Welcome to Close it now, the podcast that's revolutionizing the H Vac and home improvement trades industries.

Get ready to dive deep into the world of heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

We're turning up the heat on industry standards and cooling down misconceptions.

And we're not just talking about fixing vents and adjusting thermostats.

It's about the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement.

We're the driving force, inspiring top performers who crave excellence not only in their professional endeavors, but also in fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all.

This is Close it now, where excellence meets excitement.

Let's get to work now your host, Sam Wakefield.

Well, welcome back to Close It Now.

Sam Wakefield here to turn on the radio voice for a second and get an introduction in.

I am so happy to welcome this guest today.

He is somebody that I've known for a bit over a year now.

We are in the same networking group, same mastermind.

Just quick shout out if you, all your listeners, if you have never heard of what a mastermind group is, find one, look it up.

There's got, there's, there is one in your area, highly recommend it because it's typically a group of very success minded, focused people that are, you know, wanting to grow their businesses, share best practices and a lot of times are able to trade business, be pod good, obviously be podcast guests, all kind of stuff.

So referrals, that kind of thing.

So find yourself a networking slash mastermind group to grow in your area.

So with that being said, my guest today, we've got a really cool episode for you.

I know a lot of you have.

So this is a polarizing topic in the H Vac world and in the home services.

And it's a polarizing topic on the other side of this other side of this fence too.

So today we're talking about property management.

Who works with property managers, who doesn't, who wants to, who hates it, who loves it.

We're going to unpack a bunch of, a bunch of the gripes, right?

So he's been in his community, I've been in my, I've been in my community.

We've uncovered like the top five complaints that property managers have for H Vac people.

I've covered some of the top 5 complaints h vac people have about property managers.

So we're going to meet in the middle and see if we can shed some light on this and help everyone grow through this conversation.

So my guest Today he is.

His name is Jason Hull.

He is the CEO and founder of the number one, number one trainer coach, like growth captain for property managers in the entire world.

He is the CEO and founder of Door Grow and so excited to have him as a guest on the podcast today.

Welcome, Jason.

Thank you.

Love the intro.

Yeah.

Hey, you know you built it, so they will come.

Yeah.

Excited to be here and this will be interesting to get into.

We both did some research and I asked my Facebook group and community of property management business owners what their biggest challenges and complaints were of H Vac companies.

And you did kind of the same thing but on the opposite.

And so, yeah, this should be an interesting conversation.

I'm sure the people listening to your show are probably thinking, you know, how can I get more business from property managers?

Have better relationships maybe with property managers and make more money maybe leveraging property managers.

Maybe we can get into that, right?

Yeah.

I mean, on this side of the coin, it's one of those love hate relationships.

Everyone knows that there's a massive amount of business there and property managers need lots of work.

But from our perspective, it's like this horrible pain and it's like drudgery to have to work with them at the same time.

So it's like, how do we bridge this gap here?

Before we get into it though, I'd love for you to give a quick highlight reel, man.

Give everybody like your journey.

How did you get here?

And you know, what was your big philosophy and inspiration for, you know, for starting door grow.

Yeah.

So I guess the quick version is I was doing website design and my brother needed a website.

He had just bought into a property management franchise and he didn't like what corporate gave him and so I helped him with a website.

Then his fellow franchisees wanted a website from like, like he had.

And then we started ranking nationally for property management website design and that usually people want websites cause they think it's going to help them grow their business.

Sure.

And so that's their real goal.

So then we started helping them focus on their real goal, which is growing their business.

And then it turned into coaching and, and I've been doing this for over a decade, so it's evolved over time.

So yeah, no joke.

Well, man, that's a cool story.

And I love how you have like really taken over so much of the space and developed the.

And for everybody.

Jason shared with me some of the, some of the training content, some of the business coaching and stuff that he does.

It is incredible.

Very high value.

And so I Love what you've developed over time, obviously through a lot of, you know, a lot of hard knocks and the, you know, thousands of ways.

That Door Grow is built on a foundation of thousands of mistakes.

Like most businesses that are good.

But I, I mean, I, I geek out on systems, I geek out on frameworks, I geek geek out on taking complex ideas and figuring out what works and then figuring out how to make it palatable or easy to digest for people.

And really, Door Grow exists to feed my addiction to learning.

It allows me to be in lots, I'm in multiple masterminds, high ticket coaching programs.

I love to learn and I love to be able to turn around and share what I learned with others.

And so that's why Door Grow exists, so that I can have a channel to be able to feed that addiction of learning and teaching.

So that's awesome.

Well, give everybody a feel for the magnitude of Door Grow.

How many, you know, how many basically doors, I guess, would you represent or how would you even qualify that?

How many property management companies or I.

Mean, I've talked to over the years, I've talked to thousands of property managers, been able to see inside their business.

And I've been a fly on the wall in the industry.

So I'm nobody's competition.

And yet I'm able to identify quickly the things that work the best.

And I have a similar goal.

You know, I don't teach them how to manage rental properties.

That's not, that's not a hard thing for them to figure out.

They all know how to do that.

The harder thing is to run a business, you know, like the E. Myth Revisited type of book.

Absolute sort of idea.

Michael Gerber, man, that's, that's huge.

Yeah.

A lot of people think, hey, I can fix an H vac system, I should go start a business.

And then they don't know accounting, they don't know branding, they don't know marketing, they don't know sales.

Like, you know.

So, yeah, same thing in property management.

There's a lot of people that manage rental properties that go start property management businesses.

And there's no shortage of shady property management companies.

Most suck.

If I have a room of property managers, I say, how many of you, by show of hands, think that all of your competitors suck?

Everyone raises their hand, right?

And then I usually joke and say, but not yours, right?

And they all laugh, right?

I'm gonna steal that.

I've got an event coming up.

I'm gonna do the same thing.

Is that with your client?

Yeah.

So true.

In Hrac as well.

Every single person says, oh my gosh, all the other guys out there are cheating on.

And they're like, it's gross.

And.

But yours doesn't, right?

No, no, mine doesn't.

Okay.

So yeah.

And like, that's usually why people started their business.

They're like, well, I couldn't find a property manager that was good for my rentals so I decided to start one.

Yeah.

Do it myself.

Yeah.

And that's how they all got started.

And nobody starts their business thinking, man, I want to suck.

But it's pretty easy to suck when there's so many potential pitfalls in getting a business started.

There's so many potential mistakes to make.

And a lot of the mistakes they make are doing things, you know, things like what everybody else is telling them they should do.

And everybody else are usually marketers.

And so marketers are saying, you want to grow your business, spend all this money on stuff that doesn't even make sense for you starting out.

And then they're not getting the roi.

And then the first thing to go if they're not, they don't have good ROI on stuff they're spending money on is a lack of cash flow.

And if cash flow dips, then customer service goes out the window.

And then you have a whole bunch of crappy companies.

Right.

I love this.

Everything you just went through, everybody listening, how much does that relate to starting a home service company?

It's the same struggle.

They're both service based businesses and any service based business, you're going to have a lot of marketers pitching you on.

Like you need to just run a bunch of ads, do Internet marketing.

But you have to realize the shittiest, coldest, worst leads are the ones that you're going to get from the Internet.

These are people at the end of the sales cycle.

At that point you're a commodity to them.

Then if they're a commodity, they're looking for the cheapest one.

So now you're in a race to the bottom.

And you know, in property management there's very little search volume on Google.

You can go look on trends.google.com, google Trends.

Look up, you know, maybe I don't know, H Vac or what people search for air conditioning repair or whatever, but generally for property management related keywords, the search volume hasn't changed since 2004 when Google started tracking data.

Uh huh.

Yet competition in that space has gone up dramatically.

That's where everybody's spending their money.

And the biggest companies, those that have thousands of doors are shelling out three to five grand a month minimum to do Internet marketing, to capture business.

And then the small guys are like, hey, I'm going to go be David fighting against Goliath starting out my business.

Except I'm going to be dumb David and put on the same sword, same armor, same shield and get my ass kicked.

Right.

Whereas smart David had a hack.

He basically brought a gun to a sword fight.

Yeah, he had better, a better idea.

And so that's what we do at door grows.

We help them find a better idea than going and doing that.

And usually it involves going out into the blue ocean where there's way more opportunity, there's less competition, price sensitivity is lower, and it's, there's plenty of business.

They're just not looking on the Internet.

Right.

So the question then is, how do I find these people that are not looking on the Internet?

Cool.

Like pick up the phone, you know.

So we give them strategies to doing warm lead generation or warm outreach.

And the close rate of warm leads is way higher.

Like 90% versus cold leads is 10% or worse.

And then we've had them focus in that blue ocean on, on that.

And then we focus on going after warmer leads like, you know, where there's higher close rates.

So, you know, and there's no scarcity in property management.

70% are self managing their own rental property.

So there's tons of opportunity, tons of business.

Right.

I'm a, uh, fact people maybe should just start a maintenance company and do maintenance and then start a property management business because that's like the biggest challenge usually for property managers is maintenance.

Some of y' all probably have that dialed in.

Yeah, so yeah, that's, you know, for everybody listening, I hope you're relating everything that Jason saying to because at the end of the day, just like you're starting off with Michael Gerber.

I've heard him speak at H VAC conferences and of course you've, you know, I'm sure heard him speak at all kind of property.

I did coaching way back in the day with, with E Myth Coaching.

Yeah, I was.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

And the, the coolest part about it is with this philosophy and these ideas, the widget doesn't matter.

The widget is H Vac.

The widget is electrical, plumbing, property management, whatever.

Building a business is building a business and having the mindset.

So everybody listening, you can clearly hear pretty quickly why Jason and I have connected because we have the same philosophy and you know, we, we work the same way with our home service Companies.

Yeah, we don't like bullshit.

Yeah, exactly.

Let's just cut straight to it.

Be like.

Yeah, cut out the extra fluff.

You don't need that right now.

Right.

But that's a great segue because you're starting talking about maintenance and those types of things that property managers are desperately looking for.

Quality vendors.

Yeah, ones that show all the things.

So this is a good segue for us to start getting into our list here and we can compare.

Compare contrast.

And then we really unpack it and from the other perspective and see, hey, what.

What aligns here and what doesn't and how can we work together to fix some of it?

Because I know that's obviously huge.

So what's at the top of your list?

I'm excited.

All right, Number one on my list, actually.

Let's start number five.

We'll do it Dave Letterman style.

We'll go backwards.

You're right.

We should build up too.

Yeah, let's build up.

All right, so number five on my list is.

And I don't know how widespread this is or how it works, but this one is a killer.

10 property managers in some areas get paid a commission on the repair or the replacement, like an actual percentage.

So they're okay with expensive repairs.

And this may be why they'll not.

So this is straight from one of my reps, one of the reps that I've coached.

This may be why they will not let me speak with the homeowner to explain why the repair may be a bad idea and versus the benefits of repair versus that repair versus replace conversation, which comes up very often.

It's bad for the owners.

In many cases when, you know, they're just wreck.

The property manager will only allow a price for a repair on a system.

If anybody living there actually owned the place, it would be the.

It would literally be throwing thousands of dollars towards something that is unnecessary.

That's just kind of wasting money.

So that's the.

That's the number five gripe from.

That's the complaint.

That's the complaint.

From my experience, most property managers, I mean, not all property managers markup maintenance.

In a lot of areas.

You have to disclose that, like legally.

But.

And a lot of them don't want markup maintenance.

I think they should.

If they're having to coordinate maintenance and do all this work, they might mark it up 10, 15% on.

On maintenance.

But even still main.

They're not.

It's not like because of that little markup, which really for them is not a huge deal for them.

It's because most of them are doing all this maintenance coordination and all the communication involved in property management is just making them lose money, really.

So the less they're having to communicate, the less they're having to do maintenance.

So they prefer properties that are newer, newly remade, newly remodeled properties that have.

Are higher rent in general because there's less work involved and less maintenance because having to coordinate maintenance is difficult and can be really costly for them to do it.

So some will do a percentage markup on maintenance, some will, I think smart ones will start their own maintenance company and then subcontract might be a smarter strategy.

So they're not marking up.

They have like set fees and then they're going to the vendor and they've negotiated stuff already.

But I don't think that.

And I think a lot of times they're, you know, they don't want to let them speak with the homeowner.

It's not like they're trying to hide stuff from the homeowner.

It's because the homeowner hired them so they don't have to talk to people like H Vac people.

The homeowners don't want to talk to you.

The homeowners wanted to hire property managers.

So they, that's the whole reason they hired them is they want to be hands off.

They don't want to be a maintenance coordinator, they don't want to be a leasing agent, they don't want to do inspections.

They don't want to ever talk to the tenant tenant ever.

They don't want the tenant to even know how to get in touch with them.

And if a vendor knows how to get in touch with them, that's.

That, that's a problem too.

Right?

And so that's the whole point of having a property manager is to protect the owner.

And so good property managers usually have healthy pricing structures set up so that if the homeowner is winning, the property manager is winning too.

And if the homeowner, if the property manager is winning, winning, the homeowner is not losing.

Now, obviously, if that, if that's off, then there's going to be some problems exactly like this.

Right?

And so, you know, there, there could be some issues.

You know, for example, if the property manager is, you know, they're a flat fee company, for example, and then they have, usually they benefit by keeping rent as low as possible so there's less turnover, whereas the owner wants as much rent as possible.

So there's kind of an ethical dilemma there where there's a misalignment in motivation and money always dictates the incentives.

So you always want, like, you need to make sure the incentives are aligned so that the owner wins, the property manager wins, and, you know.

Yeah.

And the vendors win.

Yeah.

100%.

And I love this.

After we go through this list, definitely we want to talk about what are the best things to look for in property managers that are worth working with and ones to avoid.

I know that's the big question that everybody's going to have from my community in this podcast, but everybody.

You're going to have to wait till after we get through the list.

Yeah, we can talk about how to win with property managers.

Like how to suggest or create the ultimate relationship.

We can talk about that.

Or that could be a whole nother episode.

Well, let's, let's move on to, to yours.

What, what's one on.

On the list here?

So I just threw it out to my Facebook group a while back.

And so some of the things.

And I, I.

There's no.

Overall, everybody kind of mentioned different things.

But.

And, you know, some even have positive things.

Like, I'll mention a positive one first.

So you're not like, man, property managers are the worst.

You know, one of the, one of the people in our group said, I have an awesome H vac vendor.

He loves PM companies because we have lots of business.

He doesn't even charge weekend or holiday rates to me.

No complaints.

You have to find the right partners who also value you and your clients.

So, I mean, there can be really good relationships.

All right.

But one of the, one of the complaints I see here is one of the first is telling the resident that, quote, the system needs to be replaced, unquote, even though it might not need to be replaced.

And it's not the tenant's decision.

Right.

Hundred percent.

I love this one.

So it's unnecessary work.

Absolutely.

But it makes the vendor money.

Yeah, it makes the vendor money.

Well, it.

So from what I always used to coach, but I 100% agree with this complaint.

This is one that's really, really, really, really common.

And I think what that comes down to is in every company, sometimes technicians get, they, they just have word vomit and they will, you know, the tenants asking, hey, what's wrong?

Well, if we coach them properly, they'll say, you know what?

We've got.

We found the problem.

We've got to get with the property manager.

We'll get with the owner.

We'll let you know when, when we'll be over here to repair it.

We've got it, you know, when we're coaching properly, we're not, or we, you know, it's fine to even tell the tenant, oh, yeah, you know, we found this bad component.

Whatever, it's fine.

But the thing we don't want them to do is make any sort of recommendation or mention the solution to the tenant.

Because you're right, the tenant has no decision factor there.

And if they say misinformation or something to the tenant, then the tenant gets upset or angry at the property manager or the owner for not taking care of the problem when it turns out that wasn't the, you know, the right solution anyway.

Yeah.

So 100% agree with this one.

This is for every owner manager at H Vac.

Please, please, please, please, please have your people not communicate any solutions or recommendations to the tenants.

It does not matter to the tenant.

Keep them out of the loop on that.

You go in, you do your job.

Be courteous, be friendly.

Yeah.

To defer to the property manager.

Defer to the property manager.

Yeah.

Just say, hey, we just got to talk to the property manager.

I wish I could tell you, but, you know, and just, I mean, keep it easy.

Be like, you know what, we've got to go and run our calculations.

We'll get with the property manager and they'll let you know.

Yeah.

You know, just keep.

But so 100% agree with that one.

Yeah.

Because otherwise the property manager is going to be made to look like the bad guy.

The owner might be made to look like the bad guy.

And the property manager's job is like, they want.

Your job is to make the property manager look good.

If they're hiring you to do work.

And they're not going to hire you to do work if you're making them look bad in front of their tenants.

Yeah.

And H Vac, you wouldn't employ people on your team.

They don't get called back when this is going on.

Yeah.

Like you wouldn't employ people on your team that do that?

Like everybody on my team, I tell them, your job is to make me look good.

That's why you have a job.

That's why you exist 100%.

So let's see, I've got another one here, and I think we already kind of covered this, but we can unpack it a little bit more and re.

Emphasize it.

One of the big complaints from everybody, because I don't think H Vac contractors truly understand the dynamic.

And you mentioned it earlier, but one of them is, and I saw this probably a dozen times, they should always encourage owners to speak with the contractor on a large project like this.

Of course, several people mentioned they're fortunate.

The ones they have a good relationship with know this and let them go through the options with the homeowners.

But because normally we're talking about.

It's more than just a handyman repair.

Of course, more than just a couple hundred bucks when we're talking about big mechanicals.

So that is the com.

That is the complaint from, you know, from the contractor side.

Now, of course, understanding they hired property managers to not be able to.

Yeah, but that's, that's like.

That.

It's like a paradox.

It's a huge decision.

There are some, you know, obviously decisions that will save way more money in the long run.

That might cost a little more upfront.

Yeah.

But from our perspective, it seems like property managers don't understand that dynamic.

So that's why H vac people and trades are always trying to talk to the owner because it's their money on the line, not the property managers.

And that having more skin in the game seems to help them make a better buying decision.

So that's the perspective that this one comes from.

Got it.

I mean, I think property managers naturally have skin in the game because if they come back and say, oh my gosh, it's this huge expense, the AC unit blew out, it's not working, or the heating isn't working or whatever, and it's winter, you know, like it has to be taken care of.

And it's a bit.

It's a big expense.

They don't like being the bearer of bad news.

Sure.

So if they can say, hey, we can band aid this and it could cost this, or you have this option to do this for the long term.

I mean, then the owner can make a judgment call, but the property manager needs to have all.

All the information you have to understand.

Property managers that have been doing this a while have heard these kind of, had these kind of conversations probably thousands of times.

Sure.

So they, they're always looking for the best balance.

And most property managers are playing the long game.

They're trying to keep these clients forever and these properties well maintained forever.

Like for, you know, these are not accidental investors.

They're trying to sell the property and get rid of it in a year.

They're.

These are buy and hold.

They're long term.

So in general, most smart property managers are playing that long game and recommend doing the better thing for the long term because they know if they.

Even though it's more pain upfront, it's less pain over and over and over again for the property manager, which makes them look.

Look worse.

Right.

And smart property managers usually have a threshold.

It might be like in their agreements, 500 bucks or a thousand bucks or whatever, but anything below that, they're authorized to just take care of it without even talking to the owner.

Sure.

Smart property managers usually do this so that they're just taking care of stuff, and then they just pull that out of the rent money collected.

And that allows the owner not have to be involved in all the little stuff that comes up all the time, like, oh, the garbage disposal needs to be swapped out or whatever.

Like, well, you're bothering me about this, you know.

Yeah, exactly.

So question.

But if it's a big deal, if it's a big expense.

Yeah, they're going to have a conversation.

But smart property managers aren't calling them to say, hey, can we do this?

Mm.

I mean, taking care of heating or AAC unit really is.

It's not an option for them.

It's like, this is.

They might have some options, but this is going to be done.

Yeah, yeah.

It has to be done for the tenant.

How do we want to approach it?

Right.

Yeah.

So good property managers will just reach out to them and say to the resident, or I mean, to the owner, hey, this is.

This is what needs to happen.

This is what's happened.

This is like what, what they said.

And here you're.

You have this option or two options, and we recommend this.

Or they'll say, usually smart property managers will already just pick the best option they know that the person should do, and they'll say, owner, here's what needs to happen.

I'm just letting you know this is what needs to happen.

They're not saying, hey, can we do this?

Should we do this?

They're letting them know.

And the owner then cries a little, I'm just kidding, and says, okay, let's like.

Like, we got to do this.

Let's do it.

I like it.

So question then with, along these lines, because I'm, you know, part of this conversation is to help the, you know, help the trades and help the industries work to be better with property management.

You know, my philosophy has always been, you know, heard this from Tony Robbins years and years ago, is most people don't like resources.

They like resourcefulness.

So would it be helpful?

Because I know the answer here because I've done it.

Would it be helpful if instead of having this, you know, struggle constantly, just help.

Help the property manager by providing more information and more collateral to be able to pass to the homeowner.

If the big disconnect is, you know, contractors want to talk to the homeowner.

And of course, the reason for that is if they only see a number, they're picking based on the number, not on the value being brought by the company.

So would it be helpful to property management if companies did things like, let's make a video of what we find now, let's record maybe a quick video and put together a better presentation.

Here's my recommendation, is a video yourself talking about it.

Here's what we found.

Here's our recommendation.

You can do this, this or this.

Here's the options.

Let's go through the pros and cons of each one.

And so that's directly from you.

And it doesn't have to be from the contractor, doesn't have to be mistran, because usually it's mistranslated through a property manager to the homeowner.

So to give the property manager much better ammunition.

Ammunition or just information to be able to take to the owner, here's the full picture.

Here's what we can decide from.

Would that be something that's helpful or would that, you know, kind of undermine the property management?

So that's the real question.

What is the best practice?

I mean, I think make it easy for the property manager to relay the information accurately.

So if you say, hey, I'm going to text you exactly what I've seen, what's going on with the situation and what needs, and I'm going to send you a photo, they can almost just copy and paste that to their owner, and then there's a record and then the owner can text back and say, cool, like to get it done.

And that makes it so much more efficient to.

And the property manager doesn't because the last thing they want to do is have to get on a really uncomfortable phone call, take, try and explain options.

And then they say, well, you know, did you ask them this?

And like, so if you provide all the info, and they're like, this is exactly what they gave me and what they told me and their findings and blah, blah, blah, that just.

Yeah, it makes it super easy for the property manager.

Cool, cool, good.

And that's that.

That's the way I coach.

But of course, most people don't.

Don't do that.

That's why everybody listening.

This is your golden nugget number one.

Take the time to do that.

Make a, you know, document what you're finding.

Don't just, don't just pass over your technician's notes and expect them to know one, what the hell you're talking about and two, to be able to pull any level of value from that.

So when you make these videos, take a quick minute, introduce your company, introduce the history and how you've worked with property managers or, you know, whatever it is, but don't spend all the time there.

Take a quick minute to, you know, if you have a unique value proposition, mention it.

You know, this is why you should choose us because xyz and here's what we found.

Here's video, here's pictures and send it all over the informational stuff.

Just like you would be talking to the homeowner.

Just talk to the video the same way and then send that over and super helpful.

Yeah, I would just send the video, not probably mention some of the details and specifics that the property manager is going to have to negotiate or explain would be my recommendation because it.

Because then they're just not going to want to share the video because if you're like, well, here's what we.

It would cost and the property manager had might have a markup and they've got to like relate a different cost or however it all works.

So my recommendation is like, give the property manager all the info so they can easily relate it to the owner.

Owners probably you can set, have, do a video, but a lot of times photos are faster for people to process information on.

Like, here's the broken condenser, like, here's evidence.

Because the property manager needs evidence and you're the eyes and ears for them.

When they send out vendors, you're the eyes and ears.

And if you really want to maximize things, like, just like let the property manager know, hey, I saw a pit bull at this property too, and I don't know if that's in their lease or hey, I noticed their crayon marks all over the walls from their kids.

You know, property managers rely on vendors to be some of the eyes and ears and boots on the ground for them in some, some capacity.

And they're going to love you for that kind of stuff.

Oh, nice.

So that's a big tip right there to everybody.

You know, start paying attention to everything.

If we can help add value, of course they're going to call you back for more work.

If you're the one that's like an advocate in working together with the property manager and not, oh God, I have to go to another property management.

How fast can I be in and out of here?

That's the wrong mindset.

Yeah, I mean, a Simple photo of the pan that's like full of water in the attic or something.

You know, be like, look, this isn't draining properly.

Like, yeah, we got to take care of this or you're going to have a whole ceiling fall in.

Right.

What do you want to do things.

And you've got evidence.

And so you can send the.

They property manager can send this photo.

Hey, we need to take care of this.

This is what it costs.

And here's this broken part they showed, like.

And this is what, you know, it's, it's a lot of times it's a yes or no if you give them the right info.

And it's not even a no for the property manager with the owner.

It's just, this is what is going needs to be done in order to maintain our level of expertise.

Or we fire you as a client.

That's usually how property managers that are healthy think.

Because if an owner's like, no, we're not going to change the roof even though it's leaking.

They're like, okay, then we're putting in.

We're letting you know you're no longer a client.

Yeah, you know, that's cool to know because, you know, what we hear, normally at least, maybe not what we hear, but the common idea in the trades is not that it's like, you know, that property managers are.

The common misconception.

We'll say it this way is property managers do the least amount of work possible to just skate by.

And that's, that's the impression that we get.

And because of the lack of communication from most property managers, that's, that's what it feels like.

I mean, there are, there's, there's definitely people that do that.

The, the good property managers, though, are magic superheroes that make three of the worst things on the planet behave better.

And those three things that everyone complains about are tenants, landlords and rental properties.

Right.

And they make all three better.

If they are a good property manager, they're like the superheroes.

But a lot of property management companies suck.

So, you know, if you're going to be working with property managers, you're going to learn pretty quickly in your market which ones are good and which ones are not.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny, I had somebody recently reach out to me because they're wanting to work with property managers.

This was after I put up that original post.

And here's the.

I mean, the numbers, the numbers work out.

Everybody.

Property managers, well, let's do it this way.

We all know in the trades, 80, 20 rule 20% of the companies are the, are good companies and the rest are, you know, the bottom feeders and the trash companies and guys that are just out there because they don't have a clue what they're doing.

Same thing.

What we find is the same thing in Property Management.

20% of them are awesome.

The rest are, you know, hit and miss.

You know, for example, I mean the last company I was with, we, we interviewed and work tried out working for probably two to three dozen property management companies and we ended up keeping two that we worked with because they were the ones worth working with.

And the rest we said, you know what, thank you for the offer but we will decline your business.

And that's the numbers that we saw.

So what I'm curious to know if, if you feel the same way from the property management side, is that how it, how it goes with H Vac or the trades?

They, they go through a bunch of companies to be able to find one or two that are worth working with or what, what's the.

Yeah, absolutely.

They usually most property managers have like, you know, a number one provider for a certain service they need.

Then they have a couple backups and but yeah, they spend years kind of vetting and trying different people.

And just because of one vendor is good at something now doesn't mean as they scale their business, they know how to scale it correctly and they use a lot of times become terrible.

Right.

And so yeah, so they're always juggling and trying to find the best talent to, to leverage, you know, resource wise.

So Cool.

Well what, what's another one on, on the property management side?

I mean I'm noticing some others like that are related to talking to the tenant.

So I think the general rule is just don't talk to the tenant.

Like if you can just walk in there, say hey, we'll be in and out, check the stuff and then get out of there.

Hey, we're done.

That was all we needed.

Thank you to the tenant.

And you're, you don't leave a mess and it's clean like that's it.

That's probably all you need to do.

So there's that.

But yeah, so listen everybody stop talking as much.

Just do your thing.

Just get in and out.

Talk to, they might be asking questions.

Like hey this and like as little as you have to tell them as possible.

You know, hey, you know, I'm going to send my findings over to the property manager and they'll make some decisions and we'll get, we should be Able to get this taken care of pretty quick.

Something like perfect answer, keep it really simple.

So one said you can send three different companies and they all tell you something different is wrong and they only seem to say it's expensive, it must be replaced.

So again it's the system needs to be replaced thing.

But three different companies telling you three different things are wrong.

Sure.

So the lack of consistency so it's, it's hard to know what, what's really true.

Where's.

And so that's where they're like where's the evidence?

Yeah, 100%.

And you know again this is one that I agree with.

You know we see it all the time, you know from the training side in the trades.

You know you, you get the.

Because the.

I think because of the long time relationship between the trades and property management management has been strained.

What happens a lot of times until a contractor and or property management and management company, until they find a good match and they have.

This is my guy.

Right.

The vendor that we, that we trust because they always are fair and treat us right and take care of us.

Yeah.

Until that happens, I feel like so many times companies will send the least experienced person because it's such a low value.

Job.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a low value appointment and a lot of it is which actually this is going to wrap up two or three complaints all in one.

One is what they what from our side which is funny.

They always, they want two to three quotes period because they're making the choice on a numbers game, whichever one is cheaper.

And the other part, other side of this is so much, so much of the time property managers are really, really, really, really slow to pay.

So if the AR is have seen 30 or 60 day accounts receivable from property management or at the same time the property manager's concept of what things, what charges things should actually cost is very, very like wrong.

It's just very much because one of the complaints.

This will wrap up one of the complaints on your side too in it which is forever because we know this, we hear it from the same thing.

So it's two sides of the same complaint.

We hear why in the world would you charge $300 for a capacitor when it's 20 or 30 bucks online.

Right.

Capacitors are mentioned specifically.

Yeah.

Because that's 80% of failures during the summer.

Yeah, it's mentioned like where it, where's.

I know that's right.

Right here.

Capacitors.

Holy hell.

The markup on capacitors that was, that was One of the comments, and someone said, right, a capacitor is only 20 to 30 bucks at the supply house, 200 to get it installed though, you know, so.

Right, yeah.

So I mean, you know, obviously unpacking that from our side of, you know, we all know, well, you got to pay the guy to put it in.

You have to pay for the fuel, all of the overhead, all of the things, you know, you're paying for 10 years of experience to be able to diagnose in five minutes.

That's right, all of that.

So from our side, that's, we're like, this is stupid.

Why would somebody even say that?

But from the other side it's like, okay, how do we provide better communication and value so they understand that this is what it is.

And if, and honestly, we're going to throw this in there too.

And I hope you translate, pass this word to the property management.

If they're only paying two or three hundred dollars for a capacitor, they're getting a steal.

Because the industry average across the country right now is about 600.

And in some places, depending on the company, it's 800 to 1200 per capacitor.

And so it just depends on the market.

Yeah, yeah.

Curious.

Yeah.

This is one of those things.

It's like it's.

Yes, I get it.

But at the same time, it's almost that such a small, ideally, you know, sounding low cost part, but that's basically a minimum threshold for a company to be able to operate, to put somebody on site.

You could add two or three other repairs in and proportionally they're going to be cheaper strictly because now we've passed the threshold of being able to do work.

And so there's kind of a back and forth there of like, where do we need to be?

And that's the constant what everybody's trying to figure out.

You know, until somebody understands their business like you train them and to know their overhead and be able to get a price.

So I'm curious to kind of, you know, let's unpack this from the other side though, because that's how we feel about it.

I mean, every business experiences that they're like, why is this so expensive?

You know, or something like that.

And you know, cool.

You want to do it yourself, Go for it.

Yeah, try it out.

Yeah.

You know, if you want to, you know, you have a handyman and you don't ever comfortable with him not killing himself by getting shocked to death because he's not an electrician or knows what he's doing.

Sure.

Yeah.

So, I mean, every, every business has as those kind of things where people are like, why is that so expensive?

And so, you know, being able to justify the price.

But this is an instance where if the H VAC person has a good relationship with the property manager and can help them understand as a business owner to business owner, this is why the price is this.

And to justify it, it allows them to be able to go and justify it.

Because that's really what you're.

What they're saying.

What they're complaining about is I have to now go have a conversation with the owner.

And I don't even know how to explain this to them in a way that's going to make them happy or makes sense.

So they can say, hey, look, to have an H VAC guy come out, they have to have the expertise of an electrician.

And you know what, everything you're just saying and here like to have somebody do that, be able to diagnose it quickly.

This is what it would cost.

And for them to be able to replace it.

This.

Because it has to be somebody with this caliber of expertise.

So we don't have a dead person at your property laying next year, you know, your AC unit outside or whatever.

Right.

So, yeah, because that would cause problems.

Right.

So, yeah.

So I mean, it's if.

Yeah.

These things are education and they're opportunities for you to educate them.

Because if you're getting friction or complaints or they're like, why, like that's expensive.

Or then they just need to.

They need to understand and they have similar stuff in their business that they deal with.

And so but you have to remember they're.

They're the middleman.

And so as a middleman, they have to go have the uncomfortable conversation with the owner.

Sure.

So, yeah, I was gonna say it sounds like the goal is to be.

For everybody listening is one, have a.

Be an adult and have a real professional conversation with your property manager instead of.

So this is actually going to springboard us into one other thing that we hear a lot, but have an actual conversation with them and say, I want to help me help you.

How can we provide you better support in your messenger journey to the owners?

So the interaction is better.

So it takes the pressure off, it helps you in your process.

And, you know, we can get to decisions faster.

All the things.

Right.

But so much of it, I think, is like creating it as much more of a partnership or a team than, you know, we're just a vendor.

And you called us to get you a quote and you know, you get 10 quotes and you might use this for one repair.

You know that that's usually what happens.

So people stop giving quotes if they never get work.

And so having that partnership relationship and building a relationship sounds like is a big foundation for this.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, you really want to maximize a relationship and continue to get business from a property manager.

Send them business.

Like how many, how many H Vac people have gone into a rental property where the landlord is some sort of slumlord?

And then you have to deal with hole of a person trying to.

And then like the tenant wonders why you're being so crappy.

And it's the landlord.

Right.

You should be saying, hey, Mr. Landlord, you really should be talking to this property management company.

Let them take this off your plate so you don't have to have to deal with this stuff.

And it makes it easier.

And yeah, you're gonna have a bigger expense, but you probably haven't even raised rent in the last two or three years.

You're probably at least 10% below market rate.

Property managers usually charge that much or less.

And so you're like, you probably would get it be like getting free management if they just made sure you're getting as much rent as you should be.

And they can be the bad guy with the tenant if they have to be.

And you don't have to even, even deal with this stuff.

And they would do a better job than you.

Because I've seen the properties we go into and versus yours and this is like a difficult relationship that you've got going going on.

The tenants not happy and they're probably going to bounce and then you're going to have a vacant property for two to three months minimum and you're still paying the mortgage on this.

Like, don't be an idiot.

Like get a property manager.

And so if you can feed them business, property managers would love to get referrals from you.

You're like, you see, you know, some of these rental properties that are have.

We're in thousands of rental houses a year that don't have property management.

Obviously it makes sense.

Have the conversation.

Right?

Yeah.

And there's other ways to win with property managers we can chat about.

But yeah, I love it.

I love it.

So that is.

So the other one, I think falls into one last one.

I think it falls into the.

Our conversation earlier about, you know, working with different competencies of property management.

Different, like are they good ones, are they bad ones?

But the last complaint is zero respect for your time.

If they're going to be later unavailable during for the appointment that they scheduled with us.

And a lot of times don't even show up and don't even let us know.

And so we're sitting around on the closet so to speak.

But yeah, so that, that's a big one.

Is like very, very little or lack of communication.

I mean super disrespectful.

It's super frustrating when I get so pissed off if somebody books a call with me, sales call anything and they don't show up.

Right?

No.

Shows are like, like I go crazy.

We do almost everything we can to prevent those.

Right.

We send the reminders, whatever.

So I get it.

Like it's really, it's really frustrating.

Most property managers are not trying to suck.

They just have bad operations, they have lack of systems, they have a lack of resources or team members.

They're trying to please everybody and talk to everybody all the time.

Which is a huge waste of time and scalable in a property management business.

Right.

And so if the business you can tell is just not being run well, then recommend them to door grow.

This is like what we do.

We help make like I was going to say shitty property managers.

But yeah, we help make shitty property managers become good property managers.

Sure, as long as they're good people.

A lot of times they're not.

Nobody wakes up in the morning and says I want to run a shitty company today.

But it's the default of what happens when we hit our limit and our capacity and our, of our limited knowledge and resources we currently possess.

And every business owner hits that eventually.

And which is why you get support.

Like if they need sales, they probably should talk to you if they're an H Vac company, if they're a property manager and they're running into operational challenges, systems challenges, challenges.

Adding doors and getting clients they should talk to door grow and get, get to that next level.

And if, if any of you send somebody to door grow and they sign up, I'll write you a check for a thousand bucks.

Like we'll give you a referral.

Hey, everybody heard it here first.

Send me some property managers.

Like I would love it.

Like do that and just let me know, hey, I referred this.

Just email jason dorgo.com and say hey, I sent you this guy and here's his info.

Follow up with him.

I told him you're going to talk to him and we will follow up with them and we'll write you a check for a grand if we get them on as a client and they're going to be A better client of, of yours and deal with their tenants and owners better because they, and they want to.

The problem is they're probably trying to please people too much and they're failing at all of it.

Right?

Yeah.

I love the response here.

And you know, I.

One of the big philosophies that in our community is, and I probably haven't even talked about it enough, everybody, but everyone is doing the best they can.

You know, at the end of the day, people are not maliciously trying to not communicate with you or just avoid.

People go into avoidance mode when it's difficult conversations.

Remember, everyone is in a different journey.

Everyone is a different place in their personal growth and the ability to handle conversations like that.

And don't think it's only property management.

Everybody look at yourself.

Also, if we're pointing fingers, remember three are pointing back at you.

So I'm going to call out my own community here and say everyone needs to work on better communication skills and give grace.

You make just as many mistakes every single day and you can, I guarantee every single one of you can look through your own messages and pick out the ones that you've been avoiding responding to, then give that same grace to them and then work through how do I get better at my own communication and then how can I help them in our communication back and forth.

So I'm sure this is a complaint on both sides.

Like one of the complaints here is just they're not ethical.

Right.

In some instances it's a general sort of complaint.

Several mentioned in different ways.

Yeah, go ahead and unpack.

That one that you were reading me before, that was really, really detailed.

Which one?

The one about stealing and all that.

I'm looking here.

Yeah.

Like when, like one of the, one of the big ones is like saying you did work and you didn't even actually do the work.

Or some said stealing parts from your existing equipment at the property.

So some are like stealing parts and stealing stuff.

They're like, that was there before you came, you know.

Right.

And yeah.

And so lack of training is mentioned.

Most H Vac technicians really don't know anything about H Vac.

That's like one said that.

Yeah.

They can't figure out what you.

What it actually needs, so they just like replace the whole thing.

But you know, like there's unethical people in every business, in every industry.

And you know, those are the people looking for the short term gain and they destroy their business long term.

Right.

Like it's.

And, and you, you.

And that's a culture problem.

If you are a business owner and you're like, we're honest and we do things the right way and.

But you have any team members that don't share your values, you are rolling the dice with the future of your business.

It's really dangerous.

And so this is a hiring problem, that you don't have the right culture to find it for your business.

And you're not hiring based on cultural.

Culture means they share your values, which means maybe you don't have your values defined.

And so you're bringing in people and allowing them to go represent your business and they don't match your values, they're going to destroy your business.

Right, Right.

For everybody listening, I love this part of the conversation is actually last night, Jason, you didn't even probably know I did this.

We did an entire webinar for an hour on how to create an ethics.

On ethics, how to create an entire ethics statement for your company.

And as an individual as far by listening, I'll put the link to that recording in the show notes because this is huge.

This is culture is everything 100%.

I love the office dogs.

I have them too.

My dogs are attacking the neighbors.

This is what I love about post 2020 is we could have kids run through and have dogs.

Dog's mark.

And nobody cares anymore.

My wife's in the other room, like telling the dogs to hush because the kids are walking by after school.

But ethics and culture, this is huge.

Right?

Culture drives everything.

So many.

And I think this complaint comes up, at least from my perspective, in the companies that I've been in working, and then also now that I'm coaching, so much of it is this chicken and egg type of conversation.

Because a lot of times property managers, if they, if they've not been educated in.

Because from what I understand, a lot of property managers or, and especially the ones that end up, if the organization is a little larger, they may have an assistant or two that are managing the contractors.

So there are people that have never really been around trades or contracting or taking quotes or understanding the value of any of this type of work.

And so from their perspective, what they think is, well, let's get a few bids and we'll just pick a cheap one, then pass them over because they don't know it's no fault of theirs.

They've just not been educated.

And so from the way that it feels to us.

And so what ends up happening is they'll call around and they'll ask for some, you know, ballparks over the phone and then they end up calling the cheapest two or three, which everyone knows you get exactly what you pay for, especially when it comes to contracting.

And so they're it's without knowing it, they're preloading themselves and setting themselves up for disaster because they're calling the companies that are not doing things right.

Because a company that strictly tries to get business by being the cheapest is going to cut all the corners.

And so how can we bridge this gap in the education I guess is for my question.

Okay, is that similar to what you would think or see?

I guess would be another part of it.

Here's something important to understand.

There are three types of buyers.

Psychologically.

I train my clients on this and I call them the cheapos, the normals and the premiums.

The difference between cheapos and normals are the largest group, they're like 2/3, they're like typically 61%.

Cheapos are the next largest group and then premiums are the smallest.

Now when it comes to things like property management, property management is more of a premium product.

Most of the cheapos are self filtering.

They're not going to use a property manager.

So by going by finding a good property manager you are dealing with less of the cheapos owner situations.

And most property managers are not cheapos themselves.

What I coach, if they are, they attract cheapos.

So you are, you attract who you are.

And so if you are the person that everywhere you go you're asking for a discount, you're trying to find a stupid coupon code every time you buy something online like all this, if that's your mentality because that's how little your time is worth.

You're a cheapo which means you have so much pain attached to money.

Cheapos have more a lower pain threshold their money and dollar signs and seeing dollar signs attached to any product or offering is pain to them.

So they're more price sensitive.

And if you're, you associate more pain with money, you are going to undercut yourself in pricing.

You're gonna have more pain in relating your price to others.

And so you are going to know, naturally attract and have more cheapos.

I'll give you an example.

I had a client and he was complaining in our Facebook group and he was like there are, I'm so tired of owners coming to us and trying to like talk down our price and that are super cheap.

And then I saw him post in another Facebook group for property management.

Does anybody have a discount code for this property management software?

I don't want to pay full price.

The Irony was not lost on me.

I was like, dude, you are being a cheapo.

This is exactly who you're hating.

It's this blind spot we have because he has price sensitivity when it comes to money.

And so he's looking through it.

So when he relates his services and his price, he's probably looking weak, he's probably uncomfortable.

He's like, we have this maybe more premium option if you want that, but it's expensive and he's awkward and he.

Which shows he doesn't really believe in it, or he doesn't believe in his own pricing or, or he's not charging enough because he doesn't have that confidence and competence to, to do that.

Right.

And so you have to start to shift yourself towards becoming more of a premium buyer.

If you're a business owner, like, go buy a massage.

Like, go do nice things for yourself.

Like start to do premium things and not worry so much about the money.

And, and that will filter through your organization.

You need to start to coach your team members on viewing the world through a le.

It isn't cheap and it isn't expensive.

Because if they approach every conversation with, hey, it's like really expensive to get this thing fixed.

And it's really.

Then the own, like the landlord, the owner, the property manager, whoever is involved in this conversation is going to feel that.

And you're, you're transferring it to them, right?

It's like belief is transferable.

If you believe it's great and high value and you should do this thing, they're going to be more likely to want to do that thing even if it's replaced the whole unit or more expensive.

And so we have to shift out of being cheapos because if you're constantly seeing a world of cheapos, this is your lens.

This conversation is so incredible because.

And everybody pay attention to this.

I have the same conversation with everybody with.

When people are asking me about coaching and we go through it all and.

The people that don't believe this, let me say this for the people that don't believe this, that are listening and they run an H Vac company.

You know, there are H Vac guys that are crushing it and eating your lunch and they have big businesses.

Do you think that they and their team are there are charging less than you all the time?

Do you think?

No, they have a different belief system and a different mindset.

The average person you guys are talking to has no fucking clue what anything should cost.

Like, if somebody said, came to me and said a capacitor, blah, I Have no idea.

Yeah.

You think I spend my time thinking about capacitors?

Never.

Like, I have no clue.

You could say it's a thousand dollars to swap this thing out, and it's a thousand dollars for the part.

And I would probably be.

Be the idiot that would be like, okay, cool, Just take care of it.

Well, because you care about value, you care about time, you care about convenience.

I'm like, I don't just take care of it and move on.

I don't want to have me spend.

An hour with an H Vac person or two or three is worth.

My time's worth more than a thousand dollars an hour for me.

So that would be, like, cool.

Even if I'm.

Even if you feel like, man, I got that guy.

Like.

But if I find out later, like, oh, I can't believe you spent that much on this.

Because I talked to a property management client.

They're like, I can't believe you spent $2,000 to change out that.

And that was a problem.

I'd be like, oh, will I ever use your company again if I have a problem with Macy's?

No, no, of course not.

So, you know, so you.

You, like, the market dictates price to some degree, but also your perception has an impact on this, and your ethics and your morality is a factor.

Like, do what's fair, do what's right, but don't be an idiot and make your business profitable.

100.

And it's totally right.

You know, I did a talk recently, and we opened it up with if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.

The famous Henry Ford quote.

And it totally relates to this.

You attract what you are, and you're 100% right.

I would say when people.

I'm talking to them about coaching, and they're like, oh, yeah, sounds great.

Awesome.

I'm gonna have to think about it.

Then I'll just ask them.

Do a lot of people give you.

I want to think about it in your sales presentation.

And you're just attracting.

If you have a hard time making a decision and saying, I want to think about it or I got to get other quotes.

Well, of course they're going to.

With you as well.

So you are.

Don't be the person that you hate.

Right.

Don't do the things that you're complaining about, or you're gonna.

It's this.

It's a revolving door.

You're gonna keep running into the same thing over and over and over.

So I love this.

Thank you for addressing this so, so directly.

But the important thing is the mindset.

The important thing is the belief system.

Yeah.

Remember everybody was a couple episodes back.

We're talking about your identity.

Create your belief and your belief creates your outcomes.

Or belief creates identity and identity creates your outcomes.

This is living proof of this.

Right.

If you, if you're I.

If you believe that all property managers are cheap, that is your identity and you're going to attract that outcome if you change.

Listen to this episode and change your mindset about working with property managers.

There is a massive amount of work out there that they desperately need done and they're constantly looking for someone who can show up when you say you're going to show up, communicate better.

Like, do the things you say you're going to do at a fair price and they'll happily hire you over and over and over and become the trusted vendor with a relationship.

But you have to change your mindset first around that.

Yeah, you've got to believe in yourself first before anyone else is going to believe in you.

That's the crux of sales.

And a lot of people are trying to find some sort of way to get everyone to believe in them.

Like, how many guys are out there, like trying to figure out why won't my wife believe in me?

It's because you don't believe in yourself.

You have to believe in yourself first and then everybody else has no choice but to either believe in you or get out of the way.

Like, that's how strong your self belief has to be.

And the way you build up your self belief is you have to build yourself up.

Like, you have to say good things about yourself.

We have all sorts.

Write down all the negative self talk that you say.

We don't even realize how many things, oh, I'm an idiot or I did this or that's dumb or like, and you have to start investing in yourself.

And an easy hack to become more of a premium buyer and to believe in yourself more is to invest in yourself.

Like, get a coach, spend money on yourself, go like, do things that make you feel valuable.

And you know, the more I invest in myself, the more confident I am in charging money, the more confident I am in what I offer and I'm able to deliver because I have more knowledge and more value to provide.

And you know, and that goes with everybody on your team.

If they're investing in knowledge and they really want to level up, then they're probably a good culture fit, they're probably a good personality fit for the role and they, they want to be better and they love it.

If not, you're, you're like tolerating mediocrity on your team and you're, you've got a mediocre business and you think that that's okay.

Right.

Because you don't have high standards.

Yeah.

Your own standards are low, so everyone follows suit.

I heard this years ago and it totally makes sense.

If the fit, if the fish stinks, it stinks from the head down.

There's no way around it.

You, your, your organization is a mirror image of you, period.

Yeah.

If you want to change your organization, start first with yourself.

Right.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Gandhi, right.

Yeah.

It's true.

I mean, results don't lie.

Like, if your business doesn't feel healthy, if you're not enjoying it, then you're the one in charge of it.

You're the one that picked everybody.

You're the one that built it.

And, and that's okay.

You probably are just hitting your, your capacity.

You have to invest in yourself and to increase that capacity, you have to learn more so you can do better.

Yeah.

It's hiring coaches, you know, coaches like us to see your blind spots.

We've been through the mistakes and it.

Doesn'T, it doesn't like if you're a property manager, it doesn't have to be me, but it needs to be somebody.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

So this is actually a good springboard to take us into kind of the.

I think would be a good place to land the plane on this episode is, you know, we can do this both directions.

When a company is, say, wanting to work with property managers or is approached by property managers to do work, what are, what are the pros to look for in good property management companies to work with?

And what are some of the red flags that, you know, they need to be aware of in maybe not so good property management companies?

So I think green flags for property management companies are there's certain inflection points that are difficult for property managers.

Like under 100 doors is they're kind of a solopreneur and starting to try to build a team.

And from 100 to 200 doors as a company is really a difficult transition.

This is a difficult transition in any business.

It's building your first team that's hard.

That's a hard transition.

Once you get past that, maybe in the two to four hundred dollar range, I call that the second sand trap or the team sand trap.

Usually they built the wrong team and they end up stuck there.

And this is where the business owner is heavily involved in the business even though they have an entire team and they're getting burnt.

So some of the, the healthiest companies, very few break 500, 600 doors.

If you break 5, 600 doors you must have a good team, you must have good culture.

Things are in general are healthier and so you know that that could be a pretty easy indicators like and those are rare businesses.

There's.

Should we be asking number per market?

Yeah, I would say should we be asking you know, property management companies, how many doors do you have?

I would just be curious like if you want to build a relationship with a property manager, say hey how many doors you guys manage currently?

And whatever they say be impressed like wow, that's really great.

Like you good job.

But yeah, you know there's.

And that doesn't mean that they're bad if they're under 600 doors.

Right.

But what that means is there's different levels of expertise that you're dealing with and so you need to be aware like this, oh this is a startup.

Well I remember the startup days in my own business.

That's hard times, right.

So you, you'll have some compassion, you'll understand what challenges they're going to deal with.

It might be difficult to navigate everything and wear every hat and pay you on time and whatever.

So you're going to look at each stage and you're going to have a different perception because you've gone through similar stages in your own business and that helps you to know where they at because you've probably progressed in your journey to some sort of similar.

You've either been that solopreneur doing everything yourself built, started to get an assistant or some initial team members.

That transition was painful building the team, lots of mistakes, hiring and firing and playing Russian roulette to try and build a good team because had no knowledge of how to do it right or how to have a system.

And then now you finally through Russian roulette after maybe a decade or five to 10 years, have a really good team that you trust and you like and there's good culture and occasionally there's a bad egg but you get rid of them pretty quickly.

But you've got now a pretty good, well oiled machine.

Maybe you're still too involved in the business and then there's that next level to where we've got a great team.

I'm out of all the stuff that I don't enjoy doing as a business owner and my team are able to take care of stuff and do stuff well.

Right.

And so you can look at them through that similar journey or similar lens.

They're an entrepreneur just like you.

So just getting an idea of their door count can help you kind of understand where in that journey they are.

And there's advantages and disadvantages at each stage, but you should have a pretty good understanding of that.

I love that answer.

And it's so cool because it brings us right back to humanity.

It brings us right back to one.

Not forgetting where we came from and remembering helps us to remember those struggles and then to have more compassion for that.

And with that seeing it through that lens of the, you know, property managers want to, you know, they can be our advocate or they could be our adversary.

And it's up to us to choose, you know, what it is.

But having the compassion and how can I help you in this phase of where you're at in your business?

So again, it just goes back to the communication.

Right.

Asking about that.

What's another something maybe to look for and something to avoid.

I mean, if property managers have lots of negative reviews, that's a pretty good sign that they just don't know how to play the game of customer service very effectively.

So that's a pretty obvious telltale sign.

So it's not a hard game to win, but it, it is a challenge in property management because it's difficult to please everybody.

You've got opposing parties, you're in the middle of trying to make everything work.

But good property managers know how to, how to systematize getting good reviews and manage that process.

So that could be another clue for a green flag versus a red flag.

You know, if they're not, if they don't pay you on a, on a job or they're not paying on time or they've seen that be disorganized, I mean, those things are pretty obvious.

Sure.

And so then you just need to set boundaries and expectations with them.

Like, hey, the last job we didn't get paid this, and like this, we're going to do more work for you.

Then it needs to look like this and like, basically telling them, grow up and be a more mature business and, and be responsible.

And they may, they may be like, hey, yeah, sorry, we were going through a lot, we're struggling, we're trying to get this going and maybe they'll be better company or a better client for you.

But I think, you know, those, those are some pretty obvious things to look.

For 100% the other direction, you know, we can cover that too.

You Know, for property managers, I hope you pass this on to, to that community because, you know, the general consensus from for so the speaking directly to property managers out there, the general consensus from almost every trades company is we want to work with property managers.

We really, truly want to overcome these struggles to make a better partnership because we know that you need help and we also know there's a massive amount of work there that can help bolster our companies.

Let's talk about a really cool win win opportunity.

Yeah.

I have a client, had 1500, maybe 1600 doors, big business.

And, and he did this convert this talk and it's one of the recordings we have in our platform on how to start a maintenance company as a property manager and be basically like a general contractor.

And he's able to go to vendors and he's negotiating a lot of them to do work at half their rate.

And here's how he does this.

And so this could be like, I know people listening are like, I don't want to do work for half.

Yeah, no, nobody works for half price.

Right thing to rent realize in the trades or as a vendor, there's a lot of things you do work that you do that don't make you money.

Right.

A lot of companies are spending 30% just to acquire customers.

I mean, this is.

That's a huge amount of money.

So if a property manager can just give you work to do and give you business and you're not having to like go out and just do bids all the time and you're a preferred vendor.

You're not having to advertise to get that client.

You're not having maybe to do as much on the quote side or bid side or whatever.

You go out, assess the problem.

You're like, this is what needs to be done and they just do it.

A good property manager also will he.

What he would do is he would negotiate.

I will pay you every week.

You get your invoice to me in that week, early enough and I will pay you that week.

Nice.

So he would pay them and he said, and we'll set up.

You can do.

You can fill in the gaps in your work schedule.

You could do work on our stuff nights and weekends.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

You know, so in off hours, if you want to.

Yeah.

And so he was use it to plug holes in.

What he did is he went to the vendors and said, what are all your biggest frustrations?

It's going out on bids.

It's not getting paid on time.

It's, you know, having to do a bunch of marketing to get customers.

So by doing like he was able to reduce like 3, 50% of their frustrations in like spend just to get work and get business.

So he's like, if I can do all that.

And he also would pay for materials.

He's like, you could go to Home Depot and use my account and buy the materials.

So like they don't, you don't have to wait to get materials.

Like so, so in general, vendors, carpet, tile, people, whatever, he was able to do that.

And then he would set up a straw man and you know, in the straw man was Home Depot or somebody.

Else that would go do the work, whatever vendor, right.

He would say, so he'd say to his clients, you could have Home Depot do the carpet or do the tile or go do this water heater replacement or we, my vendor, our maintenance company, we can have them do it and our, here's our rate and it's cheaper.

And then he would just subcontract it out to the vendor and that they had negotiated.

They're getting all this work that they didn't have to do any business for.

So as a tradesperson or as a vendor, you have to recognize that if you get business handed to you that you didn't have to have all the overhead in order to get that client.

It would be stupid to charge the same rate that you would charge somebody else.

That you had to like go plaster a neighborhood with postcards and do right mail to get and to do all yellow book advertising and do billboards or whatever, whatever stuff you're doing and pay for all your trucks that you have like, you know, wraps on and like all this stuff, like if you're just getting lay downs and business handed to you that you didn't have to spend the money to acquire that customer.

Like that's a no brainer.

So you have to make sure you factor that in.

Sure, absolutely and forever.

Yeah, this is, it causes a more intelligent conversation also more intelligent contractor.

At the same time, you know, we, wow, this is brilliant for everybody.

And we can almost, you know, and there's a whole accounting discussion around this.

I can, you know, totally envision your bookkeeper, your, you know, your cpa, whoever's your comptroller.

You know, this would be classified as its own profit, basically its own book of business and profit center.

So you can, you know, obviously calculate your P and L and your overhead and everything differently because of, you know, we're no marketing costs, no cost of new client acquisition, all of that can be pulled out of it.

What is left and that's the rate that you should be charging.

So if it's 50% or whoever that falls out to be, then you have a really solid number.

And you know where you need to be working with this property manager in this type of a relationship to retain the margins but also cut out the extra stuff that you don't that's unnecessary in this type of relationship.

So man, this is insanely powerful.

I mean if you think about this, your number one prospect in any business business is your existing customer.

The problem in a lot of trades work is you don't have repeat business from that same customer very often.

Right.

Like my AC unit goes out maybe once every couple of summers, you know, or something.

Right.

Yeah.

It sounds like you need a new one because that should be every 10 years plus.

Right.

Whatever it is.

I don't know, I don't know.

But yeah.

So you know, your number one prospect is your existing customer.

But property managers are a whole different category of customer, which is why you want them because they're connecting, they're giving you customers.

They're a customer that if you have a good relationship with, gives you customers maybe regularly, if they're big enough, probably every month.

Oh, absolutely.

On autopilot.

Contractors that have a full time person.

Yeah, 100%.

As I have contractors around the country, they have a full time person strictly for their property management companies.

Because there's every single day, they're constantly, all day long working for the property manager.

Yeah.

And that should be your best people, that should be your best relationship because that's built in work.

It doesn't matter if you could get more money on other jobs.

This is residual repeated business that you're getting and that's more important.

Like, and so you have to factor in like a lot of people think getting on like let's say you make a thousand dollars in your business.

Well, did it cost you 500 to get that thousand dollars or did it cost you $200 to get that thousand dollars?

Right.

Because the profit margin is dramatically different on that.

Right.

And so you might have double the take home on work you do for a property manager as opposed to the jobs you're doing elsewhere.

If you factor in all of the wasted drive time and, and team members and other marketing stuff and everything else.

So you need to be smart and do some math and say, okay, how can I justify this to get this price point as low as possible to give my property managers a deal so that when they do market up a certain amount, if they do, and maybe you tell them you need to get your own general contractor's license.

You need to be a business, start a separate business as this.

And we could subcontract this work and create this relationship with them.

They will get you business.

They will.

They have built in marketing, they have built in clients.

They have.

Some of them have thousands of properties.

And they will just keep giving you work through their maintenance company.

And so you really are the.

Their maintenance, their AC or H VAC or whatever person that does the business for them.

And so they can go sell it at a more normal rate.

And then you are able to knock it down because you're eliminating all those other expenses.

So it's a win for you.

It's a win for them because they're making margin that's probably better than the 10 or 15%, because if they can negotiate something cool with you and then the owner's happier because maybe they're doing it at a little less than all the competitors, you know, that would be not.

And you wouldn't get that business anyway.

Right.

So, yeah.

So that you can create a win, win, win for all three parties and then everybody's making more money.

This is beautiful.

And I love that we're having this discussion because this is one for everybody.

This is something nobody talks about in the trades, is how can we work better?

You know, if we go into all these different Facebook groups, all we ever hear is griping and griping and griping and bitching about, you know, all the different other industries that we hate working with.

Well, yeah, you can retain that, you know, suffering mindset, or we can grow and focus on the positive.

How can we.

Instead of, I can't, so how can we get better at this?

And I love this model, but again, it goes back to having relationship, building a relationship, having good, clear communication, and starting off on the right foot with, I want to be your ally in this, not somebody you hate to call and dread.

Let's make our experience together a positive one.

How can we help support each other?

Yeah.

If you really understand your business and you really understand your cost to acquire a customer.

Because not every customer, even if you're doing the same exact job on every customer, not everyone came to you in the same way.

Not everyone has the same acquisition cost.

So if you understand your general acquisition costs for a customer and you can go to a property manager and you understand the lifetime value that a potential that a property manager can give you, which is easily a hundred times or a thousand times over the life of that relationship, it would be an absolutely ridiculously stupid thing to not find a win win to do something with them.

Even if it meant discounting your services.

You're not really discounting if they're saving you money.

Money.

It should be a wash like it should be.

It should make sense for both of you.

Both of you can have a better relationship together than.

Than apart.

I love this so much.

Well, it is, man.

I feel like we could talk about this forever.

We, we've definitely put in some content here today and I'm so grateful for you being on the show and it's, it's for everybody listening.

We are definitely honored because Jason was just on if you know who Brad Lee is, he was just recorded on his podcast as well.

So we are honored and privileged that you took the time out of your day to be here with us.

And man, give everybody some parting words here.

What would you say to.

And let everybody know how to get a hold of you, you know, when they, you know when they have those referrals.

So one more time give the contact information when they come across people.

And, and the better question is where do you work with people nationwide, state, globally.

Give us a little bit of that too.

If you speak English and you do property management, we can probably help you.

So that's doesn't matter where you are.

And I mentioned that because this podcast is listened to the Spotify report is in 71 countries.

There's a good chance somebody's listening outside of the United States.

So to make sure that if that's an option for them too.

Yeah, so yeah, we, we love coaching and supporting property managers.

It's, it's, you know, we really enjoy it and you know, if they want to.

If, if you are into entrepreneurism and you found any of this helpful, you probably would enjoy following me on Instagram or YouTube or Facebook.

Yeah, you can find me pretty much anywhere as King Jason Hole is my username.

So maybe check me out on Instagram or TikTok or whatever you're into.

And so King Jason Hull H U L L and then if you're a property manager or considering starting a property management business, it's a very complimentary business to any sort of trade.

If you're considering that you can just go to doorgrow.com or look up Door Grow on the same that username on any platform we're there and you can check that out.

And as far as like parting words, man, I don't know.

I think parting words is if your business.

This is one of the things one of my Mentors.

My.

One of my earliest investments is into a high ticket coach.

He said, if you don't yet have the business of your dreams, it's simply because you're not yet the person that can run it yet.

Yeah, that's powerful.

That was good medicine at the time.

Still is.

So, yeah.

And so, yeah, you just, you just need to learn more.

And so, yeah, keep investing in yourself and you know, and the.

If I give one more, it would be the slowest path to growth is to do it all on your own.

I was that guy.

Like, I tried to do everything on my own.

Tried to learn everything, watch YouTube videos, listen to someone's free podcast and just get tips.

And once I started investing and paying people to help me collapse time, it always ended up paying for itself.

Like, I just made so much more money.

Right.

And had so much more time and it just helped me collapse time.

And that it's.

There's no way to go as fast collapse time.

Get a coach, get a mentor, get somebody that's going to help you solve the problem.

And I've had coaches in relationships, marriage coaches, fitness coaches, sales coaches, like, you name it, like, get a coach and collapse time or whatever you're dealing with and then you can move on to the next thing and always be leveling yourself up.

So good.

So good.

I totally agree.

Thank you for being on the show.

Thanks for imparting your wisdom there and everybody.

And at the same time, man, you got to check out Jason's podcast.

They do.

Him and his wife do an incredible podcast on Facebook.

It's a, it's a live feed on, on and of course there.

The recordings are there too.

Awesome, awesome content.

It's not the.

What I love so much, everybody, is you.

So many times we learn the most from industries outside of your own.

That's how innovation happens, is you learn something that not.

It's not this revolving door of the same people over and over and over saying the same thing.

We get innovation and how to differentiate yourself in your marketplace by listening to other industries.

So this is one of the handful of shows that I recommend outside of the trades worth listening to every single time because there's a massive amount of value that Jason and his wife bring to the show.

Thank you.

So everybody, thanks for listening.

I hope you got some value from this.

If you did.

If you're on YouTube, make sure to like and subscribe.

Subscribe.

This is a growing channel.

We, I love all of the new YouTube viewers and for everybody else, thank you for listening.

I am so grateful for every single one of you every single week that tune in twice a week on this show and grow yourself.

You know, this is drive time university work to become someone worth buying from.

Also that means, you know, increasing every element of your life.

So that's it.

We're gonna sound off and wrap it up today.

Thanks for listening everybody.

Go be someone worth buying from.

You've been listening to the Close it now podcast.

Our passion is to dive headfirst into the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement and at the same time covering fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all.

We hope you've enjoyed the show.

If you did, make sure to like rate and review.

We'll be back soon but in the meantime, find the website@CloseItNow.net find us on Instagram herealcloseitnow and on Facebook @CloseItNow.

See you next time.

Sam.