Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, frontliners. Yeah, you’re definitely seeing it more. I mean, they’re all posting it all over Facebook. Right. Yeah. It’s all like, post your vaccination?
Greg Owens 16:09
Well, no, and it’s a weird atmosphere to because I’ve seen a couple of friends say that they were denying it, and then they got shamed. So I bet you there’s a lot of people that are not posting not getting it, right. Because they’re like,
John Fahmy 16:21
yeah, I post things about my nephew. Get involved in anything. You want to be safe. And these times, you know, it’s you know, I look at it as we’re little ants and all of this right, you know, just be good, right? Just be good go out every day try to be a good human being. And you know, whoever the president is, or whoever’s your governor and stuff like that, yes, we can have all disagreements on it. But God stop with the shaming.
Greg Owens 16:48
Yeah, what really well said, I want to get into a little bit because you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area and going into San Francisco these days, because I’m in Marin, and we do a lot of work in San Francisco. It’s been eerie in so many ways. And there. And as a building operations that you’re involved in, in an HOA and apartment complexes, what are you guys doing around like we so we did some work? graffiti removal, right? Go to this building, all three sides of this building that can get reached were completely painted in graffiti, right. And they and there’s a mandate in San Francisco that you got to get rid of this graffiti in like 40 I think it’s like a week or something like that. And so a company calls us and they’ve called us before and we go out there, we paint it, I see that they missed some a couple of spots. They sent me some pictures, I’m like, go back and just hit that they go back the next day. And the old buildings covered again, right? And they’re like, what do we do? And I was like, okay, we’re there. Just finish it, paint it again, they have to come back another day. And it’s tagged completely again, right? And I tell them like Yeah, do it since we’re there. We’ve already wasted all this time. And you know, they asked us to do this and it’s over at holiday break. We do it again. But I write an email to the client saying this is a lost cause I don’t know what to tell you man. Like this is unbelievable. And then there’s so much garbage and so much homelessness and people you know, we had to move encampments just to do some painting right? Like a please sorry to move your home. But we need to kind of move you over here. So we can just do this wall here. What are you guys doing around this? And what do you see? How do you deal with it? It’s so challenging.
John Fahmy 18:22
Yes, a crime crime is just out of control. I mean, I was just on a zoom call yesterday and talking to a prospective client and partner of ours that the ownership group and and I know the management company, while their crime has increased dramatically for everything from car break and to dumpster diving to what’s it called squatting? Like just there’s a lot out there and look, I mean, that’s where you know, the rock and a hard place with the empathy thing here. You know, people are definitely going through tougher times right now, you know, out of work God you haven’t you have the entire restaurant industry that’s closed, right you have this service industry in general is getting crushed. You have folks that are janitors importers of commercial buildings that lost their job everyone’s cutting expenditures where they could So I think, you know, look, there was one thing that I did a security assessment a few years back for a client and you know, what’s the most annoying thing to homeless people is LED lighting outside your building, so hard to get one LED lighting so I it worked. I mean, I couldn’t believe it that the building at two entrances and it was one of those things I was like, Yeah, I think if you put more lighting it’s just they’re not gonna want to sleep here. It’s just annoying. They have the brightest light even have to put some masking tape on half of it because it was way too bright. So they put it underneath the first unit, the first unit window like that, you know, below that, so it’s obviously not affecting any homeowners or residents. Yeah, but to be honest, no streets bear there’s no more in campus and it’s just like, let’s go find a darker Street. You know, nobody wants to do bad things under light. You know.
Greg Owens 19:57
There’s a saying around like London’s like such a great day. disinfectant in a way. And any kind of bright light is a good disinfectant. And
John Fahmy 20:05
so sometimes it’s the simple things like human guards, which is what we do standing guards, that is a great deterrent, our building budgets built though that way to add that kind of labor, whether
Greg Owens 20:16
it’s that’s a that’s like you need. You need a few people that do that too, because like, that’s not just
John Fahmy 20:21
depending on the size of the property, right? We have properties in Oakland that are three people 24 seven, right? You know, that’s a big big knot to stomach but that client actually knows they built a building in Oakland and they did it correctly. But you know, when you’re getting a small HOA, the HOA building still under developer control, trying to keep expenditures low trying to keep you know, the HOA HOA fees low right, so how do you add, you know, whether it’s 100 grand a year, and still make it appealing for homeowners, new homeowners to come in and buy, right? So, so doing little things like that almost be annoying, you know, figure out a way to annoy them. And then they get to the point where they’re like, Okay, this is like, let’s just go somewhere else. Right? So that’s usually how I look at it. I also look at buildings as well, how do I how can I break into this build, right? So simple things of like, does your garage door go down quick enough, call your garage vendor and see your account, count how many seconds it is how many seconds it sits out. And then you know, obviously coming down will be the same as it going up. But that can be adjusted that can be adjusted, whether it’s something simple or you can change the your garage vendor can change the motor, because a lot of ways that folks are getting in and it’s you know, I want to say it’s getting cold, but I believe we have 70 degree weather this weekend, but it’s getting cold. So people want to get inside and you know, they want to get shelter and you know, or they want to break into a storage unit or take a bike. You know, you buy you know, they steal these things, and they sell them at the Oakland swap meet on Saturdays and Sundays. Right. But I think they’re in a desperate position. And that’s that’s what I worry about in the future is how this really plays out. Will the new administration do something to help business owners and to help folks that are in need, but we have definitely seen the spike in security issues. And then hey, on the 20th we got you know what, we got an inauguration we may have say, you know, civil unrest.
Greg Owens 22:11
We had it in San Francisco, I said would be really weird. I can just say like, Can you imagine like a bunch of people coming? Where would they come from? First of all, they’d have to come up Noma or Petaluma or no and come here, but that’s
John Fahmy 22:24
Well, did you see how many people that had anti Twitter protests the other day in front of the Twitter building? I didn’t. They had like three. Like, you know, I don’t want to get into I don’t even have Twitter, but I disagree with some of the decisions made on censorship. But yeah, I don’t think we’re gonna have much going on right now. But I didn’t think I was gonna have you know, the demonstrations in the summer here in Walnut Creek, right. You know, where we
Greg Owens 22:51
are like Walnut Creek, they had to board up the mall and everything over there.
John Fahmy 22:55
And they had some looting. I believe a young lady, thankfully non fatal was grazed by a bullet like what you’re pulling a trigger in Walnut Creek? Like, I mean. Yeah, I mean if a garbage can falls. It’s like it’s all over, you know, next door and the citizen app. Right. So it’s you never know. Right? So we did a lot of work. And we were stretched, stretched in during this summer. And that’s, that’s going across all our markets. Right. So your New Jersey, especially that New Jersey City, Hudson County area, Atlanta, you know, the DC metro area right now we’re prepping for you know what?
Greg Owens 23:31
Yeah, gotta get to know again, basically, right? Yeah.
John Fahmy 23:34
I don’t know what we’re probably you know, I don’t know, we’re probably I mean, you’re Yeah, you’re I think you got to start at Armageddon. And hope it just falls below that. Right. So our security team, our plan, security services is getting geared up for that, you know, we’re talking to all the different building owners and clients and making sure you know, things are boarded up correctly, we have somebody posted on the door. So we have a bunch of clients that have obviously reached out to us to add for additional services that day, and maybe the next day, you know, and and that’s what it was like for us. And I remember, you know, one of the things I was doing over the summer was literally just being like searching Twitter, it was I don’t have a Twitter account, but trying to find out when the next protests are where they are, because I needed to reach out to my clients. And sometimes they would obviously reach out to me before they have their teams looking as well, so we can post more people, right? So you know, and thank God through all of this. We have nothing major, maybe a few windows broken in the Oakland area and San Jose area, but in the end, nobody got hurt, at least in our company and our clients, which was important.
Greg Owens 24:36
Yeah, it’s interesting. We too had I was like looking at social media and that kind of thing just to see like, if we’re sending painters into the city, I don’t want them to be like trying to drive through a protest with our equipment and putting them in danger. I was like, This is gonna be really bad. So every morning and kind of like, you know, luckily they don’t protesters seemingly don’t start early in the morning. So that was good right out of the city by noon, you’re probably pretty good. They like to sleep in. They don’t. Yeah, they
John Fahmy 25:02
Or they go to their first job. Right, right. But no, I was actually on the protest line where I live. So I was sitting in my balcony, a lot of them were really young kids, they were in their, you know, high school, probably, you know, freshmen sophomore in college, you know, yeah, the agitator, but those weren’t them. There was a lot of, you know, really wonderful humans that, you know, in this country start with, you know, stuff like that, like, you know, but then processing it. That’s how
Greg Owens 25:28
Yeah, but you know, it was it was like tea they to tea off of boats, you know, yeah.
Katrina Stevenson 25:35
That was a big deal back then, No, I know. Tea might have been expensive back then. Yeah.
Greg Owens 25:40
I want to just wait a few more minutes in our podcast here and touch on how you’re doing because your primary role is sales and business operations. And I’m really what’s an operations here?
John Fahmy 25:51
Yeah, so I oversee all the operations on sales, but it’s a dual role, which we
Greg Owens 25:56
sell product, you sell it, and then you talk with the client, you go through what their needs? Are, you follow up with the client as things progressed, that kind of thing, right?
John Fahmy 26:04
Yeah. And then we have our ops managers that oversee the accounts and such and such,
Greg Owens 26:08
right, and I’m curious around the sales like, because this year is such a difference, and how you’re going how you had to sort of change your role in a way to continue trying to sell work, but what does that look like now?
John Fahmy 26:19
Oh, that’s that, you know, mobilize a lot? Yes. You know, prior to all this, what what are we doing? We’re going to conferences, we’re taking clients out, you know, for drinks and food, and, you know, just doing industry event hosting things. So, there’s an old school method called referrals, you know, you have a good relationship with your clients, I hope you do, I hope we do. They are generally your best source, right? I talked to our ops managers, and I tell them to cold walk, you know, when you’re doing a visit in one building, well, what to just ask, and so a little more difficult now, because they don’t want strangers in buildings. But through you know, we do like webinars that plants are marketing department is robust, and really just thinking outside the box, right. I mean, we did a Santa Claus event, we did a Frank Sinatra night, you know, we we’ve done a lot of cool things to just continuously engage with social media, right? And like what you’re doing here, yeah, this this is what is engaging people to go, Oh, cool. Let me check out with these guys. Right. So I think that’s how we’re really conforming, more or less, and it sort of is going a little more old school, right, where you’re going into your CRM, and you’re saying, oh, let me call this person, you know, we gave him a proposal, you know, x time ago, and let’s, you know, check in and touch base with them. And also sales have changed in general, where they have less money to play with, or they’re being a little bit more cautious. So budgets are different this year. So you have to get a little more creative, especially on the labor front, right? Maybe not doing 40 you’re 35 hours or 30 hours. So and just trying to work with your clients, I think is key to success during these times. And hopefully we’ll get out of it. Yeah, we can go back. having lunch isn’t exactly. Oh, my God, I can’t wait. I almost want to throw the most epic like Studio 54 style party, but I feel like that might get me in trouble. So right.
Greg Owens 28:06
Yeah, yeah. Did you guys do you want to add to that?
Katrina Stevenson 28:09
Yes. I would like to be invited to that.
John Fahmy 28:12
Absolutely. It might be my last party, because it might break every rule there is.
Greg Owens 28:21
As long as you’re not on social media, you’ll be good.
John Fahmy 28:23
Exactly. No phones, no phones. I mean, it’s like if you ever go to Dave Chappelle show, or Chris Rock show they lock your phone in? And yeah, it’s super cool. Jack White does it too, for his
Greg Owens 28:39
That makes sense. Yeah. They don’t want
John Fahmy 28:41
their stuff. They don’t want it out there.
Greg Owens 28:42
Yeah, that’s smart. That’s smart. So and part of this podcast, we like to ask our guests for people that are interested young people or people that want to changing careers, right, learning about facilities management, building maintenance, and that kind of stuff. Isn’t it is super interesting. What would you tell like new people that are interested in doing this, how to get started or how to look into it, that kind of thing. Start
John Fahmy 29:05
from the bottom. I mean, I when I first got in my just career in general, I grew up in a My father was in hospitality in New York. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, you know, but he’s like, why don’t you you know, follow my footsteps. And I started out as a front desk agent at a very nice hotel in New York, and I had the crappiest schedule to overnight shifts and three switch shifts. You’ve never felt like he truly got two days off, right? And then you’re going back to work and you know what, at 7am you find out that the guy that’s supposed to relieve you calls out and it was one of those things where I was you know, I did well in it, but I didn’t love it. And so I sort of left sort of walked away from it. And then what I went into sales with at the time Cingular wireless and then became AT&T and then from there I somehow got into hospitality again. And then I met you know, Rob Francis and the executives at Planned and I sold a number of my interview at, you know, Rob’s a wonderful charismatic, you know, person where he’s, you know, off the cuff kind of stuff too, which is great. And I was like, you know, I like these guys, these guys, you know, they’re gonna go against the grain and a lot of things they’re driven come to find out I’m you know, back, you know helping out on the concierge side which is just like front desk. And so I took that experience. So my opinion is, is I can empathize with our folks that are sitting behind the front desk, I can empathize with other folks that are standing security, I can empathize with our porters and matrons that are cleaning properties, because, you know, I had to work with the housekeeping department and hotels and stuff such so I think anyone who’s really interested in this industry, whether you want to go on the vendor side, or whether you want to go on, say, our client side, so if you want to go for the property management side, you know, take a look at some of the big players in the area, you know, and going on the leasing side, I can’t tell you how many people that are senior vice presidents of monster companies, whether ownership or they’re on the management side, the property manager side that were once leasing agents, or even on the vendor side, I mean, so how many vendors do I know that you know, we’re one time working as you know, leasing agents and really understanding what we do. And that’s the only way you can do it, right? It’s like, you start a painting company, but if you don’t paint, like how guys are gonna take advantage of you, right? You know, they’re, you know, you really I know, at the same time, but what do you know about it? So I think, you know, my advice to anybody, and it is a great industry, right? The vendor side is not going anywhere with facilities management, I don’t think commercials going anywhere. So there will be commercial buildings, it’s just taking a little bit of a pause. But you know, we’re always going to need to rent apartments are always going to need to rent right homes, or whatever the case is. So I do think starting from the bottom and really proving yourself you know, I started with with Cingular Wireless, I started as a sales rep in a store, you know, I became the selling selling the first cell phones
Greg Owens 31:56
and they were back then not these little tiny things right
Katrina Stevenson 31:59
No the razors probably
John Fahmy 32:01
Yeah, the Motorola Razor 6120s, I could actually still program knows, by the way, because you stopped the program, then when you activated a phone number, but I started there. And then I grew to overseeing three stores and eventually oversaw 22 stores. So just go in there and don’t think you’re better than the guy next door. Whatever the case, are, this Job’s too good for you. If you really want to get into this industry, get into this industry and crush it, you won’t last long as a leasing agent, if you’re not awesome,
Greg Owens 32:28
right? Right, they’ll know they’ll move you up, they’re looking for individuals that are motivated, right, so they see you doing really good, they’re gonna offer you more.
John Fahmy 32:36
100%. Planned, we actually this is, you know, part of our DNA, I can’t tell you how many operations managers, how many, we actually have some executive directors that have all started in a built that were once you know, making this hourly wage, whatever it may be, from whatever market you’re in and working on overnight shift or working that mid swing shift or whatever it may be going out ops managers with, you know, vehicles and you know, a responsibility of going in, in that suit, meeting the client taking them out to lunch, or, you know, a lot of them started from the ground up. And this is what I think makes our company great is, you know, really, before we throw an ad out there before we you know, HR starts recruiting, the first thing we did, firstly, anyone in any one of these buildings can be promoted to this role, you know, that we always want to try to promote from within, right, and that’s what’s important. A lot of these companies the same thing, our clients are having a hard time finding good people. That’s what we do is groom the people that you have. So if you know, you know, you’re going into an industry that is in dire need that’s consistently growing like the multifamily industry or the vendors on the multifamily facility side going on, and you will grow.
Greg Owens 33:44
Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, the same thing within the painting industry, right, like to move up the ladder as a painter, right? For sure. Like they can come in and get started and prove that you can work and record and I do agree with you 100% around the I painted for 10 years. And so I have a tremendous amount of empathy when it comes to the craft and the job and how hard a job it is. Right? You know, you paint ceilings, like all day long. That’s a tough deal to do. And then, you know, here in Marin County or San Francisco, it’s a unique challenges of moving equipment around houses and buildings and that kind of thing and getting to that space and doing it. You know, sometimes we have to go around the building three times kind of stuff, right. So yeah, so yeah, well, this has been absolutely wonderful. I really enjoyed talking to you, John, thank you so much for being on the Watching Paint Dry podcast,
Katrina Stevenson 34:34
Thanks John.
John Fahmy 34:35
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. And if you guys ever need anything, I’m here for it.
Greg Owens 34:39
Alright, sounds good. Thank you so much.
Outro 34:52
Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.