Dianne Widowski on From Fortune 500 to Affordable Housing Entrepreneur

I have this belief that I can single handedly change the world.

Me too.

Whether it's the environment or change people's lives. And really, one person at a time, I'm doing that. So I'm working on the environment because I'm a beekeeper and I'm changing, you know, my little neighborhood and improving everybody's gardens around there. And when it comes to affordable housing is I'm changing thousands of people's lives.

Today on the podcast we are talking to Diane Wski of 4B's and we are talking about her transition from corporate America to Main Street. So welcome Diane, to the podcast.

Thank you for having me, Chrissy. I'm looking forward to this.

I am super excited to have a conversation with you today. So I would like you to tell me about your entrepreneurial journey from corporate Wall street to small town Main Street.

Okay. So. So I worked at Nestle, world's largest food company, for my entire career.

Wow.

And I knew that I was going to be having an early retirement. I was a fortunate beneficiary of a old school pension plan and I knew that I needed to do something. I was going to be too young to retire. So as part of that, I started learning about real estate. And I always had this passion for real estate. And I started, I received my, I earned a real estate license, I flipped homes, I worked with buyers and sellers. And during the pandemic, I had an opportunity to be downsized. So I took my pension, my 401 and my downsize package and said, let's go full into real estate. During that journey, I discovered commercial real estate and I transferred the skills that I had from creativity, networking, problem solving, project management over to commercial real estate. And I've been doing that the past four years.

Wow. So can you tell me a little more about your key, key learnings or experience from your role at Nestle? Working for the world's largest food company, doing something completely different that prepared you for entrepreneurship in real estate.

A lot of what I did was managing creative sessions. So teaching people and my customers how to be creative and bring creative products to market. And I really use that and affordable housing. Working and using my networking skills that I learned at Nestle. So I used to, you know, work with Panera and Walmart and Costco and present to these heads of corporations and talk to them about why they needed to buy macaroni and cheese, for example. And so using those same skills with small town America and going and talking to municipalities in the fire department and county commissioners and state representatives is really all about that networking. And I use this term I learned from Tony Robbins and that is create a raving fan culture. You say, how does that possibly work in real estate? I don't get it. Yeah, well, my customer is actually the person who buys the home or rents but, or excuse me, my consumer, but my customer is the municipality. They're the ones that if I can create a raving fan culture with municipality, they want me to come back. They want to donate land to me from the land bank because they see how I'm improving communities. And what I've learned about politicians is anytime you can make them look good, just like I made the head of Walmart look good, they want to bring you back.

Wow. So who knew that there were so many ties between Mac and cheese and manufactured housing?

There you go.

So what are some of your personal values? We talked a little bit about, you know, learning how to network, building relationships. What are some of the personal values that push you in your entrepreneurial journey?

So I have this belief that I can single handedly change the world.

Me too.

Whether it's the environment or change people's lives. And really, one person at a time, I'm doing that. So I'm working on the environment because I'm a beekeeper and I'm changing my little neighborhood and improving everybody's gardens around there. And when it comes to affordable housing is I'm changing thousands of people's lives and giving them the opportunity to have safe, affordable and energy efficient housing.

So what personal experiences, observations do you have that put you into that niche of affordable housing you could have done in commercial real estate? Anything. I mean, there's, there's retail, there's all sorts of different types of office space. There's multi family housing. What made you go into manufactured housing?

I really wanted to make an impact. I can revitalize a shopping center and yeah, that makes an impact in an environment or in a community. But being able to give the folks that work at that retail center a place to live really just resonated with me. And at the end of the day, the fact that you can provide great housing for people and, and make a profit, they're not mutually exclusive. And I just love the fact that I'm helping all these people.

So tell me, what is manufactured housing and who are the customers that, that live in those types of places?

So most people want to think of a trailer park. Okay, so we all know the old school trailer park, we all know the jokes, but we like to call it manufactured housing communities. So These are homes that are built in a factory to HUD specifications. They're delivered to the community, set on a foundation of sorts and skirted. And we are able to deliver housing for a fraction of what any other single family unsubsidized housing has to offer. And that's really the difference. Oftentimes people think of affordable housing, think of Section 8 and they think of rentals. Our model is all around home ownership because homeowners add more value to a community. They become involved in their houses of worship, in their yoga studio, in the, you know, kids soccer games and pta, and they really become a fabric of the community.

So how are you working to overcome some of those challenges and misconceptions or perceptions that people have about the trailer park?

It's huge. Everybody says, not in my backyard. NIMBYism and what we try to explain, and particularly I've been very involved here locally with the Medina County Economic Development Corp. I've met with local and state representatives and, and really it's having them out to our community and showing them the two by six construction, the energy efficiency drywall and the high quality homes that we're building and really trying to change that mindset that this isn't the trailer park that you remember. It's hard.

Yeah. And when you're thinking about the type of individual that's living there, you're talking about individuals that are maybe looking at living in multifamily housing. So apartments potentially renting a home, but you're giving them an opportunity for home ownership, which also gives them the capacity to potentially build wealth. And maybe this isn't their only home, maybe this is the first home and they can transition and move into another direction. So what do you look for when you're looking for a manufactured housing community to acquire, especially as you're building community and looking at building community.

So I think you bring up a great point, and that is homeownership is the path to wealth building. And if we keep people in apartments, they never have that opportunity. So when we buy a new community and we want to go and rebuild, number one we look for is a strong school system. Because no one ever grows up and says, I want to live in a manufactured home community. However, as parents, we all want our kids in great school systems. And so from an investment standpoint, we look for good quality school systems and we look for an affluent area where the price of their lot rent and if they have to finance their home that those two combined are significantly less than rent. So for example, where we are in Medina County. If you had to purchase your home with a loan and your lot rent, you'd be at about $1,100 a month. A two bedroom apartment building, no equity would be about $1,500 a month. So we give them home ownership at less money.

So that big of a difference.

That big of a difference. And we really look for that type of multiple to make it worthwhile. It's our unique selling proposition is a term we used to use in industry.

Wow. So as you're starting to continue to build relationships within the community, within building government relationships with the land bank, as you're looking at bringing in homes that are HUD certified, HUD approved, so they're built to the specifications by the federal government. You're following all of these guidelines, you're dealing with all these things. Is there some potential to work with or collaborate with employers? I mean, I could think that having individuals that are in a manufactured home community that can be closer to their work environment than maybe having to travel, what does that look like and how do you build that collaboration?

That's a great question. Just last month we have another community we purchased recently in Hope Township, excuse me, Plain Township. And we met with the local officials there and they said, Diane, we need, you know, we're bringing in all this business, right. And we don't have people to work in these businesses. And you know, regardless of where the next election cycle goes, we know that both presidential candidates want to bring more manufacturing back to the US so now we have these 18 to 25 dollars an hour jobs and nowhere for these people to live. And a recent Harvard study shows there are 7.1 million unavailable housing units today.

Wow.

For people that have the least amount of income.

Right.

So that's 18 to $25. So there's a long way to go to fill that gap. We really feel like affordable housing or manufactured housing can meet those needs. And as I met with Plain Township, they recommended that I reach out to the local manufacturing community and talk to them. And we're even looking at partnering for a first time home buyer down payment assistance and having those employers participate with us.

So you're pulling together a lot of different resources. Is that similar to some of the things that you did when you were in your corporate job?

Absolutely. I didn't do anything in my corporate job except bring people together. And it's kind of the same thing, you know, buyers and communities and financial institutions all together for the success of the community.

So you talked about NIMBYism, talked about trying to collaborate and get people on the same page. How do you enter a room or enter a conversation where you automatically know? I think there's probably been times in your career where, you know, someone just doesn't necessarily agree with you or they've got an opinion. How do you work on shaping the path to get them to a yes or an okay? I can see your point.

So I used to introduce myself as a mobile home park owner and immediately nobody wants to talk to you. So instead I say, hi, I'm Diane Widowski. I bring quality energy efficient housing to communities at an affordable price. And all of a sudden they go, wait, what? I want to talk to you. Yeah, so I just did this recently and I had a county commissioner and two state representatives say, well, let's talk, help me understand. Because again, their job is to bring business. Well, they can bring all this business to their community, but if there's nobody to work there. The other piece that I've been talking to people about is, so you have your kid that's graduated from high school.

Yeah.

Maybe they're not going to go to college. They're going to take one of these manual labor jobs, something again, that go that 18 to 25, 18 to $35 an hour. You want to get them out of your basement. Where are they going to live?

That's a good question.

They can't stay in the community. When you have $400,000 houses in your community.

Oh, wow.

And so when you phrase it like that and you make it a little bit more personal, like where are your kids and grandkids going to live? You don't want them in your backyard and we'd rather not see them in an apartment because again, there's no wealth building. Living in an apartment.

Yes. Okay, so let's shift for a minute. We're talking about, you know, we talk about wealth building. We're talking about running a business. You came from a large business environment, so you managed budgets. But, you know, cash flow is a little bit different in a large corporation that's, that's publicly traded. How was that transition for you financially going from person who's managing corporate budgets to now managing small businesses? What, what does that finance look for you? How did you anticipate? Were there surprises along the way, as you've had to learn, kind of moving through that?

Yeah, you know, I mean, I, I managed $100 million business. Wow. You know, now I'm managing maybe a $5 million business, but it's all funded by the bank of Scott and Diane So I was fortunate again. I had a pension. I had a sizable 401, and I received a nice bonus to early retire. So that really helped me, you know, kind of get through the hump.

You had your good seed money, I.

Had my good seed money. And then we. Something we haven't talked about is I have a couple of other buildings where I have retail, which provides me some additional income.

Okay. So learning all the finances, it just kind of had to change. Be more creative.

You have to be very creative. Okay.

What do you think over the last couple of years since COVID when you transitioned, what is the most important thing that you learned as a business owner in manufactured housing? If you could share that one thing with the audience.

I would say to continue to build that network. I attend a lot of trade shows for manufactured housing. I attend local community meetings in the township where my properties are located. I make sure I meet the local business owners. So an example I just gave to somebody recently was my retail building. I had a period of three years when with all of my properties, I would have had 324 rental payments that I was expecting to receive.

Wow.

Okay. During that time, I had four turnovers, and in two instances, we had to completely remodel one of the suites. During that time, I only lost four months of rent. I collected 320 months of rent. Wow. And the reason for that is my local networking with the business community there, with the Bedford Downtown alliance, so another business group, and letting people know who you are, what you have to offer, making those relationships, I was the first one they thought of when someone said, hey, I want to bring my new business. I need an apartment.

Wow.

So it's just. It's just that constant networking, letting people know what you do.

So when you walk into a room and you walk into places where you don't know people and you're having to network, what do you tell yourself? How do you build yourself up to be able to have those conversations? Is there a question that you always ask? Is there something that you always present yourself to with. How do you manage through some of those things? Because for some of us, networking can be a challenge sometimes. We don't always. We want to be introverted. We don't want to be extroverted. What's your tip around some of those things?

I like to catch them off guard, and I say, what do you like to do for fun?

Oh.

Because that way, you want to find some common ground. You're both at this business networking. You clearly are interested in building relationships, and maybe it's around a particular industry or event or whatever. But when you say to somebody, what do you like to do for fun? You find out that, you know, maybe they like horseback riding and you like horseback riding. Or recently, I like to can. And so I was talking to somebody who I suspected had a similar interest. And as we were looking through pictures, I made sure she saw my picture of canning, and I was canning pickles. And so we got to talk about canning pickles, and we developed this whole new level of relationship and respect for one another because it's kind of a quirky thing. Not too many people can anymore.

No.

Wow.

So you come in disarming. It's not that whole, what do you do? Tell me what your business is you're doing. You're taking a different angle, and you.

Kind of joke, you know, you kind of, like, look around the room and say, well, what do you do for fun?

Nice.

And people seem to enjoy that because we like to talk about things we enjoy.

I appreciate that. Diane, as we start to wrap up, where do you see your future as far as what you're doing in affordable housing? What would you like to see within that industry? What changes?

Well, it's really interesting. I just came back from a conference this past week that was downtown Cleveland, and I gave a presentation and talked about affordable housing. And I've had three very, I'll call them senior investors come to me and want to understand more about my model and what we're doing. And I met with one this afternoon, and we're actually talking about a project in Texas that we may do together that will be around modular housing. And I see that as a huge change in the affordable housing. So it gets rid of the NIMBYism, because now a modular home is built in the same fashion in the same location as a HUD home. But now it's going to go on a traditional foundation. That being said, I think we eliminate a lot of the NIMBYism and we can increase density, which is a key to making housing affordable. So I'm looking to partner with more people and share this idea out and do it outside of Northeast Ohio.

Nice. So as we wrap up, you know, one of the things that we like to do on this podcast is to give a takeaway to small business owners so they can get 1% better in their business every day. So what is that one thing you'd like to tell them as a takeaway?

I think I kind of said it earlier, and it really just goes to networking outside of your kind of immediate sphere, going to, again, the community leaders, the business owners, and introducing yourself and just befriending them genuinely. If you have a local restaurant, every time you go to visit your property or your business, go and network with those people and get to know them. And that is just the biggest change in our business is the results that I've gotten from networking with those people. People I never expected have come through and, you know, given me leads and taken me in new directions.

So never stop building connections.

Never stop building connections. Without a doubt.

Well, thank you for your time, Diana.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Yes, RAM.