Ep 156 | The Reality of the Modern Sales Process for Property Management Companies w/ Jeremy Pound

Speaker 1 Jeremy Pound has easily become one of my favorite guys in the property management industry. And it's easy to like love the guy cuz he's so affable, funny, like if you're ever in a room with him, always has the right one liner. Him and Jen hosting events and stuff like that, they're great. But here's what a lot of people don't understand about Jeremy. The dude is a brilliant, brilliant business strategist. Like every time I come away with a conversation with him and Jen, the the level that they're thinking at operationally, system wise, procedurally and strategically is always super, super impressive. So this is a conversation about all of that stuff. And something to not sleep on is the fact that him and Jen have this unbelievable visionary integrator partnership thing down. So I asked him about that as well. I think a lot of us that listen to this podcast are visionaries and working with an integrator is a blessing, but you also it's a learned trait. So he shares some of that. But most of this is essentially how to, you know, get better at sales, understanding the client acquisition mechanism in the world where we are today with this rapid commoditization and like attack of like turbo tenant coming after the people that just want like basic services and how you stand out in a market and build a customer acquisition flywheel for yourself. You're going to love this conversation with Jeremy Pound. I know I did. Welcome to the Property Management Frame Breakers podcast. I'm your host, Pablo Gonzalez and I am here to introduce you to the folks in the property management space that have broken the frame of what you may believe was possible. This podcast is presented by Vendoru. It is your all in one AI solution for resolving your maintenance needs. Let's go in coming up with this podcast. First, I'd love to hear from you coming into this. Did you have like a hope of like, hey, I hope we get to talk about this right? Like what was your expectation? Speaker 2 When I came into this business, a lot of property managers were like, I'm the only guy in town. I put up my shingle, the phone rings. Sales and marketing should be easy. Now there's competition, there's alternatives. I think that'll like. My biggest message is the idea of like dialing in customer acquisition, like sales and marketing is going from a luxury that you get to do when you're big one day to protect your position to like you're, you're just not going to make it like if you're just like everybody else, you've got no differentiation. I just, you're going to die. Like now we got turbo 10 and out. We've been saying that a lot. You saw the sacred cows Jen and I have been talking about for a year. Peter Loman just wrote about that and Rone's like, Oh my God, I didn't know about this thing. I'm like Jenna, I've been talking about this for a year. He's got for $130.00. These guys will provide a property management like experience, you know, even if it's not as good, The difference between $130.00 a year and $4000 a year is pretty material and so you can have. Speaker 1 You are now anchored to that price point right? Like that they they created a new anchor to anchor you too. Speaker 2 Exactly. Speaker 1 So, all right, so there's a new anchor. There's it's never been more important to have. I love how you talk about when people build a business, they need to build two things. They need to, they need to build a product and they needed to build a distribution channel. And both are equally as important. And like it's true, most people just think about the product, right? Like me included me, hype guy, marketing guy for my own business. I think about like the product way more than I think about the distribution channel. But what you're saying is that it's not just that. It's also never been more important than that in the property management space because somebody has just anchored a completely commoditized here is like, you know, the worst version of what you could think property management might be for the cheapest price or maybe it's a little bit better than that, right. So what's how do you how do you fight that man? What's what's step one? I heard you say differentiation. I where, where's I don't know, give me orders of magnitudes of like what's step one, Like what is where you got? Speaker 2 To go, yeah, So obviously being different, I mean, like you said, you're a product guy for a reason. You got to have a good product, you got to believe in that product and you got to tell that story. That goes kind of like the distribution model, got to have a way to reach your clients. Second, the sales experience. Like what do you do when you want to buy a car? You go test drive the car, right? And you get a feel for it. And then there's that one car you test drove. Maybe it's not the cheapest, maybe you didn't check all your boxes, but you just can't forget it. Well, in property management, the sales process is the test drive. How fast did they call me back? How clear did they communicate? What questions did they ask me? That sales process is the test drive, even if the prospect isn't like aware of that and they're not spelling it out. If they talk to four people, I guarantee you they're going a lot on just these guys are just blowing me away in the sales process. Therefore I expect them to blow me away when it comes to product delivery. And I think that too many clients say yeah, when they hire me, when they write me a check, I will finally start taking them seriously. But good companies get good and service businesses by treating non paying clients like paying clients, right? We get in out there, we take care of them. We put out great information. You run this podcasts, right? A lot of our clients do that. We're like, I need to educate the market. I need to give value, which has become so cliche, but can you really find ways to give value? And then maybe jumping on a call, solving their biggest problems, telling them this eviction they're going through or this renovation that they need to do on their property is not unusual and it's normal and it's a standard and I'll help you get through it and I'll make that ugly wart seem fine. These are things that are endearing to the prospect and now they're just like I'm what it is. But when I talk to Pablo, I feel great. He answers all my questions. I picture calling him anytime there's a problem with my property and not going on some portal and keying in my situation. But salesmanship, right? That is the test drive for a high stakes product or service like property management. So these are the things I want clients to be thinking about in this new competitive marketplace where property managers are popping up. You know, Jen and I went to the Tom Ferry conference. Pablo, Tom Ferry's the biggest sales consultant for real estate brokers and Realtors. So we're in A room. Speaker 1 Let me guess what his number one piece of advice was. Speaker 2 What was it? Speaker 1 Start poverty management. Speaker 2 It was not actually, although we wish it was. I wish you would have said you need to go talk to Jeremy and Jen in the front row and start a property management company that would be self-serving. But no, 5000 people in the room, These are the best of the best, Pablo. These are the guys that, you know, go to California and write a big check to be in that room. And they said this is the age of expired listings. There's going to be more expired listings than ever before. And 20% they believe of all real estate license. I'm sorry, real estate listings will be the second time that property is being listed. Well, you know what's going to happen to a lot of those? The real estate agent's going to say, I can't sell it, why don't I rent it for you? And as you know is famous in the industry. Like there's nothing more dangerous than a real estate agent who thinks they're a property manager. They're just going to be like, I'm not closing any transactions, so why don't I just rent this property? Why don't I just manage one? If I manage one, I can manage two. If I can manage 2, I can manage 3. And so that's all going to mean pricing compression, that's all going to be noise. The real estate agents, the most dangerous part, Pablo, is the real estate agents already have the relationship with the Lister, right? The person that owns the home. And so rather than them send them out into the wild and say, go find a property manager, they're either going to have somebody they know or they're going to think they can do it themselves. And so that's just the cycle that we're in. We've never seen a market like this before where historically we're more frozen than ever as a real estate market. And when people can't sell their property and they're somebody died, they're getting divorced, they got a they have a new kid, they need to move across the country, they got a promotion, people need to move. And they're going to more and more I think are going to become renter, you know, renters. And unfortunately, if we're not out there having a good conversation and creating a great experience, they're going to trust Johnny Realtor and it's going to suck. And so that's what we're up against. Speaker 1 Thank you for that. I, I love that man for two reasons. One is I talk a lot about this idea of context shifts creating like the, the demarcation points, right? And, and like, there's a lot of done a lot of talking about the contact shift around the great generational wealth transfer, changing our clientele. And then a, a lot of contact shift around like regulatory environment around property management has changed so much that the rules are changing. And obviously I talk a, you know, insane like a obnoxious amount about the contact shift of AI. But the, the context shift of Realtors becoming more property managers is a very real one that started, you know, I would say the NAR change was like the, the, the, the starting gun on this thing, right? And then, and then the, and then the next, the next half of the race became higher interest rates than normal for longer, right? And a complete slowdown of transaction activity, which is how they eat. So there is a giant contact ship that is going to flood the market with commoditization from both the turbo 10 and AI side and the human everybody getting in peace. And you know, as we're talking about orders of orders of magnitude here, that can really help a property manager. We, you and I first go to differentiation. And what I'm hearing from you is that the first differentiation, the lowest hanging fruit of differentiation for our property manager is to treat their sales experience as exponential marketing, essentially. And, and understand that this is an experience that you invest in that drives a level of differentiation that makes everybody else look like a sucker. If you're, if, if you show up as like, Oh yeah, Oh yeah. What you're welcome to come into my house. And by the way, I have AI, have AI have a bed made for you. And I have your favorite, your favorite warm cup of milk here on the bedside. And you know, like, and, and you're prepared for it, right? Like that, that that shows a different level of like sophistication that obviously leads to more, to more sales. And I, I love that man. So OK, what's that look like? Speaker 2 So I think, you know, it looks, it looks any way you want it to look. I mean, that's the great thing about working with like hundreds of clients is we've got so many mutual clients that you probably know I'm talking about. I got clients that have amazing podcasts that are educating and shaping an entire market around what does it look like to rent a property in this market and what do you need to know about? And I got other clients that are much more like that, much more hand touched. It's like every real estate agent knows that if they have any issue, they pick up the phone and they call the bat line and they reach 1 property manager and that person has all the answers and everything they do. So the good news is, is it looks any way you want it to. And there's no, I have one way to do it. And if I publish a game plan for one client, there's probably 50 other game plans at work. The, the common denominator is that they care and they, they're demonstrating that experience and that knowledge upfront. So having a question to the most common problems, sorry, having an answer to the most common questions is like the new table stakes. That's a salt and pepper, right? If I go to your website, I should learn everything I need to know about what is it like to rent a property. Do I need a license in my town? That makes a lot of people laugh because a lot of people are in. Let's just oversimplify. Like in red states where like you can just rent a property any day. We got clients in states where the property managers don't even have to be licensed. Then we've got neighborhoods where my clients tell us I manage a property on two different sides of the street and the regulation on the left side is this and the regulation on the right side is that. That's the kind of local subject matter expertise that you should be talking about and sharing publicly and making these questions OK to ask. Unfortunately, the number one reason that we don't have good sales conversations is that typically the prospect is embarrassed to ask the real question. Like we all love to get together and complain about the overbearing prospect that calls us and says I have 57 questions for you. There was like this really hilarious Bigger Pockets post going around about five years ago, Pablo, and it was like 87 questions to ask your property manager and literally our clients were all getting those 87 questions, which is ridiculous. And I think that we over index and we characterize these client, these prospects as unrealistic and like they ask all these questions. They want everything for every one of those, there's 10 more guys that are afraid to pick up the phone because they're embarrassed. Like especially if we talk more about like first time renters. They don't know the questions to ask. You know, they can't even get on the conversation. They feel like they're a kid that can't swim and you're throwing them in the deep end. But we all do this every day and we we use subject matter expertise, we use inside baseball and we confuse people. And so we got to put it out there. It's acceptable to ask us any questions. We've got answers. I've got thought provoking questions. If you're an expert, I can still add value. If you're a novice, I have, you know, humility and I can kind of walk through that empathy for what you do. And so giving people an easy access and then when they show up, meeting them where they are. So that's just, like I said, that is the most simple thing to say and the most underutilized tool that the whole industry is missing out on. Pablo. Speaker 1 So I'm hearing a couple, you know, I'm hearing one thing for me that I want to explain. But first I want to just indulge myself in this rabbit hole. When you first said everybody got the 87 questions, my mind went to like, oh, I would make AI would make a piece of content saying how to sort through the five different 87 questions you got from your property manager to find out what really matters to you. Speaker 2 Yes, like. Speaker 1 That's where my head went. That's where my. Speaker 2 Head went I love it decision tree. If you care about this, ask this. If you care about this, ask that. Yeah, like. Speaker 1 Use, use the thing that they're already thinking that they're judging like well, great, I have like 87 * 5. It's like what? I have 400 questions to read. What's the most important? Speaker 2 Thing ever right now, right? The crazy stuff. I love that. Speaker 1 Yeah, let's. Speaker 2 Go do that. Turn the podcast off and go do that right now. Speaker 1 Do it right now. Shut. Shut this thing off. Get out of here. Speaker 2 Come back and watch the rest later, but go get it done. Speaker 1 So, so here's what I'm hearing from you. I'm hearing 1st order of operations is to see your see your sales channel as an experience, right? Like if you if you start to think like that, that's what it's going to do. And then the in order to start to operationalize that, I'm hearing from you that the lowest hanging fruit there is a bunch of self-serve content on the dumb questions that everybody asks all the time. Have that in a way that is, you know, findable to some way on your website in some way, at the very least, like build it into the sales process in a way that people are getting in, they're able to find you through it. And that to me, when I think of that operationally, that feels pretty easy to do, right? Like find somebody in your office to just like ask you all the questions that they get every single day and you answer it and and put it out. AI can really, really help with that. How? How? Speaker 2 Necessary just to put a pin on that like as you go forward, pre sales call selling is so underutilized, right? You know, most of the people in the industry know Alex Harmozzi. We all talk about him. I've been in the sales process from the moment you book a call until the moment you have the call. He's doing most of the selling. I'm getting videos, he's pre handling the objections. He's like, you're probably thinking X. So everything you just said doesn't have to be a public on your website, although it should be. You can start selling the second somebody raises the board and says I want to do it like that's when you so again, so underutilized like pre sales call selling is so under your lives, right. I wanted to push pin that one. Speaker 1 I mean, let's, let's, let's spend some time right there, bro, right, Like I, I completely agree. I, you know, man, I call it setting the table, right? Like I, there's at, at the very least. And I've, and I've done this for so many people, right? Like I've done so many podcasts and I'm always just like, you know, how do we make this thing that the podcast that you would introduce yourself to? Like if somebody books account, you know, like something like that, right? Like, or if somebody reaches out to me and they want to do a meeting with me, I'm like, what's the one piece of content? I can go listen to that. I will let me understand who you are. Like having that piece done right. Like the, the one thing that's like, hey, you were on whatever, if you were on the property management free Breakers podcast talking about how like you're like a technology advanced, whatever, like, yeah, listen to this before whatever. And, and do you have that? I, I, I put that type of stuff on like my e-mail signature. I put it on like on my calendar to book a call. I say, is there a piece of content I can watch from you, you know, to like be familiar with you? Oh, by the way, here's mine, right? Like just just one piece of somebody talking to you about the things that you want everybody to know of why they should care about your business or why you care so much about your business is like table stakes. What are the other things, man? Are you seeing people? Yeah. What are the what's what's like a great version of this that you've seen that's really like copyable for people of this like pre selling content deployment? Speaker 2 Yeah, the hardest thing is the better it is, the less copyable it is. But it's really it's not, that's not actually not true. It is actually very copyable. People just look at it and say, oh, that's a lot of work, right? You know what I mean? Like the things that are easy, that the hacks are easy to recreate, everybody does them. I definitely have them. I think they're awesome. But the real value that I see my clients make is just deep, right. So we all know, I think we all know Mark Gainley in the industry, long time client like client #12 I think at Renscale back in the day, he has built a community in Chicago that is unparalleled. I think he's on 300 podcast episodes, amazing downloadables. I've got clients here at Renscale that their number one lead source is referrals from Mark. That's how big of an impression he's made. Like, like their number one lead source is a referral from Mark. Again, people look at that and say, oh, that takes personality, that takes time, that takes effort, doesn't take a lot of money. Mark will be the first to tell you, man, I built this thing on very little cash, just consistency. It's amazing. We got clients who have the most amazing webinar series. We got a client in Austin and he's just constantly pumping out webinars. Every vendor he uses, he brings them on and says, what do you need to know? When do I replace a roof? When do I not replace a roof? He brings on an HVAC guy. He talks about that. Landlords in Austin eat that stuff up, you know what I mean? And again, not a lot of money just takes consistency. The biggest problem here, Pablo, is how much people think that sales and marketing should be like hiring an accountant. Like you can swap out an accountant pretty fast. You can outsource account and you can do it yourself. And the public doesn't quite know. Unfortunately, sales and marketing, like we're getting into big boy business pants stuff here. Like, you know, my favorite Peter Drucker quote, like all business is really just innovation and marketing. The problem is, is most property managers got into it because they love the craft of property management. They geek out over the leasing process and what should you do and what should the maintenance be? I call that the craft of property management. Mega important. This is why you have a business. It's your product. But the business of property management is different. This is how you acquire clients. This is how you market. This is how you keep clients, prevent churn. This is how you basically build a profitable business and a lot of people don't have the appetite for it. But I'm here at the, the biggest take away I want to give the listeners, Pablo, is this is the margin, this is the Moat, this is the area. Like if you can find somebody or you can take this stuff seriously, the bar is so low, so low. If you stop trying to do hacks and you start trying to really build the brand and really lean in and do some stuff that maybe isn't the craft of property management, like party's there, it's ready to go. Ready to like throw on your back and take it all home? That's what I'm seeing some of my clients do. It's not that crazy. If I go and talk to my friends in other industries and I show them what the most successful property managers do in sales and marketing, they're like, they giggle and they're like, oh, they don't have a mega ad spend. They're not doing all these things. They're like, no, they're just doing this and they're blown away by it. Speaker 1 Yeah, it's interesting, man. Even in there was there was a whole era in Silicon Valley where they were just like whatever the product is the product, the go to market is the Moat, right? Like and that is in a super technologically advanced kind of like industry and vertical, right. Like the the idea that the product is the product and property management and go to market can be the mode, it seems seems like it has an even higher upside since property management is inevitably going to sound commoditized, right? Like, like it's going to be very hard to really, really differentiate. And I love that you bring up Mark Ainley man, because Mark is first of all, he has 475 podcasts. And I know that because I was the last guest on the not. Speaker 2 Straight of Chicago, thank you for correcting me. I can't serve with the guy. Speaker 1 Yeah, no, man, listen, you know my my kind of arrival in an art boom was keynoting broker owner because of what I did for JWB Real estate Capital and it's very similar to what Mark Anley is doing in Chicago, right? Like the? Speaker 2 Speaking of the choir today. Speaker 1 Yeah, the podcast flywheel as like a networking and marketing and, you know, social validation piece that creates the baseline assets for everything that you need in a local market, particularly to me a super low hanging fruit. It does seem operationally difficult for people and I get that I've, I've like coached a lot of people through that. But I think that there's also, you know, there's also kind of like I, I believe in the idea of hire a camera crew, get, you know, get like one day of just you shooting all the content that you need that you can then create in your sales cadences. Like I think there's AI think there's a world where you don't have to do a podcast. You do like 2 days of shooting or one day of shooting, you hire people to do the editing piece and you now have enough like content for like 90 to 180 days of social media and, and, and all the material you need for like an onboarding sequence. That's really rich, you know, like, and I feel, do you see that as a deployment? Do you, do people go straight to the podcast? Is that like? Speaker 2 I think the podcast is just one example, but it's content is the placeholder for this conversation. So yeah, you're absolutely right. Video Trump's all. Video is the language of the Internet, but that's just let's just get that out of the way. More and more. I'm starting to stop saying podcast and I'm starting to say YouTube because I actually feel like YouTube is just a monster. So if you want any predictions, like everybody should just be spending more time and money on YouTube and that doesn't, that means long form, that means shorts, that means everything. It's just crazy. There's a huge opportunity there. But yes, I agree with what you're saying. The video on the intake, we've got that you sign up for rent scale, you get a video that Jen and I filmed in Kansas City Nationals five years ago. I think Jen was only like 2 months in the company and we filmed it. We're still using it five years later. You. Yeah. What do you expect? Like you literally get a video when you sign up. What? Do it? Here's what brought you here. That's what we say. Here's why you signed up, here's what to expect next. And it's that little warming between the day you write a check with Renscale and the day you kick off. I need something to keep you excited. Five years. I mean, what? That didn't cost us anything at all. We are already at a conference and we did it, so it's great. But I also want to say like, video is not an excuse anymore. Honestly, some of my most influential pieces of content or like two paragraphs on LinkedIn where I just call a problem out that the industry is having and they get it right. And there was number production, there was some editing, there was definitely some thoughtfulness. But I put out like the best conversation to enter is the one that's already in the prospects head, right? And you can do that through writing, you can do that through e-mail, you can do that through video. You just got to meet them where they are. And I love that. You know, I stole that from the guy that created Dilbert Scott something, I forget his name, but Scott. Speaker 1 Gilbert. Speaker 2 Scott Something, he created the Dilbert cartoon. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1 But anyway, Scott Gilbert, last name's Gilbert, I think. No, it's not Dilbert. Not I'm. Speaker 2 Just thinking, Scott. Speaker 1 Evans or Scott? Scott Adams, Yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, he always just said like, if you want to look smart, just say what the client is already thinking, but say it better than they can say it. And that's a big part of our sales training. It's like, listen, do discovery understand what they're trying to say and repeat back to them what they're thinking, but way better than they've ever said it. And bam, you are bonded with that person. You're an instant. You can do that one-on-one. You can do that in content. But what I wanted to say is. Speaker 1 You're literally this is I don't know if you've noticed this is what I try to do on every podcast, right? Like I stop what you said, I repeat it in my own way and validate it. I'm. Speaker 2 Like, man, I like, I don't know what it is, but I like this about this Mark guy, you know, yes, totally. But you can do that in content, right? And if you talk to enough clients all day, you can be like, oh, the last 16 calls all came down to the same thing. And if you spend 30 minutes really distilling that down into some potent pulp, you'd be blown away by what that does. But I wanted to say forever, we were like, just turn the camera on, just film. And that's been like the line. Gary Vaynerchuk put that in our heads. We've been saying that for 10 years. And I do agree with that. But now we're teaching our clients to use Hey Gen. They don't have to film the video anymore. They can type the video. They can just send it out. Like just put, I mean, you think about some of the most influential people in the industry. They're not doing video. They're sending out emails, newsletters, they're writing like it's just it's really about the ideas more than the packaging, right. So I don't care if it's YouTube, I don't care if it's a podcast. I don't care if it's your newsletter. Like the, the the entering the conversation that's happening in the prospects head is what that's it. That's the non negotiable that has to translate to everything else. Speaker 1 Buddy, you were the first person I went to Funnel Hacking Live 2019 and it was kind of like at the beginning of like me really going all in on this last round of entrepreneurship for. Speaker 2 Myself. Is this a Brunson event? Richard Brunson. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Russell Brunson. Speaker 2 Russell Brunson. Speaker 1 Yeah, and I still, I still, I still look back at that event as one of the best events I've ever been. It was the most like it was a human funnel. It was incredible, right? Like just like respect on Event Marketing 5. Speaker 2 $1000 product at the back of the. Speaker 1 Stage everybody got got I went in there saying I'm not going to get got and I still got got for like 400 extra bucks that I wasn't going to spend. Dean Graziosi said a very similar thing that I've repeated ad nauseam and it's the idea like you never start a conversation with anybody. You can only hope to join the conversation already happening in someone's head. You're the first person that's ever brought that up outside of that that I'm like no wonder I love you man. So the idea of having a healthy content flywheel and how you're doing it, whether it's AI an agent and all these different things and the FAQ S and the day of you know like or however you're going to deploy it to create these content assets to then continue a conversation and react to things and be able to like have assets to give to somebody all of that feels like very something yes, post Gary Vee, I feel like we're all on that. Let me ask something, man, what, how critical and be completely honest with me here. How critical is having a, a stream of content where you're just like always, you know, like where you're reacting to these things and you're, you're whatever you're podcasting and you're, you're showing up versus having like a core narrative that you clearly have identified that differentiates you, that feeds that entire thing, right? Like, like for, for me, my life has been, I first started just making a lot of content showing up everywhere. And then it's become more and more effective in direct correlation to like this idea of like having a sensual differentiated narrative around like the thing that the thing that differentiates me or the problem that I solve the most in property management. And what you're seeing, how critical is that to to this piece that we're talking about right now in your in your experience? Speaker 2 It's great. I hadn't really thought about that. That's a really good, good point. So I think that if you do either, but you get out in public, you're gonna beat everybody else, right. So yeah, like I'd also say like I wouldn't be just showing up. So like, I gotta figure it. Yeah, I gotta figure it out. Yeah, it's a really good point. I think if you did either. So I, I really believe like here at renscale like I'm like, we got like 1520 core concepts we repeat over and over again and I feel like I can come up with a million pieces of content that is just new varieties and new packaging and new sub flavors of the same 20 concepts. I love that that's who I am. Like one of our company values as simple as always worth it. I actually think that the fundamentals of client acquisition never go away. Persuasion, you know, sales, like like leadership. That's what we espouse. Now, having said that, a ton of our content is like, do you know about granola? Do you know about this AI thing? Like do you know about like, I'm just bringing out new things, but then I'm anchoring them back to like the core concepts. I think there's a huge opportunity for that in property management. It's all about real estate investing. It's all about, you know, asset management. How do we bring it back? On the flip side, this is not in my nature, but I think this is where you're going. I follow a ton of people that are famous just to talk about what's new, you know, And that's by the way, something we teach every business development manager is you should always have an answer to what's new. Because if you go into networking events, if you're going to see the same clients, they don't want to hear the fundamentals, although that's why they hire you. They always want to know what's new. Like you're their zeitgeist, you're their like Periscope into what's happening. And so I follow a ton of people and all they do is react to what's happening, right. So it's it's fantastic. A bunch of the real estate investing gurus, you know, for lack of a better term, that I follow influencers, all they're doing is just reacting to what's happening and they're news people and I want to know if the rates are going up and things like that and then I got people that I follow that just basically teach the same 7 fundamentals over and over again so it's an unsatisfactory answer Pablo, but I follow both in my nature I want to come back to like the the fundamentals, but I want to make them fun and sexy and show new ways to talk about them over and over again I. Speaker 1 Would I would challenge that the guys that you and the girls that you actually follow, they, they may come at it from a what's new or they may come at it from the fundamentals. But the ones that you actually follow versus they just ping in and out of your ecosystem. All have a foundational point of view that they tie it back to similar to you, like you, like you just said, you, you can you have the 20 concepts that you would tie into that are that are tied into kind of like your view of the world of what you do. And you take, hey, have you heard of granola? And then bring it back to like one of those foundational concepts that are that are that are tied really well into a spine of what you and then have built around Renskill and what you believe in and what differentiates you guys. Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a good point. Speaker 1 Yeah, so we. Speaker 2 Understand our fundamental manifesto really well and so it allow it actually is freeing now that you say that for us to just talk about anything under the sun and still make it like coherent with the point of view. Speaker 1 Yeah, I see you guys do that really, really, really well. Like all, all of your presentations are excellent and they feel bespoken, unique. And yet I, you know me as someone that's like trained in this, like I see that there's always the core through line of like of what you guys of how you guys see the world. And I and I kind of get that from, you know, like I I think that you're you're fundamentally teaching a lot of that stuff. Like if you're teaching a BDR that stuff, you are right, it's way easier to walk into a room with like a Hey, what's new in relation to your problems, Not just what's new, right. Like it's one thing to talk about the odyssey came out. It's another thing to be like, oh, there's, there's, you know, like there's a new regulation in town that should affect or whatever, or AI now makes this possible and we're all in on it, right. Like these kinds of things of like to excite people. Tell me more about. So I get man, I've always been pretty curious about your business. And I've always, I've always assumed that there's a, a large degree of mano a mano sales training and role play and like hiring BDRS that then are able to do that stuff. And, and I had an inkling that there was also content strategy because you guys are so good about talking about it. What's the, I mean, am I right? I guess there's, I guess there's both sides of it. And we've been spending a bunch of time on the content strategy piece that you guys enable for people. And then you also do that mano a mano, kind of like bring your sales guy to my Dojo slash. He came in from my karate school and I put him in your, in your, in your company kind of thing. Speaker 2 Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I just jumped off of training right before this call for seven people we hired to do the business development management role for property managers. And they're all going through what we call our trusted advisor training. And I was deep on what is it like we have sort of a special sales process that it would take too long to explain, but we're always, you know, looking to first do a bunch of discovery and then present, you know, all the information that allows people to basically make a yes or no decision. And so I was, it was great. I had like 7 business development managers of all different experience. They were all brand new to the BDM role. Some have been property managers before, some had worked in the company, some are Realtors, real estate agents. Some people we plucked out of the fresh out of college and we're just having a conversation about how do you present the rental array? How do you do a tour when you view the property? We're just, you know, like I said, I'm not all into hacks, but like we got them. You know, when you show up at a property after you had a conversation, you should write something down that you learn in the discovery call then to bring up two days later when you meet the person to let to remind them about what they were concerned about. We talked about, you know, you walk in the door, if there's something you can't ignore, like a dog jumping around, don't ignore the dog. You know, spend some time, like talking about the dog. If they're in the middle of the kitchen renovation and the kitchen's half, you know, renovated, have a conversation about that. So we get deep on the training and then we do practice and we do everything again. It all comes back to the lens that we look at the world through. There's only one reason a company goes out of business and that's a lack of sales. Unfortunately, we're so obsessed. Property management is such a hard gig that we're also focused on the craft of property management. We don't want to get sued. We don't want to lose clients. All very valid concerns. Unfortunately, the last person to eat is typically how do we grow this business. And so the lens that we look at through the world is, is that is your test drive. That is the way that you get better clients that you can be choosy about. Nothing will make you more choosy than having an abundance of opportunity. So we want our clients to have optionality. We want them to create a test drive. And we feel like you train your clients to be better based on how you sell them. And so I mean, I just think we're the best in the world of that. And so that's what we focus on. Speaker 1 I think you're just used to having an abundance of opportunity because you're so like cool and good looking and everybody likes you, bro. No, I agree, man. I, I agree and I appreciate it man. And I think it's to me like, like I said, you instill that in me like it's like, Oh no, I need to build 2 businesses, the product and the, and the go to market. I never really thought of it that way. And as I'm like, I'm trying to distill our conversation down into what that looks like right There is a it looks like essentially treating your sales process as an experiential thing, right? Like as an exponential marketing go to market motion. Part of it is creating content that can help pre educate, preset the table for you, you know, take shame off the plate, right? Like like get you to a certain level of like trust before you interact with someone. And then there's the blocking and tackling of like the person in the field that you guys also trained very, very well that I'm sure is basically just universal behavior science and sales. You're applying it to property management. Like you've done a really, really good job of niching into that. Out of all of your clients. Do they all, So do they all develop the content piece and the BDR kind of like blocking and tackling piece? Is there like is there, is there? Is there a world where somebody goes at it with just one of those? Speaker 2 Oh, 100%, yeah. Yeah, We've got clients of all different magnitudes. I mean, we've got clients that have been in business long enough that they're tripping over leads and that business development manager is truly more of a closer when they hire them. And obviously we have the closer product, which I know Jen has told you about. And that's like you got so many leads, all you need to do is somebody to close it. Fantastic. We even on the rent scale side, we've had people like that. In fact, that's probably like our first couple dozen clients because it was, you know, 8-9 years ago and these guys had leads needs. They just need some sales training. Now. We've got clients hiring us that are spinning up and they're like, I have no opportunity. I need to truly do business development. I need to meet referral partners, I need to create content. So knowing your job is actually a big part of what we do on the filter. So it's like nothing is worse than when you hire a business development manager and you as the owner and them are not clear and they think their job is just to close and you think their job is to hunt and vice versa. So yeah, that's a big part of what we do is like what? What do you have? It's all customer acquisition. I would use the word customer acquisition more, but I just don't think our industry knows what it means as much. But that's everything you do to turn a stranger into a customer, right? And it's usually a blend in sales and marketing. We're not a marketing agency. We love our marketing agent agency partners like PMW and four and a half and everybody else upkeep. We love those guys. But we are having a conversation about like how do you generate business? How do you create content? How do you build referral partners? Like we don't stop, you know, but at the end of the day, we're just like how do you acquire customers? And we're going to help you get that done. Speaker 1 My go to simplification technique is I think everybody goes through three basic questions. Is this interesting? Does it apply to me? Do I trust this person? And you know, like it sounds like, you know, like the the is it interesting to me is kind of like those are the signals that you put out there. That's the content that you make or like how you introduce yourself to get somebody like perk up, you know, does it apply to me? That is that's kind of the stuff I think the heavy lifting of of a pre marketing kind of like, you know, you're already before we meet in between meetings, like these kinds of things. You can really like lift that a lot with content. And then do I trust these people? That really is when when you have them and they're spending time with you, the you know, how do you design that experience and how do you like the things that you said, right, like write things down that you then bring up so that they know that you were listening those those kinds of things. I find it all super, super interesting. And yeah, I, I, you know, I see you guys as you and Jen, as you know, you are, you are a business development agency, not a marketing agency. Like you, you, you help build pipeline at whatever, you know, build or, or generate revenue from pipeline at whatever stage people are at. I am super curious about the closure product. So the closure product then is like somebody that has enough leads, but they just don't have a salesperson out there. Like just like there are people that have invested in content, they have SEO, they're already, they have a bunch of inbound. And it's just like instead of instead of hiring somebody and training someone for this role, I can just kind of like scale up or scale down based on close rate by people that know what the hell they're doing. And I don't have to worry about that function of my business. Speaker 2 You got it exactly. So the last mile of sales is totally closing, right. So you've developed the business, you have the, you have the reputation, people look you up, you got great reviews. The phone's ringing or the inbox is being filled in every time you check lead simple. You know, like our app lead, you got new leads and the owner is like, Oh my God, I don't have time for these guys. Like they want to talk, they want to have three phone calls with me. They want me to meet him at the property. Like I don't have time for this. That's when you call closer or you know, very often unfortunately like a lot of our clients against our best recommendation, they're like my property managers can do sales for me, which by the way we can. That's a whole nother sub conversation we can have. If you, if something's important, put somebody full charge in front of it. What's more important than developing business, right? So that's closer. Closer is there. So the simple premise is imagine having a Jen or a Jeremy representing your business. You know how to market, you know how to generate leads, or you're willing to pay for the leads, right? A lot of the Closer clients are just doing paper lead like a thumbtack or an APM or something like that. But they're like our general premise is we did the research, our PDM's are averaging somewhere between 12 and 20 contacts before they close a deal. Most business owners that are doing property management think nobody can sell as good as them. But when we look at the CRM and we're like, Pablo, you're calling your leads an average of two times and they're like, well, I called them. They if they don't want to do business with me, they're no good. Like, what do you want me to do? And I'm like, I want you to follow up 12 to 20 times. And that's what we do a closer so that we just think the bar is much higher than most people think and everything. We don't want to be an order taker. We want to be a closer. An order taker is like, here's my product. I show up and I throw up. Do you want to do it? Unfortunately, that's what a lot of business owners do. A closer is like finding the pain. Why do you want to do this? What made you reach out? Are you sure you want to do go with a property manager? What's your timeline look like? What how do you make a decision like this? Right? And so you got a dinner, a Jeremy on the phone and you only pay when you close. So it's a total no brainer for somebody who's got the lead flow but just doesn't have the appetite for selling. Speaker 1 What a great insight man to me. Like the you know, 1 stat business case, like 1 chart business case average lead takes 12 to 20 touch points to close. Average property manager has time for two to three that's. Speaker 2 It. That's it. You got it. Speaker 1 Yeah, like outsources, right? Like let somebody else do it. I love that man. All right. Speaker 2 I think overall, the theme that I really hope people take away from this, and this is like Renskales philosophy, is sales and marketing just takes more work than you think it does, but it totally pays for itself. So everything comes down like one of my biggest, you know, I've got my Jeremy Isms just like you probably have your Pabloisms, right? We repeat them a lot. I'm always having a conversation around effective versus efficient. And I think that as operators, all of us as business owners, we want everything to be as efficient as we can and we should up until the point that it decapitates the effectiveness. So we've learned that a property management sales process is actually better if you schedule a second call rather than trying to close on the first call. Highly inefficient. Any bean counters going to look at that and be like you're spending too much time with every prospect, cut it down. Like why are you doing 2 calls when you could do in one? We have found it's 15 times more effective when you do it that way, right? And so you got to make every day like everything's a balance. You could go hyper efficient and basically we would just have like a sign up form on the website. It would be like Amazon, we put our property management agreements in Amazon Prime and we'd give like 2 day free shipping and we'd just let people sign up. That would be super efficient, cost us nothing. Probably not a ton of door addition going on in the next month, right? Hyper effective would be every time a property's for rent, I walk up to the, I find the owner's house, I fly there, I meet with them, I wine and dine them and convince them to let me manage their property. Not going to be very profitable. So we have to decide where we want to be in the mix of that. This is just a business lens. I look at everything through and I think unfortunately all of us, this is our human condition. We want to default to over optimizing for efficient and we're leaving so much money on the table because we won't be less efficient to make more money. And I think that's why client that's the golden rule about treating customers well, delivering good service. Not everything you can't do, you can't over index on everything, Pablo, but you've got to make like four or five bets where you're like, I'm going to be less efficient to be more effective. And I feel like that's business strategy one O 1. Speaker 1 That is business strategy 101. Like I just keep thinking I'm like, man, I'm totally stealing this frame for talking about AI and AI agents and stuff like that, right? Like it's like the things that you can efficient to death, efficient with AI, the things that the things that you want to effective to death, you go super superhuman and voila, you are differentiated around the things that you find the most important that. Speaker 2 You spend and that's what pays for the less efficient things is by going efficient everywhere else, right? Yeah, Yeah. So it's a great point. Speaker 1 I want to take a super hard right that I did not prepare you for in any way, and feel free to pass on this. The property manager that listens to this podcast, chances are not an integrator. I like this is very much like a visionary content stream because I'm like a exaggerated visionary, right? Like I, but I'm also as somebody that is so exaggeratedly visionary and you know, integrator handicapped, I value integrators just enormously. And I also, when I see a really good pairing of visionary and integrator, I become obsessed with it. And then I started like, I'm like, oh, how do they function and blah, blah, blah. And you and Jen are exactly that, right? Like, like you and Jen to me are such a well functioning, effective and efficient pairing of visionary and integrator. And I've picked up little things from you of like you understanding in front of a room, not talking about process because it's not your place to like talk about process when your integrator should be talking about process. And I and I'm, and I'm, you know, and then I talked to Jen about it at, at Tony's event. I was just kind of like picking her brain about it. I'd love to, you know, man, I see you. First of all, is it right? I, I, is it right to think that you're the visionary and she's the integrator and you guys have like your roles really, really well dialed in. And, and I'd love to kind of like hear from you your process of learning how to really work with a integrator in a way that you don't step on toes and, and the things that you think about that might be obvious to you, but extraordinary to other people of, of how you do it. Speaker 2 Yeah, I appreciate that this is a question we get asked all the time and something we want to share more because it's like it is very well documented. And like even anecdotally for me being an entrepreneur's organization guy for years, which you know, the traction thing came on the scene 10 years ago and everyone thought I can cover all my shortcomings as an entrepreneur by finding an integrator. That's what everybody thought. That's what the whole like every guy that's like, look, I, I, I'm like ADD I party too much and I never show up to work. But if I just get an integrator, everything's going to be handled right like that. Like, so that's the joke that we all said in EO is like, you can, you can make up for every shortcoming ever if you just get the right integrator. Well, it's actually kind of true to some extent. It's like that doesn't work. So the one thing I want to correct you, not correct you on, but I want to point out, having been, you know, about five years into this relationship, Jen is the integrator. I'm the visionary. I'm much more integrator than most visionaries. And Jen is much more visionary than most integrators. You see that too. Yeah, So that sounds. Speaker 1 Even harder to me. Speaker 2 Oh my God, It actually creates a ton of problems because I don't only come up with a vision like typical like storybook fashion is. I got a great idea, I pick a hill to climb, and then I let Jen figure it out. The problem is I spend two months creating the battle plan to climb the hill and then I hand it over to Jen to execute. And she's like, there's a lot of problems in this, you know what I mean? So like, I want more fingerprints on the operational side. She wants more fingerprints on the the visionary side. I don't think she'd be upset for me saying that I bring her a vision sometimes and she wants to put her fingerprints on that. So that is actually challenging. However, the outcome is way better than trying to do it on your own, you know, So I think I probably have met some true all the way to the end integrators and all the way to the end visionaries. And we're more like a Venn diagram that overlaps. And it is challenging, but it's also really fruitful. I think that we see around corners because of that. So I think really like the take away here is when you read that and you try that, don't assume that it's going to be salt and pepper and nothing integrates. It's way more of kind of a Venn diagram sometimes or it's a total salt and pepper, doesn't matter What is, what I think matters is that people are aware of who they are and where their instinct is. And it's hard for me to let go of how to do things because I think I'm a system thinker. Like even though nobody can believe it as a sales guy, I mean, I ran, I was a software programmer for 10 years. My first company was software, like I think in code, Jen's got an abstract idea, which usually the integrator never has. And I'm like, let's define that. And she's like, what are you talking about? But I'm like, I can't let go of that because I was a programmer. And if you have, if you have great thinking and software, it doesn't work, you know, whereas A divisionary, she calls me out all the time. I come with a big idea. And then she's like, and exactly what does that mean? And I'm like, well, I haven't figured out what it means. I just like the way that it sounds, you know. And so, yeah, we call each other out on that. Lot of lot of amazing value comes out of that. And lot of know thyself. A lot of calls just end with us being like, she'll say to me, she's like, I'm just going to end this call right now because nothing good is going to happen from this. And I'm like, I get it. And we're all going to like make up tomorrow and we're going to get right back to it. So yeah, like, you know, this is hard work. It is messy work. So I just want to say that for anybody who's going through it. Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel like, you know, the people that I'm one of the partnerships I respect most is JWB and they've, they've invested a lot into like consensus based decision making and like how they how they operate and stuff like that. And I'm wondering like from you guys, like you said, five years in, right, like five years in both of you, both of you are alpha number ones, right? Like and you have this unbelievable partnership, right. I think five years into it, there's stuff that you couldn't have replicated on day one, like the amount of trust you have to be able to let go of things. But what are the things that you find yourself different now five years in, in that relationship of like visionary integrator and how you come to decisions or give feedback or what, or speak in public, you know, like not putting down the other one, which is what I noticed from you, what you know what, what is something that you're 1 you could have been doing that you've learned now five years later. Easy question. Speaker 2 Yeah, not at all. I mean, not a lot's changed. I mean, total respect there for the other person. Like absolutely disagree more than anybody would ever realize. But being able to do that with total respect for the process and just like it is what it is. Like, I mean, 5 dysfunctions of five dysfunctions of a team. Like I feel like we need to go back to that every now and then because we definitely make a lot of decisions that one or the other doesn't agree with or other leadership team members. And like if you read that book, you realize once the decision's made, you got to stick to it and everybody's got to have the outcome in mind. And then when things go wrong, like how do you have a conversation about that without throwing it in each other's face? I mean, we, you know, I don't know if anything's changed. I mean, there's been nothing but respect. I think that over 5 years she's gotten way more authority and way more latitude and now she's a partner, which she wasn't before. And so, you know, that's been something that I've, you know. Speaker 1 What does total respect look like, Jeremy? Is it is it we don't cost when we're disagreeing? Is it like what is you know what I mean? Like like for me, I have AI have like a real problem. Like if somebody loses it on somebody on my team, I'm like, that's a fireable offense, right? Like, you know, you can't, you can't just have a hissy fit. But like when it comes to partnership stuff, sometimes you got to be able to be intense and you got to be able to like have hard conversations. And I wonder kind of like paint to me what your definition of like what is what is respect and disagreement? And you know, like what? How do you, how do you define that? Speaker 2 Yeah, it's tough. I mean, yeah, there's none of that. Like we, I don't think that Jen and I are that kind of person, that kind of people. We, I definitely, probably not Jen. I definitely have said things I regret later, but it's never been purposely hurtful. It's usually been miscommunicated or short sighted, you know? But I would say true respect is like, I can totally hate your idea, but I realize it's coming from somebody that I really respect. So I, I must be missing something in this idea and I need to like, go think about that. That's what I think the total respect is. Like we can absolutely hate the decision or what somebody else has made a call on. But then you immediately check your gut and you're like, well, but it's coming from somebody that I really respect. So I need to really think through that, that that to me. I don't speak for Jen, but that's the way I take it. Speaker 1 I like that, man. I hear that. And I think the the respect is essentially A commitment to leading with curiosity instead of judgement when you're when you're disagreeing. Yeah. And that'll. And that's a good North Star for that piece. I like that, yeah. Speaker 2 Totally, totally. Curiosity. Total respect. I mean, I can think five things in the last week where one of us, like the other person pointed out a blind spot and like one of us was like, awesome, thank you for catching that right? I was, I was being too much of A Jeremy or she was being too much of A Gen. You know what I mean? We're like perfect. And then we're good and the decision's better. Speaker 1 You guys are like perfect man. I love hanging out with you guys. Would any, any, anything else, man? Anything I've missed here either on this integrator visionary conversation or something else that we could have talked about on like the on the on like how the world is changing and you need to assist my sales as an experience side? Speaker 2 There's so much. I mean, I always enjoy the conversation. I always enjoy hanging out with you. Yeah. I just, you know, I just want to say that we think that the industry is still so young and you know, just, you know, recently biased, but sitting in the room of 5000 of the top real estate agents and seeing how big they thought and how they were talking about what's coming is just amazing. And I think that's what we're trying to do is rent scale to the community. By no means am I saying that like we got it all figured out, but the rest of the industry is very focused on how do we reduce some maintenance, you know, contract from three days to one days, right? Or like I think, yeah, unbelievably important, unbelievably important. I just really always, I'm trying to hold space for what could happen in this industry. What can we learn from other industries? What do we think is happening six months from now? What is the consumer thinking? What options do we have, right. So like when Peter talked about Turbo Tenant, we were talking about it and Jen uses it from one of her rental properties and she's like, this is serious. Like we gotta have a conversation with the industry about all these alternatives that are happening. So just in general, I just want more conversation about where are things going and what's possible and not just solving the immediate right in front of your face problems. And so that's just what I wake up every day trying to do that and try to share that. Speaker 1 Amen, brother. That's what this podcast is all about. Speaker 2 Awesome. Speaker 1 Man, huh? Speaker 2 Break the frame right? Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. What are the things that are at the edge of the frame that are breaking it, right? What is changing? What are the new things? Like how is a context change creating a new opportunity for innovation and therefore a big advantage, right? I totally agree with that, man. Dude, I just want to acknowledge how how much I admire like you as a business person, right, like I think every, every it's easy to it's easy to see funny Jeremy Pound and like great hand Jeremy Pound. Your, your business acumen is something that I'm always like super, super impressed by. And, and, and it's, and it's like, I don't know, I just think more people like I'm, I just, it, it always over delivers for me, whether it's like a private conversation in a group of people where I see you presenting or it's like really digging into the nitty gritty of how you've like, you know, really understood that niching into this space was the right move. And then continuing to niche and niche and niche into the thing that you do in this space. Like, as somebody that like sees all those strategic moves and recognizes it. And I'm I am still too chicken to do half of them. It just like it. It really is like a, a real kind of like thing that I really, really admire, man. And I appreciate our friendship. Dude. Thanks for doing this. Speaker 2 Appreciate you too, man. It's nice to be nice to hear that, nice to be seen. And I feel the same way, man. Every time we're in the same room I'm like, how do I do more of this? Speaker 1 Heck yeah. All right, that's the pod. Speaker 2 I love it. I hope to see you soon man. Speaker 1 Yeah, for sure. Speaker 2 Bye, take care. Speaker 1 That's the end of the show and the only thing I ask is be my friend. Shoot me an e-mail to Pablo at Venduru dot AI. If you like this conversation, you want to connect with somebody that's connecting with the most forward thinking people in this industry that's trying to figure out this new future of property management. You know that the change is coming and you want to keep an eye on the pulse of it, a finger on the pulse of it. The best thing that I can offer you is access to me and my I'm out there at events. I want to meet you. I want to connect you to people. I want to solve problems for you. So just shoot me an e-mail Pablo at vendoru dot AI. Just say listen to the podcast, count me in. I'll reach back out to you. I'll subscribe you to the newsletter, which we're writing articles about this type of stuff. But just a quick don't overthink it, Pablo at vendoru dot AI and just say whatever podcast, sign me up, Tell me what you think, Tell me how to do this better. But I would love, love, love to hear from you. All right, talk soon.