Peter Lohmann's Podcast
00:20:08 · Adam Willis, Peter Lohmann
[00:20:08] S0: One entity, DBA, as as for real estate. But, yeah, there's the filings, the structure, and then there's the compliance with the state. [00:20:18] S1: Yeah. I can't remember if it was you or somebody else who who I was talking to about this, where they they pointed out to me that when you decide to do brokerage, you have to think carefully about the name because, like, in our... My example, RL Property Management, that would not work as a name of a brokerage. Like, you you don't wanna see, like, a for sale sign in someone's yard. For sale by RL Property Management. Like, wait. What? It doesn't make sense. So I would need to do, like, RL Realty or... You know, I would have to come up with some parallel name that tied back to RL but wasn't referencing property management in order... I think, in order to do well in that area. [00:20:56] S0: Yeah. You also have to think about trademarks. Nestwell is a a fairly popular phrase across the country, and our trademark attorney is shutting down companies, honestly, every single month who are trying to do that. So if you get too ambiguous or too big, like, you know, general, you can't trademark it. If you get too specific, you can trademark it, and then you can protect your brand. Because this is a... This is an asset, the brand. [00:21:26] S1: The the trademark attorney who's doing that, I mean [00:21:30] S0: Mhmm. [00:21:30] S1: Do you perceive that to be a good thing, or is it more of a nuisance and you wish you didn't have such a common name? I'm assuming it's not free.
00:21:30 · Peter Lohmann, Adam Willis
[00:21:30] S1: Do you perceive that to be a good thing, or is it more of a nuisance and you wish you didn't have such a common name? I'm assuming it's not free. [00:21:39] S0: No. No. The trademark attorney is gonna make a lot of money. But, no, having the mark is fantastic because, you know, real estate trademarks or brands or domains, it's. There's only so much of it. And to not have that trademark, like, at one point, I was Roost Property Management, and my dear friend Lisa Wise in DC, we all know her and love her, she sent me a cease and desist letter. [00:22:03] S1: I remember this. Yeah. [00:22:04] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've told it a few times. And we're good friends, but I'm like, I have to respect your mark. And the reason why it came into her world is, like, we started ranking, and someone on her team... Lisa's not gonna bother herself with it. But someone on her team is like, wait a minute. There's this company in Salt Lake, and we now do that on a monthly basis to other other companies across the country. [00:22:24] S1: Interestingly, there's a Roost Real Estate in Ohio. I know the guy, Chris, and I wonder if he's gotten a letter yet, but I guess we'll see. Yeah. Alright. Yeah. Very good. Okay. How about speaking of sort of parallel businesses that attach to property management? Let's talk about maintenance and GC type stuff. I think I saw in the notes here that you're resurrecting an old GC company. Tell me about that and why you're messing with it and what... How it's going.
00:22:24 · Peter Lohmann, Adam Willis
[00:22:24] S1: Interestingly, there's a Roost Real Estate in Ohio. I know the guy, Chris, and I wonder if he's gotten a letter yet, but I guess we'll see. Yeah. Alright. Yeah. Very good. Okay. How about speaking of sort of parallel businesses that attach to property management? Let's talk about maintenance and GC type stuff. I think I saw in the notes here that you're resurrecting an old GC company. Tell me about that and why you're messing with it and what... How it's going. [00:22:56] S0: Yeah. The impetus around that was we did not like... We loved all the vendors we were doing business with, but we did not love then the experience that we were receiving, the pricing that we were receiving. And like any entrepreneur, you're like, I can do it better for cheaper. Right? Like, you totally disregard someone's work and saying, I can do it better. And so we we kinda birthed that because we wanna control over our turns, and we kinda have a reputation be... For being able to do our turns in, you know, five business days. Like, that's the trap. We're we're a little bit behind that now. But the only way we were able to do that was to do it our way to our standard, and that birth kind of this general contracting company. It limped along for probably seven or eight years with just a couple of handyman that were kinda coming and going and constantly kinda churning out that that demographic of employee. And then we came across Josh who is a retired military guy. So, again, a who issue is we brought him in. Retired military. Fantastic. Big presence. Speaks at all the conferences now.
00:22:56 · Adam Willis, Peter Lohmann
[00:22:56] S0: Yeah. The impetus around that was we did not like... We loved all the vendors we were doing business with, but we did not love then the experience that we were receiving, the pricing that we were receiving. And like any entrepreneur, you're like, I can do it better for cheaper. Right? Like, you totally disregard someone's work and saying, I can do it better. And so we we kinda birthed that because we wanna control over our turns, and we kinda have a reputation be... For being able to do our turns in, you know, five business days. Like, that's the trap. We're we're a little bit behind that now. But the only way we were able to do that was to do it our way to our standard, and that birth kind of this general contracting company. It limped along for probably seven or eight years with just a couple of handyman that were kinda coming and going and constantly kinda churning out that that demographic of employee. And then we came across Josh who is a retired military guy. So, again, a who issue is we brought him in. Retired military. Fantastic. Big presence. Speaks at all the conferences now. [00:24:03] S1: Yep. Know
00:24:03 · Peter Lohmann, Adam Willis
[00:24:03] S1: Yep. Know [00:24:04] S0: Josh. Yeah. We all know him. Like, yeah. I think you guys have hung out a few times. And he comes in, and he's like, team Joel, well, yeah. I can... All these things all these things that you think are hard are actually really easy. And I said, sure. Like, let me... I'll write a check. I'll figure... We will figure this out. And he's done fantastic work to where we're, like, seven or eight techs. We're doing all of our turns in house, and we're looking at kind of our list of of our third party contractors and saying, alright. Who do we wanna buy? Who do we wanna... What do we wanna bring in house? And getting really clear on that just so we can own that entire vertical and own that experience and for the benefit of our shareholders, our homeowners, our tenants. Like, we want quick turns when we don't want them done on time at a certain price. And having that control is actually really great. It is hard. I highly recommend it. Most people don't do it, but we are, and it's worked out very well.
00:25:01 · Peter Lohmann
[00:25:01] S1: I will echo all those comments. We have had in house maintenance for almost the whole history of the company. We have similar number of techs to you, and it is great. It's great value for the property owners, great, you know, responsiveness and value for tenants as well. And we make money on it, but it is hard. It is the number one source of occupied brain cycles of the leadership team is, like, maintenance. You know, what's going on with turns? What's going on with occupied maintenance? What's going on with keeping technicians staffed? What's going on with technician compensation? You know, we messed this up. We forgot this. We need to do this. There's a lot because it is a totally different business. It... You're basically running another business inside your management company, and it's made harder by the fact that it's not even just one business. You know, you're basically trying to run a plumbing, HVAC, electrical, like, handyman, four or five or eight or 10 different trades, which themselves are are actual businesses, are all falling under the roof of maintenance in a property management company. Now, there's challenges to not having your own maintenance of a different nature because you have to have an outstanding vendor network and you, you know, when you're dealing with vendors and contractors, you can't necessarily say, I need you to go over to this property right now and take care of the situation. You can do that when you have in house. So there's different challenges, but it's not for the weak man. And you do need a who. My business partner ran it when he was still involved with the business, And we've cycled through a couple different... Several different directors of maintenance since then. I think we landed on a great one now, but it's been a journey, and it's still not without its challenges.