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DGS 308: Passive Power Plays: Land, Storage, and Content that Converts

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Content provided by Jason Hull, DoorGrow | #1 Property Management Growth Experts with Jason, and Sarah Hull. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Jason Hull, DoorGrow | #1 Property Management Growth Experts with Jason, and Sarah Hull or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Seth Williams (00:00) I was able to buy a lot of land at dirt cheap prices. So there's no mortgages or anything on it. And when you buy anything for a small fraction of its actual market value, it's not hard to turn around and sell that thing and make money on it.

Jason Hull (00:14) All right, I am Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of property management businesses, helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profit.

simplify operations and build and replace entire teams, we are like bar rescue for property managers. In fact, we have cleaned up and rebranded over 300 businesses and we run the leading property management mastermind with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world and 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. Now, let's get into the show. And my guest today I'm hanging out with is Seth Williams. Welcome, Seth.

Seth Williams (01:28) Hey, Jason, good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jason Hull (01:31) Yeah, it's great to have you and of REtipster. so Seth, let's get into a little bit of your background. You've done a lot of different things connected to real estate. Give us the background on your journey and how you got it kind of got into entrepreneurism and what made you start all this crazy stuff.

Seth Williams (01:48) Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Well, my journey kind of starts back in about 2005, 2006 when I was still in college. And like most people, I was trying to find houses I could buy that I could flip or rent that kind of thing. Just get into the real estate game. But I didn't really know anything about how to do it. I had no competitive advantage. I was looking on the MLS. That was the only place I knew I could look for to find deals.

And there weren't any deals. It was horrible. I spent hundreds of hours and found nothing that made any financial sense. And I was just like, man, how do people do this? Like, how do people find good real estate deals if I can't find them? I was looking everywhere and there was nothing out there. And it was around, you know, after struggling with this for a couple of years, I discovered two things that kind of worked hand in hand. The first was the land business. So buying vacant land and

Like most people, when I first heard that I was like, what? Picket land? Like, why would I do that? That makes no sense. It's just dirt. Like, where's the cash flow? Where's the income? The other thing that I discovered though was how to find deals off market through something called the delinquent tax list. And this is basically a list of property owners that every county has of properties that are currently back due on their property taxes. This is not the same thing.

Jason Hull (02:52) Yeah.

Seth Williams (03:11) as the tax sale list. So it's not the list of properties that's going to go up for auction soon. It's people who still own their property, but they're back doing taxes. If they don't pay them off soon, they're going to get their property taken from them. And these two things together, land and the delinquent tax list, I was able to find and contact people who had land with delinquent taxes on it. And because there were delinquent taxes, they're in a situation where it's like,

Jason Hull (03:18) Yeah, they're just behind.

Seth Williams (03:37) You got to pay off these taxes in like weeks or you're going to lose everything. So why are you in this situation? Is it because you don't care about the property? Like what is the issue? And in many cases, that was it. Maybe they just inherited it. Maybe they bought it 20 years ago, but for whatever reason, they didn't care about the thing. And I'm sitting there saying, Hey, I'll pay you a few hundred dollars, maybe a few thousand dollars, and I'll pay off your taxes and I'll make this problem go away.

And because a lot of these people didn't want their property anyway, and I was kind of taking care of a nuisance in their life, I was able to buy a lot of land at dirt cheap prices. And I could also buy it free and clear. So there's no mortgages or anything on it. And when you buy anything for a small fraction of its actual market value, it's not hard to turn around and sell that thing and make money on it. So that was the business I got into. And it's been awesome. It's changed a lot over the years, but

It's just been a really great way to, you know, without needing a whole lot of cash, finding properties, getting them for a very cheap price, and then making money without having to change anything on the property.

Jason Hull (04:45) Yeah, got it. Okay, cool. Is that still the go-to strategy? Delinquent tax lists.

Seth Williams (04:52) So, it's definitely still effective, but the drawback of the delinquent tax list is that they're kind of a pain to get, and then even when you do get them, they're kind of a mess to sort through. So, if you're willing to go through the nuisance of getting the list and sorting through it, there's a ton of value on that. But there's another way that's actually easier through a data service that I use called the LAN portal. And it's basically just a much more streamlined

Jason Hull (05:04) Yeah.

Yeah.

Seth Williams (05:20) seamless, organized way to get lists of landowners. They don't necessarily have delinquent taxes, but I can find specifically the types of properties I want and then either send the mail or a cold column, that kind of thing. So both ways work. They both have pros and cons. The delinquent tax list is more of an annoying way to do it, but it's probably the more effective way. The land portal is a lot easier, but you get a little bit less motivation on that list because people don't have this delinquent tax problem.

Jason Hull (05:48) Yeah, less of a mess to clean up, but probably a little quicker. so cool. you're going to unpack today the secrets of building wealth through land investing. This is like your number one specialty. And we'll chat a little bit about self storage. And I'm sure there's some property managers that are listening that might be like, haven't done that yet. Like I have not gotten into.

That sort of investment and most of the property managers listening you if you're on a property management business your number one goal Should not be to just manage other people's properties. It should probably be to build up your own portfolio of stuff and and make some money That's probably a bigger better play and leveraging your company to attract deals and to attract Real estate so let's get into this. Where do we start?

Seth Williams (06:37) Yeah, well, what I just described, there's kind of the high level view of how you find properties in the first place. And I mean, in terms of like people out there who are property managers who might invest in houses and that kind of thing, there's only one tax list or the land portal can work for those kinds of properties to the main difference is that you're going to find usually less competition when dealing with vacant land, because most people aren't thinking about land, thinking about houses. They think that's the way they have to do it.

And that's fine if you want that. But the problem with houses, as you probably know, in property management, there's a lot more wrinkles. There's a lot more people problems. There's things falling apart that are broken and get stolen and destroyed. With land, there's none of that. It's a much simpler animal to deal with. But if your strategy is to find rentals or something like that, you could certainly scope out rental properties using the same method. You would just be targeting different types of property owners than I do.

Jason Hull (07:10) Thank

got it. So how does this connect to self storage?

Seth Williams (07:34) Well, self storage is a totally different business than buying and selling vacant land, but there is some crossover. So back in 2021, I found a piece of land that was zoned residential. It was 6.7 acres and I bought it and I rezoned it to commercial. And then I got approval to build a self storage facility because I had always wanted to get into this business. A land business is great for

generating big influxes of cash. It's like a cash generating machine. But self storage is a little bit different. At least the way that I do it, it's more of a cash flow play. you know, all in all, took me a couple million dollars to buy the land and build this facility. It took me basically a year to design it and build it. And it's comparatively speaking, more of a trickle of cash, cash flow, but it's permanent cash flow. There's also a lot of depreciation write offs.

It's also very scalable. So it's easy to increase every single person's rent by $5 and the value effectively goes way up because of that. But like nobody moves out because it's just five bucks and most people don't care about a $5 increase per month. So it's a very different business. And for me, my long-term goal is to do more of that because the benefit of self-storage is that unlike land, it's not like a

thing that you have to keep peddling for it to keep working. Land is a very active, you know, got to keep peddling or the cashflow is going to stop. Whereas self-storage is, well, you can buy one facility and the management is not terribly difficult for that, at least compared to like a rental property and the cashflow will come in for as long as you own the thing. So that was why I made that shift.

Jason Hull (09:12) Nice. well, tell us a little bit about cell storage. How does that work? How can maybe property managers potentially get in?

Seth Williams (09:21) Yeah, well, it's when I first got into it, what I tried to do is buy an existing facility from somebody within like an hour driving radius of where I lived. And I think that's probably the best first move is to do that if you can, because you don't have to deal with all of the work of construction and there's cash flow on day one. So like right when you buy the thing, money is already coming in. Whereas when you build a new one, it takes months for the thing to fill up.

So that was what I tried to do at first, but problem was in my market, I couldn't find anybody who wanted to sell their property at anywhere near a reasonable price. People wanted like twice as much as what their facilities were worth. And people were paying it like it was just crazy. You couldn't find good deals. And when I saw that, was like, wow, I would normally never build something. But if people are being dumb and overpaying for self storage facilities, I could probably give this a go.

And even if I screw it all up, I could still sell it and get out if I needed to. So that was why I decided to do that. And it's nice in that you get to design it and lay it out the way you want, but it's also a much longer runway required to put the cash in and then wait for it to fill up and start cash flow.

Jason Hull (10:29) Yeah, this is our market to building these things out and then just selling them even though they're empty.

Seth Williams (10:35) Yeah, that's what some people do. Selling them empty. I mean, that's not the ideal play. The real value of these things comes from paying tenants, that kind of thing. Maybe what most people would do is build them or maybe even buy an existing one that's half empty and then fill it up. Like do whatever you have to do to get tenants in there, whether it's changing the pricing or advertising more. And then once it's at least reasonably full, then you could cash out and do whatever you want. Buy another one or do something else.

Jason Hull (10:39) Right.

Got it. Okay. Got it. Cool. So vacant land, self storage, and then you're also like, you do a lot of content creation stuff in the real estate space. So tell us a little bit about that.

Seth Williams (11:12) Sure. Yeah. So I started a website called REtipster back in 2012. And it was really kind of a place to store a lot of the lessons and knowledge that I had gained from my experience in land investing and in owning rental properties and everything I had done to that point. And I didn't really know what the plan was. I just knew, like, it's kind of fun for me to take my ideas and thoughts and things I've learned and distill them down into like bite sized chunks and help other people.

figure out how to do the business from where they're at. And it turned out to be a lot of fun. And it didn't make money for like probably the first year that I was running it. But eventually I found ways to monetize it. Started a podcast, a YouTube channel. And a lot of what we talk about is land, but we also talk about self storage and occasionally rental properties, other things that are ancillary related to real estate investing.

Jason Hull (12:07) Okay, well cool. Let me do a quick word from our sponsor and then we can get into a little bit more. So our sponsor for this episode is Vendoroo Many of you listening tell me that maintenance is probably the least enjoyable part of being a property manager and definitely the most time consuming. But what if you could cut that workload by up to 85 %? That's exactly what Vendoroo has achieved. They've leveraged cutting edge AI technology to handle nearly all of your maintenance tasks from initiating work orders.

and troubleshooting to coordinating with vendors and reporting. This AI doesn't just automate, it becomes your ideal employee, learning your preferences and executing tasks flawlessly, never needing a day off and never quitting. This frees you up to focus on the critical tasks that really move the needle for your business, whether that's refining operations, expanding your portfolio, or even just taking a well-deserved break. Over half the room at last year's DoorGrowLive event conference signed up with Vendoroo right there.

And then a year later, they're not just satisfied, they're raving about how vendor is transformed their business. Don't let maintenance drag you down. Step up your property management game with vendor. Visit vendor.ai slash door grow today and make this the last maintenance hire you'll ever need. All right, cool. So, Seth.

Where should we go from here? We've been talking a little bit about vacant land, a little bit about self storage, talking a little bit about RE tipster. What do you think would be of the most benefit to property management business owners that are exploring some of this stuff?

Seth Williams (13:42) Well, you know, maybe we could have a little conversation, you and me. So I've got a few questions I always go to when I'm talking to other real estate investors that are always kind of brings out some interesting perspectives. How long have you been in real estate, Jason?

Jason Hull (13:55) Well, so I've been involved with coaching and consulting property management companies. So I'm more of a business coach for like since 2008.

Seth Williams (14:04) Mm OK, gotcha. Well, interesting. Here's a question for you. What's one thing that you see new property managers focusing on that you think is actually a distraction from long term success?

Jason Hull (14:09) so while.

That's a good one. So the most common thing that I see that's a big distraction from long-term success is digital marketing. So a lot of property managers think in order to get more doors or get business, they need to do SEO. They need to do Google ads like pay per click, content marketing, social media marketing. The problem is the dirty secret marketers don't want to tell property managers because they like making money off of them.

is that there's very little search volume of people looking on the internet for property management. So they can go on Google trends right now, put in property management backdated to 2004 when Google started tracking data and metrics to the present. And what you'll see is there's very little search volume. And if you compare it to any other term, like compared to AI is a good one lately, it has the same search volume of AI a decade ago. Whereas AI has this meteoric rise.

Seth Williams (15:13) Mm, sure.

Jason Hull (15:15) And compared to AI, property management is just a little line at the bottom. It like doesn't even register. And so there's plenty of business out there of people that don't want to manage their own property. There's no shortage in the U.S. There's no scarcity, but they're not looking for a property manager actively because they're either not aware that property managers are a viable option or exist, or they are aware, but most property managers suck. So they've written it off.

Seth Williams (15:44) Yeah. So how do you find those people then if you don't know where they're looking or maybe you do know where they're looking.

Jason Hull (15:44) and they're not really looking.

We get them to do crazy things like pick up the phone and call non owner occupied property owners or like connect with real estate agents and create relationships to help the real estate agents get more deals from investors, stuff like that. So.

Seth Williams (16:02) Yeah. I'll

tell you, there's a ton of power in somebody who's willing to pick up the phone. I mean, so many people don't even want to think about that. But if you can do that, man, you're already way, way ahead of the crowd.

Jason Hull (16:09) And there we go.

Yeah, I mean, it's the one thing that we can teach clients that they can create business on demand at any time and not have to hope and pray that a market is able to give them something. yeah. Okay.

Seth Williams (16:20) Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Well, here's another question. What's something that

you hear novice property managers or critics of property managers complain about that makes you roll your eyes?

Jason Hull (16:35) Well, the first that comes to mind is a lot of novice property managers complain about the potential clients being cheap.

yet they're cheap. And so that's kind of the blind spot that I think there's a lot of property managers that have. They're like, like, I had a client once and he was complaining that, about, you know, I'm tired of getting all these people wanting discounts or asking for us to lower our pricing, all these people that are so cheap about related to property management. And then I saw the same person post in a Facebook group for property managers saying, hey, does anybody have a discount for this?

property management software or this then like, what is it? A maintenance software that exists because I don't want to pay full price. And so the irony wasn't lost on me. you know, usually the blind spot that we have is we, you know, kind of project that and create that in others. And so if you're cheap and you have a cheap mindset, then you're going to attract cheap clients. It's far more likely not only that, but you're going to be a lot more sensitive to it. It's going to impact you differently.

Seth Williams (17:16) Hmm.

Jason Hull (17:36) and people will pick up on that and they'll feel more anxious and be more price sensitive because you are.

Seth Williams (17:40) Yeah.

For those property managers who are willing to pick up the phone and call around and find their customers, what do they do to avoid those cheap clients? Is there some red flag they can look out for to say, you're not a good fit. We're going to go look here instead. Like, how do you find people that are willing to pay what they have to pay?

Jason Hull (17:58) Well, I think I just had Dustin Heiner on as an interview. And yeah, I know him from some masterminds that we're in together. And Dustin's a really cool guy. Dustin had this, we did this great episode where he's like our client's ideal client, really. Because he's like, the first thing I do is I try to find a property manager before I even get a rental property.

Seth Williams (18:03) Yeah, Essence

Mm.

Jason Hull (18:24) And I want to ask them where I should get a rental property and ask them for their advice. And I want a good property manager I can trust before I go find a property. But it's like, usually everyone does it backwards. They go get a realtor, they get a property. Then they go and try and see if there's a good property manager. And he wants to be hands off. He doesn't want to call his property manager. He doesn't want to be involved in it. He wants them to just take care of stuff. That's the ideal. So I think the challenge is when property managers

are looking on the internet for clients. They're like getting them through SEO or pay per click. These are the worst investor clients. They view property management as a commodity. They think all property managers are the same and they're not right. Not all property measures the same and most property managers are not very good. So to find the exceptional ones, usually you're going to find the better clients for a property management business by doing stuff that is

Seth Williams (19:11) Mm-hmm.

Jason Hull (19:20) more towards the strategies that we would rely on, which are warmer leads, warmer connections, so that you're not getting the crappy scraps that fall off the word amount table that are now searching on the internet looking for the cheapest manager. And if you build your portfolio off of digital marketing and the cheapest and most price sensitive owners, then you're going to have the highest operational costs, more than my clients at least, and it's going to be expensive to run your business. So.

Seth Williams (19:43) Yeah. Yeah.

What do you think makes somebody a good property manager? Because I've had my share property managers that were terrible. had one that was pretty, pretty decent. And in my case, I thought what made them stand out was just really good communication. Like I was always in the loop. I was never questioning where things were at. Like I just, I just felt like I knew what was going on. I don't know if that's true for everybody, though, in your mind, like the ones that really stand out and just kill it in this business and have no problem.

finding clients and keeping them happy. Like what is it they're doing that makes them so good?

Jason Hull (20:16) Okay, this is a great question and I love that you shared your perspective. And tell me a little bit more, what do you think makes a good property manager? And then I'll share my thoughts, which might be a little different. You said good communication.

Seth Williams (20:28) Yeah. mean, I just kind of mentioned that.

Yeah. And I will say one thing, you know, one of my nightmare experiences with a bad property manager was and maybe this is just foolish on my part, but I relied on them to find some subcontractors to, you know, make some improvements and repairs on my property. And they just found horrible people that totally screwed up the property. And and they just kind of walked around all flustered, like, I can never find good people. And like.

I don't care. Like if he can't do it, then don't don't do it. Yeah. Like tell me you can't don't just, you know, find somebody who's going to ruin my property. So that really annoyed me. ⁓

Jason Hull (20:59) to the next.

Hmm. Yeah, that's yeah, that's

hot. Okay, so I mean, according to studies and surveys, the number one reason that people leave a property management company is communication. And so I think a lot of property managers mistakenly think they need to over communicate. But I think what a lot of property managers do is they give their tenants and their owners a blank check to steal all their profits in some instances, because that's

The number one source of financial leaks that I've seen in companies is interruptions. so they just, every phone call from every tenant, every owner, constant interruptions means they need way more team, way more staff. This is the business. What I've found is really effective property management companies aren't communicating all the time. Good communication is what the clients want if they don't trust the property manager.

Seth Williams (21:41) Mm-hmm.

Jason Hull (21:55) If they trust the property manager, they want zero communication. So that's very different. So the best property managers, what I think is they set really good boundaries. It's different. It's not like, hey, I'm going to talk to you all the time. So for example, my wife, Sarah, she managed 260 units part-time in 20 hours a week, basically by herself. She had one time, one part-time person boots on the ground, C-class properties, average rent below a grand, difficult tenants.

and she had plenty of time and she had 60 to 90 % profit margin in her business. One of the most ridiculous like case studies I've ever seen. Like she was really successful, very profitable, but she basically had a conversation with her owners at the beginning said, hey, it's been great getting to know you, getting to know your property from here on out. You're not going to be hearing from me much. If I call you, if my name shows up on your phone, I'm asking for money because there's a problem. So you're probably not going to want to hear from me.

And she was said as a joke, but she was setting boundaries and they would laugh. But that was how they trusted her. They trusted her because she set really strong boundaries. And so that reduced their anxiety and it lessened the amount of times they had to call. They weren't like, hey, Sarah, did we get that tenant yet? Who's looking at the property? Anyone look at it this week? Like what's going on with the maintenance? What happened with this? Are we getting this handled? Like they weren't anxious. They trusted her to manage and she was good at managing. So one, you got to be good at managing.

Seth Williams (22:57) Mm Yeah.

Jason Hull (23:17) Like you've got to have good vendors. You know, you've got to have good resources. Otherwise, why would they use you? Why don't they just do it themselves? As a good property manager, you should be way better at it than your clients. You're the professional. Which means you're not relying on them to tell you what to do. They should not be micromanaging the manager. They didn't want, they didn't hire you to micromanage you if you're a property management business owner, right? And so I think that there's good communication.

Seth Williams (23:27) Yeah.

Jason Hull (23:44) This is the superficial thing that everybody sees. The better thing is having really good service and really good boundaries is even better.

Seth Williams (23:52) Yeah.

Well, it seems like the boundaries thing works as long as you are good at your job, right? I mean, if you do let a place sit vacant or if you do find a subcontractor who screws the property all up, your trust is gone now and they are going to be harassing you.

Jason Hull (23:58) Yeah.

Yeah, you can't say, don't call

me. I'll let you know when I get this taken care of, you know, because their anxiety is going to go through the roof. Right. Yes, exactly. You have to be on top of your stuff and you have to be good. but the conversely, you can't be good if you are over communicating with everybody. It's not it's not a scalable business. You just can't do it. And so if you are giving everybody all the attention all the time,

Seth Williams (24:12) Yeah.

Jason Hull (24:31) it's going to be very little attention and it means you're not going to be able to pay attention to and focus on the things that actually matter and do a good job. So setting boundaries is required in order to do have a really healthy business that does perform well. Especially if you're a business owner.

Seth Williams (24:43) Yeah. Yeah. I guess like

say if you're managing a property that's in the armpit of town and it's going to take a long time to find a tenant. I mean, maybe it's starts by just telling that property owner, hey, it's going to be a while. Like set the expectations. Like don't make them think it's going to happen fast when it's not. Is that what you do?

Jason Hull (24:55) Good expectations.

Absolutely.

Yep, setting good expectations, setting good boundaries is absolutely critical. And I think that goes for any business. Any business that involves humans, right? If they can land, there's not a whole lot of people involved, but maybe in the deal, you need to set boundaries and expectations, right? In self storage, same thing. You have tenants, there are people involved. It's a little less than dealing with toilets, and termites, but.

Seth Williams (25:17) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jason Hull (25:27) There's still humans that are involved and you have to be willing to set boundaries. know, there's self-storage places in LA that have a problem with homeless people trying to build homes inside of them. Right. Like that's probably outside of like what you wanted to be selling, you know, it's not probably legal for them to live there. Right. And so, yeah, setting boundaries, setting expectations. And they say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And that's probably true in any business. Yeah.

Seth Williams (25:51) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I'm

wondering if you could wave a magic wand and fix anything about the real estate industry right now, what would that be? Anything come to mind?

Jason Hull (26:03) Ooh, fixing the real estate. Seth's interviewing me now, everybody. and yeah, you are. You are good at this. so, well, why don't you go first? This is a great question. So Seth, what would you wave your magic wand and change about the real estate industry?

Seth Williams (26:07) Yeah. I'm pretty good at this.

Yeah, mean, mine would be mostly related to the niches that I'm in. So like land and self storage and on the self storage front. So the way that we manage our properties, the software is a huge component. mean, it's it's a very, very important. It's how we assign gate codes. It's how we get people's payments. It's how we communicate with them. Like it's a big deal. But a lot of the software out there is terrible. Like it is just garbage software. It looks like it was designed 20 years ago and it's

It's like antiquated, but it's expensive. And the problem is, once you start using it, they kind of hold you hostage. So like, even though it's bad, you got to keep paying for it and rewarding this broken system. So it's just a it's just a pain. So if I could wave a wand, I would probably make it super easy to jump ship and switch softwares without them holding all of my customers information hostage. That's what I'd fix.

Jason Hull (26:55) Yeah, you're in bed forever.

Got it. You might be able to wave that one now with vibe coding and AI. It's probably possible. Get a nerd, they create a prompt for you. They could probably import the API or the data or the information from an existing company software, or at least get a CSV export and you could probably create your own software from scratch. It does exactly what you want. And kids are making software every day now. Somebody just made vibe coding software and some women made this app.

Seth Williams (27:17) Cool.

Jason Hull (27:41) called T or something like this. And it was like rating men for dating. So women could say, this guy's like not a great guy to date or something like this. and it was like at the top of the app store, like you can, you can create stuff now through AI. And the only problem with that app is they had a big security flaw that some guys probably didn't like what was on the app about them easily hacked it. And they doxxed all of the women's

Seth Williams (27:51) interesting.

No.

Jason Hull (28:09) Credit or not credit cards, but their drivers licenses that they had submitted to verify their profiles and they made it all public Right. So if you're doing vibe coding people make sure you have somebody take a look at the security side of it All right. Yeah, so but that you know that could be that that could be a magic wand that could be waived My magic wand in line with what you said I would selfishly do something towards the property management industry

is I would change the licensing requirements throughout the US, because the licensing requirements in each state to be a property manager have nothing to do usually with property management. Usually you have to have a real estate broker's license in order to manage rental properties, and that doesn't qualify them to manage rental properties at all. But it does create a big hurdle for them to be able to do it, and so it keeps probably some good actors out.

Seth Williams (28:48) Yeah. ⁓

Jason Hull (29:03) and probably makes people feel overconfident to do something that they probably aren't prepared to do. And very few states have a separate property management license. So, yeah.

Seth Williams (29:12) What is the connection there? Like, is it because you have to effectively list properties? Like, you're not selling it, but you have to list it publicly and then respond to people who are interested in that kind of thing.

Jason Hull (29:19) Yeah, I think it's related

to leasing and renting properties. The number one source of complaints at most board of realtors is related to leasing, not real estate. so, yeah, so there are some things in which, but there should be separate licensing, separate rules specific to property management and that maybe raise the bar for property management so that they come in, you know, understanding some things legally.

Seth Williams (29:29) Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Jason Hull (29:46) that are related to that because there's a lot of real estate agents that are doing some stuff that's probably not legal when it comes to leases or having conversations or probably breaking laws, you know, and so that can be dangerous. we have one of our lead magnates that we have that we have clients build out is a 411 on leasing course. And it's basically a course property managers can download, put their branding on and go scare the shit out of real estate agents in handling leases.

And so that these agents will refer business to them, which isn't hard to do because a lot of real estate agents are dabbling in leases and they should not be messing with it because it puts the real estate license at risk. So. Yeah, so that would be my magic wand. Well, that's to tell us a little bit about your podcast and some of the stuff that you're up to lately and how people can get a hold of you.

Seth Williams (30:26) Yeah. Hmm. Interesting. That's cool. Yeah.

Sure. Yeah, the REtipster podcast, it's really creative name, just REtipster podcast. I've been running it since 2018 and every week, just talk to people that I find really fascinating. Sometimes they're in land, sometimes self storage, sometimes neither. They just have a really cool thing going on and I like to grill them and ask them questions and really get to the bottom of like how they're doing what they're doing. So not surfacey questions, but like really getting into it. It's a ton of fun. So

Yeah, feel free to check it out or anything at retipster.com. That's kind of the home base where you can find all the stuff I have out there.

Jason Hull (31:18) Perfect. Very cool. Well, Seth, it's been fun. Appreciate you asking me some questions. That's always a surprise. And it's great having you here on the the DoorGrow show. If those of you listening, if you've been stuck or stagnant in your property management business, you want to take it to the next level, reach out to us at door grow dot com. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at door grow club dot com. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. And until next time.

Seth Williams (31:22) Yeah, likewise.

Jason Hull (31:46) Remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

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Seth Williams (00:00) I was able to buy a lot of land at dirt cheap prices. So there's no mortgages or anything on it. And when you buy anything for a small fraction of its actual market value, it's not hard to turn around and sell that thing and make money on it.

Jason Hull (00:14) All right, I am Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of business owners, coached, consulted, and cleaned up hundreds of property management businesses, helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profit.

simplify operations and build and replace entire teams, we are like bar rescue for property managers. In fact, we have cleaned up and rebranded over 300 businesses and we run the leading property management mastermind with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world and 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. Now, let's get into the show. And my guest today I'm hanging out with is Seth Williams. Welcome, Seth.

Seth Williams (01:28) Hey, Jason, good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jason Hull (01:31) Yeah, it's great to have you and of REtipster. so Seth, let's get into a little bit of your background. You've done a lot of different things connected to real estate. Give us the background on your journey and how you got it kind of got into entrepreneurism and what made you start all this crazy stuff.

Seth Williams (01:48) Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Well, my journey kind of starts back in about 2005, 2006 when I was still in college. And like most people, I was trying to find houses I could buy that I could flip or rent that kind of thing. Just get into the real estate game. But I didn't really know anything about how to do it. I had no competitive advantage. I was looking on the MLS. That was the only place I knew I could look for to find deals.

And there weren't any deals. It was horrible. I spent hundreds of hours and found nothing that made any financial sense. And I was just like, man, how do people do this? Like, how do people find good real estate deals if I can't find them? I was looking everywhere and there was nothing out there. And it was around, you know, after struggling with this for a couple of years, I discovered two things that kind of worked hand in hand. The first was the land business. So buying vacant land and

Like most people, when I first heard that I was like, what? Picket land? Like, why would I do that? That makes no sense. It's just dirt. Like, where's the cash flow? Where's the income? The other thing that I discovered though was how to find deals off market through something called the delinquent tax list. And this is basically a list of property owners that every county has of properties that are currently back due on their property taxes. This is not the same thing.

Jason Hull (02:52) Yeah.

Seth Williams (03:11) as the tax sale list. So it's not the list of properties that's going to go up for auction soon. It's people who still own their property, but they're back doing taxes. If they don't pay them off soon, they're going to get their property taken from them. And these two things together, land and the delinquent tax list, I was able to find and contact people who had land with delinquent taxes on it. And because there were delinquent taxes, they're in a situation where it's like,

Jason Hull (03:18) Yeah, they're just behind.

Seth Williams (03:37) You got to pay off these taxes in like weeks or you're going to lose everything. So why are you in this situation? Is it because you don't care about the property? Like what is the issue? And in many cases, that was it. Maybe they just inherited it. Maybe they bought it 20 years ago, but for whatever reason, they didn't care about the thing. And I'm sitting there saying, Hey, I'll pay you a few hundred dollars, maybe a few thousand dollars, and I'll pay off your taxes and I'll make this problem go away.

And because a lot of these people didn't want their property anyway, and I was kind of taking care of a nuisance in their life, I was able to buy a lot of land at dirt cheap prices. And I could also buy it free and clear. So there's no mortgages or anything on it. And when you buy anything for a small fraction of its actual market value, it's not hard to turn around and sell that thing and make money on it. So that was the business I got into. And it's been awesome. It's changed a lot over the years, but

It's just been a really great way to, you know, without needing a whole lot of cash, finding properties, getting them for a very cheap price, and then making money without having to change anything on the property.

Jason Hull (04:45) Yeah, got it. Okay, cool. Is that still the go-to strategy? Delinquent tax lists.

Seth Williams (04:52) So, it's definitely still effective, but the drawback of the delinquent tax list is that they're kind of a pain to get, and then even when you do get them, they're kind of a mess to sort through. So, if you're willing to go through the nuisance of getting the list and sorting through it, there's a ton of value on that. But there's another way that's actually easier through a data service that I use called the LAN portal. And it's basically just a much more streamlined

Jason Hull (05:04) Yeah.

Yeah.

Seth Williams (05:20) seamless, organized way to get lists of landowners. They don't necessarily have delinquent taxes, but I can find specifically the types of properties I want and then either send the mail or a cold column, that kind of thing. So both ways work. They both have pros and cons. The delinquent tax list is more of an annoying way to do it, but it's probably the more effective way. The land portal is a lot easier, but you get a little bit less motivation on that list because people don't have this delinquent tax problem.

Jason Hull (05:48) Yeah, less of a mess to clean up, but probably a little quicker. so cool. you're going to unpack today the secrets of building wealth through land investing. This is like your number one specialty. And we'll chat a little bit about self storage. And I'm sure there's some property managers that are listening that might be like, haven't done that yet. Like I have not gotten into.

That sort of investment and most of the property managers listening you if you're on a property management business your number one goal Should not be to just manage other people's properties. It should probably be to build up your own portfolio of stuff and and make some money That's probably a bigger better play and leveraging your company to attract deals and to attract Real estate so let's get into this. Where do we start?

Seth Williams (06:37) Yeah, well, what I just described, there's kind of the high level view of how you find properties in the first place. And I mean, in terms of like people out there who are property managers who might invest in houses and that kind of thing, there's only one tax list or the land portal can work for those kinds of properties to the main difference is that you're going to find usually less competition when dealing with vacant land, because most people aren't thinking about land, thinking about houses. They think that's the way they have to do it.

And that's fine if you want that. But the problem with houses, as you probably know, in property management, there's a lot more wrinkles. There's a lot more people problems. There's things falling apart that are broken and get stolen and destroyed. With land, there's none of that. It's a much simpler animal to deal with. But if your strategy is to find rentals or something like that, you could certainly scope out rental properties using the same method. You would just be targeting different types of property owners than I do.

Jason Hull (07:10) Thank

got it. So how does this connect to self storage?

Seth Williams (07:34) Well, self storage is a totally different business than buying and selling vacant land, but there is some crossover. So back in 2021, I found a piece of land that was zoned residential. It was 6.7 acres and I bought it and I rezoned it to commercial. And then I got approval to build a self storage facility because I had always wanted to get into this business. A land business is great for

generating big influxes of cash. It's like a cash generating machine. But self storage is a little bit different. At least the way that I do it, it's more of a cash flow play. you know, all in all, took me a couple million dollars to buy the land and build this facility. It took me basically a year to design it and build it. And it's comparatively speaking, more of a trickle of cash, cash flow, but it's permanent cash flow. There's also a lot of depreciation write offs.

It's also very scalable. So it's easy to increase every single person's rent by $5 and the value effectively goes way up because of that. But like nobody moves out because it's just five bucks and most people don't care about a $5 increase per month. So it's a very different business. And for me, my long-term goal is to do more of that because the benefit of self-storage is that unlike land, it's not like a

thing that you have to keep peddling for it to keep working. Land is a very active, you know, got to keep peddling or the cashflow is going to stop. Whereas self-storage is, well, you can buy one facility and the management is not terribly difficult for that, at least compared to like a rental property and the cashflow will come in for as long as you own the thing. So that was why I made that shift.

Jason Hull (09:12) Nice. well, tell us a little bit about cell storage. How does that work? How can maybe property managers potentially get in?

Seth Williams (09:21) Yeah, well, it's when I first got into it, what I tried to do is buy an existing facility from somebody within like an hour driving radius of where I lived. And I think that's probably the best first move is to do that if you can, because you don't have to deal with all of the work of construction and there's cash flow on day one. So like right when you buy the thing, money is already coming in. Whereas when you build a new one, it takes months for the thing to fill up.

So that was what I tried to do at first, but problem was in my market, I couldn't find anybody who wanted to sell their property at anywhere near a reasonable price. People wanted like twice as much as what their facilities were worth. And people were paying it like it was just crazy. You couldn't find good deals. And when I saw that, was like, wow, I would normally never build something. But if people are being dumb and overpaying for self storage facilities, I could probably give this a go.

And even if I screw it all up, I could still sell it and get out if I needed to. So that was why I decided to do that. And it's nice in that you get to design it and lay it out the way you want, but it's also a much longer runway required to put the cash in and then wait for it to fill up and start cash flow.

Jason Hull (10:29) Yeah, this is our market to building these things out and then just selling them even though they're empty.

Seth Williams (10:35) Yeah, that's what some people do. Selling them empty. I mean, that's not the ideal play. The real value of these things comes from paying tenants, that kind of thing. Maybe what most people would do is build them or maybe even buy an existing one that's half empty and then fill it up. Like do whatever you have to do to get tenants in there, whether it's changing the pricing or advertising more. And then once it's at least reasonably full, then you could cash out and do whatever you want. Buy another one or do something else.

Jason Hull (10:39) Right.

Got it. Okay. Got it. Cool. So vacant land, self storage, and then you're also like, you do a lot of content creation stuff in the real estate space. So tell us a little bit about that.

Seth Williams (11:12) Sure. Yeah. So I started a website called REtipster back in 2012. And it was really kind of a place to store a lot of the lessons and knowledge that I had gained from my experience in land investing and in owning rental properties and everything I had done to that point. And I didn't really know what the plan was. I just knew, like, it's kind of fun for me to take my ideas and thoughts and things I've learned and distill them down into like bite sized chunks and help other people.

figure out how to do the business from where they're at. And it turned out to be a lot of fun. And it didn't make money for like probably the first year that I was running it. But eventually I found ways to monetize it. Started a podcast, a YouTube channel. And a lot of what we talk about is land, but we also talk about self storage and occasionally rental properties, other things that are ancillary related to real estate investing.

Jason Hull (12:07) Okay, well cool. Let me do a quick word from our sponsor and then we can get into a little bit more. So our sponsor for this episode is Vendoroo Many of you listening tell me that maintenance is probably the least enjoyable part of being a property manager and definitely the most time consuming. But what if you could cut that workload by up to 85 %? That's exactly what Vendoroo has achieved. They've leveraged cutting edge AI technology to handle nearly all of your maintenance tasks from initiating work orders.

and troubleshooting to coordinating with vendors and reporting. This AI doesn't just automate, it becomes your ideal employee, learning your preferences and executing tasks flawlessly, never needing a day off and never quitting. This frees you up to focus on the critical tasks that really move the needle for your business, whether that's refining operations, expanding your portfolio, or even just taking a well-deserved break. Over half the room at last year's DoorGrowLive event conference signed up with Vendoroo right there.

And then a year later, they're not just satisfied, they're raving about how vendor is transformed their business. Don't let maintenance drag you down. Step up your property management game with vendor. Visit vendor.ai slash door grow today and make this the last maintenance hire you'll ever need. All right, cool. So, Seth.

Where should we go from here? We've been talking a little bit about vacant land, a little bit about self storage, talking a little bit about RE tipster. What do you think would be of the most benefit to property management business owners that are exploring some of this stuff?

Seth Williams (13:42) Well, you know, maybe we could have a little conversation, you and me. So I've got a few questions I always go to when I'm talking to other real estate investors that are always kind of brings out some interesting perspectives. How long have you been in real estate, Jason?

Jason Hull (13:55) Well, so I've been involved with coaching and consulting property management companies. So I'm more of a business coach for like since 2008.

Seth Williams (14:04) Mm OK, gotcha. Well, interesting. Here's a question for you. What's one thing that you see new property managers focusing on that you think is actually a distraction from long term success?

Jason Hull (14:09) so while.

That's a good one. So the most common thing that I see that's a big distraction from long-term success is digital marketing. So a lot of property managers think in order to get more doors or get business, they need to do SEO. They need to do Google ads like pay per click, content marketing, social media marketing. The problem is the dirty secret marketers don't want to tell property managers because they like making money off of them.

is that there's very little search volume of people looking on the internet for property management. So they can go on Google trends right now, put in property management backdated to 2004 when Google started tracking data and metrics to the present. And what you'll see is there's very little search volume. And if you compare it to any other term, like compared to AI is a good one lately, it has the same search volume of AI a decade ago. Whereas AI has this meteoric rise.

Seth Williams (15:13) Mm, sure.

Jason Hull (15:15) And compared to AI, property management is just a little line at the bottom. It like doesn't even register. And so there's plenty of business out there of people that don't want to manage their own property. There's no shortage in the U.S. There's no scarcity, but they're not looking for a property manager actively because they're either not aware that property managers are a viable option or exist, or they are aware, but most property managers suck. So they've written it off.

Seth Williams (15:44) Yeah. So how do you find those people then if you don't know where they're looking or maybe you do know where they're looking.

Jason Hull (15:44) and they're not really looking.

We get them to do crazy things like pick up the phone and call non owner occupied property owners or like connect with real estate agents and create relationships to help the real estate agents get more deals from investors, stuff like that. So.

Seth Williams (16:02) Yeah. I'll

tell you, there's a ton of power in somebody who's willing to pick up the phone. I mean, so many people don't even want to think about that. But if you can do that, man, you're already way, way ahead of the crowd.

Jason Hull (16:09) And there we go.

Yeah, I mean, it's the one thing that we can teach clients that they can create business on demand at any time and not have to hope and pray that a market is able to give them something. yeah. Okay.

Seth Williams (16:20) Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Well, here's another question. What's something that

you hear novice property managers or critics of property managers complain about that makes you roll your eyes?

Jason Hull (16:35) Well, the first that comes to mind is a lot of novice property managers complain about the potential clients being cheap.

yet they're cheap. And so that's kind of the blind spot that I think there's a lot of property managers that have. They're like, like, I had a client once and he was complaining that, about, you know, I'm tired of getting all these people wanting discounts or asking for us to lower our pricing, all these people that are so cheap about related to property management. And then I saw the same person post in a Facebook group for property managers saying, hey, does anybody have a discount for this?

property management software or this then like, what is it? A maintenance software that exists because I don't want to pay full price. And so the irony wasn't lost on me. you know, usually the blind spot that we have is we, you know, kind of project that and create that in others. And so if you're cheap and you have a cheap mindset, then you're going to attract cheap clients. It's far more likely not only that, but you're going to be a lot more sensitive to it. It's going to impact you differently.

Seth Williams (17:16) Hmm.

Jason Hull (17:36) and people will pick up on that and they'll feel more anxious and be more price sensitive because you are.

Seth Williams (17:40) Yeah.

For those property managers who are willing to pick up the phone and call around and find their customers, what do they do to avoid those cheap clients? Is there some red flag they can look out for to say, you're not a good fit. We're going to go look here instead. Like, how do you find people that are willing to pay what they have to pay?

Jason Hull (17:58) Well, I think I just had Dustin Heiner on as an interview. And yeah, I know him from some masterminds that we're in together. And Dustin's a really cool guy. Dustin had this, we did this great episode where he's like our client's ideal client, really. Because he's like, the first thing I do is I try to find a property manager before I even get a rental property.

Seth Williams (18:03) Yeah, Essence

Mm.

Jason Hull (18:24) And I want to ask them where I should get a rental property and ask them for their advice. And I want a good property manager I can trust before I go find a property. But it's like, usually everyone does it backwards. They go get a realtor, they get a property. Then they go and try and see if there's a good property manager. And he wants to be hands off. He doesn't want to call his property manager. He doesn't want to be involved in it. He wants them to just take care of stuff. That's the ideal. So I think the challenge is when property managers

are looking on the internet for clients. They're like getting them through SEO or pay per click. These are the worst investor clients. They view property management as a commodity. They think all property managers are the same and they're not right. Not all property measures the same and most property managers are not very good. So to find the exceptional ones, usually you're going to find the better clients for a property management business by doing stuff that is

Seth Williams (19:11) Mm-hmm.

Jason Hull (19:20) more towards the strategies that we would rely on, which are warmer leads, warmer connections, so that you're not getting the crappy scraps that fall off the word amount table that are now searching on the internet looking for the cheapest manager. And if you build your portfolio off of digital marketing and the cheapest and most price sensitive owners, then you're going to have the highest operational costs, more than my clients at least, and it's going to be expensive to run your business. So.

Seth Williams (19:43) Yeah. Yeah.

What do you think makes somebody a good property manager? Because I've had my share property managers that were terrible. had one that was pretty, pretty decent. And in my case, I thought what made them stand out was just really good communication. Like I was always in the loop. I was never questioning where things were at. Like I just, I just felt like I knew what was going on. I don't know if that's true for everybody, though, in your mind, like the ones that really stand out and just kill it in this business and have no problem.

finding clients and keeping them happy. Like what is it they're doing that makes them so good?

Jason Hull (20:16) Okay, this is a great question and I love that you shared your perspective. And tell me a little bit more, what do you think makes a good property manager? And then I'll share my thoughts, which might be a little different. You said good communication.

Seth Williams (20:28) Yeah. mean, I just kind of mentioned that.

Yeah. And I will say one thing, you know, one of my nightmare experiences with a bad property manager was and maybe this is just foolish on my part, but I relied on them to find some subcontractors to, you know, make some improvements and repairs on my property. And they just found horrible people that totally screwed up the property. And and they just kind of walked around all flustered, like, I can never find good people. And like.

I don't care. Like if he can't do it, then don't don't do it. Yeah. Like tell me you can't don't just, you know, find somebody who's going to ruin my property. So that really annoyed me. ⁓

Jason Hull (20:59) to the next.

Hmm. Yeah, that's yeah, that's

hot. Okay, so I mean, according to studies and surveys, the number one reason that people leave a property management company is communication. And so I think a lot of property managers mistakenly think they need to over communicate. But I think what a lot of property managers do is they give their tenants and their owners a blank check to steal all their profits in some instances, because that's

The number one source of financial leaks that I've seen in companies is interruptions. so they just, every phone call from every tenant, every owner, constant interruptions means they need way more team, way more staff. This is the business. What I've found is really effective property management companies aren't communicating all the time. Good communication is what the clients want if they don't trust the property manager.

Seth Williams (21:41) Mm-hmm.

Jason Hull (21:55) If they trust the property manager, they want zero communication. So that's very different. So the best property managers, what I think is they set really good boundaries. It's different. It's not like, hey, I'm going to talk to you all the time. So for example, my wife, Sarah, she managed 260 units part-time in 20 hours a week, basically by herself. She had one time, one part-time person boots on the ground, C-class properties, average rent below a grand, difficult tenants.

and she had plenty of time and she had 60 to 90 % profit margin in her business. One of the most ridiculous like case studies I've ever seen. Like she was really successful, very profitable, but she basically had a conversation with her owners at the beginning said, hey, it's been great getting to know you, getting to know your property from here on out. You're not going to be hearing from me much. If I call you, if my name shows up on your phone, I'm asking for money because there's a problem. So you're probably not going to want to hear from me.

And she was said as a joke, but she was setting boundaries and they would laugh. But that was how they trusted her. They trusted her because she set really strong boundaries. And so that reduced their anxiety and it lessened the amount of times they had to call. They weren't like, hey, Sarah, did we get that tenant yet? Who's looking at the property? Anyone look at it this week? Like what's going on with the maintenance? What happened with this? Are we getting this handled? Like they weren't anxious. They trusted her to manage and she was good at managing. So one, you got to be good at managing.

Seth Williams (22:57) Mm Yeah.

Jason Hull (23:17) Like you've got to have good vendors. You know, you've got to have good resources. Otherwise, why would they use you? Why don't they just do it themselves? As a good property manager, you should be way better at it than your clients. You're the professional. Which means you're not relying on them to tell you what to do. They should not be micromanaging the manager. They didn't want, they didn't hire you to micromanage you if you're a property management business owner, right? And so I think that there's good communication.

Seth Williams (23:27) Yeah.

Jason Hull (23:44) This is the superficial thing that everybody sees. The better thing is having really good service and really good boundaries is even better.

Seth Williams (23:52) Yeah.

Well, it seems like the boundaries thing works as long as you are good at your job, right? I mean, if you do let a place sit vacant or if you do find a subcontractor who screws the property all up, your trust is gone now and they are going to be harassing you.

Jason Hull (23:58) Yeah.

Yeah, you can't say, don't call

me. I'll let you know when I get this taken care of, you know, because their anxiety is going to go through the roof. Right. Yes, exactly. You have to be on top of your stuff and you have to be good. but the conversely, you can't be good if you are over communicating with everybody. It's not it's not a scalable business. You just can't do it. And so if you are giving everybody all the attention all the time,

Seth Williams (24:12) Yeah.

Jason Hull (24:31) it's going to be very little attention and it means you're not going to be able to pay attention to and focus on the things that actually matter and do a good job. So setting boundaries is required in order to do have a really healthy business that does perform well. Especially if you're a business owner.

Seth Williams (24:43) Yeah. Yeah. I guess like

say if you're managing a property that's in the armpit of town and it's going to take a long time to find a tenant. I mean, maybe it's starts by just telling that property owner, hey, it's going to be a while. Like set the expectations. Like don't make them think it's going to happen fast when it's not. Is that what you do?

Jason Hull (24:55) Good expectations.

Absolutely.

Yep, setting good expectations, setting good boundaries is absolutely critical. And I think that goes for any business. Any business that involves humans, right? If they can land, there's not a whole lot of people involved, but maybe in the deal, you need to set boundaries and expectations, right? In self storage, same thing. You have tenants, there are people involved. It's a little less than dealing with toilets, and termites, but.

Seth Williams (25:17) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jason Hull (25:27) There's still humans that are involved and you have to be willing to set boundaries. know, there's self-storage places in LA that have a problem with homeless people trying to build homes inside of them. Right. Like that's probably outside of like what you wanted to be selling, you know, it's not probably legal for them to live there. Right. And so, yeah, setting boundaries, setting expectations. And they say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And that's probably true in any business. Yeah.

Seth Williams (25:51) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I'm

wondering if you could wave a magic wand and fix anything about the real estate industry right now, what would that be? Anything come to mind?

Jason Hull (26:03) Ooh, fixing the real estate. Seth's interviewing me now, everybody. and yeah, you are. You are good at this. so, well, why don't you go first? This is a great question. So Seth, what would you wave your magic wand and change about the real estate industry?

Seth Williams (26:07) Yeah. I'm pretty good at this.

Yeah, mean, mine would be mostly related to the niches that I'm in. So like land and self storage and on the self storage front. So the way that we manage our properties, the software is a huge component. mean, it's it's a very, very important. It's how we assign gate codes. It's how we get people's payments. It's how we communicate with them. Like it's a big deal. But a lot of the software out there is terrible. Like it is just garbage software. It looks like it was designed 20 years ago and it's

It's like antiquated, but it's expensive. And the problem is, once you start using it, they kind of hold you hostage. So like, even though it's bad, you got to keep paying for it and rewarding this broken system. So it's just a it's just a pain. So if I could wave a wand, I would probably make it super easy to jump ship and switch softwares without them holding all of my customers information hostage. That's what I'd fix.

Jason Hull (26:55) Yeah, you're in bed forever.

Got it. You might be able to wave that one now with vibe coding and AI. It's probably possible. Get a nerd, they create a prompt for you. They could probably import the API or the data or the information from an existing company software, or at least get a CSV export and you could probably create your own software from scratch. It does exactly what you want. And kids are making software every day now. Somebody just made vibe coding software and some women made this app.

Seth Williams (27:17) Cool.

Jason Hull (27:41) called T or something like this. And it was like rating men for dating. So women could say, this guy's like not a great guy to date or something like this. and it was like at the top of the app store, like you can, you can create stuff now through AI. And the only problem with that app is they had a big security flaw that some guys probably didn't like what was on the app about them easily hacked it. And they doxxed all of the women's

Seth Williams (27:51) interesting.

No.

Jason Hull (28:09) Credit or not credit cards, but their drivers licenses that they had submitted to verify their profiles and they made it all public Right. So if you're doing vibe coding people make sure you have somebody take a look at the security side of it All right. Yeah, so but that you know that could be that that could be a magic wand that could be waived My magic wand in line with what you said I would selfishly do something towards the property management industry

is I would change the licensing requirements throughout the US, because the licensing requirements in each state to be a property manager have nothing to do usually with property management. Usually you have to have a real estate broker's license in order to manage rental properties, and that doesn't qualify them to manage rental properties at all. But it does create a big hurdle for them to be able to do it, and so it keeps probably some good actors out.

Seth Williams (28:48) Yeah. ⁓

Jason Hull (29:03) and probably makes people feel overconfident to do something that they probably aren't prepared to do. And very few states have a separate property management license. So, yeah.

Seth Williams (29:12) What is the connection there? Like, is it because you have to effectively list properties? Like, you're not selling it, but you have to list it publicly and then respond to people who are interested in that kind of thing.

Jason Hull (29:19) Yeah, I think it's related

to leasing and renting properties. The number one source of complaints at most board of realtors is related to leasing, not real estate. so, yeah, so there are some things in which, but there should be separate licensing, separate rules specific to property management and that maybe raise the bar for property management so that they come in, you know, understanding some things legally.

Seth Williams (29:29) Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Jason Hull (29:46) that are related to that because there's a lot of real estate agents that are doing some stuff that's probably not legal when it comes to leases or having conversations or probably breaking laws, you know, and so that can be dangerous. we have one of our lead magnates that we have that we have clients build out is a 411 on leasing course. And it's basically a course property managers can download, put their branding on and go scare the shit out of real estate agents in handling leases.

And so that these agents will refer business to them, which isn't hard to do because a lot of real estate agents are dabbling in leases and they should not be messing with it because it puts the real estate license at risk. So. Yeah, so that would be my magic wand. Well, that's to tell us a little bit about your podcast and some of the stuff that you're up to lately and how people can get a hold of you.

Seth Williams (30:26) Yeah. Hmm. Interesting. That's cool. Yeah.

Sure. Yeah, the REtipster podcast, it's really creative name, just REtipster podcast. I've been running it since 2018 and every week, just talk to people that I find really fascinating. Sometimes they're in land, sometimes self storage, sometimes neither. They just have a really cool thing going on and I like to grill them and ask them questions and really get to the bottom of like how they're doing what they're doing. So not surfacey questions, but like really getting into it. It's a ton of fun. So

Yeah, feel free to check it out or anything at retipster.com. That's kind of the home base where you can find all the stuff I have out there.

Jason Hull (31:18) Perfect. Very cool. Well, Seth, it's been fun. Appreciate you asking me some questions. That's always a surprise. And it's great having you here on the the DoorGrow show. If those of you listening, if you've been stuck or stagnant in your property management business, you want to take it to the next level, reach out to us at door grow dot com. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at door grow club dot com. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. And until next time.

Seth Williams (31:22) Yeah, likewise.

Jason Hull (31:46) Remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.

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