Peter Lohmann's Mailing List - Issue #48

Welcome to the 272 new subscribers in the last month! We’re SO CLOSE to 3,000 readers (2,998 as of this writing). I love writing this and hope you love reading it… let’s get into today’s issue!

Industry News & Events

• Renter’s Warehouse rebranded and went public as “Appreciate Holding, Inc.” last year (NASDAQ: SFR). Things don’t seem like they are going very well over there. The stock is down 97% in the last 6 months and is currently trading at 28 cents. Their preliminary 2022 and Q1 2023 results seem bad (not even close to profitability) and they apparently only have a couple hundred thousand dollars in the bank, with a lot of debt (all of this is public info btw). I suspect they will go bankrupt. Also, there is a law firm investigating claims of fraud on behalf of investors. Interestingly, if you look at their current market cap (~14M) and divide by the number of units under management at the end of Q1 (8,274), the market values the business at ~$1,700 per unit.

• The hosts of the “Grow Outbound” podcast (affiliated with Rescover) are putting on a live webinar titled “Outbound: Generating Waves of Leads” on May 23rd. I registered and expect to learn a lot about outbound marketing for property management companies, something I have a high level of interest in.

• LeadSimple has a BUNCH of job openings right now, including several engineering positions and a sales job. Having worked closely with the entire team over there in the past six months, I can’t speak highly enough of them. Highly recommend considering any role for which you may be a fit.

Mistakes I Made Starting My PM Company

Originally posted on my Twitter, here are 8 things I did wrong in the early years of RL Property Management:

1. "Clever" pricing. Tried to be unique with how we charged customers. All this did was confuse potential clients.

2. Waited WAY too long to hire a salesperson. Within weeks of this hire, our closing rate climbed by half.

3. Managed everything and anything. High-end, low-end, near, far, HOA, Section 8, we did it all. Scattered focus and playing on hard mode.

4. Didn't hire a pro to do our trust accounting. I did it myself & messed it up. This has to be 100% right (read more about how to do this correctly here.)

5. Didn't take advantage of existing paid resources. Ended up re-inventing every form, process and contract from scratch. Should have found & purchased an existing set of documentation.

6. Allowed big clients to dictate policy (eg setting up separate bank accounts for them). NO.

7. Failed to build & maintain an email list of potential clients, and nurture with valuable content (until just recently). This single mistake likely cost me millions in enterprise value. Email works!

8. Didn't understand the power of a local "personal brand" to drive business.

Masterclass: How to Buy a Property Management Company

The fine folks over at Evernest are putting on a live event all about buying property management companies. This is one I would not miss. These guys have executed dozens of acquisitions and probably made every mistake in the book really nailed down this process, so why not learn from them?

The masterclass is Thursday, June 1st at 3pm Central. Register here!

PM Systems Conference Tickets - On Sale Now

Wolfgang Croskey & Paul Kankowski put on a very unique conference each year. If you’ve never been, I highly recommend it. They just announced that early-bird tickets are on sale for the January 2024 event. Here’s where they separate themselves from every other property management conference:

By the way, I’m speaking this year. If you’d like to learn more about it, go here — and when you’re ready to register, you can do that right here.

Closing Thought

This week’s issue is sponsored by Kris Kaplan.

EOS & Business Operating Systems

My company RL Property Management self-implemented EOS about 5 years ago. Last year, we brought in professional coach Kris Kaplan to tighten up our systems in BIG way.

Our leadership team kicked off the year with a 2-day offsite conducted by Kris, and we held quarterly offsite planning meetings all year.

Results have been outstanding and our revenue climbed 29%, in no small part thanks to our work with Kris.

Kris is finalizing his schedule for 2023 and has room for just two more property management clients. Simply reply to this email for an introduction.

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Podcast Sponsorship Opportunities: I'm launching season 3 of my podcast Owner Occupied in July. Recording has already started.

Season 3 is fifteen tight episodes in a similar style to last season. Interview-style with some incredible guests including Nick Huber, Wolfgang Croskey, Michael Girdley, Brad Larsen, Adam Willis, and Mark Ainley. There are 2 ad slots available per episode.

Learn more about sponsoring the show here.

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My favorite payroll service is Gusto - we’ve used them for 9 years and I couldn’t be happier. Gusto makes it unbelievably easy to pay all our W-2 employees and global contactors on the same platform. Use my affiliate link for a $100 credit! 

That’s all for this week! -Peter

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