Nikonomics - The Economics of Small Business
00:17:19 · Nikolas Hulewsky, Peter Lohmann
[00:17:19] S1: going to ask, how would you get your first door? [00:17:21] S0: Yeah. I think the way we did it is I spent a lot of time on BiggerPockets, and I would just go there and I would talk about the fact that I offered property management, and I would try to offer value to other folks who were asking questions about real estate in my area. [00:17:34] S1: So I don't know BiggerPockets that well. I mean, I know it's a thing, and I know they have forums. Why would you go to BiggerPockets? [00:17:39] S0: It's just probably the highest density of real estate investors anywhere on the Internet. Oh. And so you can set up search terms for their forums where, like, anytime someone mentions Boise, you'll get an email. Then you can jump in and see, oh, they're talking about, does anyone know a good plumber in Boise? And then you can jump in there and say, oh, yeah. Here's a great I used last week. By the way, I run a management company if you ever want to just be done with these headaches. So, it's kind of like that. [00:18:05] S1: Okay. So, you would start with bigger pockets. That's kind of the area that you would go first. [00:18:09] S0: I would go bigger pockets online and for offline stuff, I would go to real estate investor meetup groups and there's two or three or five of these in every city. They're usually held monthly and I would try to be at every single one. [00:18:21] S1: I don't know what those are. A real estate investor, I mean, I can figure it out, but who organizes them? Are these all just self organizing? Are they a part of an organization?
00:18:21 · Nikolas Hulewsky, Peter Lohmann
[00:18:21] S1: I don't know what those are. A real estate investor, I mean, I can figure it out, but who organizes them? Are these all just self organizing? Are they a part of an organization? [00:18:29] S0: They're usually independent. Just somebody or some small group of people wants to meet other like minded folks, and they tend to change hands over the years and to sort of be passed down to the new generation of real estate investors. These groups are are hit or miss. I would try going to a few of them. Some of them are really heavy on the sales pushes, sort of like get rich quick real estate stuff. Others are very much organic, just a bunch of guys hanging out and talking real estate. These tend to be amateur real estate investors, meaning this isn't their full time professional job. They usually have a job. They're buying. They're flipping. They're renovating. They're... There's hard money lenders there. There's realtors. There's title company people, stuff like that. [00:19:11] S1: How do you find those? [00:19:13] S0: Literally just search, you know, Boise Property Management or Boise Real Estate Investor Meetup. [00:19:19] S1: Oh, all right. So it's not like, oh, they're usually on bigger pockets or they're usually on Facebook or they're usually... [00:19:23] S0: No, they're kind of organic. Yeah, Definitely look on Facebook too, but I would start with a Google search.
00:19:23 · Peter Lohmann, Nikolas Hulewsky
[00:19:23] S0: No, they're kind of organic. Yeah, Definitely look on Facebook too, but I would start with a Google search. [00:19:28] S1: Yeah. Alright. So let's say I go to BiggerPockets or I go to real estate investor meetups and I've got a fish on the line. When you got your first customer... First client, excuse me, was it one door? Was it a package of doors? Like, how did you land that first client? [00:19:43] S0: I believe our first client was a small handful of doors. I think that was just chance. [00:19:49] S1: Did you offer a discount? Were you like, hey. I'm just trying to get into this. Let me let me do it for a month or
00:19:49 · Nikolas Hulewsky, Peter Lohmann
[00:19:49] S1: Did you offer a discount? Were you like, hey. I'm just trying to get into this. Let me let me do it for a month or [00:19:54] S0: I mean, I think that back then I didn't offer a discount exactly, but our pricing was really low because I knew that I needed to offer something to entice people since we didn't have, you know, experience really. And what I said to our early customers was like, listen. We're a young small company. I am young and hungry. I wanna make this work. You are going to get a ton of personal attention from me to make sure that everything's going well at your property, which was a 100% true. And so in those early days, it's like, hey, you're gonna be my thirteenth client, but that means you're gonna get a ton of attention from me. And I have a background in engineering and we own our own rentals. And so we know, you know, we're gonna treat your rentals just like our own. So you got to work with what you got, right? So these days I don't say that. I don't even talk to our The sales pitch that our salesperson gives us completely different than that and leans on the strengths that we have today.
00:20:45 · Nikolas Hulewsky, Peter Lohmann
[00:20:45] S1: Interesting. So my background was healthcare and in hospice, there are sort of these benchmarks. Once we get to 10 patients, it's like, okay, we have our team. Once we get to 30 patients, that was the point where it's self sustaining and profitable and you have a good agency quote unquote. And then 50 is another benchmark. It's like, alright, you're at 50. Now you're kind of a real player in the market. You have some sophistication and then over a 100, you're one of you're one of the big guys. Those are broad, but that's generally generally what it is. Are there other benchmarks like that in property management? Like, let's say, once you start, is there a certain number of doors you're aiming for? What does that look like? [00:21:24] S0: Yeah. There definitely are. So a 100 doors is a big deal. When you start a management company, you'll be able to do everything yourself for the first 50 to 100 doors. Once you hit that 100 door mark, first, that's a big milestone for a few reasons. One, you're generally gonna be able to afford to hire your first full time employee if you... Oh, okay. And you're going to start to need someone at that point because you're going to be stretched really thin. Also, by the way, you you would then qualify for Crane, which is my paid private community for property management business owners. [00:21:55] S1: Crane? I've never heard Please tell me more.
00:21:55 · Nikolas Hulewsky, Peter Lohmann
[00:21:55] S1: Crane? I've never heard Please tell me more. [00:21:58] S0: Yeah. So Crane is is... It's a community of property management business owners that I started a year ago with a friend of mine, Wolfgang Kroski. He owns a management company too, and it's a place for those who are already up and running and looking to grow to communicate with each other, share best practices. We do real life meetups as part of the conferences and things [00:22:19] S1: like that. Those communities are are so valuable. Like [00:22:22] S0: They're they're great. [00:22:23] S1: Because you're learning from other people. It's not necessarily, I am Peter here to distill all of my knowledge onto this community. Like, they're... I'm assuming, I don't know Crane, but most communities are like, hey, what are you doing in this market? How does this work? Would anybody talk to a lawyer who's done a, you know, transaction before? Exactly. I said, like, those, they're just invaluable as you're trying to get up and running.