Why should you start a company or have a business? Making money should not be an entrepreneur’s primary goal or only reason. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks about four reasons for starting a business or having a company.
Many entrepreneurs mistakenly think the goal is to exit and retire early. However, if you follow my four reasons, you won’t want to leave because you’ll be giving up something that’s really important to you.
You’ll Learn…
[02:20] Money: Doesn’t always make a successful business owner happy but miserable.
[03:09] Four things are probably more important than money for having a business.
[03:19] Side Effects: Being a big bottleneck or cutting operational costs.
[04:36] Jason’s four reasons for starting a company.
[04:47] Reason #1: Fulfillment: It should be a vehicle to give you fulfillment in life.
[05:30] Reason #2: Freedom: It’s what you achieve, why you want to be entrepreneurs.
[08:04] Reason #3: Contribution: Businesses should solve real marketplace problems.
[10:31] Reason #4: Support: It’s a vehicle to create contributions and change the world.
[10:55] Business Model: Resources, money, staff create contributions, make difference.
[12:17] Why not start a business? For most people, it’s safety and certainty.
Tweetables
“There’s something more that entrepreneurs need to be focused on than just making money.”
“If you have these four things and you’re in alignment with these four things, you then have a business that you love.”
“The reality is there’s nothing in your business in the long run that you have to do. There’s nothing. You can offload any pieces of the business that you don’t enjoy.”
“Entrepreneurs—we really want to make a difference in the world. We want to contribute. We want to feel like we’re adding value.”
Resources
Transcript
Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. 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 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 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, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show.
I’m going to do something a little bit different. Usually, I interview people, first of all, because that makes me feel a bit more secure. It’s just a comfort thing. It feels a little bit weird to just sit here and talk all by myself, but my team has been pushing me to do this for years. You need to create your own episodes just you talking, sharing some of your ideas. That’s really what people want to hear, and so here it goes.
This episode may be one of the most important pieces of content or information that I’ve put out into the marketplace. We’re going to be talking today about what I call the four reasons. These are Jason Hull’s four reasons for starting a company or for having a business. This is something that is just formulated in my mind over the last decade of running a company and coaching business owners, just realizing and seeing that there’s something more that entrepreneurs need to be focused on than just making money.
There’s something more that’s important because I’ve had so many. I’ve talked to thousands of property managers, I have hundreds of clients, I’ve spoken to a lot of business owners, I’ve been in a lot of different masterminds and programs. One of the things that I’ve realized is that there’s something a bit deeper that a business owner needs in order to have a successful business than just making money. At some point, money is no longer really an issue, but they could still be miserable.
One of the things that I’ve noticed is that instead of money being the primary goal, there are four things that are probably more important than money. These are the four reasons for having a business. What I’ve noticed is if you have these four things and you’re in alignment with these four things, you then have a business that you love. If you’re out of alignment with these four things, then you have a job that makes you somewhat miserable or maybe very miserable. You then are basically the biggest bottleneck in your business, you are the most critical employee in your business, you will be more and more frustrated, and you’ll want to escape.
A lot of entrepreneurs mistakenly think the goal is to exit, the goal is retirement. Here’s the thing, if you have these four reasons, you don’t really want to retire because then you give up something that’s really important to you.
The other side effect of having these four reasons is that your operational costs when it comes to staffing is usually cut into a fraction. Usually cut maybe down to a third of what most property management companies or most businesses spend on staffing costs, which means you’ll be able to get about three times the output from team members because you’ll be in alignment with these four reasons. That means that they can be in alignment with these four reasons. Let’s get into the four reasons for starting a company.
Reason number one, the primary reason, the most important reason to start a business has to be fulfillment. Fulfillment is the primary goal or reason for a business to exist. It should be a vehicle to give you fulfillment in life. You’re going to be giving up the majority of your life on this thing. Probably the largest portion of your day goes to your business or towards your work. Probably the largest portion of your week goes towards your business or towards work. You should be getting something in return, besides just trading your life and giving your life away in exchange for dollars.
You should be getting life, you should be enjoying your life, and you should be getting fulfillment. That’s primary goal number one. Primary goal number two, the second reason for having a business needs to be freedom. This is why we become entrepreneurs. We want to achieve and get more freedom. You can make more and more money as your business grows. Most businesses do, but most business owners have less freedom and less fulfillment in their day-to-day. They become more and more a slave to their own business, and the business is then their master.
As entrepreneurs, we want more freedom. That’s usually why we want more money. We think, man, if I had more money, I would have more options in life and that should be true. If you have more money, it should give you more options in life, and you should then have more freedom. Most business owners usually within the first year of their business, a very short period of time, they have very little freedom and very little fulfillment.
The thing is with fulfillment, reason number one, if you’re doing everything in the business wearing every hat in the business, you can’t really be in a state of fulfillment. You also can’t really feel like you’re free because you’re doing things that you really don’t enjoy doing. I find a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners mistakenly think that there are certain things they have to do because they’re business owners.
What’s really odd is this is different for each person, but it’s some sort of conditioning. Maybe it’s things they learned growing up, learned their jobs, or they’ve just decided they can never hand off certain pieces. A lot of business owners hold on to things that they don’t have to do.
For example, if you hate accounting, but you feel like I have to do all the accounting in my business. Maybe you hate sales but you’re like, I have to do all the sales in my business, or I hate talking to people and connecting with people, but you are talking and connecting with people constantly. Really, the reality is there’s nothing in your business in the long run that you have to do. There’s nothing.
You can offload any pieces of the business that you don’t enjoy. The problem is a lot of times, entrepreneurs will offload the things they do enjoy, which give them fulfillment and a sense of freedom. Then they hold on to the things that take that away, that are really minus signs in their day instead of plus signs energetically.
The third reason for having a business is contribution. The goal of a business should be that it solves a real problem in the marketplace. That’s a contribution. If a business doesn’t solve a real problem in the marketplace, then it’s basically bullshit. It’s snake oil, it’s stealing people’s money. I find entrepreneurs—we really want to make a difference in the world. We want to contribute, we want to feel like we’re adding value.
One of the reasons I’m inspired to work with property management entrepreneurs is you have a real impact. Most property management businesses suck. I’m sure you’re like, yeah, that’s true. If you look at your market, you know it. You know that this is true. Most property management businesses suck. It’s not because these business owners woke up in the morning and said, man, I want to have a shitty company today. I want to start a business and have it suck. We’ll get back to why so many suck at least one part.
Good property management business owners, their business solves three of the biggest challenges in real estate. What are three of the most complained about things in real estate probably? Probably number one, landlords. You just hear lots of people complaining about landlords. They get a bad rep. Number two, a lot of people complain about tenants. All these renters, they’re the worst and you hear people complain about them. You also hear people complain about rental properties.
Good property managers are the superheroes of the entire real estate investing industry and they make all three of those things better. Nobody else does that. DoorGrow hacker, property management entrepreneur, you deserve to get paid well if you’re one of the good ones. That’s a real contribution. That’s why businesses exist to solve a real problem in the marketplace, and you deserve to be compensated well for that. That’s reason number three.
Entrepreneurs, we want to contribute and make a difference. We feel like we’re doing something good in the world, and that feels like fulfillment to us to be contributing and benefiting other people. The business is a vehicle for fulfillment, it’s a vehicle for freedom, and it’s a vehicle for contribution for the entrepreneur. The fourth reason is so important that if you don’t have it, you can’t really have the first three, at least not fully.
The fourth reason for having a business is support. Having a business, it’s a vehicle to create contributions and change the world. There’s probably no better vehicle that could exist. Charities aren’t even as effective or as efficient. Entrepreneurs have figured out a model, which is a business, which allows them the resources, money, the staff in which they can create contributions and make a difference. In order to do this and have more freedom and have more fulfillment, you can’t be wearing every hat as I talked about earlier. You need support.
Having support in the business means that you have an awesome team. It means that you are able to offload all the things and the hats that you don’t want to wear. You find people that enjoy doing those things, that will be better at it than you, that you can trust, that share your values. When you’re supported, then you’re going to feel like Iron Man in your super suit. You’re a normal person, but you have this magical increased super capability because you have a team, which gives you more time, gives you more ability. You need support.
Here’s the cool thing. If you have these four reasons—you have fulfillment, you have freedom, you have a contribution, you have support—then that means that you can have team members that also have those four reasons. Looking at these four things, what’s interesting to note is that most people on the planet do not care about these four things more than they care about a higher priority. A higher priority than these four things for most people is safety and certainty.
This is important to recognize, especially as a property manager. Safety and certainty are the highest priority for most people on the planet. They want to feel safe and certain. This is why they don’t go start businesses. This is why they’re willing to give up and not have fulfillment, freedom, a sense of contribution, or even a lack of support in their day job. This is why the standard American employee often just complains about their boss, lives for the weekend, and wants to go out and drink. They’re just trying to escape their life.
If you are in alignment with these four reasons then you can build the right team around you. When I see those, a lot of entrepreneurs are not in alignment with these four things. As they expand and break past the first sand trap of maybe about 50, 60 doors, and then they get into the next sand trap of maybe 200–400 doors, where they have a team, usually they have the wrong team.
Why? Because they are not in alignment with these four reasons. They’re doing the wrong things. They’re showing up as the wrong person that’s less happy, has less fulfillment, less freedom, less contribution. They are not going to feel supported because they’re doing the wrong things. They’re going to build a team of people around them that supplement their miserableness, and so these people around them are also not going to have a sense of freedom, fulfillment, contribution, and support.
The operational cost on those types of team members is usually going to be three times higher. What I mean is if you have a team member that has a sense of fulfillment in the business, they feel fulfilled in their day-to-day, they feel like they have autonomy and freedom, they feel like they’re making a difference in benefiting people, they feel supported by you, and they feel like they get to support you as the entrepreneur, they are going to give you three times the output I find. A-player team members, really great team members, will give you three times the output of a typical employee, which means that’s going to significantly decrease your operational costs.
This is the most expensive thing in business is staffing. That resource is the most expensive. If you want to be a profitable company, you want to be one of the good property management businesses, and not be one of the sucky ones, a lot of times the reason they’re sucky is because their operational costs are too high.
They don’t have a really good team because they aren’t really showing up as a really great boss. They are miserable and their team is not very happy. Their customer service levels drop because they can’t really support people as well because their operational costs are too expensive so they’re not able to get as much done.
One of the most common questions I get is, how many staff members should I have per the number of doors? Is there a ratio that’s right? There are so many variables that come into this that it’s an impossible thing to answer. You need a lot less staff per door if you are in alignment with these four reasons and your team members are in alignment with these four reasons.
Hopefully, this concept of the four reasons is helpful. This is the foundation of my philosophy as a property management business coach. With my clients, this is my primary goal. I reiterate this on our coaching calls that we have each week. I reiterate this in my one-on-one with clients. My goal is to get you more and more in alignment with these four reasons. I have processes and ways of helping people do that, that maybe we’ll get into on a future call.
Basically, we want to see what are the plus signs in your day-to-day, what are the minus signs? How can we become really conscious of that? I usually use time studies to do that. I have a specific process for taking clients through to identify that, how to figure out how to feel safe to offload. In order to do that, you’re going to have to create the right culture so that you have people that share the values that you can trust with people, trust with your clientele, and not just people that know how to do the job. Cultural fit is more important. We can get into that more, maybe in another conversation.
Anyway, if you want to get in alignment with these four reasons, you feel like you’re out of alignment with them right now, reach out to me and reach out to my team at doorgrow.com. Check us out, join our Facebook group, doorgrowclub.com. You can go to doorgrowclub.com. Apply and join our Facebook group if you are a property management entrepreneur. Let’s see if we can get you more in alignment with those four reasons.
Life’s too short. You should be enjoying your day-to-day life. I want you to have a job and a business that you don’t want to escape and retire from. Because if you did, you would be giving up one of your main vehicles for fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support in life. You want to keep that. You then can choose how much you want to do in that business. I want you to always be able to hold on to the things that give you freedom, fulfillment, contribution, and support.
Anyway, with that, I’m out. Until next time. To our mutual growth everybody. I’m Jason Hull, and I hope that you found this beneficial. If so, leave comments, give us a review, and some feedback. I would appreciate it. Thanks.
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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/subsribe. Until next time. Take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.
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