185: How to Think About Growth Strategies in PM
Just give me the cheat code.
Speaker 2:Give me
Speaker 1:the hack. You wanna make it easy. Right? This is what society rewards is getting good at things, doubling down, and going all in, making a choice, and actually succeeding at it.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the episode of the profitable property management podcast. I'm your host, Jordan Wehla. And guys, we're doing it remote. It's been quite a few minutes since we've had a remote episode, but we're doing one right now because there was something that felt timely and it was of particular interest that I wanted to talk about, someone I wanted I wanted to jam with. Jeremy Pound, thanks for being on with me, brother.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to be here. You know, it's like Borat. You get a studio, I get a studio. I had to keep up with you. Right?
Speaker 1:So I was like, I can't let you outdo me, so I'm excited that we brought our studios together. Thanks for bringing me in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And yours is looking tight, dude. You a you got a fly setup. I dig it. I love the investment.
Speaker 2:I'm seeing a number of people getting in the content.
Speaker 1:Cameras, like Yeah. The way, this was a dining room. This was a formal dining room in my house that I had four meals in over the course of six years of living here. You found a better use for it. Because I joke with my accountant, my whole house will be a write off by the time we're done.
Speaker 1:So I just keep adding rooms. So here we are.
Speaker 2:You found some highest and best use. Yeah. I love that. I see a number of people getting in the content game. You noticing that too?
Speaker 1:Oh, of course. And you and haven't talked about forever. I think it's one of those things that we've all appreciated and and as consumers have bought into for years, but it just seemed like, oh, that's for other people. Right? And then now we're being like, well, you know, you start talking to the most successful people in your life, and they're all doing content.
Speaker 1:You're like, okay. Well, maybe I need to you know? It's like the or it was the 2010 version of, like, I finally need a website. Well, maybe we finally need to get into content. Right?
Speaker 1:It's just like we're always late to the game. I feel like that's where we are with content.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Content is so interesting because if you think of all the distribution mechanisms of all the lead gen, of all the growth plays, content is one that probably in is similar to others in in this way that it does have some requirements. Like not anybody can actually do content. It's this beautiful dichotomy of on the one hand, yes, anybody can do it, you know. Just get over yourself, get out there, speak your truth, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2:And like I I very much believe that. At the same time, you do have to have some conviction. You have to have something to say, something you really believe in. Like, if you have no deep seated belief and you're just looking for leads, do SEO. Do do do PPC.
Speaker 2:Do do something, you know?
Speaker 1:It's way less about our fancy setups as we're joking about right now. None of that matters if you don't have a point of view. I mean, you know, we can pull up an iPhone and just film ourselves talking about great content, and it's gonna trump super sexy, you know, polish that we have. Well, this is great. Gonna stand out in the feed.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. It's gonna get people to watch you. It's gonna get people to remember you. You know, I I laughingly say this as I wear a t shirt to wear a call. It's like showing up to a meeting in a suit.
Speaker 1:Right? It's gonna get you respected a little bit more. But if you don't have the substance, you know, forget the content. It's not gonna work.
Speaker 2:It's really best as a as a forcing function. By making the investment, you feel more obligated to lean in. You know, I can see it being helpful Yeah. In that way. But, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2:I mean, the the vast majority of views every day on everything social.
Speaker 1:Yes. And easy views. I like when you see the forcing function. The studio the goal of this studio that I created is I have these, like, little remotes. I just come down and I just click, six buttons and everything gets up and I can start filming a video.
Speaker 1:Ease. Yeah. Friction. Like, you've probably seen a lot of video in my library, which I'm looking at across the room. It would take me an hour and a half to set up the tripod and the cameras and the lighting.
Speaker 1:And by that time, I'm like, alright. I'm off to another meeting. Right? So it's both the forcing function and the convenience. I know you've told me you love that as well.
Speaker 1:Like, you've got the studio you can just walk into. Anything that's a barrier, it's just like working out in the morning. Right? We talk about all the time. It's like having your shoes set out the night before, like, just getting ready to go, get it all on.
Speaker 1:Like, it just lowered the lower the resistance. That's what that's what I was trying do. That was my goal with the studio.
Speaker 2:You know, I find the topic of latency and friction removal, it's kind of low key profound. I keep coming back to that book I read years and years ago by Eli Goldrath, the goal. But
Speaker 1:one
Speaker 2:of the biggest takeaways from that book for me was understanding the impact of decreasing cycle time for whatever it is that you do. It's it's kind of non obvious, the impact that it makes. But in this case, just removing the friction from doing the filming had a profound difference for me. When I was responsible for doing everything before and after, it became excruciating. When I had an experience like I just had, Jeremy, I opened the door, I walk up, I walk in, I sit down, there's a bottle of water, all I had to do was start talking.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's just begging for creation as opposed to I gotta set it up and figure it out in the codex and the files and the uploading. I mean, wow, that's that's that's pain. And I think that applies to a million other areas of life as well. You brought up working out and you brought up like your setup, but at home gym versus driving to a gym. Right?
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Another another example. There's there's a million more of those out there.
Speaker 1:A million. A million. We can talk about you and outbound. You know? It's like, you have the list created the day before.
Speaker 1:Oh,
Speaker 2:You and
Speaker 1:I have talked about a million List sorting.
Speaker 2:You know? I wanted to make the calls, but I had to get my setup right.
Speaker 1:Get it all set up. You know, it wasn't right. The phone wasn't working. I didn't have the right list. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Like, yeah. It's all the reasons. So this is a light universal lesson for us. Get the get the setup out of the way and then show up and do the work.
Speaker 2:Alright. Well, you said it. You brought up Outbound. Let's go there, man. Let's talk a little bit about what you're seeing right now, back half of 2023, what folks are doing to drive disproportionate growth results.
Speaker 2:And when we say that, really we're talking about like the delta from the baseline. There are certain strategies that are the current dividends are being paid off based on investments that were made years and years and years ago. And there are other activities and campaigns that you're able to see in real time go from kinda from start conception actually to producing yield. So tell me, man, I'm really curious. What are you seeing produce yield?
Speaker 2:What have you been able to watch from inception all the way to actually production? What was the timeline involved? What are the mechanics? What types of strategies? What are you seeing?
Speaker 2:This is your bread and butter.
Speaker 1:It is. At this point, some people are probably wondering if I'm a mechanic or a sales coach. Well, I've got a toolbox on my desk right now. And this all feeds into this. I mean, the answer is it all works.
Speaker 1:With the right effort and the right mechanics, the right market, all of these things work. So but we walked through a number of those things, you know, and and we are fortunate enough to work with people that have been doing this for a long time, and they're riding the crest and the wave of momentum that they established ten years ago. And we're watching new people just pop up and just absolutely explode, and we're taking notes. So I one of the things about, you know, kind of the toolkit that we talk about all the time and this, you know, idea of all bound and what we're really talking to our clients about is, you know, stop searching for the one thing that's gonna work for you that works for everybody else. Right?
Speaker 1:Sales and marketing is a is a risky game. It it takes experimentation. It takes some thoughtfulness. Some of it will work, some of it won't. In so much of our business, especially in a operations game like property management, we we abhor waste.
Speaker 1:Right? We're looking for a zero waste business model. But on the sales and marketing side, there's gonna be some waste. Right? You gotta try it.
Speaker 1:If it was literally a copy and paste model, like, I will take this play off of the shelf, and I will run it, and it will work, and there will be zero waste, and I will get exactly the margins I wanted, everybody would right? So that's the thing that we always talk about is in sales and marketing, there is gonna be waste. There's gonna be experimentation. It's gonna be market driven. It's gonna be brand driven by what you can do.
Speaker 1:So what are we seeing work? We're seeing everything work. Right? We've got, we just released the scoreboard. On this weekend PM, we're gonna I think we're gonna talk about we've got our scoreboard, our market leaders.
Speaker 1:Our market leader in Charlotte, North Carolina closed 96 stores last month
Speaker 2:Hefty. In one month. And how many many owners out of comprised of the 96?
Speaker 1:It was a very unique strategy that I don't wanna give away. It included partnering up with somebody who brought in a group of investors that they were able to bring in all at one time. So it wasn't a mega deal, but it was a it was a eighty eighty of those 90 something doors were basically brought in through kind of a one effort. So I don't wanna give that away because that's a proprietary thing you're doing. We'll be talking about that in this week in PM.
Speaker 1:Just below that, we've got, you know, our good friend, Mark Aimele, with his podcast in Chicago, perennial leader on the leaderboard. I think they're closing somewhere between fifty and sixty doors a month. He is a local celebrity in Chicago. He's got the best podcast. He's got events.
Speaker 1:People show up. When we I think you're gonna you're gonna relate, Jordan. If you and I meet somebody at Naropa National and they walk up and they say, hey. What's working for lead gen? And they say, yeah.
Speaker 1:Just start a podcast. Going back to the beginning of the call, create content, build it for three years, spend all this money on it, and you'll start closing 50 doors a month. It's probably not the answer they were looking for when they were like, what's working in lead gen. Right? They're just gonna gloss over and be like, well, that sounds great for them.
Speaker 1:Not gonna do that. On the flip side, SEO is working. Good old fashioned cold calling investors is working. Having your out and taking advantage of all of these accidental investors that are coming is working. Real estate agent networking is working.
Speaker 1:It's been working forever. Pay per click is working. Pay per lead is working. Even though we think it's super expensive, we've still got clients that are crushing it with a pay per lead kind of model with, like, an all PM or a geek or something like that. So the truth is it's all working.
Speaker 1:The problem is is knowing what's gonna work for you, knowing what your appetite is, building a lead stack that's gonna work for you, and not being whole like, being held hostage through a single strategy, you know, and just doing it that way. So it's all worth it. It's it's not the answer people wanna hear, Jordan. No.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's it's exactly what I was about to say. It's not the answer people wanna hear, but I gotta say, I'm a if that's what you're selling, I'm buying. I generally subscribe to the idea that growth looks so much simpler on the outside, and it looks like that there would be one best strategy universally across all owner temperaments, markets, etcetera, that would just be the thing to do. And the reality is that the setup is so individual and unique to you.
Speaker 2:If I reflect back on my career, a lot of the marketing decisions that I made were based on what did I want to do? What sorts of activities did I want to engage in? It's kind of not kosher to say because it sounds like some gross sub optimization, but it is true that if you're hearing these words, you are a human that is deeply irrational at your core. It's our nature. Our nature is to lean and map towards business practices, strategies, partnerships, relationships that we enjoy and that we feel comfortable with for whatever individual reason that absolutely applies to sales and marketing.
Speaker 2:We talked about with the podcast on the front side, but I feel like I feel the same way everywhere else. PPC, Jeremy, some people just kind of get off on being in the campaign manager, getting your settings dialed in, getting it figured out versus thinking about SEO and the algorithms like they all kinda come with their own distinct set of activities and it's really common for me to see this strategy actually born out of what how people prefer to work and what they prefer to work on rather than some purely probabilistic model of what is likely to produce the highest results. Because the model of what's gonna produce the highest results, those models are made up, you know. People like put their finger on the scale depending on on what Mhmm. What what their background is.
Speaker 1:Well, let me let me say this, Jordan. If anyone's watching this and says, why would it matter that I want to to double down on that effort? Or why would it matter that I have an interest in making that my lead source? Cause they're like, well, results are results. Right?
Speaker 1:Like, I I bet a lot of people are here, they're like, why would what I care about matter? Well, why why you care about what matters is because none of this shit works overnight.
Speaker 2:It's not easy. It's
Speaker 1:good time.
Speaker 2:You have to do it over and over and over again. Yes.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Hundreds of You
Speaker 1:know, it would be great if we could all just sign up for wrestling club tomorrow and be a world champion wrestler, or we could just join the football team tomorrow and be the best in class. No. This takes pursuit. This is like this is what society rewards, is getting good at things, doubling down, and going all in, making a choice, and actually succeeding at it. And, you know, you and I both get these calls all the time.
Speaker 1:Just give me the cheat code. Give me the hack. You wanna make it easy. Right?
Speaker 2:I'm for me, coach. Put me in. Whatever you say I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1:Yes. Well, my my I mean, we can tell them what to do. A good coach is gonna save you a ton of time. A coach is gonna help you stay on the path, but it's still gonna take time. It's still gonna take money.
Speaker 1:But I'm not saying, though, Jordan, some people can solve their lead gen problem by just spending lots amounts of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, your skill
Speaker 1:That's okay.
Speaker 2:Your skill and will is the key primary input. I get this, this lead simple is a frame for me. When someone signs up and pays money, in some cases there's the perception that what they are paying is what came on the invoice. What you're paying to get set up and to rebuild the processes and the infrastructure for your business, what you paid wasn't what was on the invoice, it was your time. The awareness, you, your team.
Speaker 2:You spent tens of hours, in some cases hundreds of hours and certainly with growth that's gonna be the case that Mhmm. You're gonna spend hundreds of hours on this. So how could your interest or enjoyment not be relevant? Like, how could that possibly not be relevant? And like you said, for David Goggins listening to this podcast, because we know he's gonna crush this podcast, but for you know, he's maybe that guy's exempt.
Speaker 2:Maybe if it was standing on his head for sixteen hours a day, he'd do it. For the rest of us, myself included, my enjoyment and interest and that really does vary. It's a practical consideration because the pain to believe what you talked about and it wasn't exhaustive. But BNI, that's that's a great example, you know. We talked about working the PPC campaign.
Speaker 2:BNI is about as far on the other side of that axiom as you can get. How do you experience this and how do you interact with the difference in the temperament of the operators you're helping, and how you help navigate that to actual activities and channel strategies to pursue?
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's a great question. I I wish there was a perfect recipe and say, you know, I'm gonna give you a personality test, Jordan, and based on your personality, this is what you should code. This guy's I mean, it's not there. Right?
Speaker 1:I think the only the only answer I know, and I'm open to feedback on this, is you need exposure to what's possible. Mhmm. So the thing that we always try to do is show our community and and and the the industry in general. I I'm sure you've seen this with our webinars and the events we do and all the collaboration we have with you and with Profit Coach. All we wanna do is expose you to the ways people are winning.
Speaker 1:And I and I and I know that this is, you know, maybe a bias I have as an entrepreneur is then I'm gonna self select and say, hey. That's how I'm going to build my company. That's what I care about. Right? Or I have a peer or a mentor of mine that I really respect, and this is how Jordan is building his company.
Speaker 1:And you know what? I like how it's working for him. I'd like to model that. I'd like to find somebody who knows how to do that. So now in reality, you know, the answer for me is I just need to expose as many people as possible to as many ways to do it as possible, and then be very open with pros and the cons, and say, hey.
Speaker 1:This is a sweat equity opportunity. Mhmm. This is a check equity opportunity. Mhmm. This is a long term play that's gonna drive down the cost, and it's gonna create bigger outcome.
Speaker 1:This is a short term win. Mhmm. So, you know, I think it's easy to use the real estate analogy so much with property management because so many of us are in real estate. So we contrast, like, flipping properties versus wholesaling, which are all about getting cash early versus long time portfolio building, creating properties and actually, you know, syndicating those and and creating that, which is longer term opportunities. Those are huge exits that take forever to get to versus I need money tomorrow.
Speaker 1:So it's the same thing. It it really is. What's your parameter to run your business? If you're barely getting by and you need to grow, all you care about is where your next ten doors are coming from, let's have a conversation around what works for that. If you're in this for the long haul, and you're out there flipping properties like crazy, you've got other businesses, and this property management thing is really the long term play.
Speaker 1:We get a lot of calls from transactional brokerages who are doing just fine, and they're like, well, I'd just really like to get to a couple thousand doors over the next ten, fifteen years because that's residual income that's gonna pay us forever. It's gonna take care of my portfolio. That's an entirely different marketing strategy. So it really be it all begins with the end in mind as everything does. Right?
Speaker 1:So there is no one way to do it. And if your goal is to build 2,000 doors over twenty years and my goal is to stay in the business for the next two years so I can survive, we're gonna do different things, you know? And that's what we've really gotta take into consideration.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, there are so many different ways to skin the cat. But when we think about the commonalities amongst folks that are growing aggressively, that have figured out growth, quote unquote, we've parked on the fact that it's less of a knowledge gap and more of an intention gap of like how how much of a priority is it for you? And there's no judgment in that. Like there's no definitely no right or wrong answer to that question, but it's how much of a priority is it for you personally, not to delegate or stroke your track, to lend your own mental gaze and stare at it for an extended period of time.
Speaker 2:But the common patterns that I see, and I'm sure it, you know, I want to hear your feedback as well, common pattern that I see is that this was made a top priority for an extended period of time. That the owner found a strategy that they do deeply enjoy. Like it plays to their strengths, whatever those are. And they leaned in financially to the point where they operationalize the function. There was some muscle executing their will with it.
Speaker 2:It wasn't, you know, it didn't like stay on them the entire time. That's a key step I see at the end. Those are three things that are that just feel obvious to me and really stick out as like a repeated pattern. What what do you see?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, actually love that you bring that up because just like anything else, we all we I I feel this could just be bias of mine, that most of the owners I talk to think that 90% of business fall to this category, that you can figure it out, you can systematize it, you can delegate it, you can expect repeatable results. And then there's 10% of your business, like, well, shit just happens. Like, it's sales and marketing. Like, you're a good editor, you're not good at it. And, you know, from the beginning, Jordan, I think you and I have have rallied around this concept that anything that is worth doing long term has to be able to be systematized and delegated, and you should be able to expect consistent returns.
Speaker 1:Right? As when we were business partners, I go back to that all the time. You and I had lots of conversations. There were a lot of things you could do, and you would challenge me on it, and we would both talk and be like, yeah. We could do this.
Speaker 1:This is gonna be a huge boost. But is that sustainable? Is that something we're gonna be doing over and over again? So as much as we want the owner to Mhmm. Want to do it, which is what takes you to get, you know, kind of that first, you know Get it off the analogy for this that I talk about all the time is it's 90% of the rocket's fuel to get out of the atmosphere.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Right? Yeah. Agree. Talking about all the time.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. It's gonna take nothing but human will to get you there. But then at some point, you're gonna have to say, is this sustainable? Can I can I systematize this? Can I
Speaker 2:teach this? There
Speaker 1:are some things in our businesses that Jeremy and Jordan can do that probably is not handoffable to somebody else. Right? And so we need if we wanna really grow a good company, we need to use that as a crutch, as a catalyst, as, like, infusion juice to to hit goals. But then we need to be thinking as a business you know, as a as a leader, what how am I really creating enterprise value? What is possible?
Speaker 1:What can I create? And so that's just something, you know, we're always having conversations with our owners. Is this something you're just gonna do short term, or is this a scalable thing that you need to do? Yeah. Can I answer your question?
Speaker 2:Well, that's you can back into it a number of different ways. I think like where my mind goes here is unique ability. There's scalability of like, do I have the bandwidth or I have the time. You know, that's a very meaningful lens. I've had a number of activities that I knew I could really do some exciting stuff with for like a quarter and then after that the quality of me doing it would just go down and down and down.
Speaker 2:And that's sad, you know. I've seen that movie multiple times.
Speaker 1:Realistic though.
Speaker 2:It is real. Yes. Unique Time is is finite. That is a fact. But unique ability is another lens of like where should I be focusing?
Speaker 2:What would I not be able to or not want to delegate because I'm so good at it. It's what I'm here to be doing. Focus on that stuff. Double down on that stuff. And as you scale, my experience is that more and more is just ripped out of my hands.
Speaker 2:It's the obvious consequence of scaling. As I just I've had this stuff I've babysit, I've held onto, I've kind of micromanaged and it's all just slowly violently pulled out of your hands because things get bigger, you can't keep your hands on it. So obviously it's possible that it can be delegated. It's do you assign value in that exercise and are you willing to go through get over that hump of standing it up and then passing it off. But it's definitely the pattern of what folks do in order to get anywhere with this stuff.
Speaker 2:You mentioned like pay per lead. That in my mind is just like as far as you can get from having a sales marketing strategy. Because there is no barrier to entry. It takes no effort. So like the level of mastery that that demonstrates and therefore the returns that can come from something that has that little permission to entry, it like there is those leads get recycled and the quality is so low.
Speaker 2:Yes. There's some value there.
Speaker 1:There's a season for some people. If you've got nothing but brute force and you wanna call everybody back and you you wanna compete on, you know, maybe what these people are looking for, which is just a better response time or a lower cost. Yeah. Yeah. By all means.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm not gonna talk you out of using that strategy.
Speaker 2:True. If you're the response time guy if you're the response time guy and you truly call every lead within thirty seconds, under those circumstances, that that might be viable for you. You might get some juice. But that's back to, you know, your makeup and what you're willing to do. Many how many folks are willing to do
Speaker 1:that? What I love about the toolkit idea, Jordan, is that's not the weight like, you should not restrict your goals for the business based on the number of calls you can buy for pay per lead. Right. And I promise you, I've been on calls, and maybe you have been too. And they're like, well, I don't really know if I need to grow because I can only buy so many leads.
Speaker 1:I can only get, you know, six calls a day. I'm gonna put a ceiling on my business on those six calls a day. Right. Like, that's just the screwdriver. Right?
Speaker 1:Or the hammer, perhaps, you know? Mhmm. You need a whole toolkit. You need multiple ways to grow this company if you're gonna be playing at a high level. And we also know a competitor can come in town, and they can just start paying three times the amount you're paying for those leads, and your whole business model is gone in terms of growing.
Speaker 1:So, again, there's nothing wrong. I just want us to have a tech stack, you know? I'm sorry, a lead stack.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just the way that we want people to have a tech stack.
Speaker 2:Mismatched strategies is a theme I keep hearing from you. And the pay per lead marketplaces are one of the best examples of that because of how heavily the results are tilted and skewed. What is non obvious about pay per lead marketplaces is that the there there's a small number of competitors that are closing the bulk of the deals and those folks tend to stick around. And then in the rest of the the set of folks that are still also paying, there's low results and a high degree of churn. And it's the churn that actually props up those marketplaces and keeps them in business because it's a small number of operators that are closing the bulk of those deals.
Speaker 2:And that's an example of just mismatched strategy. There's so many folks that are signed up for that that just shouldn't because response times is a great example. That just that isn't an arena on which they want to compete on when that is very nakedly and obviously what you have to do. You have to call that lead back within the first minute.
Speaker 1:And you've gotta you've gotta beat the competitor's offer. Because even if you call them back in the first minute, they're gonna get three more voice mails. Uh-huh. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then they're Exactly. Well, you're 8%. These guys are 5%.
Speaker 2:You gotta be willing to slug it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that's not right for all of our clients.
Speaker 2:No. But it is it is for some. So, like, there's, you know, there's no dogma here. Right? The message here isn't paper lead as bad.
Speaker 2:It's that it's a very specific strategy. And if you're not willing to operate exactly on that strategy, move on. There's other there's better passages.
Speaker 1:And my argument is it's a hammer. Right? In the toolkit Yeah. Can't build your company and hit your goals with just a hammer.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right? You need other tools. Right. That's really the point. It's okay.
Speaker 1:It's just not here to save you.
Speaker 2:So we're talking about channel strategy. Let's pivot. I wanna hear some more of the themes of what I assume are going to come through at the All Bound Conference, which is taking place in Austin, Texas, early December same week of LSU.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:I wanna hear about what you have teed up and use that as kind of a general a proxy for what you prioritize. Like the agenda there reflects what you're currently prioritizing and thinking people need to know and understand and what's going on in the market. Who are you targeting, and what are people gonna be hearing out about at that event?
Speaker 1:We're we're targeting ambitious property managers. We've told people that the event is designed for owners, people in charge of business development, and marketing manager. And there's gonna be something in that for all of them. In fact, each presentation we're doing, Jordan, we're actually saying, hey. These are the takeaways.
Speaker 1:If you're the owner, this is what you should take away. You're the business development manager, this is what you should take away. If you're in charge of marketing, this is what you should take away. So we're trying to spoon feed it. You have been a big part of some sales masteries.
Speaker 1:Glass from the past. Do you remember this bad boy from New Hampshire?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:National?
Speaker 2:Oh, boy. Was that number one or number two?
Speaker 1:This was number two, I think. Was number I
Speaker 2:sure do. I sure do.
Speaker 1:50 pages of a workbook. Right? So, you know the the whole point of bringing that up, because I had this because I was sharing it with somebody the other day, is this is the one of a kind nature of our mastery events is you leave with ideas. Ideas you can implement tomorrow, ideas that won't even make sense to you for six months or twelve months from
Speaker 2:now. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So I know you've always been a big fan of leaving an event with one big takeaway, which I agree. Gotta do something right away. But our nature is to kind of overwhelm people with lots of ideas, but not for that stuff to just dissipate and turn into fairy dust, but give them a way that they can take it home in a workbook. And maybe you're gonna find an idea that you heard in December. It didn't make sense to you until next October.
Speaker 1:And then this was like, hey. This actually makes a lot of sense for us. Let's do it. So our goal is to bring in a ton of case studies. Here's what's working within the industry, for inbound, outbound, and next bound.
Speaker 1:By the way, next bound is just who knows your next client, which is referral marketing. What are all the ways people are doing it today? What are some ways that we're seeing some gentle or auxiliary industries doing it that are just outside of what we do? Other real estate services, other, you know, professional services that really map back to property management, but show you what they're doing. Who's gonna be the first to adopt that idea for the industry?
Speaker 1:You know, I'm a bit I've I'm gonna be repetitive on this, Jordan. When you brought me in this industry, we went to conferences. Everybody said, if they don't do in property management, go listen to them. It's not a good idea. Right?
Speaker 1:That was like every conference he took me to. Those guys don't know what they're doing. It doesn't work in property management. Since then, in the last five years, I think you and I have seen the most innovative companies take ideas from other industries and bring them into the industry. And that's a theme of what Renscale is all about.
Speaker 1:It's a theme of what I'm about. I think you are the same way. Let's bring ideas that are just outside the realm of what we do, and let's just look at these brilliant people, find a way to make it work for them. So that's my goal. That's really who the
Speaker 2:conference is for. So I'm hearing the focus here is there's a lot encompassed in that. What I think about, if my intent was to grow, to show up and blow up in 2024, what I would be showing up for? Content, strategy, yes. Get clear broadly directionally.
Speaker 2:Like, directionally, where am I headed? You know me. I'm I lean more on the vision side, so I'm like high level direction. But but the other takeaway for me, what I would most definitely be bent on if this was my priority in 2024 running SFR, property management company, would be the connections and the relationships of the people that I'm going to call repeatedly to see, hey, what's up? I'm trying this.
Speaker 2:I've done that. What's working for you? What's your offer look like right now? How are you handling pressure from people with large portfolios? What's going on with ops?
Speaker 2:Are you you running into any bottlenecks when you hand deals off? Is that jamming you up at all? Those types of conversations, that's where the money is at. And when you come to an event like this, if that is your intention, it's really straightforward, you know? Like it's it that that will happen for you if that is your intention.
Speaker 2:And I think that that's an incredibly useful intention. I mean, relationships, sharing that kind of context, that's where so much of the insight that's come up for me in my career. And I'm seeing a growing edge of folks in the organization that are not just the company owner doing that. You know, I don't know if I've ever articulated this, but I'd say over the last two years, I've seen a bit more of that happening. I've seen examples of integrators or general manager or COO, whatever title you want to use.
Speaker 2:Number two's, syncing up and getting together. I've seen at least one group of that is taking place in Profit Coach right now. I'm seeing another example for maintenance. Maintenance score I've seen maintenance coordinators having a mastermind. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Obviously, we've seen that with the BDM function with ScaleClub. How many folks are
Speaker 1:in ScaleClub right now? Ballpark? Yeah. We're we're close to 70 people, which is about 60 companies. And, yeah, I think we've even had some ScaleClub members, you know, leave Skill Club and then start their own businesses together.
Speaker 1:So talk about masterminding. Right? We definitely spurred that kind of That's true.
Speaker 2:That's It's a fact.
Speaker 1:That's a fact. Very early this morning with a with an integrator, and she said, thanks to Profit Coach, I'm meeting other integrators in the same business. So I had I didn't know you guys were doing that over Profit Coach, but I heard that literally at first call this morning. So I love the very specific masterminds that are coming out of this kind of collaboration.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So the last thing that comes to mind for me in terms of takeaways, you know, if I'm putting myself in the shoes of someone listening and being at the event, is around setting expectations for 2024 and baby, it is November. We're coming into Thanksgiving. Forecasting, forecasting, forecasting. It's like low key consuming my life right now.
Speaker 2:I'm in meeting after meeting and it's ground and pound, I'm getting ready, and our our financial year doesn't even start until February 1 because we're offset by a month. So I'm further ahead than I've been in the past. I'm getting a lot of lift out of it. I'm curious for you, how do you think about the kind of forecasting that scales and makes sense for your average residential PM managing, you know, three to 600 units. How do you think about forecasting goals for 2024?
Speaker 2:What should someone be keeping in mind?
Speaker 1:It's a great question. You know, we we've done a lot of forecasting. I know you you have a very exciting view of forecasting, which I do as well. Because, typically, you know, people who don't have a goal in mind, don't hit it. Right?
Speaker 1:It's pretty obvious to say, especially on the side and also on the cost control side. So forecasting is just a function of sophistication in your business model. I think we all know that. Right? Well, I'm very excited about the forecasting that we've built together, Jordan, between LeadSimple and Rinscale on the upside.
Speaker 1:Don't call Jeremy to manage your finances and your budgeting. But if you wanna forecast your sales and your top end, I think we're just as sophisticated as the profit coaching guys are over on managing the expenses and the budgeting. So the takeaway that I would say is you gotta have goals, and you gotta be realistic. But something we talk about all the time is, you know, if you're twenty, thirty doors today or 200 or 300 doors today and your goal is to be four or 500 doors, you gotta budget for that. Right?
Speaker 1:I think that we all somehow think that we can just budget to be a 200 door company, both on the upside and the marketing and the cost side, and then somehow to wake up tomorrow, we're a 600 door company. It takes intention. It takes sacrifice. It's gotta be well thought out. You don't wanna bet the farm on it to the point where you'd be you know, you'd have a death wound if you overspend.
Speaker 1:But there is a gigantic leap of faith, and it should be done within the right expertise and within the right, experience to say, hey. I think we can go from a 200 door company to a 400 door company. This is what our budget would look like. And if we're halfway through the year and we're not hitting those numbers, we need reserve budgets to change that. That's something we talk about all the time.
Speaker 1:So we were doing here, you know, you staying inside working at Rinscale. I do believe, like you guys, next year, we'll be on the Inc. 5,000 fastest growing company list, and we've doubled in size. And and we've had goals to triple in size, and we've hit those goals. We've had to adjust those budgets.
Speaker 1:So I guess the takeaway, sounds a little convoluted, is you need the right budgets for what is reality, what's gonna keep you in the game. We can't die, the ultimate death stroke as a business. But you also you're keep spending like a million dollar company if you're on your way to becoming a $5,000,000,000 company. Right? And you know team investment in people, advertising, marketing, all of those things lead to creating the next goal.
Speaker 1:So the most complicated thing that I've kind of experienced and I've learned from my EIO network, you and I have talked about, we've got a mutual friend named Greg Crabtree, is how do you manage for profit at the size you are, but make the right investments to the scale you wanna be? And it's the hardest part of my business. It was easy. Both neighbors on next door of every house that everybody listening to this lives in would have $10,000,000 a year business. I think this is the one of the hardest parts about business.
Speaker 2:Shout out to Greg Crabtree. That was a clutch reference. Yeah. He's doing great work. For anybody who hasn't read simple numbers, it's essential reading.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, you know, really my question there was about goals, and I hear you saying people need to have a goal, which is not obvious. And I think what I would add here is when you're thinking about where to set the goal, people can get hung up in all sorts of different directions. You don't wanna be over, you don't wanna be under, you don't wanna commit because you don't wanna you don't wanna fail, like you can really get in your head with setting your goals. The way that I think about goal setting is what are you willing to commit to, where when you're making up the gap, it'll come in the form of like a pound of flesh. How big of a gap are you willing to make up?
Speaker 2:If everything just wasn't teed up perfectly and wasn't gonna go exactly right and you were gonna have to course correct and by sheer force of will fix it to get back to the goal and stay on track, how much of that are you up for? That's a just a really helpful calibrating lens for me and I know that my appetite is lower than other people's. Some people's. It's higher than some other people's. What are you optimizing for?
Speaker 2:Stability? Going sideways? That's that's there's there's temptation in that me and that I call it temptation because it's not really what I want to do. I get the most juice out of the journey by being under load and strain. And so that's what I'm solving and optimizing for.
Speaker 2:So therefore the goals are just commensurate. It's kind of obvious that you would have big goals if you're looking to be experiencing growth by virtue of being under strain. However, we both know that when you get, when you go sideways, if you just go sideways, the tenor, the tone, the vibe, the ethos, it feels different. Instead of feeling like, yet again, I have no idea what I'm doing because I've never done this before. You get to a place of like, okay, this is somewhat comfortable.
Speaker 2:This is familiar. And somewhere in that nexus is where everybody has to calibrate. And the the counsel for me is just to be maximally honest with yourself and not aspirational about your level of ambition. You know? Be as be honest about exactly how ambitious you are.
Speaker 2:No more, no less. Whatever that is. That's kind of that's my guiding feedback. How does that land with you?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I I'm gonna I hesitate because I'm super ambitious. And you you've seen that. I mean, looks like me. So and you and I have had counsel of clients where we're like, yeah.
Speaker 1:They're not. They they're saying they want x, and then we're telling them what it's gonna take to get x. And then you can read the look on their face, and they're like, thank you for having that conversation with me Mhmm. Jordan, because I don't want that. Right?
Speaker 1:The the pound of flesh Mhmm. You're talking about. It is really, you know, I I think satisfaction and enjoy enjoy from life as an individual does come from progress. It does come from pushing the boundaries and and doing things we wouldn't think were possible before. So I over indexed on You're a
Speaker 2:romantic entrepreneur, bro. That
Speaker 1:that that's what's out criticize there. Risk and the the winner story. And I did it, but it's not for everybody. So that's me holding back because I know I've got 50 clients that, like, I wouldn't give them that advice because I've got to know them and they don't wanna do it. You know?
Speaker 1:So I'm always pushing people, and maybe that's the gift I have to give to the people in my proximity.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's why people are that's why people are coming to you. Right? They're self electing saying, push me. Like, help me. Help me to get up there.
Speaker 2:I've done that, man. Like, the coaching relationships I've worked with, that's all it was. It was it was it was a push, you know? Taken to a deeply uncomfortable place and it's produced some stuff I'm really proud of and grateful for.
Speaker 1:There should be no court ordered coaching relationship. It's gotta be selected. It's not gonna work. Right? It's not gonna work.
Speaker 1:And they're like, no. We just need to go see Jordan. He's gonna teach you to change figure.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Be healthier. Do something different. Like, it's not gonna work. It's gotta be self selected.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well said. Alright, man. Well, I we covered some good ground there, but something that hasn't come up that I really wanted to hit was I wanna talk a little bit about this dream that you had. I remember being at a tequila bar with you and you just kinda dropping this idea on me that you were really excited about and I think you knew that I was really gonna like and I really did like it and it was just a very enjoyable kinda satisfying conversation. Because one thing I know about you is that you are pretty bent towards wanting to do long term planning to set vision and also as a forcing function, and then like really kind of call your shot and map towards it, which I really respect.
Speaker 2:So when we looked at it, like I just assumed that this was going to become reality. Know, you're manifesting shit, for lack of a better term. So that was the early memory, and today it's here. And that is the only PM focus SFR, professional PM focus publication that I'm aware of outside of the one that Narpen produces. What do we got cooking here, brother?
Speaker 2:What what are you up to with this project?
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I remember sitting at the bar with you at you're in Orlando at a conference together, and I did share with you on I think on my iPhone, of all places, my little brief for Strategic PM. And and this goes back to the idea of, I think, you and I are just drowning in case studies of people doing stuff that other people think is impossible. So some of our clients, like I said, like, the Mark Haley, you know, he's his goal is to get to a million dollars of recurring revenue a month in property management. And I think they hit that, actually. And I think a lot of people are like, well, that's just crazy because that's what I hope to do at at at a yearly rate.
Speaker 1:And then other people are, you know, creating these amazing maintenance businesses within their property management businesses, and some of those divisions are creating more revenue than they can ever imagine. And so I saw this, and I said, we love the community that we're watching happen in property management. I just believe most of what I was saying was talk around how to be a good fiduciary steward of the property, how to be profitable, how to not get in trouble, how to make your life easier. But I didn't really see short of you with your podcast because I don't wanna discount that. I just didn't see this amazing amount of case studies and storytelling around people that were leading the industry.
Speaker 1:And I said, hey. People need to know what's possible. People need to know that there are ways to make money being small and profitable. People need to know there's ways to make money being giant. People need to know that building a property management company is actually maybe the best catalyst you can to build your own investment property, like our good friend Ralph, who's got, you know, 500 investment properties through his clients, which is amazing.
Speaker 1:He's partnering with them. I just didn't see a place where those stories were being pulled. And so I thought, what if there was, like, a Forbes magazine of property management? Because thinking long term, if you know I do, we talk all the time, I don't really make three month bets. I don't buy a stock to sell it the same year.
Speaker 1:I'm buying a ton of Tesla, ton of Apple. I'm buying things that I think are gonna be really valuable ten years from now. And I think it's the same way. I think that this industry is growing like crazy. I think that the market for professional property management, especially in residential and auxiliary markets, like association short term commercial, is only going to explode.
Speaker 1:And I think they're gonna be looking for leadership. And so I didn't see that need being filled. So we came up with Strategic PM. We have a quarterly magazine. We have about 10,000 mailing addresses.
Speaker 1:So if you don't have it yet, go to strategicpm.com and sign up. They're mailing now, and they'll mail every quarter. And it's a full on glossy print magazine because there's a huge deficit of people online that are actually participating in the community, And it's hard to get email addresses that people respond to. It's hard to get phone numbers that people answer. But you know what we can do?
Speaker 1:We can get everybody's office addressed. And if a glossy magazine shows up in their office talking about their peers doing great things, I think people will start you glom onto that and wanna know more about it. So we have Street Studio PM, the mailing magazine, and then we have This Week in PM. I built this studio out, dining room, which is crazy. I swap out my Renskeel, you know, on mic for This Week in PM.
Speaker 1:And every other week, we have a live show where we basically imagine, like, a morning business show about property management. Because I think this industry needs that kind of respect and that kind of pulse to know what's going on, who's winning, and what they should be doing next. So that's the vision, and that's what we're executing on. It's costing us a fortune, so I would appreciate if anybody would actually pay attention to it because we're putting a ton of energy and money to this.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. You're you're making your bet. You're you're definitely making your bet, calling your shot here. I love that.
Speaker 2:I love getting to witness that. I think what was interesting to me is and what's just generally appealing to me is celebration of the operator. Back to the whole comment I made about, you know, that romantic flavor of entrepreneurship, that very much appeals to me as well. That's one way to phrase it. Another way is just like acknowledgment for people in the industry that are doing cool stuff to be seen and be celebrated.
Speaker 2:That gives me joy to witness. So eat like the the magazine shot of Brandon. Brandon, my guy. Brandon Scolton, key runner Denver. I've known this guy for a minute and just seeing him on the cover of the magazine.
Speaker 2:I don't know. It was cool. It was gratifying. I was like, yeah.
Speaker 1:Because he The romanticism that that he has built a thousand dollar company by wanting to be the best place in Denver to work. Right? Like, how much conversation is happening about investing in your people and profit management? He's so confident than that. About you from an outsourcing and automating and then software, but who's really talking about investing in your people?
Speaker 1:And then he's here at a thousand doors, super profitable. I think he's one of the most profitable in his franchise because he invests in those people. Nobody's talking about that. So I just wanna make sure we're telling those stories.
Speaker 2:He's always had that disposition to make those types of investments and been really vocal about it. So, yeah, I mean, that and a thousand other stories, And that's what's interesting to me. Like story narrative, it is what drives us. It is what shapes and crafts us. And you're leaning into it.
Speaker 2:So just for maximal clarity, brother, like somebody is like, give it to me. I want it. How do they sign up to begin getting this?
Speaker 1:Go to strategicpm.com, the website. You just click on sign up. You can create a free online sign up. You can also add your mailing address. You want the glossy full cover magazine.
Speaker 1:Go to any of the social profiles for a strategic PM, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and you're gonna get if you subscribe, you're gonna get the live video show that we do every other Thursday. The irony is I know it's called This Week in PM, Jordan. But if they feel like it takes us weeks to come up with a great episode, I always feel like I have to defend that, but it does. We put a ton of time in it, so it's This Week in PM.
Speaker 2:Every other week in pm.com. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We yeah. We just had the same sizzle. So
Speaker 2:I love it. Alright, dude. I love Jammin with you. I'm excited to have you in my city later this year. That's gonna be a really fire week.
Speaker 2:So looking forward to that, and I love to see what you're doing in the industry, the ways in which you're giving back, highlighting, celebrating operators. And, yeah, man, I'm glad to be in this. The industry is richer because you're in it. So thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. You brought me into this industry. Let's not forget. You know? So I am here because you brought me in.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, I think I'm just I'm just building I'm scaffolding on your shoulders. Right? I'm my own niche.
Speaker 2:That's really kind.
Speaker 1:Couple of my new song.
Speaker 2:That's really, really kind. Yeah. Maybe a bit of an overstatement there. I mean, you've come and you've added a ton of value, but I am glad that whatever that initial contact was, many, many
Speaker 1:Yes. On top of the fundamentals that you brought. You know what I mean? So, yes, I just gotta I gotta give I gotta call it what it is. I'm adding value in my own way, but it's only because you set the foundation.
Speaker 2:I think like the takeaway from anybody that's hearing that is like when you meet somebody that shares the same POV, when and I don't know about you brother, but that comes up for me. It's not just like background accomplishments, like I do have a specific POV and in our initial interactions, I could just tell that we were fairly synced up on how we saw some things. So that made it a lot easier. So yeah, if you're listening to this, like one takeaway for today is who are the people in business that you find that you just kind of relate similarly to how business should be done and how do you how do you get yourself in more rooms with people like that? Final parting takeaway for me, one last piece of advice for you Jeremy.
Speaker 2:If you had one last piece of advice for an operator listening to this, what is it?
Speaker 1:I think I gotta go back to what I have the shirt on. So this is something we've talked about from early days, Jordan. More doors, less trauma. It it means a lot to me. It could be easy to misunderstand, but the less drama part is the people part.
Speaker 1:Right? As an entrepreneur, you and I have had this conversation, Jordan. Nothing affects our quality of life more than our clients and our staff. And so the less drama comes from be good enough to attract the right clients that you want, be intentional enough to attract the right clients, and be good enough to attract and keep the right people, in your life as months newer, it's gonna be far more enjoyable. So it's gonna keep you in the game longer and affords you the opportunity to
Speaker 2:make difference.
Speaker 1:So start with the people. That's more doors than what's true with me.
Speaker 2:I love it. Yeah. That's a whole another whole another podcast episode right there. We'll have to pick that one up another time. Alright.
Speaker 2:As always, it was great jamming with you. Loved it. Thanks for coming on the show, brother. Appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me, man. See you soon.
Speaker 2:Until next time. That's it for this episode. Hope you enjoyed it. You can check out other episodes along the way. If you're watching this on YouTube, appreciate to subscribe.
Speaker 2:Any comments, I'm always here to engage. If you're listening on an audio platform, would really appreciate review. It's a great way to help other people find out about the show.
