What Nobody Tells You About Selling a PM Company with Bri Leichliter

when you sell a business, you only know what you know from the buyer in the couple of meetings that you've had getting to know them and their business. What is reality might be completely different than that. I'm very process-oriented. I built all of my processes and instructions out, and that structure for my team was huge. And I'm in a situation where some of what I've put together, a lot of what I've built is kind of feels like it's going to waste because those systems are no longer used. That was a little bit soul-crushing, to be honest, because I, that was like the part of the building, right? I got to a certain point, I got the outcome that I wanted, and that's great, but I don't want all the hard work I put in along the way to just, I kind of want it to live on, you know what I mean? I spent all that time doing it. I want it. I want to be able to continue to, you know, have that available and whatever. So, so that, that was a difficult part for me.

Welcome back to Peter Lohmann's podcast. I'm thrilled to introduce my friend Briann Lickleiter, who goes by Bri. Most people would probably know you as Bri. Welcome to the show.

Yeah.

Thank you. So Bri, I want to talk to you about selling your property management company. We call that a hook in the business. So for people who are just tuning in, make sure they stick around. So you sold your property management company at the end of last year, and I had gotten to know you over the last couple years, so I was up to speed on sort of the business and you and how everything was going all along the process. And so I've heard a lot from you about why you sold and how it's been going since then. And I think it makes for a really interesting story. And I know there's a lot of people listening who are thinking about selling their property management company, even if they're not going to do it this year. You know, it's nice to hear from folks who have actually done it. They're kind of few and far between and understand what to expect, pitfalls, what to do, what not to do, and things like that. But to kick it off, can you give us a snapshot of your business, you know, as it was going into the sale process, just so people sort of understand the context?

Yeah, absolutely. So we actually closed on the sale in October, and at that point we were around 215 to 220 doors. We had a staff of 7 people. At the time, and that included some maintenance technicians in there as well and some RTMs. So revenue-wise with everything that we were doing, we were about between $750,000 and $800,000 revenue. I was still very heavily active in the business, so, you know, we didn't have a huge number of doors. I was still having everybody reporting to me, still very actively involved in our owner communications, things like that. So I was really very close to you know, boots on the ground level versus, you know, in somebody in your position at this point with your size, you've kind of been able to work your way out of that. Mm-hmm. Um, so that's kind of where I was at the end whenever we'd made the transition.

Got it. And did you all have in-house maintenance?

We did. We had just one technician earlier in 2025, we had two. And as you know, and we've talked about many times, just having maintenance technicians and the turnover in that role is pretty high. Yeah. But when we sold, we had one maintenance technician.

Okay. And then how about brokerage? You guys have in-house brokerage?

In-house brokerage sales, but I was the only licensed agent, so it was me basically just buying and selling for my existing property management clients. I didn't really do too much outside of that. You know, the occasional one or two deals, friends and family kind of kind of thing or my own investment, but not, I didn't have a lot of agents under me or people in the brokerage that were licensed.

Yeah. And you're in Cincinnati, Ohio. We should mention that for anyone who's not familiar. Yes. So this is great 'cause this is a very typical setup for a lot of people who are listening.

Mm-hmm.

Few hundred doors. Yeah. Maybe a maintenance tech or two. Maybe doing some sales in-house. And when did you get started with the business?

So I actually started in 2021. That's when I got licensed. My starting point is probably different than some people, but maybe not. I'm actually not from Cincinnati. I'm from a small town in Pennsylvania, and I had moved to Cincinnati to take a job at GE Aerospace. That's what got me there. I moved in September of 2019, pre-COVID, but really close to COVID. So I was there for a very short amount of time house hacking myself in Cincinnati and COVID hit in March of 2020. So at that point you were working—

you had no, at this point you had no property management experience or background.

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 were getting laid off.

Manufacturing aerospace parts from home, as one does.

Yes, 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 to a cease.

Yeah, but it's more fun to think about manufacturing gas turbine engines.

Something in my head.

Blades. You know, in your garage or something.

Right, 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, and COVID-proof, recession-proof industry. And it felt relatively safe to me. So I was working from home, studying to get my real estate license, and somehow did not get laid off in 2020. I was licensed in January of 2021, had my first real estate sales closing in March of 2021, and signed my first management client in April of 2021.

Got it. So you were managing property professionally for about 4 years. Total. And in that time scaled up from 0 to 200, high 200s or whatever you said, and sold. So, yes, 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 want to come back to the point where you decided, okay, I'm going to sell, but let's pretend you've already made that decision. What were the steps that you took to run the sale process?

So to really, do you mean to get it out there to tell people I was selling or like after we were under contract?

Yeah. Just like what were the, 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. 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 2 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 20 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, 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 2025, early, early, probably Q1. 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 2025. I did nothing with it in, you know, terms of saying, hey, here's the price, all of those things. At, 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, we're 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 3 specific people about this, 3 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. There will be an NDA in your inbox by 5:00 PM tomorrow. I'm planning on making a decision at the end of the month. And that was all I said. No price, no price, no, you know, like I was, wasn't sugarcoating anything. And I did let them know there are 3 people that I sent this to. If I don't get a response, then I'll go out, I'll go public with the sale.

Yeah.

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 101. 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 know, that was my range.

You had a dollar amount in range of what you wanted to get.

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.

And if you hadn't gotten a bite from your initial outreach to those 2, 3, 4 folks, what would've been your next step then?

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've probably put it out there in Korean, you know, put it out there on LinkedIn or one of the platforms that, you know, I know my people live, right?

Mm-hmm.

In, in our circles. And, you know, just to see what kind of bites that I would get. It would at least start some 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.

Just too small.

With the sale. 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.

Okay.

In comparison to other things.

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 76 hours a month on administrative work and rent collection alone. Think about that for a second. That's basically 2 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 hours a month saved That's almost 3 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 want to 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, certainly respect, you don't want to, 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. Yeah. So when I originally sent out my mass text message to, or group text, it wasn't even a group text. It was 3 separate text messages to our potential buyers. I think—

A group text could have been fun. You know, run a little process right there in the text thread.

Right, right. And I think in my mind, I, when I sent what I did send, I wanted there to be some competition. And that's why I did, part of the reason I didn't put a price on it. And I wanted them to know they were gonna, you know, I sent it to 3 specific people. So first come, first serve, or gimme the best, you know, bring your highest and best. And that was just kind of how I approached it. But in terms of the actual sale, you know, in, in reality, we went fast. We, I got an LOI. That's what kind of triggered the process. So sent it out to the 3 people, had some preliminary conversations, sent over data. That was the initial part. And then based on the data that they received, they did their own due diligence, came back, asked me questions, and then submitted an LOI. The LOI obviously had, you know, the general terms on it. I did negotiate my LOI to a degree. I had a couple of things that were really important to me that I wanted to make sure were built into the contract. So we had some negotiation. On the LOI. Once we firmly came to terms, I think that probably took us 2 weeks of back and forth, several phone calls of, you know, getting the details. Once that LOI, we were good with the LOI, then we had an attorney draft a purchase contract, an official purchase contract and bill of sale and assignment of contracts. You know, kind of a bundle of paperwork. And with property management, you can go as fast or as slow as you want. I mean, if you think about you onboard a new client that has 100 doors, right? If that is something that you have done before, doing a sale and a purchase is kind of similar in that regard. Mm-hmm. You gotta onboard all of these properties. You have to have systems and people and all the things in place. So you can go as fast or as slow as you want. So what we decided was we officially closed where we sat down and had a notary, you know, we signed our bill of sale and our contract or assignment of contracts and everything on October 10th. In our arrangement, and my attorney kind of thought that I was crazy, and you can tell when people don't understand your business fully too.

Attorneys don't know about business. I have a partner who says that often.

They don't know about what it takes to transition something like what we do. So what we, me and the buyer had decided was we would close and then we'd have a transition period before we did the official handoff of management where revenue changed hands. And that, that was the part that my attorney didn't understand. Like, why can't you just do it tomorrow? I'm like, well, doesn't, It doesn't work like that. You know, you have a lot of stuff that you have to prep and get ready. So we closed on October 10th with the transfer of management services happening on November 1st, which is still pretty fast. So one of the things that we decided that this is pretty general, it's not, you know, we're not talking specific numbers or anything that I feel like I am okay sharing is the arrangement that we made is while it was still under management of me and I was collecting the revenue, The revenue would stay with, with me and so would the expenses. So for the rest of the month of October, I collected, you know, management income, maintenance revenue, all of that kind of stuff that still went into my organization, but then I still had to pay for payroll and all my software and all of that. So wherever the revenue was coming in is who was responsible for the expenses is how we made a very clean break. So when we transferred, transferred management on November 1st, then that changed officially as well. So revenue went to the buyer, expenses went to the buyer, and that's how we transitioned. So all of my staff that went along with the sale transitioned on November 1st, and that happened to be a weekend, which, you know, rent collection on the weekend, When you're transitioning management, I'm sure you guys all know this, who have just onboarded properties and then have tried to, you know, collect management. The first month is a little bit rough, but it went, it actually went really well. So that was kind of our initial transitional month and timeline. Now what I will say that is an important piece to consider if you're, if you are selling is you have to understand what systems you're buyer has.

I was just gonna ask you about that. Because, because I know you were on Buildium.

I was on Buildium. Yeah. Buildium. So my tech stack looked a little bit like this. Buildium, PropertyMouth, LeadSimple were my, my main ones. And obviously we communicated through Slack. So the, those were, you know, the main things. RentEngine we used for leasing. And the buyer had completely different systems. So they had AppFolio, they ran their maintenance through AppFolio, they used TurboTenant. So that transition we could have done a little bit differently. And hindsight's 20/20, things that I would do differently if, if we were gonna do it again. We made the transition systematically on 11/1. So that was, you know, 3 weeks of us getting stuff into AppFolio, notifying tenants. Getting all the owners set up, you know, that was a huge undertaking to transition all the systems and then transitioning the maintenance team. There was, you know, training that was needed there, all of, all of that. So that was a lot and I would do that completely differently if I was doing it over. But I mean, we survived it and it was fine. It was just stressful.

What would you do differently though? Because it seems like it's just gonna be a pain no matter what.

It is a pain no matter what, but I, I do think when you have staff that's transitioning to new bosses that also need to learn new systems. So this wasn't sell and then they had their own team who already knew AppFolio and already knew all of those systems. This was my team, part of my team, not all of my team transitioned, but part of my team transitioned. Had to learn that new system in almost no time, really. Like it was plug and play. You start today and you have to know how to use the system today. And that's not realistic. And that was like the communicate— how we communicated changed. You know, we're used to communicating on LeadSimple shared inbox. How they communi— how the buyer communicated was completely different. So the people part of that and the, the training the people and now having to do all of your processes completely differently than what you've, you're, you've been doing. That was the hardest part. I think it was the hardest on the people. So if I was gonna do it differently, what I would have done is say, let's do the first 90 days where you keep everything the same, get your people up to speed and trained on the new system. Have a plan to then kind of offboard from one system, onboard to the other. And I think, you know, that would've maybe helped with the transition itself versus like there being 3 weeks of, hey, no one really knows a whole lot. Now we're transitioning staff and we're learning all new systems and all the tenants and owners are also transitioning systems. So, you know, staff's learning. Owners are learning, tenants are learning. So that, that would've been—

The situation was tough. I mean, you had a buyer who wasn't as large or, or experienced as some other buyers. And so you were having to help a lot. The staff, you know, was having to learn everything new. I think, you know, there are, there's advantages and disadvantages to selling to some of the big boys. You know, one of the advantages is they've done this 25 times and so they have a process they're gonna run. And they're highly invested in making sure that every single owner, tenant, team member, all, you know, I's are dotted and T's are crossed. So in terms of the structure of the deal, like, did you get a big wire in your account the day you closed? Did you carry a note? Did they use, you know, Live Oak Bank or something to finance this deal? Like, how did that work?

Yeah, so we, ended up doing an installment sale. So there's 4 total payments in our contract, and the first 2 payments are essentially based on the initial number at closing. So the door count at closing.

Mm-hmm.

One of the things that I did in my contract, we had like a closing door count and then we had what we called transitional units where the properties were already listed for sale. They were kind of a short-term, you know, we knew they were gonna drop off. So we structured that slightly differently because obviously, you know, from a buyer's perspective, if those properties weren't gonna stick around, then he didn't want to pay for them the same, the same amount as the other doors, right? Yeah. So logically makes complete sense. So I actually did a lot of work with my CPA on how I wanted to structure from a tax perspective. So what we ended up doing is we did, we did not collect anything at closing with a first installment payment happening this calendar year because we were so close to the end of the year. So, you know, that's, that's more of a tax planning. Everyone's situation is going to be a little bit different in that regard. And essentially my—

Because, you know, presumably your income was going to drop for 2026. And so getting that installment payment into this calendar year, I mean, you could have saved tens of thousands of dollars in income tax by having the sale take place technically, or you get paid or however it works, you know, in, in the next calendar year, right?

Yeah. So the first two payments are based on that initial door count. So we split split it up, the larger payment being the first one and then the second payment, and that happened in January, and then the second payment at the end of the quarter. There is no— in our arrangement, there's no clawback clause, but there is a true-up period. So it— if at this point the door count has not dropped significantly, that, you know, the buyer would be in trouble or they would need to execute on a clawback anyway, but The second and third payments are based on a true-up. So running the numbers to see what the door counts are from a retention standpoint. And then there's a dollar value assigned to each of those with my final payment be the true-up being at the 1-year mark, but the final payment being released in 2027, again, for tax purposes.

Yep.

So I kind of structured how I wanted the payments based on my tax. Largely in part of my tax strategy. Yeah.

Yeah, that sounds great. Now, how has the churn been, meaning the churn of your portfolio, like owners who didn't transition or who decided to sell or switch management shortly after the transition? What did you sort of model out or expect in terms of that, in terms of like percentage there? And how has it actually gone?

Honestly, I wasn't sure how it would go at all. And part of the reason being is one, I've never done this sale, this type of sale before, so I have no experience on, you know, my own personal experience. Obviously I knew that there was gonna be some churn, but also, you know, the, from the buyer's perspective, they had never done an acquisition before of this nature. Now they had done other brokerage acquis— acquisitions, so they did have experience in buying this processes, which is great, but I was expecting there to be some. I had no real indication of how significant it would be. I will say that from client transitional perspective, when we announced it to clients, we were very strategic in having a united front on how we addressed it. And I also, I didn't stay on from a payroll perspective. A lot of people do that at acquisition, like they'll keep the owner on for a period of time. I am on in a project manager capacity to finalize some renovation projects, but I'm not on as a payroll employee.

Got it.

What we ended up doing was I stayed on from, it's built into my purchase contract that I have to be available for so many months, and that happened to be through the end of the year. And we were just on joint communication for a lot of things. So when we made the announcement, it's like, hey, I'm not going anywhere. For the time being while we transitioned. And I, if anybody had, you know, issues, I was talking to them through that. We were getting on a call with the buyer, you know, joint call, you know, handling situations like that that came up. I will say one of the things that I structured in my contract that made, made that make sense is I am still planning on doing brokerage sales. So as I sold my business, I sold the PM division. I could have kept my brokerage open to do, to do sales only. I decided to not do that and went to another small brokerage, but just for like a rebranding purpose and a variety of other things. But I did in my sales contract retain my, or the purchase of the business, I did negotiate to retain my clients as sales clients for a period of time. So what that allows me to do is I still have a continuous touchpoint with my, with a lot of my clients that transitioned. I still have that relationship with them. If they are having an issue, they are telling me and I'm able to direct it to the buyer and say, hey, we have a problem just in case you weren't aware. And then You know, we're kind of working through that. And I think that has dramatically helped. I think we would've had a lot more people that maybe didn't want to transition. But in terms of people who said, no, I'm not transitioning, we had one. And it wasn't because of the transition, they had some other issues, but one kind of pretty much right away that fell off in December. The transitional units that we had that I, I called 'em transitional units that had properties for sale, We did have, you know, a couple of sales that were already in the works. It had nothing to do with the sale of the PM side. And really from people who have offboarded since we closed in October, we had one offboard and change managers and anything else that has offboarded has been because they sold their property. So it's not been a, I'm, I'm super unhappy with services and I'm leaving. So, you know, we're in March, obviously things can happen. I don't know, but I still have great relationships with my clients and, you know, if there's an issue, we're still, I'm still kind of feeding that over to the buyer. So I think that really depends on how your deal is structured on, you know, how close you want to stay to it and try to assist with, you know, mitigating that churn.

Today's podcast is sponsored by AppGentic AI. Ever feel like your best people spend half their day just routing calls? It's time to give every caller the service they deserve without interrupting your team's flow. AppGentic.ai can take care of this for you. Let's give them a call.

Thanks for calling RL Property Management. This call is being recorded. This is Alex, your AI receptionist. How can I help you?

Hey Alex, I have a maintenance emergency. My guest bedroom light fixture isn't working. I need you to send someone ASAP.

I'm sorry you're dealing with that. A light fixture or bulb not working is considered a non-emergency. We can still get this taken care of promptly. Would you like me to take the maintenance request over the phone now, or would you prefer I text you the link so you can submit it through the maintenance portal?

I don't want to mess with the link. Let's just do it over the phone.

No problem. Can you please describe what's happening with the light fixture, like whether it's flickering, not turning on at all, or if you've noticed any burning smell or sparks?

It just doesn't turn on at all. Like, it was working yesterday, and now when I turn it on, there's no light coming out from Got it, thank you.

So it just stopped working entirely overnight with no flickering, smell, or sparks. That's helpful to know. Could you please confirm the property address where this issue is happening?

123 Main Street.

Thank you. So that's 123 Main Street, correct?

That's correct.

Perfect, I'll note that. Lastly, do you know if this is a ceiling fixture or a lamp plugged into an outlet?

It's a ceiling fixture.

Got it, thank you. I've logged your maintenance request for the ceiling light fixture not working at 123 Main Street. The maintenance team will review it and schedule service soon. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

That's all. Thank you. And that's it. AppGentic.ai's AI receptionist de-escalates tense moments and guides callers to resolution while your team focuses on executing. Stop the interruptions and see how it works. Book your demo today at appgentic.ai. Well, that sounds like a great outcome. I've done a couple acquisitions of portfolios. Locally here in Columbus, and we've experienced pretty high churn when we, you know, for both of those, you know, I'd have to go back and do some analysis to figure out why, but sounds like you had a really good outcome. What made you decide you wanted to sell? I think this is of a high interest to a lot of people is people, you know, we all go through a stressful season or stressful week. And we just think, you know what, I'm done. This is insane. You know, the employee problems, the owners, the tenants, I'm getting sued. Like, I can't sleep. This isn't— yeah, my wife's telling me, or my spouse is telling me that, you know, you're, you're, you, this is crazy. You're stressed out all the time. Yeah. You're, you're not present. And a lot of people have thought, yeah, I should get out. And then some people do and some people don't. So I'm curious from someone who has, what played into this decision?

So mine was mostly monetary. Like I said earlier, I knew, I always knew I was gonna sell this thing. So, you know, it wasn't a business that was passed down to me that my family did. I have no, you know, emotional ties in that way where I'm like letting go of a legacy. I think that would be extremely difficult to come to that decision. But I was really at the point in the size of my business and the things that I wanted to change that I either needed to hire in that really expensive leadership role, which then I would have to take, you know, I don't have any business debt. I should preface with that. So we ran our business with no debt. We had revolving, some revolving credit cards for maintenance that we've paid off every week, but outside of that, no business debt. So I'm strictly looking at numbers going, if I had to hire this next hire, which is inevitable, I'm going to have to do if I want to work my way out of the business, that would cost me X, and I'd either have to go into debt to do it, or I would need to take a pay cut, or, you know, lean out my other staff to be able to do it. And at that point I was like, or That is now my sign that maybe I should test the market and see what happens. So my worst case scenario was I hire a leadership position. My best case scenario was I, I find a buyer and, you know, I'm doing what I said I was gonna do.

So the pros would call it your BATNA, your best alternative to negotiated agreement, which is like, yeah, hey, I'll just keep running the business. No big deal.

Yeah, right. Worst case scenario. Keep making money. I mean, yeah, you know, so it was low risk for me anyway. I looked at it.

Okay. Well, yeah, that makes sense. And I think you came into this pretty clear-eyed and I know that about you. You're pretty, you know, rational in how you think things through and you're like, hey, I started this business to sell it and I'm at a point where I'm either going to have to make some major reinvestments into the business and sort of— I think of it as like a fork in the road. It's like you could take the one fork and it's a long road and there's not going to be another rest stop for 100 miles. Or it's like, this is actually my exit ramp right now.

Right.

And so you made the decision like, hey, now's the right time for me. And in retrospect, I know it's only been a few months, but feels like that was the right decision for you.

Any regrets or— No regrets.

Okay.

No, nope.

And, and the, the, the day-to-day experience of owning and running this business for you, and this is different for everybody, different for every business, how would you characterize that? Was it fun, easy, hard, stressful, scary? Like how, how did it feel on a day-to-day basis in like the 6 months leading up to the sale?

Yeah, before, before I sold. Yeah. I would say, I mean, obviously I was still on the day-to-day, so yes, there's natural stressors there. The other thing that I kind of wanna circle back to that leads to this question, to the answer of this question is I didn't lose my first client at all from churn until the end of 2024. So I had, wow. So, yeah, I know. So then in 2025, I started seeing more natural churn, you know, some people leaving because, yeah, some people leaving because they want to change management companies. A lot of people selling, a lot of people getting out of the business. So, you know, when I first started thinking about it, it was kind of the slow season. Then things picked up and you just are in the thick of it and you're just doing what you need to do to get through it. And I'm a continuous improvement type of person. So, you know, of course, like every 5 minutes I'm thinking, oh, I could, I could make XYZ change, but the XYZ change required me to not be working in the business to be able to execute that change. And so that goes back to like the chicken or the egg. Do I get out of it or do I bring in this person that can take over for me? In a lot of ways so I can do, you know, more work on the business. And that's a very real milestone point in any property management company when you're building it, right? There's a point where you have to stop being the doer and have everybody else be the doer. And then there's a point where you have to not manage those people and someone else has to start managing those people. So I do think that it was, it was stressful only because I was still in the day-to-day. I wasn't stressed out about the, like, some normal business stuff that I think a lot of small business owners, maybe not property management company owners, but a lot of small business owners stress about. I wasn't stressed about revenue and cash flow and all those things. I was never stressed about those, but that was largely in part because I had no business debt. So my money coming out every month was, and I'm the probably one of the cheapest person, people on the planet. I think you're aware. I think you're aware of that. So, you know, scrutinizing what I'm spending money on and just cutting out the waste continuously, you know, I wasn't stressed from a financial perspective at any given point. So my main stressors, and I think probably what most property management companies experience, is your, your people, dealing with people in any regard, whether that's your clients, You're, if you're still dealing with tenant BS and lawsuits and all of that and your staffing, you know, to me that I think the people part is the hardest part of the property management business in any small business really. So that was kind of my biggest stressor. You know, I knew we probably needed to have some more people, but then I was thinking, well, if I'm going to sell in the next couple of months, I'm not, I'm not bringing in headcount at this point because I don't know what would happen. So, you know, I was kind of going back and forth mentally with the people part of it for quite a while. And then as part of the sale, and this is something that everybody should think about if you are thinking about selling, you know, the people aspect is a huge one. Does this— is the buyer taking all of your staff? Are they taking none of your staff? You know, so that really at at the end of the, you know, tour closing. And then of course at the transition point, that was a huge stressor for me, was having to handle, you know, the people part of it from a staffing perspective and doing it with integrity.

Yeah, that, that's certainly a big consideration. I know for a lot of PM business owners is the staff, right? What's gonna happen? With my staff. And I think that actually holds up a lot of folks from selling because they're worried about what's going to happen to the team. Some of the large acquisition groups are sort of infamous for clearing house after a purchase deal. I know there's one or two others that kind of take the opposite position. They're like, no, in fact, if you don't have a great team in place with a great leader, we don't even want to buy your business because We're not going to run it. You're going to continue to run it or your team is going to continue to run it. So there are different options out there. I want people to be aware of that. But yeah, I certainly agree with you that the most stressful part of business, whether it's operations or during a sale, is the people. How do we deal with all of these humans and their families and their careers? And it's a lot of pressure. So what did it feel like? I guess— I mean, your deal was a little different in that you didn't have that like one day where you sign the docs and then an hour later the big wire hit. Like, that's like, everyone wants to know what that feels like. But tell me a little bit about the feelings you experienced when you did sign the closing docs, when that first wire did hit, and just what was that like?

Yeah, so when I signed the closing docs, I had no like immediate relief or anything of that sort because I knew I still had a ton of work to do. So I was very realistic and what my role was going to be and how much work I had ahead of me. So there was no like instant relief. I know there was no instant relief, but I do feel— it did feel worse for a minute. I know it did feel worse for a second, but yeah, so I didn't really feel that relief after. So we had really, if you think we had the closing date, then we had the transition date. and then I had to close out books for the year with, we used OJO Bookkeeping for our trust accounting. So, you know, transitioning ledgers, making sure we zeroed out everything because our trust account didn't transfer. So it changed to the buyer's trust account, which you should expect to happen. So as, as I started, as I really started to see my day-to-day workload decrease is when I started to feel something different. I would say not until January. My first wire was January 5th. And you know, it is gratifying seeing it hit your account, right? But also in parallel to that, I also had a serious workload reduction in that same month. And that's really when I felt like some relief that I could, I, as much as I wanted to take time off, I think we all were realistic that that was not going to happen. For me. So, you know, I was immediately into the, the next thing and I transitioned my brokerage sales in November. So I closed down my official brokerage after the new buyer took on the property management services. I closed down my brokerage and joined another small brokerage and got my broker's license in Kentucky all in the last 2 months of last year while we were finishing up the transition. So I had a lot of stuff in motion anyway, and then all of that was kind of done and I was in a new normal in January. And that's when I really started to feel some relief and like, feel like I had time to do things that I wanted to do. And it's, it's progressively, you know, continued on that path and I, I don't do things I don't want to do at this point. So, that part is nice.

That's great. And we're going to get into what you're up to now, because I want to hear more about that. Before we do though, I know that you ran into like some post-sale challenges with some of the transitions, some of the workload. Share a little more about that and like maybe mix in there anything you would've done differently to help that go a little better.

Yeah. So in my contract, I did, we negotiated because we, I did a decent amount of renovating with my clients. Not all property management companies offer that service, so this may not apply to everybody, but I managed some pretty hefty renovations for some of my management clients. And to me it felt really unfair for me to just be like, okay, I'm done and hand that off to the buyer when they've had no involvement in any of the back history of the property and all of that. It just felt unfair. So we did come to an arrangement that I was going to stay on as project manager for those handful of projects. I think there were 6 at the time that we were trying to close out because I was in the, I was already in it with the owner. you know, having those conversations and the buyer now has new staff and is trying to like deal with normal resident issues and work on their processes and things. So it just made logical sense for me to continue to take that on. So that is a service that I am offering to the buyer and getting paid for.

Mm-hmm.

And we're down to the, you know, the last, I think we have 2 on my end that we're down to. So I still do have some involvement. With the buyer's team. But that alone had its own challenges because I'm used to having access to, you know, owner's funding and being able to control when I cut a check to a contractor and being able to order materials and, you know, immediately bill for it. And now I'm, I have none of that. I have communication with contractors and communication with the owners, but in terms of how they get paid, when they get paid, Does, does the owner have money? I don't, I'm now not involved in any of that process. So that was difficult for me when I was used to having control over those relationships. And I did, we did strain some relationships with contractors along the way there because they were used to how I operated with payments. And now the new company has their own process for operating and how they process payments. So that was, Yeah, that was a little bit of a roadblock from my side and, and caused some delay. But that was really kind of the, you know, giving over control and being— I still have access to, because I'm project managing, I still have access to the buyer system so I can still see what's happening, but I can't do anything about it. I think that's the, you know, outside of communicate my concerns, like I don't have control. It's not my business anymore. And I think the feelings for me would be different if the, if one, I didn't grow the business from zero. So I did no acquisitions to get to where my size by the time I exited. So I did no acquisitions. I built every relationship one-on-one with every customer. I didn't have a BDM doing that, you know, so I had, I only had one meltdown in the, in the entire process of the transition.

Like you only melted down one time is what you're saying?

I only melted down one time. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, not in the professional setting, just in like the, I don't, I can't, I'm, I feel helpless. You know what I mean? Because I can't do, I can't do anything. Like how I would normally handle stuff is not what's happening. And Everyone else is gonna run their business how they run their business, but it's like, I built this thing from zero. It became my baby. And even though I'm a logical, rational person, I built every relationship I had with every contractor and every owner.

Yeah.

That's personal. And so to hand that, hand those relationships, yeah, that, that was personal. If I would have been a different size or I built my business based on acquisitions and I didn't have those personal connections to clients, completely different story. I would've been less emotional. Yeah, exactly. I would've been less emotional about that, about that process and how it went. You know, obviously I don't want, I want our clients to be happy. Yeah. And I want that for me and I want that for the buyer and I want that for the client. Right. You, that's what you want when you do a sale. But I'm also, it's not like I'm going into, I mean, I joked with you with you guys about going into retirement, which we all knew was a total joke. But if I was selling to be like, I'm completely out, I'm done, fully done, I'm leaving the industry and I'm going to sit on a beach, I probably wouldn't have had those feelings. But I'm not, and I'm still maintaining those client relationships and still trying to help them grow their portfolios, which would be a benefit to the buyer. Because we'd scale, you know, sure, those doors. So it was more personal. So letting go of that control or feeling— not even letting go of the control. I had no choice but to let go of the control. Like, that was completely— that's what I signed up for, to let go of the control. But I think the feeling of helplessness that when something was going awry, I had no control over the fix. I could basically give my personal opinion, but it's not my business to run.

Yeah.

And I, you can't expect somebody to, you know, take your advice on everything. And I think the other thing is like when you sell a business, you only know what you know from the buyer in the couple of meetings that you've had getting to know them and their business. What is reality might be completely different than that. Mm-hmm. You know, that, and, and that part of it, you don't wanna have regrets on who you sell to, of course. And I don't have any regrets on the sales process, but I do wish that I would've learned more about how their operations functioned. I think we would've been able to do handoffs better. We would've been able to kind of prep a little bit more. And I feel like You know, I built, I'm very process-oriented. I built all of my processes and instructions out in LeadSimple. I've been with LeadSimple since 2022, and that structure for my team was huge. And I'm in a situation where some of what I've put together, a lot of what I've built is kind of feels like it's going to waste because those systems are no longer used. Or at least they're not used right now. So that was a little bit soul crushing, to be honest.

Mm-hmm.

Because I, that was like the part of the building, right? I got to a certain point, I got the outcome that I wanted, and that's great, but I don't want all the hard work I put in along the way to just, you know, it was for something, but I kind of want it to live on, you know what I mean? I spent all that time doing it. I want it, I want to be able to continue to, you know, have that available and whatever. So, so that, that was a difficult part for me. I do think, you know, everybody's different and what they're going to be attached to and what they're not. You know, I wasn't in such a bad headspace where I needed it to be gone, you know, for major mental health reasons. I mean, sure, I was stressed and, it felt like I couldn't shut off. But I think that's any business owner in general is gonna feel that no matter what kind of business you're in. And I do remember when I was talking to my boyfriend Jake about selling the business and we were talking about the price and I, I said to him, I said, what price is, you know, what do you think? And he's like, zero. You could sell it for zero and I'd be happy. He's like, because it's not worth your mental health. And you know, and that's when you know you found a great partner, of course. And, and then I was like, ha, you're outta your mind. Like, I'm never gonna give it away. But you know, it was, it, it, he obviously saw the, the toll that the business had on, you know, my mental health in general. And I, I don't think we talk about that enough in the industry and in small business as a whole, how difficult it is and how lonely it feels too. I didn't have a business partner, so I was making decisions on my own. And thankfully I have a great, you know, friend circle that is in the business and that's super helpful. But there are a lot of people who don't. So, if only there was a community of people. If only one existed. Imagine that. But yeah, I mean, and it's true because I did pick up, I mean, Peter's obviously referencing CRANE there, but I did pick up the phone and I called a couple of CRANE members along the way and to talk through things because I had that support. System that understood my challenges. And I've called other PMs that are non-Krane that I know have done acquisitions. There is, there's a company in Denver that I've met at Broker Owner and am still friends with, and they treat acquisitions like they're the most fragile thing on the planet. And they put so much time and effort into the people in the transition that I'm like, man, I'm a little bit jealous of that, right? Like, they, they take so much care of the staff that's coming in, the owner that's exiting, you know, like they take transitions and make them 6 months because they want to do it right. So, you know, thinking of that, those kinds of things, I think is, yeah, what I kind of reflect on at this point.

Well, I really appreciate you being vulnerable there over the last few minutes. I think you're exactly right. It doesn't get talked about enough. You know, of course, at these conferences, everyone puts on their best face, literally and figuratively. We talk about unit counts. We talk about how little we have to do in the business. We talk about how profitable things are and, oh my gosh, I have this great new hire and everything. But you get in the smaller circles, whether it's in Crane or just people that you've gotten to know where like you're able to text them and just pick up the phone any time. And then you start getting the real, real and, you know, you learn them. The more you do that, the more you understand that there are highs and they're great, but they're more the exception. And everyone experiences the pain and the suffering and the self-doubt and the just grind that is this business. And if you feel like you're alone in that, you're literally 0% alone because everyone who's built any size Every business has been through that and continues to deal with that no matter how big they are. The problems just get bigger. So, yeah, I'm like on a mission to help people understand that that's normal and it's not a personal failing of theirs. It's not a something they did wrong or a wrong hire. It's just, it never goes away.

I mean, well, yeah. And it's not like an if it's gonna happen, it's a when.

Yeah. You know, so we're getting towards the end of the hour here. Kind of zooming out for a second, I want you to answer like 2 questions. One is, what are you really happy that you did in terms of the whole business sale process? Like, what's one thing you're really happy that, that you did it the way you did? And what's one thing that you would do differently next time?

So there's— I mean, I feel like I I did fairly well in my negotiations on the sale. I'm actually pretty proud of what I've been able to do there. And the couple of things that kind of stand out to me are I wanted to stay in the business and I wanted to maintain my relationships with my clients. One of the things that I did not really touch on when we were talking about staff is my mom. I moved her here from Pennsylvania and I negotiated to guarantee her a job for a year. That was an important personal piece for me. So, you know, I know a lot of people have family in the business that that might be something that they need to think about. And I really think in the grand scheme of the entire process, although there were a lot of things outside of my control, I did everything that I possibly could to facilitate. I didn't take a back seat. I did everything in my power. It didn't go as perfectly as planned and that's, you know, that's never gonna happen. It's not, there's, you can't expect perfection when you're doing something in property management in general. But I do feel like I gave it my all and I, I made myself available and did everything that was in my power to do.

Yeah.

And there is a point where you just gotta let go and realize it's not, and I really needed to like get to that headspace. But really, if I was gonna do anything differently, it just would've been, uh, the, the implementation of the system changes I would've delayed. That was the biggest thing for me. I think from a staffing perspective and the staff retention, I think that's a huge piece of it. You can't expect everyone to just go start working for someone and have no training as they're getting into it. So that would've been my biggest. Do different part there.

Okay. What's next for you, Bri? What are you doing?

Mm. Well, I, I own a farm, so it's, the timing is kind of funny because I bought the farm in August and my first weekend that I gave myself off, I was sitting on my porch going, oh, I wanna do more of this. And then I'm texting, you know, those, those buyers going, Hey, buy my business. So we're doing a lot of things on the farm, infrastructure, things like that. So that's been, you know, a fun personal journey for me. And we're still gonna be doing a lot of things there. I just bought a greenhouse that delivered. That's my first expensive thing that I've bought myself in a very, very long time. So doing that, and then like I said, I transitioned to an independent brokerage. So part of that transition was getting my broker's license in Kentucky. So for those who of you who don't know, Cincinnati borders, can borders the Ohio River, which then goes into Kentucky. So a lot of times, like from my house, I have to drive into Kentucky to get back into Cincinnati. So it's kind of a natural expansion for a lot of investors and, you know, people live on each side of the river and work on each side of the river. So I'm a principal broker for Kentucky for the TLS Agency, which is the independent broker that I'm with. And then I'm doing, you know, what I negotiated in my contract, which was continuing to help those clients buy and sell. So that's part of where my journey's at. And that's, you know, flexible of course, because real estate, you have to be available and a contract comes up when a contract comes up. But I'm also now helping my friend Brandy, who is in Crane, and she's another broker. I'm actually in Dallas right now at her house. This is her house in the background as we record this, but I am essentially acting as a fractional maintenance manager to part-time to help her build out her maintenance operations and do some process improvement for her projects and maintenance coordination. And with the goal to bring in internal maintenance this year. So, you know, doing some, I don't want to call it consulting, but I guess that's what it is. You know, I enjoy helping my friends achieve their goals and I think being around the group of people that I've been in, in this industry for the last couple of years, you know, you see the good, bad, and the ugly when you're doing it on a day-to-day basis. But when you find your people, mm, I could've easily gotten outta property management fully and not done property management at all anymore and not stayed in the industry, but I've renewed my NARPM membership. I'm still, I want to heavily be involved. I still want to be active. I still, I'm still investing myself. I have my own rental property still. So, you know, I still want to stay relevant in the industry and I'm at the point where I am out of survival mode and now I'm more into doing things that I enjoy and I enjoy. Helping my friends. So we'll see where that goes.

That's awesome. Well, thank you, Bri. This has been really enlightening and I know a lot of folks have been curious, you know, what is it like to sell a property management company? So you've provided a great window into the real, you know, the reality of it. So for people who want to follow along sort of with what you're up to or want to get in touch with you, where can they do that?

Yeah, so my email is bri@bree@ the tlsagency.com. We can send that out. I, I'm sure you guys will put it in the show notes as well. And also that's my real estate brokerage side of the business. So if you're, if you're looking at, you know, needing some help with, with anything or just want to talk, happy to do that as well. So Peter will give you guys my contact info and great. We can have, we can have PM therapy. That's right.

All right. Thanks again, Bri. This is great.

Thank you.

I hope you have enjoyed this episode. If you like the show and want to get connected to the community, you can follow me on Twitter @PSLohmann and subscribe to my email newsletter on my website, peterlohmann.com. I try to share as much valuable property management content as I can on a regular basis. Thanks again for listening and have a great week. ¡Hola!