Searching here, searching there...How do investors find rental properties that align with their financial goals? Is there a way to provide them access to these assets?

Today, I am talking with Dan Ganguly, president of HomeUnion and founder of INVESTimate. As an entrepreneur, he’s always looking for a new solution to an existing problem. So, if a realtor needs a feed for homeowners, a property manager needs a feed of investment properties to present to potential buyers.

You’ll Learn...

[04:05] Questions for Investors: What’s your budget? Risk preference? Age and stage in life? Do you need cash?

[05:13] Two Brands Connected: HomeUnion’s where investors search for properties; INVESTimate’s where property managers and realtors work with investors.

[06:30] Business Model Change: Internet-only to tool that increases engagement between property managers dealing with investors.

[07:43] Where to Start: Build a relationship sooner than later in the sales cycle process.

[09:00] Help property managers build better Websites as a front door for people.

[13:53] What does the local property manager do? Signs up with service, pays monthly fee, and puts on private/white labels.

[14:58] Realtor gets MLS feed for home buying; property manager gets MLS feed with intelligent filters and big data for investment buying.

[15:15] Everybody knows their #1 prospect is their existing customer because they already know, like, and trust you.

[16:12] Other Options: MLS, Zillow, and similar Websites focus on finding stuff (schools, pools, etc.) that get people into a neighborhood.

[16:35] INVESTimate: Offers big data platform with 110 million properties, 20 years of transactions, 200,000 neighborhoods, and more than 9 million rentals.

[19:30] Is everything 100% accurate? No. Property is highly individual.

[20:15] INVESTimate: Investors get best of both worlds when making a transaction.

[21:45] Different risk-reward gradients/categories help people make the right decision.

[26:45] Feedback from Property Managers: How has this changed their business?

[32:05] Bottom Line: Business owners make money, get a door, and much more.

Tweetables

It’s a fish net to grab fish, and then we nurture the fish until they buy.

Your #1 prospect is an existing customer because they already know, like, and trust you.

We can’t force them to buy, but give them a reason and product to buy.

Bottom Line: Business owners make money and get a door.

Resources

HomeUnion

INVESTimate

MLS

Zillow

Realtor.com

DoorGrowClub Facebook Group

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker.

DoorGrow hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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.

And today, I have a very special guest. I’m hanging out here with Don Ganguly. Don is the CEO of Homeunion, is that correct?

Don: Yeah. I’m the president of Homeunion and founder of Investimate.

Jason: President and the founder of Investimate. Don, I want to welcome you to being here on the Door Grow Show.

Don: I’m glad to be here.

Jason: Don, you have an interesting background. You have a lot of experience in entrepreneurism, I think people would be really interested here some tidbits from you today, and some insights. I’m excited to get it into your business and service. But let’s start with you. Can you give us a little background on you and just some of your experience and what lead you to where you are now in business?

Don: Sure. I’m sort of a vocationally reformed engineer. This is my third company. The last one we did was actually an outsourcing service company for mortgage banks and services. We were actually helping originators doing the big boom and people [...] were getting a loan. When everything fell apart we were helping the services service those loans and try to keep people in their houses. We touched I think over $75 billion of service. That company ended up getting sold to Oracle, to a banking software company.

But it was the progenitor to this whole Homeunion and Investimate thing that we founded because we were able to see all these properties all over the country that had some pretty decent prices and a good rental price ratio. When we looked at that, we figured there are all these homes that made good investments and people that live in the coast don’t get access to these assets. We looked at that and said, “Is there a way that we could provide access to rental properties the way people buy stocks and bonds?” If you look at the way rental properties are bought, we base them a little how homes are bought. So people go to a listing site, they get a list of properties, they do some back and beyond below calculations, figure out the rent, go to the neighborhood, or pick up the neighborhood, call a realtor, and then bounce around and try to find the right property that they like.

If you’re look at an analog to that and say, “Hey, if you go to a wealth advisor and say, ‘I’ve got this much money to invest, what should I buy?’” The wealth advisors are going to say, “Okay. I got some stocks, here’s the idea, and here’s the score, here’s Apple, here’s Facebook, which one of these do you think you want in your portfolio and let’s go through a list.” The question they ask you often is, “Hey, what’s your budget? What’s your risk preference? What’s your age and state in life? Do you need cash?” And then they put a portfolio together that’s got a little bit of this and a little bit of that and it all enlines to your financial goal.

We took that playbook and we brought it to this Investimate product that we built which says, “We can ask investors the same type of questions about their real estate investments and then let the system go out and find the right assets and build them a portfolio or a set of assets that need those financial criteria.” The non trivial exercise because to do that, we actually had to calibrate everything from a risk and reward stand point. Right? How risky is this house? And what’s in that house type of thing.

That’s how we came to this. As an entrepreneur, you’re always looking for a new solution to an existing problem. Often, the existing stakeholders don’t have the answers. You got to think of something a little bit different. That’s how we got into this business.

Jason: Help us understand these two brands, how they’re connected first and what they are. Just the overview.

Don: No, I’m happy to. Homeunion used to be a retail platform where investors can come in and basically search for properties and invest. The first incarnation of Homeunion, we were actually serving as overall asset managers for these properties and then farming out the actual work to property managers on the ground. And then last year we made the call, it was becoming too big a business for us. We’ve done over 200 other transactions and we didn’t want to be in property management. We ended up giving those properties out to the property managers that were managing it, productized it and provided it as a platform for property managers and realtors that are working with investors.

The product itself has been tested for four and a half years, it’d done $200 million of transaction within 5% of forecast and a good use by investors to buy properties all around the country, highly exercised. What we just see is the business model from being an internet only model that brought consumers to my front door to a product that would then serve people like property managers who are actually dealing with investors day to day, giving them a tool to engage with their investors. That’s the connection between the two.

The Homeunion brand is an internal user of the investment product. So any leads that come in there are fed to our property management partners in various locations because we are not in the business. When we engage with that investor and they want to buy a property, then that property is managed by one of our partners. Both of them actually feed into the advantage of the property management tool.

Jason: Let’s take our typical listeners. We’ve got a property management business owner, they got a small business, maybe they’ve got 100-200 doors on their management. They’re wanting to grow their business, they’re trying to deal with team changes, and staffing, and operations, and trying to systemize things for the first time ever. And then we have these solutions available that they can use to support in bringing investors. Where would they start with your services?

Don: Yes. If I look at businesses such as yours and others, you’re helping them grow doors. How do you grow doors? You grow doors by finding more investors and having investors buying more doors, right? The property manager either at the bottom of the food chain which is that when the investors already bought that property, then they put their hand up and compete with four other property managers and say, “I’m the best guy in this market and you should come and put your property with me.” Or they can be more proactive and go up the food channel and up that funnel and have a conversation with the investor when the investor starts looking for that property.

Be early in the solutions process. What happened to them is if you’re at that point in the fulcrum then you are actually able to participate in the property management process more naturally rather than doing it after the fact.

Jason: If you’re part of this process earlier in the sales cycle then they’re going to have this relationship with you that’s already set and you’re by default mostly going to get the management contract.

Don: You got it. Because you've been partnering with them ahead of time. At the same token, let me just take the other side of the coin there, the good work that you’re doing and others are doing is that saying, “Okay, listen, you need to market your business in some fashion. You need to get traffic on your website. You need to put content up.” There are various stakeholders that are helping property managers build better websites, you have a business in that, and a better front door for people to come in. When those people come in, then what do you have for them? That’s where we come in.

I’ll give you a simple analog. If you’re a realtor, what do you need? You need an idea speed to your local MLS. Otherwise you can’t show any property. When a company comes in and says, “Hey, I want to buy from you.” If you have a website that doesn’t show any properties or you don’t have an ability to send that buyer of homes to buy then you can’t participate. It’s a minimum stake for a realtor.

Jason: [...] tool.

Don: If I am an “investor realtor” and that sort of property management, if I’m catering to investors then I need an ability to serve up investment properties or properties that are more likely to be good investment. Or put another way, I need to give you an investment lens through which to look at these properties so that you can then engage in buying a rental property through my system. If I don’t have that then I’m back to the bottom of the food chain because I’m searching here, I’m searching there, I’m doing all of these.

If a realtor needs a feed for homeowners, I think a property manager needs a feed of investment properties that it can present to its potential buyer, if the property manager wants to jump up the food chain. That’s what Investimate provides.

If you’re a property manager in a particular market and we’re in 15 or 16 markets around the country, we have real time connections to the local lifting services, what we would do is we would white label Investimate for your website so it would say, “ABC Property Manager” with your logo and your color on the front. When you use Door Grow or another service to drive investors to your website, then they come in and they have a way to search for rental properties in your patch or around the country, if you allow them to. Because you still get a referral fee for that and engage with you in that fashion. That’s one part of it.

The second part is if you look at the realtors and I go back to the home buying because everyone gets that business. If you go to the home buying end of the business, what happens? The realtors are all over that bill when it reels its head. When a home buyer says I want to buy, you have a short window in which to grab that person and about 20 realtors are all over it from leads, from various places. The name of the game and how quickly can I get that person.

On the investment side, nobody wakes up and says, “I just have to buy rental property in the next 24 hours. Otherwise I’m going to have a hissy fit of some kind.” That doesn’t quite work that way. When people make that decision saying, “Hey, maybe I should be in real estate, I know a lot of wealth is built that way. I should be out of the stock market, or I’ve already bought two properties, I think it’s time for me to buy another one. I got some excess cash.” What they need is a steady dive of stuff that fits their preferences and in nurturing. It’s very different from the home buying.

The investment platform actually comes with a set of campaign management and a set of investor support services. When you’re under Investimate, and you’re a customer of ABC Property Management. So you come in and say I’m Jason. You register you start using the site, we call you and say, “Jason, we’re investment support with ABC Property Management, we’re here to help you use the system and help you understand what’s in here.” You get acclimatized with the system, you understand what it is, we get an idea of your preferences and the system also captures your preferences.

Now, you’ve told me you like sci-fi movies or romcom and I now keep sending you scifi and romcom till one day you watch that movie, because that’s how investors work. They drip feed them until they put their hand up and say, “That’s probably interesting.” Now I got to buy box. Once I get that buy box, then I call ABC Property Manager and say, “Hey, I’ve got Jason who’s got X amount to invest. He’s looking in Austin. This is sort of his buy box, this is the sort of the property he’s looking for. Please help him out and do the local due diligence.” We serve that lead up at that point. It’s the website, it’s a set of intelligence filter that connects to the local listing service, and it’s a whole analytics lens that allows them to search like they would search with stocks and bonds. I can get more into the data side of it, it’s much deeper than that.

To answer your question what does that local property manager do? He signs up with the service, it’s a small monthly fee, and he private labels it, white labels it on his website, and he’s off to the races. The way we make money, really, most of it is from when there’s a successful transaction. What we ask for them is to load whatever lead customers they have into that proprietary database that always stays there on and then these people as they come in, it’s a fishnet to grab fish, and then we nurture those fish ‘til they buy. It’s a long term way to keep their brand in front of customers and leads and others.

I’ll tell you something that a lot of the property managers are working with, not only loading customers, they’ll think, “Hey, here is a whole bunch of people we touched in the last five years. We didn’t do business with them but we touched them in some fashion. I want those registered to me.” And a lot of them wake up and are prospect of buying stuff. All because once you see the product then they’ll say, “Yeah. I’m interested and I will use this to buy something.” That’s what we bring to the tables. What a realtor gets from a strict MLS feed for home buying, a property manager gets an MLS feed with a bunch of intelligent filters and big data for investment buying. That’s what we’re doing.

Jason: I love the idea. Everybody listening knows or should know that their number one prospect is your existing customer. They already know you, trust you, and like you. You’re already probably managing a property for them. They’re one of the most likely to do business with you again, and if you have opportunities, a property’s available and they’re already investors, it would be a very easier thing to get them into an additional property. They’re going to have a high level of trust with you. If you have this easy pull of properties that they could see and view and they’re getting dripped, and they’re getting notified, and they’re in your funnel and system here, then eventually something is going to grab them. They’re going to go, “Hey, this looks like a deal I could sink my teeth into. I’m going to go for this.”

For the skeptics that are listening, you’ve got the property managers that also do real estate and they’ve already got the MLS and they’re like, “Wow, why don’t I just put the MLS on.” And they can just look for property, any property. Let’s really clarify the difference between just having the MLS and having the Investimate tool.

Don: Great question. The MLS or Zillow or Realtor.com or any of these sites, are geared towards you looking for school pools, stuff that gets you into a neighborhood to live in. What we did is we created a big data platform where we have 110 million properties, we have the entire US Housing Stock, we have 20 years of transactions. We have 200,000 neighborhoods, we have an initiative here with University of California where we collect over 9 million rentals all over the internet so we could put that into our model, and we do a couple of different things with it.

We process over $200 billion of properties to bill them out. What we do with it is first thing we’ve done is we calibrated neighborhoods from A to D as a neighborhood investment grading. Think of this as a bond grading so the D is not, we’re not in D neighborhood. C is not necessarily saying it’s a bad neighborhood, it just says it’s a neighborhood that’s a little bit more volatile, you get in with the lower quantum of money, it’s a high yield property, that neighborhood property isn’t going to give you as much growth. But you can pull me a portfolio depending on what else you’re trying to buy.

An E neighborhood has a higher quantum of investment. It’s a more expensive neighborhood, view is not going to be that great, and you are going to see a lot more growth. The question is should I buy Apple stock at $800 and buy five units of Apple stocks or should I buy something that’s $50 and buy hundred units of it? Or should I do a little bit of both? We’ve given them a risk reward calibration so they can look at both of these things. Then we forecast, we have a model that estimates the rent. We have a rent valuation model, we have a cascade waterfall where we compare to [...] and a bunch of other things to say here’s a range of the rent. We then estimate the price and see if it’s above or below what we model the price to be at. Based on that we come up with a big range on their property.

Then, we provide a con of rich neighborhood information on the renter. If you go to an investment, you’ll see how much money do the renters make, what’s the average income, how come they can afford the rent, where are the rents on this neighborhood, am I an outlier rent? Once my renter goes, “I’ll never be able to fulfill it because I’m the only guy in that neighborhood where my renter’s paying higher among everybody.”

There’s a ton of good strategic data and there’s price trends and rent trends on that neighborhood. When investors go in, it’s a shame when you look at the stock. What’s my risk in this stock? What’s the previous growth has been? What’s my dividend play? What had done historically? What is it expected to do? What other research can I get around it? It’s that one place where all that information is encapsulated.

The potential rental property buyers are doing what [...]. They’re going to go to Zillow, find new property, we’re doing a back of the napkin, going to a rental meter, finding the rent and then coming back, going to a realtor, looking at the neighborhood, they don’t like it, go to another one. We put all of that into one piece on the back of big data.

Like in many model, is everything 100% accurate? No. Property is highly individual. You and I may be living next door to each other and you’ve done a lot of great things in your property. You may be a little bit different than mine. How do we do that? The property manager solved that last mile problems. The model, the data helps them create a buy box, instead of guard rails, instead of neighborhood, it’s a type of property. And then the property manager goes and then says, “Yes, the data is right on this one. The renter’s exactly what we said.” or “You know what, this property is gutted on the inside and it’s not going to work.”

It’s a combination of that site, of the platform, and the local property manager at the point of purchase. Investimate, you get the best of both in terms of making a transaction. Now, why is the property manager the best partner? Because he or she has to manage that property afterwards. They’re not going to go in and say yeah, the rent’s going to be $2,000, no problem. The moment it closes, then they come back and say the rent’s $1,500, that’s the beginning of the end as far as their whole credibility goes. All that big data is underlying the investment lens of [...], just going in that a little bit more.

When we look at the MLS, we pull the listing services every 30 minutes. It’s real time. We apply 50 to 60 different filters to pull stuff in. We exclude stuff. If they’re common, if we don’t like them, we exclude those things, exclude D neighborhood. There’s a set of filters that go in, then we [...] the rich data, then there’s a que where a set of eyeballs do a quality check. Then, it makes it into the platform. It’s a highly curated investment focused platform that’s available for the property manager to showcase to his or her client.

Jason: Alright, that was a great explanation. Basically, what I’m hearing is this is like MLS. It includes all the MLS stuff but it’s better. It includes more tools, more resources geared specifically towards the investor, and they’re able to make decisions. This is maybe a random question but I’m really curious about these different gradients or different categorizations that you have of risk reward and how are people making this decision whether they want As or Ds?

Don: It really depends on the risk profile, at the end of the day. If you go for a C property, when do you buy a Triple C bond? A Triple C bond is a high yield bond for sure, because it’s not an A bond. But when you buy Triple C bond, you also know that there could be defaults, there could be things that wreck your returns. You’re getting that high yield to compensate for the risk.

When you buy a Triple A bond, it’s more deterministic. In a higher end neighborhood, you’ve got rents that are not quite as high to the ratio of the property price, but you’ve got renters that tend to be more stable, that have been there longer period of time, and their homes tend to appreciate. But it requires more money to get in. It all depends in the investor’s personal preferences, are they looking for money now, are they looking more to build a portfolio and after 15 years when it’s all paid off that’s [...]. Are they looking for growth where they wanna spin around and flip it in five years? That’s a whole different discussion, they you go after more growth properties. You need at least five years for real estate before you cover all your transaction costs, or three plus years.

It just totally depends on the investment and their requirements. They might buy some properties for cash flow, they might buy some for growth, and they might buy some that’s in between. We hear investors say hey, I need cash flow, that’s my number one determinant. Other investors might say I don’t really need any money right now, but I wanna build up a portfolio that will grow and be safe. Others will say I need to cover my mortgage, and maybe make a little bit of money, then the balance in the middle, but I really need properties that are going to appreciate. I don’t really care about cash flow, but I don’t want to be out of pocket.

Those decisions then drive the type of properties, neighborhoods, locations, cities they end up with.

Jason: In your platform, curious, what do you see being the most popular for the investors that are typically using this with property managers in that categorization?

Don: Where people buy, 40% is what I call the B neighborhoods, 40% are on the C neighborhoods which are the high yield neighborhoods, and 20% are the As. As are obviously more expensive, and your buy will shrink when you get to the A neighborhood. That’s roughly what I see.

Jason: Got it. This would obviously work for non-property managers that are using it. Maybe their intention is just to use and look at this for their own stuff, or to look for flips, or turnkeys, or different types of deals than just some sort of long term management situation.

Don: It would work for realtors, any realtors that’s dealing with investors, they are also using the platform. We’ve got a number of realtors that signed up. The realtor piece is a little bit different. I’d sell you a home and you’re not going to buy another home from me for the next 7 to 10 years typically, I’m not going to come every year and sell you a home. Once I sell you a home, if I’m smart, I know you could be a potential investor. I say hey, if you’re looking for rental properties now, here’s a site that gives you local and national rental properties, and I’ll help you out with it. For the realtor, it becomes a cross sell. For a property manager, it’s an upsell, it’s one more property or a new guy coming in. But for the realtor it’s a cross sell to a customer or lead that already spent the money getting that customer or the lead. Now you say what else can I get out of their wallet? And this product does that.

In terms of flippers, we’re not really geared towards flippers. We’re not showing the big distressed assets out there that you can find and rehab. The big thing for the flippers are rehab numbers. How much do I have to put into this property to actually make money on it? I’m buying it $40,000 on the market, I put $20,000 in it so I’m already in $20,000. I can make another $20,000 because I can sell it at market. That requires on the ground running around and understanding what those rehab cost. They can use the system to identify stuff, I’m sure. But at the end of the day, I think these are people driving around neighborhoods or trying to find distressed assets that need that. There’s not an inordinate focus and people on that on that platform, just because our partners are not really chasing those types of deals. We need a partner on the ground for this, solving the last model. Any investor can come in and use it for sure.

Jason: Property managers that are already working with you and using your system in doing this, what sort of changes or feedback or results have you been hearing from them? What are they noticing and how has this changed their business?

Don: One thing a lot of them are noticing is that a lot of their customers or their leads are waking up and they are engaged in looking at properties. There’s two, three things they’re saying. One is they’re making offers and new properties, in some cases they’re selling properties to the system which helps the property manager get a listing. They get that listing, and if the investor is selling the property, they can get to keep the property management because it’s a rental property that they’re selling it as and they’re not kicking out the renter going to a homeowner. I think a lot of people like that because there’s no erosion or churn of their portfolio from that perspective.

Jason: What’s happening is even though properties are selling, which would normally turned into a property management business, they’re able to retain the management contracts and keep the tenants in place.

Don: That’s right.

Jason: Love it.

Don: For those investors that are willing to do that, there’s some that will want to sell in the open market for whatever reason. I think if we can increase the velocity of this, and as more and more people get connected to the investment network when you push something into that, it goes across, gets eyeballs everywhere. It may move a lot faster because the investment on the other end will want a rental property that’s already rented with a track record of history from that property manager, because the property manager will be able to give us what’s been happening in the last two or three years in performance on this property. That becomes a lot more attractive than to buy a new one and then do all this stuff to it.

Jason: So this is a proven property, they’re able to see that it’s rent rolled effectively, and this extends the reach then of this ability far beyond what the local MLS would provide because investors would be out of state and beyond are able to see this opportunity.

Don: And realtors are not that interested in selling rental properties to investors. The MLS and stuff like that, they get the least amount of attention from realtors. Putting it on this platform puts many more eyeballs. We get 120,000 users on the platform today.

Remember, we’ve been at this for four years, four and a half years. As the assigning of these property managers, they’re going into this. The [...] account is increasing dramatically month over month. Out of that, not everyone’s a buyer today but big enough sample size there that people would look at it and say this is something I want to buy. And the more product you put in there, the better you are.

Jason: Say they sign up, how easy is this to get connected into the website? Is it just some javascript code snippet that would be added to a page, or just some HTML like an iframe…

Don: Good question. It’s not iframe, it’s a hyperlink linked with their subdomain that gets added to their website and we can put it right over… For example the DMI franchise is rolling this out to a lot of their franchisees. We spoke to their website company and made sure that the logos and the colors and all that was consistent in how they wanted the brand to look for all DMI franchises and put it out there so they have the same experience, it’s stuff like that. It’s not a massive task, it’s a quick task of getting it up and running. They don’t even need someone familiar with website development on their end to put it up.

Jason: Fantastic. I would imagine besides that, they’re able to feed in maybe their list of clientele, or how do they get clients using or into this system?

Don: They send a file of their clients and their leads, and we separate the two. That gets loaded and tagged to them in the CRM for good. Anytime they do anything, they’re forever tagged to them. We look at the clients one way, we look at the leads one way, and they get a mail from Jason at ABC Property Management saying hey, we just implemented this new tool, come check it out, here’s all that it’s got. A series of mails inviting them to come check out the tool, what’s in it, and then we engage with them as investor support for Jason’s property management company, help them utilize the tool. That’s all branded to Jason, it’s not branded to anything else, it’s all branded to Jason. The backend calls are made to investment support to help them use the system, that’s all Jason.

Then, they start receiving some weekly properties that are hot in their particular market. If they put their hand up, we answer questions and take [...].

Jason: Great. The bottom line, everybody listening, that business owners are all thinking is this makes me money, right? They’re getting the real estate deals, they’re getting commissions on the real estate deals, anything else that I’m missing?

Don: They get a door...

Jason: And they get property management contracts.

Don: Yup, and let’s say for example we have property managers in California. A California property manager’s customer wants to buy in Austin, so the Austin person then can get a referral from the California buyer because the California buyer is not finding something in the price range they want in California.

One thing they always ask, our customers, is do you want to show only your market or do you want to show all markets? There’s pros and cons to it. If you only show your market, then that investor can only buy in your market and that’s all they get and you always get the door. The con is if they ever decide to buy somewhere else, they’re not going to buy through you because you didn’t show that.

Or, you show all markets and then if they do decide to buy somewhere else, then you get a referral fee from that. By the same token, you get inbound traffic from someone else. That’s the idea of that. But we give people that option, because we can show one, or two, or all. Most people tend to keep it fully open, but when you have people that say I don’t want to show anything other than my city. We’re okay with that as well, it’s the business owner’s choice.

Jason: So this has other potential benefits of really setting up a referral network, getting some deals.

Don: Yup. We’ve had situations where property managers just got a door, because somebody is buying a property. Then the person says they need a property manager, so then we get the door. Sometimes, they get the whole thing. If an investor wants to buy in their market, then they become the buyer’s agent, obviously they give up a referral fee back into the system so others can get paid. They get the door and that commission. At the same token then, they refer someone, they get a fee from that person from the door and the commission; it works both ways.

Jason: Alright. Don, this sounds fantastic. Is there any other common questions or things that you think people listening might be curious about related to this? And then how can they find out more?

Don: I think one thing we had expectations on, this is a long term relationship with your investors. Let’s say you’ve got 400 doors and 150 investors, the investors get exposed to it. It’s not that okay. In 60 days, they all come in and say great, now that you’ve given me this, here are 10 properties that I’m going to buy. They will buy over time, but what’s important is they are now much more connected with your brand and you start seeing deals happening with these investors when they decide to buy.

We can’t force them to buy, but we give them a reason to buy, and we give them a product to buy. That’s the one thing. The second thing is we do need the property management person trained on the system. We have a training program and all of that. When we transfer that investor in the right time, they need to be able to use the system to find the next property and the next one if this one doesn’t work out. Because ultimately, they’re the one fulfilling that.

A property management company sometimes has not been in the sales process, they’ve always been at the other end of the food chain. They’ve got to think that if they want to climb the food chain, they do need some competence and strive to be able to go and get that property and close the property with the investor. Although we’re taking a lot of the analytical work in a way by systems giving them all of that. They get a very clear buy box, but they still need to fulfill that buy box.

Jason: Let’s wrap this up, how would people find out more about your Investimate product, and how would they demo this and learn more about the business, and how do they get started?

Don: They would go to investimateroi.com, in there is a little video that talks about the product, an explanation of what it does for property managers and realtors, and an ability to set up an appointment for a demo. The best thing to do is always look at a demo. If they go there and they schedule a time, just like we’re doing here, we’ll get them on an online webinar and we’ll take them through the product and explain what it does, and see if it’s a fit for the business. It’s simple enough, yeah.

Jason: Fantastic. Don, this has been really interesting, really insightful. I think a lot of people’s wills returning as they listen to this. I think that you’ll probably be getting some demos of people checking it out.

Don: Great, thank you.

Jason: Thanks for being on the DoorGrow show.

Don: Glad to be here.

Jason: You can check that out at investimateroi.com. I appreciate Don being on the show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors and make a difference, then make sure you check us out at doorgrow.com. If you want to join the most awesome community of property management entrepreneurs on the planet, we are hanging out inside the DoorGrow Club. It is a free Facebook group, you can go to doorgrowclub.com, make sure you join the group. We will see you next time on the DoorGrow Show. Until then, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

 

Are you sure your kitchen table or big-screen TV will fit? If you’re interested in renting or buying a specific property, there’s a few steps to take before actually visiting it. Watch a virtual tour video and get pre-qualified.

Today, I am talking with Michael Sanz of Neesh Property, which started in 2009 and has more than 650 doors. We discuss the benefits of automating property showings, including the opportunity to spend more time with people and to travel. Who wouldn’t want to operate a property management business from beaches around the world?

You’ll Learn...

[02:25] Purpose of Neesh Property: Holistic real estate that helps people buy, sell, rent, and arrange financing.

[03:20] Same Startup Suffering: Michael struggled to start a business, grow new doors, and retain customers.

[03:37] Identify and Prevent Problems: Michael controls and protects his business and simplifies his life through systemization and automation.

[05:45] Workforce Reduction: Michael went from 18 to 1½ staff members and replaced them with property management software to save money.

[07:58] Eliminate Office Space: Doesn’t affect how you do business.

[09:43] Competitive Advantage: Neesh Property closes deals and acquires new business by leasing properties quickly.

[10:30] Retain Relationships: Be client-focused, not location-focused when managing properties.

[12:40] Learn from Mistakes: Try and implement new things, which may or may not work completely; pivot when necessary.

[14:29] What’s the problem? Any problem, big or small, should be documented and automated to disappear.

[16:10] Build Knowledge Base: Take time to make “how-to, what to do...” videos, recordings, and other visuals to help people understand processes/procedures.

[21:05] Leverage People as Process: Create core team of people who are thinkers and decision-makers.

[27:38] Virtual Tour Stats: Neesh Property gets over 85% of its real estate booked based on the virtual platform and averages 1.8 showings per property.

[31:05] Good Tenants Gone Bad: Rather than giving best to the bad, give it to the best of everyone; mesh type of tenant to property.

[50:55] Common Beginner Pitfall: You don’t need to be cheaper than everybody else to get started and compete; change your value proposition.

Tweetables

Save Money: Replace staff members with property management software.

Be client-focused, not location-focused.

Meaningful Connections/Conversations: The rest just falls into place; it’s all systems.

Automation offers the opportunity to simplify your life and spend more time with people.

Resources

Neesh Property

Michael Sanz on Facebook

Ricoh 360 Camera

Matterport: 3D Camera and Virtual Tour Platform

Vieweet

Skype

Zoom

Housecraft

GatherKudos

Oculus Rift

DoorGrowClub Facebook Group

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker.

DoorGrow hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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.

I am welcoming all the way from across the pond or even further maybe, Michael Sanz of Neesh Property Management. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael: Thank you very much for having me.

Jason: I’m excited to have you. You’re a really cool guy. I got to connect with you in the past in person, which was great to meet you in person, and you’ve done some really cool things. But before we get into some of that, and today’s topic for those listening, is automating property showings. We’re going to be talking about that. But before we get into that, why don’t you give people a little bit of background on you and let everyone know why I think you’re so awesome.

Michael: Thanks for the introduction and thanks for having me at the conference in Missouri last year. It was amazing. Perfect. As Jason said, I’m Michael Sanz. I am from Australia, from Melbourne, and I have a company called Neesh Property Residential that has been going since 2009, has over 650 doors. I started how everybody else started out in real estate and started from zero, or how much people started, started from zero doors. I had a new relationship started at the time. Add the pressure and the stress of a new relationship coming into a new business, setting all that up.

I started from the study nook in an apartment that I had. I had left a previous business. It was quite a successful business. Left the partnership at the time and I started Neesh Property. What was Neesh Property to me? It was a holistic real estate that help people buy property, sell property, rent property, and arrange the finance. It’s holistic all under one roof.

I had suffered the same problems everybody else has suffered from starting a business, trying to grow new doors, I guess retain business when people sell their properties or go to other agencies. I spent a lot of time methodically going through all the pros and cons of a property management business and I really started to systemize it, automate it, and not let the business control me from an early point, but how I could control my real estate business and what protections I could put in place to make sure that I could do some hyper growth, retain the customers that I had, and simplify life.

A lot of people that know me would have say that I will operate Neesh Property from many beaches around the world. I would close down the company every Christmas time for two months. In real estate, people say, “That’s unheard of. What about maintenance? What about all the problems?” But I identified all these problems and I’ve been out of able to do a lot of travel, and I’ve spend a lot of family time while automating the business.

Jason, as you’re talking about today, automating how I show properties and really break down that process meant that I could be in Missouri and show people property before I went on stage, after I went on stage, and successfully lease property without really having to do anything at all.

Jason: This is wild. I think everybody listening goes, “Michael’s some sort of crazy, weird robot. This is some magical impossible thing. Nobody else can do this.” You’re maybe some sort of savant or guru. But you started your business and from the beginning had this intention of systemizing things and keeping things off your plate to keep that space, and some people, their intentions and focus is very different. They build a business that’s very difficult to manage and to run.

Paint a picture. You’ve got 650 doors right now, I think you’ve said, right?

Michael: I just sold a bulk of that and I’ve got Neesh Property. I’ve automated even more with a new portfolio, but that’s for a whole other conversation.

Jason: Help people understand your business logistically. How many team members do you have? I think this is where it really showcases how different your business is than most companies that are at a similar size.

Michael: Sure. At a point with the business, we had about 18 staff members. We had acquired another smaller business, and we acquired their team, and we had an office. A lot of which goes against the grain having office to me. But when I acquired another business, I took the office and it had a receptionist, it had a business development person, it had an account, they had all these people there. I couldn’t see, with total respect to their role, I couldn’t see the purpose of it, so I knocked them down from 18 down to 1½ staff members. One full-time property manager and one part-time who did routines and edit some showings as required.

Jason: Wait. So, you went from 18, bring on another company, and then you whittled that down to 1½ team members.

Michael: Yeah, correct. I couldn’t see the massive need to have all these people doing accounts when a lot of the property management software already did all the reconciliation. I was just having a bum on a seat to press a button to reconcile. I couldn’t see the purpose of having a receptionist when there are people there who could answer the phone, so we put in a good IVR, a good voicemail system, and we educated.

We identified that a lot of the calls that were coming in were from tenants either trying to report maintenance or [...] it was. Then we put in automated responses there, too, and if there’s any business call, “Press one if you’re a landlord, press two if it’s new business,” and then it would come through to my cell where I could answer and respond to it quite fast.

Identifying the flow of calls, the type of calls that are coming through the office meant I no longer had to have a receptionist there. In Australia, the wages are quite high. We’d be paying someone $50,000–$60,000 to sit at a front desk, to greet people if they came in. We have also identified that as property change, people will less and less likely to come to an office. Tenants wouldn’t necessarily walk into the office and let’s say they did walk into the office, we would be there to greet them but no one was really walking in. Owners rarely walk into an office anymore because they could call you, they could video call you.

We ended up getting rid of the office. We have spent from a big 250 square meter office place to a two-bedroom apartment, and guess what? It didn’t affect how we did business, didn’t affect us picking up new business, didn’t affect us losing any business, and the world still spins. It’s not chaos. For us identifying all these headaches we’re able to see what mattered. If the team couldn’t adapt to technology changes, video, virtual reality, automated IVR systems, and things like that, then there wasn’t really a place in the business for them, respectfully. I actually have one property manager leave to go with a company where they still did paper condition reports because that’s how she wanted to do them.

Jason: Right. You’re welcome to it. That’s so funny. Okay, so this will make a lot of sense and I think you and I have both significant, nerdy, technological side to us. This stuff sounds obvious to me and maybe obvious to you, some people listening maybe not so obvious. If they have all these questions, “How would I do this? I would I do that?” It’s scary. But if you make that your intention and your goal, you’ll figure it out just like you figured out whatever you’re doing now.

One of your big competitive advantages now in closing deals and in acquiring new business is your ability to lease properties so rapidly. Paint this picture of how rapidly and how different your leasing process is, just to prime the pump here.

Michael: To put it into another perspective—I know we touched on it previously—we were full suburbs. We manage properties in over 84 suburbs and we also have properties in two other states, which was Sydney and New South Wales in WA. WA is a four-hour plane ride and Sydney is 1½-hour plane ride from us.

Now, we weren’t insane, crazy totally. We only manage properties of the clients that we actually had on our book and we did that so that we could retain the relationship with them and we would appoint other local agents to help with open inspections or routine inspections, or things like that. And because I’m a frequent traveler, when I was in the area, I would pop in, say good day to the tenants, and just touch face that way, so the owners knew that they are getting full kind of service.

In Victoria, it is very much managed by our office and again, we are client-focused and not location-focused, which was one of our main selling points and is quite attractive to landlords that we had. Because we also offered mortgage brokering, we really didn’t do too many sales, we were mainly property management and then we offered mortgage brokering we saw the value in that. If it was [...] other agents that could help us do the menial tasks.

It wasn’t a headache for us, we didn’t stress about it, but we covered a lot of space. You can imagine when properties come up for rent. It’s cyclical because people [...] properties around at Christmas time, they go home to their families and their friends. We would have sometimes 10%–15% of the book would start to come up for rent and you can imagine the franticness of trying to get out all the inspections, deal with tenants, vacates, and all those headaches that came with it.

Now, it’s probably 11 where I started [...] this. This wouldn’t be a problem with the spread of properties. As I sat down, I started writing down all the problems that I could have. Petrol, time on the road, who am I going to have, how many staff members I need to to do this if I’m going to have potential growth? How do I automate this? That was the biggest thing. How do I automate this? What if it’s Christmas time and I want to go away on holiday? What am I going to do? The selfishness in me also came out because I still wanted to live and being an owner-operator. What would you do?

I identified with myself that if I made mistakes, that was okay because being a business owner, if we don’t try and implement the things we’re looking, that ain’t worth. But it doesn’t mean that it’s not going to work in its entirety. It might mean that you just need to pivot a little bit and change what you’ve been doing to give another go. I had to automate the whole thing and I started the journey.

Jason: I’m hearing a process here and I think you’ve mentioned this twice now. For those listening, you may have caught on this but it sounds like you have this mental process that you go through probably constantly where you list out potential problems, and then you sit down and figure out what are the solutions, and then you have this intention throughout that whole process of, “How can I have vacations? How can I make sure that I don’t have to always be doing it?” Which is a very different mindset than most ppl have. They’re just figuring out, “How to do I keep the business running? How do I make sure that we don’t drop the ball?” And you’re like, “No. How can I,” as you put it, “take Christmas and not have to work? How can I go on holiday and not have to do this, and it would still work?” That’s a different problem to solve.

As entrepreneurs, we’re great at solving problems. But if we don’t give ourselves the right problem to work on, our subconscious isn’t going to work on it, our brains are not going to work on it, we’re not going to find those solutions. We stop prematurely at something superficial and that’s a whole level of depth to go beyond just making sure things work, it’s making sure things work without you. Maybe just describe that. What do you actually do? Do you just pull out a piece of paper and you write all the problems?

Michael: A big point when I had staff in the office is that if anyone reported any type of problem, big or small, it had to be written down. If an owner said, for example, “I can’t reach you on your mobile phone.” Or, “I don’t understand the statement,” just general questions. If someone doesn’t understand the statement, what we did was we recorded what the landlord income statement meant. “This is your name, this is the date and everything.” We do a video. We do a screenshare/screengrab video and in that was a link. If anyone asks anything about statement, it was there for them. It was in one of our FAQs. People could see it. All of a sudden, we didn’t get all these calls.

We worked out any problem in the business. Someone turned out in our office at 7:00 in the morning and said, “Why aren’t you open?” We address those things, we have better signage on the front door, and then all of a sudden, all these problems that a business would have were just disappearing and it was automated. By using video, by using written text, by having window displays, just simple things, the business became automated. So much so that religiously we close before Christmas and we open up towards the end of January, so that everyone gets time off to spend time with their family.

Jason: And everyone being your 1½ team members.

Michael: When I had a lot of team members, they were loving it big time. If people want to go on holiday, they can go on holiday because the business can run.

Jason: All right, so this is really cool. Basically, what you’re talking about is you built a knowledge base of frequently asked questions and leveraged video screen shares, recordings, showing them how to do things so they visually could see, hear, and understand what needed to happen. As they would go through these and have these questions, or you send them a link to this frequently asked questions or in your knowledge base, or you send them this video, they would watch this video. The magic of video is they would feel like you’re right there, walking them through it, tell them, they’d hear you, see you, they feel like you’re taking care of them, and you’re not even there. You did it one time and now, it can be used for 650 different people or however many clients ;that you have. They can go through it multiple times instead of just once because they may not remember. But they’ll remember, “Oh, there’s this thing I can go to to get it.”

Michael: Correct. A lot of the agents who I would speak to is on video. I don’t have to speak to video where it takes time, I don’t have enough time. A lot of the videos early on that I did [...] showing or like a routine inspection or open for inspection. I would just have the camera on a tripod and while I was waiting for people to come, I would do a video. “I’m at this property here. Look at this one,” or, “This is a leaking tap. This is how we address it. This is what we do.” Just small videos and I just built up content.

I had the tenants any problems, what to do if it’s raining. What to do if your hot water service breaks. What to do if your dog runs out to your next door neighbor. Just simple things I turned into a video so I didn’t have to answer again and again. Again, this is like I’ve touched on before when people could call up and they address the problem or an issue or concern, we try to turn that into a video so that it was answered once, solved 100 times.

Jason: The trick is that if you’re going to have to answer ever, once, take note of it, then put it on your to-do list to make a video so you don’t ever have to answer that again.

Michael: Yeah. I think as business owners we need to give ourselves the emotional permission today to take the time, even if takes us half an hour to do it, so we bank up future time. That task is going to take us a 30-minute phone call or whatever it is, we spend 30 minutes recording it now, and you’re going to have that conversation a hundred times, you just saved yourself 50 future hours and you could be doing other things.

Jason: Absolutely. We have done the same thing with clients who go through our program. I used to coach them all directly, but shifting it into video content allowed me to make sure that I said the same thing and got the best information to each client, and it allowed them to watch it more than once. My memory is not so amazing that I could remember every single thing I’ve said to every single clients about every single topic and not miss something. But I could put it into content. If I get a bunch of questions, I can add more content.

I think some people would say, “Jason,” or, “Michael, you guys are really lazy.” I think there’s brilliance in that. I wouldn’t call it laziness; I would call it, we don’t like doing stupid stuff over and over. I mean, really simply, and that’s really frustrating to have to do redundant work. But some people, they love that. They would just do the same thing everyday. They love doing that. That’s not me. I would guess that that’s not really you, either. You like being able to have freedom and not have to answer the same questions over and over and over again.

Michael: That’s the definition of insanity, isn’t it? Doing the same thing over and over again, getting the same result. I can’t understand doing the same thing over and over. I guess as business owners, we also get caught up in the really small things, and those small things we think become really important but they’re not. I’ve got some VAs that do the really menial, small tasks that I don’t even have to think about. Things that our software doesn’t do that a VA would do.

Get out of that mindset that you have to do these really small things because it’s not important and when we identified that owners and tenants just want to get that problem resolved. If it needs to get escalated, then yeah of course, take it on. But the small things, they don’t really care who answers, it’s fine. As long as it’s clear, their problem is solved, they can walk away happy, then they’re good. Don’t stress.

Jason: So, part of this automation, you’re leveraging technology, you’re leveraging video, you’re leveraging a database or knowledge base of frequently asked questions but also, you are leveraging people as process. You’re bringing people almost in a position of almost operating software in some instances. And then you have a core team of people that actually are thinkers and decision-makers that’s really small based on what you said.

Let’s get into then the topic at hand, which is automating property showing. How can those listening start to move towards automating property showings and what are the benefits you’ve seen by doing that? Let’s get them excited about the why they should do this first.

Michael: As a business owner, having staff members and having multiple properties that would come out open for inspection and also understanding that tenants are really demanding, they want to see the property, they would call you up and say, “Is it open now? Is somebody there now? Can I go now?” And then having a staff member get in the car, drive half an hour listening to music, speaking to their family and friends, doing whatever they want to do in the car, get to the property, wait for the tenant to turn up, show them the property, have them say, “Oh, yeah. It’s nice. The walls really look like they did in the photos.” Whatever it is, or they love it and again they’ll buy for it. “Can you wait for my friend to turn up? My partner’s on their way.” All these headaches. They do the inspection and then they spend another half an hour driving back or getting lunch on the way, or however long it is.

One time, okay, but if you replicate that, you’ve got 8, or 10, or 15 properties for rent at that time, that’s a headache for any company because of all these inefficiencies on the road. I identified, “Okay. Well, what do we do?”

My wife was working for a ticketing and event company based in San Diego. She was running it from Australia, it’s the operations. We’re in San Diego one time, I had this massive 3D 360 camera. I was going through all the theaters and from every seat there would be a 360 [...] so that people, when they go to buy a ticket, they could see their exact view of how they’re going to see the stage.

I was like, “Hang on. Why can’t I do this in real estate? What’s stopping me from doing [...]? This is so simple.” The camera was huge. It was massive at the time. Even three months later, I couldn’t find an actual camera to do it. What I was doing was going to the room and taking 100 shots everywhere and then stitching it together. For one image it was taking way too long.

At Christmas time, I was in London, closed the business down, before virtual reality [...]. It can be done. I was walking up the high street in London and I just thought, “I need to find something simple, cheap, to get the job done, and save me more time.” I just went on the phone, I looked at my phone, and I found a local supplier that had the Ricoh 360 camera. It has just been released. I went out and picked it up, and from that point in time, everything I did for real estate, for property had a 360 video.

And went then into step two, and I made sure that all the rental properties had a normal video, just with a smartphone or SLR. From that moment on, when I brought the 360 camera, I really hit all our properties hard. Before I go with 360 virtual reality and video, a lot of people that I speak to, they go out and buy the camera, they’ll do one tour which generally happens after the tenant has vacated and they’ve already had marketing for 4–6 weeks, they’ll do the tour and they’ll say, “You know what? Michael, I tried that. It’s not for me. Didn’t help me get a tenant. It was no good.” That’s the biggest feedback I had.

That’s cool. That’s fine. But for me, I want to persevere. I made sure that every single property we came up for rent, had a 360 virtual tour. Also in the start, it didn’t help with every single property because I had marketed without photos for four weeks prior, and I was able to find tenants thereabouts, most often than not. With the 360 virtual tours, it was the next time that it came up for rent. A tenant would give me notice to vacate. The day they gave me notice to vacate, the virtual tour went up on all the real estate platforms that are out there. We have the video and we have our photos which are okay. They’re good, they’re okay. But from day one, people could start to see the property without me having to worry about booking an open for inspection and the condition of the property is all boxed up, or the whole family’s home or whatever excuse the tenant was, people could start to see the property. That started to change things.

Just to reiterate, if you’re starting off, you have a property that’s coming up for rent, the tenant’s moving out, you can do the 360 tour afterwards. You may not get the hyper result that you’re expecting. Don’t stress. Replicate it on every single property you’ve got and you will start to see massive change from the next time it’s for rent and every time after that. Don’t stress. Give it time. People fail because they give up straight away.

Jason: And then each new door that you’re getting on, you’re going to do the virtual tour at the beginning so you’ll have that moving forward.

Michael: Correct. I got to the point where if a tenant gave notice to vacate, I went in there, and I do the 360 tour with all the furniture in there as it was. I didn’t put that on publicly but I was able to show people with the tenant’s permission, just give them a link, and remove the link after they see it afterwards. I wouldn’t get it publicly on the real estate platforms but I would have the tour and I would give it to people. That changed everything, too. Tenants were okay with that because you can edit the 360 images to blur out photos in the wall and things like that. That was pretty good. I also just did on the iPhone walk-through videos that I could also comment on. I would take just photos, too.

We had over 85% of our real estate booked on virtual platform. Can you imagine, Jason, having 85% of your business, that people can view the property without you having to worry about putting a lot box on, be physically attending the property, and having the issue of staff or even yourself going to have to show that property multiple times? To touch on that, we were averaging at 1.8 showings per property and I’ve got to cancel one showing per property on average.

Jason: No kidding.

Michael: Huge time savings. If you were to quantify that and you’re breaking out 15 properties a month, let’s say, that’s like $150,000 saving in a year, of time and profit based on our letting fees. Our letting fees are small than American letting fees. It’d be significantly higher in America but for us, it’s about $150,000 just the base saving in 15 properties a month.

Jason: Oh, yeah. So, the cost savings compared to the cost of getting the digital cameras and maybe the little bit of work and labor that would take to get these virtual tours done and everything, it was an obvious no brainer, financially.

Michael: Obviously, yeah. For me at the start, I would have spent a couple of thousand dollars, maybe more, trying to really solve it. I have a lot of cameras now, a lot of VR, a lot of 360 cameras, and I’m still using the same one that I bought years ago which was the Ricoh. But I’m trying to find the next camera that gives me more depth immersion like the Matterport but something that fits in my pocket. So, for me to do it, if it does not fit in my pocket, I’m not going to take it with me.

The Ricoh fits in the pocket. I think it’s $170 or something like that on Amazon. A tripod is $30 or $40 on Amazon. To host 22 platforms of the year is $20. The platform that I use is Vieweet It’s one of the cheapest one out there. It’s robust, it’s simple, it’s no frills. If you’re an agency, you’re just starting out, and you’re looking for cheap ways to do 360 automated showings, $130 for the camera, $30 for the tripod, $20 a year to list 20 showings that you can put up and take down. A lot of people don’t have more than 20 properties available all at once.

Jason: It's called Vieweet?

Michael: Yes. If you're in $200-$250 US, you can be up and running today to do these things. But just remember, you may not get that sprinkled dust straight away. It’s something where you build that new catalog that does work. Results have been quite fast because I kept at it and you will, I can’t say, you'll get the same if not similar results that I was getting because what it all sold for us—that’s just kind of the odd part of things, Jason. Our property to more people around the world in different that [...] the property. Rather than having to rely on people to come into a lock box or view the property physically, they may not have been the best quality tenant.

Rather than giving the best to the bad bunch, we’re able to give it to the best of everyone. Anyone who wants to see it within the markets to high-end income, at least they could go to relocation consultants that were actually being paid by people to come into the country to show them properties. We were showing it to the people before they go to relocation agencies in the end. If they will apply, they would inquire, “Hi, Michael. I'm actually relocating from America or Europe. I'll be there next month, try to arrange a viewing.” I’ll send in the link. They view the property. They don’t need to worry about looking at 10 properties when they get here. We can do the process, we can get them out of Skype or Zoom.

At the end of the day, good tenants can go bad. Make sure you get landlord insurance if you can get that. We were so efficient with what we did and that’s probably for another conversation, but we got rent arrears to 0%. Not only will we have to get the best tenants in the marketplace, we get the best tenants that could afford to pay rent and not have any arrears and it solved a massive problem for us too. We are probably at about I think 3½ of rent arrears sometimes because people, they’re just lazy. By changing the type of tenants that we had, also made all the knock on effects that we had so that our arrears is 0% vacancy because we’re able to work credibly with our leases to make sure that longer leases we had better type of tenants.

We’re also able to mesh the type of tenants to the property. For example, if we have an application that was someone 50 years plus as opposed to 18-25 year olds. An 18-25 year old would be more transient and they wouldn’t stay on the property for a long period of time, maybe 12 months. But someone who’s older is typically settling down, they don’t want to be moving around everywhere. We have a bit of a tenant selection too.

Jason: I realized it might be a little different in Australia than here though.

Michael: Well, what we did inside the office, we can verbalize it to the people that apply.

Jason: Got it.

Michael: No one from Australia is watching this, yeah? No tenants that I had.

Jason: Right. This all makes a lot of sense. You have 0% vacancy rate. You’re renting out some of these places before they're even vacant because you're marketing them from the second there's a notice. You're getting people out of state or out of country that are able to look at it. I think it’s brilliant that you've got partnerships you've created in alignment with relocation agencies and relocation agents. I think that's sharp. All of this sounds really fascinating and this is something that anybody can do.

Michael: Anyone can do it. Even like staff members. You’ve got people who work for bosses, there's no reason why [...] to help automate your showing. If a virtual tour or a video, or someone contact you at 10:00 o’clock at night and you're this type of person that picks up the phone at 10:00 o’clock and tries to make a time, you can send them link that’ll pre-qualify them. The good thing about UVR, it shows you the room, the whole room. They can be looking at the whole kitchen. They can be looking at the whole bathroom for so many times you go online and you just see a corner of the bathroom which shows the tiles, the toilet, the shower, and the bath. It eradicates all of that, it’s gone.

I think I showed you too, when we got to the actual property, the other headache was, I'm not sure if my table would fit, or the fridge might fit in the cavity so then we included an incorporated AR, so the augmented reality which was just another boat. With the AR, you can record the screen, so you can be at the property while it’s taken and actually do a video recording of, “This is where your catch goes. This is where the fridge goes, and the TV goes,” and put the furniture down. Then you can send that video to people too when they inquire about, “Will it fit a king sofa bed, or what size is the fridge cavity?” Because people are visual, mostly.

Jason: How are you doing that? How are you putting in beds, virtual beds and things like this into a video?

Michael: The app that I use is a free app. I love this stuff. It isn’t going to cost anyone here. Housecraft. Now that’s free augmented reality application.

Jason: Housecraft, it sounds like witchcraft, it’s like magic. Housecraft, okay.

Michael: It is magic. Again, I have all these tools because they're objection handlers. I don't need to over complicate things because then it just starts making problems. These are free things that anyone can be using. Anyone can do anything that I've been doing. None of it is hard. It’s just I have a better use of my time.

Jason: Yeah. You’re using Housecraft, you're using Vieweet, you’ve got your Ricoh camera, are there any other technological tools that help you automate the showing thing?

Michael: Basically, how it would work for us was a tenant will give notice to vacate or we would have a brand new property come on. We would have the tour or take the tour. We would put that as a link on a description. A lot of the feedback I had from people around the world was, our property software, our showing software doesn't allow us to put a hyperlink in there.

We just put it in the ads, we put it in the ad there too. We had every second photo for us was, “Did you know this property is in virtual reality? Make sure you click on the link in the description.” When people are looking on their smart device, because most people are probably looking ad property searches from their mobiles, it’s important that we could grab their attention with a nice bit of photo, grab their attention saying, “Hey, we've got a virtual tour, or a video, make sure you look at it and prequalify.” Rather than coming to the property and saying it’s for them. If someone did call and inquire the questions was, “Great. Have you seen the virtual tour?” If it was no, it’s like, “Okay, here’s the virtual tour,” and they all had to see it. We would not go to a property unless the person had seen the virtual tour.

Jason: Right. Virtual tour first and then if you've watched that and it's still a go, then we will show you the property.

Michael: Correct. When we did that, when we went to the property, we knew that it was really just a case of them checking if there's a smell, just their general feel, their juju. It was basically they’re going to apply for the property. Typically, if I went to the property, there's a 93% chance they got the property, and it was 96% that they would apply or they’d rent the property.

Jason: Because the virtual tours have filtered out so much.

Michael: Prequalified.

Jason: Now, in the photos where you doing stuff like box brownie and like this kind of stuff or are we just getting photos?

Michael: We change it to make sure that the header photo, the main photo in this sort of style—we’d have a blue sky, green grass—it was just a nice attractive image so that people would click on that, like a clickbait basically. It'll look nice, they click on it, and then the next image was the virtual tour. They knew that there was a virtual tour there and then there are the other photos. They were the only photos that were relevant like the way you actually see the room. If you couldn’t see the room or it was cut off, we wouldn’t show it, because the virtual tour was going to show the property in its entirety.

This just meant that I would not put 20 photos up of a half-baked house when I can put three photos up, a virtual tour video, and a walkthrough video—far greater impact. That’s why we’re leasing properties four times faster than our competitors, and we were getting more than double the amount of views on all our properties according to realestate.com.au which is a massive property platform in Australia. What we were doing was, no major cost difference to competitors, but we were getting twice the people looking at our property, and four times faster with being leased.

Jason: Michael, this sounds really incredible. Having all these stuff in place, it sounds really low cost, and it sounds like it actually saves you a ton of time, and a ton of money to get these things implemented. Now, what I love to do is connect this to how is this helping you grow your business. Obviously, it’s reducing cost, it's reducing staff, but this sounds like a huge competitive advantage selling point when you're pitching to new owners to say, “We have zero vacancy rate. We’re managing hundreds of properties…” which is unheard of in our industry, “…and we can we can get this thing taken care of and lease it out really rapidly. I've got the cameras on me, I'm ready to go. Let’s do this.”

Michael: Correct. There’s a lot of white noise and noise generally in property management. When you're going to a listing presentation, it runs based on the same topics. “We collect rent. We have low vacancy. We are fantastic. We have good systems.” You can basically walk into a presentation and know verbatim what people are going to saying. If somebody inquired about renting out a property, they will get an email from me with our reviews, true statements, and things that we do differently.

When I would go to the appraisal, I wouldn't actually bring anything other than a set of virtual reality goggles. For me, I didn’t go in with a booklet. Everyone kind of expects you to walk in with a booklet and pamphlet like all your competitors do. But me, it’s straight away, “Let's work on that trust that rapport with the owner.” I would walk into the presentation, I put the virtual goggles down the table which is a gimmick, they're a gimmick, and then I put them on the table and then I say, “Mr. and Mrs. Landlord, so tell me, what do you love about your property? What are the tenants going to love about the property? What would you do differently to the property that tenants might also think that they wouldn’t want changed?” I get them speaking about it.

None of it is about my fees, none of it is about my service, none of it is about anything else about me, it’s just about them. Then it gets to the point where, “I can totally see why people fall in love in this property and it's so important that we show people what this property actually offers. Here are a couple of ways that we can do that.” Bear in mind, by the time they've already got to ask and called us, they've gone and seen our Google reviews. They've seen our social profile. They’ve already assessed us when they make the phone call.

Jason: Sure.

Michael: It’s so important that you’ve got some social proof and some history there. If you're just starting out as an agent, get reviews, get some social proof because you really are fantastic. As people, we’re fantastic, and there's so many great attributes. If you're starting fresh, you don't have to look fresh. Jason, you're helping build websites. You can make someone who's just starting out look as a major player in the marketplace.

Jason: Absolutely. I tell potential clients, there's no reason why a company with zero doors or even five doors has to look any different than a company with a 1000 doors. They can have just as good a branding, just as good of a website, and we can help them with the reputation stuff. We have our service gatherkudos.com for those listening that you can check out, which helps you facilitate or lubricate I guess if you will, that process of getting more reviews from clients.

Michael: There's no reason why you can’t. “I don’t have clients to get reviews.” “I'm sure you've done business with people before and they can leave you reviews.” That’s all you need, just that momentum. From the time that we’re meeting with them, they know a little bit about us. I'm not concerned about any other services because they all know that we collect rent, and we find tenants, and we manage maintenance, and we do all that stuff. It's going to the owners that we will love their property, and really focus on the things that they love also, and identify the weaknesses of the property too because it’s important for us at the start the owners to acknowledge their property may have some shortcomings.

They wouldn’t have to have that awkward conversation later. The prospective tenants said that, “I like the pink wall in the kitchen.” We get the owners to draw out what they think is needed in the start, and then it sets the time. Then I bring out the virtual goggles, and I say, “This is one way that people are really going to immerse themselves in your property from their own lounge room. We also had virtual goggles and Oculus Rift in our office, so when people came in and they want to get a rental list, we stop giving out paper and we would say, “What are you after? A three-bedroom, two-bedroom?” And give them the goggles, and show them a property.

We have far greater success than coming in, picking up some paper in the office, leaving, throwing it in the bin later on for one property they might be interested in. We cut down on paper too, Jason. That was a pretty good experience. We went paperless. For new owners, they could say that we were focused on serving the customer, rather than they burdened with admin and just a slow death in a real estate office. We could show them some of the other tours we've done. We were doing drone work too Jason, where we would showcase the aerial view of the property in proximity to shops because that was another question that people would say, “Probably looks great, but what's it near?” In Australia, with Google maps, sometimes, they hadn't caught up, so the area would look like just massive farmland, but actually, they’ve built up a state with shopping malls, and freeways going through it. We take aerial shot, and show it from what it was near. With owners, I think, I was at 140 doors and 141 appraisals.

Jason: You show up for these initial contacts at the property, or these appraisals, or whatever you're doing, and you would pull out virtual reality goggles, and set your camera there, and start describing what you do.

Michael: Correct. Now, fast forward a few more years, we didn’t have to go to the property anymore, because I had the virtual tours online, and people can see them, and it would tie on my websites, so people could see that too, and they got to the point where people would make an inquiry, and I will send them a video message. They're already seeing all the proof statements, and a video message to start the initial conversation. I didn't have to meet all these owners, I try to meet all the owners. Sometimes I make time for if they're interstate, they were overseas, whatever the reason. I found other ways to get inside the living room without being in their living room. You have the virtual tours, and then you get the video text messages, and a lot of people will say, “I’m too scared to do a video text message. What if I say the wrong thing?” I say, “It's easy, don’t send it. Just do it again.”

Jason: Right, re-record it.

Michael: If you're doing a video, you can edit it. If it’s not live, edit. If it’s live, I’d say laugh. So what? Make a mistake, we’re human. I will make the same mistake speaking with you, as I would do on a video. Recapping on it, our process was, every property had to have a virtual tour. When I had the staff, they weren't happy going out and taking a virtual tour, because it would take them between 15 minutes to 30 minutes, maybe depending on how many rooms there were. It's a very fast process to take photos and then you just copy them on to the Vieweet platform, and you put the hyperlinks, the hotspots, and the tour is done. The tour might take you 45 minutes to do.

For me, that's no problem at all, if it’s a big one. If it’s small one bedroom place, might take you five minutes to stitch it together. It just depends. The more you do it, the faster you become. Every property had the virtual tour, had the video, had some updated photos. It just meant that as a tenant, trying to select for the property, all the problems were answered. As an owner, we're now looking at other agents online who’s going to rent out their property, they can take the methodical process of photo, virtual tour, application form. That’s very simple process. We then are going to back it up with proof statements, like the rent is zero vacancy. All those other things that were important, because if you guys are doing an appraisal and start just reeling off everything you do, you're the same as everyone else, but if you can show proof statements, then it's 97% there.

Jason: Love it. You can easily send a video introducing yourself, and you can send them link to a page of video testimonials from clients. If you can give them all the social proof, and you say, “Look at how we market the properties.” Send them the link to your rental listings. “Here's an example. Here's a property similar to yours maybe.” Suddenly, they can imagine all of it, they can see it, and it becomes real to them. This becomes this huge competitive advantage in this huge differentiator between you, and other property management companies, and then it's allowing you to close more deals. I would imagine it facilitates word-of-mouth, because people are going to talk about you because they're probably impressed.

I would be impressive if somebody showed up with goggles, and camera, and show me tours, and sent me a video text message. I'd be like, “These guys are on top of things, and they're tech savvy, and they're going to take care of me out of the gate.”

Michael: I guess one of the great things is, I won't mention the exact pricing, but we were full fee. We weren’t competing with, “But that agent is offering a cheaper fee,” anymore. We’re full fee, we’re doing full leasing fee for management estate. In Australia, we can't charge as many fees as you can in America. I wish we could, but we were full fees. I was maximizing every potential fee that I could, so routine inspection fees, higher statement fees. We were full fees, we don’t have to compete with someone. I remember when I started, Jason, and I’m trying to get traction, I sent out a thousand flyers to people and offered a low management fee to people for three months. I got one person out of the thousand that I sent out, that was great, because there were multiple referring client. But starting out, thinking that I have to charge something low, so that I can get in front of more people was one of the biggest crazy thoughts that I had at the very start.

Jason: It's one of the most common beginner pitfalls is, “I need to be cheaper than everybody else to get started and to compete.”

Michael: Yeah. If I just realized back over 10 years ago that my value proposition had to change.

Jason: Yeah.

Michael: “Not with my fees but with my value proposition. How do I not complicate it? Now, I no longer have any other office. I work from a home office. I've restructured because I don’t want to have physical staff. I've got VAs that do all the menial tasks. All the properties that we have are on the virtual platform. I've got no properties arranged at the moment. No rent arrears. Last year, I was abroad seven months of the year. I was in Turkey for two months, Indonesia for two months, in and out of America, or like interstate. I traveled a lot.

This year, maybe four months of the year. If I get a new business, I will have someone go and do the virtual tool for me. I’ll train a simple person who doesn't want to do anything else if I'm not around. I enjoy going to the properties and checking them out. I'm a bit of a property nerd, I like checking them out, seeing how we can add value and connecting. The most important thing for me as an agency was to make sure that we have meaningful conversations, getting rid of all the clutter and all the noise. Instead, we will focus on the good happy goals, the meaningful connections, making sure that we can add value to our customers and our clients. That was our end result, to have that meaningful connection. The rest just all falls into place, it’s all systems.

Jason: You didn't go into it thinking, “I just want to automate everything to the nines.” Your core end goal was, “We want to have meaningful connections,” and then, “I want to have freedom as I'm doing this,” to just focus on that.

Michael: Yeah. Automating it just allows the opportunity to spend more time with people.

Jason: I love it.

Michael: It wasn't to make it so easy that I could travel a lot. It just meant that I need to get better connections. I pick up properties from going overseas. So many Americans travel. I've been in Europe and picked up a new management system [...] abroad. It gives me that flexibility. Also, you get to actually get new systems. People do things differently, so go out and see how other people are doing things to make their businesses better and how can you implement it in your business. It’s so important.

Jason: Yeah. I think I heard a quote the other day that was, “Travel is the language of peace.” The amount of tolerance, and learning, and growth that happens just from being in different environments and different cultures, I remember taking a trip to Israel and it just was so different than what I was used to in the US. Even the checkpoints where kids were holding machine guns. It was just all so different and it was just really eye opening. I've been in Mexico, very different.

You’ve been exposed to so many different cultures. You get to really fill your soul with having this variety in life. I think that's part of why a lot of people are in property management. They love that unique variety. There's all these different unique challenges that come with it. There’s all these unique opportunities to meet unique people. You really got to focus on the even best and highest portions of that by being able to treat that freedom.

Michael: Don't be scared of doing anything. Don’t be scared of making mistakes. Trial it. If it’s not 360 for someone, if it’s not video for someone. Go ahead and trial things and see how it can give you that freedom, but also to be able to engage with people, family, and friends. Imagine if you live in a suburb and you've got a sports club, a church, a local pub, or whatever you’ve got, all these meeting places but you never get to go there because you're so busy trying to do the admin. You're a local real estate agent and you're not even able to local. Flip that upside down. Imagine if you're a local real estate agent doing local things because you have all these other things automated and being done for you while you're networking, and meeting, and engaging with people in your area. Imagine for a second how different that looks.

Jason: Yeah, I love it. I think, Michael, everybody listening has probably by now hopefully felt a little bit inspired that there's this possibility that you've painted for them that is probably for a lot of property manager still outside the current world view. I think that's exciting. I appreciate you coming on the show. How can people get in touch with you and what sort of take away would you want to leave them with?

Michael: Well, if you’ve got any questions about anything we've spoken about today, just hit me up on Facebook and send me a message and I'll respond that way. It’s probably the easiest way rather than giving you a cell number or an email, just go to Facebook, we can connect there. I'm on messenger, it’s the simplest way. Again, I guess the constant message that we've been discussing today is try it; don’t give up, try new things that may automate your business and give you more time tomorrow even though you’re spending more time today to get it done.

Jason: Perfect. This is an episode I will hope that people will listen to more than once. Michael, I appreciate you coming on the show.

Michael: You're welcome.

Jason: I think you gave a lot of value. I'm grateful to you. Thanks for being here and sharing so many ideas.

Michael: Thank you.

Jason: Alright, cool. That was really fun for me as a nerd to have Michael on. Message him through Facebook. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors and make a difference, as I said in the intro, then you should be a part of our community. You would love it in there. Make sure you join the DoorGrow Club. You can get into that by going to doorgrowclub.com.

Our Facebook group, there's really cool people in there like Michael, and there's just some phenomenal helpful property managers. People that buy into this vision that good property management can change the world. That what the industry needs here, especially in the US is collaboration over competition. These are people that are willing to collaborate, willing to help, willing to support you.

Make sure you get inside the DoorGrow Club Facebook group and check it out. If you join that group, if you apply and join that group, it's free, but you have to apply. We will give you some free gifts including a fee bible and some other really cool takeaways and gifts over the next few days after we welcome you to the group, just to welcome you aboard, part of our Facebook group. Check that out at doorgrowclub.com. Until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye everybody.

 

The American dream no longer represents home ownership. Whether you’re looking to rent or buy, everyone wants the same thing: A place they call, “home.” Not a house, but a home. There is a difference.

Today, I am talking with Chris Litster, CEO of Buildium, which helps property managers handle properties, leases, tenants, and units. Chris shares how property management firms should focus on customer service, relationships, and reputation.

You’ll Learn...

[06:53] Service Oriented, Relationship Focused: Avoid treating residents, owners, or vendors adversarially, if you want to be a successful property management firm.

[07:43] Millennial and Baby Boomer generations view home ownership as a burden. When things change, personally or professionally, they want to be able to move.

[09:25] One reason to rent is to avoid dealing with and doing maintenance. Time is better spent focusing on other priorities.

[11:19] Multiple generations want technology from property management companies to automate payments, submit maintenance request, and perform other tasks.

[12:04] People demand a strong relationship with their property management “firm.” Their moving away from using the term, “Landlord,” because of the baggage it brings.

[12:25] Property managers should make their language more friendly and appealing.

[15:50] Property management firms should shift their mindset to be service-oriented and understanding to have stronger relationships and less resident turnover.

[17:40] Property managers have a massive network and influence with owners, tenants, potential residents, and others. They can cause a ripple effect and change the world.

[19:50] Every property manager says they’re the only good ones. All others are terrible. A mindset of scarcity has been falsely created in the industry.

[20:50] Low levels of awareness and perception impact a business’s ability to grow.

The industry needs collaboration over competition.

[22:41] Buildium believes, knows, and has evidence that service orientation and relationships matter.

[25:38] Core principle and goal of technology is to take care of customers and solve their problems efficiently.

[28:53] Strategic vs. Tactical Timing: Expanding and growing a business takes time and effort. Automating processes gives you time to think strategically.

[30:57] SEO Lottery Addiction: Spending revenue on SEO won’t generate ROI.

[37:21] Ladder of Autonomy: Companies that understand their business, customers, message, and differentiator are at the top level and benefit everyone involved.

[38:43] Fundamental Funnel Basics: Brand, pricing, reputation, Website, sales process.

Tweetables

American dream no longer represents home ownership.

Landlord Stereotype: Evil person who collects your rent, but doesn’t take care of things.

Low levels of awareness and perception impact a business’s ability to grow.

The industry needs collaboration over competition.

Resources

Chris Litster’s Email Address

Buildium

All Property Management - a Buildium Company

Constant Contact

MailChimp

DGS 3: Buildium’s 2015 State of Property Management Report – Part 1

DGS 3: Buildium’s 2015 State of Property Management Report – Part 2

National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM)

The Iceberg Report

Google Ads

DoorGrowClub Facebook Group

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

Jason: All right, we are live. Welcome, DoorGrow hackers 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker.

DoorGrow hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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.

Today, I have a special guest. I am here hanging out with Chris Litster, the CEO of Buildium. Chris, welcome to the DoorGrow Show.

Chris: Hey, Jason. How are you? Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. I’m just flabbergasted by that opening. The energy, I could already feel it. It’s going to be a great hour.

Jason: Yeah. I put quite a bit of thought into that little intro.

Chris: It’s great. It’s fantastic.

Jason: Yeah. We’re pretty passionate about this and we want to champion a cause here. Chris, I’m really excited to have you on. I love to get a little bit of background on you and how you got connected to Buildium. Give us a little history here.

Chris: Sure. I’ve been with Buildium now for just over a little bit of 2½ years. I have been in the SMB or the small- and medium-sized business market space for probably 15–20 years. I’ve been in tech for a lot longer than that. I was with IBM for a while, a couple of other tech companies, then I landed at Constant Contact in 2006. It was an email marketing firm for small businesses like MailChimp and a couple of other players in that space.

I was with Constant Contact for 10 years, started with them, they’re pretty small, and that when we grew them and scaled with a great team at Constant Contact. Ultimately, ended up selling them three years ago, selling Constant Contact. Took a year off to reacquaint myself with my wife and three boys. During that 10 years they have the short end of the stick as we’re building Constant Contact.

During that time off, I had the opportunity, through different acquaintances and such, to meet the former CEO and one of the founders of Buildium, Michael Monteiro, who I know that you had on this show. Michael, at that point, was interested in just talking with folks who had scaled companies before. Buildium was on the verge of that inflection point of really scaling and revenue growth was starting to really accelerate. Michael and the team at that time over the past 12 years or so, had grown Buildium to where it was. Now, because of our great product, great team, and great customers, we are ready to go to the next level.

We started talking and it took three times of meeting each other. Finally, it was either he or maybe it was I who had said, “Hey, wait a minute. Do you want me here and did you say, ‘Hey, would you want to join us?’” I wasn’t really ready to jump back into the space yet but there’s so many great things going on here at Buildium that I decided to. The fact that Buildium again was focused of small and medium business was something that really attracted me because this is where I get my passion from the small business folk. The fact that it was then focused on one vertical instead of hundreds, that being property management on the residential side, I jumped in.

I joined a couple of years ago as the Chief Customer Officer and for that, I was responsible for sales, marketing, partners, support, and success. I did that for the next year, year-and-a-half or so. Around that time, Michael and I started talking about Michael looking to transition out of the CEO role. He’s been the CEO since founding—that was 12 years or so—and we started talking. Last July, we went through the transition. I have now been the CEO since last July and I’m loving every minute of it.

Jason: Cool and what’s he up to now?

Chris: Michael and Dimitris, our other founder, are both advisers here at Buildium. Dimitris has a couple of things going on but he’s here a couple of days a week helping us out with some of the larger initiatives that we have going on. Michael’s here a couple of days a week advising me, the rest of the exec team. They’re both active board members for Buildium. It’s just great having them both here because it just adds to that continuity, builds on the history. I can turn to him and say, “Hey, this customer that’s been around for 10 years. How did we get them and what were the things that they were looking to do 10 years ago?” so that when I go and meet them, I know the history that they’ve had with Buildium and how we’ve helped them grow.

Jason: Great. The topic that we had discussed or that we had down is homes, not houses. Let’s get into that. What do you mean by homes, not houses?

Chris: Great question. I’m sure, as many people know, Buildium is in the residential space, as far as helping property managers with our platform to manage their properties, manage their leases, tenants, and units. Also on the accounting side. We have 16,000 customers, we’re managing on the platform about 1.8 million units, and through that, we have the ability to not only talk and speak with our customers in the residence, but also because of our partnership with NARPM and a few other things, we do a ton of research.

We have most certainly seen over the past couple of years, this trend where the idea of the importance of relationships between the property management firm and their residents has really taken on a new and different light where relationships have become so important. As part of that, the realization that regardless of if you rent or if you buy a home, everyone is looking for the same thing. Even when you are a renter, you are actually looking for a place that you can call home. The idea of referring to this as a rental property or a rental unit, in the minds of the resident, they’re really looking to understand and get that feeling of, “Hey, I’m going to call this home.”

Why are they doing that? Because frankly, there’s many trends that are going on, both at, let’s say, the millennial segment as well as in the upper segments of the baby boomers, where this idea of the American Dream where it used to represent home ownership no longer really stands for that. It’s the whole idea of that, ‘I just want to find a home.’ By calling it a home and not a house, what we’re trying to do is bring that idea of belonging and bring that idea of where can I put my roots down. Just for the fact that I didn’t sign a mortgage and I have a rental agreement, doesn’t mean that my aspirations are different somehow.

Because of that, property management firms should really take that idea really as far down the road as they can and understand that they have to be service-oriented. They have to be relationship-focused. This idea sometimes of looking at residents or your owners or your vendors in somewhat of an adversarial way, is no longer something that you can do if you really want to be a successful 21st century property management firm.

Jason: That makes a lot of sense. I think part of the challenge is that nowadays, millennials and the younger generation, a lot of them see home ownership as a burden. They see it as a tether in a lot of situations. We live in a day and age in which people can work from coffee shops, they can have freedom, they can travel, and jobs change. It’s no longer the day and age where people will stay in the same career sometimes for just 20 years. When things are changing, they want to be able to move.

I think also, one of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed renting was I didn’t have to do the maintenance stuff. I do want to have to deal with that. I either have to hire a house manager to manage the property for me or have a property manager that helps manage those things for me. I don’t want to have to deal with that. My time is far better spent on my business, with my family, those kind of things, and that’s not just a priority for me. I don’t have any sort of kick out of doing that stuff.

Chris: Exactly and that’s not only. So, 100% on the millennial side. The idea that even though they may only be a resident for a year or two years, again, they still want to have that strong feeling of being able to call this their home. The same thing, for different reasons, is on the baby boomer generation. Here we now have this generation who are quickly becoming empty nesters left, right, and center, and they now have really no more great use for the large house that they have in the suburbs. They have all this space, again to your point, they no longer want to have to clean in every week and they no longer want to maintain this beautiful house. So, what they’re doing is actually selling their houses.

We’re seeing a big trend of, for example, there’s a brand new neighborhood here in Boston that has just grown over the past decade or so called the Seaport. Many empty nesters are moving into the Seaport and renting. Actually, they’re renting it with some of the leases are almost renting at will, a three-month lease, a half year lease, for the same reasons that you talked about. They want to now travel. They want to have that flexibility that, should they want to pick up and explore another part of the country or another country altogether, they don’t want to be burdened, like you said, tethered down by the fact that they’re carrying this mortgage. That is changing on the top end as well.

The interesting thing that binds these two segments together, these two parts of our industry together, is they’re both asking for technology. They’re both asking for technology with their property management companies for automation of payments, understanding, “Hey, if I have burst pipe, I don’t want to have to call but rather perhaps tell Alexa that there’s a burst pipe or you log into the portal to put in there maintenance request.

Even though many people look at millennials and baby boomers as quite different—in many cases they are—there’s a huge intersection in the property management space that both of these segments share. The largest one that we’re seeing, there’s two. One, again is around technology and the other one is demanding a really strong relationship with their property management firm and actually moving away from even using the word ‘landlord’ because there’s just so much baggage in that word. But saying, “My property management company,” or, “My property manager,” it really works to strike in the relationship that they’re looking to have.

Jason: Let’s talk a little bit about the language then because I think that does matter. I think you’re right. The word ‘landlord’ is always been displayed or the archetype of the landlord is this sort of evil person that you have to pay rent to and that doesn’t take care of things. This is what you’ll see in shows. They’re often this great antagonist in virtually any show.

Because we’re talking about homes, not houses, what sort of language should a property manager be using? How should we be rephrasing this to make things a bit more tenant-friendly and shifting towards being more appealing towards residents?

Chris: That’s it. That last word you just used. We strain and really speak with our property management customers about the idea of resident versus tenant. There’s just a deeper meaning around resident as opposed to lacking emotion the word tenant. As the title of what we’re talking about here today, wherever you have that opportunity, use the word home as opposed to unit. Unit is so devoid of any emotion. Even if it’s a rental apartment or even if it’s a multifamily property, when you’re talking with the residents, talk it in a sense of their home.

And the idea of partnership. We talked about looking for a deeper relationship amongst all of the different constituents that our property management company works with. Instead of looking at it as us and them, you talk about the partnerships. The partnership that you have together with your vendors, the maintenance vendor or your service partners. The partnership that you have with your owner. So really, getting away from, again, that adversarial type of thing and being deliberate about using this language and taking the time to check yourself as a property management firm, to make sure that you’re using that language that holds your constituents or your partners in, as opposed to setting up that wall between you and your resident, you and your vendor, or you and your owner.

Jason: Got it. I’ve heard some property managers joke that calling your clients your owners has this psychological negative impact. If you call somebody your owner, they own you. You’re like a slave to them.

Chris: Yeah. You reminded me of another one. Definitely that idea of client versus owner, tenant versus resident, service partners instead of, “This is my landscaper or roofer.”

Jason: I like the idea of service partners instead of just vendors. The latter sounds pretty cold. All right, we’ve addressed several target audiences here that are connected to property management. Tenants instead of our residents, owners instead of our clients, vendors instead of service partners. Are there any other groups we’re missing here?

Chris: No. I think, yes, it’s language but if you look at the property management firm itself, there’s a mindset shift that needs to happen. It’s that idea of being service-oriented and being understanding that if you get that service-orientation, you’re going to have stronger relationships and you’re going to then hopefully have residents who stay in your properties longer, so then not having to deal with your turnover expense, the constant ins and outs, and just building those bonds.

Ultimately, again, building the language with that mind shift. We have customers that are just living into this idea. Not only are they growing, they start to get a reputation for this. We know in our space, word of mouth is so important that they’re seeing people coming to them and saying, “Hey, I’ve heard that you really are doing something different and you really are looking to help with the service perspective. And on top of that, you’re using some cool technology that helps build on the relationships.”

This idea of technology taking out the human factor is not what we’re talking about. Being a technology vendor, some people are somewhat surprised to hear that. We look at technology being the enabler, to help firms become more efficient so that they then have the time to be able to focus on building these relationships, making sure they’re service-oriented, and making sure frankly that they’re differentiating themselves from everybody else in the pack.

Jason: I think that’s a really important distinction. Going back to what you’re talking about, you’re talking about with residents, with clients, service partners, you’re talking about just in general being a more respectful company honoring other people, caring about other people. I really believe that property managers have a massive network. They have a massive ripple effect between all the owners, all the tenants, all the different people that they connect with, even potential residents, they are able to have quite a big influence. It can be a bunch of little micro interactions that are negative, and it can be lots of micro interactions that are positive. That little shift, even in language and little things. This is what gets me excited about our company, DoorGrow, and impact that we get to have through our clients. But I really believe that good property management can change the world.

Chris: I completely believe that. I’m with you 100%. That’s so great.

Jason: So, good property management can change the world. Bad property management [...] industry and it can have a massive ripple effect either way.

Chris: Well, think about this. To you’re point, driving and if you’re commuting somewhere, we know that property management firms love to have the banners, love to have the advertising, “This building is managed by so-and-so.” If they have a bad reputation, people that are two, three, or four degrees away from that actual company, there’s a good change that they know of that reputation. So, even though I’m not directly involved in XYZ property management firm, when I drive into Boston every morning, I know of folks, those that aren’t even our customers, I know the reputation that they have. I think that’s a good example of that ripple effect. They’re always out there. You can’t miss those banners. There’s just this constant on of this advertising for these property management firms, that if they don’t have that great reputation to back it up, like you said, it can impact them pretty directly.

Jason: I think it’s even bigger than that and I want everyone listening to realize this. A lot of property managers I talk to, they say, “Well, we started our company because there weren’t any good companies in our market,” or they tell me, “We’re the only good ones. All the other ones are terrible.” But everyone says that.

What’s interesting is I think some people have this mindset of scarcity that I think has been falsely created in this industry. In single family residential, according to Iceberg Group, we’ve got about 70% that are self-managing. There’s tons of blue ocean, tons of available potential market share, and yet everybody’s been fighting over the coldest, worst, most difficult leads.

I think the thing to realize is that there really isn’t scarcity right now in the US. There really is not and the thing that I really want listeners to pay attention to is that the companies that have bad reputations in your market are hurting your ability to grow your company because of that. The awareness level is low and the perception level is low. Those two things are impacting your ability to grow.

I think what the industry needs right now is collaboration over competition. Collaboration allows you to feel safe helping your competitors. A rising tide raises all ships is sort of true but it sinks some because the tide is low in the industry as a whole. Some of those ships are not seaworthy and they’ll sink. But I think if you can lift up the ones that are seaworthy, there’s going to be a lot more business to go around. The ones that are at the top promoting the industry are going to be the ones that win.

Anytime there’s a new business category in the US, the person that builds the category instead of their own individual brand is the winner. Google built the category of internet search. Now we google everything. Whether you’re on any other search engine, “I’m going to google it.” Kleenex built the category of disposable paper facial tissue. Everyone was using handkerchiefs before that. So now, Kleenex is synonymous with any tissue. “Give me Kleenex.”

Property management has been held back, I believe, and has a huge opportunity to grow. It’s been around for decades but the problem is the awareness level is on par with brand new industries. I don’t even know of any other new industries that exist in the US that are as young in reputation, perception, and that sort of infancy other than maybe marijuana, vaping and these kind of things. Property management can be as big, I think, as the real estate industry. It has that potential. We barely scratched the surface.

Chris: I completely agree. It’s funny that you used the all the boats rising because we talk about that all the time here at Buildium. We talk about the idea that this industry is ripe for so many things as far as growth and a little bit of disruption, as far as technology adoption, and it’s all for the idea of introducing the true human element into the industry. Further, this idea that everyone who really buys into that is then going to rise up because as you said, I think there’s enough pie for everybody.

It’s really interesting when we’re at either some of our meetups or we’re at NARPM, there is a real camaraderie around those folks. You can almost tell those folks that have really been successful around this idea of understanding, it’s the strength of relationships that count. Why? They’re not threatened by the other property management firms because they know that their relationships are solid, that their residents, their clients, their service partners are going to stay with them, because they know the reason that they’re going to stay with them. They don’t mind talking with other PMCs because they know that they’re solid in their business.

What really working here to try to bring that element, obviously in addition to the technology. But there is a change that needs to happen and frankly, it’s not just a, “Hey, we think you should change.” What we’re saying is, “We 100% believe, know, and have evidence that people who take this idea of service orientation, this idea of relationships matter, and using technology to get to those, we know it works.”

Again, 16,000 customers and we have so many of them that are successful, who have bought into that entire idea. What do they have? They have happy long-term residents, they have happy clients, and they have happy service partners that aren’t going to go anywhere else because they know they’re in it together. That’s what we’re looking to really continue to help and help the entire industry here, which is really exciting.

To your point, there’s an opportunity here that not too many industries have. We have seen research that says that the property management industry is the third highest industry in interaction with constituents, let’s say, because they have to deal with residents, they have to deal with their clients. That idea of total interaction and ongoing interaction with people, it’s the third highest. What are the other two? Hospitality and retail. That’s pretty good company that they’re in and hospitality and retail understand that relationships matter. Now, it’s time for the third person or the third set in this industry to realize that.

Jason: That’s really an interesting little factoid right there. Let’s go back to what you mentioned earlier. You’re talking about tech enables you to spend more time on relationships. I think there is this mythical creature that everybody’s chasing after that looks like this robot that will run their business for them. They can cut out relationships and they can have this business that runs itself. It could be super easy. I think when we chase that mythical creature, we end up chasing a pipe dream. It becomes really difficult and we alienate ourselves from our customer base.

I think that’s an important thing to point out what you’ve mentioned earlier. I love technology. I’m a total nerd, I love it, I love automation, I love geeking out on this stuff. But the whole goal of all of it, everyone needs to remember the core principle that it’s about your customer. It’s all about giving your customer more depth. I think instead of trying to hit more people, more superficially, more quickly, we need to figure out how to go more deep, more personal, and connect more with more people. If that becomes the focus, then we can leverage technology and automation to take care of the mundane, while we focus on the relationships and getting us personal and as deep as possible.

I’ve noticed that a general rule I give to my team, that if any is a sticky or difficult communication, or situation, or somebody’s not happy, we want to go as personal as possible. The most personal would be in person. Second most would be a video call like this. Third would be maybe a phone call. But it needs to be as personal as possible because it just calms the situation down, it makes things easier, and really that’s what people want. People want to be taken cared of. A business only exist if it’s serving somebody and if it’s solving their problems and their pains. That’s only the reason a business exist. You cut yourself off from the customer, you’re really killing your ability to have a business.

Chris: Right. Do you want to come and do our copywriting? You’re hitting on every single thing that are just so fundamental to what we believe here at Buildium. The idea of using technology for technology’s sake is a non-starter. The idea of using technology, as you talked about, to serve something and what we truly believe, after talking with our customers and understanding the industry, that using technology leads to the greater efficiency that offers you the ability to then spend your time where you can and where you should from an important business perspective.

There are two things. The efficiency brings your ability to spend time with, again, your various partners or clients and your residents. So really, get to know them, to really understand them, to really interact with them because now you don’t have to be chasing them for, let’s say, the rent payment because that’s automated. You don’t have to be chasing them for understanding their tasks, their needs from a maintenance perspective because that’s automated.

Rather, what you need to talk with them about is, “Hey, am I meeting your expectations to help you build this home, this idea of a home?” “Hey, am I meeting your expectations as my client?” “Hey, how can we think of growing this business together?” That’s the second part.

The second part is how do I look to grow my business? If your goal as a property management firm is to continue to expand, that takes a lot of time. That takes a lot of effort. You really need to understand what type of properties you’re really good at, what types of residents you really want to have, what type of clients you really want to get in business with. That’s not something you can just do haphazardly. You have to work at it. You have to plan at it.

If you’re not focused on, as you said, those things that can be repeated and processes that can be automated, that gives you the time to really think of you business strategically to continue to help grow. You are, in a directed fashion, going after and driving how you want to grow your business, so you’re growing your business and your business isn’t growing in spite of you or growing at you. You’re taking control of it and you’re working in a methodical way now to grow your business and become more efficient.

Jason: You mentioned something that stood out to me, talking about strategic timing. This is one of the first things we have clients do when they come aboard with us, is we have them do a time study to get really clear on how much strategic time they’re spending in the business and how much tactical time. Usually, their strategic and tactical ratio is almost 99% tactical. It’s like everything is completely tactical. You’re just doing work in the business. You’re handling emails. You’re doing phone calls. You’re dealing with your calendar. You’re just working. Business can’t grow if there isn’t strategic time. Strategic time is the time you spend to focus on growth. If that doesn’t exist, you won’t be growing.

I think another thing that’s important to point out is you talked about how customer service and relationships really matters. One thing to point out that I think a lot of property managers listening, I talked to hundreds of property management business owners that they want to do good customer service. They want to be the good company. I don’t think of of them wake up in the morning and say, “I want to be terrible to tenants, I want to be terrible to my owners, and fight terrible customer service.”

I think one of the big things holding them back is that the entire industry is addicted to the SEO lottery. The SEO lottery is a losing game for the majority but you get a few noisy winners that hit the jackpot. They tell everybody how they built their business and grew things, they get the top spot in Google, and everybody chases after this myth or this thing like they’re playing the slot machine in Vegas. It’s harmed the entire industry because if the company is spending their hard-earned revenue on SEO, pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, content marketing, social media marketing, and they’re not getting an ROI, then the first thing to go is customer service. They’re worst off than if they have just not spent the money in the first place because they didn’t get an ROI. So, then the first thing to go is that customer service. They’re not growing. There isn’t growth. There isn’t going to be customer service.

So, if anybody’s listening, shameless plug, talk to DoorGrow. We help people get out of that problem and then you can move. I find that when people solve that problem, the next thing they want to focus on is everything else. They want to focus on systems and processes, building a team, creating culture, focusing on the customer, and then they get in to making a difference. But when you’re starving, you’re not too focused on anybody else.

I think there’s a Chinese proverb that says, “Your own toothache is more important to you than a million people dying on the other side of the world,” or something like that.

Chris: I have not heard of that one. That’s pretty interesting.

Jason: I may have adapted it, but...

Chris: I agree with you. I agree, let’s say 99%, and the reason being is because we’re also, as part of the growth aspect of what we offer and what the industry likes is that we do have the whole property management side of our business. However, I’m going to caveat with that, there is a massive impact of relationship and reputation in that side of the business as well. Why? Because you have prospective clients going to that side and going that that marketplace, and ultimately being exposed to local property management firms because they’re interested in having a third party manage their properties for a myriad reasons as to why they no longer want to self-manage.

There is a reputation and relationship aspect that plays into that exposure as well, because again, it goes back to the banners on the side of the building ad that I’ve talked about. When you are exposed to potentially these three, four, whatever other property management firms, if you have a good reputation, I will contend that that owner probably has heard about you. If you have a bad reputation, they’ve probably have heard about you as well and they immediately are going to discount you. If you have a good reputation and they see that, “Okay, this property management firm has said, ‘Yes, I’m open to looking to get more greater properties under management,’” they’re going to turn to that, one that they have a little inkling as far as, “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that this is a good firm.”

I agree with you about the vast majority of what we’ve just talked about. However, reputation and relationships even matter in that space, too. What goes of value, of all the channels, it’s not binary. It’s not the idea of, “Oh, I can just,” to your point, “focus on this execution aspect and not stuff over here,” because this stuff over here is also going to matter in whatever marketing channel or marketing activity you use.

Jason: Absolutely. If somebody shores up all the major league should exist in the sales pipeline all the way from awareness to closing a contract, then it makes sense absolutely to do different advertising methods, all probably management. But if you have a massive leak where you have this horrible reputation online, or your website doesn’t create trust or convert or answer their core questions, or your pricing is off in your market, or your branding is off like they think you’re a real estate company or something generic with properties or they’re confused, there’s a lot of potential pitfalls.

If you have all those pitfalls, you can turn the spigot on full-blast and it’s not going to work very well. If you have those things tight, you can squeeze blood from a stone and you can use allpropertymanagement.com, you can do SEO services and focus on that, maybe get more business. But you need to make sure that you end up foundation of it, like you said, is word of mouth and reputation. That’s going to trump everything.

It’s like a clamp on the pipeline. You could have everything else in alignment but if you have really bad reputation, they’re going to check you out. Even if your website’s amazing, even if your advertising and copywriting are on point, they’re going to go check you out because they want to feel safe. If you’re a one-star company, they’re going to feel a little bit nervous talking to you, and then you’re going to have to figure out how to spin it. Like, “Oh, the tenants just hate us but the owners love us or something like that.

Chris: This is something from a small business perspective that it’s not only property management but it’s everywhere. It’s that idea and I think what you’re saying is shoring up your business model before you pour a ton of gas on the top of what we call a funnel. I can’t tell you the number of not only property management firms but owners from all different types of SMBs.

When you start to talk with them and they want to do that top of funnel stuff, they want to do all of that because sometimes that’s more attractive. It leaves a more sexy type of activities about growing your business. Then when you go, “Okay. Well, are you going to be able to keep that? Are you going to be able to get a response to that lead within a matter of minutes? Are you going to be able to service that prospect all the way through? And then are you going to be able to keep that prospect if they become a customer for a long time because you’re all service?” That’s when you start to see the whole, “No, I can’t do that. No, I can’t follow-up. I really don’t understand that. I don’t really have good service levels.”

It’s very hard for folks to say, “Wow, that would be a waste of money, actually, to really expand my top of funnel work until I get,” like you just said, “everything shored up.” When that happens, you know it.

For us here, we talk about the ladder of autonomy. It’s kind of a 50s phrase but companies that are just existing or at the bottom of the ladder. Customers have this level of autonomy because they have all their you-know-what together, they understand their business, they understand their customers, they understand their message, they understand the differentiator, they’re working on a completely different level than other folks in their industry, notably on the property management side.

Our whole goal is to get everybody up to that top level on the ladder so everyone, again, we think will benefit from it, the ripples, the network effect that you talked about is going to be there. Who’s going to benefit as well? Residents, clients, and service partners.

Jason: Yeah and that’s why at DoorGrow we shifted our focus just to help optimize that whole funnel so it makes sense. Once you have that dialed in, everything is more effective. [...] is more effective, Google Ads is more effective, everything becomes more effective when you take care of those things. I usually use the analogy, it’s like trying to do bodybuilding and you’re not eating food and sleeping but you take some really great supplements. Supplements are not going to cut it, but supplements can really help you get to the next level, probably, if you take care of the foundational basics.

Dialing your brand, your pricing, your reputation, your website, your sales process, all these things that are in the funnel, these are the basics. These are [...] any business, like you said.

Chris: It’s [...], Jason. I love that that’s your philosophy. It’s so important. And also, everyone here at Buildium is going to be psyched that I said the word funnel a number of times because I talk about [...] company.

Jason: I love the idea of a funnel. It’s a great metaphor as well. Is there anything else we should discuss here on this idea of homes, not houses? If not, let’s let you plug something.

Chris: I think we covered it. Again, the idea of more and more over the years, we think it’s going to become almost a requirement. Those folks that are grabbing on to it today, competition is there, things are hotter than ever, and it is not nice to have anymore. Other industries have been disrupted through this very same idea and now, we see evidence, we talk with our customers, we talk with general folks that aren’t even our customers in the industry, and we really see this big wave coming.

Luckily, it’s also a cool time because the technology is there to enable the way to become more efficient through those processes that you talked about that are more on the just everyday ongoing type of things. Technology is there now to really allow this to happen. It is an exciting time. It’s an exciting time to be a vendor, it’s an exciting time to be a service provider in this space as you guys are, to see where it really goes. Just the whole property management industry is pretty hot right now and I just like to be a part of it. It’s really exciting.

Jason: Chris, it’s been great having you on the show. I feel like we had a lot of synergy. I really like you. You strike me as a visionary entrepreneur, a decade building up Constant Contact, all this kind of stuff. Not every company is lead by a visionary. I always feel safer with a company that is led by a visionary entrepreneur. That’s why I use T-Mobile, that’s why I have Apple products. I feel like there’s always been these visionaries at the helm of these companies.

One thing I want to point out, to plug Buildium or make them look maybe even better, is we’ve been talking all about being focused on the customer, being focused on your customer, serving your customer. We’ve been talking about that for property management companies, but I’m getting the sense that this is how you and your company view dealing with your own constituents, your own customers, that you want to serve their needs, make a difference for them, and not just squeeze dollar out of them.

Chris: 100%.

Jason: And to that point, some companies are focused primarily, first and foremost, as to serve investors. There’s a different focus there instead of serving their constituents. I think there’s been a lot of talk about this and a lot of pain by people in some other property management software and it’s really difficult to switch.

So, maybe you can touch on that difference a little bit with Buildium and maybe you can tell us how does somebody switch this? Somebody listening might be like, “Hey, maybe I like this guy Chris. I’d rather have him at the helm where I’m tethering my whole business to.”

Chris: Yeah. I hope there’s a lot of people that have that reaction. It is a core, foundational reality that we love here at Buildium. It’s something that Michael and Dimitris started years ago. It’s something that I 100% believe in. I think that’s why Michael and I hit it off so well so quickly. It’s actually the core essence of every single Buildium and there’s more than 200 of us now that believes in. We do not believe that we’re going to be a 100-year company who changes the face of property management if that’s not at our core and it is.

There’s a reason why we believe that customer success and customer support is not a function in a company but it’s everybody. There’s also a reason to believe that we’ll stay on the phone with customers for however long they need it. Again, property management on the accounting side is pretty involved. We’re not talking about accountants. We will stay on the phone and we will ride out the basic T account and say, “Here’s your debit, where’s the credit?” and we will walk them through that. Why? Because it leads to that relationship and then it leads to that idea that our customers are going to stay with us longer, they’re not going to think about jumping even if there’s a cheaper price or less expensive offering, and they’re going to tell their friends. Word of mouth in this space is so important as it is for our customers. It’s so important for us.

This is not corporate baloney that we’re talking about. It is something that we talk at every single company meeting, we talk about every single functional meeting. We have people listening to our phone calls all the time. We have people out in the field, employees are out in the field meeting with customers. You got to fly to California? Go fly to California. It’s going to pay off with the lifetime relationship that we end up with our customers.

How can people switch and if they are interested in getting to know me? [email protected]. Just email me. We have our standard customer success or support line. It’s on buildium.com. I have literally dozens, hundreds even, customers that I know personally, that the rest of my executive team, leadership team, and all of the Buildians. We know these customers. Just because we’re 16,000 strong doesn’t mean that you’re just a number. We will be here for anything that you need.

We just had customers up here the other day. We have a brand new office, which is great because we grew out of our other one and we spent the whole day with these customers just answering whatever questions in doing whatever we tend to do. It is a core element of what makes Buildium, Buildium and to your point, we 100% believe it. It sets us apart from the pack. It creates space between us and other folks. Frankly, we’re only going to build on it and we’re all going to make it better so that space is just going to get bigger and bigger.

Again, thank you for the visionary aspect. I think also, other folks are focused on just the technology, all product. We have a very good to great product that already throws a ton of value at our customers, that is only continuing to get better. We’re investing heavily in it but we’re also investing heavily in the relationship side. It is something that we have the ability to continue to grow and make even stronger. It’s not something that’s going to go away as we continue to expand.

I’ll also say, we have investors, too, and those investors couldn’t be more supportive of our vision, our mission, and the alignment we have around the idea that is the customer’s first always. It makes my job easier from a board perspective because they’re actually pushing me probably even more to make sure we don’t lose that, which is fantastic. I will always be. A hundred years from now, I won’t be here but I know the idea of customer’s first and always at Buildium will be.

Jason: Love it. Chris, really excited to connect, get to know you a little bit better, and hear a little more about Buildium.

Chris: Thank you so much.

Jason: And I appreciate you coming on the show. Where can people find Buildium?

Chris: buildium.com and they can find me at [email protected].

Jason: Perfect. All right. Chris, thanks so much for coming out.

Chris: Jason, I want to have you come out to Boston and see our nice new offices and spend some time with us.

Jason: Yeah, you’ll have to have me come out. I’ll check it out.

Chris: Love it.

Jason: We’ll hang out.

Chris: Yeah. It will be great.

Jason: We’ll talk shop. All right. Cool, Chris. Thanks for coming on.

Chris: Thanks. I’ll talk to you.

Jason: All right, great. It’s great having Chris on. So, if you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, and you want to make a difference, and some of the things in the show hit a pain point for you, then make sure to reach out to DoorGrow. We would love to connect with you. We also have a really clear vision that we want to transform this industry and make a difference. It’s not just hype for us. That’s what gets me fired up and excited. The clients that are closest to me know that. That’s why I do what I do. It’s super rewarding and fun for me to hang out with other entrepreneurs. I really enjoyed doing this conversation with Chris.

Make sure to check us out at DoorGrow. If you are not in our Facebook group and you want to be a part of a community where the tide is raising all the ships, make sure you get into the DoorGrow Club. Go to doorgrowclub.com. It’s a Facebook group. It will redirect into Facebook. doorgrowclub.com and it is free but it’s only for property management entrepreneurs. If you’re an entrepreneur in this space, you’re a business owner, you have a company, or you’re looking to start one, make sure you join our group and start getting [...] in.

Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.

 

Managing people when you are not a people manager keeps most property management businesses within 0-200 doors. They can’t scale beyond that without hiring a significant number of people. How can you shift to outsourcing to scale, save money, and improve business operations?

Today, I am talking with Todd Breen of VirtuallyinCredible, which helps answer property management leasing calls every day through its experienced call center. Also, VirtuallyinCredible can hire virtual assistants (VAs) and customer service representatives (CSRs) with or without phone skills for you and your property management business.

You’ll Learn...

[03:15] Outsourcing: Follow rules to get it right, and select best solution to avoid failure.

[04:03] Outsource companies often find and hire virtual assistants (VAs) and other team members from foreign countries causing frustration instead of support .

[06:00] Small businesses need an entrepreneur, people manager, and task-oriented employees.

[07:43] People Manager Traits: They care for their staff and have strong coaching, communication, and development skills.

[08:50] Avoid pitfall of a property management entrepreneur who manages a team, but shouldn’t; they’re nice people, but they’re not making money or sales for the business.

[12:30] Grow your management company by adding more doors and a people manager.

[13:35] Entrepreneurs are sales-oriented, driven, and willing to do things others aren’t; they start controlling everyone and everything, so they need “inspired staff.”

[16:25] Systems can make or break businesses; is your business systemized; and has it established and documented processes, policies, and systems?

[20:14] HR should find, hire, and train employees; supervision is quality assurance.

[21:38] Three Outsource Options: Hire your own VA directly; hire a VA reseller/recruiter; or select turnkey solution to hire VA for you.

[27:54] Ask for and get good reviews by offering good service.

[38:30] Don’t underestimate or overestimate software; technology is another tool. besides outsourcing that creates leverage, and lowers operational and staffing costs.

Tweetables

Property management businesses can’t scale, stay stale without hiring lots of people.

Shift to outsourcing to scale, save money, and improve business operations.

Outsourcing: Get it right by following rules and avoid failure by selecting a solution

Lifeblood of Real Estate Business: Answer phone, get listing, rent/sell new listing

Resources

Todd Breen’s Email

VirtuallyinCredible

HireSmartVAs

GatherKudos

SuperTenders

Property Meld

EZ Repair Hotline

DGS 39: Property Management Outsourcing with Todd Breen

DGS 43: How Virtually Incredible Can Help a Property Management Business Grow with Todd Breen

DoorGrow Website Score Quiz

DoorGrowClub Facebook Group

DoorGrowLive

The online Windows XP simulator runs in a web browser and its operation imitates the operating system. You can use it to prank someone.

Transcript

Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, and expand your rent roll, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker.

At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, expand the market, and help the best property managers win. If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor, open up iTunes, find the DoorGrowShow, subscribe, and then give us a real review. Thank you for helping us with that vision. I’m your host, property management growth hacker Jason Hull, the founder of OpenPotion, GatherKudos, ThunderLocal, and of course, DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show.

Today’s guest, I have with me, the wise, experienced, property management guru, Todd Breen. Todd, welcome to the show.

Todd: Thanks, Jason. It’s awesome to be here.

Jason: Todd, you are talking to us live right now from Manila, right?

Todd: That’s correct. I spend a few months a year here working with our team and been enjoying my time here, and getting a lot of work done. It’s an honor to be on your show all the away from around the world.

Jason: It’s a tropical island though, right?

Todd: It is. It’s actually the cooler season right now, so it’s similar to where I live in Florida. It’s just a nice weather.

Jason: Maybe there’s a little bit of fun in it while you’re there too.

Todd: Yeah. I played golf today while you guys were sleeping.

Jason: Yes, nice. Cool. Todd, today, we are going to be talking about outsourcing roles for small, medium, and large companies—perhaps there’s some differences there—and connected to Virtually inCredible. Tell everybody, what is your thinking behind outsourcing in general. This is a topic that used to be taboo. It used to be a bad word. “Uh-oh, they’re outsourcing. You’re not using people in the US, you’re like some sort of evil entrepreneur.” I think the temperature shifted.

Todd: It has. I first started outsourcing eight years ago in 2010. Back in those days, I got a lot of raised eyebrows and funny looks. Now, when people hear that we’re outsourcing to the scale that we are, a lot of people are like, “Wow! That’s awesome! How can I save some money and improve my business operations in the process?” It’s really matured nicely.

The topic today is about how to get it right if you’re going to try and outsource, whether you’re a small, medium, or large business. I’m really excited to share what I’ve learned in eight years of helping small, medium, and large businesses outsource. I’ve seen what’s worked and what hasn’t. In this, I’m just going to lay it out for you and say, “Hey, if you’ve tried and failed in the past, I can probably pinpoint how that happened.” We’ll do it in a very simple grid that I’ve made for you guys. If you’re a first timer and you want to get it done right the first time, we’re going to explain the rules for you and have what it takes to do it right and to pick the right outsourcing solution.

Jason: Anyone that’s listening to this show knows we’ve had a few different companies that help with like either VAs or outsourcing or finding assistants for things, and I’ve revealed multiple times, I’ve had my fair share of failures. I’ve had team members in India, Bolivia, Philippines. Right now, the bulk of my team are in the US because I’ve had so many struggles dealing with a lot of that. But we’re now just now ourselves getting back into hiring and sourcing some talent in the Philippines to add greater support for my team and my staff.

Our team has helped your team with some branding work and designing new logos, so check out Virtually inCredible’s new shiny logo. I’m really liking it. We also helped out HireSmart VAs and have cleaned up their branding. It’s been awesome getting familiar with people that are making a difference in the space of property management. You’re also making a difference in the lives of people in the Philippines.

Todd: I grew up in the real estate business. My dad was a very busy real estate broker, very successful, and he was working days, nights, and weekends, and he was always answering the phone. Because he couldn’t afford not to answer the phone because the lifeblood of any real estate business is answer the phone, get a listing, answer the phone, rent or sell new listing. I have a real passion now with my four kids to give them a better quality of life as third generation property management company. They just look at me and say, “Dad, how did you do it before you could outsource your leasing lines or before you could have your own private virtual assistant that was full time helping you?” And I said, ‘Yeah, it was a lot of hard work and now, it’s a lot of smart work.”

Let me get into what the rules are so that the viewers will have an idea what it takes to get the right solution for you no matter what stage of business you’re in. Is it alright with you if I share my screen?

Jason: Yeah, you can share your screen. Just make sure you’re talking through it because some people would just be hearing this.

Todd: I’m sharing my screen, I’m going here, I’m hitting play, and tell me if you can see my slides.

Jason: Yup, I see them.

Todd: If you’re a small business, you’re all three of what a business needs. Because a business needs an entrepreneur that actually is the driving force behind the business, a people manager and task a score of people or employees that actually perform the tasks needed to get the job done in the business. Me, I’m an entrepreneur, always have been my whole life, and I struggled building my management company with one thing and that was managing my staff. I was pretty good at managing owners and tenants, but you don’t work everyday, all day, eight hours a day with your homeowner and your tenant. You get intermittent relationships with them. You have to actually build a relationship with your team. Whether it’s inhouse, whether it’s onshore, whether it’s offshore, if you can’t manage people, then my aha moment was, “I needed a people manager.”

On this screen, I'm listing the things that a people manager needs. They’re good at caring for their staff. Me, as an entrepreneur, that’s not in my DNA. I’m not going to trouble you with my troubles and I appreciate it if won’t trouble me with yours. Entrepreneurs are not the warm fuzzy people managers. People managers are good at coaching, communicating, development, they take an interest in the development of the staff. I’ve got a graphic on the screen, there’s things that a people manager does. Number one, they know me. Number two, they focus on me and help me to focus. Number three, they care about me as a person. When all three of those things happen, they inspire me to do my best. There’s a long list of things that people managers do, but that inspiration in getting into the minds and hearts of the team and building a team is what a people manager does.

Jason: Just to back that up, what I’ll say is, I see this a lot. That’s what I get to do all day long is—I’ve talked to hundreds of different property management entrepreneurs, especially when they get into that 2-400 door range—they end up in this pitfall where they now have a team and the trap because they’re trying to manage this team, and they have this to-do list that’s ever growing and endlessly long, and everything on their to-do list have been sitting there for more than two weeks. It’s probably there because they’re not the person that should be doing it. They’re in a situation which they are not natural managers. It’s just not who they are.

Todd: Right.

Jason: They end up in a difficult situation in which they’re not managing well, the team’s not performing well, and then they’re blaming the team.

Todd: They’re really in the wrong role. An entrepreneur is very rarely a people manager. If we meet an entrepreneur who’s an awesome people manager, you’re looking at the one in a thousand entrepreneurs, or one in a hundred. It’s rare to see somebody who’s a gifted entrepreneur, and a wonderful people manager.

Jason: Virtually, if they are really good people managers, they’re not so great at the entrepreneurship, the sales side of the business is struggling, they’re really nice to people, but they’re not making money.

Todd: On the screen, I’ve got a picture of my wife and I right now. My wife is the consummate, ultimate people manager. She’s tremendous in managing people. We have a team of well over 150 here in the Philippines. They all think of her as the mother goose or mother hen, but they love and respect her, and they all do for her above and beyond because they’re inspired by her. It’s awesome for me to see that because I don’t have that skill set and it’s wonderful, it defines our company.

Let me explain to you why that’s so important. If you are a small business, you’re the entrepreneur, and you hire your first staff member—maybe it’s a property manager, maybe it’s a secretary, or a receptionist, maybe it’s an inspector, or a work person/handyman—as soon as you start managing people and you’re not a people manager, that’s what keeps most property management businesses in the 0-200 doors. Because you can’t scale beyond 200 doors without hiring a significant number of people. Whether you hire them yourself, or you outsource them, it’s up to you, but you need people to blow past 200 doors.

The companies, they get from 150-200 doors and grow up to 500 doors, they have to develop a people manager and get reliable people that work for them. There’s ways that you can get a people manager. You can hire one directly. By the way, if you were 500 or more doors, the companies that are 800-1000, 2000 doors, let me tell you something, they have a people manager on staff.

Jason: Sometimes multiple.

Todd: That people manager is the reason why they’ve hit that level and it’s the missing ingredient. Everyone says how do I grow my management company. I say, We’ll, there’s two ways to grow your management company. One is add more doors but at some point, you’re going to need to add a people manager.” You can actually rent a people manager or you can hire one depending on how you outsource. That’s one of the keys to today’s lessons is, “Hey, if I’m 100 doors and all I really want to do is get to 200 because the cash flow just looks so amazing then I want to go to 300. How do I best do it?” There’s some real super rules that I’m going to walk you through on how to do that.

I’ve switched screens here now, for those who are listening. If you don’t have a people manager, you’ll have staff turnover, more than you want staff turnover. You’ll notice that it’s easier to get bad reviews than it is to get good reviews because you don’t have inspired staff on your team. You’re going to hit a slower growth process because normally what happens is, the entrepreneurs grows the business to the first 100, 200 doors and then, unless the entrepreneur replaces him or herself and stays working in BDM or business development and growth, then they’re going to slow down on their growth. They won’t know what to do to kickstart the growth because they’re so busy putting out fires because they’re not a people manager. Their lifestyle will suffer and they’ll say, “I’m not having any fun.”

Jason: You’re referring to inspired staff. I heard this phrase several years ago that’s always stuck with me that I believe it’s true, that I love sharing with people connected to this and it’s, “Whenever we fail to inspire, we always control. Whenever we fail to inspire, we always control.” What ends up happening is, as entrepreneurs, because we’re generally really driven, risk-oriented somewhat and we’re willing to do things that other people aren’t willing to do—and sometimes we’re more sales-oriented and driven—by default if we’re not able to get people to do things, we start just controlling.

The opposite is to make them inspired and they just do it. You’ll end up with these business owners that are trying to micromanage, push their team, control them, force goals on them, and they aren’t inspired to do any of it. These are the team members that are B players, that’s the only ones that will stick around in a situation like that, and they are the ones that are complaining about you, the boss, and they go home and live for the weekend. They’re just hoping to get a paycheck. That creates a company culture of hiders, they’re hiding.

Todd: They’re hiding even when they’re at work. They might hide behind their voicemail. What’s the solution? We pointed out that if you are a small business and you want to go to large, at some stage you’re going to need a people manager. You can actually hire a local people manager which might cost you $50,000 or $80,000—depending on where you are—or you can hire a virtual people manager for some of the tasks at your business. By doing that, you’re now a well-rounded business. You have the entrepreneur, you have the virtual and local employees, and you have a virtual people manager.

We’re going to ask you guys to rate your business. How do you rate for systems? If you’re listening to this right now, “Am I systemized, yes or no?” And if you answer is, “Yeah, I’ve got a system for everything.” If I hire somebody, I sit in my desk, and they can open a training manual, and they can open policies and procedures manual and all of the answers are there. If the answer is that you’ve got your policies, procedures, and systems setup, then you’re halfway there to being able to onboard people.

A lot of people, small business owners, and entrepreneurs, they do the trial by fire. They’ll hire somebody, sit him at the desk and say, “Figure it out,” and if the person survives, then they walk through the fire, and if not, they burn up, burn out, or they leave, or they get fired. And that’s all due to a lack of systems, policies, and procedures.

Now, what I’ve seen is that in the 0-150 doors, unless you have a franchise that they’re giving you every system that you could imagine, and even some that you don’t need, and then you tailor them to your local market, unless you’re one of those people who has bought or created your own systems, policies, and procedures, then from 0-150, you’re winging it. You’re figuring it out yourself and it’s all in your head. If you’re listening to this you’ll say, “Yeah, that’s me.” Then what’s going to happen whether you hire a local staff or a virtual staff and it’s all in your head?

Jason: For those listening, they can break it down even further because in a business there’s not just like one system. A lot of people think, I just need a process system for processes. Every business needs some sort of sales system in their business. They need a communication system as a team in order to communicate effectively. They need a planning system in their business—which a lot of businesses don’t really have—for setting goals and milestones and allowing people to know what outcomes that are being worked towards. They need an accounting system, and they need a process system, if I didn’t already say that, for documenting, capturing all the process. Whether it’s a manual or something like Process Tree. And they need a support system for managing all the customer requests and everything else. They might be a 10 on 1 of these and a 1 on another. It really takes all of these different systems. And then you need processes for all the documented.

Todd: What happens is in those 0-150, most entrepreneurs still haven’t even started with these systems. From the 150-500, they slowly come to realize that, “These systems are going to make me or break me.” By the way, we’ve outsourced for large businesses that are over 500 and they still have horrible systems, horrible policies, horrible procedures, and believe it or not, really interesting staff and that’s the nice way to put it.

Jason: That’s probably the norm which is sad. Occasionally, you’ll see the conversed side where you’ll see somebody that is super systems-oriented entrepreneur. They’re basically an operator trying to function as the CEO. They will focus so much on process, and operations, and systems and they have no revenue.

Todd: It went off work and they’re not growing. If you’re good at systems, give yourself a pat on the back with your policies and procedures.

The next we’re going to talk about is your HR. If you;re going to grow your business and scale it and have quality and lifestyle, you have to have HR that can find good people. Then you have to get those people trained, and training does not mean you sit up the desk and figure it out, it means, before we put people to work on their tasks, nobody goes to work with less than one week of training. That’s 40 hours of specific human training. It’s a live trainer, training somebody with what’s our business, what’s out vision, mission, values, and then how do you do the actual tasks that you’ve been hired to do.

Supervision is quality assurance and etc. If you have all of those things, probably, you’re closer to 500 and more doors. If you’re missing any of those things, you’re probably in that 0-400 doors. You can say, “I’m good at some, but man, I got major holes and others.” That really impacts how you should outsource. I’ve got a graph up on the screen. The graph talks about if I am rough on my systems or rough on my HR, in other words, if I didn’t rate myself high on that last five minutes of conversation, how should I outsource. The answer is, you have three choices: You can hire your own virtual assistant direct by going to the destination country, for instance, the Philippines, wherever, and you can run your ad and try and hire somebody. Not recommended for anybody of any size that’s rough on their systems or rough on their HR for obvious reasons.

Jason: Yeah. You’re setting them up for failure.

Todd: Yeah. I see people say, “I don’t need a reseller or a turn-key. I’ll just do it myself.” I’m like, “How are you doing with your systems and you HR with you onshore operations because that’s going to directly impact or give you an insight into how your offshore is going to be?” And then they look at me and say, “Yeah, not so good.” I’m like, “Well, running out of the country isn’t going to make it better.”

The first option is to hire your own virtual staff direct. The second is hire a VA reseller which is either a recruiter or somebody who will actually stick around after they recruit for you. And then the third option is, “Hey, I just want a turnkey solution that will take care of it for me. In other words, I want staff but I’m paying you to also provide me good systems and processes and good HR because I don’t have that yet. In fact, I don’t think I’m going to have it anytime soon because I’m busy in that 0-150 doors just getting volume and growing my business.”

If I can figure out a way to affordably get good systems and HR brought into me by outsourcing, that sounds like a dream job to me. This tells you that turnkey is your number one solution. If you can go to somebody that offers turnkey outsourcing and just give them some process or system or some of the workflow from your business, and then it’s called set it and forget it, and just manage the results, you’ll be thrilled.

If you hire a reseller, you may or may or be thrilled based on how well systemized those systems are for the work that you give. “Have you got a system, or policy, and procedure for the specific work that you’re giving?” And/or, “How good are you at managing onshore staff and how well do you think you could manage some offshore staff?”

Jason: Right.

Todd: Let me go to the next screen which is a hiring guide; if you have good systems already in place and you have a people manager. In my case my wife, in your case, if you have somebody who’s a good people manager, wow, what should I do? The answer is, the world is your oyster. You can do turnkey from 0-150 and that allows you to just focus on growing your business. And then when you start hiring locally, from 150-600 doors, it means that it’s one last thing to worry about. Now, 600 and more doors, you’d be looking at a big bill from a turnkey operator and you’d be saying, “Look, I can do this myself. I should take this over inhouse with either my own DA resellers,” where I pay a recruiter to hire me an offshore staff, or by going to the destination country yourself to hire which can all be done virtually or you can actually take some trips depending on how far away you go.

But good systems, good HR, and a people manager is important before you start hiring individual offshore staff that are going to report to you and work for you directly. Does that make sense?

Jason: Absolutely. I think people really need to realize that they need to figure out what’s the best fit and works for them. One of the biggest mistakes I see people really early on is their default thought is, “I need to go hire somebody like me right here in the US.” That’s the first employee. They’re like, “I need to go get another me and duplicate myself,” and they’re doing 20 different things; they’re wearing 20 different hats. They go to try to hire and they’re not ready for that. They can’t even bring on somebody, they really should with technology and just start with outsourcing solutions like Virtually inCredible because you’re bringing to the table a lot of the stuff they aren’t even aware of that they might need yet.

Todd: One of the things that I outsource at my management company, for those who are listening who aren’t aware, I had a property management company since 1985. I used to absolutely hate the answering my leasing calls because I knew if I didn’t answer them during the day then I had no return calls. I knew if I didn’t answer them in the evening or on the weekend then I wasn’t going to fill my vacancies and I’d have to return more messages. My phone was glued to my ear. I decided to outsource my leasing calls and so many other managers heard about and said, “Will you take my calls too?”

It’s such a systemized process with us that it’s not like you could just hire somebody if you’re 120 doors. You can’t hire somebody for what you pay us because you’re going to pay more for your outsourced people, and they’ll only answer 40 hours a week, and we’re answering 80 plus hours a week. There’s a stage which it makes sense to take it over yourself, but there’s a stage where you just say, “Get rid of this and let me focus on other stuff.”

When we talk about capacity in online reviews, this is the DoorGrow Show and Jason, I’m one of your customers for the review, what’s the software you have?

Jason: GatherKudos.

Todd: GatherKudos, thank you. I think we’ve had it for several years. We’ve had good reviews in my management company and that’s because we offer good service, and we ask for the reviews. Seasonal workload variations can actually impact your reviews. Let me explain to you why. I’m going to show you what the variations look like. This is what your work orders look like. This is from Super Tenders. Hundreds of thousands of doors went into this. In January until May, you don’t have near the work orders that you do in June, July, August, September and then it’s slower a little bit again in the fall. You’ve literally got double the work orders between April and July. April is half of what July is. How do you staff for that in your business?

Jason: Yeah. The question is, “Are you going to just double staff and then fire half your staff every season?”

Todd: What happens is, if you look at when you get your bad reviews from tenants who are tired of work orders taking forever to get done, you’re getting those reviews typically, not April, you get them in June, July, August, September. That’s when the majority of bad reviews come in. It’s no secret, if you’re not staffed for the increase in volume, you’re going to have a problem. At my management company, we use Property Meld to technology, really accelerates the communication process and then we use EZ Repair Hotline. Now I can outsource. I’m pretty good at it, but I hire somebody else to do my work order outsourcing because they’re pretty good at it. I haven’t chosen to do that in the Philippines yet and it’s got a US-based team.

What do they call about eating your own dog food or drinking your own Kool-Aid? I outsource to other people at my management company because it makes sense for me to do it and I’m under 300 doors. I’m not at that stage where it makes sense for me to take it over. The same goes for our leasing call volumes. This is data courtesy of Virtual inCredible. This is our call volumes across the entire United States on a monthly basis, and you can see, December’s the slowest month of the year. Thank goodness, right? Going into the holidays. November, December are great, but literally there’s double the volume between December and June. June is going to crush you and people say, “Man, I can’t answer my calls or my properties take longer to rent.” It’s because you’re not really staffed to handle it right.

This is called a heat map. For those of you who are listening, it’s a counter Monday through Sunday, and it shows the darker hours of the day are when we have higher call volumes and the lighter colors are lower call volumes. Throughout the course of the week, on an 80-hours of answering your calls, days, evening, and weekends, there’s a tremendous call volume variation between Monday all day. By the way, there is a reason why Mondays are Mondays. Your phone’s going to ring with your highest call volume on your leasing calls on Monday.

Jason: Compared from the weekend because we aren’t generally doing it over the weekend.

Todd: Or they didn’t get you on the weekend. It could that too. Wednesday is a calm day. How do you staff for that? When you’re at 120 doors. When it’s just all hands on deck at all times when you’re at that volume. It makes sense to just say, “Hey, take my calls. When I grow to a certain stage, I’ll take them back.” That’s where people are able to make a tremendous good decision for their business because if you’re under capacity, under staffed, you’re going to get bad reviews.

Jason: Yeah.

Todd: If you have sufficient capacity at all times throughout the season of workload variations, you can get good reviews if you ask for them. If you have too much capacity, too many staff, you’ll get good reviews but your profit will suffer. Managing that becomes a full time job when you go past 500 or 600 doors, you’ll start to do that yourself but under that, it just makes sense to outsource some of these stuff. It will save you a tremendous amount of time and money, it’ll make getting good reviews easier, it’ll make your staff happier to get rid of some of your high seasonal workload that varies a lot, and just outsource it until you’re big enough to take it back inhouse.

Jason: And if you’re built out to the point where you can handle the amount of seasonal growth and seasonal increase, then what happens during those lean times, you end up with team members that are sitting at unused capacity. Nobody likes being in a position, or a job in which they feel like they’re meaningless, or there’s lack of purpose except really bad team members that you wouldn’t want.

Todd: They’ll never tell you that they’re not busy.

Jason: Yes. They will never say, “Oh, I have so much extra time right now. I’m probably not relevant during these few months. I probably shouldn’t be here.” It makes a lot of sense.

Todd: If you’re a small company and growing, this is the last part, I don’t have slides for this, maybe I’ll stop sharing my screen.

Jason: I’ll point out, connected to that, it’s not a great investment to have a team member that’s sitting in the garage half the time not being used. Imagine you live in a big city, and you’re taking the subway all the time, and you have this expensive car that you’re maintaining constantly but you’re not using. Financially, it becomes incredibly costly to have a team that is under utilized especially if they’re US-based staff, they’re really expensive, and you’re not just able to use them. You’re [inaudible 00:34:56] the money whether you’re using them or not. They’re not making any money.

Todd: Can you imagine what it’s like being me? We’ve got hundreds of staff and our volume is following that curve. We figure out how to do it. There’s something I wanted to share. This is on a personal note from a guy who’s grown a management company through a few cycles. If you’re in that 150 or less, I want you to ask yourself, “Is it easy to get leads to grow my business?” If it is, great, if it’s not, check out DoorGrow, check out some great ways to get improve your leads.

Second is, “Am I too busy to grow my business being an operator instead of being an owner?” An owner knows how to grow a business and knows how to keep the capacity to grow the business open because that’s what it takes. You know, 60% or 70% of calls to a business are your leasing calls. When you’re sitting there answering somebody who says, “How much is that house with the red door?” You’re considering the brain damage that’s giving you. Meanwhile, your phone’s ringing on line two and it’s an owner who has a nice listing and you didn’t get to that call.

If you’re struggling to grow your business and you have leads, but you’re not growing your business, man, clear your plate, get rid of some of your work, and grow your business. You can always take it back. And then work on reducing your labor costs. If you’re in the stage in your business where, “Oh I don’t get enough leads or I don’t want to grow my business.” Well then fine tune your business, that’s great. But as long as you can grow and you want to grow, clear your plate and move forward on growth which is your highest dollar.

People are valuing management companies at between $2000 and $4000 per door. Each new listing that you can sign up is going to increase your net worth, your asset value of your company by $2000 or $3000. If you can get five new listings in a month, and that’s worth $3000 a listing, we’re talking $10,000-$15,000, that’s what you’re increasing your net worth. You grow up that rate in a year and you’re $150,000 and $200,000 in your net worth. It’s all because you’re focused on growth and clearing the decks to make it possible. That’s what it takes to grow your business.

Then as you bring in the new volume of work, decide carefully, “Should I insource or outsource? Do I have a people manager or don’t I? What’s the best way that’s going to keep the machine moving forward?” That’s what I tell people because if they fail that outsourcing, I usually say, “Well, who’s the people manager?” And when the entrepreneur says, “I am.” I’m like, “Oh, okay.”

Jason: It didn’t work for me. You just did it wrong.

Todd: Did you learn something, Jason? Relative to your world and your lives that you’ve been living with our outsourcing?

Jason: Absolutely. All of these makes so much sense. Over the last decade, I’ve had plenty of failures in outsourcing things or I’m trying to do things. I think if I were to add one thing to this is one thing that has really helped me is to not underestimate or overestimate technology. Because technology, like you mentioned, like Property Meld for example, technology is another tool besides outsourcing that creates leverage, and lowers operational costs, and lower staffing cost.

A lot of people will try to go cheap on software. I believe that when it comes to software, you want the best tools, the best softwares. I have spent a lot of money on software tools and I buy the best. I don’t buy the Swiss Army knife that can do everything crapily or terribly, but I buy the best in each category to make sure we have the best systems for process, or the best communications system in our business. That allows my team to get more done, and be more efficient, and more effective.

Whether you’re going to outsource directly or you’re going to outsource to companies, make sure that you have the best tools available software-wise because even if software costs you hundreds of dollars a month, people are always going to be more. If you can give them the tools that they need to do the job well, you’re collapsing your cost and making them far more efficient, and it always pays off.

Todd: Very true. Listen, if anyone has any questions about this, I’ll just briefly tell you how we can help you at our company. We do answer your leasing calls, we also have a tenant screening department. That scales too because you get your number of applications in the summer, is a heck a lot more than it is in the winter. We do that. Those are full termkey systems, where you’re actually putting a department into place and you don’t need a local department to do either of those tasks.

In addition to that, we also have a brand new service where we’ll hire an individual VA for you with or without phone skills. You can get an admin VA or you can get a CSR, a customer service rep that can answer calls for you, and they’re all screened by our company and trained in property management. I used to be a trainer for the Property Management Academy. We put all of our people through all of that training now before they show up at your job. You get screening and training though our VA. If you like some more information, just send an email to [email protected]. Be happy to help you out however I can.

Jason: Awesome. For those listening, when we put on our conference, DoorGrow Live, we gave Virtually inCredible an award because they have consistently been one of the best in class or the best in their category for what they do inside the DoorGrow Club and inside the feedback that we hear from clients. It’s not just my recommendation, it’s a recommendation of a lot of people, and you provide a really good experience for people. You are making a difference in the industry.

Todd: Yeah, thanks. We’re having a ball and appreciate all you’re doing to help people grow with creative ways that aren’t obvious. I’ve been through some of your education, it’s really high quality. Thank you for what you do.

Jason: Appreciate it. Todd, thanks so much for coming on the show, and appreciate you sharing all these insights. I think there’s some solid takeaways that people listening this show. I think some rising like start with technology, then start with outsourcing to a solution like Virtually inCredible, and then maybe once you start getting some things dialed in, you might want to start bringing the staff in-house eventually, but you may not. It’s going well. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Todd: That’s right.

Jason: Todd, thanks again.

Todd: Alright, guys. Take care.

Jason: Alright, it’s great having Todd on the show. Again, to make sure to check out the previous episodes in which we talked specifically about leasing lines and the challenges with those with Todd. You can just search for Todd Breen and DoorGrowShow, one word.

If you are listening to this on iTunes, be sure to give us your feedback in iTunes, they helps us out, also makes us aware of how you feel about the show. We love getting your feedback on these different shows, and make sure you are inside our Facebook community where you can hang out with cool people like Todd and other really savvy entrepreneurs. You can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com and this is a community unlike any other. It’s a special community of property management business owners that believe in this vision and message that collaboration is more significant and important than competition in what this industry needs right now.

If you love the idea of collaboration and helping level up the entire industry, we’re just going to help every property management business owner succeed and grow this business and industry and get more market share then that’s the place for you, that’s your home. Join us in the DoorGrow Club. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

You just listened to the DoorGrow show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrow Club. 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 at 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’ve learned and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

How often do you get complaints from the inside sales team about the outside sales team, and vice versa? “I can’t…I didn’t know...” Every business experiences the challenge of what a salesperson says and actually happens. It’s a constant struggle to make sure the sales team correctly relays what’s going to be done and the team accurately fulfills what the salesperson sells. How can you bridge the gap between inside and outside sales teams?

Today, I am talking with Jennifer Stoops, senior vice president at Park Avenue Properties. She shares how external and internal sales teams can work together effectively. After all, they’re on the same team working toward the same goal. Work together, instead of separately!

You'll Learn...

[04:55] Definition and difference between inside and outside sales. [06:22] Three Cs: Collaboration, contribution, and communication. [08:49] Find a good personality fit for property management. [14:09] Red flags to watch out for during hiring process. [16:50] Align goals to facilitate and mitigate hatred, animosity, and frustration. [22:06] Involve property manager for transparency and transition with sales process. [24:45] Metrics to Measure: New doors and retention. [27:40] Client and Customer Retention: Change how you sell to them to build a long-term relationship. [28:20] Park Avenue Properties plans to move to one system, but now uses Knack, an internally produced business development tool. [31:00] Gamify sources of motivation (recognition or money); make a grueling job fun. [35:30] Seek buy in and feedback from clients; what problem can you solve for them?

Tweetables

Three Cs: Collaboration, contribution, and communication.

Metrics to Measure: New doors and retention.

A property manager is conflict resolution all the time.

Involve property manager for transparency and transition with sales process.

Resources

Park Avenue Properties

Jennifer Stoops’ Email Address

Jennifer Stoops’ Phone Number: 704-334-2626

NARPM

Zoom

Zoho

Klipfolio

GatherKudos

DoorGrow Website Score Quiz

DoorGrowClub Facebook Group

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

Jennifer: There is an integration of the property manager pretty early on because otherwise, business development has established this great relationship in the beginning, promised the world, and in comes the property manager who's like, “I'm sorry, your property has been on the market now for 30 days, but we're going to have to lower the rate.”

Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to The DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors and expand your rent roll, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker.

At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to grow property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, expand the market, and help the best property managers win. If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor. Open up iTunes, find The DoorGrowShow, subscribe, and then give us a real review. Thank you for helping us with that vision. I'm your host, property management growth hacker Jason Hull, the founder of OpenPotion, GatherKudos, ThunderLocal and of course DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show.

Today's episode, I am hanging out with a bubbly, fantastic, wonderful lady named Jennifer Stoops. Jennifer, welcome to the show.

Jennifer: Hi Jason. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the invite.

Jason: It’s great to have you here. I'm sure we're going to go off on some tangents here because that's just how you and I talk. We're going to be talking about bridging the gap between inside and outside sales. Jennifer is part of a company called Park Avenue Properties and those watching this instead of listening, can see this big sign behind her. Jennifer, tell everybody a bit about who Jennifer is and give us a little bit of back story on you.

Jennifer: Interestingly enough, when I moved to North Carolina in early 2007, I interviewed with John Bradford. I just got my real estate license here in North Carolina and interviewed with John in March of 2007. It is the only job I have had since I lived in North Carolina. I actually graduated with a four-year degree. I'm from Buffalo, New York. I graduated with a four-year degree and I went to work at a dental practice of all things. I had no idea that I even remotely wanted to get into the dental field but she was looking for a business manager.

My degree was in business and communications. I put myself through school so I couldn't go for my MBA right away. It was just too costly at the time. After working in this pediatric dental office for about six months, the dentist sat me down and she said, “Would you consider going back to school?” and I was like, “Well sure, for what?” and she said, “We'd like for you to be a hygienist with us,” and she said, “Your personality is better with the patients than doing your insurance stuff,” and I said, “Sure.”

I am a retired dental hygienist turned property manager, long story short. I’ve always had an interest in real estate but coming from Buffalo, New York, it was not a terribly lucrative field there. Nobody was moving to Buffalo, they're all moving out and I ended up doing the same. I started here as the first property manager. I've been here almost 12 years. I just worked my way up.

Jason: When you started there, how many doors did the company manage?

Jennifer: At that time, probably 30-ish. John and his aunt were working at the company at that time. She did the books. She was also licensed. John had actually gotten his real estate license on the side. He was a sales executive at IBM. The 30-ish properties we were managing were a combination of his and business colleagues. He came from IBM and ExxonMobil background. It was a combination of those folks and we've just grown from there.

Jason: Where are you guys at now? Give people a little bit of perspective.

Jennifer: We are currently at just about 1400 doors.

Jason: You guys are one of the rare ones that have broken that thousand door threshold. That’s a pretty large outfit that you guys have got going on. My understanding is, John basically lets you run this thing now.

Jennifer: Yes, that’s true. It’s probably been about four years actually since he’s been, as he said, at the wheel. It’s been about that long.

Jason: One of the challenges that you've seen over the years is this difference between outside and inside sales. Maybe you could explain to those listening that may not be clear on what your definition is of those two things, but what are those and what sort of challenge exist there?

Jennifer: In property management outside and inside sales, I think everybody at least has, —whether it's your property manager or otherwise—in our organization, if we’re going to about ours, our outside sales would be business development folks. Those that are calling on owners, potentially visiting the properties. Inside sales are our property managers really. That's the inside counterpart. Previously, before we had grown to where we are today, I would have been considered outside sales as a property manager and we had some support team that would help be sort of inside sales. But in our world today, it's our business development folks and then our property managers internally.

Jason: Got it. What is the challenge that you’ve noticed? This is a challenge I think every business has experienced, the difference between what the salesperson is saying and what ends up actually happening. This is a constant struggle in any business, making sure that the sales team is correctly relaying what is actually going to be done and the team actually fulfilling accurately on what the salesperson is selling.

Jennifer: Absolutely. I look at it like there's three Cs. There's collaboration, contribution, and communication. Of course, communication being the key to everything. Honestly, we've recognized you have to have all three of those to make it work right. We had even fallen into the trap and it really hasn't been that long that we've been in a mode where we’re weighing this in a little bit better.

Internal complaint is always the same. “I cannot get the rent rate that business development promised. I can't honor the contract the way business development wrote it. I didn't know they agreed to these terms and now it’s special circumstances. Now I have to try to go manage. I now have to relay to the owner that they have to do these things to make a property rent-ready.” That would frustrate the internal team. The external team was, go close the deal, get contracts signed, turn it over to the internal team, and move on. There was no further engagement between the two. There was not a lot of collaboration. There was not a lot of communication leading up to the execution of the contract, the terms, the rental rate.

We decided we had to change that. That has helped tremendously. We look at it like our complementary roles now. Business development outside has a counterpart inside which is really your property manager. When our business development team is signing on a new property, they are signing it to a property manager internally. You're talking to that homeowner for the first time, so you know if somebody is a little bit more just very, very business. You can probably turn them over to somebody internally that has very similar personalities with multiple property managers here.

You may have somebody that's a brand new investor and needs a little bit more hand-holding. You might want to put them in touch with one of the more deliberate, or hand-holding, or soft-spoken individuals internally. The big E person can read that, but you have to get to know your internal team and that doesn't necessarily mean being in the office. There's a lot of firms, including ours, a lot of firms today that have grown. You've got maybe one main office and business development people in various markets, but you have Zoom. We were doing that right now, so you can get to know somebody, learn about them, and really feel connected to them as a teammate utilizing things like technology and stuff like that as well.

Jason: What are things that you do as a company then to really make sure that the communication is there, that the collaboration is there, that contribution is focused on? I guess at the foundation, it would start with the right team members. What are some mechanisms that you put in place? How do you identify whether somebody's going to really be a good fit on the property management side, or on the outside sales, or the BDM side?

Jennifer: A lot of it has to do with personality. Really, you can ask folks, too. There’s a lot of folks that'll tell you upfront, “I have no business being a forefront in sales. I prefer to be in the background.” Salespeople are historically not ultra-organized. They tend to be very chatty, very social, and folks that are more on the organized side tend to not want to be in sales roles. They feel that it can be very disorganized and they don't enjoy that. We learned that with folks around here.

When we have team members, oftentimes too when you're trying to figure out their appropriate roles, you can determine good people when you interview them. We just said the other day, too, we should do this more at the interview process, but we do tend to do it afterwards. We've done some of the shortened versions like the personality profile testing, things like that. It just sort of get engaged. More often than not, people are usually asked about. They'll tell you upfront. But you're right, it is very important to have the right people on the right team.

Jason: Yeah. I use a lot of assessments because I'm a nerd when I'm hiring, because I don't want to just go off of my gut. I want something that I can look at that helps me make things real clear.

Jennifer: It’s probably much smarter to do it that way. A lot less harder.

Jason: I love the idea of just simply asking people. One of my favorite things to ask when interviewing candidates to work at DoorGrow is to simply ask them what they most love doing and what really drains them. A lot of people listening are probably thinking, “Well, nobody's going to be honest. They're just going to say whatever the job is,” so the way that I usually phrase this is I’ll just say I’ll be honest and disclose first like what makes me uncomfortable, what I'm not good at, what drains me, the stuff that makes me feel alive, and that I love doing. I’ll just transparently share that and then I’ll say all these things that I dislike, that's why all these different people on my team have a job. That’s why they're there, because I need them for those roles to support me.

Then I’ll ask them, “What drains you?” I usually preface it by just saying, “There's lots of different things that we do in this company,” which is always true. “There's so many different things you could be doing and I know that if I have you do the things you love most, that you are naturally going to do a great job at it, because that is just what you're inclined to do. I’ll never have to motivate you to do it. I won't have to follow-up to make sure you're doing it. You’re just going to do it because you love doing that. I want to make sure I get really clear on what you love because I want this job to be something you love. Tell me what you love and what drains you,” and I usually get a pretty honest answer. Most of the time, they're really honest. I'm surprised how honest they are once I preface all of that, at the things they'll tell me that drain them that they don't like. Sometimes it’s stuff that's in the job description. I go, “Okay, this is maybe not a good fit for that person.”

Jennifer: One of the things that I do, like you, you're trying to get honest answers, is I'll ask, “What do you like to do in your spare time?” That can tell you a lot about a person and it’s sort of an ending question to the interview because to your point, you're usually told what you want hear as it pertains to the job description and whatnot. And exactly, we don't want people to take a role that they will not enjoy at the end of the day.

It's hard to describe every single thing in any of our roles. In property management, my gosh, there's so many moving parts. But you learn very quickly when you ask somebody, “What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?” If somebody says, “I enjoy quiet time. I enjoy reading. I enjoy time by myself,” that's probably not going to be your salesperson.

Jason: Probably inside.

Jennifer: Right. Those that are like, “I belong to a charity organization. I'm on a kickball league. I volunteer at this and I sing in a choir,” whatever, that's probably more on your outside team.

Jason: Yeah, it makes sense. I like that. That’s clever, asking what they do in their spare time. I think also when you ask just about their daily life and what they do in their spare time, they also reveal some of their propensities towards either organization, or towards maybe things that are more driven activities, which might be more outside sales. They’re more driven towards activities. I think that's clever. What are some big red flags to somebody that’s just a really bad fit for outside sales or might not be good at communication, contribution, or collaboration?

Jennifer: For outside sales, it is the folks that are, “I prefer to work by myself. I prefer to work independently. I don't like to talk on the phone.” They get nervous with having to speak to customers. There are certain little things that’ll come out when you learn that because this is development. In any organization, there's a lot of not only talking to the customer but branding whatever company it is. Maybe you and I were both at the same conference. You're out there, I'm there branding Park Avenue as an attendee, but still representing the brand as you are for yours. When people are not necessarily wanting to be in a social situation or things like that, that's going to be a problem. Those are red flags.

Jason: What about red flags on the inside side? You're looking for a candidate for the inside that you want them to be a property manager, what are some things to say, “This person's not going to be able to handle this. They’re not going to last in this role,” because that can be a challenging role, dealing with all the maintenance stuff, dealing with upset tenants. It takes a fairly resilient person, I would imagine, to deal with that.

Jennifer: Yeah, it’s that conflict resolution. If people tell you, “I don't enjoy conflict. I struggle with conflict,” that's a big one because a property manager is conflict resolution all the time. You don't need for it to be, but you're a middle man between an owner and a tenant, so you have to. Or if they give you the, “I know the hours are 9-6, but if I left a little early on these days a week...,” or I've had folks say, “Is this job always in the office? Because I don't enjoy being in an office all day every day,” that's like, “Yeah, it kind of is.” That may be a candidate for outside sales, but you still have conflict resolution even in outside sales because that goes back to the collaboration that we've learned.

I think business development in outside sales didn't normally have to deal with that. Really, the conflict was coming from the disconnect between inside and outside. But business development folks or outside sales were kind of [...] and the conflict resolution and all the other problem-solving things were coming from the inside team. That was creating the disconnect between the two teams. We're all on the same side, so we had to figure out how to go fix that.

Jason: Yeah. Then in tech companies, where you had the sales team and what they would sell, and then you'd have the fulfillment side would hate the sales team. There is this animosity that was tangible inside the companies I would see, in which the billing department, or the fulfillment department, or whatever, were like, “The sales guys are always selling stuff. They said it wrong. They’re not doing it right,” and there's this frustration. How do you facilitate this bridge between the two to mitigate that? Let’s say you got the right people in place. How do you ensure that there's a really good understanding on both sides of what their capabilities are and what's accurate?

Jennifer: We actually started to align the goals. Business development roles have a tendency to operate on bonus structure. Obviously, it's sales. Its target, its bonuses, its goals. We’ve recognized that even though the folks internal are generally W2-based salary employees. There is a way to align that to where they win together, they lose together, a shoulder-to-shoulder approach. What we had done was we created transparency. We aligned the goals. The goal for the entire organization is new business and retaining business.

Previously, we would run into issues where business development would close the deal, turn it over, move on. Now, the way that we have it structured, they get a portion of their bonus structure at the execution of the agreement, but the balance of it doesn't happen until the property is rented for the first time. It forces the two to stay engaged. We've created a clear path of collaboration between the two as far as, business development will make the call, they may negotiate some of the terms, but the contract which wasn't done this way previously, will actually be sent out now by the property manager.

Not that we're trying to put more work on the property manager’s [...], document signed doesn't take that long, but it forces the two of them to talk about the terms that were agreed to with the homeowner. Prior to the contract given going out, the collaboration on the rental rate happens. An inspection of the property happens, so the two of them are looking at the inspection to come to terms with what the owner may need to do to the property to make it rent-ready.

Previously, all of those things were done by BD in advance. Once everything was executed and a rent rate was given, the BD person was not normally telling an owner what needs to be done to prep the property. Now all a sudden, the property manager is in the picture. They receive a new contract, now they're looking at the terms going, “This is not something I normally do, so now I have to go to [...] for this owner,” or whatever the special circumstances are that they now have to go figure out how to manage. “Gosh, I don't think we can get this rent rate.” So we made it to where they win together, they lose together. They're all watching the same metrics now as it pertains to that. They both have a collaboration and a bonus structure tied to it.

Jason: Yeah, because one of the big challenge is if you get a closer on your team, they can close deals, and you put them in a position that it's simply about getting a deal on and not the longevity of that relationship with the client or the customer, they're going to delegate the deals. They’ll still close one and they'll move on to the next one. Those might not be a good fit for the business. They might not be a good fit for the team. They're less inclined to make sure that what the message that they're sharing is accurate. They're far less inclined to make sure that they have really good communication with the fulfillment side of the business, to know what can be done and that sort of thing, because their financial reward isn't connected to that. I love that and I love basically what you're saying. It sounds like you’ve created a much more gradual transition from one department to another. A lot of people view it as you're sales, and then there's this clear cut-off, and then boom, you're with other people.

Jennifer: Owners don’t like that either. That's right and the client didn't like that. Yes, it is a more gradual approach now where there's an integration of the property manager pretty early on because otherwise, business development has established this great relationship in the beginning, promised the world, and in comes the property manager who's like, “I'm sorry, your property has been on the market now for 30 days, but we're going to have to lower the rate,” and that then sets the tone. Now, business development’s getting a phone call from said owner to go, “Wait a minute, you told me I could get this and now this person that is managing my property is telling me we can't get that,” and it makes everybody go backwards. It's a much slower process for turning it over so that the homeowner doesn't feel like it’s either a bait and switch, or that they're just left at the altar when business development moves on.

Jason: I imagine other property managers that are listening or property management business owners listening to this, they could probably start to implement some of this even in their companies that are smaller, simply by getting the property manager involved earlier on with the person that's doing the sales. A lot of times, that's the business owner. But if they have managers, it might be wise for them to start transitioning as soon as possible to somebody else.

I think what that also does is it frees up the BDM. There's a lot of work that the property manager can help facilitate in building that relationship and in onboarding the client. I think that helps the sales process. It helps transition them into just being a client and going into that delivery or fulfillment stage of business, which is going to free up time for the BDM to spend more time selling, I would imagine.

Jennifer: Yes and we’ve created transparency, too. We’ve used technology besides doing consistent touch points. Right now, I had gotten back engaged in doing a lot of the BD. I'm generally here with most of the team. We meet regularly to talk about the CRM because everybody can see our customer care team takes telephone calls, puts the lead into the CRM, everybody gets alerted. They know on the rotation which property manager it's going to get assigned to.

The property manager knows there's something coming down the pipeline. They can see whether it's me or anybody else doing the business development side of it, where they are in the transaction, has contact been made, where are we in the process. Once it gets to a certain point where the owner is ready for a contract, we will go ahead and then collaborate. “Let's look at the rental comps together. What else do you have available in the neighborhood currently that we're managing? Are we competing against something else?” So there's a collaboration.

We also have transparency not only in the CRM and to know where we are with the leads, but we got to make it fun. This is a very thankless job, it's a very hard job, there's a lot of moving parts that everybody has to deal with every day. We have actually used technology that talks to our CRM which is an internal one that we have and then our property management software. It’s a tool called Klipfolio. It’s awesome because it makes graphs and things like that. If we say, “The target for Team Liberty is 10 new doors this month,” then every time something new comes in, they close it out in the CRM, and they mark it a closed deal, their graph changes. Both internal and external can see where they are in their target to go get as it pertains to new doors and retention. Those are two metrics that internal and external teams are both responsible for. It’s helping with retention. Everybody in the organization needs to help with retention and new growth. Those two metrics in particular are a collaboration between the two teams.

Jason: Absolutely. It’s really important in business to focus on the entire life cycle and the lifetime value in extending that, rather than just on sales and closing deals. What ends up happening on companies that just focus on closing a deal on sales is that fulfillment on all of those companies tends to take a backseat, tends to start to suffer and struggle because their focus is just on getting revenue in. If the goal needs to be on revenue as a whole in aggregate, lifetime value, building up the longevity of these contracts, keeping clients on, the number one prospect that most businesses have is their existing customer.

Jennifer: That's exactly right.

Jason: We’re always stoked on getting new ones which is exciting, but we want to make sure that we keep one. There's no point in getting on a new deal if you lose one.

Jennifer: Right. I think every property management firm across the country for the most part, several that I've talked to over the last few months, I know for us last year was our biggest one but for the last couple years, have experienced attrition due to sales. The sales market has come back. To your point, the internal customers that you already have, if somebody says, “Hey, when my tenant move out, I'd like to go ahead and sell the property,” why not try to retain that business and now send something out to all of your homeowner's letting them know, “Hey, we've got a property that another one of our clients is looking to sell. Is anybody interested in buying it?” I'm sort of talking about it at a 30,000 feet view.

That's something that we went ahead and implemented where we’re periodically sending a letter out to all of our owners. It’s an email format but it's not just an email. It looks like it’s a little letter that goes out and just letting them know, “Hey, if you want to buy more, the market is good for that. If you're interested in selling, let us know because we have others that are interested in buying.” That's still a door safe. It’s another sale all over again. That’s something that's also very important. That’s why retention is something that had to not only be tracked internally.

Business development was a little bit surprised when we were saying, “Look, you have to help with retention too,” but you do because internally, they may need some help in trying to convince person X as to why this particular property is good. The messaging has to be the same too about the firm. What is it we are selling? What is our firm [...]? What sets us apart? We need to have an aligned message on that.

Jason: Yeah. The way in which I found that for my own business and for the clients that I coach in sales, one of the number one things that impacts with client and customer retention is just how they're sold in the beginning. It changes how you sell if you're selling for the long term. It changes how you build and create that relationship and if that relationship is built well in the beginning, the lifetime value and the chances that they're going to stay with you longer is far more likely than if you just get the win and close the deal, and move on. That changes how that happens.

I've a couple of questions. One, what CRM do you guys use? Do you have a sales CRM? And then you have your customer portal and back office that you're keeping track of. Are those separate or are you trying to do everything in one system?

Jennifer: No. We're probably going to move to one system. Today, have we actually use something that we actually created internally, it’s a software called KNACK. We developed that to be our business development tool but also attracts a bunch of our other metrics and things. We have multiple tabs in it. We actually changed the name to it. We call it Grand Central Station in our office here.

It tracks our retention. It tracks all of the metrics that our property management teams and our business development team, those that they have to watch together. Then of course internally with respect to maintenance and work orders. Even internally, they're still doing sales. It’s a different kind of sales. Retention is sales. Keeping a homeowner happy is still sales. Tenant retention is sales. It’s just a different kind than the initial close of a deal. Even internally, the system is tracking lease renewals, it’s tracking tenant retention, it’s tracking how quickly we’re doing maintenance work orders because there is a direct correlation to how quickly even normal regular maintenance gets handled and tenants staying longer in the property.

Maintenance is the number one reason tenants leave. We have a system that we developed internally. Zoho actually is another tool that we use but it works more with our emails right now. Interestingly enough, they have a ton of tools that can be used. I think we may be moving in that direction . But today, we use KNACK and then we use this Klipfolio. Klipfolio is what actually creates the fun stuff. It creates the pie charts and the graphs, so everybody can see.

Jason: It’s more of a dashboard.

Jennifer: Yeah. That’s exactly what it is. It’s our dashboard. It shows everybody where we’re at.

Jason: You've got your own system for keeping track of some of your metrics and tracking data. You've got this thing that will take the data and print it in pretty charts so the team can see a scoreboard so they know whether they're winning or losing. Then you also have your back office, I would imagine, for accounting, keeping track of properties, and all of that that you do. I want people to be clear that you weren't just doing all of this in one magical unicorn system.

Jennifer: No. It takes a lot to put it all together.

Jason: The other thing I wanted to point out is, you talked about kind of gamifying this for your team. I think it's important for people listening to recognize that these two personality types that we’re really describing here that both need each other and help each other, that can work together, have very different motivators. I think as entrepreneurs, one of the big mistakes that we make a lot of times—I was talking with clients this morning about this—we’re very money driven. We’re very money-motivated. That’s a reward that we'd like to get.

We mistakenly assume that everybody on our team are money-motivated, or economically- or financially-driven. It usually is not the case. Most people are the opposite but outside sales people, BDMs, they are usually the good ones, are money-motivated. They’re economically-driven. Financial rewards and bonuses could work for them but then you have this other side and they're not. I find that when people are not economically- or financially-motivated, they are recognition-motivated.

They want to be recognized. They want to be seen winning. They want to feel like they've contributed. They want to feel like a winner. That’s a very different sort of situation. I think it's important as business owners to understand that if you're going to gamify this, to not just make it monetary rewards. I see it all the time. Somebody’s like, “We can start a reputation game in our company and we'll just give everybody a financial bonus,” and then they're like, “Why aren't our maintenance coordinators getting so excited about getting more money?” But they do get excited about getting recognized, doing a good job, and being called out in front of everybody as being awesome. I think it's important to recognize that you don't always have to throw money at people to get them to do things. Sometimes, that doesn’t work.

Jennifer: It’s interesting, too. We do have some monetary bonus both for external and internal. Definitely, the sales folks, generally speaking, that is exactly what they're looking for. Internally, we have a few different ways that we do it. Just this year, we started our hall of fame. It’s our wall of stars. Each month, somebody is selected. For example in February, the person that stood out from the crowd in January was selected. Their picture goes up on the wall. It stays there. We have January through December up on the wall. Once their picture gets put up there, the picture stays up there. That's something that we implemented this year and that's exciting for them.

We do PTO time. It's amazing recognizing somebody and it doesn’t cost your organization anything to say, “You have a half a day. You've earned four hours PTO time as a bonus,” or, “If you meet these metrics, for each metric that you meet, it’s one hour of PTO time.” It's unbelievable how far that goes.

Little things, when we've had business development come into the office for those that can physically come in, we do what we call training trivia. We might be training on what our lease agreement says, or mention an agreement, or what our pitch is supposed to be like to our owners. What is our message about our firm.

I'm telling you, I go to the dollar store and buy these boxes of candy. As people are getting it right, they're taking from this big bag. You can get $20-$30 worth of candy. That’s like 30 boxes of candy and they're so excited. It’s little stuff like that. Even from a training perspective, we try to make it fun because it can be a very grueling job. It’s mentally taxing. You're a middle man between the tenant and the owner and their money. That's not a really great place to be on any given day. You go home and a tenant or an owner is not mad at you, that's a great day.

Jason: Yeah. Sometimes it's hurting cats, it's organized chaos, and lots of conflict resolution. Jennifer, this has been really fun, chatting about all of this. I think there's lots of ideas that’s been thrown around that are helpful. Any last thoughts on making this work between your inside team and your outside sales department? Especially for the property management businesses that are not at 1400 units, they're smaller, they're just getting started, and they've got a really small team, what do you think are some of the first things they should just start to try to tackle to make this work well?

Jennifer: I would ask people specifically, “What do you think we should be saying to new clients?” Really, it’s all about communication. Just ask. Even your internal folks, while they may not volunteer the information because in their mind, they're one that’s in sales, but if you ask them, any of your staff, they will tell you. They all hear the stuff. That goes from your maintenance coordinator, to the folks that are answering your phone, to the owner of the company, whoever's doing business development. Just ask, they'll give you feedback.

What we do is problem-solving. Property management is problem-solving. What problem do homeowners have or what are the concerns that they could have? Why are they hiring a property manager? All of the people on your team in some capacity are going to tell you what the most common things are that they hear are an issue from a tenant or from another homeowner, and that's what you need to go to tackle as a team. That’s what you need to make sure you know how to go solve together, but they'll tell you. It truly is just about asking them.

That's something buy-in is huge. The buy-in on the message, the buy-in on how the process should look, the collaboration on there. Even we didn't learn that right away either. We would say, “Okay, I think it should work this way,” and, “Well, you've only been here two months, so you probably don't have an opinion on it yet,” but you know what? They do. It's good to ask for those ideas and feedback on that. They won't give it to you unless you ask for it.

Jason: Yeah, that’s true. Especially on the inside type of personality types. I find a lot of times, they see a lot. They’re almost like the guides for humanity. They're so aware and they see so many things that we miss. Us highly driven, money-motivated people, and entrepreneurs that are crazy, and wild, and taking risks. They see so much.

I meet regularly with my fulfillment team just to ask them, “What challenges are you dealing with? what are you noticing that is coming up as an issue?” A lot of times, we can solve it just by changing how we sell and making sure that we qualify prospects better, that we change what type of clients we’re bringing on because I want them to have a good experience, too. What that does is when you align sales with your fulfillment side, your fulfillment side starts to feel like you care about them.

Jennifer: It’s important what they have to say.

Jason: Some of our biggest mistakes were when I wasn’t listening to the fulfillment side, or wasn't listening to that team, and getting their feedback. They were frustrated because then they feel like they're not supported, “Why are you throwing these stuff at me and these people?”

Jennifer: Exactly. We have to go manage the problems that you guys went and promised but nobody's asking us what we have to deal with on the backend.

Jason: Yeah, absolutely. Our business is our best product.

Jennifer: Yes.

Jason: And when we look at our business as a product, we can see that there's flaws in every one of our businesses. There's always flaws in our product and we can approach it as a product and figure out how do we improve this? How do we make this better? How do we systemize this better? How do we reduce churn? How do we improve the communication? I love the idea of just asking what should we be saying or asking the fulfillment side of the team, like what things are coming up? And what are the big questions that we're having?

Jennifer: It's almost always the simplest things that are overlooked.

Jason: Yeah. Sometimes it's the simplest things that give you the biggest bang for your buck or the biggest increase in revenue. Sometimes it's really simple pivots that need to be made. Sometimes these really simple changes that they can see help improve the business. That's why even with tools and systems that we use like GatherKudos and stuff like that, getting feedback coming in from the business, or feedback from any channel, I think a lot of times people perceive feedback as something negative, but I see feedback as this gateway to everything that you really want.

Jennifer: Absolutely. Even the stuff that comes in that's good, you could still be looking at to do better. A feedback is critical because how do you fix what you don't know? If you're not asking for it, you're not going to get it. All of a sudden, you've got somebody that wants to terminate with you or an employee that doesn't want to be here anymore but nobody ever asked for feedback. Now all of a sudden it's laying in your lap and you're like, “Gosh, I could have fixed that had I known,” but now it's too late.

Jason: The scariest place to be as an entrepreneur is to be completely blindsided with something you didn't see because you are the emperor with no clothes.

Jennifer: That's a great point.

Jason: Nobody should be building a team around them that everybody feels like they have to say yes to.

Jennifer: That's right.

Jason: You are the emperor with no clothes.

Jennifer: That’s right. You want the ideas. You want the feedback for sure. Like it or not, you want it.

Jason: Great. Jennifer, this has been super fun. I really enjoyed having you on the show. It’s always fun to chat with you. How can people connect with you if they're interested connecting with you or how should people get in touch with you if they want to be able to do that?

Jennifer: My email address is just [email protected] or you can just go to Park Avenue’s website parkaveproperties.com and all my info’s on there. My cell number’s on there, my email, and I'm not afraid to get my cell number out so people are welcome to reach out to me. You can go to NARPM. I'm on there, too.

Jason: Awesome. Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it. Thanks Jason.

Jason: You bet.

That was super fun, hanging out with Jennifer. For those of you listening, if you enjoy this episode, we’d really appreciate it if you are listening on iTunes, to make sure and subscribe to iTunes podcast and make sure that you leave us some feedback. We really appreciate your real feedback on iTunes. It helps us get awareness and makes it worth it doing these shows. Be sure to join our free community, the DoorGrowClub Facebook group. You can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com.

If it's been a little while since you've gotten some leads on your website, or you feel like your website maybe is pretty but isn't really doing its job, or maybe it's actually just ugly and not doing its job, make sure to go test it out by going to doorgrow.com/quiz. Take our DoorGrow score quiz and test your website. It’s going to show you how effective your website really is at converting and making money. It’ll give you a letter grade. There’s a few resources for you.

If you're struggling to grow your property management business, you feel like things aren't working like SEO, pay-per-click, content marketing, social media marketing, you're finding all of those cold lead marketing channels less effective, and your number one source of growth still is word-of-mouth, we can make that better. Reach out to DoorGrow and you can check us out at doorgrow.com.

Thanks everybody for tuning in. until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.

You just listened to the DoorGrow show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social direct, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve the 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 at 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’ve learned and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Do you overcomplicate things? Try to automate and systemize everything? Focus too much on drip emails, SEO, or pay-per-click (PPC)? Then, you’re missing the most important element in property management: Taking care of people and property. People don’t buy property management. They buy into a relationship with a property manager.

Today, I am talking with Patty Young of Pearson Smith Realty. She describes how technology has its benefits, but building relationships and being there when someone needs you is the key to success and growth in the property management business.

You'll Learn...

[03:40] Grow a property management business by talking to people and being available on the phone; avoid complicated conversations by being confident and authentic. [05:38] Pain and pleasures of solving their problems; property managers close deals by asking more than talking. [09:07] Understand and categorize personality types; don’t stereotype, but figure out where they are to know how to make them feel better. [11:05] Why are you reaching out to get property management now? Determine what’s driving their decision making to reach out for help. [13:18] Create opportunities to start relationships by giving away a value and your free time to help people; find events to attend and places to volunteer. [15:52] Actively create business by being dedicated and disciplined; schedule time every day for prospecting. [17:53] Growing too fast isn’t always good; only take on what you can effectively manage and avoid sales lumps by creating consistency. [21:53] Ratio between level of connection and intimacy in sales situation and close rate is not about how many people show up, but how well you connect with them. [23:10] “Why don’t you like me? What made you decide to go with them and not me?”; ask for feedback to make your business better and leave the door open for the future. [32:33] Showcase your expertise and stay on top of what’s happening in the industry; don’t listen to people telling you things that aren’t from a real source. [39:08] Shift yourself with any prospect or referral partner into being an advice-giver; you’re in a position of authority and trust, which is what creates sales. [44:34] Be aware of applications that come in where person froze their account due to bad credit history and to bypass your system.

Tweetables

Solicit and close deals by asking more than talking.

Be yourself, be a person, and listen.

You can’t sit back and relax. There’s no relax. You’ve got to keep it going.

Needy in sales is creepy.

Resources

Patty Young’s Email Address

Patty Young on Facebook

Crowdcast

NARPM

DoorGrowClub Facebook Group

DoorGrowLive 

Transcript

Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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. I have a special guest. We’re hanging out with Patty Young. Patty, welcome to the DoorGrow Show.

Patty: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Jason: Patty, you are with a company called Pearson Smith Realty. Maybe you could give everyone a little bit of background on your experience in property management. How’d you get into this?

Patty: Oh, good lord. Many, many years ago, I won’t give out my age, I’ve always liked real estate and just renting property and I was living in Montana at the time. I thought, “You know what? This can’t be that bad. Let’s try this out,” and so I met this fellow who owned a complex and that’s where it all started.

Jason: Were those famous last words?

Patty: No, I guess I’m one of the old people that started this long before we had cell phones and technology, Crowdcast and all those kinds of stuff so it’s really been interesting watching it grow.

Jason: I want people to realize that you have single handedly helped out a lot of doors to some property management businesses. Tell everybody a little bit about your BDM sort of experience.

Patty: I’ve done the franchise route. That’s where I met you many years ago. I did that and grew it and worked with a lot of people in the franchise, which is great, and I was able to do a lot of training. I’m a teacher by trade so I go back to—property management, I think, are protectors to some degree, and so the educating, teaching and trying to explain how to do things is just at the root of what I do. I got to do a lot of training in the franchise world of property management and just kind of kept growing and growing, and it just seemed to make more and more sense.

Jason: While you were working at that franchise, I think you added maybe about 600 or 700 units to the franchise.

Patty: Yeah, in about four years.

Jason: I’m trying to help you brag about yourself a little bit in a relatively short period of time. I think everybody listening would be curious, what are some of the things you’ve done to help grow a property management business just as one of the big challenges?

Patty: One of the big things is talking. You’ve got to be available on the phone and talking to people. All of this technology’s great, having drip emails and all that kind of stuff, but it comes down to the real relationship and being there when they need you. It’s not the SEOs. It’s not all that stuff; it’s about a real person needing real services and being able to help them when they need them. That’s the basis of what we do.

Jason: Absolutely. I think, a lot of times, we overcomplicate things in property management and we think we’ve got to automate everything, we’ve got to systemize everything and we’ve got to create a bunch of drip emails, we’ve got to do SEO, we’ve got to do pay-per-click.

We’ve got all these crazy things that we’re trying to implement and do, and then the challenge is that we’re missing the most important element, which, in property management, if you are a protector, you are taking care of people, and taking care of property. People don’t buy property management; they really buy into a relationship with a property manager, and I think we lose sight of that.

Sometimes,we think, “I’m trying to sell my business to them,” and, really, they’re not trying to buy your business. What they’re trying to buy into is whether or not they can trust you to take care of their property.

Patty: Exactly. I think people are not confident enough sometimes and they think, “I’ve got to talk, and talk, and talk,” and you never stop breathing and then you just become an elevator speech and everybody’s saying, “You’ve just got to be yourself. You’ve got to be confident, you’ve got to feel good about what you do in the service that you provide, and the rest comes.” It is crazy how complicated people make it.

Jason: It would probably be true, then, to say as a property manager if you’re working on closing a deal or soliciting somebody to hopefully get their business that you need to be asking a lot of questions.

Patty: You need to be asking more than you’re talking. You need them to talk. You need them to tell you where they’re scared, where you can come in to help them and where you can support their needs. That’s what they want to hear even though that’s not what you’re hearing them ask.

Jason: What are your favorite questions to ask, then, during that sort of sales process or maybe even in initial conversations to really identify where they’re at and whether or not you can close that deal?

Patty: I want to get a report going as quickly as possible. “So, tell me about yourself.” That’s kind of like the first thing, and they will start talking, and they’ll tell you, “Oh, I just had it and got it today. I’m moving to California. I’m coming up by you,” and he’s got to move, and he’s got this house, and there’s no way he could sell it because he just bought it, and you just let them go.

They will start answering all the questions themselves when you ask them, “Just tell me about yourself. What time would I mail? How can we support your needs? What is it you need?” and let them ramble out. Once they ramble it out, in your head, you’re already knowing how to answer those questions that they—the holes in your life that you can plug.

Jason: Yeah. They’ll start to help you identify some of their pain points. They’ll start maybe even giving you some clue as to what they want. Really, the two things you need to know to close a deal are, “What problems do they have that you can solve? What’s their pain?” and, “What do they want?” and that’s the outcome of solving that problem, the pain and the pleasures. If you have those two pieces, those elements, that can be really effective.

I think, a lot of times during the sales process, if we get too caught up on our own voice and what we want to say to them, we miss really digging into that pain because the stronger we can really identify that pain and really connect with it, and the stronger we can really connect with what they want and really get clear on that, and help them be really hyper aware of those things, the easier it is to close a deal, but if we go, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,” and gloss over it and move on to what we feel like we need to tell them or we want to say as a salesperson, then what ends up happening is they start tuning out, they are thinking you’re just a commodity like, “You’re all the same. Every property manager’s the same,” and they’re probably heard that from most of the people they’ve talked to.

“Well, we do this, and here’s our fees, and here’s how we do it, and we’re going to do this. We’ll come out to your property,” and they’re thinking, “Well, what about my problem?”

Patty: Right, and you just sound like a recording like everybody else. No. The one I had today, he was asking about going to California. I said, “Well, great. What’s prompting you to move? Is it a job? Are you from there? Tell me about your trip to California and this new chapter in your life,” and then, all of a sudden, it all just comes tumbling out. In allowing them to talk and then, at the right time, knowing when to—and you’re not going to know until you know.

Now, every human, luckily, is different and all that good stuff, and some people are your very Excel Spreadsheet-of-the-World, some are the technical people, some are more like, “Where’s the pictures?” or whatever, but you don’t even know what they are so stop trying to sell that until you even identify what it is.

Jason: Do you feel like, over time, you’ve become really astute at understanding different personality types? Because what it sounds like what you’re saying is you’re taking some time to get to know them to build rapport, but it sounds like you’ve kind of categorized people a little bit in your head as certain personality types.

Patty: I did.

Jason: Give us some examples of some different personality types that you maybe come across that are different like this gentleman from California. How would you categorize him as different than somebody else that you might talk to?

Patty: He was right to business. He doesn’t want any—he’s no fancy-pants. He just wants to know, “All right, am I going to make my numbers? Is this going to work? What is my involvement in this?” He was just so cute so when he talked about himself and told me about what his needs were, what he did for a living, and all these kinds of things. Every human is different.

Now, I don’t mean to stereotype, but you have to figure out who your audience is. “Well then, great. Now I know what’s going to make this guy happy. We have this portal. Everything is there for you. You have electronic filing cabinets. You’re going to have monthly statements,” and then you go down what they’re really after that’s going to make them happy.

If it’s a person who is more about, “Oh my gosh, I’m so worried my house is going to be torn up,” or if their baby, and they just built, and they picked out every cabinet and all that kind of stuff, it’s a different, softer approach because now you’re dealing with the emotional side of the client. So you have to figure out where they are because you don’t know how to make them feel better unless you know whether it’s making them anxious.

Jason: Got it. Some people might be a little more on the analytical side, they might be a little more concerned about the numbers, you might have some people that are a bit more on the emotional side, maybe the property is connected to a family member or there’s some history there emotionally or there’s some sort of pain that they’re in, emotionally, that is connected to this.

One of my favorite follow-up questions during the sales process after I initially connect with people and get familiar with their situation is to ask, “Why now,” which is a great question just to identify, like, “So you’ve had this property for a while. Why now? Why is this an issue now?” and then I get a whole different set of answers a lot of times.

Why now? Why now are you reaching out to get property management? You’ve obviously had this for a little while and maybe you’ve been self-managing. What’s sort of driving this? Then you’re going to get even more insight they’re going to share with you, and that’s where, usually, I get the real pain answers, when I ask that question.

I’ve heard anything from, “I have cancer,” or, “My family member just died.” To not know that information and to just keep plowing forward in the sales process almost seems insensitive sometimes when you get to the bedrock of what’s driving their decision-making to reach out for help right now.

Patty: Absolutely. Now, this guy, obviously, he’s very excited. He’s got a position in California so he’s changing coasts. He’s not happy about having to pick up and move his family, but it’s okay because he’s leaving winter behind. He’s happy to get rid of our cold. We’ve got more snow coming. That makes him very happy so that piece of it is good for him but then with that move comes the hardship because his brother is here. You have that to go with. "Maybe I can just have my brother do it,” and that comes into play as your why.

You’ve just got to be yourself, be a person and listen. If you’re just a person listening versus this façade as some person who’s just doing their job, walking in, you’ve got to be confident and you’ve got to care.

Jason: All right. If you’re confident and you care, what are some other ways that you are creating opportunities to start these relationships? Because I think a lot of people are like, and I hear this all the time, “If I just get people on the phone, I can close them. I close everybody,” which usually means they’re closing all the word-of-mouth leads, which are easy to close, but the real concern they have is, “How do I get more conversations?” How are you creating opportunities to have these relationships instead of just waiting for them to come to you?

Patty: You’ve got to put yourself in positions with other people so I do that through teaching. I’m giving away a value to a lot of different offices. I’m giving away a value. I do a lot of different speaking engagements for free, no charges, because, in doing so, then, one, they look at you as an expert, two, you’re willing to give your free time and to help people and talk with them, and you’ve just got to find places in your communities to rise above and be there to volunteer.

I look at it as I’m a farmer. It took me a long time to grow up and figure out, “Where am I going to be? I’m a farmer.” I like to grow businesses. I like to grow relationships. What’s a farmer’s duty? There’s different kinds of farms. You can farm neighborhoods. You can farm HOAs. You can manage those if you want to. I personally like HOAs, and a lot of people do manage those. Are you doing more of a commercial management or residential? There’s different audiences. Are you looking for investors?

You have to think somewhat here, and maybe you want to level up, but you’re going to have to set a plan to decide where you’re going to farm and where you’re going to get these people from. Then, once you do it, one of the duties or tasks, if you will, of farmer is you get animals now. Okay, property managers, what kind of animals do you want? Are you raising these investors? Are you doing accidental landlords? Are you looking for trustees?

I’m one of them. One of our animal’s realtors. Some of those are big brokers, but I do go to a lot of real estate events and I do a lot of talking and a lot of chatting. You can do NARPM events. You can do realtor associations. There’s just so many different places that things are happening. You’ve just got to get out of the chair and be out there where the people are because they’re not going to find you in your seat while you’re still there talking on the phone.

Jason: Right. I think one of the big challenges is that there’s so much opportunity in the property management industry. There’s such a high percentage in the US that are not using property management that are self-managing and yet you have so many property managers that are just looking over their shoulders back and forth and everybody else going, “What are you doing to wait for leads and wait for business to come to you?” They’re hoping that they can take money and just hand it to a marketer and suddenly people will just walk in the door and say, “Take my money.”

You’re out there actively doing what a coach likes to do. You’re actively out there creating business instead of waiting for it to come to you.

Patty: Eventually, it comes to you. Once you get enough to go in and you become—yes, you can get that going. Every day, you should have prospecting time, whatever that is. If you’re going to spend two hours every day or whatever it is you want to grow to or do, that’s your call. But you’ve got to have that dedication and that discipline to do it because if you don’t, then time just slips on by.

Jason: Let’s create a little bit of perspective here. It’s taken you a little while, but when you start out in a new market, which you’ve done several times, and you decide you’re a farmer using this analogy and it’s time to farm, and you’re looking at the field and you feel like you need to get things started, how much time do you start spending in a week on prospecting or maybe in a day?

Patty: Today’s world is so different from what it used to be. You’ve got meet-ups, you’ve got Crowdcast, you’ve got podcasts, and you’ve got all this stuff out there. So you’ve got to quiet the noise down, and you have to start somewhere. Don’t be afraid to start because that’s the other problem. Maybe you can just say, “I’m going to pick this neighborhood.” Okay, great. “In this neighborhood, I could do a little research and see that there are 5000 thousands in this development so how do I reach out to these people?”

Okay, maybe you go and you meet the HOA people. They’ve got different events that happen so you’ll want to be part of all that. There’s usually some businesses nearby that you can be part of. Let’s say you’re going to take this area, you want to at least be putting in, at a minimum, at least three hours a day. If you’re going to do eight hours, let’s just say, I think there should be at least three hours of that as prospecting.

Jason: So, probably about 15 hours in a week?

Patty: Depending on how much you want to grow and how fast you want it to go because sometimes growing too fast isn’t good.

Jason: Right, so then you’d be able to handle it, and manage it successfully, and deal with each new property to bring you on each—bringing on board and effectively.

Patty: If you’re going to promise something, better do it.

Jason: Right. Yeah. They can start farming neighborhoods. They can start reaching out. They can start hitting up some groups in the area. How much time are you spending now that you’ve kind of primed this engine in the business that you’re in now towards prospecting?

Patty: Probably at least the same, if not more. There’s very little internet need-leading or any of that going on. At this point, I’m curating it. I’ve got people coming in and I talk to some, need to nurture some and all that kind of stuff, but you can never stop this. You can’t ever get happy like, “Oh well, I’ve got these three coming so I’m all good,” like a realtor will. “Oh, I’ve got these few commissions. They’re going to close them and I’m all good.”

You can’t sit back and relax. There’s no relax. You’ve got to keep it going and, sometimes, it’s evening weekends or whatever it is and, of course, they’re seasonal in this, too, so you have to be watching that, but you can never stop prospecting because even if you’re happy and maybe your goal is a hundred doors and you’re happy with a hundred, they’re not going to stay with you. That rollercoaster’s going to start moving. Somebody’s going to sell. Somebody’s back. It’s constantly changing.

Jason: Right. The sales has to outpace the churn, and the doors getting sold, and so on. I think you bring up a good point in that if you don’t have consistent prospecting and consistent lead-gen systems in place where you’re doing it consistently, then what ends up happening is, usually, it creates a sales slump, and those last for maybe a month to 90 days, typically, and they’re difficult to crawl out because you’ll build up the pipeline and then you have deals closing.

If you get comfortable and turn that off, what you’re doing is you’re creating a problem a month or two months later in which you’re going to have a sales slump. You’re going to have less cash flow coming in and you’re going to have less new clients coming in, and it’s going to get quiet and then you’re going to hi ho Silver. You see salespeople, "Hi ho Silver," they jump on the horse and they’re like, “I’m going to ride this hard and I’m going to figure this out and do sales, sales, sales,” and then they come across almost needy.

Needy in sales is creepy and then the problem is it starts to get carry for them.

Patty: They’re panicking.

Jason: They start to panic, and so they can avoid these sales lumps by creating some consistency even if they’re only able to dedicate a small number of hours a day or even just an hour a day, as long as they have some consistency throughout the week that they don’t just shut it off for half the month or shut it off for a month, they should consistently be able to generate leads. They have no control when those deals will really close. If they aren’t doing it, those deals won’t be closing.

Patty: Yeah, they’re zero. In the classes that I teach and things, I might get one or two leads that day and then I don’t know what’s coming. You cast out the net and you see what it brings in. I didn’t want to do it. It was early December. It was a bad time of the year, but they really wanted me to come do this and I was like, “You know what? Absolutely. I’ll be there.”

Now, I didn’t think there was going to be much of a turnout but you never know, and it turned out there were four people. I was like, “Whoa, that’s pretty cool. That’s all right. I could do four. It doesn’t matter.” Out of the four, I got three so who would’ve known? It was awesome. Even the lady that was doing the events, turns out she was convinced and she decided to give me her house to manage. You never know what’s out there and if you’re not out there, you’re not getting anything.

Jason: I think there’s a direct ratio between the level of connection and the level of intimacy in a sales situation and the close rate, and so it’s not just about numbers. It’s not about how many people show up but, like you said, it’s about how well you’re able to connect with those people. The smaller the group, the more intimate that communication can turn, like if you’re working with one-on-one with somebody, I’m sure it’s a very intimate conversation. It’s personally about them and their pain that we talked about in the beginning.

You get three or four people, it gets a little bit more broad. If you’re doing it through an entire room, there’s some authority there and that’s nice, but you’re going to then have to do follow-up to create that intimacy and create that connection afterwards, which is really important in those situations, but you then are getting to do one of the many sales and establish yourself as an authority in front of them.

Patty: And you didn’t cancel. They never expected that you’re going to cancel and bail. That would stop you from getting the next gig. These are all gigs. We’re constantly going after these gigs. You cancel one and, “Yeah, do I really want to get out there? It’s 7:00 at night. Could I maybe do more work on the site? Yeah.”

No, being in front of people makes a huge difference. I’ll tell you: Some people don’t think about it, but if you’ve gone on a meeting, you’ve tried and you’ve lost, you need to ask why. At this point, “Oh, that’s fine. I have another company.”

“Okay, you tell me so I can make better my business. What is it that made you decide to go with them and not with me?” It’s a hard question to ask, like, “Why don’t you like me?” but you have to ask the question. “What was it? Was it my perfume?” But you have to ask because if they say, “Well, the other guy seemed more confident.”

Now, you know what to work on. You need that constructive criticism, but most people don’t want to ask because they just want to feel, “Ah, they didn’t fit anyway. I don’t want them.” They may or may not but if you don’t ask, you never know and then you can’t improve.

Jason: Feeling safe asking for feedback is a huge superpower. I feel like, for business owners, not being willing to palate or not being able to palate, digest, absorb or take in feedback is a dangerous thing. I honestly feel like I’ve built my company on thousands of failures, and so being able to get feedback, make mistakes and to keep moving forward as a business owner is huge. If you don’t get a deal, there’s some awesome feedback waiting for you that you could potentially gain from them so I love that idea.

Sometimes, it’s just simple as just sending an email follow-up. “Hey, honestly, could you tell me why you went with this other company? You won’t hurt my feelings. It would help us. If there’s anything that you can do to help us improve, it’d be great,” and people love sharing advice.

Patty: If you put it that way, “Look, I just need a favor. I know that you’re going X, Y and Z, but I would just so be appreciative if you can give me some constructive criticism. What exactly was it? Was I 10 minutes late and you didn’t like that? Don’t you like our pricing? What is it? What swooned you? What was it?” and maybe it was just, “I have no idea. I just like this guy better.” Okay, that’s fine. I’m okay with that, but if I don’t ask, I never know, and if you don’t know, you don’t improve. It’s kind of like those, “Listen to your sales pitch,” and nobody likes to hear their own voice and no one wants to hear why they’re not picking you but you need to.

Jason: Yeah. If we’re really honest with ourselves, we really do want to make money and we really do want to know. We really do want to know why they didn’t go with us, and so being willing to be vulnerable and ask for that feedback can be really powerful.

Surprisingly, when you do that, it gives you ideas. It’s like, here’s how to win more business, and sometimes it’s the things that they use. The deciding factors are so simple and they’re so simple that you’re kicking yourself. You’re like, “Really? That’s it?” I mention that on every call. It’s really simple.

Patty: You're not going to know if you don’t ask. You've got to ask.

Jason: One of my favorite tactics, though, if I don’t get a deal, is to lead the door open for the future. “Why’d you go to somebody else?” Great, I really appreciate that feedback. “If things don’t go well with this company, you have any trouble or this happens to this, we will still be here, ready and willing to take your business and help you in the future.”

I love just leaving that door open. I don’t want them to feel like, “Well, they shut the door on me and they’re dead to me.” I’m creating that anchor for the possible future because I’ve had clients go with another company, they have happened exactly what I had explained to them would happen, and they come back and like, “You were right and I would love to work with you guys.”

Patty: Because they’re not ready to hear it yet. They haven’t reached the point what you’re telling them. They can’t absorb what you’re telling them yet.

Jason: They don’t believe it, they haven’t experienced, and they have to go experience that. They have to go try out the cheapest property manager, the cheapest website company or the cheapest whatever, marketing firm.

They’ve got to try out somebody and test out stuff because they believe they know better and then, as soon as they realize that they don’t know better, they didn’t know something, something blindsides them or they’ve run into a snag that you had kind of mentioned or foretold, you’ve created this powerful anchor that they’re going to remember you the moment that happens.

Patty: Yeah, and it’s great because—you have to leave it open to the point that they’re not going to—a lot of people don’t want to ask the question why they didn’t get it. It’s the same thing; they have to be comfortable to come back to you because you’re not going to say, “I told you so,” so it has to be very open. I always say, “Look, I’m a sounding board. If anything happens in the future,” and sometimes, they’re like, “I’m going do it myself.”

You have those people in the world and you have those that go to the bare minimum bones. “I’m glad they can help you for that price. It’s not something that we can do, but if something should change down the road, if you have questions or something odd comes up, you’ve got my number,” and I sit there with them. “Can you put me in your phone please?” and I make them do it while we’re there.

Otherwise, they’re not going to put you in there. You’re gone. They’re going to forget so I say, “Here, put me in there,” and I watch them put my number in there if it’s not already, and if it is already, I just say, “Just put, next to my name, ‘Call her.’” He’s like, “What?” I say, “Well, down the road if something comes up, you can say, ‘Oh, yeah. It says, ‘Call her.’ You can search and find me.” They’re like, “Okay?” but it works because they do.

It’s kind of like when you have a little child that they’re just not mature enough to understand maybe how to tie a shoe or whatever. They just mentally can’t do it. It just can’t happen. These people are not going to be able to get where you’re at yet, and you’ve got to understand that and it’s okay. They will mature eventually and we’ll see what happens, but making them put you in their phone is like, “Oh, I’ve got to be in that phone because they’ll never find me if I’m not on their phone.”

Jason: Such a little hack and I can see how effective that would be. Yeah. As soon as you have this problem, you’re creating this anchor. “As soon as you have this problem, if you run into this or if you run into any issues, I am available for feedback. You don’t even have to remember my name. Just put, ‘Call her,’ in here and, remember, call her and just plug it in.”

You walk them through, making sure they get it into their phone. They’re going to do it. They want to finish the conversation, they want to be done and you’re hanging out with them or you’re talking with them. “Enter this into your phone.”

Another tactic is you could say, “What’s your phone number? I’m going to text-message you right now and then you have my phone number. Enter this number in,” or however you want to do it and just make sure you get them into the phone.

Patty: That’s the new Rolodex.

Jason: Then, send them a follow-up email after that and say, “Just in case you ever lose my contact details, here is my information. Here is my direct number. Reach me if you run in any problems.” I love the idea you mentioned of being a sounding board. I think a lot of property managers are so focused on getting the deal, but what they really need to start with is being a resource.

Patty: Yes. Yeah. I always tell them, “You’ve got my experience at your disposal.” You’re doing your research. That’s great. We all have availabilities on our computer to do some research. “Great. I'm planning to get a roof, I’m going to do some research,” whatever it is, and that’s all great. Hey, absolutely. I'll do the same thing. I said, look, if you hear something from one of the other companies that you’re shopping or something doesn’t make sense because you’ve got to peel back some onions to get down to—how you’re really comparing here, apples to apples, call me and I’ll answer whatever it is. There’s no cost to you. You’re just going to call me and ask me a question.

Usually, they do. Maybe you’ve met with them or they’re not going to be moving in for six months or it could be one of these long nurtures or whatever, they’ll come up to something. They’ll go, “Hey, someone told me this but you told me that, by the law, it was this so what really is it?” I’ll say, “Oh, absolutely. Let me send you the statutes,” and, all of a sudden, you’re on top again because they’re constantly doing the comparing. Guess what: I’ve got the law that states this is what it is. Now, Patty wins. I like it when Patty wins.

Jason: I’m sure, in some of those situations, you’ve gotten the deals just because you actually showcased your expertise. They gave you that chance.

Patty: Yeah, it’s amazing. Even in today’s day and age, how much out there is just make-believe and fluff. “Well, our agent said this was it,” or, “This one said this is it,” and, all of a sudden, that becomes a new law and it’s not, and there’s a lot of it out there. Unfortunately, people get away with doing stuff and they keep doing it, but they don’t invest in themselves enough to continue the training, go to classes, just become smarter or at least be updated or something.

Those agents, even when I’m working with them, I can look them up at our MLS system and I look and see when something starts–you get that gut feeling. I’ll look them up and I’ll just say, “Oh, okay. Well, they haven’t done a rental deal since 1997 so now I know how better how to work with this agent to make this deal get through.” Knowing what you’re dealing with helps.

Jason: How much time do you invest in making sure that you’re on top of the industry, that you know what the latest laws are, that you know what’s up with property management in your state? How much time are you investing on a regular basis towards this? How do you stay connected to all of that?

Patty: I’m probably obsessed with it more than most because if we’re here—my job is to protect your property and protect you. How am I going to be done if I don’t know what all this stuff is? Actually, I was on the phone yesterday with one of the attorneys and a simple little thing, as an example—every state’s different, but the pet addendum that’s used in our state does not have a sentence it’s needed to be there that says, like a tenant signing off, “Pet does not have a bite history.” One sentence, that’s all we need. That’s it.

To give the insurance companies all of our emotional support, our services and all of this, they’ve gone away from that dirty dozen. They’re not barring any animals anymore. They’re going by bite history. Why doesn’t our farm have that? I’m like, “Hello? Boo.”

I do volunteer with those associations. I volunteer on education committees, on the fair housing task forces, the forms committees, all that kind of stuff, so that knowing where we need just makes sure it’s pushed through, one. Two, finding out what they’re up to and what we’re going to get is another and fighting for what we need.

If you’re staying in two and you’re involved in these organizations, it’s all volunteer so you don’t have to pay for this kind of stuff, but you volunteer in NARPM and other ones. I’m heavily involved in NARPM and trying to make sure all that’s going through, but you’ve just got to find out what’s around you, volunteer and get into it.

I guess I’ve never really sat down how many hours it takes; some of it just comes up and you know there’s a need for it so you know the right people to call and say, “How do I do it?”

Even if you don’t know, maybe you’re brand new, and just moved here, “Okay, who’s the wielder association? Who’s the property management companies? Where’s the NARPM groups? Where’s this? Where is that?” Some of it is research. You’ve got to find out how do you know and who do you know to call. You find out and then say, “How do I volunteer to get to the meetings?” and then, pretty soon, it just builds its way from there.

Jason: I’ve heard you mention a few things. You’ve mentioned you talk to an attorney so you’ve got some attorneys that you’re connected to that you leverage as resource, you mentioned NARPM which you use as a resource, you mentioned real estate or realtor association and being connected to those, and then you also mentioned doing your own research.

Overall, you said you’re obsessed, and I think it’s important that if there’s one thing you should be obsessed about as a property manager, it’s being able to effectively solve people’s problems. That’s this, is to solve some of these problems. If you are obsessed with doing it correctly and solving people’s problems, that gives you a lot of confidence going into a sales conversation, I would imagine.

Patty: Yeah, and there’s so many chat groups, Facebook groups and all this, but the other thing, too, is make sure that you’re not listening to the players of the world. If I’m listening to people telling me things that aren’t the real source, then I’m learning it wrong, which is the only reason I teach and I have my own real estate school is I teach it right, but if you’re listening to the wrong sources, then now what?

I had a call today from a fellow. He used to own a property management company, I’ve known him for years, and he was a meeting. I won’t say which company he’s with now. Anyway, he’s just doing real estate; he’s not doing management. He goes, “Hey, I thought, years ago, when we did this and this, we weren’t allowed to give out the credit reports,” and I said, “It depends on your contract.” He said, “Yeah, but they’re saying dah, dah, dah, ” and I said, “Who are you listening to? Wait a minute. Why am I on a speaker there? When’s the next meeting?” and that was my question to him.

He goes, “Oh, absolutely. Okay, can you do April?” I said, “Give me a date, Baby.” When I find out and it doesn’t matter whose name’s on the doors. When I find out that there’s stuff happening that I know is incorrect, based upon me being around the right sources and the smart people, then I want to go fix it before they all start it because when we’re running these properties, we’re very real estate-driven. Everything is done through the MLS here, so I’m going to bump into these agents. I don’t want them doing it wrong because it makes my job harder plus I want their referrals.

Jason: As soon as you identify that somebody is inaccurate in maybe landlord-tenant law or in process, you leverage that as an opportunity to go and speak to them, educate and to teach, which then feeds you referrals.

Patty: I attack it. I’ll bring the cookies, I’ll bring the donuts, and whatever. Let’s go. Give me a date now.

Jason: They have a question and you’re like, “You have an audience? I’ll come answer that question and I’ll give even more value.” I love it.

Patty: It’s funny because it all just kind of evolved. When I was doing the franchise pieces, I met a lot of great people all over the world, literally all over the world. It was special over every country and it just became—they would have something come up. “Patty, can you give me a hand? Can you help me?” “Yeah, what’s going on?” and, because we were the same franchise, it was easy for me to answer a lot of questions so I kind of became the 911 or the 411 when they would ask questions.

It was awesome and then I started training with them, too, and I enjoyed it. I enjoy fixing people’s problems. I’m one of nine children so I’ve got on-the-job training, you see. My dad’s an engineer and my mom’s incredible so you learn this stuff. There’s a lot of realtors here that have called me on different things and when they call or when you work with a realtor on something, if you are dealing with them, ask them.

You’ve got to ask, “What do you guys do for training?” and they’re going to come back and say, “Well, what do you mean? All we do is a rental deal.” “I know, but you do guys property management in your office?" Are you asking these questions because there's another opportunity or a source. Most people get the deal done, they move on and don’t even think twice about it, but you can get feedback.

Jason: Right. You’ll ask them, “How are you handling leases? How are you handling property management-related things?” and as soon as you notice there’s problems, you use that as leverage to say, “Hey, maybe I should come teach a class for you guys. Let me come share some ideas with you.”

Patty: All I need is a little crack in the door.

Jason: “Got it,” and then you’re in. It’s a magical and powerful thing if you can immediately shift yourself with any prospect or referral partner into the category of an advice-giver. As soon as you’re there, you are in a position of authority and a position of trust, and that is what creates sales.

Sales happens at the speed of trust, and so you can skip right to the top simply by shifting yourself and positioning yourself into a position of being able to give them advice, and that instantly establishes you as a trustworthy person in their mind that you can now give them information and value. They’re receiving information and value and once you give them value, then it’s a lot easier for you to get value from them.

Patty: Yeah, and then you're going to find out too—let’s say you go to their April meeting. Okay, you’ve done their meeting. “So, can I come back next April? When’s your next meeting?” That’s usually the one you can’t stop. It’s follow-up. Our laws in Virginia change every six months. I need to come here every six months so that I can keep you guys abreast of it, right? Because the brokers don’t want to do it. You have to make sure you’re cycling there every six months.

Jason: Don’t just give up. After you do it once and you’re like, “Wow, I did this. Hurray!” you might be leaving a lot on the table if you don’t just simply ask, “Can I do this again? The laws are always changing. Things are always coming out. I’d love to come right back, and I’ll put you in my calendar and follow up with you, and let’s just do it again,” and they’d probably say, “Yeah. Well, this has been great. It’s been a good experience. We would love to.”

If you don’t ask, then, odds are, they’re going to be focused on their own problems, on their own business, and their own things, and they’re not just going to go, “Maybe we should invite Patty back. I wonder what’s going on in property management law lately.”

Patty: They’re not going to call you unless there’s a problem. It’s like when you go to a dentist. Before you leave, they have you booked. “How are you doing in June?” or whatever. They already had you booked for the next one. Before you leave that office or whatever groupie you’re doing, you should be already booking your next event. It’s a new gig. Get that new gig set up.

Jason: Cool. Really smart. What do you do at these events to make sure that you’re able to follow up and connect with people after the event?

Patty: Some events, I do registrations so that I have all the information. Some don’t so if they don’t, I need to sign up. I always give a raffle giveaway put their cards in. If they don’t have cards, I have index cards that they put all their information on it. If it doesn’t have an email and a phone number, it doesn’t count; they can’t be pulled.

If they want the freebie, they’re going to have put them both in, and I want them both. I want their cell phone and I need an email. Otherwise, whatever. I can find the rest out in the internet as to where you live and all that kind of stuff, but it depends on the audience. If I’m with realtors, they love their toys. They’re going to hand me their cards. I do a lot of stuff, too, that’s landlord lessons so I do a series with landlords. I have all kinds of different people come join me, different partners I’ll partner with.

If it’s just a landlord, they may not have a business card. Maybe they don’t want to give me their work stuff so I always have index cards and I have them already ready to go. Phone, email, name—boom. It’s all you need. Otherwise, you can’t win this $100-giftcard and everybody wants a $100-giftcard so in they go.

Jason: Cool. You’re gamifying the whole situation a little bit here just to make it joyful.

Patty: Yeah. People like to want to do stuff and they want to be told. They do, too. Kids will tell you they don’t but they do. They really do and adults do, too. Did you go to the DMV? I know we don’t have to go anymore, but when you did go, I always feel like a DMV person when I'm doing the W-9 form, is they would highlight that one spot. They highlight where your name is, your phone number and all that kind of stuff.

It’s great so it’s like, “Okay, here’s what I need,” and they just look at you like, “Oh, she said so,” and they fill it out and they give it to you, just tell them to do it.

Jason: Yeah, they do it. “This is what I need from you. Here you go,” and they just do it. They’re like, “Okay.” You’re like the Pied Piper.

Patty: Well, one of the biggest compliments I ever got and I didn’t even know is my son has become a realtor, which is crazy and I told him that. I didn’t know he was listening. You’re in the car, you’re his mom, and you hear all this stuff, and you figure they’re not listening. They do listen. Anyway, I used to tell him—I’d be talking to someone and when I had papers that need filled out that I’m actually meeting in person, I highlight everything; it’s all ready to go.

He’s eating his pie. “Here’s your pen. Follow the yellow brick road and everything is all done.” I heard him repeat that and I was like, “Oh my, gosh.” There we go. That’s one of the biggest compliments you can get, is when somebody repeats what you said. He goes, “Well, I told him to follow the yellow brick road.” That went on his first listing with him and that’s what he told the client. I’m like, “Yes.”

Jason: Yellow highlighter. Follow the yellow brick road.

Patty: Yes, that’s all I need, is these signatures.

Jason: Patty, I think you’ve shared several cool little hacks and ideas. It’s really clever and I think all this is very helpful for property managers who are seeking to cultivate relationships which eventually lead to contracts. Are there any other recommendations or any other challenges you’re noticing among property management business owners that are struggling to grow that they should be paying attention to?

Patty: One hack that I’ve seen that’s not good that is out there that they might—I don’t know if they’re aware of it or it’s happening near them, but it’s not for growth; it’s more for protection. A lot of people have identity theft. It’s all over. What a lot of people have done to save it instead of paying money to some of these companies is they’ve just frozen their credit. They’re not buying anything. They just freeze it.

Therefore, they didn’t protect it, but what’s happening is we have people who are putting applications in our—there’s 5 million different software out there, and most people doing applications online actually agree with that. The application comes in and what’s happening is the people with really bad credit are freezing their credit. So when we pull the application and we run it, it comes up as, ‘N/A.’ We don’t see that they have 14 late payments. We don’t see that they have two charge options, three bankruptcies and all that kind of stuff because it comes up as, ‘N/A.’

People assume, “Oh, well, based on the birth date, they just don’t have enough credit established so it’s coming up as, ‘N/A.’” Not true. They’re freezing it so they’re bypassing our system, which is pretty smart when you think about it. It’s pretty slick. What I’ve done and everybody can do is just add one sentence to your application that says, “Have you frozen your credit? If so, please unfreeze before applying,” because if they’d lied on the application, now that affects them getting released, but it’s a pretty slick little smart way.

I’ll give them credit for that because, by freezing it—and I can’t tell you how many people have gotten by with it because most owners—so, if I’m telling you, Jason, “Well, they don’t have any credit based on the score and they really don’t have any debt. They just haven’t established yet according to the agent but they’re making this much money and they’re going to come in and take care of your house, and the property manager’s telling the truth.”

You might buy that, but if I tell you their credit score’s a 420 and they have 18 collections and all this kind of stuff, you’re going to say, “No way,” so I give them an A for effort. However, they’re not getting past us.

Jason: Yeah, if they have a credit score of 420, what then…

Patty: You’re probably going to say no. If I tell you, “N/A. They just don’t have any,” versus a 420, you might be willing to accept the, ‘N/A,’ but you’re not going to take the 420 so it’s a pretty slick little racket they’ve got going on, but the way […] one question in the application and then now you’ve got it.

Then, the other part, too, is there are some people that we have a lot of military government being here near DC so we have a lot of people moving and they maybe forgot they’ve frozen it, and I don’t want to run the credit and then it comes up nothing then we have to go back again.

By asking that question, if it’s a legitimate person that has done so, they can see on there, “Oh, wow. We froze it. We’ve got to fix it,” and they’ll fix it before they apply so it’s a good thing, but it’s been used in a little interesting hack, if you will.

Jason: Got it. All right. Patty, all this has been super informative. I agree with you that property management is about relationships. People need to be getting out there, creating relationships, connecting with people. There’s so much blue ocean and opportunity available that’s just waiting for leads to come to you. It’s probably not a great growth strategy in general, and I know you’ve had phenomenal growth in all the businesses that you’ve been affiliated with because of these methods so I think everybody should pay attention and listen to Patty.

If anybody has some questions for you or wants to reach out to you, how can they get ahold of you?

Patty: My simplest email is [email protected] or you can reach me on my cell number. I’m on Facebook. I’m on your staff, of course. I actually was thinking, Jason.When I was back with OpenPotion, did you live in Idaho or somewhere at the time? Is that where it was?

Jason: Yeah, I’m in Southern California now.

Patty: I know, but was it in Idaho? I want to try to remember.

Jason: Yeah.

Patty: Gosh, what year was that?

Jason: I don’t know. A while ago.

Patty: A long time ago. It’s so cool to be old enough, to have a relationship with someone like you back then, and you had the dreams and the ideas to do this, and then to actually see you do it is awesome.

Jason: I appreciate that. I think we’ve probably known each other for about a decade, realistically.

Patty: Gosh, we probably have.

Jason: Yeah, because I helped my brother, Bryant, with his business originally, probably back in 2008.

Patty: I was going to say ’07 or ’08, probably.

Jason: And then you were one of the early clients, I think, that we’ve worked with.

Patty: And you often have.

Jason: Exactly.

Patty: Back then, even. See? When you were just starting out on this. It was awesome.

Jason: We’ve learned a lot since then. A lot.

Patty: Yeah, it’s crazy.

Jason: Like I said, a thousand or more mistakes.

Patty: No, it’s all good. We don’t fall; we don’t get up so I’m glad it happened.

Jason: Yeah, always learning. Patty, it’s been great having you on the show. I appreciate you coming out and I wish you continued awesome growth and success.

Patty: And yourself as well. Thank you.

Jason: All right. Thanks, Patty. Okay. Cool. Everybody watching this show, please be sure to check out the community that we have going on online, which Patty had sort of mentioned on Facebook, which is our DoorGrow Club. You can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com, and if you are a property management business owner and you are looking to add doors and grow your business, that is an awesome community of people that are helpful.

Then, if you want some help figuring out how to grow your business, you want to align and clean up your sales pipeline, clean up the major leaks that are limiting organic growth and preventing you from being able to really capitalize on a lot of the things that Patty was discussing, then reach out to us at DoorGrow. This is what we focus on. It’s helping you align your business so that you can create new revenue, create more growth, and maximize each door that you have.

You can get to us just by going to doorgrow.com. I’m Jason Hull of the DoorGrow Show and until next time. To our mutual growth, everybody. Goodbye.

How should property managers deal with mold that affects air quality? How can they create a healthier indoor environment for their tenants? The key is to have a “green” professional perform tests and offer solutions.

Today, I am talking with James Armendariz of Green Home Solutions TrueEnviro. He shares a new perspective on how to handle molds and odors, as well as add healthy bacteria into the environment.

You'll Learn...

[03:23] Property managers usually try to get rid of mold by spraying a porous surface with bleach, which is 99% water that continues to feed the mold. [04:30] Property managers often have to deal with odors left behind by tenants, including cannabis, cigarette, cat urine, and other smells. [05:55] Painting cigarette-stained walls or using bleach only masks or covers up smells temporarily; TrueEnviro eliminates odor molecules from the environment for good. [06:42] TrueEnviro removes allergens, pathogens, mold, odor, and bacteria to maintain and establish a healthy, indoor environment that smells like fresh air. [07:33] Eat Dirt: Shift balance toward beneficial bacteria vs. bad bacteria. [08:37] Good or bad, bacteria seeks a food source; TrueEnviro’s probiotic service eliminates food source that bacteria thrives on. [10:09] Tenant may not pay rent due to illness and environmental factors that impact their ability to work and generate revenue; take action to decrease sickness, turnover. [11:22] People travel from all over to India to drink water from a river that’s viewed as magical because of its strong flora of healthy bacteria fed by waste and sewage. [12:48] TrueEnviro’s mold remediation product is Oceanic, which kills every pathogen and fungi; it has earned approval for use in hospitals. [15:02] TrueEnviro can remove less building material, if it's not structurally compromised; instead of cutting mold out, the company cleans it to reduce client’s costs. [15:46] Pre- and post-tests are conducted to obtain results and protocol for treatment.

Tweetables

Create a better way of life with a healthier indoor environment.

Bleach is not the best strategy for dealing with molds.

Property managers deal with odors left behind, especially the smell of cannabis, cigarette, and cat urine.

Resources

TrueEnviro

Green Home Solutions

NARPM

Eat Dirt: Why Leaky Gut May Be the Root Cause of Your Health Problems and 5 Surprising Steps to Cure It by Dr. Josh Axe

DoorGrow Website Score Quiz

DoorGrowClub Facebook Group

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

Jason: Welcome DoorGrow hackers to The DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors and expand your rent roll, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are DoorGrow hacker. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to grow property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, expand the market, and help the best property managers win.

If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor. Open up iTunes, find the DoorGrowShow, one word, subscribe, and then give us a real review. Thank you for helping us with that vision. I'm your host, property management growth hacker, Jason Hull, the founder of OpenPotion, GatherKudos, ThunderLocal, and of course, DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show.

Today's guest we have James Armendariz from Green Home Solutions TrueEnviro. Did I say all of that correctly?

James: Yes sir, you did.

Jason: Welcome to the show James.

James: Outstanding. I appreciate it Jason. How are you?

Jason: I'm doing great. You and I connected briefly at the Los Angeles NARPM Chapter. I was there presenting and speaking. They brought me in to speak, you were a new member there or something, and you got to do your little presentation. I think I handed your card and said, “Hey, let's get you on the on The DoorGrowShow and showcase what you guys do.” I would love to get a little bit of background just on you. Tell us a little bit about who James is and how you got into this.

James: Yeah. Our company’s called Green Home Solution TrueEnviro. My name is James Armendariz, I'm one of the owners, franchise here. I just got into the opportunity to own a franchise, really control our own path, help people managing, and create a better way of life, a healthier indoor environment.

Jason: We're going to be talking today about mold remediation and air quality. What challenges have you seen that property managers are dealing with related to this that your company help solve?

James: Well, that indoor environment. You turn up mold, you have some sort of water intrusion come in that may not get dried out in time. We had a client report it, threw some towels over it, and thought it was good, but mold grew. Somebody was reporting [...] or something like that. It’s really a pesky situation that tenant, property manager, landlord situation and if you can have somebody who can come in and provide testing and solution for that mold, or whatever the case may be, certainly in a timely manner, with the green background, it's a great solution for property managers.

Jason: What do property managers typically do to try and take care of these problems?

James: Well, some of them, Jason, they throw bleach on it. One of their first things is to have a maintenance guy go out, spray it with bleach, and hope that it's taken care of, when in all actuality, bleach is 99% water. The water content absorbed into that porous material, essentially feeding the mold and then bleach does what it does, it kills the color on the surface and they think it's gone, only to come back two or three weeks later and say, “Gosh, this mold hasn’t gone away. It’s back.” Well, it never really left. You just got it embedded, stole the color and that’s a lot of [...] to take care of the mold for you.

Jason: Bleach is not the best strategy for dealing with molds.

James: No sir. Only on a nonporous surface. If you're dealing with bleach in a fiberglass shower that's hard, that’s not going to absorb water or anything for that matter, certainly bleach is best. If you're dealing with anything that's a porous surface, you do not want to use bleach.

Jason: What are some other challenges that you're helping property managers with besides just the mold situation?

James: Odor is certainly relevant in a property manager’s life. You have somebody moved out, they lived in that unit for several years or whatever the case may be, and there is an odor left behind. They know walking in to do that evaluation after somebody's moved out, “I am not wanting this unit with that smell attached to it,” so they give us a call and there’s the four C’s, cannabis, cigarette smell, cat urine, and gosh I can't remember the other one we had, but those are some very pesky odors and were able to actually eliminate all three and other one. Seriously, the tough smell would be [...] from the cabinets, but those are some tough odors we can get rid of, and we've got a very efficient and affordable way to remove those from the environment.

Jason: I was going to ask about smoking, that’s a tough one. You'll come in and you use your materials or your systems and you can remove these odors in the property. Then we'll be able to rent much more easily. Rent for a higher dollar amount, most likely, than if it had these potential problems scaring off prospective tenants.

James: Correct.

Jason: What do property managers typically do to deal with the odor things? What are they trying to do on their own? They might have their own little ozone machine. What are they typically doing and how is it different than what you guys might provide?

James: Generally, we’re trying to take care of things the most efficient way possible as far as money involved. I've seen everything from people try to paint over orange cigarette stained walls, hit it with [...], bleach is always a go-to whether it's mold or odor. Those are some of the ways they're trying to but it's really just masking it or covering it up. It’s a band aid. We have a way to go in and eliminate that odor molecule scientifically, removing it from the environment and leaving behind nothing, just that smell of a fresh unit.

Jason: Mold, odor, does that cover the bulk of what you guys do? Is there is some other things that Green Home Solutions TrueEnviro will help with?

James: Yeah. We’re able to remove allergens, pathogens, mold, odor, bacteria. We're really able to help maintain and establish a healthy indoor environment. We have different services that we can offer. One of the things we're most excited about is our probiotic treatment and [...] machine. What that does is just flood an environment with healthy probiotics, creating the healthiest microbiome possible.

Jason: That sounds really interesting. I read this book called Eat Dirt. The author of this book was talking about the benefits of having healthy bacteria and how all these things that we do to try and kill bacteria, create an environment that doesn't allow for the healthy bacteria to remain, and even in environments that we might consider dirty or unsanitary like subway systems and things like this, there's this organic or this healthy biome that exist, that maintains this healthy stasis of bacteria. The bacteria is always going to be there, so if you can shift the balance towards healthier bacteria versus bad bacteria.

In the book, he even talks about literally not maybe eating dirt or different types of things that expose you to beneficial bacteria, or allow your kids to be exposed to bacteria in ways that your immune system can develop and stuff like this. This is a really interesting idea to spread probiotic. I haven't heard too much about that. I doubt there's too many property managers spraying pro bacterial sprayers, whatever, throughout a unit. What are the benefits of putting probiotic into a building or into a unit? How's that become a thing? I find that fascinating.

James: Good or bad, a bacteria is looking for a food source. If they have something to thrive on, it can swiftly take off. If you imagine for example the air ducts. The air ducts along any indoor [...] whether office or home, it’s really circulating good, bad, indifferent bacterias, particles throughout the home. If we can eliminate that food source that a bacteria will thrive on by flooding that environment with good probiotics, there's really no way that that bad bacteria whether it’s staph, MRSA, whatever it is, can thrive and really take off an environment.

This also means allergens, pet dander, all of these things are sources of food for good or bad bacteria. When something in an environment is completely overwhelmed with those healthy probiotics, there's really no chance for a bad bacteria or any sort of infection to take over the environment.

Jason: I would imagine one of the leading reasons why a tenant may end up not paying rent or suddenly is not able to pay rent might be due to illness, sickness, things that have affected their ability to work, and generate revenue. By having something like this in place, I would imagine that the property in general, I would imagine there would be some stats over time that would showcase the properties that have this treatment done if it works effectively, but they would then be in a situation which they had a lower sickness, or a lower turnover rate, or a higher instance in paying rent.

James: Yes, exactly. The other thing that people lose sight of is that a lot of odors are contributed to bacteria. If you think about that, a moldy sponge that sits on your sink, after a few days, that thing will start smelling. It’s due to the bacteria. Not only is it going to help create a healthier environment, but it’s going to cut down significantly on things that are lingering around.

Jason: Another interesting case that kind of connects to this just in my mind is, there's this major river in India. In India, people are just putting their waste material into that, they're putting all kinds of stuff, but the water is clean. It has this flora of bacteria that's so strong and powerful in it, it’s a good bacteria that it just feeds on any sewage, or soil, or any stuff that comes into it, and it's able to transmute it basically into something positive. People will travel from all over just to drink this water.

In India, they view this water as magical or amazing, because it's got this really strong flora of healthy bacteria. It’s fed constantly by waste and stuff that we would normally find would destroy water, but it's because the bacteria is able to convert that, and it converts it really quickly and effectively. I find that fascinating. We've covered the odor. We've covered the probiotic stuff that also can help with odor remediation, removing mold. Is there anything else that we're missing here?

James: No. That indoor environment, allergens, pathogens, those are all encompassed in that indoor environment. The products that we use are really what separates us from our competition. The mold remediation product is called Oceanic. It’s been fully vetted by the EPA. By fully vetted, I mean, they put this thing through 570 individual tests. Within 10 minutes, it killed every pathogen and fungi, mold being a fungi, earning an additional approval for usage in hospitals.

How safe is it? How effective is it? So much so that they will use it in a hospital. This product, we apply it as a bomb, on the surface and in the air and it will remove the mold and mold spores, not only from the surface, but within that air quality, and that’s the problem. Just because you see a mold and you cut out mold and remove it, doesn’t mean the mold is gone. It already put spores into the [...] and that it. What you can't see that is going to cause a problem, somebody gets sick or whatever the case may be. Now the property manager or landlord is dealing with the situation and really want to know about it.

Jason: Yeah, it makes sense. That’s this Oceanic product. That's part of why you're called Green Home Solutions. It sounds like these are all products that have been tested safe, they are largely green solutions that are friendly to the environment, and they're safe to be around humans and pets, correct?

James: Yes, that’s correct. The Oceanic is a plant-based enzyme, it’s catalytic in nature, it’s whole purpose in life is to kill mold source. The difference also is that you can go out and kill a mold source, but that can still cause an allergenic threat, or cause somebody to have an asthma attack. Our enzyme, what it actually does is breaks down the three protein layers that make up the mold source and break it down and leave behind a [...] thus removing that mold source completely from the environment imposing absolutely nobody any health concerns. That's really what separates us from our competition.

With that being said Jason, we're able to remove less building material. Just because something has mold, we’re not cutting it out. As long as it's not structurally compromised, we are going to clean in place, which means a tremendous savings. That’s really why people enjoy us. We’re green, safe for everybody that lives in the environment, and we're saving your home.

Jason: Right. There's nothing destructive about it and you're not having to replace as much. I love it. What are some of the main questions besides the safety of the product, besides what you guys do that potential clients have questions or concerns about, that we maybe haven’t covered?

James: Well, one of the concerns that we see is, we need to have testing. “I see it’s mold, you're telling me it’s mold, why do we have to do testing?” The testing is so important because we need to understand the scope of the job, how much of the air, if at all, has been affected? Without a firm understanding of that, we can't properly treat that environment, and do a clearance test saying, “It's clear to go [...]” the mold level is down to a healthy state and tenants are safe to be in that environment.

I cannot give you that guarantee without proper testing, done. It's really not worth it to cut the corner and say, “I'll skip the testing, just please take care of the mold.” We've got to do testing so we can provide the proper protocol and give every [...] that that environment is [...].

Jason: Alright, so part of what you do as part of your process is you'll test the before and you’ll test the after so that you can verify with confidence that there's a difference. Whether it goes to marketing or any sort of product or service that you're using, you want to be able to showcase or prove that there's been some sort of change, because that's why a product or service exists, it’s in order to impact some sort of change.

James: Yes. The testing, we’ll do pretesting. The conflict of interest to verify our work. We have a third party that does that, but we're not done until the test, the client’s test shows what [...] to show.

Jason: You don't even do the testing yourself. You use an independent third party to do the testing to verify the results and where they're at.

James: The post testing. We will do the pretesting. Use whoever you need to know for testing, but things you should consider, what protocol do they follow. I've seen people walk in with a petri dish and say, “We’re going to leave this here for a certain amount of hours and if it turns whatever color, you have mold.” Well, we’re [...] well of course it’s going to show whether there’s mold, what kind of mold are we dealing with? Is it a waterborne, watery mold, or is it just common mold spores that are out there right now that we are breathing in? That petri dish isn’t going to tell us something.

What protocol are you following and then who are you sending this to. Make sure that the lab’s accredited. Worst case scenarios, somebody ends up having to [...] and come to find out the lab wasn’t accredited at all and now we don’t really make a stand on it, if you will. Make sure that that lab is accredited. Make sure that the protocol is on point where it needs to be, and that will give you peace of mind that the job has been done perfectly.

Jason: Fantastic. Now you guys have a franchise location in California, you target the LA market, and maybe you're expanding out from there. How can people in that market get a hold of you and how can people get a hold of you if they're outside of that market. We've got listeners all over the US. How can they get in touch with the corporate entity?

James: We cover all of Southern California. If you're in Southern California, you can go to trueenviro.com and look us up. But for anybody anywhere in the country, go to greenhomesolutions.com, type in your zip code that you need [...] the proper channel so that it fits your assessment, you get your problem taken care of.

Jason: Awesome. James, thanks so much for coming on the show. I appreciate you sharing with everybody maybe a new perspective on dealing with mold, dealing with odor, and even adding healthy bacteria into the environment. I think it's been really interesting and I appreciate you being here.

James: I appreciate you and the opportunity, Jason. Thank you very much. I hope everyone has a great day.

Jason: Awesome. For every property manager that deals with order, you deal with these sort of situations, and you want to make sure that a property is safe and healthy, because you care about the families and the people that you're putting into these homes, then if you're in California you can check out trueenviro.com. If you are outside of Southern California, then you can go check out greenhomesolutions.com as James have mentioned.

Those of you that are new to the show, make sure that you subscribe if you're checking this out on YouTube or on iTunes. Make sure that you leave us a review. If you're listening on iTunes, we would love to get your feedback and hear what you think of the show. It helps us out and motivates us to do more and to provide this free service to you guys. Also make sure you get inside our community at doorgrowclub.com and check that out.

If it's been a while since you've had your website done, or tested, or since you focused on your marketing, you may want to just test your website out, go to doorgrow.com/quiz and test your website. This will help you see your website through my eyes a little bit more from a marketing perspective, whether it's effective at making you money and converting deals. You could potentially be missing out on tens of thousands of dollars in the future ROI every month from every deal that is being missed by your website not being effective. Check that out, test your website, and make sure to join our DoorGrowClub community full of awesome property management entrepreneurs. Apply to get in it, the group's free, but you can get to that at doorgrowclub.com. Bye everybody. I appreciate you tuning in. Until next time, to our mutual growth.

If you own a company, then you probably have insurance to help protect you when something goes wrong. However, have you ever experienced shock and dismay when you submit a claim and have it denied because your insurance doesn’t cover it? You thought you were covered, but didn’t truly understand your insurance policy.

Today, I am talking with Vicky Methven about understanding your options when buying insurance. She helps clients understand risk on all levels: What they bought, why they are buying it, and what they actually need.

You'll Learn...

[03:04] Insurance has changed because business has changed; traditional go-to commercial general liability policy is mostly for brick-and-mortar businesses. [03:57] Different types of insurance policies and how they are structured; beginning gives you a lot, middle takes most of it away, and end gives you back something. [04:25] People don’t read their insurance policy; decide to tell agent what they need. [04:50] Delivery of Insurance Policy: Agent’s obligation to explain it to you effectively because no policy covers everything. [06:03] What you need vs. what you think you need vs. what an agent tries to sell you. [07:26] Personal insurance policies are built on the law of large numbers; commercial insurance is based on many more variables. [08:45] Licensed realtors must carry errors and omissions (E&O) insurance to pay a claim when they make a mistake or neglect to tell client about their policy. [09:55] Vicky views cyber risk as biggest challenge for property owners; property owners don’t buy or believe it - they’re dealing with other problems. [16:57] Crooks gone phishing for plethora of data by hacking companies of all sizes. [22:23] Don’t let professional actions negatively impact personal life; make sure you’re doing everything legally necessary to keep protections in place. [23:42] Property managers need to put basics in place; may include general liability, lawsuit protection, E&O insurance, cyber policy, and a good lawyer. [27:50] Every entity should be separate; avoid one business assuming risk of other one. [30:39] Potential pitfalls in property management industry include master policies.

Tweetables

Talk about risk on all levels.

Policy: Beginning gives you a lot, middle takes most of it, and end gives you back something.

Delivery of Insurance Policy: Agent’s obligation to not only give you the policy, but explain it to you.

Insurance policies are built on the law of large numbers.

Resources

Methven Agency

Vicky Methven’s Email

Vicky Methven on Facebook

Equifax Data Breach

Yesterday’s mass-login attack on Basecamp is another reminder to protect yourself

Have I Been Prwned?

INSUREtrust

Hiscox

DoorGrow Website Score Quiz

DoorGrowClub Facebook Group

DoorGrowLive

 

How do you sort the good from the bad when selecting tenants? Do you check previous landlord references? Run a credit report? Verify employment? There’s a way you can save about 47% of the time you spend faxing, emailing, and calling to verify tenants.

Today, I am talking with Vitaliy Merkulov of Renter, Inc. about how to automate giving landlord references and rental verifications.

You'll Learn...

[02:10] Vitaliy’s move from the tech industry to property management. [02:57] First Tenant Fail: Fake landlords and fake information. [04:10] What did I do wrong? How can I prevent people from doing this?. [05:50] Solution: Create SaaS way of requesting or sharing rental verifications online. [06:41] Property manager’s biggest problem without automation? Compliance. [10:20] How fake companies fool tenant screening companies. [14:00] Reference requests require identifying owner of property. [15:12] Registering an account to post online rental verification request form. [17:51] Plans to partner with property management software companies. [23:41] Problem with Property Managers: Trying to do everything and not being effective. [27:20] Apple’s client-centric focus with its products to solve problems and be profitable. [29:18] Simple design, so users don’t get stuck; automation sounds difficult, but you don’t have to be hi-tech savvy. [34:15] Ask: What's the biggest challenge or problem you're dealing with in your property management business?. [38:37] Storing information in a database to give to other landlords, is that legal?. [39:22] I trust myself, not a system, to do rental verifications. [40:20] API purchase not required; “robot” analyzes information and converts it into data.

Tweetables

Solution: Create SaaS way of requesting or sharing rental verifications online.

Save almost 50% of time spent faxing, emailing, and calling to verify tenants.

Problem with Property Managers: Trying to do everything and not being effective

Resources

Renter, Inc.

HUD

Fair Housing Act

Brad Larsen's Podcast

BiggerPockets’ Forums

Propertyware

AppFolio

Buildium

Rent Manager

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

Ask by Ryan Levesque

GatherKudos

Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)

DoorGrowClub Facebook Group

DoorGrowLive

What should you do when starting a property management business and trying to grow your number of doors?

Today, I am talking with Benton Cotter of RentVest. There’s no question that he knows how to grow a property management business.

You'll Learn...

[01:33] Benton’s background and how he got into property management. [03:55] Going nationwide and growing from 79 to 4,000 doors in a few years. [04:33] Steps to take when starting from scratch: Identify kind of company to create to determine clientele and marketing strategy Set fee structure: Do organic marketing, PPC, and SEO. [05:13] Rework Philosophy: Start small, work hard, and start/pay marketing. [06:14] Constant interruptions and constraints; it doesn’t have to be crazy at work. [08:37] Benton built big growth and expanded his network; opportunities are available. [12:16] Being an owner and involved in all of it - from computers to marketing. [13:46] Define your avatar, and narrow your niche. [20:57] Don’t get distracted; focus equals power. [24:20] Identify strengths and weaknesses, but don’t give up ownership too soon. [28:18] Everyone makes mistakes; businesses are built on thousands of failures. [31:07] Put profits back into the business, it will pay off later. [37:35] How to get unstuck in sand trap of 50 units as a solopreneur. [40:07] Entrepreneurs are resilient and adapt easily, but should self-reflect on skill set. [42:30] RentVest’s future goals regarding growth and getting great talent. [44:20] #1 Growth Limiter: People’s ability to offload and bring on new team members. [47:50] Hiring Process: How to filter and find the right fit; ownership is a critical quality.

Tweetables

Start small, work hard, and start/pay marketing.

It doesn’t have to be crazy at work; create a calm culture.

Simple secret for growth: Focus equals power.

Put profits back into the business, it will pay off later.

Resources

RentVest

Benton Cotter on LinkedIn

Benton Cotter on Facebook

Rework Book

It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

Slack

NARPM

Google Trends

Grant Cardone

Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

DoorGrowClub Facebook Group

DoorGrow Live