At DoorGrow, we aim to expand the property management industry and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We love gathering new strategies and ideas to help savvy property managers grow their businesses.
In this episode, property management growth expert Jason Hull interviews Tommy Chambers from Chambers Theory about the secret to his success in property management.
You’ll Learn…
[02:08]The Secret Power of Trust Equity for Improving Churn Rate
[08:59]Keeping on Clients… Even When they Don’t Really Need You Anymore
[15:09]Benefitting Homeowners and Investors with Ongoing Management
[21:02]Why Recognizing Your Team Matters
[26:07]Systems Every Business Should Have
[31:23]The Importance of Establishing Company Culture
Tweetables
“It’s not just about growth. It’s also about keeping the ones you have and the clients you have satisfied. So our strategy has been to take care of our people.”
“If your churn rate is high, that means you then have to replace all the doors you are losing every single month. If you’re replacing every door that you’re losing constantly, then you have stagnation.”
“It’s far easier to keep a client than to go acquire new ones… and far cheaper.”
“Hiring is hard. One of the hardest transitions I see entrepreneurs go through is solopreneur to having a team.”
Resources
Transcript
[00:00:00] Tommy: We said, âHey, your services donât have to stop when you come back to live in your own home. We can still be your property manager even if weâre not collecting rent.
[00:00:08] Jason: All right. 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 in business and life, and youâre 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 youâre crazy for doing it. You think theyâre crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.
[00:00:46] 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 the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Iâm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now letâs get into the show.Â
[00:01:11] Welcome to the #DoorGrowShow.Â
[00:01:13] Tommy: Yeah, thanks for having me. Itâs a pleasure to be on.Â
[00:01:15] Jason: Yeah. Glad to have you. So youâve been doing property management for how long?Â
[00:01:20] Tommy: 21 years now.Â
[00:01:22] Jason: And how long ago did you start your business?
[00:01:25] Tommy: We started Chambers Theory in 2018. This was on the heels of my former company selling to a bigger broker and saw the opportunity to start fresh and bring my theory to the market of what property management should and could look like.Â
[00:01:42] Jason: Cool. Well, welcome to the show. So you guys reached out and wanted to be on the show, I guess you had been listening to the podcast for a while. Weâve never worked together, right?
[00:01:52] Tommy: Not yet.
[00:01:52] Jason: Not yet. Not yet. Right. So cool. Well, Iâd love to hear how many doors do you guys have right now.
[00:01:58] Tommy: 717.Â
[00:02:01] Jason: All right. Thatâs a nice number since 2018. So whatâs your biggest strategy to add doors? How have you grown the business so far?Â
[00:02:08] Tommy: You know, thereâs a lot of different ways weâve approached that. Thereâs a growth strategy just from organic growth. All of those doors have been organic growth. Of course, we look at acquisitions as well. And then, thereâs also the client retention. Itâs not just about growth. Itâs also about keeping the ones you have and the clients you have satisfied. So our strategy has been to take care of our people, use and try new tech, be early adapters with some new tech, and when we take care of our people and lean into some cool new products and leading-edge technology, the word gets out and when weâre effective and take care of our people, people like to follow that. Clients like to follow companies where they have consistency of people theyâre dealing with and especially if theyâre happy with their jobs, it really works out well.Â
[00:02:55] Jason: I love what you said. One of the big things that a lot of businesses fail to look at is churn, you know, and retention. And your churn ratio or churn rate is basically the number of clients you had at the beginning of the month. And then, you divide that by the number of clients you have at the end of the month, basically is how you calculate churn. And so if your churn rate is high, that means you then have to replace all the doors you are losing every single month, if youâre replacing every door that youâre losing constantly, then you have stagnation, and a lot of business owners try to increase growth, increase lead then, and they donât focus on churn at all or retention at all. And they wonder why theyâre not making any progress. And itâs kind of like trying to run uphill while somebodyâs pulling you backwards. So what are some things youâve done to kind of decrease the churn rate and prevent clients from leaving? And one of the clients that tends to leave the most are accidental investors. Do you avoid those or are you good at convincing them to stay longer?Â
[00:03:56] Tommy: I love the analogy too. We actually use the analogy of pushing a rope uphill is when you have a high churn rate. Just doesnât make a lot of sense in that it takes a lot of energy to both reintroduce a new client to what your programâs like and set expectations and agreements on that, but also to find them, so keeping the ones we have and keeping the ones we have happy is critical for us. And we actually have a high churn, natural high churn type of client base. A lot of our clients are military and US foreign service, which means typically we know when they sign on with us, theyâre gonna be back to their house in three years, which makes a really interesting⊠Mm, Iâll call it calling or genre of residential property management. When you know your clientâs gonna be back in three years. You know, you have to plan for that replacement, and you also have this higher calling of care where: geez, this is not just somebodyâs investment property. This is their home theyâre going to come back to and the judgment is often a lot more meticulous when they come back and say, âHow did you do taking care of my house?â not just, âHow much rent did you earn me?âÂ
[00:05:08] So some of the things we do are really to increase the level of care and communication the client feels during the period of time that we know we have them, and we call it building or losing trust equity in every interaction. So the way we describe trust equity is like having gas in your tank and youâre going on a trip. Youâre only gonna go as far as you keep fueling up that gas in that tank. And for us, that gas in that tank with that client is trust equity. So in every interaction, we either see ourselves as building rapport, building trust equity or losing it, or losing the opportunity to build it. So a lot of our practices are focused on: how do we build up trust equity all the way through their journey and make it the full three years? And the positive side of the community that weâre working with is: even though thereâs a high natural churn, thereâs also a high referral rate from one landlord client to another to utilize our services if weâve done a good job for them.Â
[00:06:11] Jason: Yeah. I like that. Yeah. You know, refueling the tank or recharging the cell phone or, you know, anything. Like nothing just continually runs forever. Right? And I love the idea of trust equity. Iâve said many times on the show like I really believe sales and deals happen at the speed of trust.
[00:06:29] Tommy: Hmm.Â
[00:06:30] Jason: And, you know, retaining clients also happens related to trust. Like youâre gonna keep clients if they trust you, and that trust is everything that you do in your business, everything that your business puts out there is either creating trust or taking it away to some degree with your clients. And so, one of the main things we focus on at DoorGrow with clients is taking all the major leaks that exist in their sales pipeline related to trust and helping short those leaks and thatâs always the language weâve used around that is to try to make sure theyâre reducing the leaks. And thereâs lots of things in the sales pipeline that can destroy trust. It could be the brand. It could be maybe theyâre not destroying, but theyâre leaks in trust. Like they might trust a property management company over a real estate company when it comes to branding more.Â
[00:07:21] And so that could be a leak just at the branding stage thereâs leaks when it comes to your sales process, thereâs leaks when it comes to your website, thereâs leaks when it comes to your pricing, and all of these different things that exist throughout their experience in the sales pipeline can either add value and add trust and build it, or it can take it away. And this is why when we talk about cold leads versus warm leads, or going from a cold interaction or lead to close, the difference between cold and warm is trust, right? Weâre trying to nurture them through this sales process and through follow-up. And eventually, they get warm enough, they trust enough that we can close the deal, right? And then the trust cycle continues. You have to then onboard them effectively. You have to then make them feel safe because everybody has buyerâs remorse after they purchase something. Thereâs an initial dopamine high. When we make a purchase. And after that purchase, after we spend money, there is natural lull. Like it comes back down and thatâs where people kind of freak out and they look for the problem, and if they see one theyâre like, âOh crap, did I make the wrong choice?â So making sure thereâs this smooth experience through the sales pipeline and then bridging over into onboarding and into their client experience.
[00:08:39] And if you onboard them well, and they have a good experience, youâre gonna have a much higher retention rate. So now youâve got people that are leaving most likely after about three years. So youâve got like this three-year cycle. How do you deal with that? Because every three years you help that churn rate and thatâs better than some that are taking on accidental investors that are only gonna hang out for a year.Â
[00:08:59] Tommy: Yeah. So one of the ways we deal with it isâ which I think is unique, is we said, âHey, your services donât have to stop when you come back to live in your own home. We can still be your property manager even if weâre not collecting rent. Often, we were getting calls from clients that came back anyway saying, âHey, you know, I was your client last year or two years ago. I need a recommendation on an HVAC company,â or, âI need a recommendation on a plumber for Thanksgiving before my family comes to visit,â or whatever it is. And it was like, well, oftentimes we were getting these calls back from clients anyway, saying, âI just need a contract recommendation,â or âIâm going to be away from my house for three weeks on vacation. Can you just check on it once for me if thereâs a storm?âÂ
[00:09:46] And what we decided to do is instead of treating it like a clumsy process to make it a formal process and organize that thing that was happening anyway, and we said, âHey, when you come back, you donât have to close out your account. And you can continue to use us for anything related to your house and you can run your expenses through your escrow operating account in property management, and weâd be happy to be part of that for you and give you contractors when you need them.â And we made the expense for that minimal, and itâs not a profitable activity, yet it kept the connection and it also told these clients, âHey, you know, we can trust this company even when theyâre not really making money from us, right, theyâre truly in it to serve us.âÂ
[00:10:32] And what happened is when they got their next assignment, whether theyâre military or foreign service, but they already had their account open with us, they didnât have to decide, âOh, who do I want to interview?â Or âWho do I wanna start with this time in property management?â we made it easy for them to just keep going with us and recommend other people to start with us. So thatâs one of our nuances and I welcome other property managers to do it too. You donât stop serving them when they stop becoming a client, especially if they could become a client again or refer somebody else, you know, continue to offer them some kind of value even after you think that theyâre done.
[00:11:07] Jason: Yeah. Thatâs fascinating. That makes a lot of sense in a military market. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Do you find that it is more of a loss leader or are you doing this at cost at least?
[00:11:18] Tommy: So I guess you could call it a loss leader if you tried to start a business that way. I mean, once you have a certain scale⊠our scale of our business, right, is we keep close track of how many property management hours per property weâre spending throughout the year, and, you know, we have it down to a science exactly. You know, how many doors to our staff, not just per property management lead, but overall support staff. How many hours are dedicated to these properties? And what we find was keeping these accounts on wasnât costing us a lot of time, but it was giving us a really good return on trust equity. So we were building more trust equity when the client closed out their account, their normal rent collection account, and kept going with us from what we call a heat account or a home escrow account and the home escrow account, you know, weâre charging $360 a year, a dollar a day, less than that, really. And oftentimes it was not profitable for us in terms of the hours we spent, but weâd spend, you know, five or six hours a year on those accounts, making recommendations, handling their expenses through their property account. So it wasnât like a money maker, but it really had a return in terms of these clients came back to us and they recommended other people to us because we were building trust in the process, not just cash.Â
[00:12:45] Jason: So this three-year cycle that you mentioned where they will go off for maybe about three years, and then they want to move back into the property. Do you know how long theyâre typically staying before they go off again?Â
[00:12:57] Tommy: Yeah. I mean, it depends on which government agency or department they work for. Thereâs different requirements for each, which weâve come to learn quite well. Sometimes theyâll come back for, you know, letâs say they work for the U.S. state department. Theyâll come back for one-year language training. So theyâre, you know, theyâre coming back from Bangkok and theyâre gonna be transferred to Nairobi, Kenya 12 months from now. So they know theyâre coming back just to learn the language of the next place theyâre going and all the more reason to just keep their account active, right?Â
[00:13:31] Jason: Yeah.
[00:13:31] Tommy: Oftenâ
[00:13:32] Jason: So theyâre only back for a year and then theyâre probably out for maybe another three years?Â
[00:13:37] Tommy: Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, it tends to be a one or two-year return depending on the nature of their return assignment, domestic assignment. And then, another three years out tends to be.Â
[00:13:49] Jason: Wow. Okay. So, I mean, so the ratio skewed so that theyâre gone more than theyâre back. So by maintaining that relationship, you have built-in future clients.Â
[00:14:00] Tommy: Nailed it, yeah. Oh, and that maintaining the relationship is where the secret is, as we said. Not doing that turns growth into pushing a rope uphill. If you maintain that relationship, it makes it really easy for that business relationship to continue and that trust equity to grow.Â
[00:14:18] Jason: Yeah, itâs far easier to keep a client than to go acquire new ones⊠and far cheaper. And it takes a lot less work and if they have a good experience with you, they already know you, trust you, like you, so like itâs super easy. Next time they need it, theyâre gonna go with you as long as they had a good experience, and if that relationship has been maintained, theyâre still a client. Yeah, no-brainer. Itâs like, âHey, weâre going out again.â âCool.â So pre-framing that from the beginning when you onboard a new client and letting them know, âLook, youâre probably gonna go in some cycles. Weâre used to this. This is how we handle it. This is what we do,â theyâll just plan on staying with you forever.Â
[00:14:54] Tommy: Yeah, Iâll tell you at first, itâs an awkward value proposition, right? Itâs like, âWell, Iâm back. Why do I need to keep a property manager?â And the answer is: you donât. You donât need to. You donât need us nearly as much as you did when you were on the other side of the world and we had a tenant.Â
[00:15:09] Jason: Yeah.Â
[00:15:09] Tommy: However, this is why every connection and communication is an opportunity to build trust is when they start to see, âOh, Iâd much rather call my property manager and have them deal with the contractor,â or âcall my property manager, see if they can check on this after a storm,â or, âcall my property managerâŠâ whatever it is. The more that they see thereâs value in the process in the chain, then the more likely they are to say, âWow, I actually wanted this. I didnât realize you guys even offer when I came back, I could just keep using you at a lower price.â So, itâs awkward at first because youâre used to saying, âWell, these are the reasons we are worth property management: rent collection, and dealing with tenants,â and you just have to change that and recognize that actually, weâre valuable for a lot of things that the clients trust us on and including, you know, managing, making it easy for them to manage their home escrow account or their expenses related to their property, or we make it a lot easier for them to not call some contractor out of the yellow pages or Google somebody and get lucky. They already know that we have a tried and true stable of contractors.Â
[00:16:17] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Itâs frustrating trying to find contractors and having to do the research, so I think thatâs a great selling proposition and property managers donât like giving out their vendors generally. So if theyâre a client and youâre like, âHey, let us handle this.â If they come back to you⊠so what do you do in the situations where theyâre like, âNope, I donât need you. And I donât want to do this. Weâre back. I got it handled. But then they call you up and theyâre like, âHey who you got for me? You got a contractor that could do this or this?â Do you say, âWell, we have this great program,â and you try and get them on the program?Â
[00:16:50] Tommy: Yeah. We try to reintroduce them to the program, and the reason why is because when youâre out of the system, everything itâs that much harder to translate the information to what needs to happen, right? Like, okay, you have something that needs to be done, but we donât have all the information in our system and as close anymore, and also our contractors, they like to know that if they bill a property manager, theyâre gonna get paid in two weeks. We build trust equity with the vendors too, not just the clients. So these contractors would rather get a call from us and say, âOkay, yeah, Iâll be happy to do that job tomorrow or Monday, whatever it is because I know youâre gonna pay me in two weeks when I send you the invoice,â versus, âOh, Iâve gotta deal with some homeowner thatâs calling me. Maybe itâs good. Maybe itâs not. I donât know if theyâre gonna pay me on time or if I am going to have to do an accounts receivable issue.â
[00:17:43] Itâs just all smoother through our network when we have the account open. So yes when they call us back, we say, âHey, of course we can give you the contractorâs name and number, happy to do that. Weâre not gonna block you from that. However, the contractorâs gonna prefer to hear from us anyway. So, you know, weâre happy to set your account back up.â we really put their account on pause if we think theyâre gonna be going back overseas in a couple of years, but yeah. I mean, we do reintroduce the concept, even if they closed out thinking they didnât need it.Â
[00:18:13] Jason: Hmm. Got it. So Iâm trying to figure out how could this apply to non-military markets if at all possible. So Iâm just spitballing here, but Iâm wondering if property managers could present this as an actual product or service to just typical homeowners, like, âHey, weâll handle the vendors, weâll handle maintenance, whatever,â and they charge them for that, but they just, they charge some sort of fee and, âWeâll take care of all this stuff and handle vendors, and we have the best contractors and weâre organized and sort this out. I donât know if people would go for it, butâŠ
[00:18:43] Tommy: Actually, I think itâs a growing market and it is happening. A good friend of mine, Lisa Wise, who owns Flock DC, sheâs trying to build almost a franchise concept, but a series of this very thing where all they do is home management for primary homeowners. Sheâs pursuing this market in high urban markets with really busy professionals who just donât know how or donât want to take the time to take care of their own house. And sheâs got a great program set up for that. Again, weâre not doing it on the scale sheâs pursuing it. Weâre offering the service as. Letâs build the relationship with the client that we have for rental management before they need us.Â
[00:19:24] Jason: Sure. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But yeah, I think thereâs an opportunity there for the people in the non-military markets to make that maybe a profit center or something. You cut out the whole tenant side of things, but thereâs the whole maintenance coordination piece and home management piece, lawn care, grounds, pools.
[00:19:44] Tommy: Iâll tell you, I actually think investors would love this, and it might be something we pursue more as we work with investors thatâll appreciate this that is to be able to do not just, oh, any expenses related to your personal residents, but to do an analysis like, âHey, typically for a house your size youâre spending two X the amount of water on your water bill that you should be. When you can start to do some financial analysis within their expenses, instead of just saying, âOh yeah, like you can pass through your expenses through your account. So itâs all in one place,â but to add value by saying, âThis is out of our standard deviation for this expense,â orâ and again, you can always add value by saying, âYou can call five contractors if you want, but weâre buying in bulk as a property manager and we can get you either better pricing or better value of service.â
[00:20:33] Jason: Yeah, very cool. So what else would you like to share with people about your business that might be beneficial to property managers listening? Youâve grown fairly quickly. I think you have the advantage that youâre in that military market where youâve got people leaving, which is great as long as they have awareness, youâre going to be adding doors, which I think is really powerful. You focus on trust equity, which I really like that phrase, and what else do you think really kind of sets you apart, makes your company unique from the competitors in your market?Â
[00:21:02] Tommy: Yeah, thanks for the question. That trust equity is a strong theme at our company. And what I do is, itâs not just with the contractors or with the clients, weâre also building trust with one another on the team, and we call it the Camelot principle. So yeah, after youâve done battle enough on our team as a property manager, youâve been through a couple of tough summers. Summers tend to be the hardest time of the year in our market. Then we award that person with a sword, a sword with etching on it for chambers theory, and we welcome them as a knight of the round table. And what we really want to do is we want to build this interdependence of trust with one another as a team, and part of my promise as the employer and the business owner is to keep the job manageable for them, right?Â
[00:21:53] Like most of the time as the entrepreneur, like weâre trying to get the most out of our teams so we can get more profits and grow and itâs healthier. And sometimes itâs great. Some of us are, âHey, weâll pay our people more,â which is a wonderful way to look at it, yet sometimes people want their job to be more manageable. Like we can call them to a higher standard, yet we also shouldnât overwhelm or burn out our employees, and it was really telling when we saw right after it was the end of 2020-2021 market, they call it the great resignation. Thereâs a lot of people saying, âHey Iâm done working,â seems a lot of it had to do with burnout. People are like, âLifeâs short, why am I burning myself out for this or for that?â And to really lean in on how do we build trust with one another?Â
[00:22:37] How do I serve my team by making them part of that round table of strategic decision making, making them part of that process where we say, âHey, weâre serving one another as a team, and then we serve our clients and we build trust with our clients and our contractors after we build it with one another. I have a high respect for these different elite teams in the world, in any industry. I love the new movie Top Gun Maverick. They take the top 1% of 1% of pilots in the Navy and they build this elite team, and yet still the part of the theme of the movie was: how do you take these elite individuals and turn them into a gelled team to accomplish a mission? And thatâs part of what weâre trying to do is itâs about believing in one another to accomplish the mission, not just going for the mission at all costs and burning each other out.Â
[00:23:30] Jason: Yeah, thereâs a lot of truth to that. I think one of the big mistakes Iâve seen, having been able to see inside of probably thousands of property management companies and work with lots and lots of entrepreneurs is I think itâs a common misconception and a common belief that entrepreneurs carry that their team members want more compensation and that compensation will increase output. And the reason for this is entrepreneurs, weâre money motivated, but most people are not. Entrepreneurs and salespeople typically are the two categories of people that are money motivated. But what I find is most of our employees, most of our team members, most of the people on the planet are not actually money motivated in that if you give them bonuses, commissions, incentives, financial incentive, performance doesnât really get better.Â
[00:24:24] And you can see this if you give team members a disc assessment. The more advanced disc assessments have whatâs called values index. And one of those values is the economic score. If the economic score is low, theyâre not money motivated. And if the economic scoreâs high theyâre very money motivated, but entrepreneurs usually are money motivated, so they by default think, âThatâs what would motivate me, so Iâm gonna try and inspire them by offering money to get better output, and it backfires because if theyâre economic score is low and say, for example, their charitable scores high. Some of them have guilt related to money. So you pay them more, the performance actually goes downhill and they get worse. And so if their economic scoreâs low, hereâs what you do instead, you give them recognition, theyâre recognition motivated. So I love the idea that youâre giving âem a full sword. Youâre probably like in front of the team. Recognition, generally, even the people that are money motivated is appreciated, so.
[00:25:28] Tommy: Yeah. I learned that one the hard way, just hearing you talk about it. I was like, oh yeah. I took me right through the past scenario where itâs like, âWhy am I not getting more? Iâm paying this person more,â and what they really needed was to be taken and given the opportunity to be believed in more. And actually, they wanted more responsibility, not more compensation. They wanted to show that theyâre capable of more things, and then the compensation piece made more sense, but they almost really felt like they needed to earn it first, which is beautiful, but I tried to do it the other way around and it didnât work so well.
[00:25:59] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I think itâs a lesson everybody that runs a company eventually has to learn. And some of us are pretty hard at learning it, but I think another thing having a system in place allows recognition. So our planning cadence at DoorGrow, we call it DoorGrow OS, our operating system and it allows our executive team members to see what each other got done in the previous week or for our monthly goals or for our quarterly goals, and everybody gets to see the wins and gets to see that somebody contributed to the team goals. And a lot of businesses donât even have goals or itâs the business owners pushing a goal onto everybody, which is very different. So having a really good operating system like that can really make a difference.Â
[00:26:46] Tommy: So I really like that system. I wanna talk to you more about that offline.Â
[00:26:50] Jason: Yeah. Weâll chat with that. Thereâs systems out there like EOS and Traction, and some of these, but really shameless plug, DoorGrow OS is better than those systems. Those have some fundamental flaws because theyâre still either entrepreneur centric and thatâs not as effective, like any business owner thatâs ever gotten burnt out or tired itâs because youâre doing too much and youâre probably the biggest bottleneck in your business, and itâs because you donât have a good operating system to really leverage your team effectively. And most entrepreneurs, we generally are the biggest bottleneck in our business. Thatâs how it works.Â
[00:27:25] Tommy: Whatâs interesting is I was gonna add, you said, what else would I offer property manager and other property managers out there from what Iâve learned and embracing technology. I can tell you, I researched the heck out of all my competition. I researched the heck out of property managers all over the United States, and I love learning about what are their best practices. What are they doing? Howâs their model set up? How do they value their company? Are they doing this new client retention thing? I love all the best practices and learning from it, but I almost always see, âOh, we utilize technology,â and Iâm so curious. And then sometimes when I dig deeper, itâs: âWe send our clients digital pictures,â like digital pictures isnât new technology. That was new technology 15, 20 years ago, or, âOur accounting platform says theyâre the latest in technology,â and thereâs a lot of different platforms out there. And man, when some of these things came out, they were great platforms for being the latest and greatest at being more efficient in organizing your business.Â
[00:28:22] To say we utilize technology because you have email or mobile phone, smartphone, or a platform that came out 10 years ago. Itâs got some updates since⊠no like Iâm interested in the DoorGrow operating system because you guys are leading edge in how to use that to make my business more efficient and grow not because it was something you came up with 10 years ago and youâve made a couple of updates since. Iâm fascinated by being an early adapter and new tech, not claiming Iâve got tech because I use email.Â
[00:28:54] Jason: Yeah, there are. Thereâs a lot of property managers that feel like, âHey, I used to doing spreadsheets and now I have AppFolio or Buildium, so like weâre high tech, so.
[00:29:02] Tommy: Right. âI got a website!âÂ
[00:29:04] Jason: Yeah. They got a website now. Yeah. Yeah. So Iâm probably more tech-savvy and geeky than most people on the planet, but yeah weâre doing some really cool things at DoorGrow that we really feel like add some serious value to the industry. I think two of the most challenging systems for our clients, once we get them growing that they need that weâve built out is a really good planning system. Have project management or task management system, sort of system to assign tasks, but thatâs tactical work. They donât have anything related to strategic planning, and some have EOS, but thereâs some fundamental flaws with EOS, but the company that puts out the idea of EOS, the entrepreneur operating system, their goal is to sell coaches for that system, which they call integrators.Â
[00:29:52] And so they create this org chart in which you have the visionary, which is you usually, the entrepreneur, and then they have the integrator, and then they have the entire team. A fundamental flaw in that is if you have somebody that could run your entire business like that, and youâre once removed from it. They could walk away with your business and thatâs not really a safe place to be, and thatâs not really how anybody actually does it. So you need a planning system though, and EOS DoorGrow OS, most systems out there will have annual planning, quarterly planning, monthly planning, maybe weekly, maybe some sort of daily things, but thatâs pretty typical of any business planning system, but you do need a business planning system.Â
[00:30:30] The other system that every business needs is a really good hiring system. So we just partnered with an AI firm for hiring because our clients always screw this up. Like itâs hard. Hiring is hard. One of the hardest transitions I see entrepreneurs go through is solopreneur to having a team. And this is the transition from maybe about a hundred doors into that two to 400 door range, and usually they build the wrong team around the business owner, doing the wrong things, to where the business owner gets maximum lack of fulfillment and misery and being the biggest bottleneck and so really our entire system is built around the entrepreneur, like identifying what they most enjoy and donât enjoy doing, building the team around them and then build a hiring system to bring in the right team members that you actually can trust. Trust equity can only exist if thereâs culture in a business. And culture can only exist if itâs defined so that you can bring in people that can look at that cultural material and say, âHell yes, I want to be part of this where some people might just want a paycheck and thereâs a massive difference in output.Â
[00:31:41] Your team members, it sounds like you have good culture, and so youâre probably getting three times the output of companies that have bad culture, and by bad culture I mean they hire team members just based on what the business needs. Itâs based on skill. And so they have people that are maybe a skill fit. They can do the work, but theyâre not the personality fit for the role, which means theyâll never be great at it or theyâre notâ the most importantâ cultural fit for the role, which means they actually share your values and you can trust them and let go of pieces of the business. So if you have team members you trust, but they can do the job, but theyâre always coming to you asking questions, youâre always having to micromanage them, itâs because you lack culture in your business. And you need to get that definedâŠ
[00:32:21] Tommy: I hopeâ you canât just have it. Itâs a continual build. Itâs just like trust equity like itâs a continual⊠continue to work on, continue to define, continue to build. I would define our culture as that Camelot culture, Camelot principle, which is the heart of it is the saying âIn service to one another, there is freedom.â
[00:32:40] Jason: Love it. So yeah, service is one of your top cultural values. I love that. We have one at DoorGrow. Ours is called Care ROI, like care, and similar to your trust equity, like we wanna let people know that we care and if we invest care into people, then you know, weâre gonna get a return on that investment. Tommy, itâs been great connecting with you and chatting. It sounds like you found some cool little ways to facilitate and decrease churn. Appreciate you coming on the show and looking forward to connecting more in the future.Â
[00:33:11] Tommy: Yeah. Jason, looking forward to also following up with you and chatting, talking more about how you can help us grow.
[00:33:18] Jason: Absolutely. All right.Â
[00:33:19] Tommy: Cheers.
[00:33:20] Jason: Until next time, everybody, if youâre curious about how to grow or scale your property management business, youâre curious about DoorGrow OS or some things we mentioned on this show or how to identify culture, or youâre just starting to experience that burnout as a visionary, and you donât feel like the visionary anymore. You feel like your best employee, which sucks. We would love to help you get out of that. We have processes to take you through to systematically help you offload, help you feel safe offloading, and helping you have great people to offload to that are actually better at those things you donât enjoy. And you, and a lot of entrepreneurs listening, if you havenât experienced that, youâre like, âNo, nobodyâs better than me.â Believe me, itâs an ego thing. We can kill that real fast. So reach out. Weâd love to support you. Check us out at DoorGrow.com. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.Â
[00:34:10] 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!Â
[00:34:37] 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 todayâs 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.
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