#DoorGrowShow - Property Management Growth

by DoorGrow | #1 Property Management Growth Experts with Jason & Sarah Hull

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🚀 Struggling to grow your property management business? 🔥 Need more doors but feel stuck? ⚙️ Operations a mess? Welcome to Property Management Growth with DoorGrow! This is THE podcast for property managers who want to scale faster, add more doors, and systemize their operations—without the B.S. Hosted by Jason Hull, marketing expert, entrepreneur coach, and property management growth strategist, we bring you the best strategies, insights, and hacks to help you dominate your market. Learn from top property managers, industry experts, and vendors sharing real-world tactics that actually work. ✅ How to attract more property owners ✅ Fixing broken operations & streamlining processes ✅ Marketing & sales strategies that get you more doors ✅ Eliminating stress & scaling efficiently Join our free community of growth-focused property managers at DoorGrowClub.com and get the best property management marketing & growth strategies at DoorGrow.com. 🎧 Subscribe now and start growing your business today!

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April 18, 2025

DGS 290: AI in Property Management

As the property management industry continues to evolve, it’s important to stay up to date on the latest innovations in technology. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with David Normand from Vendoroo to talk about AI’s role in the future of property management. <h2 dir="ltr">You’ll Learn</h2> [01:29] The AI Revolution [08:47] The Importance of Empathy and Human Touch [22:21] Decreasing the Cost of Maintenance Coordination [32:29] New Features Coming to Vendoroo <h2 dir="ltr">Quotables</h2> “As any property manager believes, we know how to do it the best.” “If you're not reading articles and studying up on this, I think that's going to catch you by surprise pretty quickly.” “Empathy is the magic lubrication that makes everything better.” “Empathetic reflection and empathy is a magical ingredient.” <h2 dir="ltr">Resources</h2> <a href= "https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/courses/mastermind">DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind</a> <a href="https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/">DoorGrow Academy</a> <a href= "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC1mGYT2Sw0LOe32hO_QdNg/featured"> DoorGrow on YouTube</a> <a href="https://doorgrow.com/">DoorGrowClub</a> <a href= "https://doorgrowlive.com/">DoorGrowLive</a> <h2 dir="ltr">Transcript</h2> [00:00:00] David: If you're not building AI tools from working with your partners, from being on the ground floor with them and using the data and building tools based upon the data and their pain points and their failures, buyer beware. If somebody's coming to you and saying, Hey, we figured this all out in the lab. [00:00:14] David: Come use it. Yeah. Right. Buyer beware. [00:00:18] Jason: All right. Welcome property management entrepreneurs to the DoorGrow Show or the Property Management Growth podcast. I'm Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive group coaching mastermind for residential property management entrepreneurs. We've been doing this for over a decade and a half. [00:00:39] Jason: I've brought innovative strategies and optimizations to the property management industry. I have spoken to thousands of property management companies. I've coached over 600 businesses. I've rebranded over 300 companies like Bar Rescue for property managers, cleaning up their businesses, and we would love to help coach you and support you and your growth. [00:01:01] Jason: We have innovative strategies for building out growth engines, for building out your operational challenges, for helping you figure out how to get to the next level in your business and one of the cool tools that I'm excited to showcase today with my guest here, David Norman, is Vendoroo. We've had you on the show before. [00:01:19] Jason: Welcome back David. [00:01:20] David: Yeah. Thank you for having me. It felt like years ago, it was only about, I think eight months ago since we did this, so much has changed over the time, so it's great to be back. Yeah, it's great to be back. [00:01:29] Jason: Good to have you. I know you're in the middle of this AI revolution, which AI is just innovating and changing so rapidly. It probably does feel like years ago, so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's been crazy. You guys have made a lot of changes too, so, you even changed your brand name from the last time we had you on the show. Yeah. Which was I think Tulu. Yeah. Right. And so, yeah. So why don't you get us caught up on what's going on 'cause, you know, there's been a lot. [00:01:55] David: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you first of all for having me here today, Jason, and from the entire Vendoroo group of us, which, you know, the team has grown 10 x over the past eight months, which has been awesome. And I just also wanted to start in thanking everybody from what we call our client partners who have jumped in into this great unknown that is AI and is going to be like, how is this going to work in our industry? And so that's really what we've been focusing on the past eight months. You know, it's been a unbelievable journey of both failures, successes learnings and insights. And ultimately we're getting excited here at the NARPM broker owner which is in Denver to unveil Vendoroo. Like this is the coming out party. And so we're super excited if you're going to be there. We have a massive booth that we have set up that we have the ai alliance with other people that are working in the AI space, and I really hope that you guys come over and check it out. I promise this. [00:02:53] David: You'll never see a booth or a display like we have set up. At the NARPM broker owner. So. [00:02:58] Jason: Now I want to go attend it. Yeah. Just so I can see your booth. [00:03:01] David: So, let me put it this way. You may see the robot from the Jetsons walking around the booth walking around the NARPM broker owner, so, okay. [00:03:07] David: Yeah. Rosie? Yeah. You may see something like that. So she'll be vacuuming with her apron? Yeah. She'll be doing a little social engagement. It'll be cool. So, okay. Okay. [00:03:17] Jason: Yeah. Very cool. Yeah, so catch us up on what, like, let's get into the kind of the background and the overview for people that have never heard about Vendoroo and what you guys do and how you got into this. [00:03:29] Jason: Yeah. Give people kind of the backstory. Yeah. [00:03:31] David: Yeah. Thank you for that. So really the backstory is that, you know, we know of this AI economy that's coming, right? And there was a few of us, you know, I've been in this industry for 18 years. You know, I've managed you know, portfolios of 40,000 doors. [00:03:47] David: I've managed them for governments. You know, I started off with our own property management. Much like you guys. We started off with 80 doors. We grew to 550 doors in four years. So it was exciting to know that technology that was coming that promised duplication because, you know, as any property manager believes, we know how to do it the best, right. [00:04:05] David: And so what we decided to do is to come together and say, Hey, if AI's coming, there's two things that we need to figure out. Number one is how is this going to help us show value in this new industry to this new generation of property owners that is here, that is coming, that has been raised in the technology world too, right? [00:04:25] David: And two, can it actually duplicate our efforts? Can it actually be an employee for us? Right? And I don't care what people are promising about ai, you don't know until you get into what we call like, you know, get into the weeds, you got to get into the trenches. And so that's what we did, right? We went out and we were the guys that grabbed the torch and we said, we are going to take all the risk. [00:04:46] David: We are going to jump into the mix. We're going to ask people to jump onto the bandwagon with us and we're going to figure this out. And oh my gosh, what an unbelievable eight months it has been in learning and insights. And I can't wait to get into all the things that we've learned about the property management industry. [00:05:01] David: But that's really what we've been focusing on here the past eight months, right? So we started off with well hey, can the AI assist the va? Can it turn them into a super va? Is that what it's going to be? And, you know, some people were like, yay. And some people were like nay, you know? And so, and you know, because that human failure still was there, right? [00:05:21] David: And you know, what happens if they left? There was that inconsistency. And then it was like, all right, well what can the AI own? Right? What can it do? What can it perfect? And you know, can AI actually be the last employee that I ever hire? Right. That's really, that's a really cool thing to do. [00:05:39] David: But the property managing community had some really specific demands that they said that if this is going to be the last employee that I've had, it has to do this. And that's what I'm excited about our new technology 'cause it's doing those things. You know? [00:05:52] Jason: Yeah. And now you guys have made some big moves. I know, like I've, I have clients that we've sent over to you and they've shared some incredible stories. Like one client, I think he had 154 units or something like under management, and he said in the first day you're of turning on Vendoroo, like it closed out like 80 something work orders. [00:06:12] Jason: Yeah, like, it was crazy. Another client, they had a little more doors. They said it was like 50 something work orders were closed out in the first day of turning it on. And so, I mean, you're creating some dramatic stuff. Like this is a very different thing than what people are used to in maintenance. [00:06:27] David: Yeah. Yeah. And really what the exciting part about this, Jason, is that maintenance is actually really easy. And I know people laugh when I say that it's managing communications that is extremely difficult. Okay. Okay. Right, because you have, you know what AI told us about our industry over the last eight months is when we dove in with it and it took a step back and it said, whoa, you guys don't have a data problem here. [00:06:51] David: You guys have a emotion problem here. There's very specific categories of emotion that are in this space, right? Like, how do you build a technology that senses something? And I know this relates with property managers, 'cause I know this for myself. A property manager can walk into their office, sit down at their desk, and their spidey senses go off and they know something's wrong. [00:07:15] David: There's no screen that's telling them anything. There's no spreadsheet. They know something's off. Right. And so the AI is like, well, the statuses really don't matter that much to me based upon the feedback that I'm seeing from the property managers. Because the status and the communication all seem to be in order, but there's a disruption somewhere. [00:07:35] David: So I need to know about people's emotions. I need to understand about is the resident happy? Does the owner feel supported? Is the vendor being directed? And does the property manager believe that I can own the outcome for this? And it was really cool to start seeing its learning and understanding and picking up on these cues where, you know, people say that this is a data-driven industry. [00:07:55] David: It's really in an emotion driven industry. [00:07:57] Jason: Oh yeah. It's a relationship and emotion industry for sure. Yeah. Yeah, big time. [00:08:01] David: And it's really cool to see, and it's really started happening over this past last 60 days, the amount of residents, I was actually just looking at one before I jumped on here, that are like thanking the system, right? [00:08:15] David: Imagine that, like think of all of us that actually worked with the chat bot at like Verizon. I've never thanked that chatbot at Verizon for being their customer service. Right. [00:08:25] Jason: And how do I get a representative? Representative. Representative! [00:08:28] David: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Versus you seeing people, you know, seeing individuals saying to the, you know, saying to the Vendoroo maintenance coordinator, Hey, I really appreciate feeling supported and how fast you acted because you know, there's empathy that's inside of its law and learning. So I don't want to get too much into the details on there. But yeah, these are some of the exciting things that we're working on. [00:08:47] Jason: I mean, empathy is the magic lubrication that makes everything better. [00:08:52] David: Yeah, [00:08:52] Jason: I mean they, they've done studies. Teams, even in working in warehouses, are more productive if the team has a higher level of empathy. Yeah. And doctors perform better. Yeah. If there's a higher level of empathy, there's less malpractice suits, like empathetic reflection and empathy is a magical ingredient. [00:09:10] Jason: I coach clients to add that in during sales. Yeah. 'cause their close rate goes up dramatically. Yeah. Right. So yeah. So leveraging and like getting the AI to actually be empathetic in its communication. Yeah. When that's probably not a natural skill for a lot of maintenance coordinators to be empathetic. [00:09:26] David: It's not, it's not a natural skill for a lot of people in the maintenance industry. Right? Yes. Especially when you talk about burnout. People begin developing views of the rental community, right? Like, oh my gosh, they're calling again, and that empathy meter goes lower and lower and lower. [00:09:41] David: Yeah. As people have been in the industry longer. But isn't it great that you have an employee now that knows that, yeah, it's my duty, rain or shine, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 a year to always operate at the highest level of empathy? I never have a bad day. I never take a day off. [00:09:57] David: I'm never upset. I'm never short with somebody on the phone, never tired, never like, oh my gosh, Susan is calling me again. I'm going to let the phone just ring because I'm annoyed of talking to her. And it just is constantly hitting that same level of standard. And this is what's exciting to me, is that there are people that that have played around with this and have been a part of what I call the pain phase, right? [00:10:20] David: The pain phase is that understanding the way that agentic AI works, right? It's input in output. Input, output, right? The more that you're putting into it, the better the results are that you're going to get out of it, okay? Right. It's just like training an employee. So over the last eight months, what we've seen is that the community has trained this to be the level of a person that has now been working in the industry for five years. [00:10:46] David: In eight months. It's got five years of learning in eight months. Okay. Wow. In the next six to 12 months, we're probably looking at somebody that has 10 to 15 years understanding in the next six to 12 months and understand the level of type of tasks that it can do, especially getting into estimates and getting some other work. [00:11:04] David: And again, just you know, having empathy in my own life towards the people that jumped in that are like, what is this all about? Like, how does AI fail? Like, you know, there's still people that are involved and it was like this big like momentous train of like, you know, all these people were jumping on and giving ideas and people are in the loop and now it's weeding everything out and the AI stepping in and saying. [00:11:27] David: Hey, I appreciate all the input that you've given me. Thank you for all your effort. I'm now ready to step up to the plate and to own the outcome. Right. And that's what we're seeing at the NARPM show that's coming out. There's five AI tools. There's a master agent, five AI tools. And you know, I'll give you a couple of pieces here that, you know, we had feedback from our property managers like number one across the board. [00:11:50] David: A property manager said, if I'm hiring AI as my last employee, that has to work in my system. Yeah. Okay. Right. Like I don't want another, I don't want another technology. Yeah. [00:11:59] Jason: I don't want a new system I got to get every vendor to use or a new system I got to get my team to use or figure out. We don't need another tool to make our lives more difficult. [00:12:08] Jason: No. They've got to use our stuff. [00:12:09] David: They got to use, we have our existing stack. Yeah. So now the AI is fully integrated into all the most common PMS systems. You know, you have a cool chrome extension that you can download and there's a little yellow kangaroo right right there. And it's actually reading the work order that you're working on, and you can literally just ask it a question now and just being like, Hey, did anybody express frustration or concern on this work order? [00:12:32] David: Right? Because that's the emotion behind the status that you need to know. And it's like, yeah, two days ago Sally said that, you know, she was actually really frustrated about the multiple reschedules by this vendor. And it's like, great, that's a person I should be reaching out to and that's what I should be knowing that a status is never going to tell you. [00:12:47] David: Right? Yeah. It's in your slack, right? So if I have, if I'm on my phone, I'm talking to my employee and I'm laying in bed and I have a panic attack as a property manager, and I'm like, oh my gosh, did we take care of John's refrigerator and the office is closed? I can't get ahold of my employee. Yeah, you can. [00:13:03] David: Your employee works 24 7 now. Hey, can you give me an update on the refrigerator replacement at John's place? Yeah, it was scheduled this day. I contacted John. Everything's good to go. You know, go to sleep. You know, like, like that's the power. Full audit. Full syncing. So it's in your platform. That's really cool. [00:13:21] David: The other thing, it's got to be branded, right? This is a thing that we really learned about, like how important branding is to the community of property managers, right? Yeah. So the communications that go out have to be from your area code that's done. The emails that go out have to have like, you know, your company name and your logo on it. [00:13:39] David: The AI is doing that as well too. So that's being sent out, which is really cool. So people are feeling like, you know, that loyalty to brand is super important. And also do you know now that the AI can ask the residents to give a Google Review and we can link to the Google reviews and give you instant Google reviews to your page through the ai, which is cool, like how it's, it will know that if the success of a Google review is high on the way that the work order was done, that it's probably best to ask this person and it will send them a little thing. [00:14:11] David: Hey, can we get a feedback from you? And we link up to your Google review. And it posts that Google review to generate those 'cause we know those are super, super valuable to property managers. So that's actually going out today. That's kind of a little teaser there. That's the emails out now. [00:14:23] Jason: Nice. We'll have to get you to also connect it to our gather kudos links for clients 'cause then people can pick which review sites. So it diversifies the review profile. [00:14:32] David: Love it. Love that. I'm going to hook you up with our guy Dotan. He's running that. He's one of our head of product. He's, actually out of Israel. [00:14:39] David: He's a amazing guy. I'd love to get you connected with him. Yeah. Cool. Let's do it. Cool. And then the biggest one too is like, I need a single point of contact. Right. And we knew that before there was a lot of people were still involved. There was a lot of oversight that was going on there, having that confusion and single point of contact. [00:14:56] David: Now it's in your phone, it's in your Slack, it's in your phone extension. It doesn't matter what's going on. You have one point of contact. It's your employee. You ask the question, get the answer, Jason, you can even ask for a change. You can even say, Hey, I want to change a vendor on a job and you'll see that the vendor gets changed for you in the system. [00:15:17] David: You can even say to your ai, and this is the big one: hey how do you triage this work order? And I want you to do this, or I want you to do that. And you just do it right through Slack or right through your PM chat and it makes the change for you. And now you have custom triage and all property managers have the ability to train their own AI for their company. [00:15:36] David: Think how cool that is. A person with 75 doors now, and the product that's being released has their own AI agent customized for their company, right? Yeah. Like, that's what happened over the last eight months, so you can see my excitement. There's been a lot of hard work in this. [00:15:54] David: Yeah, that's amazing. But this has been all the effort and a huge thank you out to everybody who's tried us, you know, even said that this wasn't for them at that point in time because those learnings went into what's going to make this product the best product in the property management space and is going to help people leverage sales and leverage efficiencies and blow their owners' minds away in ways that, that we have never thought about. [00:16:15] David: Oh yeah. [00:16:16] Jason: Yeah. So I know like initially when you rolled this out, a lot of people were nervous about AI and you guys had kind of a human layer in between the AI and any communication Yeah, initially. Yeah. And so there was like, they had like a reps and a lot of people associated, oh, I've got this rep. [00:16:33] Jason: Yeah. You know, Steven or whatever is my rep or Pedro and I've got Pedro and like, oh no, what if Pedro leaves? And they were associating with that while the AI is really doing the crux of the work. Right. And so you guys have shifted away from even that now the AI is directly communicating with people. [00:16:52] Jason: Correct? Yeah. [00:16:53] David: Yeah. So let's talk about that. So, definitely, so in the beginning there was like, we all had like lack of trust. We believed what it was going to do, but it was like we had a ton of people still trying, like, you know, using qualified VAs, training them. Like, you know, like, you know, if it fails, like, you know, you have to have a person stepped in and so let's talk about that. [00:17:12] David: So, you know, it was definitely that human layer. And let's talk about where we're at today. It is very clear to us, and the one thing that separates us from everybody is we still believe that humans are super important in this process. Okay? Yeah. And where humans are very important in this process are going to be when the AI says, Hey, I need you to make a phone call to this person for me, right? [00:17:35] David: Hey, I've reached out to this vendor three times and they haven't responded yet. I need you to give a phone call to see what's going on. Right? Hey, I need you to recruit a vendor for me. I need you to reach out and do a recruitment for the vendor. For me. Hey, this owner is asking questions about this estimate. [00:17:51] David: I need you to give a call for me. So the AI is basically able, on a standard work order, the AI can handle 95% of the workflow, no problem. Work order comes in, gets assigned to the resident. It gets out to the vendor. It's under the NTE not to exceed. It's great. The work gets done, the resident uploads its photos, the AI says to the resident, are you happy? [00:18:14] David: Everyone's good. It closes the work order out. Cool. Right. And then if a human... [00:18:19] Jason: and how is it communicating with the tenant and with the vendor typically? [00:18:24] David: Yep. So, it's very clear that and this isn't a surprise to anybody. Everybody loves text messages, right? Yeah. I mean, that's just, it's just what it is. [00:18:32] David: You literally, like, people will get a phone call and they won't pick up and the text will come back and like text back. Yeah, text me. What do you need? Yeah. Text me here. But, so here's the things that people don't see behind the scenes that we'll talk about. So the complexity that went into. [00:18:51] David: Mapping out how to allow vendors... so a vendor could have like 20 jobs, right? And we don't want to send him like a code that he has to text for every work order so that it links to the right work order. Like what guy wants to do that? Okay. Like that's not how he works. So we figured out how to allow a vendor through AI just to use his regular phone and text anything about this thing. And it's understanding it and it's mapping it, it's routing it to all those work orders because we knew that in order for this to be the last employee somebody would have to handle, it also means that the vendor has to be happy and the same for the resident. [00:19:30] David: They can just text that they have multiple work orders. It understands what work order it's going to. If it's not quite sure, I would ask them, Hey, is this question about this work order? And they say, yeah. And so there's not like, again, codes and links and things that they have to do. It has to be seamless if they're working with a person. [00:19:46] David: So yeah, text message is massive. Email is second, and then phone is third for sure. [00:19:51] Jason: Got it. So is your AI system calling people yet or you or telling the property manager to make the phone call? [00:19:58] David: Yeah. People are okay with. If they're calling in like our new front desk agent, which if a person calls in and they want to get information about a listing or if they want to get information about a work order or something like that, or, you know, they're okay with getting that type of information. [00:20:13] David: Yeah. But they are, it is very clear that they are not okay with AI calling them when they're asking for an update on a work order like that. Like that line in the sand very clear. Yeah. And so we have people on on the team. That are constantly monitoring into ai, giving feedback, hitting improvement. [00:20:31] David: I want everybody to know there is not a work order that is taking place that is not touched by a human at least twice. [00:20:38] Jason: Okay. [00:20:39] David: Okay. Right. [00:20:40] Jason: So there's a little, there's some oversight there. There there's, you're watching this, there are humans involved [00:20:45] David: And then the ai will when it hits certain fail points, right? [00:20:51] David: It then escalates those things up to what we call the human in the loop, right? So there's an AI assistant, we there's people now that we're training a whole new generation of people that are no longer going to be maintenance coordinators. They're AI assistants now, right? And so when the AI says, Hey, this work order is not going down the path that I think it should go to be successful. [00:21:12] David: I'm escalating this up to a human, and so now as a property manager, not only am I getting this AI agent workflow that's standardizing the empathy and the workflows and all the stuff that we talked about in the communications, I also now get a fractional employee that when the AI says, Hey, I need help, I already have an employee that it can reach out to that can make that phone call or call the vendor. [00:21:36] David: But it's also monitoring the AI for me on top of it. So yes, there is, and that's one of the big thing that separates us apart is that the platform comes with what we call a human in the loop, an expert in the loop and so we're training the first generation of AI assistants in the property management industry. [00:21:55] David: Yep. [00:21:56] Jason: Got it. So the AI maintenance coordinator. Has human assistance. Yep. Underneath it. [00:22:02] David: And before it was the other way around where Yeah. The AI was assisting the human right. And now the humans are assisting the ai. That's what's happened in the last... [00:22:11] Jason: that may be the future of all of our roles. [00:22:12] Jason: So, [00:22:13] David: If you're not reading articles and studying up on this I think that's going to catch you by surprise pretty quickly. Yeah. Learn how to write prompts. I'll tell everybody right now. Yes. [00:22:21] Jason: Yeah. Interesting. So, now what about this, you know, there's the uncanny, you know, sort of stage where people get a little bit nervous about AI and what do they call it? The uncanny valley or something like this, or right where it gets, it's so close to human that it becomes creepy. And there's some people that have fear about this, that are concerned. You're going to have a lot of late, you know, adopters that are like resistant. "I'll never do ai." [00:22:49] Jason: What would you say to somebody when you get on a sales call and they're like, well, I'm really nervous about this AI stuff, you know, and they just, they don't get it. [00:22:57] David: Yeah. [00:22:58] Jason: I'm sure there's people listening right now. They're like, oh man, AI is going to kill us all and it's going to take over the world and it's going to take our jobs. [00:23:05] Jason: And they think it's evil. [00:23:06] David: Yeah. Yeah. I, and you know, I really want to hear that fear and I want to like, again, have empathy towards that. 'cause I do understand that fear of change causes people to get... Change in general. Yes. Right. It's like, whoa, I like everything the way it's going to be. Right. And we are historically in one of those phases of like, you know, the industrial revolution, the renaissance, like the automobile from horse. [00:23:34] David: Like, this is what is taking place. This is, this will be written down in history. It's massive change. It's a massive change. Massive. So what I would say to them, and not to, not from a way of fear. But to inspire them is there are a lot of hungry entrepreneurs out there that are embracing this head on. [00:23:57] David: Yeah. That are pushing the boundaries and the limits to be able to bring insights and customer service to their clients at a much higher level. And if you want to compete in this new AI economy. I would definitely encourage you to understand and get in and start investing in yourself now. But understand that investing in AI means having some pain threshold. [00:24:21] David: Like you got to get in, like you, you need to be able to give the feedback. You need to understand that if it falls short, do you have to be able to give it the time and the energy and the reward and the payoff of what I'm seeing for property managers who've embraced that when they're sitting there and they're going, I don't touch maintenance at all anymore. Yeah, it's wild. Right? And those are the people that in the beginning of this relationship, and there's a few that come to my head, are the ones that were sending me emails constantly saying, David, this is failing me. I believe in this, but this is failing me. And as my technology partner, I know that you're going to help us get this better. [00:24:58] David: And there is, you know, I have this word down that struggle equals great con conversation, right? Like, and so they had a struggle and that opened up a great conversation and because of that, their technology and the technology is getting better. So yeah, I think that from a personal point of view in this industry, one thing that I want to solve with AI is I think that we can all say that over the past 15 years, we've probably yelled at a lot of vendors or yelled at a lot of VAs or yelled at a lot of people. Let's start yelling at the ai. And then hopefully that the AI will actually eliminate the need for us to ever have to yell at anybody again because it knows us. [00:25:36] David: Yeah. It never fails us. [00:25:38] Jason: You know? It really is amazing. I mean, your company is creating freedom for the business owner from being involved in maintenance. Yeah. Really? [00:25:46] David: Yeah. [00:25:47] Jason: And it just, and they get used to that pretty quickly. Like maintenance is just running and they're like, yeah. It frees up so much head space for them to focus on growth. [00:25:56] Jason: It gives them a whole bunch of like just greater capacity. Yeah. So they feel like, yeah, we could handle adding any number of doors now and we know we can still fulfill and do a good job. [00:26:07] David: Yeah. Fixed cost scaling. Right? That's a term that we came up with is now that you know that I have a price per door that will cover all my maintenance. So if I went in and brought on 75 doors, I know that I don't have to go out and hire another employee. The system just grows with it and I know exactly what my margin is for all those doors. Right. And as we know previous, before fixed cost scaling a property managers is like, I have enough people. [00:26:32] David: I don't have enough people. Someone quit, someone didn't quit. My profit margins are good. My profit margins are bad. Yeah. And now with these AI tools. You know, you have your front desk employee, you have your maintenance coordinator, you have these fixed cost scales, and now somebody calls you up and says, Hey, I want you to take on 25 doors, and you're like, I have the resource resources for maintenance, which is, we know is 80% of the workload already. I don't have to go out and hire another maintenance coordinator 'cause the system just grows with me, which is cool. [00:27:00] Jason: So one of the things you shared at DoorGrow Live and you're our top sponsor for the upcoming... Can't wait for DoorGrow Live, can't wait to, so we're really excited to have you back so. [00:27:10] Jason: Everybody make sure you're at DoorGrow Live if you want. Our theme this year is innovating the future of property management. And we're bringing, we're going to be showcasing, innovating pricing structures that are different than how property managers have typically historically priced, that allow you to lower your operational costs and close more deals more easily at a higher price point. [00:27:30] Jason: We're, we'll be showcasing a three tier hybrid pricing model that we've innovated here at DoorGrow, and we've got clients using it. It's been a game changer. We're going to be sharing other cool things about the future hiring systems, et cetera. Right. So you guys will also be there showcasing the future. [00:27:46] Jason: One of the things you shared previously that really kind of struck me as you showed, you did some research and you showed the typical cost. Per unit that most companies had just to cover and deal with maintenance. Yeah. And and then what you were able to get it down to. [00:28:03] David: Yeah. [00:28:04] Jason: And that alone was just like a bit of a mind blowing. [00:28:07] Jason: Could you just share a little bit of numbers here? [00:28:09] David: Yeah. So one of the first things that we had to do when we started way back in the day is figure out well. Like, like what's the impact of AI going to be us from like a cost perspective, right? Is it a huge change? And so we went out on a big survey mission and we were surveying property managers and asking them, what's your cost per door for managing maintenance? [00:28:30] David: How much do you spend every door to manage maintenance? Now the first thing is less than 1% of property managers knew what that cost was. Sure. [00:28:37] Jason: Oh, sure. Right. Because, but then they got to figure out, oh, we got a maintenance coordinator and we've got these people doing phone calls and they cost this, and yeah, it's complicated. [00:28:45] David: It's complicated. So we built a calculator. Okay. And then people could start adding in that information out into the calculator, and the average person was around $13 and 50 cents a door. [00:28:56] Jason: Okay. Okay. [00:28:57] David: Wow. Right, right. So that was where the average person was, somewhere in the low twenties. Yeah. [00:29:01] David: And others were actually pretty good. Like, I'd say like, you know, some of the good ones that we saw were maybe around like, you know, 10, $11 a door or something along that line. [00:29:09] Jason: They probably had a large portfolio would be my guess. [00:29:12] David: Yeah. And also I think a lot of it's just like, you know, I don't know if they were still accounting for all their software and everything that they had. [00:29:19] David: Maybe they're not factoring everything. Yeah. No, I think if we really dug in, it'd be different. So now we know that, you know, the base package of what people are getting in. The average cost of what people are paying for 24 7 services that's emergencies around the clock is about $7 and 50 cents a door, right? [00:29:37] David: So right off the bat in AI's first swing, it said we cut the cost in half. Yeah. Okay. Right. So 50% reduction. I mean, to me as an owner, a 50% reduction in cost. That's like. You know, alarms and celebration going off, you know? For sure. And then, yeah. [00:29:55] Jason: And that's, if everything just stayed the same, like it was still the same level of quality, cutting in half would be a solid win right there. [00:30:03] Jason: Yeah. [00:30:03] David: Yeah. That's just like status quo stuff. And now what, with the release of the new Vendoroo product that, that's actually being announced here today. The email's going out to all of our existing clients of all the new features that are coming out now, we're starting to see that. You know that quality is now increasing to where if you were to go out and hire that person, you may have to be spending, you know, 55,000 or $65,000 a year. [00:30:29] David: Right? So now it's like saying, okay, if we can get as good as what these people are using for their VAs right, and we know what that cost is, and they're saying that's, you know, that's what their factors is. Well, what happens in the next six to 12 months when this is a seasoned person that you would've to pay $85,000 a year to? [00:30:45] David: Right. Yeah. And right, because they have knowledge of. Estimates and knowledge of vendor routing and knowledge of, you know, it can handle... [00:30:53] Jason: you've invested so much time into them, so much attention. They know your properties and know your portfolio. They know the vendors. Like you've invested so much into this person that now they sort of have you by the balls so that they're like, Hey, I want 80 k or I walk. [00:31:06] David: Yeah. [00:31:06] Jason: You're like, you've got to come up with it. [00:31:08] David: Yeah. [00:31:09] Jason: Right. You've got to do it. [00:31:10] David: Yeah. [00:31:10] Jason: And you know, because that's not easy to create. And a lot of people, in order to have a good maintenance coordinator, they need a veteran of the industry. Veteran of industry. [00:31:19] Jason: They need somebody that's been doing this a long time. [00:31:21] David: Yeah. [00:31:22] Jason: And that's really hard to find. [00:31:24] David: Yes. It's extremely hard to find as we know. One of the things that I think that we're doing for this industry is we're actually preserving knowledge that I don't think is necessary getting passed down. [00:31:33] David: Yeah. You know, there's a lot less people that I think are as handy as they once were in the Americas and so we have a lot of that knowledge. Like, you know, we know that the average age of an electrician is in the sixties, the average age of a plumber's in the sixties. And these guys, you know, they have wealth of knowledge that it can troubleshoot anything that's going on in a house. [00:31:54] David: And so to be able to try to preserve some of that, so maybe if a person does come in, you know, maybe there's some knowledge sharing along the lines. But let's take it even in another step forward Jason that in the future, you know, the AI is going to know the location of the hot water tank in that house. [00:32:10] David: It's going to then add it automatically to the system, like. It's going to know more knowledge than they will because it's going to have maps of every single property that's all currently sitting inside of, you know, that maintenance coordinator's head, right? And so it's going to, it's going to actually know more than them, you know. [00:32:26] Jason: Yeah. That's wild. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. It's the future. Cool. Well, you're rolling out a bunch of new features. You're announcing these today. You've told me a little bit, but why don't you tell the listeners what's changing, what's new, what innovations have come out? What are you guys launching? [00:32:41] David: Yeah. Exciting. Yeah. So, the biggest one I think is, which is the most exciting is, is Resiroo, which is the first one that actually handles all the communications with the resident and does the triage and troubleshooting. First one of what are you talking about? So we have our products. [00:32:57] David: So you have these AI tools, right? These agents. Right. [00:33:00] Jason: And so, you know, every, so think of them like different sort of people? [00:33:04] David: Skill sets. Yeah. Different person. Okay. Exactly. And so that's when you come and see our display at the NARPM conference, you'll actually will see these five agents kind of in their work desk and in their environments, kind of cool. [00:33:15] David: Okay. Able to see them right. So the coolest part about that one is we're doing a major product you know, update on that for not only the knowledge base, but we're actually turning that over to the company. We were talking about this a little bit before, and now they own their own AI agent and they can customize it into how they want it to ask questions or the type of questions and the mindsets when it's triaging stuff. [00:33:41] David: Triaging work orders for their portfolio. Like super cool. So fully customizable to your company, right? [00:33:49] Jason: So now sometimes the more humans get involved, the more they mess stuff up. [00:33:54] David: Yes. We make sure they don't mess it up. So everyone's going to learn how to write prompts and they'll submit it into us. [00:33:59] David: And we have a great team of AI engineers that when that knowledge base is written or what they're doing. We will ensure that it is put in so that it actually produces the desire outcome, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that's a very exciting one. The second one that I'm that I think is so cool, do you know that only 10% of all estimates get approved by the owner without one or multiple questions? [00:34:23] David: Because owners really struggle with trust when it comes to estimates. Like 10%. Like, that's a really bad number, I felt as the industry that owners only believe us one out of 10 times. Like that's the way I took that. Yeah. Right. And so, Owneroo is what I coined inside, is the estimate of the future. [00:34:41] David: That really was looking in understanding like what was, what questions was the owner asking when they were rejecting a bid that that we could proactively ask the answer for them to help guide them to understanding the value in this estimate that they're looking at in historical context of the property. [00:35:00] David: How many other people have experienced this issue? Like, like there's a whole bunch of factors that should go into an estimate and an estimate should no longer be like, here's a cost from Frank. Right? Like, like that was like, like that was... [00:35:14] Jason: here's what Frank said it is. Yeah. Like that was like from the 1940s. [00:35:17] Jason: That's good. How do I trust that? [00:35:18] David: How do I trust that? That was from the forties and we're still... [00:35:21] Jason: how much went into this decision? Was this just out of the blue, like pulled out of your ass or is this like legit? [00:35:27] David: Yeah. Yeah. What's the, you know, we live in a data-driven world, so what's the intellect behind this estimate? [00:35:33] David: And so I'm really excited about Owneroo, which is going to be the new standard for the way the estimates are created. We have the front desk agent which is coming out. So, that one is going to handle phone calls that are coming in, be able to talk about available listings, actual general questions about leases route phone calls over to property managers for you. [00:35:54] David: So again. Very human-like interaction, great AI voice. Actually. We feel it's going to be the best in the industry. So a person's calling in, just like they're calling your office able to handle all those front desk things. We, we have the PM chat, which is now the employee which is fully integrated into all of your systems. [00:36:14] David: It's in Slack. That's your employee that you get to talk to. We believe that if you're going to hire somebody, they should be inside of your communication channels. You have the Google Chrome extension that it's on right inside your AppFolio or your buildium or your Rentvine software that you can ask and talk to it. [00:36:31] David: So, yeah, so we have a lot of exciting products that have come out. And then of course the backbone of all of them in the middle is Vendoroo, which handles all the scheduling, all the communications. You know, a resident asks for an update, responds to them, an owner asks for an update, it responds to them. [00:36:48] David: And you know, it handles actually the body of the work order. So you have those five tools, we believe are what the property management industry said. If you are going to give me an employee, this is what the employee has to be. This is what makes up that employee. So we say that these tools, these agents were actually built by the property management industry. [00:37:08] David: And that excites me because if you're not building AI tools from working with your partners, from being on the ground floor with them and using the data and building tools based upon the data and their pain points and their failures, buyer beware. If somebody's coming to you and saying, Hey, we figured this all out in the lab. [00:37:25] David: Come use it. Yeah. Right. Buyer beware. [00:37:29] Jason: Yeah. So you guys connect with Slack. They can communicate through Slack, but it slack's a paid tool. Have you guys considered Telegram? I love Telegram Messenger. [00:37:37] Jason: Alright. Could you do that? Write it down. Telegram Messenger is like the iMessage tool that works on every device. [00:37:44] Jason: It's free. It's one of the most secure, it's not owned or controlled by Facebook. Like, WhatsApp, like, yeah. But WhatsApp might be a close second, but we use Telegram internally, so I love Telegram. [00:37:58] David: We'll definitely take that into, into consideration for sure. Yeah, check it [00:38:02] Jason: out. Because I, what I love is the voice message feature and I can just listen to my team and others at like high speed, but internal communications and it's free for everybody, which is great. [00:38:12] Jason: So, yeah. [00:38:13] David: Yeah. I think a lot, for a lot of people it was like you know, who was Vendoroo in the beginning and Vendoroo was like the team of like people that were trying to figure out like how is AI going to work in this industry? [00:38:26] David: How is it going to solve the needs of our property management partners? And this is why I say to everybody, if you thought about Vendoroo, if you came in and the experience wasn't great with Vendoroo, if you're one of our existing clients that has been with us and you're and you're still moving forward, and we thank you so much for your dedication to this, the Vendoroo product, everything that we've done, everything that we worked at is being showcased at the NARPM broker owner. The email's going out today. This is who Vendoroo is. We are a team that is a technology partner for the property management industry that is helping building meaningful AI tools, specifically by demand, by our industry to help us show value and to preserve this great industry. [00:39:09] David: For the future in this new AI economy, right? Like we need to step up. We have clients that are adding doors left and right because they're showing their clients that they use an AI maintenance system and their clients are like, this is what I expect from a property management in this community. [00:39:24] David: Right? And again, Owneroo, that estimate, we believe that in the future. Like, like owners are going to say like, I'm not approving an estimate unless it's like the estimate of the future, right? Like, like that's the new standard. So you got to know what the new standards are and you got to get technology that are going to help you compete with those new standards that will be in your community and are will be in your community in the next week, the next two weeks. [00:39:46] David: And definitely some really cool products in the next six months. [00:39:49] Jason: All right. Well, yeah, I'm really excited to see what you guys have been able to create so far. So yeah, it's pretty awesome. Yeah. All right. Well David, it's been awesome having you on the show. Sounds like you guys are really innovating the future. Everybody come to DoorGrow Live. David, are you going to be at that one? I will be there. All right, so you can come meet David in person. [00:40:08] Jason: We've got some amazing people that are going to be at this. We've got technology people. There's a gentleman there, one of the vendors they created another really cool tool, but he had a hundred million dollars exit, you know, in a previous business, like there's really amazing entrepreneurs and people at this event, so come to DoorGrow Live, get your tickets, and if you do, we have just decided that we're going to give out to anybody that registers. [00:40:34] Jason: You can pick from one of our free bonuses that are well worth the price of the ticket. Or coming or anything in and of itself, including our pricing secrets training that goes over a three tier hybrid pricing model or our sales secrets training, which goes over how we're helping property managers crush it and closing more deals more easily at a higher price point. [00:40:55] Jason: And reputation secrets, which are helping our clients get way more positive reviews by leveraging the psychology and the law of reciprocity and getting the majority of their tenants in order to give them positive feedback online. Maybe some others. So you'll be able to pick from these bonuses one of these that you might like and that's our free, most incredible free gift ever that we'll give to each person that registers for DoorGrow Live. [00:41:19] Jason: So. [00:41:20] David: Cool. Awesome man. Always great to see you. Looking forward to seeing you at DoorGrow Live and love that you guys are working on pricing because AI is going to make people think different about pricing. It's going to be way more efficient, so you guys are ahead of the curve on that. Great job, Jason. [00:41:33] Jason: Awesome. All right, so how can they check out Vendoroo, David? [00:41:36] David: Just visit, Vendoroo.ai, go to the website, request a demo with one of our great sales reps, and yeah they'd love to help you out. See all the new products, see how far it's come. And again, we thank everybody from the bottom of our hearts for all their effort, people who've tried us out. [00:41:52] David: Come back and see what you built and yeah. Come check us out at Vendoroo. [00:41:57] Jason: Got it. Go check out Vendoroo, it's vendor. If you know how to spell that, V-E-N-D-O-R-O-O dot A-I, go check it out. All right? And if you're a property management entrepreneur, you want to add doors, you want to make your business scalable, you want to get out of the day to day, you want to increase the capacity so your company could easily handle another 200 plus doors without having to make any significant systems changes, reach out to us at DoorGrow. We will help you figure it out. So until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.

April 3, 2025

DGS 289: Close More Deals & Build Trust: Sales Secrets for Property Managers

As property managers, you know how important communication is. Building solid relationships and creating trust is crucial in the industry, especially when trying to bring on new clients and doors. In this episode of the Property Management Growth Show, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Sam Wakefield from Close it Now to talk about how you can level up your sales game to close more deals at a higher price point. <h2 dir="ltr">You’ll Learn</h2> [00:54] Vendor and Property Manager Relationships [09:43] Why You Attract Cheapo Clients [15:33] Building Trust in Sales [21:14] Shifting Perception: It’s Not A, It’s B [27:43] Learning to Improve Your Sales at DoorGrow Live 2025 <h2 dir="ltr">Quotables</h2> “Truly all that sells is just communication.” “The second you start to develop a trend in your life, look internally because you are attracting exactly who you are.” “If we don't build the right culture, it's on us as a business owner.” “As business owners, we want to not give up big chunks of our life for just money. We want to be able to have something scalable.” <h2 dir="ltr">Resources</h2> <a href= "https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/courses/mastermind">DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind</a> <a href="https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/">DoorGrow Academy</a> <a href= "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC1mGYT2Sw0LOe32hO_QdNg/featured"> DoorGrow on YouTube</a> <a href="https://doorgrow.com/">DoorGrowClub</a> <a href= "https://doorgrowlive.com/">DoorGrowLive</a> <h2 dir="ltr">Transcript</h2> [00:00:00] Sam: A lot of times property management companies think all the companies are the same, so they're looking for maybe cheaper, whoever's cheapest, a cheaper price. [00:00:07] Sam: But then what they get is a company that doesn't communicate and doesn't show up when they say they're going to, and it's really the old adage, you get what you pay for. [00:00:14] Jason: All right. I am trying a new platform today. This is Jason Hull and I am a property management growth expert. If you're not familiar with me, I help grow and scale property management companies and I am really good at that. And so our company's DoorGrow and we are the world leaders of growing and scaling property management businesses. [00:00:35] Jason: I've helped thousands of property managers do that. And today my guest is Sam Wakefield. Hanging out here with Sam. Sam, welcome to the show. [00:00:44] Sam: Thanks for having me on, man. I'm glad to be here. [00:00:46] Jason: Hey, good to have you. So, I'm really excited to get into this. We had some really nice dialogue back and forth. You coach. [00:00:54] Jason: Well, I'll let you tell. What group, category of people do you coach and you help with them with sales and closing more deals, so. [00:01:01] Sam: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So we do sales training and basically sales systems, whole operation systems within companies, but mostly sales focused for home services. So everything from HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and then even outside of that. Garage doors, or you name it. If someone improves a home, then we help the communication side of all of those companies. [00:01:27] Jason: Got it. So in my industry, property management people would call those vendors. That's usually what they call them. They're like, "these are the vendors." And so we thought it was fun. I went on your podcast, we had this really fun dialogue. [00:01:39] Jason: I highly recommend you go check out Sam's episode with Jason Hull and go check that out. We were going back and forth because we had done a survey each to our audiences, like what's frustrating about HVAC companies and what's frustrating about property management companies. Right. And just seeing the disconnect that existed there. [00:01:56] Jason: Which was interesting. So, before we get into this, I want to read a quick message from our sponsor. This episode's sponsored by KRS SmartBooks. Do you have properties manage, and zero time for bookkeeping headaches? KRS SmartBooks is your secret weapon. They specialize in finances for busy property managers like you, with 15 plus years of real estate knowhow and skills in AppFolio, Yardi, and more imagine monthly reports magically appearing, and zero accounting stress. Sound good? Head to krsbooks.com to book your free discovery call, integrity, quality, and a dash of bookkeeping brilliance, that's KRS SmartBooks, and that's K as in Kansas, R as in Rogers, S as in Sam. Sam. All right, so cool. Now let's get into this. [00:02:45] Jason: So we're going to talk about closing deals, but why don't you give us my audience a little bit of background. How did you get into sales and then starting your own company, helping people with sales, and like, how'd you how did Close it Now come to be? [00:03:00] Sam: Yeah, for sure. Thanks for that question. So, I've spent almost 20 years now in home services. [00:03:05] Sam: Most of my time has been in HVAC. I've done solar. I've done a lot of different trades over the years and, you know, so I launched the Close it Now company in 2019 because I really just recognized a place where there was not a lot of modern training because truly all that sells is just communication. [00:03:26] Sam: You know, it's how do we communicate clearer and in a way where we can educate so somebody can understand, one, what we're talking about, and two, why they should care and how it's going to make a difference in their life. So at the essence of that, so I was looking for some more modern training for my people at my company that I had at the time, and I didn't find anything out there. [00:03:48] Sam: So I just said, well, now we have a space for, you know, I have communication skills. I can train people. So that's when I launched the company in 2019 and so much of my career built up to that point of, and specifically how it affects here and why I'm here today. You know, I've worked with so many property management companies and individuals across 20 years of doing this. Yeah. So I've definitely learned a lot of best practices and a lot of the things not to do, you know? Got it. I all own my mistakes as well as, you know, coming across maybe property managers that I wouldn't work with again. Right. Yeah. So from all of that experience, you know, I started the training company, so I work with those home service companies to communicate better. [00:04:33] Sam: You know, a lot of it is, you know, of course, working directly with homeowners. But also there's a huge portion of all of those companies that, you know, rely on it and need property management companies to, you know, really help them stay in business and in turn they can turn around and, you know, help those property management companies to efficiently take care of properties. [00:04:58] Sam: But there's always seems to be this kind of struggle of, you know, that back and forth. So that's obviously why we're here today is a big part of that. But that's some of my history. I've been doing it 20 years. I started Close it Now six years or in, coming up on... yeah, April this year, next month is six years anniversary. [00:05:16] Sam: Nice. Of the company. And it's been a fun ride and we've definitely helped lots and lots of organizations to you know, to grow in a way. [00:05:24] Jason: You're helping them close it now. All right. Yeah. Got it. All right. So you're just, you're helping these vendors close more deals, right? [00:05:31] Jason: So, property managers, I think would love to hear. You're on the other side of this relationship between property managers and vendors. What have you seen and what's the general feedback that you're noticing of the property management industry? What's kind of the vendor's perspective? [00:05:46] Jason: Because I know property managers, they get frustrated with vendors, right? They're like, "oh, the vendors like say you need something when you don't and like they don't like, it's difficult to reach them or this or whatever." Right. What are some of the complaints and gripes about property management companies? [00:06:03] Sam: Yeah. Complaints and gripes about property management companies. One of the big ones is, a lot of it is kind of the same thing is lack of communication. Okay. That's always one of the biggest complaints that comes up is, you know, we will get, you know, say someone, a property manager will call in for us to go evaluate a property. [00:06:21] Sam: We'll take an air conditioning issue or something like that, so we'll show up and then we're trying to call ahead. There's no clear information was given on who to call ahead to. Then we show up to the appointment, maybe the tenant's there, maybe not. A lot of times they're not there. [00:06:36] Sam: Okay. Then we can get ahold of the property manager to even get in the place. So now we're like dancing around in the circle of, okay, who do we contact? You get frustrated, move on to the next call, then the property manager calls and "Well, why'd you leave? Somebody was there." [00:06:50] Sam: Well, nobody was there. And so all of this just seems to happen very often. [00:06:55] Sam: Too often. Yeah. So it creates a stereotype. When the stereotype is created, that means of course there's a reason for it. Yeah. And so this is one of the big ones is the lack of communication. And I know that I've heard that the other direction as well. But so that's one of the things I hear the most. [00:07:11] Jason: Yeah. Got it. Yeah, so I'm sure when a vendor finds a property manager that does communicate effectively that there's clarity in that communication happening, and they've got good systems in place. The tenant's there, the tenant understands what's going on. Everybody's informed. Then those can be really great relationships to have. [00:07:34] Sam: Absolutely. Yeah. Those are, you know, the last the last organization I was at, I was with them, I was a sales manager and trainer for six years there. And I went through about 18 different property management companies to find two to three that were worth working with. Wow. And that was, you know, just sadly. We were always open to when a property management company came to us and we're like, "Hey, we, you know, we need you to do some work. We're looking for a new vendor." We're like, "sure. Absolutely. We'll try you out as well as you're trying us out." Right. But sadly, you know, the two or three that we did find great relationships with. They were fantastic relationships because yeah, we, you know, part of my ethics is our team was like, we will show up on time no matter what. [00:08:19] Sam: Right? We always do what we say. We will never, you know, recommend something that's not verifiable from our, you know, from our testing. We're not going to just guess at this because we're not guessing with anybody's, you know? Yeah. Investment. And at the same time when we, you know, say we're going to do the work, we do the work, and we show up to do the work, we say we're going to. [00:08:43] Sam: So that was my ethics statement I always led with. And then basically I would ask the property management company, can I expect the same thing from you guys? Right? And sure enough, the second that we met in the middle and said, yes, this is how we want to do business, those relationships were always the very best ones because sure, were we a few more dollars than the other contractor down the street? Sure. Yes. But we showed up when we said we were going to and we did the right work right the first time. And so, right. That's a big part of that disconnect, I think, is it seems like so many you know, a lot of times property management companies think all the companies are the same, so they're looking for maybe cheaper, whoever's cheapest, a cheaper price. [00:09:22] Sam: But then what they get is a company that doesn't communicate and doesn't show up when they say they're going to, and. It's really the old adage, you get what you pay for. [00:09:30] Jason: You know, property managers have the same sort of problem is that a lot of people that are looking for a property manager are just looking for the cheapest price. [00:09:38] Jason: And they hate that. They're like, "we're not all the same." Right. So I, yeah, I think it's really important. I think this is dictated by the morals, the ethics, and the values of the business owner. It's always a top down thing. And so if the business owner is a cheapo, they attract cheapo clients and they deal with vendors through this cheapo lens, and this is where there's going to be a lot of mess and a lot of communication issues, and a lot of times the business owner, and this goes for any business and any industry, has a blind spot to the fact that they're cheap. But they're, you know, you're a cheapo if you're the person that's always looking for the stupid coupon code every time you buy everything online, you're always like hunting for that like. I don't have time to do that. [00:10:21] Jason: Like that's a massive waste of my time to go find, save 10% on some stupid a hundred dollars thing online, right? Right. Like, Ooh, I'm searching around. Right. Oh, I saved $10 even though I could have made a hundred thousand dollars. Like if I just like built something awesome, right? So I think there's a mindset issue is that these property managers or vendor business owners are not valuing their time enough. [00:10:45] Jason: If you value your time, you value other people's time. You then show up on time. You then like try to make sure, like your schedule is tight, you want to make sure your schedule is full. Like you, because you value your time and you feel that it's important. And if you really value your time enough as a person, you get things like assistance. [00:11:03] Jason: You get team members, like you get support because your time is so valuable that you want to go buy other people's time because it's less valuable than your time. Right, and this is how we scale our businesses over time is we are buying other people's time that are like they're willing to trade and give up their life chunks of their life for money. [00:11:24] Jason: And as business owners, we want to not give up big chunks of our life for just money. We want to be able to have something scalable. And so I think there's a mindset thing that we have to not be cheap. We have to operate with integrity, and then our team members need to have these values instilled in them, and if we don't build the right culture, it's on us as a business owner. [00:11:45] Jason: And if we don't build the right culture, we then don't have longevity in our business. We don't get return business, we don't get return clients. We don't get to have that really good vendor to continue to work with. We don't get to have that property owner continue to want to work with us, right? [00:12:00] Jason: Because we have showcased that we are not on top of things, or that we don't have the right values or that we don't have healthy mindset. And so I feel like. At the foundation of everything. It always comes back to mindset. A lot of times [00:12:13] Sam: I a hundred percent agree with that. It, you know, it's funny that you're kind of started this conversation going down this path. [00:12:19] Sam: This is something that's been a very basically a soapbox for me, a big hot button. Yeah. You know, when I'm coaching... [00:12:26] Sam: jump on that soapbox, Sam. Let's go. [00:12:27] Sam: Yeah. When I'm coaching and training people lately, especially at this last week especially... yeah. You know, I'm training people with sales and that type of focus, and they, of course, people always come to me, "Hey, how do I overcome these sales objections?" [00:12:43] Sam: You know, somebody says, "I want to get three bids, or somebody says, your price is too high, I want to shop around, or I need to think about it." Yeah. And instead of just going straight to, "well, here's the word track and how to handle these objections." Yeah. We always start with: anytime that you find a trend in your life, [00:13:00] Sam: so if you're getting the same consistent objection, say somebody's getting every single time they get to the end of their appointment and the homeowner or whoever they're talking to says, "I want to think about it." It's like the second you start to develop a trend in your life, look internally because you are attracting exactly who you are. [00:13:17] Sam: I would be willing to bet that person does the same thing when they shop. So then no wonder you're getting every single one of your clients is telling you, "I want to think about it." Or if when you shop, do you ask for say, "oh, I've got to get some three bids on this thing. I got to look around." Yeah. Well, no wonder the people you're selling to always have to get three bids because we attract who we are. Yeah. And it starts right here in the mind. And it's incredible how that works. [00:13:43] Jason: Yeah. because if we're anxious, if we have that energetic sort of anxiety of that, like things are, it's expensive, and we go into that trying to sell it to somebody. Then they can feel that and we present it differently. And so we're like, "here's the price." And like, yeah, and it's worth it. And they can just, there's so many little subtle clues they pick up on that, Hey, this seems a little high. And because sometimes like if you're presenting to somebody and they're not what I call a cheapo, there's three types of buyers, cheapos, normals, and premiums I call them. [00:14:16] Jason: And normals are like, you typically like 60%. They're like the majority, 61%. The smallest group are usually the premium buyers, supposedly. But the idea is this: if you're a premium buyer and I present a price and I'm not even going to like flinch telling you about it, I'm like, "yeah, we've got this and this is what it costs and this," and they're going to go, "oh, this person feels really confident." [00:14:36] Jason: And it's just energetically how we present it. There's no like, "Hey, I'm trying to prep you for this price, you know, reveal because it's going to hurt a little bit." Right. Or if they just have the confidence and they know they're expensive, they might even just say, "Hey, we're one of the most expensive, but we're also one of the best. Let me tell you about your options." Right? So maybe they start with a pre-frame like that, but either way, they have this confidence that they know they have value and that it's worth it, and then they present it like that, then people would go, oh, okay, but if you have that anxiety deep down related to price and you know, you're this person if you're always looking for the coupon code or the discount code or you're trying to find the cheapest way to do something, then you've got a bit of that going on. [00:15:21] Jason: Because that's your identity. And so I've noticed this. Like in order to get people to be better salespeople, I can't just give them tactics. I have to give them identity. And so, and this is why my greatest sales hack, I call the Golden Bridge Formula. It's like it's the most authentic way to sell, which is your personal why connected to the business why connected to the prospect's why. Because we always trust motives. And the default assumption in sales, if I don't know your motive and you're trying to sell to me, is you want my money. [00:15:54] Sam: Right. [00:15:54] Jason: And if I think that's your only motive is you want my money and you're willing to do whatever it takes to get that, then you're probably maybe even willing to be unethical in order to get that might be the assumption. [00:16:05] Jason: Right? So that's kind of the default assumption in sales. And so to correct that, if I tell somebody, "Hey. I'm Jason Hull. My personal why is to inspire others to love true principles. And so what that means is I love sharing what works and learning what works and teaching to others. I would do that for free, for fun, and so I created DoorGrow and our why at DoorGrow is to transform property management business owners and their businesses. [00:16:27] Jason: And so if our whole belief system is around helping people transform their businesses. So that allows me to basically feed my addiction to learning, coaches, masterminds, books, whatever, and turn around and be able to share what's working with others. And that's just fun for me. So I have a business that basically fulfills my lifestyle and allows me to have fun and do what I want to do. [00:16:51] Jason: And you, Mr. Property management, business owner, who I'm maybe selling to, want to grow your business. And so our interests are in alignment. My business is the bridge that connects your why to my why. We both get what we want. It's the ultimate win-win, right? Everybody wins. And so I've been able to take really terrible salespeople that are really bad at selling, and I just get them clear on their own identity. [00:17:14] Jason: Mm-hmm. Who they are, why they do what they do, and have them relate that to people and then people trust them. And sales and deals happened at the speed of trust. [00:17:22] Sam: Oh my gosh, I love this so much. It's insanely powerful too when I'm teaching people how to do just introductions, you know? A super quick formula too for the property managers out there that are listening to that, even if you're property manager, you have to get good at sales. [00:17:38] Sam: Yeah, you have to be good at communication to be able to bring more doors into your portfolio. And so the way you know, a really easy formula for those homeowners when you're having that conversation, first of all, they've got to know who they're talking to. Yeah. You know, this belief, identity, you know, matrix that I actually I love to call, I just did a keynote. [00:17:59] Sam: It's funny for everybody listening. It's almost like Jason and I have read each other's notes, but we haven't. Just did a keynote, well that's maybe a month ago in Minnesota, that the entire talk was your thoughts, create your belief about yourself, your totally belief about yourself creates your identity, and then your identity creates your outcomes. [00:18:16] Sam: Yeah. And, but we have to go back and start with those thoughts. And so, but a simple, easy formula for property managers out there having this conversation is first of all, start asking permission for things. Yes. We can't just tell, right? If we can ask it as a question, ask it as a question. [00:18:36] Sam: So ask permission, like, "Hey, before we get started, do you mind if I take a quick minute and just introduce you to our company and myself." [00:18:44] Sam: yeah. [00:18:45] Sam: And so first of all, anytime a conversation starts, there's always this period of icebreaking, right? Yeah. Anytime anything new is introduced in anyone's environment, there's always stiffness until that moment of rapport happens and we relax a little bit. [00:19:00] Sam: Yeah. So taking a couple of minutes to just. "Hey, before we get started, do you mind if I introduce the company and a little bit about myself? Would that be all right?" Yes. So permission to it and then just take a few minutes because I mean, so many times we'll go through this crazy presentation and then we're asking somebody to buy from us and they don't even know who we are. [00:19:21] Sam: We never took the time to even introduce ourselves. Right. [00:19:24] Jason: Yeah. [00:19:24] Sam: Or they don't know thing about the company. [00:19:25] Jason: Trying to immediately shove the product or service down their throat. [00:19:28] Sam: Yeah. No wonder they need to think about it. They don't even know who you are. And so we introduce that first. [00:19:34] Sam: It's huge. And to just getting into the things. So that's the flow. It's like, okay, now that you know a little bit about us, tell us a little bit about you. What are you looking for? Right. So then you start that discovery process, and I'm sure you trained this but the discovery process is everything. [00:19:51] Sam: We have to understand the motive behind why they want to do things. Somebody just says, "Hey, I'm looking for a property manager." Okay, great. That's one thing. "Why do you would need a property manager? What are you trying to solve? What do we want to accomplish by having a property manager for your property?" [00:20:09] Sam: So we find out, what are the pain points? What are the issues that they're wanting to overcome? And then from there, we can create a, you know, craft a conversation around it. But until we know that, we're just stabbing in the dark and just guessing it. Yeah. Well, hopefully this will work. [00:20:23] Jason: Right. Yeah. If we just jump right to offering solutions when we don't even ask what they need it's not very effective. [00:20:30] Jason: And then they're going to have a ton of objections. [00:20:32] Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. But yeah, that's the some of the complaints we have are the communication and the other one is just not responding once we find solutions, then give them to the property manager. [00:20:45] Sam: And then it's like ghosting for who knows how long until finally somebody gets back. And so that's the other side of the communication is not getting resolution once we actually, you know, we can do this work, but we're not going to sit around here all day to wait to get it approved. We have other appointments. [00:21:02] Sam: So do we want to reschedule? [00:21:03] Jason: It's treating the vendor like they're high value, they're going to treat you like you're high value and they're going to prioritize you. And so it really is a mutual respect relationship that needs to be built. So, Sam, I also want to bring up to our audience, you are going to be coming [00:21:19] Jason: to speak at DoorGrow Live. Yeah. And you're going to be teaching some really cool stuff. Could you just touch on real quick what you're going to be sharing at this because I wanted to come bring you to expose my clients and my audience to what you're going to be sharing and maybe you can get some people pumped up for DoorGrow Live, so. [00:21:38] Sam: Absolutely. Yeah. So thank you for the invite as well. I'm super excited to be speaking for DoorGorw Live. It's my passion, in fact to be able to help people in their daily lives, especially in conversations like this, to make it easy. I am such a firm believer that sales should be easy. If it's not easy, we're overcomplicating it. And so what we're going to be talking about at the event is I'm going to give some really simple keys to better communication so people actually not only listen, but they understand what you're saying and, more importantly, why should they care? [00:22:18] Sam: So we're going to talk about something called, the benefit lens. We're going to talk about some easy word substitutions. We're not going to be learning scripts or anything. We're going to be, we're going to show any really easy ways to get immediate buy-in to what our conversation is. Nice. And how to recruit people to be raving fans and be on board. [00:22:38] Sam: And how to ask and get referrals because that's huge in... [00:22:44] Sam: absolutely. [00:22:44] Sam: ...something like a property management. If every third door you added also added another one from a referral, what would that do to your business? Yeah, absolutely. So not just asking for referrals, but actually asking in a way where actually get them. [00:22:57] Jason: Right. Yeah. If you're getting enough referrals, one, because you have a good reputation, you're doing a good job, but also because you have an intention and you're asking appropriately, you create this kind of virus of growth in your business where it's multiplying. [00:23:13] Jason: Every client becomes more clients. [00:23:16] Sam: Yep. Absolutely. In fact, we can do a quick little as an example of some of the things we're going to cover. Are you open to doing a quick little role play with me on... [00:23:24] Sam: all right. Let's do it. [00:23:25] Sam: Some of the conversation here. Yeah. I love role play. [00:23:28] Sam: Let's have fun. [00:23:29] Sam: Yeah, for sure. [00:23:30] Sam: So I'm property manager. So before we do, give me a quick little context of what is a premium price property manager and what is like a middle range property manager. And so I'll know what I'm working with here. [00:23:44] Jason: Oh yeah. Usually our clients have three different price points for that reason. So, perfect. But let's say like, real typical in the marketplace is 10% is pretty normal. Okay? And this is not what we recommend. because our clients close more deals more easily at a higher price point. [00:23:59] Jason: So we have some special pricing models, but let's say 10%. Premium, maybe 12%, and the lower would maybe be like 8%. [00:24:08] Sam: Got it. Got it. Perfect. Alright, so I'm the project manager. So I'm going to be a premium 12%. Yeah. So what we're going to do in this conversation, I'm going to ask for the business and you're going to give me a little bit of a price flinch with, "well, the other guy was only 10%." [00:24:23] Sam: Okay. And so we'll show a quick, easy way to handle that. All right. In a way that will make sense for everybody. So, alright, Jason, so, sounds like everything that you've talked about, can you see how all the things we do will take care of the concerns that you have? [00:24:38] Sam: Yeah, absolutely. Sounds great. [00:24:40] Sam: Awesome. Perfect. So the next steps to get moving is you know, so we're just 12% of the monthly as for us to be able to take care of all of that. And this will just need a quick authorization on this form here and we can get started right away. [00:24:55] Jason: Ooh, okay. Well, I was expecting, you know, I talked to a company down the street, they were like 10%, which seems to be a bit more normal. [00:25:04] Jason: I don't know. [00:25:04] Sam: More normal? [00:25:07] Jason: I've talked to a couple companies and a lot of them all do it at 10%. Could, like, is it possible you could do it at 10%? [00:25:13] Sam: Oh, gotcha. So listen, I mean, so we were just 12%, but listen, we're not 2% higher or 2% more expensive. We're 2% better. Can I explain to you why that is? [00:25:25] Jason: Sure. [00:25:26] Sam: Absolutely. [00:25:27] Sam: So at that point, as a great company, you're going to have a hit list of all of the reasons why you're better than everybody else, and what makes you that premium company. I like it. So the minute we get that permission question in of, "Hey, we're not 2% more expensive, we're 2% higher, we're 2% better." [00:25:43] Sam: Then the permission question is, "can I show you why, or can I show you how?" And they say "Yes." Then we're going to, "okay, so what we do, it's..." never talk bad about the competition. Sure. But it's always with that perspective. "So what we do is this, and what we do is this, and what we do is this. We're always going to have the availability to be in contact, you know, 24/7 or you know, whatever all of the benefits is. [00:26:10] Sam: We're going through this huge benefit list. Yeah. And then when, once we, and it works like magic, once you get to about 10 or 12 things, especially when you know, those first 10 or 12 things are things the other companies don't do. Yeah. So many times that person will go, "you know what? You're right. You know what? You're right. Let's just go ahead and do it." Yeah. [00:26:31] Jason: I mean, you go through those things you say, "so does that make sense why maybe we're 2% better?" And they're going to be like, "yeah." [00:26:38] Jason: You've got agreement. [00:26:39] Sam: Cool. Absolutely. And the other thing to do in this conversation, and this is really powerful too, so, you know, we'll take you know, what's a, what's the average rent that we'd be taking that percentage off of? [00:26:50] Jason: Let's say 2000 bucks. [00:26:51] Sam: So 2000 bucks. That's what I was going to use. "So we're talking about 2% difference. So we're looking at $40 a month or $10 a week. Is it worth it to you for $10 a week to potentially fight the headache of, you know, your property management company not responding when you need them to respond, your tenants being really unhappy, the tenants turning over and over, for, I mean, $10 a week. Is it worth it to you for that?" [00:27:22] Jason: Yeah. [00:27:23] Sam: So if, I mean, if you're willing to roll the dice and take that chance, then of course you could do what you want. But if you want it done right and done once, so you're headache free and you're not going to have to, because the reason you hire a property manager is to be hands off. [00:27:35] Sam: Right? Yeah. Perfect. That's why what, that's what sets us apart. Next to any of the other companies around. [00:27:43] Jason: Got it. So hypothetical property manager, Sam here, like believes. You can tell by listening to him, he believes in what he is selling. He believes he's worth that 12%. He believes he's worth that value, and I love that reframe. [00:27:58] Jason: One of the NLP hacks I teach clients is, it's not a, it's b, and he's like, "it's not that we're expensive or higher price, it's that we're 2% better." And so you're saying this is how you are looking at it. Here's how I want you to look at it. And that's a really cool correction. I love that right there. [00:28:16] Jason: Very powerful. [00:28:17] Sam: The other part of that too is when you take, we're not talking about the total monthly, you know, we're talking about what's 12% or 10%? We're talking about 2% difference. Yeah. Is it worth it to you for a 2% difference to take the chance on having to deal with this, having to manage your own projects, having the headache, having the you know, the angry tenants or we don't have that problem. [00:28:42] Sam: And here's proof: review, testimony. Other people in the area, for people that use us just like you guys. [00:28:49] Jason: Yeah. Awesome. Perfect. And you're going to share some really cool stuff I know at DoorGrow Live. I'm excited, man. Me too. [00:28:56] Sam: Let's just tip of the iceberg. [00:28:57] Jason: For a salesman to be able to like build a coaching business, teaching sales like these are the best in the world at sales, and so I'm really excited to have you come. I've sold millions and millions of dollars of stuff. I love, I'm always learning more about sales, like this is something you can always continually learn more, so I love that little reframe. [00:29:17] Jason: That's a good one. I'm excited to hear what else you have to share. This is going to be really awesome. And if you're interested, go to doorgrowlive.com and get your tickets. Get your tickets. Our theme this year is innovating the future of property management, and we are bringing future ideas. [00:29:32] Jason: I'm going to be going over hybrid pricing, a new pricing model for property managers. This is the future. We're going to be sharing our DoorGrow hiring system. This is the future of how you're going to need to do hiring, so you're not making mistakes with hires, we're helping a lot of people replace their entire team. [00:29:48] Jason: So anyway, DoorGrow Live is going to be really freaking cool. So, yeah, and it's a holistic conference as well. We're bringing people from outside the industry, people that are related to different things. I've got a biohacking expert. We've got different things just to optimize your life as an entrepreneur and to make you better at what you do. [00:30:05] Jason: So this is going to be really cool. So, well, Sam anything else we should touch on? [00:30:10] Sam: You know, there's so much we could cover. [00:30:12] Jason: There's a lot. We'll save it for DoorGrow Live. How can people that, if they're listening, they're like, I'm a vendor, or I've got this, or I could really use Sam's help. [00:30:21] Jason: How can they get ahold of you? [00:30:23] Sam: Yeah, absolutely. They can go to, of course the website is closeitnow.net. That's NET so closeitnow.net. They can email me directly, [email protected]. On an Instagram at @therealcloseitnow. Okay. Or basically search Close it Now anywhere and I pop up all over the place. [00:30:44] Sam: All right. I'm kind of everywhere on social media and on the Googles at this point. All right. [00:30:50] Jason: All right, well we're going to close this show now, so appreciate you coming on, Sam. It's been great having you. And for those that are watching, listening, if you could use some help from DoorGrow reach out to us. [00:31:00] Jason: You can check us out at doorgrow.com. We are the world leaders at coaching and scaling property management companies. And so if you are dealing with operational challenges, team challenges, hiring challenges, or you just don't know the right strategies for adding doors or business development, we can help you with all of that. [00:31:18] Jason: So reach out to us, check us out at doorgrow.com and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.

March 27, 2025

DGS 288: Wires, Pipes, and Signals: Everything You Wish You Knew About Home Utilities

As a property manager, you’re familiar with the uncomfortable shuffle when trying to ensure utilities are set up correctly at move-in. What if you could make the whole process easier? In this episode of the Property Management Growth Show, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with the founder of Utility Profit, Zac Maurais, to discuss wires, pipes, and signals: Everything you wish you knew about home utilities. <h2 dir="ltr">You’ll Learn</h2> [01:48] How Zac Built a $100 Million Business [07:38] Solving Utility Challenges with a Streamlined Tool [15:54] Using Utility Profit to Make Extra Profit [23:26] Integrations and Frequently Asked Questions [30:20] Take Action on The Things You’re Avoiding! <h2 dir="ltr">Quotables</h2> “I think the secret to being smart is just being willing to look stupid.” “Done is better than perfect.” “Have a bias for action. Get your hands dirty. Do it yourself.” “ Whatever it is that you think that's holding you back, just start trying to do it.” <h2 dir="ltr">Resources</h2> <a href= "https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/courses/mastermind">DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind</a> <a href="https://www.doorgrowacademy.com/">DoorGrow Academy</a> <a href= "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC1mGYT2Sw0LOe32hO_QdNg/featured"> DoorGrow on YouTube</a> <a href="https://doorgrow.com/">DoorGrowClub</a> <a href= "https://doorgrowlive.com/">DoorGrowLive</a> <h2 dir="ltr">Transcript</h2> [00:00:00] Zac: It's almost like we're like taking the Yellow Pages and then putting it online or something. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a wacky problem that we're solving there. [00:00:08] Jason: So you're single handedly bringing the utility space into the future. So, All right. [00:00:16] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Property Managers to the Property Management Growth Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur and you want to add doors, you want to make a difference, you want to increase revenue, you want to help others, you want to impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager and you just don't know it. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. [00:00:47] Jason: You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. [00:01:13] Jason: I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show and I'm hanging out today with Zac Maurais. Did I say it right? [00:01:25] Jason: That's right, yes. [00:01:26] Jason: Hey. All right, cool. It's great to have you on the show. So Zac we're going to be chatting today about wires, pipes, and signals, everything you wish you knew about home utilities. [00:01:38] Jason: I think this will be interesting to our listeners because, you know, we get into this stuff as property management people. So, so Zac before we get into that though, give us a little backstory on you. How'd you get into being an entrepreneur? When did you first figure that out, that you maybe were one and then we can get into why you started this business so that you've got going and tell us, tell everybody about it. [00:01:58] Jason: Cool. [00:02:00] Zac: Let's do it. Yeah. So, quick intro myself, I live here in Austin, Texas. I've been an entrepreneur now for better part of a decade and a half. Right out of college I started a business it was actually a food delivery business called Favor. We ended up scaling that business to having 50,000 delivery drivers in the state of Texas. [00:02:22] Zac: So it was the second largest employer in the state. And over the course of building it up over a couple of years, we were doing over a hundred million dollars of food sales a year. So sizable company and we sold that to HEB grocery and yeah. [00:02:38] Jason: And if people don't know, HEB I'm in the Austin area, I'm up in Round Rock. [00:02:41] Jason: But if people don't know HEB. HEB consistently wins the best grocery store awards like in America every year. Like it's always winning. [00:02:51] Zac: It's kind of amazing. I mean, they are an institution. There's so many small towns across Texas where the only show in town, I would kind of say it's akin to like a Walmart or something like that for a national brand that people would be more familiar with. [00:03:04] Zac: Family run business, been around for a hundred years. So it's cool that it had joined forces with Favor. And learned a lot from doing that company. I mean, at the time that we sold it, we had over 140 corporate employees, designers and software engineers and business intelligence people and salespeople. [00:03:24] Zac: So I'm right there with you, Jason, where I like growth. I like growing things and learning about business and learning about new categories. So as I sold it, I was looking for the next thing to do. [00:03:35] Jason: So people are clear, Favor, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but Favor competes with like Instacart and like some of these, it's like a delivery service. [00:03:44] Zac: That's right. So the way that the service worked was, it was like an on demand. It was part of the on demand delivery kind of thing that was happening. The gig economy, you know, people will probably remember Lyft coming out and Uber. There wasn't one for delivery of kind of like fast casual food or groceries yet. [00:04:02] Zac: And we brought that into the market. We had first mover. [00:04:05] Jason: Oh yeah. So yeah, it's kind of like Uber Eats and, you know, these kind of things. [00:04:08] Zac: Exactly. So you could tap a button, request a Favor, and then someone would go shopping for you, go pick up some tacos or yeah, run at the grocery store or something like that and bring it to you in 45 minutes or less. [00:04:20] Jason: Got it. And is Favor just a Texas thing? [00:04:23] Zac: At one point in time we tried to go national expansion, but it was a bit of a wartime thing that was going on. Yeah. A lot of VC dollars getting put in. And we had a very strong Texas brand. We had over a million people in Texas using it. [00:04:37] Zac: Yes. So we said we just doubled down on home base. [00:04:40] Jason: I mean, Texas is like its own little universe. We've got Favor, we've got HEB, we've got, you know, there's all these things that are just specifically Texas. So if y'all come to Texas, you got to like experience the whole Texas deal. You got to go to an HEB, you got to go to Bucky's, you got to go to all these things, right? [00:04:56] Zac: So yeah, right. When you're here in town for Jason's event, go get yourself some Yeti swag. [00:05:02] Jason: Yes. [00:05:02] Zac: And then order yourself a Favor. [00:05:04] Jason: Yes. There you go. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, and people get really religious about their, you know, things like Yeti. It's like Yeti Mecca. Like people, like my brother-in-law comes into town. He is like, "I got to go to the Yeti store." He's like, just like starry-eyed in there. And I'm like, "why? Why?" Coolers, thermases? I don't know. Cool drinks. Yeah. Yeah. It's a thing. So he like collects them, and then sometimes he's flipping them too. Like there's limited edition things, so. My brother-in-law's name is Jason also, so he might listen to this. [00:05:36] Jason: So Jason, I mentioned you on my podcast, so, all right. [00:05:39] Jason: Shout out to Jason. [00:05:41] Jason: Shout out to Jason. So, cool. So Zac, I mean, that's a pretty impressive thing. Not many people can say they built a hundred million dollar, you know, business or had an exit or something like that. So, and then what did you do next? [00:05:55] Jason: Like, you sell this thing, did you lose all meaning and purpose in life and decide to start a new business or what happened? [00:06:01] Zac: I think that happens with some people, right? You sell it, you have somebody, you're like, "what am I going to do with my life now?" I'm going to take a good thing and somehow it becomes a bad thing. [00:06:09] Zac: But I just, I really like building. And I like the process of entrepreneurship where you talk to people, you try to find a problem and you like go hit a whiteboard, you sketch, it becomes more tangible, and then all of a sudden you can partner with an engineer and make it and then bring it back to the customer. [00:06:26] Zac: And I just like that. It kind of just scratches something in my brain, I think. And something else that's been cool for me on my entrepreneurship journey. I had mentioned that I've been doing it now for a decade and a half and the entire time that I've been working and doing startups, I've been doing it with like my best friend Ben from growing up together. [00:06:45] Zac: We [00:06:46] Jason: best friend Ben. [00:06:46] Zac: wen to school in New Hampshire. And it's fun to be able to go on that journey with someone like that. [00:06:52] Jason: Yeah. That's cool. So you and Ben are still doing stuff together then. [00:06:55] Zac: Right. [00:06:56] Jason: Yeah. Third company. [00:06:57] Zac: Third company now, so. [00:06:59] Jason: Yeah. Dynamic duo. All right. And so I imagine that you have some complimentary sort of skill sets and challenge each other a bit. [00:07:08] Zac: Yeah, I think our brains have kind of been swapped and became more of the same brain. But the way that I explained it originally was like Ben was the left brain engineer, right? He is going to build out the backend database. He was a civil engineer, so he was just constantly doing math. And then I was more of the, you can kind of see there's some paintings behind me, like I was the artist. [00:07:30] Jason: The right brain guy. Yeah. Got it. [00:07:32] Zac: But now it just kind of became one, somewhere between now. He kind of went a little bit more right. I went more left, so. [00:07:38] Jason: Cool. So bring us up towards the present day. So like, what are you and Ben, you know, getting together and working on? [00:07:45] Zac: Yeah, so I guess the way that we got into the property management industry was we were trying to build some leasing automation tech over the last few years. We had something called Sunroom Leasing, and it was like a platform that would help. With self showings, with different things related to collecting some data from renters about the home. [00:08:05] Zac: We had at one point in time, around 8,000 homes that were leasing across the country for some real estate investment trusts and some large scale property managers. And it kind of turned us on to this like, it had some challenges I think of that scale. And so we ended up realizing that's not what we want to do long term. [00:08:26] Zac: And something that it was like a good ride, but I think we were onto something that could be more scalable and a more acute problem to solve. [00:08:35] Jason: Yeah, this was like a tuition business. You're learning and paying the price of tuition. Yeah. So you got familiar with the property management industry a bit through that. [00:08:44] Jason: That's right. Figured out kind of your target audience and you probably started to see some different problems you like started scheming with your whiteboard on, so. [00:08:52] Zac: Yeah, and the problem that we zoomed into was around utility setup. And what we thought was kind of a silly thing was, here it is, it's 2024. [00:09:01] Zac: This was last year that we had launched it. We realized that there wasn't like a Google Maps of utilities. We thought it was silly that you couldn't just type in an address online and then see what's the water, what's the electric, what's the gas, what's the internet? There was no transparency for that. [00:09:20] Zac: And when we looked closer, there's like, you zoom in on water, there's over 20,000 water providers and they have really weird setups, you know, or it could be down just by the neighborhood or the zip code or the, you know, it's just wacky the way that the mapping works. And we thought if we could build out the whole mapping infrastructure, that would be a valuable thing, both for owners of the property that just want to have a more streamlined process, property managers that are doing it every day, and then renters. If you kind of think of this problem of setting up utilities while it's annoying and they have to Google around and make a bunch of phone calls, this is just one problem within a whole, you know, iceberg of other things. It's just the tip, small thing that they're doing a ton of things related to the move. We thought that if we could streamline this, then it could have a broad appeal and be something that we could do nationally and do at a big scale. So, over the last year, what we've done is we've built out that infrastructure to be able to do mapping at scale. [00:10:21] Zac: And we have built a platform that streamlines the process of turning on utilities. We're trying to make the utility on switch and it's a cool tool because the property managers using it can get confirmation that utilities have been set up correctly. And this is helpful for them because, you know, if you don't turn on the electricity and it's the dead of winter, you're probably going to have some problems on your hands with pipes bursting, you know, and things like that. [00:10:48] Zac: So, it's a useful tool in the process. [00:10:51] Jason: So let's talk about this problem, right? This is super annoying. Like everybody that's moved has had to figure out this weird, you know, puzzle to like, which utility providers are available here? Which internet provider can I use? What are my options? Can I get this cool fiber, you know, thing, can I get this? Is there..? Like what's available? Then they're trying to figure out like water, electric. You're maybe trying to find out from the previous owner or somebody and you're trying to like negotiate all this and then like getting things switched and then the timelines like it's a mess. [00:11:25] Jason: Like it's really annoying and yeah, it's like why do we just deal with this and put up with this? We're living in the age of AI and this AI revolution now and. Why isn't there a better solution to this? It seems like it's just like chaos and confusion. Yeah, so. [00:11:45] Zac: It is chaos and confusion. Yeah. And people waste so much time doing it and oh god. [00:11:50] Zac: Yeah. And I think as a result, like sometimes people will just make sacrifices where they'll be like, well, I was on this telecom company before. Maybe I'll just go back to them. And then I might miss out on being able to be like, well, I could have had faster internet or a better plan that's cheaper or something If they had just... [00:12:07] Jason: sure. Yeah. [00:12:07] Zac: ...known that they had options. [00:12:10] Jason: Right. You're like, man, I'm still using dial up. And I didn't realize Google Fiber was available here. Yeah, right. [00:12:15] Zac: Throwing that in an old AOL like. [00:12:18] Jason: Yes, I remember those days. I was such a nerd. Alright, so yeah, and people may maybe get impatient and they just make some quick decisions. [00:12:27] Jason: You know, and all these companies try to give them incentives like, Hey, if you move, like we'll move it and help you get it set up. And they try to make it seamless, but because they're trying to retain their, you know, the customer, but that might not be in the best interest of the customer. [00:12:41] Zac: Totally. Yeah. So this we're in the spirit of trying to add transparency into the process, make it more streamlined. And and have a really lightweight tool like, you know, not another app you have to download, but just something that seamlessly fits in the move in process. Okay. [00:12:55] Zac: Integrates really well with the tools that the property manager is already using, you know, just is able to sync, in real time, figure out what are the addresses coming up, and then give the property manager a way to both communicate what the utilities are and then check that they've been turned on. [00:13:16] Zac: And then interestingly, there's a lot of places in the US where these telecom companies are competing. And they spent a lot of money to lay down these fiber optic lines, you know, or copper lines, and they're trying to recoup some of that cost. Yeah. And so they'll pay money for more customers. [00:13:35] Zac: And so we're able to generate revenue and then share that with property managers as an incentive to use the tool. [00:13:43] Jason: Okay, cool. So what's the name of the tool or this service? [00:13:46] Zac: It's called Utility Profit. [00:13:48] Jason: Utility profit. Okay. All right. And it's P-R-O-F-I-T I would assume? Yep, exactly. Not like you're prophesying. [00:13:57] Jason: All right, got it. So Utility Profit, and so this really is solving that challenge to just streamline all that, and there's a financial incentive or benefit for the property manager helping to get these things connected. [00:14:11] Zac: That's right. That's right. Yeah. And one of the... [00:14:14] Jason: Win, win, win all the way around win. [00:14:15] Zac: Yeah, exactly. And that's the best type of tool. You know, something that it doesn't just benefit one party, but all the people involved. Yeah. And so, you know, it's exciting there. Now there's people across the entire United States using it. We've been helping thousands of renters per month. [00:14:32] Zac: Just in the last year there's been, I think over 750 property managers using it. Some really big ones with thousands of properties all the way down to people that just have a couple homes in the portfolio. I think the average has about 400 homes and, you know, it's really kind of empowering that we bring something to the world and that fast that many people are using it. [00:14:55] Zac: It's cool to see. [00:14:56] Jason: Yeah. Cool. So. And Ben's leading the nerds on the team making this all work. [00:15:02] Zac: Yeah, we're both working closely with engineers and, I mean, it's been a big lift. I mean, we've had to do all sorts of wacky things to be able to like get this data because like I said, it didn't exist. [00:15:12] Zac: I imagine. [00:15:13] Zac: We have to like literally go and draw service maps, you know, that were PDFs on old websites and then, you know, turn them into a structured database. Right. I, you know, pull it up correctly. Yeah. [00:15:26] Jason: You're just doing this ground level legwork to like get... it's almost like you're transferring old records into a digital format. [00:15:35] Jason: You know? Yeah. So that people could play their MP3s or something. Yeah. [00:15:38] Zac: It kind of feels like that. It's almost like we're like taking the Yellow Pages and then putting it online or something. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a wacky problem that we're solving there. [00:15:48] Jason: So you're single handedly bringing the utility space into the future, so. [00:15:54] Zac: Yeah. And one thing that we've we've been doing over the last couple months that I think is pretty cool is that there's this whole industry that exists for the multifamily apartment space related to what they call as like fiber as an amenity or fiber to the home. [00:16:11] Zac: Yeah. And so the way it would work on multifamily would be, you know, these big telecoms would say, "Hey, we'll sell you a thousand units of internet and then we'll give you a discount for doing so. And then you can either kind of keep that for yourself or you can, you know, share that with your tenants as a way to help your apartments stand out from other apartments." [00:16:33] Zac: The apartments are i identifiable and also you know, easier for the telecoms to spot. The hard thing about homes is it's this long tail of properties and there hasn't been a good way to aggregate them. I think over the last few years there's been some, you know, real estate investment trusts that have got to scale. [00:16:54] Zac: And so it kind of got these telecom companies thinking, "Hey, maybe I should go you know, sell into this market, see if we can apply the same principles of this program from apartments to single family." But it hasn't yet been done at any sort of significant scale. It's kind of a new concept. Now that we have hundreds of thousands of homes, that we are effectively the on switch for, we're helping to source these deals. [00:17:20] Zac: And we're able to bring, you know, significant discount from retail pricing to property managers and consumers. So we we're adding that as a new program that we're doing. We're calling it like Fiber Ready Homes. So it's a cool thing because we can help property managers identify what portion of their portfolio has the underlying technology at the home to have, you know, hyper fast internet speeds. [00:17:47] Zac: Yeah. And then do all of the enrollment process and the billing process to be able to offer a program like this. And and it's pretty gnarly. Like the average property manager that will turn on this program can make tens of thousands of dollars a year. It's roughly $10 per month per door. [00:18:04] Zac: So if you're a 300 door property manager, this is about $18,000. 18,000 per year that you'd be able to generate. And just, you know, kind of free cash flows for enabling something that the renters want. [00:18:18] Jason: Right. Just making more money and yeah, I mean, high speed internet also being able to bring that to your units. [00:18:26] Jason: It creates a bigger incentive for people to rent it. I mean, it's definitely something I research before I buy a home or move anywhere. I'm always like, what Internet's available there because my life is going to be happening through this. And a lot of more people working from home, especially since Covid. [00:18:41] Zac: True. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I think a lot of renters see internet more important than running water in some ways. I mean, it's like everyone's on Netflix and doing work from home calls. You know, it's just, it's super important for renters. [00:18:55] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's interesting. And it sucks though when you like if you rent somewhere and that you only have one option and it's not the option that you really want in that area because sometimes they've negotiated like, oh, it's Comcast cable or something like this, and it's low speed or whatever. [00:19:11] Zac: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Sometimes you're kind of limited by what lines have been laid, and sometimes there's limited options, but it's cool because now we have these two programs. We have one, which is that one I just explained, and then we have a second one. We call it like a marketplace. So it'll truly show you everything that's available, every single company, every single speed all the details of it and help to facilitate just being able to turn it on a lot easier. [00:19:34] Jason: Got it. How does this work? Like a property manager gets set up in your system, they've got their properties, you know, in this, and then they can figure out the tenants when they're onboarding a new tenant, they're like, "Hey, before we give you keys and move you in, we want to make sure utilities are getting moved over." [00:19:49] Jason: So you help streamline this? [00:19:51] Zac: That's right. Yeah. So it will connect seamlessly with property managers, property management software. Pull in the active listings that they have, and then it will have triggers around the move in date. So once someone's been approved and you have a move in date that's approaching. [00:20:08] Zac: It will send reminders and say, Hey, you know, you're moving in end of the month, like before you move in, please show that you've turned the electric on so that there's not going to be bill back problems and things like that. [00:20:20] Zac: So, it handles the communication and then what's pretty cool about the tool too, is it's all white labeled. Utility Profit, it's not, you know, like a tenant friendly name, you know? Yeah. It's really for the property manager. And so, okay. We're just helping to facilitate these things. So it's got the property manager's logo, you know, we're more just the underlying technology, which I think is good because like a renter in the process doesn't want to get handed off to another third party. [00:20:48] Zac: They just want to... [00:20:49] Jason: yeah, "Who are these guys? Why should I trust them? I trust you. I'm working with you," but yeah. Got it. No, I think that's really smart. And so your business model then, your growth strategy really is to leverage and support the property managers. [00:21:02] Zac: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We're trying to partner with all the property managers in the single family rental space. [00:21:08] Zac: And you know, last I checked, you know, there's at least five to 10 million homes that are managed by third party property managers. And we want to become the main place where where people used to turn on utilities. And you know, we talked about entrepreneurs and having a big vision earlier in the call. [00:21:26] Zac: You know, I think we're solving an important problem by building this Google Maps of Utilities and also just making a better experience. I think anytime we start a business though, you're kind of thinking about like, okay, "Well if I'm able to pull this off, how could this even be even more significant long term?" [00:21:42] Zac: And one of the things that I've been just thinking about as I've been doing it is you know, today we are helping to connect the dots between these things, but I bet in the not too distant future, maybe a few years out, we'll be responsible for millions of homes in helping to turn on these utilities. [00:21:59] Jason: Yeah. [00:22:00] Zac: We'll probably want to go down the stack of utilities, you know, instead of just directing you to be going to, you know, XYZ local power source. Maybe they get directed to a company that, similar to how we're able to get discounts on internet because we have so much scale, we could buy energy contracts in deregulated markets and, you know, [00:22:22] Jason: okay. [00:22:22] Zac: Inch down becoming a utility. [00:22:24] Zac: Okay. [00:22:24] Zac: And so, I think it's a, it's an interesting thing. [00:22:27] Jason: So you're saying maybe there's a potential the property manager could be the utility? [00:22:32] Zac: We'll be able to help the property manager earn more money... [00:22:35] Zac: yeah. [00:22:35] Zac: ...on this process because we... [00:22:38] Zac: just more margin [00:22:38] Zac: ...want to direct them to like a utility that we own. And we're able to help them monetize these other things like natural gas and electricity. [00:22:49] Jason: Got it. Love it. Yeah. You're passing the benefit onto the property manager. So, yeah. That gives them quite an incentive to help you grow this. [00:22:55] Jason: Right. So I love it. So, I mean, this really gives property managers a strong competitive advantage over self-management then. [00:23:03] Zac: Yeah, I think so. You know, I think property managers, they have so many things that they're doing and this is one of those set it and forget it types of tools. You know, it's not something you have to have mastery over and like learn another thing, this is like you get on, you set the thing up, you get the logo added and get it synced to your PM software and then you're done with it and it just kind of is happening in the background and then just notifies you. [00:23:26] Jason: Got it. So the setup is pretty easy and then it makes it a lot easier for the property management team to make sure utilities are getting set up correctly. There's visibility into seeing what's been set up and what hasn't, it sounds like. And you mentioned integrations with property management software, and I know everybody listening's like, "but what about my software? The one I'm using?" Yeah. So what integrations do you guys have set up already? [00:23:49] Zac: It's all the major ones. So what we find is like AppFolio is popular. Rentvine is becoming more and more popular. You know, Propertyware is another one. Buildium's one that we you know, have in the works too, but yeah, I think most people... [00:24:04] Zac: Rent manager? [00:24:05] Zac: Rent manager, yeah. That's one that we work with too. Yeah. I know there's a lot of options for property managers there, but yeah. [00:24:11] Jason: Very cool. Yeah. So everybody listening there. There you go. So they're like, "oh, he mentioned mine. I'm okay." [00:24:17] Zac: Yeah, that's right. Yeah it's cool that it, you know, just works in a broad way like that. And it's kind of interesting too that the tool even is able to work you know, even if you don't even have a property management software to figure out some ways to you know, even work in that use case. [00:24:32] Jason: Sure. [00:24:32] Zac: But most people have software. [00:24:34] Jason: So as long as you can get the properties like into your system, then...? [00:24:38] Jason: That's right. [00:24:38] Jason: Got it. Okay, cool. But if they have those then and you have that connection, then it's, yeah, it'll just streamline things. Makes it even more turnkey. [00:24:47] Zac: That's right. [00:24:48] Jason: Got it. Cool. So, all right, so you, what else should people know about this? [00:24:52] Jason: Like what are the big questions property managers have been asking you? [00:24:55] Zac: I think one question is, you know, how much money I earn from this? You know? Okay. [00:24:59] Jason: They like, they want to know about the money. Let's talk about the money. [00:25:03] Zac: So the average property manager will, it's a range of 25 to $40 per move that, that happens. [00:25:10] Zac: It ends up being about 25 to, to $30 on average is what we're seeing across the country. And so I think it's one of those things where it's like nice gravy. What we find is that the average property manager, they're like, "this is nice. I can make some extra money from it." But I think it's like, you know, not enough to go, you know, it just adds to the bottom line a little bit. [00:25:32] Zac: Every little thing. Sure. So the main reason why people use it is the time savings, you know? Absolutely. It's just one last thing to have to worry about. So that's that's what we're seeing as we talk to people. [00:25:44] Jason: Yeah. Yeah, because I mean, just the amount of time you're paying a team member, if they're like 25 to $35 an hour, for example you know, they might be spending an hour or two here or there just calling, trying to negotiate back and forth with the tenant, get these things set up so. [00:25:59] Zac: Property management some days feels like death by a thousand mosquitoes. [00:26:04] Jason: Oh yeah. I often joke it's, it can be death by a thousand cuts or it can be a really well oiled systemizable machine, but yeah. [00:26:12] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, it offsets a little bit at the move in cost and then just the time savings. You're not having to pay your team to do all this communication. And you know, speed in onboarding is a real challenge for a lot of companies that are really in a high growth sort of state. [00:26:28] Jason: Like small companies might have a hard time just onboarding 10 units in a month, you know? Yeah. And larger companies, it can be pretty hairy if things aren't well dialed in. [00:26:36] Zac: Yeah, I think that's a good point. It's all about having the systems in place. So that they scale. [00:26:40] Jason: Very cool. [00:26:41] Jason: Well, is there anything else you think people should know about utility profit? And then we can get into like, how can they connect and get something like this going? [00:26:50] Zac: Yeah. So the website's, utilityprofit.com. [00:26:53] Jason: Okay. [00:26:53] Zac: And it has some more information about how it works and has has some videos of the actual product. [00:26:59] Zac: You can see what it looks like from the renter's perspective, from your perspective and the dashboard that gives transparency. And and it kind of just walks you through everything about the product. And then there's a way on the website to be able to either book a demo if you have any questions about how something works. [00:27:17] Zac: And then, what we do is we'll just help you do like an onboarding call where we have people connect their PM software, upload a logo, invite their team members, really simple, straightforward process and then and then it's kind of good to go. So it's very streamlined thing. People typically will do it and it'll be live same day. [00:27:38] Zac: It's not like some big heavy lift or something. You just kind of go through this 15 minute process. We help you get it all synced up and then it's good to go. [00:27:45] Jason: So, there's competition out there, right? Like this is a new thing in the space, but previously there's all these companies that try to, you know, negotiate and be able to pull in money and by being the person that gets people on a certain internet service or gets people and they get these kickbacks from the companies and that's how they make their money. [00:28:03] Jason: How do you feel like utility profits sort of stands out from those and I mean, my guess is you have the database, you have the data, like your ability to streamline. You're not having to go and start doing research and that you're just much faster. [00:28:17] Zac: Yeah, I think that's exactly it. So there's been this whole category over the last couple years that's called a home concierge. [00:28:25] Zac: Yeah. And it's historically been like a call center model. Yeah. Where a rep will get the address and they'll, on your behalf, Google around, make some calls, you know, go try to set things up. And I think that was a helpful first step, and it seems like the natural thing that, that the industry would've been doing. [00:28:43] Zac: But this is just the natural progression of it, you know, building that database out, making it something that is like, you know, a true streamlined tool for everybody. And and just digitizing it a lot more. [00:28:57] Jason: This is the future. This is the future. It's the next step. You're going to be a sponsor at DoorGrow Live. [00:29:02] Jason: So make sure, you know, everybody come to DoorGrow Live this year. Our theme this year is innovating the future of property management. And so we're going to be sharing innovative stuff. Innovative new models of pricing, not doing it the same way everybody else has been doing it, like percentage or flat fee. There's a lot of innovation and that's our goal at DoorGrow. We're always trying to figure out what are the most innovative stuff? We've got AI maintenance coordinators, we've got all sorts of stuff that are going to be showcased at this event. So if you don't want to be behind the times and have your lunch eaten by competitors and startups that are savvier and more focused on the future, make sure you come to DoorGrow Live. You're going to want to be there because the people that are at DoorGrow Live are going to be the ones that are getting a head start on these really effective cost, saving new tools, these ideas, they're going to help you have more profit in your business. [00:29:54] Jason: And so, Zac, we appreciate you being a sponsor. We're excited to showcase you and some other tools at our event, so. [00:30:00] Zac: It's going to be fun. It'll be here right around the corner, so. [00:30:03] Jason: Check it out at doorgrowlive.com, and make sure you get your tickets. And we're going to be talking a little bit more in the future, probably on our podcast here. And just online about some of the cool things that you will get or learn if you come to DoorGrow Live this year in May at the Kalahari Resort in Round Rock, Texas. [00:30:20] Jason: So, cool. Well, Zac, is there anything else you want to share before you go? Parting word of wisdom for entrepreneurs out there that haven't had a hundred million dollar exits and built big giant things and they're just struggling to build their little machine, what would you say to them? [00:30:36] Zac: I would just say like, whatever it is that you think that's holding you back, just start trying to do it. [00:30:43] Zac: You know? I think a lot of times you build up whatever it is in your head. And you think, "well, I would do it if I had this. Or what if I have to hire this person? Or, you know, I need to have this figured out, or I don't know how this works. Like I'm going to just say no to it." I would just say, just start doing it. [00:31:02] Zac: It doesn't have to be perfect to start. And the more you just take that first step it will become more clear and sometimes, it's harder to see the next 10 steps in front of you, but it's pretty easy to take that first step. So I'd say, have a bias for action. Get your hands dirty. Do it yourself. You have mentioned a lot of these things about AI and how the best companies are using ai. [00:31:25] Zac: We're really leaning into that as an organization. It doesn't matter what people's role is, we're saying. You know, download, ChatGPT three and talk to it. Ask it questions like, you know, there's so many cool resources today. It's the best time to figure things out and do things and and take that first step. [00:31:44] Jason: Yeah. GPT 4.5, we're getting clues of that's dropping and going to be out for everybody soon. And then Grok 3, I've been really geeking out on Grok 3, so it's pretty next level, so, but yeah. Cool. I love the idea. Done is better than perfect. I love the idea of rapid iteration. You know, so many times for those of you that are in the earlier stages of entrepreneurs listening to this, this is great advice because I've seen inside a lot of businesses, a lot of small businesses, and one of the biggest mistakes a lot of them make is they try to make everything perfect before they ship it, before they launch it. "I want to get all my processes dialed in," and they're trying to solve problems they don't even have yet. [00:32:20] Jason: They're trying to solve future problems instead of their current problem. And so rapid iteration really is the secret to growing a business quickly because you learn very fast what does and doesn't work. Just start trying shit. Just do it. Break stuff and you're going to learn way faster and everything's figureoutable, so. [00:32:39] Zac: Yeah. And in that spirit, it doesn't matter what the thing is, you can always get feedback from it, even if it's not totally built yet, like it can be on a napkin, you know, or it could be the next level of that. But go build the thing in whatever low fidelity way. Yeah. [00:32:55] Zac: And then go talk to your customers about it. And this is going to have different applications for different types of business. because you're going to talk about different things. But you know, maybe you have a new program that you're thinking property owners might want to see, like get their feedback on it. [00:33:10] Zac: Or maybe you want to launch a new website or a new logo or whatever it is. I would just say, it doesn't have to be perfect, bring it but you have to get feedback on it. So definitely go and partner with who it is that is going to see it, and then just talk to them about it and say, "Well, how could this be better? What is this missing? What would be the next thing to do? If you could do anything with this, what would you do?" And, you know, people love to share advice. I mean, I think that's the other thing. Yeah. It's like over the last couple years since I've been doing entrepreneurship, I've been kind of amazed at how many people have been willing to share their time and their advice. [00:33:46] Zac: Yeah. And especially if you get an intro to someone from something. Yeah. You know, I think there's this huge thing of maybe you're afraid to ask for that intro or, you know, have that conversation because it's not perfect yet. I would say, you know, find the ideal person that you want to talk to and then figure out how to work backwards and how to get an intro to them and then have that conversation. [00:34:08] Zac: You know, I think you have to be vulnerable in it because you are going to come across dumb sometimes. You know, people are going to say like, "how did you not know this? Everyone knows this," but like, just lose your ego in that. Be okay with not being okay. And then you're going to feel a lot better because on the other side of it, you're going to learn so much. [00:34:27] Jason: Yeah, I think the secret to being smart is just being willing to look stupid. So, I mean, for sure. Ask the dumb question that you're afraid to ask because you're going to learn way faster. And I really think proximity is power. Like just another reason people should come to DoorGrow Live is I think we attract the most growth oriented property management, business owners in the industry and just being in proximity to all these sort of change makers and people trying new stuff and people experimenting, people willing to invest in themselves and to pay like coaches, like DoorGrow. And then I use all my clients as a mass rapid iteration sort of project. [00:35:05] Jason: Like we're always figuring out more and more stuff and I'm gathering these ideas and so we've got systems in place to just allow us to innovate in this industry a lot faster. And so we're really excited about bringing these kind of things to DoorGrow Live and showcasing it. [00:35:19] Jason: So if you're not part of our program, you're not one of our clients. Come check out the magic at DoorGrow Live. Connect with some of the people there and you might realize you found a home, so yeah, your family might be there. So yeah, entrepreneurs we're different breed of people. We, you know, we take risks, we're willing to try new things, and we're not focused primarily on safety and security. [00:35:39] Jason: We're focused more on fulfillment and freedom and contribution. And so this natural offshoot, entrepreneurs are the most helpful people, especially the healthy ones. When you're in a healthy growth-minded state, you want to benefit and help everybody. You're not gatekeeping information like people are sharing stuff and so yeah, I found the same thing to be true in the high level masterminds, coaches that I work with. [00:36:00] Jason: Like just being around the people in these programs has been probably the biggest benefit more than even learning from the guru or whoever that is sharing stuff sometimes. And so, yeah, proximity. [00:36:11] Zac: Yeah, I think that's well said. You kind of become an average of the people that you spend most time with. [00:36:15] Zac: So if you're around, you know, someone who's going to be pessimistic about everything, then chances are, not going to try things as much. I mean, that, that was like one of the reasons why I had originally moved from, you know, where I was growing up in New Hampshire. I remember when I was pitching Favor when I was 20 something people were like, "ah, no one's going to pay five bucks for something like that. And how do you know how? You don't know how to code. You can't figure that out. Right? Go get a job like everybody else." And then I kind of moved and found my tribe you know, and in Silicon Valley area and then in Austin, Texas. And then next thing you know, I'm actually doing the thing. [00:36:53] Jason: I think even if people just come to DoorGrow Live to connect with somebody like you and they can create a relationship with somebody like you or any of the change makers or players that we attract at our event. [00:37:05] Jason: I mean, you've done things that a lot of people would dream of being able to do in business, right. And so come make those connections, come to DoorGrow Live and make some connections because it's going to change your life for sure. So, well Zac, I appreciate you coming on the show. People can connect with your company at utilityprofit.com. [00:37:22] Jason: Do a demo. And it's been great having you here. [00:37:26] Zac: Hey, thanks so much for having me on Jason. [00:37:28] Jason: All right, so everybody, if you are struggling to grow your business or you're struggling to deal with operations, reach out to us. Check us out at DoorGrow.com. We would love to have a conversation, see if we might be able to help you with something. [00:37:39] Jason: And that's what we do all day long and we care about our clients. We really want to make sure that everybody succeeds. We only win if you're winning. And so until next time, everybody to our mutual growth, let's all win. Bye everyone.

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