Aileen (00:00):

Welcome everyone to today’s episode of the, How Did They Do It? Real Estate podcast, we are your hosts Seyla and Aileen and today’s guest, we have Tim Bratz. Tim is the founder and CEO of legacy wealth holdings who started his career working as a broker leasing ground floor units. In 2008, after the real estate bubble burst, Tim used a credit card to purchase his first property and turned a profit using those proceeds and reinvested them. Today Tim’s company controls a portfolio of over 4,180 rental units and the legacy wealth fund for accredited passive investors. Tim has dedicated his professional life to studying wealth building and personal finance. Working in real estate. Tim has learned how to create a passive income that allows him to live the lifestyle of his choice. His goal is to educate and empower others to become financially free through entrepreneurship and real estate investments. Tim is also a real estate mastermind coach. He and his wife, Kate are co-authors of the children’s achievement book series called little legacy library. Welcome to the show, Tim. We are so grateful to have you on today.

Tim (01:02):

Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Aileen (01:05):

So can we get started by telling the listeners a little bit more by your background and how you got started in real estate?

Tim (01:10):

Sure, sure. Yeah. So when I was going through college was Oh three to Oh seven. Now the market real estate market was going crazy and I was motivated by money as a 20 year old kid. So they said, Hey, go and get involved in real estate. And you can make a lot of money in real estate. So I ended up interning for a big home builder. When I was in college, I ended up starting a painting company and kind of landscaping Type Company when I was in college. And then after college, I decided I wanted to go out to New York City. It’s where my brother lived and I’m from Cleveland, Ohio originally. And so I moved down to New York City and I thought you got involved in real estate by becoming a real estate agent. So I went and just got my real estate license and somehow ended up putting it with a commercial brokerage instead of like a residential brokerage. I don’t even know why I did that. I can’t even remember, but I ended up essentially representing landlords who were trying to lease out retail space or office space. And I represented businesses that were looking for retail space or office space. And it’s a highly competitive market in New York City. So I got a bunch of small deals, small leads, not a bunch, but I worked a few of them and it took me about nine months to close my first transaction. So it was a 12 year lease on a 400 square foot space. And the monthly rent was over $10,000 every single month. And I just remember doing the math on this thing and with escalations that happen every year and over the 12 year term, what, how much that landlord was going to make. And it was almost $2 million for doing something one Time. And I’m like, I’m on the wrong side of the coin.

Tim (02:40):

I need to be owning real estate instead of brokering real estate. And so I’m just kind of on a whim decided to move down to Charleston, South Carolina. So I moved down to Charleston and kind of like what you said at the, during the intro is I bought the first house that I ever purchased was purchased on a credit card is in 2008, two nine. Now when the market crashed and nobody was going to lend money to some 23 year old kid, who’s never done a deal before especially in that real estate economy. And so I had to get creative. And so, you know, there’s, I heard a quote once that said, you know, some people say that they can’t do something because they don’t have the Time. They don’t have the money, they don’t have the resources to go and do that. And the quote was resourcefulness is the ultimate resource. If you are resourceful, you can go find the Time. You can find the money, you can find the resources. And I guess that’s kind of what I was always did. I just kind of figured it out and I never let somebody tell me that I couldn’t do something. I just said, hey, how could I do it? And that mind-set of just asking questions led to more questions or more answers, you know, and so know. And then all of a sudden you get into wholesaling and I got real heavy into wholesaling. And then I started flipping a few houses and then I started coming across deals that I tried to wholesale and I’d bring them to some big buyers in town. And they said, hey, man, I just don’t have the bandwidth to take on any more projects. Or I bring it to somebody who had a full-Time job. And they said, Hey, I don’t know what I’m doing. How about you do the work, but I have the money. Can, can I bring the money? And then you do the work. And that’s how I got my first private money lenders and really started scaling up from there. So private money was a big piece of helping me leverage up.

Aileen (04:20):

So I kind of wanted to go back to purchasing your first property using a credit card. Can you talk a little bit more in detail on how did that go and just, what was the outcome of that?

Tim (04:30):

Yeah, yeah, so it was, I was 23 years old and I realized I’m, you know, I spent six months just studying and reading and watching all these gurus and, you know, going on their video blogs and all this stuff. And I realized, I need to just go buy something. It doesn’t matter how much I study this. I’m not going to learn how to invest in real estate without actually doing it. And so I found a real estate agent who was willing to make a whole bunch of offers on properties. And we put out, I don’t know, a hundred or more offers on all sorts of different properties on the MLS. And one of them came back that actually happened to be the cheapest house on the entire MLS. At the Time it came back and we’ve gotten into negotiations and they ended up taking about a 50% of the list price. And so that was amazing. The only problem was I didn’t even have any money let alone 50. It was, it was only listed at $25,000 and they ended up accepting an offer at $14,000. So I call up my credit card company and I’m like, Hey, I’m about to make a really big purchase. I need you to increase my limit. And they said, sure, you know, Mr Bratz, thank you for being a customer. You know, how much of a limit do you need? I was like, I need $100,000. They’re like, that’s just not going to happen. You know, thanks for opening up this card after you graduated from college about 18 months ago, but we’re just not going to give you that high of a limit. And I was like, well, how much can you give me? And they give me $15,000. So that was exactly what I needed.

Tim (05:57):

I ended up getting one of those like balance transfer checks. I wrote myself a check. I put it in my bank account and I went and bought the house essentially on my credit card. And I had a couple of thousand dollars saved up from working up in New York City, not a lot of money, but I don’t know, five grand or something. And I ended up using that money in my own sweat equity to go and fix up the property. So I painted it. I would find a remnant carpet on Craigslist and go and pick it up and put it on top of my car and drive it over there and install it. I did landscaping on it. And then you, in order to sell it, I just, you know, I searched, how do you sell a house? And somebody like hold an open house. So I printed out a bunch of flyers and I, you know, hung them out and put them on everybody’s doors in the neighbourhood. I bought some of those bandit signs and I put those out on the street corners and I held an open house. And one of the neighbours ended up coming in and making me a cash offer for $33,000. So there was about a 13 or $14,000 of profit after closing costs and everything that I made and the total transaction took about 110 days. So I go through this, this is 2009 when the market is just decimated, everybody’s saying run from real estate. I’ve never done a deal before. I’m 23 years old at the Time. And I just made $14,000 most money I’ve ever made in my entire life. And I’m like, Holy cow, like let’s go do it again. So I do it again. Do it again, do it again? And that’s when I got into wholesaling, that’s when I got into like contract assignments and private money. It was really hard to come by because again, nobody wanted to invest in real estate. So there was a lot of creative financing strategies that I learned early on that I’m now actually re-engaging those creative financing strategies today because lending has tightened up a little bit in some capacities.

Seyla (07:44):

Wow. $14,000 in 110 days. That’s really fast.

Tim (07:49):

Yeah. Yeah. Especially for the first deal, you know?

Seyla (07:51):

Yup. Yup. So at what point did you discover multi-families and got started with the multifamily space?

Tim (08:01):

A few years I built up a portfolio of like single family houses when I lived down in Charleston and in 2012, I ended up getting engaged to now my wife and I moved back to Cleveland, Ohio, which is where she’s from also. And so I moved back to Cleveland at the end of 2012. And when I moved back there, some people that I met in Charleston had said, Hey, you know, we, I heard you’re getting back into real estate and, or like getting into real estate up in Cleveland. And, you know, we started our traditional business. So that way we’d have money to invest in real estate. And we’d love to be your private money partner. And we created an exclusive relationship there where they owned 67% of all the deals we did. And I just went out and did all the work and I own 33%, but it got me into a position where these guys invested, I don’t know, a few hundred thousand dollars initially. And it ended up being about $1.3 million within, I don’t know, two years. And so I started out doing single family. And then when I went up to Cleveland, I looked at on the MLS and I just found is 2012 now. So this is like really bottom of the basement type pricing. And I found an eight unit apartment building listed for $30,000. And I was like, I can’t lose on this. So I made an offer on it. I ended up getting the off. It might’ve been listed for more, but I bought it for 30,000 and I ended up getting the property. I renovated it and I put tenants in place. And it had, I was all in for about $80,000. And the net income on it was $27,000 a year. So I had a 33% cap rate on this property, which was like, it’s remarkable.

Tim (09:35):

When you think about that today. And most of all though, I like the efficiencies and the scalability of it. You know, when I was in single family, if I had eight properties, I’d have to drive to eight different destinations. I’d have to collect from eight different places. I’d have to go and look at eight different rooms, eight different foundations negotiate with eight different sellers. And when I bought this eight unit apartment building, I went to one location. I collected rent from one location. I looked at one roof, I looked at one foundation, and I negotiated with one seller. I raised money one Time on it. And it was just, it was so much easier and more scalable. And so I bought that at, it was right around Christmas, new years of 2012. And that was the first apartment building I ever purchased. I ended up buying another eight unit in like February of 2013.

Tim (10:23):

And then I bought a 15 unit and I bought a 14 unit. And I just kept on growing organically into bigger and bigger properties until I had about 140 units. And then the partnership that I had with those, with those business partners ended up essentially, we decided to liquidate everything. We decided to go our own separate ways. My value kept on increasing as I got more and more skilled in the business. And then they kept on wanting to take their money off the table, which means their value decreased. So it just wasn’t just didn’t correlate anymore. And we just came to an agreement said, Hey, let’s, let’s liquidate. And we ended up selling a hundred or 140 units, which was all multi-family at the Time. And that was in 2015, 2016. So in 2015, I started building my current portfolio, which you know, today we’re just at five years and I’m at 4,180 units as I’m sitting here talking to you guys. So, you know, it’s one of those things where sometimes it’s hard to see, but this compound effect and the way that things snowball in your momentum that you can build up is pretty remarkable. And so I gained great insights when I was building up, you know, that hundred, hundred 40 units. And it allowed me to just once kind of that partnership was off my back. And let me kind of spread my wings and create new joint ventures and meet new people and bring on new lenders. It allowed me to really grow very, very fast.

Aileen (11:41):

So earlier you talked about creative financing and you had to use a lot of those strategies to get into a lot of these deals and you implement them now as well. Can you talk about what kind of strategies those are and share a bit?

Tim (11:54):

Sure. So my first, my first buy and hold property was in 2010 down in Charleston. And I, one of the obvious ones is seller financing, right? Like the seller can be the bank for you, and then you could be the bank for somebody else. So it’s a way that you can acquire properties with little, to no money out of pocket without having to jump through all the hoops of going to a bank or a traditional lender. And it’s a way that you can sell property and maybe get your price point, you know, and you can dictate your price point because you’re offering better terms to the buyer. So it’s a strategy that I still use is seller financing. So my first buy and hold was, it was two single family houses on one parcel. And that there’s a house in the front house in the back. And they rented for about 550 a month each. So it was about $1,100 a month in rental revenue. And the seller just needed some cash. He had another business that was bleeding and he needed about 15 grand or something, whatever it was of cash as soon as possible. So he listed this for $50,000 and I went in, I made an offer at $50,000 and I said, Hey, I need you to sell or finance a portion of it. He’s like, Hey, well I need this much money down, but I can hold, you know, 30 of the $50,000 price point, he said he could hold $32,000 of it. So I had to go out and raise private money for the difference. So I went out and gotten, got a private money investor to give me $25,000. And if you add that up 32 plus 25 equals $57,000, but I was only buying it for 50 grand.

Tim (13:20):

So at the closing table, I bought a property using none of my own money. They actually gave me a check back for $7,000 of loan proceeds, which are not taxable. And I had a cash flowing property with two tenants in place that cash flow, after all operating expenses and debt service about $400 per month. And I was like, again, like, this is unbelievable, right? Like I can’t believe that I can go and buy property without having to go to a bank without using any of my own money without using any of my own credit and walk away with it, check and the cash flowing property. That’s, it’s just remarkable to me. So seller financing is one. I ended up then selling the property with those mortgages in place with those two lenders. I ended up selling the property and just kind of wrapping it up and selling it via an instalment contract, which it’s kind of like a car loan. You know how, like if you get a car loan, you don’t actually get the deed or the title to the car until you pay off that loan instalment contracts, the same thing. So the property stayed in my name and then I criticize and [Inaudible] contract with this buyer. They came in, bought it for $75,000. They gave me a down payment. I don’t remember what the down payment was. I don’t know, let’s call it 10 grand. They give me $10,000 down. I put that in my pocket. There’s still a spread because I owe my investors $57,000. They owe me another 65,000. So they make payments to me. I make to my investors. And eventually there’s a little, there was a little bit of spread. I don’t know, 50 bucks, $75 a month, I think is what it was. So I made about, I made $10,000 upfront on the sale.

Tim (15:03):

And then I made about $75 a month until they then refinanced. And when they refinance, I made another nine or $10,000 when they cashed me out. So it was a way that I bought the property and then I sandwiched it all up. I still maintained control of it because it was still titled in my name, the way that I sold it was on an instalment contract. And it worked out that way. So you could do that. You could assume I’m looking at a loan right now on a big multi-family portfolio by 800 units. And on those 800 units, I can assume that financing the loan that the seller already got. Now, I still need to be underwritten and some of those things, but I can close on the deal sooner, a lot easier on the seller because they don’t have a prepayment penalty. So I can deduct that when I negotiate with them. So there’s a lot of different things that you can do, but I think seller financing and instalment contracts and loan assumptions are usually three of the most common.

Aileen (15:57):

I believe those are very powerful tools.

Seyla (16:00):

Thank you for sharing all those strategies. So I want to ask a question, how can you scale up so quickly within five years from, you know, to 4,000, more than 4,100 units?

Tim (16:13):

Yeah, that’s a great question. And what I do want to say is, let me remind you that I started in 2008, you know, 2009. So I was really bad at real estate for six or seven years before I got pretty good at real estate. So believe me, I took my lumps, I got punched in the face. I got, I lost money from contractors. I had tenants that totally tore up properties. I had properties that had, you know, you’d open up the door and roaches would fall from the ceiling. You’d walk out and there’d be fleas all over your pants, contractors taking deposits and never showing up again, tenants who literally took baseball bats to the walls and a purposefully flushed and clogged toilets, just to, so that they’d overflow, like I’ve dealt with all of it, I’ve dealt with all of it. So I’ve definitely paid my dues and I was again, really bad. And I learned from all those experiences over Time, but I knew that real estate was not an experiment. I knew that it worked, I knew so many people that had built wealth. You know, you see all these millionaires and billionaires and you hear the statistics that more wealth has been created in real estate than any other industry combined. And I just, I remember I knew that it worked, I just didn’t know how long it would take me how long it would take for it to work for me, you know? And I did this ever since I was in college, so I didn’t really have a fall back plan or some sort of like backup plan. And I just had to figure it out, right. Like I couldn’t, I couldn’t quit and go and do something else just because I didn’t have, I didn’t know how to do anything else.

Tim (17:46):

So I ended up continuing to grow my portfolio. And again, those that partnership I had with about 140 units that gave me a little bit of a launching pad to start buying other properties. As soon as we decided that we would start liquidating, I realized I had a finite amount of Time because I still had this balance sheet with 140 units on it that would allow me to go qualify for buy-in, you know, a 50 unit building or a hundred unit building. So, pretty soon after that, I went and partnered with a buddy down in Georgia on an 82 unit apartment building where I sponsored the loan, meaning I signed on the loan and then I helped bring the capital for the deal is about $300,000. So we ended up doing that project. Now I have another 80 units. Now I’m at 200, whatever, 220 units we had started selling some though, but I ended up acquiring some other properties in the meantime. So what I found was, as I grew my balance sheet, I could start doubling my balance sheet every single Time. So I got up to a few hundred units, and then all of a sudden this 700 unit portfolio came across my desk and I had enough units where I could then qualify for that. And that portfolio alone took me from whatever I was at five, 600 units up to around 1300 units when I acquired it. So I was able to double my portfolio. And then once I was over a thousand units, I really got a lot of momentum because now I have a big enough portfolio. It was, it was over whatever it was a hundred million dollar portfolio at that Time then, or 85 million, something like that. Where now I got a seat at the table for any negotiation, right? I got a lot more credibility in the marketplace because I could say, Hey, I own all these 1300 units, okay.

Tim (19:30):

This is a serious buyer. Let’s give them a shot at a quarter in property. And, and for me, I kind of found my niche to my niche was properties that were too distressed that were very distressed and they needed a lot of work. They need a lot of good management put in place, and they were too distressed for the smaller investors to be able to qualify for them. And they were also too distressed for the big hedge funds and real estate trusts to want to get their hands dirty with. So I kind of found this niche where I could qualify for these very, for these big deals, but they were difficult deals. And I didn’t have a lot of competition in that space. So whenever a property came up, that that kind of fell into that bucket, the brokers and stuff would reach out to us and we’d be able to find those deals and acquire those deals a little bit before everybody else was.

Tim (20:16):

So it gave me a little bit of a leg up. And the other thing is I had some Timing on my side. I started buying apartments in 2012 before it was cool to buy apartments and really started scaling when apartments became cool in 2017, 18, 19. So, so that helped. I became very engaged in social media as well. You guys know the power of social media and podcasts. We’re now because of your podcast, you have people reaching out to you saying, Hey, I have this deal. Will you guys partner with me on it? Or can I sell it to you? Or can I lend you private money? Or, you know, do you coach, do you mentor? And that kind of turned into me, coaching and mentoring other people on how to buy apartment buildings. And eventually what happened was they took down deals on their own, but there were some bigger deals that they could not take down on their own.

Tim (21:04):

And they needed somebody with my balance sheet or ability to raise private money, to partner up with them. And that got me involved in a lot of deals because I wasn’t greedy. You know, a lot of people say, I want to own as much equity in this property as possible. I’m not like that. I’d rather have 25% of a watermelon. That’s this big, right. Than a hundred percent of a grape that’s this big. So there’s a lot more juice in a quarter of a watermelon than there is in a hundred percent of the grape and that’s always been my philosophy. So I try to partner up with people who are amazing at what they do and compliment my skillset at the same time.

Aileen (21:39):

I love that watermelon and grapes analogy.

Seyla (21:43):

So what has been, what has been the most difficult challenge that you’ve faced when building up your business so far?

Tim (21:51):

I’d say what’s helped a lot. And what’s been the hardest part is building a team. You know, like employees and team building is, has always been a difficult piece of the puzzle for me. It’s helped me scale significantly when I find my players and the amazing people on my team. And at the same Time, it holds me back big Time because I joint venture with somebody who doesn’t have the wherewithal or the ambition to get a deal to the finish line. Or I hire somebody just because I needed to fill a spot real quick. And all of a sudden, they’re not the A-player or even a B player, the more of a C player. So now not only did I waste Time and waste energy and waste money hiring this person, but now we’ve got to fire them and I’ve got to find somebody else and waste double that Time and money and energy.

Tim (22:37):

So that’s always been the toughest part, read a book called traction. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of traction by Gino Wick man. It’s an amazing book about how small business owners can operate their business. And it teaches you that you got to measure everything. You know, you got to put metrics in place. So that way you can measure somebody’s performance, because if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it. So by measuring somebody’s performance, you become more aware of the things that are actually important to that person. So there to that role, let’s say your acquisitions person, like your acquisitions person, you want them to go and close X number of deals. Well, closing deals isn’t necessarily the activity that you can control. You know, how many variables happen in real estate? It could be something on title side. It could be something on the sellers, something on the financing that could mess up a deal. So that’s not the acquisition person’s fault. So what, what can the acquisitions person control? What they can control is making offers. And eventually has however many offers that they make. Eventually a ratio will appear of, hey, if I make a hundred offers, I’m going to get one deal. So if I want to do four deals a month, I just need to make 400 offers every single month. And eventually that ratio appears. And so it’s not how many contracts do you get? It’s not how many properties go to closing. It’s not how many properties actually do close. Its how many offers? That’s the only thing that can actually be controlled. Everything else is a ratio that eventually appears. And it’s kind of a trickle-down. So for my acquisitions guy, I said, Hey, here’s what your, here’s what your number is. And here’s you’re metric. And you’ve got to report on that metric every single day.

Tim (24:19):

And that’s made it a lot easier to manage people. And because it’s not, it’s not drama, right? It’s not the work, the workforce, you know, gossip that’s happening at the water table. So it’s, instead it’s talking about what are your numbers? What was your goal? Did you reach your goal? Did you not reach your goal? Why didn’t you reach your goal or how do we increase that goal in order to have more success for you? And it’s just its data, it’s all data, not drama. So keep putting those metrics in place has been key for us and really helped us with our expansion.

Seyla (24:50):

That makes sense that you cannot control something if you cannot measure it. And then you have to have all the key performance indicators in place and the goals in place in order to measure it. Exactly. So for the multi-family investing space, it’s a team sport and it usually has different processes in there. So which one, which process is your favourite part?

Tim (25:15):

I love raising private money. That’s my favourite part of, of the actual activities that go into doing a real estate deal. We’ve kind of structured in a little bit different way than a traditional syndication, and it’s a very attractive model. And at the same Time, I just love having conversations with people about money, about building wealth, about tax advantages and strategies, and opening up their mind to a lot of things that they didn’t realize before. I’m friends with a lot of entrepreneurs who are not necessarily in real estate, and they’re really good at making money, but they’re really bad at getting their money to make more money for them. So to be able to come in and help somebody with their retirement and help somebody with their long-term wealth building strategies is really fulfilling. And it’s just exciting and it’s fun. And it’s a, and I’ve gotten really good at it.

Tim (26:00):

So I like it even more, right? So that’s all, that’s always been my focus. I hired a chief investment officer who really handles a lot of that side. Now I still get involved a little bit, but now I do a lot of the coaching. I do a lot of the mentoring. I do a lot of the social media. A lot of the content is what I do and I create. And what that does that drives people who want to be educated. It drives people who want mentoring or consulting. And then that in turn turns into deals. It turns into private money lenders. It turns into joint venture partners. It turns it a lot more opportunities for the investment side as well. So I found that the content and the social media is usually the highest return on my Time, even though it’s not as directly quantifiable or directly related to results.

Tim (26:48):

I heard Dan Gilbert say one Time, Dan Gilbert’s the owner of the Cavs. He owns Quicken loans, a multi-billionaire. And he said, the highest return on my Time are the activities he goes now the highest return on my Time, because early on it was all activities that could be measured and stuff. He goes now the highest return on my Time are the activities that are not quantifiable. You know, it’s like the conversations that I’m having and the podcast that I’m on and the, the presentations that I give and the audiences I speak to, and you’re planting seeds in all those different places. And you don’t know when they’re going to sprout. You don’t know when somebody is going to say, Oh, I heard you on a podcast in October of 2020, and this is now October of 2027. And so its seven years later and they never ever said anything, but they’d been following you the whole Time. And then all of a sudden, you’re still in real estate, you’re still doing deals. And they just sold their company for $40 million, you know, and all of a sudden they got some cash. They were looking to deploy with you because they’ve been following you for the whole Time. So when you’re planting those seeds, just know that they’re growing. And before a seed grows out of the ground, it has to grow down into the ground under the surface before you ever see it. And I’ve kind of internalized that I totally have adopted that mind-set of let me just plant as many seeds as I possibly can. And it’s going to make my life in the future so much easier. And I’ve been doing that for 10 years. That’s why I’ve been able to grow so much because I planted so many seeds in 2009, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 to make my 2017, my 2018 by 2019. And then my 2020 grow so rapidly. We’re now it looks like I’m an overnight success. I promise you. It’s been a lot of hard work for a long Time.

Seyla (28:34):

Wow. That’s really powerful. The way you put it in the perspective of planting seeds along the way, and don’t give up, just keep planning them and then eventually they will be growing and then you will see, see them fruitful eventually. Yeah. So in your opinion, is it now, is it still a good Time to invest in real estate?

Tim (28:55):

Here’s what I know. And I’ve been through a few market cycles now, right? I know that there were good deals a year ago. I know that there will be good deals a year from now, and I know that there are good deals out there right now today. So it all depends on, but like, it’s not really a bad deal if there’s really bad investors or bad formulas for, or strategies for investing. So the deals are out there, you just have to make it a deal, right? Like the opportunities are out there. It’s up to us to go in and negotiate and get a great price point and make sure that there’s a good plan in place to increase the value of the property, increase the income, decrease the expenses. All of a sudden the net operating income grows and the value of the property then grows.

Tim (29:40):

So we’re still actively doing deals on Monday. This week, I closed on 128 units in Louisiana, got phenomenal financing terms. That’s a solid property, 87% occupied already. And there’s room to bump up rents there’s room to bump up occupancy, but it was occupied enough where I had again, great financing. And I have an amazing joint venture partner on that as well. And a property management company there manages another hundred units for us right down the road in Louisiana as well. So they do a phenomenal job. And we’re really excited about that project. I have a couple other deals that are in the pipeline right now that we’ll close on before the end of the year. And so, yeah, I’m still always buying deals. I’m very rigid, very rigid and disciplined in what we buy though. Like it has to fit in the box that we’ve created.

Tim (30:26):

Otherwise it doesn’t make sense. Again, it’s all data, no drama, and right? If the numbers are there and it makes sense, we’ll end up buying it. If the numbers do not make sense, then we just pass. You know, I, no problem, Ms. Seller, just give us a call back whenever you, you will have a little bit more motivation or if somebody else drags you through the mud, because they can’t close on a property. I, you know, I get it. I’ve been there, give me a call back. And I promise you, we are very qualified buyers and we will close on this property, the issue or not the issue. But the thing is, we just needed that this price point, you know, in order to make that happen. So, you know, some deals we missed, we miss out on, but not necessarily miss out on, but we pass up on somebody else comes in and buys it for more than what we offer. And that’s okay because I would rather not do a deal than to do a bad deal.

Seyla (31:09):

Yep. That makes sense. It’s all a numbers game and congratulations on your new acquisition. Good luck to that. You’re also a co-author of the Little Legacy Library series, what was the motivation and why you are doing that?

Tim (31:25):

Yeah. Yeah. I actually appreciate you bringing that up. It’s kind of a passion project for me. I promise you, it does not make any money, not at all, but it’s a big impact piece for me. My mom was, had an education degree and was really involved in the schools and big Time volunteer and was always about, you know, paying it forward, giving back, like we’re very blessed being born, you know, in the United States and to a great family and making sure that that other people can develop the mind-set or have access to opportunities like I have. So that’s always kind of been near and dear to me. And I remember, you know, it always kind of in the back of your mind. And then once you have kids, it becomes a little bit more prevalent and a little bit more prominent in what you want to accomplish.

Tim (32:08):

And so I had a daughter in 2015, and I remember being on a flight after a real estate conference coming home. And I was reading the magic of thinking big on this flight. And I’m thinking I was 31 years old. My daughter was about two years old at the Time, or read about lots of turn two. And I remember reading this book and thinking, wow, these principles are so powerful. Like this is amazing. And I’m getting this at 31 years old. How do I develop this? How do I give this to my daughter at two years old? And I’m like, there’s got to be some books out on entrepreneurial mind-set and success principles and philosophies. And, and so I got off the flight and I started Google searching as I’m, you know, before I even get in my car to drive home, I started Google searching, you know, personal development books for kids, success books for kids and achievement books for kids.

Tim (32:57):

And there was nothing. Well, you know, there were, there were some on like working hard and money management and a couple of things like that. Like, you know, living by the golden rule of treating others, how do you want to be treated manners, that kind of stuff? But there wasn’t anything with like really the success principles and, you know, so, so in my mind, I’m like I got to eventually write these books, but I was so busy growing my portfolio in 2017 and 18 that I never got to it. And it wasn’t until about fall of 2018 that I was on vacation with some friends. And another couple that was with us, a good girl friend of mine from high school. She’s like, well, you know, I just left my job. And she had a really amazing corporate job and her husband just got promoted and they just moved.

Tim (33:38):

So she had to leave her job and she’s like, I’m not doing anything. I’d love to write the books. And then my wife jumped in and she said, I will help write the books.  Tim, you just kind of handle the business side. And it was, they kind of muscled me out of a lot of equity in the business, but again, quarter of a watermelon is what I keep on telling myself, right? So I ended up partnering up with them. They wrote the first book, took us a year to write the first book. And it’s essentially, we’ve taken the classic personal development books, like thinking, grow rich, how to win friends and influence people, magic of thinking big richest, man in Babylon, the power of positive thinking. We’ve taken a lot of those books that we’ve made children’s versions of those books. And so they’re usually, I’d say, you know, between four to 10 years old they’re illustrated books and what I can promise you, there’s adults that read these books and they’re like, yeah, this is a good book.

Tim (34:27):

I got a lot out of this. This is amazing. And so it’s, it’s really cool. We’ve released the first one in like July of this year, but we have a few others in the pipeline right now. So the next one’s going to be released this month probably next week, actually, I think we’re going to release it. And then we have another one that’s going to come out around Thanksgiving and we have one more. That’s going to come out right before Christmas as well. So we’ll have four books. The first one is think big and go to baseball camp. The second one is how to win class president and influence peers. The third one is the richest kid in the neighbourhood, you know, so it’s like plays off of some of those personal development books. And I can say this because I didn’t personally author them with technically it was my wife and our friend.

Tim (35:07):

They’re really good. They’re like really, really good. And we’re super proud of them. And the illustrations are fun and we’ve done a lot of different stuff of like, like hiding certain images and icons in there. So kids can kind of do like a search. And then there’s at the end of the, every book, there’s a, a take action page of how to talk to your child about personal development and about the principles that we’re this book is about. And then how to take action with those principles, how to create a goals and how to save, earn, earn money, save money and your money and doing all these different kinds of things. So that way we can actually not only read these books to our kids, but they can actually think about it. They can ponder it. You can have a dialogue and a conversation about it and put it to work.

Tim (35:49):

So it’s, it’s pretty cool. Littlelegacylibrary.com is the website. And we’re working on workbooks for, to go along with each book as well, colouring books and puzzles and word searches, and kind of like the take action section, but expanded to several pages. And so we have that coming out for every single one of our books as well. And I think eventually we’d like to do some sort of like retreats where entrepreneurs and you know, success oriented people can bring their kids out, go on a retreat for a long weekend, go camping, or, you know, kayaking, zip lining, and do some fun stuff outside. And then, you know, connect, talk, talk about how to become a better parent, how to become, how to install these principles in your kids. And here’s some activities for the kids. I think that’d be really, really cool. And, and well-received, so that’s on the agenda for next year, as long as, as COVID garbage goes away, you know,

Aileen (36:39):

So we’re [Inaudible] ourselves with a little two year old, so we can definitely appreciate, we’re trying to always think of ways of how can we start them at an early age so that they can become successful and they can utilize what we’re learning. So it’s really great. It’s really great that you, you put this book together and the series together, so we’re excited to take a look at it.

Tim (36:56):

Yeah. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Good for you guys.

Seyla (36:59):

So how has the real estate investing impacted in your life?

Tim (37:01):

My life? Yeah, it’s allowed me to do stuff like that. You know, it’s allowed me to focus more on impact pieces versus just the money. And I you know, I said earlier that I was very money motivated early on and that’s true. And I think I’ve matured or really understood things and become wiser as I’ve kind of grown and made money lost a lot of money, made a lot more money. And now I’m in a position where I’ve got a great lifestyle, you know, I’m back in Charleston, South Carolina, we have a house on the ocean and it’s you know, my wife’s parents are in town this week and we’ve been hanging out with them all week and I answered some emails and stuff, but I don’t work that hard anymore. Right. So it’s, it’s allowed me to really live the lifestyle that I’ve always wanted.

Tim (37:46):

That I’ve always desired. It’s allowed me to send my kids to the schools. It’s allowed me to, like, I’ve created a scholarship in my mom’s name. She’s, she’s still around, but she’s still bigger than the schools. And we’ve created a scholarship for the high school that I graduated from that she’s still very involved with to give a scholarship to kids going off to college or going off to some sort of parole or like a vocational school or whatever that is. So we’ve done things like that. We’ll give back to the community, give back to those things. And it’s not necessarily about the money it’s about what’s going the money. Do that’s, what’s noble, you know, like, can you retire your parents? Can you retire your spouse? Can you just send your kids to whatever school can you build churches? Can you give to philanthropies?

Tim (38:26):

Like, one of the other things that we do is with little legacy library, you know, for every book that we sell, we give one away to a child in need or to a community or to an in need. And we try to spread this out. And we also I’ve done stuff. Like I bought a suite for the Cleveland Cavaliers when they were in the, when we still had Lebrun James and we were winning games actually. And I gave away a suite to a bunch of people who were, you know, kind of unsung heroes in the community, people who one girl lost her sister to a drug addiction and an accidental drug overdose. And she goes around and this girl could have gone to the dark side, right? Like she could have gone, like her sister could have gotten into trouble herself, the 16 year old girl who lost her best friend, her older sister started going around to the local schools and speaking and talking to kids about drug addiction and accidental overdoses and like, wow, like how come people, aren’t talking more about this girl.

Tim (39:20):

Right? And so I sent her a couple of her girlfriends to the game. And then I got, there’s another guy who lost his daughter to a congenital heart defect. And instead of, you know, having the world melt around him, he actually went out and started a non-profit to help other families who were going through the hard Times and the struggles that he went through with his job and finding housing and just having a more meal when they’re at the hospital all day with their kid. And this guy is such an amazing person. I give him four tickets to the cab suite. Also, it gives them the, one of his, one of the people who are utilizing his services for his non-profit. I’m like, dude, you know, that’s how amazing he was. And then, you know, just trying to find local people who are making an impact, who’ve overcome great adversities and not just overcome them, but figure out a way to make an impact in other people’s lives. Like I love lifting those people up and giving them some attention and resources in order to keep on doing what they’re doing. So that’s, that’s really been a big driving piece of my life now. And now it’s, you know, how big can you build it and how much impact can you make kind of a thing.

Seyla (40:25):

What is one thing that, you know now about real estate that you wish you knew when you first started?

Tim (40:31):

Oh, by a lot, right? That’s part of the, that’s part of the growth. That’s part of the journey. That’s part of the fun is learning some of that stuff. And it’s not fun when you’re going through it, but it’s a lot more fun when you’re looking back and you’re like, oh, that was the simple days. You know, those were the easy days and it felt like you were just consumed by some of that stuff. I think you know, the, the, the key factors is like, I wish I would have joined a mastermind earlier on. I wish I would have been found a group that I could really surround myself that was already where I wanted to be. And, you know, I always looked at masterminds as an expense instead of an investment and realizing that you’re investing to be in a group of very high level people who believe in themselves enough to write a check for 20 or $30,000 to be in that group.

Tim (41:14):

And it keeps, I don’t want to say this. I don’t mean this in like a derogatory way or a mean way, but like, it just keeps lower level thoughts out, right? It’s all high level thoughts, high level principles, really big thinkers and ideas, and people who want to make big impact in that room. And I wish I would’ve gotten into rooms sooner. I think that has been a big catalyst for me and my trajectory and my growth because, you know, I grew, I joined my first mastermind in February of 2015, and that’s when I started building my current portfolio. That’s when I decided that I needed to get out of that business relationship. That’s when I decided to start building my current portfolio and the resources and the connections and the people and the money that was in that room has helped me just catapult me towards a success that I’ve received and have achieved it today.

Aileen (42:03):

Awesome. Thank you so much, Tim. We really enjoyed that and all the knowledge that you shared today. So if our listeners wanted to find out more about you, where can they go?

Tim (42:13):

Yeah. Just connect with me on, on Facebook or Instagram. I’m very active on both of those mediums, little legacy library.com is our kids’ books. And my investment company is legacywealthholdings.com. You can learn more about like what we do there. And I do some blog posts and I do some videos and stuff on there once in a while too, to try to just kind of share content and share insights and knowledge and stuff. But if you can add me on social media, that’s usually the best I answer my own messages. So send me a Facebook message. If there’s anything that I can do, or you want to connect and talk about, you know, whatever. So I appreciate it. Thank you guys for having me. You guys asked a lot of great questions and I appreciate the value in the content and the impact that you’re making to with the podcast. So thank you.

Aileen (42:55):

Thank you so much.