A Podcast | Jason Hull

Pete Neubig: [00:00:04] Welcome back everybody. And as promised, I have Jason Hull, CEO of Doorgrow. So Jason, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate you.

Jason Hull: [00:00:14] Yeah, Pete, thanks for having me on the show. Appreciate that.

Pete Neubig: [00:00:17] You are the man, brother. All right. So you are the CEO of Doorgrow, which, based on its name, helps property management firms grow their business. Typically, when someone asks, how do I grow? Most people point to online advertising and SEO. Now you believe a focus on SEO and advertising could actually hurt your business growth and the entire industry's ability to grow. Tell us why.

Jason Hull: [00:00:42] Yeah. So this is something I'm pretty passionate about. You know, I just I talked to property managers all the time. I've talked to thousands, thousands of property managers. And one of the worst mistakes they can do early in their business, starting out, is to try to play the game of internet marketing, which is a difficult game to jump into. I usually use the analogy of comparing it to David versus Goliath and the story of David versus Goliath. David was offered the tools that Goliath had. He's like, here's a sword, here's armor. You can do things Goliath's way. But David would have gotten his ass kicked, right? He would have gotten his butt kicked in this scenario if he had done it the same way. And that's what little companies try to do to go compete with the big companies that are spending thousands of dollars a month on all of this stuff. They're going to lose in general, trying to compete with a company that has a budget of five grand a month to dedicate towards SEO and leads and pay per click, and all this online advertising. Here's the dirty secret marketers don't want to tell you related to all this internet marketing, because if you ask, why should I do any of this stuff? Usually the answer is, well, to get to the top spot on Google or to get SEO. That's why we do social media marketing. That's why they say to do, um, you know, content.

Pete Neubig: [00:01:57] Marketing videos on YouTube.

Jason Hull: [00:01:59] Videos, uncomfortable videos, all this stuff. They say, well, it helps SEO and the better. The bigger question to ask is, is having the top spot on Google going to solve all of your problems? And the answer is probably not. There are companies that have the top spot on Google right now that have been losing more doors than they're adding on. Is it good to be king? Yes, but it's really difficult to dethrone somebody that's been there for like two decades or a decade, and they're at the top spot on Google. So the thing to realize is this, and marketers don't want to tell you this, is that the coldest, worst leads are the ones that are searching on the internet. They're the ones at the very end of the sales cycle. The they're basically the leftover scraps that fell off the good word of mouth table. This is what's left over searching online. Everybody knows word of mouth is great, right? The close rates super high. Their warm leads, you can close them very easily. But then they get into cold lead marketing and they assume, well, they're all leads are the same. And it's not true. Cold leads are not the same as warm leads. Cold leads do not know you, trust you, or like you yet. And so you then have to play this game. But at the end of the sales cycle, after they're already shopping and looking around online, you now are just a commodity to them. So at that point, once you're a commodity, they're just looking for the lowest price. So now you're you're dealing with all the cheapos.

Jason Hull: [00:03:22] And so psychologically there's three types of buyers. I call them premiums normals and cheapos. Normals are like 60% the majority. And what's left over at the end of the sales cycle that are searching on Google are usually the cheapos. And so if you build an entire portfolio of cheap owners where they're hyper price sensitive and they view you as a commodity, that's a grind. As a property management business owner, because they're the worst, they want to micromanage you. They don't trust you as much. They're like trying to control everything that you're doing. And you're always feeling like there's this pressure towards the bottom. And I think most property management businesses are not good and not healthy. Like most of you listening to this go, well, I'm good, but everybody else in my market sucks. And that's why I started my company. Right? And I hear that all the time like, no, we're good, but everybody else sucks in my market. And that's why we started our company, because I was an investor and everybody else sucked in my market, and I couldn't trust them to manage my investments. Right. Most property management business owners have sucky businesses, and I believe the one of the number one reasons why is because they're spending all their money trying to do what every marketer is telling them to do to grow their business. They're not getting a really good ROI on this, so they're just burning cash. And when you're cash poor in a business, what's the first thing to go?

Pete Neubig: [00:04:41] Marketing.

Jason Hull: [00:04:43] Well, if you're already spending the money on marketing and it's not working, the first thing to go is customer service. Customer service starts to slip, right? Because then you don't have the resources to, like, get a good team and you can't stop the marketing, you think, because that's the only way we're getting business. So then it ends up in this, like this downhill loop that the property management business owners end up in, where they're in the cycle of suck, bringing.

Pete Neubig: [00:05:07] Them in, and they're turning.

Jason Hull: [00:05:08] Clients and they're trying to spend money like, this is a big secret. It's more significant and important to decrease churn in a property management business than it is to do marketing to get new clients. You cannot outpace churn with amazing marketing if churn is high, right? It's like that is such a grind and it's super expensive. I'll say this another way. It's a lot easier to keep a customer for another year than to go get another customer that's only going to stay for a year.

Jason Hull: [00:05:38] Right. There's a ten times difference between an accidental investor of one year and somebody that's buy and hold for ten years, right. And so a lot of times we're just picking the wrong types of clients. And then we're doing advertising and internet marketing that attracts the wrong type of clients. And then we wonder why this business is such a grind. And it can be really good and it can be really profitable. So the other thing I'll point this out too related to SEO. If you want to see this for yourself, go to trends google.com. This is where you can see search volume and related stuff for keywords put in property management. Change the date back date the date to 2004, when they first started tracking data to the present, and look at over a decade of data sitting there in front of you. And what you'll notice is search volume has not increased in a decade for property management. But you want to know what's increased, Pete, over the last decade.

Pete Neubig: [00:06:33] What what Jason.

Jason Hull: [00:06:34] Competition related to search volume like dramatically. Right. Everybody's trying to spend money to do all this stuff to try and grow. So the competition has gotten fierce, but the search volume stayed the same. And you can compare it to any other keyword on Google Trends. You can put in like real estate or loans or credit or anything else. Right. And you'll see that property management is so minuscule, it looks like a little line at the bottom. When you add any other search term to compare it with. There's very few people searching online and they're the worst usually. And so if you can capture the secret is if you can capture people earlier in the sales cycle that are not even yet looking on the internet. There's 70% that are self-managing in single family residential, for example. There's no scarcity out there. There's tons of business. They're just not looking online. And so this is one of the things we help at Doorgrow is we help you figure out what's a much more effective strategy to grow your business and create new market share instead of fight over the scraps.

Pete Neubig: [00:07:34] That is well said, buddy. And I'm going to ask you later on what some other things we can do. But right now I want to talk about something else that you that I've heard you say. Yeah. Northam. You know, Northam radio show. And Northam is a big advocate of collaboration over competition. And this is something that you are also passionate about, because I've heard you talk about why collaboration over competition is important. So expand on that, because even at Northam, like we like to we like to collaborate, but then we like to hold some cards close to the vest for sure. And in other industries, they don't trade at all. So talk a little bit about that.

Jason Hull: [00:08:14] So well. This leads right into what we were just talking about. Because when you're in a place of scarcity and there's a lot of scarcity, if you're playing the internet marketing game, you feel it, you feel the pressure and the race to the bottom in terms of pricing, because of all the cheapos you feel the pressure because your competition are all over and they're ever present on the internet and you're trying to compete, right? And everybody that talks to you by that point has already talked to probably other companies too. So you're just it seems like there's scarcity, but there really isn't. There's tons of business. There's tons of business. There's very few industries that have the opportunity where there's only 30% market share and there's like 70% are just trying to do it themselves. Like you contrast this with Australia. About 80% of single family residential rental properties are professionally managed. Yep, that's more than double the percentage here, right? It's more than double. So imagine if everybody could just double the amount of doors because we focus on collaboration. Like there's so much business out there. There aren't enough property managers to handle that level of growth that could happen. That's my belief, because there aren't that many good ones. There aren't a ton of good property managers. Because and I don't believe. And I want to make this clear. Like nobody wakes up in the morning and says, I want to have company today. I want to be a business owner. I don't want to have a company. But business is hard. Business can be really hard. And when we don't have the right, especially.

Pete Neubig: [00:09:40] This business, especially this one.

Jason Hull: [00:09:42] Especially this business, if we don't have the right system, then we are going to have to make a ton of mistakes to eventually build a system that works. And property management can be death by a thousand cuts. You have 500 doors and two problems per door. That's a thousand cuts, right? It can like this can be a very system, sizable, healthy type of business where you have monthly residual, you know, revenue or it can be death by a thousand cuts like every month. I mean, I've had clients come to me that had 500 units and had zero profit in their business. The average profit margin in this industry is super low. It's super low. Yeah. Yet there's these outliers like some of our clients that have 40% profit margin or greater. And it's absolutely possible anybody can do this if they have the right system. And so collaboration over competition. Competition is created by scarcity, by this false scarcity that people see or perceive exists. And what I find is with our clients, when we get them to a place where they are getting adding doors easily and lots of doors, that scarcity mentality goes away. They no longer even afraid of sharing stuff with their competitors because they don't really view it as competition. In fact, we actually go beyond just stating on the surface collaboration over competition. We actually get our clients reaching out to neighboring property management companies in their market and outside their market, using a strategy called the neighbor strategy, and this helps them add more doors. We have clients in our program that are in the same city and same market, and they're helping each other get more business.

Jason Hull: [00:11:19] And I really believe, you know, this idea that a rising tide raises all ships. That's somewhat true, but when the industry is on basically low tide bedrock, you're sitting on gravel or on the sand because the tide is so low. A rising tide will sink some ships. The tide is low in this industry, and I believe a rising tide will raise all the ships that are seaworthy and a lot will be out. And I think we need that. We need to level up this industry. Some ships need to sink. They need to sell out their businesses to somebody else. And maybe some of my clients, they need to sell their business or get some help. And and I really believe if you focus on just raising the level of property management in your market, some of your competitors are getting eaten up or fail, they'll probably sell to you, or everybody has more market share available because the number one challenge in the industry right now is not your local competitors. That's not your biggest competition is other property management companies. The two biggest competitors you have right now are awareness. There's a lack of awareness. A lot of people don't even know that property management exists or not aware of it. And if they are aware, the second biggest competitor that you really have is perception, the property management industry, because of all the suck that exists in it, has a negative perception among those that are aware of it. If you can overcome those two hurdles, then you are going to have no problem with growth.

Pete Neubig: [00:12:57] You mentioned it earlier, right? You said most of us, you know, join the business because we were investors. We had our own properties. And it's exactly how I got into business, right? I owned a bunch of properties and I got into business. And the.

Jason Hull: [00:13:09] Story every day I.

Pete Neubig: [00:13:10] Tell this, but I tell this funny story because like when I, when I had 31 properties and I didn't know how to manage them and I was I was getting my butt kicked. And finally I decided I was going to create a management company one, because when I did Google back in 2011, there were no property management firms that I could find. And then two, I'm like, well, it doesn't exist. Like, no one is going to be crazy enough to build a management company for single residents. Single family residence, right? Only only people with multifamily are going to create management firms. So I thought, Jason, I thought I created the industry, right? I thought I I'm like, oh, single family property management. I created like that. And then I find I'm like a year later I'm like, oh, there's thousands, not even hundreds, thousands of people that do what I'm doing and way better than the way I do it. So but you're right. Like, I didn't know about it. Right. And perception was that no one's going to manage my property as good as me. And and I had no idea that that existed. So sometimes I call them the best kept secret out there, which is not a good thing. That's the best kept secret. But but yeah, so I'm right with you, man. So I think that was interesting.

Jason Hull: [00:14:17] I think the challenge is that in the early stage of an entrepreneur's journey, we always isolate. This is everybody's story. Usually in the beginning we think it's all up to us. It's all on our shoulders. And there's nobody else like nobody.

Pete Neubig: [00:14:32] Else can help. Yeah.

Jason Hull: [00:14:34] Because, you know, we are weird if you compare us to the majority of the people on the planet. We're the weirdos that somehow wake up in the morning and we think, you know, I would rather have freedom and fulfillment than safety and certainty. And that's not most people. Most people on the planet would rather have safety and certainty that's a higher priority to them than having freedom and fulfillment in their day to day. And when people that want freedom and fulfillment, they also want contribution. They want to make a difference. But most people on the planet would rather have safety and certainty first and then benefit other people, right? Entrepreneurs. We're weird. We're so different. And because we're so weird and so different, life's really hard for us. When we're young, we don't fit in. We're like, we're these weird rebels in school that, like, question everything and, like, get put down because we're not following the status quo. We look at the world and we walk into places and we're like this. We could solve problems. This could be better. That's what a business is, is to solve a real problem.

Pete Neubig: [00:15:38] And how many times you walk into a business and you're like, oh man, well, they could do this and this. And if they did this and I can help this, and how come they're not marketing this, right? You you talk about that. You know, when I was an employee for 20 years before I became a business owner. And you talk about that safety and security. Every company I worked for in those 20 years, about 4 or 5 different companies no longer exist today. And so talk about that safety and security, right? Like when I was an employee, my last, my last company, I actually never felt safe and secure. And that's why I started my own company. And I'm like, that's that's going to be, you know, that's going to make it more. I'm going to be more safe. I'm going to have more control. Right? I'm going to bet on myself versus betting on some CEO or some company that I worked for that I never meet except for the company meetings, you know? Yeah.

Jason Hull: [00:16:28] Yeah. And so that's part of the entrepreneurial journey, is we start out isolating. We think nobody else is like me because we get so much friction from the world. The world's always telling us like, slow down or why don't you just get a job or, you know, or whatever? And we were kind of these heretics. And so we kind of learned to keep things close to the vest. We learned to keep things to ourselves. We learned not to because we just get friction. We just get friction, a lot of friction. And so eventually we start to realize we don't know everything. There's a group of other people that could support us, and being in groups like a mastermind or joining them or being connected to other people is the only way to go fast. It's the only way to move forward quickly. And we realize that, you know, there's a lot of other good ideas out there and that, you know, that's a bit humbling, I think, as entrepreneurs. But it's also super validating for us because then we start to go, okay, I'm not the only guy on this planet that's weird like this, or I'm not the only gal that's trying to grow this property management, or I'm not the.

Pete Neubig: [00:17:29] Only guy who has this challenge.

Jason Hull: [00:17:31] Right? Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:17:32] Go to go to to a Doorgrow mastermind or go to them and have the five things, maybe the five challenges you're facing with. And you go talk to people. And I guarantee you, most people you talk to have had those issues or those challenges and have already solved them in some capacity.

Jason Hull: [00:17:50] You know, this is why I mapped out this whole doorgrow code, this roadmap that we have from 0 to 1000 doors, because at every stage I started to see patterns. After talking to thousands of property managers, I started to see these patterns and it was always this similar door counts, similar challenges, similar problems, similar dysfunctional beliefs, similar ideas. Right. And I was like it was like different people, different faces, but the same person over and over and over again. So I started to see these patterns. And so then I mapped it all out in a single page document. Anybody is welcome to go get it from us. Just reach out and DM me the word code on social or something. But we'll give you the doorgrow code. But this is how we're helping clients know what to focus on. Because the other challenge is, you know, we focus on the wrong things at maybe the right things, but at the wrong time, like a lot of people. How? Here's the two things I hear every property manager say they need if they're below maybe 200 doors and they're dealing with the typical challenges there, they always say, I need more leads, I just need more leads, which I'm going to tell everybody is a lie. It's not actually usually true when we dig into things. Usually you need to stop all the leaks that are preventing the leads that are available to you from coming through, perhaps, and then or you're focused on cold leads. So you're you're mistakenly thinking they're all the same. But leads is kind of the dysfunctional belief, I just need more leads. So if you're listening to this, you're like, I just need more leads. Well, Jason, I really do just need more leads. I'm so amazing at sales and everything else would be great if I just had more leads. Cool. Maybe we should talk and I might blow your mind. All right, the second thing, like, once they're a little larger, maybe 2 to 400 doors or bigger. Usually the challenge there is, they think I just need more processes. That's all I need. I just need more processes.

Pete Neubig: [00:19:31] Processes break around 300 doors, is what I found. Yeah, I just need more processes.

Jason Hull: [00:19:35] That's all I need. And that's also a misnomer because usually at that stage, sorry to tell you this, what I find is everybody thinks they need more processes and what they actually need is a better team. What they actually need are better people, and they actually need better culture.

Pete Neubig: [00:19:52] Needed that too. Yeah, that's a good call.

Jason Hull: [00:19:55] So this is I've seen this over and over and over again. And, you know, having the right system for creating the right culture and the right hiring and the right team will change everybody's life at that stage. And so usually you just need a better team. And my way people always like, no, my team's great. I hear this all the time. Here's how I destroy that. If you still have an entire team, if you have an entire team, you're 2 to 400 doors or bigger and you have an entire team, and your day to day is still not fun and you're still wearing hats you don't enjoy wearing, and you're asking yourself the question, why won't my team think for themselves? You by default, that proves you have the wrong team. You're still you're you can do whatever you want in the business, and you're still wearing all the hats that you don't enjoy. And then you built a team. That's the puzzle piece you created of yourself, and then you built an entire puzzle piece of people around you. You by default have the wrong team. And so usually we have to get clarity on you and they build the right team.

Pete Neubig: [00:20:57] What's the next thing to break after you get to about 800 doors or 6 to 800 doors.

Jason Hull: [00:21:01] So nobody breaks 600 doors without good culture. That's what I find. Like you have to have a really good team and really good culture, and usually the people that do it, they break the 600 or bury they do it by Russian roulette. Like it's just they've been doing this for a decade or two, and just over time, they've eventually finally gotten a good team. If they lost that team, they have almost no clue how to replace everybody perfectly. It would be like a catastrophe, right? But they've done it through Russian roulette. They finally got a good team, but they don't have a good system for creating a good team. 6 to 800 doors. Usually at this stage they start to try and focus on. And people do this prematurely sometimes, but they try and focus on profit. I just need more KPIs. I need more metrics. Which again means you just need a better team. A lot of times you don't really have to micromanage amazing people.

Pete Neubig: [00:21:54] Now with KPIs. And I'll give you. I'll give you a quick story. So, um, it was around probably a little over 600 doors at the time, and my director of operations emails me and says, hey, I'm giving my notice, right? And I'm like, oh man. I'm like, oh my God. You know, like, this is the worst thing ever, you know? And she always walked around. She was always stressed out and everything. So she leaves and her email gets forwarded to me. Her phone gets forwarded to me. Like, now I'm the director of operations, right? Yeah. And I promise you, man, I didn't receive any emails or any phone calls. Matter of fact, when she left, my real estate team was happy she left. My property managers were happy, she left and my sales team was happy she left. Didn't realize how much stress and and and chaos that she was creating inside the industry, inside our business. And when she left, I ended up hiring somebody who's much better. The moral of the story is, no matter how good you think somebody is, um, if they if they leave. Typically you replace him with somebody better, typically because you've learned a little bit more from that experience, and you're able to hire somebody with a little bit higher quality or train them a little bit more or what you want. But but yeah, I was yeah, that person.

Jason Hull: [00:23:09] That everybody's terrified leaves your company that you're afraid of. That's sometimes the very best thing that could ever happen to you. Because the reason they're so critical is because you don't have their processes documented. You don't know where they spend their time or what they do. You don't have clarity. So you think they're so important and they've built up a really good job security because of this. And so and that means they often get to write their own ticket. They're like, oh, just pay me this, right?

Pete Neubig: [00:23:35] Yeah.

Jason Hull: [00:23:36] We create so much more safety and security for ourselves as an entrepreneur. When we have things documented and we have them document their processes. And that's the number one thing an operator should do. But I will say that the operator is the most important hire anyone will ever have in their business. They run the business.

Pete Neubig: [00:23:51] Yep.

Jason Hull: [00:23:53] They take your vision and they make it all work right?

Pete Neubig: [00:23:55] Yeah. But you need two.

Jason Hull: [00:23:57] Amazing people.

Pete Neubig: [00:23:58] Right. KPI? And you have to make sure, like, yeah, you have to manage them, right. You can't abdicate. You still have to delegate. You still have to manage. You still have to train. You still have to do all that stuff. All right. We got on lots of tangents here, but I want to go back because we talked a lot about the internet marketing, SEO and how that could be a big mistake early on. So if you, Jason Hall, had limited resources, owned a firm, what would be the first thing you would do to grow your business?

Jason Hull: [00:24:24] Mhm. Okay. Well I definitely wouldn't do marketing or advertising first. That would not be my first step. I mean really this is sounds like a shameless plug, but we created a program for startups we call Doorgrow foundations and we have doorgrow like startup secrets. And we just we almost give the give it away currently. I don't know if we'll keep doing that, but it's like such a low price. It's ridiculous. I think it's like 95 bucks or something. And we were going to charge a bunch more. But we created this because really we just want to help people get started the right way because people are going to start, they're going to do it anyway, but they're going to do it poorly and they're going to make a ton of costly mistakes. We just one of my one of my coaches, Morgan, just talked to a potential client and they had just spent 30 grand on their logo and their website with a branding agency. That's how they started. They could have bought a franchise for maybe that amount. Maybe, I don't know. But then maybe that would have been a better decision. But I'm not a big fan of franchises either, because I feel like they also don't give people the right tools. They tell people to do SEO, they tell people to do marketing. And I've had several franchisees in our program that came to us because they were struggling to add doors and grow, and they were required to pay a certain amount of money towards marketing to corporate.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:42] So would you. So what I.

Jason Hull: [00:25:43] Would do first.

Jason Hull: [00:25:44] Oh go ahead.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:45] Oh go ahead. I was I was going to ask what would you start first with. Yeah.

Jason Hull: [00:25:48] So what I would start with first is I would start by first making a list of all of my resources. Like who do I know currently? What do I know? Investors. And then look at the industry. I do some Google searches to find out what resources are available in my market. Are there real estate investor groups? Are there meetup.com groups? Are there what exists to facilitate my target audience or serve my target audience? I would get super clear on my target audience. Who do I really want? And then I would figure out where do they hang out? And then I would just go get them, like I would go talk to them. So I'll share a quick growth strategy. My number one strategy I like to share with startups is and this is what I would do is product research interviews. So basically go hang out at these groups and meet some investors. And I would ask people, hey, you're an investor. Do you have rental properties? And they say, yeah, cool. How many units do you have? And if they say four or more, they're my best buddy, right? So what I'm going to do then is I'm going to say, oh my gosh, I'm working on starting a property management business. And I think it's going to be amazing.

Jason Hull: [00:26:50] But there's a lot of things I don't know yet. I have questions I would love to set up a time to chat with you and interview you, and get some feedback on my idea. Would you be willing to do that? And most people want to give advice. They want to help you out, right? And so I would do 20 or 30 product research interviews and I would interview these people. So we give our clients a script. We give them the how to do this four phase process of doing that, that interview. That's really effective. But the basic idea is you interview these people and during the interview you get to pitch. Here's what I was thinking of doing, Fred. Like, what do you think, Fred? And you explain your business model and your pricing and all this. But before that, you identified all of their pain points. Why have you never worked with a property manager before? What concerns do you have? Oh, okay. So you're getting all what are your biggest challenges with your rental properties now? What are you doing currently to manage your properties? Oh do you enjoy that stuff? Oh you don't love like doing leasing and maintenance coordination. That's not fun for you. You don't like late night phone calls from tenants? Oh, wow.

Jason Hull: [00:27:54] Okay. Right. So I would take note of all this. And this gives you a wealth of data, a wealth of knowledge and language so you can communicate with your target audience. This is the beginning of knowing how to be a marketer. You need to know your target audience. You need to know their pain, and you need to know how they say it and write down how they say it. And you need to communicate in their way. This is what I do to get clients I know so well. Just based on the door count of a company, I can speak what's going on in their head secretly. And like, Holy shit, this guy knows my my problems and they feel naked and they feel seen, right? You. This is how you get that knowledge to know. And if you've been doing this a while and talked to hundreds of investors over the years, you've developed this. But in the beginning, this is where startups need to to develop. And then at the end, after you go through and explain your pitch and what you do, then you can do the ask. And that's phase four. But you're going to ask, hey, you know, Fred, thanks for giving me all this feedback and listening to my ideas. I'm going to be working on this over the next week or two, getting this really well dialed in.

Jason Hull: [00:28:58] And I really appreciate this. Once I have that done, would it be cool if we got together again and I show you my my idea? And tell you more about it and see if maybe could get you to let me manage your properties. Let's say just half of them say yes, right? Let's say half of the people you reach out to say, sure, I'll do a call with you. And then half of them, they have four units or more, and half of them say, okay, I'll let you shoot your shot and do another call. And then half of those and they have four units or more say they're willing to work with you because you do. Then you get to pitch all over again, sell to them a second time. It's more solid. You know how to target them. You know their pain and you, they let you pitch them again. And let's say only half of them say yes. You're going to get on average, if you're interviewing people with four units or more, you're going to get about a unit per interview that you do on average. Right? Maybe more because they might have ten units, they might have 20 units.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:52] Right.

Jason Hull: [00:29:53] And so this is one of the easiest ways initially to get a wealth of knowledge and to get your first initial clients.

Pete Neubig: [00:30:00] Yeah. This is just one of our strategies. It's not cost a lot of money. Right. It's just it might be. 

Jason Hull: [00:30:05] It costs $0, and it actually takes less time to do this than it would to follow up on cold leads from like or something. Right takes less time. So less time. And the close, it's going to be way higher because they feel invested in your success and they're listening to you and you get to pitch. And these are people that aren't working with property managers. Blue ocean.

Pete Neubig: [00:30:29] Talk about. I've heard you talk about property management is bigger than toilets, tenants and turmoil. And a good property management can change the world. This reminds me of the story when we were trying to get to the moon, and they interview a janitor who works for NASA, and they said, what's your job? And he says, I'm getting. I'm getting a man on the moon. I'm helping get a man on the moon, right. It's that mindset, right? So for those listening that are beat down, doing the daily grind, stuck in the daily thick of things, it's tough for us to see a much bigger picture. So all right, let's end this on a great note. Tell us how good property management changes the world, buddy. How are we.

Jason Hull: [00:31:05] Really believe this? I just got chills. Like I really believe good property management changes the world. And I know like it's hard. Like I've heard I hear all the stories. I know my brother has a property management business. My dad had a property management business. He sold it to my brother eventually and exited. My wife had a property management business like, and I've heard stories like I have clients that I'm coaching and they're going through tough stuff when they come to us like hard stuff. You know, sometimes it's like compounding. It's like the business and divorce and like all like I've had people like, with cancer, like there's, like, we have tough stuff, like life can be tough. Good property management, I really believe, can change the world because you get to have such an impact, like a real, legitimate business solves a real problem, right? It's not snake oil. It solves a real problem in the marketplace. And here's why. Good property management changes the world. You solve the three largest problems if you're a property manager that exist in real estate investing. The three most complained about things probably on the planet, maybe could be landlords. Tenants. And rentals. Right. These are three of the most challenging and complained about things. I've started doing TikToks and I'm like, the number one mistake people make with a rental property is not hiring a property manager.

Jason Hull: [00:32:25] And the comments I get are hilarious because they're like the number one. One of them said the number one mistake is them not offing themselves with a gun or something like this. Like, this is like, this is the like, this is people's mentality. They hate landlords and they hate tenants and they like it. Just depends on which side you are. The magical people listening to this that run a property management business. You make all three of these better. You make owners behave better. You make them better landlords, they're less. You make tenants behave better. You make them pay rent. You make sure they show up like you make sure all of these show up better. You make rental properties better. And there's a lot of rental properties out there, and there's a lot of families that are renters, and there's a lot of families that have rental properties that own them. And so this is a huge ripple effect that you get to have as a property manager. So don't sit there and think you're not really having an impact. If you have 100 doors, that could be 100 families that you're impacting, that are renting from you, that you can make their life less stressful, you can make their life work a little bit better.

Jason Hull: [00:33:27] You can make them step up and be a more reputable, solid human being, right? You can. You have an impact on them or you can if you want to. You also, um, are impacting, you know, say you have 100 units. You're probably impacting at least maybe 60 different owners and their financial situation and their families and their ability to provide and do things for their kids and their future. Right. And then there's the community at large, right? Like you're helping to maintain these properties and keep them up and make sure that the owners are doing what they should be doing to take care of things. I mean, this has a big impact, and I get like, excited. And this is why I do what I do and why I love serving property managers is because for us in our team, we know that we get to have a massive ripple effect. I can work with one owner and impact 1300 units. Right. And and all the impact that they get to have. And if I can make their business healthy, the ripple effect is immense. I feel like like it's significant and that's inspiring and excited to me.

Jason Hull: [00:34:32] And this is the change that I want to see in the industry. I really believe there's so many properties that should be managed by a property manager right now that are not. There's a lot of people in difficult circumstances, situations they shouldn't have to deal with because they should have a better landlord that shows up better. There's a lot of owners that are making a lot of mistakes that they don't realize they're charging too little rent. They're not able to, like, take care of things. There's a lot of problems, and all you need to do is be aware of somebody's problems and you then can solve them. That's the glory of having an amazing business. So that's how I believe. And there's a ripple effect beyond that. Like if families are healthier and happier, there's less domestic violence, there's probably more pets thanks to property managers and properties. So more families are exposed to, you know, nature and having animals in their life. And kids are growing up with pets and there's less stress. And there's I mean, we could go crazy and extrapolate to the nth degree, but I really believe good property management has a massive ripple effect and can change the world.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:30] So for you guys listening that are property managers, owned property management firms, just think of you're like a super hero for the common people. Not all heroes wear capes.

Jason Hull: [00:35:39] They're the superhero of the entire rental industry. They are the superheroes. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:43] I get it. All right, man. Well, we're we're we got to come to a commercial break. We're gonna we're going to hit a commercial break. And when to come back for the the lightning round. All right, so we'll be right back. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. Everybody, for the lightning round. Get ready for the lightning round.

Jason Hull: [00:35:59] All right.

Pete Neubig: [00:36:00] All right everybody, welcome back. And here we go the lightning round. We ask you a series of questions. You can. One word quick answers. But if you want to expand on it just go ahead and do it. All right. Ready?

Pete Neubig: [00:36:10] Let's go. What was your first job?

Jason Hull: [00:36:13] Oh my gosh. My first job. Folding flyers for a cent a fold for my mom who was a real estate agent. That was my very first job. And then she would have us canvass neighborhoods. How old man, I was young. As young as I could fold papers. I don't know, she would walk me, take me to open houses, and I was little.

Jason Hull: [00:36:31] Yeah. Awesome.

Pete Neubig: [00:36:33] What is your ideal vacation?

Jason Hull: [00:36:36] Ooh, my ideal vacation. So my wife Sarah and I are different. Her ideal vacation is probably some sort of ridiculous, adventurous thing. Like us jumping on a bungee thing or something and scaring the crap out of myself, right? Adrenaline junkie. But for me, I love just relaxing and being able to, like, read and enjoy good food because I'm so go, go, go in the business. So that's really an ideal vacation.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:02] Are you a beach guy?

Jason Hull: [00:37:04] We do love the beach man. We took a lot of trips to Mexico during Covid.Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:10] What is something that most people don't know about you?

Jason Hull: [00:37:15] Um, I don't know. There's a lot of weird things about me. I'm kind of a strange guy, so, um, I don't know. A couple of things. One, if you were able to see my keyboard, I actually pop all my keys off of every keyboard, and I rearrange them in a different format. It's called Dvorak or Dworshak, depending on how you pronounce it. But, um, so it's more efficient. So it's world speed records were set on Dvorak. So that's something super strange and unique about me. So I just got a new MacBook. I did brain surgery on it. I pop every key off very carefully and rearrange them, and then I change the settings to Dvorak.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:50] Oh my goodness. All right. Does pineapple belong on pizza.

Jason Hull: [00:37:55] I like pineapple so cooked pineapple. Raw pineapple. Both good. So I'll eat it.

Pete Neubig: [00:38:02] What is one piece of advice you'd give someone just starting out in the business? And I think you kind of beat this one to death. But just give us a quick a quick answer. This one.

Jason Hull: [00:38:11] Um. All right. I mean, I'm going to say talk to Doorgrow because if you're just starting out, we can help you. If you're seasoned and you're struggling, we can definitely help you. And if you have a big company and you want to start to squeeze more margin out, then we can definitely help you. So that would be the best feedback because we'll steer you clear of all the BS, all the time wasting, and will help you collapse time and help you win. We legitimately, as a team, we want to see you win. It's our mission is to transform property management, business owners and their businesses. And if you're not yet the person that if you don't have the business of your dreams. One of my mentors told me, he said, Jason, if you don't have the business of your dreams, it's because you're not yet the person that can run it yet. That's my goal. I want to turn you into the person that can have the business of your dreams, because as soon as I do, you'll have it. You'll create it.

Pete Neubig: [00:38:57] What Disney character do you most associate with Disney character?

Jason Hull: [00:39:01] Oh, man. And I don't know. What Disney character. Um. I have no idea. I don't know. I've seen it every movie.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:12] I've got one out there. How about. How about goofy? Since you're goofy, since you're changing keys on the keyboards and going to goofy.

Jason Hull: [00:39:21] Goofy is kind of dumb, though. Think I'm a little smarter than goofy, but barely. Just a little bit. Maybe. Um, so I don't know.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:29] All right, you know what's funny?

Jason Hull: [00:39:30] That's not like a huge Disney fan lately with all their garbage politically. But if I were to pick a Disney character, um, I don't know. I think I've got the hustle of Aladdin, but maybe more ethics.

Jason Hull: [00:39:42] Since he was stealing stuff, right? Like so. But I liked his drive, you know. All right.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:47] What is one challenge you are facing in your business?

Jason Hull: [00:39:51] Ooh. Yeah. Um, you know, our current challenge, we spent the whole last year not focusing on sales. Like, we really weren't, like, bringing people into the into our mastermind, our program. It wasn't our focus. We were just focused on building out, making our program amazing. So we added tools, we added software. We had a lot of stuff like we have some really cool new stuff like Doorgrow flow, the best process software out there. We've have all sorts of systems that we added. So now our expenses are high, which isn't normal for us. And so now we need to get more clients on. So that's our focus right now is lead generation and getting more clients on. And so this whole year my focus is on lead generation and growth.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:30] I got a solution for you SEO, internet marketing. You should try it out.

Jason Hull: [00:40:34] We're to do that stuff. We already.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:36] Do you prefer dogs or cats?

Jason Hull: [00:40:38] Oh definitely dogs. I'm allergic to cats. Not a fan of cats at all, really, so. But I love dogs. We have to.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:47] Jason. If someone's listening to this podcast and they like, man, I really want to go talk to Jason Hull. How to get in touch with him.

Jason Hull: [00:40:53] Cool. So I have the same handle on all social media. It's X Twitter, whatever you call it now, um, you know, Facebook, Instagram, whatever you use Snapchat. I'm on everything as King Jason Hull. So just send me a DM on any social platform and we'll be buddies.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:13] So awesome. And the website.

Jason Hull: [00:41:15] Doorgrow.com. 

Pete Neubig: [00:41:17] Doorgrow.com. If you are interested in joining, if you listen to this and you're not a member, why are you not a member? Join now go to Na, rpm, org, northam.org or give a give a call to the good people out there (800) 782-3452. That's (800) 782-3452. And if you want to lower your expenses Jason was talking about this earlier. One of the best ways is to hire virtual assistants. And one of the easiest ways to find them is go to vpm Solutions.com. We have over 30,000 people looking to work in the real estate, property management and housing industry. That's Vpm solutions.com. Or you can email me directly at Pete at vpm. Solutions.com. Jason, thanks so much. You did a fantastic job. Appreciate you being on on the podcast. All right everybody, we'll we'll talk to you next time.