DGS 266: Automated Workflows in Property Management
Description
As business owners, we often mistakenly assume that micromanaging our teams will make them more effective and efficient.
In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert, Jason Hull sits down with award-winning real estate coach and industry influencer, Jo Oliveri to discuss how implementing automated workflows can revolutionize your property management business.
You’ll Learn
[03:14 ] USA vs Australia for property management
[07:03 ] Property management is stuck in the past
[17:38 ] What is automation?
[21:11 ] The importance of having good policy
[31:24 ] Why your business needs a set of values
[40:23 ] Implementing automated workflows and processes
Tweetables
“In some respects, we're struggling as an industry to change our mindset and have a fear of moving forward.”
“When we use something manual, it's not logical. It becomes part of what a person feels like doing at that time.”
“If you don't have your business founded on a very strong policy, then you're going to struggle when things go wrong.”
“Out of policy becomes the promise that we can make, and we know that we can deliver on it.”
Resources
Transcript
[00:00:00 ] Jo: They say every leader is present even when they're not present. So you need to have that. And the only way to have it in property management is through your automated workflows that are built upon the logic that you created through your process.
[00:00:18 ] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives. And you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently than you are a DoorGrow property manager.
[00:00:38 ] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust, gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.
[00:00:59 ] 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. I'm your host, founder and CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull.
[00:01:18 ] Now let's get into the show. And my lovely guest today is Jo Oliveri. Welcome, Jo.
[00:01:25 ] Jo: Hello, Jason. How are you?
[00:01:28 ] Jason: Good. What time is it over there right now?
[00:01:30 ] Jo: I think it's about 7am in the morning. So we're a little ahead of you. It's Wednesday. We're in the future here.
[00:01:37 ] Jason: Yeah you're in the future. How's the future look?
[00:01:39 ] Jo: The future in Brisbane is actually very bleak. It's a very wet day, which is unusual for Brisbane, but we need the rain so.
[00:01:46 ] Jason: Got it. Well, we're going to be chatting a little bit about about automation, about automating your team and processes a bit, but why don't you give people a little bit of background on yourself?
[00:02:01 ] And how you kind of got into this.
[00:02:04 ] Jo: Yeah. Okay. Well, I've been around the industry in property management, I chose property management for 30 years, which seems like a long time when I say it, but I've been through the process of when they first introduced property management programs through to where we are today in technology.
[00:02:22 ] And I've worked as a property manager right through to being the kind of like the creator of property management for one of the big international franchise groups until I was ready to launch my own business 15 years ago as a property management business coach and consultant and yeah, just feel blessed to be doing what I do every day because it's a great industry to be involved in.
[00:02:49 ] Jason: Awesome. So where do we start?
[00:02:52 ] What do you think?
[00:02:53 ] Jo: Oh, well it's interesting when I say I started 30 years ago, I feel like we're still back in, you know, what we were doing 30 years ago, in some respects we're struggling as an industry to change our mindset and have a fear of moving forward. So it's quite interesting.
[00:03:14 ] Jason: So. You've been back and forth between the United States and Australia involved in property management conferences, events. I've actually just for kicks been reading on my morning walks, the LPMA manuals or doc like books or whatever because I'm like, what do they got going on over there? And it seems like there are some notable differences.
[00:03:35 ] It seems it's really interesting. I'm like, Oh, that's really weird. Why did they do stuff that way over there? So, but what have you noticed between the two countries, like what's kind of different in property management.
[00:03:46 ] Jo: It's an interesting question, because a lot of people think there is a big difference, but there's really not a lot of difference.
[00:03:55 ] And I say that because I worked in the USA as vice president of a very large company over there in company management.
[00:04:03 ] Jason: Yeah.
[00:04:04 ] Jo: And I really believe that in a lot of respects, the USA is way ahead of where we are here in Australia. But I think that probably the subtle difference is team structures.
[00:04:18 ] We seem to focus more on property managers doing everything over here. And when I say here, I'm in Australia at the moment. Whereas in the U. S. they like to have like the breakaway roles, I call them. You know, someone focused on maintenance, someone focused on leasing. And yeah, a little bit more task orientated in the U. S.
[00:04:41 ] Jason: Got it. Okay. What I've noticed in my perception is that property management over there is almost always connected to a brokerage. That's the perception. Is that accurate? Or is it often that there are property management businesses that do not do real estate?
[00:05:00 ] Jo: Yes. I would say going back two decades, that was probably the case here.
[00:05:05 ] But we are seeing a lot more entrepreneurial type business owners who start up as property management companies and as they grow, then what they're doing, they're losing management's to people selling. So as they grow, they're now adding in you know, like a sales service, which obviously makes sense. So yeah it has changed in the way they're doing it, but certainly when I started property management did belong to an brokerage. But you know, the, when I first started, I worked for a property management only company, which was very unusual back then.
[00:05:45 ] Jason: Yeah. I was particularly surprised by the growth strategies that I was reading the book. To me, it felt like they were a bit, I don't know, old school and I was like, man, why, but maybe there's just a lot more opportunity in the U S. One of the things that we have a big opportunity here is there's a lot of rental properties that are just not professionally managed.
[00:06:07 ] Whereas it sounds like there's quite a high percentage are professionally managed in Australia.
[00:06:12 ] Jo: Yeah, I would say, you know, in Australia, we don't see the people who own big property portfolios, like personal property portfolios who become their own managers. So, you know, in the USA you see a lot of people who might own, you know, ten or more doors and they end up starting their own property management company, their own LLCs.
[00:06:35 ] We don't see that In Australia you know, there's not a lot of people in Australia compared to the U. S. that have vast property, you know, holdings. We see more of the mom and dad or the mom and pop, as you would say over there, type investors in Australia that, you know, own one, maybe two properties.
[00:06:57 ] So of course, most of those are managed through you know, a professional property management company.
[00:07:03 ] Jason: Got it. Yeah. Well, cool. Let's talk a little bit about the topic at hand. So we're going to talk about automated workflows in property management. And I did a webinar in the past talking about three levels of process documentation or of a process system in a property management business.
[00:07:21 ] And my level one was just documentation. It was like google docs or something like that. Level two was checklist It was like Process St. or LeadSimple or some of these kind of tools and then level three was something like DoorGrow flow or Flussos which is It's basically the same thing. It's ju
United States
