As a property manager, you’re familiar with the uncomfortable shuffle when trying to ensure utilities are set up correctly at move-in. What if you could make the whole process easier?

In this episode of the Property Management Growth Show, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with the founder of Utility Profit, Zac Maurais, to discuss wires, pipes, and signals: Everything you wish you knew about home utilities.

You’ll Learn

[01:48] How Zac Built a $100 Million Business

[07:38] Solving Utility Challenges with a Streamlined Tool

[15:54] Using Utility Profit to Make Extra Profit

[23:26] Integrations and Frequently Asked Questions

[30:20] Take Action on The Things You’re Avoiding!

Quotables

“I think the secret to being smart is just being willing to look stupid.”

“Done is better than perfect.”

“Have a bias for action. Get your hands dirty. Do it yourself.”

“ Whatever it is that you think that's holding you back, just start trying to do it.”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

[00:00:00] Zac: It's almost like we're like taking the Yellow Pages and then putting it online or something. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a wacky problem that we're solving there. 

[00:00:08] Jason: So you're single handedly bringing the utility space into the future. So, All right.

[00:00:16] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Property Managers to the Property Management Growth Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur and you want to add doors, you want to make a difference, you want to increase revenue, you want to help others, you want to 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 and you just don't know it. 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.

[00:00:47] Jason: 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.

[00:01:13] Jason: I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show and I'm hanging out today with Zac Maurais. Did I say it right? 

[00:01:25] Jason: That's right, yes. 

[00:01:26] Jason: Hey. All right, cool. It's great to have you on the show. So Zac we're going to be chatting today about wires, pipes, and signals, everything you wish you knew about home utilities.

[00:01:38] Jason: I think this will be interesting to our listeners because, you know, we get into this stuff as property management people. So, so Zac before we get into that though, give us a little backstory on you. How'd you get into being an entrepreneur? When did you first figure that out, that you maybe were one and then we can get into why you started this business so that you've got going and tell us, tell everybody about it.

[00:01:58] Jason: Cool. 

[00:02:00] Zac: Let's do it. Yeah. So, quick intro myself, I live here in Austin, Texas. I've been an entrepreneur now for better part of a decade and a half. Right out of college I started a business it was actually a food delivery business called Favor. We ended up scaling that business to having 50,000 delivery drivers in the state of Texas.

[00:02:22] Zac: So it was the second largest employer in the state. And over the course of building it up over a couple of years, we were doing over a hundred million dollars of food sales a year. So sizable company and we sold that to HEB grocery and yeah. 

[00:02:38] Jason: And if people don't know, HEB I'm in the Austin area, I'm up in Round Rock.

[00:02:41] Jason: But if people don't know HEB. HEB consistently wins the best grocery store awards like in America every year. Like it's always winning. 

[00:02:51] Zac: It's kind of amazing. I mean, they are an institution. There's so many small towns across Texas where the only show in town, I would kind of say it's akin to like a Walmart or something like that for a national brand that people would be more familiar with.

[00:03:04] Zac: Family run business, been around for a hundred years. So it's cool that it had joined forces with Favor. And learned a lot from doing that company. I mean, at the time that we sold it, we had over 140 corporate employees, designers and software engineers and business intelligence people and salespeople.

[00:03:24] Zac: So I'm right there with you, Jason, where I like growth. I like growing things and learning about business and learning about new categories. So as I sold it, I was looking for the next thing to do. 

[00:03:35] Jason: So people are clear, Favor, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but Favor competes with like Instacart and like some of these, it's like a delivery service.

[00:03:44] Zac: That's right. So the way that the service worked was, it was like an on demand. It was part of the on demand delivery kind of thing that was happening. The gig economy, you know, people will probably remember Lyft coming out and Uber. There wasn't one for delivery of kind of like fast casual food or groceries yet.

[00:04:02] Zac: And we brought that into the market. We had first mover. 

[00:04:05] Jason: Oh yeah. So yeah, it's kind of like Uber Eats and, you know, these kind of things. 

[00:04:08] Zac: Exactly. So you could tap a button, request a Favor, and then someone would go shopping for you, go pick up some tacos or yeah, run at the grocery store or something like that and bring it to you in 45 minutes or less.

[00:04:20] Jason: Got it. And is Favor just a Texas thing? 

[00:04:23] Zac: At one point in time we tried to go national expansion, but it was a bit of a wartime thing that was going on. Yeah. A lot of VC dollars getting put in. And we had a very strong Texas brand. We had over a million people in Texas using it.

[00:04:37] Zac: Yes. So we said we just doubled down on home base. 

[00:04:40] Jason: I mean, Texas is like its own little universe. We've got Favor, we've got HEB, we've got, you know, there's all these things that are just specifically Texas. So if y'all come to Texas, you got to like experience the whole Texas deal. You got to go to an HEB, you got to go to Bucky's, you got to go to all these things, right?

[00:04:56] Zac: So yeah, right. When you're here in town for Jason's event, go get yourself some Yeti swag. 

[00:05:02] Jason: Yes. 

[00:05:02] Zac: And then order yourself a Favor. 

[00:05:04] Jason: Yes. There you go. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, and people get really religious about their, you know, things like Yeti. It's like Yeti Mecca. Like people, like my brother-in-law comes into town. He is like, "I got to go to the Yeti store." He's like, just like starry-eyed in there. And I'm like, "why? Why?" Coolers, thermases? I don't know. Cool drinks. Yeah. Yeah. It's a thing. So he like collects them, and then sometimes he's flipping them too. Like there's limited edition things, so. My brother-in-law's name is Jason also, so he might listen to this.

[00:05:36] Jason: So Jason, I mentioned you on my podcast, so, all right. 

[00:05:39] Jason: Shout out to Jason. 

[00:05:41] Jason: Shout out to Jason. So, cool. So Zac, I mean, that's a pretty impressive thing. Not many people can say they built a hundred million dollar, you know, business or had an exit or something like that. So, and then what did you do next?

[00:05:55] Jason: Like, you sell this thing, did you lose all meaning and purpose in life and decide to start a new business or what happened? 

[00:06:01] Zac: I think that happens with some people, right? You sell it, you have somebody, you're like, "what am I going to do with my life now?" I'm going to take a good thing and somehow it becomes a bad thing.

[00:06:09] Zac: But I just, I really like building. And I like the process of entrepreneurship where you talk to people, you try to find a problem and you like go hit a whiteboard, you sketch, it becomes more tangible, and then all of a sudden you can partner with an engineer and make it and then bring it back to the customer.

[00:06:26] Zac: And I just like that. It kind of just scratches something in my brain, I think. And something else that's been cool for me on my entrepreneurship journey. I had mentioned that I've been doing it now for a decade and a half and the entire time that I've been working and doing startups, I've been doing it with like my best friend Ben from growing up together.

[00:06:45] Zac: We 

[00:06:46] Jason: best friend Ben. 

[00:06:46] Zac: wen to school in New Hampshire. And it's fun to be able to go on that journey with someone like that. 

[00:06:52] Jason: Yeah. That's cool. So you and Ben are still doing stuff together then. 

[00:06:55] Zac: Right. 

[00:06:56] Jason: Yeah. Third company. 

[00:06:57] Zac: Third company now, so. 

[00:06:59] Jason: Yeah. Dynamic duo. All right. And so I imagine that you have some complimentary sort of skill sets and challenge each other a bit.

[00:07:08] Zac: Yeah, I think our brains have kind of been swapped and became more of the same brain. But the way that I explained it originally was like Ben was the left brain engineer, right? He is going to build out the backend database. He was a civil engineer, so he was just constantly doing math. And then I was more of the, you can kind of see there's some paintings behind me, like I was the artist. 

[00:07:30] Jason: The right brain guy. Yeah. Got it. 

[00:07:32] Zac: But now it just kind of became one, somewhere between now. He kind of went a little bit more right. I went more left, so. 

[00:07:38] Jason: Cool. So bring us up towards the present day. So like, what are you and Ben, you know, getting together and working on?

[00:07:45] Zac: Yeah, so I guess the way that we got into the property management industry was we were trying to build some leasing automation tech over the last few years. We had something called Sunroom Leasing, and it was like a platform that would help. With self showings, with different things related to collecting some data from renters about the home.

[00:08:05] Zac: We had at one point in time, around 8,000 homes that were leasing across the country for some real estate investment trusts and some large scale property managers. And it kind of turned us on to this like, it had some challenges I think of that scale. And so we ended up realizing that's not what we want to do long term.

[00:08:26] Zac: And something that it was like a good ride, but I think we were onto something that could be more scalable and a more acute problem to solve. 

[00:08:35] Jason: Yeah, this was like a tuition business. You're learning and paying the price of tuition. Yeah. So you got familiar with the property management industry a bit through that.

[00:08:44] Jason: That's right. Figured out kind of your target audience and you probably started to see some different problems you like started scheming with your whiteboard on, so. 

[00:08:52] Zac: Yeah, and the problem that we zoomed into was around utility setup. And what we thought was kind of a silly thing was, here it is, it's 2024.

[00:09:01] Zac: This was last year that we had launched it. We realized that there wasn't like a Google Maps of utilities. We thought it was silly that you couldn't just type in an address online and then see what's the water, what's the electric, what's the gas, what's the internet? There was no transparency for that.

[00:09:20] Zac: And when we looked closer, there's like, you zoom in on water, there's over 20,000 water providers and they have really weird setups, you know, or it could be down just by the neighborhood or the zip code or the, you know, it's just wacky the way that the mapping works. And we thought if we could build out the whole mapping infrastructure, that would be a valuable thing, both for owners of the property that just want to have a more streamlined process, property managers that are doing it every day, and then renters. If you kind of think of this problem of setting up utilities while it's annoying and they have to Google around and make a bunch of phone calls, this is just one problem within a whole, you know, iceberg of other things. It's just the tip, small thing that they're doing a ton of things related to the move. We thought that if we could streamline this, then it could have a broad appeal and be something that we could do nationally and do at a big scale. So, over the last year, what we've done is we've built out that infrastructure to be able to do mapping at scale.

[00:10:21] Zac: And we have built a platform that streamlines the process of turning on utilities. We're trying to make the utility on switch and it's a cool tool because the property managers using it can get confirmation that utilities have been set up correctly. And this is helpful for them because, you know, if you don't turn on the electricity and it's the dead of winter, you're probably going to have some problems on your hands with pipes bursting, you know, and things like that.

[00:10:48] Zac: So, it's a useful tool in the process. 

[00:10:51] Jason: So let's talk about this problem, right? This is super annoying. Like everybody that's moved has had to figure out this weird, you know, puzzle to like, which utility providers are available here? Which internet provider can I use? What are my options? Can I get this cool fiber, you know, thing, can I get this? Is there..? Like what's available? Then they're trying to figure out like water, electric. You're maybe trying to find out from the previous owner or somebody and you're trying to like negotiate all this and then like getting things switched and then the timelines like it's a mess.

[00:11:25] Jason: Like it's really annoying and yeah, it's like why do we just deal with this and put up with this? We're living in the age of AI and this AI revolution now and. Why isn't there a better solution to this? It seems like it's just like chaos and confusion. Yeah, so. 

[00:11:45] Zac: It is chaos and confusion. Yeah. And people waste so much time doing it and oh god.

[00:11:50] Zac: Yeah. And I think as a result, like sometimes people will just make sacrifices where they'll be like, well, I was on this telecom company before. Maybe I'll just go back to them. And then I might miss out on being able to be like, well, I could have had faster internet or a better plan that's cheaper or something If they had just... 

[00:12:07] Jason: sure. Yeah. 

[00:12:07] Zac: ...known that they had options. 

[00:12:10] Jason: Right. You're like, man, I'm still using dial up. And I didn't realize Google Fiber was available here. Yeah, right. 

[00:12:15] Zac: Throwing that in an old AOL like. 

[00:12:18] Jason: Yes, I remember those days. I was such a nerd. Alright, so yeah, and people may maybe get impatient and they just make some quick decisions.

[00:12:27] Jason: You know, and all these companies try to give them incentives like, Hey, if you move, like we'll move it and help you get it set up. And they try to make it seamless, but because they're trying to retain their, you know, the customer, but that might not be in the best interest of the customer. 

[00:12:41] Zac: Totally. Yeah. So this we're in the spirit of trying to add transparency into the process, make it more streamlined. And and have a really lightweight tool like, you know, not another app you have to download, but just something that seamlessly fits in the move in process. Okay.

[00:12:55] Zac: Integrates really well with the tools that the property manager is already using, you know, just is able to sync, in real time, figure out what are the addresses coming up, and then give the property manager a way to both communicate what the utilities are and then check that they've been turned on.

[00:13:16] Zac: And then interestingly, there's a lot of places in the US where these telecom companies are competing. And they spent a lot of money to lay down these fiber optic lines, you know, or copper lines, and they're trying to recoup some of that cost. Yeah. And so they'll pay money for more customers.

[00:13:35] Zac: And so we're able to generate revenue and then share that with property managers as an incentive to use the tool. 

[00:13:43] Jason: Okay, cool. So what's the name of the tool or this service? 

[00:13:46] Zac: It's called Utility Profit. 

[00:13:48] Jason: Utility profit. Okay. All right. And it's P-R-O-F-I-T I would assume? Yep, exactly. Not like you're prophesying.

[00:13:57] Jason: All right, got it. So Utility Profit, and so this really is solving that challenge to just streamline all that, and there's a financial incentive or benefit for the property manager helping to get these things connected. 

[00:14:11] Zac: That's right. That's right. Yeah. And one of the... 

[00:14:14] Jason: Win, win, win all the way around win.

[00:14:15] Zac: Yeah, exactly. And that's the best type of tool. You know, something that it doesn't just benefit one party, but all the people involved. Yeah. And so, you know, it's exciting there. Now there's people across the entire United States using it. We've been helping thousands of renters per month.

[00:14:32] Zac: Just in the last year there's been, I think over 750 property managers using it. Some really big ones with thousands of properties all the way down to people that just have a couple homes in the portfolio. I think the average has about 400 homes and, you know, it's really kind of empowering that we bring something to the world and that fast that many people are using it.

[00:14:55] Zac: It's cool to see. 

[00:14:56] Jason: Yeah. Cool. So. And Ben's leading the nerds on the team making this all work. 

[00:15:02] Zac: Yeah, we're both working closely with engineers and, I mean, it's been a big lift. I mean, we've had to do all sorts of wacky things to be able to like get this data because like I said, it didn't exist.

[00:15:12] Zac: I imagine.

[00:15:13] Zac: We have to like literally go and draw service maps, you know, that were PDFs on old websites and then, you know, turn them into a structured database. Right. I, you know, pull it up correctly. Yeah. 

[00:15:26] Jason: You're just doing this ground level legwork to like get... it's almost like you're transferring old records into a digital format.

[00:15:35] Jason: You know? Yeah. So that people could play their MP3s or something. Yeah. 

[00:15:38] Zac: It kind of feels like that. It's almost like we're like taking the Yellow Pages and then putting it online or something. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a wacky problem that we're solving there. 

[00:15:48] Jason: So you're single handedly bringing the utility space into the future, so. 

[00:15:54] Zac: Yeah. And one thing that we've we've been doing over the last couple months that I think is pretty cool is that there's this whole industry that exists for the multifamily apartment space related to what they call as like fiber as an amenity or fiber to the home.

[00:16:11] Zac: Yeah. And so the way it would work on multifamily would be, you know, these big telecoms would say, "Hey, we'll sell you a thousand units of internet and then we'll give you a discount for doing so. And then you can either kind of keep that for yourself or you can, you know, share that with your tenants as a way to help your apartments stand out from other apartments."

[00:16:33] Zac: The apartments are i identifiable and also you know, easier for the telecoms to spot. The hard thing about homes is it's this long tail of properties and there hasn't been a good way to aggregate them. I think over the last few years there's been some, you know, real estate investment trusts that have got to scale.

[00:16:54] Zac: And so it kind of got these telecom companies thinking, "Hey, maybe I should go you know, sell into this market, see if we can apply the same principles of this program from apartments to single family." But it hasn't yet been done at any sort of significant scale. It's kind of a new concept. Now that we have hundreds of thousands of homes, that we are effectively the on switch for, we're helping to source these deals.

[00:17:20] Zac: And we're able to bring, you know, significant discount from retail pricing to property managers and consumers. So we we're adding that as a new program that we're doing. We're calling it like Fiber Ready Homes. So it's a cool thing because we can help property managers identify what portion of their portfolio has the underlying technology at the home to have, you know, hyper fast internet speeds.

[00:17:47] Zac: Yeah. And then do all of the enrollment process and the billing process to be able to offer a program like this. And and it's pretty gnarly. Like the average property manager that will turn on this program can make tens of thousands of dollars a year. It's roughly $10 per month per door.

[00:18:04] Zac: So if you're a 300 door property manager, this is about $18,000. 18,000 per year that you'd be able to generate. And just, you know, kind of free cash flows for enabling something that the renters want. 

[00:18:18] Jason: Right. Just making more money and yeah, I mean, high speed internet also being able to bring that to your units.

[00:18:26] Jason: It creates a bigger incentive for people to rent it. I mean, it's definitely something I research before I buy a home or move anywhere. I'm always like, what Internet's available there because my life is going to be happening through this. And a lot of more people working from home, especially since Covid.

[00:18:41] Zac: True. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I think a lot of renters see internet more important than running water in some ways. I mean, it's like everyone's on Netflix and doing work from home calls. You know, it's just, it's super important for renters. 

[00:18:55] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's interesting. And it sucks though when you like if you rent somewhere and that you only have one option and it's not the option that you really want in that area because sometimes they've negotiated like, oh, it's Comcast cable or something like this, and it's low speed or whatever.

[00:19:11] Zac: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Sometimes you're kind of limited by what lines have been laid, and sometimes there's limited options, but it's cool because now we have these two programs. We have one, which is that one I just explained, and then we have a second one. We call it like a marketplace. So it'll truly show you everything that's available, every single company, every single speed all the details of it and help to facilitate just being able to turn it on a lot easier.

[00:19:34] Jason: Got it. How does this work? Like a property manager gets set up in your system, they've got their properties, you know, in this, and then they can figure out the tenants when they're onboarding a new tenant, they're like, "Hey, before we give you keys and move you in, we want to make sure utilities are getting moved over."

[00:19:49] Jason: So you help streamline this? 

[00:19:51] Zac: That's right. Yeah. So it will connect seamlessly with property managers, property management software. Pull in the active listings that they have, and then it will have triggers around the move in date. So once someone's been approved and you have a move in date that's approaching.

[00:20:08] Zac: It will send reminders and say, Hey, you know, you're moving in end of the month, like before you move in, please show that you've turned the electric on so that there's not going to be bill back problems and things like that. 

[00:20:20] Zac: So, it handles the communication and then what's pretty cool about the tool too, is it's all white labeled. Utility Profit, it's not, you know, like a tenant friendly name, you know? Yeah. It's really for the property manager. And so, okay. We're just helping to facilitate these things. So it's got the property manager's logo, you know, we're more just the underlying technology, which I think is good because like a renter in the process doesn't want to get handed off to another third party.

[00:20:48] Zac: They just want to...

[00:20:49] Jason: yeah, "Who are these guys? Why should I trust them? I trust you. I'm working with you," but yeah. Got it. No, I think that's really smart. And so your business model then, your growth strategy really is to leverage and support the property managers. 

[00:21:02] Zac: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We're trying to partner with all the property managers in the single family rental space.

[00:21:08] Zac: And you know, last I checked, you know, there's at least five to 10 million homes that are managed by third party property managers. And we want to become the main place where where people used to turn on utilities. And you know, we talked about entrepreneurs and having a big vision earlier in the call.

[00:21:26] Zac: You know, I think we're solving an important problem by building this Google Maps of Utilities and also just making a better experience. I think anytime we start a business though, you're kind of thinking about like, okay, "Well if I'm able to pull this off, how could this even be even more significant long term?"

[00:21:42] Zac: And one of the things that I've been just thinking about as I've been doing it is you know, today we are helping to connect the dots between these things, but I bet in the not too distant future, maybe a few years out, we'll be responsible for millions of homes in helping to turn on these utilities.

[00:21:59] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:22:00] Zac: We'll probably want to go down the stack of utilities, you know, instead of just directing you to be going to, you know, XYZ local power source. Maybe they get directed to a company that, similar to how we're able to get discounts on internet because we have so much scale, we could buy energy contracts in deregulated markets and, you know, 

[00:22:22] Jason: okay.

[00:22:22] Zac: Inch down becoming a utility. 

[00:22:24] Zac: Okay. 

[00:22:24] Zac: And so, I think it's a, it's an interesting thing. 

[00:22:27] Jason: So you're saying maybe there's a potential the property manager could be the utility? 

[00:22:32] Zac: We'll be able to help the property manager earn more money...

[00:22:35] Zac: yeah.

[00:22:35] Zac: ...on this process because we... 

[00:22:38] Zac: just more margin

[00:22:38] Zac: ...want to direct them to like a utility that we own. And we're able to help them monetize these other things like natural gas and electricity. 

[00:22:49] Jason: Got it. Love it. Yeah. You're passing the benefit onto the property manager. So, yeah. That gives them quite an incentive to help you grow this.

[00:22:55] Jason: Right. So I love it. So, I mean, this really gives property managers a strong competitive advantage over self-management then.

[00:23:03] Zac: Yeah, I think so. You know, I think property managers, they have so many things that they're doing and this is one of those set it and forget it types of tools. You know, it's not something you have to have mastery over and like learn another thing, this is like you get on, you set the thing up, you get the logo added and get it synced to your PM software and then you're done with it and it just kind of is happening in the background and then just notifies you.

[00:23:26] Jason: Got it. So the setup is pretty easy and then it makes it a lot easier for the property management team to make sure utilities are getting set up correctly. There's visibility into seeing what's been set up and what hasn't, it sounds like. And you mentioned integrations with property management software, and I know everybody listening's like, "but what about my software? The one I'm using?" Yeah. So what integrations do you guys have set up already? 

[00:23:49] Zac: It's all the major ones. So what we find is like AppFolio is popular. Rentvine is becoming more and more popular. You know, Propertyware is another one. Buildium's one that we you know, have in the works too, but yeah, I think most people...

[00:24:04] Zac: Rent manager?

[00:24:05] Zac: Rent manager, yeah. That's one that we work with too. Yeah. I know there's a lot of options for property managers there, but yeah.

[00:24:11] Jason: Very cool. Yeah. So everybody listening there. There you go. So they're like, "oh, he mentioned mine. I'm okay." 

[00:24:17] Zac: Yeah, that's right. Yeah it's cool that it, you know, just works in a broad way like that. And it's kind of interesting too that the tool even is able to work you know, even if you don't even have a property management software to figure out some ways to you know, even work in that use case.

[00:24:32] Jason: Sure. 

[00:24:32] Zac: But most people have software. 

[00:24:34] Jason: So as long as you can get the properties like into your system, then...? 

[00:24:38] Jason: That's right. 

[00:24:38] Jason: Got it. Okay, cool. But if they have those then and you have that connection, then it's, yeah, it'll just streamline things. Makes it even more turnkey. 

[00:24:47] Zac: That's right. 

[00:24:48] Jason: Got it. Cool. So, all right, so you, what else should people know about this?

[00:24:52] Jason: Like what are the big questions property managers have been asking you? 

[00:24:55] Zac: I think one question is, you know, how much money I earn from this? You know? Okay. 

[00:24:59] Jason: They like, they want to know about the money. Let's talk about the money. 

[00:25:03] Zac: So the average property manager will, it's a range of 25 to $40 per move that, that happens.

[00:25:10] Zac: It ends up being about 25 to, to $30 on average is what we're seeing across the country. And so I think it's one of those things where it's like nice gravy. What we find is that the average property manager, they're like, "this is nice. I can make some extra money from it." But I think it's like, you know, not enough to go, you know, it just adds to the bottom line a little bit.

[00:25:32] Zac: Every little thing. Sure. So the main reason why people use it is the time savings, you know? Absolutely. It's just one last thing to have to worry about. So that's that's what we're seeing as we talk to people. 

[00:25:44] Jason: Yeah. Yeah, because I mean, just the amount of time you're paying a team member, if they're like 25 to $35 an hour, for example you know, they might be spending an hour or two here or there just calling, trying to negotiate back and forth with the tenant, get these things set up so.

[00:25:59] Zac: Property management some days feels like death by a thousand mosquitoes. 

[00:26:04] Jason: Oh yeah. I often joke it's, it can be death by a thousand cuts or it can be a really well oiled systemizable machine, but yeah.

[00:26:12] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, it offsets a little bit at the move in cost and then just the time savings. You're not having to pay your team to do all this communication. And you know, speed in onboarding is a real challenge for a lot of companies that are really in a high growth sort of state.

[00:26:28] Jason: Like small companies might have a hard time just onboarding 10 units in a month, you know? Yeah. And larger companies, it can be pretty hairy if things aren't well dialed in. 

[00:26:36] Zac: Yeah, I think that's a good point. It's all about having the systems in place. So that they scale. 

[00:26:40] Jason: Very cool.

[00:26:41] Jason: Well, is there anything else you think people should know about utility profit? And then we can get into like, how can they connect and get something like this going? 

[00:26:50] Zac: Yeah. So the website's, utilityprofit.com. 

[00:26:53] Jason: Okay. 

[00:26:53] Zac: And it has some more information about how it works and has has some videos of the actual product.

[00:26:59] Zac: You can see what it looks like from the renter's perspective, from your perspective and the dashboard that gives transparency. And and it kind of just walks you through everything about the product. And then there's a way on the website to be able to either book a demo if you have any questions about how something works.

[00:27:17] Zac: And then, what we do is we'll just help you do like an onboarding call where we have people connect their PM software, upload a logo, invite their team members, really simple, straightforward process and then and then it's kind of good to go. So it's very streamlined thing. People typically will do it and it'll be live same day.

[00:27:38] Zac: It's not like some big heavy lift or something. You just kind of go through this 15 minute process. We help you get it all synced up and then it's good to go. 

[00:27:45] Jason: So, there's competition out there, right? Like this is a new thing in the space, but previously there's all these companies that try to, you know, negotiate and be able to pull in money and by being the person that gets people on a certain internet service or gets people and they get these kickbacks from the companies and that's how they make their money.

[00:28:03] Jason: How do you feel like utility profits sort of stands out from those and I mean, my guess is you have the database, you have the data, like your ability to streamline. You're not having to go and start doing research and that you're just much faster. 

[00:28:17] Zac: Yeah, I think that's exactly it. So there's been this whole category over the last couple years that's called a home concierge.

[00:28:25] Zac: Yeah. And it's historically been like a call center model. Yeah. Where a rep will get the address and they'll, on your behalf, Google around, make some calls, you know, go try to set things up. And I think that was a helpful first step, and it seems like the natural thing that, that the industry would've been doing.

[00:28:43] Zac: But this is just the natural progression of it, you know, building that database out, making it something that is like, you know, a true streamlined tool for everybody. And and just digitizing it a lot more. 

[00:28:57] Jason: This is the future. This is the future. It's the next step. You're going to be a sponsor at DoorGrow Live.

[00:29:02] Jason: So make sure, you know, everybody come to DoorGrow Live this year. Our theme this year is innovating the future of property management. And so we're going to be sharing innovative stuff. Innovative new models of pricing, not doing it the same way everybody else has been doing it, like percentage or flat fee. There's a lot of innovation and that's our goal at DoorGrow. We're always trying to figure out what are the most innovative stuff? We've got AI maintenance coordinators, we've got all sorts of stuff that are going to be showcased at this event. So if you don't want to be behind the times and have your lunch eaten by competitors and startups that are savvier and more focused on the future, make sure you come to DoorGrow Live. You're going to want to be there because the people that are at DoorGrow Live are going to be the ones that are getting a head start on these really effective cost, saving new tools, these ideas, they're going to help you have more profit in your business.

[00:29:54] Jason: And so, Zac, we appreciate you being a sponsor. We're excited to showcase you and some other tools at our event, so. 

[00:30:00] Zac: It's going to be fun. It'll be here right around the corner, so.

[00:30:03] Jason: Check it out at doorgrowlive.com, and make sure you get your tickets. And we're going to be talking a little bit more in the future, probably on our podcast here. And just online about some of the cool things that you will get or learn if you come to DoorGrow Live this year in May at the Kalahari Resort in Round Rock, Texas.

[00:30:20] Jason: So, cool. Well, Zac, is there anything else you want to share before you go? Parting word of wisdom for entrepreneurs out there that haven't had a hundred million dollar exits and built big giant things and they're just struggling to build their little machine, what would you say to them? 

[00:30:36] Zac: I would just say like, whatever it is that you think that's holding you back, just start trying to do it.

[00:30:43] Zac: You know? I think a lot of times you build up whatever it is in your head. And you think, "well, I would do it if I had this. Or what if I have to hire this person? Or, you know, I need to have this figured out, or I don't know how this works. Like I'm going to just say no to it." I would just say, just start doing it.

[00:31:02] Zac: It doesn't have to be perfect to start. And the more you just take that first step it will become more clear and sometimes, it's harder to see the next 10 steps in front of you, but it's pretty easy to take that first step. So I'd say, have a bias for action. Get your hands dirty. Do it yourself. You have mentioned a lot of these things about AI and how the best companies are using ai.

[00:31:25] Zac: We're really leaning into that as an organization. It doesn't matter what people's role is, we're saying. You know, download, ChatGPT three and talk to it. Ask it questions like, you know, there's so many cool resources today. It's the best time to figure things out and do things and and take that first step.

[00:31:44] Jason: Yeah. GPT 4.5, we're getting clues of that's dropping and going to be out for everybody soon. And then Grok 3, I've been really geeking out on Grok 3, so it's pretty next level, so, but yeah. Cool. I love the idea. Done is better than perfect. I love the idea of rapid iteration. You know, so many times for those of you that are in the earlier stages of entrepreneurs listening to this, this is great advice because I've seen inside a lot of businesses, a lot of small businesses, and one of the biggest mistakes a lot of them make is they try to make everything perfect before they ship it, before they launch it. "I want to get all my processes dialed in," and they're trying to solve problems they don't even have yet.

[00:32:20] Jason: They're trying to solve future problems instead of their current problem. And so rapid iteration really is the secret to growing a business quickly because you learn very fast what does and doesn't work. Just start trying shit. Just do it. Break stuff and you're going to learn way faster and everything's figureoutable, so. 

[00:32:39] Zac: Yeah. And in that spirit, it doesn't matter what the thing is, you can always get feedback from it, even if it's not totally built yet, like it can be on a napkin, you know, or it could be the next level of that. But go build the thing in whatever low fidelity way. Yeah.

[00:32:55] Zac: And then go talk to your customers about it. And this is going to have different applications for different types of business. because you're going to talk about different things. But you know, maybe you have a new program that you're thinking property owners might want to see, like get their feedback on it.

[00:33:10] Zac: Or maybe you want to launch a new website or a new logo or whatever it is. I would just say, it doesn't have to be perfect, bring it but you have to get feedback on it. So definitely go and partner with who it is that is going to see it, and then just talk to them about it and say, "Well, how could this be better? What is this missing? What would be the next thing to do? If you could do anything with this, what would you do?" And, you know, people love to share advice. I mean, I think that's the other thing. Yeah. It's like over the last couple years since I've been doing entrepreneurship, I've been kind of amazed at how many people have been willing to share their time and their advice.

[00:33:46] Zac: Yeah. And especially if you get an intro to someone from something. Yeah. You know, I think there's this huge thing of maybe you're afraid to ask for that intro or, you know, have that conversation because it's not perfect yet. I would say, you know, find the ideal person that you want to talk to and then figure out how to work backwards and how to get an intro to them and then have that conversation.

[00:34:08] Zac: You know, I think you have to be vulnerable in it because you are going to come across dumb sometimes. You know, people are going to say like, "how did you not know this? Everyone knows this," but like, just lose your ego in that. Be okay with not being okay. And then you're going to feel a lot better because on the other side of it, you're going to learn so much.

[00:34:27] Jason: Yeah, I think the secret to being smart is just being willing to look stupid. So, I mean, for sure. Ask the dumb question that you're afraid to ask because you're going to learn way faster. And I really think proximity is power. Like just another reason people should come to DoorGrow Live is I think we attract the most growth oriented property management, business owners in the industry and just being in proximity to all these sort of change makers and people trying new stuff and people experimenting, people willing to invest in themselves and to pay like coaches, like DoorGrow. And then I use all my clients as a mass rapid iteration sort of project.

[00:35:05] Jason: Like we're always figuring out more and more stuff and I'm gathering these ideas and so we've got systems in place to just allow us to innovate in this industry a lot faster. And so we're really excited about bringing these kind of things to DoorGrow Live and showcasing it.

[00:35:19] Jason: So if you're not part of our program, you're not one of our clients. Come check out the magic at DoorGrow Live. Connect with some of the people there and you might realize you found a home, so yeah, your family might be there. So yeah, entrepreneurs we're different breed of people. We, you know, we take risks, we're willing to try new things, and we're not focused primarily on safety and security.

[00:35:39] Jason: We're focused more on fulfillment and freedom and contribution. And so this natural offshoot, entrepreneurs are the most helpful people, especially the healthy ones. When you're in a healthy growth-minded state, you want to benefit and help everybody. You're not gatekeeping information like people are sharing stuff and so yeah, I found the same thing to be true in the high level masterminds, coaches that I work with.

[00:36:00] Jason: Like just being around the people in these programs has been probably the biggest benefit more than even learning from the guru or whoever that is sharing stuff sometimes. And so, yeah, proximity. 

[00:36:11] Zac: Yeah, I think that's well said. You kind of become an average of the people that you spend most time with.

[00:36:15] Zac: So if you're around, you know, someone who's going to be pessimistic about everything, then chances are, not going to try things as much. I mean, that, that was like one of the reasons why I had originally moved from, you know, where I was growing up in New Hampshire. I remember when I was pitching Favor when I was 20 something people were like, "ah, no one's going to pay five bucks for something like that. And how do you know how? You don't know how to code. You can't figure that out. Right? Go get a job like everybody else." And then I kind of moved and found my tribe you know, and in Silicon Valley area and then in Austin, Texas. And then next thing you know, I'm actually doing the thing. 

[00:36:53] Jason: I think even if people just come to DoorGrow Live to connect with somebody like you and they can create a relationship with somebody like you or any of the change makers or players that we attract at our event.

[00:37:05] Jason: I mean, you've done things that a lot of people would dream of being able to do in business, right. And so come make those connections, come to DoorGrow Live and make some connections because it's going to change your life for sure. So, well Zac, I appreciate you coming on the show. People can connect with your company at utilityprofit.com.

[00:37:22] Jason: Do a demo. And it's been great having you here. 

[00:37:26] Zac: Hey, thanks so much for having me on Jason. 

[00:37:28] Jason: All right, so everybody, if you are struggling to grow your business or you're struggling to deal with operations, reach out to us. Check us out at DoorGrow.com. We would love to have a conversation, see if we might be able to help you with something.

[00:37:39] Jason: And that's what we do all day long and we care about our clients. We really want to make sure that everybody succeeds. We only win if you're winning. And so until next time, everybody to our mutual growth, let's all win. Bye everyone. 

The property management industry is no stranger to conferences and in-person events, but have you ever thought about creating an event yourself?

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the behind-the-scenes of putting on a live event or conference and all the pros and cons of doing so.

You’ll Learn

[04:39] Learning from Past Mistakes and Failures

[15:32] Getting Back in the Saddle: DoorGrow Live

[21:07] What Goes Into Creating a Conference?

[30:31] The Magic of In-Person Events

Quotables

“I think being able to just connect with people, making sure that people know who you are and what you do, I mean, it's really valuable.”

“When you've got a room full of people who are in the same sector, in the same industry, there's so much knowledge in that room.”

“When you're connecting with other people that are like you, that are growth minded and you both share an industry and a share a business model, like it really helps you grow.”

“Your business is the sum of the five property management business owners you as a business owner are most connected to.”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jason: When you're connecting with other people that are like you, that are growth minded and you both share an industry and share a business model, like it really helps you grow.

[00:00:08] Jason: Your business is the sum of the five property management business owners you as a business owner are most connected to.

[00:00:13] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the Property Management Growth 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.

[00:00:42] Jason: 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.

[00:01:06] Jason: We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. All right. 

[00:01:14] Sarah: Woo! 

[00:01:15] Jason: So first, you'll have to excuse if I sound a little nasally today, because I have a cold, which doesn't happen often. And I might have given it to Sarah. I don't know.

[00:01:25] Sarah: My sinuses just feel weird. 

[00:01:27] Jason: So. 

[00:01:27] Sarah: So thanks. 

[00:01:28] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:01:29] Sarah: Thanks for that. 

[00:01:30] Jason: Okay, so. 

[00:01:31] Sarah: Appreciate it. 

[00:01:32] Jason: You keep kissing me. I'm not kissing you. Like I'm not trying to get you sick. 

[00:01:35] Sarah: He's not kissing me. 

[00:01:36] Sarah: She can't resist. 

[00:01:37] Sarah: Does anybody believe that? Nobody believes you. Nobody should. 

[00:01:40] Jason: I'm sick. You keep coming up to me.

[00:01:42] Jason: I'm like, you want this? Obviously she does, guys. Obviously. 

[00:01:46] Sarah: Oh brother. 

[00:01:47] Sarah: Alright. 

[00:01:48] Sarah: What a great episode. What a great kicker offered. 

[00:01:51] Jason: So I might be coughing and I apologize. Alright, so what we're talking about today is we thought we'd give you a little bit of behind the scenes into us creating an event and us doing DoorGrow Live, getting prepped and prepared for this. You know, we put an entire year into getting this thing going and getting this prepared and promoting it, finding speakers.

[00:02:15] Jason: And so let's chat a little bit about some of the behind the scenes stuff. 

[00:02:19] Sarah: Yeah. So one of the things that I wanted to talk about is kind of everything that really goes into it behind the scenes that when you go attend an event, you just don't notice. You just don't like realize a lot of the times, unless you're used to running events.

[00:02:35] Sarah: And once you start running an event, go run one event and then you will attend every other event differently. For example, when we go to, you know, Aaron's events, or Funnel Hacking Live, my brain is constantly going, like, operationally, this must be a nightmare. How on earth are they coordinating all of this?

[00:02:56] Sarah: It's just insane. Because I know how crazy it is with our conferences, and we don't yet have thousands of people there. We will, at one point. But, man, there's just so much that goes into it. So, If you're ever considering running events, and I think that for property managers and for anyone who's a real estate agent or investor, I really think events are something that you should at least look into. And it doesn't have to be this big crazy event where, you know, you spend 25- 30 thousand dollars like we do and that's kind of like a low budget, you know. That's like you'll blow through that real quick. It doesn't have to be anything like that and it definitely doesn't have to be this, you know, this big crazy promoted thing you can do your own version of events like in a very different way, back when I was in property management, you know, we would do some little networking events and they were nowhere near the size, but also nowhere near the cost, but they can be really beneficial for you to do. So I think if you haven't experimented with that, then maybe get some tips and pointers and check it out. Like try it, experiment and see what happens. Because for me, it was really great to just be connected. So there's that saying, "your net worth is in your network," and I think being able to just connect with people, make sure that people know who you are and what you do, I mean, it's really valuable. So if you're a property manager and you haven't done a little in person event yet, then perhaps you might want to try. And we're going to talk a little bit about, you know, what goes into like a bigger event the way that we run them. So why don't you give them some background?

[00:04:41] Sarah: When was your first? Your first DoorGrow Live was pre-Sarah, the pre-Sarah DoorGrow age, I think it was it 2018? 

[00:04:49] Jason: Yeah. 2018. 2018. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:04:51] Sarah: Okay. Can you talk about you know, what was the first DoorGrow Live like? 

[00:04:57] Jason: Oh man. Yeah. And if you want to get a visual of this, you can go to, I think it's photos.doorgrow.Com and we have photos of all of our different major events. You can go back to 2018 and there's a nice photo of me and Mike Michalowicz there. And so we brought in some big, you know, for me, they were big speakers. Some people that I really looked up to and that I got a lot of value from.

[00:05:22] Jason: So, coach, authors, you know, people that I had worked with. And so, it was a big deal. We spent, I think we spent about $115,000. Putting that event together because I wanted to do it, right. I didn't want my first event to be Mickey Mouse or cheap or you know, whatever So I wanted to do a really good job and I thought well, "and we'll sell tickets to make up for it." We did. We sold about a hundred and fifteen tickets at around, I think $1,000 a pop.

[00:05:53] Jason: And I have a whole podcast episode I did on this. I call it my $2 million mistake because we were growing at a pace of, we were doing about a million in revenue a year and we were growing at a pace of about 300% percent at the time we were growing really quickly. We had a lot of momentum, and I decided to do this big conference. It was a little bit of an ego thing. Like it was like kind of a dream that I wanted to feel cool and be on stage and it was super stressful. The event went really well. People liked it, but I was massively stressed during it. And then I didn't do another one for how many years? I don't know. 

[00:06:29] Sarah: Yeah, that was his first and only and then like canceled it 

[00:06:33] Jason: I was like, "I don't think I'll do that again."

[00:06:35] Sarah: Yeah. 

[00:06:36] Jason: I mean I didn't realize everything that goes into it. I'm sure people were watching me start my first conference from the sidelines who have done events in the space were like, "good luck, bro," because they know how hard it can be.

[00:06:47] Jason: It's like starting a whole nother business but you have to recognize there's like the hotel. It's hard to do an event that's not at a hotel. So you kind of have to do it at hotels and so they have this like, sort of, they're like the mafia.

[00:07:01] Jason: They have this control over doing events. Like, and you go to them, you're like, "I want to do an event here." And they're like, "cool." And like finances become a thing and they negotiate a group rate with you, which means you have to book certain number of rooms because they want you to book rooms, and if you don't book out the group rate for the rooms in the room block, then you're responsible to pay for that.

[00:07:24] Jason: So we were on the hook for like a lot of money for rooms. I'm like, "well, how many rooms does that mean? And like how many nights?" And all this stuff. So just managing finances for an event is like managing finances for a dangerous business startup is really what it is. Because people have gone bankrupt from doing big events really big events where you have two, three thousand, five thousand. These are millions and millions of dollars in and out.

[00:07:48] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:07:49] Jason: And if they don't navigate this well, it can bankrupt companies 

[00:07:53] Sarah: Russell just said that on stage. He didn't say who, but Russell Brunson said that he knew someone that was running a big event, didn't sell enough rooms in the room block, and he went bankrupt from it because it was such a large event and he was on the hook for so much money and ended up bankrupting the company.

[00:08:13] Jason: It's dangerous. And then you got to get people to buy the ticket, book the hotel, like, and then there's marketing to do this. You got to spend a lot of money to get people to do this. And then, you know, in order to attract people, sometimes people will do like big speakers. Like I got some speakers and let me tell you speakers, they're expensive.

[00:08:33] Jason: Like usually they, they want thousands and thousands of dollars. Like an 

[00:08:37] Sarah: inexpensive speaker just to like put it out there, like an inexpensive speaker is still usually around like 5k 

[00:08:44] Jason: Anyone you've probably heard of is that minimum 25 grand. 

[00:08:47] Sarah: Well more than that.

[00:08:49] Jason: And if they're a big name It's 50k, 100k, it can be really expensive to have them come be in an event.

[00:08:58] Jason: So, Yeah, so it can be really challenging. Then there's food and beverage minimums. So the hotel, they're like, "you also have to spend a certain amount on food and beverage while you're here." Yeah, so they're like, "you have to book a certain number of rooms. You have to, like, pay for a certain number of food and beverage, and you're not allowed to bring any other food or beverage into our place."

[00:09:19] Jason: Nope. 

[00:09:19] Jason: "You have to use our stuff. And our stuff is like going to the movie theater. It's overly priced, like, inflated." 

[00:09:26] Sarah: Remember, we did the Game Changer event at the JW Marriott in Austin so I looked at everything afterwards and it was not a huge event. It was not a big event. We had under 20 people there.

[00:09:40] Sarah: Yeah. And that included like Jason, myself, DoorGrow staff, speakers, like under 20 people. And one lunch and we had, it was a two day event. So we did like two lunches. So one lunch, I think was somewhere around like two or 3,000 dollars. Yeah, it was insane for lunch. 

[00:09:57] Jason: And my first event, we spent eight grand to provide coffee for two days. Eight grand for... 

[00:10:03] Sarah: coffee. Yeah. 

[00:10:05] Jason: For two days like and you know, and they have all these rules. I think the rules are made to inflate the price, but they have these food and beverage and they charge you sometimes by plate. So that hotel that we were at our first event, we didn't realize this, but they have people to go around and pick up plates.

[00:10:22] Jason: And you're paying by the number of plates people use. Like how much food they consume and by plate. So they were picking up plates. 

[00:10:29] Sarah: Oh my god. 

[00:10:30] Jason: It's a racket. Like if you go into this not knowing what you're doing, some hotels can take gross amounts of money. Wow. They negotiate a terrible group rate, they negotiate a horrible food and beverage minimum is really high for you, and then you go way over that minimum if they have anything to do with it.

[00:10:45] Jason: And so you're spending all this money and they're like, "well..." 

[00:10:47] Sarah: you'll never have to worry about hitting your minimum in food and beverage, like, never. No, really. 

[00:10:51] Jason: I mean, if you want food there, period, like, 

[00:10:54] Sarah: you're going to hit it. So, I don't care. I don't even care what my minimum is because it doesn't, honestly, it doesn't even matter. 

[00:11:00] Jason: Yeah. So then people think, oh, well, then I'll do the event somewhere else. Well, if you do it somewhere else, then how are they going to get from where they're staying to the venue? And so then there's a logistical challenge. So then like people aren't like coming and it's just like it's so much easier if they walk.

[00:11:17] Jason: So everything gets like complicated when you don't do it at the hotel. 

[00:11:22] Sarah: Where was your first event? Where was it? 

[00:11:24] Jason: It was in St. Louis at an old classic hotel. It was really beautiful. 

[00:11:28] Sarah: Okay. Interesting. 

[00:11:30] Jason: Yeah, we did in St. Louis. We did it at This hotel and we did it because we thought we'll make it easy because NARPM had an event around the same time.

[00:11:41] Jason: So we're like, Oh man, we want to do it at the same time. So let's just do it at the same venue. I think we did it the same venue, but we booked a nicer room on the top floor with lots of windows. It was very cool. And it was on different days. So you could attend both. We thought that would give us some cross pollination and really, it didn't.

[00:12:00] Jason: Like there were a few people that went to the NARPM one and came to ours, but yeah, it was like so small. So that didn't even really help. "We're like, yeah, it's so easy to stay a little longer and go to ours."

[00:12:08] Sarah: Interesting. Okay. Yeah. 

[00:12:10] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:12:11] Sarah: So after the first DoorGrow Live, he decided, I think when I came on board, he said, "I'm never doing another event again."

[00:12:18] Jason: Yeah, I just didn't want to deal with it. It was so stressful. And your whole team, that's the real part of it, is like your whole team is involved in it in different ways, unless you have someone specifically handling sales, event, marketing, planning, advertising, planning, like every role we had in our business that we needed for our business had to go towards the conference because we were now on the hook for, I can't remember, like 50, 80 grand or something with the hotel. We had to figure out how to get rooms booked. We had to figure out how to pay for speakers. It was a whole thing. It was like starting a whole nother business. And our main thing was no longer the main thing.

[00:12:58] Jason: So our business stopped growing. It actually didn't grow for several years after that, like a couple of years after that. And that's why I call it my 3 million or 2 million mistake, but it was probably a bigger multi million dollar mistake than that, because there's a lot of money I could have made over those years extra.

[00:13:14] Jason: We're not hurting by any means, but that really slowed things down. And I just chalk that up to being the price of tuition in business. I made a mistake. I didn't know. And I learned from it, right? And I didn't listen to my mentor. Alex was like, "make it a really small event. Make it really small. Do your first one, make it small." I'm like, "no way. I've been to so many events. I'm going to make this awesome. I want this. If I'm going to compete with all the other events that are out there, I want this to be the best." And I really think, like, we had the best food there. We had the best, like, everything was the best.

[00:13:46] Jason: We had audio visual team. We had a stage set up, like, we put a lot of money into this and it was pretty awesome. Like, it went pretty well. But I was massively stressed during the whole event. And yeah, but people that went, they gave us good feedback. They had a good experience. So, which I'm glad. Then you got to like ticket sales is hard too.

[00:14:06] Jason: That's a tough challenge. How do you get people to give up what they're doing to come do something else? And so, you know, we've created some really strong magic. I think at DoorGrow, like our in person events, there's just something magical about our events. There's more heart, there's more connection.

[00:14:20] Jason: It changes lives and that's very different than what has happened in the space. And I think that's more just about who we are and what we bring and the type of speakers that we bring in. It's very different than just property management. 

[00:14:34] Sarah: And so that's one of the things I wanted to talk about is, so you did your first event.

[00:14:39] Sarah: It went well, but it was pretty crazy. We basically broke even. We're not doing another event. I came on to the business a couple years after this and there's still a lot of like trauma and PTSD associated with it and then we started talking. Well, what if we do another event? And he said "no. No I don't want to do another event," and I said, "well, what if we do it differently?" So we did bring DoorGrow Live back after that first conference that they did and we've done several of them since then. We have another one coming up in May. It's May 16th and 17th. It's a Friday and Saturday at the Kalahari Resorts in the North Austin, Texas area. So if you're watching this and you have not yet registered, then definitely go do that. You can go to doorgrowlive.Com. But we've done several of these events since then, and one of the reasons that we wanted to bring these events back, especially even though for Jason it was just so, so traumatic, we just needed to do them a little differently.

[00:15:43] Sarah: So, the reason that we wanted to bring them back though is because everything is just so much different when it's in person. And we know that there's so much magic that can just happen if, you know, if we can get people in a room. It's not just going to another conference. So in the industry, there's a lot of conferences, I mean, there's tech conferences and like all the big you know softwares have their own thing and there's NARPM events and there's all kinds of things like this and DoorGrow Live is just different. It's different than all of those things. We're not trying to focus on hey, you know, what are they doing and let's duplicate it. We're focused on how can we provide like such a great experience and such great value and real connection in a like large group environment? Which is hard.

[00:16:38] Sarah: Like that's a challenge. If you're like, okay, we're going to get, you know, 50 to a hundred people in a room and we want them to all be connected. That's hard. That's hard. But I think that our events do actually a really great job at that. 

[00:16:49] Jason: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, we get great testimonials. It's going to we have a really cool venue We just decided to keep doing it at this Kalahari resort.

[00:16:59] Jason: It's near our house. It's in Round Rock They treat us really well there. It's a big it's like we have endless room to grow there We could have thousands and thousands of people someday if we wanted to. There's plenty of room there 

[00:17:12] Sarah: But they're great to work with and the rooms are nice. When you guys book a room, the rooms are nice, everything is right on property, it's very family friendly too, so, you know, if you want to kind of bring your family and usually, I've noticed sometimes people, when they go to the conference, and then their family stays at home, there's a little bit of like, "oh, you're leaving me with the kids, like, what is this? Like, you get to go off to a conference and," well, come, like, come with us and you guys can hang out at, like the water park and the Build A Bear and the restaurants and the like arcade and there's still... 

[00:17:48] Jason: America's largest indoor water park. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:17:52] Sarah: And I think when you book a room, they include a ticket.

[00:17:53] Sarah: Yeah. 

[00:17:54] Jason: You get a ticket to all a bunch of cool stuff. So like you get a, like a wristband. So yeah it's a pretty fun place. Like there's a whole Facebook group just for people looking for deals and discounts to stay at this resort. Yeah. They're like always talking about it in that group. I've joined all the local groups, just see what's going on.

[00:18:15] Jason: So, yeah, so it's pretty interesting. So yeah, we've got a really cool venue. And oh, the other things places have charged us for other places we've done some of our events they charge us for electricity, they charge us for, like, just having cords put down. 

[00:18:31] Sarah: They charge for internet.

[00:18:32] Jason: They find a way to charge you for everything at some venues, and so, not all venues are equal.

[00:18:38] Jason: So, yeah, so we've really appreciated the Kalahari Resort in Round Rock. It's a cool resort, and they treat us really well there, so. 

[00:18:45] Sarah: Yeah, and it's a great experience for people. Because that's really frustrating when you go into any kind of hotel and you're like, "Oh. Why is this where I'm at? I guess I'll be here because the conference is here, but outside of the conference being here, I would never book here." And this is not that at all. Like people like to book here for sure. I think now let's do our little demo and then we'll get back into it. 

[00:19:08] Jason: Got a little sponsor for today's episode, KRS SmartBooks.

[00:19:13] Jason: Do you have properties to manage and zero time for bookkeeping headaches? KRS SmartBooks is your secret weapon. They specialize in finances for busy property managers like you with 15 plus years of real estate know how and skills in Appfolio, Yardi, and more. Imagine monthly reports magically appearing and zero accounting stress.

[00:19:35] Jason: Sound good? Head to KRS Books. At K as in Kansas, R as in Roger, S as in Sam. Books. Sarah's already dying. She's like, you didn't do the right military phonetically. 

[00:19:46] Sarah: I really am dying inside. 

[00:19:47] Jason: KRSbooks. com to book your free discovery call. Integrity, quality, and a dash of bookkeeping brilliance. That's KRS Smart Books.

[00:19:58] Jason: Alright, how should I phonetically do KRS? 

[00:20:00] Sarah: K like Kilo, R like Romeo, S like Sierra. 

[00:20:04] Jason: Alright, Sarah, by the way, is Becoming a pilot. She's taking pilot flying lessons. 

[00:20:11] Sarah: I've known the military code for years 

[00:20:13] Sarah: because I used to work in a casino and that's how they would communicate in slot machines. 

[00:20:20] Jason: Yeah, alright.

[00:20:21] Sarah: But now it's also handy being a pilot. 

[00:20:24] Jason: Okay. 

[00:20:24] Sarah: Alright, so if that sounds good, I think it sounds really great. Because I know a lot of property managers struggle with bookkeeping, and that's usually not something that's fun for property managers. It's definitely necessary, but it, oh man, it's not fun, and it's really draining.

[00:20:38] Sarah: So if you can find someone that's great at what they do, and you can allow them to handle that, and just kind of check in and make sure things are going well, then, whoo, man, life gets a lot easier. 

[00:20:51] Jason: Yeah if you're not paying attention to the finances or the financial health of your business or your accounting You're probably getting stolen from it's just I've seen it happen so many times.

[00:21:01] Jason: So get a great bookkeeper. Yeah have people you trust to take care of that. Okay. 

[00:21:07] Sarah: So speaking of finances, let's talk a little bit about what kind of goes into an event. So for example, we have our DoorGrow Live coming up in May this year. So we have been working on this event now since, so our last one was in May, and then I think we started working on the new one in like July, June or July.

[00:21:31] Sarah: So things that have to kind of happen just to be able to have the space, obviously, you have to look into venues, you have to, you know, look at the space, make sure it's going to work for the size of your group, which means you kind of have to estimate a little bit what it's going to look like, and then make sure that the room can.

[00:21:48] Sarah: fit more or less if needed. 

[00:21:51] Jason: You've got to negotiate with the hotel. 

[00:21:53] Sarah: Yep. You've got to negotiate what the rates would be. You know, am I paying for the space or am I paying for the room block and the food? Because there's different ways to do it. So you've got to figure out, you know, how many rooms in the room block do I need?

[00:22:09] Sarah: Because if you overestimate that, if you go, "Hey, I think I'm going to have a thousand people come" and 100 people come, it is not going to be a good time for you because every room in the room block that is not sold, you are financially on the hook for. So you get to pay for that. And it's like, it's a certain number of nights.

[00:22:28] Sarah: So it's not even so much how many rooms it's, how many nights someone will book. So you want to track that along the way. And then you want to start looking at a lot of the tactical things that go into it, like, well, who is going to speak at the event? So you want to start looking at speakers and when you're looking at speakers, you start to think about, you know, who would our audience resonate with and what kind of value would they provide?

[00:22:55] Sarah: And, you know, is this strategic and tactical stuff or is this like mindset and empowerment stuff? Because you kind of want to get a mix of both at each event because everyone who comes to an event They're looking for a different thing. So it's really impossible to satisfy everybody make sure everybody, you know is super happy with everything sometimes people say, "oh, I wish there was more of this and oh, I wish there was more of that," but you kind of have to do like this balance and mix to make sure that everybody gets something out of it.

[00:23:25] Sarah: And that they have a great experience. You also want to build a little bit of fun into it. So that it's not just, "hey, show up to this conference, sit down, learn something, take some notes and walk out of the room." You know, we've been to events like that before. Where it's like, "okay, that was a lot. But also, man, it would have been really cool to like, do something fun and you know connect with people," so you want to you know start to build in some time so that people can connect with other people, you know, so are you going to do a mixer?

[00:23:52] Sarah: Are you going to do some sort of networking event? You know, are you going to you know go do kind of some fun event before like the night before? Are you going to, you know, send them off to lunch together? What is that going to look like? So that they can really connect with each other especially when you've got a room full of people who are in the same sector, in the same industry, there's so much knowledge in that room.

[00:24:15] Sarah: So just talking to other people in the room is really valuable and making connections. So there's got to be some room for that as well. And then you want to think about well, are we going to have any vendors or sponsors? Yeah, and are those vendors or sponsors people that have services that are valuable and that we trust? Because there have also been times where, you know, someone had wanted to sponsor us and we did not want them to be a sponsor.

[00:24:43] Sarah: Because if they don't provide a great service, you know, can you throw some money and be in the room? Yeah, but if it's not the right person to be in the room, then that matters. That matters a lot. So we have turned down money. We've turned down sponsorships. So then you also have to think about all of the tactical things.

[00:25:05] Sarah: Well, you know, am I doing round tables? Am I doing classroom style? Are we doing full circles? Are we doing semi circles? Like what is the front of the room? And what's the back of the room? And where are the vendors going to be? And what doors do people walk in and out of? And as soon as they walk in, what is the first thing that they see?

[00:25:20] Sarah: In what direction do we want to go in? And are they crossing over our equipment? Is somebody going to trip and fall on all the 10,000 chords that we have like taped down and. Then you have to also think about things like your AV. So does the room have internet? Is there power in the room? And I know that seems like a silly question to ask, but guess what?

[00:25:40] Sarah: Sometimes they charge you for power. So you would think, hey, there's power in the room, obviously, because like it's at a hotel. They obviously have electricity. Yeah, but do you have to pay for it? 

[00:25:49] Jason: Yeah, AV is expensive. Like we rented it initially and it was so costly. 

[00:25:54] Sarah: Yeah. 

[00:25:54] Jason: For the price you could rent it for it made sense to just buy it.

[00:25:58] Sarah: To buy it. 

[00:25:59] Jason: And so we eventually bought all our own equipment, but that means now we have to set it up and we have to figure it out. And so, yeah, so there's always a challenge. 

[00:26:08] Sarah: Before the actual conference, like before anybody even steps foot like on property, Jason and I and several members of our team are there setting things up.

[00:26:18] Jason: Sometimes my kids. Yeah, 

[00:26:19] Sarah: sometimes the kids, sometimes an assistant, sometimes Madi comes on in. 

[00:26:22] Jason: We're hooking up lights, we're plugging in audio equipment. 

[00:26:25] Sarah: So we like pack everything up in Jason's SUV. We drive it over, we unload it. I'm doing this in stilettos, mind you, because I'm a stubborn 

[00:26:33] Jason: You do everything in stilettos.

[00:26:33] Sarah: Yeah, that's what I am. Right, so we like, we get there, we unpack it, we have to set it all up. You know, we're making sure that, like, all the lights are working, a sound system has to work, because there's no point in having a microphone if it's not going to work. There's always technical errors, and I'm horrible with technology, so Jason is our tech person, and he is the only tech person that we have.

[00:26:54] Sarah: So he gets to figure everything out. And then it's like, you know, is the screen working? And can people see it? And is the laptop connecting to the screen? And is it blurry or is it too big or too far? Like there's always these weird little issues that happen and I don't know how to solve any of them.

[00:27:10] Sarah: Yeah, so Jason knows how to do that. And then there's the other things like well. What about swag? And you know, are we doing a registration table and who's going to be there to, you know, check people in and make sure they know what to do and they know where to go? And, you know, is there like just kind of first come first serve seating?

[00:27:27] Sarah: Or is there like a separate section for, you know, special clients or VIP clients or speakers or the team? And there's also things like, "Oh, well what about name badges?" You know, are we doing, like, are we doing name badges? Are we, you know, making sure that everybody kind of knows who everybody else is? Is there anything special or is it just like a bunch of people walking into a room and then hopefully they figure out that they're in the right room? Like there's so much that goes into it and then there's the scheduling. So well, you know, who's going to go in what order, what day and time are certain speakers available? Because just because they commit to an event doesn't mean, "oh, I can speak at any point during the event."

[00:28:11] Sarah: So, you know, it's putting the agenda together and how long do you give them for lunch and where are they going for lunch? And are we doing lunch? Are we, you know, letting them facilitate it on their own? Are we doing breaks? How do we get them back from breaks? Are we, it's crazy. Like it's so, there's so much.

[00:28:28] Jason: If you give people a break at an event, it's like 30 minutes of downtime. Oh yeah. It's really hard to get people to like get to the next thing or come back right away. And they all start talking to each other, which is cool. They want to network. Yeah, so getting people back from lunch. 

[00:28:43] Sarah: Yes, absolutely. Yes.

[00:28:45] Sarah: And then it's, you know, who kicks off the event? Who opens it? Who closes it? Who's going after lunch? Because we all know most people, what happens to them after lunch? They're tired. I'm fine. But a lot of people, they're tired after lunch. So you can't have a, you know, more mundane or quiet or low energy speaker after lunch.

[00:29:06] Sarah: You just can't. Because you'll lose everybody. So there's a lot that goes into the scheduling as well. And then there's things like, you know, who's going to MC it? Who's making announcements? Who's making sure that everybody knows where to be? And what time? And what to do and when to come back? And who's doing the intros for speakers?

[00:29:26] Sarah: Are you doing music for every speaker that comes up? If so, like, are they picking it? Are you picking it? What happens? Like there is so so so much that goes into it, and then after you like run the event then you got to break it all down if it's your equipment. Yeah, so then it's like pack it all up and put it away and make sure nothing gets damaged or lost and repack the car and unload it again, and like there is so much that goes Into it.

[00:29:53] Sarah: And I would say at this point, it's funny because Jason now can show up to DoorGrow Live and nine out of 10 times, he has no idea what's going to happen or when. 

[00:30:05] Sarah: I love it. 

[00:30:06] Sarah: I just call him up on stage and he's like, oh, okay, because, and I'm like, my team handle most of it. Talking on this go. 

[00:30:12] Jason: Right now. I still just have to make sure the tech stuff all works.

[00:30:15] Jason: But yeah, other than that, yeah, I don't. I don't have to do as much which is nice, but because it's stressful enough. It's stressful enough So yeah, so it's a lot. There's a lot that goes into it, but it's been worth it to have you know to see people's lives change to see people impacted. We've noticed there's some sort of magic that happens that when people come to something in person with us even if they've been a client for years, they start to get different results.

[00:30:40] Jason: They start to see things differently. They start to absorb all of our content, our information, our training material, our ideas more effectively. Everything just magnifies. There's something about in person. You can't get the same sort of benefit in your business. If you think, "all I need to do is read books and watch videos and show up to zoom calls to grow my business.

[00:31:04] Jason: Look, there's a lot of benefits in all of those things. I do all those things, but we still go to in person things. There's something different about in person that I don't know if it's the energy of being in the same space as the people you're learning from. If it's the group energy and that group mind that makes you able to like learn and faster.

[00:31:23] Jason: There's, but there's some, I don't know if maybe there's some quantum physical magic, magical stuff, but there's something different about it in person. It's happened too many times for me to like believe otherwise or to dismiss it. I've had too many clients that I've been working with for years, go to their first in person thing with us, and then they have some breakthrough. And I'm like what? And they tell me about it, and I'm like, "I've been teaching you that for years!" Like "I know but like but it's just hit differently."

[00:31:51] Jason: Yeah, "I just got it."

[00:31:52] Sarah: It hits different. It feels different and you just absorb things.

[00:31:57] Jason: And because we've seen this pattern, we've seen this pattern, we now make it part of our onboarding of every new client to come hang out with Sarah and I in person for a one day with usually a small cohort and like, and just get some things figured out and dialed in their business.

[00:32:14] Jason: And that's been magic for our business. Like it's been magic for our clients, magic for us. So we give them that in person experience early on. And then DoorGrow Live allows them to connect with others, which is there's just something different about the people at DoorGrow. The property managers at DoorGrow are different.

[00:32:30] Jason: I've been to a lot of conferences. A lot. Like in various industries, but especially in property management. And there's something different about the people that we attract and the clients that we attract. They're growth minded, they're positive active in mentalities, which means they're not like the skeptical, negative Nancy's that are grumpy about the industry and the business.

[00:32:51] Jason: That there's this positive growth minded, healthier sort of personality that we attract at DoorGrow. And maybe that says a little bit about who we are, because that's what I tried to be. But we attract amazing people and the connections people make, when you're connecting with other people that are like you, that are growth minded and you both share an industry and a share a business model, like it really helps you grow.

[00:33:15] Jason: Your business is the sum of the five property management business owners you as a business owner are most connected to or that you're most influenced by. So look at those property managers if you've got coaches or mentors, and they're not people that you really like that maybe you think they're smart, but you don't really want to be more like them, then maybe you're around the wrong people.

[00:33:34] Jason: Maybe you have the wrong coach, and I'm not the coach for everybody. Sarah's not the coach for everybody. But you should have a coach. Otherwise, you're selling yourself short if you're not accountable to anybody, you're definitely getting less results than you could or should be so come to DoorGrow Live come check us out. This DoorGrow Live,

[00:33:52] Jason: I want to open our playbooks up if Sarah lets me. I want to just reveal some really amazing stuff that only our clients get to see because I want to show anyone that shows up that's not part of our DoorGrow ecosystem. Our clients know the magic's there. We have more case studies or testimonials than anyone else in the industry, but if you're not a DoorGrow client, and you want to come to DoorGrow Live I'm going to give you some gifts for sure, some magic. We're going to make some significant changes in your business. They're going to help you make a lot more money a lot more easily and keep a lot more of your profit and so come hang out with us.

[00:34:29] Jason: You're not going to be disappointed for sure So there you go. 

[00:34:33] Sarah: Yeah. This event we've got some really awesome things planned. We can't let too much out of the bag at this point. But we always have some really great things planned and every event we do, like we always learn from it.

[00:34:46] Sarah: And we always do like a little team meeting afterwards and we get feedback from people. We're always looking to make it better and better. And this year is absolutely no exception to that. So the things that we have planned for this year, like I know that if you come to this event, it will change your business and it will change your life.

[00:35:12] Sarah: And I know that's a really bold statement and we're ready to back it. 

[00:35:16] Jason: Yeah. And maybe that could be a later podcast episode as we get closer to the event. But we can tell you a little bit more about what's going to be happening there, but hopefully this was interesting to get behind the scenes at all that goes into DoorGrow Live and we meet on this you know, we're talking about it weekly, monthly in our planning meetings, like and quarterly.

[00:35:37] Jason: And so, and that's it for today's episode. So if you are interested in that, go check it out at DoorGrowLive.Com and get your tickets and get things booked and get ready to come have an amazing experience in May at DoorGrow Live. So, and until next time to our mutual growth, bye everyone. 

Why did you decide to own a property management business instead of working for someone else? Did you just want money, or was it something deeper that drove you to become an entrepreneur?

In this episode of The Property Management Growth Show, industry growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Rich Walker, Founder of Quik! Forms to discuss adaptability as an entrepreneur and embracing change.

You’ll Learn

[01:55] Entrepreneurial Tendancies from a Young Age

[13:49] Reasons for Starting a Business

[20:08] Embracing Change and Facing Adversity

[30:31] The Power of In-Person Interaction

Quotables

“ You build something people want, they'll pay you for it.”

“There's no value in worry.”

“We think we want more money because we think it's going to give us more freedom and fulfillment, but we actually have less fulfillment and less freedom the more money we make.”

“If everybody thinks they're right, then my beliefs can be just as right.”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

TalkRoute Referral Link

Transcript

[00:00:00] Rich: What do you get when you have your best work?

[00:00:01] Rich: You get joy, you get fulfillment, you get productivity, you get engagement and you get the highest possible outcome from every person on your team. That's why I'm an entrepreneur more than anything else.

[00:00:11] Jason: All right. Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the property management growth show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, impact lives, help others, and you're interested in growing your business and life and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management, growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.

[00:01:13] Jason: And my guest today, I'm hanging out with a local Austinite, fellow friend that I know locally, CEO and co founder of Quik! Forms Processing, Rich Walker. Welcome Rich. 

[00:01:26] Rich: Hey everybody. Really an honor to be here. Jason. Thanks for having me on your show today. 

[00:01:30] Jason: Yeah, glad to have you.

[00:01:31] Jason: So you're doing some really cool stuff in business. And it's been great. We're in a mastermind locally together. And and you're going to be speaking to our audience at DoorGrow Live, you know, for those listening, make sure you get your tickets to DoorGrow Live. And you've written some books, like tell everybody, give us some background on Rich and how you kind of got into entrepreneurism and like, what you do.

[00:01:55] Rich: So, well, boy, this could be a long story or I'll try to keep it brief. Look, I grew up very poor. I was the product of a broken household, if you will. And I learned very early on that if you make something people want, they'll pay you for it. It's amazing. So I started my first business at age 12. I took a $300 investment and turned it into over $1,100 in one day at an event.

[00:02:18] Rich: And I was stunned. I was just struck with all these people handing me fistfuls of cash to buy my product. And I said, "wow, this is what I'm going to be. I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to build businesses."

[00:02:29] Jason: What was the product at age 12? 

[00:02:31] Rich: Oh, man. So I should show it to you. I'd have to go off screen to get it.

[00:02:35] Rich: But if you know what surgical tubing looks like stretchy latex tubing, and you know what a pen tip looks like, take the pen tip, shove it into the tube, tie a knot on the other end, and then get a garden hose with a cone shaped nozzle and it blows up a long tube of water. Like a squirt gun. Yeah, we called them water weenies.

[00:02:52] Rich: Yeah, I made those. Yeah! Yeah. 

[00:02:56] Rich: So, but imagine before the super soaker came out, what were your options? You had water balloons, hand grenades, you had squirt guns that went five feet, you had the hose stuck to the house and then water weenies, which squirted 30 feet and carried gallons of water on your back.

[00:03:13] Rich: So you are the king of the water fights. 

[00:03:15] Jason: Yeah, and you got a good workout. 

[00:03:18] Rich: Yeah, amazing. 

[00:03:19] Jason: How long were these tubes? How long would you cut them? 

[00:03:23] Rich: The longest cut length would be three feet, but when it filled up, it was nine feet. So imagine, draped around your neck, down to your toes, with water. 

[00:03:31] Jason: Nine feet of water filled hose.

[00:03:32] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:03:33] Rich: Yeah. So you were just a walking, like fire truck. 

[00:03:36] Jason: I just got back from funnel hacking live and Russell Brunson always shares a story of starting by selling potato guns online, like how to build potato guns. This sounds very reminiscent. 

[00:03:47] Rich: Yeah, very much. It was a really awesome experience. I mean, honestly, going from having nothing to having money in my hands.

[00:03:54] Rich: And actually I saved up money at age 12, just about to turn 13. I saved it until I bought my first car when I turned 16. 

[00:04:01] Jason: Wow. Wow. All right. So you ever heard of the marshmallow tests they give kids? I'm not sure. It's like, it's delayed gratification versus instant gratification, right? So they put a marshmallow in front of them and they make them wait with it.

[00:04:14] Jason: And they're like, you can eat this marshmallow, but if you don't eat it by the time I get back, then I'll give you two marshmallows or something like this. I think it's how it goes. And most kids fail. They're like, "Oh, I really want that." Or they'll put cookie or whatever it is, you know, showing you saving money, when there's like, you could buy video games as a kid, like whatever, right? That's some serious delayed gratification right there, so. 

[00:04:38] Rich: You know, Jason, I got to tell a bigger story here because really this is what happened at age eight, I went to my friend's house and my friend had a radio controlled car.

[00:04:46] Rich: It was a kit you had to build yourself, but it would drive 35 miles per hour off road. It was amazing. This is the eighties, right? Yeah. And I wanted that car so bad. And we were so poor. There was no way my parents were going to buy me a $300 car. And in today's money, that's like 12 to 1500 bucks. Okay. Yes.

[00:05:03] Rich: So that's not going to happen. So I started saving my money, birthday, Christmas money. I would sell candy around the neighborhood. I would rake leaves for a neighbor and make $2. Anything I could do, anything I could do to save money. It took me four years. To save up the $300. And that summer that I got introduced to water weenies was by my neighbor. He was a supplier to physicians. His son and I played all the time. And he came out and gave us these water weenies to play with, but then he took them back and all the other kids wanted one. So I was kind of observant and I said, "Hey, In your shed, I see a reel of tubing. Can I buy that from you?"

[00:05:36] Rich: It was like 25 feet of tubing. "He's like, okay, how much?" It was like 12 bucks or something. Ran home, grabbed the money out of my bank account, gave it to him, went home, started cutting links, destroyed every pen in my house and started selling. And within a day or two, I had sold $50 worth of stuff. So I went and bought another 25 feet and sold another $50 bucks.

[00:05:53] Rich: Then I went to summer camp and I rode my bike and squirted every kid I could find had 20 kids chasing me on my bike. And then I'd sell them all the water. So over that course of that summer, I got to the $300 mark and I bought the car. Now, my uncle saw all this behavior and said, "Rich next summer, I'm hosting fourth of July.

[00:06:10] Rich: You could have a booth and sell these water weenies there. Would you like to do that?" I'm like, "yeah, absolutely." Months and months go by, go through winter, go into spring, my mom reminds me of this opportunity. And I'm like, okay, so I go to my neighbor, "How much for a thousand feet of tubing?" "300 bucks."

[00:06:24] Rich: Guess what I don't have? I don't have 300 anymore. 

[00:06:27] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:06:27] Rich: So I said to him, "Hey, look, your son is about to have his birthday. Wouldn't it be cool if he had this RC car? He loves playing with it. Would you barter with me and trade me for the tubing?" And the guy's a saint. Honestly, I wish I could find him and say thank you because he did it.

[00:06:42] Rich: His son got a great car. I got the tubing. I wrote a letter to Scripto pen company and said, "Hey, I'm doing a project. I need some sample pen tips. Would you mind sending me some?" They sent me a box of 5,000 pen tips for free. 

[00:06:52] Jason: What? 

[00:06:53] Rich: No cost. And so then I had all the materials to put it together and showed up at 4th of July, started selling by 7am, sold out by 1pm.

[00:07:01] Rich: And this is why I said I had fist fulls of money. I had people at this, you know, long table. I had people out eight to 10 people deep lined up to buy these things. And it's all I could do is to take money and give them a water weenie. My pockets filled up with cash and my mom would pull the cash out of my pockets and put it in a safe box over and over again that day.

[00:07:18] Jason: What were you selling each one for 

[00:07:20] Rich: Anywhere from like $1.50-4.00 or something, depending on the length. 

[00:07:24] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:07:25] Rich: Yeah. 

[00:07:25] Jason: Okay. 

[00:07:26] Rich: It was such an incredible experience. And that's why I said, man, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. So I just knew that I was bitten and I had to do this and look, I'm age 50 now, my company that I own today, Quik! Just celebrated our 23rd anniversary, and I've started 10, about 10 different business ventures and companies since age 12. So I've always just had this desire to fulfill my own sense of freedom and creativity and serve people. Yeah. So yeah, that's really the genesis of it.

[00:07:55] Rich: Like you build something people want, they'll pay you for it. And it's an amazing thing. 

[00:07:59] Jason: I love it. You see a problem, you saw an opportunity. And lots of other people saw the problem. They just didn't see the opportunity. They're like, man, I would love that one of these. It's nice, you know, and you were able to fill that need.

[00:08:12] Jason: So that's a great story. Love that story. That's how you kind of got it like, you know, bit by the bug of entrepreneurism. 

[00:08:19] Rich: Yeah. Now, the Quik! company started because in the nineties, I worked at other companies that worked at Arthur Anderson, for example, and I learned technology, especially from like a backend perspective of big tech. How does it all work? How does it flow together? And I decided to get out of tech consulting late in the year 2000. 

[00:08:39] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:08:39] Rich: And in doing that, I really went back to my degree in college, which was finance and said, "I really love finance. Let me help people with their money." So I became a financial advisor.

[00:08:47] Jason: Okay. 

[00:08:48] Rich: And in doing that. You go out and get your licenses, you work really hard for all that, you work really hard to gain the trust and respect of your first client, and then they finally say, "yes, I will open an account with you," and guess what your reward is? Yeah, fine, you can make a commission that's a reward.

[00:09:01] Rich: No, you get to handwrite paperwork. And I thought, man, this sucks. I am not going to make $4 an hour handwriting paperwork for people. I used to charge $200 an hour as a consultant, so how do I fix this problem? And I decided to build software, because I was a technologist, that would fill out my forms. Jason, it was a hack.

[00:09:19] Rich: It was a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with fields overlaid on images. It was just a hack. It just made it work, but everybody around me for six months kept saying, "Rich, give me your software. I hate filling out forms," and I was in this quandary of, "wow, I have found a need. But I want to be a financial advisor. What do I do?" And after six months, I finally said, "okay, let's build the product." So we did our first install in February 11, 2002 and never looked back. I mean, we found out people really wanted this and it's changing people's lives. It was empowering them to do their best work, which is not paperwork. And today we manage a library of over 42,000 forms.

[00:09:57] Rich: And we generate over a million forms every month across wealth management industry, serving well over a hundred thousand financial professionals. 

[00:10:05] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:10:05] Rich: So yeah. Yeah. 

[00:10:07] Jason: That's awesome. Yeah. I had a short job. I worked for a while at Verizon, like in their business DSL tech support. Like I was an internet support guy and after every call, it was a call center, after every call that we did, we had to fill out this ridiculous form it just took so much time and we were measured on the time that we were unavailable between calls and how many calls we completed. And so I found some sort of like macro tool because there was only like three, maybe four types of tickets that we would do.

[00:10:40] Jason: It was always the same sort of challenges. But we had to fill out all of these fields of ridiculous, stupid stuff. And so I use this macro tool that basically if I type a certain thing, it would just spit out a whole bunch of other stuff and it would go tab from field and fill it all out. And so I set this up because I started to see these patterns.

[00:11:00] Jason: And so then I, similar to what you did I solved the problem for myself. So I built this thing that I could then just do this type of ticket, this type of ticket. And then there were other people on the floor and they're like, "man, I'm going to get fired. I can't do this. I can't do this fast enough."

[00:11:14] Jason: Well, so then I'm starting to help people. So now I'm like a virus on the floor and the managers didn't like me for some reason. Like my manager did not like that I was doing this. I don't know why. Because maybe he didn't come up with the idea. I don't know. Yeah. Then I'm starting to help other people so they don't get fired, and I'm showing, you know, other people on the floor, how to set this up and how to do this and giving them my formula and, you know, for the script language for how to do this. And they're able to close their tickets out like really fast. They're just like "bloop!", and it's like "vrrrrrr", and they're like, cool next.

[00:11:47] Jason: Right. And what was baffling to me at the time is that it was not seen as a positive by my superiors. It was seen as a problem and I'm like you are an idiot and this is where I kind of realized Like a lot of times, you know, you've heard of the Peter principle? Yeah. Which for those listening...

[00:12:09] Rich: You're at your highest level of mediocrity. 

[00:12:12] Jason: Or incompetence.

[00:12:13] Jason: Right? 

[00:12:14] Jason: And so, yeah, which means basically people get promoted because they're good at a certain level and then they get promoted again, just beyond their current capacity or ability to perform well. And now they're at a level where they are no longer able to intellectually maybe rise to the occasion or be good.

[00:12:32] Jason: And so businesses are just full or rife with all of these people that like, especially big organizations, cause I was at HP. You know, I just saw it everywhere. I always had idiots like above me is what it felt like that were telling me I couldn't do things or slowing me down and I'm like, "don't you see?"

[00:12:50] Jason: And then what would happen is months later, that idea that I was trying to push that they were fighting me on was their new idea. They're like, "I have this new idea." 

[00:13:01] Rich: What you're explaining is the real truth. And it took me a while to figure this out for why I'm an entrepreneur. 

[00:13:07] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:13:08] Rich: I want to be able to do my best work and anytime I've worked for others, I've been limited and held back.  

[00:13:14] Rich: So I really was seeking a way to empower myself to do my best work. And in my company, in our culture, it boils down to empowering others to do their best work. I want my team to do their best work. I want my vendors and my partners and my customers to all do their best work. Because what do you get when you have your best work?

[00:13:31] Rich: You get joy, you get fulfillment, you get productivity, you get engagement and you get the highest possible outcome from every person on your team. That's why I'm an entrepreneur more than anything else. I mean, yeah. Ooh, I'd like to make money. Oh, I want freedom. I want creativity, but honestly, at the core of it, how do I get to do my best?

[00:13:49] Jason: I love this. So some of you listening to this episode, you've heard me talk about my framework of the four reasons for starting a business. I call it the four reasons. And this is what makes us different than everyone else on the planet. And we're rare. Entrepreneurs are rare people. We are the minority.

[00:14:05] Jason: We feel like we're living on a planet as aliens a lot of times. We're like, "why doesn't everyone think this way?" It's super weird. So entrepreneurs, the reason we start businesses is we want four things. We think we want money, usually in the beginning. But what we really want is what money will give us.

[00:14:22] Jason: And that's these things. It's freedom. Well, first is fulfillment. The most important is fulfillment. We want to enjoy life, enjoy what we're doing, make a difference, whatever but we want fulfillment in whatever that means to us. And then second, we want freedom. We want autonomy. Usually in the beginning, we have, we start trying to start a business.

[00:14:40] Jason: We think we want more money because we think it's going to give us more freedom and fulfillment, but we actually have less fulfillment and less freedom the more money we make. And so then we start to wake up like, "Hey, this sucks. Like, how do I like be pickier about my clients or how do I change this?"

[00:14:56] Jason: You know? But fulfillment and freedom are one and two. Third, once we have those, we want contribution. We want to feel like we're making a difference, having an impact and we want to benefit other people. And that's what a business is designed to do, right? Solve real problems in the marketplace.

[00:15:10] Jason: It's contribution. If not, it's snake oil, right? It's taking people's money. So fourth, once we have fulfillment, freedom, contribution, the fourth is we need support. And that's why we build a business because we can't max out on fulfillment, freedom, contribution if we are wearing every hat and we're miserable.

[00:15:29] Jason: Yeah. Because we don't want to do everything. Not everything is fun for us. right? There's the pieces you love and there's pieces you just don't love, right? And that's true for every business owner, but we're all different. Like some of us love accounting. Some of us don't love accounting, right? Some of us love sales.

[00:15:44] Jason: Some of us don't love sales, right? Some of us love ops. Some of us are bad at ops, right? And so, there is though what I call the fifth reason. This is what makes everyone else different than us. We want this one too, but everyone else in the planet prioritizes this fifth reason over the first four.

[00:16:02] Jason: It's safety and security. Oh, right. Yeah. They want that. That's more important than freedom, fulfillment. They will give up freedom. You saw this during the pandemic. Most people were like, "forget your freedoms. I want to feel safe. Give me safety and security." Right. I remember here in, I was in North Austin. I went to Costco during the pandemic and masks were kind of optional, right? They were optional. And I'm walking around Costco without a mask and everyone else has masks on for the most part. And anyone that didn't have a mask, I was like, "Hey, do you own a business?" And they're like, "yeah." And we're looking at each other like we know like the world's gone fucking nuts. Like, what's going on? We had a knowing like, "yeah, everyone's crazy." 

[00:16:42] Rich: Man, I wish I'd asked that question. I would have met a lot more entrepreneurs that way. Because I was out there, no mask, any chance I got. Right. I mean, I didn't want confrontation with people.

[00:16:51] Jason: And for those listening, there's nothing wrong with this, right? We need both, right? Not everyone can be entrepreneurial. It would be a crazy world, right? We need people that are willing to work for us, right? We need both. And they want the four reasons too. Like nobody's going to say, "Oh, I don't want freedom." But they want safety and security first and that's most people on the planet.

[00:17:11] Jason: And so psychologically, entrepreneurs, we're just wired different. We will give up safety and security in order to have freedom and fulfillment. 

[00:17:20] Rich: I'll tell you how I did that, Jason. 

[00:17:21] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:17:22] Rich: So imagine, I'm a tech consultant charging $200 an hour. I'm making $350,000 a year. I'm age 24 or 25, driving my dream car.

[00:17:31] Rich: I have everything. Yeah. I go become a financial advisor and I make very little money. I mean, I had savings basically, and then I start the software company. I have no income. I literally say, "I'm going to start this company." I have zero income. I had no house, no wife, no kids. So, I mean, that made it easier.

[00:17:49] Rich: And for the first ... 

[00:17:51] Jason: people will say "you're nuts". They're already saying he's crazy. But every entrepreneur listening is like we get it. 

[00:17:55] Rich: No, that's what you do. I cashed out my 401k. I sold the dream car, cashed out any equity I had in that. I bought a cheaper car, et cetera.

[00:18:03] Rich: And then I said, "okay, I'm going to have my dream car back in a year or two." Yeah. In the first four years of my business, my income was $1,000 a month. I mean, I made $12,000 year for four years straight. And so here's the thing. A thousand dollars a month doesn't pay my rent. My rent was $1200 to $1500 during that time.

[00:18:21] Jason: Right. 

[00:18:22] Rich: So here's the question that you'd ask yourself. How did you sleep at night? And I'll tell you this one thing. Every time I paid rent on the first of the month, I actually did not know how I would have the money in 30 days to pay rent again, right? So how do you sleep at night? I slept great. It never bothered me.

[00:18:39] Rich: I didn't lose one minute of sleep over that financial burden. Okay. I just looked at it as that's another tool I've got to figure out how to make money with this. And there were things that happened. It's like sometimes a big credit card bill came through when somebody bought our software or sometimes I borrowed money off the credit card to pay the bill.

[00:18:58] Rich: It was just different things happen. And you know what, in those four years? I was never late once. My wife and I contrast. She could not do that. She just cannot live that way, she could never have that kind of risk profile for me. I was just like, "yeah, whatever. I'll figure it out every single time."

[00:19:13] Jason: So you trusted. You trusted yourself and maybe God, I don't know, but you trusted your ability to create, right? You knew you had confidence you could create money. 

[00:19:24] Rich: Yeah. And I learned that being poor. I mean, in college, I went to USC, one of the most expensive schools around, but I paid my own way to go there.

[00:19:33] Rich: And during college, there were so many weeks, I can't even count them, where I'd wake up on Monday with exactly $5 to my name. That's all the money I had access to. And I had to get to Friday before I got my paycheck and I had to pay for parking and food, et cetera. I was so scrappy. I would look at what ads were in the paper and I find people doing focus groups that would pay me $10 for 30 minutes of my time to go pretend to shop and pick products.

[00:19:58] Rich: So I'd go make an extra 10 bucks and now I had triple my money to get through the week. I did so many creative things. So I knew at that point, like, yeah, money is just a tool. We'll figure it out. We'll always make it work. So, you know, I want to bring this up because this is the thing, you know, you mentioned at the start of the show that I'm going to be at your event, the #DoorGrowShow, right?

[00:20:15] Rich: DoorGrow Live. Yes. Okay. Yeah. And what I'm going to talk about is one of my books and it's called, "It's My Life!". I'm going to hold it up for anybody watching. "It's My Life! I can have..." sorry, there's two books. "I can change if I want to." My other book's called "It's my life! I can have the job I want," but I'm going to talk about change. Because one of the questions inherent to this problem of how do you go through these hardships?

[00:20:38] Rich: How do you go through these struggles, which would stress most people out like crazy? Comes down to your ability to handle change. 

[00:20:46] Rich: And it starts with you. Adaptability. Yeah. Now, look, I was forced into it because. I'm 50, but I've moved 33 times in my life. I had moved 29 times by the time I was 32.

[00:20:58] Rich: Wow. 

[00:20:59] Rich: And I was forced to move as a kid. I had no choice about that. I was forced to make new friends. I was forced to go into new schools and new cities and new states. 

[00:21:06] Jason: Military family or...?

[00:21:08] Rich: No. Divorces. Job transfers, etc. 

[00:21:11] Jason: That's a lot of change, a lot of turmoil. Yeah. 

[00:21:14] Rich: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, really a very challenging childhood that I don't look back on with any negativity towards, but I was forced to learn how to change and adapt to change.

[00:21:25] Rich: And out of that, around age 12, I developed a methodology for how I could change myself and the behaviors and the feelings I had. Because I started to look at the world. This actually comes from religion. I mean, you brought up God. My father was a minister in a church when I was born, but it was very extreme. It was considered a cult.

[00:21:41] Rich: My stepfather was in the Catholic church, so we attended Catholic services. I lived in Salt Lake City, Utah. I've been to plenty of Mormon events, the LDS church. I know all about that. I've been part of other types of church. 

[00:21:53] Rich: I grew up Mormon actually. So I was exposed to all these different religions. And what I saw was everybody said they're right.

[00:22:01] Rich: And I'm not taking issue with that. I'm not trying to say one's better than the other, but just as an observation, if everybody thinks they're right, then my beliefs can be just as right. And that empowered me to say, "what do I want to believe about the world?" How do I want to choose beliefs that will help me be the best I can be?

[00:22:18] Rich: And simultaneously at age 12, my mom was going through a huge awakening in herself. She was reading books by Dr. Wayne Dyer and all sorts of self improvement books, because she wanted to get better. And she was sharing those lessons with my brother and I. So I was learning through osmosis. I was learning through observing my mom go through these changes, but I was also observing the world around me, and I realized I can make changes to myself and become better, which means I could have lower stress. So let's go all the way back to the story of how do I start a company with no money? How do I believe I don't have to be stressed out about the money? And it comes down to your core beliefs of what you actually believe about your ability to go figure it out or your ability to let it stress you out or what even stress means in your life.

[00:23:02] Rich: I'm sure you've talked about this with your group here. There's no value in worry. Like worrying about a problem, what does that actually get you? It gets you anxiety and stress. It doesn't solve the problem. It doesn't add value into your life. So therefore I looked at it and said, how do you not worry?

[00:23:19] Rich: How do you not stress out about things? So what I'm excited to share with your audience when I get up on stage is how to use my methodology to become more resilient, to accept change for what it is, to learn how to control the change so that you can be the person you want to become. And therefore you can go through the hardships, the challenges, the biggest potential failures or actual failures that you're going through in your business and in your life and win on the other side, because you become a better person through the whole thing.

[00:23:47] Jason: Love it. Yeah. I mean, running a business can be tough. It can be very hard. Entrepreneurs go through a lot of challenges. I often joke DoorGrow was built on thousands of failures, you know? But we have that hope and we keep moving forward. And so being resilient is essential.

[00:24:06] Jason: Being adaptable is essential. Otherwise it's just takes a toll. It takes a toll on our body. It takes a toll on our health. We don't make progress. We don't have as effective of decision making and there's like, if we're not in a state of worry, not in a state of stress, we make infinitely better decisions.

[00:24:24] Jason: Like decisions made from fear, decisions made from stress generally are almost never good decisions. So, and if you think about all the decisions we make on a daily basis in our own business, If you just have a healthy mindset, you will be at a very different place, even in a short period of time. And I've had periods of stagnancy.

[00:24:43] Jason: I've had periods of hardship and I've had periods of like dramatic growth. 

[00:24:47] Rich: Yeah. And transition. I love the graphic and I'm sure everybody's seen it where two guys are digging and one guy is giving up and the other guy keeps going and the diamonds are right there. The gold is right there. Okay. Right. The guy who gives up is one foot away from the gold and the guy who keeps digging hits it because he just went that one extra foot.

[00:25:07] Rich: And to me, that is that point of exasperation where you're saying, "Oh my gosh, this is the worst day of my life. The worst month of my life. This is so challenging. It's, everything's wrong. And you embrace the change and suddenly things change faster." Now you may not strike the gold that you want. You may not win the biggest account you want, but I mean, look, you can read the biography on Elon Musk with his story of SpaceX and Tesla, and he was betting the farm on both of them. He was down to two weeks of payroll, I think when NASA came in with a one and a half billion dollar check to fund the rocket boosters they wanted. Like he is at the absolute lowest point and boom, the greatest thing happens.

[00:25:42] Jason: You know, when we take these risks, they create great stories. And even if it doesn't work out, the risk, it still makes a great story. It does. Because we're going to figure it out. The one thing is if we're committed, if we're committed to getting the result, it's inevitable.

[00:25:56] Jason: It will eventually come. It might take a little longer, but yeah, if we're committed and man, like, yeah, he took some big risks. He was committed. 

[00:26:04] Rich: Yeah, but it comes back to you. I've met so many entrepreneurs who do stress out. They lose sleep. In fact, one of the most common things I hear from entrepreneurs is, "Hey, what makes you lose sleep at night?" Nothing. Honestly, my three year old makes me lose sleep, but losing business, man, it doesn't bother me in the same way that I think a lot of other people do. And that's because I know who I am. I know what my beliefs are and I've challenged myself to change the ones that don't work. 

[00:26:31] Rich: I'll give you one other example here, Jason, to think about, and again, this is not a judgment towards anybody.

[00:26:36] Rich: I was in an audience of entrepreneurs, man, I don't know, 12, 15 years ago. And the guy on stage said, "okay, everybody here, raise your hand. If you have ADHD," I was maybe one of two people who didn't raise their hands. I've never been diagnosed with ADHD and I refuse to accept the label of ADHD for whatever purpose the label means.

[00:26:55] Rich: What if though, what if ADHD is your superpower? And what if the label of ADHD of treating it with drugs and you can't stay focused and still is a negative by all the other aliens on this planet? Because you said as entrepreneurs, we feel alien. What if it's everybody else's assessment of you versus your own?

[00:27:12] Rich: What if your own assessment was your ADHD is actually your superpower? 

[00:27:16] Rich: Sure. You've got the ability to hyper focus. You've got the ability to like do something unique or exceptional. Yeah. 

[00:27:22] Rich: Or switch gears on 10 conversations in a day, because that's what happens during your day as an entrepreneur. 

[00:27:28] Jason: Yeah.

[00:27:28] Rich: Right. And adaptability. So I look at that again, going back to how I view your belief systems and my book on change, is that you can take something that a lot of people look at as, "Oh, that's harmful for our relationship or whatever. I say, no, I'm going to turn it into my superpower."

[00:27:44] Rich: And take a different view of it because it's you. It's not me. It's not my judgment of you. It's your own judgment of you. How do you want to be? Yeah, I'm excited to share this with everybody when we get up there. 

[00:27:55] Jason: Yeah, it'll be awesome to have you there. You know, the reason I'm having you come and other speakers that have nothing to do with property management, by the way, for the property managers, is I find that it's never really a business issue that's holding people back in business.

[00:28:09] Jason: And I mean, I've talked to thousands of property managers, I've coached hundreds. And when I dig in it's never that they're focusing too little time on their business that's the problem. It's always related to mindset, self belief. You know, that's really what's holding them back. And so I think this, this'll, this'll be really awesome.

[00:28:31] Jason: I'm really excited for you to benefit our clients that'll be at this event. And those of you that are not yet clients that are coming to DoorGrow Live, I think this'll be a game changer for them to just kind of shift their mindset a little bit and increase their resiliency. So, yeah, I'm excited for that.

[00:28:46] Rich: Yeah. I am equally excited because you said one of the four pillars is contribution. And I didn't write this book for my business. It has nothing to do with software and efficiency. I wrote this book because my sister and her husband at the time were at the beginning of a divorce and they were both coming to me independently to ask me questions and I'm helping them.

[00:29:04] Rich: And they both independently said, "Rich, you should write a book about this someday." And it was on Thanksgiving that year when they both tried to use me as a conduit to each other, where I said, "I'm fed up, I'm done." And honestly, Jason, I just spent the next whatever days until the 23rd of December writing the book.

[00:29:20] Rich: I stopped watching TV and it just flooded out of me. I never thought I'd write a book. I don't even like reading books. I listen. So I wrote the book before Christmas and then I hand bound it and gave it to them as a gift and it went nowhere. It was lost on them. 

[00:29:32] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:29:33] Rich: And then I realized, man, I've got this thing.

[00:29:35] Rich: I've got to get it out there to the world and help other people, because this is one of the ways I get to contribute in the world. Yeah. My business contributes too, and I love that, but at the core of who I am personally, I want to empower people to be their best version of themselves. Yeah. I can do that with the book.

[00:29:50] Rich: I can do that with the podcast I have. I can do that with the software that we generate. There's a lot of ways to have that effect. And that is my lightning rod. So when you ask me to come speak, it's an easy yes, because this is an opportunity for me to help others become their best version of themselves.

[00:30:06] Rich: Maybe by giving them a tool set that they can then use to implement for themselves and create the person they've always wanted to be, or they know is inside of them that's afraid to come out or just maybe just one behavioral change. I don't know. It's up to them. 

[00:30:19] Jason: I love books. I think books are awesome.

[00:30:21] Jason: I read lots and lots of books. I'm reading books all the time. Like I usually have like three or four books I'm reading at a time because maybe I am ADHD, but you know, I get bored of something and I then focus on something else or whatever. I love books. What I've noticed though, because I've gotten to be around a lot of the people that have written some of these books... I pay a lot of money to go to masterminds or events. Like I just got to see Tony Robbins at Funnel Hacking Live. It was really great. I learned some awesome stuff. Right. And I think there's some magic in being able to be around and be in the energy space of the person that is giving you this idea.

[00:30:58] Jason: It's not the same. Like being in person and doing stuff, I've noticed this weird thing that people absorb information different. They perceive it different. It's not the same as being on video like this. I've taught lots of people through video and over again, when they would come show up to DoorGrow Live or come in person, things would just click in a different way.

[00:31:16] Jason: And I started to call it, mentally I called it the 'real bubble.' I have to pierce this bubble that it's not real. I think our unconscious mind doesn't perceive this as real. 

[00:31:26] Rich: Right. 

[00:31:27] Jason: Right. But you and I met in person, so we know we're real people. So our unconscious mind is like, "Oh Rich and Jason. We're real people." So we know this, our brain knows this, but until I meet somebody, fist bump them, high five, give them a hug, whatever, like, and they see me in person, my clients don't get as big of results. 

[00:31:45] Rich: Yeah. 

[00:31:45] Jason: Their unconscious mind is somehow like "Oh, this is that digital universe or TV universe. That's not real. I don't know." So if they come and like experience this... even if you get his book, like get his book, but I'm excited for people to be in your energy field to experience you and for you to teach this and there's something you could say the same words that are exactly in your book, but people will absorb it differently.

[00:32:08] Jason: I've seen this over and over again, and they will get so much more out of this. That's why I'm excited to have you come present this. So. 

[00:32:14] Rich: Yeah, there's no replacing face to face. There's absolutely no replacement for the energy and the connection that's made when you're face to face. I 100 percent agree and I wish we could do more of it. So i'm glad for the event and the opportunity to do it in my hometown.

[00:32:29] Rich: It's great. 

[00:32:30] Jason: Yeah, it'd be an easy drive not too far. So yeah All right. So, cool. I'm really excited about this. So for those of you that are listening go to DoorGrowLive.Com get your tickets. This is different than other property management events. Property management events, usually people go to these conferences and they're really there to like hang out at the bar and escape their life and their problems.

[00:32:52] Jason: DoorGrow Live's different and you can go to the bar. There's bars at the Kalahari resort. You can do that and you can hang out with people. But people come to our event because they want to be around other people in that space of other people that are really growth minded. And that's who I attract in the industry.

[00:33:08] Jason: We have the most growth minded property management business owners. Like these are people that are focused on being a better person, a better husband, a better father, better wife, better parent, you know, whatever. Like, and they're focused on you know, taking care of their team, making a difference in the industry.

[00:33:24] Jason: And I really believe good property managers can change the world. They can have a massive ripple effect. They affect all their clients, the investors' lives. They positively impact the tenants' lives. They can have a big ripple effect. They can affect a lot of people. And that's exciting is inspiring for me to be able to, you know, Help benefit them and bring that to the table.

[00:33:44] Jason: So these are leaders. These are people that affect families. And so, you know, by you coming and presenting, I think there's definitely a ripple effect and a positive impact that can happen. So if you're a property manager listening and you don't care about any of that stuff, then just don't go to DoorGrow Live, because we don't want you there anyway.

[00:34:00] Jason: All right. So Rich, any quick tip that you could give to people before we wrap up our conversation and then how can people, you know, get ahold of you and, or you know, or whatever you want to plug. Floor's yours 

[00:34:12] Rich: I'm going to leave everybody with one of my core beliefs. That is an empowering one.

[00:34:17] Rich: And it's this: confidence is knowledge of yourself. We all want more confidence, right? 

[00:34:22] Rich: And the reason I call it knowledge of yourself is because you should be able to take confidence and apply it to any given situation. It's not a hundred percent confident all the time. It's confident about something you're doing.

[00:34:33] Rich: My typing speed's near a hundred words per minute. I have absolute confidence in my ability to type, for example, right? 

[00:34:39] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:34:40] Rich: My, my other skills may not be the same. So how do you build confidence? It's you build knowledge of yourself and it's a lot of what we've been talking about is your own personal growth and who you are and all that's going to lead to more confidence.

[00:34:53] Rich: So that's just one of the things I'll share. Best way to find me probably LinkedIn. I'm the Quik! Forms CEO and that's Q U I K. There is no C in the word 'quick' for my company. You could try to email me as well. [email protected]. You could spell it with a C because we own both domains, but yeah, if you reach out to me on LinkedIn, there's one thing you should do, send me a personalized note, tell me why you want to meet me because I'm very happy to meet you and share my network with you. But if you're trying to sell me and spam me, I don't answer those. So just give me a personal note and I'm very happy to talk to you. 

[00:35:23] Jason: Just say, "Hey, I heard about you on the DoorGrow podcast and you know, the property management growth podcast like..." 

[00:35:30] Rich: Yeah. And I'll look, I'll plug one little thing. I don't know how relevant it is to your audience, but my podcast is called The Customer Wins. And I talked to business leaders about how they help their customers win, how they overcome challenges of growth, how they create a really excellent customer experience.

[00:35:45] Rich: And about 20 percent of my guests come in with totally different perspectives. I had a custom suit broker on, I had a golf pro, I had a magician and the majority of people in the financial services space. But I'm telling you, there's a lot you can learn about building a better customer experience from listening to people talk about it and hear about it.

[00:36:03] Rich: So I've studied that a lot for several years. Like that's, it's a big deal to me. I mean, you have to, if you're running a coaching business, coaching businesses are generally high churn. Education businesses are really like a low engagement. Yeah. So I've had to figure a lot of things out to make this go really well, 

[00:36:19] Rich: so, yeah.

[00:36:20] Rich: Yeah. Well, I mean, I really don't care about how many subscribers or listens I get on my podcast. That's not what I care about. I want people to get value. Yeah. So if you get value from it, awesome. Let me know. Awesome. Very cool. 

[00:36:32] Jason: 110 words per minute. It's pretty fast. Do you type on QWERTY or did you change your keyboard?

[00:36:37] Rich: No, I type on a normal keyboard. At one point I was at 115. Right now I'm around 100. I bought a device called a Kara quarter, which is a totally different configuration where you can type about 300 words per minute, but I've yet to learn it new skill. I'm just not picking on yet. 

[00:36:51] Jason: So. I hear a lot of world typing speed records are set in Dvorak and I switched to Dvorak simply because my wrist started hurting when I was going through college.

[00:37:02] Jason: So I actually pop all the keys off all my keyboards and rearrange them into Dvorak. So I know I'm a nerd. So, and you just change the setting. On Mac books and Mac keyboards, it's like doing brain surgery. It'd be really careful, but for the geeks out there. Maybe you'd appreciate this, but it has the most commonly used vowels on the home row of the left hand and the most commonly used consonants on the home row of the right hand.

[00:37:27] Jason: Oh, that makes sense. And so world speed record. So, and it took me like a month to just get used to it. Like you would pick it up really fast. So how fast are you? I'm not that fast. I just did it because my wrists were hurting. I actually don't type that much. Honestly, you know, I'm like talking and drawing a lot more than I'm typing, but I'm probably faster than I would be with QWERTY.

[00:37:50] Jason: So I don't know. I've never really like done a speed test or, you know, typing test to see, but I don't think I'd beat you. That's my guess, your QWERTY handicap. So, cause QWERTY was designed to slow down typewriters. 

[00:38:04] Rich: Like the hammer strike colliding. Yeah. Of the old type that, yeah. So I'll leave you with a fun fact.

[00:38:11] Rich: The average typing speed in my company is about 85 words per minute. 

[00:38:14] Jason: Nice. Okay. It's pretty good. 

[00:38:15] Rich: Tell you there's people faster than me here. Yes. 

[00:38:18] Jason: Yeah. Cool. Well, Hey Rich, great to have you on here. Appreciate you hanging out with me and I'm excited to have you at DoorGrow Live. 

[00:38:25] Jason: My pleasure. And thank you for having me today, Jason.

[00:38:27] Jason: All right. So for those that are, you know, struggling with growth, you're wanting to figure out how to grow your property management business, or you're just getting stuck in the operational challenges. You're tired of telling your team all the time, thinking, "why won't they just think for themselves" and frustrated and you're dealing with operational systems challenges to get to that next level, reach out to us at DoorGrow.

[00:38:49] Jason: We might be able to change your life. So, go to DoorGrow. com. And if you'd like to join our free community and Facebook group and, you know, learn about us get access to you know, some free stuff, go to doorgrowclub.Com to join our community. And of course, go check out DoorGrowLive.Com, get your tickets.

[00:39:08] Jason: It's going to be in May and we would love to see there in person. And a little bit of that DoorGrow magic is going to change your life. We'll see you there. Bye everyone.

After working with property management business owners for over a decade, I’ve realized that the problems they are experiencing tend to be deeper than issues in the business…

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Sam Womack to discuss entrepreneurship, health, and how the two intertwine.

You’ll Learn

[01:57] How stress affects your health

[13:48] The impact of oxygen and proper relaxation

[17:40] The importance of being able to calm your nervous system

[26:10] More health expert insights

 

Tweetables “Everybody's doing the best they can with their current limited access to knowledge and resources.” “Don't beat yourself up for when you feel stressed out. Just make sure that before you continue that stress rollercoaster, like find some space to find some peace.” “You don't have to like beat all your competitors in a lot of instances, you just need to outlive them. You just need to outlast them.” “High performance isn't just how hard you push. It's about how well you recover and regulate.” Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

TalkRoute Referral Link

Transcript

[00:00:00] Sam: If you don't find time to balance your nervous system or don't work on implementing tools to balance your nervous system, then you are limiting yourself to lower performance in the short term and decreasing performance in the long term. 

[00:00:15] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the Property Management Growth Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager.

[00:00:37] Jason: So DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow.

[00:01:21] Jason: Now let's get into the show. Cool. 

[00:01:24] Jason: And I'm hanging out here with sam Womack. Sam, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:29] Sam: Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here. 

[00:01:31] Jason: Cool. So Sam we met at a local mastermind here in the Austin area, which is really cool. And for those that know that I run a mastermind for property managers, I also eat my own dog food and believe in getting coaching and learning and growth and everything else.

[00:01:52] Jason: And wanted to connect with some people locally and make some friends as well. So, Sam's one of those friends. So, Sam, welcome to the show. And why don't you give people a little bit of background on yourself and what you do and how you kind of. Got into running businesses and doing cool stuff.

[00:02:10] Sam: Yeah, no, thank you. First off, I don't do anything near as difficult as you guys. Managing property and tenants, I think is a feat to be held. And so props to all you guys out there crushing it in real estate. I cut my teeth in entrepreneurship starting at a young age. I was charging like 30 bucks an hour to teach old people how to use their computers, you know, tell their life story.

[00:02:29] Sam: They'd pay me 30 bucks an hour while they sat there and henpecked. It was pretty ingenious. Fast forward into later on in life when the pandemic hit the business that I was launching just disappeared overnight. The retail died, everything that I've been working on, all the investors pulled out.

[00:02:44] Sam: I was left with a few grand in my name and a baby on the way, living in a studio apartment with my wife. Had to figure something out, went into supply distribution, and a couple years later, fast forward, I did about 20 million in revenue as a solopreneur distributing gloves, masks, COVID test kits, etc.

[00:03:01] Sam: But throughout that time, I dealt with like a really serious health issue. Stress had kind of overwhelmed me and I ended up with an autoimmune condition in my brain and through the journey of healing that autoimmune condition that was presenting as like early onset Alzheimer's, it was kind of a mystery.

[00:03:16] Sam: They didn't know what was happening. I developed a deep passion for finding the root of health and the root of optimization and root of performance. A lot of that came through working with my mom, who's a preeminent physician focusing on anti aging and regenerative science here in Austin.

[00:03:31] Sam: And so I typed her handwritten notes for a couple years and followed the patient journeys of the elite because she has a concierge practice for the elite here in Austin. And as I saw what drove change in their lives, I learned a lot about the human psyche and I learned a lot about how each of our individual unique biologies are very different when it comes to what we choose to do to find optimization or find optimal health. And so now I have a passion for bringing that to the masses. And as the pandemic waned, and as I healed, I became passionate about different physics based modalities and the different systems in the body and how to reach optimal performance.

[00:04:07] Sam: And now I have a wellness center here in Austin that focuses on performance optimization, as well as maximizing human potential and transitioning the human experience as well as a research Institute called Human Beaming Research Institute, where we present the stories of the truth about health and where we help bring true health science to light so that people understand what's actually true, not truth that's manufactured by special interests, but truth that's founded in science.

[00:04:36] Jason: Got it. Yeah. I mean, there's kind of a battle right now, right? We're like seeing it all play out live real time. Oh yeah. Got this whole make America healthy movement. We've got RFK, Bobby like and it seems like there's some major disruptions that are kind of happening right now and there's a battle and we're waking up.

[00:04:58] Jason: A lot of people are waking up that hey, you know, big food, big pharma, you know, big government are not in favor of us being healthy for some reason, which is kind of scary. So yes, yeah kind of waking up to this and I don't know, maybe we're all biohackers now. I don't know. 

[00:05:17] Sam: Yeah. No, I you're absolutely right I think that humanity as a whole is kind of done drinking the Kool Aid when it comes to what we've been told is the truth.

[00:05:27] Sam: And, you know —

[00:05:29] Jason: Yeah. Cause the Kool Aid has like glyphosate in it and like, also like molds and mycotoxins, like it's got bad stuff all over it. And I'm not saying actual Kool Aid. This is metaphorical people. Metaphorically. 

[00:05:42] Sam: Yes. And when you look at like where, you know, just briefly to when you follow the money and you see that, like, from a business standpoint, one of the largest mergers and acquisitions in history, if you bring it to current dollar value was when big tobacco bought the food industry and you look at when that transition happened and you see what happened to our food supply and you know, we're fish in a barrel that they're just taking their pick of right now when it comes to what we have that's societally acceptable to put in our bodies and societally acceptable to engage in, in terms of social interaction, et cetera.

[00:06:15] Sam: And it, yeah. Kind of funnels us down this path of high stress, which kind of takes us to today's topic with the nervous system. But yeah, I don't don't know if you have anything else you want to discuss before we dive in. 

[00:06:25] Jason: Well, I want to point out. So Sam really sharp guy, as you can tell already, Sam's going to be a speaker at our DoorGrow Live conference.

[00:06:35] Jason: And he's going to talk about some really cool stuff that we're very holistic at DoorGrow. And so I know that in coaching entrepreneurs and having talked to thousands of property management business owners and coaching hundreds of clients that it's never really the business or that they're spending too little time in their business that's keeping them from succeeding in business. It's everything else, especially health, especially their relationships, especially their marriage. Like these things create a lot of friction for entrepreneurs And they've got a lot going on. You're not really talking about property management when you come to DoorGrow Live, but I do believe it will be a game changer for them to be able to perform more, be able to get more out of their business, be able to get more out of life, which is the goal of having a business, right?

[00:07:20] Jason: That's more freedom and more fulfillment. So, yeah. So if you have not yet gone to doorgrowlive.Com and gotten your tickets. Go do that right now. Go get your tickets and make sure you're at that event. Come hang out with us in North Austin at round rock at the Kalahari resort. It's going to be awesome.

[00:07:36] Jason: All right. Shameless plug completed. Now, Sam, let's get into talking about the topic at hand. 

[00:07:43] Sam: Yeah, I know. And thank you. And I'm really excited to get on stage and speak and I'm going to save some nuggets for the stage. Won't give it all the way here. So I'm really excited about that and helping you guys understand what the true root of your full potential actually is and not from some woo woo space, but actually understanding like the fundamental simple science beneath high performance and beneath fulfillment in life because it really does break down to a very simple equation. One of the key factors is a molecule, and that molecule is actually oxygen.

[00:08:13] Sam: And when your brain is in a high stress state you would think that your body would give it more oxygen under high stress, right? But under high stress, you actually have vasoconstriction. Your blood pressure rises, blood gets pumped to your extremities, you got to get away from that proverbial bear, right?

[00:08:29] Sam: But for y'all, that bear is the constant wave of tenant complaints, the constant wave of, you know, economic factors interest rate shifting stuff like that And so you have this like constant bear chasing you and if you're always in that state of fight or flight your brain is patterned to operate on survival mechanisms and a lower amount of oxygen and so And then we get this like male, sometimes male and female, but we get this, like this almost masculine energy of like, let's go conquer and do this high stress, high action push, push, push coffee, stimulant.

[00:09:03] Sam: And we're really performing with our hands tied behind our back at that point, because our brain has less oxygen in it. And when you look at the other side of the nervous system, which is our parasympathetic nervous system you have this increase of oxygen in the brain. which actually raises serotonin instead of relying on that dopamine cortisol roller coaster, right?

[00:09:24] Sam: And so, at the base of this is oxygen, which is bringing us life, which is creating ATP, cellular energy. And, to put it simply, If you don't find time to balance your nervous system or don't work on implementing tools to balance your nervous system, then you are limiting yourself to lower performance in the short term and decreasing performance in the long term.

[00:09:48] Sam: Higher relying on stimulants, higher amounts of of just stress and cortisol and dopamine reliance in the long term, which takes away from your ability to connect with others, to find community, to find that real fulfillment that comes in life. 

[00:10:02] Jason: And so what you're saying is we shouldn't just overdose on coffee that here in the U. S. probably has mold in it and makes you not feel good and have to pee way too much. And then not, you know, take care of ourselves in breathing effectively and getting too little sleep, too much hustle, too much stress. 

[00:10:23] Sam: Yeah. 

[00:10:24] Jason: Okay. 

[00:10:24] Sam: Yeah, we can get addicted to that pattern because stress actually can feel really good.

[00:10:30] Sam: When you have dopamine augmenting that cortisol, right? Without dopamine, cortisol feels really crappy. You know, you look at high anxiety. You look at that restlessness feeling where you don't feel good. You're on edge. That's when your cortisol's high and your dopamine is kind of low because you've been exhausting the dopamine stores by just pushing it.

[00:10:50] Sam: Dopamine is supposed to be a short term reward to get us out of the stress back into a parasympathetic state. Dopamine was never meant to be the consistent ongoing reward. Because, like, think about it for survival, right? If you're, you know, trying to get away from the bear, and you're running, that needs to somewhat feel good, in order to get you through that stress.

[00:11:11] Sam: So dopamine kicks in when oxygen lowers in the brain. And then, when you get out of the stress, you find that parasympathetic state again, you calm down, oxygen rises in the brain, serotonin rises, which is that more deeper, long term fulfilling chemical, that actually leads to creativity as well. But our society tells us that love is dopamine. It tells us that success is dopamine. It tells us achievement is dopamine. It gives us these dopamine triggers for all of the cultural hierarchy and the cultural validation, that external validation when you do something to succeed and you show it off, that's a dopamine trigger. Social media is a trigger. So all of these things, society is structured in a way that says, "dopamine's the reward. Now go buy shit, right?" Like almost all the financial economy is driven surrounding dopamine, which is a ultimate losing game because you guys all know that it doesn't really provide that end fulfillment, but since it feels good, we're kind of stuck in that loop. And so. What I want to help illuminate is where true fulfillment can be found and help with some kind of practical tools and a practical understanding of this foundational science so that when you're looking to perform at your best, you can give yourself a break and allow yourself to relax.

[00:12:22] Sam: You know, before you have that next cup of coffee to keep yourself going, take some deep breaths, find some space to relax. Don't worry that your brain doesn't feel a hundred percent on. And give yourself some space to allow that peace in knowing that you're raising oxygen in the brain. You're opening oxygenation to areas that are going to drive creativity, that are going to allow for connection, that are going to allow for more presence in your body.

[00:12:44] Sam: You'll be a different person in the home. You'll be a different person towards yourself. And so these are critical components of understanding the power of the nervous system when it relates to performance. Because high performance isn't just how hard you push. It's about how well you recover and regulate, and it's about how you create that balance that pushes for longevity and pushes for long term endurance and strength.

[00:13:09] Sam: Because if you want to succeed and grow your business 5x, 10x, 100x, you need endurance. Sympathetic, nervous system tone, high stress does not create endurance. It's short term bursts, you crash out or you keep hitting the stimulants. And it keeps you in this narrow window of potential. You find that parasympathetic, you find that relaxation, you get creativity going in your brain, you get higher oxygenation in your brain, you're shifting gene expression towards longevity.

[00:13:33] Sam: So it's a pretty powerful tool. And most people think, "oh, I don't want to meditate, you know, or I don't want to relax", or they don't feel safe when they're calm. And it's something to just work on shifting your perspective on because there's true power in that state of peace. 

[00:13:48] Jason: A while back, I read this book.

[00:13:50] Jason: I don't know if you heard of this. It's called the Oxygen Advantage. It's by a guy named Patrick Mckeown and it's got a forward by Dr. Joseph Mercola, but it's interesting because basically the book is about how he trains athletes to breathe through their nose while working out instead of their mouth, which like exercises the lungs and increases lung capacity.

[00:14:15] Jason: But if they're, if we're constantly operating with our mouth open and working with our mouth open, we actually decrease our lung capacity. And so, athletes are just burning out really quickly and they don't have the ability or the capacity to, you know, absorb as much oxygen. So like working out those muscles, like breathing through your nose, you know, is something that talks about, but that's interesting that when we're not calm, we're not getting enough oxygen that we're not recovering, we're not regulating our stress, our body probably starts to eat itself a little bit and, you know, and then we get addicted to dopamine and you know, in business, most businesses fail and really you don't have to like beat all your competitors in a lot of instances, you just need to outlive them. You just need to outlast them. And that, that endurance aspect. And so I think, you know, I think we're going to go through some financial turmoil in the marketplace. Things are probably going to get worse before it gets better as we're cleaning up all this mess financially that is going on in the government.

[00:15:18] Jason: And the U S dollar is like, I think it's been going down from its original value down and down as they've been stripping value out of it through inflation and giving that money to who knows who. And so. I think there's going to be a big transition. It's going to get really stressful.

[00:15:33] Jason: And I think the businesses that are just able to last through this transition and endure and they're focused on the long game are the ones that are going to win. 

[00:15:43] Sam: Absolutely. 

[00:15:44] Jason: And there's going to be a lot just eaten up. 

[00:15:46] Sam: Yeah. And if you don't allow that perspective of what you just explained about business to apply to your own self and your health, you know, what got you here won't get you there.

[00:15:54] Sam: And if you want to sustain and succeed through the turmoil, then you need to adapt. And when you have a high stress state, you actually lose BDNF expression in the brain brain neurotropic factor and brain derived neurotropic factor. And that is our adaptability aspect and factor in our brain. And it literally decreases its efficiency, the higher, the more chronically stressed we are.

[00:16:18] Sam: And so it's super important. You guys can look up BDNF and understand its role with oxygenation in the brain. And so fundamentally, you know, the more oxygenated your brain is, the greater your access to intuition, memory, and high level thinking. And those are key components to succeeding in business.

[00:16:33] Sam: And when you are in a state of constant survival mode, constant reactivity, constant push, hustle, you lose that space to develop creative longterm solutions. You lose that space to be able to get that spark of inspiration on how to pivot around the corner and see around that corner or do something a little differently than what other people are doing.

[00:16:55] Sam: And that's why even you look at like Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, like they would love to access that like state estate, the theta state just akin to sleep. They would put like a lead ball in their hand over a metal plate. And then as they were falling asleep. It would drop and the ball would hit the metal plate wake them up and they'd have their pen and their quill and ink on the table with a candle and then they'd have their formula or problems they were trying to solve and then they'd go to solving it because that was deep parasympathetic state where that creativity was opened up brain oxygenation was opened up. And me, just like so many of y'all out there, like, I'm like, man, I do not like meditating, I do not like calming down, like slowing down. 

[00:17:31] Jason: I mean, especially if we're addicted to dopamine and adrenaline, like slowing down feels like a waste of time. 

[00:17:39] Sam: Oh yeah, it does. And so you, most of you have heard of dopamine, serotonin, and adrenaline slash norepinephrine, right? That's only 20 percent of our neurotransmitters.

[00:17:51] Sam: Okay. What's the other 80 percent glutamate and GABA, right? Glutamate is the exitory neurotransmitter. So that's what animates our body. Think glutamate animate, but then GABA is what balances that. So GABA helps slow things down, shut things down. And it's kind of interesting that popular culture slash society, like you don't hear much about GABA.

[00:18:13] Sam: And the reason why is because they're selling us GABA in the form of alcohol. Alcohol is a huge GABA receptor connector, so it just hits the GABA and you feel kind of calm and relaxed. And so people love alcohol to be social because you want to be in a slight more parasympathetic state to be social, right?

[00:18:30] Sam: Because high stress doesn't lead to— 

[00:18:32] Jason: What about scrolling on social media? 

[00:18:33] Sam: Social media is going to be hitting dopamine, not so much the GABA. But scrolling social media is going to be giving dopamine, new information. Ooh, new information. I learned something new, like boom, like that constant external input stimulus.

[00:18:45] Sam: But when you look at the importance of GABA and you understand that a lot of us aren't making it on our own, which is why we're staying in such a high stress state all day. Yeah. And then we take a GABAergic, like GABA or a benzo or some weed or something that, that can hit that, that GABA receptor instead of making our own endogenous GABA.

[00:19:02] Sam: And that's what happens when you're in a parasympathetic state is your body is creating its own GABA to balance out the brain. And that's what drove me to developing a suite of tools called Peace on Demand that I have at my wellness center that are physics based modalities that drop you into that parasympathetic state without sitting there fighting against your brain and trying to force yourself to meditate.

[00:19:21] Sam: And then also with hyperbaric oxygen therapy, that's another tool that induces a parasympathetic state over the course of the treatment. And so I found tools because my brain, I had a hard time controlling with the autoimmune disease that I had and how stressed and on fire my brain was, I had a lot of difficulty finding that space, but without those tools, you can still utilize things like breath work, even if it's just longer exhale than the time you're inhaling or like four seconds in, you know, hold for a little bit and then eight seconds out or seven seconds out.

[00:19:48] Sam: That, that's just like the simplest form of breath work to kind of activate the vagus nerve and slow down that that nervous system and get you into a more parasympathetic state but it's really interesting when you see that some of the most creative people and the most successful people, they're not super high strung. At a certain point, you'll see a lot of successful people that are high strung. Push, push hustle.

[00:20:10] Sam: But then you go to that next level. You look at like the Elon's of the world, or, you know, so these people are on that next level. You watch them speak. They're calm. They have this, you know, they go hype on at times to like reach certain goal. But then they also have that balance. So the key is balance.

[00:20:26] Sam: Don't beat yourself up for when you feel stressed out. Just make sure that before you continue that stress rollercoaster, like find some space to find some peace, do some breathing, take a pause, give yourself that chance to take a break. That'll start developing some resiliency in your nervous system so that you don't burn out.

[00:20:42] Jason: Yeah, it does seem like really high performers are highly adaptable to, you know, situations. So they move and adapt quickly. It seems like they are able to maintain some calm, but they also are really quick thinkers, like their thinking seems to be faster than normal. I notice for me, I get really frustrated with team members when they're not—

[00:21:05] Jason: I'm like, "come on, this is super quick. Like, look how fast I can do this." And I'm like, "keep up." And so that becomes a little bit of a frustration. I'm like, why is everybody slow? I saw this really interesting thing. My son sent me this and he's really into football. And I guess there's some quarterbacks that are now training with VR.

[00:21:23] Jason: Playing the game in VR and but they're doing it at 1. 5 speed. And so they're getting used to everything being fast and they've adapted to that. So then when they go and play, it feels like everything's in slow motion. And I was like, wait a sec. I listen to telegram messages at two speed. I listened to audio books at two, between 1.8 to two speed. Like, so my brain is probably more adapted to speed. 

[00:21:49] Sam: Yes. 

[00:21:50] Jason: And and so I'm able to process, I was just hanging out with somebody who has a lot more money than me, who runs, who's the CEO of Real, Sharran Srivatsaa. And he talks really fast and he thinks really fast. Like this guy is sharp.

[00:22:03] Jason: And I'm like, how does he move so fast? You know? But also and he doesn't seem like stressed out or anything. One of the things I've noticed, maybe like sparks this GABA sort of thing is just for me, reading? Just reading, actually reading not like high speed audiobooks, but sitting down with a book and processing information, my body's in a calm state. I feel a really deep calm where I'm in a flow sort of state reading and absorbing and processing information. So I found that can be a really good tool for me.

[00:22:34] Jason: Sarah and I go do your peace on demand thing, which is just awesome. And a game changer. It's really been helpful for Sarah. It's kind of, I compare it to doing a float session, having a really good float session which doesn't happen every time you do a float session, but it happens every time you do Peace on Demand and you don't have to get wet and naked, and nothing gets in your eyes or ears on accident sometimes and stings.

[00:22:54] Jason: So that's nice. The other thing I've noticed is just walking. So I went and did EMDR therapy for a while, for like a year with a therapist, bilateral stimulation, both sides of the brain is the concept. And then I noticed like, well, walking is bilateral stimulation. And so that's like a free, very cheap version of EMDR therapy is just to go on walks.

[00:23:14] Jason: And rather than running, which is like, Hey, stress response. I found walking is very calming, especially if I'm really stressed. If I go for a walk, it kind of signals to my body, "Hey, you're okay. You're not being chased by a saber tooth tiger right now." So your fight or flight, calm down. So those are the things that work for me.

[00:23:32] Jason: I don't know, but those are great tools. I don't know. 

[00:23:35] Sam: Yeah. So what those are doing are like, you mentioned a keyword there and that's safe, right? And so you're creating these environments. One, you're reading a book, gaining new knowledge, and you're not cramming the book in a stressed out state to try to memorize it for a test, right? Which so much of us get programmed in school at an early age, that like reading means like, focus hard and stress out over what you're reading.

[00:23:56] Sam: But if you allow yourself to relax into that flow state, and you mentioned flow state as well, flow doesn't happen when you're in super high stress state. Some people We'll try to say, "Oh yeah, I'm in flow" because they've got like dopamine coursing and cortisol coursing and 

[00:24:10] Jason: they're like manic and going crazy. 

[00:24:12] Sam: Yeah, exactly.

[00:24:13] Jason: They're busy, but they're not productive. 

[00:24:15] Sam: Yeah. And when you get productive and when you feel like you're going fast and your team isn't responding fast enough, like you have that adaptability, you have that BDNF that's really efficient in your brain because you practice going in and out of these states and you spend a lot of time in this flow and in this GABA balanced state Where you're not hyper stressed out and one one thing that also on a biochemistry level explains some of this is: in a sympathetic nervous system response, your body is trying to find as much glucose as possible to burn glucose for fast quick energy, which creates oxidative stress on the body, which creates inflammation. And then your body has to like go clear out all the junk but it doesn't care that it's creating a bunch of junk to clear out, because it's trying to help you survive short term.

[00:24:59] Sam: When you're in a parasympathetic state, you're looking at a— 

[00:25:02] Jason: Does it make you crave sugar then? 

[00:25:03] Sam: Yeah, so high stress makes you crave sugar. Whereas parasympathetic state, you're on a more fat burning metabolism. You're not creating as much oxidative stress. You're like expressing longevity genes. You're expressing anti inflammatory genes.

[00:25:16] Sam: Your body literally shifts into almost a different state, not just mentally, but biophysically and biochemistry wise all throughout your body. You adapt based on the nervous system state that you allow. And that's where it does come down to personal responsibility to make the choice to start practicing finding this state that will empower so much more potential for your life than that narrow band of, you know, survival programming and high stress thinking.

[00:25:46] Sam: And then it's better for your health longterm too, because you're not just compounding oxidative stress nonstop and then needing those negative inflammatory inputs to make your dopamine stay high. And you can just find that peace. And then you'll find a much higher level of performance and that flow state will start just happening naturally constantly, which is what's been happening for Jason as he's been practicing these things as well.

[00:26:08] Jason: Got it. Okay. Very cool. So little teaser, what are you going to talk about a little bit at DoorGrow Live that will be revelatory or helpful for people that might be a little bit stressed in their business or are wanting to take their performance to the next level? And I just, I want to point out, the difference I've noticed just in clients doing time studies and things like this.

[00:26:32] Jason: Some of my clients will, we can see in their time study that they, it takes them in the latter half of the day, like the afternoon, an hour to do stuff that takes them 10 minutes in the morning. They're just, they're running out of brain chemicals. They're running out of like, what are neurotransmitter chemicals that they produce while sleeping?

[00:26:51] Jason: They're now no longer productive and efficient, even though they're working really hard and they're really busy. And so, so yeah, maybe you could tease a little bit. What could we talk about there that might optimize their productivity so that they could actually feel superhuman and get two to three times the amount of output with the same amount of work or stress or effort?

[00:27:14] Sam: Yeah, so we're going to go into a little bit more detail on some other aspects of the foundations of performance. So today we focused on nervous system, which is key. But. Controlling our nervous system isn't just as easy as thinking about it. There's some environmental factors. There's some lifestyle choices we can make. Often, we have a really hard time making those changes due to the, those well worn grooves, like, you know, skis on a slope that are really hard to get out of. And so I'm going to help with some simple truths that you'll understand and make it a lot easier to start making small shifts that will create massive change and that don't have to be stressful or induce anxiety or feel hard. It'll actually feel easy. So I'm going to help you understand some fundamental truths about your biology and That will unlock unlimited potential. 

[00:28:03] Jason: Yeah, because I think every entrepreneur listening, myself included, I'm sure you as well, have been in those time periods where you feel like you're working so hard and you're investing so much time and energy, and you're going nowhere like it feels like you're just treading water and you're burning yourself out and you're like, "why am I not adding hundreds of doors? Why am I not growing my business? Why am I not getting ahead? Why am I seeing idiots get further along than me?" You know, like, " why is this not working for me?" And and I think that all plays into that like that. Everything you're talking about plays into that. 

[00:28:41] Sam: You'll find yourself having permission to make some changes and the permission is a key aspect of that courage and that bravery to choose something different to focus on something different.

[00:28:56] Sam: I mean, we all hear where you, where your attention goes, your focus grows, you know, and what you focus on is what you create, you know, all these things. What does that fundamentally and literally mean when it comes to the way we choose our life experience? And what can we create when our choices change and how can we be empowered to make those choices?

[00:29:16] Sam: Those are some of the more intricate topics that we'll discuss. 

[00:29:19] Jason: Got it. Almost like shifting from feeling like, "Hey, I'm giving up something or sacrificing in some way that in actuality, you're getting more." 

[00:29:30] Sam: Oh, so much more. Exactly. So much more. Yeah. Cool. 

[00:29:34] Jason: So. Those of you listening, I'm guessing you're growth oriented, growth minded.

[00:29:39] Jason: You want to get more. Come to DoorGrow Live. Come hear Sam talk. So cool. Sam, appreciate you coming here on the #DoorGrowShow. If people are hanging out in Austin or curious about what you're up to, how can they find you? Peace on Demand. Tell them about your stuff and how people might be able to follow you or get in touch.

[00:29:58] Sam: Yeah. So we have a small wellness center here. It's a private, you know, high touch concierge space, very comfortable here in Austin. And it's open for business by appointment only but just go to beamhyperbarics.Com and you can book an appointment. If you want to reach out to me I am Sam Womack.

[00:30:15] Sam: On Instagram or you can send a message through the website. Easier website to remember is beam.do B E A M dot D O. And yeah, just reach out, come hang out. You don't even have to buy something to come in. Just hit me up. We'll make sure that I'm around and we can sit on the couch in the back and talk life.

[00:30:34] Jason: All right. Awesome, Sam. Appreciate you coming on and excited to have you at DoorGrow Live. 

[00:30:40] Sam: Yeah. I'm excited as well. Looking forward to it. I love what you're doing. And I think the steps that you're taking to help empower people beyond just showing them tactics and strategies, but helping them live a more fulfilled and empowered life.

[00:30:50] Sam: That's what it's all about. So thank you for that work you're doing. 

[00:30:53] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. We've just noticed like we can give them all the right tactics and strategies, but if they don't incorporate the other things, it's kind of like you're trying to run a race up the mountain with rocks in your backpack, like boulders, you know, it's just, it's so much more efficient if we get everything else in alignment and usually it's never the business piece that's really what's holding them back. It's not the tactics it's mindset. It's their mental health. It's like everything else, their family. Yeah. So we're excited to bring you and some others that are going to just unlock a lot of things for our clients and for non clients that are coming to DoorGrow Live.

[00:31:32] Jason: So appreciate you. 

[00:31:34] Sam: Yeah, you bet. Thank you. And just one last thing is you guys are all doing such a great job too. Like, don't think of this as any type of a criticism or, "Oh, you're not doing good enough." Like you're doing such an excellent job with the tools that you were programmed with the upbringings you had with the environment you're in.

[00:31:48] Sam: So like, just look at it as a chance to learn something new and be empowered by it. But you guys are all doing such a great job. And so keep it up. 

[00:31:56] Jason: Yeah, everybody's doing the best they can with their current limited access to knowledge and resources that they put out. Whatever. All right, cool. Awesome, Sam. I'll let you go. All right. So, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're wanting to add doors or increase your profit or lower your stress, reach out to us at DoorGrow we would love to help you grow and scale your business. You can check us out at DoorGrow. com. And if you're wanting to join our free community, get a little bit more info about us, hang out with some other property managers, go to DoorGrow club. com to join our free community and connect with other property managers and get some cool free stuff. And until next time to our mutual growth, everybody. Hope you all crush it. Bye everyone.

[00:32:38] 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 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 business owner, how do you find the best people to build an effective sales team?

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow Podcast, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Bob Lachance, founder of REVA Global, to talk about how you can utilize virtual assistants for lead generation and growth.

You’ll Learn

[01:22] Identifying a Need in the Real Estate Industry

[08:53] How to Utilize VAs in Your Business

[14:35] Creating a Hiring System in Your Business

[19:30] Using VAs for Lead Generation 

Tweetables “When marketing consistently goes out, what we find is all those leads end up piling up.” “Over 70% of all sales never happen on the first touch.” “People want to do business with people they see, feel, touch, and like.” “Property management can definitely be death by a thousand cuts.” Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

TalkRoute Referral Link

Transcript

[00:00:00] Bob: Virtual assistants are a big part of anyone's business. In my opinion today, I think you got to start looking at that because small businesses, a lot of times, especially when we start, we are on a tight budget. 

[00:00:12] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities daily variety unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow.

[00:01:10] Jason: Now let's get into the show. And today's guest is Bob. Do you say Lachance? 

[00:01:18] Jason: Lachance. Yep. Lachance. 

[00:01:20] Jason: I nailed it. All right. So Bob, great to have you on the show. And, Bob, you are helping people discover the top marketing channels that can maximize lead generation when working with VAs. And so we're going to chat a bit about that today before we get into that, tell everybody a little bit about you, how you got into entrepreneurism and what led you to what you're doing now. 

[00:01:43] Bob: Yeah. So right now I'll just start right now. I have a real estate investment company as well. And I have a virtual assistant staffing company, so I use my VAs in my own business. So I have a rental portfolio as well as a buy sell fix flip company here in Connecticut, doing a couple of different states, but I started back about 20, 21 years ago now back in 2004.

[00:02:06] Bob: I played professional hockey prior to that for eight years and then got into real estate. And you know, from real estate, helped start an education program while I was, you know, working on properties. I did a lot of, you know, fixed flip wholesaling, all that kind of good stuff. This is, again, I'm dating myself, but this is back in 2004.

[00:02:25] Bob: And through the process, when I helped start this education company there was a huge need in the industry, just like you, right? You see a need out there. And I'm a lot like you on that side of it, helping people and figuring out, you know, where they could. Create passive income or income in general.

[00:02:42] Bob: So, during the coaching program, while I was in it, I realized there was a huge need. Majority of the students that I coached didn't have the time to actually put into their real estate business because they were either working part time or full time. They just needed to, you know, they needed help. And for years, upon years, I was looking for a solution for that.

[00:03:01] Bob: Whether it was a product I didn't know back then, again, this is going back from 2007 to 2013. I didn't know there was any services out there, like what virtual assistants were. And then I got introduced back in 2013 what a virtual assistant was. You know what this could help my business So I hired my first one and then light bulb went on like, you know what we could turn this into a business I could take the back end of what it helps create which is the real estate education company And our students could use it to help them grow their business help scale help, you know, get your time and freedom back. So launched it in 2014 and then fast forward today you know 10 years later i've been in business for a while and I also have like I said my real estate investment company 

[00:03:45] Jason: Nice.

[00:03:46] Jason: Nice. All right. And so let's get into the topic at hand. So, we're going to talk a little bit about leveraging virtual assistants. And so how did you kind of start doing this yourself? 

[00:03:58] Bob: Yeah well, when I first got into this, like I said I door knocked first, we didn't have the opportunity to have, you know, virtual assistants do some outbound stuff.

[00:04:07] Bob: And I didn't understand, you know, I didn't understand what outsourcing was when I first started. It was just me. I had an individual who was my business partner back in the day, but first year I door knocked. I went from door to door, individuals that were behind on payments. So it wasn't the easiest job in the world, but it allowed you to understand how to build a business from ground up.

[00:04:29] Bob: I think that was very important back then. So nowadays you can have virtual assistants do that, whether it's you know, cold calling, whether it's responding to direct mail, whether it's text messaging, whether it's social media, whether it's going out to, you know, Facebook marketplace and going right direct to seller, you also have rarely used now Craigslist, of course, but there's different ways to acquire and use your virtual assistant to do that. So that's just, again, a long and short. 

[00:04:54] Jason: So go ahead and tell people a little bit about your company and what you help people do. And I'm really curious because this is usually a difficult thing for business owners to outsource.

[00:05:05] Jason: Usually they'll outsource some of the lowest level stuff, and it's usually not towards growth, lead generation, outreach, stuff like that. Those pieces can be really difficult to get dialed in or to do effectively. And so, tell us a little bit about REVA global? Okay. Yeah. 

[00:05:22] Bob: So, you know, like I said, we started back in 2014.

[00:05:26] Bob: Like I said, I've been doing this for a long time and just to fast forward to what that looks like today and working with property managers, because obviously the individuals that are on your podcast here, I'll speak to them. And I know, you know, many people that also buy and hold also probably do fix and flip or also may wholesale, but it's kind of the same concept, but there's a lot of different tasks within it that virtual assistants can do.

[00:05:50] Bob: So what I did is I broke up all the stuff that our VA is doing in my own business because you know, many individuals that are listening to this will relate to a company like ours because like I said, we have a real estate investment company, but we also use our VA's which I think is pretty cool. I think Nowadays, it's very important as a service provider like myself to use it to make sure it works so I think that's a pretty unique thing that we actually have. But what we do, we have virtual assistants that acquire, we call them like a department of acquisition. So if you're looking for leads, you could do cold calling, you do text blasting, you could do lead management. You know, lead management, a lot of us, I'm just like, you will have all these leads in your database, but if you don't get ahold of them the first time, your marketing is going to consistently go out. So when marketing consistently goes out, what we find is all those leads end up piling up. And if you try to reach out to them the first time, you know you have a very small percentage that are actually going to pick up the phone. Right? So you need somebody then that will continue to follow up on those leads.

[00:06:57] Bob: And a national statistic is over 70% of all sales never happen on the first touch, right? So you have to continue. And I think that's probably 90 or 95 percent nowadays. So that's what we find in our office. And I know a lot of our clients say the same thing. So that number could change a little bit depending on what you read, but our experience in our office is over 90%.

[00:07:21] Bob: So what I mean by that is the first touch, whether it's direct mail call or a cold call, whatever you do for direct mail or whatever you do for marketing, that first touch will not equate to a contract, so you're going to have somebody that's continuing to follow up with those individuals. Very important.

[00:07:39] Bob: I wish I would have understood that stat when I first started real estate. But again, you know, you learn over time. Another stuff. If you look at other tasks as well, that works very well is marketing. Right social media management because you look at any type of business if you don't have marketing It's very difficult brand awareness, right people want to do business with people they see, feel, touch, and like so you need to make sure that you're out there You're out in the public's eye.

[00:08:05] Bob: I think that's very important. I know you guys do a great job of that Jason on the marketing side of always being out there because I see in a lot of different places everywhere I'm looking online. So whoever's doing your stuff man, great job. So you're doing a fantastic job on that side of it. And then you go into leasing so if we look at property management you know driving leads is one thing, but you also have to, you know, close them.

[00:08:27] Bob: So if it's you, me, or whoever's the one on the phone locking up those deals, it then goes to once you own them, you got leasing, you got move in, move out, you have collection, you have evictions, you have maintenance, you have accounts receivable, you have accounts payable, bookkeeping, accounting etc that fall underneath that property management umbrella, that virtual assistants are phenomenal to actually take on those tasks for you. 

[00:08:52] Jason: Got it. Yeah. Yeah. So what's the typical process for somebody that could use some help from a company like yours? How do you engage them?

[00:09:01] Jason: What's onboarding like? How does that work? 

[00:09:03] Bob: I think for anybody who's looking to scale or looking to just get help in their business. You know, here in Connecticut, it's pretty interesting because if you're looking to hire someone in house, you start looking at what's going on with the world and what's going on with the economy in state of Connecticut, minimum wage is up to $15.69.

[00:09:24] Bob: So when you start looking at that I know in my area, if I try to hire someone at minimum wage, they don't have a four year college degree. That's just not the highest level individual that you'd want working in your office. And so now you start looking at those things and what's happening around the country.

[00:09:42] Bob: Virtual assistants are very are a big part of anyone's business. In my opinion today, I think you got to start looking at that because small businesses, a lot of times, especially when we start, we are on a tight budget. Right. And so for us to start to scale or start to grow or start to hire, we really need to look at what's going out, meaning out of our pocket.

[00:10:04] Bob: So it's very important. So they first look at number one, what can we afford as small business owners? If we look at that number, now we start looking at what tasks in our business do not put money in our pocket. Right? And if you look in your world, meaning the property management world, it is a lot of the tasks like leasing, like taking calls from tenants, move in, move outs, eviction process when you're calling attorneys back and forth. What does that look like? There's just a lot of back and forth, right? Maintenance concerns. You get those all the time and those are the things that burn up your time. Your phone doesn't stop ringing.

[00:10:44] Bob: So if your husband or wife wants to go on vacation with you and your phone doesn't stop ringing. That's going to put a lot of stress and a lot of challenges in your personal life to where, especially when you continue to grow. You have to put more systems and processes in your business. You know, if you had one house, that's one headache.

[00:11:02] Bob: You had two, that's two headaches. You have a hundred, you have a hundred potential headaches that if you don't want to take those headaches on yourself, it's always good to have somebody else take those headaches before it gets to you. 

[00:11:15] Jason: Yeah. Property management can definitely be death by a thousand cuts.

[00:11:18] Bob: Yep. 

[00:11:18] Jason: Yep. And if you get it really well dialed in though, yeah, it can be a really great residual income business model. 

[00:11:25] Bob: So Very good. Very good. Well, two sides of it, right? You buy, right? You have an equity play there, right? And if you don't have to deal with the headache, you get the positive income, you get tax advantages, things like that.

[00:11:36] Bob: So, I mean, I'm a huge advocate of buying and holding and property management because over time, the more, like you said, the more properties you actually hold, the bigger your income grows. 

[00:11:48] Jason: Nice. Yeah. Cool. So, so I love this. There's lots of low level tasks. It does get really expensive trying to afford staff and team members and you don't want the cheapest or lowest level or worst people.

[00:12:02] Jason: You know, in the United States representing your business. And so, sometimes you can get people at a fraction of the price point that have a lot more education that are a lot better. And so when you, any of the roles that are able to be done virtually, you open yourself up to a global marketplace rather than just your local city.

[00:12:22] Jason: And so, yeah, so there's definitely advantages. So my entire team are virtual and I've got team members in various areas, Canada, Philippines. Egypt gosh, I don't know where else like all over the place and I've hired people over the past and just about everywhere. So yeah. And so, and so I'm not limited, so I'm able to just go find the best and I'm able to figure out, okay what can kind of fit into our budget and what can we afford in order to do that.

[00:12:49] Bob: Right. And to your point, to get back to what that looks like, I mean, anyone in this world could go out and go source for their own candidates. You know, we set up a very unique system process. We have a whole sourcing and recruiting team. All my virtual assistants are in the Philippines. We set up a sourcing and recruiting team out of the Philippines, so they're Looking through, you know, thousands of resumes every single month sifting through and we're getting the best of those Resumes that come in as soon as they pass then they go through an interview process.

[00:13:22] Bob: They pass the interview process They go to our training team and they train for about a month on various tasks property management tasks lead generation tasks, etc And then once they actually get to the end of that stage, they do another test and a lot of individuals do not pass our testing phase. And that's a positive thing because, you know, that's a way to kind of weed out the individuals that wouldn't make it, yeah, very good.

[00:13:48] Bob: So, after that goes to our placements team and our placements team, it's kind of like match. com. They look at exactly what you're, you know, what the tasks are. And we do DISC profiling, things like that, and predictive index. And we look at the tasks that they're good at, and we match them exactly up with the client and the tasks that they're looking for.

[00:14:05] Bob: So for instance, if someone's looking for a bookkeeper, you're not going to give them a profile that's a sales profile, right? You're going to, you're going to give them the correct profile. You put them together, they go through an interview process, and they pick the best candidate that fits within them so after that, it goes to our operations team. We have what we call a client service manager that helps manage the relationship between you and your va, so it's very streamlined.

[00:14:27] Bob: You know, we tried every different business model there is out there and the model that we have right now seems to be the best model. 

[00:14:34] Jason: Nice. Yeah, I always recommend if you're a property manager like watching this or listening if you don't have a really solid hiring process you have not like tested embedded and experimented with, then the best initial way to do hiring is to leverage other companies' hiring processes. Go and work with a company and there's lots of different companies I've worked with over the years to get people on my team, and then eventually we've built a really good process internally, but In the beginning, I do think every business eventually needs their own hiring system, but if you don't have a great robust hiring system that you can get candidates consistently, that you know are a good culture fit, a good skill fit for the role, a good personality fit for the role then you need to go leverage somebody else's hiring system.

[00:15:20] Jason: So I would highly recommend, especially if you're going to dabble with VAs, especially in the Philippines or any other area, that you want to not be dealing with all the riff raff and the challenges and everything else. You want to have some help with this. So I highly recommend you leverage somebody else's hiring system. And they're going to help you not waste as much time and money for sure. 

[00:15:46] Bob: And that's one of the things that's a great very great point because when you're first starting out or you're smaller. The best thing to do is learn off of others, right?

[00:15:55] Bob: It's you'll walk through a company like mine. You say, "wow, what a great system." You know what? Document what we do and then implement it in your own business if you start growing. I think that is a fantastic idea, Jason, for that. Because, you know, you look at the biggest companies in the world.

[00:16:09] Bob: They didn't just, you know, start being the biggest companies in the world or that, you know, it doesn't, you don't have to be the biggest, but they learned from somebody and they started implementing and they tested, you don't always get it right the first time. But after a while you will hone in and get that right.

[00:16:24] Bob: So I 100 percent agree whether it's with our company or anybody else. Like I said, anyone could do anything themselves. It all depends on what you need help with at the beginning. 

[00:16:34] Jason: Yeah. And it also depends on how long do you want to suck until you figure it out. 

[00:16:40] Bob: That's true. 

[00:16:41] Jason: Like so if you want to collapse time, I highly recommend. Because I know when I started experimenting with hiring in the Philippines. Like there's just things you don't even think to ask like we had to ask like where are you accessing the internet?

[00:16:53] Jason: Is this like at a cafe at your home? Is it reliable? What kind of computer do you have? You know, we needed to be able to you know there's just so many little quality controls we had to implement in order to figure out if they would be a good candidate, I mean, I've had team members in the Philippines with chickens going off constantly in the background and roosters crowing and like all sorts of stuff and their internet going up and down and so you know, there's there's a lot of quality controls that I think need to be put in place because it's not America. We have a little bit more stability in our infrastructure and in our internet connections and everything else.

[00:17:29] Jason: And so, and then, you know, it helps to have somebody that manages the relationship like your company, because a lot of times, in that culture, they can be a little bit shy, I think at times, or a little bit nervous about displeasing their employer or giving honest feedback. And so they tend to ghost or disappear.

[00:17:49] Jason: People have talked about people in the Philippines doing this. And so having somebody manage that relationship as a liaison can help improve the results that you're getting from team members. And but the cost savings are awesome. I mean, it's like a third to a half of what you would get and you can get college educated people, you get people that have like lots and lots of experience and skill, and they are able to be paid very well for their area.

[00:18:14] Jason: And for you, it's seems like a steal. So. 

[00:18:17] Bob: And that's one of the things that we pride ourselves on. I mean, you nailed it. You touched upon all of that. You know, we make sure there's backup. We make sure there's the right internet connection, the right computer system, etc. So to your point that is definitely something for everyone listening to this to look at because the vetting process, that's what I found the most tiring. When I first hired my first VA, I got it wrong a lot, to be honest with you. And I didn't ask any of those questions. And then it's kind of funny to talk about the rooster. That happened to me. And that was before I actually owned the company. And then I started my company. That's one of the things I'm like, all right, we have to listen for, right?

[00:18:52] Bob: What's your background, what's your surrounding, right to your point. And then you start learning over time. And then the more interviews you go on, the more stuff you learn, right? Like you said, you don't learn or you don't know all this stuff until you actually go through the process. And I think it's important for you to understand if you're going to do this, know that you're going to have a lot of pain up front when you hire at the beginning, right? And then you work with a company like mine and you'll realize you didn't go through that pain, but then you want to go hire someone. And then you decide to then throw your hat in the ring and do this yourself.

[00:19:25] Bob: 100%. The questions to ask, just like Jason said up front, those are some of the things to look at. 

[00:19:30] Jason: You know, based on the stuff that you said, I there's a lot of. Property management targeted, you know, VA companies leveraging talent in the Philippines, but it seems like one of the things you brought up that seems to be unique to what you guys do that's different than most of the others, or maybe all of them is the focus on client acquisition, lead gen, and on the sales side of things.

[00:19:53] Jason: Most are usually focused on trying to find VAs that are more like executive assistants or that are going to do tasks and be told what to do rather than people that you can trust to be the initial connection and face of your business. 

[00:20:08] Bob: You know what it's interesting, again, it's interesting you say that because I've been in this business for about 21 years, real estate investing.

[00:20:14] Bob: And we realized over time that If you don't have, you talk about acquisition and lead generation, if you don't have leads for any of our businesses, we are going to struggle to make ends meet, right? So you have to figure out a way that's going to drive in leads to your business. I mean, I know for me, I'll just give you a perfect example.

[00:20:32] Bob: When I door knocked, I went door to door to door every day from 10 a. m. to 3 p. m. But when I go home, I'd get that list and I would skip trace it back in the day You'd use 401. com white pages, and I would look for the best possible phone number for that individual then I would call. So when I got home, I would skip trace then I'll call until seven at night until I had to eat dinner with the family. But over time, I was beat up.

[00:20:55] Bob: I don't recommend doing that anymore. You don't have to do that anymore because you can hand over those tasks over to a virtual assistant. And they're the ones that are going to be doing the outreach for you. And again, I do recommend you should try it because you'll realize you know, open your mind and understand that outsourcing that task will really give your energy back and bring your success up.

[00:21:16] Bob: You may feel, well, I don't think anyone could do that task better than me. We all said, I know you said it before, Jason, I've said it. We all feel that way. And if you think about it, if they do 80 percent as good as you, that's a huge win. Now you get to do other tasks. That's going to drive business and revenue to your business.

[00:21:36] Jason: Even if they do it half as well as you, but they're getting. You know, half the result and you're able to hire two or three of them and not do that work. Like it's easily time and money well spent. So it's consistency, right? 

[00:21:48] Bob: It's all the consistency. If you have something, a task that gets on a consistent manner, consistent basis every single day, you will get results by the end of the week.

[00:21:58] Jason: Yeah. So what are kind of SLA you know, you know, what do you sort of think are the metrics or KPIs for as an appointment setter or somebody trying to help, you know, maybe reaching out directly to owners or maybe reaching out to schedule, I don't know, appointments with real estate agents to build referral relationships.

[00:22:17] Jason: How many calls should they make a day? If this is their full time gig and how many appointments do you think they should be booking? 

[00:22:22] Bob: Well, it depends. So if you have, so for instance, if you have a, you know, triple line dialer, as an example, it depends if you're, you know, calling just on a, you know, on your phone and just dial like this, but there's a lot of very good technology out there.

[00:22:36] Bob: You got mojo dialer, you have things like that actually are very good. You may have a company that you refer, Jason, that you could tell everyone but you're probably calling if you're full time, anywhere between 400 and 600 dials using that dialer, not manual dialing. You're probably going to hit about a hundred, 150 if you're manually dialing.

[00:22:57] Bob: And that's a day. Yeah. But if you have a triple line dialer, you're going to hit on average 400 to 600 and this is just what I've seen through the years that I've been doing this. You may have a technology that burns through a thousand calls and then you're going to be listening to me saying, well, Bob, you're a hundred percent wrong.

[00:23:13] Bob: I'm just telling you what I see on a daily basis and what comes out of, you know, mine and my client's offices. 

[00:23:19] Jason: I think yeah, even if they're doing it manually, if they can get a hundred to two hundred calls a day and get two appointments booked a day, like, so they're getting roughly about 10 a week.

[00:23:27] Jason: Like that's a solid result for an appointment setter. 

[00:23:31] Bob: That's a win. That's a win. You're looking at, if you're looking for, so we call them ITS's in our office, interested to sell. I know other people call it different, but that's what we look for. Same exact thing. One to two per day per VA.

[00:23:44] Jason: Nice. Yeah, very cool. And those listening, I'm sure all of you would love to have one or two appointments booked for you per day, and that would fill up a nice little chunk of your time and help you close some deals. So, yeah. 

[00:23:57] Bob: Especially on the buy and hold side Jason. It's a lot easier to look at your numbers.

[00:24:03] Bob: And I know you have a formula that you guys look at to make sure the rent and you know, what the interest rates are today, et cetera, et cetera, whatever financing you have, but it is easier on the buy and hold side to fit within your buy box, right? Rather than having to go at, you know, 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 percent of the value.

[00:24:20] Bob: When you fund it out and then try to resell it. So it's a different kind of mindset. So you're very fortunate if you're going to buy and hold your buy box is usually different than somebody who's either trying to wholesale or fix and flip. 

[00:24:32] Jason: Got it. So we've probably got some property management business owners listening to this.

[00:24:37] Jason: And for some reason, maybe they're just crazy and they have not yet worked with DoorGrow yet, but they're like, Hey, I would like to grow, add some doors and maybe have somebody do some calls and reach out to Bob. How could they get in touch with you and how can they initiate a conversation? 

[00:24:54] Bob: Well, you can check us out on our all of our social, of course, but REVA Global. R-E-V-A Global. com. If you have any specific questions, obviously for you, you could just reach me direct at [email protected]. 

[00:25:07] Jason: Awesome. Hey Bob, thanks for coming on the show. Any parting words for entrepreneurs that are struggling, they've never hired an assistant yet they, even if they've built out part of their team or an entire team already, which is ludicrous to me, but what would you say to them?

[00:25:22] Bob: Well, I would say number one, get started, of course, but number two, I would say you got to set up your processes and systems and get them done consistently because if you just get success here. And then you stop doing it. Real estate's a long game. You know, like I said, I started this 21 years ago and I wish I knew what I knew now back then.

[00:25:43] Bob: I would start buying properties back then because right now I'd be retired with thousands of doors and rental income of a thousand doors. But I started a little bit later. 

[00:25:54] Jason: Hey, Bob, we appreciate you coming and hanging out with me on the DoorGrow show today. And I'm excited to see if you helped maybe some of our clients listening or some of the people let me know what results they get and maybe we'll have you come back on.

[00:26:07] Bob: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. 

[00:26:08] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur, you're struggling to add doors, you're struggling to figure out how to grow your business. We want to help you. We want to support you. Reach out to us at DoorGrow. com. You can also join our free community at DoorGrow club. com. Go there. Answer the questions. We reject 60 to 70 percent of applicants. It's just for property management business owners And if you get inside, we'll give you some free stuff that'll help you out and help out your business. So that's it for today until next time to our mutual growth I'm, Jason Hull, and I hope you crush it.

[00:26:40] Jason: Bye, everybody.

[00:26:40] 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 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.

In a world where your potential clients are constantly inundated with marketing content, how do you create trust and ensure your property management business sticks out?

In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management expert Jason Hull sits down with Dan Lievens, Founder of Share One, to talk about the benefits of collecting and utilizing client testimonial videos.

You’ll Learn

[01:56] Getting Started as an Entrepreneur

[08:41] The Impact of Social Poof and Positive Reviews

[15:39] How to Ask Your Clients for Video Testimonials

[24:53] Handling Objections and Retaining Clients

Tweetables “Marketing is always evolving as well. Like it's not like you learn to do it once and then you're done forever.” “If I say it, no one believes it because it's my business, but if my clients say it, that's the ultimate social proof.” “The ability to be able to create human connection in any marketing or any business, I think is absolutely critical today.” “A lot of people think, "Well I have a skill in doing something. Maybe I could start a business doing that thing," but the skill is the technician-level work.” Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

TalkRoute Referral Link

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dan: Even if you have a solid business model, like property management, for example, which is obviously needed you know, how do you communicate that?

[00:00:06] Dan: How do you attract the right people? And so it's a constant exercise of being able to put yourself in a position of your customers. 

[00:00:15] Jason: 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. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management, growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. All right. My guest today is Dan Lievens. Dan, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:23] Dan: So glad to be here and looking forward to meeting your amazing community here. Thank you. 

[00:01:29] Jason: Awesome. So Dan and I, we met at a local mastermind in the Austin area, which is really cool because I need more friends and I was like, how can I meet some? I'm in all these different masterminds, but I'm like you're traveling all over the US I'm like, I don't get to hang out with any of these people that often. So yeah, so I joined a local one and there's some really cool people in that group, which is really awesome.

[00:01:53] Jason: So Dan's one of them and Dan, why don't you give us a little bit of background on yourself as an entrepreneur and then we'll get into what you do. 

[00:02:02] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So, this is actually my 12th business and in a variety of different industries from technology to health and wellness.

[00:02:12] Dan: And my last big venture was opening up coworking facilities in the Philadelphia area. So I was one of the first people to open coworking facilities there and basically catering to startups and small businesses. And we very quickly became a business incubator and a business accelerator and supporting, you know, small startups and getting going right?

[00:02:35] Dan: And what I noticed pretty quickly was there is a pretty high rate of failure, and the rate of failure was primarily due to not necessarily the idea of being bad but more the lack of the ability to communicate the value proposition. So that's when I kind of pivoted and said, "Hey, how can I continue growing my impact and helping these folks?"

[00:02:56] Dan: That's when I started getting into marketing, really helping them be able to communicate a little bit better in terms of why they do what they do and really meeting the clients where they're at. And so we started getting into video production and pre pandemic, we had a huge video studio with audience, live audiences and all sorts of recording stuff.

[00:03:18] Dan: And then the pandemic hit and that's when we kind of realized that, "Hey, at the end of the day, yes, fancy videos are good to have, but what's really going to help people move the needle is social proof. So how can we create a service for businesses to be able to leverage social proof, in other words, video or testimonials basically, to give consumers exactly what they're looking for?"

[00:03:42] Dan: So if you're in a market to, you know, rent an apartment or to buy something somewhere, the first thing you do is you look at reviews and So that's how Share One began is really being able to help businesses capture legitimate social proof to grow their businesses. 

[00:04:00] Jason: Yeah, awesome. Business can be tough. And like you're saying, there's a lot of good ideas out there, or there's a lot of people that think they have good ideas and you know, I've noticed not everybody tests those ideas. They just, they think the idea is so good, they're like, "everybody else has to love it." And they're surprised when nobody else has the same taste as them. You know? Other people don't love it. Or there's so many pieces that go into it kind of like the book The E Myth Revisited, a lot of people think, "Well I have a skill in doing something. Maybe I could start a business doing that thing," but the skill is the technician level work. Usually like "I can bake a cake, so maybe I should start a bakery business," you know? And then they're like, "Oh, accounting, marketing, sales, prospecting, like all the details, inventory, all the stuff besides baking a cake is where they get hung up on and they get frustrated.

[00:04:59] Jason: And then there's just people that are just really bad marketers. They just don't know how to get the message across. Sometimes you run into the opposite problem though, right? Like I've had coaches and people I've worked with that were really great marketers, but their stuff wasn't super great.

[00:05:14] Jason: I've had that situation happen as well. But even if they were great marketers and their stuff wasn't great, they still were making money... unfortunately.

[00:05:25] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. You know, most entrepreneurs, you know, me included, we find a passion, we find a purpose and we come up with some kind of a amazing technology or whatever that may be.

[00:05:35] Dan: And then, you know, our personality is just jump in and do it, you know. And it's so valuable now to really kind of take a step back and understand, you know, what the consumer wants and it goes beyond that. I think it really goes into, you know, even if you have a solid business model, like property management, for example, which is obviously needed you know, how do you communicate that?

[00:05:58] Dan: How do you attract the right people? And so it's a constant exercise of being able to put yourself in a position of your customers. Right. And then even as time changes as AI comes in, which hopefully we can talk about a little bit today the landscape changes and consumer behavior patterns changes and what people are looking for changes as well.

[00:06:18] Dan: So to, to have that finger on the pulse of, "Hey, what are my prospects actually thinking? What's going through their head?" Is a constant exercise that I think every single entrepreneur needs to do. And then from that perspective, it's like, okay, how do I reverse engineer what's in their mind?

[00:06:34] Dan: How do I meet them where they are? Create the language and then slowly kind of invite them into the product and service that you're offering. 

[00:06:41] Jason: Yeah. Marketing is always evolving as well. Like it's not like you learn to do it once and then you're done forever. Right? Like what I did to grow DoorGrow in the beginning doesn't work anymore.

[00:06:53] Jason: Right? Some of the things that we were doing, like I had LinkedIn automation that was able to generate profile views. And then people would look at the profile view and go, "Oh!" And it's like "somebody viewed your profile." So they go look at mine, which I had set up like a sales page and then I was getting messages and then I would message them, "Hey..." I was getting friend requests or whatever you call it, connections on LinkedIn.

[00:07:16] Jason: And then I would send them a message. "What prompted you to reach out?" And then they started clamping down on how many views you could generate a day. And like, then the automation, like, and eventually that whole mechanism pretty much died, you know, and then it was Facebook groups for a while. For a while, the Facebook algorithm was heavily aligned towards Facebook groups.

[00:07:34] Jason: So that went crazy for us there was a time where it was like, you know It was just, you know, organic Google was doing its thing. We still get business through that, but you know, it's always evolving as well, which is a challenge. Now, one thing that has always worked well, always, is testimonials that has always worked well for us.

[00:07:56] Jason: And so we have more testimonials. I realized this early on. If I say it, no one believes it because it's my business, but if my clients say it, that's the ultimate social proof. That's the ultimate evidence. And so gathering testimonials has always been a like a focus of us at DoorGrow and we have more video testimonials than any other coach or consultant in the property management space.

[00:08:24] Jason: I mean, we've been doing this a long time, but we're also really good. But the challenge is how do you show that you're really good in a way that people believe it? Well, I just capture other people's results. So we're always having clients share their wins on our calls and then we're recording it and stuff like that.

[00:08:41] Jason: So what, what prompted you to start to focus on testimonials as a business idea? 

[00:08:48] Dan: So I do have, you know, pretty strong tech background. So being able to leverage the technology and human resources to be able to give businesses truly what they need. Just as an example we'll take care of the entire invitation interview process with the real producer and edit everything down for less than 200 a piece, right?

[00:09:09] Dan: So our next competitors to do the same thing. are $3,000 to $5,000. So we've really, you know, grown this entire business to be able to scale and give businesses exactly what it is that they need. And as I mentioned before, over the years, it's like, yes, you can get super fancy with different things. But video testimonials today by far are the strongest piece of marketing content that you can use as you just mentioned. There's research that says there's an up to 62 percent increase in conversions. So the conversion could be a schedule, a call or schedule, a visit, or, you know, fill in the form. An increase of 62 percent if you start showing video testimonials on pages.

[00:09:51] Dan: And today, recent research also shows that 82 percent of consumers have some level of suspicion towards written reviews. That includes Google, Yelp. Amazon today employs 12,000 full time employees just to track down fake reviews. So, you know, talking about market change, right? So that is definitely something that's changing.

[00:10:10] Dan: And so being able to capture somebody in the comfort of their homes or their offices, truly speaking from their heart and sharing where they were before and how they met you and what your lives look like today and sharing that transformation is, you know, ultimately the most powerful thing you can do because it's believable, right?

[00:10:29] Jason: Yeah, it's reality. It's not AI. It's not you know, even text testimonials, like on Amazon, there's lots of fake reviews. Like, you can have fake text. Somebody could type out anything. You got to chat GPT. "Type out a fake review that sounds credible," you know, or something like this.

[00:10:46] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:10:47] Dan: So be super careful with that. If anybody out there is, you know, starting out and you're looking for some kind of social proof on your website or anything, the FTC had a new bill in October really cracking down on people that are using fake reviews, $27,000 fine, and just some really crazy stuff.

[00:11:05] Dan: That's, you know, consumer protection. 

[00:11:07] Jason: You have to be able to back it up. So, yeah, you put some text on something with a testimonial, if you have the video original of that, you're good, right?

[00:11:15] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, in my company, we take a lot of care in terms of certifying that every single video that we conduct is a true human transformation.

[00:11:24] Dan: So it's a critical component, but at the end of the day, it's like, you know, any listeners today. What's the first thing that you do when you go on Amazon? You look at the number of reviews, look at the number of stars. Is that like four? Is it four and a half? Or is it five? Right?

[00:11:36] Dan: And then we scroll down and say, does anybody have any videos? And do these things look legitimate? Right? It's, that's the first thing that we, that anybody does when purchasing something new. And that's part of human nature, right? Dr. Robert Cialdini has a really famous bestseller book called Influence.

[00:11:52] Dan: I don't know if you've read that. It's all about the psychology of persuasion. And in there, he mentions that, you know, out of 95 percent of all consumers are what they call imitators and only 5 percent are initiator. So what that means is only 5 percent of people will be open and willing to go be that first person to try something, right?

[00:12:15] Dan: Yeah. 95 percent of consumers are waiting for some kind of social proof. They're imitating somebody else's results. 

[00:12:22] Jason: That's why the bandwagon approach is so effective. Most people on the planet want safety and security. It's more important to them than freedom or fulfillment in life.

[00:12:35] Jason: They want safety and security first. Those people are not entrepreneurs They work for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are a small percentage of people and they value freedom and fulfillment over safety and security. We want that too, but our priority is in a different order. 

[00:12:50] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, even attracting tenants or you know, bigger decisions to there's especially with the age of AI.

[00:13:01] Dan: So I personally believe that we're going into next six months to a year. I mean, things are moving so quickly right now is that there is going to be a revolution or direct kind of already is of like humans against bots, right? So the ability to be able to create human connection in any marketing or any business, I think is absolutely critical today.

[00:13:22] Jason: And 

[00:13:22] Dan: most people aren't doing it. So you can definitely be ahead of your competition if you start leveraging and building that human connection into your marketing. And one of the easiest way of doing that is allowing your happy clients to tell a story. 

[00:13:35] Jason: Yeah, I totally believe that. I think, you know, that all the interactions that AI can do are going to put a premium on humanity. Human connection and human conversation and human relationship is going to be a premium luxury product in some way. And so that's one way to set yourself apart always is to go deeper and to show care 

[00:14:03] Dan: Yeah.

[00:14:04] Jason: Most companies are going to leverage ai and people are going to leverage ai to go wider but it's not going to have the same depth AI doesn't have that soul. Might get there.

[00:14:14] Jason: Yeah, I can see that. And that'll be important. The other challenge I've noticed though, with gathering testimonials is that if I do it, It feels a little awkward and it feels a little forced. Hey, what do you think about my business, you know? And so I think there's an advantage in what you're doing. And then like I know what it takes. Like we have somebody on my team that can edit video and can reach out and like do interviews. And like this is a difficult thing for the typical business owner to like go and do. It's like almost a whole nother thing, a whole nother business or something that we've had to incorporate over the years. And our best testimonials are the unprompted things that we randomly captured during our calls, which we do three, one hour calls weekly coaching clients, group calls. And we just. Have the whole thing recorded. So we capture stuff constantly, just unsolicited, unprompted, great things.

[00:15:14] Jason: But when I have to go ask the client, "Hey, how did you like this event?" It just gets awkward and it's not as effective and they can't think of what to say. And they're like, oh yeah, it's really good. And I'm like, "no, tell me about all the problems you had and tell me about all the success we've helped you create."

[00:15:31] Jason: But in that moment, they're like, "oh my gosh, I'm taking a test right now in front of a camera. I don't know what to say." And then I don't get something good. So. 

[00:15:39] Dan: Yeah, there's quite an art to doing that. And the word awkward definitely sticks out like a sore thumb from the invitation, like asking your people, "Hey, would you record a video testimonial?" All the way to interviewing them as well.

[00:15:53] Dan: So we take a slightly different approach. And the invitation, we have a 47 percent success rate in getting your clients to show up for an interview. And that's all about the way our white glove invitation process works.

[00:16:06] Jason: This is like all of their clients that they give you their information, you reach out and you can get about half to give you a full testimonial.

[00:16:16] Dan: Yeah.

[00:16:17] Jason: It's an amazing stat that I'm just saying, by the way, everybody, imagine if you got half of all of your clients to give you testimonials, you would look like an amazing business. 

[00:16:27] Dan: So whether you're doing it yourself or somebody else, let me just give you a couple of pointers. We never use the words "video testimonial."

[00:16:34] Dan: So it's always something along the lines of, "Hey, I realized that, you know, you've been living here for a month and you seem really happy." Or, you know, "you've recently had a transformation... 

[00:16:44] Jason: We've managed your property for a while. 

[00:16:45] Dan: Yep. So think something along those lines and say, "Hey you know, there are a couple of really cool individuals that we're trying to bring into our community, and they're on the fence about moving here, if they could hear firsthand what it's like living here from somebody like you, I think you'd have, you know, great neighbors, right?" Something along those lines. "Would you be open to meeting with one of our producers just for a quick 15 minute chat over video, just to ask you a few questions about your stay here? And you know, your story can be truly inspiring to others. And maybe you'll meet some new neighbors," something along those lines, right? So really getting creative and the invitation don't ask for video testimonials, really about, hey, how can you as the client contribute to somebody else's wellbeing, right? That's another human nature thing that's important. And then being able to pass it off to say, "Hey, when you meet with my producer," so it becomes less of you know, it's almost like if I said, "Jason, I'm going to send a news crew to your house tomorrow to interview you.""

[00:17:41] Dan: You'd be like, "Oh my God, great!" Like you feel honored. Right? So that's the kind of invitation that we're trying to create here too. 

[00:17:46] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:17:47] Dan: And then honoring their time, honoring their stories and being a super, super easy, you know, real human being kind of conducting the interview and our 15 minute interview, it gets edited down to, you know, sometimes 60 seconds, maybe two minutes tops just for the golden sound bites that you need to help your your free marketing conversions.

[00:18:04] Dan: So yeah, don't go out and ask for video testimonials. That's not going to go over very well. Just get creative with the invitation. 

[00:18:10] Jason: Yeah. Good tip. So explain how your service works and what it is and what it's called. And like, so that people can understand the advantage that this can give them. 

[00:18:21] Dan: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:18:22] Dan: So we're a membership model. We are currently $189 per month to be a client of Share One. And we take care, as I mentioned before, the invitation. So we'll invite your clients. We'll remind them, answer any questions, scheduling and all that. And then basically schedule a call with one of our producers.

[00:18:39] Dan: All of our producers are going to be highly trained on the specifics of what you're looking for. So your branding you know, what locations you're trying to fill, whatever that may be our producers already know going into the interview, what the soundbites are you looking for? And we'll basically coach them into answering questions.

[00:18:55] Dan: So we'll help them with their cameras a little bit, their lighting. And say, Hey, why don't you finish this sentence and, you know, make sure it doesn't ramble on and on. So we're literally producers looking for these soundbites. So we'll coach them into basically saying the things that we need them to say.

[00:19:09] Dan: And that 15 minute interview gets edited down. We add captions and then we deliver that back to you. And from inside of our portal, you can easily say, "Hey, this is a cool testimonial. I want to run it as an Instagram Reel or Facebook ad or anything like that. And we'll recut and reedit everything for you.

[00:19:27] Dan: So we're basically completely done for you video testimonial service. Yeah, so we're affordable. We're white glove and we're extremely effective at what we do. 

[00:19:38] Jason: Yeah, I mean at 189 a month, it's an absolute no brainer. Just the cost of getting people to do this stuff, or trying to go out and get cheap places to do it, like to edit some video that you capture yourself, the quality's just not going to be there.

[00:19:53] Jason: I think the magic is probably in the coaching and in the right questions and in the process and then the editing, putting it together is going to make it all work. 

[00:20:02] Dan: And then once you have the video testimonial, we have a couple of really cool new piece of technology that we can automatically push testimonials to certain parts of your marketing assets.

[00:20:13] Dan: So we have a, like a floating widget that can sit in any corner of your website that says video testimony. As soon as you click on it, it pops up and people can start watching mobile friendly. You know, when consumers are about to take action. So whether it's a book a tour or schedule a call, there's this anxiety inside of them when they click that. So we have this really cool inline widget that can sit underneath the buy button or schedule button that basically it's just a whole bunch of videos that they can watch some quick social proof in terms of that they're making the right decision.

[00:20:44] Dan: Send them over the edge.

[00:20:45] Dan: Absolutely. So as a member of Share One and we'll push all those videos automatically as we collect them onto the different parts of your marketing assets. 

[00:20:54] Jason: Yeah, nice. So this can be it like there's a code snippets that you can embed on your website stuff like that. Very cool Yeah, we found that conversion rates increase... we'll do on our websites that we do for clients, I call it a testimonial sandwich. So basically we have the main call to action form that's lower on the page and we'll put like maybe two testimonials above it could be videos most of the time It's like a face image and text and then below that we'll have testimonies that have been gathered from their review websites, but videos would maximize if you just had two or three videos that somebody watched before signing up with you, there's a scripture in the Bible that says "in the mouth of two or three words shall every word be established."

[00:21:41] Jason: There's this thing that happens in people, if they watch two or three videos of testimonies, or even just see that you have two or three, and there's some sort of headline below them that, like, sums up what it's about, they'll just believe it. They think that this is how everything happens at your business.

[00:21:56] Jason: And so the power of just having even two or three videos, now if you have a lot, and you're able to continually gather these from clients, and then maybe leverage getting them to give you positive reviews on review sites, as well, then maybe after they leave the video, there's this other thing, I think Cialdini talks about this as well, that once somebody takes a certain action, they're more likely to believe in that like a positive action towards a business are more likely to want to continue to do that.

[00:22:27] Dan: Validates their decision, right?

[00:22:29] Jason: Right. And so once somebody gives you a positive review like if a tenant gives you a positive review or an owner gives you positive review, what happens is they tend to have a longer lifetime value. They stay longer and then when you have a problem because something inevitably comes up. The tenant gets frustrated, or the owner gets frustrated about something.

[00:22:51] Jason: They're more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt, because previously they acknowledged they had a good experience with you, and they're more likely to say, "Oh, they'll figure it out. And so, it just makes business easier. What we coach our clients on is the best time to get a testimonial or a review is at peak happiness. And for most tenants and owners, that's usually around tenant placement. That's once the tenants in place, the tenant's happiest and the owner is now happy. "Hey, I've got a tenant and they're paying rent," and that's when everybody's happiest. And so during their and owner, new client onboarding processes.

[00:23:29] Jason: They could build in this connection with you guys to give you their info and you reach out and ask about their experience. And our usual script for clients when we're coaching them to do this directly is that they reach out, point out the good that they've done for them so far, and then ask them the loaded question, like how do you feel we've done so far?

[00:23:51] Jason: And then they're like, "Oh, well, you just told me you did all this you took care of that leaky toilet. You did this and property is ready for me And yeah, it's been great." " What's your experience been like with ABC property management so far?" "Oh, yeah It's been great." Because you just pointed out all the good. For the owner, you're like we got a tenant in place. We got the rent collected should be hitting your bank account in the next couple days. Like how do you feel ABC property management's done so far?"

[00:24:15] Jason: "Oh, yeah. You guys are great." "Awesome We love hearing that would you be willing to share that feedback with us online? Or would you be willing to share that feedback with somebody else? That would really help us out." "Oh, yeah." So, it's called the Law of Reciprocity. They want to reciprocate, because you pointed out that you did something for them.

[00:24:35] Jason: Yeah, there's kind of this debt or this leverage and they're like, "yeah, sure. I'd be happy to. Awesome. I'm going to have our producers-" you say right? "Our producer reach out and they'll do a little interview with you and I think you'll really enjoy it, and we're really good at making you look good."

[00:24:51] Dan: Yeah, so great point.

[00:24:53] Dan: I mean, testimonials build trust ultimately, right? And trust lasts a very long time. So even being able to send testimonials to existing tenants or existing owners as a reassurance, like, you know, if an owner has been with you for years, it's like, "Hey, If they're ever doubting about leaving us, let's send them like a case study or something, you know, once every six months or so, just to kind of reaffirm that you guys are really good.

[00:25:15] Dan: So, so we actually have technology. We actually have technology that can build into the CRM process to know exactly when to reach out. So that can be automated. And we also upon completion of the video testimonial, we automate the whole Google or Yelp or any other types of site reviews. Automatically for the people that we interview and then one more thing I want to touch on Jason is objections, right?

[00:25:37] Dan: So video testimonials are super powerful to use to address all objections before they even come up. So if you know right off the bat that nine times out of 10 people are going to say, well, you're, you know, such and such place is cheaper or other property managers or, you know, only charge 8 percent or whatever."

[00:25:55] Dan: Then using the video testimonials and you can cue your producers into collecting that as like, "Hey, initially I thought that going with X was going to be a little bit more expensive, but little did I know they took care of X, Y, Z." Right. So being able to have those little seeds or saying, "Hey, you know, yes, this apartment building is probably not the cheapest around, but I'm so glad I chose this because of XYZ. So being able to take those objections and understanding how to reverse engineer these interviews to be able to get those soundbites that are going to help you with your closing. 

[00:26:24] Jason: So this is something that your producers are trained on. That is in part of your onboarding process with new clients, then it's probably to identify what actions or challenges do they tend to deal with?

[00:26:36] Jason: And then as you're gathering testimonials, it becomes a goal to offset those. 

[00:26:41] Dan: Absolutely. So every new client that comes on board, we do a deep dive really understanding. who their audiences are going to be, who they're trying to attract, where these video testimonials are going to be displayed where these people are coming from, essentially trying to understand like what's in that prospect's mind frame, like what are they looking at when they're watching this? So that we can really kind of, you know, hit a home run for them.

[00:27:03] Jason: Yeah, I love this. I think good testimonials are more important than most companies' marketing. They're more important than most companies' websites. They're more important than most everything that a company does to try and get new business. They don't understand the impact. And if you have negative reviews, which is like the opposite, it's like a clamp on anything that you could potentially do in your entire sales pipeline, any marketing you do, anything else, if you have negative reviews. People will check you out. People want to know, can they trust you? So they're looking for indicators. Even if they heard about you word of mouth or whatever, they might still go check and they're like, "well, they have a bunch of bad reviews. Maybe we should do some more research and find another company." And so the impact of that, I think is often underestimated. You can have the ugliest website. You can have the worst branding. You can have all the other leaks that exist in businesses, but if you have great testimonials and great reviews online, people will still work with you and those will be warm leads.

[00:28:08] Jason: Like they'll trust you. There's stats that suggest that people trust online reviews or testimonials as much as word of mouth from a trusted friend or advisor if the reviews are credible, unlike some on Amazon. And then, so like the conversion rate or the close rate then is really high and you don't have to have as good of a website, you don't have to be as good at sales. You don't have to be as good at marketing. Good testimonials and good feedback really solves a myriad of marketing sins. 

[00:28:37] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. And then it's reputation management too. So if you do have some bad reviews on Google, you can easily upload videos onto your Google business profile and you can upload positive video reviews.

[00:28:49] Dan: And when somebody reads something that's written that's negative and they go to your website and there's what we call wall of love, which is basically a whole bunch of videos saying how great, you know, you are, that's a game changer. 

[00:29:00] Jason: That's an outlier. That negative review is now an outlier. You know, owners know that there's going to be upset and negative tenants.

[00:29:06] Jason: And that's a given in property management. But they want to know that you know how to deal with those situations and that you're making changes or improvements or whatever. So having good responses is also can be important on those reviews. So having a whole wall of proof, yeah, that overcomes a lot of challenges.

[00:29:24] Jason: So well cool, Dan. I appreciate you coming on the show. I wanted to announce Dan, you're coming to DoorGrow Live. You're going to be talking at our event in May about some of this stuff, but going even deeper into how people can have an impact in a way that I think would help grow and scale their business, which was what we're all about at DoorGrow.

[00:29:45] Jason: And so everybody, make sure and go and check out the details at doorgrowlive.Com. And we were bringing in some really cool experts that are going to be talking about a variety of different things. And Dan is going to be one of those. So really excited to have you at that, Dan. 

[00:30:02] Jason: Super excited. Can't wait for it. 

[00:30:05] Jason: Yeah, that's going to be really cool. And so if you want to take things to the next level and grow your business, this is the place to be. And can you give them a teaser of what you might be sharing at this? 

[00:30:15] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So, being able to present actual case studies in terms of property management and give solid advice and examples on how you can immediately start using video testimonials and leveraging social proof to be able to increase your conversions and also teaching you how to collect them.

[00:30:33] Dan: And everything to do with social proof. So I'm super excited about that. 

[00:30:37] Jason: This will be really cool. So make sure to get your tickets to DoorGrow Live. Go to doorgrowlive.Com. Dan, I appreciate you coming on the show. How can people learn more about Share One and get connected with what you're doing?

[00:30:51] Dan: Absolutely. So our website is www.share.one O N E. And I think, Jason, we might put something nice together for your listeners and we'll add that to the show notes. 

[00:31:01] Jason: Awesome. All right, appreciate you coming and hanging out with us here on the DoorGrow show and excited to do more stuff with you in the future.

[00:31:08] Jason: All right. So, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're wanting to grow your business, add doors, reach out to us at DoorGrow. We can help you with that. So until next time, everybody to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

[00:31:19] 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! 

[00:31:46] Jason: 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.

Things don’t always go as planned in life and in business. It’s important for property management entrepreneurs to be able to roll with the punches.

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss a recent experience where they were forced to pivot and adapt over and over again.

You’ll Learn

[01:58] The Original Plan

[05:31] How a Winter Storm Distrupted a Business and Family Trip

[08:52] Moral of the Story: Be Prepared

[11:08] Your Plan is Not Always the Right Plan for You

Tweetables “Moral of the story is be prepared.” “This is how businesses work. Your best plan is sometimes going to fail and you're going to have to come up with a new way of doing it and you're going to have to adapt.” “There may be a reason that things are not going the way that you wanted them to go right now.” “ The only time that you won't have your breakthrough is if you quit.” Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

TalkRoute Referral Link

Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: There is a bigger plan out there for you, and there may be a reason that things are not going the way that you wanted them to go right now.

[00:00:09] Sarah: There may be a reason that you're not experiencing the results that you thought that you would at this stage in the game. 

[00:00:17] Jason: 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.

[00:00:35] Jason: 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] Jason: 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 Hull and Sarah Hull. Now let's get into the show. Alright.

[00:01:16] Jason: So, today we are recording this episode at, what time is it now? 

[00:01:22] Sarah: It is almost midnight. 

[00:01:23] Jason: It is late. On Monday. And this will go live or be streamed later. And so if you're watching this, thanks for watching. And we're not actually like real time live at this moment, but it's because we had to change things up and make different plans. 

[00:01:42] Sarah: Live in the moment, we're probably still in the car. 

[00:01:45] Jason: Yeah, so we will be driving tomorrow during our podcast episode. So we wanted to record this episode real quick so we can get one out. And in today's topic, we're just going to share a little bit of our adventure. And, you know, the moral of the story will be things don't always go according to plan.

[00:02:03] Jason: So. 

[00:02:04] Sarah: Sure don't. 

[00:02:05] Jason: Alright, so, where do we start? 

[00:02:08] Sarah: Alright, well, let's do quick synopsis. Where are we right now? Ohio, I think? I'm pretty sure we're in Ohio. 

[00:02:15] Jason: I think so. 

[00:02:16] Sarah: I think it's Ohio is the right answer. So, we've been to, in the last few days, we left on Friday, we've been to Texas, we've been to two days in Tennessee, we accidentally went to Kentucky, now we're in Ohio, tomorrow we're going to Pennsylvania.

[00:02:30] Sarah: So, I think that's five states. Five states in five days. It's a great time. So, we're driving from Texas to Pennsylvania. It's supposed to be a straight shot, up like this. And it's this crazy record breaking winter storm, and we're driving through some of that. We're missing the big part of it.

[00:02:51] Sarah: So we had to adjust our route. So our plan, this was our plan, was to leave on Friday. We're going from Texas to Memphis, Tennessee. Then the next morning, we were going to go to Graceland. We did do that, and then we spent some time in Nashville that evening. And then from Nashville, we were going to go to Morganstown, West Virginia, and then from there, drive into Dallas, Pennsylvania.

[00:03:18] Sarah: So, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we were supposed to get to Pennsylvania on Monday, which is tonight, we are not in Pennsylvania. We are, I'm pretty sure, somewhere in Ohio, past Akron. And where, what's the name of this? 

[00:03:32] Jason: Youngstown. 

[00:03:33] Sarah: Youngstown, near Youngstown. That's where we are, right now. And so that was our plan. And then because of this crazy storm, we were leaving Nashville. We left Nashville. Roads were fine. Then all of a sudden, a little bit of rain. That was okay. Then, snow. And that was awful. And we were trying to get from Nashville, Tennessee up to Morgantown, West Virginia. Did not happen. Not even close. So we were going to stop in Lexington, Kentucky for lunch around like 3 o'clock or 3:30. That was not the plan. We ended up staying in Kentucky because it took us so long to get to Kentucky because of the crazy storm that we then had to stay overnight in Lexington and then reroute. So we were going this way and now we're going that way. 

[00:04:31] Jason: So do you want to share why we're doing a road trip?

[00:04:34] Jason: Which is crazy to do. 

[00:04:36] Sarah: It's crazy to do. I know, right? I could have flown there in a day. So we're driving my car that I've owned for a couple years now. I'm driving to Pennsylvania, and I'm giving the car to my mom as a gift. She has absolutely no idea. 

[00:04:52] Jason: It's a surprise. 

[00:04:53] Sarah: That this is happening.

[00:04:54] Sarah: I don't think she watches the podcast. 

[00:04:56] Jason: No. Probably not. 

[00:04:56] Sarah: Hopefully it's safe. But I'm gifting the car to my mom. I want her to have a nice car, and a reliable car, and not have to worry about things. So, I'm gifting her the car. She has absolutely no idea. Coincidentally, it's also in a couple of days, my brother Jason's birthday.

[00:05:14] Sarah: So, shout out to Jason. Happy early birthday. We love you. And we're going to do this little trip. We're going to see my family for a little bit. We're going to go out to dinner for my brother Jason's birthday. Give my mom a car, and then fly back home and we are running an event. So that's why we're doing all of this in the first place.

[00:05:31] Sarah: The whole crazy part of the story here is when we left Nashville, we were trying to get to Morganstown. It was insane on the road. Just wildly insane. Like snow, ice, there was a mix, there was sleet. We were going like 40 miles an hour. I was just happy to be moving. We saw multiple cars that had run off the road.

[00:05:58] Sarah: We saw a couple of tractor trailers that we're in accidents. We saw a few accidents. We were almost in a few accidents ourselves. And this trip is not at all going as planned. We had to move our flight, and then move our flight again, and then move our flight a third time. So then we, last night we almost gave up on this whole thing.

[00:06:18] Sarah: I was going to quit and just leave my car in Cincinnati, fly home. back to Texas and then come back and finish the second leg of this trip a second time. Jason woke up this morning and he said, "I think we can do it, babe. I think we can do it." So here we are, but this is not... 

[00:06:35] Jason: We were not prepared for this storm.

[00:06:37] Jason: This car had pretty bald tires, which was... we were not ready. 

[00:06:43] Sarah: No. 

[00:06:43] Jason: Yeah. So after sliding off the road a little bit, twice, yeah, on a freeway. 

[00:06:50] Sarah: On a freeway. 

[00:06:51] Jason: On a highway. Yeah. 

[00:06:52] Sarah: And car is supposed to be heading in this direction, and then it turned in. 

[00:06:57] Jason: And we were just off to the side, so we were able to get back on the road safely both times.

[00:07:02] Jason: Thank goodness. Yeah. And not get hit by a tractor trailer. 

[00:07:05] Sarah: Yeah, we didn't get hit by anything. The car didn't get damaged. We are safe. And to that I can only thank God. The whole time I was praying, our fathers, I was saying Hail Mary's, our fathers, the whole time. I was just praying to God and God took care of us made sure that we were safe made sure the car is safe, made sure that we got where we were going, made sure we didn't get stranded in the car because we saw a couple people stranded. 

[00:07:30] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:07:31] Sarah: It was scary.

[00:07:31] Sarah: It was really scary. 

[00:07:32] Jason: We eventually pulled off and went and found a tire store 

[00:07:36] Sarah: Yeah, we were going to continue out there for a while. 

[00:07:38] Jason: Got new tires. 

[00:07:39] Sarah: And something told me it might have been God telling me like "go, you need tires. Go get tires." So I said to Jason, I said, "Can you find...?" 

[00:07:47] Sarah: Can you find? No. 

[00:07:49] Jason: I wanted to get some better tires on that car, for sure.

[00:07:51] Sarah: So, I said, "is there a tire place that's like, nearby, that's open right now, that we can go to right now?" So we did. Took a little pit stop detour, but it was very well worth it. I just don't think we would have made the rest of the trip in one piece. 

[00:08:06] Jason: The first tire store we went to was closed. 

[00:08:08] Sarah: Yeah. Like it wasn't even plowed to get to it. They were closed. The third one was a tread. So we got new tires. That's good. The guy at the tire store, what did he tell you? The tread level was like a four. It's real, it's really bad. 

[00:08:21] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:08:21] Sarah: It was real bad. Yeah. So, that was fun. 

[00:08:23] Jason: So We got fresh tires. Then the car drove really well.

[00:08:27] Jason: Plus we had pretty much made it through the worst of the weather, which we had planned. Because there were two ways we could go. The northern route had less weather, so. 

[00:08:39] Sarah: Yep. That's why we're in Ohio. 

[00:08:41] Jason: So. 

[00:08:41] Sarah: And not through West Virginia. 

[00:08:43] Jason: Yeah, we'd probably be in a very terrible spot if we had gone the wrong way.

[00:08:47] Jason: So. 

[00:08:47] Sarah: Yeah. We'd be off on the side of the road frozen like popsicles. Oh gosh. You guys would never hear from us again. 

[00:08:52] Jason: So moral of the story is be prepared. Make sure you're prepared. Have a plan. And so we've done lots of plans and changing of plans and so this is part of life. And this is how businesses work. Your best plan is sometimes going to fail and you're going to have to come up with a new way of doing it and you're going to have to adapt. And so one thing entrepreneurs, we are good at is adaptability. We figure it out cause we have to, and we adapt. And so we've adapted a lot today.

[00:09:23] Jason: And yesterday. The last couple days. Yeah, the last couple days. 

[00:09:25] Sarah: We had a plan, we changed a plan, we changed that plan, we changed a plan again. We just keep changing it. 

[00:09:30] Jason: And that causes us. We're just rolling with the punches. That causes us to have to adapt in business. So here we are recording a podcast.

[00:09:36] Jason: Here we are. 

[00:09:36] Sarah: At midnight. 

[00:09:37] Jason: In a hotel room. 

[00:09:37] Sarah: Which Jason did not want to do. 

[00:09:39] Jason: No. No. I was like, we don't have to do anything that we don't want to do. We don't have to do this. 

[00:09:44] Sarah: No. And I said, we are not recording a podcast live from the car because we might die. No. 

[00:09:49] Jason: We're not going to do that. 

[00:09:49] Sarah: We might die live on camera.

[00:09:51] Sarah: Yeah, that would be... 

[00:09:52] Jason: All right. So hopefully some of you got some value from this. If you do not have a good plan for your business, then that's something that we can help you with here at DoorGrow, help you come up with a plan, and help you adapt to some of the things that are getting thrown at your way.

[00:10:09] Jason: This is why we mapped out the DoorGrow code, our roadmap, for some of the most common challenges and problems. So if you would like a copy of the DoorGrow code, just reach out to us. We'd be happy to give you one and tell you a little bit about how we might be able to help you and hear about your challenges.

[00:10:24] Jason: So reach out to us. You can check us out at doorgrow.Com or go to our website or join our free Facebook group by going to doorgrowclub.Com. Make sure to answer the questions. We reject 60 to 70 percent of the applicants that try to join that group. So it's only for property management business owners.

[00:10:44] Jason: So if you own a property management business or seriously planning on starting one, then you can request access to that group. Make sure to answer the questions. We would love to have you inside. And that's it. 

[00:10:55] Sarah: No, that's not it. No. 

[00:10:56] Jason: Oh, there's more. 

[00:10:57] Sarah: That wasn't it. I said, what are we going to talk about this episode?

[00:11:00] Sarah: I told you what we're going to talk about, then we just... So. 

[00:11:03] Sarah: It's not the end of the episode. Surprise! A little bit more. But wait, there's more!

[00:11:07] Jason: But wait, there's more. 

[00:11:08] Sarah: So for those of you that do have a plan, and you're like, "yeah, no, I definitely have a plan. This is not applicable to me," we had a plan going into this as well.

[00:11:17] Sarah: So, when you have a plan and life does not work out the way that you planned, and things don't work out the way that you thought that they would, and you're going through things and you're trying to figure out, you know, "what am I doing wrong? And why isn't this working? And like, why is this so hard? I don't understand why it's not happening the way that I wanted it to happen," and why it's just maybe not happening at all...

[00:11:40] Sarah: or maybe it's happening, but it's just so slow, and it's so hard, then you just need to know that sometimes there's a bigger plan in place for you somewhere. And if you're religious, you might believe that God, or the universe, or fate, or whatever you might want to call it. There is a bigger plan out there for you, and there may be a reason that things are not going the way that you wanted them to go right now.

[00:12:07] Sarah: There may be a reason that you're not experiencing the results that you thought that you would at this stage in the game. Just like when we thought we would go to West Virginia. Had we actually gotten to West Virginia, we'd be stranded there for sure, because they are getting hammered with snow right now.

[00:12:22] Sarah: So the whole, like, West Virginia, D. C. area Hammered with snow, and that was our plan. So I'm grateful, although it's a little crazy, I'm grateful that we didn't end up going that way. I'm grateful that there was a bigger plan in place for us. So just trust that you do have support when you reach out to people like your mentors, and if you're in the DoorGrow Mastermind, there are so many resources for you, including property managers who are in the exact same spot that you are in.

[00:12:56] Sarah: They've been there. They've done that. They've experienced everything. So leverage the resources that you have available to you. Know that there's support and know that everything is unfolding exactly the way it's supposed to for you in this exact moment. And you will have your breakthrough. The only time that you won't have your breakthrough is if you quit.

[00:13:14] Sarah: See, and now we're done. 

[00:13:15] Jason: Good words. Good stuff, Sarah. All right. 

[00:13:18] Sarah: All right. We're going to go to bed now. 

[00:13:20] Jason: Yeah. Get some sleep. 

[00:13:22] Sarah: Yep. 

[00:13:22] Jason: So until next time, to our mutual growth. Hope you all crush it. Bye, everyone.

[00:13:27] 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! 

[00:13:54] Jason: 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.

It’s already 2025! What goals do you have for the year for yourself? For your property management business?

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss their goals for 2025 and how they will impact property management business owners.

You’ll Learn

[01:36] DoorGrow’s Yearly Planning and Goals

[07:30] DoorGrow in-Person Events in 2025

[13:05] The Future of Property Management: DoorGrow Live 2025

[16:11] DoorGrow’s Commitment to Rescuing Dogs

Tweetables

 ”Strategic time invested in the business is what actually grows businesses.”

“Most of y'all are focused so heavily on the tactical, the day-to-day tasks that just come at you and the business isn't moving forward.”

 ”Broke people often have a broke mindset.”

“You can do it. You just need a really good plan.”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

TalkRoute Referral Link

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jason: Most of y'all are focused so heavily on the tactical, the day to day tasks that just come at you and the business isn't moving forward. 

[00:00:09] 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.

[00:00:27] 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.

[00:00:47] 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 Hull and Sarah Hull the owners of DoorGrow.

[00:01:07] Now, let's get into the show. All right. 

[00:01:10] So today, we're going to be...

[00:01:12] Sarah: It's new year's eve! 

[00:01:13] Jason: It's new year's eve as we're recording this episode. So those of you watching us live, happy new year's. And those of you that are not, then I hope you had a happy new year, and you didn't like drink too much and you are like ready to go for the new year.

[00:01:28] So we're going to be talking about the new year. What are we going to chat about today? 

[00:01:33] Sarah: I thought we were going to talk about where we want to go. 

[00:01:36] Jason: Yeah. So we're going to tell you a little bit about what's up with DoorGrow. We do our annual planning in the middle of the year. We offset it by two quarters.

[00:01:45] We find that to be a lot more effective. So we actually coach our clients to do the same. Why? Because this time of year, everybody's a little bit too focused on other stuff, holidays, family, all good things, right? And not as focused, maybe, on the business.

[00:02:00] Sarah: Can you imagine if today was the deadline for all of your big annual goals?

[00:02:05] Like, man, we gotta do that one thing! Today's the last day. Hard push, guys! Everyone's like, "..."

[00:02:10] Jason: Or just even this whole month of December or even like Thanksgiving time. Like just trying to push your end of the year goals and trying to achieve as a team, your team are like, "cool. I'm glad you are motivated, Mr. Business Owner, but..." 

[00:02:24] Sarah: "I'm taking two weeks off for Christmas, and I'm off for Thanksgiving, I'm taking time off for Christmas, I'm taking time off for New Year's."

[00:02:31] Jason: "That's cool, you want to hit that end of the year revenue goal, or sales goal, or whatever your goals are, but I need to figure out what to get my Aunt Susie for Christmas, and who's bringing what for Thanksgiving."

[00:02:43] Sarah: "I'm cooking, and I'm cleaning."

[00:02:44] Jason: And, "what party am I going to for New Year's? Who am I going to kiss at midnight?" Like, it's hard stuff. That being said, some of the goals we have for 2025 I think one of the things we've really put a lot of attention into over the last three, four years, maybe even longer is just making our program better and better.

[00:03:05] We've just added a lot to the program, like focusing on decreasing churn, keeping our coaching clients longterm improving systems. We just rolled out some cool stuff, our client workbooks. What are some of the things we've done in the last year? We rolled out this new Accountability Sales Tracker.

[00:03:19] We rolled out, you know...

[00:03:20] Sarah: all kinds of client workbooks content... 

[00:03:23] Jason: new courses, 

[00:03:23] Sarah: operations revamp. 

[00:03:25] Jason: DoorGrow, we get a lot done. Part of that is because of DoorGrow OS and our planning process. It allows us to really focus on Goals and outcomes, strategic growth of the business instead of just tactical day to day work.

[00:03:38] And strategic time invested in the business is what actually grows businesses. Most of y'all, because I've talked to thousands of property managers, most of y'all are focused so heavily on the tactical, the day to day tasks that just come at you and the business isn't moving forward. So our goal for this year, because we've got a really good program, we're getting great results.

[00:03:59] We're keeping clients for a decent time now. You know, we even got rid of over the last several years, we got rid of any sort of annual contract. A lot of vendors like DoorGrow have annual agreements or whatever. We got rid of those because we could keep clients longer than a year. And so we didn't need that.

[00:04:16] Like it increases the risk of people wanting to like get on board with us. So we're like, let's lower the risk to come on board with us, prove ourselves and just keep them. So the next goal for us really at DoorGrow is to focus on lead generation. That game has changed so much over the last decade plus that we've been in business.

[00:04:37] We've used LinkedIn to get business for a while through automation. We used our Facebook group and we've used organic stuff through SEO. Like we've used a lot of different strategies and we still have several things going at a time, but the game always changes. And so lead gen is something where we're shifting our focus.

[00:04:57] As you focus on the business, we've got our six core functions, lead gen, nurture, conversion, delivery, lifetime value, pricing, retention, et cetera. And then financial finances. And so we're shifting our focus every year towards what's weakest. Where does our attention... yeah.

[00:05:17] Sarah: Every quarter, we're like, "okay, Hey, we solved that problem. Now we have this whole other problem. 

[00:05:22] Jason: So our weakest thing right now is probably lead generation. Like we've got a lot of tools for nurture. This podcast or newsletter. We've got lots of content on YouTube. Yeah. Nurture's strong. 

[00:05:35] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:05:36] Jason: Delivery and fulfillment is strong. Conversion, like we're pretty good at conversion. 

[00:05:40] Sarah: Hassan follows up with people like crazy. He's just on top of it. He's done everything. 

[00:05:45] Jason: So lead gen, we've been getting a lot of leads, you know, through Facebook ads and through our Facebook group where we funnel people to, but we're getting a lot of unqualified leads.

[00:05:54] Like basically there's a lot of startup property managers that are broke and don't have money and we can help them with that stuff if they're willing to invest. But broke people often have a broke mindset. So if you're listening and you're not growing, you're probably not investing any money towards growth.

[00:06:10] Like who are you paying to coach you or teach you or help you figure out how to grow? If you're not paying somebody, you're selling yourself short. And we eat our own dog food. How many masterminds am I in right now? I don't know, two, three?

[00:06:22] Sarah: I don't know. You just added another one. 

[00:06:24] Jason: Yeah, but they're for different areas of the business.

[00:06:26] And and we leverage them and allow the team to leverage them and to make sure that we're always innovating or getting new ideas and moving things forward. 

[00:06:35] Sarah: Think the answer is four. 

[00:06:36] Jason: I think I'm in four different masterminds right now. Yeah. We're in plenty. So, yeah. So, and yeah we've got two online programs that we're in right now related to just leads.

[00:06:49] Oh, I wasn't counting those. 

[00:06:50] Ads. So we've got access to at least, you know, at least two focused on lead gen. So we're going to be putting our attention and focus this year on lead generation. Like how do we attract more property managers that are struggling, that want to grow, or that are struggling with being able to scale their operations and adding doors is causing a problem for them?

[00:07:14] These are problems we solve and we're really good at solving it. So we're going to be shifting our lead gen from just like, "Hey, are you a property manager? Join our free Facebook group and then we'll give you free stuff." We're going to shift it more towards, "Hey, do you have these particular challenges we want to help?"

[00:07:28] So that's going to be our focus this year. 

[00:07:30] Sarah: I also want to focus on doing some cool events this year. 

[00:07:33] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:07:33] Sarah: Those are so fun for me. I love that. Like even our jumpstart events. 

[00:07:37] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:07:38] Sarah: It's a whole day, so it's a lot. Like I am tired afterwards, but I walk away feeling really fulfilled I walk away...

[00:07:45] Explain what a jumpstart event is 

[00:07:46] ...and I just feel like we just changed the trajectory of people's lives and businesses.

[00:07:52] Jason: Yeah, they're powerful. Explain what a jumpstart is for those that are like, what's that? Yeah. 

[00:07:56] Sarah: What's a jumpstart session? So the jumpstart session is available for our mastermind clients. They're held here in the North Austin, Texas area, and they're a one day deep dive into the business. So, there's no pre selected topics.

[00:08:08] Sometimes I get, "well, what are we going to talk about?" I don't know, what do you need in your business? What are the problems? What are your challenges? What are you working on? What has not been working for you? You know, what questions might you have that you're like, "man, I just, I know I can do this better. I just don't know how." That's what we're going to talk about. So whatever it is. We've done a couple of them we've done pricing. Some of them have been focused on sales. Some of them have been focused more on the back end, like delivery and team operations. 

[00:08:37] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:08:38] Sarah: So they're different every single time and we never know what we're going to talk about really until we get there and we start diving in and we start asking questions.

[00:08:48] So, they're usually smaller events. I like to keep them small because if they get too big, it's hard to go really deep into a business if there's like 20 businesses in the room. Now it's not a deep dive. Now it's just, we're going to talk about some stuff. So we keep them generally pretty small.

[00:09:03] There are usually about like three, maybe four businesses there. And it's like a one day deep dive. We do break, we get some really good tacos. We go for lunch and then we dive right back into it. But every single time people walk away with an action plan, they walk away knowing what to do. We update our client workbooks.

[00:09:22] So they get a lot of clarity and then we wanted to mimic that, but build on it and do this a little bit in a more robust way. So we're actually hosting an event. This is open to anyone who wants to join. It will be called Thrive 2025 because as we're talking with people, we're realizing we're at the end of the year.

[00:09:44] The clock is about to reset. Some people, they have an idea of what they want to do, but they don't know how the hell they're actually going to get there. So, we're going to get into the nitty gritty and help them figure out, well, what is your plan? What are your goals? And then, how are you going to get there?

[00:10:01] What are the things that you need to do? And by what time frame do you actually need to do them? So that you can hit this goal that you're trying to hit in all of 2025. So at this event, we're not just planning for like, "Hey, here's what you're going to do for maybe the next month or the next couple of weeks."

[00:10:18] "Here's what your 2025 is going to look like, and here's the entire roadmap for your 2025." So that you can be on track and hit the goals that you're looking to hit so that you don't have another year where you're like, "man, it just didn't happen again. I just don't know what's going on. Maybe I'll just never do it."

[00:10:38] You can do it. You just need a really good plan. You need a solid plan put together. So we're going to spend the day with a room of property managers. We're going to brainstorm. We're going to create some goals, figure out what is it that you really want for your business? Why do you want it?

[00:10:53] And then, what are the action steps that you need to take so that you can get there? So this essentially is going to write the business plan for your business for 2025. And we're going to do that in a really cool place. It's going to be in Nashville. 

[00:11:07] Jason: Yeah, we're going to take you through a bit of our planning process the way we do this at DoorGrow I really think this is the technology that has allowed us to surpass any other coaches in the space it's our planning and it's the planning process gets our team in alignment It gets them out of that transactional sort of leadership system.

[00:11:28] It gets them focusing on objectives. It gets them functioning more like like intrapreneurs, instead of just waiting to be told what to do. And if you're frustrated and always having to tell your team what to do and always having to answer all their questions, you have a transactional leadership system because that's the least risky thing for them to do is to let you do all the thinking and decision making.

[00:11:48] So when we start focusing on a team, figuring out what is the business need? What are the objectives to like brainstorm as a team? And you're the last to speak as a visionary or the people that are running the business and you get feedback, real feedback from your team who are on the front lines, who know what challenges they're running into, then we can start to innovate as a company.

[00:12:09] Then they start to focus on those outcomes and they start to move things forward. And so we're going to take you through that process. And come up with a plan. So we're going to spend a day and just dig in. And this will be a game changer for you and your business. So we're going to have a small group.

[00:12:24] How many are we allowing to come to this? 

[00:12:26] Sarah: There's going to be eight spots total. And some of them are already spoken for. 

[00:12:30] Jason: Okay. Eight businesses. 

[00:12:32] Sarah: Eight spots. 

[00:12:33] Jason: Eight people. 

[00:12:34] Sarah: Eight. Yep. Eight human beings. So, a business might just have one person. 

[00:12:39] Jason: Or bring a plus one. It can bring a plus one. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:12:43] Sarah: Two, two max.

[00:12:44] Because if someone goes, Oh, I have three people. So it might only be four businesses. Four people. Like now that's really. 

[00:12:49] Jason: Okay. 

[00:12:50] Sarah: It's hard then, because it takes up so many spots. 

[00:12:52] Jason: So we're going to be doing events as another goal for the year. 

[00:12:56] Sarah: Yep. Yeah, so we're going to kick it off with right in January Thrive 2025.

[00:12:59] Jason: If you're listening this podcast later on like iTunes or something then you probably missed it, but we'll have other stuff. 

[00:13:05] Sarah: But don't worry because we have our DoorGrow live event coming up.

[00:13:08] Jason: Okay, that's another event So we've got DoorGrow live coming up. You want to talk about DoorGrow Live? 

[00:13:13] Sarah: Yeah, let's talk about DoorGrow Live. So that is going to be a Friday and Saturday. It's May 16th and 17th. And you'll want to make sure that you come in on the 15th because that Thursday, the day before from 7pm to 9pm, we're doing a mixer.

[00:13:27] So we're doing some networking. You'll meet the DoorGrow team. You'll meet a lot of other business owners and property managers, and we're going to have some live entertainment. So you're going to get to see some dancers. We're going to have a singer. It's going to be a good time. So make sure that you travel in the day before, attend the mixer.

[00:13:46] And then this year we're talking about innovating the future of property management. So we want to talk about where is this whole industry going? Because things change really quickly, especially with all of the developments in AI. So things can change really quickly. So we're going to have some great speakers there.

[00:14:07] You can go actually right now. You can go to doorgrowlive.Com and you can get all of the event details. You can book your rooms at the discounted room rate that we've negotiated with the venue for you. It's at Kalahari Resorts in Round Rock, Texas. And you can check out some of the speakers that are going to be there at the event. Every year we do one of these we always try to make it a little bigger a little better, and this year is no exception We've got some great stuff planned. 

[00:14:39] Jason: You know, I think a lot of people are burnt out on conferences. A lot of you maybe have gone to a lot of events and conferences. But there's something special and different about DoorGrow Live.

[00:14:49] I've been to a lot of different events as well. And there's just something special and different about DoorGrow Live. And one, we're creating a lot of momentum for property managers too. I think we're a lot more holistic in our approach. We're not just focused on property management. All of y'all know plenty about property management, but what I find is usually what's holding you back in business is not even related to business, it's everything else going on. And that's why we take a much more holistic approach. And so we're going to benefit you in a lot of different ways. Like people walk away from these events and become better people. That's our goal. And so, and better people have better businesses and better families and make more money and more contribution and make a bigger difference.

[00:15:33] So, so get your tickets to DoorGrow Live. That's coming up as well. And any other events? 

[00:15:39] Sarah: Well, there's this secret one that we haven't talked about yet. When we were in Mexico, we were talking about it. 

[00:15:45] Jason: Okay, well I guess we're not talking about today 'cause it's a secret . So, so sorry, everybody.

[00:15:51] All right. So something cool is coming. All right, so we've got events coming up and then so what other goals do we have for DoorGrow? Those are kind of the key ones for us internally. It's lead gen. Yeah. Yeah. It is going to be our focus, so. 

[00:16:04] Sarah: I want to just find it to help more people and

[00:16:07] Yeah.

[00:16:07] I don't care what that looks like. 

[00:16:08] Jason: It doesn't 

[00:16:09] Sarah: even matter what it looks like, really, so. Oh, and then my, I have some personal goals, too, I'm going to help more dogs. We're going to save more dogs this year. Jason's going to kill me, probably. I might be divorced by the end of the year. Hopefully not. 

[00:16:22] Jason: I will not kill her.

[00:16:22] Sarah: What's the number of dogs that we can get before we talk about divorce? 

[00:16:28] Jason: Is this, like...?

[00:16:29] Sarah: On the pod, we're going to record it, yeah. So, like, what's the number? Because we're at three right now. We just rescued enough. 

[00:16:35] Jason: There's no amount of dogs that would make me divorce you. There's plenty of other things you could do that would probably lead towards that, but it's not a dog thing.

[00:16:44] Sarah: So we're going to have 99 dogs. 

[00:16:46] Jason: We just adopted. Yesterday, we officially just adopted our third dog, who was a foster. We had for, what, a month? And then... 

[00:16:55] Sarah: we had him for a month. 

[00:16:56] Jason: And then he got adopted. We got him adopted. 

[00:16:58] Sarah: We did our job. 

[00:16:59] Jason: We took him to farmer's markets and places and we met somebody at one of the things we took him to and got him adopted.

[00:17:06] Sarah: And it was a great situation for him. We were super sad because he's such a great dog. He's so perfect for him. And then when we dropped him off, I was just I was crying. I was a mess. 

[00:17:15] Jason: Yeah, it was, that was hard. 

[00:17:16] Sarah: I was so sad. 

[00:17:17] Jason: He's just like the sweetest dog ever. Like, he's so, like, loving, he just loves everyone, like, well, loves us, not everyone.

[00:17:24] And yeah, so we got him adopted and then they took him back to the animal shelter. 

[00:17:30] Sarah: Yeah. 

[00:17:31] Jason: Which is sad. I guess. 

[00:17:33] Sarah: Husband wasn't really on board. 

[00:17:34] Jason: Husband wasn't really on board with it. No. The wife had adopted him and. 

[00:17:37] Sarah: She got him while he was in Florida like. He was out of town. Rebuilding houses from the storm.

[00:17:43] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:17:43] Sarah: And he was like, yeah, babe, go ahead. And he comes home and there's this dog. 

[00:17:47] Jason: I'm coming to Texas. And he's like, I don't know if I like this dog. Yeah. Hans doesn't like new people, so he was probably like a little iffy about him, and it probably just didn't go well. I don't know. 

[00:17:57] Sarah: Well, he let me know that it wasn't going to work out, so I said, okay, bring him back, and we'll foster him again, and in fostering him again, we both just, we knew we can't, we just can't, we can't give him up. 

[00:18:12] Jason: So we're on number three. If we keep doing this fostering, we may end up with 20 dogs eventually. We'll need to buy land and a farm for dogs. 

[00:18:21] Sarah: Y'all heard it. He said there is no amount of dogs. 

[00:18:25] Jason: I'm not going to divorce you over dogs. 

[00:18:26] Sarah: He said there's no amount of dogs.

[00:18:27] So this is recorded. I have video evidence 

[00:18:30] Jason: that doesn't mean I'm going to allow any number of dogs. There's only so many we can handle. Do you like taking trips? You like taking trips? 

[00:18:37] Sarah: I do, but that's...

[00:18:38] we're not boarding 20 dogs.

[00:18:40] No, we just need a farm. Need a farm.

[00:18:43] Need some volunteers. We'll start a nonprofit. 

[00:18:47] Jason: Okay. 

[00:18:47] Sarah: Get some people to help out. I'm going to save all dogs. 

[00:18:50] Jason: This is Sarah's goal for 2025. 

[00:18:54] Sarah: We'll have buses full of dogs. And he's not going to leave me, so that's great. 

[00:18:58] Jason: God help me. 

[00:19:00] Sarah: Seriously. 

[00:19:00] Jason: Please, protect me from this woman and all of her dogs, so. Okay, so that's it.

[00:19:07] That's our goals for DoorGrow. What are your goals? Figure them out. Let us know inside our Facebook group. You can go there by going to doorgrowclub.com . And let us know what your goals are for the year. And if you would like some help, we would love to help you with your goals. You know what your default future is.

[00:19:25] You know what you achieved last year. You know what you achieved the year before that. And if you're anything like the majority of the property managers I've talked to over the last decade, your results probably aren't super great and you're probably not super excited about it. And you're probably getting a little bit burnt out on your business.

[00:19:43] And you probably do not want to keep doing things the way that you're doing it for the next year or the next five years. And so if you would like to have a different year this year than you had last year. Like a great year, like things really going well, like adding a lot of doors, getting a team that actually makes your life easy and you feel like you can just take vacations and step away and the business works swimmingly well, then reach out to us. Reach out to us. This is stuff that we're helping clients do all the time, and you would be amazed how much we can get accomplished even in your initial jumpstart session as a new client, but certainly within the first 90 days, we are changing lives, and we would love to change yours.

[00:20:26] We love getting to do this. We just we want to help more people and reach out to us. Have a conversation. We're expensive. Yeah. Not going to lie, like we're expensive, right? But we help you make so much money that you're not going to be worried about the expense. So that's the goal. 

[00:20:43] Sarah: What's this, what's the, I don't know what it's called, but there's this framework where you have good, you have cheap, and you have fast and you can never have all three.

[00:20:51] Jason: You can only pick two. 

[00:20:52] Sarah: There's only two. There's no combination in this world of anything. No product, no service, no nothing that's good and cheap and fast. 

[00:21:00] Jason: Yeah.

[00:21:00] Sarah: So 

[00:21:01] Jason: Yep. 

[00:21:01] Sarah: So figure out which one you want to sacrifice, right? 

[00:21:04] Jason: Reach out to us. You can check us out at DoorGrow. com and until next time to our mutual growth and happy new year.

[00:21:10] Bye everyone.

[00:21:10] 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! 

[00:21:37] 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.

Many property management business owners out there struggle with having a bad brand, bad pricing, cheapo clients, a lack of confidence, and more.

In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down in-person with property manager and DoorGrow client, Kelly Rafuse, to talk about her journey with property management.

You’ll Learn

[04:53] How to Be Picky with the Clients You Bring on

[10:59] Overcoming the “Hustler” Mindset

[15:04] Choosing an Effective Brand

[21:07] Cheapos, Normals, and Premium Buyers

Tweetables

 ”As you live and you grow in this business, you learn what makes money and what doesn't.”

“ The more confident you are, the more some of these… difficult personality types will kind of abdicate and allow you to lead them.”

“ It's better to be at the top than to be competing with the garbage at the bottom.”

“ Need is scarcity, need is starving, and need is survival.”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

TalkRoute Referral Link

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kelly: You know, as you live and you grow in this business, you learn what makes money and what doesn't. And I learned how to manage property the hard way. 

[00:00:07] Jason: But you learned it. 

[00:00:08] Kelly: Yes. 

[00:00:10] 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. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it.

[00:00:37] 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 Hull, founder and CEO of DoorGrow, and Sarah Hull, the co owner and COO of DoorGrow. And now let's get into the show. 

[00:01:13] So our guest today, we're hanging out with Kelly. Kelly, introduce yourself. 

[00:01:17] Kelly: Hi there, my name is Kelly Rafuse with Crimson Cape Property Management in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. 

[00:01:22] Jason: And you have a really nice logo. Where'd you get that really nice logo? 

[00:01:25] Kelly: It's this little mastermind I joined called DoorGrow helped me with that. 

[00:01:29] Jason: And it's, I was saying, I think it's cool because it's like you are flying right there.

[00:01:33] It's like, it like reminds me of you. 

[00:01:37] Kelly: Well, yeah. I had this Marvel Comics stud fetish, so. 

[00:01:41] Jason: Yes. Okay. You're the Marvel comic gal. All right. So really excited to be hanging out. We're actually in Pennsylvania because this is kind of the neck of the woods Sarah grew up in and managed properties nearby and you manage properties in a neighboring market and so.

[00:01:59] The same market. The same market. She, yeah. Exact same market. 

[00:02:02] Sarah: I left and she has the market. 

[00:02:05] Kelly: While you were here, I was just managing my own portfolio. 

[00:02:08] Jason: Oh, okay. 

[00:02:09] Kelly: And people were coming to me to manage theirs, and that's how I got into this mess. 

[00:02:15] Jason: Yeah. Well, give us a little more background on you, Kelly.

[00:02:18] How'd you get into property management? 

[00:02:20] Kelly: Oh, well, I started off as a real estate investor. You know, buying homes out here in Northeast PA. It's a very good place to invest in property. Cash flow is, I mean, I think cap rates were like 12 percent when I got in. So, I mean, it was huge, and honestly, I was trying to replace my income because I'd gotten as far as I could go in my former career, you know, hit a huge glass ceiling, and realized that, you know, real estate was probably my ticket to freedom.

[00:02:45] Jason: What was your former career? 

[00:02:47] Kelly: I was on the radio. 

[00:02:48] Jason: Yeah, okay, you've got a great voice for it, so. 

[00:02:51] Thank you very much. 

[00:02:53] Yeah, so you were doing the radio. 

[00:02:54] Kelly: Yeah, so I actually got into this market, and I liked it here. I actually, I did my two years and then moved to a bigger market. I was in Hartford, Connecticut for a while.

[00:03:03] And then an opportunity to come back presented itself. And I came back because I genuinely like the area. And you know, the inexpensive real estate was an attraction. And then My husband and I got into investing in properties. We built up quite a portfolio. We had 25 units of our own at one point.

[00:03:20] We're down to 14 now. We sold a few off that, you know, really weren't moneymakers for us. But, you know, as you live and you grow in this business, you learn what makes money and what doesn't. And I learned how to manage property the hard way. 

[00:03:33] Jason: But you learned it. 

[00:03:34] Kelly: Yes. I made all the mistakes. 

[00:03:37] Jason: Yeah. And that's sometimes learning through mistakes and pain.

[00:03:41] I sometimes joke that DoorGrow was built on thousands of mistakes. 

[00:03:45] Kelly: You're telling me. And I will introduce My biggest pain point in just a second here. So what caused me to join DoorGrow is my husband's a real estate broker. And so people were banging on his door. "Can you manage my property? Can you manage my property?" It's like, "well, I don't do that, but my wife does." 

[00:04:03] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:04:04] Kelly: And I'm like, well, I can't manage their property. I don't have a real estate license. And so it was a whole year of, "come on! Just get the license. Just do it! Just do it. Come on!" So I got the license. And I took on one of his investor clients, and I joined DoorGrow, like all in the same day.

[00:04:23] And what I found out when I joined DoorGrow was I never should have taken on that client. 

[00:04:27] Jason: That was the price of tuition. It's one of the key lessons that defines you in business, which is you learn those lessons and not take on bad clients. Well, I mean, for us, it's been really inspiring and exciting to see your journey as an entrepreneur and see you kind of get all this ready and get things developed and start to grow.

[00:04:46] And so, we were talking about it, like, what should we talk about on the podcast today with Kelly? And you had mentioned. 

[00:04:53] Sarah: Yeah, I had said, I think for me, one of the biggest shifts that I've seen in Kelly again and again and again is shifts in mindset because it was just even a few weeks ago where maybe a month ago or something, was relatively recent, where you were saying like, "oh, I read this book and it changed my life I'm waking up at like 4:30 in the morning and structuring my day different" and it was just again and again. But you've had these little shifts that end up leading to these huge changes for you and how you run things and how you structure your day and like just even your, your energy levels seem to be more protected now.

[00:05:32] Kelly: Yeah, I'm not getting up at 4:30 in the morning anymore. Although I just learned yesterday I might have to start again because my daughter wants to join the swim team. Oh. And they practice it. 5 a. m. sometimes, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's been a struggle because I'm not only a real estate entrepreneur.

[00:05:48] I am also, you know, a wife of a whirlwind. I mean, my husband is a broker. He's into wholesaling. He's into flipping. And I go to manage him. 

[00:05:58] Jason: The whirlwind broker. 

[00:06:00] Kelly: Yeah, and, 

[00:06:02] Jason: yeah. 

[00:06:02] Kelly: No, we'll say no more about that. 

[00:06:04] Sarah: There's a lot going on.

[00:06:05] Lots of moving pieces. 

[00:06:06] Kelly: He's a genius. He's like a Bill Gates level genius.

[00:06:09] I'm just waiting for the ship to come in. Yeah, nice. It's been 30 years, but it's coming. 

[00:06:13] Jason: So what do you feel like maybe was the first mindset thing that you noticed in Kelly, kind of overcoming? Or what do you feel like was your first? 

[00:06:22] Sarah: I don't know if I can think of a first, but I know that there's been several that I'd like to highlight.

[00:06:27] Jason: Okay. 

[00:06:27] Sarah: So I think one of the things is being much more picky with what clients you take on and what properties you take on and how you kind of screen and vet people. 

[00:06:41] Jason: Maybe that first client helped you learn that lesson. 

[00:06:44] Sarah: Yes. 

[00:06:45] Jason: Yeah. So what, what was the lesson there? Like, what did you figure out? 

[00:06:48] Kelly: Oh, wow. You know, the, the first thing is I have to see if our philosophies match.

[00:06:53] Jason: You and the client. 

[00:06:54] Kelly: Yes. And when I got into real estate investing, I admit I'm a bit of an idealist. I know you're into personality types. 

[00:07:01] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:07:01] Kelly: And I test as an INFP. 

[00:07:03] Jason: Okay. 

[00:07:03] Kelly: So I probably have no business being in any business at all, but yet here I am. But I'm a dreamer. I'm a visionary. And so my first company was, and still is called Good People, Good Homes, LLC.

[00:07:15] And I own property in that LLC. I'm not really doing business in it. It just holds property for me. But when I started it, it was supposed to be the company and it was: you buy these distressed properties in these neighborhoods and you fix them up and you put great people in them and it brings up the whole neighborhood and then everybody loves you and we hold hands and sing Kumbaya and that didn't really happen.

[00:07:36] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:07:36] Kelly: But I did improve a lot of properties. 

[00:07:39] Jason: Okay. 

[00:07:39] Kelly: Right. Yeah. 

[00:07:41] Sarah: I think arguably in this market, you are outdoing anything that I've ever seen because the befores and afters are just wild. And the rent rates before and after are wild. And this area, yes, you can absolutely get a great deal, a great bargain on real estate, and that doesn't come without its challenges and its problems.

[00:08:06] But one of the things that I think is just so great in this area that you do is you take these distressed properties and you make them beautiful and livable and safe. And you provide a wonderful home now on something before that was dilapidated. 

[00:08:25] Kelly: And the market's full of C class properties. You know, I hear a lot of property managers say, "Why are you even bothering with those?"

[00:08:31] Well, honestly, there isn't anything else. Yeah, that's what we hear. You work with what you got. And I probably wouldn't be a real estate investor if the market wasn't like this. Because that's how I got in. I didn't make a ton of money in radio. I didn't. But I made enough to get in, you know, with a C class property.

[00:08:48] And now those C class properties are paying for my life, and my daughter's life, and it's beautiful. The property management company? That's just icing on the cake, but I think it might even eclipse what I've been able to do with my rentals. 

[00:09:00] Jason: Oh, I'm sure. 

[00:09:01] Kelly: And there's a need for it. 

[00:09:02] Jason: Yeah. Big need. 

[00:09:04] Kelly: Yeah. So the biggest thing I learned, back to your question about how to vet clients, does their philosophy match mine? Do they believe their C class property could be turned into a desirable place to live? And yes, you will be charging market rent for that, which is a lot more than maybe you thought you could charge. And you'll get a better class tenant that way. Or are they just happy not doing anything to the property, just letting it be what it is and getting whoever they can get into it and, you know, getting whatever money they can for it. I don't really want to work with those people. 

[00:09:38] Jason: Do you find part of this though is just selling?

[00:09:41] It's like convincing them to align with your vision? Because it sounds like you have a better vision than a lot of the people that might come to you. 

[00:09:48] Kelly: Sometimes when I show them the spreadsheet, of, you know, what I've done for some of my other clients, including the first one that I told you about. I mean, I really turned some of his properties around.

[00:09:59] And I've tried to fire him twice. Yeah. 

[00:10:01] He won't go and, you know, he's also a third of my income, so I'm going to keep him on. And, but the thing is, he's kind of listening to me now. Kind of. 

[00:10:11] Sarah: He's open. Well, I think. It's like a walnut shell. We've just cracked it open. Maybe some of the good ideas are seeping through.

[00:10:18] Jason: I've talked about this before, but I think also part of it is, as we've seen, you come into your own in more confidence in what you're doing and the more confident you are, the more some of these A personality types or these difficult personality types will kind of abdicate and allow you to lead them.

[00:10:36] And I talk about metaphorically punching people in the face sometimes. So you probably maybe punched them in the face metaphorically a couple of times since then. And so setting those healthier boundaries. Is something we naturally do when we start to believe in ourselves more. And so what other shifts do you feel like you've noticed in Kelly?

[00:10:55] Or what are some of the things that DoorGrow's helped you with? Are you making changes too? 

[00:10:59] Kelly: Well, like Sarah said, a lot of the mindset stuff, I mean, a big revelation came to me when I was at DoorGrow live. 

[00:11:05] Jason: Yeah, what was that? 

[00:11:07] Kelly: Well, first of all, getting to DoorGrow Live was a challenge because I was in the midst of my survival mode.

[00:11:13] I'm a solopreneur still. I do everything myself. My husband's my broker of record, but, like, he's off doing his thing. Sure. So. 

[00:11:21] Jason: You were doing everything, you're really busy, and you're like, how do I take a break to even just go to DoorGrow Live? 

[00:11:26] Kelly: Yeah, and, you know, then I've got this mindset that, you know, how can I afford it?

[00:11:30] But the thing is, I did have the money to go. That's another thing. I've got a poverty mindset I need to get past. And when I went to DoorGrow Live, that was really thrown in my face. Because I was talking about the challenges of being a solopreneur. And one of the pieces of advice that I was given by one of the speakers is, "What's your time worth?"

[00:11:49] You know, you can't be doing all of these things when you pay somebody. Yeah, and I thought, well, what's my time worth? And then this little voice in the back of my head said, well, not a whole heck of a lot. 

[00:12:00] Jason: You told everybody that. You said, "not a whole heck of a lot." 

[00:12:04] Kelly: Yeah. 

[00:12:04] Jason: And we're like, "oh, okay." 

[00:12:06] Kelly: Yeah. 

[00:12:07] Jason: Yeah.

[00:12:07] Kelly: Well, I mean, that comes from, you know, my background. I grew up without a lot. 

[00:12:11] Jason: Yeah. You know, 

[00:12:12] Kelly: I saw my parents struggle. They're working class people. You know, I got into an industry that was on its, you know, downslide when I, I started on the radio in you know, the early nineties, you know, probably right after it started to slide down and, you know, there've been multiple layoffs and, you know, voice tracking and automation and, you know, I survived, but I think one of the reasons I survived was I was willing to work really hard for not a whole lot of compensation.

[00:12:40] Jason: Sure. 

[00:12:40] Kelly: \You know, as people were let go and reductions in force, I was given more duties, but not more money. 

[00:12:47] Jason: Sure. 

[00:12:48] Kelly: And, you know, you do that long enough, you start getting the message that, oh, well, your time really isn't worth a whole heck of a lot. 

[00:12:54] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:12:55] Kelly: Yeah. 

[00:12:56] Jason: Who decides what your time's worth? 

[00:12:57] Kelly: I do. 

[00:12:58] Jason: Yeah. I do.

[00:12:59] Yes. 

[00:12:59] Kelly: I do. 

[00:13:00] Yeah! 

[00:13:01] And, you know, that's...

[00:13:02] you do now. Yes. 

[00:13:03] Jason: How has that shifted for you then? What's your perception of your time and the value of it? of your time now? 

[00:13:09] Kelly: My perception of my time is, you know, first of all, I don't need to be tied to the Henry Ford 40 hour work week or even the 50-60-70-80 hour work week that I hear people say you "should" do when you're running a business because, you know, it's impractical.

[00:13:24] I have a daughter. She's a teenager. She's just started high school this year. She's a field hockey athlete and now she wants to be on the swim team and she's got needs. Mhm. Right? I've got a husband who does not have a cushy job I can fall back on while I do my entrepreneurial thing. 

[00:13:40] Jason: Right. Right.

[00:13:41] Kelly: He's also an entrepreneur.

[00:13:43] We are living off self employment income. So it is a constant, you know, point of stress. So, you know, I need to find out my key productivity time, and that's when I work. And sometimes I get four or five hours a day, and that's it, of key productivity time. But then I find myself, you know, when I'm walking the dog, having all these great ideas.

[00:14:06] You know, I do things like I listen to your podcast you know, some great audio books that have been recommended to me. I devoured The One Thing by Gary Keller, the Profit First book. And I'm starting to implement these ideas. And it's just sort of like they're ladder steps. 

[00:14:23] Jason: So basically, little by little, you've been investing in yourself by leveraging reading, getting coaching, doing this stuff.

[00:14:31] And that's translated into you valuing yourself a little bit more. 

[00:14:35] Yeah. 

[00:14:35] Awesome. 

[00:14:36] Kelly: Absolutely. And I've learned to turn things over, like maintenance, you know, I hired one of the vendors that you recommended, Vendoroo and they're, you know, the tenants still text me with maintenance issues.

[00:14:47] Sure. And I text back, "put it in the portal." Right. "If you can't put it in the portal, call this number and they'll teach you how to put it in the portal." 

[00:14:55] Jason: But yeah, probably less willing to take phone calls than you were before. 

[00:14:58] Kelly: Yeah, I've never really taken phone calls. 

[00:15:00] Jason: That's good, that's good.

[00:15:02] Kelly: Thanks me. Get it all in writing. 

[00:15:04] Jason: So you went through our whole rapid revamp process as well, like with the branding and like getting everything kind of dialed in, pricing. You've implemented a lot of things. And so, has that impacted your confidence level as well? 

[00:15:20] Kelly: Oh, absolutely. I really feel like, you know, I'm marketing a real brand now with Crimson Cape.

[00:15:25] Jason: Yeah. What, what was it before that? 

[00:15:26] Kelly: GPGH Management Company. 

[00:15:29] Jason: Oh, the acronym. 

[00:15:30] Kelly: Yep. Good People, Good Homes. 

[00:15:32] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:15:32] Kelly: You know, just to take off of that and, you know, everything was GPGH. My husband was GPGH Realty. 

[00:15:38] Jason: It sounds like some sort of drug or something. What do you take in GPGH?

[00:15:42] Kelly: Well, it's the right market.

[00:15:44] Jason: Okay. Well, then there's that GLP 1 joke too that you could put in there. GLP 1. Yeah. But my husband actually reprinted his real estate company because of, you know, he was inspired by what I did. 

[00:15:54] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What's his brand? 

[00:15:56] Kelly: He's Gorilla Real Estate. That's the little stuffed gorilla you saw on the way in.

[00:16:00] Jason: Okay, yeah. Yeah, and they're different, which is nice. They're not like, you know, kind of mixed together. 

[00:16:06] Kelly: Right, right. And I don't want, you know, people to really associate us together, even though we do share an office. 

[00:16:11] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:16:12] For now. 

[00:16:13] So you've gone through the branding, your pricing is different than anyone else in the market.

[00:16:19] Kelly: Yeah. It's higher than anyone else in the market too. And that keeps a lot of the riffraff away. 

[00:16:24] Jason: Yeah. It's better to be at the top than to be competing with the garbage at the bottom. For sure. Yeah. Especially in a difficult or lower end market. Yeah. Yeah. So awesome. What other changes? 

[00:16:36] Sarah: I think, well, how many, we've gone through the rapid revamp a couple of times, so she's done the mindset piece a few times, and I think every time you go through it, you kind of get, like, an extra layer out of it, like almost like the next, like we're stacking like, levels and levels and levels of different like mindset tips and tricks, and then the perception piece, which once we're done with the little pieces on the website, we can get that launched for you.

[00:17:04] I think that will make a huge difference. And recently. I mean, for the whole entirety of the time that you were in our program, you had always said "there is no way I can add more units. There is no way I can do more work. There is no way I can even focus on growth." And you are now adding new doors.

[00:17:24] Kelly: Yep, I added three last week. I added another two Sunday night from a current client. I didn't know she had another double block. You know how I got those doors? She called me from you know, her poor husband is at the Cleveland Clinic. So she called me from Cleveland and she's like "I got a no heat call from this one building that you're not managing And I can't deal with it. Can you please take these units?" 

[00:17:47] Jason: Nice. 

[00:17:48] Kelly: So I just got two more doors. 

[00:17:49] Jason: Okay. 

[00:17:50] Kelly: And I'm hopefully closing on another five by the end of the week. 

[00:17:53] Yes!

[00:17:55] Jason: So doors are just starting to flow and you're able to dedicate time now towards growth which before you're kind of 

[00:18:01] Kelly: yeah 

[00:18:01] Jason: Chicken with head cut off running around and dealing with stuff.

[00:18:04] Kelly: It's going to get a little iffy again now that I've added these doors, you know, okay. Now I have to onboard all these tenants. And there's a couple that come with the vacant units that they want me to rent in January? 

[00:18:16] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:18:17] Sarah: The best time of year here. 

[00:18:21] Jason: Right. Lots of activity. 

[00:18:23] Sarah: Speaking of vacant units, You have none now in the portfolio that you're Managing?

[00:18:28] My current portfolio, I filled them all. 

[00:18:31] Yeah, and how many did you have? Because I feel like all throughout the year I was getting updates and it was like 20 something and down a little bit, down a little bit, and now you're at zero. 

[00:18:41] Kelly: Yeah, I filled I think 17 units over the course of the last year.

[00:18:45] Amazing. 

[00:18:46] 10 of them were filled between September and now. 

[00:18:50] Jason: Nice. Wow. 

[00:18:50] Kelly: And I've got a few that are coming up. I've got, you know, two of my tenants are moving into senior housing. So, you know, that means I'm probably going to have to redo their apartments because they've been living there since like 1965 or whatever.

[00:19:04] I'm sure they're going to need to be some updates. 

[00:19:07] Jason: So in getting this business started, if you hadn't heard about DoorGrow, or say, DoorGrow didn't exist. Where would you be you think right now? 

[00:19:15] Kelly: Oh my gosh. 

[00:19:16] Jason: What'd be going on? 

[00:19:17] Kelly: I'm not sure I'd still be doing it. 

[00:19:19] Jason: You think you would have quit? 

[00:19:20] Kelly: With this client that I took on from the beginning, if I didn't know any better, I would think this is what property management is.

[00:19:27] Jason: And you'd be like, yeah, right, so talking with us saying you should probably fire this client was probably enough to go, "okay, this may not be everybody." 

[00:19:35] Kelly: Right.

[00:19:36] Jason: Okay.

[00:19:36] Kelly: Right, right. And you know, and you also helped me work with this client. So he's still my client, and he could be a very good client now that his buildings are cash flowing. But that remains to be seen because I got a little pushback on a repair last night that I wasn't real happy with, but we'll see.

[00:19:53] Jason: You're going to set some strong boundaries with this guy. 

[00:19:56] Kelly: I might have to punch him in the face a third time. 

[00:19:58] Jason: Metaphorically. Right, right. Metaphorically, we're not advocating violence. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Well anything else that we should chat about or cover? I mean, it's really been, like I said at the beginning, it's been inspiring and exciting to see you grow.

[00:20:13] We're really excited to see where you take this and we've seen just it and that's why we do what we do. It's great to see clients just grow like you've come so far. Your whole energy is just different. Just how you are from when we saw you at DoorGrow live and you're like, well, what's your time worth?

[00:20:29] And you're, you've spouted off, "well, not very much," you know, or whatever you've come a long way. And I'm really excited to see where you go with this because this could be a really great residual income business. I think absolutely it will overshadow what you're making off your rental properties, but then it also feed you some more real estate deals in the future.

[00:20:47] For sure as you, as you work this. And so, yeah, I think it'll be interesting. And how does the, the king of Gorilla Real Estate feel about everything that you're doing? 

[00:20:56] Kelly: Oh, he's incredibly supportive. Yeah. I think he misses when I used to just, you know, clean up his bookkeeping for him. We now have to hire someone to do that.

[00:21:05] Jason: Mm-hmm. Yes. Those wealthy problems. Yeah. 

[00:21:07] Kelly: And yeah, and that's another mindset thing I need to get over. And you cover this in the rapid revamp when you're talking about, you know, the three types of clients you got, your, your normals, which you're, you're aiming for. 

[00:21:18] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:21:18] Kelly: But then you've got, you know, your cheapos and your premiums.

[00:21:21] Sure. 

[00:21:21] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:21:21] Kelly: And and, and one of the things you talked about, the cheapos is. Are you a cheapo? 

[00:21:27] Jason: Oh. Yeah. 

[00:21:27] Kelly: And I realize that, yeah, I kind of am a cheapo. 

[00:21:30] Jason: You get what you attract. Huh. And so, yeah, we're blind, we have a blind spot towards which category we are showing up as, and so stretching yourself to not be a cheapo.

[00:21:41] Kelly: I grew up with nothing. You know, I grew up with nothing, so, yeah, that's why I'm a cheapo. 

[00:21:47] Sarah: Yeah. And I get it, because I too was in that mindset, especially when I lived here. 

[00:21:52] This area is in that mindset.

[00:21:54] Yes, the whole area is very, and when you find someone who kind of breaks through that bubble, It's odd here, right?

[00:22:03] And it's different. And it's weird. And it's like, what are they doing? What is this all about? This is just weird. Like, why are you not, you know, normal like us? And when that was something that I had struggled with for a very, very long time, too, because back when I had lived here, I thought, "okay, well, I want to make more money. And like, I need to make more money. And the only way I can do that is I can either work more hours and maybe get some overtime or maybe I can find a job that's going to pay me more and or ask for a raise, or and this is my go to strategy, was let's just work two jobs, three jobs, four jobs." I was working four jobs at a time.

[00:22:44] I was working seven days a week and I did that for years and years and years just because, well, this job I maxed out on and I can't get any more money out of here, but I need more money, so, oh, let me just add on another job. Yeah, so I understand that completely and it was just, it was with time that that started to just crack and shift a little bit.

[00:23:02] Jason: Kind of the trap of time for dollars. As if that's the only way. 

[00:23:07] Sarah: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

[00:23:09] Jason: So yeah, so being exposed just to other people that are not of that mindset probably is cracks that glass ceiling you spoke of a little bit before maybe. 

[00:23:19] Kelly: Right. Yeah. And what I'm noticing is that I'm attracting people, local people, that have a similar mindset and they exist.

[00:23:28] You know, there's a lot of entrepreneurs in this area. Chris Jones started Pepper Jam, and he decided to keep his company here. 

[00:23:34] Sarah: Oh, wow. 

[00:23:34] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, there's, there's a few. Tech company, you might have heard of them. But yeah, there's, there's a few. 

[00:23:39] Jason: So, you are no longer a cheapo. 

[00:23:42] Kelly: No. I, well, I'm working on it.

[00:23:45] I'm working on it. I catch myself. 

[00:23:46] Jason: You say...

[00:23:47] Kelly: I am no longer a cheapo. 

[00:23:49] Jason: I am more normal. 

[00:23:51] Kelly: I am more normal. 

[00:23:52] Jason: Graduating towards premium. 

[00:23:53] Kelly: And I'm graduating towards premium. 

[00:23:55] Jason: It's good to be premium. We get to decide this, right? We get to decide this.

[00:24:00] And so as you stretch yourself into more premium experience and recognizing, like, money is not the painful thing to be focused on, there's, and there's better things to be focused on that are more valuable and more important, like your time. And as you put a greater and greater premium on your time, you shift out of that currency of cash being the, you know, the God of your life controlling you and then you can start to be grateful.

[00:24:26] And I think one of the key things for everybody listening is when we start to celebrate all of the things that we used to complain about related to money, I think this is how we shift out of that poverty mindset is, oh, we got to pay this bill. Thank you God that I have lights and power that I'm able to afford to do this.

[00:24:44] Or thank you that I'm able to do this. And when we start to be grateful instead of projecting pain every time we see or hear money, And we start to project gratitude, then we start to attract more money. Like we start to be open to that. And as we shift into normal, yeah, we attract more normals. As we shift into premium, we attract more premium clients.

[00:25:05] And they recognize you. It's like, there's a knowing between you and them, like, yeah, this is how it works. You come to us and we take care of everything and we take care of you and you get a premium service and product and they're like, "yeah, that's what I want." because premium buyers, when they see people that are cheapos.

[00:25:20] They can like kind of smell it on you, right? So then they're like, "I don't want to work with this person. They're not going to take care of my property the way that I would want or do things or take care of me the way that I want." And so investing in ourselves. Sometimes for me, one of my coaches said, "go get a massage, you know, go do things to invest or take care of yourself to where you feel like..." you know, anything where we say, I think the poverty mindset is we hear this voice that says, " I don't need that nicer car. You don't need to go get a massage. Why do you need that?" Normal and premium is about shifting beyond need, right? Need is scarcity, need is starving, and need is survival, and so, and then what happens is we have to create drama or problems in our life in order to justify taking time off, so we have to get sick, or we have to justify it.

[00:26:09] Doing something and so when we shift out of that then we shift into a healthier state where we can decide I am going to take a vacation or I am going to take time off. I'm going to go to DoorGrow live. You should all go to DoorGrow live, so. 

[00:26:20] Sarah: I highly recommend coming up in May! 

[00:26:23] Jason: It's coming up in May. Go to doorgrowlive.Com. So, all right anything else we should touch on? 

[00:26:28] Sarah: One thing and I don't know if I've ever said this on the coach a call where you've been on but for me, it was actually Roya Mattis. She, at the time, was in Mary Kay like, and I was in cosmetic sales for Mary Kay, and It was very early in my Mary Kay career and I was kind of learning how to be entrepreneur ish, right?

[00:26:53] Like, "Oh, I can write these things off and I can do things differently" and, "Oh, this is an expense, but it's a good expense." And it was a lot of new things for me. And one of the things that she had said is and I'll never forget because it just stuck with me and I went, "Oh, okay." Yeah, I need to stop thinking like that right now.

[00:27:11] Is " come tax time, there are people who can't wait for tax time because they're waiting. They're depending on that refund and they're like, 'Oh, thank God I get this refund.' Right?"

[00:27:21] A lot of rent gets caught up in it.

[00:27:23] It sure does. Yeah. Funny. All of a sudden they have money. So. Once you start really making money, though, you don't get refunds anymore.

[00:27:33] What ends up happening is you pay money. And not only do you pay money into it, but you now are, like, quarterly paying money. But you don't have to do that if you're, like, barely scraping by, if you're not making money. So, what she said to me is, " when you're, like, rich and you're making money You're excited to pay this money because you're making so much money that now, not only are not going to get a refund, but you don't, you don't worry about the refund, you're making money and now you're paying the taxes and you are going to hit a point where you want to be paying taxes more often than just once a year because that means you've reached a certain level and now you're making a certain amount of money and your goal at that point is then going to be, 'well, how can I increase this?'"

[00:28:24] And that for me, it just stuck in my head forever. And I went, "Oh. Oh, geez. I didn't even realize that." And at that time I was, I was. Like, "well, I'm going to get a couple thousand dollars back, like on my tax refund." I haven't gotten a refund in years. And it's true though. It's just a different way of thinking about things.

[00:28:40] It's like, well, you know, if you make this tiny little bit of money and then I can get, you know, a couple thousand dollars back at the end of the year, or I can make a whole lot more money. And then, yes, I have to make some quarterly tax payments. Man, I'd rather make a lot more money and I'll just give the government some of it.

[00:28:54] And then what you have to do is just figure out how can we reduce that as much as possible. 

[00:28:59] Jason: I would love to see taxes just be reduced dramatically. So, we'll see. 

[00:29:04] Kelly: But, who knows what they're going to do. 

[00:29:05] Jason: I don't get super excited about paying taxes, but I do get excited. I would rather, like, see more income on my tax return.

[00:29:13] You know taxes every time so. 

[00:29:14] Sarah: Would you rather make the big amount of money so that you have to pay the taxes in or would you make a really small amount of money so that you get a refund? 

[00:29:22] Kelly: Yeah, just a really good accountant that can help you zig when the government zags 

[00:29:26] Sarah: So that that was something that she said to me and I went oh, okay, that is a very different way of thinking about it.

[00:29:33] And it just, just stuck with me. 

[00:29:35] Jason: Yeah. Always looking through the lens of 'why is this positive?' it's a healthy mindset for sure. Yeah. Why are taxes positive? All right. Everybody listening is like, "they're not." 

[00:29:45] Sarah: I know. Right. Cool. My brother wants a shout out. So shout out to Jason. 

[00:29:50] Jason: What's up, Jason?

[00:29:51] Sarah: He's like, "you never shout me out!" Here, here you are. The three of us are waving to you now. So, what's up, Jason? 

[00:29:58] Jason: No, he's got the same name as me. Everybody's like, what's that all about? 

[00:30:01] He's dating a Sarah. 

[00:30:03] Kelly: Oh! 

[00:30:04] Jason: Which is funny. And you have a stepsister, that's Sarah, so he's got two, three Sarahs in his life right now.

[00:30:13] Three Sarahs, two Jasons, and a partridge in a pear tree. All right. Cool. Well, Kelly, it's been great coming to hang out in your office and to meet you in person like here in Pennsylvania. Thanks for hosting the DoorGrow show and having us hang out with you and we're excited to see where you go and how you progress in the program and all the things you're going to do as you add doors.

[00:30:36] And I think the future is really bright for Crimson Property Management, Crimson Cape. Hey, I missed the Cape. It's like superhero stuff here. Yes. I am. I love it. All right. And that's it. So if you are tuning in, make sure to check us out at DoorGrow. com. And if you are wanting to grow your property management business, or you are getting burnt out on it, or you are one of the many sucky property management companies that exist, you don't have to be.

[00:31:04] It could be good. It could be better. Then reach out to us. We would love to help you scale and grow your business. We help people from startup all the way to breaking the thousand door barrier. Whatever your goal is reach out to us. Check us out at DoorGrow. com. Bye everyone. 

[00:31:18] 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! 

[00:31:45] 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.

Even with all of the property management software and tools breaking onto the scene lately, it seems that some entrepreneurs are still identifying gaps they could potentially fill…

In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Eric Nelsen of Walkthroo to talk about a new maintenance solution in development for property managers and vendors.

You’ll Learn

[03:36] What is Walkthroo?

[08:43] Developing Software and Utilizing AI

[16:52] Getting Time Back with User-Friendly Tools

[23:02] Get in Touch with Walkthroo

Tweetables

 ” It's a lot easier to make changes to software when you're smaller and you're getting things started and you're doing it in the right way.”

“ Time is probably the biggest benefit we provide.”

“ Vendors in a lot of situations end up being the eyes, ears and hands for the property manager.”

“ User experience is a big deal when designing software.”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

TalkRoute Referral Link

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jason: It's a lot easier to make changes to software when you're smaller and you're getting things started and you're doing it in the right way. Once it turns into a giant beast and it's old, then it's really difficult. 

[00:00:11] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. 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.

[00:00:52] 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. And today I'm hanging out with Eric Nelson of Walkthroo. Eric, welcome to the DoorGrow Show. 

[00:01:21] Eric: Thanks, Jason. Glad to be here. 

[00:01:23] Jason: So Eric I would love to first get into your background. And my wife's chiming in saying I need to remember to promote DoorGrow live today, so I'll just do that right now real quick, and then we'll get to you, Eric. So if you are a property manager and you're watching this make sure you get tickets to DoorGrow Live like this is the most contribution focused, holistic property management conference in the industry.

[00:01:44] We do things very differently. "There's heart" is kind of the feedback we get from others. People cry at our events. Like it's really awesome. It's going to be at the Kalahari resort here in Round Rock, Texas. And get your tickets right now. They go up in price over time. So head on over to DoorGrowLive.Com and get your tickets and be there. We've got sponsors. We've got cool speakers. It's going to be awesome. And DoorGrow magic is there. You're going to learn about growing your business from Sarah and myself and we'll help you out. All right, cool. Shameless plug inserted.

[00:02:20] Now, Eric, I would love to get into your background.

[00:02:23] You know, we hung out briefly in in Austin you came out and got to know each other a little bit, but I want my audience to get to know you share a little bit about How you kind of got into entrepreneurism, how you got into this. So tell us a little bit about your background. 

[00:02:37] Eric: Yeah, sure. Sure. I grew up in Houston, Texas kind of came up through the finance world. So I spent about 10, 15 years in finance, went to grad school at Rice in Houston, and I just couldn't walk down the finance hallway. I saw the entrepreneurial professors down a different hallway, really wanted to kind of do my own thing.

[00:02:55] So you know, stayed in finance for a couple more years and got into the pharmacy business. And through that business, I got exposed to IT technology and building software to kind of run our pharmacies and improve our ops and, and run those companies. And then a good friend of mine in Shreveport Springs, Texas was is a general contractor and said he works with these property managers and they, he does a lot of maintenance for rentals.

[00:03:20] And he said, "yeah, Eric, I want to take on more business, but I can't keep track. There's so many little jobs. There's so much communication going on, text, emails, phone calls. You've got a software background. Can you help me?" And so that's, what's really exposed me to the property management industry and kind of started me on this path.

[00:03:36] Got it. All right. So let's get into talking a little bit about Walkthroo and what it is. And it's, it's "walk T-H-R-O-O. So tell us a little bit about Walkthroo and what is it? What does it do? 

[00:03:52] Yeah. So Walkthroo is, it's a really kind of a mindset and approach to the business and the underlying core is as much as accounting and tenant screening and even inspections, that software, those tools have grown, you know, with technological advances and whatnot.

[00:04:13] If you really look at what we think is one of the four main pillars of property management is the maintenance, that hasn't grown. I mean, if you look back 10 years ago you really couldn't get multiple bids to do any work. If you look back 10 years ago, you couldn't pull up on your screen and compare two different bids.

[00:04:29] 10 years ago, you couldn't split charges on an invoice between a tenant and owner. And you look today, fast forward 10 years, and I would say You know, 90- 95 percent of the platforms, you still cannot do those things. Well, when my partner brought me into this, you know, first he wanted me to help him with his, you know, just his construction company, but we quickly realized the problem wasn't him.

[00:04:52] It was the property managers he was working with and the inefficiencies that came with the way they handle maintenance. So right out of the gate within a month. We switched that mantra. We're going to work to help property managers. And so that's really been what Walkthroo's focus has been the last three years.

[00:05:09] And we really just, again, within the first three months we can get multiple bidders, we can split charges. And so it just showed me right away that it's not for a lack of technology or, you know, lack of know how even. It's just when you look at these software platforms and these operating systems, they just have bigger fish to fry.

[00:05:27] They, you know, they all agree we should be able to hire multiple bidders with a couple clicks, but we're going to spend time doing X. So I can't explain it, but again, within the first six months, we had all these features built. And so now we're coming up on three years. We're really looking to round out the platform and keep growing.

[00:05:45] Jason: Okay. So besides doing multiple bids and splitting charges, what would you say Walkthroo is? Like, what is, what does it accomplish? 

[00:05:53] Eric: So we're going to be a full operating system for property managers. We started backwards. I spoke with the former CEO of Buildium post sale to real page.

[00:06:03] And he told me flat out, "we did a lot of great things." I think they were in 19 countries at the time. He's like, "but I'll be honest here. We never figured out maintenance. And so if that's where you're starting, you know, good on you. Good luck." And so we started with maintenance and we built our platform around maintenance.

[00:06:18] We've recently added inspections. And so we'll keep growing. So Walkthroo will be A full suite of operating suite for property managers. Currently, we're not there yet, I'm going to go through a couple of rounds of raising money. Currently, we're a maintenance tool. People can use our platform. And we also provide maintenance services still.

[00:06:39] So that's, that's, that's kind of what we do today. And the third leg, which just launched, is, and this is probably the most unique feature of what we're building, every other maintenance tool or platform or operating platform out there has property manager and they invite people in and the people have to learn how to use your system and whatnot. We actually sell our software straight to contractors.

[00:07:02] So they're using it independent of property management They're using it to paint houses, do handyman jobs around around their cities, and so we're building this network where property managers will be on Walkthroo, the contractors are on Walkthroo, and it's just a simple connection and you don't have, you know, the training and, you know, as a vendor ourselves the last few years, I've been through some trainings to use different systems and I can imagine. It's can like a painter, you know, in downtown Austin that has two employees trying to figure out all these platforms and how to work with these clients. So we're, our goal is to really simplify all that for all the stakeholders. 

[00:07:39] Jason: Got it. So it sounds like Walkthroo, you're building this from the ground up.

[00:07:43] You're building it as a tool to support and help based on what business owners actually need in property management. You started with one of the biggest challenges, which is maintenance. You're now adding inspections, you're adding other things. And the goal, the roadmap is to make it a full suite that helps maybe a better property management back office or software solution.

[00:08:05] So the next big piece is then I'm sure on the roadmap somewhere is accounting and, tenant portals, owner portals, so they can see statements and submit the maintenance request, maybe like all of this kind of stuff. And so yeah, and I don't, I think that there's, there hasn't been a lot of innovation.

[00:08:23] We've seen Rentvine come out recently. And it was born kind of out of a lot of complaints people were having about Appfolio. Appfolio was kind of born out of a lot of complaints people were having about maybe Buildium and Propertyware. Right. Right. And so, you know, when software is born out of complaints, you know, of different tools, yeah, it's going to be better than that tool, but it is interesting to start from the ground up building around the needs of and supporting the property manager and the work that they're doing. It'll be very interesting to see where you guys end up and what's kind of the timeline for all of this?

[00:08:55] Eric: Well, you know, it depends on fundraising, right? So it's expensive, especially, you get into the accounting engines and a lot of that. There's a lot of costs involved. So we're hoping in the next You know, 12 to 18 months, we'd have a product out of, you know, for small property managers to run their business off our platform.

[00:09:12] Jason: That's pretty fast. That's really the goal right now. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Yeah. And it sounds like you guys move quickly. You know. It's a lot easier to make changes to software when you're smaller and you're getting things started and you're doing it in the right way. Once it turns into a giant beast and it's old, then it's really difficult.

[00:09:30] Like some of the older maintenance software companies I'm sure they're toying with the idea. Like, should we just rebuild from scratch or throw all this away? Or do we just work this until this horse dies, you know? And so that's always the challenge with software.

[00:09:46] And then adoption is always a big challenge. So getting people to use something new or to change to something else. And a lot of times it's easier to get the smaller guys and the smaller companies to make changes. And the big companies are usually watching the little guys make all the mistakes or test stuff out or see.

[00:10:04] And then they stand back to wait to see who the winners are. So... 

[00:10:08] Eric: yeah, yeah. And thankfully I've got some experience on our side. My partner, Travis, he before he got into construction, him and his dad ran a small microscope specialized software company they sell it to universities. I don't know the ins and outs of it, but they could like take a laser and look into this, you know, the elemental makeup of a molecule.

[00:10:26] It was really, really specialized, but that was exactly where he came from. He's like, yeah, you could go with Hitachi or a big Japanese brand, but you can't get them on the phone. You know, like you said, they've, they've done good. They've built so big, but now that's a hindrance. And we're in the same path.

[00:10:40] You know, we didn't have splitting the owner and tenant charges, but you know, after talking to a few clients and a few property managers, that was just a common, very common thing. And I said, "well, let's just build it." Well, we're small or nimble, you know, we can, we can get away with that.

[00:10:53] So we're going to take that same approach as we go through the accounting side of things, you know, and just interviewing property managers and listening to the industry and saying, Hey, my background is finance and operations. And so, you know, when I met you, something you brought up a lot was transforming lives and, you know, kind of making people enjoy their work and that's something I don't see. When we launched this tool. We decided to launch it internally two years ago. So we haven't really been selling Walkthroo, we've been using it ourselves. We currently manage Over 250 jobs in nine states. And so I talked to more maintenance coordinators and property managers every day and a lot of them could be happier.

[00:11:35] So as we build this out, we want these tools to allow some sort of automation and allow people to focus on growing doors and, you know, and doing other things that are more beneficial versus banging their head against walls. 

[00:11:49] Jason: Sure. Yeah. I know property management business owners would much rather spend their time focusing on scaling their business than dealing with all the the nitty gritty day to day challenges and difficulty in all the tools that they're dealing with.

[00:12:04] So Eric, we're in the middle of this AI revolution and you're like right in the middle of building this tool as we're coming into this new AI revolution where there's just tons of software just coming out. And people can create tools and software a lot more easily and their AI is helping them.

[00:12:22] And then everyone's trying to integrate AI. And then you see all these companies that are dinosaurs. They're trying to strap chat GPT on the side of their crazy rollercoaster. And like, you know, say now we have AI. And so how's AI kind of tie into you guys, you know, getting Walkthroo built out?

[00:12:43] Eric: Yeah, great question. We've got a roadmap for it. We don't have anything integrated yet. I think it's, it's too early, but you know, my background is really improving operations efficiencies. And so once we have this tool built out, then we will again, deploy AI where it makes sense. Like you said, it's a buzzword.

[00:13:03] People will say everything is aI generated. It's like, no, that's just a search function, but call it AI. And so we, you know, we know most of the data. I'm not well tuned on the accounting yet, but definitely on the maintenance side, we know what data and what decisions are being made every day because again, we've lived that life and we're living it now we're doing jobs.

[00:13:24] And so we will bring in AI kind of as we roll out the full suite, you know, I'm not sure to be perfectly honest. I don't know if it's going to be a heavy lift. I mean, again, it really comes down to the operations of the business and work and we see efficiencies and you know, there's some decisions you want eyes on, you know, you want, you want human interaction and others are a little more mundane task.

[00:13:45] And so we, we are definitely have that in the playbook but I, at this point, you know, our plan is not to have this fully automated AI, you know, software, it's going to be just a much cleaner, easier tool to use and AI will be obviously just a natural component of that.

[00:14:01] Jason: Got it. I mean, I think that makes sense. A lot of people start, you know, thinking, Oh, let's make AI do everything. But I think, I think it probably does make a lot more sense to make sure that the tools and systems are working for humans and they're working the right way first. And then AI create some leverage now that this is working well.

[00:14:21] And I think that goes for how business owners should implement technology in general is you first do the process manually, and then you start to look for points of leverage and where can I leverage tech, where could a tool like Walkthroo facilitate what I'm doing now or help move things forward? So who's your current target audience?

[00:14:39] Like, who are the people listening to this podcast that you think should reach out to Walkthroo to get an assessment on their current maintenance situation? 

[00:14:49] Eric: Yeah. I mean, we've talked to everyone from PMI to sole proprietors to self managers. So I would say our sweet spot is probably property managers with, you know, 200 to 500 doors.

[00:15:02] Seems to be small enough where the data is not overwhelming. They're doing a lot of work, I feel from what I've seen personally, and so working with Walkthroo helps some of that. And people can work with us in different ways. We some people just use our software. You know, we, If we can, if we can manage jobs across nine states, truly, you know, we know people can manage jobs in their own town or their own state and some of them just hire us as a, they just have us on their preferred vendor list, you know, we obviously I don't have staff in nine states, so I use my tool to manage jobs and manage vendors and the third way people can access and partner with us Is we come on as your maintenance coordinator, you know, we'll use their vendors, their top vendors, let us manage it.

[00:15:43] One question I always ask property managers, not surprisingly, the answer is usually similar is, you know, "have you ever logged in as a vendor to whatever system are you using?"

[00:15:51] " Well, why would I do that?" It's like, well, yeah, you probably wouldn't think of it, but I recommend it because you know, it's, it's one of those tasks. It's important, but it's also been done since the dawn of property management, I give someone a job, they go do it. But if you, if you're using tools, I recommend logging in as that contractor and seeing what they're seeing. And, oh, this is why it's hard to communicate because I can't upload anything or I can't text or, you know, whatever, whatever it may be.

[00:16:20] So the maintenance coordinator role is something we've been taking on more and more where it's like, yeah, you give us your favorite painters and handyman, and we'll either API into your system, or you just send your tenants our way. You know, we structured any way that works best for our clients and the, let us do the dispatching, you know, all the status checks.

[00:16:39] I mean, you know, it's just a constant barrage of phone calls every Monday morning on where we're at. And of course, Sunday night we send out reports so we don't have to get those calls. Those are the three ways that property managers can work with us currently. 

[00:16:52] Jason: What, what are the results that people that start working will Walkthroo tend to notice or what sort of the changes that you're creating for these business owners. 

[00:17:02] Eric: It's time. Time is probably the biggest benefit we provide. You know most I just mentioned the Monday check ins or daily check ins most maintenance tools that I've seen in, by the way, the other way that we know our, our tool is is well built, it's acting and being a vendor for the last three years.

[00:17:21] I've logged into all the other tools. You know, when a property manager sees Walkthroo, yeah, they say Oh, Eric, yeah, we're always looking for a new painter. Here's our login to our system. Great. So immediately we take notes and, and figure out what's, what's wrong, but the time component I would say is probably the, the most we hear back on, on the biggest benefit and then most systems will have status indicators, maybe something's in progress.

[00:17:44] We've got over 20 statuses. Are we waiting on the contractor to finish the work? Are we waiting on the tenant to accept the schedule and confirm it? Are we waiting on the after pictures to come in. I mean, there's all these nuanced steps that I think historically again, bigger companies are busy, but coming from at it from fresh from outside the industry, it was like, well, this is important to know if I know that I'm waiting on the tenant to confirm a schedule, I don't need to waste my time calling the contractor, ask what's going on.

[00:18:14] And so those, that's a little microcosm of. How we built our system and also just a, again, just the workflow. I mean, I was shocked. None of the systems I've used since I've been in property management, offer me a way to do a change order. Very simple, very common request. And I have to like make a phone call or send an email.

[00:18:32] And it's just time, time, time. So we make all that click, click, click. 

[00:18:37] Jason: For the listeners. Explain a typical change order sort of situation. 

[00:18:41] Eric: Leaky faucet. We've got a leaky faucet. We want somebody to go check it out. Contractor shows up on site, looks at a leaky faucet, and says, yeah, this faucet's leaking here.

[00:18:51] I can fix that. But also, it created mold and damage all behind it. All under the counter. We've got to rip all these counters out. Well, that's not what the contractor was there sent to do. It's definitely not approved without, you know, anyone signing off on that. So he's got to communicate back to the property manager, "Hey, there's a much bigger issue here."

[00:19:11] And so in the industry, it's, you know, typically referred to as a change order. And so now the contractor usually sits and waits and says, okay, I'll, I'll wait for the property manager to talk to the owner. And see if they want me to rip off this cabinet and do all this extra work. You know, I'm just, you know, I'm just a contractor.

[00:19:28] Can I explain what I see? So now we're in a waiting game, right? So a week later, property manager boss comes in and says, "what's going on on one, two, three Smith street?" 

[00:19:36] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:19:37] Eric: "Oh, well, there was a problem." 

[00:19:38] "Okay. What's going on now?"

[00:19:40] "I don't know. Oh, it looks like, I think we're waiting for the owner to give us the green light to do the new repairs"

[00:19:46] and so you can, you can step back and realize how that can. And you add that times 50 jobs or 100 jobs and it starts, it really adds up. So again, the way we built our system was to really eliminate a lot of that excess time. And where are we in this maintenance process? And just put it on the dashboard.

[00:20:03] Just like, you know, many other things in life now. Put it in front of my face, so I know where all my jobs are and all my maintenance tasks are located. 

[00:20:11] Jason: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm sure that's a challenge, like people discovering new work when they go out to do work. And there's also the issue a vendor goes out to do work and then they notice other stuff they think the property manager should be aware of.

[00:20:25] And yeah, I mean, vendors in a lot of situations end up being the eyes, ears and hands for the property manager, so. 

[00:20:32] Eric: Yeah, actually that's, that's why we built our own inspection tool. You know, we see everything else that's out there, but a lot of it's not connected. It's, you know, it's separate tools. So I've got a system that does this and does that.

[00:20:45] So we tell our contractors, it's in our app, which I think there might be two or three other maintenance platforms, but not many that actually have an app in the app store for the vendor. So again, I challenged property managers to log into whatever system they're using as a vendor. And you'll probably see it's not the easiest thing to use or communicate with.

[00:21:05] Well, we turned that upside down and. We've got an app live in the app store. Contractors can download it. So when they're doing work for us, it's super easy. They're on their phone. So we added an inspection tool and said we're going to require you to do, if it's vacant, to do a full inspection. And we just provide that as a free service, like, hey, in case, in case you or the owner missed something, we happen to notice these other 10 items that you didn't want us to fix, but here's some pictures and a report, and so again, like, just to your point, we know we're the eyes and ears a lot of time, you know, at the property, so anything we can do to capture all that data and get it back to the property manager.

[00:21:43] We think so it's a win for everyone. 

[00:21:45] Jason: Yeah, I love that So, I mean historically that's been a big complaint about some of the property management maintenance coordination tools out there is that the getting vendors to use it the adoption of vendors has been like real difficult and maybe it's Just your from your experience.

[00:22:02] Maybe they're just not very good for the vendors through for their experience. It's just not a great experience. So user experience is a big deal when designing software. And it sounds like you guys have kind of designed this from the ground up to make sure that the vendors are going to have a good experience using it.

[00:22:17] Eric: Absolutely. You know, again, we, you know, we're, we're signed on as preferred vendor across, across nine states. And so it's, you know, it's our insurance, our butts on the line if the jobs aren't getting done. So we figured out very quickly, we cannot make this difficult for this contractor in Florida that doesn't know Eric from Dripping Springs, Texas.

[00:22:36] So let's make the tool super easy. And that's exactly what we did. And so we've had... oh, I would say over three years, I think maybe three or four times we've had to coach somebody through how to use our maintenance tool. 

[00:22:48] Jason: Really? Sometimes vendors are old school.

[00:22:49] They're not the most tech savvy. They're, they're using physical tools, you know, but yeah. And so that says a lot that it's pretty intuitive or easy for them to figure out. 

[00:22:59] Eric: Yeah, that was a big focus for us right out of the gate. 

[00:23:02] Jason: Got it. Okay, cool. Well, for those that are, like, hearing about this, or a little bit interested in this, is there anything else they usually have questions about that we didn't touch on, or that they should know about Walkthroo?

[00:23:14] Eric: Let's see, not really. I mean, I think we covered most of it. Again, our goal is to really provide more time. I just, we see so much wasted time, you know, in the maintenance process. Obviously, we're going to carry that on through the rest of the modules and operating software, but our goal is to eliminate that time and give it back to property managers and really allow them to, like you said, I know they'd much rather growing doors and making connections and using their time more wisely.

[00:23:39] So, yeah. If we can save them hours a week that's really, really our goal. 

[00:23:45] Jason: Got it. Okay. Well, it sounds like you guys focus on simplicity. You focus on making these work. How can people get in touch with Walkthroo? 

[00:23:55] Eric: Yeah, you can go to our website. It's www.walkthroo.com . You can also send an email over directly to me or my team. My email is [email protected] and if you want to just send it to our team, it's work [email protected]. 

[00:24:21] Jason: Got it. So it's 'the Walkthroo' and through is T-H-R-O-O. Okay. All right. Everyone listening, go check that out.

[00:24:30] Eric, appreciate you being here on the DoorGrow show and hanging out with us. And I'm looking forward. We'll have to have you come back on once you guys have added some new features and it sounds like you guys are pretty aggressive at doing that. 

[00:24:44] Eric: Absolutely. Thanks, Jason. Appreciate the time. Good seeing you. 

[00:24:46] Jason: Good seeing you too.

[00:24:47] All right. For those of you that are looking to grow your property management business or you're struggling, check us out at doorgrow. com. We would love to help you. We are getting amazing results with our clients. And so if you want to get from 0 to 100 doors, from maybe 100 to 200 doors, or you wanted to go from 200 to 500 doors, Or from 500 doors to a thousand doors, we can help you at each of these stages and each of these sticking points to grow and scale your business rapidly and to get the right stress free ops and systems in place so that you are able to do this without making your life worse personally.

[00:25:21] And so check us out at doorgrow. com. And until next time everybody to our mutual growth, bye everybody.

[00:25:28] 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! 

[00:25:54] 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.