Peter Lohmann's Podcast
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.
00:12:51 · Peter Lohmann, Bri Leichliter
[00:12:51] S1: Just too small. [00:12:52] S0: With the sales. Just... Yeah. It just wasn't it wasn't worth it to give a piece away when I'm just trying to get, you know, a relatively nominal number [00:13:02] S1: Okay. [00:13:03] S0: In comparison to other things.
00:13:04 · Peter Lohmann
[00:13:04] S1: This episode is sponsored by DoorLoop. They recently put out an ebook called the Property Manager's Guide to time and getting sanity back based on a study of hundreds of property managers across The US. And one number from that research really stood out to me. The average property manager is spending seventy six hours a month on administrative work and rent collection alone. Think about that for a second. That's basically two full weeks of work each month just to keep the machine running. Not growing the business, not improving operations, just chasing rent, updating spreadsheets, and dealing with manual processes. How can property managers solve these costly issues? The answer is simple. Switch to a more automated system, something you know I'm big on. The study showed on average time spent on property management tasks was reduced by about 30% and cut rent collection time by more than 40% when making the switch. In practical terms, that translated into 23 a month saved. That's almost three full workdays you can get back every single month. A lot of that came from pretty straightforward tools, online rent payments, automated payment reminders, maintenance request tracking, integrated accounting and reporting, and centralized tenant communication. Nothing magic, just systems that remove the manual work most operators are still doing, which again is something I have a huge focus on in my business. If you wanna dig into the numbers and see how other property managers are reclaiming their time, DoorLoop put the full guide together. You can download the ebook for free at doorloop.com, and we'll link it in the show notes. Thanks again to DoorLoop for sponsoring this episode. As much as you can, I'd love to hear about the actual deal. I understand, you know Sure. Certainly respect you don't wanna, you know, share the price and things like that. But if you're able to share the terms, like how it was structured, was there any type of a clawback? How was it financed? Anything you can share along those lines? I think people are interested in that stuff. Sure.