Property Management Growth with DoorGrow

Property management is hard enough. As your business becomes successful, don't always say "yes" or "no" to everything. Owners are coming to you to solve a problem. Step into potential opportunities without being pulled in multiple directions. Today, I am talking to Marc Cunningham, President of Grace Property Management, who identifies five characteristics that define successful property management companies. You'll Learn... [02:42] Entrepreneurial Footsteps: Marc grew up in real estate property management world working for his dad, who founded Grace Property Management in 1978. [04:02] Doors in Denver: Grow slow and steady; from 110 to 1,000 doors. [04:32] Mantra: Follow the opportunity. [07:15] However you define success, companies follow some of these five standards. [07:56] #1. Filter and Qualify Owners: Don't take every owner that comes along. [20:04] #2. Know your numbers to know how well your business is doing. [31:43] #3. Focus on profit, not door count. People are willing to pay for additional value. [37:20] #4. Have systems and processes in place, and follow them. [43:50] #5. Recruit, develop, and retain talent. [52:28] Marc's Extra: #6. Hold weekly one-on-one meetings with each team member. [53:15] DoorGrow Extra: #7. Invest consistently in your own development. [56:27] DoorGrow Extra: #8. Get coaching to help grow your business. Tweetables The more successful you get, the more opportunities come your way. Cycle of Suck: Taking on bad owners, you get bad properties, tenants, and reputation. You won't regret firing difficult clients, despite emotional and operational costs. Track metrics regularly because numbers make a difference. Resources Grace Property Management Marc Cunningham's Email Business Health Check-up Form QuickBooks Steve Jobs FilterEasy PetScreening Process Street Basecamp Voxer Google Sheets AppFolio Help Scout Drift Intercom Traction LeadSimple DGS 25: Why Every Property Manager Should Implement Profit First DGS 80: Automating Your Business with Process Street with Vinay Patankar DoorGrown Cold Leads Calculator DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. This guest that we have today is a fantastic gentleman named Marc Cunningham. Marc, you're not a stranger to most people probably listening to the show. Welcome to the show. Marc: Thank you for having me, Jason. Jason: I'm really excited to have you here. It's strange that you haven't been on here yet. At the beginning of the show, I was like, "Have you been on here? You're like, "No." I said, "It's long overdue." Marc: I've just been waiting for the invitation. Jason: Okay, well I'm glad we finally got you invited. I'm glad you're here and today's topic is going to be the five characteristics of successful PM companies. Before we get into that, I want you to share a little bit of your background to qualify yourself to the audience, help them understand how you got into property management and what your connection is to these five characteristics of a successful company. Marc: Absolutely. Let me start by asking you a question. What were you doing in 1978 Jason? Jason: 1978? Marc: Yeah. Jason: I was probably pooping in a diaper and drinking breast milk. Marc: Okay. That image there. Jason: I was born in 1977. Marc: Okay, so you're one. I wasn't much older than that, but in 1978 my dad decided that he was going to quit teaching—he was a middle school teacher—and he was going to follow his entrepreneurial real estate dream. We opened up a real estate property management company Grace Property Management 1978 in Denver. I was employee number one because I was pre child labor, so my dad would have me doing all the things that kids probably shouldn't do. He would have me showing properties, mowing lawns, collecting rents, and filling out lease, just anything that needed to be done. I grew up in that world, so it really gave me a unique view into real estate, into property management, and just in the business because that's all I knew. That's all we did. As I got older, I'd take my summers, I'd worked for him in the summers, and again just doing whatever needed done. If I get really lucky, if it gets too hot out, I'd work in the office. When it got over 110 degrees, the deal is I get to come into the office, otherwise I'm mowing lawns. I did that for many, many years. I went to Colorado State University, I studied finance and real estate there, and I was working in Cheyenne, Wyoming doing accounting work there. My dad called me one day and he said, "Hey, I need to hire a property manager, are you interested?" Well Cheyenne Wyoming, with all due respect, isn't the most fun place to live, so I jumped to that opportunity and that was about 20 years ago, 20 some odd years ago. I joined the firm permanently at that point in time. At that time, we were relatively small, I think we had 110–120 doors and we have grown slowly and steadily over the years. Today, we do both residential and commercial. We've got just under a thousand doors that we manage. We do real estate sales, we do property management, we're investors ourselves—I own some stuff—we flip. Our mantra is follow the opportunity. If there's an opportunity to real estate, we want to look at that, whatever that is. So, that's how we've gotten to where we are today. Jason: I was just down in Vegas speaking to a group of property managers and they were bringing up like, "How do I avoid all this distraction and move the business forward?" What I said to them is opportunity is I've noticed is what kills entrepreneurs. How do you keep following the opportunity at all times but also keeping your focus narrow enough that you're actually moving forward. Marc: That's a great question. That's a really good question and that's hard. It is really hard because we found that the bigger we get, the more successful we get, the more opportunities that are out there. At this point, we're of the belief that you've got to say no to almost everything. I think it was Steve Jobs that said, "The difference between successful people and really successful people are the really successful people say no to just about everything." Jason: Following the opportunity as a mantra doesn't mean saying yes to every opportunity. Marc: It does not mean saying yes to everything. You need to consider everything. What I don't like is people say, "No, we don't do that." For many, many years, for example, we didn't do real estate sales. "Hey, will you help me sell my house?" "No, we don't do that. We only do property management." We didn't consider. Well then, one day we thought, "Maybe we should consider it," and as we considered it, we realized, this is a really good opportunity that we should capitalize on. Where when an owner says, "Gosh, I want to sell my house. Would you guys be interested in buying it?" "No, we don't do that." Well, stop saying, "No, we don't do that." At least think about it, consider it, and I think that's the way to step into some potential opportunities. But yes, you have to be cautious or else it will get you pulled to many directions. Jason: Relevant to that, how many of these units are now in your own portfolio, are yours or your company's? Marc: I don't have a real big portfolio. I'm a pretty conservative guy, so I'm a buy-it-pay-it-off kind of guy. I've got 10–12 rental properties in my portfolio. Jason: Let's get into these five characteristics that you feel define a successful company, and you're obviously a successful company. You've helped keep it successful, right? Second generation, so let's get in number one. Marc: Yeah. I don't pretend to be a guru. I can't stand the guys that stand there, beat their chest, and say, "Do it like me, I know what I'm doing." This is just from our perspective. We worked with a lot of companies and I didn't get this, but I do a lot of PM coaching in business stuff on the side with PM companies helping them get better, basically. We know a lot of PM companies, we've worked a lot of PM companies and there seem to be some standards, some things companies that are successful, however you define success, are going to follow some of these aspects. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list by any means, but it's the way that we gauge ourselves. Jason: This will be cool because I probably come from a very different perspective. You're in the industry, you do this in Denver and I don't have any rental properties. I don't manage. I'm not a property manager. I have largely been this nerdy fly on the wall that's been able to see inside of hundreds of companies. My perspective might be a little bit different, but I'm sure there's some alignment. Let's get into number one. Marc: Number one is successful companies don't take every owner. They don't take every owner that comes along. So you agree with that one? Jason: Totally. If anyone's heard my show, they've heard me talk about the cycle of suck, which is it starts with filtering owners. Like if take in bad owners, you have bad properties. It doesn't matter how amazing they are. If you have bad properties, you have bad tenants. It doesn't matter how much tenant screening you do. If you have bad tenants, you have a bad reputation because you have bad owners and bad tenants. Nobody's happy and this is where I think the entire industry as a whole in aggregate sits right now. It has a bad reputation because they're taking on any owner. Marc: Yeah, I would agree. The concept is this. Any PM company knows that if a tenant, a prospective tenant walks in the door, an applicant comes in and says, "Hey, I want to rent your property," every property manager is a little bit skeptical. They raise their eyebrow. They say, "Okay, well maybe. I'm going to qualify you." We know industry-wide that whatever the number is, call it 25%-30%, depending on the market you're in, the 25%-30% of the applicants are not going to make good tenants. Everybody would agree upon that. Well, we really believe that probably that same percentage 25%, 30%, 35% of prospective owner-clients are not going to make good owner-clients. The challenge comes, how do we filter them? Because if it's an applicant to rent a property, we have them fill out a rental application. We go in deep. That's the hardest part of the business is qualifying those folks. So, how do you qualify an owner? That's where the challenge lies. If you called our office today as a prospective owner-client and you are talking to our new account specialist or one of our PM's, they would have a dock in front of them, a piece of paper, and a lot of this is just basic questionnaires—what's your email address, what's the property address, tell me about the property—but at the end of that questionnaire, they have four questions. Yes or no questions that they have to check the box on yes or no. They have to discern this information during the conversation with you because it helps us qualify these owners. For example, the first one says, "Is the owner financially stable?" If during this conversation you as my prospective owner say to me, "Hey Marc, if you can't get this property rented next week, I can't make my mortgage payment. I've got to get this thing ready quickly." Well, you're not financially stable, right? That's going to be a no on that box, that's the first question. Jason: "So, are you current on all your house payments?" One of my clients said that was a favorite question they would ask. If they say no, it's instant disqualification. Marc: Absolutely. Then the second question we have to ask ourselves is, is the client emotionally stable? That can be a hard one to discern. I always tell people, "Don't ask them the question verbatim, okay?" It will get you in trouble. Jason: "Are you sane?" Yeah. Marc: Exactly, but we need to be able to discern that information from the conversation. Is this somebody who's going to be stable when things go bad because at some point in time it will. Jason: Right. Sometimes, people will reveal their emotional instability pretty quickly, right? Marc: Yes. I tell my PMs, "Look. Two quick keys. If they cry on the first conversation or if they own more than two cats, they are not emotionally stable. Run away from them." Jason: Might be a little biased against cat owners. What's cat owners like? Marc: I know. You just lost half of your audience because of my personal bias. Jason: No, they're cool. Marc: I am as well. Then the third question we ask is, "Can I control the situation and the client? Are they willing to give me control?" Not in a puppet master, I'm going to be the mean guy, but they have to give me control. They have to be willing to do so. Then question number four is, are they realistic in expectations? Do they think that we should be able to get $2000 a month for property that's only going for $1000? Or do they think that we should call them before we ever spend a dime on maintenance? That's just not realistic. That's not going to happen. If we can't check the yes box on all four of those, then my PM does not have permission to work with that client. Jason: I love the idea of figuring out if they're willing to relinquish control. That's such a big thing because they're coming to you to solve a problem. I've noticed with clients that they're not willing to be strong enough of a fence for people to push against to elicit trust enough for people to relinquish that control. I think a lot of people will push. They might look like bad owners, they're trying to test the fence, and it's like in dating how girls will crap test the guy. They just want to see if they can handle them or if they're willing to be strong enough. I think a lot of times property managers will try to be nice and maybe don't have enough bite or drive and they're really looking for somebody they can feel safe with, so they test us. I think clients will test us and then they're willing to relinquish control at times. It's just something I've noticed during the sales process because I deal with entrepreneurs. They're driven people and I need the same thing. They need to be willing to relinquish a certain amount of control because I'm asking to do crazy stuff, like fire doors or change your business name. I love that idea, and then are they realistic in their expectations. If somebody says, "Hey, I want to add 500 doors in the next quarter,'' then that's probably not going to be realistic. I want to make sure they're in touch with a reality that I feel I can give them or lead them towards and it's the same with our property management clients. Marc: Yup, and if we set those filters on the front-end, that's just going to make things so much easier on bringing good clients on because our business is hard enough without having difficult owner-clients. I think there's the second aspect of that is, "Well, gosh. That's great. I wish I would have heard that before I took on Mr. Crazy," so, what do you do then? I think the other part of that—you alluded to this—is sometimes you do need to let those clients go, and sometimes that's the best thing, because we're talking about what successful companies do. Successful companies realize that, "Hey, if we made a mistake, we brought on a bad client, we need to let that client go, whatever that looks like." Jason: There's always going to be those mistakes. We cannot always know and perceive every person coming in and know that they are emotionally stable, or that you can control them, or that they will be realistic, but when they start to reveal those colors, we have to be willing to let them go. I've made bad decisions in bringing people in as clients and I have had to let them go. Some of them were just really like verbally abusive to my team. You'd be really amazed at some of the types of people that that can somehow leak through even if you have pretty good qualifications at the beginning. I love what you're getting at here because really anybody that studies sales in any capacity knows that qualifying a prospect is at the outset. It's really mind boggling that people would not qualify their prospects in any regard. Marc: I'm curious. You said you had to let clients go. How have you overcome the internal thought of, "Ooh, but that's money. That's a big chunk." When do you decide? How do you decide? Is that an internal struggle for you? Jason: Sometimes. There's always a negotiation and it's a balance. It's a balance between the money aspect and the cost with the team. Ultimately, my team I want to keep forever. I want to keep them long-term. If I keep that client on, I'm saying to my team, your feelings don't matter. I don't care about you. That sends a really painful message and I've noticed this in property management companies. People wonder why there's so much turnover with their staff and I think one key reason is because you're allowing your staff, you're forcing your staff to tolerate too much. There are some of these owners that should be let go, and I've said many times to clients, "The hallmark of a seasoned property manager is that they fired some clients." Some businesses have hundreds of doors and they've never fired a client. I know if they've never fired a client, they have some bad things in their portfolio. There's some pain in there and that's a difficult place to work. They're not willing to let go of painful situations and there's always going to be painful situations. Marc: Yeah, and I've never talk to a PM who did let a client go who regretted it. Jason: Never. Marc: It's hard, it's scary. We face that. I remember very vividly when we were small and we had 125 doors, maybe. We had a client and had like 12 properties. I remember the guy, could see the guys face. He wasn't a bad guy, but he was just difficult and it had to be his way. He would contact us all the time. He just drove us crazy. We finally decided we needed to let the guy go. Well that was like 10% of our portfolio. That was hard. We thought about it, we don't know what to do, and even after we did it we thought, "Oh, is that the right decision or not?" But we quickly realized it's like a load that's been lifted. When you get rid of those people that sucked that time and energy and life out of you, it is a positive thing. Jason: The operational costs, the emotional cost when all of that falls by the wayside. I've never had a client fire something. I had one person fire half their portfolios like one big property. I had one person do that and they were terrified, but they did it. Two things happen almost every time. One, they replace the income really quickly. It always, it creates some vacuum in the universe, I don't know what you want to call it, but they always seem to replace the income really quickly with better doors. That always seems to happen. They just need to trust that's going to happen. The other thing is, is they always say to me, "I can't believe I didn't do it sooner," like they wished they had done it sooner. They were so afraid of doing it and then once they do it, they realize it wasn't so bad and they wish they were like, "Why didn't I do this sooner?" Marc: If one of your clients is talking to you and you're saying, "Hey, you need to fire this owner," how do you recommend they do that like? What should they say? Should they say, "You're fired"? Jason: You're interviewing me now. Marc: Yeah. Jason: There's a few ways you can let them go. There are some creative ways. One of the best is just raise the fees. If [...] make it worth, just make it more expensive. Say, "Hey this property is difficult. You're a bit more challenging person to deal with, to be honest. We are willing to keep doing it, but it's going to cost X." So, you just raise the rate, and if they keep being annoying and you feel like it's still not worth it, you keep raising the rate until they self-select themselves out. That's one easy way. Another way is to just refer them to somebody else, and if you're going to refer you might as well get a nice referral fee out of it. Go to one of your buddies and one man's junk is another man's treasure. I mean they might know how to deal with this type of person. They might be a better personality fit for this type of person than you. Don't just instantly assume that because you can't tolerate them or their difficult for you, that everybody else will. Give them to somebody else and let somebody else have a shot. Marc: I like it. We will rarely fire an owner, but we will as you just suggested bump fees up and up until they decide to fire us. I'd much rather have them fire us and leave on their terms. Jason: Right, they'll self-select out. Are we complete on number one? Marc: I think so. Number two is successful companies know their numbers. I see this so often with PM companies. We get really good at the logistical side of we know how to lease, we know how to talk to owners, know how to collect rents, but when it comes to the numbers, the financials, we just don't know what we're doing often times. I really am a big believer in that concept that if you don't know your numbers, you don't know your business. You don't know how well your business is doing. One question I'll often ask of coaching clients that I work with on that side of things is also, "Okay. Now, if you, Jason own a PM company, at what point in time do you close the books for your company? Let's say the month of June ends, right? We're here almost until the end of June. When June closes for you, how quickly will you have your June books closed so that you know how much money your company made in the month of June?" The answers always surprise me. They're all over the board. "Well, I'm currently 90 days behind. I'm trying to catch up," or, "I'm not much further behind in that," or, "I might get it towards the end of the following month." Jason: Yeah, how can they make business decisions if they're 90 days in the rear-view mirror? Imagine trying to drive a car like that. Marc: Like I said, I've been doing this for many, many years. While we were small. like anybody else, I was everything. I was the janitor, I was the accountant, and I was everything. My favorite day of the month was always the first. Not because we collect rents, but because on the first day of the month, I go online and print out our company bank statements for the last month. I get our paper checkbook out and I'd reconcile. I'd get our ending balance and I enter it all into QuickBooks. I can look at that piece of paper and say, "Hey, how much money did we make last month?" I love that. I would wake up early to do that. I'm weird, I know, but that's how you know how well you're doing, I wouldn't wait until the second, the third, the fourth, the twentieth, that's crazy. You can do it on the first. So, I'm a big believer in as soon as possible, which in this day and age it can be pretty much immediate. You get your books balanced, you run some numbers, you see how your company is doing it, and you've tracked some metrics, some internal metrics for your company to know how you're doing. Jason: I think the challenge is when property managers are holding on to something that's not in their particular wheelhouse or area of genius, but if this isn't your thing, if you're not like Marc and you don't love doing this and this isn't like what makes you thrilled and excited is to get in your bank statements and numbers, have somebody else get everything ready for you. I've got a profit-first coach and accountant. She meets with me and goes over everything with me. I get not only my perspective, but she says, "This is what it looks like to me, Jason," so yeah, I think it's usually helpful to do a review every month and look at your numbers. Marc: Yup, and like you just said, most folks aren't as weird as I am as it comes to that stuff, and that's fine. But you need to find someone weird like me. You need to find someone who can go get excited about running your numbers, make sure they do it, and then you review those and you track a couple key metrics. For example, some of the metrics that we always track, are door counts proportional to owner count? Because that's a sign of a healthy business. So for example, if your company has 100 doors, if you've got 100 owners for those 100 doors, that is the sign of a very healthy business because it means that you don't have any one owner with too much control versus the guy the guy called me a couple of weeks ago and he wanted to know if I was interested in buying his business. I go, "Tell me a little bit about it." I think he had like 75 doors, "I've got 75 doors, I'm here in Denver and interested in selling." One of the first questions I always ask is how many owner-clients do you have? He had 75 doors and 4. I was like, "You know what? I don't need to know anything else. I'm not interested." Why? Because if we took those doors on, that's four owners. That's a lot of control. Jason: If it's two of them, then what are you getting? Marc: It's something that you can't control, but you need to track it, that's one of the things you want to track on a regular basis. Another metric we really like to track is the percentage of our overall income that we spend on employees. Because in our industry, that again can just be all over the map on companies. Do you have a number on that that you recommend to your folks on what that number should be? Jason: It varies so wildly especially by market, but I know an owner that has 65% profit margin in his business. Marc: Wow. Jason: I know it's ridiculous. Marc: It's a good thing I'm sitting down. Jason: I know. He has a couple of hundred doors. It varies so wildly and it depends largely on the type of owners they're taking on, the type of property, because—I'm talking about this in the cycle of suck idea very often—if you take one bad owner or one bad door property, can have 10 times, maybe even 100 times the operational cost as a good door. So, that can vary so wildly. I've had a company come to me that had 500–600 units under management and wasn't making a dime. I said, "How is this possible?" They're like, "Well, we're doing $3 million a month in real estate," so there was a brokerage with a cancerous tumor on the side called property management. He had twice as much staff as he needed, no technology in place. Fast forward, he fired half his team, he fired about 200 doors, maybe 300 doors, and it's now a very profitable company. So, it's not all about doors and staffing is always going to be the highest cost. If you can replace even a fraction of that or create some leverage for your team using technology, outsourcing, whatever, those are some big wins financially. A lot of times everyone's looking at, I got to get more revenue in and they're not looking at their expenses. That's why I'm a big fan of the profit-first system which says, "You take out a portion for profit and then what's left over is your expenses." Most people are like expenses. You're just revenue minus expenses and then whatever's left over, there's nothing left over typically in that situation. Marc: Absolutely. We have that profit is almost like an expense item that we know we're going to take out every month and put into a savings account. We've been doing that for a long, long time from that aspect. But yes, I agree 100% with that aspect of what you're saying there. The number that we coach folks around is you don't want to go over 50% of your total revenue to staffing costs regardless of your size. The bigger you get, the more that number's going to probably creep towards that, just because you get more overhead, you get more managers, and you have more red tape, so that's a natural part of that. But if you go over 50%, that's a red alert. Something's wrong from that standpoint, so that an important to track for every company. Jason: Yeah, as a company scale, they're able to create a bit more leverage, but yeah, I could see how when you're really small and you're doing everything, your employee costs are a bit less per door because assuming your free labor or maybe if you work for your dad. Or sometimes it's a spouse. They'll have their spouse as their business partner, and you'll see them get to maybe 70-80 units, they're tapped out, and they can't afford to hire their first person. Nobody's getting paid. That makes sense. All right, I like it. Anything else on number two, knowing the numbers? Marc: The other things I would just add that's worth tracking that I often find companies don't track this well enough is how many doors they're adding and how many doors they're losing. It's always a surprise to me is when you ask them that, they'll say, "Well, I can dig it up, but I don't know." A lot of the software don't track that. If we're old school, we've got the spreadsheet. Every time we lose a door, we go to our spreadsheet for the year, we put it in, and it's going to keep that auto tracking. Every time we sign a new one up, put those on the spreadsheet so we can pull that up and instantly see, "Okay. As of right now, we've lost X number of doors per year and we've added X number of doors." So, track that. Don't make that something that you've got to go dig in your software and try to pull a report. That needs to be one of those metrics that you're tracking at least on a monthly basis. Jason: Yeah. It's a pretty difficult situation and it's a common one where you'll see somebody adding a door and losing a door just as often. They wonder why they're not getting growth. Sometimes, the problem aren't getting enough [...], it's obtaining doors. They could be the type of target audience that they're going after, it could be that they are lacking some awareness around how to retain these clients or whatever it might be, but yeah, that's an important thing I think to pay attention to. Marc: Yeah, and to track the percentage of doors lost. That's all over the map as well. If you can keep your losses on an annual basis in the single digits from a percentage standpoint, that's pretty good. If you can keep it 10% or below on doors that are leaving you every year, you're in the pretty rare group of PMs. Jason: I created something for property managers called our cold leads calculator. One of the things I noticed with a lot of companies—this is more relevant to what I do—a lot of property managers are not paying attention to the amount of money that they're spending on cold lead marketing—pay per click, SCO, APM leads—all these different places at social media marketing, content marketing, that they're paying to generate business. A bulk of where most people get their deals and leads from I find in the industry is often word-of-mouth, so they just group everything together. All their warm leads from word-of-mouth, referrals, other cold lead marketing, and they're not paying attention. When you look at the numbers alone of the cold lead marketing, which everyone can check it out by going to doorgrow.com/coldleads, they can take this little questionnaire and go through it, but it'll help you calculate your cost for cold lead marketing. It also calculates and factors in the time. Time is worth money and it calculates and ask what that time is worth, like what's your hourly wage or whoever is following up on these, how much time does it take to follow up on these, to create a real aggregate or at least close aggregate cost of what one cold lead is costing you. I've seen numbers. I just had one come through the other day. One cold lead was costing them $5000. I've seen $11,000, I've seen a $1700 per lead or per acquisition per deal and what I love to ask them when I get them on the phone, I say, "Hey, I saw you fill out this cold lead thing. How long does it take you to recoup $5000 on a contract?" and they're like, "Well, that's probably three years of free management or two years whatever." Then their perspective starts to shift and we have to uncouple that. The transparency in numbers helps you make decisions as a business owner. Marc: Yup, and then review them regularly. Don't just leave it your accounts. If you're a successful PM company, you're looking at those numbers because those numbers make a difference. Jason: All right. We're on to number three. Marc: Number three is a good lead-in as you were just talking about there. Number three will be successful companies focus on profit, not door count. You've already talked about this. This comes up so often in our industry, what's the first question any PM ask another PM? How many doors do you have? What's your door count? How many doors are you managing? That's the measuring stick and it's the wrong measuring stick because I know companies that are smaller, they're very profitable, and I know companies that are very large that are not profitable at all. Door count is irrelevant. The profit is what matters. What that means is practically speaking, if you've got 50 doors, I would say, "Before you say I another 50—that's fine—but you know what? Let's maximize the profit of the existing group you have." That doesn't mean just go out and nickel-and-dime everybody, but it means what other services can you provide? What other things can you put in place to make sure that you're maximizing that income and that'll have a dual impact in that you're going to increase your income on that 50? Then when you pick up your next 50, now you've already got some structures in place to ensure that they are profitable as well. You've got to focus on the profits, on the revenue streams to be successful. Jason: Absolutely, I don't think there's ever been a property management company that I've seen that is not leaving some money on the table. There's always additional services that you can offer, even if it's something little like filter easier petscreening.com. There's always some additional value that you can offer and there's always a way that you can monetize that. People are willing to pay for additional value. Marc: On the flip side of that as well, I think we need to pay attention to those expenses because what the industry right now is more difficult than it has been a long time and folks that have not been in the industry for too long, they'll recognize this because this is normal to them, but it's a tough industry. This is a tough market to be running a property management company. When things get tough, you've got to be tight on expenses, and it's too easy not to get tough on expenses. That's one thing we encourage folks, is to go through that profit of loss, line by line, and if there are expense items on there that are not directly relational to income coming in, you have to figure out how to cut them. You have to get rid of those wasteful expenses. That is such a good exercise to sit down and start going through that stuff and say, "Well, gosh, I've just been paying for the subscription service every month and I don't even know what it does. I signed up for it two years ago. All right, let's get that cancelled." Jason: Yeah, and you're like, "Why am I still on this?" Marc: Exactly. This is beneficial as getting on a new door, is cutting those expenses. Jason: This is why I love having a profit-first coach, because this really is built into the system. Every month is like, "Hey, what about these services you said you're going to cancel and you said you don't need this anymore?" Yes, so I think it's helpful. If you're not like accounting-minded, I highly recommend you go back and watch my episode with Mike Michalowicz, who is the author of Profit First and check out that episode. I think it was a fantastic episode. Really cool guy, came and spoke at our conference. It covers that system like cutting down expenses, putting profit first, making sure that expenses are fitting within your existing budget and you're still getting a profit. Yeah, makes sense. Marc: What I had to do, I realized that the biggest expense item, the biggest overhead we had was my ego. The thing is that, that I wanted for me, the big desk, the big office, the nice car, and that's something everyone needs to start there because if you drive, especially in the real estate sale side, you go to any real estate sales event and what is the parking lot filled with? A lot of very expensed leased vehicles. I'm not against nice vehicles, but that's just a suck on the income side of things. Jason: I think there's always this ratio between the amount of money that you're going to take out of the business, and the amount of money that you're going to leave in to fund towards the growth. If we take out too much too quickly, the business growth is stagnated. I've seen some really aggressive companies put almost all of their money. I've seen owners try not to even take a paycheck. They're really minimizing their take out of the business so that they could fund the growth, because they're delaying gratification for the future. They're funding and creating a business that is growing and they're putting their funds and their money towards that. Sometimes, you have to double down as a business owner and to be willing to take a short-term hit because you want a long-term growth goal. And we can put too much towards growth to where it feels shaky, it feels unsafe. We're not holding anything back. There's no padding there. It really is this balance of how much I'm going to put towards growth be aggressive, how safe am I going to play it, and how stable and slow am I going to be at doing this. There's a balance there. Marc: It is a balance, it's an absolute balance because you need to leave some in, and you need to be pulling some out every month and putting it into that savings account so that you have opportunities. We've purchased several companies over the years and every one of those deals worked because we were able to in essence say, "We can write a check. We'll write a check today. We'll get this deal done." Why? Because we have money put away. That savings account isn't just comforting, it's an opportunity fund for things when they come up in the future. Jason: I like it. All right, is that three? Marc: That's three. Jason: All right, number four. Marc: Number four is successful companies have systems and follow them. They have systems in place and they follow. In a word, system means different things to different people. Some people think, "Well, that's just so I need a good software. What's the system?" I really believe that probably 75%-80% of what we do on a day-to-day basis in our industry can be systematized, meaning, simply documenting your process, documenting your routine, because it plays out in so many ways. We learned this early on when we were growing and first there were two of us. My dad and I, we both did it all and we hired a third person, and then we all three did it all. Then we hired a fourth person, and by the time we hired that fourth person, we realized that, we can't all do it all. This isn't scalable, we can't all do everything. It works great at two people, it works great at three people, but when we had that number person and Mr. Tenant calls and says, "Hey, I called in with a maintenance request last week and I haven't heard from anybody." And I say, "Well do you know who you talked to?" "No, I don't remember." "Well hold on, let me see if I can figure it out." "Hey dad, did they talk to you?" "Hey, Bill did they talk to you?" "Sue did they talk to you?" "No." "Well they talked to one of us, right?" That's very ineffective. You've got to start specializing in your processes. We realized at that point in time that if we're going to hire someone to be our leasing person, for example, we better have a documented process for them to follow. I mean specific detailed documented. Here's what time you get to the property before showing. You open the door, you turn on the lights. Here's where you stand when they come in. Here's how you greet them, here's what you say, here's what you don't say, here's how you process an application. If we do that into our entire business and we break the business down into the smallest components, it simplifies things like nothing else because we're in a complex business. If you think of a continuum in your mind, a long line going on both directions. On one side of the continuum, you have the words consistency and simplicity. On the other side, the far extreme opposite, you've got the words variation and complexity. You have to ask yourself, where am I on that continuum? We're all different places, but we hopefully will always be moving forward towards consistency and simplicity. I don't think there's a better way of doing that than through documenting your process, your system and then following it, training on it, improving it, upgrading it. It's got to be written, it's got to be documented, and it is a process. Jason: That needs to be used. People document it, they'll give it to the team member, the team member will look at it at the first few times they do it, and then they're done. I have Process Street on as a guest once. We used Process Street internally, but it forces them to actually use the process on going. It's a checklist that has to be verified and completed. Marc: Yes, checklists are huge. We couldn't exist without the checklist. Its old school, but it works. We still have paper checklists on some things in our office here that people say, "That wouldn't work." I guess just too old school. I say, "Well , we're pretty successful. It worked for a thousand doors; I can tell you that. Will it work beyond that? I don't know, but it works to get you to a thousand." Jason: There you go. I've noticed in businesses, I think there's, at a minimum, probably seven systems that every business eventually has to have in a business. One, they have to have an internal communication system. For me and my team, it's virtual, so we're using things like Basecamp, Voxer, stuff like that. But there needs to be an internal communication system that isn't just, "Hey Steve, did you do this?" So, internal communication. There needs to be process documentation system. That could just be Google Sheets, Docs, and whatever, or it could be something more complicated or cooler like Process Street or whatever, but there needs to be a process documentation system. There needs to be a billing system, of course. Property managers use maybe AppFolio or Rentec Direct, Buildium, but there needs to be some billing, accounting system. Then there needs to be a support system. A lot of property managers are starting to gravitate towards setting up Help Scout, Intercom, Drift, or one of these, but internally we use Intercom. There needs to be a support system in the business so that you can track tickets and track things. Sometimes, you'll do that through your property management software a bit. I find one system most property management businesses are lacking or missing is a planning system. You're hearing people move towards traction in some of this which I think has some fundamental flaws to be blunt, but it's a great system. It's better than no system and there's a lot of systems out there for planning, but there needs to be a planning system in the business. Another system that's necessary is a sales CRM. This is different than your existing customer database. This is for prospects. There needs to be a sales CRM in place. A lot of property managers use LeadSimple, for example. If there were one other system you can throw in there probably be a phone system. We need some way to manage this big influx of calls or outbound calls with team members being able to be reached. These are some of the systems that I've paid attention to, that businesses need. Most businesses will have maybe two or three. Marc: Yup, and we preach what we practice as well as preach to make on the systems for individual team members to make them position-specific. We have 20-some odd people our office and every role has a position-specific system manual, so our director of accounting has a director of accounting system manual. I'm the president of the organization. I have a president system manual. Why? Because I need to be replaceable. That's one of the benefits of it. That idea that now we become less dependent upon individuals and no individual can hold us hostage to be like, "They've got everything in their head. What are we going to do they leave? We can't lose them." It's a terrible place to be. We don't have to worry about that. You're going to lose everybody at some point in time. You'll either lose them for a good reason or a bad reason, but they need to be replaceable. Now if you have a document, if you have documented their process, then they become replaceable. I'm replaceable. If I get hit by the truck today, it's alright. Hopefully, the company will take a little hit, hopefully they'll need me a little bit, but we got a system manual, somebody can step in that role, and already says, "Hey, this is what Marc does." Just do it and you'll be successful. Jason: I like it. All right, so are we on to five? Marc: Number five, the last one, successful companies recruit and develop talent. We just talked about systems and the concept that systems can make your people replaceable to some extent and they should. However, at the end of the day, the team with the best players usually wins. If you can go out there and if you can figure out how to recruit the best talent and then retain them, that is going to do more for your company than almost anything else out there. If I'm going to brag about something about our company, I'll brag about that. We get the best people around. We've gotten good at that. It makes it so much easier to do business. I don't work harder than my competitors, I'm not smarter than my competitors, I'm not technologically savvy more than my competitors, but what we do better than a lot of our competitors is we get really good people Now that's hard, and it's hard to get really good people and that's why you got to recruit. It doesn't mean you put an ad on Craig's list and read a bunch of resumes of people that can't get jobs. I mean you go out and you find people that are really good at what they do and you got to get them, you have to recruit them. That's hard because successful people aren't looking for jobs. They are already successful. If you want to be successful, you got to go out there. I'll tell a story and I'll give that the short version. We had to hire a leasing person not too long ago. Wwe were hiring, meaning we were just reviewing resumes and I thought this is ridiculous. We can't find anybody good. I better do what I tell myself what I should be doing. I got my car one day and I drove around to a lot of the multi-family class A properties in Denver, and I walked in as a prospect. "Hey, I'm Marc, I'm here. I just want to see what you have available. I'm looking for a buddy of mine to rent a property." And I was usually met with the, "Okay, well here's a piece of paper. Tell your buddy to give us a call." I say, "Okay" and left. About the fourth place I came to, I came in and met a gal there behind the front and I said, "Hi, I'm Marc. I'm just looking for a place for a buddy of mine." She said, "Well, me about your buddy. He's looking for one bedroom. He's tall dark and handsome, got a cat, probably crazy," and she's like, "You know what? I know the perfect unit for your buddy. Do you have a couple minutes? I'd love to just have you tour this property." "Yeah, sure. Okay." She tours me through and she's pointing out the feature benefits to offer. She was sharp. Her name is Lindsay. I said, "Lindsay, you are really good at your job. She goes, "I love leasing. I just love it. I love helping people. I love real estate. I love what I do." I said, "That's great. Coincidently, I happen to run a property management company and we're actually looking to hire a director of leasing for residential real estate. Have you thought about doing residential?" because she's a multifamily. She was like, "Oh no. I could never leave. I'm not a job hopper. I'm really stable. Stability is a big deal for me once I get somewhere I like to stay." Now I'm drooling. I got to have her. I said, "Well is there anything you don't like about your job Lindsay? Well we work weekends." I said, "Oh. That's too bad. We don't work weekends." I said, "Tell you what. Why don't you come into my office sometime? Here's my card. I'd love to just sit down and have a conversation with you. Who knows? Maybe something comes out of it, maybe something don't, but I'd love to just connect and see if there's something there for the future." Well long story short, we got her. We got Lindsay. And we had to go after her, we had to get her because she didn't want to leave. She's been a rock star. She's been amazing. The things that she's helped our company to do, but we would not have found her if we were just hiring. We had to go recruit her, we had to go get her. That's what you have to do in every position in your company. You have to go find stuff. I'm not saying go steal people away from your competitors, but you have to find those people out there that are successful and get them. Once you get them, you have to retain them. You have to train them well, you got to pay them well, which is one of the reasons you need to have good profit because good people aren't cheap, but that's what's going to lead to a long-term success, and unless you take a step back out of the day-to-day stuff at the end of the day. Jason: Yeah. I think it's important to point out what you're saying is not that people are easily replaceable, that you can pop somebody else in. You're not saying that at all, and I think every business owner knows that if you have a seasoned team member that you've invested in, that you've trained, that you've developed, there's nothing as good as that, like having somebody that's been with you for years. I have team members that has been on my team for maybe six years and he's a rock star. I have a competitive advantage over most companies in that our teams are virtual, so I can source the best talent from anywhere pretty much in the world. But yeah, this can be challenging for property managers that are looking for somebody locally, they're looking for somebody nearby, they're looking for a particular set of skills may be. But ultimately, if you find somebody good, you want to make sure you retain them and that you keep them happy. You can compare it to a wine, you can compare it to anything, but over time they just get better. If they're good they get better, if they're not good, they get worse. Marc: That's the other side of the coin. That's where just like we talked about earlier with owners. This is what we started this whole conversation with you get a bad owner, what do you do? You need to let them go. Well if you made a hiring mistake, you need to fix that and correct that as well and let that person go, because we're going to make hirings. We are very good at this, but we make a lot of hiring mistakes. We just do, it drives me crazy. But when we do that, we correct it quickly. We're going to move that person on very quickly when we make that mistake. Why? Because the longer they're sitting there, the longer the right person isn't there. You've got to make that correction when you made a hiring mistake. Jason: I think it's amazing when you bring in a new team member, it changes the entire team. It either changes the entire team for the better or for the worse, especially if that team member that you just brought on is taking off of your plate everything. It changes your role as CEO. It changes your role as an entrepreneur, and it affects everything from you. It's pretty significant and it's important to make sure that they're the right fit. We we're all going to make hiring mistakes. You have to kiss a few frogs and you have to suck a little bit at hiring in order to find the good people. Marc: It's an art, and a skill set to hire someone in no way translates over to property management. It's not like, "I'm a good property manager. I'll obviously be good at hiring." No, there's no correlation there. It's completely different. The other unfortunate thing is, the smaller your company is, the more important it is to make that first good hire. Now we've got 20 people. If we make a bad hire, we got one in 20 then who's bad. They can fly under the radar a little bit, they're not going to stick to the company. If we've got two people and then we make a bad hire for number three, so we never got 33% of our workforce that's a low performer. The smaller you are, the more important it is that you take the time to get the right person in. A lot of it is just time. You've got to slow down the hiring process. These ideas of we had a phone conversation and we interviewed him, it's not enough? Are you kidding me? No, you want to do multiple interviews. Anybody can come across as a positive person on that first interview. You want to have multiple interviews with multiple people. You have to dig, dig, dig on that before you make that job offer. Jason: I think where I've made a lot of mistakes personally in the hiring process is I love to delegate and its delegating too quickly. Some people will micromanage, they'll control too much, and I think some people will do the opposite. They'll bring somebody on and they won't give them all the training, all the tools, all the support they need to really be the rock star they could have been. I've made both of those mistakes to be transparent. I think onboarding is a really important process to make sure you're meeting with your new hires on a regular basis daily initially, then backing it up to weekly and so on, so that every day like where are you stuck? What do you need? What are you confused about? Often, they're not going to just volunteer all that information to you. But when you're meeting with them daily, they're going to feel supported, they're going to feel like they're invested in the team. I think onboarding is a really big deal. That's where I made mistakes. Marc: We still do one-on-one meetings every single week with every one of our team members. It doesn't matter how long they've been. I'm a huge believer in that, I guess if you wanted number six, there is number six, right? Have one-on-ones every single week, sitting down with them, even if it's for 5 or 10 minutes, touch base, see what issues are going. Those have been critical for our people in their success. Jason: We have a bonus, number six. Marc: You got a bonus, number six, because you're so good. What did I leave out? I'm curious. You talk to a lot of PM companies. What do you think are characteristics of success may be that we didn't hit on? Jason: I wasn't even thinking this, I was so into yours. I think all these things are really fantastic. I think if I were to add a seventh here that I think is absolutely critical, so imagine you have an orchard, you're at the top, and this is like a reservoir of hopefully money and or water or whatever you want to call it. There's outflow, you're paying your team, you're spending money, things like this, and investing your team. I think where most companies are flawed is there's no inflow at the top of the orchard. There's nothing above the entrepreneur feeding into them. I think this is why it's critical. I probably spent at least six figures annually just on coaches and mentors. I have three coaches right now affecting different areas of my business. I think it's that inflow that I'm able to get that allows me to consistently have value to offer to the marketplace and to benefit my clients. It comes out in ways that I don't even expect, like a client will ask me a question or be stuck on something mindset-wise or be challenged with something, and I'm like, "I had that issue and I worked that through with my coach," or, "I have done that in that training that I had done," or whatever it might be. I think as entrepreneurs, we need to invest in ourselves if we're expecting other people to invest in us. When you go to prospects or clients and you say, "Hey, invest in me, spend money with my company," and you aren't willing to invest in yourself or in your company in a similar fashion, I think there's a little lack of integrity. Energetically, something's off. If there were a seventh, I would say that's a big one is make sure that you're investing consistently in your own development, not just your team so that you have something to give. I think that's the inflow. You don't want to be a dead sea, there needs to be in flow and there needs to be outflow and that's where there's life. That's where it's a healthy business. Marc: For the person that would say, "Hey, that sounds great, but I'm working 70 hours a week. I don't have time to invest in me. I'm just give, give, give." What would you say to them? Jason: I would say they're ineffective, they're inefficient because if we're doing, doing, doing we moved out of the mode of being affected. That means most of our time is tactical instead of strategic. Any business that lacks, the business owner lacks strategic time, the business isn't growing. There's a direct relationship between the amount of strategic time, planning, looking towards the future, coming up with ideas, or getting trained or learning new things, versus their growth. If all their time is tactical, they're dealing with maintenance, fires, leases, managing their team, emails, phone calls, if all their time is tactical, their business can't grow. It will stay basically where it is. I think what I do with clients is I start them with a time study and we create time. Everybody is spending time doing stuff that's unnecessary, or low dollar an hour work, or silly, and it's pretty simple to start getting clarity on that first and then that helps them see what they need next. My entire foundation, my company really has been built on time studies. That's where I think fundamentally there's a huge difference between how I would coach operationally a business to run versus something like traction or a rocket fuel or these other systems where they're saying, "Here's the magic org chart and here's the roles that you have to have." Ultimately, a business should be built around the entrepreneur and what they actually need. The only way to really see that is to know where your time is going. Marc: Good stuff. Jason: That's my two cents. Marc: I like it. Jason: All right, so that's number eight maybe. I don't know. Marc: It's number eight. Jason: We'd better stop before we add anymore. Marc: We'd better. I know. You're making me think of too many things. Jason: Marc, it was really awesome hanging out here with you. This is really fun. You're welcome back anytime. Before we go, how can people get in touch with you if they're curious about some stuff that you offer for property managers or they want to learn more about your business or whatever? Marc: The best way to reach me is through our website which is propertymanagementsystem.org and we got a handful things on there, a lot of video resource things. We've got our system manuals, we talked a little bit about that, our actual system manuals, we offer those. You can download samples of those and we got packages on those. We do ancillary business training, some coaching stuff from that aspect. One thing I'm pretty excited about, we're just putting in place, we actually just put in place and I'm happy to share with any of your folks if they're interested, they can drop me an email. We put a business health checkup form where you answer some questions and it spits out a number to let you do that business health checkup. If anybody is interested in that, drop me an email, go on the website, reach out to me from there, will be happy to send it to them. Jason: Cool. All right, Marc, thanks so much for coming on the DoorGrow Show and excited to see what you do in the future. Marc: Jason, thank you, it was fun. Jason: All right ,so if you are property management entrepreneur and you are struggling, you are feeling challenged in growth, be sure to connect with us over Door Grow. I would be honored to help you out. As I said during this call, I'm a firm believer in getting coached, getting coaches, and even if it's not me, somebody like Marc, there's lots of other [...] there that can coach you. Get somebody that can give you some value, help you grow your business, help you achieve your goals, and figure things out. Until next time, everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.

Do you want to build wealth through real estate investing and property management? Then, put in the work, trust the process, be open-minded, and get results that change your life. Today, I am talking to Robin Reed, CEO of Concept 360 Property Management and a licensed California real estate broker. She helps clients reposition assets to maximize their value by decreasing expenses and increasing income. You'll Learn... [04:29] Challenging Coworkers: Let them go, and try not to grow the company. [05:07] Learn to appreciate employees who handle day-to-day tasks and tenants. [05:45] Feast or Famine: Flip from brokerage income to property management. [07:27] Completely Commit to Changes: Follow DoorGrow, and do whatever it takes. [12:00] Then vs. Now: No Jerks Allowed policy to make everyone happy. [17:05] Desperation and Disrespect: You get it, or you don't. [17:25] Value of Property Management: If working for peanuts...get what you pay for. [18:20] Walk Away: Not everything, everyone is a perfect market/product fit. [22:00] Feeding Funnel: What do you do? What's property management? [25:50] Retention: What works? Sells? Results and relationships with real estate agents. [26:05] Growing from 65 to 200 doors; adding 2-5 doors/properties each month. [30:15] Second Sandtrap: New challenges ahead for processes, teams, trust, and more. Tweetables I like working on the business, and not in the business. Feast or Famine: Rollercoaster of brokerage income. Be willing to change, take action, and make a difference. What sells, what people want to buy are results. Resources Concept 360 Property Management National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) LeadSimple GatherKudos DoorGrow Case Studies and Website Secrets DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. Today's guest is Robin Reed of Concept 360 Property Management. Robin, welcome to the show. Robin: Thank you, Jason. Jason: It's really good to see you. Robin: You too. Jason: Robin has been a client. For long have you been a client? Robin: Coming up to two years. I think we're right around two years. Jason: Maybe I should read a little bit of your bio because you're really cool. It says, Robin Reed is a licensed California real estate broker and CEO of Concept 360 Property Management with a background in commercial real estate, finance, investment, and development. She's experienced in all real estate asset classes having secured over million in both debt and equity for her clients. She opened Concept 360 Property Management to share her true passion and combined experience as a broker and investor with her clients by helping them reposition their assets. They maximize their value by decreasing expenses and increasing income. A passionate real estate investor herself. She enjoys helping her clients build wealth through real estate investing. Robin is actively involved in several real estate trade organizations including NARPM, the National Association of Residential Property Managers, and is always aware of the pulls of the current real estate market. An Orange County native, she holds a BA degree in English and Comparative Literature from Chapman University. Robin, I actually saw you in person in Long Beach when I spoke at the NARPM chapter. It was awesome because you and your husband came up to me and gave me a big hug. I remember after that event you said some kind words to me. After that event, I was kind of high of the event, but afterwards in the parking lot, I started crying. Because as a coach and as a mentor to a lot of property management companies, I don't get to see clients in person very often because a lot are digital or remote. But occasionally, at a conference or something and somebody comes up to me and they say something in gratitude, that means a lot to me. Robin: Right. Jason: That was one of the moments I cherish. It was really nice being able to help you guys out. Why don't we start back at the beginning? Maybe a couple of years ago when you came to myself and to DoorGrow. What challenges were you dealing with then? What has been happening? Robin: We had let an employee go. The company was something that at the beginning when it first started in 2004, it was pretty big and had a lot of multi-family and things like that. Then the recession hit, a lot of people sold their buildings, some lost them, things like that. We weren't really focused on the property management company. It was just sort of this thing over in the other office that was self-sustaining and it was really something we weren't paying attention to and we were really focused on brokerage. We did a lot of brokerages, sold a lot of REOs for banks and we were really involved in that. I guess it was three years ago, that was right, it was about three years ago and we let an employee go and we looked and realized we were down from probably at the hay day close to 1800 doors, we are down to 65 doors. I said, "I don't even think we should keep this open. What's the point? It's a liability. I'm not into it. Let's just close it." So, we didn't, we kept it as a self-sustaining thing, but we didn't try to grow it. Then my remaining employee went to a maternity leave and I was doing her job for a couple of months which I learned that I hated doing her job. I'm glad I have employees. I like working on the business and not in the business. Luckily, we were at the point where we were able to have employees and I don't really have to deal with day to day of tenants and all that. I did her job for a couple of months and during that period I thought to myself, "This is a good business. This is a good business to be in. This is viable." I was so used to the rollercoaster of brokerage income, it's feast or famine. Jason: Yeah. Robin: And the property management company had always been in the background if between commissions or something like that. I thought, "why don't I flip it? Why don't I flip the script and focus on the property management company and then put the brokerage on the side?" My husband saw you speak somewhere on the internet, came across you and your videos and said, "You got to check this out." Historically, there's been a lot of "check this out", "we got to try this system" so I'm skeptic with systems and coaches, I always have been. I saw one video of yours and I said, "Yes, I'm in." Jason: That's it. You have been super skeptic and one video was all you needed. Robin: One video and I said, "I'm in. Let's check him out." Jason: What did I do in that video? Robin: I don't know. I wish I knew which one it was. Jason: It's good. I got to do more of that video. Robin: That one, yeah. Jason: Yeah. Robin: We joined up with you and we were willing because we wanted the property management to grow. It's like, I have this company already and we already have clients, it's something that I can grow from. I was committed and I said, "Whatever needs to happen." We went through all of the training. If I needed to change the name, we ended up changing the logo for you guys. I would have changed the name. I would have done anything. I said, "I'm completely committed to this system. I'm willing to do whatever it takes. Let's go." We did the website. I think before we even did the website or maybe in conjunction, I don't know how it works, but we did GatherKudos and that was huge. Jason: Yeah, [...] on the reviews. Robin: Yes, that was huge. That's been a huge help for us still. We have people that say, "Oh my god. I just saw your reviews." We started asking tenants and owners to review us. Sometimes you have to ask several times for people to review you. Dana, who works for me in the office, she's always trying. She's very good at getting people to review us. She's like a dog on a bone that she said, "You said you we're going to review us. Review us. Review us." So that's good. Jason: Yeah, good. You started going through a process. Robin: Yeah. Jason: The one thing I really loved about you guys as clients is I made mistakes in the past in attracting clients that are really opinionated because I was being very opinionated to the marketplace. Robin: Okay. Jason: But somehow you guys came through and were amazing clients. You guys were the type of clients that I really wanted because you were open to doing things differently. You were open to trying stuff. That's the type of person that I am. I'm very much like an open-minded person and so I'm getting better at putting out more of an open-minded message to attract those types of clients because we attract really well what we put out there. You guys came to me and you were willing to put in the work and you guys trusted the process. Those are the clients that get the biggest results and that's always really exciting to see a client get results, doing what you say that you asked them to do, I feel like when my clients come on, they are putting a lot of faith in us. Robin: Right. Jason: Whether you are a business owner or coaching client of mine and if they put that faith in you, that's a secret thing, I think, in business. I think that's why when your husband came to me—I don't even remember what he said off the top of my head—but he said something like, "You changed my life," or something like that. Robin: I think it was something like that because it's true. Jason: Yeah. I think as entrepreneurs—or at least the type of entrepreneurs I really like to work with—that's really the core of who we are. We want to make a difference. Some entrepreneurs, maybe you can call them entrepreneurs, they have business in which all they want to make money. Robin: Right. Jason: They are not really concerned about solving the problem, but real business exists to solve the problem. Property managers solve the real problem. Robin: Right. Jason: I think a lot of them are very much enjoy people who are contribution-focused. That really was great to watch you guys go through and trust that. You guys asked a lot of questions. Robin: Yeah. Jason: A lot of questions, good questions, then you guys took action. You guys did stuff. You did the things that I told you to do. Robin: Yeah. Jason: You did a lot of different things. You've gone from saying, "It's a liability. Let's just close it down," to saying, "Hey, maybe there's something here." To getting coaching, to going through a process, cleaning up your reputation, working on your website, working on your pricing model, working on your sales process, working on your prospecting methods. You've really gone through all of that and then we started getting on the operational things, figuring out your team a little bit, figuring how to get you in alignment with your business that wasn't so uncomfortable. Robin: Right. Jason: Because it was, it was uncomfortable for you at some times. Robin: Yes. It was. Jason: I think we've all been there. I remember some calls of you where you were like, "How do I get this one team member to do things the way that I want them to do?" Robin: Right. Jason: "I want things to be this way." Your perspective shifted really quickly after that. Robin: Oh, I did. Yeah. I've learned a lot. Jason: How do you feel like your business is now? How does it feel different now having gone through all that? Robin: We have no jerk's policy. You were talking about the kind of clients that you want to attract and it's the same. Life's too short. We've had some clients that are just not great and we let them go. That takes some faith in the system because it'd be easy for me to say, "I have a staff. They can deal with this person. I don't have to deal with him. I'm just going to keep them because of the income." But that's not really the culture that I want. I don't want unhappy employees to hate me because I keep bad clients on. We've attracted so many just really cool, nice people who get it. There's people that just don't. They don't get it. They don't see the value of property management. They maybe have self-managing for a long time and they don't see the value, but there are other people that do, and those are the people we want to work with. We've really streamlined our criteria about the kind of clientele we want, the kind of properties that we want to manage. We manage several HOAs. We don't manage them anymore. They had their separate challenges that weren't really working for our business model and so we let all of them go. That's income, but it's been replaced. It's come back around. You were talking about relationships. You said to us, "Your property management company will be a place where you get referrals for your brokerage." I've got one in escrow right now that we've managed for a couple of years. Another one that we managed that were evicting a tenant and putting on the market. It is true that the property management company has been an interesting gateway to the brokerage business which has sort of become my side hustle, if you will, not my main thing. Jason: Yeah. It's a good side hustle. Robin: Yeah. Jason: One of the things that I point out to clients, and for those listening, I think it's very easy for us as business owners to fall into having the business that we can create or that we can have. Having the types of businesses that we can serve instead of having the business that we really want and the clients that we really want. Robin: Right. Jason: It's such a slight distinction and such an easy trap to fall into. It's similar to what I said outside of this is that, ultimately, I think what happens to clients is that we help them understand not just who they want to really work with, but who they don't want to work with. Then when they get that clarity and we then engineer the sales process and the reputation process, your pricing, and everything around who you really want then the message creates and attracts the right type of clients or tells the wrong type of clients, and so you are now attracting the right type of clients. I think a lot of property managers are hearing you and they just don't believe it. They're hearing you say, "Our clients are great. We love them. They are easy. "And they're like, "She's smoking something." They don't get it because they're feeling, "I know. I talk to people every day." And they're like, "I hate this business sometimes. It's crazy. I'm struggling. We are dealing with people who are like we have to replace one door every time we get a door on." Really, it's that they're putting out the wrong type of energy, message, or perception or they're focusing on the wrong type of audience and they don't see that it's possible. This sounds like a pipe dream to them. How would you explain that to somebody that's sitting where you were two or three years ago? Robin: It does sound like a pipe dream, doesn't it? It does sound a little bit scary to start trusting the process and that you will get new doors on if you let go of some. I'm a firm believer of that kind of energy anyway. You let go of some things and they are going to be replaced by something better anyway. I'm a firm believer in that kind of energy, but you might not be able to let go. Let's say you start doing the process and you start to GatherKudos and you start getting more clients. Then you'll be able to slowly maybe let go of the worst ones to replace it with better ones. You've got to trust the process. That's the thing and it's an empty card. I think a lot of times in this business, I've seen it in brokerage, and I'm sure it happens in every business, people get desperate and they accept treatment from clients they don't really want to accept, but they get desperate. We've had people call us and other people will do it for less. [...]. I mean, go ahead. I saw somebody on one of the DoorGrow threads say, "If you want peanuts, you're going to get monkeys or something." It was essentially like. Jason: If you're working for peanuts, yeah. Robin: Right because that's what you pay for. Jason: [...] monkey if you're working for peanuts. Robin: Right. There's a lot of people that would do it for less, go ahead. If that's your main thing, is somebody who would, "What the price is?" I mean, I was telling my husband, I said, "I've never gone in the hair salon and said, okay, how much?" It's more of what can you do and then how much. Don't you want to know what the product is? I have these people call me the other day and they had a litany of questions. I was being peppered with questions. I finally said, "It sounds like you guys have a lot of questions, maybe we can set up a meeting." They were just hammering me on pricing and I said, "Maybe we're not a fit." It's okay to walk away, you are not going to fit with everyone. Jason: Probably the people that ask endless litany of questions, they're usually really looking for an excuse not to work with you... Robin: Right. Jason: ...especially if they know that your pricing is higher. They're looking, "There's got to be a reason I want to work with these guys, give me an excuse. Oh, you guys don't do that one little thing? Hahaha. I have my excuse. Now, I can avoid this leap that I was going to take working with a coach, working with this business, or whatever. I can avoid that and I can stay in my mediocrity. I can stay in my stuff. I can stay in my dysfunction." I mean, there might be people that call you up asking about your business and they really just want to self-manage. They're just looking for an excuse why is it too expensive or too bad of an idea, or why can't I not trust them so that I can hold onto this moldy peanuts and [...] a monkey and keep my hand in the monkey trap. They want to hold on to it. They don't want to let go and they are looking at you to give them a reason. I love when people play tug of war game with me. Robin: Right. Jason: My favorite thing in the tug of war game is to let go of the rope. Robin: Right, exactly. Jason: And watch them fall on their ass and then they are sitting there holding on going, "Why won't you play with me? Why won't you fight me on this?" "I don't need to, I don't need to play that game." Let's get into the changes that you've made. Your business from where it is now in almost every way is different. Robin: Right. Jason: What changes did we go through? Did you mess with your branding? Robin: The logo. Jason: Okay. We did change something to do with branding. Then we go into the reputation stuff you mentioned. And you guys also have process now reaching out to people, and stuff like that. Or it's gotten [...] for you? Robin: We used LeadSimple. I tried so many different things just to make our systems better as you bring on more doors, you have a quality problem of how do you manage everything. The system of bringing them on board and all of that. I've actually just been working, finessing our onboarding process. Our BDM wouldn't get all of the necessary information. The BDM just wants the signature on the contract. Jason: Right. "Let's get the deal, let's close it." Robin: I realized, "You go get that signature, I'll get the rest of the stuff." I'll send them a welcome email with all the things that we need, and that has really worked out well for us. Jason: You've also revamped your pricing, right? You went through significant change there. You revamped your sales process, which you're talking about right now. Robin: Right. Jason: Making significant changes there in optimizing that. How about the methods for feeding this funnel and prospecting methods? Robin: I'll talk about a couple of things that have worked for us, and then something that haven't worked for us because I've tried everything. Something that's very, very simple is that when you have a business, whatever it is, you need people to know what you do. Especially in property management, my local area, there are people that sell products that can sell to a nationwide audience, that's not what I do. I am managing properties in my local area. I think focusing on that type of local people that are local professionals that know what I do, and that can refer business to me. We do a lot of speaking engagements. We have Dan [...] presentation and then we have one that we're doing right now that we've done a couple of times that is some before and afters because we do a lot with clients that have maybe inherited a property or bought something at a discount that needs to completely be rehabbed. We've worked through a lot of those. We've some before and afters and we talk about the clients getting more money in their pocket every month now because of turning the units. We got a client that inherited a property that his mother had owned and she had kept the rents the same for years. One bedroom was getting a month. It's now getting . Jason: Wow. Robin: How can you argue with that? Jason: That's what sells. What really sells, what people want to buy are results. Robin: Exactly. That's why that presentation has been so successful, it's black and white, it's the numbers, it's the before and after pictures, it's the before and after rent rolls. It shows clients, when we manage their properties, and we have a lot of guys that work for us that can do the turns. We do a lot of it. We can discuss a lot of business. We have a lot of vendors that give us great deals. It's been really beneficial for our clients. Doing this speaking engagement gets us out there and has people see what we do. That's been very beneficial. I go to events, I'm really the only property management company there. There's no other property management company that show up to these events that I go to. In general networking event, I don't really seem to get much out of those. In our area, we have the realtor referral program on our website, we don't get anything. I don't know if it's because the realtors in our area, they're doing one-offs, kind of they've got one deal and that's it, you never hear from them again or in LA County you make so make so much money on one deal that our little referral, they don't care, they're not interested. Jason: Not as enticing. Ultimately, having a relationship with real estate agents is what works... Robin: Right. Jason: ...and nurturing relationship long term. That's really what works there. You mentioned before and after and how effective that is. Let's paint a picture of your before and after for your business that helps me out. Let's look at this. Before, when you came to me, you were 50, 60 units? Robin: I want to say it was 65 doors, 64 doors, right there. Jason: Okay. And then where you guys at now? Robin: Right around 200. Jason: Oh my gosh. So, 200 doors. How many doors were you adding when you were at the 65? What was the sort of the challenge then? What was the typical growth rate? Robin: Nothing. The growth rate was a negative. We were losing. We weren't doing anything. The company was just in the other room on its own and we weren't doing anything to try to grow it. Jason: No growth. That's 65 doors and now, if you guys were at about 200 doors under management, what sort of the growth rate still like? How many doors you add in typically in a month on average? Robin: Typically, a month, 2-5. Jason: Okay. Steadily. If that's the case then you must be retaining doors a lot longer. Robin: We always have. Our retention rate is really a lot longer I think than the stats I've heard in the industry. We've done well with that. Jason: Which [...] targeting better owners, or owners that are not just accidentals that are going to fold after a year. Robin: Right. I find the single family is what we like to target and the small multi-family. We do manage some properties, that's why 2-5 a month, sometimes that's not necessarily doors that's properties, some of those properties might have 4 units. Jason: Oh, okay. Robin: We've taken on some larger multi-family. We actually started in multi-family. Jason: [...] a year typically on average adding a month maybe is what, maybe about 10? Robin: It may be. Depending. Sometimes it's just five single family. It just depends on the month. A lot of times though because we're doing so much prospecting, we have so many in the pipe that somebody I've been talking to for four months comes on, that kind of thing. That works well. Jason: That [...] nurture process. Robin: I just found that people that have the 25-unit buildings and things like that, they want you to run your business the way they want you to run it. I had a guy come and talk to us. We do all of our statements, there's an owner portal, we email them, we don't do a paper statement, and he wanted a bound paper statement every month, so his wife could read it. I said, "Too bad, we don't do that." Jason: Could you imagine if you had 20 of those to do a month? Robin: Exactly. Jason: 50 of those to do a month? Robin: They seem to want special treatment so you really have to set your boundaries and know what you're willing to accept. There's always negotiation. It's business. There's always a bending. You might think, "Well, this is so worth it. You know what, I will lower my price on this or that, or I will do something out of the ordinary." But for the most part, you really have to stick to your guns and know what you're willing to accept. That works for us. Jason: Works for me too. I love hearing about you and your husband's successes. It's really great to see you. I appreciate you coming on the show and hanging out with me. It's great to hear that you guys are 200 doors and having growth. You guys are headed into what I call the second [...]. That's the 200-400 doors and this is where now you're dealing with processes and staff, and building a team. You've got some new challenges ahead. Maybe we'll be talking soon. Robin: Okay, good. Jason: [...] challenges. It's really great to see your success. Shameless plug, for those that are considering maybe working with me, doing the seed program, maybe they're skeptical, or they've heard mixed reviews. What would you say to them about me, what's your perception of me and DoorGrow? Robin: I can't say enough positive things about you and DoorGrow. It has truly changed our business. If you have a property management company, if you're starting a property management company, especially if you're starting one, there's not so much clean up that you'll have to do. Do it right from the beginning. Jason is very genuine. He's a good human being. That's important. We trust you, we really care about you and you care about us, and we've had a two-year relationship with you and we know you're there for us. We've seen the results. Not only that, for me, it was hard for me to trust the results, and trust that they were going to keep coming, and they have. You don't just get a new DoorGrow website and have a seat and have everything come to you. That's not how it works, but it's all of these different pieces that starts to funnel business your way. Jason: I tell potential clients or even clients, it's the last 10% of dialling in things that give you 90% of the results. Robin: That makes sense. Jason: It's that last 10%. For example, they'll do the website, but they don't get faces on there, they don't get the social proof. They're missing just a couple little pieces. I have the whole website, that's 90%. But they're missing the little pieces that create that trust or ticket to the next level. How I built my business, and how I built the entire program is built around the idea of trusts. Trust is what sells and the fact that you came on board and trusted me, allowed me to help you create a business that creates trust. It sounds like you're putting out a lot of trust for the industry and property management industry in your market which I think is awesome as well. You're changing the perception of property management. There's a lack of trust. For those that are listening, pay attention to this, people that are not signing up with you that you feel like should be, it's not because they distrust you, it's because you haven't created enough trust for them to pick you over your competition. You just haven't created enough trust. It's not that they're walking around just distrusting everybody. Maybe they are, maybe the property management industry has earned a bad reputation in some ways. But I think more than that, it's that you haven't created enough trust. It's about creating that trust. Anyway, I honor you for your growth. You did all of these. You did it. I just pointed, and you and your husband deserves all the props for making this happen. Robin: Thank you. Jason: Really, you guys have done some phenomenal things. Like you said earlier, "I tried everything." You have the tenacity. And I gave you ideas, but you tried things, you tried everything out. You did, you trusted the process but you experimented and that's really what entrepreneurs do. That's how business works. Robin: Yeah. We're still tweaking. You mentioned the website. Jason: Always. Robin: I just took the website quiz again last week. I got a B. There's a couple of things we need to tweak. Jason: I have a new training called Website Secrets that you got to watch. Robin: Right. Jason: And we're getting to an A. Robin: Yeah, exactly! I know exactly what we need to do and it's just getting with your team and making those tweaks. Jason: Make sure you watch the training because some of my questions in DoorGrow secrets or in the DoorGrow score quiz. Robin: I will. Jason: If anyone wants to grade their website, you can go to doorgrow.com/quiz and take a test to grade your website, how effective it is to creating trust and getting conversions, but some of the questions are backwards. You think you're saying, "Yes, I'm going to get this, and I need to add this for my website." It's a trick, it's like the reverse. I didn't really explain which ones are right and which ones are wrong, I'm just asking do you have this and then it gives you a grade in the end. You're on the inside. I've seen people go and implement a bunch of changes, thinking they could just go off the quiz and then it's just [...] they can clear things up. Cool. Robin, really great to see you again. I'm excited to hear about your continuing success and what [...] big and brighter future with Concept 360 Property Management. Robin: Thank you. Thank you so much. Jason: Alright. I'll let Robin go. Really great to connect with her. Always exciting to see and share in the winds with clients. Man, I would love to take all the credit, but my best clients, all the ones that are in my case studies that you guys can see back onto the doorgrow.com/case-studies, these are clients that they trusted the process, but they did the work. They did the work. This is a secret, there's no company that you can just go hand them money and they're going to give you contracts. We don't do that. Marketing agencies can't do that. The best they can give you, most agencies with cold leads, we're going to help you build system so that your business grows more organically, that it's easier that we put gasoline on the fire that works in the sense you which is word of mouth and we optimize your business towards that. If you are struggling to grow, if you are maybe what Robin was in the beginning saying, "It's a liability, let's just close it. I'm burnt out, I'm stressed out. I'm not getting any younger." I've heard these phrases from clients. Get on the phone with DoorGrow or start with our case studies, go to doorgrow.com/case-studies and just start there. If you go there, there is a free training—it really is the beginning of our program, I give it out for free. There is a link you can click on to watch free training about DoorGrow Secrets. It's going to share with you concepts like the cycle of suck, the 4Ds to revenue, cold leads versus warm leads, the myth of SEO, so that you can be a more savvy educated person with marketing and growing your business. If you decide that we can help you out, I would love to do that. If you feel like you are a right fit, you are open-minded, you're the right type of client, I would love and be honored to be able to work with you and coach you and help you grow your company. Again, thanks Robin for coming on the show. Until next time, everybody to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life. This document has been edited with the instant web content composer. The online instant HTML converter make a great resource that will help you a lot in your work. Save this link or add it to your bookmarks.

Toilets, tenants, and termites: Property management can be a tough business. Have you ever felt like giving up, only to find joy again? Today, I am talking to Annemarie Sunde of Legacy Property Management. She paints a realistic and transparent turned pretty picture of property management. You'll Learn... [03:00] Discovering Development Areas: Annemarie never wanted to be a realtor, but now has a real estate license. [04:04] Dealing with the Scum of the Earth? Given an opportunity to get into property management, only to learn most property managers and tenants lack integrity. [04:50] Origins of Legacy Property Management: Treating others with respect that leads to legacy with tenants, owners, and co-workers. [06:10] DoorGrow's Time Study: Doing things that cause you stress and headaches. [06:30] Strategic and Futuristic Strengths: Started having fun thinking 20 years ahead about being on a beach and the business naturally growing. [06:55] Cycle of Suck: Vicious circle of not-great properties, tenants, and owners. [08:40] Business Model and Breaking 100 Doors: Fewer but healthier and fun properties that pay bigger yield. [09:45] Seeking Clarity: Biggest problem growing and scaling business is blaming everyone and everything else. [10:47] Tactical vs. Strategic: Entrepreneurs are visionaries; why do the tactical crap? [14:26] Accidental Perfect Landlords: Owners who take pride in their property. [15:16] Prospecting Channels/Methods: Lead gen from realtor referrals via classes, podcast, and online reputation. [16:30] Some clients don't listen, follow the protocols, or get results. Do what you're told! [17:48] Door Envy: It's not about doors, but whether you love your business and life. [19:25] How do you turn your phone off at night? Do Not Disturb. [20:35] Biggest Benefits of Seed Program: How to design a user-friendly Website, find clarity, ask for reviews, and create an online reputation. [22:35] If you were to sell your business, what makes you valuable? [25:07] Magical Mindshift: If you want people to invest in and spend money on you, be willing to do that for yourself. [28:34] Memoirs of a Property Manager: What we go through managing owners. Tweetables Transparency of Property Management Industry: Toilets, tenants, and termites. Cycle of Suck: Dealing with scummy owners and tenants sucking you dry. Entrepreneurs assume everyone else is like them. Nobody's like us. We're weird. Resources Legacy Property Management Tom Rath's StrengthsFinder DiSC DoorGrow Seed Program Yelp AppFolio National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) OpenPotion DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. Today, I'm hanging out with the fantastic Annemarie Sunde of Legacy Property Management. Annemarie, welcome to the show. Annemarie: Thanks. Jason: It's been a while since we've chatted. Annemarie: I'm having Jason withdrawals. Jason: Yeah, you've mentioned that on the pre-show and I'm like, "You just show up. Show it to our weekly cult review, internally for our clients." The topic for this episode is how I almost quit and then found joy in property management. Property management can be a tough business. It can be a tough industry. "Toilets, tenants, and termites," as some of you say. As business owners, we're often in this promotion-sales mode. We're just telling everyone how great our business is all the time. We start to almost believe it superficially, but then on the inside, sometimes it's just not really how it is and there's this disconnect. I would love to just give people just a taste of some reality and some transparency because business is not always great. Sometimes it's just really not great. I remember, way back, waking up when I was running my company as OpenPotion and realizing I hated my business. I didn't like the clients that I was working with at the time. My team were out of alignment with my values. Everything was just off and I just want to stream Netflix today. That's it. Let's go back to one of those early conversations you and I had. Give people a little bit of background, you and your business. You can give the pretty picture first. Tell everybody about you. Let's qualify you. Annemarie: I'm actually a degreed engineer by trade, worked 15 years in Oil and Gas in Denver. When I got married for the second time, I married a realtor, and I consulted to his business, actually growing his business. After a year of doing that, I said I never want to be a realtor. I never want a real estate license in my life, and now I have a real estate license. But I don't do any of the buy-sell transactional selling, whatsoever. I'm not interested in that, I don't have the patience for it, and you should know, I lack incredible patience. That's part of my development that I've learned coaching with you. Let's fast forward a little. Just got into the opportunity to get into property management was offered to me, and I have always done flips, I've always had rentals my entire life with my father. I'm like, "Well now, I can be the boss of a tenant. This sounds fun. I can do this." I did when we started our own business, I worked for a couple of property management companies. I felt they lacked integrity, a lot of what you talk about in DoorGrow. They're just scummy, dealing with scummy owners, scummy tenants. Jason: I talk about that? Annemarie. Yeah, the Cycle of Suck. Jason: Oh, the Cycle of Suck. Yes. Annemarie: We had our own rentals and I was like, "You know, there's got to be owners out there that actually want to be treated like something." We created Legacy Property Management really to lead legacy with our tenants, with our owners, and with the people that we work with, that work for us. That's where it was born. My husband stumbled across DoorGrow, and I was one of the first Seed Hackers 1.0. Jason: Jeff, right? Annemarie: Yes. I got into the Seed Hacker Program and then I got into coaching, but when I got into coaching with you, I was cooked. I hated my business. I was looking for anybody that wanted to offer me a good sum of money to buy my business. I did not want to be in it anymore. So, that's where I was. Jason: I remember this conversation. You were describing your business, you're like "I want out," and what did you want? Annemarie: I wanted to be with my kids and I wanted to go sit on a beach. Jason: You're right. I want to spend time with my kids. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to deal with all these headaches and stress, and I've seen this. I've seen this a lot. And it doesn't the business or the industry, it's not even about the business or the industry. What did you realize it was about? I'll ask you. Annemarie: I was doing things that completely stressed me out. It started with a lot of the exercises you had us do on the coaching call, but one of the big things was the time study. The very first time I did a time study. I am not a tactical person, whatsoever. I am highly strategic. I'm the 50,000 foot. I actually did a Tom Rath StrenghtsFinders and I have strategic and futuristic in my strengths. I'm 20 years ahead of everybody, thinking about how I'm going to get myself onto a beach. When I learned that, your comment to me was, "When you're doing the tactical crap in your business, this is when you are grumpy. This is when you can't handle it. This is when you're stressed. This is when your kids are driving you crazy. This is when your phone's going in the toilet. All of those things." The minute I took that out of my job description and I was doing strategy, I started having so much fun, and the business was naturally growing because I was having fun. Jason:We've thrown out a couple of terms that are insider terms here, right? So some people who are hearing this for the first time are like, "What are they talking about? They're speaking some language only they know." Let's explain what the Cycle of Suck is. What is your perception of what the Cycle of Suck is? Annemarie: It's this vicious circle of not a great property, not a great owner yields crappy tenants, and it just keeps going round and round and round. You can't get out of the circle. Jason: The bad reputation and then you attract more bad owners, more bad properties. That's where the whole industry sits in general, as a whole and aggregate in the industry has a negative reputation, and most businesses are taking on any owner. That's something that the whole industry needs to shift. Annemarie: I did that. When I first met you guys, that's where I was. You're hungry, you're starting a business, you just take in anything you can take, and you're realizing that the low-end people are sucking you dry, costing me more money because I'm using attorneys. It just wasn't a fun thing. So, I elevated our business model. We do know multi-family, for example. That's our choice. We have fewer properties that pay a bigger yield so I'm sitting at about 110 doors, and I love it. Jason: Amazing. You broke 100. I love it. Annemarie: I did. Finally! Jason: Did you throw a party? You should've throw a party. Annemarie: We are going to throw a party. I think my senior property manager and I are going somewhere. Jason: You deserve to throw a party. That's awesome. They're healthier properties than where you were. Annemarie. Yes. They're fun properties and we love representing them. Jason: I remember that first conversation. You just want to spend time with your kids. You wanted out of the business, and I remember what I said to you. I said, "You're just doing it wrong. We can bring this business into alignment around you," but at that time you were serving the business. You were a slave to the business instead of the business fulfilling you and your needs, specifically. [...] an alignment with you. Every business is different. What would work for you and fulfill you is different for me. We had a hard time even getting into this software, but I love the nerdy stuff. I would do technical stuff and I'd put that as part of my role in the business. You will hire someone up. Everybody's team looks different. If we build the right team around us, but the only way we can do that is if we're clear on ourselves and that's the biggest problem people have with growing and scaling companies or teams because they have no clarity on themselves. So, they're externalizing everything and blaming the business, they're blaming their team, they're blaming their clients, and the problem is them. Once you get clear on you and we have clarity on what really fulfills you and energizes you and drains you. You mentioned tactical versus strategic, right? Entrepreneurs, generally, we are strategic people. We're the visionaries. That's generally who all of us are as entrepreneurs. Some of us enjoy some of the tactical stuff. There are tactical things that I do enjoy, and you can hold onto those if you want to. But, in general, all the tactical things that we hold onto are the things that are holding us back. They're holding an entire business back. The tactical things that drain us are the things that are keeping the entire company from growing and it makes us the biggest bottleneck in the company. Annemarie: I figured everybody was like me. Why would they want to do the tactical crap? I actually have people that work for me and they can't even see beyond their nose, and they're fine doing the tactical day in, day out, day stuff. I can't stand it. Jason: That's a big mistake we make as entrepreneurs. We assume everyone else are like us. Nobody's like us. We're weird. Raise the chair. My team members, they love doing the things that they love doing. I don't love doing the things that they love doing. Annemarie: Me neither. Jason: That's great. There's seven billion people or whatever in the planet. There's always people that love doing the stuff that you don't love doing and that's such an interesting mindset shift—to realize somebody would love doing this stuff. [...] that gift by giving it up, Annmarie: You even taught me how to screen somebody if I'm going to hire them. They go through this whole process now that we have, including a DISC profile to see because I am High D and I am the bull in the China shop. If I'm always going to have to massage your feelings because I just let it fly, then you're probably not the person to work for me. Jason: You mentioned a few things that you did to go through this transition. As you shifted your business away from doing all the things that you felt like were draining you, that put you in a position where you wanted out, like you wanted to get rid of the business, what did you realize pretty quickly as you started to make these changes? You've already thrown out the word "fun" a few times, I've noticed. Annemarie: If I have a week where I am doing tactical things, I put my mind into, "Okay, this is a week," and I warn my family, "This is what I got on my plate. I could be nasty this week because I'm not having fun this week." That happens a lot when I'm bringing on a new person and I'm training them on having to do the day-to-day again. What I found to be the most exciting for me is I love to strategize on how we're going to get properties. The way we get properties is hugely through realtor referrals because we don't sell or buy any properties, so we're a safeplace for them, and through my class that I teach. I'm teaching probably 2–3 a quarter now. I just did two and I have four properties from those two classes. It's people that I want to work with. It's owners that take pride or we call them the accidental landlords that they bought in this market. We had so many people going in and out of the state right now, it's crazy. They don't want to lose the foothold in the Denver market. They're petrified someone's going to trash their house. That's the perfect landlord for me. We talk a lot about that to realtors that have owners that they just sold a house to and now that's where they go back to. What do I do with my house? Jason: That was a significant piece. If you go back in your transition is getting clarity on what you really wanted. Annemarie: And what I enjoyed doing. Jason: Declare on your avatar in getting clear on what type of client you really were wanting to work with. I remember we had several conversations about that. Also, we talked quite a bit about different channels for prospecting and you found different methods that really worked for you. You were doing everything from podcasts. Annemarie: I still do the podcasts. That's on Thursday this week, and it's with the investor. I get more leads out of that. The three places I get my leads are realtor referrals probably coming from my classes, my podcast, and my online reputation which is what people should not even be asking if they do the Seed Hacker Program because that blew my business right out of the water. I just got another house this week from a Yelp review. Jason: So, those three channels, you didn't really have a system or a process, you weren't even really focused on those three channels before you had gone through the program. Annemarie: I had no idea what to do. Jason: Those were just three that worked for you. Somebody else could do three different things that might work for them. Help people understand. Some people are like, "I don't know about Jason," or they may be on the fence about working with me and they're like, "I don't know because I hear mixed reviews," because I have clients that they don't do stuff. They don't listen to me. They don't follow the protocols. They don't get the results. You just did what I told you to do. You just did it. Annemarie: And sometimes, I have the tendency to compare myself to somebody else. We just talked about, I broke 100 doors. I'm now entering my fourth year of business and I hit 100 doors. So, four years and I hit 100 doors. I have to say that if you don't know the Denver market, for the last two years, houses have been selling and there's no inventory. I probably bumped into 100 several times, but I've lost 12–20 out of my portfolio from sales that owners decided to sell. That's attrition in the business, but I got to say that I was constantly comparing myself. I'd passed two years and I can't get to 100. Then I stopped focusing on it and I started focusing on getting rid of my crappy owners because those were crappy properties, and bringing on good owners that I wanted to work with and properties I wanted to. I marketed in those areas. Jason: I remember. I remember this conversation. I remember you were having door envy. You were like, "I haven't broken that 100-door barrier. I want to break 100 doors," like it was this thing. Do you remember what I said to you? Annemarie: Calm down. Jason: Yeah. Don't worry about it. It's not about doors. It's about, do you love your business? Are you enjoying yourself? Are you getting the life that you want to have? Are you getting to spend time with your kids? Do you enjoy your team members? Do you like the people that you work with. This is your life. Don't get me wrong, I like when people go after a goal, but once you let go of it having to look a certain way and you focused on aligning the business with you, it just started to happen naturally for you. Annemarie: What made me let go was setting critical numbers, another secret word in the secret club. I set critical numbers, and yes, one of my critical numbers was number of doors, but one of my top critical numbers was revenue coming in. What I found was, for the last two years, I'm making my critical revenue number despite being under 100 doors. That's what proved to me, "Who cares?" I can still go on vacation and literally shut it off. I don't know a lot of property managers. I have to tell you, the funniest post was one in the Facebook group when someone posted, "How do you turn off your phone at night?" After I laughed for literally 10 minutes, I went in on probably a paragraph of crap on, "First of all," and then ended with, "and you should call Jason," because seriously, on my phone that was the most liberating thing. I shut my phone off at 8:15 every night and it's silent, just Do Not Disturb until 7:15 the next morning. I don't care what's happening. There are professionals out there that can help them, not me. Jason: All right. Great. No, I love this. Let's go to the Seed Program, going through that portion which the coaching stuff that I took you through, we folded into our new version of the seed program, like majority of that stuff. So, it's all one program now. Going through all of it, what do you feel were the biggest benefits and the biggest takeaways for you? Annemarie: I had a website because I used that folio. That folio gives you this website. It's just learning what things to draw people. I had no clue and quite frankly I really didn't want to, and I love that there's a whole team of your people that will make a website change in literally three seconds of my time. There's that component of really designing a website that's user-friendly, and I tweak it all the time based on what I see other people's websites. Why keep recreating the wheel? That was a big thing. Understanding what you wanted to focus on because when you get into property management, if you're going to focus on multi-family like we do know multi-family, and from our owners, they love that we do know multi-family. That's a different management than single-family luxury homes. That's our niche. That's where we focus. The other thing, I had no clue. I just thought we had to be SEO be the first, blah, blah, blah. I had no clue what online reputation was. The first I remember two or three clients that came on because, "Wow, you have a great Yelp review. You have five stars on whatever," and I'm like, "Wow. This stuff works!" So, I learned that this was important and to go and ask for the review. That is part of our workflow process. If from a tenant, contractor, realtor that's referred us, or owner, we ask for referrals endlessly online and it has really helped us. Jason: With that, we taught you how to build a process around that and how to leverage the law of reciprocity psychologically and all that. Annemarie: I just learned really quickly at a recent NARPM chapter lunch, they had a really great speaker on, "If you were to sell your business, what makes you valuable?" Outside of number of doors, income or profit, the third thing is, "How involved are you in your business?" Because that means that it's not translatable. If they're going to buy it, they're going to have to buy you to keep it going and some people don't want to do that. I looked at my husband because he always think I got to be involved and I'm like, "I told you. I could be this much money if I would just go somewhere." So, now he's on board because he heard that. I can easily go on vacation with my business. It's much harder as a realtor to go on vacation, if you've got a buyer you got to be carting around. That's how I look at it. I want to be able to come in and out of my business as I need to. That's the part that I love. Jason: Shameless plug. For those that are on the fence, there's like, "Maybe I show up at DoorGrow, maybe not." What would you tell them? Annemarie: Don't even think about it. Seriously. I realized that I was in the guinea pig stages of Seed Hacker, and I thought, "Oh, my gosh. How am I going to spend this money as a young company?" It's paid for itself long ago, so it's totally worth it. Jason, you have an amazing staff that people will email you, you don't even know who these people are and they got it. I love it. It's great. Obviously, I was at the DoorGrowLive last year and we thought it was fantastic. In terms of the resources that you have, with your coach and parlaying those or after listening to him speak, I looked at my husband and I'm like, "Guess what? I don't have to pay that much because I paid Jason and he gives that to me!" I mean I learned so much. Jason: I invest a lot in the coaches. I just signed up with another coach. I've got three coaches right now. If I mentioned how much money I spend on coaching annually, they would lose it because it's probably more than most property managers' annual salary. It's pretty ridiculous, but that's how I have value to offer to others and that's the one thing I would tell everybody listening. If you want people to invest in you, you want people to spend money with you, you have to be willing to do that to yourself. You have to be willing to invest in yourself and there's a magical mindset shift that happened for me the second I decided to pay to invest in myself. Not just pay for a team member, not just pay for some marketing [...], when I paid to invest in myself and in my business, it changed my perception of my value and it changed how I sold. It changed my own confidence level in being able to pull in business. There's an energetic shift that happens that when you invest in yourself, other people will invest in you, too. Annemarie: I'm sitting here thinking about, I definitely have an entrepreneurial spirit, this isn't the first business I've run. One could come in and say, "Okay, I did a few rentals here and there." Now, when I hear people say, "I'm going to get into property management," I just think, "Oh, my gosh. The guy just did a nine minute video on the four new Colorado laws impacting landlords and property management," and I sent it to my owners. I spent two months on Capitol Hill trying to fight these bills and it's just crazy. People are going to get themselves in so much trouble. What I found is when I started coaching and going with DoorGrow is one could approach it, 10–20 properties, you could probably manage it. But when you start to get such a portfolio and you really don't have processes, you really don't know what you're doing to be honest with you. I agree with you. Once you know where you're really good at, and that's why I said doing what you're created to do and hiring people to do the other stuff. I still do listing appointments. I don't do them all anymore. Remember you told me, "You need to give that up." And I'm like, "You're crazy. I'm the only one that could do a listing appointment." Jason: I'm like, "Let go of your ego," right? Annemarie: Right. It was like, "They can't do it. They can't do it. We can't lose this," and now, I don't even want to go, but sometimes, I do. Sometimes it just keeps me in touch with this is what life is about and this is what they're facing. I do them, but I have no problems handing that kind of stuff off. I like to be in teaching and doing the videos and doing the podcast. That's my gig. That's what I like. Jason: And you're enjoying it. Annemarie: I am. I love that part. Jason: It's such a transition. This is one of the things that's amazing for me as a coach, that I get to see the contrast. I remember that conversation. I remember you wanting out and not liking it, and you're a passionate person when you talk. I felt it. Now, you can feel this, too. You're like, "love" and "fun." These are adjectives that you're associating with your business which most property managers are like, "She's high on something right now. I don't know what Jason gave her, but this sounds like crazy talk." Annemarie: Having the right people, honestly, makes the job a lot more fun. My property manager's been with me the longest. We literally wrote a coffee table book for our owners for Christmas. It's Memoirs of a Property Manager. We can't make this up. We were sitting in Starbucks, laughing to the point of how retarted are these people, and we manage them! She said, "We should put this in a book and give them to our owners just to remind them what we deal with." So, we did and they are asking when's the next volume coming. You got to have time for that. Jason: You don't want to anymore. Annemarie: I tell them a lot of times, "If we can't laugh about it, then certainly we will be in the fetal position crying about it." Jason: Laughter is the stage before fear. Annemarie, it's so good to catch up with you. I really appreciate you. I appreciate your husband, Jeff. It's been phenomenal watching you guys progress and feeling all the love back from you guys. I really appreciate that. I just get to work with the most awesome clients. This is the type of things that I love doing. This is my jam. I enjoy it. It's been great being able to work with you and I appreciate you coming and hanging out here on the DoorGrow Show with me. Annemarie: Yup. And I will say, if I have one piece of advice, if they do hire DoorGrow, the Seed Hacker, do what they say to do. It's not take a pill and hope for the best. It's you having to do the work. I was all in. If I was going to spend the money, I was all in. I was going to do what I was told to do and that's my biggest advice. Don't spend it if you're not going to do it. Jason: Right. And to be honest, those are the only clients that get great results. It's that last 10% of doing the stuff that I tell people to do, that not everybody really wants to do. It's that last little dialing and that last little 10% that gets you 90% of the results. Annemarie: Yup. We appreciate you guys, for sure. Jason: All right, Annemarie. Thanks so much. I will let you go. Bye. Annemarie: Bye. Jason: That's super rewarding for me as a coach. I don't know that there's anything more fulfilling than being able to see a client progress. It's like watching my children succeed in anything. It doesn't even matter what it is, it just feels good because you're seeing this. It's really awesome to have her come on the show. If you are property management entrepreneur, you feel like you need somebody in your corner. You want somebody that believes in you, somebody that can challenge you, somebody that can help you see something you can't see because you're in it, you're too close to the fire, I need people to tell me the same stuff that I would tell myself to do because I'm too close to the fire in my own business. I would be honored to take on helping you in your business, being your coach, and helping you grow your company. Reach out to DoorGrow. We're really picky about the clients that we take on because I want clients like Annemarie. I want clients that are going to do what I tell them to do. I want clients that going to trust the process. I want clients that are going to go all in. If you feel like you're that type of person, then reach out to us. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. That is it for today. Goodbye everybody and until next time to your and our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

When property managers need a helping hand, where can they go to find the right handyman/maintenance contractor? Today, I am talking to Liz Koser of Keepe, an on-demand marketplace that fills the supply-and-demand gap between contractors and property managers. Liz is a real estate investor and landlord with 10 properties, 15 doors. You'll Learn... [01:40] Early Exposure to Property Management: Liz is following in her parents' footsteps of real estate investing. [01:54] Own vs. Rent: Liz's first condo was her own home that turned into her first rental. Since then, she typically purchases 1–2 properties a year. [02:07] Diversify Property Portfolio: First year for Liz to explore out-of-state investing. [03:32] A lot like Uber: Based on location and availability, contractors go through a background check before picking up jobs via Keepe's mobile app. [04:00] Keepe Connecting through Techstars: Fast track program for startups to get feedback on product/market fit; network with others to quickly bring things to market. [04:39] Future Growth Goals: Keepe's on the West Coast and making its way to Denver and beyond. [06:25] Why choose to use Keepe? Allows property managers to feel safe expanding, growing their business, and extend the reach or capability to get jobs done. [08:55] Keepe Options as Seasons Change: When things heats up, it's time to grow. [10:07] Keepe's Process: No monthly subscription fee, paid on-demand. [11:08] Common Concerns and Questions: Keepe constantly collects data and feedback from customers and others to improve its network of contractors. [12:25] Building Relationships and Referrals: Bring over or block contractors to join the network. Tweetables Diversify within the real estate investing realm. Pick up out-of-state properties, and continue down that path. When everything heats up, that's the time to grow. Keepe makes property managers feel safe expanding, growing their business to get jobs done. Resources Liz Koser's Email Keepe Techstars Uber Lyft DoorGrow Secrets DoorGrow Newsletter DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. And today, I'm hanging out with the fantastic Liz Koser of Keepe. Liz, welcome to the show. Liz: Thanks for having me. Jason: Liz, give us a little bit of a background. Who is Liz? The bio that I have says you're a Seattle real estate investor, landlord, you have 10 of your own properties, 15 doors, alongside with your husband, your parents actively invest in rental property, and you were exposed to this early on. Tell us a little more about you and how you got into property management or into the space. Liz: As you said, my parents were already investing in real estate and I have bought my first condo in 2009, which was my own home, and that eventually became my first rental. Then from 2012 to now, I steadily bought 1–2 properties a year. Last year, we didn't get any, but this year we already have two and I think we'll probably going to continue to add this year and continue to be aggressive about it. That's where I'm at on the investing side. Also, I think I mentioned this in my bio, but this is the first year where I've explored investing out-of-state. I picked up my first out-of-state property and have every intention of continuing down that path. With the Seattle market, it's high and it just makes sense also to diversify. I know people diversify within the stock market. I actually think it's somewhat important to diversify within the real estate investing realm as well. Jason: Now, lead us towards Keepe. How did Keepe get started, what's your role there, and give us a little background there. Liz: Keepe got started because there is a supply and demand gap between having handymen available and property managers' need for finding handymen, especially in the markets that we're in today. Keepe got started as a way to address that gap. We are an on-demand marketplace, matching contractors and property managers. It works a lot like Uber in that contractors pick up jobs on mobile app, based on location and availability. They go through a background check and so on. One of the Keepe founders does also own rental properties. I had known him previously and that is how I made the initial connection. Keepe went through Techstars in 2016. Jason: What is Techstars? Liz: Techstars is a startup incubator, which is a fast track program for startup companies to get feedback on product and market, the whole fit, top-end networking with lots of other entrepreneurs and investors to bring things to market more quickly. Jason: Okay, So, that means it rapidly was getting ready faster. Where's Keepe at now in terms of growth and penetration? How new is Keepe for those that are listening? Liz: We've been in Seattle the longest, but actually Keepe is in the greater Seattle area, Portland, San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, Phoenix, Arizona, and then most recently Los Angeles and Orange County. Jason: You've hit a lot of the major markets here on the West Coast, right? Liz: Yup. Jason: What's next, Denver? Liz: Yeah. I think Denver is a very good candidate and I'm actually from Colorado, so Denver would be a good fit for me personally in terms of running the sales side of Keepe. Also, I think Austin, Texas or the Dallas Fort Worth area, but definitely we're here to grow nationally. With that, the first step is getting off the West Coast, right? Jason: Right. When you start shifting towards the east, it's going to be Atlanta and Jacksonville. Those are big markets for us. They seem to attract a lot of businesses there. Certainly those. Liz: It's interesting. We've actually received a few phone calls from the Atlanta area, property managers asking if we're there yet. That's a good sign we're getting preemptive calls. Jason: All right. So the goal is expansion, you guys are growing, and eventually people will be listening to this because this episode will have been out for a while and you might already be in some of these new markets, right? Liz: Right. Jason: Explain to everybody why they should choose to use Keepe. I know a lot of property managers are like, "Well, we find our own people," or, "I don't trust this." What are some of the typical things that you tell people to sell this to them? Liz: One, starting now, a lot of property managers who use Keepe kind of slow go. Let's say they start to send us a handful of jobs and then over time, we end up gaining a larger portion of maintenance from our customers. I know people have their trusty handyman, but I would say a big need comes up when people say, "Oh, no. My handyman retired or moved away," and this happens all the time. That is one area where if you're counting on one or even two people, there's a company in Arizona that said, "Oh, both our people retired at the same time." It just doesn't work in the long run. The other thing is when property managers are depending on those one or two handymen and they're also a little bit geographically limited. Some of our customers maybe were in a certain Bay Area city, let's say San Jose, and they're weren't willing to pick up clients in San Mateo because they didn't have a contractor in San Mateo. Using Keepe now opens the door to look at branching out into other geographies as well. We've had customers that have been able to expand their footprint because they have Keepe in their back pocket and they know they can handle maintenance in other areas. Jason: So, having Keepe allows these property managers to feel safe expanding, growing their business, and allows them to extend the reach or capability as far as their challenges with getting jobs taken care of that they have. If the handyman retires, moves, all these kinds of stuff, then they're typically in pain. This is one when they typically would reach out to Keepe? Is this what you're finding? Liz: That is where they are like, "Oh, great. Now I get it." We have a lot of property managers try us out before that point and we've had property managers that have said, "Oh, great. This helps me grow because I maybe had one on-staff handyman or two and I wasn't sure about adding a third." Sometimes, they realize that there's busy seasons and so seasons, so, "How do I keep our team busy throughout the year?" Well, you might be able to keep one person busy throughout the year and utilize Keepe instead of adding a second person. There's a lot of options here. Jason: That's a little bit of flexibility to what they've got going on, which makes a lot of sense. Property management is a very seasonal sort of business. It really heats up in the summer and even if you look at Google Trends and look at search volume, you can see the year just spike through summer every single year in search volume for property management. That's when everything heats up and that's the time to grow if they're needing to expand during those seasonal times without bringing on staff because bringing on somebody long-term is a commitment. Nobody wants to lay somebody off if things gets a little lame. It allows them a little safer adjusting. How does the process work with Keepe? How do they work with you? Liz: We have a pretty easy sign-up process and we actually don't have a monthly subscription fee. We are paid on-demand. Keepe is both a platform and in the [...] contractors. All the payments flow through us. Invoicing comes from Keepe and we pay out the contractors. The sign-up process is pretty much getting set-up for billing terms. When property managers use us for a job, that's when we make money. We actually don't have a monthly subscription. Jason: Interesting. So, it's only when you need it. Liz: Yeah, but our job is to earn a greater percentage of our customer's business, which is good for our customers because that means that we are working to build a relationship in the long run. Jason: Fantastic. What are some of the common questions or concerns that people will bring up when they call you? We got people listening right now. They probably have these questions. What are the typical concerns that they have in handing something over to Keepe? Liz: We get questions about how do we find the contractors and what's our process for getting contractors on board. Sometimes, people think that there's somebody in the background dialing a list to find them a contractor. It's just shifting the burden. We actually have a team that interviews contractors. We do criminal background checks and then from there, we are collecting ratings on the contractors, so tenants today are the ones that respond once a job is complete unless it's a vacant unit and it's a rental turn, then it would be the property manager. We're constantly collecting this feedback and we have contractors that have been in our network for multiple years. We do remove contractors at times. So, it's all about the feedback loop and continuously improving the network. Jason: Got it. Fantastic. Any other questions or concerns that they might have or that they bring up during the sales process? Liz: One question we get is if they don't like a contractor, can they block them? Yes, we do allow property managers to block certain contractors. It's come up more recently is, "If we end up going with Keepe, can our handyman join Keepe's network?" Yes, we are happy to take those referrals from property managers. They are probably some of the best referrals we can get because if one property manager likes the contractor, then that's a good sign going forward. Jason: It kind of like a timeshare. Liz: Yeah, a little bit. Jason: They're like, "Can I share my contractor with some of the other people in your network, so I can keep them on?" Liz: Yeah, definitely. Once question we get is can they request their contractor. When you think about how Uber and Lyft operate, where they're matching you with the driver near that location when they're available, that is essentially how our network works. Although you could have a preference for someone, if that person is not available at that scheduled time, then it's not going to be an exact matching. That's one thing to keep in mind with a fluid marketplace is that it doesn't work with the on-demand model to request a specific person necessarily. Jason: It's optimized for efficiency. The trade-off in not getting to pick Steve is that you get the job done for faster and probably get a better review. Liz: Yup. Jason: This is very interesting, super helpful. I'm excited to see you guys expand into some more markets and grow. Anything else anybody should know about Keepe that we didn't cover? Liz: I am always interested in hearing from people in other markets, too. Like I mentioned, we had a few calls from the Atlanta area. I do make note when people come to us and I'm like, "Oh, there's already a lot of demand there." So, even if we're not in your city today, I would recommend reaching out because I do track that. It's very telling of demand and helps us in the decision-making as we move forward into new markets. Jason: Liz, how can people get in touch with you to let you know they want you and your market or if they're in one of the markets that you cover, how can they get in touch? Liz: They can reach me at liz@keepe.com. Jason: And they can check Keepe out at keepe.com, right? Liz: Yes. Jason: Perfect. All right. Liz, it's great having you on the show. Excited to see Keepe grow and expand. It sounds like the service that helps feel that in-between gap between people's in-house maintenance, people's seasonal maintenance, some of these challenges that they're dealing with. I look forward to seeing which markets you get into next. Liz: All right. Thank you for having me on the show, Jason. Jason: Yeah. Thanks for being here. So, check them out at keepe.com and see if it might fit. As always, I love getting feedback from you guys, so let me know what you think of these guys. And I appreciate Liz being here on the show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that is wanting to add doors, you're trying to figure things out, you're struggling, and things just don't seem to be working, I would love to have a conversation with you. Reach out to our team. Go to doorgrow.com, give us a call, connect with us, schedule an appointment, and check us out. If you are a property management business that can handle adding 50 new doors at least, you want to add maybe 100 doors over the next year at least, then you can go to doorgrow.com/optin. Plug in your email address and that will get you access to some case studies. See if you can see other people that have done it. And they've done it without SEO, pay-per-click and content marketing, without social media marketing, without pay-per-lead. They were able to grow their businesses organically, healthily, with warm leads to take away last time, have a much higher close rate. You'll also see that they're all really happy, which is not super normal sometimes in this industry. It's a tough industry. I want you to notice that. So, check out those case studies. On that case studies page, I have a link to free training called DoorGrow Secrets that really is the beginning of our training material that I give out for free. I'm going to share with you and add some concepts like The Cycle of Suck, The Four Ds to Revenue, Cold Leads Versus Warm Leads, The Myth of SEO, and some other cool stuff that's going to help you see why growth has been challenging and what makes the most sense to help you grow your business. Hopefully, everybody checks that out, doorgrow.com/optin is where you go to that; one word. So, until next time, everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Why switch from a fun, high-flying job to a stressful one? Property management is the "Golden Ticket" to finding new properties and creating value to help others. Today, I am talking to Shawn Johnson of Independence Capital Property Management about putting profitability before adding more doors. If your company isn't profitable, than you can't create value for the community it serves. You'll Learn... [02:00] Property Manager with Spare Time: Shawn serves as an instructor pilot for San Juan County Sheriff's Office. [02:40] NARPM professional member, chapter president, and residential management professional (RMP). [04:30] Passion for Property Management: Happiness comes not from avoiding problems, but finding fun challenges. [06:02] Innovative Incentive: Competing for staff resources increases salaries, compensation, and revenue to successfully facilitate growth and manage the company. [07:35] DiSC Personality Type: Motivated by money or recognition? [10:15] What makes a business profitable? Finding perfect customer/market fit via value-ads and associated fees. [13:42] Charge fees to compensate for extra time, energy, and effort without extra pay. [14:57] Cost Savings: Implement less labor-intensive work (paper checklists) and more technology (videos). [15:55] Tools and Software: Transition from a brick-n-mortar business to remote/virtual office using G Suite, Process Street, AppFolio, and RingCentral. [18:35] Current Client Base: Push out and justify new fee structure; talk them through it. [22:15] Sense of Scarcity: Feel safer and more comfortable raising fees and rates. [24:05] People are willing to pay for good service and experiences. Tweetables Golden Ticket: Finding new properties, and creating value for others. Property management is never dull. Some people aren't motivated by money, but freedom. Charge fees to compensate for extra time, energy, and effort. Resources Independence Capital Property Management National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) Darren Hunter G Suite Process Street AppFolio RingCentral TalkRoute DGS 7: Increasing Fees in Property Management with Darren Hunter - Part 1 DGS 8: Increasing Fees in Property Management with Darren Hunter - Part 2 DGS 9: Increasing Fees in Property Management with Darren Hunter - Part 3 DGS 80: Automating Your Business with Process Street with Vinay Patankar DGS 82: Real Estate Revolution with Nat Kunes of AppFolio DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to change the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. And today, my guest is Shawn Johnson of Independence Capital Property Management. Shawn, welcome to the show. Shawn: Thanks, Jason. Thanks for having me. Jason: Glad to have you. Shawn, we're going to be getting into the topic today of profitability before more doors. When I mentioned that before the show, you're like, "Yes, the cart before the horse." Let's get into that, but first, I want to give people a little bit of background on you. I've got your bio here and I'm going to read this and then maybe you can come and introduce yourself. Shawn grew up in Aztec, Nex Mexico. After completion of his Associate's Degree from Glendale Community College, Shawn began flight school in Scottsdale, Arizona. Shawn's career as a helicopter pilot provided opportunities to fly internationally into Mexico, off-shore into the gulf of Mexico, and as an EMS helicopter pilot. Shawn currently flies for the San Juan County Sheriff's Office as an instructor pilot in his spare time. Shawn began his career in real estate in 2013 and has been investing in real estate since 2003. Shawn is currently a professional member of the National Association of Residential Property Managers and has earned his Residential Management Professional (RMP) designation. In 2017, he served as the NARPM Albuquerque Metro Chapter President and has been elected to serve at the 2020 Chapter President. Shawn enjoys golf, baseball, hunting, and fishing. He apparently is also connected with lots of really lengthy phrases and titles including his business name. Shawn, give us a little bit of a background. Who's Shawn and how did you get into property management, so people can understand why should they listen to this guy say anything. Shawn: How did I get into property management? It's kind of by default. My wife pulled me into it. She was a corporate paralegal for a large investment firm in California and in that process we moved, had kids, we moved to New Mexico, and she decided, "You know what? I think there is a need here." There is definitely a need and we've started a management company. I was still flying helicopters at the time but she's like, "You know what? I can't do it alone. You've got to get out of the fun job and get into the stressful job." So, I quit flying and here I am. Jason: And you regretted it ever since, right? Shawn: No, I actually really enjoy it. Jason: Good. Shawn: Your introduction to property management is spot on. I think there's so much gold in it and it's just really creating value for people. I really enjoy it. Really, it's a nice "in" to investing in properties. I love investing in properties and this is like a golden ticket to find new properties. Jason: Property managers and everyone in the industry love to joke about how hard the industry is, but there is this passion for it that everyone seems to develop. I think happiness comes not through avoiding problems and challenges. It comes through finding challenges that are exciting to work on and property management is never dull. Shawn: Yeah, that's a fact. Jason: Never dull, right? Shawn: No. Jason: Let's get into this topic. Why is it important to have profitability before focusing on getting more doors? Shawn: For us, it was always a mission to be profitable right at the start. Back in the day, we're just a management fee company. Because of that, we relented in the growth. We had to find ways to make money and compensate our employees appropriately. We live in a very blue collar town that is oil- and gas-driven and the salaries are very hard to compete with. We had to find ways to compensate them nice so that they weren't pulled away from property management into oil and gas industry. Those are the things that were important to us. If you're not a profitable company, you can't create value for the community that you serve. You just can't. You have to have money to be able to grow and expand and introduce new programs into your business. That was our mission right at the beginning. Jason: Because you're competing with oil and gas for staff resources in your market, you've had to probably have a higher salary base than what would be typical for most management companies in most markets. Shawn: Yeah, they sell. Jason: In order to do that, you probably had to get a little bit innovative. Anytime we have a constraint as an entrepreneur, we have a challenge like that to overcome, we have to innovate. What were some of the steps you took to create a space that you could afford to have really good team members? Shawn: One step was to create an incentivized comp plan. Our property managers are licensed real estate brokers, but we pay them off a percentage as the whole of the portfolio, not just a management fee. Anytime they bring in a late fee or an annual inspection that's performed on the property, then they get a portion of that fee as well. That help us increase their annual revenue as well because it hurts when they lose a property and when we get a new property on, it actually helps them gain their salary as well. Jason: Okay. You've basically created the natural incentive for them to help facilitate growth and help successfully manage the company. And if the company does better, they do better. Shawn: Exactly. Jason: I find that a lot of people, especially those that on a DISC profile that are not DI, they don't have a high economic score. They're not super motivated by additional money. As entrepreneurs, we tend to naturally think everyone's like us; they love money. Those individuals that are not motivated by more money are more motivated by recognition. When you pick these team members and you have this comp plan, are you looking for people that also operate somewhat in a BDM role? Are they more of a sales-driven type of person? Are they a DI DISC personality type or more on the extroverted side? Shawn: No, we actually don't want to mix those two―BDM and a portfolio management. You're right. A lot of people are not motivated financially like entrepreneurs are, but what we found is giving unlimited vacation time, some perks to the business, having the ability to work from home or wherever they are. Everything that we do is electronic and digital anyway, so those perks. A lot of them are young parents and if they need to pick up their kid at school at three o'clock, who am I to say? As long as your job is done and you're doing it effectively, then we don't put constraints on that. I think that pools in that attraction to the job. Jason: I find those to be huge incentives, similar to running our virtual teams. Being able to work virtually and work from home, having flex time, being able to set your own schedule and as long as you're getting work done, and being able to take vacations when you need to or want to, that's huge. People want freedom. They want autonomy and that tends to attract the more entrepreneurial people we would like in our business. To what you're saying, yeah it makes sense. The BDM portfolio thing would be segregated. But also that allows you, in your market, to have compensation that is on par with maybe what they might be getting in the oil and gas industry or at least competitive, right? Shawn: Absolutely. I would say that our salaries, once they have a full portfolio, they're making as much, if not more, than what they would get comped in oil and gas industry which is good. That's what we want. Jason: Right, and in oil and gas industry, they probably don't have some of those other perks, I would imagine? Shawn: Oh, not at all. Jason: You've made your business intentionally competitive to maintain good people. Let's get deeper into the profitability aspect. Since you're paying more money for people, how do you make sure this is profitable? Shawn: We really evaluated the things that we did as a business beyond just the normal management stuff. What are the value-adds that we do every day? If they are a true value-add, can we add an associated value-add fee to it? We kind of looked at it that way. We went through Darren Hunter's program and it was phenomenal. It definitely revolutionized the way we thought about our fee structure, but it also helped us think about and be cautious of those clients that are cost-conscious. If they are and all they care about is the cost of the service, then they may not be the right fit. It naturally brings in that right type of clientele when you have a fee structure beyond just a flat fee and everybody else is doing the same flat fee or whatever percentage fee. So, that was huge for us. As far as profitability goes, it varies in leasing season, but in our leasing season we're about 44% profitability. Leasing fees and lease renewal fees, those things have to happen in the property management business. But to actually gain revenue from it is extremely important. I could look at our business structure and see that we have a leasing fee and we have a lease renewal fee, but my competitors lease homes in twice the amount of time that we do and they don't push for lease renewals. So me as an investor, I'd be upset if they didn't try to keep my tenants in a lease especially through the winter time. Such a cyclical business, we have seasons, and you don't want it to go vacant in December. That little fee is nothing compared to having a vacant home in those times. Jason: What other fees did you guys start to identify and add going through this process? Shawn: We did a lease administration fee for our tenants. That was pretty big. The annual inspection fees—that's a third party vendor that's an actual inspector and he'll come inspect the houses on an annual basis—there's a little upcharge for that. A year-end statement fee. We found that our controller list just spinning a ton of time preparing for the year-end stuff and making sure everything was clear to send off to our clients' accountants, so we incorporated a fee in that. Then a maintenance coordination fee. Our maintenance coordinators, we have one and we just hired a new one so we have two now, and they're just super busy. Coordinating maintenance is a huge task and it's such an important one here. We do have a small fee for that. There's probably a bunch more. I'm not in the day-to-day as much anymore, so I'm kind of not thinking of the big ones. Obviously the bulk ones were leasing fee and lease renewal. Those are big and they're often overlooked. Jason: One of the things you did then was you identified all the different situations in which it was taking extra time, extra energy, extra effort, you weren't getting paid anything extra, and then just systematically saying, "Hey, can we add a fee to ensure that we're getting compensated for this additional work?" to make sure that you business is profitable. Shawn: Sure. Jason: Okay. We've got somebody watching says, "Can you list the fees again?" I had down a leasing fee, a lease renewal fee, lease administration fee, annual inspection fee, year-end statement fee, and a maintenance coordination fee. Shawn: Those are the big ones. Kelly, reach out to me. I will give you the list. Jason: Slow down. Kelly you can rewatch this as many times. This is being recorded and it's also on Facebook. Also for those watching this later, we have full transcription when this comes out on iTunes and you can check that out on our blog at doorgrow.com. Let's get into other ways in which you've made this profitable. So, obviously increasing fees. You weren't able to decrease cost with staff. This allowed you to increase cost with staff. Were there any cost savings things that you were able to implement? Shawn: Probably just technology and trying to not be super labor-intensive. I would say that doing things like move-in, move-out videos instead of running through an entire list on paper and whatnot. It takes a little bit less time than doing it on paper. Those types of things. It's just efficiencies in the office. Then we set up our team literally to work from anywhere. If you're on vacation, you want to check on a lease or whatever, it's possible and super helpful. Those things help with driving cost down because you're not focusing on the, "Hey, John. Are you back at the office? Can you reach me that file?" That's just a waste of time. Jason: What are some of the things you've done to enable and facilitate this transition from being a brick-and-mortar business that operates on sneakernet, where everybody is walking into each other's offices saying, "Hey, do you have this?" to being a virtual team that they can work from basically anywhere? Shawn: The big things are softwares that enable cloud access. Our general office is on G Suite. Everything operates through there and then our processes are through Process Street which is super helpful and can be accessed anywhere again. AppFolio for our software. They are super tech savvy as far as online stuff. I wish they'd open their API, that's my shout out to them. Jason: Yeah, I've heard that a lot. Shawn: I imagine you have. And then RingCentral. We have a team in Mexico and I've got a team member in the Philippines, and they literally can call our office in Farmington, New Mexico. Then we have another Flagstaff office as well. It's so easy because they can pick up their phone and it acts like they're dialing from their desk. That was a key point we had to set up six years ago which was, back then, it wasn't really heard of. Jason: Cool. I use all of those software or have in the past except AppFolio. Shawn: You don't need that. Jason: We've had Process Steet on the show. Great interview. For those listening, I recommend you check it out. G Suite were a Google Apps reseller, so if people need help with that we can certainly help you get set up. We used RingCentral for several years. We eventually switched to Talkroute because we found that most of our team weren't doing a lot of calling on our team and if they did, they had unlimited cell phone minutes. Talkroute just allows you to auto attendant and the call routing and the extensions but they can dial through the Talkroute app out of their phone and then it just uses their cell phone minutes. It's free basically for outbound calls. It can also receive text messages. We switched to Talkroute and probably saved ourselves about $400 or $500 a month. Shawn: That's big. I love it. Jason: What are some other things you focused on then to facilitate profitability? You've got the fees. You're paying your team well so you can compete. You've got your leveraging technology. You've set up your team to be more virtual which is scary for a lot of property managers who've been doing things a certain way. Anything else? Shawn: What I would say is tap into your current client base. You probably have a ton of really loyal clients. Don't forget to just really push out your new fee structure and justify those fees. Believe in what you're charging to those current clients. When we switched over to a new fee structure, hardly anybody left. We had 12 clients leave on our first push. We found that those 12 clients were probably 12 good clients to leave. Jason: Out of how many clients? Shawn: We were at 614 at the time, 12 left. We had a second push and we did this in phases because you have to be really sensitive to homes that are vacant. You don't want to increase fees on somebody that has a vacant home. That's a stressful time already. We certainly don't want to increase feels on a client that has not been in your portfolio for less than a year. They don't really know and trust you yet. Then I haven't built that loyalty for you. So don't touch those yet. Once you segment those out and you found the client base that you really want to go after, then do it. Don't just send out an email and hope that they sign into an agreement. You have got to follow-up. If you don't follow-up, they're just not going to believe in what you're trying to do. So, make sure that you follow through with all of that. I've heard of people, "Hey, I increased my fees and I sent out this email. I got no response," and I'm like, "Well, did you do anything else besides that? Because you got to call them. You got to pick up the phone and just talk them through." It's a scary thing. I just had a fee increase from one of the vendors that we use in our business and I was like, "What the heck?" My initial reaction was, "What the heck is going on?" Then, they talked me through and I was like, "You know what? It's all good. We're happy with you guys. We're going to move forward. It's all good." I think that's most people. Jason:Yeah, have a conversation. If you're looking for the process that you went through or that Darren Hunter could have outlined—we've had him on the show before a few times—check out the episodes with Darren Hunter. Great content. He gave a lot away here in the show. You can check that out. I just saw him actually in Phoenix. So, 12 of out 614 that's maybe 2%. Shawn: That was the first push. We did lose more the second round. There was probably a total number of 65. I can't remember exactly that left, but our profitability went up. Jason: You lose 10% but you're making more money, then not such a big deal, and usually those are the worst properties in your portfolio. What tends to happen then is you increase your revenue. You lose your profit. You lose a little bit of clientele, but you're also losing the ones that take up the most amount of time, typically. Those particular doors probably have 10 times higher operational costs than a good door. By losing that pile in your portfolio, you're gaining room to manage a lot more and you're gaining a lot more leverage. Your profitability probably goes up even more because your operational costs go down significantly by cutting out the most challenging, most micromanagy, and most price sensitive owners that are the most challenging properties. Hopefully, people are a little bit sold to this idea, "Hey, maybe I can increase my fees," because I do believe that property management businesses in general are not charging enough. They really deserve to be paid well for what they do. They provide a really valuable service and I feel there's been this false scarcity that's been created by marketers. Focus on SEO, pay-per-click and these sort of things where it feels like it's difficult to grow. It feels scarce but they're 70% self-managing in single family residential. There's tons of blue ocean, there's tons of opportunity, the scarcity is false. It really doesn't exist. For those listening, if you feel like things are scarce, we should have a conversation because we can get you out of that mode of scarcity so that you feel safer and more comfortable raising your fees and rates. I believe that's a false perception that doesn't need to exist in the industry and it creates a problem for the entire industry—this sense of scarcity. It creates this competition that I don't think really needs to be there. Really, the industry as a whole needs to be building each other up and helping each other out. You seen that being involved in NARPM. Shawn: Yeah, that's right. NARPM's big on that. Jason: Shawn, this has been really helpful. Any other other takeaways or things that you've explored your journey to make your business more profitable to grow your company? Shawn: I think most people get a little scared because of the competition and they're worried about raising their fees. Let me just tell you that our competitors don't charge anything besides a tenant, whatever, management fee. I almost said the fees. I don't know if that was against the rules or something like that. Jason: I'm not a property manager so I guess you and I can talk about it. But someone else might hear it. We're not colluding. Shawn: We are not colluding. Just don't be fearful of that. I think that if you're truly creating a value for your customer and clients that that is irrelevant, that people are willing to pay for good service and good experiences. When you raise your fees, it has a natural thing that happens that you get rid of the lower-end properties. The lower end properties cost you more money, they cost you more time, they cost you more stress, and they cost you more employees. They will burn out on the low-end properties. Once you bring on nicer properties and you keep to a standard, they are willing to pay the higher fees and get better service, and it naturally increases your profits. That's a big win for us. Jason: Awesome. Well, Shawn it sounds like you're doing great things in Farmington, New Mexico. Did you ever think that you would just end up in Farmington, New Mexico? Shawn: That's the thing about New Mexico. It's the land of entrapment, but it just brings you back. I've lived all over the country and it's a good place to raise a family. Jason: Awesome. Shawn, I appreciate you coming onto the show. Thanks for being here. I appreciate your insight and I wish you continued success. Shawn: Thank you, Jason. I appreciate your time. Jason: If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors and make a difference then maybe we should have a conversation. So, reach out. There is a lot of opportunity in the industry to grow a property management business right now. I think we're on the cusp of a wave. I think the industry is going to blossom and grow. There's a lot of big and good things happening when it comes to technology, when it comes to software, when it comes to awareness. We would love to be a part of facilitating that journey with you and I would love the opportunity to be your coach in your business. Reach out to DoorGrow, let's start with a conversation, and I will give you a free training on some of the secrets and tips. I call it DoorGrow secrets on how you can avoid some of the most common pitfalls of preventing growth. Just reach out and say, "Hey, I want DoorGrow Secrets." You might find it so interesting and get so excited, you'll want to work with us. That's my hope. So, we will talk with you all soon, to everyone's mutual growth. Bye everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

How does an aggressively-minded property management company grow quickly? Leads. But it's impossible for property managers to pursue the blue ocean of 70% self-managed landlords. There's no way to contact them. Until now. Today, I am talking to Ben Atkin of DoorsUp, a lead generation service for property management entrepreneurs. You'll Learn... [02:30] Ben's Background: Grew up surrounded by real estate, property management, and software. [03:09] 50-unit Student Housing Apartment Complex: Managing students is difficult; Ben moved on to something less stressful and more lucrative. [03:40] Bootstrap to the Core: Partnered with Coldwell Banker Premier and started property management company from scratch. [04:10] Daily Pre-occupation: How do you grow doors? How do you increase the number of units under management? [04:41] Database: How do you identify people who own rental property? Where do they hangout? How do you contact them? [05:03] DoorsUp Prototype: Every person in market who owns rental properties and their contact information to track interactions and engagement. [06:20] Secret Sauce: DoorsUp gets information and people ready to sign-up. [07:37] Grow Doors: Use DoorsUp to pick an area to pursue to contact owners and acquire more properties to manage. [14:20] Future for DoorsUp: Going to NARPM to add service areas. [16:27] FAQ: Does this have all the data that I can find myself? Data is concise, filtered, and updated regularly to make your marketing more efficient and cost-effective. [21:14] Bogged Down and Overwhelmed: Grew too fast and doesn't want to be a property manager! [22:15] My Thesis: Property management has a serious marketing problem. People cannot find a sustainable way to grow doors. Tweetables Bootstrap to the Core: Zero clients, zero connections, zero revenue, and zero Website. We have a lot of data. Mining and handling data is our expertise. We're marketing strategy agnostic. Property management has a serious marketing problem. Resources Ben Atkin's Personal Email DoorsUp Ben Atkin on LinkedIn Google Street View Grant Cardone National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) Business Network International (BNI) Cole Realty Resource SmartZip REDX DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. Today, I'm hanging out with Ben Atkin from a new startup, it sounds like, called DoorsUp. Ben, welcome. Ben: Thanks, Jason. It's a pleasure to be on the show. I'm just going to go ahead and say this and geek out out of the way. I've watched literally every single one of your podcast and I can jive so much with that intro. It seems like it's changed a little bit in the last. Did I notice that? You changed that intro to include a couple more things recently? Jason: I have made some subtle changes, yes. Ben: Subtle changes, okay. I love that. I'm really excited to be on this show. I'm just stoked to be here. Jason: Let's get into your background. You've got this startup called DoorsUp, which in my understanding is a lead gen service for property management entrepreneurs, so they can get more owners which sounds very in alignment with what we do to optimize companies so they can handle those leads, so they can effectively, organically, create that business. Tell us how did you get into this space? Give us some background on Ben. Who the heck are you? Ben: Yeah. It's a long long road. I'm a second generation real estate person as well as second generation software developer and software person. My dad has a real estate company, was a real estate developer. The most inopportune time to be a real estate developer in 2006-2007. I grew up surrounded by real estates, surrounded by property management, and also surrounded by software. Anyway, I got my start in actually having experiences in property management in college. I was managing a 50-unit student housing apartment complex. If anybody is familiar with student housing, they know that that is just a difficult job to manage students. 50 units is about 250 leases in student housing. I was looking for something a little bit more lucrative and a little less stressful. I found an opportunity in my local market with a Coldwell Banker property management franchise or Coldwell Banker Premier, partnered with that franchise, and started with a property management company from scratch. Zero clients, zero connections, zero revenue, and zero website—nothing; we just started from the ground. Jason: Bootstrap. Ben: Bootstrap. Yeah, absolute to the core. I have very little experience in property management at that time even though I did my best at pretending that I did. That was our major problem was how do you grow doors? How do you increase the number of units under management? That was my preoccupation daily because I wasn't being paid. You talk about bootstrap, I was living on savings trying to grow a property management company. That was my challenge. That was my problem. I remember speaking to my broker at this franchise. I waited at his office for about an hour. I was brainstorming with him. I said, "How do you identify people who own rental property? Where do they hangout?" It's not like there's this big database of everybody who owns rental property and a way to contact them. That's really was the impetus for what we developed and what we started to pursue. I leveraged a little bit of my connection with my dad and my brothers who were software engineers, I have a software engineering background a little bit, and we built the prototype of DoorsUp, which is exactly that. It's a database of every person in your market virtually who owns rental properties. A way to get their phone number, mailing address, and a way to track their interactions with them as you pursue them to engage with the property management services. Jason: I love it. It sounds like this is almost the equivalent of somebody doing all the manual work to go and find an owner occupied list, then start trying to direct mail to them, and doing all this so manually which works, which can work great to help them grow their business. But it's a long game. People will try it once and feel like, "I did a mailer, I didn't get anything." But then I hear people that have played this game and they'll say, "I have clients walk in all the time." They're holding a postcard they did 10 years ago and saying, "Hey, I'm ready, so sign up." Explain how this works. Where are you getting the information? Let's start there. Ben: Sure. I'm going to mention that it's a little bit part of our secret sauce. I don't know if I consider ourselves a big data company. That's kind of a word that people on software throw around to make themselves sound cool, in my opinion. But we have a lot of data. Hundreds of sources, public sources, that's really our expertise is in managing and handling data to be able to target these types of people. Like what you mentioned, let me just make this quick point, mailing to absentee owners is, in some ways, inefficient. How many second home owners who aren't interested in property management are you mailing to? In a market like mine where it's a lot of retirees and it's almost a vacation area, that would be completely ineffective because you'd sent out a thousand mailers and 700 of those would go to people who really have no interest or their daughters' living in that home or whatever. I'm just going to make that point that what we're doing is quite a bit more targeted, and hopefully, should save on expenses, marketing wise and other things. Jason: Explain how somebody could utilize the system growth in their business. Ben: It's a web based application. The first thing that a user would see as they login is they would see a map and filters on the side. They can pick an area that they like to pursue in trying to acquire more properties to manage. Let's say, they've got a neighborhood that they really love, they draw a box on the map, and then they add a couple more filters. Maybe they want to manage only properties that are the 2000s and newer properties, so they don't have to deal with maintenance issues. They hit filter parcels. They'll just see a whole bunch of pins drop on the map, hundreds of pins of rental properties that are algorithms, are big data approach as identified as rental properties. Not just as absentees parcels, but as rental properties. It's really rigorous in deciding what we display as rentals. That's the first step. They filter, they find the rental properties, they can view the properties from the street with Google Street View through our application. It's very easy to see if the property's run down. They can actually look at it from the satellite imagery. They click on the owners name and they click the lookup button. Our system does a whole bunch of secret sauce magic in the background, gives you a phone number, and the accurate mailing address of the owner. As well as information about if they own other rentals. That type of information that they can then pursue that person and try to engage them into a conversation about their property management services. That's the simplest way to explain it. Jason: They sign up for your service, they markout their geographic area, they get some pintabs, they can street view the property, then your system will crawl the magical interweb, pull in phone numbers, email addresses, or mailing address. Then the next step for them would basically, probably be to do some sort of a direct mail campaign, cold calling. Ben: Yeah. We're agnostic to whatever marketing strategy they want to take. We provide the information, we provide the data. They can be as creative as they need to in order to pursue that market. Call, mail, we don't have email addresses, that would be something that they get them on the phone and ask for an email address. Then start them in their sales funnel. A great way to distribute their content, things that you've helped them create, or others who've helped them create, or even knocking on people's doors. That sounds ridiculous in my mind; it sounds ridiculously inefficient. But if you knew that someone had 10 rental properties and those rentals properties were exactly what you wanted to manage, you can see exactly where the homeowner or where the landlord lives or where the rental owner lives, it might be worth dropping off some fudge at the doorstep of their home. That sounds ridiculous, but that's actually something that one of our [...] has done in the past. It's very differentiating as opposed to just this search engine optimization, pay-per-click strategy. It's a little bit closer to a human connection. Jason: Oh, yeah. Realtors still knock doors. Realtors still do this. Property managers have probably really tried to avoid doing that. I've got a client who's in commercial property management. One of the ways he would get clients is he would go bring a candle to their place. "I'm old fashioned here, so here's this candle." He would give a gift, a little gift. The secret is, he'll buy these at the dollar store. This isn't like an expensive thing. But some people are showing up with, I don't know, a bottle of wine or something. It's a dollar of candle and it probably meant something, it felt like something warm to them. I think it's all about connection. Obviously, if they were really aggressive, they've listened to Grant Cardone's 10X, they're like gunho. They wanted to create some business. They just need the opportunities. They go into the system. They may have done a multichannel approach. They're like, "This is my dream list right here. I'm going to call them. I'm going to send them some material. I'm going to nail them on a regular basis. I'm going to go knock on their door." They will get the business. Ben: Here's the thing, like I said, we're marketing strategy agnostic. People are already doing wonderful things to get more doors. They're doing great things. They're setting up landlords seminars, they've got great content, they're trying to push them to these distribution channels, but one of the things that we can provide is a way to reach more and more people. As part of your mailer, send out an invitation to your seminar. It fits really well into the things that people are already doing. If you've got a digital marketing strategy, get somebody on the phone, and say, "We would love to just send you an information in an email about what we do." Just enroll them in an email nurturing campaign that you've already developed, that you've already got going. It seems like organic traffic is a little bit harder to get in our industry for the smaller guys and for some of the companies that are just starting out. They've got to put a little bit of effort into it to start getting those doors, getting the traction that they've got. Jason: Yeah. If we've got roughly 70% that are self-managing in the industry, there's tons of blue ocean. This just helps you to see where the fish are. If you can see them, you can go hunt. It's time. Love the idea. I think this is such a nice match-up between DoorGrow and what you do. I'll be really curious to give feedback to some of our clients on some of the strategies that we teach them if they have these opportunities that they can go after. It's really going to be cool. Ben, what's sort of the future for DoorsUp? Ben: Yeah, good question. Like you mentioned in the beginning, we're very recently coming out of stealth mode or development mode. We launched just short of a month and a half ago. We're constrained geographically right now where we can service. Having just barely launched, we are currently servicing customers in Utah and Nevada. I live in Utah, I live right in between Las Vegas and South Lake City, which are two large markets that we wanted to initially, prove the concept of the product and establish a customer base. We are going to be in NARPM, at the NARPM convention conference in October in Arizona. Is that right? It's in Arizona. Jason: Yeah. My assistant schedules it all for me. I just do what she tells me to do. I'll be there. Ben: We'll be there and that's where we hope to add, geographically, another service area. We're going to be growing that way, kind of state by state as we go. That will be determined by the traction we're able to get in different states that we're able to start servicing. If we can grab a couple of customers in one state, that would be enticing enough for us to go through that state and start servicing that area. There's an advantage for our customers right now. They're alone in these sea of data. They're the only people using it. That's a huge competitive advantage right now for the people using it, to be some of the first ones that are using it. As much as we're just coming out of beta and the user interface is not as polished as it should be or could be, but there's a huge advantage for those that are early customers that are starting to use the system and see some results. Jason: What are some of the most common questions that people are asking you about this? I would imagine one question that comes to mind is, "Does this have all the data that I can go find myself?" Or is it missing that? Ben: Right, good question. Essentially, people ask that question. They have a little bit of misunderstanding about what we do. That was an instinct that you had right at the beginning of our conversation is, it's similar to what people are doing which is they're going out sourcing their own data, sending out mail, or sending out stuff like that. That's a very rudimentary version of what we do. The answer to that question is, I guess, the data is so concise, so aggressively filtered, that makes your marketing very efficient, and enables you to do certain things that you never would have time or money to do otherwise. Now, campaign is being an excellent example. The sales cycle for property management is so long. We're not selling toothbrushes. If you ask somebody, "Hey, you want to buy this toothbrush?" They can say, "Yes," and it's done; the sale is done and the service is done. Property management has such a long sales cycle where you get somebody on the phone and you say, "I would love to manage your units." And they say, "Well, it's got a 12-18 month lease on it. I'm not interested unless it's vacant. 12 months from now, call me." I'm being able to keep track on that and being able to keep track of how many times you've mailed to somebody is another really important part of that process. It's integrated into the system right now. People are able to track their leads, they're able to keep track of how many times they've mailed to somebody, keep notes on phone calls that they've had. The other aspect of that is that the data updates. I don't know if you've ever spoken to somebody who has actually tried to implement a long-term mail campaign, but the data, six months out, has changed. People buy properties, they sell property. How do they correlate whether they've mailed to somebody already? Whether they've called somebody already? How do they just track that change over time to be able to spend their time with one person long enough for them to close them given that property management has such a long sales cycle? That's part of the advantage of using a system like ours to do your prospecting and data sourcing. We keep it up to date. The data is updated monthly. The phone numbers, you click the lookup button and it does lookup immediately right then. Very, very fresh data which you're not going to be able to find yourself. Who has time for that anyway? You're going to be managing 200 properties and you're going to be spending time in a big Excel spreadsheet trying to correlate [...]. Absolutely not. I saw as a huge way to be much more effective and to really spend my money where it's going to make the most effect, given that I knew that people have multiple units, and they were units I wanted to manage. I can pursue the market that I want rather than shotgunning a mail campaign or something out in the world and seeing if I got anything I wanted. Jason: Tell us a little bit about some of the early adopters. What sort of experience have they had? Is there a case study or an example you can share with us? Ben: I'll start with myself. I was the first case study. If we go back to that origin story of DoorsUp, I asked my broker, "Where do I find these people?" He said, "I have no idea. No one has any idea." We developed this raw prototype of the system. I got this report. It's so embarrassing to even look at now, it's this ugly Excel spreadsheet, but it was our prototype. It was the name, phone number, and address of every person in my market who owned rental property. How many rentals they owned, the value of their portfolio, and the addresses of all of their rentals. It was ridiculous to me. To me, it felt like magic. I got straight down and called through that list. After wasting three months getting four or five units, in two months, we were managing about 45 units. I was just bogged down. It was crazy. We grew too fast. I discovered that I didn't want to be a property manager, so I went into software. Jason: Yeah. A lot of people were like, "Why don't you do it, Jason?" I'm like, "Then I can't help everybody else do well." Then, I'll be competing with everybody. I don't think anybody wants that. You're no longer doing that, but you had a really rapid growth initially. I love creating that problem for clients, by the way. I love when they come to me and they're like, "Man, my biggest problem is adding doors and getting doors." Then I say, "Great. Let's get you to problem number two which is how you deal with the growth. Now, you've got doors coming in and you're in pain because you have so much growth." I love creating that problem. Well, anything else they should know about this? If not, how can they get in touch? How can they find out more about DoorsUp? Ben: Yeah. I guess, I'll end with this thought, this is kind of the thesis behind DoorsUp. This is why we got into this space and try to solve this problem. My thesis is, essentially, that property management has a serious marketing problem. I listen to your show a lot and I feel like I didn't steal that idea from you—I sure hope I didn't—but you've taught me a lot about that, but I experienced that myself. People cannot find a sustainable, reliable way, to grow their door count. Profitability aside, that's important. That's very, very important, but top line revenue growth is the thing that we are focusing on helping people to. We don't have, in our industry, any sort of enabling data or service or company like other industries do. For example, if somebody in property management really wanted to spend all day everyday prospecting, if they wanted to do Grant Cardone 10X, they want to not talk to seven new landlords a week, they want to talk to 75 new landlords a week. How would they do that? They would go to Rotary Club and hope that a landlord was there. They would go to BNI, Business Network International, and hope that a landlord is there. Or they'll take a realtor to lunch and pray that he'll give him a referral. How does an aggressively-minded property management company grow quickly? They just need these leads. Whereas in real estate sales, real estate sales and other industries, we've got Cole Realty Resource, we've got SmartZip, we've got the REDX. We've got all these prospecting tools. Property management industry just does not have that, which has made it impossible for property managers to pursue this blue ocean, 70% of self-managed landlords. There's no way for them to contact them. They have no visibility into that market. Just from a very macro perspective, that's what we're trying to provide the industry. To be able to turn the focus from just closing hand razors, people who go on Google and raise their hands and say, "We want your service," to be able to aggressively pursue that market instead of just waiting for leads to come to them. That's what we see. That's my thesis is that there's a problem in property management that they need this data and we can provide it. We're still proving and testing that thesis. But we're very excited to get out there and be able to offer that to people. We've seen some success. If people want to contact me, there are plenty of ways on our website. You can go ahead and email me. My personal email address is ben.r.atkin@gmail.com. That's probably the easiest way to reach out to me personally. Though, I'm also tuned in on the website if you chat with us. It'll be an actual person who answers that. If you're in Utah and Nevada, go online, signup for a free trial. We'd love to have you start using the system. We do a two-week, 30 lead, free trial. Other than that, just reach out to me. I'd love to chat about it, and jive about property management, and see if we can help this industry grow from the 30% penetration to 40% or 50% or 60%. I see there needs to be some sort of change in order to be able to do that. Jason: Cool. Ben, where are you based out of? Ben: I'm in St. George, Utah. Just an hour North of Las Vegas, Nevada. Jason: Got it. I know where it is. I was born in Utah. Alright. We'll connect, I think that I have a lot of clients are at the point where they're ready to be able to leverage their service like this. I think a lot of property managers are not. I think a lot of them really are just not ready to leverage something like this, unfortunately. If that's the case, reach out to DoorGrow. Then they'll see if you're ready. "You're ready. You have the bandwidth to do these kind of things and grow your business. Let's get you connected to DoorsUp." I look forward to watching what you guys do, seeing the progress, and growth of your company. Ben: Thanks, it's a pleasure. Jason: Thanks for coming in this show. Ben: Hopefully, we'll see you at NARPM. Anybody else, hopefully, we'll see in there. Thanks! Jason: Alright. Very cool. If you are a property management entrepreneur, and you are wanting to grow your business, and you want to grow without SEO, without pay-per-click, without content marketing, without social media marketing, without uncomfortable videos, without pay-per-lead services, and they're having phenomenal growth, they're easily adding in a year 100 doors to their business, they're adding $100,000 in revenue to their business annually and you want to do that, maybe you're one of these companies that, right now, is losing more doors than you're getting on right now because it's difficult to try to outpace the market when doors are selling off because the market's good with marketing then reach out to DoorGrow. Let's optimize your business, let's get you ready to use a service like this, and some other strategies, and tactics that we have, that can help you grow your business. Check us out at doorgrow.com. We would love to help you out. We want, like what I say in the intro, we want to impact this industry, and we're excited to find like-minded entrepreneurs like Ben and others that are helping to make this industry great. I think it has massive potential. I believe that property management industry can be as big as the real estate industry; I think it has the potential to really grow here in the US. Let's make that happen, everybody. Make sure, if you're a property management entrepreneur, you join our Facebook group doorgrowclub.com. Get inside the community. Connect with us. This is a group for property management business owners. Get with your tribe. Connect with us, and we'll probably see you in person at some of these NARPM events because I'm hitting as many as I can lately. Hopefully, I'll be connecting with you guys in person and inside the DoorGrow Club. Thanks everybody for tuning in to DoorGrow Show. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Have no fear, when it comes to social media. Share your opinions and what you know. Not everyone will like what you post, but that's ok. Personal and professional Social media opportunities let you connect with others, build relationships, and post content to attract new business. Today, I am talking to Katie Lance, CEO and co-founder of Katie Lance Consulting. She helps real estate agents and brokers use social media to grow their businesses. Also, Katie is the author of #GetSocialSmart and founder of #GetSocialSmart Academy. She was named one of the most 100 influential people in real estate by Inman News and is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post. You'll Learn... [02:40] Marketing Nerd: Katie didn't go to school for social media because there was no Facebook when she was in college. [06:40] Social Media Challenge: Audience doesn't care about property management. [07:32] Don't be Vanilla: Be engaging, interesting, unique, and authentic voice for what's happening in your industry and market. [10:08] Love vs. Hate: Share your opinions, and attract your tribe through polarity. [12:20] People don't buy what you do (property management), but why you do it. [13:18] Warning: Don't outsource all your social media, or you'll lose your voice. [15:59] Avoid anxiety and conquer fear of social media by creating a system or strategy. [17:27] Day-in-the-Life of You: Done is better than perfect. [22:05] Consistency and Batch Creating Content: The more you do it, the more comfortable you get. [26:21] Repurposing Content: One piece can be posted on multiple platforms. [27:15] Platform of Choice: Depends on your target audience. [28:40] Future of Social Media: Instagram TV and video is where it's at. [31:54] Personal and Professional Social Media Opportunities: Connect with others, build relationships, and post content to attract new business. Tweetables Be you, instead of your business on social media. Done is better than perfect. Comment, Connect, and Create Content Don't suffer from analysis paralysis. Resources Katie Lance Consulting Katie Lance on Instagram Katie Lance on Facebook #GetSocialSmart #GetSocialSmart Academy Inman News The Huffington Post Simon Sinek National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) Instagram TV TikTok DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show, and today's guest, I'm hanging out with Katie Lance from Katie Lance Consulting. Hi, Katie. Katie: Hi, Jason. Thanks for having me here today. Jason: I am glad to have you. Katie, we're going to be so social today. Katie: That would be a lot of fun. Jason: [...] social media and we're on social media right now. We're doing it. Katie, help everybody understand your background. Can I read some of your bio? Katie: Sure, go ahead. Jason: It's really well written. Katie is the CEO and co-founder of Katie Lance Consulting. Katie is a nationally known keynote speaker at conferences and events. For the past 10 years, Katie has been working with real estate agents and brokers to help them get smarter about how to use social media to grow their business. Her specialty is in helping real estate agents and brokers achieve big results using social media without spending a ton of time. She is also the author of the best-selling book, #GetSocialSmart and the founder of #GetSocialSmart Academy. Katie has been named one of the most 100 influential people in real estate by Inman News and is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two beautiful boys. Katie, welcome to the show. Tell us how did you get into social media? How did this come about for you? Katie: I've always loved social media. I've always been a marketing nerd. I've always been one of those people to just really love marketing and didn't necessarily go to school for social media, and probably dating myself, but there was no Facebook when I was in college. I fell in love with social media and probably about 10 or 12 years ago. I got my first job in real estate. I was hired as a marketing director for a local real estate company and that was really when social media was starting to come to the forefront. I just remember having this epiphany and thinking this is so perfect for real estate. I had seen so many agents and brokers spending so much money on traditional marketing, which, a lot of it still works. I don't necessarily think social media replaces traditional marketing, if that's working for you, but it can be so expensive. And I thought, what a great opportunity. That's really where I fell in love with it. I worked at that real estate company for a while, then I went to work for In The News for quite some time, ran their social media, and grew their social presence. Then about 2012 I decided, "You know? I'm going to go out on my own," and got that entrepreneurial bug and haven't looked back since. It's been quite a journey. Jason: What caused you to take that leap? It's a risky leap. To preface this, I didn't realize I was an entrepreneur. Even though I was the guy that started a band in college, created big events, going door-to-door pre-selling CDs so I could pay for an album at college girls dorms with a guitar and a clipboard, I didn't realize I was an entrepreneur. I thought I needed a job, but what pushed me over the edge to jump into entrepreneurism was a divorce and needing to take care and wanting to have time with my kids. Out of necessity, I had to do it. What caused you to take the leap? That's a pretty big leap. People don't just go, "I've got a job that's going pretty well. I'm just going to throw it to the wind and go do something on my own." Katie: I think there's a couple of things. I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Any job I've ever had, I've always treated it as if it were my company. It was always very hard for me to just "work a 9–5 and turn the off button off." I guess I always had that attitude for anywhere I've ever worked and I had a great job [...]. I've worked there for many years and for a lot of people, you get to a point in your career where you have that itchy feeling, like what's that next thing. Jason: Something more. Katie: Yeah, there's something more and quietly started to explore other options. It just became really clear to me that I don't necessarily want to work for anyone else. I want to work for myself and I want to be able to help not just one company but lots of different people, lots of different companies, lots of different organizations. And it was scary. It's a whole another ballgame. I'm happily married, we have mortgage, we have kids, so it's not necessarily the easiest leap. The hardest part was just making that decision. Then you make the decision and it was pretty much smooth sailing from there. I also had a really supportive husband, which makes a big difference, too. Jason: I was going to ask about that. If a spouse is not in support as an entrepreneur, there's a lot of friction, right? Katie: Yes. Jason: And a lot of times as entrepreneurs, we tend to pair up with people that want safety and certainty. They're our balance and our opposite. Katie: Yes. Actually, he ended up quitting his corporate job about 2½ years ago, so now we run our company side-by-side and it's been a great journey. Jason: So you converted him? Katie: I think I did, yes. Jason: [...] to a job, right? Katie: Yes. Jason: Perfect, love it. Let's get into the topic at hand, which is how people can grow social media. I tend to be upfront and honest. A lot of my listeners have heard me say, probably at different times, that the challenge that property managers face with social media is that their target audience does not care about property management. They don't care at all and when they ask me, "Should I spend a bunch of time and energy doing social media?" my general response is, "How much time are you spending time following and listening to plumbers? Plumbers want your business. They want your attention. Why aren't you subscribing to their newsletters and following them on social media?" and they're like, "Because I don't care about plumbing." I'm like, "Your audience don't care about property management." What should they be doing? I'm excited to get into this. Katie: I think social media is relevant for obviously a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs and whether you're in property management or you're a plumber or whatever business you're in, that is the default response. "Well, who really cares? Is this really interesting to a lot of people?" At the end of the day, one of the ways to get traction on social media is to be that unique voice, that authentic voice of what's happening in your industry, what's happening in the market. People tend to follow you and engage with you, not necessarily for just facts and information that you're spewing out there, but because they connect with who you are and your personality. It's amazing about the management or real estate, and a lot of it's so done through word-of-mouth. A lot of it is still done through those connections that we make. That's what I think there's a lot of value in social media. It's funny you mentioned plumbers because there's actually a plumber who's killing it on YouTube, because of exactly what you said, because most people don't think like, "Oh, who's going to put out that type of content?" But his content is engaging, it's interesting, it's valuable, but it's also with his voice. That's the thing that property management. You could talk about renting or whoever and all these different topics when it comes to property management. But you can insert your own opinion, your voice and not be afraid to just be really truly who you are. Some people won't like it and that's okay. Those aren't your people. Jason: I'm going to rephrase what you just said and sum it up. It's more important on social media to be you than to be your business. Katie: Absolutely. Jason: That's really what's going to attract and get people to resonate and connect with you as if you're willing to put it out there and be you, weirdness and all, and that's something. People follow me on social media, no. I'm putting out random stuff all the time about my life and who I am, and I figure that some people are just not gonna like me. Katie: Yeah, and that's okay. Jason: There are definitely people that don't like me. Katie: Sometimes, we try to want to be really professional and we don't offend anybody. I'm certainly not saying start offending people on social media. But there's that risk of becoming just really vanilla and really boring. If you think about as an end user, somebody uses Facebook or Instagram, what do you click like on? What do you comment on? What do you share? Typically, it's things that are funny, or poignant, or interesting, or they move you in some emotion, you get angry. There's nothing wrong with having an opinion. That's where I think in real estate and property management, really for any entrepreneur, that's where the magic is because most people are not putting up that type of content. If they are, they're not doing it on a consistent basis. That's a big thing that can make a huge difference. Jason: People should have an opinion and share their opinion on Facebook and let their freak flag fly, right? Katie: Yes, and be comfortable with the fact when you do that, there's going to be people that watch you and say, I don't like that guy or girl. You have to be okay with that because with the opposite, which will happen, is that you will start to attract the people who go, "I really like that guy. He's doing a podcast? What other podcasts? I got to catch up on all of his podcast episodes." That's what happens with video. When you start putting out especially episodic video or episodic podcast content, people start defining you. They're like, "What else does she put out there?" and you search who attract your tribe. That's what can turn to business down the road. It just takes time just like anything else. Jason: I've always thought this is very in align with what I think and feel, is that if you are not creating polarity, if there's no polarity, then you can't be attractive. A magnet without polarity is not a magnet anymore. It's not attract anything. Nothing will be pulled towards it. Electricity without polarity doesn't exist anymore if you remove the polarity. There has to be polarity and that means you have to be willing to polarize someone there. I've probably been a little too polarizing in some instances; let's be honest. But I've noticed that when you are willing to just be you and polarize and put it out there, yes, you're going to have people that don't like you. You're going to get flack for that, people are not going to attract you, but you now are attracting the right people. You're attracting people that like you the way that you are. They like the way you communicate, they like the way that you coach, they like the way that you run your business, they like your philosophy. Just like Simon Sinek said, "People don't buy what you do." They don't buy what you do. They don't buy property management, they don't property management coaching/consulting from me, they don't buy what you do, they don't buy social media, whatever from you. They really buy why we do it. That's really what they're buying into is they believe in Katie, they believe in Jason, they believe in the property manager, they believe in you and they share values. What you do is really an afterthought compared to that. So, they need to create polarity. This is a great question everybody listening can ask is am I creating polarity? Have I offended anybody in the last month? And have I attracted anybody in the last month? Did anybody say, "Hell yes, I agree to that," or, "That totally rubs me the wrong way," but that's you, so thanks for sharing. Katie: Absolutely. Jason: We don't want to be vanillas. What's maybe the next thing that we should take away? Katie: Like I said, don't be vanilla. I've often said, "Lean into who you are and who you're not." It goes hand in hand with that idea of not being vanilla. I also think a big part of your social media strategy is not outsourcing it completely. There's this feeling even still in 2019 of, "Oh, my gosh. I don't have time to do this. It's one more thing. Who can I hire to do it?" It's a little bit of a slippery slope because I do think that there's value in hiring certain people. For example, we have a video editor on our team because my value is being on camera but I don't need to learn video editing, I really don't need it. For one or two, that's fine, but I don't have desire. Jason: That's not your dream and goal in life is to edit videos and stare at videos on the screen for hours a day. Katie: Exactly, it's not my dream. I'd rather put my eye out, honestly. Jason: Me neither. Katie: Similar with podcast. My value is in the content and the education I can bring, not necessarily in can I edit something. I think there's value in bringing at some point, maybe not in the beginning, people on who could help you with either editing, for example video or podcast editing, or copywriting if you enjoy writing, or something as a blogger or graphic designer, but to totally hand out who are personally is really risky and there's lots of businesses out there that are selling this idea. "You're too busy. Let us do it for you." I would just caution anyone to be just be careful when you do that because you're handing off who you are. It's like having a dinner party with your 10 most important clients, and instead of you being there, you have your assistant run the whole thing. I just think it's a basic tip, but it's also something that is important to address because time is all we have. It's our most precious asset. I don't think you need to spend all day on social media. I'm in the business of social media and I'm certainly not on social media all day long, but it comes down to having a smart system, and making sure you're inserting yourself and your personality into what you do. I think that's really valuable. Jason: This makes a lot of sense. I think there's so many parallels to this. There's so many situations in which we would not outsource. I wouldn't outsource to somebody to be the dad of my kids. I'm really single again after two decades, so I wouldn't outsource somebody else to use swiping on dating apps for me. They just don't know what I'm into. There's a lot of things we just should not outsource. And yet, being the face of our business, we will a lot of times as business owners, want to just outsource that, like some company can just come in and post a bunch of memes and garbage, and we're suddenly going to get business from it and then we wonder why it's not working. What about those business owners that are not charismatic, they don't have personality, they're better behind the scenes, they just feel really awkward putting anything out there. How do you deal with that? Some of the listeners avoid social media. Social is like an anxiety-inducing word to them. Katie: For a lot of people who are anxious or feel a little overwhelmed with social media, I would imagine part of it is because you don't have a system for, and it feels like this thing that's out there, that you have to do, that you don't really know how to do it right, and everybody saying that you have to do it, but you don't really have a plan. It just becomes sort of the snowball. The thing is, anytime you're trying something new, especially with technology, it can feel ridiculously annoying. You feel like, "Oh, my God. What am I? How do I not know how to do this?" and it's just like anything else. We work with a lot of agents and brokers. I always say, "Imagine when you first got your real estate license. You took the test, you went through the courses, but you didn't really know what you're doing until you had your first client. And then you really learn. And then you learn again and again and again." Part of it is just getting over and putting yourself out there. Sometimes we're so concerned with who am I, who cares what people think, I don't know, I don't like how I look or how I sound, I don't know how to do it, so I'm not going to do it. I always like to say, "Done is better than perfect." Jason: Oh, my gosh. I [...] that, too. I love that. Katie: I'd love to say I made that up. I did not make that up. I've heard it somewhere and probably from you. Jason: Maybe not. I think I got it from my business coach. I'm sure he got it from somewhere, too. Katie: You just start today. So if you're listening to this, start today. Go on Facebook and connect with three or four people at Facebook today. Don't just like a bunch of stuff, but go on engage with a few people. Wish somebody a happy birthday. Start today. Then you can move on from there. Part of it is just getting a system together, getting a process together. One quick thing I'll mention real fast for anyone who's feeling a little bit overwhelmed, I would encourage you to think about all the things that you do on a day-to-day basis, all the questions you get asked, all the topics of conversation that come up. Get a notebook, get a pen, and just start brainstorming things that happen a day in the life of you. I would imagine you're going to come up with 10, 20, 30 different topics of things that you could potentially talk about, whether that's through video or on Facebook or whatever it might be. Just go to start. "Just do it," like Nike says. Jason: I love the concept of done is better than perfect. I put that because a lot of times we're trying to get clients to launch their websites, we're trying to get them to take action and moving themselves forward on different things, and they just stay analyze really hard about something and they want it to be so perfect. I just iterate over and over again, done is better than perfect because once it's done, it can do its job in making money. You can go back and change it later, you can improve it later, but get something done because until you have something there, until you have the website up, or until you have this launch, or until you've done something, it's nothing to do anything for you. The other mantra that I'll share with everybody listening, if you're in that state of overwhelm, you're feeling scared, whatever, just remember that that's how you start everything. One of my favorite mantras is, we all start at level suck. That's where you start in everything. You start at level suck. That is the level you started everything. My first YouTube video was two minutes long and had 30 uhms and and so's in it, and I had to edit them out. The video looked choppy and it was awful. It was so awful. I tried to get perfect lighting, I have my little mic clip thing, an uncomfortable shirt with a collar, and I was trying to be what I thought I needed to be in order to do a video and look good. I'd probably spent hours making a two-minute video. Here's the ironic thing for everybody listening. You think it has to be so perfect? I've made way more money by doing really crappy, shaky, jittery, selfie style videos, walking around outside, than any of those videos were I was uncomfortable behind a desk or in a shirt or whatever in front of a whiteboard. Don't think it has to be perfect. People will crave reality nowadays because there's so much BS. They're really craving reality. The other thing I point out to clients, is that they are talking to people all day, every day and it's really the same thing. You just look at a device and pretend you're talking to a person, you just say exactly what you would say and talk the same way. You don't have to think, "What am I going to do with my hands?" What do you do with your hands normally when you talk to people? "How's my face supposed to like?" How does your face normally look? Just talk. You have the thing like you're talking to a person. So, just start noticing when you're talking to people and pretend they're a camera or a phone and just realize they're not that scary or awkward. Katie: Absolutely. To your point, it doesn't have to be perfect. What a lot of people don't realize that maybe they forget is the lifetime of a post is pretty short. Let's say you create a video, you put it on Facebook, that video will disappear in a couple hours. You put it on Twitter, tweet disappears in a matter of seconds. YouTube has a longer shelf life and certain content certainly has a longer shelf life. But generally speaking, we live in a world with so much noise, I often feel like I'm standing on the side of the freeway just watching cars fly by. If it's not your best performance, it doesn't have to be Oscar-worthy. As you said, just get it out there and especially with video, it's like a muscle. I will say the more you do it, the more comfortable you get. I don't know if I'm ever totally comfortable hearing myself and seeing myself, but what I am comfortable with are the results. That's what you have to think about. When you put yourself out there over the course of time consistently, that's when the magic happens. It's literally like a snowball and the consistency part is a huge part of it. Do you mind if I share a quick tip? Jason: Go ahead. Give us all the tips you want to. We want some free Katie Lance Consulting right now. Katie: Perfect. One of the things I always share with our GetSocialSmart Academy members is this idea of batch-creating your content. I love batch creating because for me, if I'm going to sit down, do my hair and makeup, and record one video, I might as well sit down and record four or five. We've been doing that the last couple years and that's made a huge difference. We'll set aside a couple hours once a month where I do the hair, get the camera set up, whatever. To be honest with you, the first 99 episodes were shot on my phone. So, it doesn't have to be anything fancy. This idea of getting into a system and batch-creating your content, that way you're done, you're locked and loaded. When we do that, then we're able to drip out those episodes once a week for the next month, but it gets you into that rhythm. When you're publishing at the same day and time every single week, people who start to follow you, as we talked about earlier, they start to notice that. It's just like your favorite TV show, you may not watch your favorite TV show Thursday night at 9:00 PM or Monday at 8:00 PM, but you know it's on and you set your DVR. It's the same thing with content. Once you start to put it out there regularly, if you can start doing it consistently, it can make a big difference. Jason: Absolutely. That's one of the reasons I really like my assistant; made this show finally somewhat consistent. We're getting about two episodes done a week now. Consistency is huge because as soon as you disappear for a week or two, people are wondering if you're gone. You lose the engagement, you lose the momentum, so done is better than perfect, but consistency is better than anything, really, probably. Katie: People wonder what's the best day. There's no best day. What day is good for you? Just pick a day. I remember when I first started sending out and email newsletters, it's like, "Well, let's do it on a Saturday. I don't know. That sounds like a good day." Seven years later, we're still sending our email newsletters out on Saturday, and people are like, "Oh, I love it. Get it every Saturday morning." It's just consistency. So, pick a day. Jason: Love it. I love the idea of batching tasks, and you can apply that to so many different things. I just did a post on this on social media about this and I showed my pill case. I hate going and digging through all my supplement bottles every single meal, trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be taking. So, I got this pill case. It's literally the size of a notebook. It's got every day of the week, four times a day, and I fill it once a week. If I travel I can take it with me. It's done, I can just take these supplements. That's how I'm able to be so sharp and so crazy all day long. No, I'm just kidding. Batching tasks reduces the decision-making that has to go into and the thought that has to go into it every day. You don't have to sit there, stress out, and "What should I talk about today? Oh, my gosh. I need to do a post. I haven't done it for a couple days," and thinking about it. I love the idea of batch the tasks and we've got a pile of them waiting. Even with this podcast, we've got several episodes in the can. We're releasing them to iTunes and dripping them out because we want to have a little bit of padding. There's an advantage to having some things in the can, especially if you want to keep the consistency. What if you want to travel? I'm going to Austin this week to meet with my business coach. Next week, I'm going to Phoenix to talk to the NARPM Chapter in Phoenix. We'll still be able to release some episodes while I'm gone. Katie: That's awesome. What you're doing which is so smart is you're repurposing your content. We're streaming this live, it's getting shared on social media, but you're going to put it on YouTube, at some point, you're going to put it on iTunes. That's really where the magic can happen because instead of feeling like you have to post something every single day, why not invest in one great piece of content like this podcast you're creating. That's what we try to do, too. It's one piece of great content, and then it can get sliced and diced a dozen different ways. You can turn it into an Instagram story or an Instagram post today and a post some two or three weeks, especially when you create content that's somewhat timeless. It's not just relevant on what's happening in the market, but it's going back to sharing things that are informative, that are really helping your audience, that have a voice, have an opinion, and that repurposing, there's a lot of magic in that. Jason: Let's talk about platform then. How do people pick? Because they're like, "Should I be on Instagram? Should I be doing LinkedIn? Should I be doing Facebook? Should I be on Twitter?" What's your recommendation when people are like, "What platform should I be on?" Katie: It depends on a couple things. Number one, where your audience is. Right now, typically, Facebook is still the number one platform for a lot of people in property management or real estate or even as an entrepreneur. But I also think that's changing as well. Instagram is growing by leaps and bounds. A lot of people have started to leave Facebook and go over to Instagram, even though Instagram is owned by Facebook, because Instagram is such an aspirational platform, lots of pretty pictures, there's not as many political posts and noise on Instagram right now. I think those are two big ones to watch. I do think for LinkedIn, though, it's important to at least have your profile updated. Make sure that's up to date. LinkedIn is not as fun as Facebook or Instagram, but if you get googled or your company gets googled, typically, one of the first things that pops up is LinkedIn. Just making sure that's up to date, that's professional social network. Outside of LinkedIn, I do think Facebook and Instagram are two big platforms to connect with people, stay in touch with people, and then also to post relevant content and to repurpose some of the content you're creating. Jason: What do you think is coming new in social media? I'm sure you're always paying attention. What do you think coming up that's hot, that probably the teenagers are using that we'll eventually be using? Katie: Good question. Snapchat was getting a lot of buzz a year or two ago, that a lot of folks in real estate were jumping on that. I think a lot of people realize it's still for the kids. Jason: I think the Instagram stories and Facebook stories killed it. Katie: I agree. I think a big opportunity right now is definitely Instagram. Instagram is spending a lot of money and resources for people to stay on their platform. Especially Instagram TV right now is a big opportunity. That launched about a year or two ago. It's doing so-so and then Instagram made some really big changes pretty recently to Instagram TV. When you're uploading a video to Instagram TV—if you don't know, you can upload a video up to 10 minutes—when you upload it to Instagram TV, you now share a one minute preview over to your newsfeed on Instagram, which shows up on your page, it shows up in your newsfeed, which is more likely that it shows up in the explore button. We found that for whatever reason, Instagram wants you to spend more time on Instagram TV. Our posts on Instagram TV are getting a much higher reach, likes, and engagement than just about any of our other posts. As of right now, as of the recording this podcast, that's definitely one to watch. It just reinforces a lot of what we're talking about with video. Jason: I will have to start doing those. When they started doing it, I was like, "This isn't getting any attention," but I have noticed, I have watched a few videos on Instagram, and I've hit that button that says, "Keep watching." Katie: Yeah, it definitely keeps you engaged. We used to just beginning a couple of hundred views on our videos and now we're consistently getting thousands of views on our videos. It's nothing really different that we've done other than just be consistent with putting up that content, sharing it over to our news feed. I think, ultimately, video is worth that. If you're not creating original video content in your business, you're missing a really big opportunity. Facebook even recently just came out over the last couple weeks and said, "Video has one of the highest rates in the Facebook newsfeed, original video content versus content that's shared from somebody else." If there was ever a time to get over, "How do I look?" or, "How do I sound?" or, "I have nothing to say," now's the time to do it. Jason: Just do it. Nike. Katie: Just do it, yes. Jason: I'll just throw this out there because somebody is going to mention it later. If they have teenagers, I think TikTok right now is the thing. Katie: It is, yes. Jason: My teenager's really into this TikTok thing. I don't know if that will somehow eventually translate to business, but let's see where it gets. Katie: It might. It's fun to watch. It's entertaining. Jason: It's like the new Vine. It's ridiculous. Katie: Exactly. Jason: Any other tips or takeaways we can squeeze out of Katie Lance before we let you go? Katie: If you are in real estate in any capacity or an entrepreneur, I really can't emphasize enough. There's two big opportunities with social. The personal side of it, being intentional, taking just 5 or 10 minutes a day to connect with people, wish people happy birthday, don't just be a drive-by liker, actually be a person, connect. That relationship-building piece is so important. Then, that other piece is putting out new content, which is going to attract new business. I just would encourage anybody who's listening to really think about it. I love using techniques like time blocking where you're setting aside time, a couple of times a week, maybe it's just 15 minute blocks of time, or a couple times a month, to really get a system together. If you think about the areas of your business you're most successful in, most likely there's some sort of system or process. Whether or not you're working with us or anybody else, that's my biggest tip. Get the system, get a process together, and don't wait. Don't suffer from analysis paralysis. Just do it. Jason: All right. Awesome. I love it. So, commenting and connecting, and then content and creation are things we need to build our social network, and we need to create social media. Two different things. Katie, if people are wanting to get a plan, get organized, figure this stuff out, be interesting, and learn social media, how can they get in touch with you? Katie: The best way is through our website, people can go to katielance.com. We have a free content grid that anyone can sign up for. It's a great planning guide. So, if you're listening to this going, "Okay, I'm stuck when it comes to putting a system together," you can download that content grid for free right on our website. We have hundreds of free resources on our website, as well. Of course, I'm Katie Lance kon just about every social media platform. You can find me on Instagram or Facebook also. Jason: Awesome. Cool. And then anybody listening can also connect with me. I'm King Jason Hull on all social media. There we go, we were just very social, sharing ideas about social media. Katie, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for being here. Katie: Thank you so much for having me. Jason: Really cool. Check her out at katielance.com. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors and make a difference, as I said in the intro, be sure to reach out, connect with DoorGrow, we would love to help you figure out how to grow your business. If you feel stuck or frustrated, you feel like you're trying to do a bunch of marketing, pay per click, SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, and it's not working for some reason. You may have some blind spots. We can help you organize, sort out those blind spots, and get some clarity on the business, to help you focus on the growth side of your business. We would love to help you do that. If you want to see a big blind spot, you can start with a very public one, your website. Take our website quiz by going to doorgrow.com/quiz and grade your website. This will give you a letter grade for your website. Most websites fail going through this and this quiz will grade your website as to how effective it is at making your money, at creating conversions, at attracting leads. Go ahead and fill that out and then we'll be in touch with you. Thanks everybody for tuning in to the DoorGrow Show. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Are you tired of dorm food and want to avoid the mad rush of finding a place to live off campus before next semester? There's got to be an easier way for students to rent houses and apartments. It's a problem that many entrepreneurs have tried to solve. Today, I am talking to Dave Spooner of Innago. There are few incentives for landlords to digitize their rentals. Landlord demand for a listing platform is low, but there definitely is high demand for better tools to effectively manage and communicate with tenants. You'll Learn... [02:50] Tenant Management Software: Making landlords lives easier with online rental payments, tracking payments, basic accounting, lease signing, and tenant screening. [04:14] Understanding Innago: Flexible, effective, simple, and intuitive software for landlords and property managers. [06:05] Learning Curve: Competitors' software requires expertise and certification. [07:32] Who wants to waste time adopting ugly software? [08:58 #1 Priority: Intuitiveness in software; speed is love language. [10:20] Different portals for different people to be more productive. [12:16] Find balance, and avoid too fast feature creep. [13:14] Possible future integration with Zapier and other third-party tools? [14:22] FAQs: Access permissions and pricing for landlords and tenants. [17:25] Innago offers unique and unmatched level of support. Tweetables Innago software is flexible, effective, simple, and intuitive. You shouldn't need a certification to use property management software. Choose features that matter, and get the biggest bang for your buck. Big believers in early success begets future success. Resources Innago Buildium AppFolio Propertyware Rent Manager. Jason Fried of Basecamp Zapier 1099 Form Freshdesk HubSpot Intercom DGS 62: Property Management Accounting with Taylor Hou DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to another DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the unique challenges, daily variety, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses, and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. Today's guest, I'm hanging out here with Dave Spooner of Innago's. Dave, welcome to the DoorGrow Show. Dave: Hi Jason, thanks so much for having me. Jason: It's great to have you. Dave, we always like to get into our guest first, help us understand who Dave is, and how you kind of got into the space that you're in, and give us a little background. Dave: Yeah, absolutely, I'd be happy to, and thanks for the intro. I graduated from university in 2013. I kind of already had that entrepreneur spirit. Me and a couple other folks got together and we wanted to solve the problem of finding a place to live. We're not the first people to try to solve it, and I'm sure we won't be the last to try to solve it, but we want to make it easier for students to rent houses and apartments off campus. A lot of those markets are still mostly or fully offline, and there's usually a mad rush to try and find a place to live. We recognize those issues and we tried to solve them. As we were going about doing that, we kind of quickly realized that there's not a lot of incentives for landlords to digitize their portfolio. There's not a lot of incentives for landlords in student housing to really do a whole heck of a lot, but helps the students out because they're already going to fill other properties, which is really high occupancy in student housing. We kind of pivoted, and listened to the market, and realized that there wasn't a huge demand on the landlord side for this listing platform, but there was a lot of demand for better tools to manage tenants, and better tools to manage and communicate with those tenants, and to manage their businesses. That's kind of how I got my foundation. I worked on that listing platform for a few years, learned a lot about the market, and then myself and the CTO of that company started and founded Innago in 2017, and we've been hard at work trying to make lives easier for landlords ever since. Jason: How do you make lives easier for landlords? Dave: Innago is tenant management software, and we call it tenant management software instead of property management software because we really believe that the focus should be on managing tenants, managing those relationships, and managing those personalities. Innago, of course, includes a lot of your classic property management tools like online rental payments, tracking payments, basic accounting, online lease signing, tenant screening, etcetera. But at its heart, it's a communication platform. It's something that makes it easier to interact with and manage those tenants. We believe that having that, having that foundation enables landlords to become better landlords, and property managers become better property managers. Jason: I haven't heard of the software before, is this something that there's a good amount of property managers already using? Is this geared towards landlords, or is this geared towards property management businesses? Help me and the listeners understand Innago here. Dave: Yeah, absolutely. We work with both. We work with landlords as small as one unit, and landlords in the thousands of units. The software is really flexible, it's effective, but it's also simple and intuitive for somebody who just owns some properties on the side, works a normal nine-to-five, and then manages at nights and on weekends, and for a landlord or property manager that's fully dedicated. We work with both property managers and landlords. We predominantly work in the residential space. We do a lot of student housing landlords, given my background, and my partner's background. We also have some commercial landlords as well. It's a really powerful, and flexible tool, and we work with all sorts of different clients. Jason: Cool, that's exciting. Help people understand, because a lot of the listeners in our audience probably already have a property management software, I mean, probably likely. They're probably already with Buildium, AppFolio, Propertyware, maybe Rent Manager. They're probably with one of these guys. But nobody's ever fully happy with their property management. Dave: Right, of course. Jason: So help those listening, how can they see where you fit into the market in relation to these? Dave: Well, yeah, it's funny you say that. I was actually listening to one of your earlier podcasts with Taylor, and he has the accounting services, the consulting accounting services, and one of the things that he mentioned, they work exclusively with AppFolio users, and kind of what they said is, "We only hire people that have worked at AppFolio, and we will only work with AppFolio at this stage because that's the only thing that we're comfortable with," because it's this monolithic behemoth that you need expertise to even navigate, right? Jason: Right. Dave: That's definitely true for AppFolio, and it's true for a lot of the other software. There's a huge learning curve there. The first time we hire somebody on Innago, we always sit them down, and we jump on LinkedIn, and we do a little exercise, or research the companies. We're not looking for employees of those companies, or even their company page, we're actually looking for employees at property management companies that their job title, their role is like the AppFolio expert on T, because you need certification to understand how to use it. That was kind of the initial kernel Innago came out of is, you shouldn't need a certification to use property management software. It should be like picking up Gmail for the first time, or picking up iPhone for the first time. It should be intuitive, and simple, and elegant, and powerful, and flexible to work with a lot of different users in a lot of ways. That's really our difference, in the way that we're approaching the market, putting a lot of time, and thought into the features, and the way that they interact, and the way that the user interacts with those features. We're really proud of the features that we do have. It is an ongoing product, and we're constantly adding more. I think for a lot of property managers, and landlords on the higher end, they're going to find at this stage that it might not be a perfect fit, but for those folks with small to mid size portfolios, it's got a lot of really great stuff that it will work well for them. Jason: Yeah, I'm in total agreement. When it comes to software, the number one challenge tends to be adoption, and ease of use is right there. If something is intuitive, that's the biggest challenge, and hurdle. Dave: Right. Jason: I don't even like them using software that's ugly. Dave: Right. Jason: I just can't bring myself to do it. Maybe it's the designer in me. I don't know, but if I'm going to be living in something, I don't want it to be ugly. That's why I use Apple products because they just… Dave: Right, absolutely. Clean design. Jason: I was around my mom just yesterday, and she had a computer and she was like, "I clicked on Chrome, and it's not loading, and nothing's happening coming up," and I'm like, "I don't know, that's a PC. I've never had that problem on a Mac." I just don't have that problem. I just think it's funny. I was like, "I don't know, good luck." Dave: Yeah absolutely, and a lot of property managers and landlords—many are very tech savvy, there's also many that aren't so tech savvy. It's equally, if not more important, to have something that's not incredibly complex, and incredibly challenging, and opaque, and difficult to enter into. Jason: I'm incredibly tech savvy, and I probably could've figured out my mom's computer thing, but it probably would've wasted an hour or two of my time and I don't want to waste time figuring out my software at every step of the turn and teaching my team members how to figure out software at every step of the turn. Intuitiveness in software is my number one priority. A lot of people build their whole set up internally in their business, trying to find one piece of software that can do everything, and it's usually really awful at everything in a lot of instances, instead of finding the easiest, and best, and fastest tools. Speed is my love language, I think in business, and I want it to be fast, and want it to be simple, and intuitive. I love that that's kind of a foundational goal with your software, because I don't believe that any of the other property management software, that was their foundational goal, ease of use, and to be intuitive. If it was, they've gotten long far away from it. Dave: Right, yeah, I think you're right. Jason: Yeah, and some are much worse than others, and some of them, they can do everything. They're like the ultimate Swiss army knife. Like I've joked in the past, you're not going to see a handy man carrying around a multi tool to try and do all this hard jobs. Dave: Right. Jason: He's going to have a nice tool box with the best tools. The software's more intuitive, the software is really easy for people to use, and now you're saying on all parties for like the owners, they want to maybe check reports, is there an owners portal? Dave: There is. Jason: Tenants that want to pay rent, and do their stuff, there's tenant portal. And then for the property manager, they can manage and see their portfolio pretty easily, and know what's available, and vacant. Does this have marketing stuff connected to it yet for listing, and the getting the properties out there in the marketplace? Dave: Yeah, great question. We do not currently have marketing. We plan to roll that out, but as you mentioned, I think one of the problems that's happened with other software packages, the feature creep went too fast. They wanted to get all the features that any landlord could ever ask for out as quickly as possible, and that has not been our approach. We have said let's do this methodically, let's think about ways to integrate this into the way that the rest of the software works. Let's make sure that it's easy to use. We are constantly adding features but we're not necessarily rolling out everything that everybody wants, all at the same time. Market syndication is what we call it. The marketing piece is definitely on its way, but it'll probably be another three or fours months before we have that out there. Jason: Yeah, feature creep is a real issue. I'm a big fan of Jason Fried. He's the CEO of Basecamp. I got to hang out with him on a Skype call for 90 minutes. He cut my staffing costs in half overnight, no doubt. I'm a big fan of him. By saying he cut my staffing costs in half, I should say he doubled our productivity. I didn't just fire everybody. We just became that much more productive because he helped me understand how we had so many interruptions, we had so many things that weren't intuitive, and he changed how we communicate as a company. He has a similar philosophy when he talks about creating their softwares. Basecamp doesn't do a whole lot compared to a lot of other software, it's pretty limited in its feature set, but it's consistently always at the top of the tools and resources people mention for project management even though I really don't believe Basecamp is a project management tool, I believe it's a communication platform for internal communication, that's how we use it. Everyone's going to ask for features, you have to really be picky in choosing about what are the features that are really going to matter the most and get the biggest bang for your buck and really make a difference without it becoming overly crazy, too cumbersome, unintuitive, and difficult to do. There's always that balance of managing all of the features. Do you see that you guys will be doing any sort of Zapier integration so that people can create zaps and start connecting and integrating with third party tools? No software has come out with this yet. Dave: Yeah. That's a really good idea. That is not our road map but I love Zapier. We use it for all sorts of other things, whether it's connecting Wordpress to HubSpot or whatever. It's a really cool platform. That's an interesting thought. We hadn't gotten that far. We might still… Jason: Add it to your list and be the first. I'm waiting to see who is the first property management software the adds Zapier integration because everyone's been asking for it. All these people want it connected to their automation. They want to connect it to their process street processes, or they want to connect it to whatever. I think this would be a really cool thing. Dave: We'll let you know when we do. Jason: I keep throwing that out usually to property management software that I have on my show and I'm waiting to see who's the first to have Zapier integration. Some people call it [zey-pier], but I think [zey-pier] is weird because it creates [zaps], people, so it's Zapier. You're not [zey-ping] your business. What else should people know about this software? What are some of the most common questions that a property management business owner might ask that they're concerned about? Dave: Well, one you hit on was the sub users. Enabling not just the head property manager from accessing the platform, but also giving out who has access to which permissions, who has access to which features. Maybe it's Bob, you want him to handle these categories for these properties, or you want your property owners to log in and be able to handle it themselves. Jason: There's the ability for vendors to leverage and use the system as well? Dave: Not vendors, that would be like a maintenance person that you either have on staff or you have on retainer 1099 or whatever. We do not have a vendor portal at this time. That's a big one and then the other really common question we get is of course the pricing because of the sector that we're in, that's at the top of our base mind. Jason: Do you want to tell pricing now? If you're planning on changing, don't. Tell them to go to your website. Dave: No, I'd be more than happy to jump into pricing. Now it's pretty unique, we're 100% free to use for landlords. There's no monthly fee, yearly fee, setup fee, there's no contract. There's absolutely no cost. Everything that I've mentioned is included. Instead, when a tenant pays rent online, we charge them $2 for an ACH transaction. We charge them $2.75 for a credit or debit card, and that's it. Jason: Totally reasonable. I've been saying for at least over a year to people who have listened to some of my older podcast episodes that free property management software will come and there will be the day that somebody's going to offer it, just like people aren't paying for Gmail, people aren't paying for this sort of stuff and it's making money. It manifested, here it is. Dave: That's right, we did it. It's 100% free for the landlord. Some landlords see the value in an online payment, they see it so highly to pay actually choose to incur a cost and we allow them to do that if they want to, but for most landlords 90% plus, they're not paying a dime to use Innago. Jason: Very cool, that's really interesting. This would be fantastic then for startup PM's, startup property managers. A question that my team would care about is for the rental listings, the vacant properties, do you have some way of listing the vacant properties in some web based fashion? If they're putting properties into their system, is there some sort of code that we can embed on a website to show their available rentals? Dave: Again, there's nothing on the marketing side just yet. Everything is cotntained within Innago but we certainly see the value in that. Jason: Maybe in the future then. What else should people know about Innago? Anything else you want to throw out there? Dave: Well, we offer particularly in our sector where you do have some of the lower cost platforms out there or some of the simpler platforms out there I suppose. Oftentimes, they don't offer any sort of support beyond a 48-hour email window. With Innago, we're a little different, we offer full phone support. We also have embedded videos and help section to ease landlords along in the system as they get started and learn the platform. We're really big believers in early success begets future success. We want to make sure that we're hand holding for your first month, two months on the platform, and ensuring that you understand how to use it. You can use it effectively and can leverage it to improve your business. Once you do that, then you're off to the races and in really good shape. We offer a unique level of support that many others can't really match. Jason: What platform are you using for support? Dave: We use Freshdesk, and we use HubSpot, and we use Zapier to connect certain things to other things. Jason: Cool. We use intercom for anyone listening, because property managers need some sort of support desk too. Dave, this sounds really neat. How could somebody demo this if they're curious to check out your software and how should they get in touch? Dave: Yeah. They can go to innago.com and they can request access to a free account. We'll get in touch with them shortly after just to make sure they're a good fit, that we're going to solve some problems for them. We don't want them to waste any time fooling around on a platform that is really not going to work for them. If they request access, we'll shortly be in touch, and we'll get them into the platform, and they can start playing around with it. Jason: Where does the name Innago come from? I'm a branding guy, I'm always curious. Explain Innago. Dave: We like to think of it as a strong three-syllable word, that's about the extent of it. It's really kind of like Google or Yahoo, there's not a whole lot behind it. Jason: Okay. Maybe we'll have to make up the story sometime together about it. Dave: Yeah. We've thought about it, but we'll take any suggestions. Jason: When did you guys launch this? How new is this software? Dave: We launched the company in January of 2017. We had the product out in the market, kind of like an alpha stage really in March of that year. We've been coming along ever since. As far as a product, we're a little over two years now. Jason: Awesome. How many companies are using this right now? Dave: We have thousands of landlords on the platform and it's growing every day. I would nail that hard number, but it probably changes by the minute. Jason: Yeah. It's probably pretty tempting and pretty easy if it's free. I would imagine you guys will have some success and you guys are making enough money you think to stay healthy just through the transactions? Dave: Yeah. As you know, there's a lot of landlords out there. The majority of them are still self managed or not using any kind of software. There's a lot of tenants that want to pay online. Only about 30% of the market currently pays rent online. That's a huge giant blue ocean that's ready to be captured. Jason: Yeah. There's a lot of blue ocean that are self managing. If you really want to super attract property management business owners, if you can figure out a way to help connect these self managers so that they can get that professional managers to take over stuff, and partner, maybe create some partners, I think you've got a winning affiliate business going on right there that's good for your company. Dave: Absolutely. Jason: I know there's lots of people listening that would like to get connected to those that are self managing and work with them. Dave, super cool to have you on the show. I wish you lots of success. It would be cool to have you come back maybe in the future after you've come out with even more features if you've got something really cool to share. I wish you guys a lot of success with the free software. I've been talking about this for a while. I think it's long overdue. This is really great. Dave: Awesome. Thanks so much, Jason. I really appreciate it, my pleasure being on the show. Jason: Yeah, thanks for coming on. You heard it everybody, free property management software that is intuitive. If they are really intuitive, they're going to have a lot of natural success and growth, and if they're free, they're going to have a lot of growth. If they can make the numbers work which sounds like it would be pretty easy with all the transactions that are going to be occurring, it could be a game changer. I think other property management software, they're a little bit greedy, and there's too much of that feature creep. I think this will be a competitor. It'd be interesting to watch. Let's keep our eyes tuned, our eyes peeled and stay tuned to see what they do. Anyway, this is Jason Hull of the DoorGrow Show. If you are wanting to know if your property management website is leaking money because every website is probably leaking money. If you want to see that it's leaking money because you don't want it to be leaking deals and leads anymore and you want to make more money and cash from your business, test your website out by going to doorgrow.com/quiz and take our DoorGrow Score Quiz that's going to grade your website on how effective it is at creating conversions. Some of the questions are tricky. There's a lot of people taking the test and then make a bunch of changes to their website, some of them are false positive, so be careful if you're going to do that. Do that quiz and then maybe talk to our team and we can help you improve your website piece because I really don't believe that anybody's better at creating websites that make money than DoorGrow for property managers. Alright, we'll talk to all of you guys soon. Until next time, to our mutual growth.

If you enjoy unique challenges, daily variety, learning new things, finding opportunities, and experiencing freedom, then you would probably be successful in property management. Entrepreneurs would rather work 80 hours a week for themselves, than for someone else. You don't have to do it all on your own. Be willing to take some risks, and connect with like-minded people. Let your entrepreneurial spirit fly! Today, I am talking to Bryan Jenkins and Jonathan Cook of AHI Properties. They share strategies that consistently grow their business and add doors in multiple markets. You'll Learn... [02:00] Keep on Growing: Corporate housing to single-family homes to property management. [05:25] Real Estate Market Crash: Created shift in income and dealing with investors, despite technology. [07:20] Love it, or Hate it: Learn something new every day in property management. [08:05] When's the right time to grow and expand? Adding doors in multiple markets. [09:42] Sand Traps: Think outside the box to grow property management business. [11:15] Educate Clients with Market Knowledge: Direct investors into markets where they can make money and purchase more doors for AHI to manage. [12:03] Game Changer: Diversifying existing portfolio and dealing with accidental landlords who leave when it's a good time to sell. [13:40] Recipe for Success: Gain momentum and referrals by building partnerships and relationships with sister companies, third-party providers, and contractors. [19:57] Four Ds to Revenue: Deals, Doors per deal, Duration, and Dollars. [24:30] Focus on Funnel: Multiple sources serve as supply line for incoming clients. [26:07] Strategies and Approaches: How to expand and operate in multiple markets. [27:13] False Scarcity: There's plenty of opportunity to create business and follow up because 70% self-manage single-family residential properties. [29:10] Remember Me? Make sure to have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy to keep track of clients and properties. [36:07] Bryan's Biggest Piece of Advice: Keep an open mind, don't be afraid, but focus on multiple funnels and opportunities to develop client relations. [38:03] Generational Change in Property Management Profession: Think about technology, bring awareness, and open people's minds. Tweetables Let your entrepreneurial spirit fly. Recipe for Success: Gain momentum and referrals by building partnerships. Four Ds to Revenue: Deals, Doors per deal, Duration, and Dollars. Resources AHI Properties AHI Properties Email National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) MLS U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) IMN Five Star Conference Roofstock Deb Newell of Real-Time Leasing Matthew Whitaker of GKHouses DGS 75: Bridging the Gap Between Inside and Outside Sales with Jennifer Stoops of Park Avenue Properties DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. Gentlemen, welcome. I've got here hanging out with me Bryan Jenkins and Jonathan Cooks. Which ones which? Jonathan: I'm Jonathan. Bryan: And I'm Bryan. Jason: Hi Jonathan. Hi Bryan. Jonathan, Bryan both of you have some experience in growing your property management business and I'd love to get into your background. Whoever wants to go first, share a little bit about your background, how you got into property management, into the space, and maybe a little bit about why somebody should listen to you today. Jonathan: Bryan is much more impressive. You go ahead, buddy. Jason: All right. Let's go, Bryan. He threw you in. Bryan: I've been a property manager now for 19 years and we started this firm ground-up but tied into a corporate housing company, where we do fully-furnished corporate housing for guests that are relocating. We operate that model in 12 different physical locations in 6 states, servicing 14 markets. With that, we had brick and mortar locations. I came online in 2000. We started buying residential single family homes to facilitate our corporate housing needs. From there, we actually acquired a property management company here in Birmingham, Alabama back in late 2003. Since that point, we've been growing. That's the only acquisition we've really done through the years. We've first acquired that management company. We had 109 properties and that portfolio that we acquired. By that time, we purchased 52 of our own properties and eight classifications for corporate rentals and lease back. With that, we've grown over the years to five locations now and it worked in two states with our property management platform. We're managing just shy of 1100 single family homes now. I personally came from a military background, 9 years active service, got into real estate. My parents have always been entrepreneurs. I'm part of this operation and really got plugged in. Probably my big cook kick off and the expansion piece of it really took flight after I found NARPM back in 2011. I got plugged in there with the Atlanta chapter. I'm the past Atlanta chapter president. I'm currently the NARPM National Member Services Committee Chair and I just dropped my application for RVP. So, see how that one plays out, but a lot of experience. We've got a team. Including myself, we've got 23 property managers working on our operation and Jonathan is our business development. I'm going to segue that into him. Jonathan: I got my real estate license in 2007. I was the youngest realtor in the state of Alabama when I got it. I was 21. Bryan: Fun facts. Jonathan. Yeah. Fun facts. But my entire life I have been surrounded with real estate. My step dad owned a real estate company. He was in construction for a long time even before that. My mom's best friend is a real estate agent in the area that has always owned properties, has her own rental company. After highschool, it just became my secondary job for the longest time of being her property manager. I don't want to drive out to my 15 properties or how many she ended up having at that time. "I've got this property. I need you to run over there. Get rent. Get this. Make sure you maintain this. Paint these walls. That tenant's out. That tenant's in. Call the newspaper." This is early 2000s. Before I even got my real estate license, I was still trying to do the maintenance piece of it. Then when I got my real estate license, I was doing real estate and had a... Bryan: Work field tech. Jonathan: Yeah, like a field tech. I had this halfway working knowledge of what property management was, I thought, supposed to be, but I was a realtor at that point. So, I was like, "Yeah, I've got an idea." When the real estate market crashed in 2008–2009, there was not the source of income that I was used to. I started dealing with investors with the slight little piece of halfway working knowledge that I've built up with my family, like rentals, trying to figure out how the single family rental market works, and start cherry-picking areas because I had access to NLS and I could look up where properties were. At that time, there was no internet documentation. I couldn't send documents online and have them signed. There was no electronic signatures at all. Bryan: It was that long ago. Jonathan: It really was. I was having to drive offers on HUD homes from Birmingham where I'm at, in an hour-and-a-half away to the closest HUD office which is in Anniston, which is a whole another city in Alabama. It was an hour-and-a-half. I had to drive and had to have ink on page. "Here. This is an offer. Will you take it?" Then you end up, "Nah. Get out of here." Jason: So needless to say, things are a little bit more efficient now. Bryan: A little bit. Jonathan: My wife actually works for AHI for years before I did. I just started as the Business Development Manager in October of last year after my wife begging me for years. "Would you please go with AHI? You know what we do here." I'm like, "Yes, it's property management. I know how to do that." Oh, I had no idea how to do that. Then I got here and like, "Oh." I got plugged into NARPM. Started learning all the extra pieces, ins and outs that I didn't even know that I didn't know here at AHI. I learn on a daily basis from Bryan and from everyone out here in the office and it has just become, "I get it now." There's always going to be stuff that I'm not going to know. Bryan: That's the challenge. That's the beauty of property management. I always say, you love it or you hate it, there is no really gray area in between. As long as you're learning something everyday and solving issues, that's what keeps me coming back daily. It's kind of us. Jason: Like I said in the intro, the people that like this like the unique challenges, the daily variety, they like the opportunities, and ultimately if you're an entrepreneur, you like freedom. And you'd rather be working 80 hours for yourself than 30 for somebody else. Bryan: That's right. Jason: We're crazy like that. Let's get into how you guys have grown. You've mentioned there was an acquisition, there's a couple of little things that you've done, but let's get into how are you adding the bulk of the doors into your business. I guess the conversation topic at hand is supposed to be about multiple markets. How do you manage doing multiple locations and when do you feel it's the right time to go into a second location for most managers that are listening? Bryan: I'm going to say that, based on what I said earlier in our history, is we're probably a little more unique than a company that's trying to open a market from scratch in an outside area. Our growth strategy is actually to come alongside our corporate housing company, utilize the brick and mortar they already have. Then we just come in with client, we come in with systems, and hire local talent. With that, we're ready to go operational, handling back office out of our main hub here in Birmingham. That allows us greater freedom and greater flexibility and movement with our client base. Our most recent acquisition was Oklahoma City and we opened in December of 2017. We went out there basically with a client that took us out there with 24 properties to get us started. Hired a single property manager and now we're managing 158 properties on the ground there. Some other clients have become along the way and have been clients we're working with in multiple markets as well. Jason: Let's give some of the listeners some tips or some strategies here for growing their property management company. We've got two kinds of sand traps that people fall into. The first one's maybe the solopreneur stuck at 50 or 60 units. What would you recommend to somebody that have 50 or 60 units if they're wanting to add doors and build up a portfolio? Bryan: Let your entrepreneurial spirit fly, first and foremost. I would say, be willing to take some risk. You have to be able to do that. What I see in property management is, I see people that are stuck in the box. What I mean by that is they're happy signing accidental landlords on a daily basis and dealing with the one-off homeowner that by default is the landlord. Jonthan: They called you because they've seen your side. Bryan: Right. Jonathan just talked to one earlier today and the expectations are totally off scale. They have no investment mindset whatsoever and they've got a strong emotional attachment to the property. Jonathan: And in my opinion, if you start taking in those kinds of clients, it's going to keep you at that rate because they're going to require way more attention. They're going to need hand holding for every little thing. They don't have that entrepreneurial mindset. Jason: If they're only going to stay a year, that means every year, you have to get a new one to replace them. Plus another one if you want to grow and add something new. If you build your business on accidental landlords, it can be pretty difficult unless you're magically able to convince them to switch to buy-and-hold. Jonthan: Generally, you're not directing them into the markets that they can make money, which will in turn allow them to purchase more doors for you to manage. That's one of the things I like to help our investors there is identify markets. I think that's super important for any property manager no matter where you are. Knowing your markets, knowing them really, really well like the back of your hand, and being able to educate owners and investors from all over. Bryan: Yeah, whether investors gain experience whatever. Jason, I would say that the big game changer for us was really about 3½ years ago, maybe even 4 years ago. Looking at the diversification of our existing portfolio and then realizing we had a heavy concentration of accidental landlords, and hearing the same information being repeated back to say, "You know what? A lot of the property managers I know, their managed inventory were shrinking and consistently shrinking year after year as the sales market started to gain momentum." And that's what happens to your accidental landlords to say they jump ship when it's a good time to sell. Jonathan: And get my money back out. Bryan: That's right. Some of those we did over the years, as long as we've been at it, we've had investors that have actually started off as accidental landlords and then they've converted to buy-and-hold and then they've had another property, and another property. They've educated themselves and they've become real estate investors. In my opinion, they've done it the right way. They're learning as they go the right way for them, I guess. They're educating, taking a step, they're not taking too much time to take the step because otherwise, you'd miss the opportunity. What we focused on was, we want to understand not only what is going on in our local market, but we want to get a broader national picture and see what markets are hot markets, why are they hot markets, what types of return on investment are investors realizing particularly after we looked at that focus on the time period after 2010. After bottoms have been hit and you're starting to get some upward momentum again with property values and such. We started attending outside events such as IMN or Five Star, started to align ourselves with some funds, some small REITs, and property owners that have portfolios that weren't necessarily internalizing their management operations. They were small enough, they needed a professional partner to partnership with, to make their operations run as efficiently as possible, and focus on key metrics. That's where we started focusing our education piece and then started signing those clients. Really, that's been a wonderful piece. From that, we've added another piece to our business which we have an internal insurance agency which we opened up last year that focuses on the investment product. They can insure in 50 states. If they're buying property in one of our existing markets or even a couple of them, that's the beauty of having multiple markets. They focus on investment in three- or four-year markets but then they're buying elsewhere. The insurance piece will pick up their properties wherever they have them in the country. That's been a really powerful piece for us and that has come online especially we opened it last year but we're really been gaining momentum in the last six months with that piece. Jason: This is a third party tool, or resource, or vendor that you guys have signed on with? Bryan: No. This is a sister company. It's Birmingham Insurance Group and their carriers are third party. They use national carriers that are backed by Lloyds of London and a few others. Jonathan: It's downstairs. Bryan: Yeah, just downstairs in our office building. They are truly a sister company and my partner is a shared owner in that entity. It's been a nice value add for us both ways. They're referring people into us, we're referring people out to them, handling the renter side of it. The big thing is the master policies with the insurance. That does make it nice and easy for investors, again, no matter where their stuff is, to add or take away property as they need to from online portal systems. It works pretty well. My partner and spoke on a couple of podcast, investment network podcast and got invited out to the West Coast to speak to some folks and from there, that opened the door to three or four buyer networks, basically. They were focused on Alabama already and then Oklahoma City. Then aligning ourselves with turnkey providers and partnering with some local contractors to be able to facilitate that piece ourselves. That's been the growth cycle. Back to that spread your entrepreneur wings, I think that somebody that really get stuck in a box and only want to do property management per se may handcuff themselves a little bit. I think you can't be the master of all things, I understand that, but understanding what industry you're in and how you can be most effective and partner with people. For example, I had a phone call with a real estate agent here locally that I've known for 15 years and all of the sudden, April 1, he just called me up today just to say, "Hey, April 1. I partnered with a rehabber, I partnered with a guy from a hedge fund, and we've got a couple of funds going. I've got some inventory to rehab and I hear you guys have some investor clients…" there's partnerships all over the place. At the end of the day, I think it all comes down to the relationship piece. Getting in front of people and just building those relationships. Maybe they'll do it. The one sit down at the bar and have an hour a bit, maybe it's the third one or the fourth one, just consistently following up. I found that a lot of these guys, if they're shopping you and shopping your competition, what happens is they're not really ready to pull the trigger that day. But if you stick with the follow-up, just stay in front of them, stay consistent, and know your metrics, then a lot of these guys will circle back to you and they'll give you an opportunity. That's been our recipe for success for the last three years. Jason: All right. You threw out a lot of things really quickly. I need a recap and I have notes here. For those that are watching, let's cover some of these. First, you said, make sure you identify the good markets with the best investments. Get really familiar with your market even nationally taking a look at which markets are hot. Most managers are working in the market they're in, but the advantage of looking nationally would be to understand maybe how their market fits in, play with the national scene to see if their market could be savvy to market investors outside of your geographic area. That sound about right? Jonathan: We've recently had a lot of out-of-state, out-of-market investors coming in because they've heard nationally in Birmingham. They come in and some of that information sometimes is going to be a little bit old but it's taking them in and being willing to, and having the knowledge to help them understand the differences. Birmingham is big. How do we separate that into areas of, "Let me explain this area, then this area, then this area," and then compare it to whatever markets that are used. Bryan: There are macro versus micro views. I think that gives you common ground to speak to the investor. If their coming out of the Indianapolis market, then all of a sudden they're looking at Alabama. It gives you some common ground to start with. Jason: That first one ultimately what's really helpful is to have context to give them, these out of state investors, to see how your market fits in with the national scene. I think that is wise. Know your own markets, know the little neighborhoods in your market, but also see how you can fit into the macro view of the nation and beyond. The second thing you mentioned is to shift away from accidental landlords, just recognizing that. I talk about this concept called the 4Ds to revenue. The first D is deals. The second D is the number of doors per deal. A lot of times people just lump those together and they think a door is a door. The third D is duration. That's how long you can keep them on. There's a massive difference between a one year accidental and the 10-year buy-and-hold. Ten times difference in revenue return. Then, the last D is dollars, making sure you get fees in place. A lot of people don't focus on each of these things individually. They're just like, "I just need to get doors on." It's just about the doors. There's a such a big difference between those. So I think that's wise to shift away from accidental landlords. The third thing you've mentioned is identify partnership opportunities. There's a lot of different ideas here for partnerships. You had mentioned partnering with an insurance product or an insurance company, bringing in a value add and partnering with them, getting on investment network podcast, then connecting to buyer's networks, turnkey providers for partnerships. Then you've mentioned follow-up over and over and over again. Bryan: That's right. One other thing I'll add to that would be your preferred vendor partnerships. One we allude to all the time is we work with Roofstock, which I don't know if you had an opportunity to speak with those guys in the past. Jason: I haven't. Bryan: Great product especially if you're buying anywhere coast-to-coast but as roofstock.com—shameless plug there—be sure to check that out. Jonathan: It's not for us. Bryan: No, it's not for us, but what they do is they come online, they certify their property management partner and the same thing with the wealth networks. Once they've certified you as a vendor and a partner in that capacity, then you're a trusted resource. It makes the closing of the transaction that much easier. Jonathan: One of the things that I really like about Roofstock is if you are able to direct your own internal investors, if you don't have enough time to go through an actual buyer's agency with an investor that does want to potentially grow more doors and you're busy being a property manager, you don't have time to walk down every single property with them, you can direct them to Roofstock and say, "Hey, grab your properties from Roofstock. Bring them to us." That helps take that portion off of it, so they're buying properties that you want to manage. They're buying properties that are already set-up. They're already getting vetted out. They have an idea of what they're going to get. They're not coming to you with some uninformed number of "I saw a house and I have no information about it so maybe can we put [...] in there?" No, this house has [...]. This is how much I'm paying for. This is the ledger. This is what is already making for rent. This is what it should make for rent. Whatever. Bryan: It allows you to control that potential client so you keep them inside your little circle if you will, to ensure that they're going to be coming back to you. Just based on people we referred to them over the last couple of years, the relationships are really tight. They take really good care of them and they do come back. They asked the property managers to perform to certain levels and the properties, as we mentioned, they're vetted out in advance. A lot of the due diligence piece done, we still always encourage our clients to do their own due diligence but a lot of that is done on the front end for them. It's a nice value add. Jason: That's a great tip. Property managers listening should go get connected, if they can, to Roofstock so that they can have that vendor partnership. They can be listed as a preferred or recommended vendor. Are there other channels or how would somebody identify their channels that they should be looking at to become a certified partnership, or a preferred vendor as a property management company? Jonathan: Local REIT, REIs, and stuff like that. Any sort of investor networking. Most cities will have a local chapter and sometimes it's going to be wholesalers. That's fine. You need wholesalers if you are trying to bring in homeowners that are going to be growing their business and growing their doors which in turn is growing yours. You're going to have to have some product to give them. It's not bad to have a few wholesalers that you know and you know the product that they have and you can stir. Maybe you get an extra commission off of that, who knows, but you're least adding to your own business by adding to theirs. Bryan: I think my biggest tip in this arena right here would be, I view everything as a funnel. You've got to have multiple sources pouring into the funnel that's going to push out to you on the end. I guess the tip to it all is develop the multiple networks and the multi approach to just having a supply line for incoming clients. We all know about the renter side; that's pretty easy. What I think has been underdeveloped over the years in the property management arena has been the client-based side of it and trying to attract the clients back in instead of being strictly out of necessity, such as the case with an accidental landlord. There's so many factors to focus on but ultimately, we are big on having probably no less than 10 different sources pouring into our funnel and then we give them points. So, there's always a trickle effect and then you're maintaining those relationships along the way. In our operation, with five locations I've got five different property manager brokers that are actually running the operations. We actually have an education piece each month which we push out all of our brokers. We have a mastermind call group each month that we work through problematic areas within the individual operations corporately and then on the local market level. All these things help us stay consistent in our team approach. You had Jen Stoops on recently, right? With Park Avenue? We love Jen. We did a show with Jen and Deb Newell after the Five Star event in Memphis, March, I think it was. We were talking about Jen's approach with John in Park Avenue. He's always been that hub approach. They have their back-end office piece and then they spoke out and she explained it to us. That's been fascinating to me because we have brick and mortar in each location and a lot of it depends on what your state requires. Again, there's a couple of different strategies on how you do those operations and how you expand out and operate multiple markets, but both of them work and both companies are successful at it. Again, I just think don't put all your eggs in one basket. My grandpa used to tell me that a long time ago and just growing up with entrepreneur parents I [...] that, exampled out to me on a daily basis. That's probably the biggest approach. Don't be fearful and don't put all your eggs in one basket. Just be mindful of the relationships. Jason: Yeah. I love this because I feel like the stuff that you're doing is foundational to growth. This is what the property management industry needs right now. We've got 70% self-managing in single family residential. There's plenty of opportunity. There isn't scarcity in this industry, yet. Yet, there's this false scarcity that's been perpetuator-created. I think it's just so refreshing that you didn't mention, yet, it's all about SEO, it's all about doing pay-per-click ads, it's all about social media marketing, it's all about content marketing. You're actually going out and tapping into that 70% and you're creating business. You're walking out the door, the business is there and you're getting the business while everybody else is fighting over the coldest, crappiest, worst leads that fall off your table. Bryan: I'm going out also to say everything you just addressed is important, too. I'll let you be going on in the background but the resources have been beaten to death over the last several years. Jonathan: We get those too. We get plenty of those and you have to call. Bryan: That's right. Jonathan: You have to. You have to still call them. Jason: And follow up, and follow up, and follow up. Jonathan: You have to. Bryan: The funniest thing and I know you can probably relate to this but we see it all the time. Any property management firm operator, or property manager just listening, they have seen it on multiple occasions. You'll get there's tire kickers that come to you, they're checking out your services, your rates, your reputation and all these stuff. Then they'll say, "Okay, I'll call you when I'm ready." You follow-up with them and then eventually they come back 12, 15 months later, "Okay, I'm ready to go. You remember my property?" We looked at thousands of properties since then. Jonathan: "Remember, you saw it? You saw it." Jason: Yeah. Bryan: We do make it apprise, "Hey, save that information. There's a good chance he comes back around." That's just experience of it all, but again, those are going to be your accidental landlords, your one off homeowners that—not being negative—aren't really investors. They're just investors by necessity only. Jonathan: Or they just want to know what their property potentially can list for. Jason: That's why it's important to have a CRM and to keep track. I've talked to hundreds of property managers and it's so funny because I always hear, "You remember me?" and sometimes—I'm honest—I'm like, "No, I don't. But I have really good notes here from when we talked and I can refer to that," and that's enough. Bryan: It is. We've seen you around at events and such, and everybody's intertwined in our industry, at least to the NARPM scene and a couple of other organizations we belong to. At the end of the day, it is about the relationships. I always said, the thing I love about NARPM—not to turn into a NARPM commercial—I always felt like the analogy that I would beat my head against the door jamb every single day and it was quite painful. I got tired of learning from my own mistakes. The opportunity came up to learn from other people's mistakes, so that made it much more appetizing. I enjoyed it. Jason: Let other people bang their heads and you can watch. Jonathan: They already have. They've already banged their head on whatever problem you're about to have. They've already done it. Here's an answer for you already. It's easy. Jason: We see that a lot inside of our Facebook community as well, the DoorGrow Club. It's a resource, everybody's super helpful, you can just ask a question, and you get at least several really solid answers. You don't have to be alone as an entrepreneur. I think as entrepreneurs, there's this myth that's created in our minds that we're alone. It does feel like that a lot of times because our teams are a little bit different than us. There are people that want to see the uncertainty or they're crazy freedom people. Most of the people, I think, in the world are not entrepreneur personality type, so we feel like we're aliens sometimes on a foreign planet. But if you can get around other people through organizations like NARPM or through the DoorGrow Club and connect with other people, you start to recognize that there's nothing wrong with you and you're normal. Bryan: And you're not alone. Jason: And you're not alone. There's plenty of people willing to help. I think as entrepreneurs, we are contribution-focused people. We get momentum by helping other people. That's why we do what we do. I think everyone's always so surprised if they've been disconnected from other people like them, other entrepreneurs at how helpful entrepreneurs will be. They're so helpful, so giving. I think really, a rising tide raises all ships. This industry really needs more collaboration. We're not at the point where there's any sort of real scarcity, or competition really is fierce. There's so much business available and there's lots of room for growth. I think the industry is going to start to see that here in the next several years. Jonathan: I think before I came to AHI, one of the things that I learned on day one was before being at this company, I did have that mindset of, "I can't, I don't want to share any of this stuff, I got to do all this by myself." Once I've been at AHI, one of our biggest competitors, we refer to them all the time. We refer people to them constantly because they might handle this better than we will in this instance. The competition is such friendly competition in this industry. Bryan: Are you talking about Matthew? Jonathan: I am talking about Matthew. It's so collaborative. We're having him in an event in a month. Bryan: You know Matthew Whitaker, right? Matthew Whitaker with GK? GKHouses? Jason: Maybe. Jonathan: He's got good notes on him. Bryan: Anyway, Matthew's a contrast to my vision and what we've done with growth. He's been growing through acquisition. Jason: Very different strategy. Bryan: Yeah. Homevestors, franchise holder, and then converted, internalized to PM operations after 2007–2008 and then went to work. Basically, he's growing from Birmingham to Nashville, Chattanooga, Little Rock, Arkansas, then Denver and Fort Collins, Colorado. He's done it through acquisitions. He's a sharp mind. He's cutting-edge guy, but we got along famously and have been friends for years. We're actually hosting a PM summit coming up in a month, in June. First thing that we put on in the State of Alabama—NARPM doesn't have a chapter in the entire State—we're trying to do a kick-off event and get some property managers in, geographically from Huntsville all the way down Montgomery, and just have a nice panel discussion. I've got some professional managers coming over from the Atlanta chapter, Matthew and myself. It would be a great event and we're looking forward to it. I think it's going to lead to bigger and better things. My big piece, I think you [...] upon it, is just make our industry better and raise the bar for crying out loud. If nothing else, what that does for operators that are raising their bars, those that refuse to do it, there's such a difference between the two companies. It's easy to select the [...] that's doing it bigger, doing it better and more efficient, and giving more value back to our clients and customers. That's our focus. Jonathan: One of the things that I see with these smaller realtors that are doing property management individuals is we all know similar stuff. It will be those stories where it's like, "Oh, I had this client that was doing this and I knew they shouldn't have done it. We just let him and it was an issue." Okay, well, that's not education piece. Inform your client instead of just sitting there and holding it. That's the thing that I see. They're afraid to lose that business so they're afraid to step on those toes to educate their clients. Bryan: Yeah. I'll make it a point to empower my team members. When you empower a property manager, you always see analogy of the guardrail system. Our procedures are guardrails and if they stay within the guardrails, they can have their own little flavor. That empowers them to make certain decisions and do things that are instantaneous and beneficial to everybody involved instead of having to go through red tape. Jason: Yeah. Let's wrap this up. If people want to connect with you, find a little bit more info, or they're curious about what you're doing for growth, how can they get in touch with you? Any final words to those who are struggling with growth right now who are looking to grow their property management business? Bryan: My final thoughts going back and recapping this thing is just keep an open mind, don't be afraid but focus on multiple funnels, if you will. Look at multiple opportunities for you to develop client relations. I think our strategy ended up originating from the need for self-preservation. Is not that we are in danger. We just saw that the market was going to change and has changed and will change again. We want to be better prepared for that and allow ourselves better diversity in what we're doing. If they want to reach us, we actually do a podcast ourselves. We have an email set up for that podcast@ahiproperties.com and that ties directly to both of us. We just love to answer any questions. I'm always open and available by email and phone. I'll be happy to connect and just give my two cents worth. Again, I always like to give back to the industry. It has been good to me and I like to give back. Jonathan: I second everything Bryan said. He's got it. Jason: All right. Perfect. Bryan, Jonathan, grateful to have both of you here on the DoorGrow Show. Appreciate what you guys are doing. Bryan: Thanks for having us. Jonathan: It's a pleasure. Jason: It's a good message for everybody to diversify your interest and how you're bringing in business. It's exactly what I coach clients to do, so I love that you're reinforcing what I teach which is a welcome, refreshing unexpected thing. I appreciate you guys being here on the show. Bryan: We appreciate you having us. We thank you very much. I just want to actually thank you for what you're doing for the industry because I think it's a wonderful thing. Jonathan: Yes. It makes everything better. Bryan: Yup. Jason: Oh, thanks. Everyone says that and I'm going to ask you, what am I doing for the industry? Bryan: Here's the deal. I'm an old dog but you can teach me new tricks. There's a generational change in the property management profession and I think as the level professionalism comes up, we see our younger generation of property managers coming in behind. I don't want to say transitioning of the guard but it is a change of mindset from what was old. Think about the technology piece and the systems pieces that have kicked in, stuff that's happened since 2012 is crazy. We were server-based. Actually, what Jonathan was alluding to early on with the ink on paper scenarios. I think that's the biggest piece. It's bringing awareness and just opening people's minds such as myself. The new line of thought process and focusing on efficiencies and systems and the benefits of what's out there and available to us. I think that's a huge help to entrepreneurs everywhere. Jonathan: When you spread this message out to everyone through the internet and it becomes national and worldwide that people can get this information, when you're going to partner with another property manager in a different area, at least we can start from a place where we can both springboard off of, we were able to send people to you and just, "Listen to this. That's the information you need," as opposed to us having to go, "We're going to have to teach you all this stuff." Bryan: It's fun to do to educate, but it is an education piece for your in-bound clients. You're using all of that to really set them up for success with the organization. The reason we got into our podcast, specifically, was the first one my partner and I were on was a guest on one of the investment wealth networks and we actually signed 52 houses off that one episode, of clients coming in from out-of-state. That prove the value of it and then the education piece. If you're like me, if you travel, I listen to podcasts all the time and come outside my own little world. It just really open that up. People are listening on a more regular basis and it's definitely an education piece. It's on demand for you. That's the beauty of it. Jason: Great. It's been great connecting with you guys. Love what you're doing. Again, I appreciate you being here on the DoorGrow Show and I will let you guys go now. Bryan: All right. Jonathan: Thank you so much. Bryan: Thank you. Jason: All right. You heard it from those two gentlemen. The strategy for growth, really, you need a diversified approach and there's so much available potential business out there. I really feel like the industry has so much potential for growth. I think it's a really exciting time for property management. There are tons and tons of people that are self managing, they're frustrated and they're not searching on Google according to Google Trends. Anyway, reach out to us at DoorGrow. If you're struggling with any of these challenges, you feel like, "Hey, I'm ready to be coached. I'm coachable. I'm open. I'm ready to grow my company. I'm ready to make some painful difficult changes in my business," then, I might be able to help you. Reach out to DoorGrow. You can check us out at doorgrow.com and make sure you join our Facebook community so you don't end up getting stuck on random questions. You can ask questions in there; doorgrowclub.com. Until next time, everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Today, I am talking to Gwenn Aspen of Anequim, which offers remote assistant, Rent Manager call center, and Rent Manager software consulting services. Also, Gwenn and her husband, Jeremy, own the Wistar Group, a property management company. You'll Learn... [04:40] How helping a friend, helped property management companies hire employees. [05:20] Currently, 150 employees in Mexico work remotely for property management companies in the United States and Canada. [06:25] Connections and Relationships: Life is all about taking care of and looking out for those you know and love. [06:50] Internal References and Cultural Differences: Holding each other accountable results in low turnover/high retention. [08:20] Managers Managing Remotely: If you manage someone who works remotely, get to know them as a human being. [10:51] Webcam: Teams founded on trust and transparency should be seen and heard. [14:50] For better or worse, Anequim and Wistar Group are unique and original company names that could be patented to prevent being sued. [16:45] Finding a Good Fit: Anequim helps potential clients identify things that they don't like to do and give them to someone who does. [20:51] Time vs. Energy: Avoid burnout by identifying what fills or drains your energy. [22:20] Onboarding Training: Includes four ways to not die in property management. [26:12] Vetting Team Members: Extensive process of selecting candidates for clients. [29:47] Working in Mexico: No background checks possible or databases available. [34:09] Progress, not Perfection: Help property managers move forward and feel confident in making a commitment. [38:21] Anequim Structure: Assistants, solution agents, and others handle 1,200 units. [42:36] Every business needs systems: Planning, process, documentation, and communication. Tweetables Power of the Webcam with Virtual Teams: Just be there, and be seen. Time and Attention: A manager's most important resources; use them wisely. Word to the Wise: Keep your clothes on when training employees. Our job is to make sure people are happy with their candidates. Resources Anequim Gwenn Aspen on Facebook Gwenn Aspen's Email Wistar Group DGS 76: Outsourcing Rules for Small, Medium and Large Companies with Todd Breen of VirtuallyinCredible First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently Zoom Myers–Briggs Type Indicator Fair Housing Act Americans with Disabilities Act Culture Index Traction by Gino Wickman SweetProcess Process Street Basecamp Help Scout Intercom Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. Today's guest, I'm hanging out with the fabulous Gwenn Aspen of Anequim. Gwenn, welcome to the show. Gwenn: Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Jason: I'm excited to have you. It's really fun hanging out with you in the green room and you were showing me your nerd glasses. Gwenn: That I carry around with me everywhere I go because there's always a need. They're literally nerd glasses, you guys. They're from Hobby Lobby, I got them for an event I had to go to because we were revenge of the nerds and I bring them everywhere because that's how nerdy I really am. But we can have fun too, we can be fun nerds. Right, Jason? Jason: Yes. Maybe. It's probably possible. A lot of people think I wear all these weird, different glasses especially the orange ones. People notice I wear this orange glasses and they always come up to me and they think I'm trying to be so cool. Their like, "Why are you wearing this glasses? Are you trying to be Bono?" Which is funny because Bono wears them to block blue light, right? He's not wearing them just to be cool but he is cool. Way cooler than me. Then I go into this diatribe of why I wear them and how they block blue light and how it helps set my biorhythm patterns, helps me get good sleep, and then they're just sorry they asked. Gwenn: Well, that's what's in your nerd shows Jason. Jason: And then they realized they are nerd glasses, so they realize I'm a nerd. Gwenn: Yes, because they bring out your inner nerd when you wear them and people ask about them. Jason: Yeah. So, I got some less orange ones. This are my nerd glasses. This make me look a little bit smarter. Gwenn: I think they look good. I like them a lot. Jason: They're a little yellow to them but I don't have the tape. I have to get the tape and maybe add the tape at some point just to look more nerdy. Alright Gwenn, let's get into this. Give us a little bit background, so you run this company doing remote assistance from Mexico and you said they're not virtual assistance because they're not robots, right? Gwenn: Right. No. They're not. Jason: You manage Rent Manager, the property management back office. You manage Rent Manager's call center, so you have a call center for Rent Manager people. Gwenn: We do. Jason: Then you also have Wistar Group which is a property management company in Omaha, Nebraska. Gwenn: Yes. That's all true. My husband and I started Wistar Group back in 2006 so we've been doing this for a long time. In 2008, a friend of his called him from Mexico because he lived in Mexico before I knew him for five years doing something totally different, transportation and logistics. The friend called and she said, "You think the economy is bad in the United States? Well, you should come down to Mexico. Things are really bad down here and I lost my job. Is there any way I could work for you in some capacity from home?" Because it wasn't only about the economy, but it was pretty dangerous at that time and my husband is the most loyal person you'll ever meet, for better or worse. That's right when VoIP phones came out so we sent one down to her, we figured how to make it work and she started answering the calls for Wistar Group—at that time, it was called Certified Property Management. She's taking the calls and it works awesome. We love it. She loves it. It's great. Then we just started, as we grew, hiring all her friends for all the other jobs that we had. We just operated like that because it works for us for many years and then in 2016, our friends from Boutique Property Management in Denver, we were hanging out with them and they're like, "Hey, this Mexico thing is working out great for you guys. Can you hook us up with people from Mexico?" I was like, "Sure." Then I got them some employees from Mexico and they loved it. My husband and I were like, "Maybe we can help more property managers with this," and so it grown like wildfire since then and now we have almost 150 employees in Mexico working for property management companies across the U.S. and Canada. It's just a win-win for everyone and it's just so exciting and I love my job so much. Jason: Okay, great. This sounds very similar to [inaudible 00:05: 37] who we had in the show except they do the thing in the Philippines. It sounds like a very similar sort of etymology or story behind how you got into this and it really was filling your own need and starting by helping a friend and it grew into helping all these different property managers. That's the interesting thing I've heard from those that have Mexican staff is that they hire one and all of a sudden, all their family and friends start becoming team members too. Gwenn: Yeah. Jason: That must be a culturally different thing, I think with Mexico versus the Philippines. I think they are both very family-oriented, but I think there's something about Mexico that they're like, "Hey, hire my brother." Or, "Hire this family member," and they're connecting people. Gwenn: Oh my gosh. Yeah, the connections that they have, don't we all love that? Isn't that what life is all about? Is connections and taking care of the people that you love, that you know. It's just yet another thing to love about all the people I know in Mexico, is just how much they care for one another and have each other's back and then also hold each other accountable. That's the other things are that we grow a lot through internal references from one employee to another. If someone has a problem and they were the one who referred them, man. They hear it from the other employee. I mean there are that many cultural differences, but that's been a fun one. It really ends up keeping the turnover really low because they are happy, our employees work from home, and they love it, that's a huge advantage. They have this great connection with each other and we have Christmas parties. We're going to have a summer picnic with everybody. It's added a lot of richness to my life, just getting to know the employees as well. Jason: I was going to bring that up. A while back, I read a book called First, Break All the Rules. I believed it's pulled up by the Gallup Organizations that does the pulling. They did a whole bunch of surveying companies trying to figure out what makes a really good team and what creates retention with the team. One of the number one indicators of retention whether somebody was going to stay in the company was whether they have a friend in the business or somebody they are connected to personally on the team. So, that makes a lot of sense. It increases retention, significantly. Gwenn: I would say that's our job. If we're going to hire someone remotely, if we're the managers of this person, it's imperative that you get to know them as a human being to get that retention and to get that buy-in and to get them on your same mission going in the same direction. I feel like I know you much better right now just because we are in a Zoom Conference and that doing what with cam... Jason: Now, we're totally homies because we are in Zoom. Gwenn: Yeah, now we're homies and we have the nerd glasses together, I mean. Those little things add to the relationship so if you make a point, I only communicate with people from Mexico using webcam because we have this amazing connection then and we feel like we know each other better. If you use a webcam, I swear it makes all the difference and getting buy-in from a remote employee. Jason: I absolutely agree. I've done a lot of remote hiring in the past and there's a huge difference, but it got to a point where eventually, I have a policy in our company called the Webcam Policy and everyone is required to have a webcam to be on the team and to communicate and show up and turn on the camera when we do meetings because it ended up being, at one point I remember showing up having team meetings and there's 5-10 people without their webcams on and there's just me putting on the show. Gwenn: I love that. I don't have an official policy, but not that you said it, I'm adding it. But I also have another employee from a totally different industry, he did a lot in banking and he was told to never have his webcam on. It was such a cultural dissonance when he came on the team because we were like, "Put your camera on. I can't see you. I don't know what you're doing. I need to see you." It was hard for him. It's good if you're somebody who requires webcams and state it at the beginning because some people, it takes them a while to get used to it. Jason: Yeah. It is a part of my onboarding process that they have to review the webcam policy and read it. Do you want me to tell you some of it here? Gwenn: Yeah. I think it's so important because whether you do remote employees from Mexico, whether you have someone in the Midwest, you know a lot of people hire people from rural Nebraska to work for their company because it's a lot less expensive. Jason: Alright. I'm going to share an internal secret here. Gwenn: Understanding the power of a webcam is crucial for the relationship working in my opinion. Jason: Alright. Here's our webcam policy for those listening. We are a team founded on the values of trust and transparency. It is important in a virtual team to be able to see one another on our virtual meetings since we often can't meet directly in person. As a team, we don't care about your hair, makeup, clothes, etc.during internal meetings. Just be there. Not having a webcam during internal meetings can feel like talking with someone behind a reflective window. It causes humans to try to assume and guess too much because they lack nonverbal cues we have evolved to rely on. Why address this? And then in bullets: to promote an environment of trust and transparency, to improve the efficiency of company communications and shorten meetings by effectively communicating with the full spectrum of verbal facial expressions and nonverbal cues, to reduce multitasking, right? Because they [...], they're like, "Oh yeah. I'm listening." Gwenn: Right. Totally. Jason: To reduce the anxiety of those speaking on camera, and then having the expectation. It is expected that all team members will join OpenPotion, that's our corporation, virtual meetings on video in order to fully engage in team and one-on-one meetings, this promotes collaboration on multiple levels and it allows each individual to feel heard as they see and receive nonverbal cues from their peers. This also increases productivity and reduces anxiety as ideas are better understood when they're coupled with facial expressions, gestures, and other forms of nonverbal communication. When meeting with clients, we appreciate you doing your best to make yourself and your background presentable, but that is not required. We just want you fully present and visible. Then I have a quote and it says, "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said," Peter Drucker. Gwenn: Oh, I love it. I love it although I would push back on the not caring what you look like because I've had people show up, not very often, but I had a guy and he looked like he'd just been to the club, and just rolled out of bed, and I was like, "Man." Also, you have to know your audience. We have a screenshot and keystroke that we record of everyone that's working for us while they're working not when they're not. We had one guy who was at a webcam conference and he had his hat sideways and my assistant was like, "Is that okay?" If you live in California that might be okay, but if you're with an older team in Omaha and you have your cap on sideways, it just might not work. I was like, "No. They're in California. It's totally fine." She was like, "Oh, okay." You have got to know your audience, better know your audience. Jason: I think it all boils down to what the entrepreneur wants though too. Before the call, I'd ask you what your Myers-Briggs Type was and you're an ENTJ, so you've got that J in the end. Gwenn: So, I'm Judgy? That means I'm judgy, right? Jason: Yeah. You're judgy which means you're a planner. You want things done a certain way. This details matter to you. I'm a P so I'm all over the place. I'm a bit more open-minded and I love taking you Js and cracking you open a little bit to expose you to some things you weren't exposed to before. Gwenn: I need people like you in my life too because I can't be too in the box. It's so nice to have that fresh [...]. Jason: J from the box for sure. Ps have no box and Js look at us like we're crazy. Some of the Ps that are perceiving, that's what the P stands for, they will take in things from all different sources, all different ideas, and to most Js, that's being so open-minded, their brain is falling out. It's how Js kind of view us sometimes but we need each other. All these other different types. I definitely need Js on my team to run my email, handle my calendar, do all the planning stuff that is not fun for me. You do this virtual team thing, how does somebody start with you if they come to you and they're like, "Hey, Anequim." First, where did that name came from? What does this name mean? Gwenn: I'm going to give you the real answer. We used to be a certified property management and then [...] wanted to sue us because they were like, "We have a certified property manager distinction," or whatever. Jason: Designation. Gwenn: Designation. We were like, "Well, we wanted to rebrand anyway," because we started from nothing and took any piece of garbage that had a roof on it and then as time went on we became more sophisticated, and wanted to take out nicer properties, but in the local market, we were the low end. We already were going to rebrand, but we didn't want to get sued or threatened of a lawsuit again, so we were like, "We have to have something that's totally unique." Well, it's very hard you guys. It's so hard to find something completely unique. My husband's a pilot for fun and so he loves this airplane called Anequim and it means mako shark in Portuguese, anyway that was like a word we could use that was unique. We got Anequim and then Wistar Group. Wistar is my middle name and they were unique enough that my best friend who is a patent attorney approved them. For better or worse we're Anequim and Wistar Group. Jason: There you go. Alright. Portuguese mako shark. Gwenn: It's also an airplane. Jason: Which has nothing to do with Mexico whatsoever. They don't even speak Spanish. Gwenn: But I'm not going to get sued for it, so you know. Jason: No, it's perfect. It's a unique and original name which is helpful in branding, right? Okay, cool. Now, how does somebody get started with you guys. Somebody comes to you and say, "Hey, I've got a problem." How do you know that you can help them? Because I'm sure there are clients that you don't take on and there are clients that aren't a good fit. Gwenn: There are. In fact, there were two clients yesterday that called me and I was like, "You know what? I think you guys just need to wait for a minute." And that is my thing. We don't sell. We try to make a relationship because if I sell you and then it doesn't work for you, then it creates a lot of heartache and drama for me because I want the person in Mexico to be happy and I want the person in the United States to be happy. What happened yesterday was, this one guy was buying another company, and they already had two employees there, but he hadn't really worked with them yet. I was like, "Hmm." He was going to be managing 400 properties. I felt like his people count was good enough for 400 properties, so I said, "Just take on these two new people. Measure processes and procedures together, make sure it works, and then when you get a handle on them then call me." He was like, "Okay. That's a better idea. That's what I'm going to do." If you call me and it's not going to work for you, I might tell you to do a few things first. Then the other guy called me and I thought again that his head count was already too high. I thought you could make more efficiencies in his software because a lot of people only use 5% of the software that they have purchased. If you have five really expensive employees and 400 units, I kind of think you should work on being more efficient first with your software and then call me. Jason: Yeah, right. Gwenn: Unless, you're going to transition things—but these were obviously, longer conversations, I'm giving you the shortened versions—so if someone calls me and they're like, "No. I need somebody. I'm working my butt off and I need some relief." Then we'll talk about a job description first because I need to find the right person for this role. I need to know what kind of tasks you want. For instance, if you want someone to be doing a lot of cold calling then that's going to be a different person than someone's who's going to be helping you associate the right invoices with the right property and the right owner, right? We have to make sure we have a good job description. Also, your training is going to be better, it's going to be a smoother onboarding process if you are really clear about what your needs are. Now, a lot of people will call me and they are just overwhelmed and they'll just be like, "I need a personal assistant." A lot of the times I push back on the personal assistant and I say, "Why do you need a personal assistant?" And they'll be like, "I just hate taking the phone calls. " I say, "Okay. Well, let's find someone to take your phone calls." Really, if you want a personal assistant because you are overwhelmed, think about the things that you hate doing that don't bring you joy, that don't fill you up, and let's give those to someone who's a better fit for those roles, that loves doing those things. Usually, it starts with a conversation about what the pain point is and what people really need, who they already have in their team, and what software they are using. We come up with a plan that would actually help them get what they want. That's kind of my goal. It maybe me, it may not be me, but my goal because I come from the property management world is just to prevent burnout from whoever's calling me. Whatever that looks like. Jason: Yeah, so you're helping them a little bit "KonMari" their time, right? Gwenn: Yes. Jason: And you we're talking about that before. Gwenn: Oh my gosh. Well, I love that. Maybe I should use that, but you have so many things that you have to do. Some people are coaches and that's really important to them, their property managers, and their families. Your time and attention are two of your most important resources and everyone on your team needs you to be using those wisely if you're the one steering the boat. Jason: Yeah. I'm a big fan or proponent of energy management over time management... Gwenn: Yes. Jason: ...and really identifying what energies you as an entrepreneur versus what drains you because we really afford doing the things that energizes us, we have an endless amount of energy. Like our life and our businesses fills us but if we are doing things that drain us, burnout sets in and it's inevitable, it becomes really difficult. I think it's really important for people to pay attention to their time and what really is giving them momentum. I tell property managers all the time, "Anything that's been sitting on your to-do list for more than a few weeks, you're probably not the person that should be doing it. Let's be honest." Gwenn: Right. Absolutely. There are people like, you and I we are just talking about how our personalities are different. Find someone who you like working with. Who you enjoy spending time with because it isn't actually an employee essentially just living far away that compliments you and can do the things that you struggle doing. Our role is to help people do that and we also train them on the first day so I have very high anxiety. I take care of things that make me anxious. I always go over the four ways people can die in property management on the first day, carbon monoxide poisoning, natural gas explosion, fire, and a technician being mistaken as an intruder and getting shot, and the importance of asking permission to enter. Those are four things we go over, which is really funny because when we turn over the training to the client, my assistant will always be like, "So, what did you learn in training?" And they're like, "How not to die in property management." The clients are like, "What?" I mean, I told them that we were going to talk about that with the agents but people forget and they're caught off guard. Jason: Four ways to die. Gwenn: Four ways to die, but those are really, really important and it really does happen. And our industry, there's been a number of deaths that we're all aware of, and so it's really important whether you're going to hire someone remotely or not to really discuss what bad things can happen, and how to make sure they don't happen in on-boarding training. The other thing we cover is Fair Housing and American Disabilities Act. That really should be trained every year if that's not on people's schedules for training. Domestically, I don't do this with the remotes, but domestically at our property management company, the other one is sexual harassment prevention training. We have a 70-year-old sales guy and then we have a 21-year-old front office lady. When you have multi-generational employees especially what they think is appropriate is totally different. It's important to discuss that because people aren't trying to be jerks, and they're not trying to be bad people, and they're not trying to offend anyone, it's just that what was totally appropriate in 1950 to talk about in the workplace is different. Also, on the 21-year-old side. I mean, 21-year-old sometimes think everyone's their best friend and they're hanging out at the bar and it's not true. Having that conversation at the beginning of a relationship with any employee is important. Jason: Okay. Fair Housing and Disabilities Act, sexual harassment training, and four ways to die in property management. Gwenn: Yeah. If you're going to be using webcam, here's another thing. I did have a client who thought that it's totally appropriate to train his new employee without any clothes on, so a word to the wise, keep your clothes on if you are going to be training somebody. People, sometimes just don't know, they just don't know. I'm sure it was hot, it was summer, maybe went out to the pool and came back. It was really not okay. It's another thing to keep in mind. Jason: Policies improve overtime. You know there's something interesting if my webcam policies say, "Don't be naked." It doesn't say that yet. We haven't had that come up yet, but if it does happen, we'll definitely have that in. Gwenn: Yeah. Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: I mean, I had no idea that's going to be an issue but... Jason: Right. You never know until it happens. I think that's how all of the property management contracts evolved over time. Like, "Oh, this one's a weird new situation. Let's avoid that in the future and write that into our contract." Gwenn: Right. Jason: Okay. Somebody comes to you, you start them with some of these things, how are you vetting these Mexican employees, these team members? What are some of the things you go through to ensure that you're getting a good match, you're finding somebody who's really a good fit for a position? Help those that are listening feel safer using Anequim to find them a team member. Gwenn: Sure. The first thing is that they have to fill out an application and upload a video of themselves speaking in English about their hobbies. You find out a lot about people when they think it's appropriate in a video to say about their hobbies and how good their English level is. It also demonstrates that they have some technological ability because they have to upload a video. Jason: Right. Gwenn: We get rid of a lot of applicants right there. If they make it through those two steps, then we have them take a personality test. We use the Culture Index, and the Culture Index indicates whether people have detail orientation or not. Generally speaking, unless I'm hiring for marketing position or outside sales or something, we are going to need detail orientation. We look for that. There are few personality types that we just don't hire at all and we also have a logic-emotional continuum. Anyone who's really low on logic also not pass to the next level. After that if the make it there then they do an initial interview and it's a pretty tough interview. Ensures they have the qualifications and the seriousness that we are looking for. Generally, the pool of candidates that we are looking for have worked previously for a large corporation. So, in the towns where we primarily source our candidates, they work for Nissan or GE or Hewlett-Packard or TATA Consulting, and there's some really big names where they've already one through a lot of the training that you wouldn't need to train a brand new person on. But they've already been through it so they know how to talk on the phone, they know how to deal with conflict in a professional manner, and they know how to write an email. We do benefit from all that corporate training many of our folks have already been through. Jason: Okay. Gwenn: If they make it through the interview then we are going to start calling their references and just make sure those show up well. After that, our clients, if they've made it through all the interviews, we've decided this person is worth this amount of money. We have a paying scale based on education level, work experience and we know what kind of job they would fit into then we match them with our clients we have who are looking. The clients get to look at three different candidates, and see if this is a cultural fit for them and if this is someone that's going to work on their team, and that they're going to feel comfortable with on a day to day basis. We always do the interviews in threes. Hopefully, we do our job well enough on the first three know exactly who we want, but if you want to do another round, our job is to make sure people are happy with their candidates. The one negative about working in Mexico—and this is going to be with a lot of the country that you would source from—background checks, it's not the same, there's no government database and even if there was it probably won't be accurate in the way that you and I would expect, so there's no background check policy or way to even do that if you wanted to. We rely a lot on internal references and those networks or people want to give us their best friend and then they internally hold them accountable as well. Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: We haven't had any issues with it, but I would suggest with anyone working remotely, you manage your privileges and your software. Rent Manager allows me to obscure social security numbers, credit card numbers, and we have a policy that nobody working from home has access to those, and you have to be in the office if you are going to be taking credit cards or looking at social security numbers. If you have good tight privileges, you don't really have much to worry about by hiring someone remote, and it's just a good policy anyway. Jason: Yeah. Alright. That is kind of the match making process. Gwen: Mmm-hmm. Jason: Then once they pick a candidate, what's the transition like this on the onboarding sort of process and how far does Anequim gets involved? Because I know some property managers are not probably used to having a virtual team member, they are probably going to make some mistakes, they might just say, "Hey, this virtual stuff doesn't work. I don't get it." How do you ensure that the transition is going to be healthy? Gwenn: First of all, we try to get a good plan on before we even get to that place. We have documents on ideal first two weeks of training and talk to them about what that process looks like, talk to them about technology, what kind of phones do you use. We recommend that you listen to calls if you're going to have someone who's the face of your company, and you're not going to be able to overhear them when you walk in the office. Here's a form on monitoring calls and here's the portal so you can see their screenshot and their keystrokes. We try to do all of that before the commitment takes place. Talk about what that looks like, so that when the commitment like, "Yes. I want to move forward," happens they've seen in their minds, "I kind of have an idea what this looks like." We don't want for either the client or the agent to get to a place where it's the first day and they just look at each other in webcam and go, "Okay, what do I do now?" We try to avoid that situation as much as possible, which is why we're not trying to hard sell anyone. We want someone to be committed to the process and feel somewhat confident. Obviously, you're going to be a little bit nervous if you've never done this before, but that's why we are here to hold your hand, and give you that documentation and talk you through it so that you feel more confident before it actually happens. But then, on the handover meeting you're going to get all of them setup on their computers. You're going to get them to know everybody on your office, taking the laptop around and you're going to say, "Tell us something that people don't know about you." Or, "What are you grateful for today?" You know, a little icebreaker and then you'll get into the tasks. The great thing about working with Mexico is that they're on your time zone. Do you have to be perfect? Do you have to have the perfect documentation? No. Because like any other employee that you hire, you can just say, "Okay. I'm going to show you how to do this." They know it should be written down but it's not, "But you're going to help me write it down because I never had time to do this before. Here's the software where were writing it down. Here's how you're going to get a screenshot using Snagit. I'm going to video record myself going through this process and then make it a pretty process for me and then when it's done and it's all pretty, then you're going to do it." That's possible. Some people are further along in their processes and procedures than others, but by no means you have to have things perfect to move forward to the remote assistance. Jason: Yeah. The Myers-Briggs people with Js a lot of times get really caught up to being perfect before they move forward. They're like, " I have to have every process documented before I could grow my business." Gwenn: No, that's not the real world. I would say progress not perfection, right? I mean, you have to move forward. I'm reading this great book called the Billionaire Coach or the Trillionaire Coach, I think is what's it called. It's really good. It's on my audible right now. But the guy is like, "Okay. Once you have things down, you have to go, and you have to go fast." I think that sometimes the people who are really into perfection lose sight of go, go fast, so it's always that balancing act. If you're not good at processes and procedures then hire someone to help you do that and just show them on in a video and say, " Okay, for the next three hours you're going to write this down. Okay? Then I'll check in on you in three hours and see how you're doing." Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: That's totally okay. Jason: I like that. Progress over perfection, so what I teach clients is, "Done is better than perfect." It's very similar. Gwenn: It is. Jason: Done is better than perfect. Get it done, you can always redo it later. You can make it better the second time around but having something is better than not having it. The other thing that I'll throw out there, sometimes is that perfect businesses are out of business. So, don't try to make everything so perfect before you move forward. It's the businesses that fail, that make mistakes, that rapidly prototype, that try stuff out and see what doesn't work, they're the ones that move forward faster. Gwenn: And when you have that hard day where things really did fall apart then just go back to the values. Like, "Okay, it fell apart, but I'm suring it up as a value, as a person with values. So, what does that look like?" If you have your values strong and you're connected to them then when you mess up, if you just go back to that, you'll be fine. Jason: Right. Gwenn: That's how I look at it at least. Jason: That's the foundation. Gwenn: Yeah. Jason: A really strong why and set of values for the business. That's what creates culture in a company. Well, cool. What are some of the questions that property managers ask you that I haven't asked yet? Some of the frequently asked questions, concerns, considerations. Gwenn: The main thing is the role. People are just like, "Okay, everyone's doing VA and I know I should be doing it because I'm just supposed to be more profitable than I am right now, but where the heck do I get started?" Usually, when people ask that, I just tell them because we've been doing this since 2008, how our company is organized because I do feel like we do remote labor as high of a level as you could. You might structure it slightly differently but just to give people an idea because the thing is in people's minds and eyes, they remember virtual assistance. They think, "I need my processes to be perfect. This is someone who can only do route activities, can't think outside the box." All of that is not true. These people from Mexico, can be, if we hire for it, highly educated. We even have some professors on the team. We have some attorneys on the team. Highly-educated people who most certainly are capable of thinking outside the box. Guadalajara, where we source a lot of the people, it's the tech capital of Mexico. When I go to the Christmas Party in Guadalajara, people are speaking Spanish, English, French, Portuguese. It's like an international gathering, like any European city that you'll be at or anything like that. Here's how we're structured. We have 1200 units that we manage. We have three customer service people residing in Mexico who take all the front line calls. We actually call them Solutions Agent instead of Customer Service Agents because they're job is to provide solutions. They don't just read from a script, but they can also talk to tenants about their statement and what it means, what's this maintenance service issue, maintenance charge is for, and help people break a lease, give them information about breaking a lease, changing roommates, tell them if they could have a puppy or not. Actually solve problems that give solutions. They also take all the maintenances services issue and troubleshoot. The great thing is that you don't have a PhoneTree when you call into our office. You just get a person which is a really good customer service. Most property management that I call have a PhoneTree and then you still can't get a hold of everybody. Thinking about what the experiences of an owner calling your main line, and what that feels like, maybe important in many of the markets that people are in. Once someone takes their phone call, any elevated issues will go to the assistant property manager. Let's just take a simple thing, it's not even elevated but like a service issue. We'll go from customer service agent, we'll take everything from the service issue then it goes to what we call the virgin list, the assistant property manager review that—and we have three of those, by the way, one for each property manager has an assistant who's a true assistant—and they look at all the service issues that come in and decide whether our internal maintenance team can handle it or if it needs to go into a vendor. If it needs to go to a vendor then they're in charge of putting a budget on it, and based on the contract, whatever the owner wants, and then signing it to a vendor and then following up on that. If it goes to our internal team, then another woman in Mexico who's the Maintenance Dispatcher decide whose list it goes on out of the 15 maintenance people that we have. Her job is to manage those guys' schedules and make sure they're busy. Make sure they have work and make sure that they're going to a place that makes sense. Then other people that we have is accounting. We have two people in accounting and collections. They don't just do accounting but they're also are like, "Why is this maintenance guy going to store three times in a day?" He's like actually analyzing the invoices and saying, "This price doesn't make any sense." We have two people there. We have Applications Underwriter who does the applications in Mexico as well and a marketing person in Mexico. I feel like I'm forgetting somebody. I think that's it. Jason: Anything on the sales BDM side? Gwenn: No. My market, we get a lot of business just coming in the door so we don't have a BDM. We have some sales people that are on a commission basis but we don't have an official BDM role. We actually decided not to get one this year which is weird because sales always pay for itself, but when we look at the numbers in our market, it didn't make sense to get someone at that price point. Instead we're buying a company in another market and growing that way, but that deal's not totally done yet. Jason: Right. Gwenn: Those are the people that we have in Mexico. Internally, we have a front office lady, a leasing agent, operations manager, a maintenance manager, and right now, we only have two property managers. And then my husband runs the company and puts his finger in everything. That's pretty lean for 1200 units, it's pretty a lean shop. Jason: Yeah, that's really lean. Then you have a pretty decent process documentation, I would imagine as well. Gwenn: We use SweetProcess, where we house our processes and procedures and we're kind of obsessed with it. We use EOS so we're using the traction book. We've been doing that for 2 ½ years now and love it. That's how we stay organized and set our goals and priorities and make sure that we don't get lost in the day to day task and know where we're going on a daily basis. Jason: Yeah. I think every business, eventually, as they evolve, they need a planning system which you had mentioned EOS. Every business also needs a process system, some system for documenting process and leveraging these processes. We use Process Tree internally, which works out really well. Gwenn: And I like Process Tree, but it's more expensive than SweetProcess. It depends on what your needs are, but I would recommend looking at both and determining what's better for your organization. But yeah, I like both those systems a lot. Jason: Every business needs some sort of communication system in the business as well. As a team, we use Basecamp as our communication platform to communicate internally, and then you need a client supporting communication system. A lot of people are using Help Scout or Intercom, or one of these knowledge based support systems. There's probably other systems. I'm forgetting off the top of my head, but business really need all these different systems in place. Once you have these systems in place, it facilitates and enables your team to really do well and communicate and understand where the company is headed and get in alignment with your vision and your goals. It's a big deal. Gwenn: Yes. There's a lot to take on, but again, people don't have to be perfect. Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: Because when you say that it's like, "Oh my god, that's so overwhelming." But it doesn't have to. Jason: One thing at a time. Yeah. Gwenn: One thing at a time, Yeah. Jason: Cool. Cool. Gwenn: That's why I like EOS though because it takes that overwhelming. The, "Oh my god we have 10 million things we have to do this year," and it forces you to say, "Okay. How much energy do we really have and what are the priorities out of my list of million things that I'm going to do in these three months?" It actually helps you get more of that done than you would if you just look at the long list. Jason: Yeah. It has an etymology that's very similar to a lot of business planning systems and most every business planning system has annual objectives, quarterly objectives, monthly, and these things break down and the idea is, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." Gwenn: Right. Jason: It's like these elephants, you break them down in a 90 day, 30 days, and then even weekly commitments as a team. But a lot of business don't have any sort of planning system in place, so they're hitting zero objectives because they really don't really have any, and there's no clarity around it. They're just winging it and the entrepreneur's, they're crazy. Entrepreneurs come into the room and says changes every week, "Hey, guys. I got this great idea." And they lob a grenade in the middle of the room, pull the pin and lob this grenade and walk out. They're excited and pumped out and the team are like, "What are we going to do with this thing?" Having those systems in place can be really helpful especially if you have virtual team members because then it makes a lot of difference for everybody to be on the same page. Gwenn: People, historically, have thought like, "Oh, were going to do all these planning and then we'll tell them later what we planned." But I recommend having the virtual team members in on all of those meetings. Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: Here's one tip that has really helped us. We have the three customer service agents. Every morning at 10 o'clock they meet with the Operations Manager and just say, "Oh, this person is out of the office today. They have a dentist appointment at 2:00 PM and it's whoever's birthday. Our swing thought for the day is people can hear you smile. In the call monitoring, I've noticed that there's not been so much smiling on there, so let's keep that in mind for today. Today's contest for online reviews, we're still giving $50 certificates to anyone who gets an online review." Whatever you have going on and just touching base for 10 minutes a day makes all the difference for someone whose remote. When you have your weekly EOS meeting, include them and what you're talking about. If they feel included in the process and in your mission, people don't leave. We've had the same employees at Wistar Group for six, eight, I think, is it nine years. I think we have two employees who've been with us for nine years. Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: That's the key to getting the virtual or the remote members totally immersed in your culture. Jason: Yeah. They need to be a part of it, ironically, right? Gwenn: Absolutely. Jason: Yeah. I'm a big proponent of making sure that your team members are involved in outcomes instead of being micromanaged. Give them outcomes and let them innovate and you'll be surprised with what they can come up with. It might not be the way you would do it, it might be better. A lot of times, as entrepreneurs, we think we have it all figured out. We need to tell our team members, "Here are the steps. Do this exactly this way." When it comes to goal setting, goals are outcomes. Assign an outcome to somebody, let them own it, and I think you'll be surprised at the results they can create. Getting your team all involved in it, some of those meetings have been really eye opening for me because I had my set of ideas. I thought this is how the whole world looks and then I went around and asked my team members, "Here's this outcome. What ideas you guys have that can do it?" My graphic designer has a totally different idea than I would have. My head of fulfillment has totally different ideas than I would have. They bring this perspective and all these ideas were really good. I'm like, "Yes. We should do that, maybe not that, that one's great." I think you don't want to be the emperor with no clothes running a company. That's how you do that, is by allowing your team members to have a voice and be involved in the process. Gwenn: I love that. Actually, we teach a version of that on the first day of training. Its form this article that you can get on the internet called Who's Got the Monkey. Jason: Okay. Gwen: It's the number one reprinted article from the Harvard Business Review of all time. I only came across it out of massive failure years ago. Where I took my team members out to lunch and I thought they would tell me how much they love their job and they were like, "No! We don't love it. You guys never listen to us." I was like, "What?" They're like, "Yeah. We don't even bring up ideas to you anymore because you are never going to listen to them anyway." I was like, "Oh my god. This is terrible." I found the article on the internet and we came and have a change management process. We asked our team members to own their ideas. The first steps are people come to meeting and say, "Hey, not all ideas are good ideas, but here's my idea." That allows people to save face and be vulnerable and say what they're afraid to say in the meeting. Then they have to bring everything to the meeting—the subsequent meetings—to move the idea forward... Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: ...so that the decision maker can just say yay or nay. Sometimes, there's a little homework on the decision maker's part, but we try to make it as minimal as possible. I take it from sale, in sales people are always eternally optimistic and they think everything's going to close. My way of determining if it's going to actually close or not is, "Is your name on the prospect's calendar for another meeting? If it's not, then your deal is dead." Just black and white. Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: If it's not there, you can revive it, but you better get a meeting out there. Same thing with ideas, "If your name in this meeting is not on anyone else's calendar, your idea's dead." Just know that because when people feel badly about their job, when they get vulnerable, they say it and their manager is like, "Oh, that's a great idea," and then they wait three months and nothing happens to it, that really hurts morale. Giving them the honest, "Hey, it's not moving forward if there's not a meeting" Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: And having them own that helps give them agency over their idea. Jason: Yeah, I love it. Cool. Let's wrap this up, Gwenn. I think this has been really helpful. I think we talked about some really cool ideas. I think, hopefully, some listeners are a little bit more open to having some team members that are not sitting in their physical office. How can people get in touch with you if they are interested in learning more? Gwenn: Well, I'm on Facebook. If you want to send me a message at Gwenn W. Aspen, I'd love to meet you there. Additionally, we have a website anequim.net and you can fill out a form, we'll get right back to you there, or you can email me at gaspen@anequim.net. But we love to help people, and like I said, if you just want to bounce ideas off whether this is a good idea or not, we can talk about your specific situation. Jason: Awesome. Gwenn, thank you so much for coming into this show. Gwenn: Thank you, Jason. It's been so fun. I really appreciate you having me. Jason: Alright. We'll let you go now. Alright. Bye, Gwenn. Gwenn: Bye. Jason: So, there you have it. Check them out at anequim.net. For those that are listening for the first time or checking us out, we really appreciate you subscribing. If you're listening on YouTube or watching on YouTube or listening on iTunes, we would appreciate—if you are on iTunes—you give us your feedback. We would love to hear your real and raw feedback. 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