DGS 266: Automated Workflows in Property Management

As business owners, we often mistakenly assume that micromanaging our teams will make them more effective and efficient.

In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert, Jason Hull sits down with award-winning real estate coach and industry influencer, Jo Oliveri to discuss how implementing automated workflows can revolutionize your property management business.

You’ll Learn

[03:14] USA vs Australia for property management

[07:03] Property management is stuck in the past

[17:38] What is automation?

[21:11] The importance of having good policy

[31:24] Why your business needs a set of values

[40:23] Implementing automated workflows and processes

Tweetables

“In some respects, we’re struggling as an industry to change our mindset and have a fear of moving forward.”

“When we use something manual, it’s not logical. It becomes part of what a person feels like doing at that time.”

“If you don’t have your business founded on a very strong policy, then you’re going to struggle when things go wrong.”

“Out of policy becomes the promise that we can make, and we know that we can deliver on it.”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

TalkRoute Referral Link

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jo: They say every leader is present even when they’re not present. So you need to have that. And the only way to have it in property management is through your automated workflows that are built upon the logic that you created through your process. 

[00:00:18] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives. And you are interested in growing in business and life, and you’re open to doing things a bit differently than you are a DoorGrow property manager.

[00:00:38] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it. You think they’re crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust, gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.

[00:00:59] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, founder and CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull.

[00:01:18] Now let’s get into the show. And my lovely guest today is Jo Oliveri. Welcome, Jo. 

[00:01:25] Jo: Hello, Jason. How are you? 

[00:01:28] Jason: Good. What time is it over there right now? 

[00:01:30] Jo: I think it’s about 7am in the morning. So we’re a little ahead of you. It’s Wednesday. We’re in the future here. 

[00:01:37] Jason: Yeah you’re in the future. How’s the future look?

[00:01:39] Jo: The future in Brisbane is actually very bleak. It’s a very wet day, which is unusual for Brisbane, but we need the rain so. 

[00:01:46] Jason: Got it. Well, we’re going to be chatting a little bit about about automation, about automating your team and processes a bit, but why don’t you give people a little bit of background on yourself?

[00:02:01] And how you kind of got into this. 

[00:02:04] Jo: Yeah. Okay. Well, I’ve been around the industry in property management, I chose property management for 30 years, which seems like a long time when I say it, but I’ve been through the process of when they first introduced property management programs through to where we are today in technology.

[00:02:22] And I’ve worked as a property manager right through to being the kind of like the creator of property management for one of the big international franchise groups until I was ready to launch my own business 15 years ago as a property management business coach and consultant and yeah, just feel blessed to be doing what I do every day because it’s a great industry to be involved in. 

[00:02:49] Jason: Awesome. So where do we start?

[00:02:52] What do you think? 

[00:02:53] Jo: Oh, well it’s interesting when I say I started 30 years ago, I feel like we’re still back in, you know, what we were doing 30 years ago, in some respects we’re struggling as an industry to change our mindset and have a fear of moving forward. So it’s quite interesting.

[00:03:14] Jason: So. You’ve been back and forth between the United States and Australia involved in property management conferences, events. I’ve actually just for kicks been reading on my morning walks, the LPMA manuals or doc like books or whatever because I’m like, what do they got going on over there? And it seems like there are some notable differences.

[00:03:35] It seems it’s really interesting. I’m like, Oh, that’s really weird. Why did they do stuff that way over there? So, but what have you noticed between the two countries, like what’s kind of different in property management. 

[00:03:46] Jo: It’s an interesting question, because a lot of people think there is a big difference, but there’s really not a lot of difference.

[00:03:55] And I say that because I worked in the USA as vice president of a very large company over there in company management. 

[00:04:03] Jason: Yeah.

[00:04:04] Jo: And I really believe that in a lot of respects, the USA is way ahead of where we are here in Australia. But I think that probably the subtle difference is team structures.

[00:04:18] We seem to focus more on property managers doing everything over here. And when I say here, I’m in Australia at the moment. Whereas in the U. S. they like to have like the breakaway roles, I call them. You know, someone focused on maintenance, someone focused on leasing. And yeah, a little bit more task orientated in the U. S. 

[00:04:41] Jason: Got it. Okay. What I’ve noticed in my perception is that property management over there is almost always connected to a brokerage. That’s the perception. Is that accurate? Or is it often that there are property management businesses that do not do real estate? 

[00:05:00] Jo: Yes. I would say going back two decades, that was probably the case here.

[00:05:05] But we are seeing a lot more entrepreneurial type business owners who start up as property management companies and as they grow, then what they’re doing, they’re losing management’s to people selling. So as they grow, they’re now adding in you know, like a sales service, which obviously makes sense. So yeah it has changed in the way they’re doing it, but certainly when I started property management did belong to an brokerage. But you know, the, when I first started, I worked for a property management only company, which was very unusual back then. 

[00:05:45] Jason: Yeah. I was particularly surprised by the growth strategies that I was reading the book. To me, it felt like they were a bit, I don’t know, old school and I was like, man, why, but maybe there’s just a lot more opportunity in the U S. One of the things that we have a big opportunity here is there’s a lot of rental properties that are just not professionally managed.

[00:06:07] Whereas it sounds like there’s quite a high percentage are professionally managed in Australia. 

[00:06:12] Jo: Yeah, I would say, you know, in Australia, we don’t see the people who own big property portfolios, like personal property portfolios who become their own managers. So, you know, in the USA you see a lot of people who might own, you know, ten or more doors and they end up starting their own property management company, their own LLCs.

[00:06:35] We don’t see that In Australia you know, there’s not a lot of people in Australia compared to the U. S. that have vast property, you know, holdings. We see more of the mom and dad or the mom and pop, as you would say over there, type investors in Australia that, you know, own one, maybe two properties.

[00:06:57] So of course, most of those are managed through you know, a professional property management company. 

[00:07:03] Jason: Got it. Yeah. Well, cool. Let’s talk a little bit about the topic at hand. So we’re going to talk about automated workflows in property management. And I did a webinar in the past talking about three levels of process documentation or of a process system in a property management business.

[00:07:21] And my level one was just documentation. It was like google docs or something like that. Level two was checklist It was like Process St. or LeadSimple or some of these kind of tools and then level three was something like DoorGrow flow or Flussos which is It’s basically the same thing. It’s just Flussos, which is visual workflow. And we use that system and we’ve upgraded from checklist, which I’ve had a huge level, right?

[00:07:54] First level is kind of like a Google, intranet back in the day when sites and then basically Google docs pretty much. And then and then we had some processes like in Basecamp and eventually we upgraded to Process St. And had that, and that was nice. I liked the software, but I had to do everything.

[00:08:14] Like I had to always create the processes. Nobody else understood how the process were created, especially if they were complicated and now using visual workflow and using Flussos, it’s been very intuitive. I don’t have to create the processes. My team members all can figure it out and it’s really like I jokingly say it’s like Visio or flowchart software and something like Process St., like had a baby.

[00:08:41] And so it really incorporates the best pieces of checklist and of documentation, but with visual workflow and it starts as a visual workflow, which is how everybody generally wants to create processes from the beginning. It’s how we think process wise is like we create the boxes with the lines connecting things.

[00:09:00] And so I found it to be very intuitive. So what have you noticed in companies in the U. S. and in Australia with their current process system and challenges that they’re experiencing and then I’m curious about the contrast when they’re switching to something like visual workflow. 

[00:09:18] Jo: Yes. Yeah. And you know, there’s a massive difference, but I think as a whole, the industry is still a little bit stuck in the old kind of like manual system. Whereas with automated workflow like DoorGrow Flow or Flussos, which, you know, is one in the same thing and it is the best system for property management, you create the logic in everything that we do. You know, when we use something manual, it’s not logical.

[00:09:46] It becomes part of what a person feels like doing at that time, or, you know, they might be focused on a task because someone is screaming the loudest to get something done. So, as a result, We’re not working or focused working on the items within a task that we need to be working on at any given time.

[00:10:08] So, you know, like the other thing with automated workflows is we see 24, 7, 365, all the tasks that we need to focus on exactly when we need to focus on. Whereas when you’ve got those paper checklists or even online checklists, we can move things around. You know, we can say, I don’t feel like working on this at the moment. I’m going to go to this part of the flow. I’m going to look at that and your flow becomes illogical. Yes. So it’s you know, it’s interesting, the mindset that we’re dealing with at the moment in the industry, because people like to do what they want to do. And they kind of like wanting to step past other steps because they don’t like doing certain steps.

[00:10:52] And a lot of the other workflow programs, you know, they allow people to bypass certain steps. And if you’re doing that, it’s not a proper workflow program. So, I think the industry is just struggling with understanding when they do a task, there is a lot of elements, a lot of actions and steps within every task.

[00:11:15] And now we’re seeing it. In front of us and people think, “I don’t want to do that” or “I never do that,” hence why we’ve had problems in the past 

[00:11:24] Jason: Yeah, so steps get skipped, you know a lot of times in checklist systems or just project management type of systems where it’s check boxes processes like the other challenges with those systems, it’s always very linear it’s like step one step two step three, but a lot of processes are more like: Step one, make a decision and based on the decision, go different ways and then maybe even split. So concurrently, one team is working on this and another person’s working on this at the same time for efficiency is how we work in real life.

[00:11:58] But in the linear checklist, we’re waiting until somebody does the first steps and then it gets moves on to the next person. Or you have two people trying to attack the same checklist at the same time. So it just gets really messy. Using checklist and we would run into those issues, so then I had to create controls in my system so that my team would not skip steps.

[00:12:18] So then they had to do things. And so then you have to create logic and then you have to make things show or hide based on whether it clicked. And like, there’s all these, and so I had to get really nerdy to make things work really well in a checklist system. And it’s still, once it got that complicated, if anything broke or was unclear, or somebody needed to alter the process.

[00:12:39] I was the only person that could do it. I was the only person that understood what the process was supposed to be doing, because I built it. And if the process is old enough, I might even forget why I was doing things a certain way. So then I have to go back and kind of figure out, what was I trying to create?

[00:12:57] Unless I actually created a visual map, or, you know, Visual flow chart in like Lucidchart or Visio or something and did that. And so I’ve loved being in Flussos. I love being able to even just create visual flows, and even if I’m not going to use them as a process, just creating the map. And i’ve mapped out my different growth engines for my business so I can pull it up and say, “this is how we get a customer. Here’s what we do. Here’s the steps. Here’s one of our engines Here’s another growth engine how we get customers” and so i’ve used it for other things as well because creating visual flows and everybody being able to see it and understand it creates a lot of clarity. And Sarah, my wife, she honestly believes technology is out to get her.

[00:13:44] I don’t know if there’s anybody else listening to this podcast that like. She thinks technology is like trying to cause problems for her. It’s confirmation bias, I’m sure. She’s like, “see, look at this! The wifi is not working on my computer or this is not happening. And it’s like being mean to me.”

[00:13:57] But she loves working inside of Flussos, like she loves being able to just drag and drop, move stuff around. She’s our operator. She messes with all the processes, even though she’s not generally fond of technology. That says a lot because the most difficult factor I’ve noticed when trying to implement or roll out new tools and things in our business or in any business with clients is adoption. Like it’s really difficult to get people to adopt new tech unless it’s really easy to use and really intuitive. And so that’s one of the things i’ve really noticed is it’s taken the burden off my shoulders. I create no processes. I don’t do it! And I just tell my team members. They’re like, “Hey, we noticed this. We need to change something”. And I’m like, “cool, update the process.” And they just do it. I don’t have to be involved anymore, which is taking a big load off of my shoulders where I used to kind of think maybe I’m the smartest guy in the room and I’m the only guy that can do process, which is not the case.

[00:14:54] I’m just nerdier than most of the people on my team, but having a tool where everybody else can create it makes it a lot easier and it’s taken a big, big weight off my shoulders and it gives me that safety and certainty or security that I know because we have all of our processes in there, that if I lose somebody, we can put somebody in place right away, change the role of that person and they can start to use that process and just go through it and do it. And so it creates a lot of safety because we’ve had things like we’ve had team members like go on maternity leave. We have team members come back from maternity leave and then quit right away, you know and stuff like this and so it’s nice to be able to have anybody on the team like be able to step in and just follow the flow and go through that and then while going through the flow they can see where they are In the process.

[00:15:44] Jo: Yeah exactly. And, you know, like team members don’t just leave, they could be away for the day. And if they’re away for the day in property management, we’ve got timelines on everything and you create those timelines within Flussos or DoorGrow Flow. You put the timeline on when that particular action or step should be completed.

[00:16:05] So, so what it means is it gives the business owner the opportunity to reassign that particular act or step to someone else, always completing the task within the given timeline and delivering on the promise that you made to your clients. There’s no excuses of, “I’m sorry, Jo wasn’t in this afternoon, so we didn’t get it done.”

[00:16:28] You know? The company has a responsibility and an obligation to the clients to deliver on task as and when due, not on a person, on the company. So, yeah, you know, like when we look at checklists, I like to think of them as, you know, the old school signs and guardrails on the road, whereas our automation is like the magnificent satellite navigation that we have now.

[00:16:54] It just guides you. It takes you there in the most you know, fastest, efficient way that you can get there. It gives you the opportunity as your business grows and you restructure roles that you can split those tasks and assign it to the relevant person. So there’s no impact on growth as you scale up and grow the business.

[00:17:17] It’s just, it’s the most logical thing for property management because what we do in property management is built on tasks. It’s just task after task. So, you know, to me, it’s the industry that, you know, really should have automated workflows. That’s for sure. 

[00:17:36] Jason: And by automation, there’s a lot of buzzwords around this right now.

[00:17:39] A lot of people think automation means that a robot’s doing all the work. And so, but there’s I think what we’re talking about here is automating or making it so that your team members can follow the processes. And so the machine of the business becomes automated so that the team are more automated instead of doing it manually as you were talking about before. There’s this myth kind of in the industry. There’s maybe two myths. One I call the process myth. I’ve noticed this that a lot of businesses that are maybe You know 200 door +, they a lot of times fall prey to this myth that it doesn’t matter what their team looks like, they can just go get the cheapest, most mediocre team members as long as they’re dumb enough to follow a process, and I feel like that’s not accurate like and so there’s this process myth.

[00:18:31] They think “I just need better processes,” and a lot of times when i’ve dug into their businesses, I’ve also noticed though that companies that have amazing people and have really good teams, even if they have a lack of processes, there are processes in their heads and they care enough to make sure it’s working And things work and the business works well, but i’ve yet to see businesses Is that are able to grow quickly, have a lot of success that overly micromanage and create endless amounts of processes and try to hire low dollar wage people to just do everything.

[00:19:06] And the challenge there is that they still have to be the thinker and decision maker in a lot of instances. And so how do you look at processes versus humans making decisions? And so where’s the decision making come in where you need somebody to think versus just follow a to do list and do tasks and be told what to do?

[00:19:30] Jo: Yeah, well, to be able to make decisions, you have to have process because process is built on policy. So policy creates the protocol where you can make decisions. And there are things that come from left field every day in property management. And if you don’t have a protocol that says “if this, then that,” then people make decisions based on their own knowledge or. Perhaps fear of the situation that they’re involved in and so potentially wrong decisions are made, delays are created, and so risk and mitigation is a result of that and liability. So if you don’t have your business founded on a very strong policy, then you’re going to struggle when things go wrong.

[00:20:16] You’ll struggle with growth because you start to become very reactive to everything that’s going on. And when you’ve got policy, it provides that platform for being proactive in everything you do. There is, you know, deliberation and determination in every element of your business. And it removes that element of desperation that we see so many companies built upon.

[00:20:42] You know, they feel losing a key member of staff. And I think if ever you’ve got that fear, then your business is not strong. You should never fear losing staff because the only constant in a business is the business owner. Everyone else will come and go. So if you fear losing any particular staff member, it means that you’re not in control of your business.

[00:21:05] Jason: It’s job security for them, but it creates risk for you. Exactly. Exactly. Could you explain, you’ve spoken on this at one of our events and I thought it was really interesting, the difference between landlord tenant law and policy procedures process, like that sort of idea because I think a lot of property managers are like, “well, there’s the law,” but that’s not always clear, right? 

[00:21:30] Jo: The law is created, to me, by lawyers and therefore it’s not black and white. It’s gray So we have to interpret what the law says and there is some very strong guidelines in law as in, you know timelines for you know, issuing a breach or you know, notice to quit or anything like that.

[00:21:51] So there is very strong timelines, but there’s other things that we have to interpret legislation into our policy. And then when we’ve got policy, we can then create process and protocol should something happen. So an example of that is, you know, if we issue a pay or quit, and the owner is saying no, you know, like, “I don’t want you to give that notice to my tenant. I want to give them a little bit of time to, you know, pay the rent.” And then we’re outside the guidelines of law. Then, you know, what have we got written into our policy should an owner say, “don’t give my tenants you know, notice to pay or quit,” or should an owner be saying, “no, I’m not going to do that maintenance on my property” when the tenancy agreement states that maintenance has to be done as does the management agreement.

[00:22:44] So, you know, it’s understanding all those things that do happen in property management or, you know, one that happens all the time is when managers do so much work on securing an applicant that should be approved for a property. A lot of work goes into that, showing the property, advertising the property, processing the application. And then we’ve got someone who is, you know, the star applicant and we can’t get a hold of the owner. And what happens is property managers delay the process out of fear of making a decision because they can’t get a hold of the owner, and then they lose that applicant. Now, you know, that’s cost the company a lot of money and the owner has got extended periods of vacancy, whereas we should have a protocol in place that in the event that we can’t contact the owner, we’ve had the discussion, you know, when the property is, knowing that it’s going vacant to say, “if we can’t contact you when we’ve got a an applicant that suits the criteria within that 24 hours, we will make a decision on your behalf because we know what you’re looking for.” But fear prevents people from making decisions.

[00:24:02] And we shouldn’t be like that. And the only reason why we’re like that is because we don’t have a strong policy. So, you know, don’t build your business on legislation. You have to interpret that legislation into your policy and what you do to manage. That, you know, legislation. 

[00:24:24] Jason: So it seems like there’s kind of a process here, right?

[00:24:27] So first people know and understand the legislation. They need to be clear on this and they need to be up and current on this. And then based on this legislation, they need to create rules internally for how we are going to go about doing business, how we’re going to do things and we have these different policies in the business of how we’re going to interpret the law or the legislation. Once we have these policies then we can start to create process around this so that we can follow our policies and achieve the good or desired outcomes that we’re aiming for. Does this sound accurate? 

[00:25:02] Jo: Absolutely spot on. Yes. Okay, exactly. Yes, right.

[00:25:06] Jason: So what are some things that you notice, because you help a lot of business owners get their processes dialed in get some of these visual workflows mapped out, what’s lacking a lot of times in their thinking about how to build a really good process? One of the things that really stood out to me in one of the previous calls as an example was setting expectations. Just setting expectations reduces a lot of extra unnecessary work, like, “Hey, tenant, we will let you know in a day that about this,” instead of them following up multiple times asking you and then multiple phone calls and emails and stuff like this. And so just communicating clearly expectations of when you’re going to communicate again seems like a really simple addition to a lot of processes that reduces a lot of extra unnecessary work and interruptions. 

[00:25:55] Jo: Yeah. No, there again, you’ve got a business that will be proactive and not have that, you know, like, “Oh my goodness, what do we do now? This happened, the tenant won’t talk to us,” or “the tenants changed the locks at the property,” or, you know, “we can’t get a hold of the owner to get this decision.”

[00:26:12] So everything becomes reactive and the focus and the energy goes into whatever that situation is. And meanwhile, we’ve got other things that are cropping up in the business that are also going to just ignite. And then they’ll take our attention. So, you know, we’ve got this constant hopping from one drama to another because we don’t have the proper policy in place.

[00:26:35] And when we say that, you know, like an automated workflow is logical. Well, logic is built on reality. You know, you can’t have something that’s logical if it’s not created out of reality in the first place. And the reality becomes the policy that you create for your company. So I would say a lot of companies actually lack that foundation of policy.

[00:27:00] It’s all very much hearsay. When you talk to the teams, and I work with a lot of teams, and what I like to do is talk to each team member one on one and, you know, ask them, in the event of this, what do you do? How do you do this? And very rarely do I ever get the same response from, you know, the team, they’re all based on their own experience, their own need to be valued. And the way people are valued is very personal. Whereas if you create your policy, then we create how people value what you do as well. So it’s not all, you know, like, “I like this to make me feel good.” You know, we do get the thank yous from the clients because we deliver on the promises we make because out of policy becomes the promise that we can make, and we know that we can deliver on it. And hence that’s the expectation. 

[00:28:00] Jason: So I’ve noticed one of the things I’ve noticed in some businesses, it sounds like there’s kind of this issue of like, you ever played the telephone game? Where like you say something to somebody and they say it and then by the end they reveal what they think the person at the end that the beginning said and it’s like totally off, right? And so it gets ridiculous because they’re just passing it along and this hearsay as you mentioned, this is often how sort of the policies in a business kind of get passed around or passed on like somebody trains somebody else, somebody brings them in, they’re asking questions.

[00:28:33] “Hey, susie. What are we do in this?” 

[00:28:35] “Oh, I just kind of do this,” and so then we create this whole nebulous, cloudy, fuzzy, weird thing where everybody’s kind of making decisions. And the reason why is “Susie told me, like when I first got hired because she was impatient and I was annoying her that to do it this way, and I’ve been doing it that way ever since, and that’s what I’ve been telling everybody else that I’ve been talking to is how we do it.” because it’s not defined. So. That’s interesting. So a lot of businesses they might have processes. I mean, almost every property management business probably has some process defined, if not, you are probably very new, but a lot of them are lacking policy being documented.

[00:29:13] Jo: Yeah. Yeah. You know, a lot of them when they create the process, it’s based upon, you know, what the team feel is right to, and you quite often hear property managers saying, “I never do that,” or you know, “I do it this way and I’ve always done it that way, and I’ll continue to do it that way because I feel comfortable.”

[00:29:31] Jason: “Manuel says this, but that seems mean or uncomfortable for me. So I’ve found a better way of doing it.” 

[00:29:39] Jo: Exactly. And “all my clients would never like it if I did that.” Well, you know, when you hear that conversation, it’s like, you’ve got a problem in your business because your business is not grounded in its policy.

[00:29:52] So it’s all made up as they go along. That’s where we start to have that desperation. We don’t have a finger on the pulse of that business. We don’t know what’s going on because your team is doing things the way they want to do it. And they’re telling you what you want to hear. So you’re hearing, “Oh, everything’s great.”

[00:30:12] And then all of a sudden that team member is, you know, really struggling and with not coping and they leave, and we find an enormous amount of unfinished tasks of dissatisfied clients of liability sitting there. 

[00:30:29] Jason: From my experience, every team member that I had that left that I thought I would just probably die if I lost them.

[00:30:37] These are always the team members that you probably need to leave, I’ve realized. Because when they do, you think you can’t lose them. It’s because you don’t know what they’re doing. You don’t have clarity on their processes. They’re not documented, which creates job security for them, but it creates a lack of transparency and clarity for you.

[00:30:55] And often they’re doing things that are stupid or the wrong way or that don’t make sense that you would change if you were aware of it. And so when I have a team member leave that I was unclear about what they were doing. We started digging into it. There’s a lot of dissatisfaction, you know a lot of clients were frustrated a lot of situations where I didn’t know it was being done that way, and so that’s it becomes a, you know, kind of a blessing in disguise a really good opportunity to now define things and improve things.

[00:31:24] So It sounds like maybe we’ve got the legal that impacts the policy, but it sounds like maybe also the business because different businesses have different set of values, right? So, for example, let’s say one business, their maintenance value is to do things high quality as possible. Real high quality so that there’s no repeat work.

[00:31:48] And then another is like “our owners are cheap and we want to do things as cheap as possible.” Duct tape is appropriate in plumbing. Something like this. And so there’s a difference in value and maybe neither one is right or wrong. Right. There may be more repeat work, but it’s cheaper and that’s what the owners want or what and the values of the business owner and what they dictate. These are the values of the company. And so it sounds like maybe also going into the processes and maybe even into the policy is also there needs to be mixed in the principles or the values of the company, which should be defined. 

[00:32:21] Jo: Oh, definitely. Yeah, definitely. It’s about the principles and the personality of that company.

[00:32:27] So what’s the personality of your brand? How do you want people to see your brand when they talk about? So I always say, if you don’t write your own story, people will make up your story about your brand. So you’ve got to write your story and tell your story about what your brand is all about. You know, is your brand, you know, filled with care and heart, or are they just, you know, a brand that’s churn and burn? Just get them in. And, you know, we don’t build on relationships. We get them in and, you know, do what we need to do. And it’s a very interesting, a lot of that comes from one, the vision, the original vision of when that person created their business, and two, the marketplace that they’re working in because you can’t, you know, be a suave, sophisticated brand if you’re in a marketplace where you’re going through an area of the area is going through rejuvenation because what we find in those areas is a lot of the old homes that the, you know, the owners of those homes are developers.

[00:33:30] And they don’t want to spend money on those properties because they’re just kind of like waiting until they’ve got the approval to knock the property down and rebuild, you know, high rise or something like that. So, you know, you’ve got to understand your market area and make sure that your brand aligns with your market and your message aligns with your brand.

[00:33:51] And then to do that, you’ve got to make sure that what backs you up is your process because your process is in how you deliver on whatever that image is, that story is, that you created on your brand. Because this is where we start to see as the business grows, everyone has their own spin on your story and they it becomes their story not the brand story. So yeah, the chapters all start changing 

[00:34:22] Jason: I’ve seen this in my own business.

[00:34:24] I’ve seen this in our clients business and we refer to kind of that a lot of times as culture because what we’ve noticed is If culture is off in a business, then it seems like everything is worse. Everything gets worse. And it’s, it means the business isn’t really built effectively around the business owner.

[00:34:41] So usually the business owner is miserable in their own business because they haven’t created cultural clarity. They don’t have their core values mapped out or they’ve got too many so they value everything and nothing all at the same time, kind of. And they don’t have clarity on why they do what they do or why they’re in the business.

[00:35:01] And so getting clarity on the motive also when we create our processes one of my rules for creating processes for our team is It needs to state at the beginning of the process what the outcome is supposed to be, so there’s clarity on exactly the best desired outcome and then why we’re doing it like why is that important? So that they understand the reason because sometimes you may not achieve at the full outcome, but if as long as you’re in alignment with our values or you understand why we’re doing things a certain way, then you’re less likely to screw it up or try to change it or be cute or be clever, right?

[00:35:38] And so sometimes it you know, I really believe that transformational leadership is way more effective than transactional leadership and transactional is like “here’s a task. Just do what I tell you to do. Be a robot, all of the orders” and you know, “don’t think,” and when we get into transformational leadership, it’s more, “here’s the outcome that we want. I don’t care how you get there, well do it according to these values at least, but whatever steps you need to do to make sure this happens, this is the end desired goal. Here’s a possible way of doing it, but get this outcome, right?” If the outcome is: we want to provide great customer service, that’s going to look different in a variety of different situations.

[00:36:20] But if you’re like, “well, the policy is that we never give a refund for this, and we only, you know, blah, blah, blah, and tell you to go pound sand,” then maybe it’s not going to achieve great customer service. And so, you know, I had a support team for a while that they were getting stuff done. But their communication skills in the support tickets was like really terrible.

[00:36:41] They were like, “this is done.” And they like, that was their reply. And I was like wait a second. So like, we changed our why at the time, because it was to build websites or whatever back in the day. And I was like, “our why statement is to build incredibly effective relationships and websites.”

[00:37:00] And so the emphasis became on the relationships. And so then I was focusing on the team. So they started to, “Oh, I need to communicate in a different way.” And they followed the same process to achieve closing a ticket out. But what was different is how they communicated it and whether they showed care and whether they showed, you know, had effective communication or kind communication, which is very different than just, I did this, it’s done.

[00:37:25] Jo: Definitely. And I agree with you. I think every task that we do and everything we do is a task in property management has to have its own objective and outcome. And then we also need to understand the clients that we serve, we need to understand their why and we become their how to their why because, you know, like they only engage us because they’ve got a certain goal that they want to achieve.

[00:37:54] They don’t know how to do that. So they call on us because we become their how and the how is then our objective and outcome for everything that we do. And it’s consistent because then what we do is we break down that, you know, personality, who wants to be the hero in everything or the one who’s the villain or the one who’s, you know, got a split personality and they’re a hero to some clients and a villain to others.

[00:38:22] So, you know, that’s where we start to have the schizophrenia within a brand. It’s not the one personality. So, you know, like we do when we create a team is about different skills, different personality, but it all joins to actually deliver to the clients the way that we see our brand, the way that we’ve created our brand through the policy, the platform of policy.

[00:38:47] And that’s the reality of our brand, to then create the process and the protocol. And you know, you’ve got a good, solid brand. And I think the best example of this in the world is Disney. You know, Walt Disney he Died decades ago, but when you go into Disneyland, you feel him there. You look through the eyes of Walt Disney when you walk into Disneyland, when you watch a Disney movie, and that’s what we need to do when we’re creating our business.

[00:39:20] We need to show what our vision is so all of our team can almost look through our eyes to see what it’s going to be like. And you know, every leader, they say every leader is present even when they’re not present. So you know, you need to have that. And the only way to have it in property management is through your automated workflows that are built upon, you know, the logic that you created through your process.

[00:39:51] So, it’s very interesting and people keep trying to shortcut it, or they think that, you know, they’ve hired the, you know, the next best thing since sliced bread and then they’re disillusioned. They think, well, what happened to that person? And there’s all the blame and justification. It’s like business should not run on blame and justification. That’s ignorance. 

[00:40:14] Jason: That’s terrible fuel for a business. Yeah, it is. So, well, I think Jo, this has been, I think very helpful. You do a lot of different things. Right. And you help people with process, you’ve got great systems, probably can help people with procedures, et cetera. So, how can people get in touch with you if they’re needing some help with something?

[00:40:39] Jo: Yes, definitely. And I would encourage, you know, everyone in the industry to invest in getting your policy and process done correctly, because once you’ve done it, then changing it as your business scales and grows is simple. It’s just adjustments and alignments. along the way. So, you know, invest in it now.

[00:41:01] And I’m more than happy, you know, we could even do group exercises, Jason. But probably the best way to contact me is I’m on social media you know, through the messenger and chats on social media or email. So, the email, it’s a long one because my. My company is called E Revolution, which is Oliveri backwards.

[00:41:26] So, yeah, so it’s just Jo, which is simple Jo@ireviloution.Com. I R E V I L O U T I O N. Dot com. So it’s super simple. 

[00:41:41] Jason: All right, we’ll throw that in the show notes, make sure people got it. All right Well, Jo, thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate you being here. And so how can people learn more that are interested about Flussos or this visual workflow tool.

[00:41:58] Jo: Yeah, the easiest way there is jump on our website.

[00:42:01] Sorry Flussos. com FLUSS OS dot com and Flussos is Italian for flow. So jump on there, book a demo and you’ll most likely get my husband Stacey who will do the demo with you and you know, like go through the process of don’t push back immediately. Yeah. Anyone who starts working on automated workflows, it’s about adapting to a new mindset in the way that you do the do every day in property management. So, you know, be patient with yourself, be very deliberate and focused on going through a mindset. And I liken this to When we introduced, you know, property management platforms 30 years ago in the industry, and I was new then, so I adopted immediately, but I see all the people that have been in the industry failed to adapt, and they didn’t hang around for long.

[00:42:58] So we’re going through that change that we did, but go in there, get help, don’t do it alone. You know, it is difficult to create flows because you like engineering and architecture. So, is that a word? So yeah, go on to Flussos. com, book a demo let them know that you’re, you know, with DoorGrow as well. Just say hi I’m with DoorGrow because we’ve got some special things for all the family at DoorGrow. So yeah. Yeah, you know, like, just do it.

[00:43:27] Don’t delay. Don’t let fear get in the way. Don’t let fear of your team not wanting it get in the way. You know, if you’ve got fear of your team pushing back, 

[00:43:36] that’s a problem. So yeah. 

[00:43:38] Jason: Not sure what it sounds, but I can tell you, like, having gone through switching process software multiple times.

[00:43:45] This one, we love. Like, we love being able to run processes on it. And once you figure it out, I really think it’s super intuitive. At the basic level, it’s drag and drop. It’s really easy to use. And, yeah, there’s a lot of complexity that can be added under the hood to really make things really well dialed in, but you’ll get there. 

[00:44:04] Stacey will help you. All right. 

[00:44:06] Jo: He will. 

[00:44:07] Jason: All right. Cool. Well, it’s great to have you here on the show. Jo, thanks for being here on the DoorGrow show. 

[00:44:13] Jo: My pleasure. Such a joy. Thanks, Jason. All right. Bye. 

[00:44:17] Jason: Okay. So if you are a property management entrepreneur and you are struggling, you don’t even know what the problem is, you’re trying to grow your business, you’re not even sure why, what is the problem? Maybe you think, “well, I just need more leads or I just need better processes or whatever it is that you believe.” Get on a call with our team and we’ll help you figure it out. And maybe you’re not clear on what the problem is.

[00:44:40] We’ll help you figure it out. And maybe you’re not even clear on what the solution is or where you’re at currently and what your current situation is. You’re like, “I know there’s something off or it could be better, but I’m not even clear.” We’ll help you get some clarity on that and figure it out. And we’re not going to try and sell you anything unless you need something.

[00:44:57] And if you need something, then we’re just going to try and figure out if you want it, you know, if we have something that could help you we’re not we’re not pushy salespeople. But we do love helping property managers. So check us out. You can go to doorgrow. com. A lot of people are like, what does DoorGrow do?

[00:45:12] We grow and scale companies dramatically and quickly. And so if you would like to grow your business, you’re tired of wasting time, trying to figure out what works, wasting time doing advertising, falling prey to a bunch of different marketers. And you want to figure out what is actually working to grow businesses?

[00:45:29] We’re helping people grow their businesses without spending money even on advertising. You’re able to grow even faster by eliminating that stuff. And so we may be able to cut your ad budgets and increase the output and the ability to grow and add doors in your business. And so we do a lot of other stuff to consult property managers and helping them get things dialed in, reach out to us.

[00:45:51] We would love to help you figure out how to grow your business. So you check us out at doorgrow. com. And if you are a frequent podcast follower or listener, we would appreciate it if you like subscribe and leave us some sort of review on whatever channels you’re listening on. It helps us help more people and we appreciate it.

[00:46:11] And that’s it for today. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everybody.

[00:46:15] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow! 

[00:46:42] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.