Property Management Growth with DoorGrow DGS 331: From Missed Goals to Momentum
When you don't hit the goals you set for your property management business, it's easy to fall into frustration, self-doubt, or the feeling that the year was a failure… but what if you're looking at it the wrong way?
In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull break down why entrepreneurs often focus on the gap between their goals and results instead of the gain they actually made.
They share how to process the disappointment of missed targets, how to recognize the real progress you achieved, and why your biggest breakthroughs often come after a year that felt like a setback. They also discuss the difference between a default future and a created future, why most business owners stay stuck repeating the same results every year, and practical mindset and planning strategies to help you reset, regain momentum, and build a stronger year ahead.
You'll Learn
(00:50) Setting and Achieving Goals
(08:03) Recognizing Progress and Wins
(13:36) Creating a Positive Future
(17:17) Rewiring Your Mindset for Success
Quotables"There's really only one thing you can do with a feeling, and that is to feel it."
"Your default future for 2026 is your 2025, which was probably also similar to your 2024."
"IFocus on the progress that you had made instead of that gap between, I didn't make it to where I wanted to be."
Resources TranscriptJason Hull (00:00)
All right, here we go in five, four, three, two, one. We are Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses.
We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now, let's get into the show. All right, so the topic we decided to chat about today is...
Oh, okay. So she was talking with one of our clients named Jay and he was. Oh, I remember now. Okay. Then what is it? We were, we were going to talk.
in 2025. Yeah, because, know, this is a common theme for entrepreneurs. We have big goals. There's a book about this. There's a book called The Gap and the Gain. And the idea is we're really good at looking at this future that we want to create. We're visionaries. We can see and create the future in a lot of instances. But sometimes our eyes are bigger than our stomach. Sometimes we see this big picture of the future we could create and we don't we don't achieve it.
And sometimes our goals are just too big for us and we don't, we grow, we learn, but we fail or we just learn as I call it. And so if we don't achieve these goals, it's really easy to get discouraged. It's really easy to beat ourselves up. It's really easy to maybe think we're not enough or put ourselves down. And so a lot of you just wrapped up 2025. We're recording this in January. This will go live a little bit later, but
You may be thinking, man, 2025 was not the year that I wanted it to be. I really wanted it to be bigger. It's just, I didn't achieve what I was hoping to. I got derailed. There were so many things that got in the way. So we're going to chat about that a bit today. How do we get past that hurdle? First of the belief part of like feeling like putting ourselves down or thinking we should do better. And then how do we actually set goals and
big dreams and hit those targets. And how do we have a better 2026 than our 2025 or a 2024 or a 2023? Maybe you haven't been making progress over the last several years. So we'll talk about that. Where should we start? Okay. I'm dying. So one of the things that I think is really easy for us to do, especially as business owners is to
focus on, I set this goal, I wanted to be here, I fell short of it somehow, in some way, and for some reason. And it could be a multitude of reasons. My team quit, the market shifted, all the clients sold, some crazy competitor came in and started stealing on clients, whatever it might be. So if you didn't hit the goal for whatever reason it is,
I think it's so easy to just kind of dwell on that and to get caught up in the, I didn't do it. And it's that disappointment. It's a little bit disheartening. It's, you know, you're just feeling bound out that I was hoping I would be here. I didn't know how it was going to happen, but I just had faith and did what I could do and man, I missed it. So.
One of the things that is really good, and it is mentioned in the Gatlin game, is instead of focusing on, this is the goal that I had and I fell short of it somehow. Look to the beginning and look at all the progress that you have made. Yeah, look at the game. Right. So instead of saying, I'll just give you an easy example. If you started the year 2025,
with 100 doors and you said, all right, I wanted to add another 100 doors. So at the end of the year, I would be at 200. And you didn't get to 200. Maybe you added some, you lost some, you added some, you lost some, you're in that, you know, kind of up and down cycle. And by the end of the year, you ended up at 145. So lots of us would look at that and go, wow, I wanted to be at 200 and I'm only at 145. Wow, I fell so short.
It's not even like, ⁓ I almost hit it. We were so close. That's pretty far short. Yeah. So it's very easy for us to just get trapped in this cycle of feeling badly for ourselves. And for some of us, maybe many of us, to be a little bit hard on yourself and go, you know, was it me? What did I do wrong? What could I have done better? Did I make some mistakes? Where did I mess this up?
Was I not the leader that I needed to be for my team? Did my clients not like working with our team? Are my processes not good enough? Are my prices not good enough? What is it? And it's so easy to go internal with that. And instead of looking and then concentrating so much on that, first, I feel like you do need to acknowledge it. You don't need to feel it for long time.
But it is important to acknowledge, hey, I'm feeling disappointed. I'm feeling disheartened. Maybe I'm feeling like, I kind of got the wind knocked out of me a little bit and I just wasn't expecting to be here. I really thought we were going to pull it together. I thought this was going to be our year. So it's important to at least acknowledge the feeling that you're having.
but then don't dwell on it. Don't get stuck in feeling badly for too long. So just identify whatever feeling it is that you have. Allow yourself to say, it's okay that I feel like this. And then you have to get yourself out of that loop. So an easy way to get out of that loop is to go, right, well, I did add 45 doors, right? So that's progress.
I didn't end up with less than 100 doors. So I didn't start with 100 and then at the end of the year, now I only have 70. Right? So you still did make some progress, even though it isn't the progress that you wanted, you still made some progress. But what else happened? Because a lot of us just look at the KPIs and metrics that are associated with the goal itself that we had set, which would be doors. what else had happened in the year?
Did you make changes to your team? Did you make changes to a system? Did you make changes to processes? Did you either expand into a new market or change your pricing? Did you shift things dramatically inside the business that would count as progress even though it didn't directly yet lead to doors? Did you develop yourself as a leader?
huge progress and many people never even get to do that. So perhaps you didn't get the 200 doors that you wanted. Now you're not at 200, you're only at 145. But if you can say, all right, well, I made shifts to my team. I let things go that needed to be let go. I brought people in that needed to be brought in. maybe shifted people around. implemented a new software. I started working with a new coach.
I learned a new growth strategy. made new connections. I grew myself as a leader. I grew myself personally. There was some growth and some learning and some personal development there. Does that directly equate to doors? Yes. It's just that it didn't happen yet. So it will. It just didn't happen yet. So 2026 might be the year.
that all of that work and all of that growth and that foundation building, 2026 might now be the year that allows you to have that growth and expansion that now you're ready for because of the shifts that you had made the prior year. So focus on the progress that you had made instead of that gap between, I didn't make it to where I wanted to be. Love it.
I have a bunch of things I want to share, but first I'm going to do a quick word from our sponsor, Blanket. So, and you're going to like what I'm going to share, so stay tuned. So Blanket is a really cool tool. I recommend everybody uses it. That's not part of the script, but I've also it is very cool when we're talking about, right? We added doors and I lost some doors and I had doors and I lost some doors, which is very normal. Blanket's a retention platform. Business ever. So those doors that you lose.
get Blanket and you won't lose them. Yeah, yeah, so I'll read this. So Blanket is a property retention and growth platform that helps property managers stop losing doors and add more revenue and increase the number of properties they manage. Wow your clients with a branded investor dashboard and an off market marketplace while your team gets all the tools they need to identify owners at risk of churning and powerful systems to help you add more doors. So highly recommend you check it out. Go take a look at Blanket.
I think it's an amazing system. I recommend all my clients use it. All right. So let's talk about some of the things that Sarah was touching on. I think these are really important. I think one, when you first have this emotion and you're in that negative space, I think it's super important to feel it. A lot of times, if you're a thinker, if you're more analytical like Sarah or myself in a lot of instances, what you'll tend to do is you'll try to avoid feelings by finding a way logically to avoid feeling.
But there's really only one thing you can do with a feeling and that is to feel it. You cannot logic a feeling. You cannot create enough mental tools and resources to prevent yourself from feeling anything ever again that's uncomfortable. Part of being an entrepreneur is learning to feel the uncomfortable things. The good news about feelings, if you allow yourself to actually feel them, you don't feel them forever. But if you avoid them, you can avoid them and keep feeling them forever. And so take some time and yes, feel it.
Feel through it, go into it, allow yourself to feel the disappointment or feel the shame or feel the guilt or feel the failure or whatever you think it is. But then what I want you to do is while you're feeling this, I would write out what you're feeling and write out why. I want you to list out all of the beliefs because feelings are created from your beliefs, the things you say in your head. I should have had doors. I should have worked harder. I should have, you know,
taking care of my clients better, whatever it might be. Make a list of all of these beliefs and then what I want you to do once you have all the beliefs, these beliefs are what are causing you to have the problem. So this is my analytical way of dealing with this but look at all these beliefs and I want you to challenge them. I want you to look at each one and say, is this belief 100 % true? I should have had 200 doors in a year. Well, here's the reality. If reality is in
Conflict with what you you wanted your reality is you didn't get 200 doors, then it's not a true statement That you should have had it. It's not true. You didn't have it. Maybe you didn't do it was required So this is where you can give yourself some tough love but list out everything and evaluate whether it's true or not and Then you can figure out was I really committed? Obviously not if you didn't achieve the result there were other factors So look at those other factors and I think this is where then it can lead into what Sarah's talking about is
Now make a list of all of the accomplishments, all the wins. We do that in our planning system cadence with our team. We call DoorGrow OS that we also coach clients on and we look at the wins for the year. We look at the wins for each quarter. We look at the wins and recognize our team for each month, for each week related to the company goals. And so you are probably lacking.
a system that allows you to see and recognize wins, but also to actually achieve them. Because if you don't have a system in place, feelings and desires and goals are basically just potential failures. You have to have a system for making sure that you can predict and create the future accurately. And that's what DoorGrow OS allows us to do. That's why we can innovate and create so many things. No other coaching or consulting firm in the space
can keep up with the amount of things that we're rolling out or innovating. We're rolling out all this AI stuff, we're rolling out a new community, rolling out the door machine, you heard me talk on a previous episode, we're rolling out a BDM launch pad, we're rolling out so many new things. And these are just the ideas we got in the last, what, month or two. Like last month, I think. And so ⁓ AI websites, we're doing a lot of really cool stuff that we have planned for the future. And... ⁓
And we're able to move really quickly, one, because we have great people on the team, two, because we are able to plan and it's not just chaos, we're not just winging it, we have objectives. And we break those big objectives and goals down into quarterly, down into monthly, down into weekly chunks, and people are assigned to them, and we know what we need to be working on as a team, and there's just a lot more clarity. And then everybody gets recognized for the accomplishments.
It shifts our brain to every meeting, every planning session that we're like, what are our wins for this period? So gets everybody in the habit of focusing on the gain, focusing on the positive. That's why DoorGrow is a really positive place to be or to work. That's why clients like feel attracted and stay with us for years. That's why our team members stay with us for a long time, because we've created a really positive culture of winning and success. And what you focus on grows.
And so we shift our focus intentionally onto these things is how we do this. And so if you didn't have the year, ⁓ well, you probably have something you're dying to say. No? Because I would love to talk about the creative future default future. And then I'll tell them how to have the 2026 that they want. Okay. I'll end with that. All right. So if you're listening to this, I want all of you to understand you have a default future.
It's inevitable unless you get some sort of injection of new ideas or fresh blood or new people or a coach or something, you are going to do what I call your default future. Your default future is basically what you've seen yourself accomplish in the past. Your default future for 2026 is your 2025, which was probably also similar to your 2024.
and your 2023 and on and on and on. And so, and your default future may not be really exciting to you. You may feel a little depleted. So you need a creative future. And one of the things we're really good at helping our clients do is get out of, there's, I talked about three different tiers of goal setting. And the client we were talking about, Jay and others, like Jay, when he came back to us after he'd had a whole bunch of growth,
was struggling, because he had lost a bunch of team members. So he was in what I call that first level of survival. Terrible goals, right? Survival is like the worst place to be. It's a hard place. Getting new team members, rebuilding the team. The next level goal is like realistic. Realistic goals. And we rarely achieve the realistic goals. We work with our clients on determining what I call impossible goals that get your brain to think differently. It becomes a tool.
to get you to think outside of your current limitations and your current reality. So you have to have what are called impossible or unrealistic goals. And that's where things get exciting. That's where your brain has something juicy to work on. That's where you get into that visionary state and you start coming up with new things and you find shortcuts and new pathways to get there that you couldn't see otherwise because you were being so realistic. So those are some things that we would focus on with clients. So if you want a created future instead of your default future, then
I recommend that you come hang out with us. You work with DoorGrow, you come talk to us at DoorGrow, even in our initial conversations, before you pay us anything. We will help you create a better future and you'll be able to see it. We'll show you how we can help you. We'll give you free training material. Some clients have added 10s, 20s, 30s, 41s doors, one client added just from our free stuff that we'll give you.
We wanna prove and show to you how we can help you so it's not like you're guessing, well maybe this'll work. Our stuff's proven. It's been proven over and over again. So we want you to reach out, connect with us, and we will create a new future together. And some of the new stuff we're launching will allow us to really go deep into some clients' businesses and grow them. And we're gonna be creating multi-million dollar property management business owners. No question.
And that's our goal. So we're gonna be kingmakers in this industry. And because we've got everything dialed in, I just need people that we can partner with that will allow us to do what we do best. And so that's what our next hunt is. So I think that's all I wanted to say. Default future versus creative future. So create a different future. You can't be doing what you've always done. And this is why I always get new coaches. I always have new mentors because it helps me level up faster. Okay.
to figure out, how am I supposed to do something?
And I'm kind of feeling like.
done that. Now what do I do? How do I set this goal that I don't even know confidently that I'm going to hit in 2026 given that I haven't done it in past? So here is a hack that I have that will get your brain into a more positive loop. What you're going to do is you're going to take a piece of paper and I want you to write this. Don't type it out because neurologically there's a different response in your brain
when you hand write something versus when you type it out. So I want you to get a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil and physically write it out. I don't care if it's line paper, printed paper, whatever, but get a piece of paper and a pen. And what you're going to do is you're going to start writing numbers next to every single number. You're going to write things in 2025 that you have accomplished. Little things, big things, personal things, business things.
things in your life, things in your relationship, things in your friendships, things with your kids, maybe places you have traveled to. I don't care what it is. it. Anything. list as much as you can. And your goal is to fill up that paper. So you're going to write the things that you did accomplish. I wanted to celebrate my birthday this year. Well, I did that. I wanted to eat chicken parmesan from, I don't know, a certain restaurant.
for dinner. I did that. Put it on the list. Why? Because you're going to fill up this list. So I know, see he made a face, those who are watching, he made a face when I said, boy, I chicken parmesan for dinner because I woke up today and I said, hey, I want chicken parmesan. And guess what? That is a goal. My goal is to have chicken parmesan for dinner. Is that a big goal? No. But is it a goal nonetheless? Yes. So if my goal was to eat chicken parm for dinner,
And then I had chicken parm for dinner. I reached my goal. So it could be anything, anything at all. I drive the car that I want. I live in the neighborhood that I want. I put my kids in school. I got to learn something new. I made new friends. I have a great relationship with my spouse, whatever. List all of the goals that you had. Big, small, and in between.
and everything that you have accomplished, right out and fill out that entire sheet of paper. When you're done, you're gonna flip it over, and you're gonna do the same thing on the backside. When you are done, you will have a sheet of paper entirely filled with things that you have done. Some will be bigger things, some will be smaller things, but your brain doesn't care if it's a big thing or a small thing, because when you're done, you get to walk away with a sheet of paper of evidence.
And proof, I know how to reach my goals. Okay. And now you have this whole sheet of evidence that you get to go, no, I know how to set a goal and I know how to reach it. And this will rewire your brain to get out of that loop of feeling badly or feeling disheartened or feeling like, I'm kind of bummed because I didn't get what I wanted. And it will positively rewire your brain.
you into a positive loop and while you are in the positive loop now you're going to set your goal for 2026 and when you have that feeling of I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this you're going to look at that list and go I will be able to do this because I have a bunch of evidence right in front of me that I know how to reach my goals and that will very quickly get you out of that I kind of feel bummed out phase so that
for me is one of the easiest things to do is just remind yourself of the things that you have done. And it really doesn't matter if they are big things or small things because your brain does not know the difference. Your brain is just looking at a whole bunch of things on a piece of paper going, wow, that's a lot of things. ⁓ more things on the list, the better because we want to get rid of that, that kind of almost the sadness, the grief of the loss.
You have to feel that you have to acknowledge that and then you need to rewire and this will rewire so that it allows you to step into a more positive mindset so you can set a new goal. And then you can go hit that goal. And when you are hitting the goal, yes, you do have to do different things. You can't just keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That's the definition of insanity. So when you have that new goal, now you're going to look and go, what do I need to do differently in order to reach that?
and then go do the thing. Okay. So some people listening might be thinking, I don't have any grief over it. I don't feel sad. I just didn't hit my goals. Well, to that I would say your goals didn't really matter enough. Like if you didn't feel not hitting your goals, then you really didn't care that much about your goals, which is why you don't hit them. You have to have goals you actually care about. They need to matter to you. So you have to take the goals for 2026, take your goals,
and you have to connect them to emotion and to feeling. You have to connect what you don't want and what you wanna get away from to feeling into what matters and what you do want to feeling into what matters. We have a tool for this. With videos of me, it's free. Go to doorgrow.com slash clarity to do our free clarity assessments so that you can get clarity on this because without clarity, goals, actions, none of it really matters. ⁓ The other thing I would say,
are not achieving the goals that you want, find somebody that has. Find somebody that's helped somebody do that. We've helped lots of people at hundreds of doors to their business and scale their business. We help people get ops dialed in. We've helped people accomplish all sorts of things. And you'll be around other people in our mastermind that are doing this actively right now. And so belief is transferable. You're obviously not around enough people that believe that they can do what you want to get done. And if you're not achieving it, there's probably a beliefs issue.
So, ⁓ Lee, hey. I think, hey, could you jump back in in just maybe in like 10 minutes?
Leigh Angman (25:26)
cannot use.
Thank you.
Jason Hull (25:44)
Okay.
Leigh Angman (25:47)
Can you guys hear me?
Jason Hull (25:49)
We can hear you, but we're right in the middle of recording an episode. We were supposed to meet with you like an hour ago.
Leigh Angman (25:55)
I had a Google meet link from Broadcaster Authority, which I had agreed to. Now I've fired your podcast. My apologies.
Jason Hull (26:00)
yeah, they gave you the wrong link.
Yeah, no problem. you, we'll edit this part out. Could you pop back in in like 10 minutes? Sure. Okay, we'll see you in just a bit. All right. Sorry about that. Yeah, no worries. Okay, so little interruption. So we're recording multiple episodes today. So, okay. Well, yeah, we were talking about grief. were talking about belief is transferable. Talking about getting wins. Anything else that we need to add? No, we do need to wrap up. Okay, let's wrap up.
Leigh Angman (26:11)
Sure. My... Okay, sorry about that.
Jason Hull (26:36)
⁓ Well, if you are a property management entrepreneur, you've ever felt stuck or stagnant in your business, you want to reach the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com for free training on how to get unlimited free leads. Text the word leads to 512-648-4608. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com. And if you want tips, tricks, ideas, and to learn about our offers, subscribe to our newsletter by going to doorgrow.com slash subscribe.
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