Peter Lohmann's Mailing List - Issue #14

April 22, 2022

Two emails in one week?! Must be something good to share!

Our Company's 3-Year Vivid Vision

I recently shared our company's Vivid Vision on Twitter, and it got a lot of positive feedback. Many people felt it was helpful to them as they thought about their own company's future. So I'm sharing it here too, in case you find it useful as well!

What is a Vivid Vision? I'll let the author of the book "Vivid Vision", Cameron Herold, describe it:

Creating a Vivid Vision brings the future into the present, so we can have clarity on what we are building now. It is a detailed overview of what my business will look like, feel like and act like three years out. Sharing it with others helps it become reality! (Source)

The RL Property Management Vivid Vision

Property Management Vendor Directory

This is an incredible resource - basically a full directory of vendors that serve the residential property management industry. I made a few suggestions and those have already been updated & included in this list. Select a category on the left-hand side to see results.

Thanks to Pete Neubig for putting this list together. I'll be referencing this often when people ask me for vendor suggestions or when I'm looking for a new one.

The PM Vendor Directory from VPM Solutions

Brand New Article on Small Business Marketing

I’ve learned a few things about how to successfully market property management services to customers over the course of the last 9 years. These skills, hard won, helped us build our management company from 0 to 650 units.

This blog post on marketing, released late Wednesday, got more traction than anything I've written in a while. A lot of readers suggested it was a great list for any small business, not just property management.

In the article I distill I most of what I’ve learned into a few bullet points. If you are trying to grow your small business, see if any of these aren’t helpful. Here's a sneak peak:

  1. Reviews matter. Get your Google Business profile set up and start soliciting positive reviews immediately. Never stop. Handle bad reviews professionally. Prospective clients notice & comment about online reviews all the time.

  2. SEO matters a lot. You need to rank within the top 5 organic results (map results too) for "YourCity property management". Keep working on your website until this is true. Again, basic SEO stuff is all you need here. There's no magic. Keep at it.

  3. Niche down to scale up. You want to become known among brokers, realtors, clients etc as "The best PM company for X". And X cannot be "everything". It should be something like "Class B 2-4 unit MF" or "Low-end SF rentals". You want a direct association to form in the mind.

Check out the full article for all 10 suggestions.

Closing Thoughts

I go on a bit of a rant in the Twitter thread below, about what I think is wrong with the property management industry right now and how it might be fixed. Read on:

Thank you so much for reading. If you enjoy my content, the best way to say thanks is to forward it to a friend.

-Peter