance coordinator considers all those and it brings out a triage and it tells the VA "here's the pieces that you're missing. Here's the information that I need. And here's what my suggestion is for you to move forward." So it's amazing at being a leader. And then it's amazing at being an expert about creating communications for the resident and to the vendor to direct them. And then it's also an educator and at the bottom of every work order.
[00:12:58] And I hope to be able to show some people it's really cool. We don't believe in just telling people what to do. We should educate them and tell them why they're doing what they're doing. Right. So imagine if you had the best expert maintenance coordinator leaning over the shoulder of every VA that you have standing there and telling them every work order, every time, here's what to do, here's how to do it, and here's why you're doing it. Right. And as a result, we're finding that VAs that come over that are dedicated to the account in two weeks, they're educated. And in six weeks, the majority of them are executing as a high level maintenance expert within six weeks. Of after sitting down and learning the training system, because just as much as it's leading, it's also training and educating.
[00:13:38] That is a wow moment for somebody who's been in the space, who's been here for 15 years, managing hundreds and hundreds of people for government entities and stuff and understanding the amount of time and effort and training that goes into somebody. And then all of a sudden they come and they tell you, "Hey, by the way, I got a new job. Thank you for all the training. I'm going to go make $30,000 somewhere else," right? How many times has this happened to me? Hundreds of times, right? And so that's a big part of what we're solving here.
[00:14:02] Jason: So in order to be effective and operate as an expert maintenance coordinator so that your VAs that don't have this knowledge can function as if they have this knowledge, then this has to be programmed, right? Maybe it'd be helpful for, the viewers or listeners of this podcast to find out what are all the inputs that go into this? What did they have to provide and what do you guys provide, so this AI, they can trust it?
[00:14:29] David: Yeah. Yeah. Great question, Jason. So first of all, I want to put it on point two to make an emphasis that in this journey that we're all learning about these smart technologies and AI, there's still a big part of human component, right?
[00:14:38] And it's like when you chat, when you write something in chat GBT, like you just don't send it without looking at it. Right. You're reviewing it and making sure it's still saying that you want it to say. Right. So everybody rest assured this thing is not, living on its own and there's checks and balances.
[00:14:51] But the onboarding on average takes 30 to 45 minutes. Okay. And one of the things that we did is number one is, when it comes to triaging and best practices, there's literally probably about 500,000 work orders of data points that it's considering. And it's an expert in that thing that's saying, "Hey, listen, this is how you should handle every work order that comes in because I've seen this, 20,000 times, and this is the best outcome."
[00:15:18] Right. But then what it does is it allows the property manager to talk in natural language. Like you want to talk like a robot. We don't have to write weird code. Just say things. "Hey the owner of one, two, three main street really loves Tom." Tom works on his properties. Comes in 123 main street comes up. It understands what Tom's capabilities are. And it says, "please use Tom to use this." The owner prefers that Tom works on his properties. They have a great relationship. Cool. And so those little tidbits for example, if the heat goes out in unit number one, understand that access has to be in unit number two basement to the HVAC unit, right?
[00:15:52] So that's good to know, but why is that important to know? Because most VAs would make a mistake. They say there's no heat. They don't check property notes. They send out the plumber. Plumber is knocking on the door at unit number one. Person says, I don't know where the HVAC unit is. Tenant next door is not home.
[00:16:06] Now you just charge your owner for 250 emergency call to go out. The resident still doesn't have heat. They think that you're unorganized. It shows you're unorganized on your owner statement because there's two invoices. "Oh, no, wait, you want to cover that? You're unorganized." So you just ate 250 that you're already not marking up on maintenance and you do that 10 times a month.
[00:16:25] Okay. And that's what's going on.
[00:16:27] Jason: And this is where then the owner's like, "I might as well just do it myself because I know everything and it's in my head." So how did they get all of that out of their head? All the little things they know about each property, each multi unit property, what's in the basements, what's..?
[00:16:40] David: We have a cool onboarding process. And again, most times about 30-45 minutes, they sit in, it's called building your AI co pilot. Actually, a lot of people dig it. It's cool. It's a cool process. And we will be first, we go into your system and we're able to pull out all your work order data and it organizes all your vendors, and we can tell who all your vendors are and what you're doing based upon the work order types.
[00:16:59] We can tell if you're a preferred guy is here. Number one guy is, "Hey. This guy always seems to be working on these properties." So there's a lot of information that we gather. And then you just come in and you're like, "yeah, he's my primary. He's my secondary. Oh, here's this little information about this property."
[00:17:13] So you really don't have to get like, like crazy. Like, like, the mailbox is located, like. You can add that stuff later, but in the beginning, it's just like, what are those important rules? I remember this one that really jumped out at me as impactful, a classic mistake, this owner had a lady living in the apartment for 35 years.
[00:17:31] Okay, and she's getting old and one of the rules is that no matter what maintenance ticket comes in, "don't ask her to triage. Don't ask her. It's the tenant's responsibility. I love this person. Please send her out and just take care of her. Right?" What a great rule to put into your system that shows the owner that when that work order comes in, He's not getting a call from, and I forget what her name is.
[00:17:51] And like, they're asking me to change my light bulbs again. And then he's like, I told you twice not to do this. And next thing he's looking for another property manager. And I always love that example of that rule. So that's what you're looking as far as the information you're giving us takes about 30 to 45 minutes.
[00:18:03] For people who have anywhere between, 150 to 350 properties. If you start having, 500, 600, a thousand, I would definitely allocate up to two hours and onboarding for sure.
[00:18:13] Jason: Okay. That's really fast when it comes to rolling out a new technology. Yeah. It's ridiculously fast.
[00:18:19] David: Yeah.
[00:18:19] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Extremely quick. So basically you have all this learning and understanding that's going into who your preferred vendors are. We know how to handle the maintenance work orders. There's no like integration that has to happen. And so as this triage is coming through, you're getting this expert level triage and you can add things down the road.
[00:18:38] You can add it, but how to handle the work orders as we say, there's really nothing new in maintenance. What's new is: "what's the NT for the property? Are there any special conditions that we need to know? Right? What are your residents' responsibilities and what are you responsible for?" Once you have those four questions answered, how to handle the hot water tank, at what time to hit on the hot water tank, how to, how to repair this door, how to do that.
[00:19:02] Those true principles of maintenance are true for everybody, if that makes sense, right? So, so that's a big part of the value that you get that You're hiring an expert maintenance coordinator. If you were to hire him, you wouldn't necessarily be telling him. "Hey, this is how you replace a doorknob."
[00:19:18] He should already know that when you hired him. Right. So think of like it that way when you're considering us as a technology.
[00:19:24] Jason: So, a human maintenance coordinator, the challenge would be, there's no way they can remember every detail about every property, right?
[00:19:32] David: Yeah,
[00:19:32] Jason: it's not. Which means they would have to keep notes.
[00:19:35] Let's say they've already got a decent amount of notes somewhere. Might be in the property management software, maybe they've got their own, I don't know, database of something. Is there the ability to pull in all that information?
[00:19:46] David: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. To grab those notes out. A lot of people have the ability to export it.
[00:19:51] They have a good note file or something like that. We get those, we take that information and it can just be pushed up into the system for sure. So yeah, the onboarding it, it can be, again, some people come in and say, "all I have is single family houses." Everything's pretty straightforward.
[00:20:03] Other people send over an Excel list. "Here's my property notes at the property levels" and upload them. So that's the cool part where. You ingest into the system. There's not a lot of data, manual input. It's reading it and assigning it. And that's where we're using technology to help even improve the onboarding process that you talked about, right?
[00:20:19] You think about people wear t shirts, like, I survived the Yardi onboarding process, right? Like, technology has come a long way to help improve that process, and that was a big part that we focused on.
[00:20:28] Jason: Yeah, that's wild. So once you've got them onboarded and they're in your system, the AI knows pretty much everything about the property, but maybe it doesn't, maybe there's some things it doesn't know.
[00:20:41] And so work order comes up. You're working on something and it's still just in the property manager's head or it's still in the business owner's head or maybe they don't even know yet, but it runs there. It runs into an issue. It's like it has a question maybe, or it doesn't. It needs to know some more stuff.
[00:20:57] I don't know. What happens in those scenarios?
[00:21:00] David: Yeah, this is a great one. So, all right, so let's talk about the life cycle of a work order. Right. And let's everybody just understand that there still is a human component involved in this, right? Every property manager has a dedicated, we call them a remote team member, who's now this expert maintenance coordinator at the cost of a remote team member.
[00:21:16] Now they're able to execute at a very high level. But there are going to be things that they're faced that they don't understand. So they have the ability to communicate with you one on one, or we also have this process internally that they have this ability to go, "I need a request from the expert in the loop" and the expert in the loop is you know, invoice review, complication that they're saying that the AI is not clear on them and it's asking for additional support. And so they can bump that up to individuals, myself, and there's other members of the team members that are big part of this and they can get expert level triage inside of there, to say, "Hey, listen, I'm facing with this vendor issue. They need 25 percent upfront. The job is only 500. I'm not understanding what to do here. The building is located and they're saying access is weird. They need to bring something in." There are complications that still involve human understanding. And so that expert in the loop solves that piece in there.
[00:22:07] And also speaking of humans, we believe that residents and vendors still need to speak to a human. Okay. Super important. Okay. So the value that we have is that we're able to create expert level triage, According to their specifications and the training model and all the great things and the automation and the text messages that are written for them and the codes that are written for them the emails, all those things.
[00:22:31] So, if we can automate at a very high level and free up our people to be able to provide support on the phone to the vendor on the field, or to actually talk to a resident, everybody knows this and I talk to everybody, guys, residents don't want to talk to a computer. They want to feel that they have a connection to their property manager and that when they call in, a lot of people have not even adapted technology for anybody who has, residents have been with them with a while and they're used to talking to Janet, they're used to talking to tell him inside and next thing you can say to them, "Oh, we have a new maintenance system. And by the way, you have to talk to the system." They're like, "okay. This is lame," right? Like, so that personal connection and we have a saying inside of the office that we keep your residents and your vendors within arm's length of you, right? It's communicating. They're using your property management name.
[00:23:20] They're speaking on your behalf. This is an extension of your office. This is your maintenance coordinator. Don't think of this as a vendor. Don't think this is an outsourced maintenance solution that you're setting all your maintenance to some company that's sourcing vendors or bringing them in and doing every, this is your in house maintenance team.
[00:23:38] So always consider that when you're thinking about Tulu, real people. In house maintenance coordinator just powered by AI enabled execute at a crazy high level.
[00:23:46] Jason: So, yeah. So how do tickets get into the maintenance system? Like how are they initiated? Do they still have to be answering their own phone calls?
[00:23:56] Are they just putting it into their property manager software? And then Tulu is going to like start taking some action. What communication does Tulu facilitate or take over if we're going to be having still needing some humans to be in Tulu allows us to increase the amount of communication and care that we show.
[00:24:13] Where do we draw the line? Like, where is Tulu stepping in and doing some communication and where do we need team members to be doing communication?
[00:24:21] David: Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So let's just go through the life cycle of a work order for everybody. I think that's what everyone really understands when they're all thinking about this.
[00:24:28] Okay, let's give me a work order from start to finish. Right? So no change to your residents. No change to anybody. They log into their portal, Buildium, Appfolio, RentVine, whatever they're using. They submit a maintenance work order, that maintenance work order through their system is dispatched to the Tulu maintenance coordinator, expert maintenance coordinator.
[00:24:46] All the magic is happening, all the triage, everything is taking place, and inside of the property management software, they're going to see. Work order.
[00:24:53] Jason: And is that dispatched through via email? API? Yep.
[00:24:56] David: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just through email? Yep. Set up as simple. You can set it up as a maintenance coordinator and as the maintenance coordinator is set up and the email comes in and it pings out and that creates the work order and starts to process through the, yeah.
[00:25:08] Yep. Cool. And then the property manager will see that the work order has been it's in triage on the status of their system. Then it's assigned, then the vendor will be assigned there. And then from there, the updates, when it's scheduled that we call it the who, what, and the why, right?
[00:25:25] What's going on, who's doing it and what's being done to progress this for. That's a note. You're constantly getting those notes. Now, the cool part about this, Jason. is behind the scenes. All of those text messages and phone calls and emails that we call the noise that are between the residents and the vendors and everybody are all being captured in a system behind the scenes.
[00:25:45] Right. Super value there, right? If a resident is a little bit upset about something or you have some questions, "Hey guys, can you hand me the phone call this one to show me the text messages," right? Communications are big part. So we capture all those communications inside there at any time that the owner of the property manager wants to pull them.
[00:26:00] That's great. Then the work order is completed. The completion, quick question. So
[00:26:05] Jason: all this communication between tenants and vendors, unless they're using some sort of magical system That the vendors have to be in and that the tenants are logged into. And it's like seeing all this, how does Tulu capture that?
[00:26:18] How does it know that the vendor is communicating with the tenant or the tenant? Okay. So it would be any point.
[00:26:24] David: Yeah. Good point. Any point that the the tenant. Is communicating or the vendor or just communicate with two of those. So if the vendor happened to communicate directly with the tenant, it would not capture that part, right?
[00:26:34] That's their phone to phone with that part, right? So it's when the resident or the tenant is communicating with the maintenance coordinator. And as we all know, tenants and vendors love to communicate by text message, right? That's their number one thing to do. So, it's really cool for vendors too, because as we know, a bunch of vendors, they hate. "I don't want to work in another app." Vendors can take pictures from their phone. They can upload estimates from their phone. The estimate comes in and it's actually turned into this really pretty estimate because we know vendors estimates are notorious for being on the back of a paper and hand scratched, right?
[00:27:06] So it actually creates into a brand new Tulu estimate. And so your owners get transparency into pricing and labor. And it's standardized and everything looks clean. And so yeah, vendors love it because they're not lazy, but they're busy guys. And instead of going home and trying to do a whole bunch of paperwork, they can now just generate an estimate, take a picture and shoot it right through.
[00:27:22] So, yeah.
[00:27:23] Jason: Because the challenge that there's a lot of communication involved. And so usually to decrease the amount of communication, they're trying to figure out how do we get the vendors to just talk to the tenants directly to collapse time? But if you have AI, then my guess is that Tulu will still just act like that middle person because the vendor can communicate with them, they can immediately text you, then Tulu texts the tenant, then it's just doing it real time.
[00:27:45] You don't have to wait on a human being in your office to like make this communication happen. So you're like, "well, we're so slow. Let's just get them to talk to each other." The AI is making this happen. Is that accurate?
[00:27:56] David: Huge point right here is, and man you really hit off the nail on the head on this one point here.
[00:28:01] The amount of people that we are seeing that they're using vendors to perform triage in this space is actually alarming. Okay. Alarming. All right. Vendors should not be performing our triage. They should not be the ones trying to figure out what is going on. They're not our client facing people. Maybe some guys are good.
[00:28:20] your in-house guys, goods or whatever. The majority of people are using this, right? The beauty of the system is: Do we have enough information that is captured? From the resident, the property manager that considers the needs of the owner to formulate the correct direction to the vendor so that they can show up with the resources that they need to fix the job the right time or show up educated about what they're there to fix.
[00:28:41] Jason: So let's talk about this real quick. Like vendors should not be doing triage and why not? Like, like what are the obvious ramifications here? Well, vendors, that's like asking a surgeon if you need surgery, right? That's how he makes his money.
[00:28:55] "That's the solution is surgery. We should chop that out, like, let's cut that thing out and I get paid thousands and thousands of dollars."
[00:29:02] David: Or how about this one, Jason, on an owner's report. I see a cost for so many times you see a cost for a maintenance guy, "unable to resolve expert needed." well, why? Because the maintenance vendor was sent out to do the triage.
[00:29:15] That's not fiduciary duty to the owner. If we had the right information, we could have avoided that one trip. So we have some really cool case studies. I'd love to show people that out of like 260 work orders, we have one right here, a client that signed up with us. And so out of that thing here let's see.
[00:29:31] They completed 194 work orders. 17 unnecessary trips were canceled. Wow. Okay. 17 unnecessary trips and 15 of those work orders had an immediate reduction in price because they said that the wrong resource was assigned to that. So think about that. 17 different numbers.
[00:29:48] Jason: So if that, if they have an in-house maintenance team, you're decreasing your your cost deploying these texts, going out and doing stupid work, like significantly. If you are using third party vendors, then there's always an expense. If you're sending anybody out, unless you're like, go do a bid, or something like this, but that's costing the vendor, which they're going to be more frustrated with you.
[00:30:09] So you're freeing that up or they're charging you for it. "Oh, well, if I go out, I charge, right?" Yeah.
[00:30:15] David: I'll give you an example. We just saved owner of a pad split property who wanted to replace the refrigerator. The request came in and they asked for three estimates, okay, to replace the refrigerator.
[00:30:28] Okay, the suggestion came back that basically said in a nutshell, summarize this, "why are you sending three different appliance vendors who are all going to charge a trip fee to go look at a refrigerator when a Home Depot program should be used and the cost of refrigerator should be 860? To factor all those costs in, it would have been about 1, 400. I don't understand why you're doing this. Please explain, right?" Talk about fiduciary duty to the owner.
[00:30:51] Jason: This is why owners get frustrated and they're like, "I might as well just do it myself."
[00:30:55] David: " Because I knew better. I would go to Home Depot. Everyone knows to order a refrigerator from Home Depot, right? Unless there's special circumstances." And now imagine this, and this is where we're going with this, Jason. At the end of each month, these owner reports go out to all these owners, and owners sit down and they call up the property manager, and we always hear people talking about this at every conference.
[00:31:14] "Oh, I don't want to answer that phone call. I know what this is about, right?" And the property manager is scrambling at the end of the month to call the maintenance coordinator, dig into work order notes and justify why did this cost this much? "Explain this to me," right? So we have this really cool report that's coming out that basically, including in the property owner, It would let you know that, Hey, you had six jobs that were able to send a handyman this month.
[00:31:38] Here's what's going on. You had two emergencies, two replacements, little asterisks that said, "Hey, this trip fee was 120. Why? Well, it required two people because there was a toilet that was being replaced on the third floor so they requested an extra hour of labor to be able to bring that toilet up because it was too like..." intimate details so that your owners are feeling like they're getting this like this whole transparency, unbelievable transparency, this report, the property manager doesn't have to waste at the end of the month, which I used to send away two to three days at the beginning of each month, just to answer phone calls and questions.
[00:32:12] Jason: Right. Yeah. It's like "why did it cost us much? Why?"
[00:32:14] Like they can just see it.
[00:32:16] David: Yeah. "Why didn't you send Tom?" "Well, I did send Tom to snake the drain because it was clogged in the master bathroom. We set his limit at an hour. He used a 17, 25 foot power snake. And we said, if you can't get this done within an hour, then we need to send Roto Rooter." "Oh, I get that. You really did try to save me money in the beginning. Yeah. And Roto Rooter found that 35 feet down the thing was a clogged diaper or something like that." That's what owners need to understand. And to break that down in every work order is a tremendous strain on property managers and our system in V2 that's coming very quickly.
[00:32:52] I was actually working on this morning. Those owner reports will be generated then if every month that explain intimate details about the thought process. and the costs and any decisions behind breaking it down into category for every maintenance work order type for their owners. Huge value. Imagine going to a client, a new client, and you're presenting against somebody else and they say, "Hey, how do you handle maintenance?"
[00:33:14] And you pull that report out and you put it down on the table.
[00:33:16] Jason: You're like, "like this is the level of detail. Nobody else is doing this." The maintenance coordinator get on the phone every time and saying, "let me walk you through all these charges and why they happened and what did." And like, how many people listen to this right now?
[00:33:31] I'm like, I know you're listening to this going, "if I never had to do that again, that would be the best thing ever. Ever. Like I've never had to have that uncomfortable conversation with the owner." Like it's all in there. It's all there. Like it makes sense.
[00:33:43] David: "Here's why we are your property manager. And here's the value that I'm giving to you in the transparency to maintenance."
[00:33:50] That's a huge burden. It's a significant pain point. And we know this Jason, the first offense creates a little crack between the relationship. The second one, you're losing trust with your owner and they're beginning Googling "other property managers around me." The third one. You're just waiting for them to look and to go somewhere else.
[00:34:07] So the relationship is falling apart. Right. And we are trying to know that
[00:34:11] Jason: You got a 600 door business in four years.
[00:34:14] David: Yes.
[00:34:15] Jason: Like, and so, and you have probably heard countless stories of people if they're switching companies, it's really rare that people switch companies. Usually things have to be pretty bad and maintenance that's in communication.
[00:34:27] Those that's number one factors, communication and why people leave. And so this allows you to free up a massive amount of time so you can actually be on the phone with the people when you need to be on the phone and stop wasting time with all of these repeat calls, repeat requests, what's going on with this, and yeah, this would just save so much time.
[00:34:44] David: Well, think about growth, Jason, right? So the three things that we're solving for, number one is we're protecting fiduciary duty to the owners, justifying maintenance costs and reducing the cost of expert in house maintenance coordination and making it scalable. Yeah. Okay.
[00:34:58] So now if I can have an expert maintenance coordinator that I add to my office, there's a fixed cost to it. I can scale infinity and not have to worry about hiring and training and staffing and issues and all these problems in global, right? My fiduciary duty to my owners, I got reporting and transparency.
[00:35:17] Maybe my property manager now, instead of being able to manage 250 doors, maybe they can manage 350 doors. Isn't that cool? Like that's where we're going with this stuff for sure.
[00:35:25] Jason: Yeah, it definitely would make a business as maintenance coordination, maybe infinitely scalable. So, okay. I know somebody that's listening, that's very detail oriented and their brain doesn't think like a spider web, like mine is going, "Hey, you guys never finished the example scenario because Jason derailed it."
[00:35:43] And so we've got the maintenance request. It's come in.
[00:35:46] David: Yeah.
[00:35:47] Jason: So take, let's go back to that.
[00:35:49] David: Okay. Yeah. Maintenance request comes in the triage takes place. The information is gathered once the information is gathered, and it fills the requirements of what they believe is the right decision.
[00:36:00] At that point, the scheduling takes place. Okay.
[00:36:03] Jason: Okay. So which pieces of Tulu doing?
[00:36:05] David: All of this.
[00:36:05] Jason: Okay. Okay.
[00:36:07] David: Okay. Okay. So then we're scheduling and then the work is completed. Quality pictures are received. If the resident is satisfaction, you have happiness received, vendors invoices received, and that's all uploaded into the system.
[00:36:20] And then at that point, the property manager can pay the vendor directly if they have a great relationship and maybe they want to pay them in whatever way they do. A lot of people like paying their vendors, that's fine. Or they can reimburse the Tulu system. If they just want to pay one vendor for the rest of their life, and then Tulu will pay the vendor for them directly.
[00:36:38] So it is from intake to vendor payment, all updates, all communications, all triaging, everything.
[00:36:46] Jason: Tulu does all of it. Does it all.
[00:36:48] David: It is your perfect maintenance coordinator. What we call the dream scenario. It has the ability to triage, troubleshoot, knowledgeable about vendor pricing, it's client facing and experience and client facing means that you can even set the parameter that said, "Hey, if anything is over my NTE, I would actually like you to generate your justification as to why think about this and send it out to my owner." Now imagine your owner getting this super email that's like, "Hey, listen, we have this problem. So the five to fancy, here's the steps that it took place to do."
[00:37:15] Jason: So like the amount that's in the agreement that says like anything under 500 in a single month, like we have a right to just take care of it. Right. Or something like this property managers having their agreements. Okay. So, so where do they need humans then? Where do humans come in all of this?
[00:37:31] David: Humans need to be there to provide expert level, the same expert level triage that the system is providing, we need humans in there to make sure, first of all, it's accurate. There is a component of that, right? We're reviewing this and training it, learning it, but as we talked about before, humans need to be there.
[00:37:47] We love that they have a great relationship because they're an extension of the office with their RTM, right? With their property manager and that RTM, they get to know each other. Humans are needed to talk to the residents and humans are needed for vendor support. Okay. Vendors don't want to call into a robot when their hand is in a sewer line from the field asking about, "Hey, I need help and direction. What's going on?"
[00:38:07] They don't want to hear "press two if you're unhappy with this service," like they don't want to hear that. That's where humans come in.
[00:38:13] Jason: Got it. Okay. So what are some of the results that you're seeing when you're installing in this into businesses? Like what's shifting? Because I'm hearing some things like it's going to decrease the time you're spending on the phone with your owner.
[00:38:25] So it's going to decrease the amount of time doing communication. You won't have to spend time doing triages. It sounds like a large piece of maintenance coordination is going to be taken care of. It sounds like staffing costs can be reduced. You tell me what are clients noticing once they get this installed over their previous systems of using a stack of tech tools to try and get their team to be able to handle this stuff?
[00:38:47] David: I think in the beginning and I think that it's cool in our relationship is just to hear people come back after the first month and go, "I can't believe it. Like I went an entire month and like, I was not involved in maintenance the way that I feel that I needed to be to make sure that all these things were taken care of. And I'm finding myself with like 20 hours extra a month." And we're like "yes, go grow. Go add more doors. Go show greater value to your clients. Maybe call your client that you haven't been calling in a month because you've been so busy." Right. So, so those are really cool. I think from a cost perspective, they are appreciating.
[00:39:24] And I'm believing that. Even people who had in house maintenance coordinators or VAs, good ones, always still feel that they needed to second check all the work. So even though you're giving to somebody, they never were able to detach themselves from me.
[00:39:37] And now when they're seeing the justification and they're seeing the education behind it, they get this sense of like, I can let go. You know why? Because this system is doing maintenance exactly the way that I'm asking it to do maintenance. And they feel that now they're actually back in control. If that makes sense. Or they're giving it away, but they're actually feeling they're in more control, if I'm making sense there. That's one of the coolest things is that they feel now they have their pulse on every work order where versus before they have to dive into search. Now they know that their requirements are just laid over every work order. So those are some big ones that I'm seeing, especially for those people who really show their value to their owners in the fact that they say, "I'm involved in every work order, every job." That's a great value prop. It really is. Is it scalable? Is it burning you out? Is it pulling you away from other duties that you need to be? Are you spreading yourself too thin?
[00:40:29] Great questions to ask if you have growth objectives, right? Scalable solution. And basically what we're doing is we're allowing the best in the business who are property managers who have created great relationships to duplicate themselves. And that's exciting for them to see. I think that they're like, "wow it's thinking like me."
[00:40:45] Jason: This really sounds like a serious competitive advantage for a property manager that adopts this over any other competitors that don't
[00:40:54] David: Jason, I'm going to a new client pitch and now I'm knowing that the guy next to me is sitting down showing him, "this is how I handle maintenance. This is how I'm keeping your cost down. This is the process. And that new report's coming in our V2. I was actually working some funnels that this morning. And if you're laying that down and then you're walking in behind them and the person says, "well, how do you handle maintenance?"
[00:41:15] "Well, I personally call you on every maintenance ticket." We're witnessing the greatest generational movement of wealth and real estate properties from retiring baby boomers to the next generation to their kids who are all grown up in a technology world that are demanding transparency and reporting and it's just going to be the new standard, Jason, a hundred percent.
[00:41:34] It's going to be the new standard for sure.
[00:41:36] Jason: Okay. We probably got somebody listening. They're super skeptical. They're like, there's no way. And they're going to throw us some crazy scenario that came up recently. And I'm sure you've heard some of these. So how would you address that? Like some sort of like, "well, what if it's like this and this," and it sounds like worst case scenario.
[00:41:54] The AI just says, expert in the loop. Like it's, it raises his hand in some way and says, "Hey, I could use a human over here."
[00:42:00] David: Here's one that actually, as a guy who in my history, we had portfolios, like 30,000 properties.
[00:42:06] So I've done probably over 500,000 work orders. In my career. Okay?
[00:42:10] Jason: More than most of the people that are probably listening to this. Yes.
[00:42:13] David: Yes. And as a result, just because of the size of the inventories that we used to manage the other day, a resident submitted a maintenance work order in and said, "my microwave is not working. And I assume it's because my gas stove is not turned on. And does my gas stove need to be turned on in order for the gas to flow up to my microwave?" Okay. True. True. Okay. All right. True maintenance work order. The the smart system picked that up and now imagine a VA facing that without any knowledge or an experience that's going to be an email to the property manager, a phone call to somebody, or maybe they make a mistake because they're 2000 miles away and they don't have any contacts and they sent out a plumber to go investigate. And the owner says, "why are you sending out a plumber for this?" Right? Right. Okay. The system picked up and it literally educated and trained. And it said that gas has no relevance whatsoever to a microwave solution. This is an incorrect thing, right? And that, when I saw that one, it makes mistakes.
[00:43:04] Don't get me wrong. It's not perfect, but when I saw it pick up on that one, I said, man, I said, this is getting exciting that it picked up on that. So I would ask that person to come and just experience it and look at a little bit and understand guys, right? This is exciting. This is new. It's learning.
[00:43:19] We're developing and it's improving daily. There's still a lot of human oversight. There's still a VAs that involved. We're getting expert maintenance coordination down to a price point that is affordable for everybody, scalable for everybody. And the biggest point at the end of the day, your owners are going to feel that every maintenance work order comes in, it's being handled by the best maintenance process in the industry.
[00:43:39] And that's what you're going to be able to offer them as a property manager to compete against other competition you have in your market. And I think that's a good value prop. So.
[00:43:46] Jason: Yeah, definitely. So is there anything else related to turning maintenance into a profit center that we should cover?
[00:43:52] David: Yeah the first step going into a profit center is realizing that the average person is paying between 16 to 28 dollars per door to manage their maintenance, right? If we get that down to the correct number, and I'd love to have anybody come through and we'll run the analytics for them and we'll give them a pricing model for that just off the bat, the first profit center that we're creating is what if I'm able to reduce that by 50 percent your cost, that's an immediate profit center, right?
[00:44:16] That's profit center number one. And then we can look at profit centers number two, that like, all right, now I can add on if I want to add on to my markup or we have some other ways that we can show them how to. But the first profit center needs to be is what do you know how much you are paying per door to manage maintenance?
[00:44:34] Take all of your staff, all of your VAs, all of your systems, all your after hour services, take all those pieces, add them all up and divide them by the number of doors that you have. So every door that you bring on, it's costing me $27 to handle maintenance emergency services. Okay. Know that number, and let's have a talk.
[00:44:54] Jason: You got to build that calculator on your website.
[00:44:56] David: It's coming.
[00:44:57] Jason: A lot of calculators like that to help people calculate their cold lead marketing costs or whatever. And as soon as they fill that out, they're like, "okay, I'll sign up. Like this is ridiculous. What I've been doing?"
[00:45:06] David: We have that in product right now.
[00:45:07] We have a couple of pieces. We did the finish on it, but that's coming out where people can just understand what they're paying per door. But give us a call up. We'll walk you through the exercise. We'll show you what you're costing. Think about that as your first profit center, Jason. And then we can talk about other ones and we help give some people some advice still.
[00:45:22] Jason: So David, you have a lot of knowledge and experience. How much of your knowledge and experience has gone into bringing this AI up to understanding what you know?
[00:45:32] David: I've been working on this for 12 years. Of putting the data and the learnings. And again, I've been fortunate guys where it was just my path.
[00:45:39] It was my journey through this, where I've got to work for some huge outfits. I had my own consulting company for seven years. I was working with some of the biggest SFR groups in the nation, guys with 10,000-20,000 doors. And I'm just fortunate to understand the amount of data. So, I've put my blood, sweat and tears into this, but at the core of that Jason, my blood, sweat, and tears.
[00:46:00] Is that, 15 years ago when I was brand new in this property management space, I had a broker tell me one time that after the sale of the property is done, the success of the owner is no longer your business or mine. And it's up to them. The sale is done. And they told me that when they walked away and that bothered me to this day, it bothered me that the fiduciary duty that individuals are giving to us to manage in some cases, millions of dollars of their money and assets and portfolios, right? And what type of products or services are we demanding of this industry? That we would demand of, let's say if I gave 50,000 to my broker to invest in the stock market for me, what type of services and technology and platforms am I demanding of that person, education, schooling, name brands, right?
[00:46:45] But yet, are we demanding that same of us in our fiduciary duty to somebody that's giving over maybe their retirement to us their kids', future, college... you hear all these people, "why'd you get into real estate?" "I want to create a college fund for my kids." And after two years, the guy's like, "this is not what I signed up for. This is the worst mistake I ever made. And I'm backing out of, buying more properties because of challenges," right? That's what I'm driven by. And I've always been driven by that. It's my curse. And so I'd have to say there's a hundred percent of me in this Jason, for sure.
[00:47:13] Jason: Awesome. And it, this will outlive you like AI doesn't die.
[00:47:17] And this is this not to be grim, but this is the concern. Like anybody has when they're signing up for a business, they're like, all right, "how much is reliant on just this one person? How much is reliant on that key person I'm interacting with?" Right. And the AI is not a person. Right?
[00:47:34] And so, yeah, so that's really fascinating to think about. Like you've built all that into it and it has immediate, instant expertise. It's not like, "Hey, well, let me go call Tom and let me go check with Fred or let me..." like all the data it has, it's there and it's instant.
[00:47:54] David: What's the difference between an emergency of a hot water tank that's leaking in a basement with a permeable stone floor versus emergency hot water tank that's located in the utility closet on the first floor?
[00:48:04] One doesn't have to necessarily require a person to go out because there's no damage to prevent with water leaking down there. But the other one is leaking onto the floor and damaging your drywall. So these conditions have to be taking place. Locations of hot water tanks, like there's, I can nerd out in this and I'd love to sit down with anybody and drink beers and talk about all the millions of different maintenance things that I ran through.
[00:48:24] But at the end of the day, when you're able to show your owner, "we acted as an expert." That's the guy that's going to say to his buddy when they're just having a drink, "call these guys up to manage your property because they're an expert in the thing." And that's what we're trying to bring to the industry for sure.
[00:48:37] Jason: So this brings a level of expertise that the business owner, the property manager, the maintenance coordinator, and certainly the VA's just would not possess.
[00:48:48] David: You're talking 15 years, over 500,000 work orders worth of data points, learning and understanding from commercial, multifamily, single family across the board, best practices.
[00:49:01] And it's for somebody who wants to imagine now a person can start a property management company tomorrow onboard Tulu. And they're immediately a veteran in the maintenance industry. Immediately.
[00:49:12] Yeah. No learning curve. You're operating and executing as the best maintenance coordinator in the industry starting tomorrow.
[00:49:19] That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really cool. Really cool.
[00:49:22] Jason: This is really, it's really wild. So now my brain's like, how can I get experts, how can I clone Tulu, but make an operator version of Tulu for running a property managed business. Or I can make it.
[00:49:32] David: Yeah there's, there, there are offshoots on this.
[00:49:34] I would have to say, and I do want to tell anybody that in this space that we always say that property managers are safe because you know what the property managers do a great job of doing. You guys do a really good job at building relationships and creating value in your local markets.
[00:49:46] Right. Focus on that. Don't get pulled into maintenance, right? Maintenance and that stuff can be automated. There are best practices. Don't struggle to have to be an expert there. Show your value and the resources and tools that you have. Lower your overhead. Produce better results. Be at networking events.
[00:50:03] Shake more hands. Talk to more people. Sell more homes. Add more doors. Shine where you shine. Brokers shine when they're out in front of people shaking hands and having expensive salads over a nice glass of chardonnay and closing deals, right? Let us flip the toilets and do it well for you.
[00:50:18] That's what I say.
[00:50:19] Jason: Awesome. Okay, cool. David, if they're interested in Getting started. How do they find out about Tulu? You can go right to our website
[00:50:26] David: at trytulu. com. And if anybody wants to email me personally, david.norman.trytulu.Com. I'll connect you with our sales team and set you up on a personal demo. I'll walk you through it. I promise I won't bring so much energy. I'm an energy guy. It's just my calling this space to be in the maintenance and I love to doing what we're doing and seeing owners go "yes!" Seeing property managers go "yes!" And we're not trying to replace anybody. We're just trying to help people honor their fiduciary duty to their owners. And that's my mission. That's what I'm driven by.
[00:50:56] Jason: Yeah. Fantastic. So try Tulu, T U L U. Dot com.
[00:51:02] David: Yeah.
[00:51:02] Jason: All right. Try it out.
[00:51:04] David: All right.
[00:51:04] Jason: David, thanks for coming on the DoorGrowShow podcast. Appreciate you.
[00:51:08] David: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Jason. Always great. Looking forward to the show. Until next time.
[00:51:11] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur and you are wanting to add doors, you get maintenance off loaded, off your plate, and you want to focus on growth and figuring out how to get more doors, you want to join the DoorGrow mastermind, our growth accelerator is all about that.
[00:51:29] We are really good at optimizing businesses for growth using our rapid revamp class, where we clean up quickly, all of the front end stuff that is causing you to like kill trust and leaking trust and preventing deals. And then we give you the right strategies. We've got at least seven different growth engines that we can help build into your business that you can stack that will feed you unlimited leads without having to spend any money on advertising or marketing expense.
[00:51:55] You just need people and it actually decreases the amount of time those people will spend If they're following working on the warm leads and the stuff that we would get you to do instead of cold leads, which take a lot more time. So we also have our super system level of our mastermind. This is where we're focused on ops, operations, helping your operator. That key person that's going to run the entire business for you, Mr. or Mrs. Visionary Entrepreneur, and they will help take your business to the next level. We can coach and support your operators, your BDMs, your salespeople, or you, the business owner to make this business infinitely scalable so that you can go to the next level and add a lot of doors. So reach out to us, let us assess your situation and see if we can help.
[00:52:36] You can check us out at doorgrow.Com. All right, that's it for today. Hope everybody found this episode useful. I think it's super fascinating and until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:52:47] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:53:14] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
As a property manager, you are likely always looking for better ways to connect with real estate agents and investors to get more deals.
In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert, Jason Hull sits down with DoorGrow client Galo Naranjo to talk about DoorGrow’s ROI Calculator tool and how it helps you talk to investors and agents.
You’ll Learn[06:46] What is the ROI Calculator?
[14:11] The power of being able to see the outcome
[25:35] How does this benefit realtors?
[30:31] Benefits to using this tool
[35:44] Other ways to use the calculator for growth
Tweetables“Sales take place at the speed of trust.”
“People only can trust you if they know that you have their best interests at heart.”
“You should be an advisor to investors. This is really where you set yourself head and shoulders above the competition.”
“If you want to target investors, go where investors hang out.”
ResourcesDoorGrow and Scale Mastermind
DoorGrow Academy
DoorGrow on YouTube
DoorGrowClub
DoorGrowLive
TalkRoute Referral Link
Transcript[00:00:00] Galo: I think paying for the calculator, I get 10x the rate of return on what I'm paying monthly to use the calculator. It's a no brainer for me to use it because 10 minutes of my time is worth however many deals I'm getting out of it. So it's great.
[00:00:16] Jason: All right. Welcome DoorGrow Property Managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager.
[00:00:36] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.
[00:00:54] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow.
[00:01:12] Now let's get into the show.
[00:01:15] And today I'm hanging out with one of our clients, Galo Naranjo. Did I say your last name? Right?
[00:01:21] You got it right.
[00:01:22] All right. Awesome. And what's the name of your property management business?
[00:01:25] Galo: A property management business is Assurance Property Management. We're here in Columbia, South Carolina.
[00:01:30] Jason: So Galo appreciate you coming on the show. So you're doing some really cool things with the ROI calculator that we've built out for clients. And we wanted to showcase that. But before we get into that, why don't you give everyone a little bit of background? How did you get into real estate property management?
[00:01:48] How did all this start for you?
[00:01:50] Galo: Absolutely. So I was in the military. Actually, I just retired about four years ago And as I was in the process of retiring from the military, my background is in finance. I was a finance office, so I have a great affinity for numbers. I like numbers I managed large budgets when I was a resource manager in the army as an officer. And I had one of the folks that was my neighbor, who was a major guard.
[00:02:11] We used to ride almost 45 minutes to work. And he was in the process of moving to Tennessee. And he was like, " I think I really want to rent my property. Do you think you can help me out? Just, keeping an eye on it, and I give you a hundred dollars a month?" And I said, "sure, that doesn't seem like a bad deal."
[00:02:28] So, sure enough, he left. He will write some leases, he will place tenants, I will show the place. Every once in a while, we had to do some maintenance, and he will literally every month give me $100. And I said, "this is not a bad deal." So I started doing a little bit of research, and I found out what I needed to do to become a licensed property manager.
[00:02:46] I said, "I'm just going to do it and see what happens." And then from that point forward, I just started telling all of my fellow military folks there at the bases where I was at. Most of them, normally in the military, you expect it to be at a place for like two to three years, sometimes sooner than that.
[00:03:01] And then they'll PCS. So it was my job at that point to tell them that they can leave the properties with me, and I will keep an eye on them.
[00:03:09] Jason: What does PCS stand for?
[00:03:11] Galo: PCS stands for Permanent Change of Station. That is when you move from one location to another. In military terms, they call it PCS, Permanent Change of Station.
[00:03:20] So most of the time, they're transitioning period from one location to the next. And I started doing a lot of research on a lot of the benefits, especially here in the state of South Carolina, for military service members to keep properties, especially when it comes to property taxes. And so, as I started pretty much gathering my clientele, I went from 1 to then to 10 to 15, not really doing much.
[00:03:44] But I started getting that extra income and I said, "well, this is not a bad gig." At that point it was easy for me to do it by myself, although that I didn't really have all of the systems in place, but 15 properties wasn't really much that I needed to do. And as I was delving into real estate. My time for transitioning out of the military, I was close to my 20 years and I started looking into real estate just to see if that was something that I may want to do. And so I started listening to all the podcasts, reading all of the books. And then I said, you know what, this is something that I want to do.
[00:04:15] And with our business partner, we started to analyzing deals to basically do flips. So we started flipping back in 2018, 2019. And from that point, since we were very analytical and very driven by numbers, we started just acquiring properties and flipping properties. And we do so very successfully without losing any money on any of our deals.
[00:04:36] And that was also at the peak of COVID and everything else. So we were doing very well during that period of time. And so when I retired from the military, I just basically transitioned directly into doing real estate. And as I was positioning myself with other real estate investors here in Columbia, people started to get to know me and all I'm a true believer that I like to tell everybody what I do and what I know and little by little started just placing fillers that, "Hey, I'm a property manager in charge. I have a license. If you have some properties that maybe you want me to take a look at, I'm also a real estate investor. I understand numbers. I understand what you're going through as an investor, what you should be looking for in a property manager."
[00:05:19] And then the conversations basically started producing some fruit and therefore started getting more properties under management.
[00:05:27] Jason: Yeah. I love it. It sounds like a really good pitch. You're, you come from a military background, finance background, investment background. There's a lot of reasons I think people would trust you to be their property manager.
[00:05:38] Galo: And one thing led into another. And little by little, just through word of mouth from one investor to the next. That has been my niche. My niche has been 100 percent investor because investors tend to trust other investors, especially when you have conversations and that they know what they're talking about.
[00:05:55] And a lot of times they will run things by me. "What do you think? How much do you think I can get in rent or what do you think this and that?" So I will we'll do those favors here and there a little by little they'll start to giving me their property so I can manage them and lo and behold I started shifting my focus from the flipping business into kind of growing the property management business to what it is now.
[00:06:15] And I think ever since I started DoorGrow and a little before, I saw exponential growth implementing a lot of the things that I've learned. And also I think in my opinion the ROI calculator is a key to the success, to my success in adding doors as of late. 100%.
[00:06:32] Jason: Well, you like the numbers, you like finance, so it's no surprise. John Chin who helped me develop that ROI calculator also loves numbers and it's no surprise that you would resonate with it and find it really useful. So that's really cool. So you've been doing some of the stuff with us with DoorGrow, you've been working on this ROI calculator, explain to those that are not familiar with that tool. What is it?
[00:06:57] Galo: Okay. So the ROI calculator in layman's terms is basically allowing someone that is thinking about buying a property, what could be the rate of return and what will be the cashflow that they will receive on a monthly and yearly basis. So if I'm an investor thinking about buying a property, we'll basically run a pro forma of the potential how well that property could do.
[00:07:18] Jason: Yeah.
[00:07:19] Galo: And if I'm an investor and I have someone that's running the numbers with all of the expenses included, and I can have my rate of return after tax and before tax, and even if I buy cash, so me as an investor, like, "hey, it's a no brainer. Why wouldn't I buy a property?" And so, once again, it's just a pro forma of a property that displays in a very simple way: what could be the rate of return for a potential on a property? That in layman's terms, that's basically what it is.
[00:07:47] Jason: And I would add, it outputs a single page document for each property that you can give to agents.
[00:07:53] It's branded with your business, your property management business in the numbers calculated, the property management fees and they're your fees, it's already included in the investment. And this is something you can give to real estate agents so that they can showcase these properties and what they could do, but it has your branding on it.
[00:08:12] And so how are you leveraging this as a tool for growth?
[00:08:15] Galo: Well, I have used it in different ways. So I've used this tool as a tool for me to buy properties. So I run those properties for me if I'm thinking about buying because I still pay myself a property management fee.
[00:08:28] So that's an expense that I'm still going to take into account. I am also going to run this for realtors, which I think that's a really good target audience that will greatly benefit from this, especially in the state of South Carolina. And I will say that fiduciarily speaking realtors can not talk numbers. Realtors can talk about a listing amount and how much do you, do they think they should offer on a property, but they don't really get knee deep into the numbers. As a property manager, there is nothing in any law, at least here in South Carolina, that determines that you can't. I also like that on the bottom of that form, you have a disclosure that, "we are not tax experts or anything like that, but the numbers at the end of the day are pretty close. And if you want to get a very close estimate, this one page form is a no brainer." So once again, I use it potentially for me to buy properties. I use it for potential individual clients that a lot of times I also get as leads And I'll tell you what I do with this like something that Jason says is that sales take place at the speed of trust So I think that this calculator helps you establishing that trust because in my market there is no one that does that and it doesn't really take that long to, you know put the numbers together and have a conversation with a potential soul client as to what are the benefits of me running these numbers for you even if they already have the property, that's fine, because what we want at this place doesn't make sense for them to rent the property.
[00:09:58] And that's where the trust piece comes into play. Because I said, this is at least my pitch. I said, "look, Mr. Potential Client. My goal is not to simply manage your property. My goal is to establish a relationship with you. So that you can make the best decision with your property. If it doesn't make sense for me to manage your property because you're going lose money You need to know that. You need to know that and I am okay not managing your property if it doesn't make sense for you numbers wise," and then I stay quiet so they'll be like, "Oh, wow. I mean, what is there to lose?" There's nothing to lose because I'm basically telling you, look, "I want to manage your property if it makes sense, and I want to establish that relationship with you and I want to give you the peace of knowing that the numbers are going to work, or no, they are not going to work."
[00:10:46] Jason: Yeah, I love it. I love it so much because one of the things that I teach is "needy is creepy." And when you frame it like that, you're basically saying, it's not like, "Hey, I really want to get your business. Yeah. Like do this, like work with us." You're saying, "let's see if it even makes sense for you to even have this as a rental property," without even focusing on trying to get their business directly. You're just earning their business. They're going to then lean into you. And this is that customer satisfaction pyramid I talk about sometimes you're now immediately in at the top of that pyramid in customer service, it, which is advice. You're in that advice giving role, which puts you in a superior position to them to lean in and to trust you. And it also shows partnership was, which is that next level like, "Hey, let's figure this out together. Let's look at this. I'm here with you trying to help you figure out if this makes sense."
[00:11:38] People only can trust you if they know that you have their best interests at heart and if they know what you want and we talked about the golden bridge and whatnot, but I love this frame in selling is: "let's just see if the numbers even make sense for you. And if it does, then we can have a conversation about whether you should be a client or not."
[00:11:57] So I think that's a very powerful frame.
[00:11:59] Galo: Yes. And that has paid a lot of great dividends. And I even use the calculator as a way to show that I am giving you more than any property management company in Colombia is providing because we have had conversations in which is like, well, "I've already talked to somebody and they're going to charge 7%."
[00:12:18] So I listen. And once again, I think the education piece has to come into play. Yeah, and I will simply say, I said, "okay. And did they run the numbers for you? Do they know whether or not this property is going to make money for you or lose money for you? Do they even care if they go if this property loses money for you? Because at the end of the day, most people are going to care about getting the property management fee. I'm simply telling you that I'm going to give, from the get go, I am providing a service free of charge. That all it's going to do is going to bond us together in this tiny relationship that I want to produce for the long term."
[00:12:55] That's my position in this. And then I stay quiet. And I let them think, get a little uncomfortable, and then they start talking. It's like, "yeah, you know what? I didn't think about it that way." That's it. And then we start talking a little bit about the property and rental rates. And I like to really educate folks in understanding the numbers.
[00:13:13] This is the part where other property managers that are not investors that don't understand the numbers can get a little uncomfortable explaining the form, right? Because if you don't understand the numbers, and this is something that we used to say in the army, you're shooting from the hip and you're not taking, aimed shots, the client can potentially read and be like, "hold on a second, like, I'm more confused now that you're telling me about the numbers than before even I sent you this form." so I think that we need to have a really good understanding on how to navigate the form and how to explain the numbers of the form in a way that is easy for the client to understand.
[00:13:47] Jason: Yeah, I love it. I love your question. "Did they run the numbers?" It's such like, cause there's almost no chance that they did like it's super uncommon and this is what you should be.
[00:13:57] You should be an advisor to investors. This is really where you set yourself head and shoulders above the competition. "Did they run the numbers? Oh, they didn't. Oh, okay. Maybe we should take a look at this." Yeah. So I think that's really clever. So, I'm curious, when you are going through the ROI calculator, you're showcasing this, you're asking these questions how Do they still say they're talking to other companies? Most people that are prospects probably have talked to another property management company before they talk to you.
[00:14:29] Do you find that starts to change after you go through the numbers with them?
[00:14:33] Galo: I say yes, 100%. I have had clients that have already talked to other property management companies, but they have never gone through the process with me. That they have never gone through the process of going through the numbers.
[00:14:45] Commonly speaking, most property managers are going to talk about. " Okay, you can get this much in rent." I said, "well, that's fine. I can go in Zillow and find that out pretty closely on what the rental rate is going to be." I said, "but what about property taxes?" I tell you as an investor here in Columbia, the number one deal killer is property taxes.
[00:15:05] 100%. Because if you purchase a property that is going to be non owner occupied, that your taxes exponentially go up. Exponentially! But what happens is that when you buy a property, you're going to maintain the previous owner's tax rate, at least for the remaining of the year. Now New Year comes and that your property taxes went up through the roof and you're like, "whoa!" Yeah.
[00:15:32] "I am no longer cashflowing. I'm losing money! How did this happen?"
[00:15:36] Jason: "Well, why didn't anyone tell me this?"
[00:15:38] Galo: If I run the numbers for you, that is not going to happen because that is the number one thing that I check. And Jason, at least here for my clients, I said, when you send them the form for them to fill out, 10 out of 10 times, what property tax rate do they use? Owner occupied. So that is a place for me to say. See, if we had used your numbers, which right now is public record, you can go and public record and say, yep, property taxes is 1600, I'll say, but that is the wrong number because this property is a non owner occupied property. And now your taxes are going to go to 5600. So divide 4, 000 by 12. That is how much on a monthly basis you have to pay. So therefore your expenses are wrong from the get go. And then I just sit back. And let them think through it. Now, what I do also, I don't just talk. I like to either do it personally or I like to do it through Zoom or through Google Meet.
[00:16:35] And I like to show them. I said, "look, if you give me a second to educate you on property taxes, given the tax rate that you chose, because it's probably recognized as a very common mistake." I said, "let me show you." And I go in there on the county records and I show them, I say, "this is how you calculate it. This is how I got my number. And this is what you will be paying sooner rather than later."
[00:16:55] And I stay quiet. And I stay quiet and I let them absorb. And normally, you get the deer in the headlights look and you're like, "oh wow, like This is big like I did not know that." Nine out of ten are going to be like "I did not know that, and I said, "That right there is the number one deal killer here in the state of south carolina because taxes are high as a non owner occupier." So that's just the way that I educate and they automatically start seeing, "okay. Well, I start to see even more value now."
[00:17:23] Yeah, even more value So those two pieces of information are key.
[00:17:28] Jason: Property taxes, and what's the other?
[00:17:31] Galo: We talked about property taxes is one. The other one that I also like to focus a lot is on renovation. So I also since I flip houses, I have a pretty good understanding on renovation costs.
[00:17:43] So what I like to do with a lot of homeowners is if there is a possibility that I can meet you in the home and mind you that although they may already have the house or they will be in the process of buying a property, I can still give you a pretty good idea what your renovation costs could be.
[00:18:00] Because nine out of 10, someone's going to say, "well, yeah, I have a I don't know, 1600 square foot home and I'm going to put that maybe to paint this house is going to be 1, 000." And I'm like, "yeah, 1, 000 is not going to cover you painting the house." But that is also an avenue for me to introduce my other business to say, "look," And once again, it's an education piece.
[00:18:20] So "look, I want to show you some comps in the area on how much they are charging for rents. I want you to physically see what those properties look like. And compare them to yours and then give me your opinion on which one looks better." So we will pick some houses that are similar in size and number of bedrooms and bathrooms And they'll pick and choose and say like "yeah, I see. Yep. Mine has carpet that one doesn't. Yep This one has this mine doesn't." I said so "The fact that those properties look better and have 'nicer things than yours,' it gives them the right to charge more. Now, the good thing is that we can use that property as a comp for rent because if you want to get your property at the same level, not saying that you have to, we can earn the right to charge more.
[00:19:08] So renovation costs this big, property management costs... this big
[00:19:13] Jason: Okay. Love that. I love that you're connecting them to reality because everybody's dealt with the property owner in property management that like thinks they should get way more rent than they probably should and they want you to list it at some high rent rate and then it's going to sit vacant for a long time.
[00:19:29] And so connecting them to reality, are you actually walking them through some other properties?
[00:19:34] Galo: I, well, if I get a chance, but a lot of times, I like to have a lot of face to face. If I can meet them at their house, at the properties, even better because I can welcome and I can show them, I said, "look, this is a property, although this is a property that I own."
[00:19:50] So one of the things that I do is try to connect with them. I said, "look, I am not your traditional property manager. I own properties. I am an investor. I know what it's like to how to pay for an HVAC unit out of pocket. I know, I understand that." And because of that, I try to once again, earn that trust that I've been there, done that before.
[00:20:09] And I understand that other property managers may not be investors, but what I'm trying to really to share is that we need to think alike investors to be able to connect with that, with our audience, 100%. You have to think like an investor. And for me, obviously, because I've been there, it comes out more naturally.
[00:20:27] That's all.
[00:20:28] Jason: Yeah. I love the idea in showcasing and connecting to reality. And then you can feed that into the ROI calculator. Like here's the actual cost.
[00:20:37] Galo: 100 percent I try to be as closely as possible to all of the numbers. And I like to start the conversation with saying, okay, he's like, "well, I want to make some money. I want to earn a few hundred dollars every month." And I said, "how much do you make? If you don't mind how much do you make a month?" They say, "okay, I make x." I said "Do you think that extra 100 or 200 dollars will make a huge difference in your income now?" Stay quiet. It's, " well, I don't know."
[00:21:02] I said, "well in this particular property and every property is going to be different with some properties. You're not going to cash flow with some others. You make cash flow. It all really depends on the numbers," I said, "but just because you don't cash flow doesn't mean that is a bad property. Because hold on a second you have this tax advantages that I think you're overlooking," and I said, "so do you rather make two hundred dollars or do you rather write off ten thousand dollars a year?"
[00:21:27] Right. I rather go with the latter So what i'm trying to do is i'm trying to identify whether this is someone that needs income Or whether this is someone that makes that needs deductions From their taxes.
[00:21:39] Jason: Yeah.
[00:21:40] Galo: Because my pitch is going to be slightly different But I need to know that from the get go is good that the form has both. There's very few folks that will buy cash.
[00:21:50] I always try to say, "Hey, but why are you going to buy cash? I think you need to finance it. It's just better in terms of return." I try to educate them with that, but most of my larger clients are looking for write offs. I need to write off. I need I don't need income. Income is bad. I need to write off and so if they think of a property that they want to purchase, they'll give it to me and I just write it.
[00:22:13] I say, "Hey, yeah, this is it." And same thing. Public record is when you look at the land value, you can see. "So look, this is where I'm getting this number right here. Right now your land is X. That is something that we cannot depreciate. But the house itself, you can depreciate it at 27.5 years, which in a year, you can deduct X amount of dollars just in depreciation alone."
[00:22:35] Right. And then, "oh, by the way, you also get the appreciation of the asset year after year." And so now they started the wheels start spinning like, "Hey, I didn't really think about that because non investors don't think that way. Investors do think that way.
[00:22:51] And I think it's key to understand who you're talking to from the beginning. So that you can tailor that conversation in the form more towards their end goal.
[00:23:02] Jason: Yeah, I love it. So, do they need deductions versus needing cash flow? What's your quick way of determining that as quick as possible for those listening?
[00:23:10] Galo: Well, when you run the form, the form is quickly going to tell you whether you're going to have a negative cash flow. So if negative cash flow, basically that means that you're basically coming out of pocket. After all expenses are taken into account. It's costing you a little bit of money for you to basically own this property, right?
[00:23:25] Or on the bottom of the form also, it'll tell you, "well, you can deduct X amount of dollars on year one." And then you can explain the fact that is taken into account that we're depreciating the asset 27. 5 years, right? Then not only that, on the bottom of the form, it will also take into account: how much are you paying in interest?
[00:23:45] And all of the other I guess debt that you have to pay for that you can also write off. So all that is very easy to explain on the bottom of the form. So I like to pretty much go on the form on the top, which are the inputs. Those are the knowns. And then I run down on the finance piece. And then the bottom part, when we're talking about the tax position, once again, cash, there's very few people that are willing to buy cash.
[00:24:09] So I haven't really used much of the bottom left quadrant is primarily the top L that I use.
[00:24:16] Jason: Got it. But if somebody comes to you and they're like, "Hey, we're going to buy all cash." You might talk them using this into a finance purchase.
[00:24:23] Galo: Right. And once again, all that does is like, "Oh man, I didn't really think about that."
[00:24:27] It's like trust. Right? Boom. It's like, "Hey, I didn't really think about this. Hey, don't buy cash. Buy three properties instead. Just put down payments and buy three properties. And we will include all of the expenses and everything. I will be glad to manage three instead of one."
[00:24:40] Jason: Yeah. This really helps investors see that because a lot of them just think it's so simple. "I just need to make sure I have more cash I'm collecting than when I'm paying on the mortgage. And then I'm set." But they're not taking into all the other benefits that could exist and they could be building equity. They could be like being able to get into more properties, maybe that cash flow better if they were looking at the other benefits, tax depreciation, their equity, all these different things that come into play. So, cool. And I love that it has real simply, like, here's your ROI. There's like a percent sign next to it.
[00:25:15] Galo: That is very impactful. It's very easy to read.
[00:25:19] It's right there. So, there is no way when you see that double digit rate of return or even something that exceeds the traditional, I don't know, S& P 500 return.
[00:25:30] Jason: Yeah.
[00:25:31] Galo: Automatically, you realize, "wow, this is great."
[00:25:33] Jason: I'm going to put my money in a mutual fund.
[00:25:35] Galo: Exactly. And is good once it is the education piece. Something that I haven't really touched much on in which this calculator is primarily geared towards, you talking to real estate with realtors to connect with them and get some benefit from them.
[00:25:50] I've had pretty good success. Now, what I like doing when I call it recruiting realtors is, "all right, let me run you through the process." And I said, "do you own a house?" He's like, "yeah, I own my house." I said, "well, let's run the numbers on your house," and I explain it to them and they see automatically, they see value automatically.
[00:26:11] Jason: Like, "Oh, I can now I'm educated in a way I wasn't before. I can see something I couldn't see before. I can see how you would be able to benefit my clients in a way that I just couldn't." Yeah.
[00:26:20] Galo: And what I like to say is I said, "look, all I'm trying to do is I am trying to create to increase trust between you and your client." And I always say it's like, "look, that client is yours. All I'm doing, I am the super glue that will help you stay very close with that client." And I say, "it will always be your client. If they want to sell, I'm calling you. If they have more friends that want to buy properties, I'm calling you. They are your clients." I said, "but let's also set something straight, although I don't have a fiduciary responsibility with them. If they send me properties that you're helping them look," I said, "I am going to be very honest. I am not going to say, 'Hey, yeah, buy everything.'" I'm like, "no," I said, "that's not who I am." So we need to ensure that we see each other eye to eye, but once again, are going to learn to trust us more as a team. Because I'm saying the numbers don't work.
[00:27:15] Jason: And if the numbers don't work, some agents that don't get like the long game might think you're a deal killer, but the agents that get it, if the numbers don't work, you can make changes to the numbers.
[00:27:26] Like, "Hey, if you bring your like down payment up, then the numbers magically work, so this property could work." So now people get to make better educated decisions instead of mistakes.
[00:27:35] Galo: 100 percent and that is something that we've done in the past and I salute the only way that this numbers will work is if you put 50, 000 down now all of a sudden you're good and then if you're okay with that, then yeah, numbers will work, but when you fill out the form and you put "this is how much I want to put down," if the numbers don't work, I'm going to be the first one that raises the red flag and say, "yeah. It's not going to work." so long as there's a mutual understanding with the realtor that I am not a deal killer. I am a deal enabler, but we just need to understand that a lot of the leads are not going to give you instant gratification. Some of them, you're going to have to work them until they buy the right property.
[00:28:15] But the key thing is that when they buy that property, and everything seemed to work as planned, they're going to feel more comfortable to buy more, and that's when the magic happens. We just need to be disciplined enough to be patient and wait for the right deal. I mean as an investor I'm not just going to go and buy everything. Numbers have to make sense.
[00:28:34] Jason: Yeah, got it. We got a couple questions. One question was posted: "how do you reach out to agents?" So this is something that we talk a lot about at DoorGrow. We've got our referral secrets training and we get into that on our growth accelerator call each Wednesday. But how are you reaching out to real estate agents to create these connections and showcasing this?
[00:28:54] Galo: So I belong to a lot of real estate investor groups here in Columbia, mostly on Facebook. I have been a speaker in a lot of them as well. I think it's about putting your face out there so people know what you do. So if you want to target investors, go where investors hang out because more than likely you're going to have a lot of realtors that attend those events.
[00:29:14] Why? Because they want to serve investors and while they're there, I will always pass on my information. I will get cards from them and then I will simply send a simple email or text and say, "Hey, this is Galo. I just provided a pitch last week or whatever about X, Y, or Z, and I would like to meet with you just so I can tell you a little bit about what I do for realtors so you can increase your chances of selling more properties to investors. Let's grab a coffee next week at X time." A lot of them will reply. Some of them won't. And that's okay. That's just like anything else. You just got to place feelers out there, but the key is going to be getting that realtor to see with you and for them to be able to see.
[00:29:57] So bring in a ROI calculator as an example and say, "look, this is what I'm doing right here. Hey, I want to establish a relationship with you. What's in it for you? We all want to know what's the pay pro quo, right? What's in it for me? I want to know what's in it for me. And I'll be very clear. So this is 100 percent what's in it for you."
[00:30:14] And I said, "wouldn't you agree that if you establish that trust with that investor, that potential client, wouldn't you agree that they will be more inclined to use your services are as the realtor? Why? Because no other realtors are doing that. I'm just that link. Let me get a link."
[00:30:30] Jason: Yeah, I love it.
[00:30:31] As you use this tool, what's also cool about it is we built it on a database system, so it stores each property as you run it, you can duplicate them if you need to, like you can have multiple of the same property with some different numbers, but then you have this database of examples. So you can print out a few of the sheets and like take them to a presentation with a real estate agent. You're like, "here's some examples of some deals that we worked on," or "here's your property," and so then you have a bunch of things to refer back to, and now you can connect stories. And when you start sharing stories of how you've helped investors, how you help prevent them from making a financial mistake and show them this there, they might not even understand everything you're explaining to them, but what they will understand is that they feel a lot safer with you and they trust you and that you understand this.
[00:31:21] Galo: Yes. 100%. 100%. And that's why when the first meeting happened, even running them through the properties, taxes, even running them through some key information that they may overlook maybe they know but that's fine, at least they know that you're looking and that you're thinking about it is there is no risk involved. Yeah, there's always going to be risk involved in real estate transactions, but the risk is always much lower when you're taking into account all of the things that you should be taking into account so running them through the whole process running them through the sheet helping them understand because If they start thinking in terms of the form, now that also gives some ammunition to be able to reach out to potential investors and say, "Hey, I know you're a high earner."
[00:32:06] Have you thought about what real estate can do to minimize your tax exposure? Hey, I think I have some ideas for you. Let's meet. And I think I even have some properties that may work for you." Just like that. And it, it doesn't take very long to run the calculator. It doesn't, it takes me maybe 10 minutes to look at the numbers, plug in the numbers and have the form ready.
[00:32:26] It doesn't take time. I think paying for the calculator, I get 10x the rate of return on what I'm paying monthly to use the calculator. It's a no brainer for me to use it because 10 minutes of my time is worth however many deals I'm getting out of it. So it's great.
[00:32:43] And the fact that it's very easy to use is just a form. You send it to them. Yeah. They plug it in. It doesn't take very long for them to plug it in. Immediately you get a message, an email saying, "hey, someone filled out the form." Great. If you get that form filled out, you just got to make sure that you close the deal at that point.
[00:32:59] You just got to close the deal because they're already thinking like, "man, I've never seen anyone doing this form thing. Like, what am I doing? But I'm interested to know." And when you deliver the content of the form, that's when you're like, yeah...
[00:33:12] Jason: it's at peak right then.
[00:33:14] Galo: It's a peak it's 100 percent at peak.
[00:33:16] And I do this with all of them. Now I don't do it with investors. Once again, I do it with even leads that say, "Hey I belong to the Facebook page here where I live." And people will say, "Hey, I heard that you're a property manager." I say, yes. Why don't you send me your address? So they send me the address.
[00:33:31] And then I just replied to them. "Hey, how about we grab a coffee here at the local coffee shop?" They said "sure." So we grab a coffee and then I just start talking a little bit about the form and I talk a little bit about what I bring to the table. I said, "would it be okay if I just send you the form, fill that out and that way you have nothing to lose? Let me just see whether or not this property is right to keep it as a rental. Let's start there." Once they fill out the form, that's like you've already hooked them. Yeah. Now you just got to deliver.
[00:33:58] Jason: Yeah, you're showing the value of them completing the form and what you're going to give them as a lead magnet And that's the bait Right and yeah, they're going to then give you the info and then you have all their info And I have never not expertise.
[00:34:14] Galo: I have never not have Anyone not fill out the form. Let's put it that way. Every form that I've sent is being filled out. Every single time. Never, because what's there to lose? It doesn't cost you anything. You're not putting social security numbers or anything on there. It's just public record information.
[00:34:31] There's nothing for you to lose. The only thing that I would say, Jason, that is important for people to understand is that the way that I use the form, especially with someone that's already, well, that already bought the house, you need to make sure that you do a little bit of math, understanding that, okay... hey, they bought the house in 2019, we're in 2024, so five years have already elapsed.
[00:34:52] So you need to correct the numbers in terms of years that they put, because yeah, I had a 30 year note. No, right now you have a, 24 year note because six years have already elapsed because if you don't do that, the numbers are going to be out of whack.
[00:35:05] Jason: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Because when you fill out the numbers, it's as if it just happened.
[00:35:10] Galo: As if it just happens. You have to adjust that for sure. You have to adjust that. But for someone that is thinking about buying, then yes, 100%, 30 year note, whatever it is, but someone that already has the house, you just have to adjust that. And then for me to validate the number say, "okay, what is your payment interest taxes? Just send that to me so I can compress it. Yep. We're pretty good there. We're within dollars," so I said "hey, we're good But we got to make that check because otherwise just like this can help you it can hurt you If your numbers are totally out of whack, so that's something that we need to keep in mind when we're talking to someone that already has a house.
[00:35:44] Jason: Ooh, yeah. So, yeah, this is really good stuff. The other thing, some of our clients have done, I don't know if you've done this yet, but they've been providing these sheets to agents listings so that they can add these as a PDF or as an image to the listing in MLS so that people can see how this could also be an investment.
[00:36:03] And so investors, they can be lazy. They can look at this property and go, "Oh, this could cashflow. I would get this return. Look at my tax benefits. Like, wow, this is amazing. I'm going to talk to this agent and it has your branding on it, not the agent's."
[00:36:17] Galo: No, huge. I'll tell you something that I did that is similar, but I use it to my advantage to get financing for it.
[00:36:24] So what I did is I just sent the proforma to the banker that I work with. I said, "look, there it is."
[00:36:28] Jason: The bank loves this. Yeah.
[00:36:29] Galo: It's like, "Oh shoot. Hey, good. Let's do it." It was simple. They know numbers. So it's like, yep. Look, hey, numbers work. Let's go. So that's also something that you can use, but yeah, I don't see why you couldn't, I don't know if there would be anything legally speaking that will prevent them from post that. But I think at the request of potential buyers, I say, "Hey, look, we have a pro forma for you to review.
[00:36:50] I
[00:36:51] Jason: think that should be a legal disclaimer at the bottom. That's like past performance is no guarantee future results. Rental properties are subject to financial risk, including the possible.
[00:37:00] So there's a disclaimer there so that anywhere you post this, like you're not going to be legally liable. And it says, "please seek legal counsel from a tax professional." Or something like this, right? So it has all that at the bottom. So agents can throw that out there and not worry about risk.
[00:37:16] So, John Chin, who I worked with for like a year, him and I worked on getting this thing just to works as well as it does and getting it put together. He's going to be presenting at DoorGrowLive for those that are watching the show. I highly recommend you get your tickets right now to DoorGrowLive.
[00:37:33] John's going to be talking about how when people are bringing properties to you, and you may be able to even leverage this tool, but how to turn them into, instead of property management clients, to get them to give you their properties.
[00:37:48] And how to do a seller financing deal without doing subject twos, which break the loan, but how to leverage a trust and to keep that owner in the trust and how he helps people set this up.
[00:37:59] Galo: That's cool. That's very cool.
[00:38:00] Jason: He's getting properties. He's getting more investments, which is a much better prize than getting a property management contract.
[00:38:07] Yeah, 100%. Right. So if you want, if you're a property manager and you believe in investing, come to DoorGrowLive and learn how to turn these potential clients into investment properties for you and make even more money and amass your own real estate. We've got one of our clients Ed Kirch, he got rid of all of his third party contracts that he didn't have ownership stake in. He has hundreds and hundreds now of properties that are just, he has ownership stake in and he's making way more money.
[00:38:40] So he now uses his whole property management business just as bait to get more investments. People call him up and say, "Hey, I was thinking, could you manage our property?" He's like, "well, let's get together and crunch the numbers." And then he scares the shit out of them. Okay. When it comes time to sell it, what the tax liability would be.
[00:38:56] And then he's like, "well, there is a way to maybe get around this. Let me think." Right. And so there's deals that could be happening. And I think a lot of property managers are leaving a lot of money on the table. When sometimes the best thing you could do is not take on a property. Sometimes the best thing you could do is to take on that property management.
[00:39:14] And sometimes the best thing you could be doing is to take over that property and own that property. And a lot of investors, property managers that should be investors are not eating their own dog food. They're not believing in that. So.
[00:39:29] Galo: And along those lines to Jason once you start building a pool of investors and you have potential leads that, hey, you know what?
[00:39:36] I know someone that if a numbers don't work for whatever reason, I can definitely connect you with someone that will buy the property and you can get an assignment fee out of that. And that assignment fee will more than likely be a year's worth or more of property management fees without doing anything besides spending. 30 to 40 minutes with a potential client that is 100 percent valuable. One of the things that I would like to say, because I understand the pitch for this calculator can be a little daunting for some folks, but one of the things that I did when I went to Austin and I watched John I watched it just to see the deliver, but then I had to add what we call in Spanish Sazon. I had to add my little, I need to sprinkle a little bit of my flavor to make it mine. Because if you sound robotic, you feel like, man, this is 100 percent rehearsed, but it did help me watch John deliver.
[00:40:26] So I'm a little bit more structure on how I can be structured and organized on how I deliver that. So 100% if John is going to DoorGrow live, which I can't, unfortunately, because of other commitments. But otherwise, I think that you will get your money's worth and then some from that experience and just learning from John and how he delivers and how much he knows because he's a real estate investor too.
[00:40:46] So he'll give you a lot of nuggets for you to own how to deliver this ROI calculator for sure.
[00:40:52] Jason: John's super smart. And so in building the calculator, we added a lot of notes and things on the form and things to clarify stuff. I, that took days to go through and just pull things out of John's brain and then ask him to rephrase it for a, like, As if he's talking to somebody that doesn't know that was like, you could see it because he uses really big words. He's very sophisticated in his language. And I'm like, "how can you say that, like to grandma or to an eight year old, so they understand it," but we were rewrote everything. So there's a lot of energy went into just making this understandable to the property manager and understandable to the agents or to the investors that are filling out the forms.
[00:41:32] And so that it makes sense. And it's still a little bit, challenging, to understand some of this stuff, but it's a lot easier because there's explanations to create some clarity on all of that stuff otherwise, and so some of y'all will learn just by running the numbers, putting some stuff in, figuring out where to get the numbers on a property and plugging this in, you're going to learn to be a better assessment of an investment.
[00:42:00] Galo: I had someone from the DoorGrow group. I forgot his name from Tennessee. I'll remember his name, but I had a pretty long conversation with him about this very thing. So Sarah put me in contact with him. And it was the same thing. I said, "look, I'm going to run it like I run it. If you're ready one day to pitch it to me, I can listen to you and I can maybe give you some feedback." But I think that's what the DoorGrow community brings to the table.
[00:42:23] You will connect with other folks that are willing to help you. And then he was like, "hey, what do you need help with?" And I said, "well, I am way behind on all my DoorGrow stuff. So let me look at your website. Let me see what you have, cause I may have to copy some of it," but it is good to know that you can get support from like minded folks.
[00:42:39] And one day is about me. Next day is about you and you can help each other. So I'm all about it, yeah. Yeah.
[00:42:45] Jason: That's why it's a mastermind. And so those of you that can attend DoorGrowLive, come experience some of our clients. Like just the caliber of the people that we attract at DoorGrow is next level.
[00:42:55] I think in this industry, they're growth minded people. You could tell just by looking at Galo, military disciplined, intelligent, like we attract really amazing people. And if you want to be more amazing, you are the sum of the five People that you hang out with the most so for your business come hang out with at least five property managers that are badasses like Galo, so And we'll have them in DoorGrow live.
[00:43:17] So Galo can't make it this year. But fortunately, but we've got some really cool people there. And we've got some really cool speakers. So make sure you attend well Galo, I appreciate coming on anything else you want to add about the roi calculator or maybe to share your experience of what it's like being in DoorGrow before we wrap up?
[00:43:35] Galo: I really think that everything that DoorGrow offers is phenomenal.
[00:43:40] And I think that you definitely have to prioritize doing the things that you need to do to make sure that you implement to grow your business. And in a short period of well, during the time that I've been with DoorGrow, just the ROI calculator some of the things that I've used and abused because I immediately saw great value.
[00:43:57] But there are so many other things that you would just apply yourself and take the time to apply. There is no reason why you cannot have your property management business succeed. The blueprint is there. Six years ago when I started learning this, I had no blueprint and it took me a while to grow.
[00:44:12] Had I had then what I have now? I could have exponentially grown much, much faster. It's a little hard, but you just got to put yourself out there with all of the sales calls and the revamp and everything else that the DoorGrow provides. You just got to be part of it and you just got to get after it.
[00:44:28] You have to let people know what you do. 100%. The ROI calculator is nothing if people don't know that you have it, if people don't know, there's like, "man, Galo has this very neat thing." you need to have people talking about it. There's a lot of engagements here in Columbia from different real estate investors.
[00:44:46] And next thing that I'm going to pitch is going to be this. I say, "Hey, let me explain this to a forum of investors from Columbia and other places." Because what that does is, all it does is just project your image out to the world so they know that you exist. The moment that you exist, even if you get two, three people, those three people will connect you with people.
[00:45:05] Some other people you just need to put yourself out there. You can go and do call calls, but calls are not really that good. When you get referred by people, your chances to close that deal are much higher than then kind of rolling the dice and hoping that they'll pick up a phone call.
[00:45:19] Now just start with people that you know, and let those folks bring you warm leads.
[00:45:23] Jason: Awesome. Well, Galo, appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for hanging out with us and appreciate you as a client. And I can hear in your voice, you're like, "man, I haven't done all the DoorGrow stuff. I've gotten these benefits," and I think all of our clients feel that way. Like there's a lot in the program and as entrepreneurs, we never feel like anything's fast enough. And so some of y'all listening are probably like, "well, man, I haven't done all the DoorGrow stuff," if they're clients, or I'm working on this, or "I've struggled to be on a call" or whatever. It's progress over perfection and you're making progress and that's what matters and it never feels fast enough for us as entrepreneurs.
[00:45:58] Like we're in the fast lane, wishing everybody would get out of our way. But you're making progress, you're moving stuff forward and I'm excited to see what you do.
[00:46:05] Galo: 100%. I was excited to be here and look forward to being part of their growth.
[00:46:09] Jason: All right. All right, cool. We'll let you go. So if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're wanting to finally experience some success, you're wanting to grow significantly over what you grew the last year or the year before that, maybe you've been stagnant for years, you just know that if you had more doors secretly, it's going to make your life worse personally as a business owner, because you have more questions from your team, more people bothering you, more problems, more drama, that means your business isn't scalable and we can help with that as well. So make sure that you reach out to us at DoorGrow and we can help you out.
[00:46:46] And if you have questions, Galo posted his email address. We'll include that if you want to reach out to Galo. And we appreciate him coming on the show. So reach out to us at DoorGrow. We would love to help you grow your business and get to be part of a community where you're hanging out with people that are doing some awesome things like Galo.
[00:47:03] So we we wish you all success until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:47:08] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:47:35] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
As a property management entrepreneur, you know how stressful day-to-day work and life can get. Over the years, we’ve noticed that property managers often neglect their own health until they burn out…
In today’s episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull chat about the importance of taking breaks and relaxing periodically as a property management business owner.
You’ll Learn[01:36] You’re stressed out! Now what?
[07:44] If you’re burnt out, you aren’t effective
[15:32] Why you need to take a vacation ASAP
[17:37] Take a break… or else
Tweetables“Just because you're working more or working harder does not mean you're productive or you're effective.”
“The thing that will give you more productivity is to stop and take a break.”
“Cars have both the gas and the brake. You need to realize that in your business, there's a time for gas and there's a time for the brake.”
“If a vacation seems crazy to you, schedule one.”
ResourcesDoorGrow and Scale Mastermind
DoorGrow Academy
DoorGrow on YouTube
DoorGrowClub
DoorGrowLive
TalkRoute Referral Link
Transcript[00:00:00] Sarah: If a vacation seems crazy to you, schedule one. That's exactly when you need one. When you go, "I just don't think there's any chance that I could be taken away from the business. Like everything is on me and there's no possible way that I can do it."
[00:00:15] That is exactly when you need to do it.
[00:00:18] Do it. Book it. You have to. Otherwise this is your life forever.
[00:00:23] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.
[00:01:04] 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, and expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow.
[00:01:25] And now let's get into the show. All right. So today's topic Is what?
[00:01:30] Sarah: Relaxation.
[00:01:31] Jason: Relaxation.
[00:01:33] Sarah: Yay. You know that thing that you guys never do?
[00:01:36] Jason: So, property management can be a little bit stressful. I've talked to thousands of property managers and this is a common theme. It can be a bit stressful.
[00:01:44] And I can't tell you how many I've talked to that said they haven't taken a vacation in like years. They're not taking breaks. They're not taking time for themselves, like things like this. And so I think it's important to recognize that just because you're working more or working harder does not mean you're productive or you're effective.
[00:02:05] And so it's important to make sure that you are taking breaks. So I think I shared on an episode recently at a client that I was coaching. And we had him do a time study, which is one of our tools we use to help clients figure out stuff. And he realized it was taking him like an hour to do things after three o'clock that took him 10 minutes to do in the morning.
[00:02:26] And so that's a clue to take. a break that we need to take breaks. Yesterday I was working on some tasks and I was getting a lot of stuff done, but then I eventually hit a wall where I was trying to work on something and it just like, was really hard. Like it was just felt really difficult for my brain to work on it at that moment.
[00:02:43] And I realized, "Oh, it's like in the afternoon I haven't eaten lunch yet and I probably should take a break." And so rather than forcing it and pushing forward, which I used to do in the past and do less productive work. I went and took a break. So, all right, what else should we say about taking breaks?
[00:03:01] Sarah: All right. So I know that it seems like the opposite thing that you should do when you're very busy And you've got a lot on your plate and you've got 10, 000 tasks to handle and you just have to push through and keep going and get it all done. And that if you stop, it will get harder because then you'll fall behind and then you'll have more to do and then it'll take longer and then you'll be going until midnight or later.
[00:03:26] And. It's really crazy, but it is backwards because if you are just pushing through and you're trying to just get it done and dig your heels in and keep going, even when you're tired, even when your body is telling you like, "Hey, I'm tired and I need a break." Then you're still able to keep going, but you're just not efficient and you're being less productive.
[00:03:50] So the thing that would give you more productivity is not to just push through and say, "I'm just going to keep going until I get it all done." The thing that will give you more productivity is to stop and take a break. I know it sounds wild, but it's true. So you need to figure out what can you do in that moment to then get some space, remove yourself from the situation and actually get into a state where your brain and your body can start to relax.
[00:04:19] Jason: Sometimes breaks are not enough. A quick break's just not enough. You're right. So especially if you've been in burnout for a while.
[00:04:25] Yeah.
[00:04:26] Sarah: We've been working really hard. I talked about this on the scale call last week. There are seasons in your business where you will be because maybe you are bringing on a whole bunch of new units. Maybe you're hiring a new person. Maybe you're implementing a new system or changing softwares or working with a new coach. And there are definitely times for that. But you also have to realize that there are times for breaks and rest and relaxation.
[00:04:52] Cars have both the gas and the brake. You need to realize that in your business, there's a time for gas and there's a time for the brake. So you must have both.
[00:05:04] Jason: Yeah. So we've been working really hard lately and I think we're both getting to a place of burnout. We were outfitting an an Airbnb that we're going to use for some client events and stuff as well.
[00:05:14] And we've just been working on the business. We're onboarding new sales people in the company too. And it's just, it's a lot, right. And so we just a week's vacation basically. We did a cool training. If you missed it last week, it was really cool. So we did do some work but we took a break and I think it was well needed, especially after that marathon move that we did moving all that furniture into that rental.
[00:05:38] Sarah: So I was pretty burned out physically, and I was nearing burnout. I was just, my stress level was through the roof. I was telling Jason, "I am on the verge of a breakdown, could happen like any little thing" and little things, little stupid things that I would normally not care about as much were setting me off like big explosions over a little stupid things.
[00:06:03] Jason: Every married guy can resonate. We know when you women get like that.
[00:06:07] Sarah: Well men get like that too, though, in a different way, I think sometimes when the little things that they're an annoyance, they're a slight frustration, but it's not the end of the world. But when your body reacts to that little stupid frustration as if it is the end of the world, that's a really good cue like you need a break. So we took one. And we pushed ourselves probably to the limit and just about every capacity as business owners often do, we're like "go, hurry up, get it all done, make it happen. So we set up we set up an Airbnb in 26 hours. Everything. We cleaned it and we had no furniture.
[00:06:48] We moved everything in, we assembled it, we decorated it. We got decor, silverware, dishes. There's five beds in there.
[00:06:55] Jason: Five beds.
[00:06:56] Sarah: And everything. And not just like beds...
[00:06:58] Jason: purple mattresses and stuff ready.
[00:07:00] Sarah: Yeah. It's ready to be rented out right now. And we did all of that.
[00:07:04] Jason: And it's two story.
[00:07:05] Sarah: In 26 hours.
[00:07:06] Jason: All the rooms, all the bedrooms are upstairs except one. It was a good time. Hudson, my son, and I were the heavy lifters.
[00:07:12] Sarah: Yes. I wasn't going to break a nail. These are like, it's 75 to get a new set! I'm not... you do that. So we did all of this. And then we actually had this trip booked for a while.
[00:07:24] It was booked last year. But the timing just worked out really well. Yeah. So we got done Sunday evening. late Sunday evening. And then Monday morning we flew out to a property, very rural in Arkansas, in Bentonville, Arkansas. It's actually Decatur, but there's like three properties in the city of Decatur, I think.
[00:07:44] And then that week, it wasn't that we didn't work at all because we did, but I only worked for maybe a few hours a day and it was selective work and it was focused work. So instead of doing everything that I would normally have done, I had to then prioritize. And say, okay, "if I have two hours to do everything because I'm only going to work for two hours today or three hours today, then what are the things that I must get done today in that time?"
[00:08:15] And those were the things that I focused on and anything that wasn't that I either didn't do it or I delegated it to the team. Because the thing that we also don't realize is sometimes things can wait and that's okay. We're in this era now of everything is instant. It's, "I want it right now. I want this now. I want an answer now. I want to talk to somebody now. I want Amazon right now. Like, I want everything instantly." And that has trained us to instantly respond to everything and then to be in this mindset where, "Oh, somebody needs me and then I must drop everything. I must handle it right now." It is okay to wait.
[00:08:55] Jason: It's okay to say no. It's okay to say, "Hey, no, I'm not doing that today, or that's going to be done next week." Depending on the situation, you don't always have to be reactive. you should be in control in your business, right? Where you're not reacting to everything. So.
[00:09:10] Sarah: So I'll share what I shared on that Scale call is I challenged everybody to give themselves Megan Cuthin talks about this.
[00:09:18] And so if Megan ever sees this. Megan, we love you. So Megan is our friend. She's out in Nashville, Tennessee. She's great. And she coaches on operations. And one of the things that she had talked about is she was noticing that every so often she would just get exhausted and then she was no longer effective.
[00:09:35] And she was just like, she had no more gusto to her. She didn't want to do things. And that's because she was hitting a burnout cycle. So she was realizing her burnout cycle was happening pretty often, like every other week. And then what she needed to do when she was like that is just take a break.
[00:09:53] So what she started doing is just building these little like mini breaks in. So what she does is she just chooses a day. And she blocks that day out so that she doesn't do anything that day. She has no calls. She has no appointments. She doesn't wake up at a certain time. She just treats it like a vacation day when she's at home. So she'll wake up whenever her body feels like waking up. If she wants to just read a book or watch TV or go take a nap or meditate or take a walk or go bowling or do whatever that day she does that. And then when she feels pretty well rested. relaxed and pretty well rested.
[00:10:35] Usually what happens then when we start to feel that way is then our brain starts going "Oh, I should take care of that. And Oh, what if I did that? And Oh..." and we start to get pulled back in to the idea of work and then work seems now exciting again versus, "Oh, I have to do that, but I really just don't want to do it."
[00:10:55] There's a big difference between going, "Oh, you know what? I could probably just do that. Oh, you know what? I had this great idea. We should do that." Then you feel excited and energized about it. That's your cue now to go back to work. And it might happen. It might take a day. It might take a few days if you're, especially if you haven't done this in a while, it might take a few days.
[00:11:12] It only might take a few hours. So you might be on like this burnout day for like three hours and that's it. So that's it. My challenge to everybody on the scale call last week was to schedule yourself a day like this, where you don't do all of the things that you would normally do and allow yourself that time to relax.
[00:11:31] And then my other challenge was to do this regularly. Also, don't just do it once and be like, "Oh, I'm good now." You're not, you have to continuously do this thing. And we had a client actually Josh, he closes his office every single week now on Friday early. And he's His whole team goes home early.
[00:11:48] Can you imagine that? So they have about like a four and a half day work week now instead of a five day. And the whole team gets everything done. They appreciate having that extra time in that extra afternoon. And instead of going "Oh, well I like, I can't not work on Friday afternoon because then all of this stuff won't get done."
[00:12:08] They get it done. So they're getting the same amount of work done, but in a shorter amount of time because they're properly motivated and they get extra time now to relax. So essentially they're getting a longer weekend. So I would challenge you to do the same thing, pick a day. And if you're like, "there is no chance I could do that right now!" That's fine.
[00:12:27] Do three weeks from now. Pick a day and close your office early. The nice thing is you don't actually have to do it. You just have to tell your brain that you're going to do it. So say, "I'm going to close at one o'clock today." And then what you'll subconsciously do is start filtering all of the work and all of the things that must get done.
[00:12:43] In that time frame, because you're going to close at 1 o'clock, and you'll get them done, and then, even if you don't close at 1 o'clock, you don't have to, but you just tell yourself that you will, if you then don't close at 1 o'clock, and you say, well, now I have an extra 4 hours in my day, what can you do with those extra 4 hours that your brain wasn't actually planning on having?
[00:13:03] Jason: Yeah.
[00:13:03] Sarah: So you can trick your brain, but you really, you have to do a little bit extra to like trick your brain. Because if you go, "Oh yeah, but I'm not actually closing at one o'clock. I'm going to be here until five anyway." Then your brain will give you until five o'clock to get all of your crap done.
[00:13:16] But if you're like, "I am closing at one o'clock, I am stopping at one o'clock and that's it." No exceptions. Then all of a sudden you work in the capacity that you have, you get all of your stuff done, and now you have some extra time in your day. And you might then decide to reinvest that time back into the business and go, "Oh, you know what? I think I'll go take a quick lunch. Maybe I'll go take a quick break. Maybe I'll take an hour break. Maybe I'll take a two hour lunch." I don't know. And then if you want to come back, you can always come back. It's your business. You can do whatever you want, but you have to actually trick your brain into, hey, "I need to get everything done by one o'clock or 12 o'clock or two o'clock or whatever time, pick a time, close early and get everything done by then."
[00:13:55] And then all of a sudden, you will be a lot more efficient that way. And you'll prioritize the things that need to be done because a lot of the things that you're doing, They don't actually need to be done.
[00:14:06] Jason: So this concept is Parkinson's law, right? Is the idea that the more time you get for something, the more time it's going to take.
[00:14:14] And so things will just always fill up whatever container you make available. Related to that, because work expands to fill the time that's available for its completion, things become harder. The more time you allow. And so sometimes by collapsing the amount of time available and having deadlines or having requirements.
[00:14:36] And this is one of, I think the brilliant pieces of our planning system, DoorGrow OS, by collapsing the time allotted in order to achieve something, people actually like work more efficiently and it's less hard to accomplish and they get more innovative And they start like looking for all these other alternatives and options and whatever and they do what's most effective.
[00:14:58] And so we've seen this with team members like they might spend way too much time on something if we just say this is when we need it's like we need this by next week and They we could give them a month And they would take an entire month and spend a ton of time and more time doing it. And that doesn't mean it's more effective or that we're getting a better result necessarily.
[00:15:17] So, same thing for you. Like set a cutoff. I'm done with work at this time. I'm going to take a break at this time. I'm going to take a vacation at this time. And then you will find that things become more and more effective. So Parkinson's law. Cool.
[00:15:32] Sarah: If a vacation seems crazy to you, schedule one.
[00:15:36] Yeah. That's exactly when you need one. When you go, "I just don't think there's any chance that I could be taken away from the business. Like I can't take away from my team or I am the team. I don't even have a team yet. Like everything is on me and there's no possible way that I can do it."
[00:15:52] That is exactly when you need to do it. So just do it.
[00:15:55] Jason: Yeah.
[00:15:56] Sarah: Do it. Book it. You have to. Otherwise this is your life forever. This is what you want. Do you want to be stuck? Doing all of this stuff every day, all day, burned out, exhausted, tired, miserable? No, so you have to get out of that. And sometimes to get out of that, we have to physically remove ourself from the situation because I know you guys out there, you'll go, "Oh yeah, I'll take a break."
[00:16:20] And then you'll bring your cell phone with you and you'll be doing stuff anyway. Actually take a break and remove yourself.
[00:16:28] Jason: So at one of our DoorGrow Live events, we have brought in an expert trainer that trains pro athletes for the San Antonio Spurs and some other pro teams that are around Texas.
[00:16:41] And she talked about how is part of their training mechanism and what she coaches on and supports them in recovery is a big part of that piece. It's a big piece of all of that. And if you don't have recovery, then you're going to have more injury. You're not going to perform as well. And so she talked about how the recovery piece is usually this most neglected piece because they're super driven.
[00:17:05] And a lot of entrepreneurs, you're high D in a DISC assessment. Like you're very driven. You want to like get things done. You're motivated, but you may not be giving yourself the recovery you need to be effective.
[00:17:16] During the recovery stage, it's built during those early morning hours where you're sleeping. That's where muscle's built. You do the work and break the muscle and tear the muscle and whatever doing the workouts, but it's built during recovery. And so if you're not giving yourself what you need and setting aside the recovery time, you will inevitably burn out.
[00:17:35] So you have to find that balance. So.
[00:17:36] Sarah: And You need to take a break before your body does it for you.
[00:17:40] Jason: Right.
[00:17:41] Sarah: Because that's the other thing, if you've ever noticed that when you're just tired and you're exhausted and you're stressed and you're like, that's usually when all of a sudden you straighten your back or you twist your ankle or you get this weird cold or bronchitis or whatever.
[00:17:57] It's because you're not listening to your body. Your body is giving you clues and telling you what it needs. "Hey, I need to eat Hey, I need to sleep. Hey, like I'm not relaxed. There's way too much cortisol in here. What are we doing?" And if we just keep pushing through it will break down And something will happen either a sickness or an illness or an injury And then you have to take a break because it will force you to take a break.
[00:18:24] But then the problem with that guys is then we're not taking a break that's fun. We're taking a break because we're sick and injured.
[00:18:31] Jason: Yeah. So we don't get to really enjoy it. Yeah.
[00:18:34] Sarah: So you're not enjoying it now. You're going, "Oh, I feel like crap." Of course you do. So you should choose to take a break before your body chooses it for you.
[00:18:43] Jason: So I think, one of the things I'm noticing is it's really important for entrepreneurs to become attuned to their nervous system. They need to be familiar with how they're feeling and just check in with themselves. And for entrepreneurs, we usually operate at a high stress level and not all stress is bad necessarily, right?
[00:18:59] The stress of working out actually gives you more runway and gives you more time, productive time. But we need to make sure that we're paying attention to our nervous system because we'll get preloaded and then we'll get like really like heightened and really anxious. And then to the point where we're exploding at that team members and like freaking out and like we're really heightened and we might then some entrepreneurs will get to the point where they're having panic attacks and they're not sleeping at night and they're having.
[00:19:25] Heart palpitations, right? And so we need to make sure we are honoring the body and our body will give us clues, nervous system. So go take a walk, take a breather, take a vacation, take a break, but start listening to your nervous system. What's it telling you right now that you need right now? Maybe you need to take care of your body.
[00:19:41] So, all right. Anything else?
[00:19:43] Sarah: I think if you need to take a break, then take a break and you can take a mini break. You can do that. So just get up and walk around the office. Even if you pace around the office. We have a couple of clients who do that. Like Yair every, I think it's four o'clock every day, he plays the Rocky theme in his office. And then he does like pushups and like burpees and like jumping jacks and lunges and stuff. Now you don't necessarily have to do all of that, but Schedule it throughout the day, put it right on your calendar, and then every so often get up and go walk around, even if it's just walking around your office.
[00:20:23] Rest your eyes, close your eyes for a few minutes, look away from your screen. Don't take a break from your screen by looking at your cell phone. That's another screen. That's not a break. Then your eyes are strained all day long. So actually look at something that's not a screen, rest your eyes or close your eyes or do some eye squeezes.
[00:20:40] You can meditate, you can listen to some music, you can start to read a book. And even if it's only for a few minutes throughout the day, that few minutes is going to help rejuvenate your body. So then you're not just feeling like you're constantly drained. And when you need a longer break, take a longer break, even though it might seem impossible.
[00:21:02] That's exactly when you need to do it.
[00:21:04] Jason: Okay, cool. So there's a cool app that I used for a while called Rise Sleep and it shows your circadian rhythm and there's usually a big spike in the morning where you ramp up and then it dips down in the afternoon and then you get a littler spike in the in the evening and where you get a another boost.
[00:21:24] But that lull in the afternoon, that dip can be pretty severe if we're not taking care of our health. And you can be really fatigued. And so that's a great time to maybe go for a walk or take a break or do something to wake yourself up or go do a workout or something like that. So, all right, well, hopefully this was a helpful and effective for you to honor your nervous system.
[00:21:44] Get some breaks in. towards burnout. We know that if you're not burning yourself out, you're going to be a lot more productive, a lot more effective, and we can help you grow your business a lot faster. And if you'd like to learn how to get your business growing faster, how to lower your stress levels and make the business a calm workplace, and get more effective and efficient team members, get better systems in place, this is what we do at DoorGrow. We're able to help grow companies dramatically, and we would love to help and support you. So reach out to us and talk to our team and let's get you going. So until next time to our mutual growth, bye everyone.
[00:22:17] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:22:44] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
Property management business owner, do you have an assistant? We’ve talked before about how important it is to build a team around you and get support as an entrepreneur.
In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull discuss why property management entrepreneurs need to hire an assistant for themselves.
You’ll Learn[01:14] The Most Important Hire in Your PM Business
[02:41] How to Get a Really Good Assistant
[04:57] Two Types of Team Members
[06:42] When Should I Get an Assistant?
[08:17] Benefits of Having an Assistant
Tweetables“I think the very first person that somebody should hire. is an assistant.”
“If you continue to build the team around the business, you will end up more and more miserable instead of helping yourself more and more, which actually makes you a lot more money.”
“Nobody's good at being two or three different types of people.” “I've seen business owners have team members that they've gotten assistants for and they don't have an assistant for themselves.”
ResourcesDoorGrow and Scale Mastermind
DoorGrow Academy
DoorGrow on YouTube
DoorGrowClub
DoorGrowLive
TalkRoute Referral Link
Transcript[00:00:00] Jason: I've seen business owners have team members that they've gotten assistants for and they don't have an assistant for themselves.
[00:00:07] That always just drives me crazy because it's so obvious that there's a problem there.
[00:00:13] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers, love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings.
[00:00:40] Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull. And let's get into the show. All right.
[00:01:13] So today we're going to be talking about assistants, right?
[00:01:16] Sarah: Yes. Why don't you have help yet? Okay.
[00:01:20] Jason: So one of the challenges that we've noticed with our clients and with other property managers is that a lot of times they don't have an assistant for themselves. And so they'll have some team members even, but they won't have an assistant that supports them.
[00:01:36] And I think this is a common trap entrepreneurs fall into. I think the very first person that somebody should hire. is an assistant. You start getting yourself some help instead of just helping the business. And if you continue to build the team around the business, you will end up more and more miserable instead of helping yourself more and more, which actually makes you a lot more money.
[00:01:58] That's like everything in a nutshell.
[00:02:00] Sarah: There you go. We're done. There we go. We can wrap up. Have a great day. So get an assistant.
[00:02:03] Jason: Goodbye. Alright.
[00:02:04] Sarah: Madi will edit this one and she'll be like, "oh wow, that was so fast."
[00:02:07] Jason: "Wow, that was the shortest one ever." Kidding! So let's talk about this. I have an assistant.
[00:02:12] Giselle's sort of your assistant. I think. Somewhat. Operationally? No, you don't think so? Okay. All right.
[00:02:18] Sarah: She's really good at really anything because she asks people on the team and she's like, "Hey, is there anything you need help with this week?" She always usually messages me at the beginning of the week and she says, "Hey, is there like anything I should be aware of or any special projects that you need me to work on this week?"
[00:02:34] And sometimes I can't think of anything until later. And then I go, "Oh, you can help me with this." And she's like, "great. I'm on it."
[00:02:41] Jason: So how do we get people really good assistants? Well, we have them do one of our DoorGrow time studies to figure out which things are energetically their plus signs and which things are their minus signs.
[00:02:51] And then we build out a job description, but it needs to be one personality type, not two or three different personalities that like that human being doesn't really exist.
[00:03:01] Sarah: And if they do, they're hard.
[00:03:03] Jason: There's people that can do everything.
[00:03:04] Sarah: They have like multiple personalities in one.
[00:03:07] Jason: Yeah.
[00:03:08] Sarah: Let's think about it if we want to hire them.
[00:03:09] Jason: No, we don't. We don't want that person. We want somebody that's good. At being one person, right? Like in, because nobody's good at being two or three different types of people. Right. You're not going to have somebody that's like, "man, I'm the salesiest person ever and super salesy. And Oh yeah, I'm a really brilliant detail oriented operator."
[00:03:27] Like it's just, for example, so we need to get you your ultimate assistant. We also then like to figure out your personality, figure out who you are. So when we get into our DoorGrow hiring, and if you need help with hiring, reach out to DoorGrow, we have a really great hiring system called DoorGrow hiring, and it's going to cost you a lot less money than working with a placement agency where they charge thousands of dollars and you'll probably get better results.
[00:03:48] Not probably. You'll get better results typically because their job is just to get somebody into your office and get paid. But we assess people, we make sure they're the right personality fit. We help you make sure you have the right culture fit and the right skill fit, which I've talked about many times, the three fits.
[00:04:06] So, I've had lots of assistants over the years. Lots. I've had some really amazing ones. I've had some okay ones. I haven't really had, well, I guess I've had a few like bad ones as well, right? So I've had lots and lots of assistants. And what I usually look for in hiring an assistant is I need somebody that I can trust their judgment and their intelligence to do things so that I don't have to do it. Right. And so my assistant Mar, she's better at several things than I would be. She has more patience. She's willing to like get frustrated at people if need be to like get things handled, whatever it takes.
[00:04:46] I think it's really important. A lot of people think, "well, I'll go get a VA and I'll go get some low dollar, low wage, cheap sort of worker in Mexico or the Philippines, and that'll be my first assistant."
[00:04:57] So there's two types of people you're going to hire in your business. Some are people as process. People as process are basically like people you hired that function like a robot. Just do what I tell you to do. Don't get cute. Don't be clever. Just follow the checklist.
[00:05:10] That's not a great assistant. It's not really a good assistant to have because you're going to have to do all the thinking for them and then give them tasks and you, then you're gonna have to show them exactly how to do every task and that's going to be really frustrating for you. That's not the ideal assistant.
[00:05:25] So then there are people that are thinkers or decision makers that you can trust to make decisions without you and to make judgments. And so that's the type of assistant that you want. You want somebody that is intelligent. Intelligence is the big differentiator here. And you can tell when you're talking with people, are they bright?
[00:05:46] Are they quick? Would you trust them to do things over you on the things that you're going to give them to do because they're better at those things? So you want to hire people that are intelligent, not people that just can follow tasks That's not going to be a really good assistant for you. Now later on if you do have some low level work or tasks in the business that you just want to offload, you can hire some people as process we have people on our team that are people as process.
[00:06:11] They follow things. They do the same sort of work each time. They're not really involved in making a lot of decisions in the business. They don't come to our weekly meetings. They don't come to our monthly meeting, planning meetings, stuff like this. They're just doing their work and they're valuable and we appreciate them.
[00:06:28] However, if you need somebody close to you, that's going to help you double your capacity and help you get accomplished a lot more, they need to be next level. They need to be higher level from that. So anything you would add to that?
[00:06:41] Sarah: I would say, let's talk about: when should I get an assistant?
[00:06:46] Jason: Okay. When do you think they should get an assistant.
[00:06:48] Sarah: Like now? Now. Usually somewhere and it's different depending on your capacity, typically, it's somewhere in between the 50 and 100 door mark. It may be a little bit sooner depending on your market and is this your full time thing? Are you trying to run eight different businesses at once?
[00:07:07] Like, what is your focus like? Really how much time are you spending in the business and willing to spend in the business? All of that will be factors in when this happens, but typically it's somewhere between the 50 and 100 doormark, which is why if you're in the DoorGrow mastermind, then the belt level requirements in order to reach the orange belt, which is your hundred doormark, you need to hire an assistant. It's one of the things on there and most people skip this step and they'll hire other positions in the business. They just don't hire an assistant. And I ran my business, that was the only person I had was an assistant and she was boots on the ground. And then that way, all of the stuff I didn't want to do, I didn't have to do because I had somebody else who could just take it off my plate and do it for me. So it was great. Without her, man, I don't know how I would have been able to do it. I would have had to work probably double or more. And I would have had multiple other positions in the company going at the same time. It just would have been really hard to do everything, especially the way that I did it without somebody there boots on the ground.
[00:08:17] Jason: Yeah. So for me having an assistant has like been hugely beneficial so that I can free up my time like it's completely gotten me out of email. I don't look at my email. Do you email me? I probably won't see it, but I'll be told about it.
[00:08:33] Sarah: We closed on a property and he didn't see any of the stuff. Yeah, we were at the closing table and he's like, "hey, I got questions on this."
[00:08:40] I'm like, yeah, that's all in your email. He's like, "oh, I don't look at my email."
[00:08:43] Jason: Yeah. So, yeah, I don't like dealing with email, right? It's not like my favorite thing in the world. So I was able to offload email. I don't have to like worry too much about my schedule. I just show up and live and do what my calendar tells me to do.
[00:08:57] So, having an assistant has just made things a lot easier so I can focus on higher level tasks and working on the stuff that I more enjoy doing and my assistant enjoys doing all those things. Those are things that drain me and my assistant loves it Like she messaged me last night saying how much she loves her job and how much she loves doing all this stuff for me And i'm like, "that's great because I would hate doing it." I just don't want to do a lot of those things that she does. So when to get an assistant? I think most property managers, yeah, certainly once you get up to 50, 60 doors, you're probably feeling a little bit overwhelmed as in that solopreneur sand trap, that's a great spot to get your first team member. They could be a part time assistant, but get somebody that can take some load off your plate.
[00:09:40] Maybe you can graduate them the full time as you add more doors, but it's going to double your capacity. Getting a really good assistant can double your capacity overnight, especially if they're taking off your minus signs because you'll have so much more energy, so much more mental capacity, so much less decision fatigue.
[00:09:57] You'll be able to get more juice out of the second half of your day if you can get those things offloaded. And so we've got some great resources for how to leverage an assistant that we can support you in at DoorGrow and how to know what an assistant should be doing, which is unique to you. And yeah, and how to make that relationship really effective.
[00:10:17] So, so reach out to us and check us out at DoorGrow.Com if you're curious about any of that, and if you don't yet have an assistant, what I think's really wild to me is I've seen business owners that have hundreds of doors, hundreds. And they have an entire team and they're stressed out and they're frustrated.
[00:10:34] And this happens a lot, especially in the two to 400 door range, they'll just be burnt out and they wonder why they can't get to the next level. They keep stopping their growth and adding doors and then focusing on trying to get their systems and processes dialed in and they don't have an assistant and they wonder why things are so stressful for them.
[00:10:51] And it's cause they're not taking care of themselves. They're not taking care of the most important person in the business. The one person that should have the most support, they're not allowing that person to get support, and it's you, the business owner, like make sure you have an assistant. I've seen business owners have team members that they've gotten assistants for and they don't have an assistant for themselves.
[00:11:12] That always just drives me crazy because it's so obvious that there's a problem there. And when I'm talking with them, they're like burnout, they're frustrated, they're hating their business, and, "oh yeah, my operator has an assistant or this person has an assistant or my property manager has an assistant property manager, but the business owner has no direct support."
[00:11:32] I'm like, "'well, everybody in my team supports me,' but you didn't build the team around you. You built the team around the business." And so they're just burning themselves out. So this is your invitation. If you're listening and you don't have an assistant right now, and you have any other team members, this is your invitation, or maybe you don't have any team members yet. This is your invitation to go get yourself an assistant. I'm giving you permission that you can go get yourself an assistant. Not that you need it, but you deserve it. Like go get yourself an assistant. You can definitely afford it because if you were able to take half of your time off your plate of the crappy stuff you don't want to be doing, you could easily make a lot more money.
[00:12:11] You can spend a lot more time doing revenue generating activities and growing the business. It's almost never an excuse that you financially can't afford an assistant. Because it just means you just have to spend the time doing the stuff that makes money, and you know how to make money and if you don't for some reason know how to add doors or know how to close more deals or know how to make money, we can help you do that dramatically and very quickly reach out to us at DoorGrow. So anything else we should say?
[00:12:37] Sarah: I don't think so
[00:12:38] Jason: Okay, so what's the core message?
[00:12:41] Sarah: Go get an assistant. Do it.
[00:12:43] Jason: All right. Do it now. That's it for today. So until next time to our mutual growth Bye everyone. Oh and get your tickets to DoorGrow live.
[00:12:51] This is gonna be an awesome event So go get those you can go to DoorGrowlive. Com. Be there. It's going to be be cool
[00:12:56] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:13:23] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
Are you a property manager? Do you hire property managers? Can you answer the question: what is a property manager, and what do they do?
In today’s episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss what a property manager is and what they should be doing in a property management business.
You’ll Learn[01:14] Million-dollar question: What does a property manager do?
[06:25] Siloing information to protect your business
[10:26] Hiring specialists instead of people who can “do it all”
[12:20] What should a property manager's role be?
[16:31] Property managers as client success experts
Tweetables“There's a lot of confusion as to the definition of a property manager in the property management industry.”
“When your company grows, what we're going to hopefully have you do is shift into specialists, so that you won't have a property manager that just does everything.”
“Effectively cloning yourself or duplicating yourself in the business usually means getting 10 people, not one.”
“It's not hard to be exceptional in property management.”
ResourcesDoorGrow and Scale Mastermind
DoorGrow Academy
DoorGrow on YouTube
DoorGrowClub
DoorGrowLive
TalkRoute Referral Link
Transcript[00:00:00] Jason: Business owners, we need to stop trying to find people that can do everything. We need to find people that are really good specialists.
[00:00:08] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives. And you are interested in growing in business and life. And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager.
[00:00:28] DoorGrow Property Managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses.
[00:00:56] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the B. S. build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management, growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.
[00:01:13] All right. So one of the things that's come up, we just did a DoorGrow boardroom event.
[00:01:18] And one of our clients that was there was like, "I need to hire a property manager." And we're like, "okay." And what we noticed in talking there and going deeper and digging in deeper is that there's a lot of confusion as to the definition of a property manager in the property management industry.
[00:01:37] Sarah: Yeah, it's like a catch all.
[00:01:39] Jason: So the challenge is it can mean just about anything.
[00:01:42] Sarah: Yeah. The definition of property manager is: "do anything and everything that the company needs."
[00:01:49] Jason: And so I've noticed this for a while. we've had a lot of clients and they'll say, "Oh, I need another property manager," or "I need to hire a property manager."
[00:01:56] "I need to get a property manager." And it always means something different. So like some people think a property manager does everything, and this is the portfolio style property manager. They're like, "they need to go get business." And so they're a BDM, they need to handle and do some of the bookkeeping accounting stuff.
[00:02:17] They need to do maintenance coordination. They need to do the leasing. So they're trying to find somebody that's basically an entrepreneur. They can do everything that's probably going to run away and steal half their business. Right. Which happens. It's happened quite a bit. I've seen it. And that's, I think the wrong way to build a property management business, it's the wrong way to hire and build your team.
[00:02:36] So let's figure out. What is a property manager? What is it?
[00:02:41] Sarah: Love it.
[00:02:41] Jason: What are your thoughts?
[00:02:42] Sarah: Well, so I think that there's an important distinction, especially when it comes to the size of your company. So in the beginning, When it's just you do everything. It's all you, you, and then you some more.
[00:02:58] And I think this is why then when they go to hire a property manager, they're like, "Oh, well I did everything and I want to replace myself. So I need a property manager to replace myself and then they're going to do everything because I did everything." So in the beginning. When you are in the day to day and it's just you and you haven't built a team yet and you're functioning as the property manager because you're in the day to day and the tactical work, yes, you are technically a property manager.
[00:03:26] And then when your company grows, what we're going to hopefully have you do is shift into specialists. so that you won't have a property manager that just does everything. You'll have people who are really good at the one thing that they do and will be able to then segment the business and split that out into multiple roles instead of just having a property manager that does everything.
[00:03:56] Everything. Yeah. So I created a Facebook post, cause
[00:04:00] There was some heat on that post. Well, I like this. I don't know if you read the comments.
[00:04:03] Jason: I like to stir the pot a little bit. For those that are watching this on video, this is what it looks like, right? So join our Facebook group, go to doorgrowclub. com, get in there. So I said, if the property manager role on your team is not your maintenance coordinator, operator, bookkeeper, leasing agent, then what is their role? And so people are like "define operator, like what's an operator?" So then I was defining what an operator was, but Michelle Miller, shout out to Michelle, she commented. She said, "in other words, if they aren't doing everything, what are they doing?" Right. Brian Nelson said "delegator." And I like that. That's I think
[00:04:39] Sarah: I don't like
[00:04:40] Jason: that.
[00:04:40] I like the idea that they are not the person that's doing all this stuff. Maybe they're orchestrating, maybe that's what they're doing.
[00:04:47] They're maintaining the relationship with the owner. Sean Foster, he says "PM's number 1 job is to be the middleman between the owner and the tenant advising and the correct path of the most profitable investment."
[00:04:56] And "but that one responsibility branches off into another 20, doesn't it?"
[00:05:00] And then, "depends on the systems." There's a little dialogue going back and forth there. So if you do property management, you manage the property. And to manage the property, you're doing leasing, maintenance, inspections, all this stuff. But that doesn't mean that the property manager in your business is doing all this stuff or should be.
[00:05:17] Usually you don't want somebody that's a jack of all trades and a master of none trying to do stuff. And if they're actually good at everything, they'll probably just go start their own business. And I think that's the other challenges that we often mistakenly fall into this clone myth. And this was what was going on with our client at the DoorGrow boardroom event.
[00:05:35] He thought, he's like, well, "I was a property manager at another company for a while. Now, I have my own business and I'm doing all everything and I need to go hire a property manager and I was doing everything at that company. I'm doing everything in my own company. Now, I need to go find somebody else to do everything."
[00:05:50] And when we finally identified this. I call it the clone myth. We think, "I just need to go find somebody just like me. I need to clone myself." Effectively cloning yourself or duplicating yourself in the business usually means getting 10 people, not one. Like 10 different hats, 10 different specialists in the business.
[00:06:07] And so just want to address the clone myth real quick. So I think we want to find a way, I think in the industry, it might make sense to eliminate the term property manager. If they're not actually the one doing all of the little pieces, unless you're portfolio style. So what are your thoughts on that?
[00:06:25] Sarah: Well, I think the other thing too, that I want to bring up about him at the boardroom event is he's like, "I need a property manager and they're going to do everything. And I do everything. And I also did everything at my other company when I worked for them as a property manager. So I need one. How do I make sure that they don't just steal my business and steal my clients and walk away though, because they're going to be doing everything?
[00:06:48] Jason: Yeah.
[00:06:48] Sarah: And that's a really good reason to not have them doing everything.
[00:06:52] Jason: Most business owners eventually figure out you need to silo information. So for example, when I ran a web design agency, I had an intranet where all the information was stored and I had how I sold, how I found clients, like all this was built out in the intranet.
[00:07:07] All the sales related stuff. And then I had all of how we build the websites, how we put them together, all this kind of stuff. And I would hire web designers to build the websites and to do work and they would get access to the intranet. They would read the sales stuff and then figure out how to get their own clients and then they would quit.
[00:07:25] I kept having them leave and they're like, "Oh, well, I've got so much business. I don't have time to do your projects now." And I was like, "what?" it happened over and over again. So I was like, "okay, something's going on here." So then I realized I needed to segment the information because the stuff that I figured out was pretty effective and pretty valuable.
[00:07:40] Sarah: And essentially you were paying them to train them to then run their own business and not work for you anymore.
[00:07:47] Jason: What a deal. So, okay. Yeah. So then I started siloing that information. And so I think I think I shared a TikTok or a reel or something with you where a guy was talking about siloing the information and he was talking about sales and manufacturing and a product business.
[00:08:02] And if they know where to source all the manufacturing stuff and they know how to acquire business, they don't need you anymore. So he had to segregate that information. I was like, that's the same thing. You need to segregate knowledge in your business. Your goal is to hire specialists on the team, not generalists that can wear multiple hats.
[00:08:22] You're the business owner. You have to wear every hat in the business that is not currently worn by somebody or is not being done properly. You have to step in. It all falls on you. That's the job of the CEO, right? You have to do it. If you have a good operator, then they step in and some of that stuff, too.
[00:08:40] You have to do stuff that's uncomfortable.
[00:08:43] Sarah: Well, let's just pause for a moment. Your operator is not going to do your day to day stuff in property management.
[00:08:47] Jason: They shouldn't do your day to day stuff. It sounded like. A lot of people get confused.
[00:08:50] Sarah: I know what you were trying to say, but people are going to hear that and go, "Oh yeah. And then my operator is going to do everything."
[00:08:55] Jason: I just wanted to include you. I didn't want to say you don't do the hard stuff too.
[00:08:59] Sarah: I do the hard stuff when I have to.
[00:09:01] Jason: Yeah.
[00:09:01] Sarah: Until we can hire somebody else to do it. Because I hate doing it. I hate certain parts though, then we hire somebody and they do it much better.
[00:09:11] Jason: Yeah. So I think it might make sense unless you're portfolio style, which I'm not a real big fan of. I think there's a lot of downsides to portfolio style management. I think it's really rare that people are good at everything. And so I think it's a lot more effective to get somebody that's a really great maintenance coordinator that can handle maintenance for probably thousands of units, right?
[00:09:32] If they really know their stuff and have the right systems and tools and you can take that off of your property manager's plates. You need probably accounting or bookkeeping or a team that helps with that kind of stuff. There's vendors that can help with some of those pieces, especially if you don't enjoy, or aren't good at that piece, there's a lot of available resources, but if you get specialists that are really good, they will surpass your ability in that particular category.
[00:10:00] Sarah is much better running the planning system that we have DoorGrow OS, running the operations of the business than me, I just like, when I was doing it between having operators I just stopped planning. I didn't want to do the meetings. It was, "anybody stuck? Let's move on. And now it's meticulous and it's detail and we're moving forward.
[00:10:19] And everything's focused and we're hitting all our goals and we're making progress. Right? Because I have a good operator. So I think the business owners, we need to stop trying to find people that can do everything. We need to find people that are really good at specialists. So, I met with this entrepreneur a while back named Joe Abraham.
[00:10:39] He gave this cool Ted talk that I liked and I checked out his book and I took his online quiz and he has a book called entrepreneurial DNA and he created this score similar to an assessment like this, but it's BOSI. B O S I. And it talks about the four different types of entrepreneurs, which are builders, opportunists, innovators, and specialists.
[00:11:01] And you need to figure out what you are, the book talks about, and then build the right team around you. So, historically, I was more of a specialist, which means I'm dedicated my craft for over a decade to coaching and supporting property managers, right? And like figuring out how to grow businesses and then I'm an innovator.
[00:11:17] I like to take in lots of ideas and formulate new ideas and create stuff and that sort of thing. So more of a specialist, innovator and specialist, and most of the coaches and mentors I've hired have been builders. Builder, innovators, stuff like that opportunists are always looking for the next way to make money or the next vehicle or this sort of thing.
[00:11:38] Think like Ray Kroc, who took the McDonald's brothers', intellectual property, because they were innovators and specialist, and he blew it up and he was a builder and an opportunist so, opportunists make great salespeople. For example, builders make good CEOs. And so I wanted to be a better CEO.
[00:11:56] And so I've worked with a lot of coaches to become more and more of a builder to develop that skill set. And I'm getting better. Better and better. So, so I think we need to as entrepreneurs figure out what are our strengths and then what are we lacking? If you need to get around maybe coaches that can help you with with some of the gaps that you have in your own personality or your own knowledge base, then that can help you get to the next level.
[00:12:20] All right, so I think if we could eliminate the property manager term from those that are not portfolio style, then what would a property manager that people typically think is a property manager do if they're not the maintenance coordinator, they're not all these things What do you think?
[00:12:34] Sarah: Yeah, I think you can still call them a property manager.
[00:12:37] I'm not against the term like you're like, "eliminate! Anti property manager term and industry!" I just don't think that's going to happen Okay. I do think though once your business grows and gets large enough you can have one person or team to do the maintenance coordination, and then that piece is handled by the maintenance team.
[00:12:58] Then you can offload the leasing part, right? They're going through, maybe doing showings if you still do those, or at least going through applications and moving people along doing the move ins. Dealing with move outs and starting that whole process, kicking that off. You might have a leasing person, or a leasing team, and then the accounting piece, like your property manager probably should not be doing accounting.
[00:13:20] You should have somebody who is really good at accounting to do the accounting. And if that means you need to have a service, do it for you. That's fine. Just make sure that they're a really good reputable service. And there's someone that can hopefully like triple tie out your books and make sure everything is correct.
[00:13:36] And then you, here's the big thing, you still have to monitor it. Don't just hand it off and say, here, please go do this thing. And then just sit back and never look at it and hope that it's right. Because I've seen that a lot where people go, Oh, like I haven't done the bookkeeping. I have somebody else do it.
[00:13:52] And then they start investigating because there's a one little issue and they start to pull the thread. And it's like, when you pull the thread of the sweater and it just all unravels. Okay, so don't do that. Don't do that. But then your property manager can be more like the person that deals with the relationships of between like clients and tenants.
[00:14:13] Right. So we're bridging a gap.
[00:14:15] Jason: So then technically they're more of a relationship manager, right. They're managing relationships. I think a big gap that we don't see a lot of in the property management industry, that's super common in every other industry is the category of client success. And the category of client success, their whole goal is to retain customers to keep customers, make sure that they're happy.
[00:14:38] And so I think that's the role that some people might say, "oh, that's the property manager" is they need somebody that's just focused on client success, loves on the clients, takes care of the clients, makes them feel valued. Maybe meets with them annually to make sure that everything's looking good financially.
[00:14:53] Sarah: Portfolio review calls.
[00:14:55] Jason: Portfolio reviews.
[00:14:56] Sarah: I love those. I will harp about that all day long. If you're not doing them, do them.
[00:15:00] Jason: Yeah. So, client success in a lot of industries. I've heard some of our coaches and mentors describe as your other sales team. Right. You've got those that sell people in, like your business development, your BDs, your business development managers, your BDMs that bring clients into the business, but then they are not responsible for retaining the clients.
[00:15:22] And you think you retain clients just by doing maintenance coordination and just by doing leasing, but these things don't really develop or solidify or build the relationship. If you screw those things up, then you're bound to probably lose clients. And so that's the bare minimum.
[00:15:36] Sarah: No one is going, "Oh my God. This leasing team is so amazing. I'm never going to leave."
[00:15:41] Jason: Right.
[00:15:41] Sarah: They just expect the leasing to be good because it's what they signed up for when they hired a property manager. Right? They're not going to go, "Oh my God, I can't believe they got this maintenance thing done so so fast. And it was done in two hours and it was amazing. I'm never going to leave."
[00:15:57] Jason: So Gallup organization wrote this book called first break all the rules. And then it has this customer satisfaction pyramid. And at the lowest level, there's the lowest two levels are availability and accuracy. So these are the two things that if you're always available and you're always accurate in what you say you're going to do and you do it, people just don't even notice. And so it's not hard to be exceptional in property management. If you do that, it's expected and demanded.
[00:16:24] Sarah: So this is like all the tactical stuff that we do.
[00:16:27] Jason: Yeah.
[00:16:27] Sarah: It falls into this.
[00:16:29] Jason: Yeah.
[00:16:29] Sarah: It's just expected.
[00:16:31] Jason: So the next level, if you really want to have great client, customer service and great client interactions is partnership and then advice.
[00:16:40] And this is where I think a property manager can really add value. This is where they are really a client success role where they're retaining clients. They're improving the relationship and the value that people see in the relationship and in the longevity of staying a client of your particular business, when there's plenty of others that could do it, they can manage their property.
[00:17:00] You have team members that are managing the relationship and focusing on client success. So maybe there should be some client success managers in property management and less property managers. As far as terms go.
[00:17:13] Sarah: He's really trying to get rid of that term.
[00:17:15] Jason: I don't know. It's just, it's so ambiguous.
[00:17:17] Sarah: That's why. So when we were creating R docs, like all of the job descriptions for different roles, he's like, "I want there to be an R doc for every role in property management business." And I said, "okay, I can create it." Here's the problem. The problem is that if I create one for an assistant, it's going to be different from company to company. If I create one for a property manager, there's going to be some similarities, but there's always going to be things that are different from company to company. So there are great templates, right? And it's they're, it's amazing. And then you just delete the things you don't need and add anything you do need from there. There's nothing that's uniform. There's so much that's different from business to business. We all do the same thing. We're all property management entrepreneurs, but the way the ins and outs, the inner workings of our business, there's a million different ways to do it.
[00:18:10] Jason: We did define those Rdocs though.
[00:18:12] We have Rdocs for each of the major roles. I think yeah, I think having recognizing that. You need a client success person to maintain the relationship. You need a maintenance coordinator. You need if all these things are segregated and you get really great specialists in each of these areas, then yeah, you're going to have a much stronger lifetime value of your client.
[00:18:33] You're going to make a lot more money. So I think that's important. Anything else we should talk about related to property manager?
[00:18:39] Sarah: I think that covers it.
[00:18:40] Jason: All right. So figure out and I'm curious, go ahead and find my post in the DoorGrow club group, or go post or comment in the DoorGrow club community.
[00:18:51] I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. What do you feel a property manager is if you don't do portfolio style? What are your property managers doing? How do you define that role? And are they really managing properties? Are they really managing people? Are they really customer success? Are they really supporting and taking care of owners?
[00:19:08] Or do you think they're taking care of tenants and like maintaining a relationship there? So, all right, I think that's our interesting conversation for the day for the DoorGrow show and do you want to give them a call to action? That's a good call to action for the end of the show here?
[00:19:23] Sarah: Oh, well, we have a few events coming up. So go and check out our events that we have coming up. Don't miss DoorGrow. It's going to be a big one.
[00:19:31] This is like our big conference. We do it once a year. It's here in Round Rock, Texas on it's a Friday and Saturday, May 17th and 18th. And our theme this year is creating opportunity from uncertainty. So we have a lot of great topics, a lot of great speakers lined up for you guys. And I've got something special in the works that I haven't really released yet, but It's gonna be really cool because we've never done anything quite like that before
[00:19:57] Jason: Yeah, all right.
[00:19:59] Cool. All right. Well on that note Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
[00:20:03] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:20:30] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
If you are a property management entrepreneur, you have likely been your own salesperson or BDM at some point. Eventually, every property management business owner will need to hire a salesperson and develop different growth engines.
In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about their BDM Bootcamp event
You’ll Learn[01:52] What is a BDM?
[03:00] Get your BDM Ready for BDM Bootcamp
[08:42] You Need a Sales Pipeline!
[14:26] Benefits of In-Person Events
Tweetables“It's not the growth strategy that's the problem. It's that there's multiple stages in a pipeline for each growth engine, and you are not identifying the leaks that exist in this pipeline.”
“Your pipeline will literally never ever work if you don't even have one.”
“If you're not working the pipeline and you don't know the different stages of a pipeline, you’re just guessing, and you’re just hoping.”
“You need to get to the real pain and related that you need to get to the real pleasure, like what they really want. Nobody really wants property management”
ResourcesDoorGrow and Scale Mastermind
DoorGrow Academy
DoorGrow on YouTube
DoorGrowClub
DoorGrowLive
TalkRoute Referral Link
Transcript[00:00:00] Jason: It's not the growth strategy that's the problem. It's that there's multiple stages in a pipeline for each growth engine and you are not identifying the leaks that exist in this pipeline or you're tolerating drop off at one of these stages.
[00:00:17] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing a business and life. And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager.
[00:00:36] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management, business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, Jason and Sarah Hull.
[00:01:15] Now let's get into the show. All right. So today we're going to be talking about BDMs.
[00:01:24] Sarah: Yeah.
[00:01:26] Jason: In honor of this event that we have coming up, which is. Going to be super cool. I don't know that there's been anything like this. That's been as cool as this that's existed in the property management space, maybe ever.
[00:01:39] There's a lot of people that talk about BDMs, but there's very few that are actually getting BDMs to get great results. And we're going to be hosting a BDM bootcamp. And so Before we go any further, every time I start talking about BDMs, as if everybody knows what it is. I just talked to a guy with, I think, 800 doors the other day.
[00:02:00] He's like, "what's a BDM?" I was like, man, okay, I need to make sure I explained this. BDMs are business development managers. Sometimes they're called BDs, business developers and they're salespeople for property management. That's what people will call them, right? Business development can happen in any industry.
[00:02:18] But the reason we use the phrase BDM in property management is because property management is closely connected to real estate. And whenever you mentioned sales, people get it confused with real estate brokerage sales type of stuff. And that's why. Now everybody knows what a BDM is, and we're going to be talking a little bit about that today.
[00:02:37] Sarah: Okay.
[00:02:38] Jason: So anyone listening to the show, you better know what a BDM is from now on. That's it.
[00:02:43] Sarah: There's a quiz at the end.
[00:02:44] Jason: What is a BDM? Did you get it right? If not, go back and start this episode over.
[00:02:49] Sarah: Try again.
[00:02:51] Jason: Okay. All right. What do we talk...? Do you want to like tell them about the event?
[00:02:56] What do we want to talk about?
[00:02:58] Sarah: Yes. Tell them about the event. So we are launching a BDM bootcamp. So there's a lot of companies that promote getting BDMs. And there's a lot of companies that promote getting BDMs and then spending a bunch of money to run ads and get leads and pay for leads and then have the BDM work the leads.
[00:03:21] And then if you just want the BDM to close more deals, it's simple. All you have to do is spend more money and buy more leads. Which is really expensive and wildly ineffective. So we have strategies that BDMs use...
[00:03:35] Jason: that actually work
[00:03:37] Sarah: ...that are free, or at least very inexpensive.
[00:03:40] You might have to pay for lunch. That's okay. You get something out of it too. And we've decided that we're going to launch a BDM, aka salesperson, boot camp. It's going to be a one day training. And we've never done anything like this before. For those of you that are current clients, there's some trainings on DoorGrow Academy.
[00:04:01] We run every wednesday, our growth accelerator calls, but it's hard to amass all of this information that Jason and I have learned about sales over the last, what, 20 something years and put it in a course. Or talk about it on a one hour call. It's darn near impossible, right? So what we wanted to do is we wanted to take some of this information and spend one day going over all of it.
[00:04:31] Now, this is very likely going to end up being a series because we can probably talk about sales and strategies and tactics and how to improve your scripts and what to say and like NLP language and filler words and all this good stuff, we can go over this for probably days on end. So what we're doing is this is very likely going to end up being a series, but we're going to launch the first one in April, so for those of you that are watching live, you all have a chance to get in on that for those of you that are watching this recording is will probably be released after the event, but don't fret because
[00:05:11] Jason: you may have missed it.
[00:05:12] Sarah: You might have missed it. Oh, man.
[00:05:15] Jason: Maybe you should get in our Facebook group and pay attention to the live streams.
[00:05:19] So you don't miss stuff.
[00:05:20] Sarah: Sometimes we do some cool things that you need to know about right now.
[00:05:23] Jason: The Facebook group, go to doorgrowclub.Com apply. We reject 70 percent of the applicants, which is why the group is good.
[00:05:31] Sarah: Okay.
[00:05:32] Jason: Okay.
[00:05:32] Sarah: Anyway. So that was our shameless plug. All right. No, right. Go ahead.
[00:05:36] If you've missed it. Yeah, we don't have a word from ourselves yet. That's a great idea. Who wants to sponsor this podcast? We'll plug you on every episode. Talk to me, baby. So anyway, if you've missed it. Sad for you, but don't fret because there's going to be more of these. This won't be a once and done thing.
[00:05:55] So for those of you that are listening now and or hear the information before the event, then this is going to be for you. So here's the information. It will be Thursday, April 11th. So this is also open to anyone on your team who handles sales, meaning it might be you, it might be somebody else. You may have multiple people on the team who handle sales. So if you would like Jason and myself to train your salespeople for a day. This is a really great opportunity for you because that's exactly what we're doing.
[00:06:33] So do you want to tell them a little bit about what we're talking about? Or do you want me to do that?
[00:06:38] Jason: I'll go ahead. So we've seen a lot of problems with businesses growing. And so if you, have a BDM or if you are the BDM, you're the business owner, you're the one that closes deals and you are not adding at least a hundred orders a year, hopefully through organic methods instead of wasting a bunch of money on advertising to get cold crappy leads, we're going to give you the strategies, we're going to focus on some different growth engines talking about those. We're going to get into specific pipeline stages because what I often identify is that it's not the growth strategy that's the problem. It's that there's multiple stages in a pipeline for each growth engine and you are not identifying the leaks that exist in this pipeline, or you're tolerating drop off at one of these stages. And not making progress and so we're going to help you identify where the leaks are if you've started building some of these growth engines, you may have started doing things like trying to do realtor referrals and it's not working very well.
[00:07:39] You're not getting easily 10 doors a month from that. You might maybe you've heard of our neighbor strategy and you're not getting referrals from that. Maybe you've heard of some other of our strategies, it's not working. And if you haven't heard of these, then you might want to show up, but we're going to talk about the different stages.
[00:07:55] We're going to talk about what maybe is affecting things at different stages. This will be very tailored to those that are in attendance. We want to help you move your business forward significantly. And sometimes there's very simple tweaks that could be done at each of these stages that opens the floodgates.
[00:08:10] So you have a lot more flow through the pipeline, which means more deals and more money.
[00:08:15] Sarah: Yeah. So back up because you skipped to topic number two, which is cool. We can do two and then one and then three and then four, but that's fine.
[00:08:21] Jason: They're not numbered.
[00:08:22] Sarah: They're not, but they are in order on the document.
[00:08:24] Jason: Okay.
[00:08:25] Sarah: Yeah.
[00:08:25] Jason: So Sarah's an operator and everything has to be done a certain way. There is a right way for operators.
[00:08:32] Sarah: There's a right way to do literally every task on the planet.
[00:08:34] Jason: I'm talking to the business owners and they care most about what is interesting or different, but...
[00:08:42] Sarah: yes, and I understand, but your pipeline will literally never ever work if you don't even have one.
[00:08:50] Jason: That's true.
[00:08:51] Sarah: Or you don't know the stages of a pipeline because a lot of times, and I bet this happens to you too, but it happens to me when I ask people, okay, "what does your sales process look like?"
[00:09:00] " Oh, I talked to somebody." "Okay, great. And then what?" "Oh, and then I send them some information." "Great. And then what?"
[00:09:05] Jason: "I wait."
[00:09:06] Sarah: "Oh, then I wait." "Oh, okay. Like, do you call them again or do you check in or do you like set up another call?"
[00:09:13] Jason: "Or I follow up in a way that I look needy and creepy?"
[00:09:16] Sarah: Sometimes the answer is yes. And then sometimes the answer is no, but even if they do follow up or have another call or check in again, somehow, then my next question again is "okay, and then what?" And then they go, "oh, and then I just wait." So essentially what happens is you have no pipeline. Okay. And you don't know that you don't have a pipeline, but you don't have a pipeline.
[00:09:35] And that means if you're not working the pipeline and you don't know the different stages of a pipeline, we're just guessing, and we're just hoping. We're going, "I don't know. I keep talking to all these people, but nothing seems to be closing. And I don't understand why," because you don't have pipeline stages.
[00:09:49] Jason: Okay.
[00:09:49] Sarah: So you got to need a pipeline.
[00:09:51] Jason: So we'll teach you how to build out the pipeline. We'll talk about the different stages that need to exist. And then it'll be a lot more clear and we'll talk with you about how to build that out in your CRM of choice. So you'll understand the principles.
[00:10:04] You can go apply this to whatever CRM you use, whether it's DoorGrow CRM or lead simple or whatever else is out there. Okay, I'll go to number three now that we're back in order. Okay. All right. Number three,
[00:10:19] Uncovering your client's pain points. So superficially people think they know the pain of their target audience. So they want their property manager. They don't want to have to deal with managing the rental property. That is not the real pain that gets you to close deals that you have to go a lot deeper than that.
[00:10:36] And so we're going to talk about how to disarm people, how to not come across as super salesy, how to create authentic communication and an authentic relationship where they believe that you can help them and how to get them to open up about what the real pain is, the real stress of the real emotion that might be motivating them to have a conversation with you.
[00:11:00] And one of the biggest problems we see in sales is that a lot of people don't take time to identify what the real pain is. The pain often has not really anything to do with the rental property. It's something going on in their personal life. And so you need to figure out how to connect to that.
[00:11:16] And for some that's like, "Whoa," that's like, "I don't know how to do that. That'd be weird or awkward," but you need to get to the real pain and related that you need to get to the real pleasure, like what they really want. Nobody really wants property management, right? Just like if you're booking a trip to Hawaii.
[00:11:34] Property management is the flight to Hawaii. It's not the paradise. It's not the outcome that they're hoping for. It is property management. So we want to sell the trip. We want to sell Hawaii, not the flight there, right? Which is property management. So we'll talk about also getting towards the, not just the pain, but the pleasure.
[00:11:54] Those are the 2 ingredients you really need to know and uncover in order to close the deal. And so if you're not closing deals, it's probably because somebody else is better at that than you. You're one of your competitors, or they're just going to go with the cheapest company because you haven't really created a connection.
[00:12:11] And so they think you're a commodity. You do everything everyone else does. And so that we'll get into that. All right. So good?
[00:12:18] Sarah: That was good.
[00:12:19] Jason: Number four, reviewing and improving your call scripts to book more appointments and close more deals. So we want to like, take a look at what are you saying? And you may think, "I don't have scripts.
[00:12:30] I'm just awesome. I just wing it every time." I guarantee 90 percent of the time, you're saying similar things, dealing with objections in similar ways. And so you have a script. It just probably isn't a very clearly defined one, which means it's probably not a very good one because you haven't taken an objective look at it to optimize or improve it.
[00:12:50] And so we're going to take a look at some scripts that are effective and figure out ways to improve your scripts. And sometimes it's not even about what you're saying. It's about how you say it. And so we're going to focus on some of the magic that comes with how you communicate with people. I've got clients that are not salespeople, like no real training in sales, terrible at sales. And they're crushing it because they know how to be authentic. They are communicating in a way that's disarming and they're just being helpful. And so we're going to talk about some of that stuff. How to close more deals. Some of you that are so good at sales, you're super salesy, you like cut your teeth as a baby in real estate and like you're a shark, like we're going to help you figure out how to undo a lot of that mess so that you can create more trust and sales and deals happen at the speed of trust.
[00:13:44] And so we're going to help you close more business, which will make things a lot better. Okay.
[00:13:50] Sarah: That's what we've got. All right. That's our agenda. And if this sounds interesting to you, now, our hope is that once you come to this event, you'll obviously get a lot out of it and learn a lot about sales that we just typically can't cover on a one hour call.
[00:14:07] It's just, it's too much. I can talk about 1 of those things for more than an hour. Right? Once you come to this event, you'll learn a lot and you'll be able to immediately implement these things so that very quickly, you will start seeing some changes and some positive results and momentum.
[00:14:24] Jason: So why do this in person?
[00:14:26] So let me talk about that. One of the things we've noticed in DoorGrow's, I'm starting to call it the real bubble. And so there's this mentality, I think, unconsciously in our brain. So when we're doing stuff on zoom calls and zoom meetings, which we do a lot of cool stuff that way DoorGrow, but we've noticed that when we get people in person for the first time they meet Sarah and I and realize we're real human beings.
[00:14:48] We're not just something on video and that we're real and they can like hug us. And like we touch right? Like then something shifts in their brain that everything else they're saying is real. When they start to meet clients that they've seen on some of the Zoom calls, sharing their wins and talking about crushing it and adding doors.
[00:15:07] They're like, "Oh, these are real people." And then the brain shifts and they start to connect that, "Hey, if they're real, and this is real and they're getting real results and they're like me, I'm a human, like I can do this too." And all of this stuff is actually true, impossible. And so we've noticed a shift in clients once they come to DoorGrow live, which is coming up in May, or they come to one of our in person events.
[00:15:32] And so we want to do this in person because there's something magical about in person that content and information is absorbed. A lot more easily. There's also that sort of kinesthetic aspect that we're there physically but the learning is a bit more experiential. We'll be able to maybe even role play, go over some scripts, talk, like, say things.
[00:15:52] It's just a bit more real than just seeing something on video or watching a video replay or something like that. And so come pierce the real veil with DoorGrow and realize the real magic that exists.
[00:16:03] Sarah: All right. Yes. And at this point you guys might be wondering all right, so this sounds pretty good.
[00:16:09] I think I might be interested. What do I do? Contact me. Don't contact anybody else on the team. They're not even going to know what you're talking about. Just contact me so you can get in touch with me. It's Sarah S-A-R-A-H. If you go to our website and you end up talking with somebody else on the team, they will point you in my direction and you can get registered that way.
[00:16:29] Now, tickets for this will be 1k per person. You can have as many people on your team attend as you would like. So if you have 3 BDMs and you want to send all 3. If there's just one or two, maybe that you want to send or you want to come check it out yourself, go ahead. But you'll need to let me know now spots are going to be limited. I don't even have 20 spots. I actually need to go back and confirm how many I have left because I know we had some people interested. But the price for this will be 1k per person. And I know that the price will not stay. At that rate.
[00:17:03] So we're launching it and we're doing something special with the price. So for now, take us our one case. So get in while the cost is low.
[00:17:12] Jason: There you go. All right. You will easily offset the cost of doing this. For most of you, that's like getting one more deal, right? So lifetime value for most of your clients, probably a lot higher, like maybe 10 times.
[00:17:27] Maybe 20 times higher if you can keep them a while, right? So this is a no brainer. This is very easy and we can get your BDM adding a lot more doors. So just like some client results, we've got clients that are easily some BDM are adding 200- 300 doors a year organically without paying for any SEO or pay per click or content marketing or social media marketing or pay per lead services like APM and they're able to grow and scale their business quickly through organic methods.
[00:17:56] Sarah: And we have some clients that turn business away every single month because they just cannot.
[00:18:02] Jason: Get pickier and pickier.
[00:18:03] Sarah: Yeah, they're backlogged. And then they ask us on the calls what do I do? Like, "I don't want to say no, but then I can't take on this many." And we're like, "now you have a waiting list and you can take on X money per month."
[00:18:14] And if they can't come on this month or they missed that deadline, then roll them over to the next month. If they qualify.
[00:18:20] Jason: Okay. All right. So that is BDM bootcamp. So check out BDM bootcamp, reach out to [email protected]. Sarah with an H.
[00:18:28] Sarah: Yeah, if you spell my name wrong, I'm not talking to you cause I won't get it.
[00:18:32] Jason: Okay. That's your punishment.
[00:18:34] Wow. Okay.
[00:18:35] Sarah: So don't forget my H because everyone does.
[00:18:38] Jason: Just email me. I'm nicer.
[00:18:40] Sarah: He never checks his email. Don't email him. That's true.
[00:18:42] Jason: My assistant does. Don't do it. All right.
[00:18:44] Sarah: You'll never hear back the black hole.
[00:18:46] Jason: No, my assistant's good. She'll take care of it. I just won't see it.
[00:18:51] She'll tell me about it if it's important. All right. For those of you that are wanting to join a community, be part of something awesome, reach out to us. And so you can learn more about DoorGrow Mastermind. You get access to some of the coolest stuff and to be part of the coolest community of the most growth minded property management business owners in the industry.
[00:19:11] And we can help you get your business to the next level. So whether it's scaling operations, whether it's figuring out how to grow, whether it's cleaning up the front end of your business, getting your website and your pricing, right, all this kind of stuff. So we can help you. All right. Check us out at doorgrow. com until next time to our mutual growth, everybody. Bye for now.
[00:19:33] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:19:59] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
If you are a property management entrepreneur who is always looking to grow and scale your business, you are open to new ways to automate processes in your business.
In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Tom and Diego from Calvary to talk about new maintenance coordination and manager trainings to scale property management maintenance.
You’ll Learn[01:28] Property management maintenance bootcamp and trainings
[06:07] How to manage a maintenance team
[08:12] Trainings for a maintenance coordinator
[12:04] Making sure things don’t fall behind
[15:51] Maintenance teams at no cost
Tweetables“The more involved you can make the material with all those different elements, the better the results are going to be for everybody.”
“It's about preserving the property, but it's also about tenant satisfaction, of course, owner satisfaction, and then building a strong relationship with vendors.”
“What you say and how you say it matters.”
“When you get overwhelmed, especially during high season, it's very easy to let things fall through the cracks.”
ResourcesDoorGrow and Scale Mastermind
DoorGrow Academy
DoorGrow on YouTube
DoorGrowClub
DoorGrowLive
TalkRoute Referral Link
Transcript[00:00:00] Tom: Why is maintenance important? Everybody thinks they really know, but it's about preserving the property, but it's also about tenant satisfaction, of course, owner satisfaction, and then building a strong relationship with vendors.
[00:00:16] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, are are on a mission a to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win.
[00:01:10] I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.
[00:01:17] All right. So today I'm hanging out with Tom and Diego from Cavalry. Call in the cavalry.
[00:01:25] Tom: Yes. Once again.
[00:01:26] Jason: Talking about what today?
[00:01:28] Tom: Maintenance as always, but I'm super excited, Jason, because we're finally launching our training programs.
[00:01:36] It's actually our in house training program that we use for our own employees. Our own maintenance coordinators, and we're making it available to the public. So super excited about that. Yeah. And the reason why is because we gotten a lot of requests from people outside of our service areas. We're about 18 months into our business now, so we're not covering the whole of the U S yet. And therefore we found a way to still help those property management companies outside of our service areas. And that's what we're doing. Yeah.
[00:02:07] Jason: Awesome. So this training is pretty in depth, I would imagine, right? This is your best stuff. Because this is stuff you want your people to know to represent you and showcase your business.
[00:02:19] Correct.
[00:02:19] A lot of business owners might not want to do that? Like you're giving away your secret sauce.
[00:02:23] Tom: Yeah. So the reason why we're giving it away is, our main mission is to help property management companies.
[00:02:30] And of course this one is also paid. Then the main reason for it being paid is because it's a fully guided course. So it's a cohort course. So it's not just like, "here are some videos go ahead." No, we're actually guiding the students through the whole process. We have two courses, one for the MCs and one for the managers. For the MCs, it's a 30 day bootcamp plus 365 guided throughout all of the seasons because-
[00:02:56] Jason: MCs meaning maintenance coordinator.
[00:02:58] Tom: Yeah, correct. Correct. Yeah, the maintenance coordinators. So that's 30 day bootcamp plus 365 guidance throughout all of the seasons. And then for the maintenance manager course, it is 60 day bootcamp and then also 365 days of guiding and implementation.
[00:03:14] Jason: Got it. Okay. Very cool. We spoke earlier and you're like, "I've got a course." And I was like here's what I've learned about courses. And so what we've learned at DoorGrow it's a lot more effective to do what you're now thinking of doing, which is have a cohort, have people move through a class together, which is great.
[00:03:30] We've just found we get so much like bigger results with our clients instead of just giving them videos, which we used to do. They still have access to some cool video material. But when we take people through a class with their peers, and they're working on it together, it feels like they're actually doing something with other people.
[00:03:48] They tend to get a lot better results. They actually get stuff done. They have homework, they have deadlines, they have completion timelines for getting things done. And so we just found that they just get way better results because the completion rate on most courses is pretty abysmal. A lot of people like buy a course, but then they don't do it.
[00:04:05] And I'm sure everybody listening, you bought a course before and just didn't do it like myself included. Yeah. And so we've learned at DoorGrow, coaching clients for like over a decade now that this is 1 of the best ways to get results is the hybridize everything. It's like we give them, a little bit of the ability to ask questions and have, that little 1 on 1 sort of accountability aspect.
[00:04:30] There's the cohort where we're moving them through a program course material. Then there's the training material that's video course material. They can move through. And I've noticed also that people learn in different ways, right? Some people need to learn visually. Some people are more auditory.
[00:04:43] Some people are more like kinesthetic, which means that it's more about feelings and the physical state in doing things. And so, the more involved you can make the material with all those different elements, the better the results are going to be for everybody. So I love that you've developed this program.
[00:05:02] So why don't you tell us a little bit about. These two programs and how they would know which one should I have my maintenance person do? What's the difference between a maintenance coordinator and a maintenance manager?
[00:05:14] Tom: Yeah. So I would say that the maintenance coordinator course would, I would recommend those for maintenance teams that already have a maintenance manager in place.
[00:05:24] Jason: How do you define that?
[00:05:26] Tom: A maintenance manager does it all and maintenance coordinator coordinates maintenance under the guide of a maintenance manager.
[00:05:33] And that's why I wanted to say, I feel like if you have a one team person, they should follow the maintenance manager course. Why? Because it's so complete and you can build that person to then hire later on other people, them become under their guide.
[00:05:47] Jason: Got it. So if the maintenance person has an assistant or something like this, then they would do the maintenance manager thing.
[00:05:54] And that assistant maybe could go through the maintenance coordinator course.
[00:05:57] Tom: Correct a one person team, 100 percent go with the manager course, because it's much more in depth. Hiring, vendor onboarding, it goes a lot deeper into all of that.
[00:06:06] Jason: Got it. Okay. So tell us about the maintenance manager course.
[00:06:10] What are some of the things that you're going to cover so that you can turn these people into effective maintenance managers?
[00:06:17] Tom: Yeah. So it's going to be how to manage a team. So there's a lot talk about leadership, one on one meetings, evaluation of the team. What also sets it apart is the vendor onboarding aspect of it, how to find vendors, where to find vendors, what the process looks like, how to do it very time efficiently.
[00:06:37] And yeah the manager's course goes a lot deeper into the training as well and how to implement our maintenance system as a manager and how to daily uptrain your team maybe not necessarily every day, but that's what we do. So that's what we recommend.
[00:06:53] So it's really how to manage the team within our system. So the idea is that if you have a larger team, then you would just give the MC course to the maintenance coordinators and then the maintenance manager course to the manager and it all works in harmony.
[00:07:08] Jason: Got it. Okay. Now, a lot of people are like "I don't need my maintenance person to manage a team. I just need one person. I've only got a handful of doors or maybe a hundred or maybe 200 doors. Maybe I just need the maintenance coordinator one," or what if they don't have a maintenance person yet?
[00:07:27] Which one should they do as a business owner? It sounds like maybe the maintenance manager one would make sense because they need to hire somebody.
[00:07:33] Tom: Exactly. 100%. If it's 1 person, it's the maintenance manager. Why? Because we also give a vendor agreement example, an owner agreement example, a maintenance coordinator agreement example.
[00:07:46] So it's very complete. And again, if you have a 1 person team you go with the manager course.
[00:07:53] Got it. Okay, cool. The reason why we made the maintenance coordinator course shorter, it's just because there's stuff in there that they don't really need to know.
[00:08:03] And if at some point they want to become a manager or you just feel like that person should know everything then you can just give them the manager's course.
[00:08:12] Jason: Okay. So what does the maintenance coordinator course material cover? And what's left out?
[00:08:18] Tom: Yeah. Let me grab the modules here.
[00:08:20] So we have eight modules in the maintenance coordinating course. It is an introduction of course, and then understanding property management maintenance. It is about maintenance ethos. It is about why is maintenance important? Everybody thinks they really know, but it really highlights every single detail.
[00:08:39] It's about preserving the property, but it's also about tenant satisfaction, of course, owner satisfaction, and then building a strong relationship with vendors. Then we have a module about vendor management, so how to communicate with vendors, how to explain to them what the NTE means and how to implement it or how to use it.
[00:09:03] We have how to assign work orders to vendors. We have a day in the life of an MC. That's another module that is one of the most important ones. It is rather short, but it is super important because it talks a lot about time management, how to schedule your day and how to be very efficient with your day, because this is one of the biggest problems we see when we hire new MCs or maintenance coordinators is that they start by reading their emails, for example.
[00:09:32] Classic mistake. No, you should never start with reading your emails. You should start with the open emergencies, then the new work orders, and then you go through all of those, and then you can go to your emails, right? So it's it's one of these small details that make a world of difference.
[00:09:49] Okay. We also talk about the snowball effect. That is, for example, when you're a little bit slow and you get complaints, now those emails and those phone calls come in, right? So that means that now you have to spend a lot of time because when emails or complaints come in, you have to always go and dig a little bit, search a little bit further.
[00:10:10] And that takes a lot of time. All that time that you're then spending on that. Now you're delaying all of the other work. So that's what we call the snowball effect. Another module, for example is communication. What you say and how you say it matters. We have leveraging chat GPT to write perfect emails to give great responses, troubleshooting, big one for chat GPT.
[00:10:32] And then we discuss occupied service requests. And then the most important module is all of the flow charts. So the service request flow chart. So we have a full flow chart for every single type of work order. So emergency, normal, recurring vendor, owner, home warranty, or warranty job.
[00:10:49] Jason: Got it. Okay. So Diego, how involved were you with all this stuff?
[00:10:54] Diego: Pretty involved when it came to creating the systems. Yeah, I'm sorry that I'm not talking so much today. I'm feeling a bit under the weather and and that's why I asked.
[00:11:04] Jason: I just figured you're probably the brainchild behind most of the processes and systems. Yeah, we better make sure that you get some credit here.
[00:11:13] Diego: So, yeah, thank you. Yeah. No I'm sorry you guys. I do feel a bit under the weather, but I didn't want to miss this podcast. One of the things that I wanted to add with the maintenance scores and the manager scores. Is what we've seen is with new property management companies that we're working with a lot of times just looking at the KPIs, and looking at how many work orders you have open and how many you have closed and so on, which the course talks about, what happens a lot of times is that no one's really following those numbers. And as a manager, one of the reasons why we recommend the manager course, especially if you're looking to become a manager and how to manage your team members.
[00:11:58] Is taking a look at those numbers and making sure that things don't fall through the cracks. You would be surprised by how easy it is. I've seen it countless times with multiple companies where work orders just get left behind. They were opened. Somebody sent a couple of messages, trying to gather more information, but no one actually followed through with those particular work orders with these type of courses and having those flows the SOPs, it allows you to truly follow up on all of your open work orders, making sure that they're closed out correctly and that nothing else is pending. When a maintenance coordinator, or even a property manager, when you get overwhelmed, especially during high season, it's very easy to let things fall through the cracks.
[00:12:46] So the course does go through that in detail. Tom touched a very important subject about every different flow. Sometimes we tend to want to handle every work order the same way. When they're very different. So, for example, you cannot handle an emergency the same way that you would handle a recurring type of service request.
[00:13:08] And so it does go into detail of yeah, pretty much every flow, how it's broken down and why it's so important to take specific actions depending on the type of service request that it may be.
[00:13:20] Jason: Got it. So you guys probably have certain systems that you use internally with your team. So, property managers, they all have different tools, different software different property management, back office accounting.
[00:13:33] So is this system specific or are they able to use whatever system they have and apply these principles? How does this work? Is that an issue?
[00:13:43] Tom: Yeah, so there's a difference between systems, processes and SOPs, right? So the system is a culmination of all the processes with human intervention and technology, processes is what needs to happen. The SOP is how it needs to happen. It's by the company. So we recommend that every company writes their own SOPs. Now, of course, our courses do guide you on that, but everybody works differently, have different software, all of that. What we will be expanding on is tutorials for the different PropTech software. So Buildium, Meld yeah, whatever. And we also have a community available along with the course. So there's a chat where we discuss the course, but also a price estimating chat, troubleshooting chat, and, I'm sure we'll come up with other chats that we can leverage the community for.
[00:14:30] Jason: Very cool. So it sounds great. I'll be interested to learn more about it. Maybe see it myself. I think this would be great. I think there's definitely clients that we could send your way that could use some support on the maintenance stuff. So how do people get started with this and what would be the next steps for those listening?
[00:14:48] They're like, "Hey, I think I might be interested in this. How do I get more info?"
[00:14:52] Tom: Yes. So you can go to cavalry.works. That's our main website, or you can go to courses.cavalry.Works. That's the landing page for both courses. And we have a special promo for the DoorGrow community. We're actually giving a 50 percent discount for all DoorGrow members.
[00:15:10] It's a way to thank you for inviting us into your community.
[00:15:14] Jason: Okay. Very cool. So DoorGrow people like here you go. So, all right. Very awesome. We appreciate that. That's really cool. The discount code is DoorGrow. It's a difficult one to remember, but I know everyone will be able to do it.
[00:15:26] All right. The discount code is DoorGrow. All right. DoorGrow is the word. All right. Very cool. So, Diego, Tom, I appreciate you coming on the DoorGrow show. Thank you for sharing discount with DoorGrow people. And I love seeing what you guys are doing to recap for those that didn't see the previous episode that I had them on, they do free maintenance coordination.
[00:15:47] Do you want to just plug what you do real quick for those that maybe haven't heard the previous episode?
[00:15:51] Tom: Yeah. So honestly, I should have started with this because the reason why we're even qualified to teaching this is because we do this for a living. So we offer free maintenance teams to any property management company at no cost to you, the way that works is we get paid through a vendor volume discounts on the backend. But if you want more information about that, you can go to cavalry.works.
[00:16:14] Jason: Sounds really awesome. So, all right. Thank you, Diego. Thank you, Tom. Diego. Hope you feel better. I'll let both of you go.
[00:16:20] Appreciate you coming on the DoorGrow show. Thank you so much.
[00:16:23] Diego: Thank you, Jason. Thank you so much.
[00:16:25] Jason: All right. Bye bye. Bye bye. Okay. So if you are a property management entrepreneur, you are wanting to get maintenance, check them out. You're dealing with maintenance. It's one of the most difficult and earliest problems that you need to deal with as a property manager.
[00:16:39] You've got to figure out maintenance, got to figure out leasing. These are some of the basics. If you're struggling though, to add doors, you're like, "I just, I need more doors. I need to get more business. I need more leads. Or I need better processes throughout my business. I need to get like my systems going. I need a better team." Then these are the things that DoorGrow can help you with. So if you're struggling and you're not scaling your business, you're not adding minimum, at least a hundred doors annually, maybe two, maybe even 300. We have clients doing that and we want to help you do that. If you are not getting at least 50 percent profit margin in your business, we can help you get there and help you like implement some of the biggest profit levers that you'll ever implement in your business. So if you are struggling and you've got a handful of doors or you've got hundreds of doors, but you're not making enough money because your profit margin is low. Why are you even doing this crazy business? So let's get you some money.
[00:17:35] Let's get you paid. Let's make sure that this is worth it for you. We've got clients that are able to close more deals more easily at a higher price point because we're optimizing all the different leaks that exist in their sales pipeline. So reach out to us at DoorGrow. We can get you to the next level and we can do it fairly quickly.
[00:17:52] So check us out at doorgrow.Com. Hopefully we're working together soon. Bye everyone.
[00:17:57] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!
[00:18:24] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
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