What is the secret code to powerful communication? Be real, get raw, and stay relevant with a ruthless commitment to get results.
Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about how to deal with uncomfortable conversations in property management.
You’ll Learn…
[02:10] Qualifying Questions: Do you feel uncomfortable and taken advantage of?
[03:05] Communication Code: Practice the four Rs – real, raw, relevant, and results.
[04:57] Step 1 – Real: Be honest. Tell the truth. Just don’t lie.
[06:02] Step 2 – Raw: Be vulnerable, which is powerful and not a weakness.
[07:35] Step 3 – Relevant: What matters to others, not what matters to you.
[08:49] Step 4 – Results: Know your and your communication targets’ wants and needs.
[12:41] Built-in Liar: Your brain tries to protect you from pain and problems.
Tweetables
“You have to tell the truth. Be honest.”
“There’s power in being vulnerable.”
“Stay relevant with a ruthless commitment to results.”
“What is your desired outcome?”
“We all have a built-in liar and that’s our brain. It’s always trying to help us avoid pain.”
Resources
Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton
The Power of Vulnerability by Brené Brown
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, 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 business 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 topic, friends, we’re going to be talking about a code of communication. During my weekly coaching call with clients today, a client got vulnerable and asked, how do you deal with an uncomfortable conversation?
The situation was this particular client of mine has a potential client that keeps calling him up and asking how they should do things. He really wants this person’s doors. He really wants to get them on as a client. He’s being nice. But now they’re starting to say, hey, I really need a concrete vendor to do this and I need somebody.
He’s being helpful and he’s giving out some info. I know a lot of you listening are like, do not give out your vendors. I’m freaking out, but he doesn’t want to give out anymore and he feels like he’s being taken advantage of. Now I asked some qualifying questions. I said, how do you feel about this to get clarity on that? I’m guessing by bringing this up, did you feel taken advantage of? Do you feel like it’s uncomfortable? His question was, how do I have this uncomfortable conversation, or how do I move them forward towards maybe becoming a client? It was kind of the question.
My feedback to my client is that you need to get really honest. When we get really vulnerable and honest, it allows other people to see that we’re human beings, it allows us to have much more effective communications.
As I said, rather than tell you exactly what to say, let me share with you the principles because this is generally how I like to work. Because how he says it might be unique to him, but I said what you need to do is practice a code. I learned this years ago from a coach named Setema Gali Jr. He was part of a coaching program that I was part of. He was my coach.
I believe he’s the first person that explained this to me. I’ve heard lots of coaches share this idea. I’m not sure where it originally got its start, but the idea is this code of communication called real, raw, relevant, and results. This is also connected to Wake Up Warrior and Garrett J. White. That’s who Setema was working for at the time.
Setema, just let me tell you about this guy, a 300-pound Polynesian. He played for the New England Patriots. He has a Super Bowl ring, I believe, won a Super Bowl. He is a really big guy and a really powerful speaker. I really enjoyed working with him.
This concept I’m going to share with you is this code of communication that will improve your communication in your relationships personally. It’ll improve communication between you and your potential clients. It helps you with challenging situations, challenging communication. This is the mode of how you should always approach communication. In general, this is a code for life. It’s four R’s, four R words: real, raw, relevant, and results.
Let me explain this code of communication and we’ll go through each of these four items. When you’re communicating with somebody, the challenge is you need to be honest, and this particular client of mine had not yet been really honest with this potential client that he was speaking with about how he was feeling and what he was experiencing.
The very first thing is you have to tell the truth, be honest. That’s a factual truth. This is the mental logical side of things. What you say should be factual, it should be truthful in your communication with somebody. That’s step one. Just don’t lie. If you’re saying, oh, it’s okay and it’s not okay, you’re lying. The very first thing is to honestly communicate, and that’s just telling the truth. The first is real, be real. Be real with people. Just be real with people. Tell the truth.
Now the second is closely related. But not only is there logical, honest communication. There needs to be emotionally honest communication. This is where a lot of people fail in their communication. It’s not fully honest because you’re not really sharing how you feel about things. Logically, what you’re saying may be true, but we’re being dishonest if we’re not honestly expressing how we feel about something emotionally.
The second R is raw. So be real, get raw. Most people don’t want to get raw. This is what we call being vulnerable. There’s power in being vulnerable. There are books written on this subject like Brene Brown, I believe, is her name. The Power of Vulnerability was a big TED Talk, YouTube videos, and whatever.
Getting vulnerable is a source of power. A lot of people see it as a weakness. But the most powerful person is the person who has the confidence to get the most raw with people and to be the most emotionally honest. It allows other people to feel safe being honest with you as well because it’s at a deeper level.
The real thing is that they felt taken advantage of. That’s factual, but expressing how that makes them feel would deepen that conversation like, hey, I feel uncomfortable. We’ve had lots of conversations, facts. I’ve helped given you some freebies and given you some access to some vendors that I use, facts. I’m feeling though, that I’m being taken advantage of. It makes me feel uncomfortable.
I run a business. I care about my clients. I want to take care of them. But then when I have somebody that is not paying me, asking for this information, and I’m helping them out, it makes me feel like whatever you feel. That’s getting raw and expressing the honest emotional side of things.
The next is to stay relevant. Be real, get raw, stay relevant. Keeping things relevant is important. It’s easy to start whining and sharing all your feelings about whatever’s going on in your life, but they don’t care about that. Whatever the conversation you’re having—whether it’s kids, spouse, potential clients, existing clients, tenants, whatever—it should be relevant to them.
If they don’t care and it’s irrelevant to them, they’re not going to pay attention to it anyway. You’re wasting your breath, you’re wasting your time, and you’re probably gossiping or emotionally manipulating. It’s not relevant, so make sure it’s relevant. The communication should be relevant to what the real situation is. It should be relevant to the feelings and thoughts that you’re having around that thing that you’re currently talking about, not other stuff.
It’s one thing to just get really real and honest and go up to some random person or even a potential client and say, oh, yeah, how are things going? And you start blabbing your whole life story and problems to them. They don’t care about that, it’s not relevant. So make sure your communication is relevant.
Now the next is results. It’s real, raw, relevant, and results. So be real, get raw, stay relevant with a ruthless commitment to results. If you are committed to results, that means you need to know what your communication targets, wants, and desires. You need to know what you want. You have to have that clarity. Otherwise, it’s not going to be relevant. What you want are results. So if it’s relevant, it’s going to be focused ruthlessly on getting towards the result. What’s the outcome? What is your desired outcome?
This is why on my Calendly link, it always asks the question, for appointment scheduling with me, what is your desired outcome? What’s the outcome you’re hoping for during this conversation? Maybe I can move towards that. What is your desired outcome?
If you’re going into a conversation that’s going to be uncomfortable, you need to be clear on what is true, what factually happened, what do you know for sure, how do you feel about that? You need to have that clarity of how you feel. You need to know what’s relevant to them, what’s relevant to the conversation, and what’s relevant to you.
You need to know what you want. What results or outcomes are you hoping for? To honestly express, in this instance, this example, it would be very honest, real, and raw to express.
Let’s say this potential client was named Suzie. We’re talking to this potential client. Hey, Suzie, I’ve helped you with this, I’ve done this, and I’m starting to honestly feel like I’m being taken advantage of in this relationship. I want to be honest with you, my goal and being helpful in talking to you, all these multiple times we’ve had calls is because I want to get your business. I want to get you on as a client. So I need to know, that’s what I want, is that going to happen? Is that a reality?
Do you see that you potentially will become a client, or are you just taking advantage of the fact that you know that I know some of the things you might need? If so, then maybe we need to have a different conversation. But are you interested in becoming a client or working with me for property management or letting me take over your units?
This is expressing what you want and that you might be able to express what Suzie wants. You can say, Suzie, what is it that you are wanting? My understanding is you want this property to be taken care of. You probably don’t really want or enjoy dealing with finding contractors and dealing with these challenging and difficult situations. I would love to take that off your plate. I want to do that for you.
That would be much more effective communication and it’d be far more honest because the reality of the situation is this communication leading up to this point, this client of mine had not yet been honest with Suzie or whatever their name is. Had not yet been fully honest with them and hadn’t lived according to this code of communication. Everything gets better and easier if you’re willing to live.
It’s uncomfortable sometimes to have this communication, but it’s less uncomfortable, I believe, than dealing with feeling taken advantage of, feeling misaligned internally, feeling frustrated, feeling annoyed by people. Honestly, express.
There’s a really good book I’m listening to right now. I really love this book so far. It’s called Radical Honesty. This guy is really refreshing to listen to. I appreciate it. It really made me take a look. I’ve always prided myself on being a very honest, open person. That’s always how I’ve wanted to run my business. One of the core facets is transparency that we subscribe to in our core values. That’s why I created my original business, it was called OpenPotion.
We all have a built-in liar and that’s our brain. It’s always trying to help us avoid pain. So if our brain is saying, well, it’ll be an uncomfortable conversation that our brain lies and comes up with stories around this. Maybe they know or maybe I shouldn’t bring this up. Maybe that’d be uncomfortable if I brought this up or set it this way. Maybe I need to be nicer, more diplomatic. That’s our brain lying.
We have this built-in liar that is always there in the background creating stories and filtering our perspective and our view from past pain and past history trying to protect us from future pain and creating more problems in our life. We have to confront that, and we have to deal with that and get even more honest.
This is something that I remind myself of and that I hope is helpful to you is to be real, get raw, stay relevant with a ruthless commitment to results. If you focus on this mode of communication with family members, potential clients, or anybody that you care to communicate with, you’re going to have a much better result.
You’re more likely to get the results out of this that you want because you’re communicating honestly. You’re going to create more safety. You’re going to create more trust, sales, and deals happen at the speed of trust. Relationships, the foundation is trust. This is going to help you build more relationships and improve your close rate. I hope this has been helpful to those listening. That is all I have to share today.
If you would like to have an objective perspective in your business because you’re too close to the fire as all of us business owners are and you want a mentor, coach, or somebody that can help you move your business forward, I would be honored and happy to help you grow your business. We have clients getting fantastic results in our Mastermind program. You can check us out at doorgrow.com and set up a call with us to learn more about our DoorGrow and Scale mastermind, how we are helping grow and scale companies. That is what I will leave you with today.
I hope this has been helpful to those listening. If it has, please give us some positive feedback on the various channels in which you may be listening to this, whether it’s YouTube, iTunes, or wherever, we appreciate that. It helps us get the message out to others and benefit more people in the industry, which is our mission at DoorGrow. That’s it. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.
Enjoyed this episode on dealing with uncomfortable conversations in property management? Get equipped with more content like it by exploring past episodes of the #DoorGrowShow.
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