Property Management Growth with DoorGrow

Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, discusses with Ashton Thomas the concept of marrying private equity with property management operations. Ashton Thomas is a third-generation real estate broker in Central Florida, she got her real estate license right after graduating high school and, in February 2019, opened her own brokerage. She decided to start her own brokerage and grew to about 25 agents, but she realized she preferred property management and did not like dealing with realtors and their recurring issues, and shifted her focus after property management "fell into her lap" when employees from a failing company approached her You'll Learn (00:45) Introduction and Ashton Thomas's Background (03:46) The Audacity to Start a Brokerage at 23 (07:16) The Marriage of Private Equity and Property Management (07:42) Benjamin Hardy's "Science of Scaling" (12:31) Understanding Private Equity and the Roll Up Strategy (17:58) The Advantage of Property Managers in Roll Ups (19:10) Advice for Getting into Private Equity (22:29) Raising Capital and How to Connect with Ashton Thomas Quotables "I've been thinking too small. That's why it's been so hard." "That's like entrepreneurs worst nightmare is to be feeling stuck and feeling like I'm not moving and I'm not getting traction and I'm not accomplishing anything." "The slowest, absolute slowest path to growth is to do it alone." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason Hull (00:00) All right, five, four, three, two, one. Hello everybody, I'm Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we've 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 my guest today is Ashton Thomas. Welcome, Ashton. Ashton (00:43) Thank you for having me. Jason Hull (00:45) So Ashton is a client of ours, but she also is a badass. And so Ashen, I would love for people to get to know you a little bit, share a little bit of your background. How did you get into real estate and property management and all of this? Ashton (01:02) Yeah, absolutely. So I'm actually a third generation real estate broker in central Florida. My granddad started in Orlando like way back in the 60s. ⁓ Both my dad and my granddad, a lot of my uncles, they're all builders. So just kind of grew up in that real estate world. I was on a job site from when I was very little. ⁓ And so I always just had a love for homes, real estate, just the whole nine years. When I was wrapping up high school about to go to college, my parents suggested, I always had like an entrepreneurial spirit, and my parents suggested that I get my real estate license. And I was like, you know what, it can't hurt to have that. So I went ahead and took the class, got the licensing as soon as I graduated high school. So I was actually a licensed realtor already working before I started my freshman year of college. ⁓ Real estate has been so fascinating because I've been able to see so many changes over the last 12 years since I got into the industry. I started with new home sales construction, actually working for my parents, ⁓ really learned about what it took to run a sales center. And then I switched to traditional real estate, like what you think of a realtor doing now. ⁓ From there, I ended up opening my own brokerage. Jason Hull (02:03) Wow. Ashton (02:28) ⁓ in February of 2019. And then property management really just fell into my lap. There was a company that was going out of business because the owner was embezzling funds. And their employees actually came to me and said, you know, we would like to work with you. We'd like to work for you. And we're bringing these clients. So I had never written a lease, seen, really even put my eyes or hands on a lease, never. This was two years ago, roughly. ⁓ And like just didn't have any property management experience at all. Figured out that we needed to get some systems in place right out of the gate. And I really took the next year, year and a half. Jason Hull (02:59) how long ago. Okay. Ashton (03:22) to develop those. And Jason, you've been so instrumental in helping us succeed in those systems. You helped us identify the holes in our business and really figure out what we needed to do. ⁓ So at the time that I had brought on the property management side, and when I say property management for us, we do both long-term property management and short-term vacation rental. So I two separate sister companies that operate. Jason Hull (03:51) Yeah. Ashton (03:51) So ⁓ at the time I had roughly about 25 realtors that worked for me under the brokerage. I had really developed that, grown that. We were one of the largest Zillow Premier agent teams in central Florida at that time. Jason Hull (04:13) Wait, can I ask you question about that? Not very many agents start their own brokerage. What? mean, how, do you mind me asking age here? How old were you you started your brokerage and what gave you the audacity to decide to do this big thing? Ashton (04:19) Mm-hmm. I was 23 when I started my brokerage and the funny part was is I actually wanted to buy a brokerage first and I had this is a wild story you'll love this so you know you look back and you say what was I thinking like I had some guts and one of those stories Jason Hull (04:33) Okay, go ahead. Okay. Okay. Yeah Ashton (04:55) So I had initially gone to this guy's office, he had four branches, local real estate agent, or a local real estate brokerage. I'd ⁓ developed his brokerage over like 50 years, had over 200 agents working for him. And I walk in and I asked to speak with the broker. He was there, they put me in the conference room. He thought that I wanted to become an agent working for him. Yeah. And I said, no, sir, I want to buy your company. Jason Hull (05:19) That's the default. my god. Ashton (05:25) And like, this was a total cold call. Like I had never talked with him before, never met him before. I ended up negotiating a price for the company ended up getting securing SBA financing. Everything had lined up so perfectly. And then a couple of weeks before we were actually going to be making it official. He decided that he wanted to, to sell his brokerage to a family member and not go through with me. And so. Jason Hull (05:53) Wow. Ashton (05:55) Honestly, in hindsight, that was the best thing that could have happened. I had no business running that large of a brokerage at 23 years old with no experience. ⁓ Over 200. Yeah. And I had secured a price for 2.4 million for the company. So with an earn out and it was just, it was going to be an insane deal if I could have like actually done that. But ⁓ I was Jason Hull (06:05) How large was it? How many Asians? Okay, yeah, I mean massive, yeah. Ashton (06:24) You know, everything happens for a reason. coming off of like the adrenaline rush from that not happening, I was like, you know what? I'm just going to start my own. Why not? So that's how I started when I was 23. Jason Hull (06:26) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, starting your own brokerage at 23 doesn't sound as crazy if you were already trying to buy 200 agent brokerage. Like, I'll just, you know, step it back a little bit. Ashton (06:49) Mm-hmm. Yes, let's like crawl before we run. Oh, so that was originally what I wanted to do was just build up a massive, brokerage with lots of agents. And I thought that in my head was the dream. No, for me, it was not. I had grown to about 25 agents, like roughly like steadily and kept that number for a while. I realized that I Jason Hull (06:56) Yeah. ⁓ Yeah. Mm-hmm. Ashton (07:21) to not like dealing with realtors and their issues over and over and over again, every day in and day out. It became like kind of toxic to me at least. And I went through and slashed a lot of agents jobs here ⁓ because it was either performance issues, attitude issues, whatever it was, they just were not the right fit for us. I ended up keeping a core five. ⁓ Jason Hull (07:32) Yeah. Ashton (07:47) and they are phenomenal people with good ethics and good business sense who care about their clients and represent me and my company very, very well. Jason Hull (07:58) What do feel like gave you the clarity to make that transition? Like, did you just wake up one morning or like, I don't like a lot of these people? Or how did you get clarity on what you really want? Ashton (08:09) ⁓ One of the things was I told my office manager, I was so frustrated one morning, I told her, said, if one more person asks me another stupid question, I am gonna lose my mind. So I was fed up, I just couldn't deal with it anymore. Jason Hull (08:23) Okay, we're just fed up. Yeah, yeah. So I know when, when did that fit with you joining DoorGrow? Because I know you had worked on culture and we'd helped you figure out kind of what mattered to you and like, that align with, was that before you came on board? Was that after? When did you let go of all the... Okay. You don't move slow on anything, it sounds like. Ashton (08:45) I don't want the same time. Yeah. I try not to. I try not to. Honestly, I feel like that's where things go to die is if you move slow. Jason Hull (08:57) Got it, yeah, right. Okay, cool, quick action taker. So obviously a very driven personality type. ⁓ And I know the topic that we were planning to talk about today is the marriage of private equity and property management, capital meets operations. So let's get into that. Again, you have big goals, big crazy goals. Ashton (09:05) Thank you. Yes. Jason Hull (09:27) that sound pretty insane to most people. But you know, the people that are bold, that have the audacity to go after these big things, achieve big things. So what are you up to now? Ashton (09:39) Yeah, so there's actually a great book by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. He has he's written like several and I know you're a big fan of Dr. Hardy's as well. He talks about like those impossible goals and how you really should and actually that one of his latest books, The Science of Scaling, is ⁓ really spurred me to action and not just having like a 10 year time frame, but like a three year time frame. And I can condense these goals. what I want to do kind of vaguely into really specifics and get it done now. ⁓ So yeah, I would highly recommend anybody listening to also read his books. Jason Hull (10:20) Yeah, agreed. Phenomenal book. I got to hear him speak down in Mexico and he hadn't released his book yet. And I was with a bunch of entrepreneurs that spent a lot of money to be there. And he all just walked out of the room with their mind blown. We were all just like, ⁓ I've been thinking too small. That's why it's been so hard. And it actually gets easier to grow and scale your business when you start thinking outside of your current mental limitations, which means it has to be something unrealistic or impossible. Ashton (10:36) Mm-hmm. Jason Hull (10:49) So that's been a game changer. I've done some episodes talking about this, but same thing for us. Like we've got some big things we're doing this year that are probably a bit ridiculous. And I don't know if we can pull it off, but if we do, DoorGrow will be the dominant player in the industry. And I already feel like we're a leader or leader, but this will be a game changer, some of the stuff that we have planned. And I've talked about it on previous episodes, just a little bit, what we're thinking of doing. But I think it's going to be some of these things are going to be game changer. and we've got so many irons in the fire right now, like we move fast and it's bit crazy, but that's where the fun is too, right? In business. So I'd rather be lit on fire with too many ideas than be stuck. And I've been that way before where I'm like, what should I do next? know, I work on. Ashton (11:35) That's like entrepreneurs worst nightmare is to be feeling stuck and feeling like I'm not moving and I'm not getting traction and I'm not accomplishing anything. That is like absolute hell for us, isn't it? Jason Hull (11:45) Yeah. Yeah, I usually joke that entrepreneurs don't care about being happy or sad. They care about whether they're in momentum or whether they're stuck. And when we're stuck, damned, blocked, frustrated, that is hell. That's like, that's hell for us. We're miserable. And yeah, and it kills our motivation, everything. But when we're in momentum, that's the drug we crave. We want to feel like we're making progress and moving forward. And so I'm that drug dealer. That's what I give out to clients. Like I'm like, let's go. That's hopium. So got to give them some hope. And then they're excited and believe they can do it. But yeah, if you believe you can do something big and you've got a big vision, a big dream, yeah, you start to find new pathways. You start to find new ideas. And so you're working on some crazy stuff. So let's talk about capital meets operations. How do we marry private equity with property management? And could other property managers do this? Ashton (12:21) You do. Jason Hull (12:47) excited to hear. Ashton (12:47) Yeah, absolutely. So I started in the private equity world really recently. It was like January of this year. And I feel like I've just been drinking out of a fire hose, like learning and being in, I've just made sure to put myself in the right rooms where I'm just like absorbing knowledge and information and wisdom from people and family offices that have been doing this so much longer than I. Jason Hull (13:13) You've been really focused on learning the private equity space, which a lot of people, that's like some crazy thing they don't really maybe even understand. They're like, oh, don't know how it works. And you decided, hey, want get in on this. Ashton (13:25) Yeah. ⁓ go ahead. What was that? Jason Hull (13:30) You said, I want to get in on this and learn about this and started figuring it out. All right, I'm going to plug our sponsor real quick, who you use, Vendoroo. How's it going with Vendoroo? Ashton (13:33) Yes. ⁓ And here's amazing. We love them. They they honestly they take care of everything. They're really good about communication. I think they're they're phenomenal. They've been a game changer for us for our day to day ops. Jason Hull (13:54) Okay, cool. I mean, it's So let me read this and then we'll get back into the show. So many of you tell me that maintenance is probably the least enjoyable part of being a property manager and definitely the most time consuming. But what if you could cut that workload by up to 85 percent? That's exactly what Vendero has achieved. They've leveraged cutting edge AI technology to handle nearly all of your maintenance tasks from initiating work orders and troubleshooting to coordinating with vendors and reporting. This AI doesn't just automate, it becomes your ideal employee, learning your preferences and executing tasks flawlessly, never needing a day off and never quitting. This frees you up to focus on the critical tasks that really move the needle for your business, whether that's refining operations, expanding your portfolio, or even just taking a well-deserved break. Don't let maintenance drag you down. Step up your property management game with Vendero. Visit vendero.ai slash door grow. today and make this the last maintenance hire you'll ever need. All right, cool. So let's talk about this private equity stuff. Help me understand what it is. I'm fairly ignorant, so. Ashton (14:59) Hmm So basically, I mean, it's a very big term, private equity, and it can span over so many different asset classes. And I think that's one of, I'm sidetracking a little just a minute, but like, I think that's one of my favorite parts about the private equity and PE industry is because you can meet somebody in your same asset class and they're doing something totally different. Like for instance, you know, what you're teaching Jason with the property management and like these operators and entrepreneurs who are owner operators really, you're teaching us the same framework and we're doing the same exact thing, which there's nothing wrong with that. That's great. That works. It's systemized. In private equity, it's all wild cards. There's a lot of structure to it, but at the same time, everybody can be doing something different. And you're not in competition truly because you all have your own unique spin on it. So it's cool. But what it means is that ⁓ if, so our firm, we bring in investor capital, ⁓ either through debt or equity. And then our investors trust us. We let them know like what we're investing in. usually have like a it depends on the type of investment. So I try not to get too technical here. It depends on the type of investment, but we let them know, hey, we're investing in XYZ companies, or we're investing in hard assets with like purchasing real estate that meet these certain criteria. So instead of these investors taking their money and putting it into the stock market, they are putting it with private firms because the stock market is the public equities. then private equity is these private individually owned firms ⁓ that I mean, you have really large ones like BlackRock and Blackstone and ⁓ all of those. And then you have a lot of small ones like myself who are just getting off the ground. We don't have a lot of assets under management yet. But as we develop that investor base, we're just going to keep that ball rolling and continuing. Jason Hull (17:04) Yeah, so there's booty firms, there's gigantic ones, there's lots of different categories of asset classes that they might be involved or invested in. And so somebody can pick a private equity company or something to partner with or get involved with that kind of is involved with the asset classes that they feel comfortable. Ashton (17:23) Yeah, absolutely. like, there's some, ⁓ like for us, we're real estate based and specifically Florida based real estate. There's, have friends who own hedge funds and that's all they do is hedge funds and specifically in like just in gold or in like just in commodities. We, there's people who are running funds based on really specific short-term rentals or within a five mile radius of national parks. So it gets down really, really, really specific. ⁓ Up until like you large firms with very large funds and they have a diversified asset class over You know, they have hedge funds. They they're doing running venture They're doing ⁓ you know Secondaries they're actually in like the private equity sphere there. So it just really depends on on the firm itself and you want to make sure as if there's any investors listening you want to make sure that ⁓ your you fit with how that firm is treating your money and running your money, and that it aligns with your goals, obviously, not just monetarily, but also with what they're investing in. Jason Hull (18:32) Right, got it. Okay. And so how can property managers start to get involved in this and create this marriage? What are you doing? Ashton (18:43) Yeah, so we're kind of doing it a little bit backwards. Most private equity firms, they start with raising capital and then they're going out and buying the asset and then they're outsourcing their vendors. So one of those vendors being property management and that's really where the gains and losses are happening is in the daily management style there. Then they realize and typically restructure that they could be making more money. They could be increasing their bottom lines and everything else with that management. Everything hinges on the management when you're talking like hard assets in real estate, whether that's multifamily commercial, you know, residence, whatever it is. ⁓ So when they bring it in-house, they are restructuring. And there's also been a huge problem with Jason Hull (19:36) Yeah. Ashton (19:41) And I've been hearing this lately, huge problem with investor capital really not being watched out for by these firms because they're outsourcing all their vendors. What we did instead is I had already have the acquisition engine through our brokerage. We've already got all the systems set up in place for our property management firms, both short and long. Now we added the private equity firm. I have a series 65. So we're actually a state registered Jason Hull (19:51) Right. Ashton (20:10) like investment advisory firm for true asset management on the back end, which a lot of private equity firms do not have that. And then we added the capital. So we literally just did it backwards. And now we're focused on acquiring not only hard assets with cash flowing tenant occupied portfolios that meet certain metrics. We have to have a certain Jason Hull (20:12) Okay. Okay. . Ashton (20:37) IRR, we have to have a certain cap rate and a certain cash on cash return to even peak our interest. The other thing that we're buying is property management businesses. So we are working on acquisitions right now. We just completed one last week and we've got two more in the hopper. So we are going in and offering these off-market portfolios, know, minimum 20 up to, you We have no limit on how many we'll buy, like minimum 20 units and we want creative financing. So we want to structure the deal where the seller and the owner is holding the majority of that note. We're using investor capital for the down payment. We're saving some to hedge for ⁓ reserves and we're going in and buying these companies to add to our revenue and our to our bottom line. Jason Hull (21:35) I love it. Ashton (21:36) Roll up. That's the name and the term that's used in the private equity space is roll up. Jason Hull (21:42) Roll-up, got it. So I've seen some of these companies in the past. I had a client, he eventually exited and sold his business to Home River Group. He had like 2,000 doors. So then he was kind more of a partner in Home River Group, 30,000 eventually. And he became kind of a consultant that would come in and these roll-ups that were being done in some instances, because they did it the reverse way from what you did, they thought they could just throw money at the problem. So they went and acquired a whole bunch of property management companies. Sometimes, like some companies would acquire like 10,000 doors. Then they would fire like 7,000 of them because they realized there was so much garbage and it was difficult to manage. And then they thought they could just put in or install a property manager in and then the business would just run. But no real leadership for the boots on the ground. And so they would bring him in as a consultant. He would go in, fire everybody. Ashton (22:34) Mm. Jason Hull (22:42) organize a team, build a business and act as an interim CEO till he got the thing healthy and running. And he would make a lot of money because they were losing a lot of money trying to make this work. And people don't realize how hard property management can be. And so I think, yes, property managers have an advantage because they have the hardest piece of this entire puzzle, it sounds like. Ashton (23:05) Yeah, it definitely is because you're dealing with you're dealing with tenants, you're dealing with the day to day your you are the boots on the ground. So that is why it is so important before we started any of this, I wanted to make sure that we had the proper systems in place that we could scale 500 more doors without blinking an eye. That is where you have to have that mindset and like you have to know what's going on before adding because when you just add doors and just think that exactly what you said add doors and thinking that that's just going to like solve your problem you're just multiplying your problem whatever problems you have at 20 doors is going to be 10 fold at a thousand doors or more so ⁓ and more just doesn't necessarily equal better and that is one reason like in our contracts we actually do have clawbacks so if we do end up getting rid of owners that just aren't a fit our purchase price is reduced down from the seller. So it gives the seller an incentive to ensure that they're selling us a good. Jason Hull (24:11) Got it, yeah, that's important to have all that's in any sort of acquisition deal. So for other property managers that are looking to get into private equity and they're looking at maybe starting to do this, because they're like, you know what, I've got a healthy property management company, we've got the systems in place, is there somebody that I can partner with on this that already knows how to do it or can I go and learn to do this? What would you say between those two options and where would you send them? Ashton (24:43) Really? It depends on the person. This isn't for everybody. know, you, what I would recommend, and this is honestly what I tell anybody, no matter what business they're in, if they're thinking about growing, where do you want to be in three years? And let's reverse engineer it from there. So if you want to, like for us, our, our plan is to roll up to about 5,500 doors and then exit. So Jason Hull (24:45) Yeah. Got it. Ashton (25:12) I already knew where I wanted to be. And so like, I wanted to exit at a certain amount. So I was like, how do I get to this amount? And then I just backed it up from there. ⁓ but that's, everybody's going to have a different goal. So I would highly recommend just like starting with that initial goal. that's, if that goal is freedom, if it is like, you want to be able to exit, you want to have, you want to just run a massive company, whatever it is, start there and then figure it out backwards. Jason Hull (25:21) Okay. Ashton (25:41) As far as bringing on capital and investor capital, whether they want to partner with somebody or if they want to like bring on debt, that's also a comfort level thing. ⁓ And it also depends on like what you and that other person that's bringing in the capital agree to and what you both feel like is the optimal solution. But before doing that, definitely educate yourself and find someone ⁓ either as a consultant like Right now I am doing a little bit of consulting work for ⁓ different ⁓ funds as well as like companies like, you know, like what we're doing ⁓ for, you know, to help them with what their goals are. Let's back it up and then let's go from there. And like just adding some advice and getting them in touch with the right people that they need as far as connections. Analysts, numbers are so important when you're talking with investors. You can't just be like, I think it's going to make this an investor, especially a sophisticated one is not going to go for that. Maybe friends and family will what I call country club money, but ⁓ a sophisticated investor, absolutely not. They're going to want to see a pro forma. ⁓ So there's so many steps involved before you ever, ever, ever bring on a dime of investor capital. So. Jason Hull (26:51) Yep. Ashton (27:09) I'm sorry, that's not like a ⁓ space. Jason Hull (27:10) So, well, it sounds like the path is maybe this. Like if you're a property manager first, you got to get your side of the room clean. You got to get your business tight. You got to get operations working, maybe reach out to DoorGro, get a little help, but you got to get things really well dialed in because it doesn't make sense to go start playing with other people's money and be on the hook for other people's money and investors. Ashton (27:20) Yes. was not. Jason Hull (27:36) if you don't really feel like you have the ability to scale, you don't really feel like you can handle stuff, because if once money starts flowing and doors start adding, then if your stuff is okay, it's going to be stress tested and probably not okay. So that's probably first. Next, they need to learn about private equity, figure out that game, and then even once you figure out how that all works, then you've got to get good at selling it, which you are already a natural, you know... Ashton (27:51) Yeah, exactly. Jason Hull (28:05) Salesperson, you've invested a lot towards figuring that out, but then you're going out and you have to raise the cap. Ashton (28:11) Raising capital is literally one of the hardest jobs. It is insane because you want to build a relationship and you want someone to trust you, but you're also asking for a check. And so it's trying to balance the relationship aspect as well as the transactional aspect. And it's even harder as a woman because private equity is definitely, ⁓ there's not a lot of women in this field. Jason Hull (28:32) Yeah. Ashton (28:41) ⁓ so it's even harder being like of the opposite gender. ⁓ so there's a lot to balance there. so getting, getting comfortable asking, but not being pushy. It's that I've learned so much from. Jason Hull (28:56) As a woman, you've had to take maybe a more feminine approach or you go in hot the way most guys would. Ashton (29:04) It depends on the person. It depends on my audience. You have to sell the way somebody wants to buy. So I've learned not to, at the beginning, I was definitely very transactional. And I've learned ⁓ through a dear friend of mine that to be more relationship-based and then that will come a little bit later with the transaction. ⁓ But at the same time, because I'm like, Jason Hull (29:11) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Ashton (29:32) I need to know now. Like, I don't want to waste my time. I don't want to waste their time. We just need to lay it out on the table right now. They need to know what I'm here for. ⁓ I've had to like roll that back a little bit. And since I have, the checks have been definitely coming in a little bit smoother. So it was a huge learning experience for me. Jason Hull (29:51) Yeah. Ashton, how old are you right now for those listening? All they've heard is 23. Ashton (29:59) I'm 30 now. Jason Hull (30:01) 30 now, okay, you're 30 years old, you're doing amazing things. What amount of capital are you raising right now? Like what's your goal? Ashton (30:05) Yeah. Yeah, so we do different like rounds or like tranches of raising and it right now we are raising for specific projects. So as the projects come up, then we go out to our current investors first and then to like new potential investors next. ⁓ So in the spring, we're about to start doing another raise for ⁓ one, a business and then two, a couple other. ⁓ real estate portfolios that I'm looking at. ⁓ So that is going to be around the $800,000 mark of capital. And typically we do like minimum commitments of 100 because when you get into smaller amounts, typically the investors that are, I just become a little bit more needy because they're only, they're not as sophisticated and we want to deal with the investors who are. Jason Hull (31:06) Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. Very cool. Sounds like you're doing really cool things. So Ashton, for those that are listening and they're curious about you, they're curious about maybe getting into this, you mentioned you do some consulting, you mentioned there may be investors or maybe they want to get in on some of the investing stuff that you're doing. How can they get in touch with you? Ashton (31:29) Yeah, so they can send us an email. That would be the best way to you can send it to info at FX to capital calm. ⁓ And we, you know, are one of our interns checks that email on the daily. ⁓ So then we can set up an investor call and go through really well what your goals are. What is your portfolio look like right now? How are you diversifying yourself? And maybe we can talk about what we can do to help increase that, maybe rebalance you a little bit within the private space and in the private markets. Jason Hull (32:06) Cool, well property managers, if you're listening, I think Ashton's definitely doing something that's very cool. A lot of you probably could get in on this or create some sort of alliance or relationships that could allow you to be part of something like this. Even if it's just you're getting doors from other people that are in the private equity space that are rolling up a bunch of investment properties, this would be easy doors for you to get on if you really could do a good job. And it sounds like that's the linchpin, that's the hardest piece of the puzzle. And if you're a good property manager, you've got that down then. So you've got a competitive advantage. So Ashwin, I appreciate you coming on and sharing this here on the board. Ashton (32:43) Thank you. Yeah, that was so much fun. It was so great talking to you. Jason Hull (32:48) Awesome, so we'll go ahead and wrap up. For those of you that are feeling stuck, stagnant, you want to take your property management business to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com for a free training on how to get unlimited free leads. Text the word leads to 512-648-4608. Also join our free Facebook community. It's just for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com. And if you want tips, tricks, ideas to learn maybe about some of our offers, subscribe to our newsletter by going to doorgrow.com slash subscribe. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review. Anything like that would really help us out. We would appreciate it. And until next time, remember, the slowest, absolute slowest path to growth is to do it alone. And you heard Ashton, she's leveraging a lot of people to do what she's doing to grow. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of Door Grow, and Sarah Hull, the COO, discuss the professional lessons learned from the departure of a long-term team member. They describe the experience as bittersweet, acknowledging the torn feeling between being happy for a departing employee who has a great new opportunity and not wanting to lose a valuable team member. You'll Learn (00:00) Bittersweet Departure: Empathy in Leadership (01:03) Maddie's Journey and Role Development at Door Grow (06:33) Security Through Documented Processes (11:08) Confidence in the Door Grow Hiring System (12:44) The "Super System" and Scalability (15:56) The Value of Structure and Culture Quotables "I think that's the first thing about being a leader is not only wanting what's best for you and the business, but truly wanting what's best for your team." "Having processes documented has always given me a sense of security." "The slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason Hull (00:02) Hello everybody, I'm Jason Hall. This is Sarah Hall, the founder and CEO and the COO 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 have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of businesses, helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profits, simplify operations, and we run the leading property management mastermind in the industry with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. So let's get into the show. All right. So we got some news this past what week from my daughter. I need to get rid of that. OK. We got some news this past week from my daughter, Maddie, that she is leaving. DoorGrow, she got another job offer. And so my oldest daughter has been working for DoorGrow for five years now. Which is wild. And so I remember she called me up from college and she couldn't find a job there. And she later told me the last thing she wanted was to ask me for a job or to work for me at the time. I guess she was just humbled enough that she had to come to me and ask for a job because she's like nobody was hiring around her campus because it was just a college town. Everybody had taken all the jobs and so she asked if she could do some work for me and ⁓ she started doing some graphic design stuff and she was working on her marketing degree and ⁓ she ended up working for us and she's handled all sorts of things. My social media, DoorGrowth social media. graphic design stuff, video editing, podcast editing, ⁓ lots of stuff. Client support. And then we moved her into client success. And so then she was managing client success on our team, helping to retain clients and make sure they're supported. that's, yeah, so she's had quite the journey of growth here at DoorGrow. And she was really nervous to tell us that she was leaving. She was like very concerned about this. And I told her, it's okay, I just want you to be happy. So excited to see her move on to the next thing that she's gonna do. This is like her first job outside of DoorGrow, as far as I know. And so I'm excited for her. ⁓ So we were just thinking like, what are some lessons that we are getting from this experience? And ⁓ yeah, so we thought we'd talk about a few of those things. The first thing is that moment where you go, I'm losing a team member. And you're kind of torn and you're stuck in between, I'm so happy for them and I want this great opportunity for them and I want what's best for them. And also, man, I didn't want to lose them. That happens a lot. And I would say to anyone out there that has experienced something like that, we had a client. Jay Shaw that had an amazing person in his business and this person got their dream job opportunity and came to him and said, hey, I don't know what to do with this. And he did exactly what we said. You have to take it. If you want to take it, want you to take it. I want you to do what you think you need to do and what's going to make you happy and what's going to give you opportunity to learn and grow and challenge yourself and experience different things. Right. So I think that's the first thing about being a leader is not only wanting what's best for you and the business, but truly wanting what's best for your team. Yeah. So that's what, you know, she's my daughter. So of course I want whatever's best for her. Um, one of the things that I realized, one of the things that I've always been particularly good at is identifying personalities. One of the things we wanted to recommend to all of you is that it's really important to understand your team members and their personality. Meaning, like getting to really know what their natural inclination is towards, not what they're skilled at, not what they're already trained at, but where would they naturally gravitate towards if they had had other opportunities. so Maddie's personality type, she's extroverted. naturally. I saw this in her growing up. ⁓ She's very much a feeler. She's ⁓ organized and ⁓ so yeah, so was very clear. Ladybug okay good. I think I on your foot So totally live. All right. So, ⁓ yeah. So what was I talking about? You were talking about ladybug finding, finding the right personality. ⁓ right. Okay. So Maddie and Myers-Briggs would be probably an ENFJ, right? ⁓ they're great at community. They're great at connecting with others. And she was going to school and eventually graduated while working at Door Girl. for like graphic design, marketing related stuff, advertising, and she thought, I'm gonna be a graphic designer. Well, I was like, Maddie, are, like, this is, you're naturally great with people. I'm thinking you should move into client success. We had a team member leave. She started taking over client success and doing the social media and graphic design stuff and things like that and podcast editing. And then, We knew we were gonna scale and so we said, and she knew and she said, well, if I have to pick one role or the other, I think I'll pick client success. And so it's awesome to be able to have that as a father, I think it's super important to understand your kids and to not try to push them into being what you are if you're an entrepreneur, not trying to push them into a certain job or career path in school, but to. move them towards what their natural personality would be inclined to succeed and win at that they would love to do. And so that's what I've done as much as I can with all of my kids. so Maddie, I thought, let's move her into client success for sure. And when we put her into that, eventually she chose that. She really recognized that she had a skill at that and she was really, really great at it. And that allowed her to grow and develop new skills besides just graphic design. ⁓ But yeah, she's learned a lot of different skills at DoorGro. She didn't know how to do video editing. She was very much into graphics and then she started editing our videos for us and figuring it out. And so over the years, she's just developed a whole bunch of skills. She's invaluable, super smart, learns lots of stuff. The other, I think, important lesson that is important, you talked about team members, when they leave and how you freak out. Well, we're not really freaking out. And why? Why are we not freaking out? we're sad to see her go. Sad, happy, bittersweet. A little bit of bittersweet feeling there. we're prepared for any and all of our team members at all times just in case anything happens. And that's one of the things is if they do decide to, for whatever reason, exit their role at your company. we have all of our processes already documented for each of our team members. So now that she's stepping out of that role, it's not like we're back here scrambling going, we have to hurry up and figure out how she's doing things and have her write it down and have her train somebody else and get everything out of her head. All of that already exists, which means that when we hire someone to step into that role, it will be infinitely easier for them because everything that Maddie is doing is already documented. What she does and the steps and the systems and the tools that she uses and how she's doing each thing, it's documented in our system. So that in case a team member or sometimes you have several leave at a time, didn't you have a guy that won the lottery and his whole team left? Somebody called me once. So they lost their whole team because they had an office betting pool with the lottery and they won and everybody quit their jobs. So now you have no team. Yeah. So yeah, very suddenly not likely to happen too often, but no, it is nice. as a, as an entrepreneur, as a founder, as a CEO, having processes documented, which we've had for years and years at door grow. has always given me a sense of security. There's always a sense of anxiety if you don't have those documented that somebody could leave or somebody could be out or get pregnant or be injured or whatever. And move away. Yeah. Take care of a sick family member. Right. Things happen. Life happens. Humans are humans. And so the challenge is if you don't have these things documented and you want them fresh, you want them being used, you want them documented by the people that are actually using them. so Maddie's leaving, so she went and reviewed the processes. Most everything is documented. There were some, she was like, I think we're missing this thing that I've recently started doing, or this little thing needs to be updated a bit. And so she's making some final tweaks to update the processes. But it's every team member's job to keep updated and maintain their processes. So this is why it's very important to have a process system. that is intuitive and easy enough for everybody on the team to use it. And this is why we use what used to be called DoorGrow Flow. We use Flusos and ⁓ F-L-U-S-S-O-S. And it's kind of that in between, it's like flowchart software. It's visual, it's super intuitive and easy. Our team can drag and drop things and build out the process and then they can actually use that process and run it and like work through the workflow. And so it's kind of like a mashup between Lucidchart, Revisio, and Process Street, or Asana, or any sort of checklist system. And checklist systems are not enough. They're just not sufficient enough. They're not clear enough. And ⁓ they're too linear. And there's issues with those. And so we found that this is a superior upgrade from what we used before, which was like Process Street. So having that system that Sarah, who doesn't like tech very much, will go in there and loves using it and updating processes. Maddie can go in and update her own. Giselle and her team can go and tweak or change her process. anybody on the team, and I actually don't even log into it. I don't have to use it, which is the first process system. And we've had several that we've ever used where I don't have to live in it. I don't have to work in it. We've set it up so that if anything needs to be assigned to me, it goes to a role called Jason's assistant. And then the assistant comes to me and says, hey Jason, we need you to do this thing. And so I was able to get myself out from not just having to manage and control and make every process and get really nerdy and build logic and things to hide and show and to the point where I didn't even understand it a year later and then would have to, if it broke, I had to get into it and fix it or weird connections to Zapier and stuff like this. Yeah, it just makes it so much more intuitive. drag and drop and that's been a game changer. So that's something else we realized through this process. It's like we're not really freaking out or concerned. You know, just a little sad Matty. So, all right. So ⁓ anything else? Well, speaking of things that are game changers, let's hear from our sponsor. ⁓ yeah. So today's sponsor is cover pest. Cover Pest is the easy and seamless way to add on-demand pest control to your resident benefits package. Residents love the simplicity of submitting a service request and how affordable it is compared to traditional pest control options. Investors love knowing that their property is kept pest free. And property managers love getting their time back and making more revenue per door. Simply put, Cover Pest is the easiest way to handle pest control issues at all your properties. To learn more and to get special DoorGro pricing, visit coverpest.com slash door grow. All right. So that's our sponsor. right. So other lessons or things that we're realizing. ⁓ One, another reason we don't have a bunch of anxiety is that if we ever need to replace a team member, we have an amazing hiring system. This is one of our proprietary pieces of IP that's been a game changer for ourselves. and has allowed us to be able to take care of all of our clients and help them replace entire teams if necessary, help them get that key team member they need that's going to be the game changer to get them to the next level. And that's DoorGrow Hiring and our DoorGrow applicant tracking system. And so this has been a significant tool that we've used for lots of clients and for ourselves to build out our team. And so we confidently know, like we've got a system that's going to get us somebody that is a good culture fit for us that shares our values, which means they won't steal from you. It means there'll be a personality fit for the role because we understand and have engineered the job descriptions for ourselves and for all of our clients so that it attracts or creates interest in the person that is the right personality fit for that particular role. And then skill fit. We have assessments and tools to figure out are they going to be able to develop the skill or do they already have the skill so that we can make sure that we're getting the ultimate hire because one bad hire is easily a 10 grand minimum mistake and probably three months of your time wasted. So being shot in the foot trying to train them and then they leave or you have to fire them, right? So we're really good at BDMs, which is a big need of our clients. We're really good at operators, which is a big need for our clients. so they can get out of the day-to-day operational control of the business and make sure the business is moving forward and build out what we call our super system, people planning a process. So these are some key things that make it not so big of a deal if we lose a team member. We're confident we can get them replaced pretty quickly. We can get them up to speed quickly because of our process and we're going to make a good hire. So, and we're able to get that system built out into our clients' businesses as well, which is A game changer, if you listen to us and you start adding a whole bunch of doors, then that can cause a lot of constraints and issues in your business to come to the forefront. And if you have our super system hiring the process, planning all built in, planning is DoorGrow OS. If you have all these things built in, then your business becomes infinitely scalable and you're not going to get stuck. You can just continually keep growing and adding doors. So cool. ⁓ Any other lessons or things about Maddie? We could, I would say so many good things about Maddie. So I think one of the things too that it just kind of shows when you put the right person in the right role, the results that you get because clients always tell us, Maddie is so great. Maddie is so great. Wow, Maddie is so great at what she does. Wow, I just love Maddie. Yeah. So. that tells us, we already know, but it tells us, hey, this was such a good fit for her. She truly enjoys this. She is great at helping people and she's thriving in a role like that. And I know that she will do great at anything that she decides to do. And I think that's one of the things that was so great is kind of watching that growth and development because when she came on, in the very beginning, was part-time. She was going to school, so she was part-time, and she was dabbling in just little tiny pieces. And then she would do a little bit more, and the hours would increase, and she would take on a few more things, and hours would increase, and then she would take on a few more things. And her role truly developed, and that allowed her growth and development as well, which a lot of times, that's something that great team members are really looking for. Yeah, in the beginning she was like, how do I get out of this job probably? then she was I think she told you, I only want to work with you for what, a year or something? Yeah, yeah. And then I think she kind of realized, hey, there's good culture, there's good environment here. And then eventually she was like, hey, I'm graduating school, I think I really want to work with you guys full time. And so that was really nice. yeah. And I'm sure it's not easy working for your dad sometimes. don't know. So, ⁓ but yeah, it's been awesome having her. And it's been, I'm really going to miss being able to just tell everybody all the time. Cause I get to tell every potential client I talk to during the sales process, if I'm involved, I get to like brag on my daughter, my oldest daughter works for me and she's our head of client success. And I get to just be so proud of her. So. Now I just get to talk and brag about my wife, ⁓ which I always do that as well. So you can't leave too. I gotta be able to brag about somebody. So, all right. I'll stay just so you Just because of that? Okay, all right, good. yeah. But Maddie's amazing, so whoever gets her, who knows, maybe she'll be back. I don't know, Maddie. I don't know, maybe. Maybe she'll be like, hey, know, other companies are just not as amazing as DoorGro. And I didn't realize how terrible most are out there. and then maybe she'll be back, who knows? You know what will be very interesting is seeing a team member that we have get transferred into a different business just to see how things run because a lot of times that's something that people value a lot more than they even realize that they value is, hey, I really enjoy the support that I get here. I really enjoy the culture that we have here and the type of environment that we have here. And I really enjoy how structured things are. even if it's your dream job, if the company just doesn't have things together and you step into a role and all of a sudden you go, wow, everything is on fire here. This is awful. It's sometimes very eye-opening to be able to hop into even something that you think might be perfect. And I think that's one of the things that allows us to keep great people for a long time is really the structure that we provide and the way that we run our company. I would say that that is something that will be interesting to see. I'd like to do a little post interview with her and see how... She'll be like, it's been the best thing ever to not work Because you know what ours is, right? So how is their onboarding process? How is their training process? How is their assimilation process? What is all of that like? Because when you, and vice versa, when you come from a place that had nothing together and all of a sudden you find a place and you go, wow, thank God they have all of this ready to go. It's already. built, just feels very solid, feels very safe, it feels very put together and it's an environment in which team members are truly set up for success and to thrive in a role. that's something that I really believe processes as part of that. It's not fun, it's not sexy, I know that, but it's really something that is so important to have dialed in. so that new team members coming in really feel like, I wasn't just thrown into the mix and told to figure it out. All right. Well, if Maddie sees this, Maddie, I love you, proud of you, and I'm going to miss being able to brag about you, but I'll still brag about you, but brag that you are working at DoorGro and are ahead of client success. So we've got some really big things coming up at DoorGro. We're really excited about the future. We've got a lot of irons in the fire right now, some big things we're working on that I think are going to be a game changer for the industry. And we're really optimistic, really excited. And so stay tuned to see what we're up to. Anything else you want to add before we wrap up? All right. Well, ⁓ for those of you that ever feel stuck or stagnant, you want to take your property management company to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com. We would love to help you. For free training on how to get unlimited free leads, text the word leads to 512-648-4608. That's the word leads to 512-648-4608. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at doorgrootclub.com. And if you would like to get the best ideas in property management, join our newsletter at doorgroot.com slash subscribe. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate it. Until next time, remember, the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone. How do I end this? ⁓ there we go.

When your property management business isn't growing, hiring a salesperson might seem like the obvious solution, but what if that's actually where most owners go wrong… In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull break down why most BDM hires fail, the critical mistakes owners make with commission-only roles, and the exact systems required to make a salesperson successful. They dive into DoorGrow's Three Fits framework, the three non-negotiable ingredients for BDM success, and tease a game-changing new growth model designed to help property managers scale without burnout, bad leads, or broken systems. You'll Learn (00:00) Introduction: The Three Fits for Hiring (01:16) The Challenges of Hiring a Business Development Manager (BDM) (02:42) The Three Key Ingredients for BDM Success (04:40) Mistakes in BDM Compensation: The Commission-Only Pitfall (05:40) The Three Roles of a BDM and the Problem with Buying Leads (09:54) The "Door Machine" Teaser: The Easy Button for Growth (14:39) Advanced Community, AI, and Final Thoughts Quotables "A BDM has zero chance of success if you hire the wrong person." "If they're not all three, they will fail. Or you'll fire them. Or they will leave you because they're not making enough money." "If you do not have the right system to plug a BDM or a salesperson into, you can hire as many of them as you want, and they will still not work." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason Hull (00:01) All right, five, four, three, two, one. All right, we are Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching company for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of businesses, helping them at doors. improve pricing, increase profits, simplify operations, and we run the leading property management mastermind with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. We're the best. At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world and that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management, business owners, and their businesses. We want to transform the industry. eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now, let's get into the show. All right. So today, we're going to be chatting a little bit about the challenges of getting a business development manager, a BDM, or a salesperson for your property management business that we've seen. Yes. So a lot of times people think, hey, I need to grow my business. and they either don't wanna do it, they don't have the time to do it, or they just want help doing it. And then their go-to is, well, I'll just hire someone to do it, right? What could go wrong? Yeah, and that's where they make their first mistakes. Hiring is tough. Hiring is tough. And so, a BDM has zero chance of success if you hire the wrong person. And so, we... started solving this challenge for our clients by building out a hiring system. We call it door for a hiring. And we focus on what we call the three fits. They gotta be the right culture fit, which means they actually share your values. You can trust them. Because if they don't, aren't a culture fit, they'll steal from you or they'll do something off. And if culture's off, generally everything else goes south. It doesn't work. They have to be the right personality fit, which means they have to have the right personality to be willing and love and be able to do sales. And they have the right skill fit, which means they have to be intellectually capable of developing the skill or they have to have the sales skill already. If they're not all three, they will fail. Or you'll fire them, which is basically because they're failing. Or they will leave you because they're not making enough money. Okay, then once you hire them, assuming you get the right person, there's three key ingredients we found that are critical for BDM success and it's really difficult to get all three of these dialed in. It's even difficult for our clients who we coach to do these three things and so generally we see a lot of other BDM coaching companies they probably do a good job of maybe hiring the right people. My guess is they know how to read disk assessments and they use other tools and they can find good salespeople. but I hear a lot of them fail. Like my brother hired two salespeople from one of these BDM placement coaching companies and he fired both of them. And it probably was my brother's fault. I don't know. Sorry, Brian. But it might've been he just didn't have these three key ingredients in place. They might've been able to have a chance. So these three key ingredients are one, training. And. Basically they have the right strategies and training in order to succeed. Second, they have to have the right accountability. A lot of business owners just are like, here, here's what you do, or they rely on the BDM coaching company to just make it work. And sometimes they just get bad strategy. I don't think anybody has as good a strategy or clever or unique as I do as Dorgo does. We were very innovative on that. I think then ⁓ the third piece is we've got training, we've got then accountability, there has to be transparency, visibility, metrics, things like this. they're being, you you can see where the gaps are, where the problems are. And third, compensation. And so the compensation has to be right. If the compensation structure is off, compensation is incentive. And if the incentive structure is off, either they won't be making enough money, and they'll quit or you'll be paying them maybe too much money in the wrong way and then they get lazy and they're not incentivized to continue because they're making enough money or they're not getting motivated enough to get the results that you need so you'll fire them. There's so many ways compensation gets messed up. A lot of you think, I could just pay them commission only. Then I don't have to pay them anything unless they make money and then they're not motivated or they're not doing the leading actions. and then they fail. So we've just seen a lot of mistakes made there. And I think one of the biggest ones is the idea, well, I'll just pay them commission only. And that's a really nice thought, but in practical application, it's just not a way to set things up to be successful. And the reason is, I know everybody's going, that's what I want. Yes, we can want these things, but... In reality, the problem is that unless someone can start working in your business today and have the ability to close deals this week, then a commission only structure is just not going to work. And what I mean by that is not just, ⁓ no, they can, they can close a deal. They could close a deal right away. Great. do you have a few thousand leads for them to call today? So if they get hired today and they get trained today and then tomorrow they start making calls, do you have a whole list of people that they can call and then close deals as early as like four days later, three days later? Because if the answer to that is no, No, Sarah, I don't have an entire list. If I had an entire list, I would just call them myself and I would just work that list myself. Great. So then what you're doing is you're bringing someone in who can only make money if they close a deal and somehow expecting them, you're expecting them to close a deal, but not providing them with leads to work. So it's essentially saying, all right, I... We'll pay you if you close deals. You can get started today. I don't have a list, a long list. Don't give them 10 people. 10 leads is not good enough. I don't have many leads for you to work. I have some, but I don't have a whole list of leads ready for you to just start working that are already in the system. ⁓ You need to go find the leads and create the connections and the relationships. to get the leads and then you need to build a relationship with them and take them through the entire sales process and then you can close them and that might take two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, two months, three months. So what usually ends up happening on a commission only structure is the BDM, the first month makes zero dollars. So imagine if you did work for an entire month and you made nothing. Would you want to be in that situation? Probably not. But then we're expecting other people to want to be in that situation. And for some people, that is doable. But for the majority of people, that's just not possible. They have bills to pay, they have a mortgage or rent, they have to feed themselves, they might have a family. It's not possible to just say, well, hopefully you figure it out really quickly, even though I'm not going to give you what you need in order to be successful quickly, I hope you figure it out quickly because that's how you'll get paid. And then people wonder, why is no one applying for my job? So the problem, a medium is a little bit unique. Having a property management salesperson, they need to be not just a closer in which you like they just closed deals. They also need to be a setter. They need to be doing outreach and outbound, but they also need to be a networker. They need to be going to networking events, connecting, walking into offices, meeting with people. And so the challenge is if they're a setter, a networker, and ⁓ a closer, they really need to be compensated the way you would compensate all three. we talk about this. There's a YouTube video up where I talk about how to compensate a BDM. Check it out. ⁓ But basically there needs to be a base plus commission and there's a strategy to how to do this correctly. Feel free to check out our video about that. But a lot of people get this wrong. All right, so assuming that you get all of these things dialed in, it's still a struggle for some of our clients to manage their own BDM to do this. I'm going to share, we're going to give you a little sneak peek about something that we have coming up. But first, that's going to be a game changer for this industry. If you struggle to grow, if you tried lots of different lead sources, you tried lots of different programs, we're going to tell you about how DoorGrow will just grow your business for you. as a teaser. But before we do that, I'm going to read a word from our sponsor. So this is our sponsor for today's episode is Blanket. Wait, Blanket. Lior from Blanket. It's his birthday today, which I did not plan. But happy birthday, Lior. Yeah, happy birthday. So by the time this goes live, it'll be past. But for those that watching the live stream, maybe if it goes out today, then cool. All right, here we go. Blanket is a property retention growth platform. that helps property managers stop losing doors, add more revenue, and increase the number of properties they manage, while 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. I think Blanket's an awesome platform. You want to keep your properties, even if your clients are kind of like selling, you can keep the property and get other owners into it, and there's a network of owners that will. choose in to being your property management client and take over this property. So I think it's a no-brainer. Everybody should have a blanket. Check it out. Okay. So let's talk about something that's uncomfortable when it comes to growth and sales and hiring a BDM. So a lot of people think that in order to solve their growth problem, they need to hire a salesperson. Okay. Right? Yeah. So they go, okay, well. growth isn't happening, let me just like hire a salesperson because either I don't want to do it or I'm not the right person to do it or I am busy with other things and I just don't have enough time to dedicate to it or maybe I am doing it but it'd be nice to have some extra deals so let me hire somebody else to do it alongside with me and then I can double my growth if there's two of us. Yeah or even worse a lot of people think well I don't need a salesperson I can do it myself I just need more leads. And if you're listening and you're saying that, there's reason why you probably haven't had great growth or significant growth if you haven't and you're saying that. Not all leads are equal. We talk about this a lot. Reach out to us. Just give us a shout out on any social media. Just say leads to us and we'll send you our leads training for free or go to doorgo.com slash leads and watch this training and I break down how to get unlimited leads for free and why not all leads are equal. You don't. have to be paying anyone for leads. In fact, I recommend you don't because it slows down your BDM, it makes your BDM focus on the wrong strategies, and then your BDM is dealing with a lot of cold, unqualified leads from the internet that are the cheapest owners, that are the most difficult to manage, that have the highest operational cost, and are the most price sensitive. And this is why a lot of businesses and property management start to struggle and be unable to scale because of the types of clients and properties and owners that they're taking on. And the sales cycle time takes way longer than what our strategies are, way longer than warm leads. And so you don't want to give your BDM a pile of cold crappy leads from the internet and slow them down. And so they're not able to add easily 10, 20, 30 units a month. They need better strategy. Okay. Okay. So the uncomfortable thing is that if you do not have the right system, to plug a BDM or a salesperson into, you can hire as many of them as you want and they will still not work. So if you're trying to get a BDM in your business and grow the company without the right system in place for that BDM, it essentially is like saying, hey, I want to get in shape and I hired a personal trainer and then he's gonna do all the work. Yeah. Well, you have the right person, but it doesn't alleviate you from being involved and putting in work. So even if you have a BDM, you still have to be involved in it. It's not many times, it's not like, this BDM is just gonna come in and figure everything out and build everything and figure out what to do and how to do things and close the deals and everything's gonna be great. Yeah, normally it's not turnkey at all. I mean, I'll give you an example. I knew of a property management business here in Texas. They have since sold their business, but they had multiple BDMs. They had a whole bunch. They were shelling out a massive amount of money for cold leads and digital marketing. And they were paying for some sort of sales program that was very expensive with one of these big name gurus who I won't mention in sales. strategies and tactics are outdated and old school, pushy sales, manipulation type stuff. And they were just showing up a massive amount of money for client acquisition. It was ridiculous. And it wasn't really that effective. And they ended up selling the business because really the business was, it was just a numbers play. They were trying to stack in a bunch of doors just to get out and they exited. But, and ⁓ you know, on these, This was the CEO, this was somebody that was coaching in the industry, but the margins were really difficult and that was because they were taking on bad doors and bad clients. All right, so what do we want to share today? So what if? We're gonna play the what if game because this is what we did. And actually, this is something we had kicked around for a while and then I was talking actually with John and I said, this is this thought that I had, and what if it worked like this? But then what if we actually do it like this instead? And ⁓ then Jason and I had been kind of chatting about this, and we've developed this idea. I think it's something that we feel like we have to do for this industry. Because... Man, it just gets under my skin so bad when I see property managers doing everything wrong. And when I see them failing. And especially when they're trying so hard and it's still not getting them the results that they want. So what if there was a way to press the easy button and just have growth happen and you don't actually need to be involved in it at all? What if you were able to just have the company grow and you don't need to take any of the action. You don't need to be involved in the growth. You don't need to do any of the strategies. You don't need to buy leads. You really would just be closing a deal, having a conversation with somebody who has already warmed up and ready to go. which is I think what most people want when they say they want leads. Right. They say they want to leads. don't actually, you don't want leads. Let's be real. Easy lay down You don't want a lead because you have to work that lead. What you really want is you want someone to come to you and say, hello, I'm ready to sign up with you. And what do I need to do to make that happen? I get it because I was there. That's, I did not want to do sales in my business. And that was the only way after. I had grown it to a certain point. That was the only way I would sign on a new client is if they came to me and said, hi, I want you to be my property manager, but what do I need to do? Yeah, here, sign this. Here's the agreement. Lay it out. Easy deals. it. So I know that that's what you guys want is you just, you love the actual closing and the pitching of the deal. You don't like all of the other stuff. You don't like the outbound calls and the follow-ups and the scheduling and the rescheduling. and the nurturing and the warming up of the relationship. And a lot of times, networking, sometimes they like it and sometimes they don't. They're like, well, I don't know, I could kind of do that. But it's not really like you're forte. Really, you're like, I would love to just get on calls with people all day who are just ready to go. Yeah. They're just ready to go. So what if that was an option? That would be a game changer for this entire industry. and we would make a ton of money here at DoorGrowl and you, if you're one of our clients, would make a ton of money and it would be a win-win-win for all three parties. the salesperson would also make a ton of money. So with this idea, I feel like we can richen the entire industry, which is exciting to me. We will be creating multi-million dollar business owners with this new offer that we're going to be launching. We're calling it The Door Machine, that's our working title right now. So this is gonna be a game changer for the industry. If you are interested in maybe what this might be, because we don't wanna announce it yet. Yeah, I'm not fully... Then reach out to us. out to us and we're gonna be starting with our clients that have gone through our rapid revamp, where we rehab their business. These are clients that we've cleaned up their branding, their website, their sales pitch, their pricing, their purpose, which is the actual product. ⁓ We're rehabbing, it's like bar rescue for property managers. We're cleaning up the business. We are gonna start with them, because we need all the friction removed from the business. And a lot of your businesses have a lot of friction and a lot of problems and a lot of leaks in the hose, and you're thinking, how do I turn on the hose more? the host has these massive leaks. So we're going to be working with businesses that we've cleaned up the leaks first. They're going to get dibs to this. And so if you're interested in this, come to DoorGrow. We'll show you the leaks. We'll help you clean that up. And then you will be one of the people that can get access to the door machine where basically we give you the doors. We throw the doors at you. You have lay downs and your business can just scale and grow and We are almost like a partner with you. We're involved in the growth of your business and we'll help you grow it. These are doors you wouldn't have gotten otherwise and it's gonna be a no-brainer. So yeah, so reach out and let us know if you're interested. Anything else we wanna say about it? I don't think we're gonna give too much more We're keep it a little close to the best. Right now. Because it's not public yet. we haven't, it's... It hasn't been officially launched. We have chatted with a few of our clients about this so far and all of them said yeah, like I'm in, it. I'll give one other clue about something other than this that we're also doing. We're also going to be launching a new community, an advanced community, leveraging AI, leveraging AI tools, giving access to AI stuff that is going to be, I think, also a game changer for the industry. We're gonna be consolidating our Dorgo Club Facebook group, our Telegram community for clients into one platform that's gonna be a game changer for the industry. And we're figuring out some low dollar price points to get people in to this group so that you can easily get your first 10, 20 units, which would make affording our mastermind program easy, offset, a no-brainer, already paid for basically. And so these are some of the things on the horizon. and I've got some new team members helping me take sales off my plate. And so I'm gonna go deep into the rabbit hole of building all this stuff out. And we've got a really strong vision. think this is gonna be, this coming year for DoorGrow is gonna be one of the biggest, this will be the biggest. I think this year we may make as much money and have as much impact as we've had in the entire life of our business over the last decade and a half. So I think it's gonna be that significant. So I'm excited to see what we're able to create. and I think it's going to be a game changer. We've got some strategies where we're going contrarian in the opposite direction of AI. And we're leveraging AI, but I think the future is human. And I think depth is going to be the key to scalability. And we're going to be applying that to DoorGrow, and we're going to be helping our clients apply that. And it's going to be a game changer because the more AI slop and goop and grossness and junk that's out there because anything can be created now, the more humans are gonna matter if you do it in the right way. You gotta leverage, you gotta use AI. You gotta get on that AI stuff, but you gotta do it in the right way. And where you can use humans, where you should use humans, you gotta go all in on that. that's part of our strategy for the next year and beyond. So stay tuned, it's gonna be amazing. So anything else we should say before wrapping this up? ⁓ Nope, do you wanna talk about the newsletter? What about it? We have a newsletter. I'll mention it in our little outro here. Great. I don't know if that was in there. So I'll mention that. So for those of you that watching, listening, if you've ever felt stuck or stagnant in your property management business, you want to take it to the next level, reach out to us at drover.com. For a free training on how to get unlimited free leads, this leads training, you can just text the word leads to 512-648. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners by going to doorgrohclub.com. And if you would like to get the best ideas in property management, join our newsletter by going to doorgroh.com slash subscribe and get tips, ideas, Sarah writes stuff, I'll write stuff. Like you'll get some really good info from that. And if you found out, if you found this to be even a little bit helpful, any of our episodes, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. helps us reach others and help others. And until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

When creating your property management and lease agreements, there may be crucial pieces of information you are missing that could proactively protect you and your team… In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Tim Baldwin from Property Management Law Solutions to talk about proactive strategies like scheduled inspections, maintenance plans, helping landlords stay ahead of costly problems, avoiding crisis mode, ensuring long-term property health, and more. You'll Learn [3:06] Creating Effective Property Management Agreements [8:34] Mold Addendums, Resident Benefits Packages, & More [12:44] Building Efficient Property Management Systems Quotables "A lot of property management business owners view these contracts as just a protection that happens once you're legally at war with somebody. Instead of a proactive preemptive measure." "A lot of times it doesn't even matter what is written in the contract, it matters what they think is in the contract, the tenant or the owner." "We don't want to just be adding more bells and whistles and services if it's not actually going to be a profit center." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Tim Baldwin (00:00) property management companies need to make sure that both of those agreements really take their business from the beginning of how they operate to at the end of the tenancy and even the move out process and what governs those relationships. Jason Hull (00:00) sure, property management companies need to make sure that both of those agreements really take their business from the beginning of how they operate to the end of the tenancy and even the move out process and what governs those All right, I am Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. We talked to thousands of property management business owners. We've coached hundreds. helping them figure out how to grow their business. And at DoorGrow, we believe good property managers can change the world and that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. We are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now, let's get into the show. So today, I'm hanging out with Tim Baldwin, welcome Tim. Thank you, Jason. And Tim is with a company called Property Management Law Solutions. So Tim, give the audience a little bit of background about you and how you kind of got connected to property management, how you kind of started into entrepreneurism. Give us a little bit of your journey. Yeah. Tim Baldwin (01:05) Thank you, Jason. Yeah, so I am an attorney in Florida. I've been licensed to practice law for almost 22 years. I started out as a prosecutor when I was just out of law school. And then in 2006, I started my own practice. And when I did that, I wanted to enter into an area of law that really there weren't a lot of attorneys practicing. And so that led me to property managers, property management itself, and to the landlord business. Jason Hull (01:42) enter Got it. Okay, cool. Yeah. Tim Baldwin (01:54) Since 2006, I really have specialized primarily in this area of law. And so for the past 20 years, I have developed a clientele throughout the state of Florida with my law firm, which is Property Management Law Solutions. And we help landlords, property owners, apartments, and property management companies across the state of Florida. Jason Hull (02:18) And Florida usually is right in line with all the new stuff going on. There's California and Florida. So I'm sure you see some of the new stuff that's probably headed your way from California eventually maybe. Tim Baldwin (02:27) You We're sort of on a different spectrum, I guess you might say in California, but yeah. Jason Hull (02:38) Yeah, yeah, totally. So, okay, well, yeah, I'm really interested in getting into the topic at hand. we're gonna be talking about. proactive strategies like scheduled inspections, maintenance plans, helping landlords stay ahead of costly problems, avoiding crisis mode, ensuring long-term property health, and several other things. There's a lot. So where should we begin? Tim Baldwin (03:06) I think the place to begin really for property managers and landlords is making sure they have the foundations correct. And I think a huge part of that is the lease agreement. The lease agreement is the operations document essentially. And that's where every property manager really should start when it comes to managing property. if you want to head dive into that, I'd be glad to talk about that topic. Jason Hull (03:12) sure they have the foundations correct. Yeah, let's do it. Tim Baldwin (03:30) Well, like I said, it is the foundational document, just the operational document you have with tenants. And Jason, what I've seen throughout the years is sort of this common theme that landlords, property managers don't quite understand the significance of the lease and how ⁓ to see it as their business document, as their operations document, because that document is what Jason Hull (03:30) Well, like I said, it is the foundational. you know this was seen throughout the years is sort of this common theme that landlords that you know property manager managers I don't quite understand the significance of the lease and how to how to see it as their business document as their operations document because that document is what you know obligates the tenants to act or not act in a certain way. Tim Baldwin (03:58) obligates the tenants to act or not act in a certain way. It gives the landlords the enforcement mechanism to run their business the way that they want to run it, as long as it's in compliance with the statute, of course. And so that part of it is ⁓ just absolutely critical. And it should address all of the various topics and ⁓ parts of the property management business that property managers see Jason Hull (04:03) It gives the landlords the enforcement mechanism to run their business the way that they want to run it as long as it's in compliance with the statute of course. Sure. And so that part of it is just absolutely critical and it should address all of the various topics and parts of the property management business that property managers see not just from a day to day standpoint but also the Tim Baldwin (04:27) not just from a day-to-day standpoint, but also the sort of the more rare instances or the occasions where it are unusual, but yet the lease still addresses those topics. Jason Hull (04:31) So are there more rare instances or the occasions where it are unusual but yet the lease still addresses those topics? Yeah, so Tim, I totally agree with you. One of the challenges I see is that usually when it comes to contracts, lot of property management business owners view these contracts as just a protection that happens once you're legally at war with somebody. Instead of a proactive preemptive measure, of setting boundaries and expectations that can create a healthier relationship. so a lot of times it doesn't even matter what is written in the contract, it matters what they think is in the contract, the tenant or the owner. And so this is why we coach our clients on making sure that you do a review through the entire agreement with them and you use that as, like you're saying, as a document to help change things operationally. You go through with them and explain to the tenant, this is what we expect from you. This is when rents due. This is the consequence. Do you understand this? Because it matters what they understand is in the agreement if you want them to be a better tenant or better owner. Otherwise, the document's really just a tool to go to war with somebody once you're in complete chaos. And there's a major issue. And we don't want to be in those situations. We want agreements. And yes, we want to protect ourselves. Tim Baldwin (05:39) Absolutely. Yeah. Jason Hull (05:52) But even better is if we use it as an onboarding tool. Tim Baldwin (05:56) You know, you're exactly right. mean, the education part of this is critical so that tenants know what to expect and sort of preparing onboarding documents that of course reflect what the lease provides. And sort of in tandem with that is the property management agreement itself. So property managers, knowing what they want in their business, knowing how they're going to operate, you mentioned inspections, know, having the criteria of when it is that you're going to inspect the property. Jason Hull (05:56) Yeah, we are. sort of entanglement with that is Tim Baldwin (06:24) You know, if there's ⁓ additional inspections that may come up, whether it's owner requested or maybe it's an incidental that requires you to go inspect. So the property management agreement is just as important on the owner's side of things. And the lease in the property management agreement need to align with each other because you don't want to obligate yourself sort of on one end with the property management agreement, but then not have those enforcement mechanisms on the tenant side of things within the lease agreement. Jason Hull (06:24) ⁓ You know, there's additional inspections that may come up whether it's only requested or maybe it's an incidental that requires you to go expect so that the property management agreement is just as important important on the owner's side of things and the lease in the property management agreement needs to align with each other because you don't want to obviate yourself sort of on one end with the property management agreement but then not have those enforcement mechanisms on the tenant side of things within the lease agreement. Got it, yeah. So if it's important for the tenant and the owners agreements for them to be able to understand these, how important is it for these documents to be plain language versus legal speak? Tim Baldwin (07:10) Well, I mean, it's hard to get away from some of the legal speak if you want to call it that just because it's just like whenever you go close on a property. mean, you know, probably your audience is very familiar with that. I mean, there's just document after document. know, so it obviously can be put in plain terms, but it's not even so much about whether it's going to put in plain terms versus legalese, but rather which subject matter is going to be addressed. That's the more important part of either one of these agreements, the property management agreement or the lease agreement. And so really, ⁓ landlords out there need to make sure, property management companies need to make sure that both of those agreements really take their business from the beginning of how they operate to at the end of the tenancy and even the move out process and what governs those relationships. Jason Hull (07:37) either one of these agreements, the property management agreement or the lease agreement. so really landlords out there need to make sure, property management companies need to make sure that both of those agreements really take their business from the beginning of how they operate to the end of the tenancy and even the move out process and what governs those relationships. Got it. So if they've got these really great agreements in place, hopefully maybe the language is easy enough for them to be able to read it and understand it a bit so it's not super thick like some of the business stuff I've signed in the past. And then, and it's got like all these proactive things like inspections, rent increases are built in and some of these things that it prevents later problems and later challenges. so they don't run into these scenarios where now it's a battle or someone's upset or there's a new negotiation that has to happen. What are some of the most critical things that you're seeing that people need to be putting into these agreements? Tim Baldwin (08:40) Well, aside from just what you might consider to be the typical areas of interest in a lease agreement, what we're seeing a lot nowadays and really for the past few years, a really significant increase in tenant complaints with regard to mold. It's a really, really hot issue. And so having a mold addendum that really... provides the nuts and bolts of what is the obligation of the landlord and the tenant when it comes to a claim for mold. ⁓ It's kind of a fact I just did a podcast or a seminar, mean, a seminar on this ⁓ last week ⁓ on this issue. And because really this is a topic that for years attorneys did not, I don't think even myself included, didn't really properly... Jason Hull (09:02) I when it comes to a claim for more. It's kind of that type of just need a podcast or a seminar, mean a seminar on this last week on this issue. And because really this is a topic that for years, attorneys did not, don't think even myself included, didn't really properly address to the fullest. But since we see it so regularly now, we have a motor venom that provides for what the... Tim Baldwin (09:27) addressed to the fullest. But since we see it so regularly now, you know, we have a molded end of that provides for what the parties are to do in that event. So that's, that's a really big one. You mentioned maintenance. That's another big win ⁓ to where landlords need to be able to put some of the minor maintenance obligations on tenants because what is what's happening. And I'm sure your audience has experienced this before. Jason Hull (09:37) to in that event. So that's a really big one. You mentioned maintenance. That's another big one to where landlords need to be able to put some of the minor maintenance obligations on tenants because what's happening, and I'm sure your audience has experienced this before, is that the tenants expect the landlords to just do everything, mean, down to changing out a light bulb. So if those things are not addressed in the lease, the landlords can really... Tim Baldwin (09:54) is that the tenants expect the landlords to just do everything. I down to changing out a light bulb. And so if those things are not addressed in the lease, the landlords can really find themselves spinning their wheels and just having a hard time with informing the tenants, no, this is your responsibility. But if they can't point to it in a lease, it becomes problematic for the landlord. So those are two big issues that we see a whole lot. Jason Hull (10:05) So just making sure there's really strong clarity related to maintenance, clarity related to mold. Mold's got to be a big issue in Florida. You guys have crazy humidity there. ⁓ Tim Baldwin (10:31) Yeah. Yeah. Jason Hull (10:34) Not as big a deal in California, Tim Baldwin (10:34) It is. Jason Hull (10:35) which is pretty dry, but yeah, still an issue. Anything else that you're seeing? What about maybe like, there's been a lot of push in the last several years for resident benefits packages and putting some additional fees onto the tenants? Tim Baldwin (10:52) Yeah, yeah, the revenue stream is very important, of course, for property management companies and they're trying to figure out ways of creating those additional revenue centers. And one of them is, of course, tenant benefit packages. There's a variety of vendors that try to sort of pull those together into one package so that whatever it is that they're providing to the tenants, you can sort of get it all in one place. Some property management companies are creating sort of ⁓ Jason Hull (11:07) Mm-hmm. whatever it is that they're providing to the tenants, you can sort of keep it all in one place. Some popular companies are creating ⁓ Tim Baldwin (11:21) those incidentals on their own, whether it's insurance coverage, certain amenities, credit building, Jason Hull (11:21) those incidentals on their own. Whether it's insurance coverage, I'm sorry. ⁓ Filters. Yeah, credit building. Yeah. Tim Baldwin (11:35) online portals, and these types of things. sort of this bulk. And then, of course, you've got to price it out correctly to make sure you're not losing money. Jason Hull (11:37) these types of things are sort of this ball. And then of course you gotta price it out correctly to make sure you're not losing money. Tim Baldwin (11:44) Another thing that ⁓ is fairly common and popular nowadays is sort of having these legal services, not legal services, but they're helping to reduce the cost of legal expenses in the event you have an eviction, covering costs or if you want to cover rent that the tenant hasn't paid up to Jason Hull (11:45) Another thing that is fairly common in popular nowadays is sort of having these legal service, they're not legal services, but they're helping to reduce the cost of legal expenses and eventually have an addiction covering costs or if you wanna cover rent that the tenant hasn't paid. Tim Baldwin (12:05) a certain amount. There's all these types of things that are ⁓ becoming more more popular, but as I... Jason Hull (12:06) up to a certain amount, know, all these types of things that are becoming more more popular. as I say to everybody that comes to me in this regard, you really got to make sure you're punching the numbers properly. You don't want to be losing money. And sometimes it has to do with how many properties you manage because you can leverage the numbers to create a bigger and better benefit for the tenants as well as for the property owners. Tim Baldwin (12:13) say to every client that comes to me in this regard, you really got to make sure you're crunching the numbers properly. You don't want to be losing money and sometimes it has to do with how many properties you manage because you can leverage the numbers to create a bigger and better benefit for the tenants as well as for the property owners. Jason Hull (12:34) Yeah, that makes sense. Obviously, we don't want to just be adding more more bells and whistles and services if it's not actually going to be a profit center, if we're going to be losing money. Cool. So now you mentioned, you know, in preparation for this, you know, it says, Tim will also discuss how consistency, documentation, structured maintenance routines. Tim Baldwin (12:43) Exactly. Jason Hull (12:55) not only prevent maintenance, like prevent emergencies, but also build lasting value and trust with tenants. And so let's get into that a little bit. Tim Baldwin (13:03) Yeah, well everything that the property manager does really needs to be mapped out. Again, starting from the very beginning of creating this tenancy all the way through to the end of it is that the property managers need to know, you know, here's what I'm going to inspect. These are the services that we're going to provide. This is how we're going to process towards end of the lease processes. For an example, requiring tenants who are already placed Jason Hull (13:04) Yeah, who are already placed to apply again to make sure that they still qualify to renew that lease. So having all of these touchstones, if you will, throughout the tenancy, those things really need to be mapped out in advance, put into your calendar, having the proper forms that relate to whatever it is that you're doing so you can notify the tenant, hey, this is coming up, or hey, we're going to be here doing this, or hey, the end of your lease is coming up. Tim Baldwin (13:28) to apply again, to make sure that they still qualify to renew that lease. So having all of these touchstones, if you will, throughout the tenancy, those things really need to be mapped out in advance, put into your calendar, having the proper forms that relate to whatever it is that you're doing so you can notify the tenant, hey, this is coming up, or hey, we're gonna be here doing this, ⁓ or hey, the end of your lease is coming up, we need to know what you're going to do. ⁓ Jason Hull (13:55) We need to know what you're going to do. Tim Baldwin (13:58) It really is, ⁓ the structure itself helps to reduce the amount of wasted time. It sort of seems oxymoronic to say, if I put more effort into the management, into the steps of the process, that's gonna take time. But in reality, when you make it a system and these things become automatic, and that it becomes part of what your team does on Jason Hull (13:58) it really is the structure itself helps to reduce the amount of wasted time. It sort of seems oxymoronic to say, if I put more effort into the management, into the steps of the process, that's going to take time. But in reality, when you make it a system, these things become automatic in that it becomes part of what your team does. Tim Baldwin (14:22) the routine, it does reduce a lot of time with confusion. Jason Hull (14:22) on the routine, does reduce a lot of time with confusion, Tim Baldwin (14:27) know, miscommunication, missing things that you should have caught, and then making sure that you know which tenants should be renewed and which ones shouldn't be renewed. So all these things work together to make management a more efficient system. Jason Hull (14:27) miscommunication, missing things that you should have caught, and then making sure that you know which tenants should be renewed and which ones shouldn't be renewed. So all these things work together to make management a more efficient system. Got it. So a lot of property managers probably initially tried to do everything themselves. That's like what entrepreneurs do. They're like, I'll figure it out. Tim Baldwin (14:48) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jason Hull (14:51) I'll go ask AI, I'll go watch some YouTube videos. I don't know if I need a lawyer. I don't know. And they try and figure this stuff out themselves. What are some of the challenges that you see that kind of reveal to you why your business exists? Obviously your business exists to solve some real problems. So why would they need PM Law Solutions? Tim Baldwin (15:14) Well, it's kind of like what you're doing in the sense that when you have a service that's servicing a need for property managers, you're the professional, you have the training, you have the experience, you have the knowledge to help managers deal with really what they shouldn't have to be dealing with on the day to day. So from my standpoint, of course, property managers are not lawyers. Well, it's more than just law. Jason Hull (15:38) It's more than just law. It's seeing the big picture, it's seeing the full scope of how you get from point A to point Z seamlessly, efficiently, with productivity. And so having the professionals to help you streamline what you're doing, make sure you're doing it properly, make sure you're doing it to reduce the risks of liability is all part of what a professional should be helping you with, whether it's an attorney or even somebody like yourself who says, you want to grow? Tim Baldwin (15:39) It's seeing the big picture, it's seeing the full scope of how you get from point A to point Z seamlessly, efficiently, with productivity. And so having the professionals to help you streamline what you're doing, make sure you're doing it properly, make sure you're doing it to reduce the risks of liability ⁓ is all part of what a professional should be helping you with, whether it's an attorney or even somebody like yourself who says, hey, you want to grow? you want more business, you want to be able to do it with more profit, then these are the steps you need to be taking. So any professional that's servicing that kind of a company, first of all, they should have something that they're providing that is the benefit and it has the value that they're paying for that service. Jason Hull (16:08) you want more business, you want to be able to do it for a profit, and these are the steps you need to be taking. So any professional that's servicing that kind of a company, first of all, they should have something that they're providing that is the benefit and it has the value that they're paying for that service. So what are some of the, I'd love you to tell the audience a little bit about property management law solutions and why they should maybe entertain a conversation with you. why your company might be beneficial, how you could help them with some of the stuff we've been chatting about. Tell us a little bit about the business. Tim Baldwin (16:44) Yeah, well, this is our specialty. So everything that we do in this office is designed to help landlords, property owners in their rental business. We do some other things as well, real estate related, but the bulk of what we do is helping property management companies and landlords. so, ⁓ you know, again, it's setting up your system and your business correctly. It's getting those foundational documents. Also, you're getting sort of that library of resources and knowledge that you need. Jason Hull (16:58) And so, ⁓ you know, again, sort of that library of resources and knowledge that you need, the training and education so that you're ⁓ managing properties the proper way. And so we can spot issues anytime you run into a situation where, hey, what do I do? This is what the tenant is saying. I'm not sure, you know, what is my standing here? What is my position here? How do I reduce my risk of liability? That's what an attorney who specializes in this area can help them do. Tim Baldwin (17:10) the training and education so that you're ⁓ managing properties the proper way. And so ⁓ we can spot issues anytime you run into a situation to where, what do I do? This is what the tenant is saying. I'm not sure. You know, what is my standing here? What is my position here? How do I reduce my risk of liability? That's what an attorney who specializes in this area can help them do. Not to mention help them with, again, the streamlining aspect of what they do because Jason Hull (17:35) not to mention help them with the streamlining aspect of what they do because property management business itself as you well know Jason is one that you have to really work on those margins to make sure that you're making a profit. So when you're wasting time and you're spending money unnecessarily it really can eat into that profit margin. So property management companies have us on retainer. Tim Baldwin (17:40) Property management, the property management business itself, as you well know, Jason, is one that you have to really work on those margins to make sure that you're making a profit. And so when you're wasting time and you're spending money unnecessarily, it really can eat into that profit margin. So property management companies ⁓ have us on retainer to really help them make sure that they're doing business the right way in that regard. We help them with ⁓ drafting those documents they need. Jason Hull (18:02) to really help them make sure that they're doing business the right way in that regard. We help them with drafting those documents they Tim Baldwin (18:09) with giving that legal advice. If they ever do have a legal contest or dispute in some way, we step in to help resolve it quickly, to try to avoid litigation, to resolve matters before they get out of hand. So having a law firm really help you at the beginning of things and earlier on tends to really help them save a lot of money and a lot of waste Jason Hull (18:09) need, with giving that legal advice. If they ever do have a legal contest or dispute in some way, we step in and help resolve it quickly to try to avoid litigation, to resolve matters before they get out of hand. So having a law firm really help you at the beginning of things and earlier on tends to really help them save a lot of money. Tim Baldwin (18:32) of time. Jason Hull (18:32) Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Prevents a lot of major problems and major headaches later that could be very costly in terms of time and money. Got it. Cool. Well, Tim, I appreciate you coming here and hanging out with us on the DoorGrow show. Real quick word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by KRS SmartBooks, the bookkeeping team, property manager's trust when they're serious about growth. So listen, the holidays are busy enough. Tim Baldwin (18:38) Yeah, absolutely. Jason Hull (18:55) The last thing you need heading into January is another month of messy books, trust accounts that might be off, or owners blowing up your inbox asking why their statements don't make sense. KRS SmartBooks fixes that. They specialize in property management, accounting and app folio, building and yardie, propertyware and more. They make sure your financials are clean, compliant and ready for growth so you can focus on scaling your portfolio. And here's your end of year win. If you enroll before December 31st, you'll get 30 % off your first month of bookkeeping. That's real savings and a real chance to start the new year with clarity instead of chaos. Visit krsbooks.com and mention DoorGrow on your intake form to unlock your discount. So, in final words, like in wrapping up, what would you like to say to all the property management business owners out there that are maybe relevant to your business, you only deal with Florida, correct? For now. For now, okay. Okay, so if they're Florida property manager, if they're not a Florida property manager currently, where would you send people? Like how do they find somebody that's gonna be a good resource similar to you in another state? Well, the association is... Tim Baldwin (19:44) For now, we are expanding outside of Florida, but yes. Well, the associations, ⁓ apartment associations, residential property management association may have some referrals in that way. And so I would probably start there. You can look at the bar association websites in those states to see if there are attorneys who hold themselves out as experts or specialists in that area of law. Those are two common ways of doing it. Obviously you could do a Google search, but trying to find someone. Jason Hull (20:11) Okay. and hold. you can do Google search but trying to find someone and I would encourage your audience to find the right law firm that fits the way you like to do business, who fits your personality, that you can easily communicate with, that you're able to get in contact with them in fairly short order. Those are critical components of having a landlord attorney because in that business things can happen and do happen. Tim Baldwin (20:27) I would encourage your audience to find the right law firm that fits the way you like to do business, who fits your personality, that you can easily communicate with, that you're able to get in contact with them in fairly short order. Those are critical components of having a landlord attorney because in that business, things can happen and do happen very quickly and so having a timely response is important. So you might reach out to other companies or other landlords that you know in your network, start asking for referrals, do an interview, contact the law firm, ask them if you can talk to them about what they can provide to you, what their cost is, obviously, and see if that is a good fit for you. Jason Hull (21:13) Got it. So if they're in Florida, how do they get in touch with you? Tim Baldwin (21:18) Several ways they can look us up on our website which is PMLawSolutions.com. You can also go to LinkedIn, look at my name, Tim Baldwin, or Property Management Law Solutions. You can find me on LinkedIn. if you want to call our office, you can do that as well at 850-857-2463. Jason Hull (21:31) speak. But if you want to call our office, you can do that as well at 850-857-2463. Perfect. All right, Tim, appreciate you coming out and hanging out here with me here on the DoorGrow show. My pleasure, Jason. Thank you. All right. So for those of you, if you are struggling to figure out how to grow your property management business, we are the best in the world at that here at DoorGrow. Tim Baldwin (21:44) My pleasure, Jason. Thank you. Jason Hull (21:55) Reach out to us. would love to see if we could help and take a look at your business if you want to get to the next level. If you would like a free training on how to get unlimited leads for free, text the word leads to 512-648-4608 and we'll send it to you. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners by going to doorgrowclub.com. And if you would like to get the best ideas in property management, join our newsletter. at doorgrow.com slash subscribe. And if you found this episode even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on whatever channel you saw this or heard this on. We'd really appreciate it. And until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

Many property management entrepreneurs who want to grow their businesses do not personally enjoy being a salesperson or BDM (business development manager). If you are in this situation, you might know that you need to hire a BDM… but do you have the resources and time to do so? In this quick episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull share a sneak peek of the Door Machine™, a program where DoorGrow vets, hires, trains, and supports rockstar property management BDMs to grow your business for you. You'll Learn [1:39] How to Automate Growing Your Property Management Business Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason Hull (00:00) All right, what's up everybody? This is Jason Hull and Sarah Hull with the DoorGrow Show. So we're gonna skip the intro today because it is the day after Thanksgiving. It's Black Friday when we're recording this. We do have a Black Friday deal, but you probably already missed out on it, because you probably might not have been paying attention, or if you got it, congratulations. But we do have something in the works we wanted to talk about that I think is gonna be a game changer, really cool. And I'll tell you about it in just a second. But before we do that, Quick word from our sponsor, which is Vendoroo. Many of you tell me maintenance is probably the least enjoyable part of being a property manager and definitely the most time consuming. But what if you could cut that workload by up to 85 %? That's exactly what Vendoroo has achieved. They're cutting edge AI technology to handle nearly all your maintenance tasks from initiating work orders and troubleshooting to coordinating with vendors and reporting. This AI doesn't just automate, it becomes your ideal and learning your preferences and executing tasks flawlessly, never needing a day off and never quitting. This frees you up to focus on critical tasks that really move the needle for your business, whether that's refining operations, expanding your portfolio, or even just taking a well-deserved break. Over half the room at last year's DoorGrow Live conference signed up with Vendero, right then and there. A year later, they're not just satisfied, they're raving. about how Vendoroo has transformed their business. So don't let maintenance drag you down. Step up your property management game with Vendoroo. Visit vendoroo.ai/doorgrow today and make this the last maintenance hire you'll ever need. All right. Let's get into it. So the exciting news that we wanted to talk about is we have this new thing called. Oh, I don't know what we're going it. We're going to call it the DoorGrow Money machine. Door machine. The door, okay, was, the money machine is the same. It's basically a money machine for your business. We're calling it the door machine. Why? Because this is a system that we're installing in your business that brings you money. Basically, we've seen a lot of challenges. People try hiring or struggle to hire a BDM. They try to get, find somebody to do sales for their business and they struggle to keep this person accountable. They struggle to find the right person. we've got the hiring down. So we're placing BDMs into businesses. And sometimes they work out because the business owner is engaged, they support them, they know how to train them and it works out. But sometimes the BDM could be great, but the business owner isn't keeping them accountable. They don't know whether the BDM is doing a good job or not. They just don't know how to best support them or train them. So the challenge is that we wanted to solve is how could we put a BDM into a business, but that BDM is accountable to us. Like we're responsible for them. That BDM has to be paid by us, we figured out. Like if we're gonna control them and get them to do the right things and get them to have the right incentives, the right training, we need to be in control of it because when our clients, a lot of the business owners are in control of these BDMs, they fall short of doing a good job at training them, keeping them accountable, supporting them, et cetera. because you're busy, you have a lot of stuff on your plate. You don't have time to babysit a new BDM. Right. A of yeah. And a lot of times you're getting a BDM because you maybe aren't good at sales or you don't enjoy it. So you trying to train them is kind of like the blind leading the blind. And so we're going to help with this. that's... ⁓ say too much more than that because we're still figuring out the details. We did give a very very sneak preview to one of our clients who before we even got done explaining it he said like eight times he's like I'm in. Yeah just sign me up. sign me Take my money, do it. So he's like yeah I think we're on the right track and it's going to be revolutionary to the industry and the BDM side specifically which I'm really excited about. I'm tired of seeing broke property managers and I'm tired of seeing property managers struggle with hiring. So I think we're just going to step in and fix it. This is the announcement. So by the time you hear this recording or if you see this live, reach out to us and say, hey, I want to hear about the DoorGrow door. What is it? Engine? Machine. DoorGrow door machine. So find out about the door machine. Yeah. money machine, maybe it'll be the money machine. But ask us about the machine, right? And we'll know what you're talking about. And we can let you know the details and I think it'll be pretty exciting. this will be a game changer. It lowers your risk and it helps us make money, you make money, BDM make money. It's a win-win-win for everybody. All right, that's our sneak peek. We are thankful for you all. Thank you for your support. Thank you for... and caring about what we do. Thank you for changing the industry. And I am really excited to do more of that. That's what we're all about here. those of you that are along for the crazy ride in the property management industry, we appreciate it. All right, that's it. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.

How much money has water damage cost your owners? How much time and money could you save if you were able to detect issues within a property before they became a larger problem? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Nadav Schnall to explore how innovative water and gas leak detection systems are transforming residential property management and to share how these technologies can prevent costly damage, protect tenants, and streamline maintenance operations for property managers. You'll Learn [1:14] Nadav Schnall's Background in Property Management [05:06] Innovative Solutions for Leak Detection [11:07] Understanding the Technology Behind Pro Sentry [17:25] Implementing Smart Detection Systems Quotables "If something goes unchecked, somebody's out of town, there's a water leak, I mean, it can just do massive damage." "The responsibility of a property manager is to make sure the building is operating properly, to make sure it's operating efficiently, to mitigate damages, to mitigate risks." "Time is of the essence when something like this happens." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Nadav Schnall (00:00) No need for displacement, no need to wake up in the middle of the night, come back to a flooded home. So we can solve all that Jason Hull (00:05) All right. Welcome everybody. I am Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. We have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of businesses. helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profits, simplify operations. And we run the leading property management mastermind with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world and that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. 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. Today, my guest is Nadav Schnall. Welcome, Nadav Nadav Schnall (01:14) Thank you for having me, Jason. Jason Hull (01:15) All right, so your company is called ProSentry. We're going to be getting into that. But before we chat about our topic today, which is protect, prevent, perform smart leak detection for modern property managers, tell us a little bit about your background, how you got into entrepreneurism and what finally led you. Nadav Schnall (01:33) Sure, happy to provide some background. So my background is actually in property management. I was a property manager for about a decade for First Service Residential in New York City. I had their kind of luxury. group or luxury division. So I did a lot of consulting for developers and lot of property management, opening buildings, know, placing staff, making sure buildings kind of transition from construction to operation. So that was really the lion's share of my background as it relates to property management. Then I went into and opened another company that had to do with the service industry, kind of fire suppression systems, mechanicals, kind of the the heart of a building, so to speak. And that led me to connect with my co-founder and business partner, John Russ, who is a builder in New York City. I've known him for probably about 15 years. And we came together to do this idea. So really very much so kind of experiencing firsthand. what we are trying to solve and that's kind how I got into the world of entrepreneurship and into the world of ProSentry Jason Hull (02:35) Got it. All right. Thanks for the background. So you're an expert. This is your bio, an expert in smart building monitoring. We're going to chat about exploring how innovative water and gas leak detection systems are transforming residential property management and maybe share how these technologies can prevent costly damage, protect tenants, streamline maintenance operations for property managers from boosting safety to increasing operational efficiency. And in today's episode, you'll get to learn how smart monitoring is reshaping the way you care for your properties and your bottom line. So cool. I'm excited to get into this. So, so now, Nadav, where, where do we start? Nadav Schnall (03:15) Well, we can probably start in property management. And I can tell you how many times I would wake up in the morning and I'd be checking my phone and then find that I have emails from last night that there was a leak in the building or my super calling me at two o'clock in the morning saying, hey, we had a flood or someone, there was a construction going on and someone left a window open and some pipe froze. Jason Hull (03:19) Okay. Nadav Schnall (03:42) And so that's kind of where it started for me, kind of really looking into these operational issues, which in today's day and age with technology, you are able to solve. And so that's where the journey started for me is really trying to look at properties and saying, how can we help common day-to-day occurrences? More so you look at the insurance industries and that's one of the... biggest pluses that we try to bring to the table is trying to helping buildings with insurance. Water leaks are non-weather related water leaks are typically the top three causes for insurance claims. And many times it's the number one reason for insurance claims. And so you look at these things and you're saying, there is technology out there. There is ways to substantially reduce that. How do we do that, improve the day-to-day work of property managers? reduce insurance claims for buildings, reduce insurance rates and premiums, and also improve the life of the residents and tenants that live within. No need for displacement, no need to wake up in the middle of the night, come back to a flooded home. So we can solve all that and we focus in the multifamily. That's kind of our main focus. Jason Hull (04:53) Yeah, Yeah, I mean, if something goes unchecked, somebody's out of town, there's a water leak, I mean, it can just do massive damage. Yeah, so how do we mitigate that? Nadav Schnall (05:04) Yeah, so I can tell you a little bit about the technology and what we do and how we do it. first of all, traditional systems that existed so far were really based on Wi-Fi, which is a big difference. And they were more geared towards maybe something that you would do for your house or maybe something you would do for your apartment. But how do you resolve that in a multifamily world, right? Where even if I am the most responsible resident in the building and I put water leak detection and temperature and humidity and maybe gas, you put all detection technologies in your apartment, you can still get leaked on from your apartment above. Something can still happen. And you just said it, right? A resident that may be away. And we have this actually. is an actual... know, claim that we were able to avoid. In a building, someone, you know, it was a vacant apartment, a realtor came in to show the apartment, walked out to the terrace. It was a classic wintery day. Didn't close the door all the way. Realtor left, came in, blew the apartment door open and the temperatures started going down and going down and going down. Luckily that building had ProSentry and that building was notified when the temperatures hit about 50 degrees and the resident manager of that building got the notification today that doesn't sound right. Of course, checked the records, found out there was a vacant apartment, ran upstairs, saw that the door was open, was able to close the door, turn on the heat before frozen pipes. But otherwise you would have had frozen pipe and that could have easily knocked out 10 apartments insurance claims and so on and so forth. So I think that's kind of one of the biggest areas where we can save. And the nice part about that is insurance carriers are starting to recognize us and starting to recognize that we are actually reducing claims inside buildings. We're doing that across the board. We recently did a study across 18 months. We took a bunch of properties and we wanted to see what happened in those properties across an 18 month period. we alerted those properties to over 6,000 different types of water events, right? Whether it's water or, you know, could be some, some of it can be just be drizzling. Some of could be, you know, a condensate drain and an HVAC unit overflowing, right? So different types of leaks. And then we followed up with the properties. Not one of those buildings and any of those water events resulted in an insured claim. And so we were able to actually prove to the insurance world that this is a risk mitigative tool and actually the service that we provide, we like to call it risk mitigation as a service. ⁓ And by doing that, we've been able to help several buildings either move from kind of E &S, Excessive Surplus insurance policies over to admitted carriers, which of course are substantially cheaper. Jason Hull (07:27) Yeah. Nadav Schnall (07:41) or just simply being able to reduce insurance rates, right? You presented a certain risk before, now you present this risk. And so it can help properties both on the operation side, the maintenance side, but also on the insurance side. And I know I said a lot. Jason Hull (07:53) Yeah. No, that's, no, that sounds very fascinating. So I can see how this would be very important. So if the insurance companies are not having to do anything on these claims, then you would think they would be very incentivized to get people to implement this. Nadav Schnall (08:10) That's 100%. So in New York State, for example, where we have a lot of presidents, especially in New York City, we work with a number of carriers that provide anywhere from, this is on the homeowner side, but anywhere from 3 % up all the way up to 12 % premium reductions. year over year on your homeowners insurance policy. So if you have a building and let's say there's 100 apartments, if you happen to be insured with one of these insurance carriers, you will receive a discount on your premium year over year. their ROI is right there. And then of course we can help on the underlying building insurance policy as well. Jason Hull (08:50) Got it, okay. So what are the benefits for the, that's obviously a benefit for the property owner, right? What are the benefits for the property manager? Nadav Schnall (09:00) So, I mean, the obvious would be peace of mind, right? Because at the end of the day, the responsibility of a property manager is to make sure the building is operating properly, to make sure it's operating efficiently, to mitigate damages, to mitigate risks. And so the advantages of property managerial, first of all, you're able to see what happens in your entire building. So you'll have a dashboard. You'll be able to see each one of our sensing technologies. And I think we've heavily focused so far on water leak detection and maybe temperature detection, which is really, you know, these are one of our biggest sellers, but we do anything from water to gas to oil leaks, to mechanical malfunctions, environmental issues, even rodents. So we have a lot. know, thermostat. So we have different types of technologies all surrounded under our platform. And so the property manager will be able to see all these sensing, all these sensors across this entire building on one, on one dashboard. It will substantially reduce damages, right? So from a... to do share responsibility to the building. is very important, but more so it also gives peace of mind, right? That you know that this apartment or this building or this area, because a lot of our installations are mechanical equipment, right? We have a building that had a couple of leaks coming from the mechanical systems. Every time there was a leak there, it leaked into the elevators. The elevators went out, had to call the elevator company out, had to file another insurance claim. And every time that's there, the amount of time the property managers have to spend to deal with an incident like this, right? It doesn't only start with mitigating the damage itself. You gotta mitigate the damage, you gotta communicate with all the apartment owners, you gotta let them know what's going on. Then they have repairs, they have to coordinate with contractors, they have to file insurance claims, they have to file reports, they have to talk to their boards or their building owners. So there's a lot there. By installing a system like this, it gives you lot of peace of mind and saves you a lot of time. Jason Hull (10:46) So less damage, less work for the property manager, less stress in having to deal with frustrated owners, frustrated tenants. Yeah, so win-win all the way around. So you had mentioned a few things that this equipment can send for. So could you go over all those for us? Nadav Schnall (11:04) Yeah, sure. It's 100%. So we have, you maybe I started off a little bit in the beginning, we talked about Wi-Fi, but I really complete that thought. So I can start high level. So. First of all, what we use is use a technology called LoRaWAN. LoRaWAN stands for long range wide area network. So it's very similar to Wi-Fi in the sense that it is a wireless technology that we can communicate over this wireless network that it creates. But indifferent than Wi-Fi, has a couple of major differences, which is huge for buildings, huge for properties, right? Especially existing buildings where you're trying to retrofit a system, which of course you're very sensitive to, right? Because if you're... You know, if you're doing property management in a multifamily residential building and you have to access every single apartment, no one wants to like start running electricity or opening walls. It has to be really easy to deploy. You come in and come out under 10 minutes. That's what you're looking to do. So this technology, LoRaWAN, what it does is it is a very strong frequency. So the advantage is it can penetrate brick, mortar, you know. concrete, steel, whatever, whatever inside a building. And you can use one of these gateways. Gateways are similar to what we would call in the Wi-Fi world as like a router. So you would install one of those every maybe three to six floors, I would say, as opposed to a traditional router where you put it in an apartment, you have one for the entire apartment. The downside to it is that you can stream a lot of data on it. So it's great for the world of IoT and the world of sensors because you don't have to put on that. You just need to say, what is the temperature? I having a leak? Do I have this or do I have something else? So that is a very, very important advantage that this technology has over traditional systems, which rely on Wi-Fi. The other big thing it has is that it's extremely energy efficient. So each one of our sensors will last for about 10 years on battery life. Whereas traditional Wi-Fi systems, probably have to replace the battery once a year, once every two years, depending on the system. As far as our offering, so we have different liquid sensing technology, so oil and water. We also have gas detection. And for example, in New York City, they passed a law which was now tabled again, but they passed a law called Local Law 157. Every, you know, apartment or building in New York City that had gas, had to have gas detection. So we were able to help those buildings as well. And so buildings that already had our system had to now comply with a new law, easily just put it on the system, no problem. Temperature humidity, we spoke about. We have rodents. We have different types of sensing. For example, if you want to see the levels of different tanks. So for example, you have a big water storage tank or you want to know what the capacity is of trash or different. So we have devices that can sense distance. different sensors for different types of mechanical equipment to see where they go, what the status is, are they operating, are they not, are they in movement? Steam traps, we can tell you if a stream trap open. So there's a lot of stuff there. And I think one of the unique parts about ProSentry is that both me and my business partner, John, really come from the world. And so we meet with supers, we meet with property managers and they say, hey, you know, I really want to understand how I can better see this or how I can do that. And that's what we developed. And so we go out and we figure out what sensing to cloud booth exists for the world and we customize them for the buildings themselves. Jason Hull (14:15) Got it. Is this system also tie into some of the other sort of catastrophes besides water, like fire, smoke? ⁓ Nadav Schnall (14:23) So we have a smoke and vape detector, but it is not what you would call your traditional carbon-fiber monoxide type of sensor. And that is because, first of all, it's a very saturated market. There's a lot of companies out there that provide. We have the ability to interface into it. It was just a conscious choice not to get into that yet. Jason Hull (14:38) Yeah. Nadav Schnall (14:47) Just because you know, it's more of a niche market and that's more of a very wide market. There's also a lot of regular Jason Hull (14:52) Figure out smoking and vaping is another thing. Like, maybe four terms, stuff like this. Nadav Schnall (14:55) Yeah. So that we do have on the property, on the platform. that is a great sensing technology, especially for like rental buildings or buildings that have passed no smoking laws in the building. So it can do vaping, it could do marijuana, it could do cigarette smoke. And so we've had that. actually, one of the reasons we developed it, again, speaking to property managers and building owners, This is a West Coast property owner. he said, you know, one of my main reasons for non renewing leases in my building is because people smoke and people don't want to renew. And so that was one of the reasons we went out. came out with this, with a sensing technology and it can, you know, it kind of tattles on the smokers, but it works with that kind of building. Right. So if you sign into a building, which is a non-smoking building, you should have that same with hotels, et cetera, et cetera. Jason Hull (15:45) Cool. So I'm going to read a word from our sponsor and then I some more questions we'll get into. So this episode is sponsored by Vendoroo So many of you tell me that maintenance is probably the least enjoyable part of the property manager and definitely the most time consuming. But what if you could cut that workload by up to 85 %? That's exactly what Vendoroo has achieved. They've leveraged cutting edge AI technology to handle nearly all your maintenance tasks from initiating work orders and troubleshooting to coordinating with vendors and reporting. This AI doesn't just automate, it becomes your ideal employee, learning your preferences and executing tasks flawlessly, never needing a day off and never quitting. This frees up you to focus on the critical tasks that really move the needle for you and your business, whether that's refining operations, expanding your portfolio, or even just taking a well-deserved break. So over half the room at last year's DoorGrow Live. conference signed up with Vendoroo right then and there after hearing about it. A year later, they're not just satisfied. They're raving about how Vendoroo has transformed their business. Don't let maintenance drag you down. Step up your property management game with Vendoroo Visit vendero.ai. That's V-E-N-D-O-R-O-O.ai slash door grow today and make this the last maintenance hire you'll ever need. All right, cool. So back to... Back to what you were talking about, Nadeav. I'm curious, this sounds like a no-brainer. Is this expensive to get set up? Can this be turned into a profit center for property managers in some way? How does this typically work for property managers? Nadav Schnall (17:20) Yeah, sure. So, excellent questions. As far as the cost goes, it is very competitive in the marketplace. Sensors start at about $70 a sensor, depending on what it is. There is a cost for the network, but again, it is not a significant cost. The costs kind of vary based on the size of the building, and obviously there's volume discounts. But, you know, I think it, you know, from a Profit center, it's an interesting question, right? Because I don't know if you're actively going to make money from the building, from activating the system. However, you will get a return on your investment because again, you're able to, first of all, reduce repair costs. There's no question about that, right? we have... Examples examples examples of buildings that have installed our system and have caught dozens of water leaks some of which may have turned into Small things or maybe you and an overflowing club, but you caught that and you mopped that up But others are like these slow leaks behind walls and all kinds of areas like that that you otherwise would have not noticed and before it became mold and stuff so hundred percent you save money on that from a repair across perspective and Jason Hull (18:09) Yeah. Nadav Schnall (18:24) on insurance front, is really one of our biggest areas that we're focused on is trying to help buildings reduce insurance costs. And so in that sense, it does turn into a profit center, maybe not the traditional profit center as a fee for it, but you do save on other repairs on insurance costs. So in that sense, yes, you do make money on that. Jason Hull (18:42) So, Nadav, a question. So you've mentioned multifamily. There are a lot of people that listen to this podcast that also do single-family residential, or maybe they do individual condos, or they do short-term rentals or Airbnbs. Do you find that this makes sense for those scenarios as well? Nadav Schnall (19:03) 100 % it does. We focus... only on multi-dwelling, in other words, we're a B2B company in that sense, unless maybe there's a situation where there's someone who manages multiple individual condos, let's say, right? Or multiple Airbnbs and they want everything on kind of a dashboard and maybe that would make sense. There are solutions out there that focus on the single-family world, that are Wi-Fi based and they're meant for that. We are really more of a commercial grade. solution, right? And that's kind of how we set ourselves up. And that is really the big differentiator with us is that we're really focused on whole building solutions. We have automatic border shutoff valves, for example, which I haven't even mentioned before. But for example, we have a commercial building. where the building owners have no one at the building over the weekend and actually no one in the building after I think it's 7 or 8 p.m. till they come back at like 6 or 7 in the morning. So they proactively shut the water to the building when they leave and no one's there. So they don't even want to take the risk. Of course all of our sensors can connect to the automatic shutoff app and say hey if there is a leak we'll shut that off, we'll shut the water off. They just want to they just put it on a schedule and proactively shut it. So in that sense if you have single family or Airbnb managers, cetera, et cetera, you can all control it even from the app. You don't even have to be at the property. And you can just shut the valve off and shut the property. So if you're going to go away and let's say you want to winterize the property and shut the water off for a prolonged amount of time because you're not going to be there going on vacation. So you can do that with the system quite easily. Jason Hull (20:35) Interesting. for somebody that's like an Airbnb and they wanted to get this set up, and they wanted like maybe water, auto water shut off, some gas detection, you know, a couple of the most obvious important ones, what would it roughly cost for them to get that property outfit? Nadav Schnall (20:53) I mean, if it's a, if let's say we're talking about a single apartment, maybe like a one or two bedroom, you're probably talking about a one time cost of anywhere between 300 to $500. If you're in, if you're in that kind of situation, if it's slightly bigger, it all depends on the number of sensors. But again, if it's about $70 a sensor, how many points of water do you have in your, in your apartment? And then that's how you do the math. Jason Hull (21:18) Got it. So typically sensor per maybe bathroom or water. Nadav Schnall (21:22) Yeah, you'd put one to two per bathroom, right? Depending on how many, if you have a tub or a shower, we typically catch that with another sensor that would be placed nearby, maybe behind a toilet. Sensors are very sleek, non-invasive. They don't actually, many of them, this is actually a sensor. They don't even look that way. So it's good. They're discreet. They go behind toilets, under sinks and so on and so forth. And so it's very easy to deploy them as well. Jason Hull (21:48) Got it. And these don't have cameras on them, right? Nadav Schnall (21:51) No cameras. And as I mentioned, because we use LoRaWAN and it is unable to communicate or transmit large packets of data, it is impossible for me to record someone because the data packets are so small. The amount of data that would need to be transmitted just to record a sentence would take days and days and days. So it is impossible for us to do that. Jason Hull (22:04) Hmm. Got it. Got it. Okay, very cool. Well, what else should people know about this solution or whatever questions that people ask, maybe about ProSentry and then how can people get in touch with you? Nadav Schnall (22:29) So first of all, think the most important thing is, you know, we were built by real estate professionals. And so we really understand the industry and we're happy to consult. and speak to anyone who has any questions. There's no strings of ties. There's no cost for that. We're happy to give proposals. And every building is unique and every building has their unique set of challenges. And so I think it's important for your listeners to know that that's the world that we come from and we actually enjoy having conversations with real estate professionals. And so if anyone has any questions or wants to discuss, just feel free to reach out. Our website, which is www.prosentry.com. prosentry.com. Contact us or request a proposal. Very easy to get in touch with us. Or also info at prosentry.com. Jason Hull (23:14) Very cool. So one last question. If somebody goes to your website, they decide they want to get some of this stuff set up for the property, who actually comes out and gets all this stuff set up and installed? Do they have to get a contractor to do it? How does that work? Nadav Schnall (23:27) No, so it is extremely, extremely simple. So we have designed the system so that it is easy to be deployed by the building itself. And while we can provide recommendations for installers, 100%, I think there's one, I wouldn't say 100, I think 99%, I think it's one property that actually hired someone to do that. All of our properties, and I'm talking about hundreds of buildings, have installed the system by themselves. It is extremely easy. The system comes pre-configured. So the gateways are the only component that gets plugged in. Those are the routers, right? So you start by plugging those into the wall into regular outlet. They turn on in about a minute or so and start communicating. They automatically connect to cellular antennas. They automatically... create this internal private network only to that building. So there's no configuration, nothing else to do. And then you take the devices, the sensors themselves, you download our app, you scan a QR code on the device and all you do is you have a drop down menu and you say, I am in apartment 22B, it's already pre-configured, we'll configure the apartment, everything will be there. And you'll say, I'm placing it by the kitchen sink. That's it. That's all you gotta do. It automatically connects, the sensors automatically connect. And so, We do speak to some buildings and they're like, yeah, we don't want to take on. so I call it deployment because it's not even installation. It's not invasive. There's no drilling. There's nothing to do there. So we say, OK, we can give you a proposal for installation or connect you with someone who can do it for you. But then once they understand how they get a little bit of a demo and see how it's done, go, oh, this is it. It's very, very easy to install. one of the features that I neglected to, to, to, to mention, I think is important is we offer, live operator calls to buildings. And so a lot of providers out there will send you like an app notification or maybe an email or a text message, right. say, Hey, but again, property managers, right. We realize that at two o'clock in the morning, no one's looking at their phone to see if you got a text message. So we use an underwriter, laboratory certified call center with live people, not some robo call. Jason Hull (25:19) and Nadav Schnall (25:33) and they will actually call you and say, Jason, you have a leak in apartment 22 B in the kitchen. under the dishwasher, right? And if you happen not to be answering, we will call the next person online. We can have multiple people. And so we'll call the front desk. Front desk doesn't answer. Maybe the handyman, handyman doesn't answer. The resident manager, the property manager, the hotline, the board president, whoever you need. We can put that all under the platform. So that is an important feature and a differentiator, by the way, because there are not many companies that do that. But we do recognize that because time is of the essence when something like this happens, you need to make sure you can get in touch with Jason Hull (26:01) Mm. Nadav Schnall (26:09) someone before damage becomes something very small into something really big. ⁓ Jason Hull (26:13) Yeah, well, it sounds like a no brainer. Sounds very cool. And yeah, I recommend everybody check it out at prosentry.com. cool. Well, Nadav, thanks for coming and hanging out with us here on the DoorGrow show. Yeah, I appreciate it. So for those of you that maybe felt stuck or stagnant in your property management business, you want to take it to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com. We can help. Nadav Schnall (26:27) Thanks for having me, Jason. This was fun. Jason Hull (26:40) And for a free training on how to get unlimited leads for free for your property management business, text the word leads to 512-648-4608. That's the word leads to 512-648-4608. Also be sure to join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com. And if you would like to get the best ideas in property management, you can join our newsletter. at doorgrow.com slash subscribe. And if you found this episode even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on whatever platform you saw this on. We'd really appreciate it. And until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

How often are you interrupted in your property management business? Tenant and owner phone calls, emails, maintenance requests, team member questions… it's an endless cycle of wasted time and stolen profits. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the hidden thief in every property management business: the Interruption Burglar. You'll Learn [01:23] The Burglar Stealing From Your Business [07:41] Becoming Aware of Your Company's Time Loss [13:20] If Your Business Isn't Growing, It is Dying Quotables "There's a burglar that lives inside everybody's business." "One interruption is going to cost you somewhere between 15 minutes and 30 minutes of wasted labor." "All it takes is questions to make you conscious of things you're unconscious of currently." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason Hull (00:00) Nobody can even see this guy running around stealing until we do some of these exercises with our clients. And then they start to become conscious and they can now see this interruption burglar sneaking around, stealing money, stealing profits, wasting everybody's time. Welcome everybody. We are Jason and Sarah Hull the owners of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of businesses, helping them add doors. improve pricing, increase profit, simplify operations, and we run the leading property management mastermind with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. We are the best in the world. And at DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world and that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to relationships, real estate deals, and residual income. And our mission at DoorGrow. is to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now, let's get into the show. All right, so today, Sarah and I thought we would chat about, she said, you've been wanting to talk about this for a little while. So we're going to be chatting about what? Interruption. All right, specifically, the interruption burglar. So maybe I'm dating myself a little bit, but I don't know if you remember the Hamburglar. I do. McDonald's, okay, all right, that's good. so for those of you listening, maybe you remember like McDonald's had the Hamburglar and he was this sneaky, creepy guy going around stealing people's cheeseburgers, right? And there's another burglar. There's a burglar that lives inside everybody's business. and it's the interruption burglar. And the interruption burglar is stealing your money by interrupting. And so every interruption in a business is a hidden thief stealing from your business. And most business owners give a blank check out to every tenant and owner that they bring on that says, call me whenever you want to, interrupt me whenever you want to, steal all my profits. And a lot of property managers think they have to talk to everybody and that's what they're paid to do. And so they have to always be available. So we're going to kind of throw a wrench into that sort of level of thinking because we've talked to lot of clients get out of the trap of lacking profit, lacking margin by helping them escape or eliminate or tear up this blank check and eliminate the interruption burglar, or at least put some guardrails around that guy. so according to Gary Keller's book, The One Thing, it cites a study saying that one interruption costs 18 minutes of productivity. Dan Martel's book about time management says I think it's like 26 minutes of productivity. So I don't know if we're just that much worse when we get interrupted now. But basically One interruption is going to cost you somewhere between 15 minutes and 30 minutes of wasted labor. Why? Because when we get interrupted, if we're in the flow or we're working on things and we're being productive as a team member or as a CEO or COO or whatever our role is, we get interrupted. We then have to rebuild that house of cards that we were in the middle of working on, figure out where was I, what was I working on, you know, kind of reestablish our thinking, get back into the groove of what we were trying to accomplish, what we were working on, especially when we're trying to get into deep work where things get really productive and effective. And so one interruption, if it happens every 20 minutes or so, which in a property management business is not hard to do, you may find you feel like you're just spinning your wheels or your team members are working and busy all day long, but they're not actually producing a whole lot of output. And so this can be very expensive in a property management business. Not only that, but usually a lot of times the interruptions are internal. So you ever heard of sneaker net? Like somebody walks into your office, it's the most inefficient network ever, and then you're like, hey, do you got a minute? Or I have this question, and maybe you're the person they're all coming to ask questions to because you're the boss, and they're interrupting you all the time. And so then you're like, well, getting interrupted. And now you've got two people. One's interrupting the other and you're wasting a lot of labor. And then we set up scenarios in which one person has the ability to interrupt multiple people in the business. This is where we set up Slack channels and other stupid communication methodologies that people think is more productive, where there's one too many communication, which becomes one too many interruptions. So one interruption, instead of costing you like maybe 15, 20 minutes of labor or a half hour of labor, It can quadruple. It can be 10 people at a time. It can be really expensive. And then, you know, sometimes, you know, one's interrupting the other. So you've got it's doubling. You know, people are just wasting your time and money. And so it's really easy for you to lose all of your profits and all your margins to staff through interruptions and a lack of productivity. And we see people get stuck at small door counts on a per person basis. They're like, I can only manage 50 units by myself, or a property manager with a whole team, I can only manage 100 units. And a lot of people think, well, that's pretty good, but it's not. Sarah managed 265 at her peak, basically by herself. Eventually had one part-time person. I had one part-time person. Yeah, eventually. was part-time, but between us we You weren't even a full-time equivalent. Yeah, and that's because you had eliminated a lot of interruptions because you just didn't want to deal with them. And you set really good boundaries. Well, yeah, which was to not be interrupted. Yeah. So cool. So that's the interruption burglar. This is one of the things we help clients figure out. We help them figure out how do we eliminate the interruptions? How do we create better, healthier, more effective communication systems Sometimes your clients do this. Sometimes your team members do it. Yeah. We've got to be able to separate ourselves where we can and reduce or completely eliminate interruptions. Yeah. That's the goal. So we have methodologies that we take our clients through to, one, identify their own interruptions, the things that are interrupting them. And then we have a process for taking their team through a process so that they become conscious of the interruptions so that they can, everybody in the business can start to protect the business from this interruption burglar because interruption burglar, sneaky. Nobody can even see this guy running around stealing until we do some of these exercises with our clients. And then they start to become conscious and they can now see this interruption burglar sneaking around, stealing money, stealing profits, wasting everybody's time. And nobody likes the interruptions anyway. So by reducing them, everybody's happier. Even the people that are interrupting you, like tenants and owners are happier and less anxious. If you set better guardrails, better expectations, better boundaries, they actually can trust you more to do the job instead of feeling like they need to micromanage the person that's managing their rental property, which is ridiculous. Why don't they just cut you out if they're going to micromanage something, right? So yeah, they don't need to do that. Okay. I don't know what else we need to say about this, but. Well, one of the things that I had created recently within the last two months was a time optimization assessment that you can go through and take and you can do it every day. Kind of get a grade and a score and see what went well and what didn't go so well and then it will help you figure out what can you optimize and what can you change and You can do that even Right now so if you would like to get access to that it's a longer link So it's not like I can just give you the URL to it So I would say the easiest way to get it if you would like access to it is just email me and Sarah doorgrow.com s-a-r-a-h at doorgrow.com So if you'd like that I would be very happy to send you the link and you can use that as long as you would like but you'll essentially go through answer a couple of questions and then it will email you your results and your score so it will tell you overall you know what were the things that didn't go so well and Oftentimes when you're filling a report out like this at the end of the day It just makes you very conscious of it because sometimes our days tend to get away from us and they wonder then at the end of the day, man, how did that happen? I didn't get to that thing that I really wanted to do. Man, I was busy all day long, but I just don't feel like I was very productive or I don't feel like I got to the things that I wanted to get to. Well, this will help you while you're answering these questions. It'll just point to a few things that you can optimize. And sometimes I've tested this out with our clients a few times too. go, ⁓ as they're taking this assessment and just answering the questions, they're going, well, I can already tell what kind of day this was. This was not good. This was not good. This was not good. And then the good news is just by taking that assessment, you have a better idea of how to approach things and hopefully a better plan for the following day. Sometimes all it takes is questions to make you conscious of things you're unconscious of currently. And when we're unconscious of the interruption burglar, he gets away with murder. Like he's just stealing your money. So we've got to stop that guy. All right. So we've got a sponsor. So let me share that with everybody real quick. We appreciate our sponsors. So our sponsor today is Blanket. And Blanket is a property retention and growth platform that helps property managers stop losing doors, 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. And so it helps you retain the doors, even if your clients sell or leave. You can keep the the units, it's really a cool system. I recommend everybody uses it. And we coach and recommend our clients use it. I think it's a great system. So. For sure. All right. I think also we had just had our clients go through a time optimization challenge. We did. Using some of the things that we talk about in the program, some of the components that we coach on and some of the things that you will see in that time optimization assessment. Not all of the things, but. Some of the things in the assessment are on there and then of course there's a lot more. So what we've noticed and what a lot of people had noticed when they went through that assessment and that challenge is, wow, there is a lot of time in the business that just gets eaten up by different things and it's not hard at all to get lost. It's not hard to kind of get consumed by the day to day. It's not hard to get lost in all of the tasks that are required by a property management company. And this really goes for you and it goes for your team. Because just looking at every person's time on the team can be really, really helpful. One person might be wildly efficient. And if that person that's efficient is, let's say, the business owner, the business owner might. assume then, well, everybody on my team is really efficient because I'm really efficient. And that may not be the case. So our goal is to help you figure out, you know, who is efficient and who is using their time wisely and perhaps who is not. So that way we can figure out what are the things that we can shift? What are the things that we can change? And oftentimes it's not even really hard to change. you know what you're doing or how you're doing it. It is different and it can sometimes feel uncomfortable because you just have to do things differently. And I think in the world of property management and especially how things are running today is everyone assumes that you need to just be responding to everything immediately and be on top of everything and be super communicative with everybody. That's not always the case. That may not get you the best results. So it can create a lot of work. But being busy and being productive are two very different things. So it's our goal always to help property managers figure out what can I do to actually be more productive? And how can I make sure that somebody on the team is always having time to focus on the income generating activities? Because if you are not focusing on growth in the business, it is slowly dying. So if there's no one who's focused on growth or if there's one person who's just a little bit, it's like, well, I do it for, you know, five hours a week when I can. And when I'm not busy doing all of these other things, what's happening is we just get stuck on this hamster wheel where it's kind of like Groundhog Day. You wake up. You do things, you make no progress. You think, I'll do it again tomorrow. You wake up, you do a whole bunch of things, you're busy, but you're not making progress. And then that day just repeats over and over and over. So we're just spending all of our time doing all of these things that aren't actually helping the business grow or helping the business make progress. You're just doing the day-to-day tasks and then it's really hard to grow because sometimes it gets scary to grow. And they go, well, if I'm this busy at 40 units, there's no way I can handle 80. There's no way I can handle 150. There's no way I can handle 500. And if you're running the 500 units the same way you're running the 40 units, the answer is yes, there's no way you can do it. So you need to just look at doing it a different way. Yeah. Yeah, you need to start running your business the way you would at a thousand doors when you have a small amount of doors because it's going to be completely different. And a lot of people, when they first start out, think they need to please everybody, take care of everybody in a special way, and they don't set healthy boundaries. They take on too difficult a clients. They make a lot of mistakes. So by optimizing your time and our goal with our clients isn't just to make you more productive. Our goal with clients is to make sure as a business owner that you are more fulfilled, that you're enjoying your day more. It's not just about being able to somehow accomplish and do more work. The goal really is for you to do more of the things you enjoy and less of the things that you don't enjoy. And so usually for most business owners, that very first exit you need to do in the business is to exit doing the frontline work. If you can make it past that, everything gets a lot easier, it's a lot nicer. But when you're doing frontline work, or when you have an entire team, but they're asking you questions on how to always do or make decisions about the frontline work, you're not out of the frontline work. And so you got to exit the frontline work, then you got to exit managing everybody. And then you got to, the next step is then you're like a CEO or you're a leader and you might want to go to some higher levels of exit, but. A lot of people can't escape the frontline work. They can't figure out how to do that. So they just sell the whole business. They jump all the way to the last exit. They're like, let's go. I need freedom. And then they go start another business and they kind of paint themselves into a corner again and they're miserable. So there's a very simple path that we can take clients through to help them get that freedom. And so if you feel like you're frustrated and you're asking this question all the time, like, why won't my team? just think for themselves. It's because you've built the wrong business. The business is not built around you. The business is built around the business, which means you are now the servant to the business instead of the reverse. And so you built the wrong business, which means you also built the wrong team and you can't see it. Sometimes it takes some outside perspective to get perspective so that you can see it. And that's one of the things we enjoy helping our clients figure out. Sometimes replacing their entire team. And yeah, if you've if you're not enjoying your day to day role and you have an entire team, you built the wrong team because you built it around the wrong person. You're showing up wearing hats and doing things in the business that you shouldn't be doing because you're not the best at this. You're not somebody that enjoys it. And I guarantee if there's certain hats or roles you're wearing or holding on to right now that you don't enjoy, somebody else out there would be better at it than you. And I know that's humbling to think in the beginning. It's a very humbling thing to see, a team member and see them perform better than you, outperform you. But ultimately smart business owners know that you want to build a team of people that are better at the stuff you don't enjoy. Because if you don't enjoy it, you're never going to be great at it. We've got a lot of tactics. We've got a lot of methodologies. There's a lot of little things we could share about that. but in interest of time, if you're interested, Sarah's already offered very generously her cool assessment. Send an email to Sarah with an H at doorgrow.com. It's got to the H otherwise I don't get it. If you spell my name wrong then you don't make the top of it. Wow, okay, yeah. No patience for that. right. Cool. All right. Well, if you've ever felt stuck or stagnant, you want to take your property management business to the next level, reach out to us. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. For a free training on how to get unlimited free leads, text the word LEADS to 512-648-4608. And we will send you a hour long training that shows you how to get unlimited leads for free in your property management business. That will blow your mind. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com And if you'd like to get the best ideas in property management, join our newsletter at doorgrow.com slash subscribe. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe And until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

As a property management business owner, you likely work with seasoned investors who are always looking for new ways to build and preserve their wealth and assets. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Alan Porter to discuss how to reveal the powerful financial strategies the wealthy and large financial institutions use and how you can apply them. You'll Learn [01:09] Alan's Inspiration for Uncovering Financial Secrets [08:38] Learning Financial Planning Strategies 90% of People Don't Know [12:25] How to Get Started on the Path to Tax-Free Retirement [15:43] Strategies For Property Managers and Their Clients Quotables "The one thing you can always trust is for everybody to look out for their own self-interest." "If your own self-interest is in alignment with their interests, then that's a win-win. Otherwise, someone's gonna lose." "If you don't have a plan, make one. But you've got to have a plan and improve on it all the time." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Alan Porter (00:00) I teach people to think outside the box, conventional financial planning, and show them the strategies that the wealthy and banking institutions have been using for years. Now, I show people how to become their own bank. Jason Hull (00:10) All right, welcome everybody. I am Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. We have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted, cleaned up hundreds of businesses. Alan Porter (00:26) Thank Jason Hull (00:35) helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profit, simplify operations. And we run the leading property management mastermind in the industry. At DoorGrow, we believe good property managers can change the world and that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. We are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry. eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now, let's get into the show. So my guest today is Alan Porter of Strategic Wealth Strategies. Welcome, Alan. Alan Porter (01:16) Well, thank you for having me on. Jason Hull (01:18) Yeah, glad to have you. And we're going to be talking about, he's going to be sharing how to reveal the powerful financial strategies, the wealthy use, how you can apply them to. Alan will be uncovering the IRS approved playbook for retiring completely tax free, explain the millionaire tax strategies business owners use to keep more of what they earn and break down Wall Street myths to show how to build lasting wealth without market volatility. So Alan. Again, welcome to the show and why don't we kick things off by give us a little bit of background on you. How did you get into entrepreneurism, into business and give us a little bit of backstory so we understand how this all came to be. Alan Porter (02:00) Well, I never thought I'd be doing this. I retired from the military back in 1993. I was a Blackhawk instructor pilot and I told everybody I had a safe landing for every takeoff and I dodged all the bullets and I had a great career. And I got enrolled in the real estate mortgage business after that up till about 2008. I've had some tragic things happen to my family. In 2009, live in Little, mean Fayetteville, North Carolina. My son lived in Little Rock, Arkansas with his wife, Lynn. She was 39 and they had two little girls that were seven and four. Jason Hull (02:19) in 2009. Alan Porter (02:28) Well, we went down there for Christmas in 2009, but my son had been 100 % disabled for three years and still not getting the disability. And January 5th changed my entire life. His wife, Lynn, called me up. said, Alan, I've been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer and they've given me six months to live. Of course we were all devastated, but there's a huge financial problem that's developed in my son's family because there's no money coming in. Jason Hull (02:28) Well, we went down there for business in 2009, but my son had been 100 % disabled for three years and still not in a disability. Wow. And January 5th changed my entire life. His wife Lynn called me up, she said, Alan, I've been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and they've given me six months to live. Of course, we were all devastated. Yeah, I bet. there's huge financial problem that's developed in my son's family because of the money coming in. Alan Porter (02:55) I'm helping them out, but I don't know for how long Jason Hull (02:55) I'm helping him out, but I don't help him. Alan Porter (02:56) until I'm gonna have to sell my house or do something. But I was like 99 % of the people out there, Jason, that thought life insurance was a death product that you had to die to benefit from it. Well, little did I know she had a terminal illness right or her life insurance policy that she could access within one year of diagnosis of this deadly disease and was completely tax free, which I knew nothing about. It was hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jason Hull (02:58) Yeah. Really? Alan Porter (03:21) And if it had not been for that, my son would be bankrupt and it took a huge financial strain off of me. Jason Hull (03:25) Yeah. Well, long story short, died a year later, so I moved my son back here to Fayetteville, North Carolina. But about a year after that, my daughter's an oncology nurse, and her husband's a doctor at Woodbrook and Raleigh, North Carolina, and just gave birth to my third grandson. And she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and it was very bad. We didn't think she was going to live. Well, now in 2023, she's been 12 years cancer free, but she also was diagnosed with Graves' disease, thyroid eye condition. Alan Porter (03:26) Well, to a long story short, she died a year later. So I moved my son back here to Fayetteville, North Carolina. But about a year after that, my daughter, who's an oncology nurse and her husband's a doctor, they live up in Raleigh, North Carolina, had just given birth to my third grandson. And she was diagnosed with breast cancer and it was very bad. We didn't think she was going to live. Well, now in 2023, she'd been 12 years cancer free, but she also was diagnosed with Graves disease and thyroid eye condition. There's only one treatment for it. It's not a cure-all for anything, but Jason Hull (03:51) And there's only one treatment for it. It's not a cure-all. Alan Porter (03:55) it's a treatment. It's an infusion, eight infusions of this drug is called Tepezza I believe. The first one was like $32,000. The last one was almost a quarter of a million dollars. That was in May of 2023. On January of 2024, the thyroid eye condition came back. In February, she went to the doctor. The doctor said, Nicole, I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do until you go blind and then we can operate. I'm thinking, man, what a prognosis. Jason Hull (03:55) my Yeah. ⁓ Alan Porter (04:21) So we tried to get her a study at Duke. She didn't qualify for that because she had already taken the Tepezza But April did get her into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. But basically there's nothing they can do for her. She was up there for about four days for testing and consultation. But basically, like I said, there's nothing they can do for her. They got a drug that may be 50 % effective. It's not improved by insurance. And believe it or not, it's even more expensive than the Tepezza is. And it's just, I mean, so. Jason Hull (04:39) Yeah. Yeah. Alan Porter (04:51) So both of my kids are living day to day in misery. And when I got started in this, knew, like I said, these things, because I was to have a very successful real estate mortgage business. And I said, these financial strategies that the insurance companies have, why don't people know about this? These are the greatest financial vehicles out there. People tell me, well, listen to Suzy Orman and Dave Ramsey, insurance is not a good investment. Well, first off, it's not an investment. Jason Hull (04:54) When I got started in this, knew, like I said, these things, because I was very successful in estate in my early years. I said, these financial strategies that the insurance companies have, why don't people know about this? These are the greatest financial vehicles out there. People tell me, listen, as soon as you arm it today, Ramsey, insurance is not a good investment. Well, first off, it's not an investment. Alan Porter (05:18) It's an asset class all of its own. There's no other financial product that can Jason Hull (05:19) It's an asset class all of itself. There's no other financial product that... Alan Porter (05:23) provide the protection, performance, and benefits of cash value life insurance when properly structured and fixed and fixed indexed annually. And I'll give you one big point. They eliminate or mitigate the risk in retirement that a stock portfolio only compounds. That's absolutely... Let me ask you this. Have you ever heard of sequence of returns risk? Jason Hull (05:23) could provide the protection, performance, and benefits of cash, money, or life insurance. Yeah. if you have one big point, they eliminate or mitigate the risk in retirement that a stock portfolio only compacts. That's absolutely, let me ask you this, have you ever heard of sequence of returns risk? Sequencing returns? Sequence of returns risk. No. Alan Porter (05:46) Sequence of returns risk. Well, don't feel lonely because 99 % of the people I talk to, to include multi-millionaires that have fee-based advisors. And let's say that you're 65 years of age and you go to retire and you got a million dollars in your stock portfolio. They used to say a 4 % distribution rate was a safe distribution rate to last for 30 years, index for inflation at 3%. Well, my plans go to age 120. They don't cut off in 30 years. Jason Hull (05:50) Well, don't feel lonely because 99 % of the people I talk to include multi-millionaires that have fee-based advisors. let's say that you're 65 years of age and you go to retire. You have a million dollars in your stock portfolio. They used to say a 4 % distribution rate was a safe distribution rate to last for 30 years, index for inflation at 3%. Well, my plans go at age 120. They don't cut off in 30 years. But the problem with that 4 % distribution rate Alan Porter (06:15) But the problem is that 4 % distribution rate, that's Jason Hull (06:19) That's $40,000 a year. And that stock portfolio, that's not guaranteed. What if you have a 10 % loss the first year? now your million dollars goes down to $900,000 minus the $40,000 you took out minus the fees you paid on financial advisor whether you make money or not. And then the next two to three years, 2008 happens again, where you lost 38 to 52%. You never got the money in the fifth year. And when I tell people about this, they're financial advisors, Alan Porter (06:19) $40,000 a year. And that stock portfolio, that's not guaranteed. What if you have a 10 % loss the first year? So now your million dollars goes down to 900,000 minus the $40,000 you took out minus the fees you pay that financial advisor, whether you make money or not. And then the next two to three years, 2008 happens again, where you lost 38 to 52%. You're going to be out of money in the fifth year. And when I tell people about this and their financial advisors, Don't tell them, I mean, they're said, I said, why do you think that is? Jason Hull (06:45) don't tell them. I made letters, I said, why do you think that is? Alan Porter (06:48) It's because they make a fee whether you make money or not. The number one fear in retirement is running out of money before you run out of money. I can eliminate that. Jason Hull (06:49) Because they make a fee, well, if you make money or not. The number one fair return is 20,000 dollars. Yeah, compensation structures are incentive models. And so if their incentive is not to tell you, it's because they're getting paid to not tell you. Well, they're supposed to be fiduciary looking out for their best interest clients. I'm a certified financial financial advisor. Yeah, but regardless, the one thing you can always trust is for everybody to look out for their own self-interest. Oh, you're right there. Alan Porter (06:59) Yeah, exactly right. Well, they're supposed to be fiduciaries looking out for their best interest clients. I'm a certified financial fiduciary. you're right there. Jason Hull (07:18) So if your own self-interest is in alignment with their interests, then that's a win-win. Otherwise, someone's gonna lose. Yeah. It's always the clients. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, that's quite the story. how is everybody doing now? Alan Porter (07:26) Yep. And it's always the client. My son looks like he's 85 years old and my daughter's living day to day in pain. Jason Hull (07:43) Yeah, yeah. So you have this burden of trying to figure out how do I take care of them? How do I make sure that, you know, taking care of your kids and, you know, nothing's more stressful emotionally or more motivating for us as a parent than our own kids having it going through a tough time. Yeah. I remember my oldest daughter, she was born with a birth defect that there was a rotation in her gut and she was just always sick, throwing up, stuff like this. Well, she almost died. We didn't know this. got, went and got a scan. Everything was inflamed. They're like, we have to do emergency surgery immediately. And yeah, it was pretty scary as a parent. And they had to like pull her guts out, do surgery, put them back in. And she was a little kid, you know? Now she's my oldest. I mean, she's still my oldest, but now she works for me. and in DoorGrow which is great. But yeah, I remember those times. That's really scary. And I can imagine that's just really a big load on your shoulders. So did this kind of spark you creating the strategic wealth strategies then? Alan Porter (08:30) No. Absolutely, that's my passion for this. I'm very passionate about what I do. It's all about education because people don't know. Jason Hull (08:49) Explain the passion, like what gets you excited about this? Alan Porter (08:53) Well, educating people. That's what I did in the Army. I was an educator. I taught people how to fly. it's just like this, educating people. I teach people to think outside the box, conventional financial planning, and show them the strategies that the wealthy and banking institutions have been using for years. Now, I show people how to become their own bank. I've been doing this for a decade and a half. And why don't everybody doesn't do this? I don't know why. mean, you borrow money from yourself, you pay yourself back compound interest. Jason Hull (09:16) you Alan Porter (09:20) and not the financial institutions and you eliminate the effective interest cost that you pay on the money that you borrow. And people, are you aware of what effective interest cost is? Banks love it. I had a gentleman who wanted to do my debt free for life plan. And I said, well, how much debt do you have? He says, well, we bought a new house a couple of months ago, a couple of car payments, a loan and a credit card. I said, what's the interest rate on your mortgage? He said 2.75. Jason Hull (09:20) Yeah. And people, are you aware? No, what is that? Alan Porter (09:46) I said, what's your effective interest cost on that? He says, well, I don't know what you're talking about, Alan. I said, don't fill it, only most people don't. Fill out my form, we'll do a Zoom conference the following week. I said, you got $461,000 in debt. That's not your problem. The problem is the 49.76 effective interest cost, you're paying on that 2.75 % mortgage. His eyes got real big and he said, Alan, how is that possible? I said, it's not going to get down to the 2.75 until the last couple of months of the mortgage. Jason Hull (10:10) Yeah. ⁓ Alan Porter (10:14) You've got a credit card here that's over 90 % effective interest cost. And even though you've got great credits, your average effective interest cost is over 46%. So my next question to him was, what financial vehicle are you investing in, your 401k or anything else, that gives you a 46 % return on your money? Because 46 cents of every dollar that you pay out goes to compound interest for some financial institution, and that money's gone for you forever. Jason Hull (10:17) and ⁓ Alan Porter (10:38) He said, well, nothing. In fact, I lost 10 % of my 401k. Jason Hull (10:40) Yeah, that'd be hard to find that much. And then my last question was how long does it you to your debts off? I said with my cap three buck of money and a whole lot of insurance policy, 14.17 years past, saving $73,000. And in the 10th year it would be 52 years of bids, and there's over $149,000 in cap Alan Porter (10:43) And then my last question was, how long can it take you to pay your debts off the way you're doing it? I 20 some years. I said, with my tax-free bucket of money and a whole life insurance policy and our software, we're paying all your debts off 14.17 years faster, saving you $73,000 in interest. And in the 10th year, you'll be 52 years of age and there's over $139,000 in a tax-free bucket of money that you can use ⁓ to buy a new car, whatever, college education for your kids. Jason Hull (11:06) you can use uh buy a new car whatever college education for your kids at that point your debt benefits will be $400,000 in tax-free money from the federal bank but think about this you don't have to any more money in this by the time you're 65 there'll be over $400,000 in tax-free money that you can use to supplement your income that does not affect the taxation of social security or the tax and community care part which will be in the thousands per year Alan Porter (11:13) At that point, your debt benefits over $400,000 of tax-free money to protect your family. Think about this. You don't have to put any more money in this. By the time you're 65, there'll be over a quarter of a million dollars in a tax-free bucket of money that you can use to supplement your income that does not affect the taxation of Social Security or the means testing for Medicare Part B, which will be in the thousands per year. You're protected from lawsuits, liens, and judgments, and it eliminates or mitigates all the risk in retirement. This is absolutely great for real estate investors. Jason Hull (11:35) Yeah. Yeah ⁓ Alan Porter (11:42) Because once they build that money up in the cash value of their policy, they can take it, go buy a property, and pay themselves back. I do this all the time. I just bought two new cars in last two years. I pay myself back. I'm going to have tens of thousands of dollars more because I compounded interest for me instead of some financial institution. Jason Hull (12:03) So you said multiple times, like why aren't people doing this? Well maybe you could answer your own question, why aren't people doing this? Alan Porter (12:10) It's lack of education. It ought to be taught in high school, but it's not. I've got college professors with PhD degrees in accounting and finance. They have no idea what I'm talking about. They ask me to teach their classes. Jason Hull (12:20) Yeah, got it. So it was just a lack of education on this. Alan Porter (12:24) That's exactly what it is. Jason Hull (12:25) So, yeah, well, I mean, it sounds like something that everybody should be doing. So how does somebody get started with this or how do they become aware of this or what would you say are the first steps? Alan Porter (12:38) Well, give me a call. I don't charge for my consultation services. That's free. It's an education. I think everybody needs to know these things because it will change their financial future, not only for them, but for their family also and possibly generations to come. at 9-8-5. Jason Hull (12:52) So Alan, it sounds like you've kind of found a passion in this. You really enjoy helping people to be able to figure this out and do this. Alan Porter (13:00) Absolutely. Jason Hull (13:01) So yeah, I think that's noble. I think this is pretty awesome. So for those that are listening to this point, I'm going to read a quick word from our sponsor and then Alan, I'm going have you share your phone number so they can get in touch with you and we can keep talking about it. So this episode is sponsored by KRS Smart Books. So if you're a property manager, are you tired of getting tangled up in numbers? KRS Smart Books has your back. They specialize in property bookkeeping. for small to mid-sized managers who'd rather focus on, well, managing. With over 15 years of experience in real estate accounting, their pros in AppFolio, Yardi, and all the top property management software, trust them to make your monthly reports hassle-free so you can get back to what really matters running your business. Head over to krsbooks.com to book your free discovery call. All right, so Alan, what's the number that they should get? to get in touch with you or to reach you to find out about this. Alan Porter (13:59) You can call me at 910-551-1046, email me at strategicwealth, the number zero at gmail.com. And you can always go to my website, which is www.strategicwealthstrategies.com and you can book appointment there. And I've got a plethora of information on that website. Jason Hull (14:18) What? Great, thanks for sharing. So for those that are listening, some people might listen to this and go, well, that's nice, but Alan probably can only work with people that maybe have a million dollars or that are ultra wealthy or have lots of savings. People will listen to this and say, that's probably not for me. What would you say to that? Alan Porter (14:39) Well, quite frankly, bull I work with everybody. know, I'm for the military. Military people don't make a lot of money. Okay. And I work with them, but I work with regular, regular working people that I mean, I'll give you a perfect example. I asked people, said, why do you contribute to a 401k? They said, well, it's a tax deduction. I said, no, it's a tax compounder. And I thought you don't think tax is going to be higher when you retire. I got another thing coming for you. Jason Hull (14:43) Okay. Right. Alan Porter (15:07) But see, thing is people don't understand. 1 % of people out there don't even think there's a fee in a 401k. A 1 % fee over a 30-year period will reduce your income by one-third. The average fee in a 401k is 2.99%. Now that's by Forbes Magazine and the Laptimes. People have less than two-thirds of their money and then they get hit with taxes anywhere from 20 to over 55%. And they're not prepared for it. They're not prepared for long-term care, which costs right now between $50,000 to $200,000 a year. I can get money for that's tax free for pennies on the dollar. It's just a matter of education. Jason Hull (15:43) So for the property management business owners listening, a lot of them will have sometimes hundreds of clients that are investors and they're wanting to maximize their investments, how would this maybe benefit the property management business owners to be better educated on this and have a strategic partner like you? Alan Porter (16:03) Well, the thing is, you've to have a plan. If you don't have a plan, make one. But you've got to have a plan and improve on it all the time. But it's just like, you know, building up your cash value and borrowing from yourself to buy a property and paying yourself back. That's an absolutely great thing for a real estate investor. And these property managers, I've got health and wellness programs. If you've got employees over 10 employees, understand this. The employer will save anywhere from $500 to $700 a year in FICA taxes. The employee and the employer have 1,100 drugs, prescription drugs, at zero copay. That's 20 to 30 % of healthcare costs. Jason Hull (16:37) Yeah Alan Porter (16:50) I mean, and they also have an accidental indemnity program and that's not for the employer, but they have a revolution health app. They've got the number one telehealth app according to JD Power and associates. It's a plethora of benefits. We have legal club, we have identity shield. It's just all at no net cost to employer and no net cost to the employee. It's the section 125 of the tax program. Jason Hull (17:06) This is all at no net cost reported at no net cost reported. Got it. Got it, interesting. Okay, well cool. Well what else would people generally ask about this or should we make sure that the listeners are aware of related to this? Well, are you... Alan Porter (17:26) Well, are you risk averse? Are you conservative? You know, it's just like when you go to retire and you've got that million dollars in stock portfolio, a 4 % distribution rate, $40,000. If you had a property constructed fixed indexed annuity at, say, age 65, you'd only need approximately $650,000 of that stock portfolio to give you the same $40,000 a year. That's guaranteed for the rest of your life. we're guaranteed. Jason Hull (17:53) New York Heat. ⁓ Alan Porter (17:53) Never to have a loss through the market because we're not tied to the market for our gain. We use indexing strategies and every time that indexing strategy goes up we have increasing income and the older you get the higher the distribution rate is. You can't do that with a stock portfolio. It's not even comparable. Jason Hull (17:59) And every time that index of strategy goes up, we have increasing income. And the older you get, the Yeah, yeah. Well, Alan, I appreciate you coming on to the DoorGrow show and bringing this to light for those listening that are not aware you're doing your purpose of educating. So appreciate that. And to wrap up what final words do you have? And then again, why don't you go and share how people can get in touch with you one more time. Alan Porter (18:31) Okay, well I've got a best-selling book out right now on Amazon. It's called Tax-Free Retirement Solution. Again, Tax-Free, Tax-Free Retirement Solution. Jason Hull (18:38) It's called tax, tax free. Retirement solution, okay. Got it. Alan Porter (18:45) And again, you can call me at 910-551-1046. My email is strategicwealth, the number zero at gmail.com. And you can go to my website, which has a plethora. I've got videos, I've got blogs, I've got everything there. And you can book an appointment there at www.strategicwealthstrategies.com. Jason Hull (18:51) email is strategicwealth0 at gmail.com and you can go to my website which has a cluster. I've got videos, I've got blogs. book an appointment there at www.strategicwellscladagy.com. Awesome. Alan, appreciate you being on the show and thanks for your service. You mentioned your former military. Yeah, I appreciate it. So for those watching, if you've ever felt stuck or stagnant in your property management business, you want to take it to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com. Also be sure to join our free Facebook community, Just for Property Management Business Owners at doorgrowclub.com. Alan Porter (19:13) Well, I appreciate it. Jason Hull (19:31) And if you would like to get the best ideas in property management, join our free newsletter at doorgrow.com slash subscribe. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. And until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

Do you enjoy property management? It's often a thankless industry, and it's easy for property management business owners and their team members to become unhappy and burnt out. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Ashleigh Goodchild, the voice behind PM Collective, to explore what it really takes to build a property management career that you can enjoy. You'll Learn [01:06] Importance of Having Support [08:01] Community-Led Learning for Property Managers [15:07] Structured Management vs. Random Leadership [21:36] People-Centric Property Management [32:41] Making the Invisible Visible Quotables "There's so much help available out there. And a lot of times we just don't ask as entrepreneurs." "The slowest path to growth is to do it alone." "A lot of people don't actually see what we do. And I think that's where you've got the opportunity." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Ashleigh Goodchild (00:00) Generally churn rate and loss rate for businesses can range anywhere between 15 and 30%. Our office is sitting at about 5%. we've got 1200 doors, to have that 5 % churn rate actually considered really great. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (00:05) Yeah. Welcome everybody. I am Jason Hull, the owner and founder 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. We've talked to thousands of property managers, helped them add hundreds of doors, help them increase profit, simplify operations, get themselves out of the business more and more. And we believe the good property managers can change the world and that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income. We are on a mission to transform property management business owners. and their businesses. want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now let's get into the show. So my guest today is Ashleigh Goodchild. Welcome. She's the voice behind PM Collective, the art of property management. together, we're going to explore what it really takes to build a property management career that you can enjoy covering the balance between structured management and random leadership, how to create workplaces people actually want to stay in, and Ashleigh's vision for a more human, less transactional industry. So Ashleigh, welcome to the show. Ashleigh Goodchild (01:35) Thank you so much for having me. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (01:37) So let's give us a little bit of background on you for those that don't know you yet, that maybe you're listening. How did you get into entrepreneurism? How did you get into doing what you're doing now? Give us some of the backstory. Ashleigh Goodchild (01:52) Yeah, so I started real estate back when I was 18 and like many people just falling into it and I was placed into an office that had a business owner, one was an air hostess and one was a pilot and really had no idea of how to run the business. So at that age of 18 and not knowing any better, I just jumped straight into the business and started helping them quite a lot. And then As I went on in my career, I then started my business, SoCo Realty, when I was 23. So I've had that business for 20 years and I've had a very blessed property management and business ownership life. I do say though that when I was 23 and when I started the business, I don't think it would have mattered what I was doing. It wasn't actually about the property management. It was actually probably about business ownership that I was drawn to. And I think I always say, even if I was a hairdresser at 23, it would have been a hairdresser shop that I opened up, just happened to be working in property management. So I've been running that and I've had a very blessed property management life. I always feel a little bit guilty when people talk about the roller coaster of their property management businesses, because I don't feel like I've had that. Or if I have, I sort of feel like maybe I just didn't sweat the small stuff. And so that led me into... Jason Hull - DoorGrow (02:50) Yeah. Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (03:10) running and founding PM Collective, which was bringing in a peer-to-peer mentorship and training Australia-wide where we run 200 coffee and conversations every year. And we really support each other in the industry just by that casual learning from each other. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (03:27) That's awesome. So they're getting together, hanging out with each other, sharing ideas, and you're kind of the facilitator in this. Ashleigh Goodchild (03:35) Yeah, we do it Australia wide. have loads of hosts around Australia. So other people like myself who want to give back. So it's a great opportunity for people to give back. We've actually run a couple over in the US as well. And we have just had one in New Zealand. So the idea is that it allows people in the industry who have been in for a long time, like I said, to give back to the industry and help the the younger ones that are coming in to really learn to enjoy the career as well. So it's really great. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (04:04) Yeah, you know, it's amazing how much help is available and how willing people are to help. Yeah, I'm reading a book right now by Simon Squibb, I believe is his name, something like that. And it's it's about like following your dream and having a dream. But he said he created an organization that. I guess over in the UK, but he created this organization that allowed people to either help. fun people's dreams or for people to get their dreams launched. And he said that they had way more people. He thought everybody would be wanting to get the dream and their own dream met. He said they had way more people offering to help those that had a dream. And so, and he was talking about how much help is available. So. There's so much help available out there. And a lot of times we just don't ask as entrepreneurs. know, there's this funny thing that when we start out as an entrepreneur, we've kind of come through this whole world where we're such a minority, because most people on the planet are not entrepreneurial currently. And so we get a lot of feedback that we're weird or that we're different or that we're strange. And so we learn to kind of isolate. We start to recognize, I'm different and there isn't a lot of help or support. which is kind of an inaccurate viewpoint, but we kind of view ourselves as an island. And then we start our journey as an entrepreneur and we usually think we're gonna do it all ourselves. We're gonna read the right books and watch YouTube videos and we wear it as a badge of honor. I'm gonna get this thing started and do it all alone. that's, as I say at the end of my podcast each episode, that's the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. Ashleigh Goodchild (05:40) I think as well, like we find that a lot of people are really great at their jobs. They're either, you know, great property managers, great BDMs, and they have people around them that say, you know, you're so good at what you do, you should go open up your own business. And I don't think people actually realize there is, it can be really hard to start your business. I mean, you've got the logistics side of things, but you just assume the phone's going to keep calling and start calling as soon as you're out on your own. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (06:02) Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (06:09) And I think that that's one of the biggest things that I see people underestimate. And so to be able to give them that support and not be forced to sell their business because it's just got too stressful. I've got one of my clients where she had her own property management business when she was in her twenties. And she ended up selling it because it was just too much to handle at that age. She didn't have the support, you know, 10, 15 years ago. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (06:14) Yeah. Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (06:36) And I remember her saying, I wish PM Collective was around because I wouldn't have sold my business. But now I can have the stamina for my business because I've got that support around me. So I think that that's where I'm seeing a really big gap. people who think, you know, people who are great at their job, which means that they think they're going to be great at business ownership, which is not always the case as well. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (06:57) Yeah, there's a great book on that exact subject. It's called the E-Myth, the E-Myth Revisited. And in this book, E is entrepreneur, it's entrepreneur myth. And basically the summary of the whole book is if you think you, if you've learned how to do the technician level work, you like you have learned how to bake really great cakes. The myth is that now you think, well, I could go start a business and start a bakery making cakes. But a business involves a lot more. A business involves marketing, sales, accounting, you know, a lot of different stuff that is outside the skill set of baking a cake. And so the same thing with property management. Some people are like, I've managed properties for a while, or I've done business development for a property management company, done sales for a while. And they think I could now go start a business doing this. And that's the technician level work. That's not the business ownership type of stuff. then that's where things get a little more difficult. Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (07:57) read that book it's actually a really great one for newbies in the business. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (08:01) Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I love that. So how does the PM collective work? How are you getting people together? How do you facilitate this? What does a typical meetup look like? How do you make these connections? Ashleigh Goodchild (08:13) Yeah, so we very much just have hosts that reach out to us and they see a gap in their location. And then they just give me, they have to give me three dates, times and locations. And I just set them up online for them. So it's relatively easy for the host. Everyone just rocks up. It's very, very casual. They grab their own coffee, they take a seat and the host is there just to sort of welcome everyone and sort of facilitate it to a certain point. We have the groups, they can range anywhere in size between four people to 20 people. And to be honest, even the groups of four, I find are so important because I find that the intimate conversations are so much stronger in those small groups and people really open up. And the conversation could be about anything. It could be about... certain products that we're using. might be about some subscriptions. It might be about what's currently not working, what demos we've had, what problems we've had. And I find in that smaller group, people definitely open up a lot more and get that real, really good support that they need. Sometimes it's we chat on a personal level. Again, that comes down to people that are personally happy, I believe make the best. employees and their best employers. And it's really important that we look after people's personal state and having those personal conversations and those opportunities to vent, think are incredibly important in that environment as well. And then we have a big mixture. So we've got some groups where we get a lot of BDMs come along, some where it's just the solo printers, some where it's the referring partners, they sort of just all find their own vibe. But one of the biggest things that has been really important is that consistency. So knowing the for the public to know that we're going to show up every single month at this location. And we're here if and when you need us. That consistency is really important. So really casual, you don't need to buy a ticket or anything like that. And I think that really what's made them successful though is that consistency. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (10:15) Got it. So is how does the PM collective have the bandwidth to facilitate this? How do you guys make money? How does that work? Ashleigh Goodchild (10:23) So we don't, we sort of run it as a bit of a not-for-profit, even though it's not registered as a not-for-profit. So the purpose is very much community-led learning. And I guess on a personal level, I run my own business, my own real estate business. So for me, that's my bread and butter, and this is really what's considered my passion project. So this is sort of more my legacy, I guess. And, you know, I've got the time and the energy. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (10:27) Okay. Ashleigh Goodchild (10:48) to and the love to do it. So that's what I do. We have got great sponsors who help support our podcast and cover the cost for the membership and things like that. And we've got a membership base, which would be say, I guess on the smaller medium size. And over time that will grow. But for now, the support is really where it's at and we're driven by that with no need. for any strong monetary value coming through at the moment. That might change in 10 years, but for now and the last five years, it's been perfect. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (11:19) Well, mean, it sounds like the people that are really giving to this community like yourself probably have some of the healthiest businesses because the people that are in over their head don't have time to go hang out or go to lunch or to meet up with people. so, you know, that, and that, you know, that allows people to come in that maybe they're are struggling to meet and hang out with people that are in a healthier place and kind of lend them a hand up. Right. So. Ashleigh Goodchild (11:32) No. It's interesting because in Australia, we've got what we call CPD points. don't know if you've got them, where they're like compulsory development points that you've got to do to hold your registration. and our events, they are not CPD registered, which means that people don't come along because they are coming because they just have to be registered and they just have to do so many points. They come because they actually want to come along. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (11:57) Okay. Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (12:12) And I think you'll find that that has made a massive difference with the vibe. Like we had an event the other night, because we sort of run the separate events as well. And, you know, everyone comes along, they're catching up, they haven't seen each other for a couple of months. And it really feels like someone's birthday party. But the important thing is that people are there because they want to, not because they're going to get a CPD point attached to it. And you really can feel that difference in the vibe. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (12:37) Got it. Okay, well, let's take, I'm gonna do a quick word from our sponsors. This will be relevant. If you are a property management business owner, you're tired of getting tangled up in numbers, KRS SmartBooks has your back. They specialize in property bookkeeping for small to mid-sized managers who'd rather focus on, well, managing. So with over 15 years of experience in real estate, accounting, they're pros in Appfolio Yardi and all the top property software. Trust them to make your monthly reports hassle free so you can get back to what really matters running your business. Head over to KRSbooks.com to book your free discovery call. And so maybe that'll help you have a little more time to get back to the property management community. All right. So back to what we were talking about, Ashleigh. I love, I love this idea. I love that you've facilitated this vehicle for everybody to get together. You just, resonate positivity and I'm sure that kind of sets the tone for the group that people are kind of attracted to. And I've been part of groups where the leaders are very positive and it's just a different category and group of people. There's a lot of people that are helpful, positive. I'm in masterminds like that. And then there's others where the leader is more kind of like a dictator cult leader and like, it's just a very different environment. And there's a lot of guilt and a lot of shame and stuff like this, right? and, I've been in some men's programs and things like that that were like that. And it's just, you know, it's a totally different environment. So you've created, and so this is really, I think a strong Testament to you. How many, how many people are involved in this throughout Australia and beyond. Ashleigh Goodchild (14:13) should know the answer to that and I don't. And I would probably say there would be around 20 hosts around Australia. So 20 people, have started having visionary leaders in each state and to help sort of help me control the states. But yeah, about 20 hosts. But then like I've got, for example, an audio summit coming up. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (14:21) Wow, OK. Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (14:37) And that's got 17 leaders in Australia doing an audio summit for me. And we're doing 17 days of tips and tricks. So there is a lot of people that make up all of this, a lot of other coaches and trainers that give their time and their knowledge as well to it. So it really is a big project. in total, I'd say there's probably about a good 40, 50 people from coaches, trainers, leaders. who facilitates some sort of knowledge base for me on all these events. So pretty lucky. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (15:07) So describe to me the difference between structured management and random leadership. Ashleigh Goodchild (15:13) Yeah, so that's something that I practice inside my real estate at SoCo. And one thing that I've learned from other people and other leaders is when we do, obviously you need structured management, in terms of processes and procedures and all of that, and that's fine. But when it comes to leadership, sort of what you talking before about the dictatorship, I feel like I probably practice servant leadership a lot more. practice servant leadership at SoCo, which is the real estate, and I practice servant leadership in PM Collective. And very much I do picture myself or feel that I'm a leader from the bottom and that you just tell me what you need and I will deliver it for you. So I do that both in PM Collective and SoCo. And that's where the support comes from. The random leadership, I think, has been something that has really helped me keep long term staff. I'm known in the industry for having a long term team. anywhere between sort of seven years and 15 years average for property managers, which is great. And one of the things I would say have helped me and I have to say I haven't done this on purpose. It's just the way that I've done it. And I now I reflect back on it. I can see how it's worked. And if we were to every single year, give our team a Christmas bonus every single year, they're going to expect that. And if one year you don't do it because you can't afford it or something's changed, people are going to start getting a little bit ticked off because it's like, where's my bonus? get one every year. And I think the same goes with the Jason Hull - DoorGrow (16:52) become expected. Ashleigh Goodchild (16:54) very much expected. And I think when we start getting, creating expectations with our team, that's when we can start getting a little bit of conflict. And I've seen it in a lot of agencies. So where I, I, I think what I think works really well is things like we might as an office randomly buy someone a coffee, or we might just randomly say, Hey, let's go out for lunch, or randomly, we'll do a Christmas bonus randomly. We might shout everyone a voucher for a massage. All of those random things mean so much more to your staff and they appreciate it so much more. Even if it was that $5 coffee or that random walk or that random time that you're giving, I just find that that doesn't set up expectations and people appreciate those little things a lot more. And like I said, it's not something that I went and said to myself, this is how I'm gonna manage my team. It's something that I just did naturally, probably because I'm a little bit scatty and I probably was, you know, not very good at keeping things consistent. But now that I look back on it and I can see that that 100 % has played a massive part in creating a really healthy long-term team. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (18:07) Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. know, yeah, giving gifts means a lot more or giving experiences or doing things means a lot more than, you know, than just a bonus that they're expecting at the end of the year. And most people aren't actually money motivated. BDMs usually probably should be a little bit and maybe entrepreneurs, but that's the mistake entrepreneurs make is that we assume everybody else likes money as much as we do. A lot of times. And so we try to bonus people or reward people or motivate people with money. And a lot of times that backfires. And because most people aren't money motivated or money driven, know entrepreneurs listening right now are like, what? That makes no sense. I don't understand it, but yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (18:48) I think a lot of businesses as well, they try to manage their team by textbook and you know, the textbook says, we should give people their birthdays off or a textbook says we should, you know, we should do a bonus at Christmas or whatever it might be. But I think, you know, really getting to know each person and I know who in my team values me sitting down and talking to them and asking them how their weekend was. However, if I went and did that to someone else in the team. That'd be like, you just go away. I'm trying to work here. And I, I, I, yeah, I know what, what each person needs to be happy. One thing that I found more recently is that if your team can have a hobby, that is probably the biggest thing to create a happy team and hobbies prevent burnout. And I think that when we get a lot of people in the industry where all they do is work and family, work and family, they don't have anything in between. And so like one of my girls, she loves to play golf. She really young girl, 21 years old, plays golf semi-professionally. And she had asked whether she can start having some private coaching on Tuesday afternoons. So she was going to come in a few hours early. And I was like, absolutely no problems at all. Because if I give her that Tuesday afternoon off to go play golf, there's something else that she loves. I just find that, you know, people have to have other things they love just besides, yeah, besides the work and family. And that's something that I feel like I really try to encourage with everyone in industry is find a hobby if you're feeling stressed. And you know, and a hobby is not, you know, reading a book or something like that. It's actually like playing pickleball or netball or coaching a team or it's something specific. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (20:37) Got it. OK, so you're encouraging team members to have hobbies. And that allows them to maybe have a little bit more to bring to the table in terms of energy and life, it sounds like. Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (20:42) 100 % Yeah, yeah, it just allows them to enjoy enjoy work. And like I said before, you've got to have them they need to have a happy home life for them to perform well for your clients. It's really, really important. You can't, you can't have them having a tough personal life at all that's going to affect you and your clients. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (21:10) Got it. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's a really good book called giftology by John Rulin. And he talks about the benefit of giving gifts, gift giving, to basically for almost as marketing or do increase referrals or to increase retention. But the same thing applies to team members. These doing these random things, sounds like a really solid idea. And then also encouraging hobbies I think could be really beneficial. So, So explain your vision for a more human and less transactional industry. Ashleigh Goodchild (21:43) So in Australia, have starting to become quite reliant on our offshore staff and our offshore team. And I'm assuming that that's everywhere. Would that be the same with your businesses? Jason Hull - DoorGrow (21:55) Yeah. Yeah, I would say so. There's a lot of people that are hiring VAs in the Philippines or Mexico for sure. Ashleigh Goodchild (22:02) Yeah, I mean, and whether it's part of your business plan or not, you know, I fully respect that. But what we've found in businesses is that by passing on the transactional work to our offshore team, and transactional, mean, collecting the rent, arranging maintenance, sending out inspection letters, you know, all of that sort of admin tasks, we're finding that that's really not where the value of a property manager or business owner is anymore. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (22:19) Mm-hmm. Ashleigh Goodchild (22:31) And so what we need to do is to move our skillset into more of a consulting role. We currently have been doing for a number of couple of years and I teach this a lot to other officers is what we call an annual investor audit. So our annual investor audits, they are 30 minute consults with every client and we are going diving straight into all the holistic side of their property because we need to make sure as a business that our clients are emotionally well and financially well. If they're emotionally and financially well, they're going to keep their investment property. The minute that they're stressed and not making money is the minute that they sell. And obviously that's not what we want in the businesses. So to do that by checking in with them, we are talking to them about any red flags we see with their tenancy with their rent or their inspections. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (23:10) Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (23:27) We're talking them through and helping them understand what level of maintenance is considered normal or excessive in their property. If they're not spending enough maintenance, we're talking to them about ideas they've got for future renovations. We're talking to them about what their mortgage rates doing, how are they feeling? Are they positively geared or negatively geared? Is there any circumstance that's coming up in the next 12 months that we should make a note of that might cause them a little bit of stress? We are... Talking about all of those things on a real conversational level and it allows us to pick up trends of what that client's plans are. Are they planning on building a portfolio? Are they planning on selling in six months? Are we going as an office to see a huge wave of clients starting to sell? Is that something we need to protect that, you know, as an asset in our business? And so when we start getting into that consultancy role, it's no different to your accountant organizing a tax planning meeting. you know, in April, for example, that's exactly what we're doing. And we are planting seeds for that client so that they're never surprised when we call them up to say, Hey, your rent's gone backwards, or you got to spend $10,000 on the property. And that has been incredible. It's not only been something that's helped our churn rate. Generally in Australia, churn rate and loss rate for businesses can range anywhere between sort of 15 and 30%. Our office is sitting at about 5%. For it so for a large, a large office with we've got 1200 doors, to have that sort of 5 % churn rate is is actually considered really great. And I do put that down to the annual investor audits. And in addition, though, it allows the business owner Jason Hull - DoorGrow (24:52) Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (25:10) to take control of their asset and not to have to maintain that relationship. Because at the end of the day, I'm very passionate about that that client is my client as the business owner. And I need to keep that relationship up. And if I put all of that responsibility onto the property manager and my property manager leaves, I've got a risk that that client is going to follow the property manager. So that's a little bit of my of the importance and responsibility I take as a business owner. So they have been an incredible game changer for retention, but it's also helped uncover new business opportunities because when we've done these for our clients, we've never sort of asked them, do you have any properties? But so many clients have actually said to us, that was so good. Can you do it for my other property? And I'm like, sure. Where's your other property? and got the address and we've subsequently got the business of the because the other agencies weren't doing it. So obviously over time, more offices will start doing it. But that's just a great example of elevating the human side of property management. And we started introducing these in our business, like I said, a couple of years ago, I now teach them to other agencies around Australia. And then as soon as we can get, you know, a really good percentage of businesses, all bringing these in as just a natural part of the business, then we will that's how we see the industry elevate. And then that's just going to be considered a normal thing like checking rent arrears. And so that's really my vision to, to bring in things like that. I've been trialing, I do a lot of like mirroring in the business. So I trial things in my business first. And if it works, I will put it out to the industry. the other trial that I did was, which actually didn't work. And, it was about, I had a junior property manager and we had a lot of clients that we were losing from, from fees from owners being fee driven. And I thought to myself a little bit like a hairdresser. You've got a junior apprentice to cut your hair. You've got a senior stylist or you've got the director. And I thought to myself, I'm actually going to do a fee schedule with a junior rate. So if you want to, if you're fee driven and you want a junior to look after your property with less than one year experience, this is the fee. And if you want a senior, this is the fee. Now I thought that everybody would jump at the junior fee schedule because everyone seemed to be fee driven. What was so interesting is I did this trial for 12 months and I probably had 3%, maybe 2 % of clients actually say, I'll go with the junior fee schedule. Every single person said, thanks, but I think I'll stick with a senior. And I think that that's a great example to showcase that investors do want the experience. They want the peace of mind. And we all thought they wanted cheap fee schedules, but when given the opportunity for the cheap fee schedule with a junior, they didn't take it. So I thought that that was a really good example. Yeah, I know. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (27:49) Mm-hmm. yeah. I could talk about that for an hour. We've tested a lot of stuff on pricing. Ashleigh Goodchild (28:10) But it was just a great test to do. I trialed it, it didn't work. So I've gone to the industry and I've said, given it ago, it hasn't worked. I'm now trialing a second option with fee schedules. And hopefully that works because I just feel like the industry needs to move just from the same fee schedules we've been doing for 20 years. It really is something that needs to be done there. So that's my next mission. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (28:14) Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I love the experimentation. So cool thing about my position is I get hundreds of guinea pigs. And so I do all sorts of testing. And so we could chat about some of that. We've done some fun stuff, but I love the idea of the annual investor audit. call those, we coach clients on that as well. We call those annual portfolio reviews and that's a great opportunity to get more referrals. great opportunity to get more reviews and testimonials. It's a great opportunity to create more connection with the client and to showcase what's invisible to them currently that you're actually doing work. And yeah, and it's going to significantly decrease churn. You mentioned churn maybe between on a lot of companies, maybe being between 15 to 30%. And if you're at 1200 units, I was doing math while you were talking, that would be between 180 to 360 units being lost each year. And so a lot of property managers don't pay attention to what's leaving and they think, well it's infrequent or they're selling their properties or whatever and they're not paying attention to that. They're so focused on how do I get more doors? And sometimes they're losing more doors than they're adding each year or they're just breaking even. And so they've been at the same spot for like a decade sometimes. And they're wondering, why does this feel like a grind? And they're not making progress. And sometimes you have to look at what you're losing and what's your level of service that you have there and how visible is what you're doing to your client? Because if it's not visible, they're going to assume, well, why do I even pay them? They're not doing anything. They're just collecting rent. Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (30:15) Yeah, it's like, I call it a, we've got a client success manager. And I think that that's a real missing part in a lot of businesses because we've got the BDM who brings in new business. We've got the property manager who maintains it, but the client success manager actually is what I call a BDM in reverse, because if they can prove your retention, that is growth. So therefore it is still a BDM role. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (30:21) Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (30:41) that you've got someone specifically for. So that's a real big missing part. And I think a lot of businesses when they don't have somebody specifically on that role. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (30:52) Yeah, I've been privy to see inside of a lot of different types of businesses and being in a lot of different masterminds. And one of the things that I've seen is that some of the most sales oriented organizations, like companies that they're focused on placing salespeople and hiring salespeople and stuff like this, they always have their best salespeople graduate to be on their client success team. is how they kind of position it. And they call that their second sales team. Because these are the people that get people to re-up or renew or continue on, or to bump up into a higher level program. so client success is your other sales team. their whole job is to decrease churn. Their whole job is to increase retention. So at DoorGrow our client success manager is my oldest daughter. And she does our client success. And she's got the personality for it. She's much more of a feeler than I am. She's much more about community than myself, right? I'm more of a logical thinker in a lot of instances. And so clients just love her. She does a great job. And so everybody should have client success. What's funny is in the property management industry, you hear the phrase property manager, but that's like this mystery sort of title that means a different thing to everybody you ask. And so for some of them, some people think their property manager is supposed to be a BDM also. I'm like, those are... probably different personality types. Some think they're the maintenance coordinator, but then they'll hire a maintenance coordinator and they call somebody else a property manager. so property managers also could be those client success people, the relationship builder. And so that's where it gets confusing is when we're, I hired a property manager. Well, okay, what are you having them do? I always have to ask because it's always different. So I don't know if you've noticed that in Australia, but. Ashleigh Goodchild (32:41) Yeah, and I think as well, like, I like what you mentioned before about how a lot of people don't actually see what we do. And I think that's where you've got the opportunity. Because I remember a long time ago, a client said to me, you know, wanting to negotiate on fees after a couple of years. And he said, you know, your job's easy, you don't, you know, the you don't have to do anything for your money. So therefore, you should reduce the fees. And I'm like, Jason Hull - DoorGrow (32:49) Yeah, it's invisible. Ashleigh Goodchild (33:07) Hold on a second, we've chosen a fantastic, perfect tenant. We do a lot in the background to make it look like we are managing it nice and easily and not creating any stress for you. Do you want me to create a problem tenant so it looks like that I'm doing work so that you can justify the fee? Because the fee is so, is reflective on you finding, it look like that we're having a very easy life. but that's taken a lot of skill and experience to do that. It's just so backwards, isn't it? That the way that they validate our fee, if we have got lots of problems and they think we're not worth our fee when we've got nothing to do and got a perfect tenant, which was the result of us putting it in the first place. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (33:34) Yeah. Yeah, I used to work in IT and one of the things I learned in doing IT and working on computers and networks is that if you make everything run perfectly, they wonder why they even pay you at all. And then I also noticed if there was a problem, they're like, why do we pay this person at all? There's now this problem with the network. so either way, couldn't win. So I learned I had to make the invisible visible. I had to tell them all the time, hey, I just updated this server. I just changed this. This has been improved. That's preventing these problems. And they're like, wow, Jason's on top of this. Jason's making everything run smooth. So I had to learn to be noisy. I worked at Hewlett Packard and I was in Boise, Idaho and I had a boss in Texas. And he would just look at our... he would message us all throughout the day through an instant message app or whatever. He would message us, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I was like, he can't see what we're doing. So I just started changing my status. I allowed you to put a little status, they use some Microsoft app, I can't remember Teams, I don't remember what it was. But I just would update it every day and I would say like throughout the day what I was working on in that moment. Updating this, working on this, doing this, and just what I was doing. And so then he started asking, what's your coworker? doing because we were a two person team that were over a big system. And he was like, what's what's what's Josh doing? Is he working? What's he? So he started to perceive that I was on top of things and working and this other person was lazy and not doing stuff. I'm like, no, he's working too. So yeah, but that's I sold, you know, we've translated that to helping clients make sure you're showcasing the invisible because they can't see it. Otherwise, you have to be noisy. And those annual reviews are a great opportunity to do that because you say Here's how many maintenance requests we've handled that you didn't have to deal with. Here's how much money has been collected. Here's the payouts that we've done to you. Here's all the stuff that we've been taking care of that's prevented you from having to deal with this. Here's how many calls we took. Here's how many tickets we handled. All these vanity metrics justify why they spend the money with you. So I love that you're reinforcing that idea. So for my clients listening. She said, and she's got 1200 doors, which is probably more than some of you. so Ashleigh, what do you feel like people are hearing your low churn rate besides the annual investor audits that you do and maybe having a client success manager. I don't, what, what do you feel like is really significantly reduced the churn rate down to 5%. I mean, that's significant in any business. Ashleigh Goodchild (36:25) Yeah, it would. You've got your audits, it would probably be I think myself being a director of the business who is 100 % active in property management and approachable is a really important word. Clients know that they can call me at any time they know that if one of my property managers is on leave, they can call me to handle anything that plays a massive part. And if I reflect on some of my clients, because we all get clients that, you know, maybe aren't happy with something or a little hiccup has happened, to know that my clients don't just silently leave and say, that happened, not happy, I'm gonna go find someone else. They always contact me first. I actually had one the other day to say, Ash, my property manager is really lovely, but I'm just feeling like I need someone with a bit more confidence. No problems at all. Let me move you to this person. The fact that they approach me first and give me the opportunity and know that they can call me to move them. I just take that with so much privilege because that doesn't happen in a lot of offices. If you're not approachable and your client would rather just leave the property, then bother coming to you because they don't think they're going to get heard. That's going to be a problem. So for me, that is massive. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (37:24) Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (37:46) And then probably the final thing, I think that our values really show through, through social media and my presence on social media, the fact that they know me on a personal level, they can see that I've got kids, they can see that I've done podcasts, they can see when I win awards, and embracing our clients on our journey and allowing them to see every part of me as a human being, I think is great. We do an annual an annual drive for a not-for-profit. support DB survivors quite a lot in our business and we promote philanthropic investing. And so the fact that we bring in our clients to be involved in that process by buying their clients, their tenants a hamper for Christmas to strengthen relationships has been a fantastic PR exercise with clients saying, you know, yes, please organize my 10 Christmas hamper and we're just so thankful to be aligned with a business like yours that supports, you know, good causes. It's those little things that I've probably played the biggest part in it, in their retention and client success. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (38:49) Love it. Yeah, I love that. A lot of property managers are so focused and business owners are so focused on thinking, what, how do I get more money? How do I take more instead of like the benefit of being involved in how much trust it would create to be involved in some sort of philanthropy or charity or something that's a bit more outward focus. And, and one of things we are really big on at DoorGrow is coaching our clients on finding a, in building out their client centered mission statement is figuring out. How do you make this vision bigger so that you're having a positive impact, not just for yourself, for the business, for your team, but maybe the community at large, maybe the industry at large? And what sort of impact and change do you want to see there and making that vision bigger? Because it allows you to attract team members that are inspired by a bigger vision, allows you to attract clients that resonate and are inspired by a bigger vision. And so you get better people all around. Ashleigh Goodchild (39:48) And it gives other people the opportunity to do good. And with our annual hamper drive, we did that last year. And all we did, we aligned ourselves with a not-for-profit hamper company, which is sort of like a by-product of one of the charities. And they support women getting back into the workforce. And so not-for-profit, we emailed all our clients and we said to our landlords, listen, if you've had a great year with your tenant, we would love to arrange a hamper on your behalf. It's $88. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (39:53) Yeah. Ashleigh Goodchild (40:16) and we'll take it from your rental income and we'll send it on behalf of you for Christmas. It's a great way to acknowledge you've had a great experience with your tenant and strengthen that relationship. And from that alone, just us doing OneDrive last year raised 14,287. And so this year we have now through PM Collective promoted that through other agencies to do the same. And I actually had an email from the CEO of the not-for-profit today and she said, Ash, I am just so excited to get these numbers back to you. We have had such a huge response from you and assitting against it. And I just can't wait to see what the figure will be because I know as an agency, we will do probably double and the fact that other agencies now will do good. It's just an example of the impact that we didn't realize we were having by giving our landlords the opportunity to do good, but then sharing that with other people to give them the opportunity for their clients to do good. It's just so wonderful on so many levels. And it's the same with our philanthropic investing. encourage owners who financially are able to rent out their home at a low market rate to a survivor of DV. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (41:19) Love it. Ashleigh Goodchild (41:29) to do it and you'll be surprised at how many people don't even know it's an option. It's not saying that it's right for every landlord, but there are so many landlords out there who have a vacant property and didn't even know that they could do this jump on board. yeah, giving those opportunities to people that didn't know that it was an option, I think is really great to see. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (41:50) Yeah, love it. mean, people want to feel good about themselves and, you know, being able to give gifts or being able to benefit others makes people feel good about themselves. And if you're giving your clients a chance to feel good about themselves, they're going to associate that with you. Yeah, that's beautiful. So, well, cool. I love all these different ideas and tips. think you've shared that. I love the idea of doing the annual portfolio reviews. love the idea of, you know, the Ashleigh Goodchild (42:04) Yeah. Yeah. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (42:18) charitable stuff, the philanthropy stuff. Love the idea of giving people a vehicle or some method to bypass the frontline staff person that they're assigned so that they can reach somebody that can maybe, if they want to complain about that, that team member or some, there's a, there's a gateway there or a vehicle there for them to do that rather than them just going, well, I guess I have to quit. I don't know. Yeah. So I love, I love these ideas. that I think anybody listening to this would benefit in decreased churn. Ashleigh Goodchild (42:40) Yeah. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (42:47) Well, Ashleigh, I appreciate you coming here on the show. How can people maybe get in touch with you or with your business or whatever you would like to share with others here in closing? Ashleigh Goodchild (42:58) Yeah, well, I mean, I'm very easy to Google. You can just Google Ashleigh Goodchild and hopefully find me there. But I am on Instagram and all the socials under PM Collective or under Ashleigh Goodchild. So I'd love to connect with anyone that finds me on those platforms. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (43:16) Perfect. All right, Ashleigh. We'll probably have to have you come talk to our clients sometime. I think that'd be fun. So, all right. Thank you, Ashleigh. Appreciate you coming here on the show. All right. So for those that are struggling in your property management business and you want to kind of get to that next level, make sure you reach out to us at doorgrow.com. We would love to facilitate or help you or see if we could help you with your business. Ashleigh Goodchild (43:21) Love them. Thanks for having me. Jason Hull - DoorGrow (43:41) If you felt stagnant for a while, also join our free Facebook, just for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com And if you would like to get the best ideas and property management, join our free newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. And until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

When trying to grow your property management business, have you ever thought to yourself, "Man, it would be great if I just had more leads?" In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the Leads Myth and how "just having more leads" will not actually help you grow your business. You'll Learn [02:06] The Myth of Needing More Leads [11:39] Leaks in Your Sales Pipeline [22:41] The Future of SEO with AI Quotables "Why do we call it the leads myth? Well, the myth is this lie that we believe that you just need more leads. And the assumption in that is that all leads are the same." "The more clarity you have, the less wrong stuff you're going to be doing." "Not all clients are equal, right? Which means not all leads you get are equal. You need to qualify them." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason Hull (00:00) Most of the industry is trapped in a cycle of suck. This is why most property managers suck in most markets. Maybe even you that's listening. 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. We help people grow their property management businesses quickly. And our mission is to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now let's get into the show. All right. So today we're going to be chatting a little bit about the leads myth that a lot of people believe. So if you have ever thought to yourself, I just need more leads. If I just had more leads, everything else would be great in my business. What do you have to say about that? Well, I think that is not the case. Okay. It's definitely not the case. And I also think almost kind of be careful what you ask for a little bit. getting a whole bunch of leads was never really the best. strategy anyway, unless you have people who are just picking up the phone and calling you and saying hey, I Would love for you to just manage my property. I don't have any questions. Here's my money. I just had a contract Those are leads I want but cold leads that are Not ready to go that need to be warmed up that have a bajillion questions That might not even understand why they want to work with you Specifically, yeah, I'm just not interested in those leads. And the other thing I think we need to discuss on this episode specifically is the changes that we're seeing because of AI. So AI is really great and also it's changing things very rapidly and leads and SEO that's very effective by this too. Okay. So. Let's get into this. So a lot of people believe they just need more leads. And the danger in that is if you really just think you need more leads, you're going to go out to the marketplace and talk to marketers and they're going to go, cool, I'll give you leads. And they will sell you leads basically. So why do we call it the leads myth? Well, the myth is this lie that we believe that you just need more leads. And the assumption in that is that all leads are the same. And they're not, they're not even remotely the same. So there's a couple of different frameworks that we usually talk about to kind of destroy the leads myth. One is the four Ds to revenue. Another is the cycle of suck we talk about and how people get stuck in growth. We talk sometimes about the pipeline leaks that you have in your pipeline. And we talk about the myth of SEO or internet marketing. And then we often talk about any others warm versus cold leads and then David versus Goliath. Okay. So we can tackle these all really quickly and go through each of these and maybe some other things will pop up as we go. Cool. Let's talk about all of that and then we'll talk about why AI has changed all of, really all of those things. Okay. That'll be in conjunction with SEO. All right, so let's go through these. And so for those following along, if you stack all these concepts, each one compounds your speed of growth. They're all related. And so these are frameworks that I love to share with clients to help them understand so that they don't make the mistake of doing the wrong stuff. The more clarity you have, the less wrong stuff you're going to be doing. The less you're going to be experimenting, the less you're going to be wasting time. And if you really wanna collapse time, the easiest hack is reach out to us and we can help you with all of this. We've been doing this for over a decade and a half. We have had hundreds of guinea pigs to figure this all out and we have over 100. case studies and testimonials more than anyone else in the industry. All right. Let's get into this. let's talk about the four D's to revenue. So these are four numbers when multiplied equal the gross revenue in your business. And I sometimes call them the four doors to revenue. And I showed four doors with a little multiplication X next to each of them equals your money. Right? So not all leads are equal. So the, these D's are, if you want to write them down, they each start with a D. It is Deals, doors, duration, and dollars. Okay? So the first is like how many deals is this client going to bring you? Not all clients are equal, right? Which means not all leads you get are equal. You need to qualify them. And how many doors are they bringing to the table? Or how many doors per deal are they bringing? And then the third D is duration. How long are they going to stick around or be involved in property management? is are they an accidental investor that's going to stick around for maybe a year, or are they in the buy and hold game and they'll be around for 10? And then the last D is revenue or is dollars. And so are they a cheapo? Are they a premium buyer? Where do they kind of fit? Or are they somewhere in the middle, like the normals as I call them? So we've got these four Ds. So let's play a quick example. Let's take the accidental investor. They couldn't sell their property. They wanna get it rented out. How does this play out in the 4Ds? done one deal. They didn't mean to do a deal, but they did. And it's usually just one door. Maybe sometimes they have two, but very often we just see one door and they're not looking to... to do more deals because as soon as the market spikes and the market is hot, they're going to bail. They're going to sell, which means the duration is questionable. Let's say it's like one year, like if they can just get it rented. but it might be a few months because if the market spikes three months from now, they're probably going to dump that property pretty quick. And then. than the dollars, they're not your premium buyers. They're not looking to do a lot of improvements. They're not looking to spend a lot of money. They're the people who, they have this property, they aren't quite sure what to do with it. They figure, let's just see if I can get it rented. They want it well taken care of, but they're not generally looking to spend a lot of money or invest a lot of money in either the property or maintenance or repairs or improvements or a property manager. So they're just trying to... Do what they need to do. It's like the bare minimum in order to get a tenant. All right, so one, one, one, right? Like one deal, one door, one year duration, for example, if this is worst case scenario and you sign a one year agreement with them and they're a cheapo, right? Now let's take a really great scenario. What would be maybe an opposite scenario or a really great opportunity? Like my, I will say my second largest client. He had 42 doors I think was the right answer but I was looking to buy more. So when I took him on he had 42 by the time I sold the business he had 60 something. So he was always doing multiple deals. Yeah. The doors that he had came out of multiple deals. So since he did multiple deals he also had multiple doors. was consistently looking to grow. He didn't want to just stop, you know, at a certain point he was always looking. He also was a buy and hold investor. He wasn't trying to buy these things and then wait, you know, until the market spiked and then try to sell them and make a profit. He wasn't up for the long term. And he was not a cheapo. He wasn't trying to cut corners. He wasn't trying to cut costs. You he wanted to work with. a property manager, wanted to take care of the properties and make sure that they were being maintained properly. Yeah. Okay. So that's a great example that previous client that you had. So let's just say like on each of these fees, we use tens instead of ones, right? Like let's say they do 10 deals over the life of being with you. They've got 10 doors. Maybe sometimes it's 10 doors per deal if they're doing small multis or something like this, right? And then you've got a 10 year buy and hold duration. In this hypothetical example that I just threw out, it would be 10 times 10 times 10. This would be over a thousand times greater lifetime value than that accidental investor in our previous hypothetical. Does that make sense? So are these even remotely equal? No, not even remotely equal. Should you then spend the same amount of time trying to cultivate both of those type of leads? Probably not. Would you spend the same amount of time following up or giving them attention? Probably not. And the great investor clients probably are easier to deal with, less emotional, have a much higher margin and operational cost is lower, right? And so there's a lot of benefits. so this is, we're just talking about the revenue piece, but when we look at the cost side of things as well, everybody knows having a really bad owner that's really needy and difficult and emotional about the property. can be a big headache and a big challenge and you may be losing money on some of those doors. So, four D's to revenue, that's one concept. One quick thing I wanna add to that is where do you think these owners hang out? So, if you've got an accidental landlord and they are looking for a property manager, where might that lead come from? Versus where might the lead of a client that has 42 doors come from? There's a lot higher probability that an online lead is going to be an accidental landlord. It's not impossible to get an online lead that has 42 doors. It's just probably not your norm because the ones that have 42 doors, they aren't really dabbling. They aren't going, oh, geez, I wonder if I should get a property manager to maybe help me with these. They are just a little bit more savvy. A lot of times those aren't going to be the leads that you're getting if you're buying leads. Although those are the leads that you want, it's not going to be the norm that you get. All right, so we're 10 minutes into this. We're going to crank through some of the rest of these. So cycle of suck. Cycle of suck, real simple. If you take on any client, it leads to you having some bad clients. So if you take on bad clients, that leads to you having bad properties, which leads to having bad. Residents or tenants which leads to having a bad reputation or reviews which leads to you attracting more bad clients. So not all leads are good. You don't want to take on every client and you definitely don't want to attract or get more bad leads. And so this is a framework that if you understand you can reverse it and focus on a cycle of success where you're picky about the owners you take on, you're picky about the properties you take on, you're picky about the tenants which everybody tries to do anyway. but those first two steps are supremely important. And then you're going to have a methodology for getting more positive reviews. These are things we help our clients with. And so then you create a cycle of success. Most of the industry is trapped in a cycle of suck. This is why most property managers suck in most markets. Maybe even you that's listening. We want you to get out of the cycle of suck. All right, let's talk about the pipeline leaks. Okay. So usually if I were drawing, I would draw a spigot or a faucet or whatever you attach a hose to, and then I would draw a hose, and then I would draw a little plant or tree that you're trying to grow at the end of the yard that this hose is trying to get water to. Most of you listening think, I just need more leads. This is where the lead Smith becomes really obvious, trying to turn on that faucet even more. I just need more water flowing through the hose. That would make sense, that would be true unless there's a problem with the hose, right? Like the hose has some leaks. And if the hose has some major holes in it, there's not going to be a lot coming out the other end. Sometimes very little at all. And so it's not about how many leads you're getting, sometimes it's just how good is your pipeline? How tight is your product? And so we need to make sure that we get those leaks shored up. And we'll just mention what they are real quick, but. One of the earliest ones that affects you is just awareness. It's going to be your perception and reputation online. It's going to be your website. It's going to be your branding. So they can tell that you are in this industry and that it's clear that that's your focus and it's not real estate or something else. And what else? Your culture and purpose. This is the actual product that you sell. So that is another one. And there are two more. Pricing. Pricing, which everybody's trying to price the same way, 10 % or worse, pure percentage, or they're doing flat fee. We have a different innovative pricing model. If you're curious about that, set up a call with our team. We can tell you about it. That allows you to close more deals more easily at a higher price point. And the last is the pitch, right? Selling. And so if you can dial in each of these leaks, what we've noticed over the years is we can double a company's close rate without changing the amount of leads or lead sources that they're getting currently if we can get those things dialed in. And that's significant. Maybe you don't need more leads. Maybe you just need less leakage in your pipeline. Cool. All right, the next one, you had mentioned warm versus cold leads. Do you wanna explain the difference? Yeah, we can talk about warm versus cold. So when I had my property management business, Yeah. what is a cold lead? So cold lead is someone who really has almost zero, very little familiarity with who you are in your company and your brand and what you do. They don't. they should work with you. That's the big thing is why they should work with you. So they don't know you, trust you or like you. That's a cold lead. And a warm lead. Warm lead would be something like a referral or some sort of recommendation. hey, Sarah is the best, I work with her and you should too. Now they're coming in already feeling like, somebody that I know that I trust recommended this person, so therefore I should also trust this person. So those obviously have a much different close rate. And there are things that you can do to increase your close rate or to warm up deals, of course. But if you're spending all of your time trying to close a bunch of cold leads, which generally is going to be what happens when you're purchasing leads, you really don't get to buy warm leads. Right. They're all cold. I mean, that would be great if you could, but when you're buying leads, you're usually buying a lead that is very cold. They don't know you at all. And oftentimes that same lead is being sold to multiple different companies. There's a lot of blood in the water there. So warm leads versus cold leads, the close rate on warm leads will be really high, like 90 % or higher. Cold leads, like the opposite, 10 % or worse. And so I would rather a client get five warm leads and maybe close four of them than 10 cold leads and maybe get one. The hidden pain point or secret with warm versus cold lead generation. or cold lead strategies is time. Cold leads take a massive amount of time because you have to nurture them and warm them up and build the trust and create the relationship. And even after all of that, and all of sudden done, the conversion rate's really low. So all of you know how high the close rate is if you get a really great word of mouth referral. We love those, right? That's a warm lead. So we have strategies and methods that we focus on with clients to increase the warm leads. while avoiding and doing cold lead advertising and avoiding worrying about cold leads. Once you start getting some growth engines installed for your business that give you warm leads, you're not going to want the cold leads. They feel like garbage in comparison, and you're not going to have time for them. And you're not going to wanna waste time on those because those are often the worst owners. All right. What I would say is as far as getting leads in, if you give me three warm leads, I will take three warm leads over even 100 cold leads. Sure. don't, I don't, I'm not really interested because even if I close, let's say two out of the three warm leads, that's great. What's the close rate on 100 cold leads? If it's about 10%, you might close 10. And some of you might be going, Sarah, 10 is better than two. Yeah, you're right. But how much work did it take for me to close the two versus how much work? did it take for me to close the 10? I would rather close two very easy warmed up leads because I can do that again and again and again. So in the same amount of time, I can close way more warm leads than I can cold leads. So I would rather take three warm leads than a hundred cold leads any day of the week. We have a sponsor for this episode. Many of you tell me that maintenance is probably the least enjoyable part of being a property manager and definitely the most time consuming. But what if you could cut that workload by up to 85 %? That's exactly what Vendero has achieved. They've leveraged cutting edge AI technology to handle nearly all your maintenance tasks from initiating work orders and troubleshooting to coordinating with vendors and reporting. This AI doesn't just automate, it becomes your ideal employee, learning your preferences and executing tasks flawlessly, never needing a day off and never quitting. This frees you up to focus on the critical tasks that really move the needle for your business, whether that's refining operations, expanding your portfolio, or even just taking a well deserved break. Over half of the room last year at DoorGroad Live, our conference signed up with Vendero right there. And then a year later, they're not just satisfied, they're raving about how Vendero has transformed their business, don't let maintenance drag you down. Step up your property management game with Vendoroo. Visit Vendoroo.ai slash door grow today and make this the last maintenance hire you'll ever need. All right. I thought it was a good time because it was a good time. Waste of time and I don't like to waste time and maintenance coordination can be a huge waste of time. Yes. All right. Let's talk about David versus Goliath. So I'll give you an example. We've got a client. that has, so this is dumb David versus smart David, right? The story of David and Goliath, if you're not familiar with the Bible. David goes to fight Goliath. These two warring nations send out their best person and David decides he is not going to wear the armor, the sword, the shield, all the heavy stuff. He's just bringing out his slingshot. He's got his sling, he's got some rock and he goes out to fight Goliath and he's like, I don't need all that stuff. What most property managers do is David basically brought a superior technology. He brought a gun to a sword fight and he was good at this. He trusted himself. He had skill. He had a better tech to beat this giant. He flung the rock right into the guy's head. I had knocked him unconscious or killed him, I don't know. And then he chopped the guy's head off with his own sword. Right. And so that's the story of David and Goliath. So let's talk about the dumb version of David. Like if David wasn't smart. And he said, I'm going to do all the same stuff. I'm going to use the sword of SEO and the shield of pay per click and the helmet of content marketing and the breastplate of social media marketing. And I'm going to do all the same stuff, digital marketing that all the other big companies are doing that are spending two to $3,000 a month or greater. I'm going to go compete with them as a small startup or a small pro. two to 400 unit property management business and try and compete with these big companies that have thousands of doors. One of our clients, as an example, came to us has 6,000 doors. They were spending $30,000 a month doing these strategies to try to grow and it wasn't even working for them. So why would you go and do what the big guys are doing and lose the battle with them and it's not even working for them, right? So that's the idea of David and Goliath. Don't go do what the big guys are doing, find a better way to compete, especially if you're smaller than them. You don't wanna try to outspend them, because that's not going to be possible. right, myth of SEO. All right, and we'll talk a little bit about the future and AI, all right, to wrap things up. So, all of you can go check this out for yourself. This is not me making stuff up. You can go on trends.google.com. You can go look up property management. date it, the time period, to the current time back to 2004, to the present. And you can filter by the US if you want to. What you'll see is that property management search volume, the amount of people searching for property management on Google has not increased since they started tracking data back in 2004. What has increased? The Goliaths, right? The companies spending a lot of money on digital marketing trying to do all this stuff. And so it's created a lot more competition. So this is where we get into another framework that we share, which is the blue ocean versus the red ocean. There's this small little area of the ocean that's red bloody water where all the sharks are fighting over the worst fish, which are these terrible property management business owners that are at the end of the sales cycle. Basically the crappy scraps that fell off the word of mouth table that the warm lead stuff has captured. They're what's left over. And so there's these ugly gross fish and the sharks are all fighting over the worst stuff. And there's this huge ocean full of fish in the U.S. 60 % are self-managing. There's tons of business out there. And so the myth of SEO is basically this, that in order to win the game, you need to have the top spot on Google. Not true. You don't even have to show up on Google in order to go out and be able to create business. Because there aren't really people searching for property management. It's very small. So you don't need to be found on Google. You need to go find owners because the best clients are offline and they're not looking for you and they don't like doing property management and they need you, but they're not looking for property management actively right now. And you can figure out how to go make that happen and we can teach you, right? So let's talk about the future of AI. What are we noticing? Well, I don't think it's any surprise. messed up a lot of Yeah, it's changing everything. AI is going to change everything. And if you haven't noticed it yet, just hold on because you will. It's crazy if you haven't even seen it yet. But it's it's going to flip everything you know upside down, including SEO. Yeah, including SEO. So everyone that is like, no, I don't care. I'm still going to do SEO. That's the only way to go. Like we made a video about this. specifically for this reason, but even the ones who are still clinging to SEO and you just can't let it go and you don't know that there's another way and maybe you don't believe it and you're like, no, I'm no, this is the only thing I'm going to do and I'm going to do this and that's the only way I can grow the business. That is all right and SEO is going to force you to look at that. Okay, yeah, so what we're seeing is search volume on Google is going down. There's less people using Google. More people are now going to LLMs like ChatGPT, Clod, Perplexity, Google's Gemini. So people are using tools now, sometimes within software, and they're using these tools to ask questions, to figure things out, figure out who they should use or who they should choose or what they need. And so Is it still relevant to have good reviews? Yes. Is it still relevant to maybe have some SEO stuff going? Probably, but it's certainly on the down slope and it's certainly decreasing. The game is changing. Even if you search on Google now, the AI at the top will respond to your search request anyway. And a lot of people are just reading that and not really looking at the results below. And so this is the new future. It's changing very quickly. and some are calling it AEO, some are calling it LLM, SEO, there's all these different phrases that are coming out. If you want to do a quick experiment, open up one of these LLMs like ChatGBT. Don't be in your own. It's a large language model. It's basically all these different AI chat tools. So go into ChatGBT. Everybody should be familiar with that by now if you're not. and go to ChatGPT open that up, but make sure you're not logged in or you use a different account and just, or say don't use any of my previous data or open a private window and say don't use any of my previous information or data and say who's the best property manager or what property manager should I choose in X market, right? And see if it comes up. See if your business comes up and see what shows up. And so this is... how people are kind of doing some of their research, but all the stuff we just talked about still applies. Don't think your whole goal needs to be LLM SEO, where you need to start getting these chat tools to tell people. Why? Because most people are not looking for a property manager. They're not looking. They are not trying to find you. That's the mistake most people make. The majority of people that are self-managing, the potential business, are not looking for a property manager. It's really rare that somebody has a property manager that they're looking actively for a new one unless they've really done a bad job or stolen money or done something really obvious. The people that need your services are not looking for you. You need to be looking for them. And so this is where you can skip all of the cold lead marketing. You don't need to spend money on SEO or AI SEO or Google Ads or pay-per-click or any of these marketing agencies, you don't need to spend any money and you can actually grow faster if you use our strategies and it costs you nothing to do the strategies that we give you. It costs time and action, but it actually takes less time because warm leads and focusing on more effective strategies give you a much greater result in less time. So less time, less money, more results. And that's why we call it the Leadsmith. A lot of people think I just need leads. Cool. there's better ways. Not all leads are equal and we can help you out. Cool. Anything else we should add in wrapping up? I don't think so. I think we covered everything. Okay. I think we got it. So cool. Well, if you are wanting to figure out how do I grow this business? How do I finally get out of the rut that I've been in? How do I scale this? Maybe adding more doors is creating you grief and pain and you want freedom from your business. These are the things we help clients with. We'll help you figure out how to grow dramatically faster and we'll help you figure out how to make your business scalable while getting you out of the day to day and getting you to exit the business in various ways so that you get more freedom. So if you felt stuck or stagnant, you want to take it to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com if you would like to get the best ideas in property management, join our newsletter at where? doorgrow.com/subscribe And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. And until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.