From 2010 until the middle of 2016, my cell phone was the phone for the business. If someone wanted to see an apartment they’d call my cell. If someone had a maintenance problem, they’d call my cell. If someone wanted a donation for a charity, they’d call my cell. I got all the calls at all hours of the day and night. This is how it needed to be at the time. At some point, I reached the point where I wanted this to stop. I wanted to create space between my personal life and being a landlord. 
The first step I took was to set up two other phone numbers:
- For routine maintenance calls – this one had voicemail
- For after-hours requests – this one I forwarded directly to my cell phone.
(I used Rogers Wireless Business Phones, for $5/month/line, there are lots of other options out there.)
This was the easy part. The difficult part was to get tenants used to calling a different number when they had a maintenance issue and another number if it was after hours, and not just call my cell phone. Trying to figure out a way to break the tenant’s habits of calling me on my cell all the time was essential. Asking them to remember new numbers and when to call them was going to be the challenge.
I sent out letters to all of our tenants asking them to call different numbers for maintenance issues and after hours emergencies. But I still received more calls than on my cell phone than I wanted. I ended up sending out two different letters but didn’t have any success.
I finally decided to create:
Fridge Magnets
I figured if the tenants had all the necessary phone numbers on a magnet on their fridge it would become the place they’d go if they needed to call about maintenance. They wouldn’t go to the only number they remembered. I wanted to remove all barriers for the tenants to start using the new numbers. Plus if it truly was an emergency I wanted the tenants to be able to call quickly.
How did I create the magnets?
I logged onto Vistaprint.ca and designed a magnetic business cards. It’s simple and straightforward. They have a design center with some pre-designed templates you can use, or you can have Vistaprint design the cards for you. Here is a sample of the fridge manget, note I blocked out the phone numbers.
I created an account, spent 20 minutes designing the fridge magnet, then placed the order, 100 magnets for $30. 1 week later I had the fridge magnets in hand. I wrote all the tenants another letter explaining the new phone numbers and included a fridge magnet for them.
This didn’t stop the calls to my cell phone immediately. It did give me the option to tell someone who called on my cell phone that the easiest way to get your maintenance items looked at is to call the maintenance request number on their magnet. Over time this helped channel the calls I was getting on my cell phone to the number I wanted them to go to.
I highly recommend creating fridge magnets for all your tenants and apartments. It will make your life easier.