Peter Lohmann's Newsletter - Issue #87

Using Notion AI for Instant Answers

Because my property management business is fully documented, I’m able to take time off without stressing about the company, or even checking in at all. In fact I’m taking the month of June off again this year, just as I have for the past two years. Does that grab your attention?

The tool we use to do this is called Notion [here’s a video walkthrough of our company Notion buildout]. For the past couple weeks, I’ve been sharing details of exactly how we use it:

• Two weeks ago I shared my top 10 best practices for getting started with Notion.

• Last week I explained what a “Task Map” is, and why it’s the most important Notion page you can have.

• This week, I want to show you a new feature called Notion AI.

Notion AI is a natural-language chat featured built right into Notion. I recently recorded a video for my team showing them how it works… take a look at this:

Amazing Notion Update - Watch Video

I don’t know about you, but I’m blown away by this.

In looking at the data that Notion provides on usage, I’m able to see that my team is indeed taking advantage of this feature, thus saving myself and other managers potentially hours per week by heading off basic questions and letting team members answer their own questions.

If you’ve started building out your own company Notion, try out Notion AI by getting on the waitlist as soon as you can.

That wraps up my 3-part series on Notion… now get building!

P.S. Want a shortcut? I’m still selling copies of our full property management Notion build (as shown in the videos), but this is the last week to get it at the original price of $2500. If you’ve been on the fence I suggest grabbing it now.

THIS ISSUE PRESENTED BY:

The Old Way is Inefficient. The AppFolio Way is Effortless.

For a long time in property management, there has been a standard way to do things. Now is the time to rethink the status quo if you want to get better results. AppFolio Property Manager offers one powerful platform to manage your entire portfolio with:

• Centralized data and communications

• Easy-to-use, intuitive design

• Industry-leading AI features

• Scalable solutions for all of your workflows

• Personalized experiences for renters and owners

Interested in learning more? Check out the newest feature releases, announcements, and major leaps forward here.

Stuff I’m Liking Right Now

• I loved this list of hiring best practices by Brie Wolfson, and with 500 likes on Twitter, it looks like a lot of other people did too. I printed it out to refer back to.

• Hacking credit card points — Next month I’m flying my whole family to Puerto Rico and staying at the amazing Caribe Hilton, all for free, because of this little trick I discovered. You may be familiar with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, where your points are worth 50% more when booking travel through their website. That’s all well and good, but I don’t spend a ton of money on my personal credit card each month. Enter the hack — Get a Chase business credit card, use it for all expenses at your company (even issue employee cards), then transfer those points to your personal Chase card and redeem them for 50% more. I’ve been doing this for years, and right now Chase is offering some wild signup bonuses on their line of business credit cards (up to 100,000 points; worth $1,500 when using the trick described above). Check out the cards + bonus offers here, the one I have is the Ink Preferred.

• My friend Jon Matzner records interesting conversations with his friends & business associates. I was bugging him for months to make the recordings available in podcast form and he finally has. It’s only available on Spotify right now. Check it out - the latest episode is him interviewing me about my annual solo “cabin-in-the-woods” retreat.

• Bryan, our new Business Development Manager (salesperson) at my property management company, is doing awesome. He’s already closed 5 doors despite only having started a few weeks ago, and I’m hearing wonderful things from our team. Shoutout to RentScale for helping us interview, onboard, train, and support Bryan. We’ve used RentScale for all our sales hires and I can’t recommend them enough.

New: Commercial Real Estate Newsletter

There are a few (very few actually) email newsletters that I really admire & carefully read when they come out. A new one I’ve been really enjoying is called “The Promote”, and it’s all about commercial real estate.

I don’t know much about the world of commercial real estate, but author Hiten Samtani (prev. Head of Content at The Real Deal) is keeping me informed and making me laugh every week. His “no-fluff” approach should resonate with you.

Check it out and see if you enjoy it as much as I do:

Industry News and Events

• Florida signed a new bill into law that gives police the power to remove squatters without involving the courts.

• Want free tickets + a free hotel room for NARPM’s property management conference in Florida next month? Check out this giveaway being offered by LeadSimple, RentScale, and Second Nature.

• Showmojo is hosting a webinar on April 11th to update the industry on leasing trends. They always bring amazing data.

• I’m hosting a webinar (with Wolfgang Croskey) on April 11th to discuss change management best practices. I have a LOT to say about this and it’s absolutely critical for small business owners to learn how to successfully drive change (eg — new software) within their company.

Closing Thought

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That’s all for this week! Have a great weekend. -Peter

Note: Sponsorships are sold out through the end of May.

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