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Property Management Mastermind Show

#137: Business Development For Property Managers Ft. Brian Hughes of BizDev Mastertmind

Mar 09, 2022 by Brad Larsen

On today's podcast, Brad is joined by Brian Hughes of BizDev to learn all about business development for your business as a property manager.  They share their experiences, setbacks, and lessons learned that will help you execute a strategy for success! 

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Brad Larsen: Everybody on today's episode, I'm bringing on Brian Hughes from Biz Dev Mastermind, a fantastic discussion about all business development stuff that matters to you. You got to listen in.

ANNCR: Welcome to the property management mastermind show with your host, Brad Larson. Brad owns one of the fastest growing property management companies in San Antonio, Texas. This podcast is for property managers by property managers. You'll hear from industry leading professionals on best practices, new ideas, success stories and lessons learned. This is your opportunity to learn about the latest industry buzz surrounding property management, as well as tips and strategies to improve your business.

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Brad Larsen: Welcome everybody to another edition of Property Management Mastermind podcast show, I'm your host, Brad Larsen. Now today's guest. We're going to bring on Brian Hughes of The Biz Dev Mastermind. Ok, everybody. Full disclosure. All right, let's talk just through this real quickly. I am basically one of the founders of Bizet mastermind. I help Brian start his consulting career and I turned it over to him several years ago, and I have nothing to do with it. But you know, again, I was helping him start it, and I have a little bit of vested interest in his success because it's kind of like, you know, I birthed him, I brought him in to rent works. I trained him on how to do all this cool stuff. And together we created this whole business development machine to where, in one of his better years, he signed up for a hundred plus units for rent works. And so it's been a phenomenal ride with Brian. He's come a long way. Quick little story, and then I'll turn it over to him to introduce himself. When we first hired him, I stole him out of a mattress firm. So he was just out of College A&M. I was working at Mattress Firm working like a dog, like 70 hours a week, you know, weekends, nights, everything. And so I showed him a 40 hour work week and all this opportunity to be creative. And he jumped on it and just tore it up, and he went for about three plus years with us or rent works and then started his own business development consulting because he was just that good. And I think he's doing a great job. So without further ado, I want to introduce Brian. Give us a few minutes of your time telling us who you are.

Brian Hughes: Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for that intro. Brad, I'm definitely happy to be out of the mattress game and in property management and consulting. So that's that was a good move for me back then. And yeah, like like you mentioned and I got my start in property management working for you, then Larsson properties and we became rent works and we had a lot of success there and really grew that business and that led to these other opportunities. So today we help property management business owners grow their business. We help them implement sales processes, marketing all that good stuff, help them hire business, develop managers. I'm sure we'll talk about some of that throughout this podcast. But yeah, that's a little about me.

Brad Larsen: Well, it's good stuff because I want to let everybody know, too, that we've actually hired you as a consultant. So you're working with our current business development manager will on a daily, weekly basis and you have been mentoring him. You helped hire him, you're mentoring him, you're training him. And this is the kind of service that you can do for anybody. So it's not just like recommending you to somebody and not using your services. We're using your services now and we're paying, we're paying retail. So, you know, it's I wanted to be clear about that is we believe what you do is a good stuff. In fact, you know, just you and I are going to have a separate conversation as we expand into Austin. We're going to hire you again to help us work and hire a business development manager in the Austin market. I mean, you could argue they can work both, but we really want somebody there in Austin, as you and I have discussed. So that's a whole nother conversation. I mean, it starts from scratch. So not only are we using you in an existing business development operational, you know, ninety five percent solution, you plug in the one business development manager and you've got a full solution. We're going to hire you to to create it from scratch in our Austin market. And so that's going to be fun when we start doing that. So I just want to give the audience a perspective like, Hey, we're using you for existing and brand new ventures to where you know you could be. Somebody can hire you in a brand new market. You know how to do that and do it well. So let's kind of talk about what your service is. What I mean, what is it if somebody talking to you and you give them the elevator pitch, what do you offer?

Brian Hughes: Sure. So we we tend to help two different types of clients, either those who kind of, like you mentioned, are in a position to just hire a business manager and they're ready to plug and play. They have their their marketing going, they have their pricing set up. They're getting leads, they have decent sales process set up. They need to hire the right person, put them in the right seat, get them trained up and have them start closing those leads, preferably at a higher rate than than they're doing as business. So that's that's one type of client we help. We'll help you hire your business development manager. So we'll put out the listing. We'll do all the legwork of getting that person in the door, which trust me, is not easy and it's gotten harder over time. So we do that portion of it. We help you with the hiring kind of start to finish until you get that right person in the door. Then once we have that right person, the right, see, then we go about training them in the training program is more than just sales training. It's more than scripts. It's more than all of that. We're in addition to just training on how to be in this position. We're talking about how to generate more leads, how to build relationships in your market and how to do all of those things that actually develop business. It's not just about closing the business, closing those leads.

Brian Hughes: That's, you know, that's one part of it. And that is important. But in reality, it's at a small business, at a property management company. It's really all about developing the business and those who are successful at that are the most successful business of all managers. So that's that's one part of what we do is the hiring side and then the training for other clients. They say, Hey, you know, we just need a sales process if we could just plug and play a sales process into this. We've been in good shape, so we also help clients on a on a case by case basis, whether they need help with their sales process, their marketing, their generation, and we work with them on that. And you know, something I did, I failed to mention in the intro in kind of a little bit more about what we do. I just really love growing small businesses and working with clients. To do that is really my passion. So whether you're looking to hire someone, whether you're looking to analyze your market, do a competition, shop, implement your sales process, something like that, we can help you across the board. But truthfully, the best bang for your buck is our training program. It's about four to four and a half months. We walk through everything from your website to your marketing materials. Just really everything. Business development related is what we go through.

Brad Larsen: So here we are, sitting in the spring of early spring, late February. Twenty twenty two. We're on the verge of going to going to be a pretty good year this year, and I want to give some background because these sales market the business market as a whole. We've had a big sell off. So we've had a lot of homes that were being sold the last 12 months, 18 months. But that's starting to slow down because everyone that wanted to sell is pretty much sold at this point. And it's not like these rental properties actually left the market, necessarily. A lot of times other investors, institutional investors, for example, we're buying up these rental properties. So we also saw a decline in a lot of businesses where all of a sudden they're down 50 100 doors, two hundred dollars, five hundred doors, and now they have all of a sudden wake up and say, Whoa, we're at a fork in the road where we need to grow this up again, get some business development going and get some signups. Or we got to just get get this thing sold and sell the business. So I think you're a real good point, Brian, to where you're going to see a lot of folks going to need your services going into the next, you know, obviously this early part of this year, what do you think?

Brian Hughes: Yeah, yeah, you actually it's funny. You mentioned that I just spoke with someone who is interested in potentially hiring us, and they were at that exact crossroads. They told me they literally at the signing table or, I don't know, literally out there, but close to it days away from signing over their company and selling it. And they came to realize, Hmm, actually, this is a pretty good asset. This is something that I could if I hold on to you for five years and I grow it from the one hundred properties we're at to two hundred and three hundred and four hundred and five hundred those those sale price numbers start to get really attractive. So their decision, they were really close to selling their business and they said, You know what, actually, let's grow it first and then let's sell it, and let's really turn this into an asset. So, yeah, there's there's certainly people out there having those thoughts in those conversations. I've talked to a few of myself.

Brad Larsen: So what we're going to be touching on next is the fact that we can't cover everything. Ok, so if you're listening to this, this is this is not a playbook for success. We're going to touch on a few topics, but this conversation is no kidding, gang. It is days long and you know, you can talk about it, but then implementing it is another day long conversation. So, I mean, I probably missed the mark on this. But if we're just going to talk about how do you generate new business? It starts with sales process of lead generation. Ok? Almost before that, you have to have a good value proposition, meaning if you're pricing your business services at, you know, selling property management services for five hundred percent a door, you're not going. No one's going to hire you. Yeah, you can almost make the same argument for three percent of door. You know what I mean to where you're so low? People look at you like you're some sort of weirdo. And so it starts with a value proposition, you know, answering why should somebody hire you? Ok, and that's I mean, that's a whole day conversation in itself. So let's touch on this just working with other businesses as you have and you're starting them from scratch. All right. Let's answer the question new business that just hired Brian. Why should they hire you? Why would it owner off the street? Look at you and hire you? Let's go from there.

Brian Hughes: Sure. Sure. Yeah. You hit on a really great point there. You know, generating leads or getting the phone to ring or having those conversations are great. But if you're selling at five hundred dollars a month as your user management fee and you know where your pricing is just confusing or your plans don't make sense or outdated, or there are things that you're just doing the same as everyone else, if you're in that boat, it's going to be really hard to differentiate yourself. It's going to be really hard to actually grow the way you want to because you don't really have a good foundation. Some of the clients we work with are kind of at that stage where they're trying to figure out their pricing. Do I need to change pricing? I've always kind of done it this way. Should I change it? I don't really know. And what we do for them to start out with our program is we we shop their competition, so we look at their top six competitors in their market and often what we found, we actually just did this with a client in Louisiana. We found that everyone in their market was charging nine or 10 percent in a 50 percent leasing fee. And that's when you go on Google and you search third city property management. Those are the top six people you see all charging the same thing. So we thought to ourselves, Okay, why don't we do something different? Why don't we differentiate ourselves based on price? And why don't we find other ways to differentiate ourselves through additional services like protection plans and other things that others are offering in their? We have a lot better position to sell versus our competition, if for no other reason, just because they're different. If everyone's doing the same thing and you call one of those six companies who all charge the same, all their websites look the same. Just by you being slightly different and doing things a little bit unique, you'll you'll get those phone calls and you're setting yourself up with a good foundation.

Brad Larsen: Yeah, we did that. Now there's a lot of pricing logic on this conversation we can have. I mean, you don't we don't recommend you don't recommend people to go out and be the cheapest competitor out there because people look at you like, what's wrong with you? Why are you charge me ten dollars a month for mangiapane? That's that's retarded. And so I get you trying to grab doors. There's that philosophy there. But people don't like to hire the cheapest and the people that do hire the cheapest. You don't want to work for them, right? You don't want to be associated with them. And so we've always been a big fan of the the flat fee model. I mean, it's never perfect, you know? But if you're just looking for an addition like some sort of differentiator, that's a good method. And again, back to it, you'd almost recommend somebody, Hey, you know what? They're all charging, you know, eight, nine, 10 percent, whatever the math is. Why don't you charge a little bit higher, but throw in the kitchen sink and throw and throw into this other stuff so where you might be charging a little bit more, but darn it, you're giving so much more in return. It's really like you're charging less, but you're wrapping it up in a different way.

Brian Hughes: Yeah, absolutely. And that reminds me of another client in Florida, a really competitive market city there. And in their market, there's a lot of flat fees. There's a lot of three tiered plans. There's really every pricing structure you can think of. And they were out of 10 percent, which was actually a premium in the market. It was one of the higher priced options there. And doing their competition shop, we realized that although there's a lot of different pricing options and a lot of people will beat them on price, no one is going to beat them on service. They have knowledgeable staff, they have programs that no one else has. They have a they offer a premium service and they charge a premium price. So not always do we do the research and find out, OK, you need to charge less or you need to charge is different. Sometimes it's just about how you're positioning yourself and presenting yourself. And you know, they do well with their pricing and get the clients and achieve the goals that they're looking for.

Brad Larsen: And a lot of it, too, is creating new features and benefits. Right. You're trying to answer the question Why should I hire you? Well, you should hire me because I have a beautiful bald head and that's a feature to you because it creates a more aerodynamic approach down the ski slope. Right? And that's kind of how you explain it to them. I know that's really cheesy and it's kind of a funny metaphor. But if you look at our site that you help develop, we list owner benefits and tenant benefits right there. Features and benefits, right? Here's the feature. The feature could be the wristwatch. The benefit is it tells you the time, and that could be your differentiator. It's not so unnecessary. It's not necessarily price, but it could be things like that, and you have to explain that to people. All right, it could be as simple as, you know, we do electronic payments. Ok, you're thinking rolling your eyes. Everybody does electronic payments. Do they question mark? Do owners know any different? You know, as far as they know, you might be taking cash, money, your office desk and then turning around and sending a cashier's check to them? They don't know. But we explain everything to them and say, Oh, that really is a feature. It's much better than my tenant dropping off a wad of ones to my front door, right to wear what they have before that, correct? Sure. So that's part of the pricing model. It's again trying to attract people. Let's stop that convo and let's talk about let's talk about lead generation because we know, OK, if the the value proposition is kind of like the net, but how do you push the fish to the net?

Brian Hughes: Yep, yep. Good question. And that's that's certainly one that we could talk for hours and days on, for sure. But there's a lot of different ways, and it kind of depends on what is your business look like? How much staff do you have, how much time do you have, how much money do you have to spend? All of those things come into play if you are short on time, but you have a lot of cash and you want to get some leads, you can go with pay per click. You can use services that are out there. Google ads, all property management and others to generate leads. Now, if you are have a lot of time on your hands, but not not a lot of capital to spend on advertising, you may invest in content creation or you may invest in building relationships, but also say generating leads in your property management business, in my opinion, really starts with content creation that is the the most cost effective. It is the most effective way to start generating leads, but I think we're a lot missed. The mark is that they say, OK, I'm going to start creating content, I'm going to do a video every three days and they post posted on their Facebook. Or maybe they put it on their website and then they kind of forget about it. But there's a lot more juice left in in that orange, if you will, to to squeeze out of it, to make the most out of it. And that's something that that we tried to to implore or put on our clients is that making the video is just the first step. It's what do you do after that, after to start generating leads and using that content in the right type of way?

Brad Larsen: One of the high level questions we get a lot. You may feel this pretty well is how much should I spend on your services, how much should I spend on lead creation? How much do I spend on a business development manager? How much should I spend on all these things that help generate capture leads and create new business? So what I've seen, and maybe you can correct me here, but for every dollar that you create into coming into the business and new business development on an annual basis, I believe you should be spending 20 cents to 40 cents. Twenty five to twenty five cents. It's almost spend a dollar to make five or spend a dollar to make 10 somewhere in there. Ok. Because I've seen the opposite of that and some corporate entities, I've seen them spend a dollar and make 50 cents for it. And it baffles me because it doesn't make any sense because you have to understand you have to create revenue to justify that business development person's expenses. And so what are your thoughts on that?

Brian Hughes: Yeah, that's interesting. One, I wish that we could just spend a dollar on marketing and get 10 back or if there was if it was as easy to make that connection, but

Brad Larsen: Not just marketing. It's not just marketing, it's everything. So the cost of the BDM, that's going to be the cost of leads, the cost of the websites. I mean, you've seen how we, you and I have segmented out in rent works. We have two hundred and fifty lines that we track every month metrics and we separate out the business development and its own faction and end of the day to what the business development person is bringing in. You know, for fun, here's an easy figure. Let's say they bring in five hundred thousand a year in new revenue. So you've seen these figures, they're pretty ballpark ish. But we should be spending in the range of one hundred thousand for total cost to bring in that five hundred thousand dollars of new revenue. Is that a pretty decent figure?

Brian Hughes: Yeah, I would. I would say you're on the money and it range with that. You know, a lot of our clients are looking at it as as far as return on investment, how many doors they need to bring on in order to earn a return on investment. And that's, you know, that's the way a lot of our clients approach it anyway. But you know something else to consider, especially when you are a smaller company, you say we're in that 50 to two hundred and fifty unit range and you're looking maybe three hundred, you're looking to hire a BDM. You know, it's not just about the doors they're bringing on. One of the things that we do with all of our clients is really we focus on building systems and building processes. So for a company that's two hundred doors and they're hiring their first BDM. It may or may not, depending on your situation, be feasible for them to be bringing on 20 dollars a month right at the beginning. More typically, they're going to have to build systems first. They're going have to build out their sales processes, their drip campaigns, the website, they're going to build relationships, they're going to do things on social media, and all of those things have a value.

Brian Hughes: Imagine if you hired a consultant or a third party company to build a drip campaign to build out your social media, to work on your website, to do all these separate things, how much would that cost to you? So when you're looking at hiring a BDM anyway, you also have to think about what are they actually doing for merely building out systems that are going to be useful in the future? Or are they just closing weeks? Because if they're just closing leads, then yes, they need to be at a certain number 15 20, whatever doors a month to break even. And each company would be different, and I would have to do those numbers. But that being said, it's not just about the door count, it's also what systems and processes are they putting in place for the future? So, you know, those are some other things to consider also.

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Brad Larsen: Remember, it's as if not the door count, it's the dollar count, right? We always we always try to go from the amount of revenue because, you know, you've seen it, we have multiple tiered pricing. And if we can get 10 signups for the platinum plan versus 20 sign ups at the silver plan, I mean, you're going to make more of the platinum plan. It's going to be only managing 10 homes, right? So we always push people. It's just a little tidbit. But what I want to let you talk about, too, is the hiring of that business development person because that's an art and a science, right? I want you to spend some time on that because it has been difficult. The job market here in the states is is challenging. Let's say, in addition to we've been augmenting what we do here locally with remote team members. So a lot of people understand they hear all the buzz about remote team members. Well, it's a good opportunity for you here to talk about one hiring the right person for the seat in your market. That could be the business owner if they replace themselves as a CEO that could hire be hiring a separate business development manager full time that could be employing a part time realtor in the office to do some of the business.

Brad Larsen: Have you seen all of the above? And then you've also seen where they work in conjunction with remote team members who answered the phones immediately, return emails immediately, they go through their processes and they're emailing out and calling out and texting out. I mean, a little tidbit, thanks to you. We have our remote team members actually signing up business, right? I mean, they're taking phone calls and they're doing everything over the phone and they're signing up new business from Mexico, right? They are remote team members that speak great English. They understand our systems, they answer all the owner's questions and they say, here's the link to sign up, go ahead and start filling out the paperwork. And next thing you know, we have a sign up. We visit their home in person just to verify and we put them in the system. But going backwards, I want you to talk about the business development hiring locally and remote team members.

Brian Hughes: Okay. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Business development, hiring, it's definitely changed. I remember when I was at networks and we're looking to hire another business development manager. We have a sea of applications and we have 10 good people to pick from. And it may get back to that in time. But for right now, anyway, what we're seeing is a really competitive job market. You know, the people who are who are really, you know, quality hires, they're getting multiple offers and you really have to compete. Salaries we've seen for business develop managers go up just a little bit. We've seen we've had to get creative with some bonus structures to find the right person. But, you know, it's really about their their want and their goals. We really look for someone who wants to be the best, who wants to be successful and ideally has demonstrated that in a previous role, you know, not necessarily in real estate and typically actually not in real estate, typically coming from other industries where they're they're successful in a sales role or a business development role. But really, ultimately it's about mindset. What is your mind? You have a growth mindset. Are you looking to be the best? And we use our interview tactics and we also use a few different personality tests and things like that to to help determine that. But overall, if you're looking to hire a business development manager, give yourself plenty of time to do it because the one thing you don't want to do is make the wrong hire. And I'd be lying if I would say that every single person we hired was the best, the best candidate ever. I'll say a good 90 percent of them are. But nonetheless, you have to make sure that you're doing your due diligence and you're not you're not in a position where, oh, I got to hire someone right away because that's going to lead you to make the wrong decision

Brad Larsen: Or to interrupt and or up to you or to hire your cousin, right? You've been in that situation where people hire you and say, Well, I've got this perfect business development person right here. Oh, and that person is my cousin. And you're like, OK, well, we can run them through the personality test. But that may not be the best fit and puts you in a bad position, right? All right. So that question and I want you to talk more about remote team members to have that question, regardless of state laws or state requirements. Do you want a licensed or non licensed person doing business development in person?

Brian Hughes: I yeah, outside the state laws, I would say unlicensed because if they have gotten their real estate license and become an agent and they weren't very successful at it for one reason or another, that to me might show that they're there's there's something going wrong because real estate sales in this business development management are similar in a lot of ways. You know, you're still building relationships, you're still got the prospect, you still are meeting with owners, you're still doing a lot of the activities that you would as a real estate sales agent, do you know, just in a different context? So if you were to get your license and be out there for a couple of years and just weren't really seeing the success, that might be a red flag. Now there are other people who, for one reason or another, just wasn't for them, and they prefer this role and sometimes they work out. But overall, I would say on license, Gotcha.

Brad Larsen: And I like that. It's almost like, Do you want pineapple on your pizza or not? Ok? And that's why I prefaced that with with regardless of state regulations, because I don't want the people screaming at this podcast. Oh, we have to have. Have a licensed person to even walk out of the door and shake hands, they have to be licensed in all this. I get that there's there's states like that through the 50 states here. Yeah, but you know, regardless of that, so most of the businesses you have an opportunity to work with are going to want to hire the full time in-person business development. The next level from there, if they want to grow a little bit more or even double their efforts is I feel they should work with a remote team member because a lot of these leads, for example, I'm going to just give away a little secret source, whatever lead generation source. And I don't want to steal your thunder, but let's say it's all property management for fun. Sure. Ok, I'm a fan of that. People will talk trash about it. It's just one more arrow in the quiver of 15 arrows. Ok, so look at it like that. It's not. Don't rely on it, but darn it, if you can generate one lead out of five, you're doing good. One. The eight out of 10, you're still doing good. Ok, hear me out. So the all property management lead comes in that remote team member is Johnny on the spot there, sitting in front of their computer and or phone, and they can contact that lead immediately. And this is where you've seen success just in that particular role because, you know, it's one thing to say go hire a remote team member, but it's another thing to put in contacts and say, this is how we use them. It's been very successful. Less sure, take it from there.

Brian Hughes: Yeah, absolutely. You hit on a huge thing, which is speed to lead, getting back to leads quickly and having a remote team member who is always at their desk and always available to take those phone calls is a huge game changer. We, for all of our clients, we shop their top six competitors and we see it time and time again, I'd say. Ninety ninety five percent of property managers leave shop don't have someone available to take that initial call or answer any questions. And what with the virtual assistants that networks and others have done. We've trained them in such a way that they can go through that whole sales, call on the phone with them, or they can answer all the relevant questions that that a typical a typical prospect would have.

Brad Larsen: Let's back up. Let's let's back up just a little bit from there because we post all of our agreements online, right? We are full disclosure website. You can sign our agreements using, I think, its Echo Sign, which is a DocuSign thing or whatever. It's called a PDF signer. A lot of times they contact the remote team members and say, You know, Martin, for example, Hey, Martin, I'm looking at the agreement. I'm looking at the platinum plan. I just had one question before I go ahead and sign it. And Martin's like, yep, question question. Question answered. Ok, good. I'm just going to complete this now and then we'll go from the next steps from there. Is that kind of how the role works?

Brian Hughes: Yeah, absolutely. And that's, you know, sometimes if you if you have the right content on your website and you answer all your questions on the website, sometimes they're just calling in to check those few boxes and the kind of back to the sales process of it. When a call comes in, that virtual assistant is taking that call every time. That's step one getting a live person to answer the call and who is knowledgeable about the service. The second part is what they're doing and what they're doing at networks is they're qualifying. So they're asking you kind of those basic questions, gathering the information and then they're setting a callback for your business development manager. If they're unavailable, if they're available, we want them to talk to him right away. But if not, we can set that callback. So the end result is that you have someone answering the phones at all times during business hours, taking those new business calls, you're keeping everything efficient. If someone just has a question right before they sign up, they can go in and answer that and they can help you on the inbound side. And that's not even getting into some of the outbound stuff they can do some of the things they can do in the background, helping with marketing and the website and social media and all that.

Brad Larsen: Well, I know that's a whole nother. Again, that's a whole nother conversation. I mean, honestly, days of training because there is so much they can do. And yeah, this is becoming a very prevalent thing in our industry is a lot more. Folks are looking at remote team members as they're waking up to the extreme value of that. And that's been a real game changer for us. And I think it's going to be a value added for the distant, you know, long time in the future as well. So let's talk about some other stuff, too, because the in-person appointment is still a valuable thing. Now, another fork in the road question for you, this is like the pineapple on the pizza thing again. Would you recommend somebody do an in-person appointment or just a remote appointment, if at all possible?

Brian Hughes: Yeah, I would definitely say in-person all the way. I know as a business developer manager at DreamWorks, we saw that our closing rate went from around thirty three percent of all leads that came in to when we met with them in person, it was eighty nine percent. I wanted to say 90, but it was eighty nine is what it was. So we had that, that almost triple and closing rate when we met with someone in person. So I mean, that's that's a clear indication. Numbers wise, but also if you look at it just just from your own personal experience, you tend to get a better feel for the prospect and you're able to kind of read their body language and all the benefits that come with those in-person meetings.

Brad Larsen: And we didn't play any. We don't play any gimmicks here. No games like. We'll meet you in person if you sign our management agreement remotely now. I mean, I think that's cheesy. I think that's this is a sales gang. You got to understand this is sales and you're going to win some, you lose some and you got to take a little bit of risk. And so you can prequalify them as much as you want. You can ask them a thousand questions, but then to force them to sign something before you meet. I think that's that's not the best way. What are your thoughts on that, just specifically?

Brian Hughes: Yeah, I completely agree, and I'll even break it down from two experiences. So we shopped a large company in Florida and they said, You know what? Nope. We don't give pricing over the phone. We'll come out and meet with you. We'll give you everything you need to know there and we can go from there. And it was very nope, we're not giving you that. Nope, we're not giving you that. So that would probably if you're in this particular market, they would probably be one of the first companies that you'd call and that would be your experience. Now, let's say the next call that you make is another company and they have an effective sales process. They answer, they ask a few questions and get a little information. They say, Hey, how about either this afternoon or maybe tomorrow morning, I come out to your house. I explain everything to you. Answer all your questions. No pressure you. If you want to sign the contract, then you can. If not, no big deal. Let's let's have that meeting now. Which of those experiences are you going to be more drawn to the one who says, Yeah, yeah, no, I'm not giving you anything right now. Come meet with you, then I'll tell you what I need to tell you or the person who's really consultative, and it is really just seemingly there to help. And that's kind of what we run into when shopping competition.

Brad Larsen: Yeah. And several of your seminars, we even coach people are you have done most of the coaching about basically what to ask. And one of the fun ones that we've always loved just for a tidbit to throw some secret sauce out there. This is always fun to talk about, is the big question. Have you ever worked with a property manager before? And that just seems to like open up the box of conversation because you can learn so much from that one question. Hey, Mister, Mister Owner, thanks for calling in, Mr. Missus Owner. Have you ever worked with a property manager before? Oh yeah, the last property manager sucked. They wanted to take my money and eat my children and all kinds of stuff, and it's like, OK, this may be a red flag. And then the other is, you know, you might hear some pretty good stuff from them and say, OK, this is going to be a fantastic client. You know that one question opens up so much.

Brian Hughes: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Those open ended questions. You know, at the beginning, have you ever worked with a property manager? We have. We ask for questions at the beginning, and each of them has a purpose. Have you ever worked with a property manager understanding their experience level? And have you done any research and what your home could rent for? We want them to tell us, Yes, I looked at Zillow and I'm thinking it's going to end at two thousand five hundred and we tell them, OK, we'll we'll look at the MLS. We'll do a little bit more detailed research and we'll give you a true estimate of what your home will rent for. And we're coming off as the rental experts. Know, so a lot of thought process and detail goes into even the first four questions. You're going to ask someone. And if you haven't thought about that, and if you haven't put that down into a process, I would recommend start thinking about it because just doing that can separate you from 90 percent of your competitors in the market generally.

Brad Larsen: All right. So this is a off the cuff question. All right. What is what do you think is the next biggest thing coming around the around the way for business development, property management? Do you see anything on the horizon that's just going to floor us? It's a new technology. It's a new service. What do you got?

Brian Hughes: Yeah, you know, what's interesting is is the build to rent stuff, and I know you guys are maybe seeing some of this in rent works. I mean, in a couple of other clients are seeing this as well. You know, we all know about the institutional investors coming in and buying neighborhoods or building them and listing them straight for rent. They're going to need property management companies, and it doesn't always make sense to do it in house or higher in house. And I don't think maybe 15, 10 years from now, they're going to be doing these things in-house. But initially there's going to be some companies that are going to be managing these built to rent units. So my thought on nabbing those deals and being the the property manager is to build relationships, who are the realtors that work with builders, who are the mortgage companies that are out working with investors and and have these institutional clients. So I see that as kind of a game changer in the next coming coming

Brad Larsen: Years because we are in a renters nation gang. And what that means is the amount of renters is growing exponentially all the time, going up in percentage as far as renters going down in percentage, as far as home ownership nationwide. And so what we saw in the last 12 months, 18 months was a shift in the ownership of the wealth generating asset, which is a single family and or multifamily type rental unit. And so instead of the individual landlords who might have been reluctant accidental landlords a year ago, two years ago, they have all sold for the most part, and the buyers of those were other investors to include institutional investors. And the build to rent model is actually becoming very, very prevalent. Because what happened is the builders discovered that they can make three to four to five times the money if they build and sell to investors. As a rental type unit, instead of building it and selling it with all these commissions, with all these realtor fees and all this other junk going out the door of salespeople, they're building them and selling them to prospective homeowners, individual homeowners that are going to live in the home primary residence type homeowners. So it's a big shift and it's interesting you mention that because it's a fun discussion to go through that. Now, Brian, let's let's kind of get this going. A lot of people want to understand your pricing model a little bit. So kind of tell us about what you charge and how the services work.

Brian Hughes: Sure. Sure. So if you're looking to hire a business manager and you want us to go through the entire process or if you're looking at your website, looking at your sales process, really everything we talk about here today and a ton more, the total cost for that, we break it up over four months. So it's twenty seven fifty a month. For four months, the total investment would be 11k eleven thousand. And what you're getting, you're getting a hired and trained business development manager. But beyond that, just the salesperson. Salesperson is just one part of it. You're also getting processes and systems that are going to be implemented in your business that are going to are going to surpass how long that salesperson stays, whether they save 10 years, even. This is stuff that's going to continue to help your business.

Brad Larsen: I think that's an absolute steal. Brian, I would encourage you to raise your prices. And I say that because everyone needs to understand the capital value of what they're what you are doing for them. You're putting a system into place to where they can go out and generate hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue on an annual basis year over year, over year over year, and they're spending a fraction of that up front. It's a ridiculous return on that investment to hire you and then to get into working with a business development manager on their organization. So I hope people understand that. And how do they reach and what's the best way to find out more?

Brian Hughes: Yeah, if they want to reach me and can email me at Brian at Mastermind, I'm always happy to have a meeting and talk a little bit more, or you can visit our website mastermind. So, yeah, we'd love to hear from you.

Brad Larsen: Perfect. Brian, thanks again for a fantastic chat. This has been cool to talk with you and catch up. He's doing the good things you're doing for rent works, and as we expand into Austin, further keep going into that market with us and let's go see what we can do there. And I would encourage everybody to come visit you at the property management mastermind area and the broker owner conference. Because you are, you're going to have a booth there. Yeah, I think you're booth. Forty three, I forget, but you will be at the Naropa Broker Owner conference in person and you'll be able to talk to people directly and they can talk to you more about your services, what you do and how to hire you.

Brian Hughes: Yeah, absolutely. Come on by and see us in San Antonio and then we'll be in at PMM Con for there in May. So yeah, we'll hopefully see you out there.

Brad Larsen: Awesome. Thanks for coming on, Brian. We'll stay in touch.

Brian Hughes: All right. Sounds good. Thanks.

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ANNCR: This has been a podcast episode by Property Management Productions. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave us feedback and come back for our next episode.

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