Peter Lohmann's Podcast
00:17:55 · Peter Lohmann
[00:17:55] S0: Yeah. Not if you're only working a couple hours a day, man. Yeah. You don't have time for that. Come on now. Hey. I just wanted to give everybody an update on Crane. So Crane is the paid private community that I cofounded with Wolfgang Croskey a couple years ago. And if you're listening to this and you're a member of Crane, especially if you're a new member, just wanna say thank you and welcome to the community. Wolf and I are thrilled to have all of you wonderful folks joining us inside the community and participating in our masterminds and showing up for our Crane dinners and Crane events that we host all around the country. If you're curious to learn more about Crane or if you missed the application window, I wanted to start providing some information about kinda what you can do in the meantime while you wait for the new application window to open. First thing I really wanna encourage you to do is join the wait list if you haven't done that already. You can go to joincrane.co. And if you just click join the waitlist, you just put in your name and your email and, like, one or two other pieces of information. And that way, you're gonna be notified as soon as we open up for new members. And something we're gonna do differently in the spring is we're actually gonna give the waitlist members early access to jump the line and apply first, and Wolf and I will be reviewing those applications before we even open up for the general public. We did recently finalize the application dates just if you wanted to mark your calendar. We're gonna be opening up the application window officially on April 3, and it will run for about ten to twelve days there before we close-up for another six months. And so if you join the waitlist, you can expect to get an email from us probably that last week of March or so. Really encourage you to learn more about Crane if you don't know much about it. It's been growing really quickly. We've been overwhelmed, frankly, with all of the, interest and and positive response from all around the community. We have industry leaders joining Crane every time we open for new members, and it's just been an outstanding experience. And I'm really honored and grateful to be a part of it. So go to joincrane.co if you wanna learn more, and I look forward to seeing you inside the community.
00:20:05 · Peter Lohmann, Matt Luke
And then does Haven.ai, the maintenance max, does he continue this dialogue over text and email the way the leasing side of it does as well? [00:20:13] S1: No. Because once the work order is submitted, I've set up workflows for each category in property melt. So they have plumbing, electrical, evaluations, all kinds of different categories, and they've set up workflows to auto assign each one of those categories to a vendor. So once the maintenance AI submits the work order, then the vendor takes over from there. [00:20:37] S0: Alright. This episode's over. I'm going to implement all this right now. Catch you guys later. So did you evaluate other... And the reason I'm really drilling on this is because truly, like, this is... What you're talking about is the stuff that's been promised, but I very rarely have met a property manager who's actually implemented it and been this successful with it. So I'm trying to uncover some of the details. Did you evaluate any other AI solutions before Haven? [00:21:05] S1: Yes. Just just briefly, Haven was... Had specific agents to property management, and they were the first one that I noticed that did that. There could be other ones out there. I'm not aware of that. I just [00:21:18] S0: There are. [00:21:18] S1: Didn't see any... Yeah. I I didn't see any at the time that were specific to property management. So our first conversation and our first demo went great. So I took a shot and Yeah. Dove in and And when was that? Been working. We've used that for roughly a year now. [00:21:33] S0: Wow. Okay. And what's the cost?
00:21:33 · Peter Lohmann, Matt Luke
[00:21:33] S0: Wow. Okay. And what's the cost? [00:21:36] S1: So for the leasing side, I... It's $1 per unit, and the maintenance is $1 per unit. [00:21:42] S0: Okay. [00:21:42] S1: There is one other tool that they provide that is is very neat and they have a great dashboard as well too to see all of the the details behind the phone calls. They do also escalate emergency maintenance. So if someone calls at 03:00 in the morning with an issue, it will call and text me to let me know. And then on my text, can simply say, this is an emergency, no, it's not, or decline. If I say, it's an emergency, then it's gonna expect me to handle it. If it declines, then it will just put it back into PropertyMeld to handle the next day or at the next time I'm available. Or if I decline it, it will then start reaching out to a phone tree of other vendors. So it's gonna start calling all of those vendors until someone accepts the work order, and then it will go into PropertyMeld and assign that work order to the person who accepts it. It hits the end of the tree in that in... The AI has hit in a Haven, then we'll just start back at the top and then alert me that none of the vendors took the work order.
00:21:42 · Matt Luke, Peter Lohmann
[00:21:42] S1: There is one other tool that they provide that is is very neat and they have a great dashboard as well too to see all of the the details behind the phone calls. They do also escalate emergency maintenance. So if someone calls at 03:00 in the morning with an issue, it will call and text me to let me know. And then on my text, can simply say, this is an emergency, no, it's not, or decline. If I say, it's an emergency, then it's gonna expect me to handle it. If it declines, then it will just put it back into PropertyMeld to handle the next day or at the next time I'm available. Or if I decline it, it will then start reaching out to a phone tree of other vendors. So it's gonna start calling all of those vendors until someone accepts the work order, and then it will go into PropertyMeld and assign that work order to the person who accepts it. It hits the end of the tree in that in... The AI has hit in a Haven, then we'll just start back at the top and then alert me that none of the vendors took the work order. [00:22:47] S0: Okay. So between leasing and maintenance phone calls, I mean, that's gotta be at least half of the incoming calls at a property management company, and these are these are off your plate. And I'm already getting a sense of how you're able to do this with no employees. Of course, LeadSimple being a big part of that as well, and we were early to that also, and it does save a ton of time. Mhmm. Let's explore some of the other areas of the business. How about when a current owner calls in with a question or emails a question?
00:22:47 · Peter Lohmann, Matt Luke
[00:22:47] S0: Okay. So between leasing and maintenance phone calls, I mean, that's gotta be at least half of the incoming calls at a property management company, and these are these are off your plate. And I'm already getting a sense of how you're able to do this with no employees. Of course, LeadSimple being a big part of that as well, and we were early to that also, and it does save a ton of time. Mhmm. Let's explore some of the other areas of the business. How about when a current owner calls in with a question or emails a question? [00:23:18] S1: Mhmm. So I do field those questions. I do have a knowledge base for the owners as well too so that they can access those questions and answers most of them. I also like to respond to those emails the best possible. So I will actually access that knowledge base and then copy and paste the email to the owner. So again, before I answer any question in email, I have zero one off emails basically. I go to the knowledge base, create the answer first, put it in the knowledge base, and then use that as my template to send back to the whoever's emailing me. [00:23:57] S0: And surely, there's an AI right now, maybe fixer.ai is one I've heard of, that could draft these emails for you using your knowledge base, and then you would basically just be able to give it a review and click send. [00:24:09] S1: Yes. So I also have that set up. I use Marblism. [00:24:13] S0: Okay.
00:24:13 · Peter Lohmann, Matt Luke
[00:24:13] S0: Okay. [00:24:13] S1: So it's an AI agent for each individual staff member, so myself. So if I get an email, then it will go into the knowledge base, pull the answer, and then throw that email into a draft email Beautiful. Can send. [00:24:26] S0: Yeah. Oh, so good. So good. Oh, man. I... I'm really excited to get this episode out for people to hear because this is cool. And what I love... Like, you're at a perfect size and age of business to be doing this stuff. So your company is just a few years old. You've got no employees. You've got 360 doors. So you are able to get in and tinker and set stuff up and try things and break things and fix things, and the... Like, you can just move so quickly. And I remember being about that way. Now it's so much harder once you're bigger and you have a big team and you have all these properties and all these clients, and there's all this just legacy stuff and procedures. So I haven't yet cracked the code on how to remain agile the way you're able to be once the company gets bigger, but I love what you're doing. And if I was three years old with 300 doors, I'd be doing the exact same thing. I think it's totally the right way to go. And you're... Happen to be at a really fun moment in the industry where AI is just coming in just... It's like a bull in a China shop to all the old ways of doing things.