Peter Lohmann's Podcast
00:05:14 · Peter Lohmann, Bri Leichliter
[00:05:14] S1: At this point, you had no property management experience or background? [00:05:18] S0: I had my own rental properties. I had a couple. And that was... You know, I wasn't managing hundreds of doors or anything like that. Yep. And I didn't have my real estate license at that point. So I was just working corporate manufacturing, and COVID came around. We started working from home. And, you know, during that time, a lot of my colleagues getting laid off. [00:05:39] S1: Parts from home as as one does. [00:05:40] S0: Exactly. Yeah. I... Well, I worked in supply chain. So I was dealing with delivery of parts, and with COVID, you know, obviously, that came in [00:05:49] S1: my mind. To think about manufacturing a gas turbine engine Something in my house. You know, in your garage or something. [00:05:55] S0: Right. Yes. For sure. So my colleagues were getting laid off, and I thought, you know, I'm new. It it was stressful. I'd moved my whole life from Pennsylvania. So I was very concerned about getting laid off myself. And I was like, well, I have my own rentals. This is at least something that I know. No matter what, people are gonna need housing. It's kind of a, you know, plague proof, I guess, COVID proof, recession proof industry, and it felt relatively safe to me. So I was working from home, starting to get my real estate license, and somehow did not get laid off in 2020. I was licensed in January 2021, had my first real estate sales closing in March 2021 and signed my first management client in April 2021.
00:05:55 · Bri Leichliter, Peter Lohmann
[00:05:55] S0: Right. Yes. For sure. So my colleagues were getting laid off, and I thought, you know, I'm new. It it was stressful. I'd moved my whole life from Pennsylvania. So I was very concerned about getting laid off myself. And I was like, well, I have my own rentals. This is at least something that I know. No matter what, people are gonna need housing. It's kind of a, you know, plague proof, I guess, COVID proof, recession proof industry, and it felt relatively safe to me. So I was working from home, starting to get my real estate license, and somehow did not get laid off in 2020. I was licensed in January 2021, had my first real estate sales closing in March 2021 and signed my first management client in April 2021. [00:06:45] S1: Got it. So you were managing property professionally for about four years total. And that time scaled up from zero to 200, high two hundreds or whatever you said and sold. [00:06:59] S0: So Yes. [00:07:00] S1: Pretty cool little window, but it certainly wasn't like your whole career or anything. Tell me about how you ran the process. Like, I wanna come back to the point where you decided, okay, I'm gonna sell, but let's pretend you've already made that decision. What were the steps that you took to run the sale process? [00:07:21] S0: So to really... Do you mean to get it out there to tell people I was selling or, like, after we were under contract?
00:07:21 · Bri Leichliter, Peter Lohmann
[00:07:21] S0: So to really... Do you mean to get it out there to tell people I was selling or, like, after we were under contract? [00:07:29] S1: Yeah. Just like, what were the... Did did you hire a business broker? Did you start telling friends? Did you reach back out to the hundreds of people who've probably emailed you about selling your business? Like, how did you approach it? Yeah.
00:07:42 · Bri Leichliter
[00:07:42] S0: Okay. Well, I kind of have the attitude of, like, everything is figureoutable. Right? So I had been thinking about selling. Now my position on selling was from day one when I started it. I knew this... I knew it wasn't gonna be a forever thing, and I was gonna sell it. And I didn't, at the time, have a timeline on that. I didn't know if it was gonna be in two years just to get me through till I could get back to PA or move or do whatever I wanted to do, or if it was gonna be twenty years. I didn't know, but I knew at some point in time I was going to sell from day one when I got licensed. I knew I was getting licensed to do property management, and I knew I was gonna sell the business at some point. So that had always been in the back of my mind, and I really will get into the why, I'm sure, in a further down the road here. But I had been thinking about it, and I... As I was thinking about it, I I think I called you at first and was like, hey. I'm thinking about doing this. And we kind of talked, and that was early twenty twenty five. Early, early, probably q one. And I was just kind of, you know, him hauling around about it, whatever. And then we had our Ohio PM dinner, and I mentioned it to a few of the PMs there. I was like, yeah. I'm I'm not real serious about it yet, but I'm thinking, you know, in the future, I'm gonna wanna sell. So that's really was kind of the seed that I planted in early twenty twenty five. I did nothing with it in, you know, terms of saying, hey. Here's the price, all of those things at that point. It was just more of a conversation. I... Because I started having those conversations and planting that seed, I actually went to my attorney and said, hey. How about we draft an NDA and get ready? Because I don't know when I'm gonna decide to pull the trigger. I want it in my back pocket ready to go. So he drafted that. Summer came around. Busy season. I don't care about even talking about it at that point, you know, where, like, everybody else, we're in the thick of it. And then really on... When I made the final decision, I was like, I know I had talked to three specific people about this, three specific brokers about selling the business. I'm going to just shoot him a text. This is Labor Day weekend. Shoot him a text and say, hey. I think my legit text message was, hey. Decided I'm selling.
00:10:11 · Bri Leichliter, Peter Lohmann
There will be an NDA in your inbox by 5PM tomorrow. I'm planning on making a decision at the end of the month. And that was all I said. No pry... No price. No, you know, like, I was... Wasn't sugarcoating anything. And I did let them know there are three people that I sent this to. If I don't get a response, then I'll go I'll I'll go public with the sale. [00:10:34] S1: Yep. [00:10:35] S0: So for me, it was like low risk. You know? I'm a relatively confident person, I would like to think. So for... I wasn't scared of of rejection. You know? If somebody came back and was like, no. I'm not interested. Like, that's sales one zero one. That's the business that we're in anyway. So that part of it didn't scare me at all that I wasn't going to get something. And in my mind, I had already, you know, looked at the stats, PM standards, pamphlets. You know what I mean? All of the resources that I had. I did not hire a business broker. I knew that I wanted to get x dollars, and it was a range. I knew what I was... I knew what I'd ideally like to have, and I knew what I would take. You You had a amount Range. [00:11:21] S1: In range of what you [00:11:23] S0: In range. [00:11:23] S1: What you wanted to get.
00:11:23 · Peter Lohmann, Bri Leichliter
[00:11:23] S1: What you wanted to get. [00:11:25] S0: Of what I thought that it would be worth it for me to leave, essentially. That's that's how I came to that number. And, of course, it wasn't me coming to that conclusion all on my own. You know, I talked to my family about it and talked to my boyfriend that I live with, and we made the decision on, you know, what mattered and what would make it worth it for our family. So it was... It wasn't an individual decision. I mean, it was to sell the business, but to come up with the number, you know, was based a lot on my life goals too. [00:11:59] S1: And if you hadn't gotten a bite from your initial outreach to those two, three, four folks, what would have been your next step then? [00:12:11] S0: I probably would have privately listed on, like, the online... What is it? Buy Biz Sell or Biz Buy Sell, whatever it's called. You know, done something like that with, again, the range in mind that I wanted. I would have probably put it out there in Crane, you know, put it out there on LinkedIn or one of the platforms that, you know, I know my people live, right Mhmm. In in our circles. And, you know, just to see what kind of bites that would get, it would at least start some conversation. Conversation. But there was... There's been no time... And I think it's probably because of the size that I had even considered hiring a broker or somebody to help me [00:12:51] S1: Just too small.