We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daniel Grandfield. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daniel below.

Daniel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We love asking folks what they would do differently if they were starting today – how they would speed up the process, etc. We’d love to hear how you would set everything up if you were to start from step 1 today

There are a few main recommendations I would make to anyone who is starting to grow their business. The one I talk about the most is choosing software, systems and team members that you can grow into and grow with you. It is easy to choose the cheapest software or team member, but once you start to really grow the business, you can easily outgrow the software/systems you initially started with and have to start over with something that suits your needs now and in the future, costing you a lot of time in an important growth period. Same goes for hiring team members, the cheapest is not always the best and having to constantly retrain new team members has a huge opportunity cost on the business for lost time.

Taking time to develop Standard Operating Procedures is also a critical thing that will save time and money once your business really starts to take off! Documenting how and when things need to be done in the beginning will really help when adding team members and reducing the training time.

Working with other companies/people in the same field has really help me grow exponentially in the last year. Being able to bounce ideas/systems/SOP’s off of other people really expedited some of the growing pains one can go through.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started in the Real Estate industry in 2019 when I got my salesperson license. I was primarily doing fix & flips for the first few years of my journey until I started my own Mid-Term Property Management company, Elysian Pads in 2023. Through doing fix & flips, I was able to keep 3 condos in San Diego that I furnished and rented to travel nurses. Once I started down that path, I noticed this untapped market in San Diego for furnished rentals for people coming to San Diego for 3-9 months at a time. I quickly grew to 50+ properties under management within 16 months of starting Elysian Pads. From my prior work experience of 10+ years working at a hotel, I understood the importance of great hospitality, and that help the business take off so quickly.

Currently, our main focus is working with government contractors and insurance companies for temporary housing placements here in San Diego. We manage everything from Studios to 4 bedroom houses, so we have a property for every type of traveler. I have always taken the approach to go above and beyond for every single guest as I would hope someone would do for me. This has helped our direct bookings & referral bookings sky rocket!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

The reputation of a business is important, but a personal reputation is more important. The choice to work together with someone will ultimately be based on ones personal reputation. Taking this approach, I have always kept that in mind while being able to vastly expand my network & client base. To help build a reputation is hard work and requires you to put other’s needs before yourself and to help in anyway you can. Pertaining to my business, I have taken this approach which has helped it grow! Even if I do not have a property that fits a tenants needs, I will refer them to other companies in the area that might. The personalized touch is one way that has helped my personal & business reputation grow.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Like I mentioned before, your reputation is extremely important! Utilizing that while taking a personal approach to hosting guests & managing for owners has been the best path for me. Client referrals & repeat guests have proven this to be an extremely successful way to run a business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ElysianPads.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elysianpads/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElysianPads/

Image Credits
T Buck Springmeier – Click N’ Capture