DGS 349: The Freedom Formula for Property Managers

Most property management entrepreneurs start a business for freedom and end up building a cage.

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, recorded right after the Fourth of July, Jason and Sarah Hull talk about what Jason calls the river of freedom. Money flows toward freedom, and a business built against it runs into friction everywhere, from sales to your own motivation.

They stack freedom at every level. It starts with you as the business owner, then your team, by moving people into the work they enjoy and giving them more autonomy. Then come your clients, because the product you’re really selling isn’t property management. It’s freedom from their rental property. Jason explains why asking an owner to pick the flooring takes that freedom away, and why trust is what creates it. Sarah shares how a business meant to replace a 9 to 5 can quietly turn into a 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. job, and what it takes to restructure your way out.

You’ll Learn

([00:00]) Independence Day and the river of freedom

([02:22]) Why entrepreneurs start businesses in the first place

([04:10]) Why you really want freedom, not just more money

([05:10]) Giving your team more freedom

([07:50]) Why more control doesn’t get you better output

([09:07]) The product you’re really selling is freedom

([10:37]) Trust creates freedom

([13:14]) Escaping the cage you built for yourself

([15:07]) Freedom from sales, from operations, or both

([16:53]) Stacking freedom at every level

Quotables

“We mistakenly think we want more money. But what we really want is what we think money will give us, which is more freedom.” Jason Hull

“The product that you should be selling is not really property management. It should be freedom.” Jason Hull

“So trust creates freedom.” Jason Hull

“You get freedom from the nine to five, but sometimes you build a different cage for yourself.” Sarah Hull

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

Jason & Sarah Hull ([00:00])

We are Jason and Sarah Hull, the founder and CEO and COO of DoorGrow, and we are the world’s leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry.

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. Now let’s get into the show. All right, so today,

we’re talking about freedom. Freedom. All right, we just celebrated the

Fourth of July, Independence Day. It’s it’s it’s called Independence Day, and the reason that they’re shifting it to Fourth of July is to get people to be less focused on their independence because that’s what it is. It’s independence day. Okay. Well yes, so let’s recap. The the United States came about because a group of really awesome entrepreneurial people decided that they did not want

to be beholden to Britain and they declared their independence, which was, you know, basically declaring war. And this small little group of colonies decided to go to war with the biggest, most established military in the world at the time. And we won. We we were able to achieve our independence. So okay

Now, why was America able to win? Well, my theory or belief is that f anytime you are moving with the river instead of swimming upstream of freedom, the river of freedom, you have momentum and yeah, at your back. You have the wind in your sails. You are headed in the direction, and

everything moves towards greater freedom.

And I think then you will be more likely to have success if you’re moving towards freedom. And so I think the USA is a big macrocosmic sort of example of the microcosmic. And so we’re gonna talk about how money flows towards freedom today is kind of the idea. So why do people start businesses, Sarah?

That’s like one of the biggest reasons is they go, Hey, I I want to do things my way. I see a need in the marketplace and the way that other people are doing things is maybe it’s not good or maybe you think you have, you know, some better ideas. Maybe there’s this this need for a product or service that doesn’t yet exist.

And they go, hey, I have the freedom and the ability to create this product or service and meet this need in the marketplace. And a lot of times, entrepreneurs, we think that we can do things better than other people can do it. And a lot of times we’re right. And that’s why businesses start to exist and and grow and expand, is they see a need and they

Fill said need. So we have the the choice really to be able to say, hey, I’m I’m gonna step up and be the one who meets that need. All right. Yeah. So I think if we’re going along with this momentum, this river of freedom, and you’re headed in that direction, what could be more powerful than starting a business in a nation that values freedom with people?

That value, they were raised celebrating Independence Day every year. They’re celebrating freedom. We value freedom. And you’re a business owner that values getting more and more freedom and creating freedom. And then you create a business like property management where you are creating freedom for others. You’re giving other people freedom from things they don’t enjoy dealing with.

Is you all of this can if if aligned creates a massive amount of momentum. It can create a lot of success if you’re selling the right thing, the right thing,

and this is what we do at DoorGrow. Our goal is to help business owners get more freedom from doing the day-to-day work, from being the property manager to being more of the business owner, the visionary, the entrepreneur. So, yes, the business owner.

as business owners, we value freedom. Usually we mistakenly think we want more money. But what we really want is what we think money will give us, which is more freedom if we do it the right way. But we make more and more money eventually realizing we have less and less freedom the more money we make because we’re doing it the wrong way. And then we’re like, why am I even doing this? yeah, I want freedom. I don’t just want more money. Because once you get more money, but you have less freedom, you realize this isn’t the trade I wanted.

And so we want to make sure we’re focused on getting yourself more freedom. You got to build the right business. If you build it wrong, your business can’t scale, it can’t grow. And you, if you’re because you’re moving upstream, you’re in conflict with freedom. And so, as a business owner, if you start building a business that’s giving you less and less freedom, even though you’re trying to help others get freedom, you’re going to be out of integrity. People are going to feel that. It’s going to be harder to sell it. You’re going to, you know, to others and convince them to become your client.

And you’re going to just experience a massive amount of friction and unconsciously you’re going to sabotage.

Once you have more freedom, then you probably also want to give your team more freedom. How do we give our team more freedom?

Consistently shifting them into more of the things that they do enjoy, and by making sure that they can really specialize in what they enjoy and what they’re good at. So usually when a business starts, unless there’s a lot of resources and capital, businesses typically tend to start with one person, maybe two people, and then that one or

Two people, they end up doing everything. So they they are the entirety of the business. Every role, every task, every department is filled by that person or those, you know, small handful of people. And then as the business grows, then some shifts are able to be made where those people no longer have to handle every single thing because they can bring on the right.

resources and sometimes that might be software, sometimes that might be people, sometimes that might be an AI tool. But they can start to shift some of those responsibilities to other people or tools and that allows them to focus more on the things that they really do enjoy doing and they’re they’re good at. And the same then kind of trickles downstream to the team.

where the team kind of gets to experience that same thing. Usually when especially your first team member, that team member ends up doing a little bit of multiple pieces of roles. Even to the best of our ability we try. We’re like, hey, this is gonna be the role that you do and then the someone’s getting roped, either the business owner or that team member is getting roped into all of these other pieces. So to give our team more and more freedom

really allows them to become an expert and a specialist in what they enjoy and in what they’re good at. And that usually looks like expansion. Hmm. Okay. And that’s a good segue to mentioning our sponsor for today’s episode. It is because they give you freedom through ooh software. So ring ring, who’s there? Ha, not property managers. Over half don’t even answer their phones during

Business hours. Hot leads are calling you directly and they’re going straight to missed calls. They’re going right to voicemail. So if you’re spending time and money on growth, you need to actually capture that growth. And that is where super comes in. Super’s AI receptionist sounds lifelike. It answers 24-7 and it’s trained on property management. It even makes follow-up calls to leads that you might have missed. Go to hiresuper.com/DoorGrow.

And stop missing revenue to miss calls. Okay.

Most business owners make the mistake. They think if I control my team more, I’ll get better output.

And that’s not the case. You that means you need better people. If you have great people, they will lead themselves. If you have better people, and you move them into what feels like more freedom for them, which means they have more autonomy, more ability to make choices and decisions, more time spent doing things that give them fulfillment that they enjoy doing. Like Sarah was talking about, you will get maybe two times the output, maybe three times the output from team members that are in that momentum.

flowing the right way down the down the river towards freedom, right? So we got to get the business owner in alignment. Now we got to get the team in alignment and help expand that freedom to our team members. We do that by helping having our clients give their team members time studies to figure out where their plus and minus signs are energetically, which things do they enjoy, which things are taking away from their joy so that we can hire additional staff, get additional support, get additional technology

That helps take the minus signs off their plate and allows them to spend more time in the plus signs, which is the freedom zone, right? And then also our businesses can’t exist if we aren’t benefiting our clients. And so property management is about really the product that you should be selling is not really property management. It should be freedom. You’re giving your clients freedom from their rental property. But a lot of property management management business owners mess this up. How do they mess this up?

Because they really just involve their clients and everything. They instead of being decisive and being the one who’s the leader and in control, they will just kind of defer to the property owner. Or maybe they’re not deferring completely, but they’re just involving that property owner. Hey Bob, what do you think about this kind of flooring?

We have to do the floors. Do you do you want do you want carpet or do you want L V P? And he’s like, I don’t know. Like now I have to think about that.

you take ownership, control, you dominate the situation, you lead. They can

relax and let go of that stuff, then you’re actually doing the job of a property manager. You are giving them freedom from the burden of having to stress or worry about or to manage anybody. They should not be managing the manager to manage their property. Right? That’s not freedom for them. It’s freedom from a bad property management situation, maybe if you’re a mediocre manager, but if you’re a great property manager,

most clients, most investors will pay more to have a really good property manager once they’ve experienced one where they’re hands off and not having to stress and be involved and micromanage and overlook, look over your shoulder and see where you’re spending their money because they don’t trust you. So trust creates freedom. If your team trusts you,

They will follow you. You’ll be creating more freedom. If your clients trust your team and you, that will give them more freedom. Okay, now let’s take a look at markets. Markets and and and businesses, money tends to flow where there is more freedom. That’s where businesses thrive. USA is a market where a lot of money thrives. but there’s areas in the US where money tends to flow and to thrive.

[Off-topic segment omitted]

So how can DoorGrow help people with freedom, Sarah? I think we’re great at helping clients get freedom from the burden of their property management business. That’s kind of one of the things that we specialize in because a lot of times when people start a business they do so with the intention of creating more freedom for themselves. Yeah. And they might even think, I you know, I don’t want a nine to five job and I don’t think I can

You know, be locked in an office all day or, you know, like I glued to my desk or my phone or or my computer. So what I’ll do is I’ll create this business and I’ll start this business. And sometimes unless you have a really great system in place, y you you get freedom from the nine to five, but sometimes you build a different cage for yourself, which is sometimes like a seven AM to

eight PM and then you get a seven to eight and you didn’t really expect that. So there’s certain shifts in your business and with your team and with your clients and with your structure and your systems and your software and your processes that you that’s I think one of the great things about running a business is you get to choose what you do and how you do it and who you work with and who’s on your team.

So one of the things that we’re really good at helping clients with is restructuring things. Or if you’re newer and starting out, structuring things the right way right from the beginning so that you don’t end up hoping for freedom but ending up with this cage and prison that you’ve built yourself that traps you in a

sixteen hour work day.

all right. So if you’re looking for freedom from the struggle, you’re you’re a smaller company, you’re trying to figure out how do we just get more doors? And you want freedom from

manipulative marketers that are trying to sell you coldly digital marketing. You want freedom from wasting money on digital marketing, then we have our growth accelerator program that is designed to help you figure out the right strategies to grow and do it for way less money. So if you’re wanting freedom from doing the sales yourself, you don’t want to even focus on that. You want someone else to add the doors for you. We have our new program, the Door Machine.

We had the doors, you manage them. You want to get freedom and gradually move yourself out of having to be involved in the front end of the business of bringing in new business. Because, you know, doing sales to you does not feel like freedom. You just hate doing that piece. Some of you love it. I don’t want to take that away from you, but it’s some of and so gross accelerator. We’ll teach you how to do it if you want to do it. If you don’t like doing that piece, let’s get you out of it. If you want freedom from operations.

A lot of you in the two to four hundred door range get trapped here. And you just you’re mired in answering everybody’s questions on your team, and you’re you’re not really the entrepreneur anymore. You’re still somehow doing every job in the business. You want freedom from property management itself. That’s our super system. Maybe you want freedom from both. The super system is included, people in the door machine as well. You get access to that. But you you’re wanting to you’re wanting freedom.

In your property management business. There’s this ascension of going from doing all the work initially in the beginning to building a team to getting out of the different pieces and getting more and more freedom means doing more, doing less things, but doing more of those less things. And it’s the ones you enjoy. It’s the ones you love doing. That’s really what freedom feels like is that you get to spend your day doing stuff that you love doing. Then you don’t need to try and escape your business anymore because you’re

You’re focused on the pieces that really give you fulfillment and freedom. And that’s our goal at DoorGrow to help you find some freedom. So let’s stack all these different levels of freedom, all the way down from the grand old United States. We’re grateful to be part of freedom and focus on where we can layer freedom at every level down to to getting ourselves the maximum level of freedom, our team, our clients, the business, and watch the money flow.

So much easier when you’re in alignment and not in conflict with how I believe the world was designed. It was designed for choice and for freedom and autonomy. And we would love to help you get there. All right. Well, if you’ve ever felt stuck or stagnant and you want to take your property management business to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com. We would love to help you for a free training on how to get unlimited leads for free. Freedom.

Text the word leads to 512-648-4608. Also, you can join our free online community just for property management business owners by going to doorgrowclub.com. And if you want tips, tricks, or ideas, or to learn more about our offers, subscribe to our newsletter by going to doorgrow.com/subscribe. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don’t forget to subscribe, leave us a review. We’d really appreciate it.

And until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let’s grow together. Bye everyone.