DGS 206: Process Mapping Your Property Management Business With Greg Brooks

Many property management entrepreneurs struggle to document their processes, and this leads to an overall lack of efficiency in their businesses. Documenting processes helps business owners streamline the day-to-day and reduce interruptions from team members.

Join Jason as he chats with Greg Brooks from Rocket Station regarding process mapping your property management business and how it benefit you.

You’ll Learn…

[04:10] What Process Mapping is and Why You Need it

[10:35] How to Document Your Processes

[16:15] Why You Need to Focus on YOU not the Business

[22:40] What Rocket Station Does

Tweetables

“Every entrepreneur can double their capacity by getting a really good assistant.”

“It’s very common that we focus so much on the business and we don’t focus on what we need.”

“As the business grows, the biggest constraints in the business are where there should be the most attention.”

“The process is always needed where we feel the biggest bottleneck or where we’re feeling the most struggle.”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

TalkRoute Referral Link

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jason Hull: for most business owners, getting a VA is probably the very first hire they should make. Every entrepreneur can double their capacity by getting a really good assistant.

[00:00:11] Welcome Doorgrow Hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you’re interested in growing in 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.

[00:00:37] Jason Hull: 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 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 property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let’s get into the show.

[00:01:10] And I’m hanging out today here with Greg Brooks of Rocket Station. So Greg, welcome to the show.

[00:01:18] Greg Brooks: Yeah, Jason, thanks so much for having us on. Excited to kind of dive in today.

[00:01:21] Jason Hull: Cool. So to get started, why don’t you give us a little bit of background of how you sort of got into entrepreneurism and developed Rocket Station, and then we can transition right into what Rocket Station is.

[00:01:34] Greg Brooks: Yeah no, definitely. I was like your classic statistic coming out of college, I was a division one athlete and I got done playing and worked in the fundraising world for a little bit, got my masters and very quickly kind of had that entrepreneurial itch. You know, growing up I had you know, goalkeeper academies that I would run, I reffed on the side, kind of had a bunch of little businesses that would help give me some money in my pocket for college. And kind of once I got done with my masters, you know, began on kind of my entrepreneurial journey. I was seven jobs or businesses owned in eight years trying to figure it out. Everything from supplement company all the way through to a restaurant. So really– Wow. Was trying to kind of find, I feel like being that athlete, right? You have that kind of grind mentality and was trying to see how the heck I was got to get that to translate to making some money and not being a broke college kid anymore.

[00:02:22] And then about four years ago now met up with my partners at Rocket Station. I’d say kind of similar to you. Had, you know, had a couple investment properties myself, but was by no means a full blown property manager or a virtual staffing company with almost 2200 employees in the Philippines. I had never even met someone from the Philippines. Probably didn’t even know where it was on a map. Yeah. But was fortunate enough .A couple of my partners were both operators as well as you know, kind of the visionary for where we wanted to go within the space and say they were looking for someone with, you know, kind of a pedigree in sales and marketing and I guess I fit the bill. So it’s been a wild ride, kind of, you know, learning this industry. I mean, we work with. You know, operators from all sizes, 50 doors to 45,000. So seeing kind of the different struggles or bottlenecks and growth opportunity, especially over the last three years that this industry has kind of been dealing with, has been exciting and say excited to kind of sit here now positioned as kind of one of the top virtual staffing companies to the property management space and helping our clients solve a lot of kind of day-to-day operational issues when it comes to process as well as people.

[00:03:29] Jason Hull: Very cool. So where on a map can people find the Philippines?

[00:03:34] Greg Brooks: Yeah, you want to go say, a lot of people go across the Pacific. You can find Japan and then go a little bit further south. That’s where you’re looking right there, in that southeast Asian corridor. It’s about– now they can all find it. Yeah. 7,000 islands all spread out. If you push them together, it’s about half the size of Florida. But I’m actually, I’m not sure when this episode will release, but we’re actually headed there next week for our Q1 wrap up, which I’m excited about. Cool. Spend seven days over there.

[00:03:57] Jason Hull: Yeah. Very cool. So, our topic today is process mapping your property management business. And so let’s talk a little bit about process mapping and then maybe we can get into how Rocket Station could help with that. So what is process mapping?

[00:04:13] Greg Brooks: Yeah. For us– and candidly this came from kind of our own business lessons as young entrepreneurs, especially in property management. So often, we’ve got great teams. We’ve got people that have been with us for a while that are running our day-to-day operations. But what they’re doing right our leasing processes, our maintenance processes, onboarding a new owner, offboarding an owner, a lot of that we rely on people to, you know, “get the job done right.” and we have our weekly meetings and our huddles. But in terms of like a conceptualized process flow or kind of orders of responsibility or actual training documentation that could allow us if we took on a hundred new doors next month to hire 3, 4, 5 more property managers. We found that a lot of operators, regardless of size, really lack that in depth, detailed documentation around how their departments, how their businesses, how each of their individual team members operates. So for us, like we feel like that being a virtual staffing company, that’s the key, right? Whether you’re just trying to maintain and have a better work life balance as the owner, or if you’re trying to scale from 500 to a thousand doors. A lot of people try to acquire and then just hire. And we feel like unless you have those processes and systems really mapped out, documented technology plugged in the right place, you’re creating a lot of headache and a lot of extra work and just a lot of unenjoyment of the company that you’re trying to scale. So we feel like process mapping is really the key and kind of the foundation to any property manager’s business in order to get where they want to be.

[00:05:41] Jason Hull: So big challenge that I see in the industry is that a lot of these visionary entrepreneurs, they know that they need process. They know they need a process system, but they hate it, like they hate doing it. It’s not fun for them. Now, some of them enjoy the act of creating a system or creating a process, but then they hate to make sure it’s being used and they hate to run it. And that’s where those operators kind of come in. Like it’s kind of the yin of the yang. Most visionary entrepreneurs, they really need an operator. I would say that’s probably the most important hire they’ll ever have in their business, and a lot of them are lacking it, so, now once they have an operator, this would be like something they could easily give to them. They’ll be like, “Hey, do this stuff. Like get these processes documented. Let me show you how to do it.” And maybe they’ll record that and they’ll say, now you make a process for this. Because they don’t want to do it. And those of you listening know, you know, you’re that person because you’ve had it on your to-do list for at least a month, maybe even many months, maybe even years, to get certain things documented or defined processes, and it’s still not done yet, which is a clue you’re not the person that should be doing it yet. You’re not the person. So Greg does Rocket Station provide people like that, operators, or are they the more going to be the people that can help to get these processes in place? Just curious.

[00:07:08] Greg Brooks: Yeah. Yep. Yeah, so we do a combination of both. And you’re exactly right. Like most. I mean, you think of a typical property company owner, right? They’re the visionary. They’ve got big goals, aspirations, like sitting at a desk, creating flow charts and documenting SOPs and creating what are the FAQs that most people ask when they make a leasing inquiry? Like they don’t want to do that and shouldn’t have to, and candidly, like who has the time, right? A lot of us, were operating businesses. If we’re at the point where we know we need processes, it’s either because, we’ve got messes we’re trying to clean up in the office, which is taking our real time. Or we’re acquiring and growing, which is also taking our real time. So it’s like how do you balance that?

[00:07:46] So at Rocket Station, that’s really our niche within the virtual staffing space, right? There’s lots of providers out there that can staff you with people. We feel like without process and without a resource for the owner to be able to build those processes or to, you know, take a property manager or take your leasing team and have them work with somebody who can conceptualize and document those processes. You’re really not doing your business justice. You’re not doing your future virtual assistant justice in terms of getting them set up for success. So we do a combination of both. You asked, do we just hand over processes or do we kind of build them from scratch? We do both. So we’re very fortunate. Like I said we work with over 550 clients just in the single family property management space itself. We also do commercial, we do short term, but we have developed with our clients. Depending on your scale, you know, the problems at a hundred doors are a little bit different than the problems and processes you need at a thousand doors, but kind of industry best practices based on, you know, the positions and the departments and the structure that companies utilize. We also have great partnerships within the industry with a lot of the softwares that you see out there. Even some names I’ve seen that have been on the podcast here, whether it’s like maintenance coordination software, or leasing software or you know, the Appfolios the Propertywares the Buildiums of the world, where everyone’s technology needs to be built into their processes, but not a lot of operators know the ins and outs of all the buttons to click and how to do this, and how to send off this, you know, th this report. So we also work directly with a lot of the software companies, templating out all the functionality that their software enables their clients to utilize, which then we pass along to the client to bake it in.

[00:09:22] So we try to template out as much as possible. I mean, it’s no secret top operators, I mean, even mid-level operators, 80% of what they’re doing, 85% of what they’re doing every single day is pretty uniform across the industry. Where we get really dangerous and become a real big asset for our clients in dangerous, in a good way, is part of our onboarding you first spend two weeks minimum with our process development team and our team of process engineers taking our best practices and our guidebooks on software or specific positions and we tweak it and customize it to how your business operates and the structure, the points of contact, the department leaders that you utilize. So it’s kind of best of both worlds, keeping it very efficient at the end of the day. Like we said, most operators are not doing process mapping is because they probably don’t have time and we totally respect that. But we are really able to create a very robust, very deep, very thorough process through a combination of the customization as well as the templating and best practices that we leverage across our 500 plus customers.

[00:10:28] Jason Hull: Cool. So let’s talk For those that are listening, they’re like, yeah, you know, I know I need to map out some processes. I want to start working on the process mapping myself. What would you recommend as the process to map out a process?

[00:10:42] Greg Brooks: Definitely, I think the process is always needed where we feel the biggest bottleneck or where we’re feeling the most struggle, and I kind of joke, the metaphor that we use is within your office, anytime you or your team have, oh, shoot moments. “Oh, shoot, I forgot to do this. Oh shoot, I don’t want to do this. Oh shoot, I ran out of time to get to this.” That’s usually where you need to start developing process immediately. You know, that’s typically kind of your foundational billing structure, right? Whether it’s you know, whether it’s like your leasing process or whether it’s how you handle a maintenance call, how you troubleshoot an issue on, on, on site, at a property. I’m trying to think what else. Like your past due, you’re invoicing, right? All of those kind of, you know, things that are very repetitive, that are very low level, but have to be done every day. We typically see that’s the most impactful place that you can start implementing and documenting your processes. Like I said, we kind of coined the term, the oh shoot moments, you know, the, that’s really where the operator, kind of like what you said, same thing for the business owner. Each of your teams, each of your property managers, your leasing agents, there’s things that they’re either forgetting to do or not doing. It’s because it’s probably a low priority item that you should be reinforcing process rather than just relying on them to get it done.

[00:11:47] And there’s many different ways. I know you guys have a great software. I mean, there’s tons of different mind mapping softwares out there, but you know, even just a whiteboarding exercise. You know, kind of just doing the, “okay guys, like where are we? Let’s go through the simple 12 steps to go from advertising a property to getting a lease signed.” Just simplify, and then start to back into the nuance. I think a lot of operators, they think their business, it’s very unique. “We do this a certain way, we do that a certain way,” and they start thinking too much about the granular and not enough about just the basic step one, step two, step three of the life cycle of a tenant or an owner. So being able to really start there, kind of the good old KISS method, right? ‘Keep it simple, silly,’ like start very basic and then you can start to build out first. But even just that very basic you know, 10,000 foot overview of how each department operates or how each department interacts with one another is typically where we want to start from a process mapping standpoint.

[00:12:41] Jason Hull: Cool. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. I like the idea of looking at the bottlenecks because as the business grows, the biggest constraints in the business are where there should be the most attention. There’s a good book by Eliyahu Goldratt. It’s called The Goal and it perpetuates the theory of constraints, and it illustrates it nicely. It’s kind of a dry read, but, so I recommend you listen to the audiobook because they have actors to play each part. Unless you like dry reading, so. But the ideas in this book, the guy is looking at everything through the lens of trying to fix this factory that he’s in charge of, and he’s looking at all these different stages in the factory, and they were making things less efficient by improving each step. Because if each step is maximum efficiency, that means they were just building up inventory and it was causing even more constraint and more delay. And so everything has to work as a cohesive whole. And so I like the idea of looking at the larger big picture because you can like optimize one part of your process super strongly and shove a lot of stuff through, and then it can all pile up somewhere else. And that’s not the most efficient business model.

[00:13:50] It would actually be more efficient to slow things down on that previous step to the level that the next step can handle it fully instead of it building up sort of some sort of constraint or inventory or whatever that you have to like manage and inventory and property management would just be like things backing up, right? So in that situation. So what else can we share with people about process mapping? And then let’s get into maybe… I really liked what you had said about how you kind of onboard your clients and bringing them into with your dev team to map out processes. So maybe we can go in a little more detail about that.

[00:14:28] Greg Brooks: Yeah, definitely. And then kind of just off of what you just said there, I think the biggest thing is at the end of the day, a lot, I’m sure a lot of people listening to this business they’re operators, right? They are stuck. The good old stuck in the business versus working on the business. Yeah. I mean, I would say don’t try to do it all yourself, right? Whether it’s consultants and consulting services, like what DoorGrow has, or bringing in, hiring kind of your yin to your yang, right? Someone who has an operational mindset, and I think that’s a huge part of it as well. Even with how we do it. Typically how an engagement works with one of our clients is like we allow the visionary type business owner to very efficiently get the processes or coordinate their team to get the structure out of them so that you can have that breath of fresh air to like really conceptualize and view your business and even just pinpoint like where those bottlenecks are. So often, I think especially if you’re growing your property management company, onboarding new owners, onboarding new doors, it’s like you’re just waking up and you’re a firefighter every day. So just having a resource, whether it’s an internal hire, a consultant, a service like ours, to just like get how the system operates now.

[00:15:29] Forget even trying to make it more efficient. Forget refining, forget figuring out how many more people we need. Just having a resource where their skillset is being able to conceptualize and document and get that out is hugely valuable. Where what we find is with our clients, like very quickly, you know, their key investors their property managers themselves as the owner, they’re very quickly able to say, “Well, why are we doing it like that? What does this look like?” Or our team can say, “well, did you know you can automate this whole business function with the technology that you’re already paying a pretty penny for?” So just like getting it out, right? Don’t feel like you got to kind of make it more efficient and document the same time. It’s like, let’s just figure out what we got here. That’s just hugely valuable and should be like kind of the first stepping stone for anybody as they go down the, you know, building systems and processes pathway.

[00:16:13] Jason Hull: Yeah. I think one of the interesting things that I see a lot in having, you know, been kind of on the inside of probably thousands of property management businesses that’s really interesting, is that it’s very common, I think just in general for entrepreneurs is that we focus so much on the business and we don’t focus on what we need as an entrepreneur in order to move towards what I’ve talked about on previous episodes, which I call the four reasons, like more fulfillment in our day-to-day, more freedom, more contribution, more support in our business. Those are the four reasons we start a business, and we all want that fifth reason of safety and certainty like our clients want, and in order to create those five things, a lot of times business owners make the mistake of just continually serving the business. What does the business need? Oh, the business needs an operator. The business needs to hire, the business needs this. Meanwhile, their needs continually get neglected. It’s super common that you get to the point where you have two to 400 doors, I call it the second sand trap, and you’re miserable. More miserable than you’ve ever been in your business or maybe in your life, and you now have an entire team around you that are doing stuff in the business, but they’re asking you tons of questions.

[00:17:28] You are now the biggest bottleneck in the business. You’re frustrated and banging your head against the wall thinking, “why can’t they just think for themselves?” And it’s because you’ve built a team around the wrong person. You didn’t build the business in a way that you get to do the things you most enjoy. And so the way we combat that, I like the lens of looking at what does the business need? What systems do you have? How can you do this? I want to challenge everybody listening also to pay attention to what you need because this business exists to give you fulfillment, to give you freedom to take care of you, and you’ve spent so much of this trying to take care of the business and take care of your team. So what we do with clients is we have them do a time study. And we have them categorize based on the energetically, which things give them energy, like gives them fulfillment, freedom. Those are plus signs and which things are minus signs that are taking those things away. And then we take a look at those. And then we also categorize them based on you know, whether it’s strategic time, like you’re focusing on the business, or whether it’s tactical, where you’re in the business, you’re making phone calls, you’re doing sales, you’re like doing the work, you’re sending emails. And for most visionary entrepreneurs, the tactical stuff are the minus signs.

[00:18:39] And then the other hidden thing that we track in time studies are interruptions, because this is the biggest hidden thief in a business, is all the interruptions, your team interrupting you, tenants, owners interrupting you. All the interruptions are a thief, and one interruption according to Gary Keller’s book, The One Thing, according to research cited in there, costs 18 minutes of productivity. And normally team members are interrupting each other at least once every 18 minutes, so you’re losing over a half hour of labor every time. One team member interrupts another team member. And so that’s why some businesses, I’ve seen some with entire teams and it feels like they’re just spinning their wheels. They’re not really making, innovating, moving progress forward and they’re just barely getting all the to-dos done. And so I would challenge people, especially if they come on board with DoorGrow, we would have them do a time study to get clarity on what they need most to get to that next level.

[00:19:33] because there’s a lot of people in the 200 to 400 door stage that they don’t even really want to add doors. That’s the secret. Usually at that stage, they deep down unconsciously, don’t really want to add doors. They say they do, but when I talk with them, adding more doors, I can tell, means more pain in their mind. So they’re psychologically against themselves. They’re reversed. And in order to do that, they need to quit focusing on the business and they need to start focusing on themselves and what they need, and their team will be better off if they have those four reasons, their team members can start to have it because their team members will be doing the right things and they’ll have the vision to be able to see that their team members are out of alignment or not on those four things for themselves. And I find we get our clients three times the productivity out of their existing team members if they are in alignment with the four reasons. Three times. So yeah, that’s cost savings.

[00:20:29] Greg Brooks: A hundred percent. And it’s just that leveling up, right? It’s for the business owner then being able to level up into what they want to do, run the business that they want. That cascades down to your management. Obviously we come at it kind of from the bottom up, right? We talk through with a lot of our clients once we go through the process mapping piece is like a virtual assistant hired the right way, onboarded the right way can be so valuable. And it’s, you know, for some clients it’s a cost cutting measure like, at eight bucks, 10 bucks, 12 bucks an hour, it’s typically got to save you a ton of overhead compared to hiring somebody locally. But we go to them and say, “Hey, look, now we have these processes. You’ve been able to diagnose what your negatives are, right? What’s sucking the energy out of you. Well, look, we just took you out of doing c and d level work. You’re now doing the a and b in the space that you thrive, which is only got to help the business get where you want it to go. And we have a super affordable resource that has the skillset and character suits to be able to do that work better than you would anyway.” So it’s that win-win- win all around the board. Yeah. And then it cascade down. Especially for that, we have a lot of clients in that kind of 200 to 500 range. Yes. It’s just, you just kind of keep, you keep throwing them muck, right? You’re in the minutiae of it, just trying to get through to the next day and the thought of going to 700 doors is just like, “no way I’m got to have a heart attack.” But when you can start developing those processes, you know, mirror that up against your team’s strengths, who you have, where do you want this property manager or this leasing, you know, agent to be really, and what do you want them doing?

[00:21:54] We like to simplify it down to, I mean, no one should have more than three to five core responsibilities, right? Really. And then property management. That’s very hard. But if we can get people doing the three to five things that are in their sweet spot. What needs to fall off of their plate and then how can we offset that with process and incredible VAs to get them so that the whole business can take a level up and I mean, once again, coming back to just the personal thing, people can enjoy going to work again. There’s a lot of times, whereas the owner where like, “I just don’t want to go in.” I’m sick of getting my teeth kicked in. So it’s like your team feels that too. Well, how can we be enjoying this more. How can we increase the culture, make it a better experience? Your owners feel that, your tenants feel that, and it all kind of starts at this initial discovery and jumping in with the process piece.

[00:22:37] Jason Hull: Yeah, totally. So cool. Well, tell us a little bit more about Rocket Station. I mean, there’s a lot of VA companies targeting the property management space. We’ve had some on the show. We’ve had like Anaquim, virtually Incredible, Hire Smart, and several others. What do you feel like makes Rocket Station stand out? How are you kind of unique in the space? And why should somebody reach out to you instead of somebody else?

[00:23:02] Greg Brooks: Yeah. No, definitely. So, I mean, big thing kind of comes back to what we just talked about. We feel like there are, there’s a lot of, especially, and we’ve seen them in the last five years, there’s a new VA company every single week, that specializes, “in real estate.” I think at the end of the day, a part of the puzzle of hiring VAs is finding great VAs. So just from sheer like, kind of recruitment size, all of our team members are based in the Philippines. So like, like I mentioned earlier, we’ve got 2200 people, 250 internal employees that work in the Philippines, recruiting, training, and onboarding what we feel like is some of the best talent the country has to offer. And all we do is real estate. So we break our business into kind of four key pillars. So it’s property management, investor, real estate agent and brokerage, and then we have a home service division as well. So a big part of what we do is providing, we want it to be a win, right? We want a rockstar virtual assistant that has spent five and a half weeks going through our training and evaluation to get placed with the perfect client so they can grow their career and grow professionally and make more money and all the things any employee wants.

[00:24:03] We also want a client who has an ease of experience where at the end of it, they get a high output individual with as minimal headaches as possible. Unfortunately we feel like in the VA space, a lot of VA companies out there are more placement agencies. Meaning they’ll find you somebody, but then you’re kind of on your own to get them trained and hold them accountable. I mean, every VA company out there touts “you’ll get management support and all,” but once you get into it, that management support really is just, “Hey, if the VA messes up, give us a call. We’ll get you a new one,” and that’s just not like the end goal. We’re big on this idea of an being an integrated staffing service, and what that means is our perfect experience is we only staff dedicated virtual assistance to our clients, either part-time or full-time.

[00:24:45] So the perfect experience for us is, yes, Rocket Station held your hand and helped you develop processes and job scopes. We do all the recruitment and placement of somebody who we’ve evaluated over the course of five weeks to be the right fit. But at the end of the day, we want them to look, act, and feel like a member of your team. So we feel like that transactional nature that a lot of VA companies unfortunately go with, just because they’re trying to get butts in seats. It doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help the property manager. It certainly doesn’t help the va. In terms of finding people that really grow and stick well, one of the numbers we’re really proud of is our average client retention is 33 months.

[00:25:20] So on average, the VA that you hire with us is lasting with you almost three years. Which I mean, in the VA space is about four times industry average, but even for the types of positions that we’re filling, maintenance coordinators, leasing administrators, like you’re not hiring somebody locally that’s got to last more than nine to 15 months. So we’re really proud of that and we feel like it creates that experience where we help. I mean, our point of differentiation is we’re not just helping a VA get a job, we’re helping our property management clients set up their systems and process so they can be successful with hiring virtual assistants. Because I think anyone out there that either currently has VAs or has maybe tried hiring VAs you very quickly realize that the number one, the term VA kind of very much undersells the capacity of what these team members abroad can do. Virtual assistant, you think my calendar or make a follow up call for me. And it’s not that right? We’re hiring, you know, world class customer service, leasing agents, salespeople, right? People who can really come in and we’ve got lots of cool studies to show this, but can typically outperform a local hire about three to one compared to what, you know, what you would get outsourcing versus hiring. But we really try to handhold and help our clients create the infrastructure– a lot of it through process mapping– to ensure the success of that hire. Sometimes people don’t match. Sometimes VAs, you know, they do get replaced in six months, nine months. But the fact that we take that deep investment from literally documenting the processes for our clients, really getting to know them and managing that relationship as if we are a part of their team, really allows it to be a win across the board rather than just the transactional nature that unfortunately so many VA companies kind of run with in, in the property management space specifically.

[00:27:03] Jason Hull: So, I mean, that’s incredibly low churn. If you’re able to, on average do 33 months. So what would you say really– I mean, because that’s unique– what really is causing that?

[00:27:16] Greg Brooks: I think it’s a, I mean, hate throwing around the word culture because everyone throws around culture, right? I got a great culture. We have a different culture, we have a unique culture, but for us, it really is the culture piece in terms of how we structure the experience for the virtual assistant in the Philippines, mixed with how we structure the experience for the client to where we kind of view our business kind of in like two different verticals that combine when the client hires. So through our recruitment process, through the training, through all the support that we give even down to like how we compensate the benefits that they receive. It all lends to being a more structured employment option for the virtual assistant themselves. And we see that in terms of, we’re very fortunate. We spend minimal dollars advertising for recruits in the Philippines. And last month we had 5,500 people apply for a job at Rocket Station. And a lot of that we feel like speaks to the culture because we have an incredible internal network over there that champions the culture that we’re trying to provide, where we’re not just that transactional VA company that’s got to get you a client and then you got to kind of figure it out, right? We’re helping support their education right from the jump in terms of the industry and the types of clients they’re got to land with. Once they do get selected and hired by a client, we have all this process mapping and training and documentation custom-built. That’s setting them for up for success. And then we actively are managing it, looking for opportunities to grow the VA’s experience and their knowledge once they’re working with the client and performing in their role. So just creating those feedback loops that create really strong culture with our teams over there. And then also marrying that with. The preparation that we do with the clients here.

[00:28:58] And I know VAs have become a lot more common, especially during Covid, but I mean there’s still a lot of operators all sizes of business where it’s still– for a bad metaphor here– it’s still very foreign to them, right? They’re like, how the heck am I got to communicate with this person every day? How are they got to be on our meetings? How are they got to be able to be plugged into our technology? So being able to walk them through step by step with that, doing it a lot of that for them, but making sure the infrastructure is set up allows them to look at this VA that they’re hiring more as a member of their team rather than just the person who is vetting all of their lease applications because their leasing agent is sick of doing it or not doing it. You know what I mean? It’s that different in terms of like, Hey, we have the end goal of them being integrated, being a part of their team. I mean, we have incredible stories of, ever since the world has kind of opened back up, clients literally traveling to the Philippines to visit. Actually within the PMI franchise network, one of our kind of trophy clients they flew. Four of their VAs over for the Property Management Incorporated national Convention last year. So it’s just great. It’s that different experience where it’s like, hey, people are people. As business owners, we need to set people up for success because personally, I’ve never hired somebody who wants to quit three months later. When the employer meets the employee, there typically is a value trade there where somebody wants to succeed and for anyone that’s worked with VAs in the Philippines, when you talk about like work ethic and really just want to it’s world class, like they want to come in and be a valuable member of the team.

[00:30:26] So the way that we’re able to prep the client, the culture that we’re able to cultivate within the VA space itself is what really lends itself to that really strong marriage and that super low churn that the client actually feels in their business, whether that’s being able to add 200 more doors, whether that’s becoming, you know, more profitable or cutting down their overhead, like whatever their end goal is with hiring VAs, they’re able to realize that faster and they’re able to get just a huge resource, a huge talent in terms of this dedicated virtual assistant.

[00:30:56] Jason Hull: Yeah, for most business owners, getting a VA is probably the very first hire they should make. They’re probably not ready yet at a smaller level of maybe like 50 to a hundred doors, you know, they’re not ready probably to afford to hire a good operator or somebody come in and do all operations. But getting a really good assistant. Every entrepreneur can double their capacity by getting a really good assistant. I never want to be without my own assistant. I have an amazing assistant. She’s in Mexico and we’ve got at least two team members in the Philippines. We’ve got multiple team members in Canada. Like the cool thing about being able to do things virtually is that you can get the best, you can get the best wherever they’re at. And

[00:31:44] Greg Brooks: at a price you can afford, typically.

[00:31:45] Jason Hull: Yeah, at a price you can afford. Now I definitely have a lot of US based team members. And I do believe, like, you know, there’s a lot of times there’s a difference. There’s a lot of times there’s been a difference, but for everybody on my team, they’re the best I could find in any category. And it didn’t matter where they were. So, It just is icing on the cake that, you know, having a logo designer, for example, in the Philippines would charge probably 10 times less than a logo designer in New York City. So there’s definitely advantages and those get passed on to your clients in a lot of instances as well. And so it allows the property manager to remain competitive in their pricing and to keep their operations and to have more profit margin. So it really does create a win-win- win all the way around so everybody benefits. Well, cool. I think that’s a pretty good place to wrap unless there’s anything else you want to say about Rocket Station. You can tell us how we can get in touch with Rocket Station or those listening, how they can. Get a hold of you.

[00:32:43] Greg Brooks: Yeah, definitely. So anybody who wants to nerd out on process mapping or learn more about VAs, say, we’d love to hop on a quick call and talk to you. Our team’s got some great resources. We’ve got some great kind of done for you SOPs where if this idea of process mapping is something you want to get into, but maybe using a service like ours you’re not quite ready for. We’ve got some great how tos. So head over to rocketstation.com. Obviously check out our website. We’ve got some great lead magnets and resources there for anybody who wants them. Anyone interested in a call, go to discovery.rocketstation.com. For all the DoorGrow listeners, we do have a $500 off promo that we’re running. So just make sure in the referral box put “DoorGrow.” But like I said, the call itself is completely free. So even if you’re trying to learn more about VAs, learn more about processes, our team of specialists, we’d love to kind of walk you through, you know, learn a little bit about your business, see if we can help, and if not, be able to fill you up with a ton of resources and knowledge and a bunch of takeaways to, to hopefully help you run a more efficient business where you leverage virtual assistance in some capacity.

[00:33:42] Jason Hull: Awesome. Thanks Greg for being on the DoorGrowShow.

[00:33:45] Greg Brooks: Thanks for having us.

[00:33:46] Jason Hull: Cool. So if you are a property management entrepreneur, you want to add doors, you want to grow your business, you’re wanting to scale, check us out at DoorGrow.com. We’ve got an amazing mastermind. And if you’re wanting to get to the next level in your business, You’re not got to do that by doing it alone. It’s time to start getting connected, reaching out, and not being that entrepreneur on an island. There’s lots of people playing a similar game as you and you should be connected. So reach out to us at DoorGrow. We would love to help you grow your business. You can check us out at DoorGrow.com.

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