Trevor Thompson: I moved from Canada to America and I was going to buy a place and do an Airbnb and Airbnb was just starting and, I said, man, 300, 000 for this place. I don’t know if I can afford it. The same place is worth 900, 000.

Tim is one of the most authentic and genuine people I’ve ever met. Sincerely believe he’s coming from a position of giving and that means a lot. 

Tim Mai: Welcome to the capital raising show. I’m your host. Tim Mai. Today I have Trevor Thompson on the line with us. Trevor has a very interesting story and he is known in the community.

He’s the only one probably that’s known in the community as a professional passive investor. He has invested in 16 deals and an LP, as a passive investor, and three deals as a GP, as an active syndicator. Yeah. He’s also Done. A lot of different types of deals, everything from multifamily to retail strip malls to townhouse to condo conversion to ground-up multifamily to medical office building land development.

Yeah, just a host of. Variety of different asset classes, and different stages of the class from ground up to already existing. So really looking forward to interviewing Trevor today to get behind his mindset and his experience on what he likes, what type of assets he likes, why he goes into so many different ways.

Yeah, asset types. And so yeah, super, super looking forward to this. A professional LP, professional passive investor. Welcome Trevor. 

Trevor Thompson: It makes me sound like I’m extra smart if I’m a professional, but I’ve definitely done a lot and I’ve definitely done a lot of research. And of course, been in such a variety of deals.

Tim Mai: Yeah, that’s, I love that about you for sure. So let’s why don’t we start out with, if you can share with everybody a little bit about your journey on how you got started in real estate investing? What got you even interested in this?

Trevor Thompson: Yeah. So just a quick, brief story. I’m originally from Canada.

I’ve been in the attraction entertainment business most of my life. My last career was with iFly Indoor Skydiving. I did 20 years with that company. I loved it. And, at the very first team meeting, the owner gave everybody a copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad. And I read the book and went, wow, this is amazing.

I got to think more about this. And then I did exactly what everyone else does. I got busy with my life and I just kept working my job and not paying any attention to becoming, somewhat having a second passive income doing different things. And then we got bought out by a private equity company, so I actually got a payday and I thought, okay, no excuse now.

But I hadn’t really done any homework. So I started doing the, I call them the weekend warrior guys, right? They come to town and you join their seminar and you pay 50, 000 and we’ll teach you how to buy an office building with a credit card with no money down. Something about this doesn’t sound right.

And I went to a few different ones and then I did find one and what I liked about them is they were based in Texas. They invested in Texas. They had monthly meetings so I could go meet the people I could connect with. So I joined that group. And my first few investments with that group and, clearly I learned a lot of doing it that way, but, their training was a little basic.

They were really good at single families and decided to get into the commercial space. Mostly just because they were, they had a lot of people in their program that wanted to invest their 401k money and their IRA money. And so they thought if we create these syndications it will be good.

But since then I’ve done a lot more self-education, and I’ve joined other mentoring programs just to fulfill my knowledge base. But I’m one of these people that I’m obsessive about. So once I started learning, I just, I love learning. I love going to meetups and I love connecting with people and doing things.

So I just kept learning and learning more about the space. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. Wow. And when was this that you started? 

Trevor Thompson: So I started five years ago, so 2000 I guess that would be, what is it, 2018. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. Okay. And so you started out investing into these deals that were in the group, correct?

Trevor Thompson: Yeah, that’s correct. Yeah. I did my first two investments with the group very quickly. To be honest, I was not educated. 

Tim Mai: Were they big deals? Small deals? Like what size deals? 

Trevor Thompson: One was small at 58 doors and the other one was a bit bigger at 176 doors. But I invested in both of them pretty quickly. And I’ll be honest, I read the PPM, but I didn’t really know what I was reading.

I, I, I didn’t know what I know now, of course, because I’ve invested in a lot of deals and learned different things. There were definitely in hindsight some things I should have noticed about the deals. So one of them, everybody knows if you’re going to buy anything in Texas, insurance and taxes are going to go up significantly.

So the one deal both things went up significantly and it just ate all the cash flow. And they managed to sell and we got our money back. It was one basically we got in, we got out, it was pretty quick. They got an offer that got everybody out with just their money back and we all considered we dodged a bullet.

And then the other one was a little bit different in that they just didn’t have enough money in their CapEx budget, they underestimated how hard it was to reposition a property. And that one I even volunteered as an asset manager for 10 months. I had some extra time on my schedule the way my work schedule was.

So I said, Hey, listen, I’m not learning anything. This is supposed to be a mentoring program, could I help out? And so they said, yeah, you could help us with this. And, you’ll learn a lot and do that. It was an interesting story. I did a whole other podcast on it. It started out. I was going to help an asset manager.

And then I found out all kinds of things because I’m due. I’m going to go there and do my due diligence. So I did a rent roll audit. I did a bunch of things and I found out what he was telling the owner. When we’re not the correct facts. There were people that had skipped apartments for three months and they were still showing them as occupied.

And, they were telling them we were 92% occupied, but our economy was actually 82%. And so I called the GPM and said, Hey, do you want the truth? And he might, of course, want the truth. And so I told him the truth. So two days later, I wasn’t helping an asset manager, he was gone. And then about six weeks later, they decided to fire the property manager.

So here I found myself Part-time still with a full-time job, managing a deep-value apartment in San Antonio. And then of course COVID came and it just became super challenging. We managed to stabilize the property. We had some disagreements about what we were going to do once we put it up for sale.

Then the sale didn’t happen. And then the decisions they made I think affected the business. And they, so basically wanted to build the occupancy up so They said to me, okay, two times income, and the only people you can deny are violent offenders and sex offenders. And of course, they accepted all the wrong people into the apartment complex.

Undid all of what we did turning it around. It didn’t sell. And then they ended up having to deal with those tenants for another eight months. And finally sold, everybody got their money back, but nobody made money. The GP claims he lost money, but it was just a mess.

Tim Mai: Gotcha. Gotcha. 

Trevor Thompson: But the biggest learning experience of my life.

I spent 10 months there. Learning what to do, what not to do, how to think, how to understand, and when I had a question, I’d have to go find the answer because there was no support mechanism to teach me the answer. So I would call other people. I did a lot of training on asset management. paid for courses when the APT Capital was with Kyle and Gary, when they were together, they did a training course and I signed up for their course.

I read their book and I went to every meetup that an asset manager spoke at, and just learned what I should really be doing here. I’ve never done it. So I learned a lot. So the education side of that was priceless. And then one of the things was I got let go that year with COVID from work.

And so I’ve managed to switch my status to professional real estate status. And so I got paid a severance. But because I’d switched my status, at least I got my taxes back. So in theory, I made some money doing it. And that was when I decided, okay, I’m going to now switch to active which isn’t as easy as they say it is.

But in between there, I’ve done a lot of passive investments. So I know we’re going to talk more about those and why I chose different asset classes and things. 

Tim Mai: Exactly. So I guess the good news on your first two passive investing deals is that you didn’t lose any money on them, right? You get your money back. So at least that’s good news. 

Trevor Thompson: My third deal is a non fold cycle, which was the apartment to condo conversion. Even though it did really well with the real estate prices increasing. You bought an underperforming asset, you were going to turn them into condos and sell them, and then COVID and the eviction moratorium came.

So you had an underperforming asset, you couldn’t evict the tenants, and then the tenants felt empowered because they were only month to month knowing they were going to get kicked anyway because they’d all been given notice, so they stopped paying. And luckily, I got my money out of that. I was in what’s called a preferred position, with no upside.

I got caught up. They didn’t pay any money for 18 months during COVID. But I got caught up, got my money back, made my 11% preferred return payment. I was happy. And, and then finally, it was all done. And, everyone else made some money and got paid out. And that one I just did. I wanted to learn about that to see what it was like, but I don’t think I got a good learning experience because I hope we don’t have another COVID ever again.

And all business conditions are thrown out the roof, right? Because you couldn’t evict the tenants. Then when you could evict the tenants, you couldn’t get a building permit because the city was still slowly opening. Then you couldn’t get supplies because the supply chain ran out.

Then you couldn’t get workers. Nothing normal happened. But I was good friends with the guy that was managing the project. And so I got a lot of inside scoops about how much more challenging and what normally should happen.

Tim Mai: Yeah. It’s COVID definitely. It’s an interesting time for sure.

So the deal, that deal made money itself and all of the investors also made money, correct? That’s correct. Yes. Okay. And I know that was just your third deal you’re sharing, but have you done more deals where you only got a prep and no upside? 

Trevor Thompson: Yeah, so I’ve only done one more like that. And it was in the medical center.

And the medical center was just a straight 10% return. No upside, just a prep payment. And so first of all, I thought, okay, medicine is very stable. I knew the people that were doing it and I thought it was a really good place to put my self directed IRA money, right? I’m okay in my hour IRA money to take what I’m going to call the safe path, right?

And so just the PREF equity and I had no idea in medical centers, but Not only does the doctor’s practice guarantee the least, they have to personally guarantee the least too. So it’s like a double guarantee. So if this fails, you can still go, in theory, take his assets. Very secure investment.

And again, COVID made me much more interested in the medical space and this is one of those offsites, with a little emergency room, a dentist, and some other things. And those things have thrived since Covid because. The big hospitals, they just couldn’t maintain the number of volumes of people.

So a lot of people went to satellite operations. So I think it’s going to be a great asset class and I plan to do more in it. Okay, good. And the interesting story is retail. I decided I wanted to do a little retail and have really good timing. We closed on March 20th, 2020. So not a good time to close out a retail store, but I’ll be honest, they’ve managed to pay 5% cash on cash, which is nothing to write home about, but considering we weathered the pandemic and I have a call later today for this quarter’s update to see what’s happening.

All things considered, I consider myself very lucky and I’m still quite interested in retail. And I don’t think it’s dead. I think shopping malls are dead, but I don’t think strip centers are dead right, people are still going to restaurants in their neighborhood, and tiff treats going to the karate place are going too, I think those ones are still going to do quite well, where the big box stores and shopping centers are.

They’re going to still struggle, I think, for quite a while, you can’t change everybody’s shopping habits to online and then change it back to going to a mall right when you got just used to pushing that Amazon button, right?

Tim Mai: Yep. Yeah, so that’s definitely good to hear about that. And So moving forward, in terms of the deals that you’re only getting a prep, you’re open to that.

Is that correct? So if the deal makes sense, you’d still be willing to passively invest just for the prep without the upside potential. Is that correct? 

Trevor Thompson: Not my preference. I’ve just done it under certain circumstances. My preferred investment is… Where, it’s a reasonable split, between the GP and the LP.

I don’t like deals where the first split is 60, 40. I think that’s too much. I’m okay. 70, 30 love 80, 20, obviously. I’m on one deal that’s 85, 15. I like that one even better. Much more LP-centric, but it’s in that range. And I also like to passively invest in deals that have a preferred pain.

And for the people that don’t know what that means, it basically means that the investors get paid first before there’s, and then if there’s enough cash flow to pay them the full 7%, then the general partners, the people running the deal, they also can get paid. So I think that really aligns with the interest, right?

Work really hard, and make sure I’m getting my minimum payment so that you can get paid. I like those kinds of deals and I also don’t mind when they hit a threshold. So they call that a waterfall. Like when we get too complicated and technical, I’m okay if they hit a certain waterfall that the split changes, right?

That, let’s keep them motivated to create, at least let’s say 16 IRR, which is what I look for and above. What’s most interesting to me is the internal rate of return that kind of balances out everything at the end of the day. It’s the normalizer of all investments.

Tim Mai: Okay. And so I’m curious about an operator syndicator offering an 80-20 split or an 85-15 split. That seems pretty. Aggressive in the sense that they’re not getting much for themselves. And so does that scare you at all in terms of like, why are they offering so much to the LPs to the passive investors? And, are they a newbie?

Trevor Thompson: Like there was a deal that was offering a 12 craft and I thought, man, the GP team’s never going to get paid. Cuz it was a deep value add, it was a reposition, they’re gonna lose interest. So I completely just lost interest at the very beginning of the deal.

But, to get a deal that kind of normalizes after the five years at about a seven to 10% cash on cash return and you’re getting a seven pre, I look for a deal that can normalize, right? I want it to be about 18 months. Then, the GPS will start making money.

I want them to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I certainly don’t want to, I don’t want them to lose interest in the deal. Exactly. And that goes back again to trying to pick the right team, the right people to invest with, which is a whole other topic.

But, it’s very important for me to have the interest in line though, if I get paid first. I want once I get paid my reasonable 7% is reasonable, it’s not like a high is not like 10 or 12 like the other one, and then they can start making money. And then, once we get stabilized and we get closer, they’re starting to make money.

And then if they. Achieved. Again, I’m okay if they double their money. If it goes, I was on one deal and it was 80 20 and it went to 60 40, so the GPS would double their money if they hit a hurdle. And to be honest, I want them to hit the hurdle and double their money because of Gotcha.

That means I’ve met what they’ve said should be a normal return for the deal. I’ve exceeded what would be my normal return. 

Tim Mai: That’s good. Yeah, I like that. I like that. So let’s let’s. Let’s first dive into the numbers, you mentioned, you’d like at least a 16% IRR. For those of you that don’t know, can you quickly explain what that means?

Trevor Thompson: Yeah, so it’s a very complicated explanation of IRR. But I call it the present value of your money. In other words, how long has your money been out there? Have you made or lost your money? And at the end of this particular period of time, it assigns it a percentage, right? You can have these things called average rate of return.

You have cash on cash. All of those numbers are important and need to be looked at depending on where you are in your life and what you need out of your investments. When I was working, I could care less about cash. On cash. It was a nuisance to get the cash almost just, gimme some big money at the end and Right.

And I always do still like the multiplier of my money, but at the end of the day, that’s a false number. Because if you double my money in 10 years, That’s a very low internal rate of return. If you double my money in five years, that’s a much higher internal rate of return. So at the end of the day, to me, it’s the balancing number that kind of says, okay, how long have you had my money?

And over that period of time, how much have you paid me, including what payments I’ve made and what I made on the profit of the sale. It kind of averages out all of everything. It’s like an equalizer of all the… The different numbers and that’s why I look at it the most to me it’s the most important number to look at.

Tim Mai: Okay. Yes okay so I am the most important for you is the cash like I guess at this time in your life is cash on cash. 

Trevor Thompson: Also like a job before it wasn’t important. And that’s why I like to be in the seven-prep position. So if there is cash flow, at least I get my, my, my payment first.

So I will make some money. I’ll be honest. I’m in a lot of value add deals and just one of them finally hit a 7% payment. So listeners need to understand that a lot of value add deals and most syndicators are fairly honest in it, right? You know I’m presenting the deal soon and you know You’re really not going to catch up till about 18 months because it takes about that long to stabilize the value add property and then it starts to normalize And, but the thing I like about it is that if there is cash flow, I get my percentage of it first.

Tim Mai: Okay. And would you say that if someone’s goal is to make monthly cash flow, then they should invest in a more stable property? That’s correct. So again, 

Trevor Thompson: It’s a risk and a reward, right? So if you want a stable cash flow, normally there’s less risk, so there’s less reward, right? So again, my medical one, it’s a 10% prep.

I get the same amount of my money every quarter in my bank account all the time. Unless cash flow doesn’t permit. So far, cash flow is permitted, right? Again, if there’s not enough cash flow to pay the 10, it accumulates and I get caught up. But on that particular one, there’s been enough cash flow that it pays it all the time, right?

So again, if you put 100, 000 in the deal, you’re going to get just less than 1, 000 a month, which is, just less than 3, 000 a quarter. And hey, this money is pretty consistently coming to me. And that’s very important to need this money to live, right? A lot of investors though, do have jobs, so they don’t need the money to live.

And they should actually not be taking the money to live. They should actually be reinvesting, right? Because that’s how they’re going to really grow their wealth, right? The compound effect is like a massive on real estate investing when you keep letting it reinvest, right? But people do need cash flow to live. It’s sometimes so right. 

Tim Mai: You still gotta eat. Eating comes first.

Trevor Thompson: Yes. 

Tim Mai: Paying the bills. Yes. Okay, so you prefer at least 16% IRR and at least 7% prep plus whether it’s 70% or 80% on the back end. Okay. And then yeah and then cash on cash is there a percentage that your goal is. 

Trevor Thompson: I’m okay at seven, right? If it’s a deal with an upside, it’s a deal without an upside, then I think 10 is a fair number. Okay. So 10% is a fair number. If there’s no upside there are a few deals that offered 12, but they scare me, and they scare me because the general partners have almost no hope of making any cash flow rate just because the nature of these deals does not spin off a lot of cash, the nature of all these types of real estate investments is to improve the basic business.

Take the multiplier of selling it on the cap rate and there’s where the big return is, right? So a lot of these deals, the return is still made on the sale or on the refinance. In other words, you’ve refinanced it, you’ve taken some money out, so for example, my storage investment, they have a recourse loan, but once they get up business, they get it stabilized, they’re going to get a new loan and give us a percentage of what we invested back.

But we’ll still own, we don’t get deluded when we get our money. It’s something that’s very important for investors to understand. They give you back half of your money. Do you only own half of what you used to own? And that particular one, when they double my money goes to a 50-50 split.

And I’m like, double my money, baby, double my money, because I’m okay with double my money, right? Faster, the better. And for them, the faster the better, because now they’re, they get significantly rewarded. Yeah, I like that. Investors should never be afraid of a win, right? You want everybody to make money.

Tim Mai: So when you have an operator that offers you 12% and you’re like, Ooh, I don’t like the deal. You’re not gonna make any money. Do you let them know that? 

Trevor Thompson: Yes. If they, if I know them and they ask me, or if you send me a deal, I get some emails, 22% IRR. To be honest, I just hit the delete button.

My mom has said if it’s too good to be true, it probably is, and she’s been pretty good at giving me life advice. And I just, I don’t like, I like what I’m going to call realistic presentations, like the, don’t be really low. Don’t be really high. You make me nervous, right? Okay. Now, where do I get a dig to find out is how 22 IRR honesty? 

Tim Mai: Okay. So let’s look at that. So what is the high? On the low end, you want 16. What’s the high end that you’d be like, that’s comfortable? 

Trevor Thompson: So I’m okay if it just, and I was, I want them to say, Hey, we’re projecting, we’re going to get 16 IRR, but if we give you better than 16, we’re going to take a bigger split and let’s hope it’s 18, 19, 20.

I’m on a deal now. I don’t even know what the IRR will be, but it’d be insane. They’re tripling my money in three years. Okay, now that’s happening just because the world’s gone crazy, right? That’s not normal. People shouldn’t. I’m not going to inspect this for my next 15 investments, but I’ll take it.

And it happened just because it’s in an insane hot market in Tucson, Arizona. They bought it at a great price. They managed to stabilize it. They managed to get a buyer before the world went a little crazy. They have had one retrade. We’re actually supposed to be three and a half and it’s gone down to three because they’ve had to retrade because of valuations and staff have adjusted a 30 or 40 IR. But It wasn’t what was promised, two years to pay your money. 

Tim Mai: So like in terms of the emails that you’re seeing when they’re sending out in their marketing, at what number do you delete? Is it 20%? 

Trevor Thompson: First of all, I only pay attention to people I know, and trust. Okay, so once I get to know somebody, I look at their emails.

To be honest, I scan down to the bottom, always put your picture. If you’re going to send me a thing to invest, I look, do I know this person? And if I don’t, I hit delete immediately. I don’t know you. I got on your list somehow. But I don’t know you. And then if I know you and I’m interested in looking at deals, which I’m not right now, so I’m hitting delete way more.

And sometimes I attend webinars just for my own personal education, just to learn how they are presenting. Doing it. And plus I like to follow certain people which is something we’ll talk about in a little bit, but yeah, actually talk about it right now. I follow people before I invest in them.

I will go to your webinars. I listened to your podcast. I want to know, are you telling me? Are you only telling me the good stuff in your life like the, like you, you never have, you’ve never had a deal where you’re struggling and I don’t want to, I don’t want to invest with somebody that can’t be truthful to me.

I had a deal and it was a bear but this is how we got out. Investors got paid first. All of these things. I do like that honesty and it makes me much more willing to invest in that person. So there are a few. And then I also right now invest in the opportunity. So I want to get to know people.

So when there’s people that I’ve connected with and I want to get to know them, sometimes it’s really interesting. We have, so I invested in someone’s deal. Who’s a very well-known person in Texas. I also comment a lot on his Facebook posts and he always says, thank you, partner.

Didn’t, no idea the power that this person puts over me to say thank you, partner, right? I always joke that I own a doorknob in a new building. I probably own more than a doorknob, in perspective, right? This is the right, this 40, 50 million deal, and I’ve got $50,000 in it, right?

So maybe I own the kitchen or the bathroom more than the doorknob, but in reality, I don’t own a lot of the deal, but. But the relationship allows him to be able to say thank you, partner, and when I see him at events, he always updates me on the deal and that’s important.

And, that was my first new build, right? So it’s a new building in the Houston area, they’ll start leasing by the end of this year. And I think we’re going to do very well because they managed to buy most of the materials before the world went crazy. They got the land before the world went, and there were a lot of things.

Tim Mai: That’s good. Okay, so let’s assume that, they are someone that you already know maybe they’re not like, like a top operator where it doesn’t matter what kind of IR they promise, or they advertise you, you’ll be in because You just know who they are, but let’s say you know them enough to be willing to invest with them and they advertise, I, I’m trying to get to a number, so is it 20% or that you’re like, you know what, I, no, I have for 16.

Trevor Thompson: You can make an Excel spreadsheet that says we’re going to make anything. I don’t want to work hard to disprove you. I want you to give me like, we’ve got this deal. We’ve been, everybody says they’ve been conservative, whether they’re not, I love it when we’ve been conservative. Rents are going to go from 16, 600 to 1200. I don’t think that’s conservative, my friend, look at the income in the area and it’s 36, 000 and we’re going to go to 1, 200 rents. You’re nuts, right? So I look for things that make sense and reason, right?

So here’s the rent, here’s the comps. We’re going to come in a little less than the comps and be about here. And it’s going to, and some people say, Oh, we’re going to achieve this in six months. You can’t. You can’t turn that, the leases get away from them, so I want somebody who’s laid out a realistic plan, right?

Here’s our 18 months, and 18 months is a very realistic thing for a value add property, which most of my investments are, to get it up to where you can stabilize it, right? Because it takes time to fix the exteriors, take care of the deferred maintenance. Turn the tenant base, improve the tenant base, increase the rents, because you can increase the rents if you, I mean during the crazy couple of years people were increasing rents without doing anything, but this isn’t normal, right?

We need to consider the world going back to normal and want to make sure they have a good plan. 

Tim Mai: Okay, that’s great. So what else in terms of numbers-wise, because we are going to dive deeper into the operators, the people, and themselves.

Trevor Thompson: So numbers I look for realistic capex budgets.

So this is a deep value add and we have 4, 200 doors. You’re not going to do it. Yeah. Or do you have 8, 000 a door? Or do you have 12, 000 a door? Again, I like to look at the quality of property. Are they over-renovating, under renovating? Do they have realistic numbers, right?

I went to one webinar and they were like, they had 50, 000 in their exterior CapEx budget. And I’m like, you can’t fix anything for 50, 000 on a 100-unit building. You got no money. And so what happens when you have no money? You take it out of cash flow. Who does the cash flow belong to? Me as an investor, right?

So raise enough money to do the deal right. Have realistic numbers. So CapEx numbers. I went to a webinar and they said we were going to add preferred parking. This was a series of four-plexes with four parking spaces in front. How are you going to make I’m, how are you, it’s like there are only four spaces in front of a four-plex.

How are you going to charge somebody to park in the only four spaces next to their unit? So if you were going to say we were going to put covered parking, okay, that’s a whole different story. But, they literally said we’re going to have preferred parking. And I Googled the property and I’m like, this is fourplexes with four parking spaces.

So verifying things like that are correct. Verifying that rent bumps are correct, right? So just doing some simple math, right? What is the, you can find the income of the neighborhood very easily on a Google search. And, you don’t want it to be anywhere near, you want it to be, you want people to make three times that kind of deal.

You want to make sure you’ve got that metric in there, right? Hey, rents are 750 and we’re going to 1000, but the neighborhood could only afford 800. Nobody’s moving from the nicer neighborhood to the worse neighborhood to pay more rent at your place no matter what you do. So you’ve got, so I look for those things to be realistic, right?

And rent bumps to be realistic. And then, I love that, we’re in an inflation of 9% and their expenses are going up 2% per year. How in the world are you living in a 9% world? You’re putting your rent up 12%, but you’re only putting your expenses up 2%.

Tim Mai: Gotcha. 

Trevor Thompson: Yeah. A lot of deals like that because that’s what they got used to putting in there.

Then they got, oh, we got these big rents before we had inflation, right? Now we have inflation. And so maybe you could put five and say we’re really going to watch the money and be very careful and we think we can do a better job. Okay, I might buy that. But 2% just isn’t enough. So I look at is their whole plan realistic, right?

I’m not like an underwriter guru. I’m a gut-feel guy, are your explanations reasonable? And that was what I didn’t know when I first bought my first deal that made no money, right? They were a deep value ad. They told us it was a C-plus property. It was a D-plus property. And they had 4, 200 a door and CapEx, and they needed like 8, 200 a door in Texas.

And if I’d have known that now, I never would have invested. 

Tim Mai: Gotcha. Okay. And so now let’s talk about the people, how, you had mentioned some of it where you follow them you get on the podcast you want to see people who are authentic who actually shares this struggle and not all, all good.

So some of those things, what else do you look for, especially when you’ve never invested with them before? What else do you look for? 

Trevor Thompson: I look for people that know them and ask them, find the track, like they’ll tell you the people that are going to say nice things about them. So I try to find the people that aren’t going to say nice things about them, or at least going to say the truth about them.

You can usually dig around and find out. When people make comments like, Hey, did you invest in this deal? Would you mind taking some time just to talk with me? I’m thinking of investing with that person. So I’ve done a lot of that, right? So because people post, Hey, we just bought a property.

We just sold the property. We did amazing. I’d like to talk to the investors and just get it and get a little general idea. And then I asked other sponsors about them, especially when I see they were partners and now they’re not. It’s always fun. You can get them to actually talk to you because the reason they’re not partners now is there was some sort of non alignment of values Or, why didn’t you connect with that person?

And you, I’d love to see them do ten deals together, right? That makes me feel good. And, when partners struggle, a deal often struggles. 

Tim Mai: Gotcha. Okay, so if let’s say, somebody you talk to, they’ve lost money on a deal with that operator. However, let’s say it was five years ago, and that operator seems to be doing pretty well now, would you consider investing in that operator, current deals?

Trevor Thompson: So I would if the person I was talking to said, man, they communicated with us. They really tried, but we had some really serious issues. And they were honest with us through the whole thing and, instead of doing a cash call, they put their own money up and things like that, so I’ve heard stories of operators, one operator just that they were also in charge of the capex for the company they own. And they just kept spending money through the pandemic and then did a cash call. So I’d never invest with somebody that did something like that they made about 300, 000 and Construction management fees.

I see. And then you did a cash call now I’d be better to say, listen, man, I screwed up. I probably shouldn’t have kept investing. I’m not taking my payment till we close on the deal. So we don’t have to do a cash flow. That to me is acceptable, right? Okay. I’m misjudged. I thought COVID was going to last for three.

Who did, who thought COVID was going to last till now? I know. I got six people out with COVID right now that I’m talking to. And it’s so whoever would have thought right now, I misjudged this, right? And, so I’m going to personally take care of it. Then that’s a good story, even though maybe what they did wasn’t all that smart.

They understood it and they took the heat and made the correction. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. And can you, for those that don’t know, what is a cash call? 

Trevor Thompson: Cash call is when they say to the investors, we ran out of money and you need to put more money in. And if you don’t put more money in your share of ownership will be diluted.

And it’ll be all listed in the PPM what the rules are of a cash call, right? So it’s often listed, because again, if a project runs out of money, they go back to the investors and say, we ran out of money, we need more money. And you are obligated to pay that money. And if you can’t pay that money, your shares will be diluted.

Tim Mai: Gotcha. Okay. What else do you look for in an operator? Yeah, especially a new one that you’re considering investing in, 

Trevor Thompson: So again, Do they think the same things I think are the things that I think are important to them? Are we connected to the same groups of people?

I want to invest in people that I think my values are aligned with. I want to invest with people that I think they’re trying to work really well with their property management company, and they’re trying to be good business people. Versus always screaming and hollering at the property manager, putting unrealistic expectations, I’m involved with somebody that’s gone through five property managers in three years.

Wow. There’s a problem. There can’t be five bad property managers, right? That’s a bad owner. And it’s just what it is, right? And people that are difficult to deal with. In people, how they answer you, things to me are, I invested in the deal and I asked him what I thought was a very simple question.

How are we doing in year one compared to year one’s performance? And the answer was, you can look it up in the PPM. That’s not a good answer. You should be saying, here’s what we projected. Here’s where we are. Here’s the difference. Here’s why. That’s what a good operator tells you, even if it’s bad news. Here’s the why, and here’s where we misunderstood, and, I want, again, honesty.

Tim Mai: I see, that’s good. And do you prefer an operator who is vertically integrated, and so now they have in-house property management, in house construction? Do you prefer that at all, or depend? 

Trevor Thompson: Not necessarily, no. I think managing yourself. There, there are, there, there can be great things and there can be great inefficiencies, right?

And if things get, if every layer is you, then you’re only as good as you. Even if you hire great people, the people you hire are only as great as the person you hired them, right? Pushed them to the next level. So I like the mix of someone else coming in and some fresh ideas especially property management companies that manage thousands of doors.

They’ve got a wide range of experience and they may have a solution that they thought of, and again, if they’re a good property management company and they’re listening to their managers, some manager way over here could have come up with a solution. That’s perfect for the property that I never would have known because I don’t know this manager.

So I think there’s, I think, definitely, there are advantages in it. And I like that variety. It’s almost like a check and balance. 

Tim Mai: Okay. And then circling back again with the numbers, but, looking at the interest rate and projecting out three, five years from now what are some of the things you’re looking for to say, okay, this operator is conservative he’s considering, whether the interest rate is going to be in, three to five years or whenever they were planning to exit that.

Trevor Thompson: Right now, I feel very lost, right? How higher, right now we’re in this weird spot, right? Where you’re going to get a 5% loan and a cap rate of 6%. So I’ll be honest right now. My crystal ball is very fine. I’m still optimistic about the U. S. condition. Certainly very optimistic about Texas.

Other parts of America may really suffer. Texas in general, where I’m investing in doing things is on fire. And so even if there is some sort of downturn or adjustment will be sheltered from a lot of the impact of that just purely because of what’s happening, right? Texas is just, there’s just such a supply and demand imbalance that if a lot of bad things can happen, it will still be okay.

But I’m, I’m definitely nervous. Obviously, you want to see them, project the cap rate to be higher. You obviously want to see it. We’re at this percent loan and anybody who says three years from now, we’re going to be less than this percent. That worries me a lot, right?

Because we just don’t know, right? I hope we’re not going to be at seven, 8% loans. But we don’t know. So my crystal ball is really foggy. So I’m actually happy. I’m not looking at it. at deals right now as much because it’s just right.

Tim Mai: Yeah. So now let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about the, you know you’re transitioning into doing more active side, right?

You’re now a GP. And so what’s to share with us your experience? What made you decide to get onto the GP side and what are some of your experiences so far? Yeah, so 

Trevor Thompson: I decided to get on the GP side purely because I was always planning to and then losing my job accelerated it. And so I definitely was, it was something I planned to do.

It just got accelerated so it wasn’t quite ready for it. And I also came at it at a time when Texas was just so on fire. I couldn’t win a deal. So to be honest, that’s how I ended up in so many ways. I would sell some of my stocks. So I had hard money for a deal. And then I would be getting close to getting the deal and I’d be sitting on this cash.

And all of a sudden a good investment from a friend of mine would come in my inbox and I’ll be like, I’ll move that money over and I’ll get some more money when I get a deal. So that’s how I got in balance. And then, right now raising money is a little tough because people are nervous.

People are unsure, so their crystal balls are foggy just like mine is. So that’s making them less willing to just say, it’s taking a lot more handholding and, and I wouldn’t consider myself a professional razor yet by any scope of imagination. I’ve got a long way to go to get there.

I know I’ll get there because I’ve been super active and connecting with people. I just gotta, I gotta get that next link closed. But it’s definitely interesting. And the first two deals I got on, I joined somebody else’s deal. So it was really, they did all the work and I came in the end and I’m going to take a small asset management position because I’m closer to the asset, which is great because I’ll get to, I’ll get to learn, they own some assets already, so they’ve already got a business plan in place.

And so I’ll get to learn a lot in theory, assisting people that have done it more than I have. And then my most current one, I am an active part of it, so it was the first time I was doing due diligence for myself. I’ve done it for other people just to educate myself, but you pay a lot more attention when you’re going to end up being the owner than when you’re when somebody else is going to end up being the owner.

And then the paperwork, goodness gracious. Man alive and I hate paperwork. Man, there’s a lot of paperwork and, so a lot of people say, Oh, these GP, they got an easy man. It’s hard work.

Tim Mai: That’s great. Okay, so yeah gP is definitely not for everybody, right? 

Trevor Thompson: Yeah, and you got to love what you’re doing, right? And you have to be prepared to work. That’s one thing that does worry me a lot about these mentor programs, right? They teach you how easy it is. You do it, you hire a property manager, and you sit on the beach drinking drinks and retire.

It’s not that. It’s, it is, and that’s another thing, I’ll be honest, that I’ve learned. I will not now invest in a deal that doesn’t have an asset manager that’s fairly close. And it’s their full-time job. Because I want somebody when there’s something going on in the property that can give it 100% of their focus, right?

Not try to answer the phone and do the work on their lunch break, or ask for an afternoon off from work to go do something and meet a contractor. I want to invest in people that have somebody full-time in the market, right? dedicated to taking care of my investment. That was something I missed earlier and it was something I missed earlier in some of my investments.

I didn’t push forward hard, but sometimes I’m very aware that it is super important that this is somebody’s full-time job. It’s not, they’re not trying to do it and still do a 40-hour work week and do it on lunch break and weekends, lunch break and weekends. Gotcha. On the active side, right? On the asset management side, fundraisers or other, but the people that are actually managing the asset.

Tim Mai: I understand. And so as a GP, what type of properties are you looking for? Are you sourcing right now?

Trevor Thompson: Yeah. So I’ve decided, so I’ve been doing 48 doors and above and under a hundred. So 48 to stay out of a little guy’s way. And under a hundred just ahead of the big guy’s way. And it’s, I’m getting a little more activity in that niche, right?

And because I want to stay away from the guys that are looking for their first, 12 or 20 or 24 plus, and I’m trying to move on, but it’s, so I’ve tried to stay in that little niche and it’s been, I’ve been getting a lot closer on deals. And I think it’s, and it’s an okay niche cause it’s I’d still rather be a hundred and above but it’s, you just got to get a deal. You can still make it work. 

Tim Mai: Okay. So with all of your experience as an LP, it’s interesting to me that you are, you’re having challenges raising money. I figured by now you would know all of this. Objection handlers and like all the different ways you would be able to explain to a passive investor, why your deal makes sense.

And, especially you as a professional passive investor, if it makes sense for you, it should also make sense for the investors that you’re raising money from. So share with us. 

Trevor Thompson: I too am surprised. Now part of it was, I didn’t do it, I was building a network with people that are doing what I was doing.

And that was a big mistake. And when I left iFly, most of the people were living paycheck to paycheck. There were no executives. So anybody looking to make this switch or looking to move on, leverage your corporate connections before you leave. Leverage, build up your database with people that you know from work and you know from your other social things, so I went from this little strange isolated world, and then I networked and when I look at my database.

Everybody else on my database is also raising money fields, right? They’re not. And so I made the mistake of not correcting, not focusing on people that were passive investors and chasing them. I chased other people hoping to do a deal with them. So it was a huge mistake on my part. And I’m working really hard to correct that now.

And that’s why I’m on so many passive investor panels and trying to speak more about passive investing with people. And I know I’ll get it foundation, I just gotta make the connections a little better. That makes a lot of sense for sure. And better systems.

Just to give you an idea of how bad it was, the first time I raised money, I didn’t have an active campaign or anything. And I’m not very techie, so I cut and pasted 400 individual emails and sent them. I literally had a Word doc and I cut the copy over, I cut the subject line over, I copied the person’s address, and I wrote Dear Tim.

It was ridiculously inefficient, right? Because I just, I hadn’t set up a system. And now I’m building this system and now I’ve started to build a funnel to reach out to people in different realms, more in the passive investor realm, and then have them come and then get on my database. So that was a hard lesson to learn because I really thought, Oh, I know everybody.

I, this should be no problem. And I underestimated what I needed. The amount of work that it took to get there. 

Tim Mai: Right. Yeah. Can you share on average, how much you invested per deal?

Trevor Thompson: For several of the deals I actually went in for half of the minimum.

It was because I wanted to invest in the deal, but I didn’t have enough cash. Some of the deals I’m only in for 25, 000 instead of 50, 000, for example. Even though it sounds impressive, I’m not that wealthy. And they were, the reason I was able to easily say yes to me was because I am an accredited investor.

For those that don’t know, on a 506B, you’re only limited to 35 sophisticated. I didn’t mess up their numbers. And they all said to me, and again, I’ve had it where I’ve been raising money, and when unaccredited investors have done that, I’ve had to tell them, Hey, listen, if we hit the 35 number, we’re going to have to kick you out.

If somebody’s going to be able to invest the minimum. So I’ve been fortunate to do that on a couple of deals. And some of it was just, Hey, I only got 28, 000 in my IRA account. It’d take me a while to get to a 50, are you willing to take 25? And so that’s what happened a couple of times saying, Hey, I want to be in the deal, but this is all I have.

Gotcha. Then there are a couple of deals, I’ve got a hundred thousand in a couple of 75, the average is 50 though. Most of the deals are for me and I’m at the minimum of 50. 

Tim Mai: Gotcha. Okay. And then on the GP side, do you have a goal of how much money or how much asset on the management that you’re looking to acquire?

Trevor Thompson: Yes. So 5, 000 in five years. Okay. And, that’s my dream number, 5,000 in five years. And DOORS are a little bit foolish, because you can have a lot of Class C DOORS, and it’s not much money, and you can have a lot of Class A DOORS, and 5,000 on Class A is a lot of money.

So I don’t look at it, oh, I’m going to have 500 million or whatever. I just did it DOORS. 

Tim Mai: Gotcha. Okay. That’s great. And so for the listeners who are considering getting into passive investing, but haven’t yet done one and there’s still a little fight for a little, yeah, a little fearful what would have, what advice do you have for them?

Trevor Thompson: So if you’ve decided. That you want to do it. You need to just do it right. You’re going to be frozen with analysis paralysis. And I was a bit at the beginning and then I just did it. And, again, don’t go off on education or do whatever. But you’re going to just have to get out of this fear.

People somehow think when their money’s in the stock market, they have some sort of level of control over it. They don’t. When it’s in their 401k, they don’t have any control. At least with this, you have the control to invest with who you want to give it to, so it’s a person. It’s an asset.

So you can, I can research Tim and learn all there is to know about Tim. I can research his property, his market, and his city. If I live in Texas and you’re going to do a deal in Houston, I can drive there and look at it. I can look at your house. Can I go look at Apple or Amazon? The people don’t get that they’re actually, even though they’re not in control, they’ve got a lot more control because they decide who.

And then also external circumstances don’t normally affect it, right? All of a sudden, the stock market crashes by 10%. Those things are not necessarily happening in the real estate market, right? Real estate is appreciated over time. It’s steady. It’s a guess we’ve had some crashes where people have done Crazy things like the mortgage meltdown and stuff, but you put more actions in that so that people quite don’t get the satisfaction Of what they’re getting right.

Tim Mai: Okay, and Would you recommend that they? Focus on one asset class and get started.

Trevor Thompson: Definitely think you just need to pick one. I’ve picked multifamily too, just to be an example. So I’ve picked a multifamily. And the reason I picked multifamily is I know it, I understand it.

And people always need a place to live. People don’t always need a retail center. People don’t always need a hotel. People don’t always need a storage unit. And I picked that asset class too, because. It’s just such a high demand right now, right? There’s yeah, if you can’t find a mini storage in your neighborhood, you buy a shed and put your junk in your own shed, but if you gotta find a place to live and you’d like to find a place to live near where you work. And so it’s, it’s a very high demand thing. And it also comes with some of the best tax benefits. It comes with some of the best financing benefits. There are a lot of things that make multifamily, I’m going to call it the sweetheart of commercial investing.

There are just so many things about it that make it the best way. Now, I have done other asset classes and we didn’t talk too much about it. And the reason I did it was just for a little bit of diversification, right? So I’m very Texas-centric. I wanted to get at least a storage investment.

I wanted to get something in the Carolinas. It’s near Charlotte where my brother lives. So it’s now a business trip to visit my brother. There are lots of factors why so I wanted to get into storage. I want to, so all the stars align and so I decided to do it and How much I’ll learn about it.

And am I excited about storing people’s junk? No. Am I excited about making apartments better? And, my reason is to have people say come over to my home, not my apartment. If I could create a community where people said to come to my home, oh I’d dive and go to heaven, right? That’s awesome.

I want people to feel like their apartment is their home. I want the people to work there to feel empowered and that they can create that environment. And then when you do those two things, investors make money and they can go do their wise. I can’t say I want to have the best place for your job.

That’s my reason, right? It’s just not fulfilling why. But I understand that it makes money. I understand it’s a great business. I understand it’s very profitable, but it just doesn’t excite me that I’m making the world a better place, by buying an apartment and improving it. I did due diligence this week, and there are some people in there saying their air conditioner hasn’t been fixed in a few months.

And I hope to go there and fix their air conditioners and, give them a better place to live and care about where they live and, fix the deferred maintenance things that aren’t there and that, walking that property after I do that and having tenants feel like it’s their home, it’ll just be, there’s big rewards in that.

And I think even passive investors can feel like there’s, they’re helping in a crisis in America, which is housing. 

Tim Mai: So yeah, we’re going to be wrapping up this interview here. I do have two more questions for you. One is, one is if you can go back to your younger self, or if you can share words of wisdom with a teenage kid. What would you share? 

Trevor Thompson: Don’t wait to buy real estate and wait. If I just started this when I was in my 20s. Life would be so much different. When I look back, I moved from Canada to America and I was going to buy a place and do an Airbnb, and Airbnb was just starting out and, I said, man, 300, 000 for this place.

I don’t know if I can afford it. The same place is worth 900, 000. Wow. Oh, it’s but I didn’t write, this is 25 years ago. And I didn’t. And if I had, my life would be that much different, right? Because now I would in theory own probably three Airbnbs or five Airbnbs in the area. And be running this successful business and building wealth for my daughter who’s still in Canada.

Just buy real estate and wait, don’t wait to buy real estate. And so if you’re young, you can just get started. Try to find a single house or duplex and house-hack it, right? Go look at the burr method on bigger pockets and just start grinding in and out earlier, right? Rent rooms to your roommates, and then go from a single house to a duplex, to a quad, to a triplex, to a sixplex, to a tenplex.

Just keep jumping and you’ll be shocked. You’ll be like, 45 years old and financially independent. I’m 60-something years old and barely financially independent because I started late. And if I’d have started early, this life would read books like Darren Hardy’s The Compound Effect, right?

Yep, love that book. Keep reinvesting in amazing books. Keep reinvesting your money. It’s staggering what can happen when you get that compound effect of your money, right? And, Warren Buffett always says if you don’t have you don’t have a second way to make income you’ll work to the day you die.

I can’t, I should remember I said it a little better, but it’s a great quote. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. Love that. All right. So last but not least, if people want to reach out to you, connect with you, where should they go? Yeah. 

Trevor Thompson: So LinkedIn, I’m very active. So Kay Trevor Thompson, Facebook, is very active.

Kay Trevor Thompson, sometimes you gotta nudge me and say, you saw me on Tim’s podcast. Because I get a lot of friend invites and I’m careful because I get a lot of people trying to sell me stuff. And if you’ve got, if you’ve got Bitcoin anywhere in your thing, I’m not going to, cause I don’t want to, that’s a crazy world.

And then my website is Niagara cause I’m from Niagara Falls dash investments. com. And my email is my initials KTT at Niagara investments. com. And you’ll find them very approachable, reach out, and set up a time to talk. I love to talk to people about real estate. It’s a, I had no idea I’d be this passionate about it’s a great way to end my career in the world.

And, I didn’t think I’d find something, but I love it. 

Tim Mai: And, your loving real estate definitely shows. Your love of candidness and like just, raw to share your challenges on your deals and, your generosity to open up. I really appreciate you.

I think. Thank you so much for doing this interview with me. I’m sure that the listeners. going to get huge, great value out of this interview. And, I definitely encourage, yeah, definitely coach the listeners to reach out to you and best deal with you at a minimum, start building that relationship with you.

Trevor Thompson: So thank you so much. Real estate is a relationship with somebody. 

Tim Mai: Awesome. All right. Thank you.

If anything you have read in today’s blog resonates with you and your wealth goals, let’s connect:

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Vinney Chopra: We could progress. Don’t worry about yesterday. Learn from yesterday, but never spend time in the ashes. I call it ashes, but today’s the only day. Don’t worry about tomorrow either. Tomorrow is going to be today. Tim is one of the most authentic and genuine people I’ve ever met. Sincerely believe he’s coming from a position of giving and that means a lot.

Tim Mai: Hi everybody. Welcome to today’s Capital Raising show. Today I have. An amazing guest speaker was on the line with us. I’m so excited to interview him because he’s probably the only one that knows the smile more than I do, and even has the nickname smile in his name so that’s amazing.

Mr. Vinny smiles at Chopra, an amazing human being. I’ve gotten to know Vinny. Through his books and his audiobook that I listened to, and then got introduced through a friend, and, as the more and more I learned about Vinny Act and Vinny I was actually on one of your capital raising calls as well.

Just to listen in. And yeah like I just love who you are. I love it. You’re, you, gosh, everything about you the way that you’re such a family man, the way that you’re positive thinking you’re always so enthusiastic and excited. I love that you take your positive thinking to a whole new level and master sage level right when you live it you don’t only.

Try to do it like most of us. We try to do it when we feel good, but you embody it and live this. I love that. Vinny’s a very experienced real estate investor syndicator international best-selling author of two books, host of three podcasts multifamily investor educator principal syndicator mentor Dedicated husband of over 40 years.

Wow. Congratulations. A father of two children, Neil and Monica. And we get to see their name in all of his brandings, by the way. If you see his branding, Vinny and his family have lived in Danville, California, near San Francisco, for 40-plus years. Vinny came to this country with only 7 in his pocket.

And… A dream, of course, and Vinny has now built a portfolio of over 6, 500 units, amounting to over 650 million asset worth of multi-family senior assisted living and hospitality arenas. He is passionate about helping others achieve financial freedom and is currently focused on giving back. to our seniors who have given us so much through the development of assisted living facilities and memory care.

So let’s give Vinny a big welcome y’all. 

Vinney Chopra: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It’s such a pleasure. I’m humbled to be here with y’all and I hope I can bring great value To each one of you because you are meeting for a very special purpose to raise money and to have a party at the same time. I love the word party because you have to work hard but play harder.

I always say that, enjoy life because this is the moment. It’s not later on in life you should enjoy. We should enjoy it right now, every day, celebrate it with the best possible results and activities, and also make it so much fun so that we get up tomorrow with a bigger passion. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome.

Yes, for sure. So Vinny, if you can share with us a little bit about your journey, how you got, how you came to the U. S. and especially how you get started in the multifamily commercial real estate space?

Vinney Chopra: Sure. I’m from India. I’m a mechanical engineer. I always wanted to be one. So I grew up in New Delhi and worked for a very large corporation in Bombay.

I wanted to do my MBA in marketing. I thought that as an engineer, mechanical engineer, and marketing, I could make a good living. So I came to this country. I could only bring 7, I remember coming to LaGuardia airport, and everything. I wrote it in the book also. And there was a kind of like.

A positive attitude is in my mind. So there was a, the airline was on strike and they said, we cannot get you to Washington DC. I kept on bugging them or whatever I did. They put me in a helicopter that afternoon, took me from LaGuardia to New York, New Jersey airport, and then got me on a plane.

So the key thing is you’ve got to be persistent, you’ve got to be always looking at there is a solution. If there is a win situation, it will come in your lap, anyway, but I started that way. I went to George Washington to do my MBA in marketing, sold books, sold a Hindu, I’m from India, Hindu, selling Bible books, door to door.

and encyclopedias and educational books and cookbooks. I still remember 80 hours a week. We would work 80 hours a week. I still have certificates right there on the back. Those are my most precious certificates. Three summers in a row. I worked six days a week. 13 hours to 13 and a half hours a day. So that gets you into this mindset of persistence, taking rejection, getting motivated, and so on.

Anyway, then we live from there to Ohio. I got married 42 years back. And then the same year, 1980, we moved to the Bay Area, but my friends were in real estate here. Wow. How do peers affect your thinking? And that’s when we got into real estate, single-family homes, then multifamily became. Took a big plunge in 2008.

I started learning about multifamily in 2007 and 8. And that has been my biggest growth in the last five, six years because we started our own company. Me, my family, which is more Neil investment group, money management group, money, hospitality, money, this and that. Yeah. 

Tim Mai: Yes. And that’s what I was referring to about his children’s name in all of all, yeah, all of your brands.

That’s awesome. I love how you do that. And wow I didn’t realize that you’ve only got into the multifamily since 2008 Tom, which is perfect timing for the market. Yeah. Yeah, it was super good for multifamily at that time in the sense of lots of distressed properties. I remember a friend of mine who got started around that same time. I wish I got into it that time when he did.

But yeah, he was buying. He was buying multifamily from banks, bank foreclosed properties for cheap enough that he was able to use hard money. loans to buy them. And yeah, that was a great time. And you started, especially on the multifamily side, when you first started did you learn it from a book?

Do you learn it from a mentor or do you just trial and error your way into it? Or how did you get started? 

Vinney Chopra: Yes, I always believe in investing. Things in myself, I hope. I’m sure all of us do. And that’s what I’ve been doing from Tony Robbins when I started in sales to Dale Carnegie, to all these Toastmasters clubs and getting lots of books, thousands of books and reading, and then the CDs and the DVDs, all that stuff.

So I did find the top coach in the USA. I went on Google and found Dave Lindahl, and he’s my mentor, he’s the coach I paid for. I think my team and I paid about 135, 000 back then to get us trained. All five, six of us, not everybody survived, I caught the vision. We had personal coaching and so forth.

And now, I’m into teaching other people actually in my academy and all my knowledge and all. 

Tim Mai: That’s great. Yes. And how much money would you say you have raised so far for all the commercial-related real estate assets?

Vinney Chopra: I would say still going over 200 million.

I started from one investor who gave me 50, 000. I sat in his, which I talked about in my podcast, also in his living room with four slides on multifamily and he bought into it. Great. Thank you. And then he brought 29 million out of this 200 million, only one person brought that much. So I have looked at not one investor as one investor, but I look at their whole tree of contacts, their family, their friends, because if I get into their circle and win them for trust.

and confidence, they’re going to tell other people about it. That’s what happened with the same investor. He’s into my so many, I’ve done 38 deals now, 38 syndications, right? So he has brought seven people. He says, Vinny, would you come Saturday morning for a little coffee at Starbucks? I showed up there.

And my golly, all those IT people and directors and everybody, they started investing with me, the children. So that’s how I grew. Yeah. Yeah. That’s 

Tim Mai: awesome. Now I’m curious as to, going from raising that first 50. thousand to over two hundred million dollars. It’s a huge number. Have you ever thought that, hey, I’m going to go out there and I’m going to raise this two hundred million?

Or was there a I guess a light bulb moment that turned on for you that made you go, oh, I can raise a whole lot more money than what I’m currently raising. 

Vinney Chopra: Sure. Tim, I would love to share, my philosophy has always been big. I’m sure all of us are in that frame of mind. So I made a decision way back not to get any more 50, 000.

That particular investor ended up giving me 125 for that project, which was in Odessa, Texas. I gave. 243%, 43% per year returns in that deal, which was very exciting. 70, 30 deal. We did it back then, but the key thing was that we want to make sure we raise our expectations high to hitch and reach higher numbers.

So I. Might have gotten a few people not to come into my syndication 14 years back or 15 years back because they couldn’t afford 100 or something like it, but right from the second asset. And now I have 38 of them. I set a bottom line at 100. So I have been staying with Hundred. Then a few years later, I started thinking about tier investing.

What that meant was that you get so much perforate at a hundred, but if you do 200, you do higher. You get higher at, I didn’t do 500 back then, but now I do a hundred, 2 50, 500, and a million. I see. So that way, more and more people started opening up their wallets. My top investors have 5 million with me.

What? Who is giving me a hundred thousand, but because they have so much in retirement funds and cash and business and all, we have high power investors, and I’ve turned their money back again and again. Essentially one more nugget I would love to share with everybody.

Please do quarterly meetings, and live Zoom quarterly meetings with your investors. You record them. And after going over the asset that you are talking about, put a blurb about your future deals. You’ve got to be always in the mode of telling them what you are going to buy next. And that has been the secret sauce for me.

So I’ve never done a webinar for my investors ever in the last 15 years, I’ve never done a public webinar. Or to my investors’ webinar at all. I’ve only done quarterly meetings. I see. And then I know if those investors who forgot to join or something, I’m going to send a recording. They’re going to go through the whole presentation.

So by just sending an email, I’ve been getting these like 20 million I raised in six weeks. You and I were just talking about just recently. And that happened without any webinar without anything. Yeah. Wow. 

Tim Mai: Very impressive. We’re going to get into the details of that here. I do want to touch on it, you mentioned you gotta think big.

So I’m curious what your goal is in terms of dollar assets under management or number of units? What’s your big goal? 

Vinney Chopra: Can I share the screen for a second? Yes. I don’t know if I can. Okay. There we are. I just opened up. This little PowerPoint. Look at that. 

Tim Mai: 2 billion.

Vinney Chopra: That’s all. Yes. That’s my goal. And I know I’m going to reach it because the key thing is it’s all in the power of thinking. Oh, this is the silver tsunami, of course. I think it’s this one, the very first slide. Sorry about that. So I’ve been teaching about this, silver tsunamis and all, but this is the one slide that I wanted to talk about.

It’s all in your mindset when you start thinking about multifamily, looking at these three tsunamis, the millennial tsunami, and the senior living tsunami, which is huge. And then also the immigration tsunami. Those are the three tsunamis, which are making the USA A renters nation again, and again.

So it’s a huge thing and I’m diversifying. That’s the other part. I’m in a multifamily. I’m in senior living developments, purchasing them, hospitality, Bitcoin mining, unicorn startups, you name it. So that’s my goal. That’s my passion. And I’ll be 70 next month. 70. I know retirement is in me. I want to dive into working, like having fun, which is about 30 years from now, hopefully.

So I want to live up to a hundred. You’re all invited. Oh, we love parties. 

Tim Mai: I love it. So many, Billion dollars is a big number for a lot of people. Even a billion dollars is a huge number. What would you share with the audience listening? If someone’s I can’t even conceive above, let’s say a hundred million.

What would it be, what would you recommend them to do, or what perspective to look at? That a billion-dollar asset under management or 2 billion assets under management is possible for them.

Vinney Chopra: Tim, I’m glad you said that the biggest thing is everything starts in the mind, right? Conscious and subconscious again, setting smaller goals.

That’s how I was, right? I was setting them. But as I saw the progress of getting, and by the way, we are back to that 2008 and nine with different. Aspects right now, it’s changing from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market. The people who are going to gain a lot are the ones who can raise money, just like this whole conference is.

It’s a matter of raising money. Putting the people together. It’s not rocket science at all. That’s what I say in my book also, right? Syndication, my whole world changed with this one word, which is syndication right there, which is like-minded people working together for a common goal.

And you’re able to get handsomely paid. You get paid four times for learning this art of syndication. pulling the money together, getting a deal, joining hands with the investors, giving them returns, and doing it over and over and over and over again. So I would say start small if you’re in the 10 units, 15 units, or 30 units, excellent.

But think about Wouldn’t you be able to get 100 units if you’ve got two other people to join hands? It’s the net worth and the cash flow, right? The liquidity, the cash equity, right? That’s the only thing. And that’s what it started. I raised only 1, 150, 000 for my first deal. And that was a big, tall order for me.

It was, but the thing was slowly, you go get on that path. It gets easier. The second syndication is easier. Third is much easier. And then you figure out a way, go into one particular area, and put the blinders on. That’s the other part. Sometimes we try to do this and these different segments.

I just stayed the course for 31 multi-families. I bought it, I just am selling my Austin deal. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it. In the last 15 years, that’s my biggest home run ever. Because in COVID 2020, my property in Orlando, Melbourne, was doing so well. Engineers were there. I’m an engineer. So in COVID, I say, Vinny, where is the next place I should go to, where people are moving to?

Austin, Texas. So I just on the phone went to Austin, Texas, and never traveled. And we bought a deal for 34 million, seven 50 in September of 2020, we are selling for 63 million today.

Wow. Oh my gosh. I can’t believe it. It’s happening in this market during COVID and 4 million. They’ve already wired me hard money. 4 million at the sign of the contract. Yeah. Wow. Because our interest rate is very low. Interest rates have gone up. I locked in with my partner 2. 89% and now it’s running at five and, quarters, but let’s go back to, again, it’s, I hope anything you can get today from me is just dream big, think big.

And how can you put equities together? See, the thing is you’re not asking money from people at all. You’re helping them. You’re serving your friends. You’re serving your colleagues. The next investor who has a million dollars to invest with you is in your iPhone or your Android. I see that all the time.

They’re not far away. They are right around you. 

Tim Mai: Wow. That’s awesome. So I guess. If you can share with us what were some of the biggest challenges you faced in, especially your first deal raising when you did your very first race, what were the biggest challenges, then, and then what are some of your challenges now in doing, You raised 20 something million in six weeks.

So that’s, does it sound like a challenge at all?

Vinney Chopra: The very first deal, things were crashing. I had a deal, which was actually from the bank repossessed, they have done underwriting. The renovations and all, and I couldn’t because I had 1. 2 million on Friday. Then the stock market went down in September of 2008 by, I don’t know, 900 points or something Monday morning.

I had half that money because nobody wanted to take it out of their accounts because they lost so much. So I didn’t get that deal, but my first deal took me 11 months, 11 months, and my 14 units took 11 months. Would I be here today? If I didn’t get that 11, 280, 000 deal, 11 units. If I did not stick and get that, and then my next deal was 109 units, it would take me about 12 months to get that one.

Nobody will give me a loan. Nobody will give it to me. They say, would you be moving to Texas Vinnie? I said, no. Do you have a deal under, you have a loan, and this and that? I said, no. Seller financing. Wow. Nobody will give us a loan. So we found a way with seller financing, 40% down. Oh, wow. The seller will not give us a loan.

They said you have zero experience. We don’t want to run this property to the ground. And then I come and take it over. So 40% we gave down. So you, there were challenges, lots of challenges, Tim, but the idea is to look at big challenges, small challenges, every challenge. Makes us grow better.

I have gone this 15 years with lawsuits, with this, with that. You name it, right? And you name it with the property management. I had 152 people on my full-time payroll. I’m giving every two weeks in my money management group, right? Every asset we kept on buying, we kept on managing. It comes with lots of ups and downs.

So essentially you want to start where you are and set definite goals for this quarter, next quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter, and then follow through and don’t do it solo. It’s not a solo sport. You’ve got to have a team, one partner, two partners, and all of them working towards raising money. I say, Raising money should be everybody’s job.

Kim Lisa Taylor, my very good friend, SEC attorney, you probably know her. She did 26 of the syndication packages, 26 of them. And Gene Trowbridge, I’m interviewing him today, father of syndication at two o’clock, he’s a great guy, right from California. So Gene Trowbridge, Kim Lisa Taylor. And the biggest thing is if you’re not syndicated, It’s not a gorilla.

I see that a lot of people told me when you get sued and all that. No, if you do it right. Nobody can come after you, you know you do with full transparency, with full honesty, all the, everything and I show my investors. The snaps of never short an XL ever to my investors, always the snippet from my software, where my properties are managed.

And with the authenticity of the date and time, when I filled out the report, it’s not in your digging old port in the investors. And out of my 500, some I have now over 500, only nine have traveled to any assets. In 15 years, only nine, but I used to bring the assets to them every quarter: the pictures, the renovation pictures, the before, the after the staff pictures, everything.

Whenever I travel or just ask the property management to send me the new pictures and put them into the slide. So those are small tidbits that bring confidence. In the eyes of the investor, because we’re talking about raising money, we have to make sure that if they have any kind of question, you stop everything.

And you take care of that. Our investors, 532, I think nobody knows who they are in the whole corporation, except me, my daughter, my wife, and our vice president of accounting, who’s been with me for 15 years. Wow. 

Tim Mai: Yeah. So you, you mentioned Vinny, that our phone here is a ton of our contacts here is a ton of money sitting here.

Oh, yes. Now we all have all kinds of people on our contact list, from our doctors, lawyers, friends, and family. All kinds of people. Yes. Do you, would you recommend, is there a way to prioritize what type of profile you are reaching out to first? Or how would you teach?

What would you teach someone to work through like a strategy or way to work through their contact list?

Vinney Chopra: Tim, the key thing is people who trust you. People who will have the best code with you. They know who you are. They know they have dealt with you a little bit.

It’s harder to bring trust into somebody brand new. So you need to look at your roller deck. I call it or contact list. Start from the inside out. Who can invest with you and your family? Your relatives, your friends, your cousins, your sisters, your grandparents, everybody’s got and look at their, what kind of richness they have.

Let’s say that word. They have some money tied up in different places. And they are getting so few returns. I’m telling you, the older we get, I always say we, the younger we get, I tell my kids. Daddy’s getting younger every birthday. I’m going to go backward and you’re going to be older.

So we’re going to meet somewhere.

It’s that attitude, but the big thing is you’ve got to start from inside out the people, your business associates, your doctor, who you’ve been going to, or the laundromat place, let me talk about it, I mentioned a few times in my podcast. Car care center. I took this to my friend Toby here.

Nobody knows Toby, he says, I would take my car. He’ll charge me whatever for oil changes and all. He says, Vinnie, I want to buy this building. I said, Oh, great. What kind of loan are you going to get? And this and that he says, no, I’m going to pay 4 million cash. 

Tim Mai: Wow. 

Vinney Chopra: Holy cow. Wow. If you think about that, what I just said, I never knew he had so much money.

So that’s what I’m trying to tell you guys. Also all the business people, all the context you come across, everybody’s got money. Everybody’s got a hundred thousand, 200, 300, again, if they don’t, that’s okay too, but you are always thinking in your list, who are the people they know most. You, they can just hang on with you and you say, Hey, I’m learning this business.

I’ve taken some students who were doing something in the medical profession. And now in two years, they’re raising a hundred million dollar funds. What a hundred million dollars, because the whole attitude is different. They got a silver plate from me. All my tools and all my PowerPoints and all my whatever, whatever, right?

So we give that. But the thing is, you’ve got to see everything happen twice. Stephen Covey talks about it, right? One time is in our mind, imagination. The second time, physically, it happens. Everything they thought. So just have the attitude of plenty of abundance. will take us to a lot of places. So prioritizing, yes, doctors, attorneys, CPAs.

People who are into their own business and IT directors you name it, teachers, of course, the thing is you got to put an Excel or CRM together. And you take your time yourself, how long you have known that person, first of all, put down in a column. Secondly, what’s your business, what business they are in that second one, then the third is going to be what they might have been earning.

But here, these are all internal equations you’re putting right to prioritize. And then you start from the top, go to the bottom. 

Tim Mai: I like that. I like that a lot. You mentioned you do a quarterly meeting for your investors. Now, I assume those are people who already invested in your deal, correct?

What about all these new people that you’re reaching out to? How do you get them into the funnel?

Vinney Chopra: Now, actually we have lots more. I have 1, 475 more on the other side. They’re coming through, my funnels, like you just said, they’re not ready to meet. Go the extra mile yet.

You’ve got to educate them through my email system. So I have not been that prominent in giving webinars, my time is so important, but I tried to show them. And then when the new deals come, like my 506 C deals accredited investors only. We have been funneling into them also, and then trying to attract people coming that way, or my team members are meeting with them.

And then if there is interest in meetings with them, and then they come to me, then I bring them into this side. Yes. 

Tim Mai: Gotcha. Okay. And are you, obviously you have your books that you’re out there constantly giving out your books. Is that the book your main way of attracting new investors or what are some of your top ways of attracting new investors?

Vinney Chopra: I’ve got a million dollars. Somebody who read this book and they reached out to me and they said, Vinny, I have a million dollars to invest with you. I gained so much. From my podcasts also, I’m humbled. People see my genuineness or something and they say, Vinny, you know what? I want to deal with you. I want to work with you.

I want to give you this much money and blah, blah. So these two books have been my big assets. You’re right. Yes. Yes. And my third book is coming on senior living investing, which is also almost ready. So that’s going to bring again, a big channel because we’ll be 92 million seniors, 10, 000 baby boomers are turning 65 every night in the USA, 10, 000 and about 6, 000 turning 70 and 4, 000 every day turning 80.

It’s going to be a mecca of opportunities in Senior Assisted Living and Memory Care Dementia. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. And I noticed that the title of your books leads them into the asset class that you’re looking for, that you’re investing in, that you want them to invest in. And even your positivity, you turn that into, positivity to pos profitability.

So you love that? Yeah, I love it. I love it. And yeah, you can, voting themes like, Hey, you can, yeah you can make it profitable until you drive them into that investing mindset. So I love the way that you structure it. 

Vinney Chopra: What you just said, because see, There is how much 32 trillion in retirement funds.

I just heard somebody from Advantage there. I’ve been connected to Alex Perny over there. And we’ve been sending investors his way. And then Damien Lupo is great from EQRP and a lot of other great people. And my syndication, other attorneys, and wealth advisors. The key thing is you have to have an attitude of abundance.

There are millions of dollars. There is one in the Bay Area alone. I think there are four trillion dollars. What? Note 4 billion, but trillion dollars is right here in my backyard and it’s all over the USA. The key thing is, do we know how to approach them? Do we have to set, avenues to harness all these different things we have now digitally to reach them, to get into a dialogue, right?

And then you’ll be able to, share with them with a serving mind attitude, how you could give them returns of eight or 9% cashflow plus 12 or 20, percent overall returns, which is what we are all giving now, 18 to 20% per year. But the key thing is the tax benefits. , you’ve got to sell that.

Now, hospitality. I love hospitality because in the hospitality arena, the limited partners’ cash flow and their losses, limited partners’ losses can be batted against their active income. I don’t know how many people knew that on this webinar, 42 of us on this one. So it’s a huge game changer for high-net-worth people who are making millions of dollars a year.

If we can give them 700, 000, my investors would give me a million dollars in hospitality. I give them 70% minus 7, 800, 000 on their active income, even though they’re limited partners. Wow. So it’s a life changer for them. And that’s how it is with the multifamily also to give them the techniques. Like I’m doing Bitcoin mining now, right?

Someone into the blockchain. Some people are not, but these millennials are really into Bitcoin because Bitcoin is going to stay here and I can mine it with efficient systems with my partner at 13, 000. A coin right now, 13, 000. Of course, it’s selling at 22, 000 right now. So I can make that 9, 000 a day on each coin.

And then we put it into wallets and all that, but we are giving our investors, I’m not saying anybody to join, accredited investors only 1. 5% a month. To 7% a month returns. Wow. Wow. When it was 60, 000, we had so much profit that we were giving it back to the investors. So we were giving 5% per month, that’s 60%.

And 75% returns on their depreciation loss because these are computers with the bonus depreciation, 100% of their whole thing is written off, so it’s exciting. Yeah. All those things. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. I love that. Okay. And so besides the quarterly update meetings do you also send out a monthly newsletter?

Vinney Chopra: Yes. I’m not that frequent now. Can you believe it? But before when I was building my business to where I am now, I just. Get sold out so fast, within eight hours, I’m able to raise nine to 10 million in about eight, nine hours. But the thing is, I just feel like it’s a good, very good thing to do with the communication, the newsletters, and telling your investor base to even ask for more referrals so that you could get more people under your belt and meet on the Zoom or phone call.

Or like that and keep them abreast of what’s happening in your feet. Also, keep them abreast of that newsletter. People don’t have time. I used to do five pages. I do only one page or two pages maximum with a lot of links. Now it’s digital. It’s digital, right? But give them some. Important information so that they click on it and look forward to it getting two weeks, every two weeks we do it, biweekly.

Tim Mai: Okay. That’s great. That’s pretty frequent. And you mentioned referrals. Asking for referrals. Yes. What would you say is the percentage of your investors that came from referral versus the percentage? That just, oh my gosh, outta sight.

Vinney Chopra: You know what? I had no website whatsoever from 2008.

To 2013. So six years, almost five years. I had no presence wherever it was only from my investors within from one to six to 16 to 26 investors. I just stayed there for a little while. Then it jumped to 39. I remember a crucial number 69. So I was sitting right there. But it was because they were referring to me to other people, and we always send a gift around Thanksgiving, never a Christmas gift.

But since I started my business, I’ve been giving my team members bonuses for a year. One in June and one at the end of November, even with the 139 or 42 people I had on my team. Now we have sold so many assets. So we are working with third parties like gray star bell partners and RAM partners. They manage my assets but it’s good to give something substantial, something to appreciate that they are in our life.

And remind them every Thanksgiving to give thanks to them. So we spend about maybe $2000 now, every year to give this special Harry and David. I think our daughter gets those three-tier boxes, five-tier boxes of different things, and they come with a ribbon and everything when it shows up at the house.

So I get investors to open with their kids and take pictures or movies and send it back, all that stuff, so it’s good to appreciate them. And then in my PowerPoint, it tells them also that we are transparent. They could reach me anytime. This is my text number.

This is my cell number. This is my email address and then portal investor portals are very important for all those things. So communication is so important, so very important, and giving them updates on the asset, good, bad, ugly, because investors appreciate you when you tell them what’s happening with their money, they can sleep well at night if they know what’s happening.

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. And why Thanksgiving and not Christmas?

Vinney Chopra: Now, see, everybody, send gifts on Christmas, everybody, and you’ll be getting lost in the shuffle. They’ll just look at it and then the next gift comes, or maybe six rare gifts are sitting outside the door. Who cares, right? So Thanksgiving is right about the end of November, it’s a great time to thank them.

That’s how I look at it. I love it. We have a nice card that goes out and everything. The other good part, if I may say to everybody, is that digital picture of you. is so important everywhere as you see me all over the place, on social media and others, even with my correspondence, daily correspondence, my signature is dynamic with my picture.

I change pictures now even though I have two reels of pictures. I’m just a geek. I just like to get different things going, so that it makes a big impact in the eyes of people because they feel like they just talk to you. They look at the picture or, moving videos or whatever. They feel like they just touched you and I’ve been doing it for 40 years.

I used to meet my clients only once a year during my motivational speaking days and presentations. Speaking in front of 15, 000 presentations, I’ve given maybe even more now, but I used to be the guy with the lapel microphone and getting out between a thousand people and just making so much fun and excitement.

But the key thing is. Clients saw me only once a year and they remembered my name as I walked in the door. So it’s all because of the power of communication and having your digital presence in their mind with your picture and all those things. 

Tim Mai: I love it. I love it. I know you, you mentioned about diversifying.

Yes. Do your investors like the fact that you diversify? In, multiple different asset types.

Vinney Chopra: Good point. Very good point. What you just said, Tim, it’s a fine line. See, they want to make sure you’re a specialist in one thing and then you’re taking good care of their money. Perfect.

Multifamily has been my game, but then moving into senior living space also, I never wanted to go into residential senior living. No. I want to do multifamily senior living with 90 units or 100 units, which can give me 5 million in revenue a year. What? I bought a 52 million deal in Orlando. My revenues per year are 3.

75 million. Wow. I can build my senior assisted living ground up in 2022 for 17 million and my revenue is. 4 million or 5 million because the rent given it’s got involvement with the food and everything right to the three meals and all the experience and spas and movie theaters and everything that we build in our senior living.

But the rent is 5,000 a month. 4, 000 to 5, 000. That’s how the revenues are higher, right? So essentially, I state the course, but I was trained by investors going from cash flow driven, which is a multifamily momentum place. To senior living developments and I told them dirt, there is no money in the dirt. We are just starting to build.

So they bought into the whole system, no returns in the first year, maybe some returns in the second year, but 30-year huge returns and gave them 18% per year, 54% in three years. Guaranteed, by the way, in the sense that I put the PPM together so that they keep their 18, 18, 18 set amount. If there is a dollar left after that, then only we make money, my partner and I.

So that gives them confidence, so they are different. Creative ways to do it. Now I’ve gone into startups and all, but I didn’t bring my whole congregation into it. I only shared the startups and unicorns, in which I’m investing. And I just tell my top investors only, I know they have money. So if they want to jump with me, because I’ve looked at these things that way, Bitcoin mining, I’m going big time because that’s where the future is also.

And then NTF Metaverse is my other space. I’m very intrigued because being an engineer in all these different things, artificial intelligence is going to rock the world. Web3 is coming before we know it. So that’s where I’m in that space also. I’m an advisor and director in those businesses.

Tim Mai: I love that. Do you have a fund?

Vinney Chopra: Oh, yeah, I do. Okay. I do have a fund. And the main part of the fund was I had so much money coming at me and not proper, not enough deals. So what I did was let me do something diversified fund, I call it because, in that fund, I have four prong attacks, my investors can put 100, 200, and 500 million. Thank you.

And I’ll buy a multifamily which is already built. I will buy the construction of the development of the senior assisted living in the fund. I’ll buy hotels in the fund, and also I buy. After I have developed assisted living in three years, we do an exit, take the investors out, and put new investors in.

So we already built our own assisted living also. So four prong attacks, we put it in there. We haven’t put Bitcoin mining in there yet, but that’s what my fund is for 50 million accredited investors only. And it’s a great way to then park the money and you can keep on raising money. And then deploying it. So it’s a good concept. 

Tim Mai: I like it. So I love to hear the advantages and disadvantages or what you like more, the syndication model or the fund model. 

Vinney Chopra: Sure. Sure. See syndication fund also is a syndication, by the way, it’s just a syndication for three years long, rather than a syndication for a specified offering.

We call it only 90 days. So we are just looking at one property, one asset, and you’re raising the amount for that particular asset in the fund. It’s a combination of many assets. You could have a fund with only a multifamily focus, and it’s a great thing. The only thing I would tell you is that if you’re doing a blind fund, Then you need to have a following who believes in you that you have done some exits and they will pour the money into your fund because of your track record.

If you don’t have a track record, it’s a little harder to do a fund unless you have one property already under contract, but even two in contract, and then you could set up the stage for a fund and then say that you’ll be getting more. Investments like these in the monies that you’re raising and you also give credit to the people who come there early rather than the people who come there late.

So usually in the fund, we put an 8% premium from the first year to the second year. What that means is if the share price is 1, 000 per share next year, it’s going to be 8% more or 1, or 080 is the share price and you take that extra money, give it to the early investors, then everybody’s at the same pace. So there’s some semantics, okay, 

Tim Mai: That’s very cool. Very cool. What are some of your favorite tools or resources? 

Vinney Chopra: Oh, wow. Of course, Dropbox, business Dropbox, we live on that. And I can run and I travel a lot with the family and everything. I can run my whole business from the iPhone, signing contracts, viewing, and reaching out, to my Dropbox business with extra space in there and making a link, and sharing everything.

iPad and I, this MacBook Pro. I Do it. So that one, right? Then I have signed easily, or you could even do it with the Acrobat reader signing in blue ink, right? I love that. So that’s an app. I love to. Then I do have app folio software where my investor portal is. So that’s where they look at their, all the assets they have put money in on a dashboard and it shows them how much they put in, how much they made up to the last quarter, all that I would say, zoom in.

Oh, some other ones. I know I didn’t get into too much Asana and Trello. I bought all these systems, but then at this time to bring my business to a new height, it’s of course, ActiveCampaign, ClickFunnel, and MailChimp. So I use all three, but now somebody shared with me something very creative.

It’s called Go High Level. Go high level. So that is my newest platform where I can put my whole structure of the business and click funnels and email systems. And then I can give it at a very low price and duplicate it. So I bought it. S A S system. So in other words, I can duplicate my whole business and give it to somebody running the business and then they can take over it.

Everything is done for them. So that’s my next technique. The software goes high level, go high.

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. Yes. I am familiar with that. That’s phenomenal software for sure. Yeah. Especially in the multifamily space in 2008 at the last market crash. And so you, where do you see this market going? How similar is it? How different is it? What, what’s your crystal ball telling you?

Vinney Chopra: Oh totally. See, in 2008, I couldn’t raise much money. I was in C minus assets in C class or C assets in B class. I know San Antonio, we went to Alamo Heights, anybody from San Antonio, we bought six assets there, C class in A area, right?

So my thinking has always been To buy B and an area or c and b area, just like all of you do. I went to Houston and I bought 14 assets, I think from 2013. 13 to 2022. At 21, I just sold my last asset there. Now I just bought it. 63 million dollar deal with my partners in the med center of Houston. I love it.

I love that place because we bought it off the market and we are already increasing rents and it’s got 108. 1, 000 people, three miles away from our property, 108, 000. And there are 3. 25 billion. Expansion is coming up with a lot of people from Houston. So I’m very high on Houston right now.

And I’m coming back. I left after so many years and last year I only left six months back. I’m back again, but I just got a hotel also. In the vicinity of the med center. So I’m making a deal right now at 26 million I think or something. I’ve got another hotel in Texas also I bought for 6 million with my partner. We are selling for 12 million.

We just made 6 million equity. So we have 7 million, 1031 going into three hotel portfolios right now as I speak. 

Tim Mai: Wow. Wow. Wow. I’m here in Houston. So definitely the next time you’re in town, I’d love to take you out to some good food here in Houston.

Vinney Chopra: I love that. I am coming. My partners, we were just talking the other day.

They’re gonna be flying in and I’ll be flying in. I love Tim. I’ll keep you abreast buddy. And then Tampa. I am flying to Tampa to talk in front of 1100 investors over there. I don’t go too far, too much to be truthful. Last six years I’ve been to only three conventions. In the last six years, I’ll be going to only one this year in October.

That’s all I get invited to many times, it’s just that I’m just a small guy, just doing my own thing. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. Regarding the market changes in a down market like this, do you see that investors are more hesitant, to invest their money? Do they hold on to a title or not at all?

Vinney Chopra: We should raise more money. This is the million millionaire maker time coming right now. See when the market shifts from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market we are coming to the bottom over here. I’m telling you, and that is what happened in 2008, and nine people stayed in the game. They’ve made a lot of money.

I started even when I started my new company, by the way, our sole private proprietorship, my wife and I in 2014, November. So the majority of the growth has come not from 2008 at all. It has come when I could raise millions of dollars quickly. And then from 2015 till now. I’ve reached 750 million. It will be about a billion.

If I put my senior living developments, which I’m building five of them in, I didn’t count them in yet. So once they’re built, I’ll take my eggs and put them in there. So I’ll be close to three. And then my portfolio of hotels, we are buying at about a 30% discount, let’s say, because of COVID and all.

So we’re going to be putting our business plan in place just to give you an idea. You’ve got to look for great deals. How do you get great deals if you are in the market? If you’re shaking the brokers, if you’re talking to them, if you’re texting them, every other week or so, which I teach every 10 days, they need to hear from you.

I got four deals in Houston, brother. By just sending it to the presidents of the company, they sent me four off-market deals in Houston. That’s awesome. Look at that. Yeah, I love it. Copy paste. That’s it. I’m doing that in Tampa. I’m doing that over there in Melbourne. I’m doing that in Nashville, Tennessee.

That’s all my trick is nothing major. And then they start conversing with me. I tell them I have 25 million to deploy, which is true. I’ve already deployed this 23 million. I’ve got 25 million. I have some investors with a hundred million. What they said, Vinny, you bring the deal. They are billionaires. Now they got into my circle.

They said, Vinny. You just bring a deal. You bring a deal in Houston, plus a deal. Is anybody listening to me? If you have an off-market deal, come on together. We could close this and I closed every single deal in the last 15 years. From a letter of intent to closing 38 deals, 38 deals is my record and a hundred percent closing.

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. I love that. I love that. That’s great. Vinny, I’m curious if you can go back to your younger years or even to your kids right now. I don’t know. What are your kids?

Vinney Chopra: Neil is 38 and Monica is 35.

Tim Mai: Okay, they’re both much older. But if you can, yeah, like for the younger ones or your younger self, even I have a 15-year-old and an 18-year-old son, two boys.

What would you share, like what’s, an important lesson that you would teach your younger self or your, your younger children? 

Vinney Chopra: I’m so glad you’re saying that. That’s my passion. Also, I have part of my university as Youth Academy, I call it, and it’s free. It will be free after I die. Also, I’m trying to do some other stuff so that we can teach entrepreneurship and success habits and goal setting and attitude control, and taking rejection.

At a 14-year age level, that is like a junior high level. If anybody wants to partner with me or whatever, the thing is you got to teach them literally because you are setting the stage rather than them spending time and energy watching TV. Getting into gangs and other stuff and not keeping their mindset right on the right path.

That’s what I’m very passionate about right now. Also, not only for seniors, but for the younger generation and you could take them slowly towards real estate because that’s where millionaires are made, even though they will live their profession of doctor or attorney or whatever they want to do or engineering.

But the thing is they need to be entrepreneurs. They need to be a salesperson before. Let them read the book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill. Let them read the book, David J. Schwartz, Magic of Thinking Big. Let them read the book, Dale Carnegie’s, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Those were the books which we bought 40 years back. My wife and I had three copies and our kids read them all. And our daughter now is in our business, which is very exciting. We are giving our company slowly to her for a hundred dollars every year. The millions of dollars will be transferred legally to her partner.

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. Wow. Wow. Wow. All right. I have a last question for you and that is what are the last words of wisdom you’d like to have? leave us with all, leave with all of us today.

Vinney Chopra: I would say, please, everybody’s capable of doing more than what we are doing. I’m more capable of doing what I’m doing right now.

I need to spend time multiplying myself. How do you multiply yourself by taking time to yourself in setting the time blinders up and seeing where you have been? Where are you going? Making a difference. Today is the only day we could progress. Don’t worry about yesterday. Learn from yesterday, but never spend time in the ashes.

I call it ashes, but today’s the only day. Don’t worry about tomorrow either. Tomorrow is going to be today, tomorrow, right? So we have to be focused now. And what’s most important is Talking to people, talking to brokers, analyzing deals, raising money, that’s it. We need to spend time on that, not watching things and creating things and, emailing things or social media.

See, I do everything. I have no appointments, only three today. There was one interview in the front, one now, and one at two o’clock with Dean Trowbridge. I’m done for the day, but the businesses are running because you put people in the right place. I love it. All right. Move the needle every day. That’s what I say.

Tim Mai: Yeah, I love it. Move the needles every day. And yeah, so we’re gonna open up for Q nine just a little bit here, but before we do that we wanna wrap up this part of the interview. If the folks want to reach out to you and get in contact with you, what’s the best place for them to do that, Vinny?

Vinney Chopra: Sure. You could go to vinnychopra.com. That’s V as in Victor, i n e Y. You can just Google me. I have a YouTube channel, Instagram, and Twitter. Pages Facebook, LinkedIn, and then vinnychopra.com slash free book. If you do that, you’ll get me, the Syndication Made Easy, Apartment Syndication Made Easy, or you could go to this one, apartmentsyndicationmadeeasy.com. So we have that one. And we also have positivity and profitability on Amazon. And also we are putting a funnel system now into this one. Also, you could invest with me, and learn from me, I’m just a regular guy. 

Tim Mai: I love it. And you’re an open book. That’s what I love about you. You’re so generous.

Yeah. Not only are you positive, you’re generous. You always, I’ve used, you’re so humble. It’s amazing. And yeah, you’re always open to sharing and always open to help. And so thank you so much for who you are. Thank you so much for being the amazing human beings that you are.

I such an honor for me to have this opportunity to interview with you today, 

Vinney Chopra: Tim. Thank you for what you’re doing, brother. I want to accolade everybody here today. They remember to share their secrets with everybody. Do you know why? Because your tree of investors with the branches and the leaves and flowers and everything is whole different than other people.

So don’t worry about it. There is no competition. See, it’s such a big pie, have that attitude of abundance and give energy, give everybody all you’ve got because it’s going to come back manyfold. When we give energy out, it comes in abundance. I believe in love attraction, love manifestation, love, everything.

The key thing is to just give you so much will be coming. I never knew. I’ll be on this path six years back, literally. We had zero sales in my new company, zero, right? But the investors moved from the previous company I had, so we shut that down. Ideal Investment Group with a partnership.

Which was a very bad partnership. I was in, I just felt like, okay, we’ll figure out a way to sell those assets. We did not have a fire sale, but we sold them well, but then, the key thing is, keep your chin up and every day you could, we can all be better and have more enthusiasm, more positivity, and more smiling, and we can get so much done.

Tim Bratz: The size of your success is not dependent on education, gender, race, socioeconomic background, or any of that garbage. Where you went to school, The size of your success is directly correlated to the size of your thinking. Do you have the balls to just go and do big deals? Tim is one of the most authentic and genuine people I’ve ever met.

I sincerely believe he’s coming from a position of giving and that means a lot. You’re going to make huge progress. 

Tim Mai: Well, welcome everybody to the Hero Capital Raising Show. Today, we have an amazing guest on the line with us. Tim has done amazing things in the commercial real estate investing space, both as an investor as well as an educator, so I’m super looking forward to this.

Tim is the CEO and the founder of legacy wealth holdings. He, which is an investment company specialized in transforming. Distressed commercial assets, multifamily assets into high performing, uh, investment assets. Uh, Tim started his real estate investing career in 2007 as a, uh, commercial leasing, broker agent in New York City and, uh, bought his very first duplex, uh, investment property with, using his credit cards back in 2009.

He had gone a long way from there to now having, um, own over 4, 500 Rental rental units over 400 million in assets, and has raised over 100 million. And Tim has, you know, I know Tim, you know when he started teaching commercial empire, a few years ago, and so has gotten to see and witness a lot of people who’ve been through his program and.

I mean, they’re all raving about you, Tim. And, yeah, so I mean you’re out there you make a difference for a lot of people. And then I also, you launched the legacy books right for the young people super young. I love that project too. Let me hear more about that in our interview here today.

And, and yeah, so, um, you know, you know, Tim Tim is a husband, father, graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10, 000 small business program mentor of the legacy family mastermind, there was a new program that you launched recently, right? I’m an educator online. Legacy Wealth Academy, an online education platform. Uh, so with that, everyone, let’s, uh, give a big welcome to Mr.

Tim Brotz. Tim, welcome, buddy. I appreciate it. 

Tim Bratz: Good to be here. I appreciate you having me, buddy. And I appreciate all the value that you’re always putting out. You’re always trying to make an impact and lead with value, and it’s just, it’s fun to see the good guys continuing to win. And all of us kind of.

Coming up the ranks, right? Like a lot of us knew each other from back before we were successful and it’s just, it’s cool to see, um, again, the good guys winning. So it’s, uh, I love what you’re doing, man. Super proud of you and just an honor to be here. So I appreciate you guys having me. Well, thank you.

Tim Mai: Yeah, definitely. Um, so share with us, Tim, I know you went from flipping houses to, uh, commercial real estate. So share with us your journey on how you, what made the switch, you know, how you got, yeah. How did you make that?

Tim Bratz: Well, high level. I went through college. Oh, three to Oh, seven. So I’m from Ohio originally.

And when I was going through college, everybody was making money in real estate. I mean, some people weren’t that smart. And I was thinking like, if this guy’s making money, I’m going to get rich if I go do this stuff, you know, and so I was ambitious about getting into real estate. After I graduated, my brother lived in New York City, as you had mentioned.

And so I thought, you know, You know, when else can I go and move out to New York City, live for free, and figure out this whole thing? So I moved out there when I graduated, no seven, and got my real estate license. I thought that’s how you got involved in real estate. And then, uh, for some reason I didn’t do residential, but for some reason, I put it with a commercial brokerage that the broker retail leases office leases and ended up, um, Took me about nine, 10 months to close my first, my first lease transaction.

And, uh, it was a little 400 square foot space in Greenwich Village of New York City, uh, at the corner of Bleeker and Thompson. I know there are a couple of New York people here. And so, um, brokered this 400 square foot space for 10, 000 a month. With 4% annual increases on a 12-year lease term. And, you know, as a money-hungry kid at the age of 22, I started doing the math on this and I’m like, Holy smokes.

Like this landlord’s going to make almost 2 million residually. Over the next 12 years for doing something once off of one small space. He had eight retail spaces. All the other ones were bigger than this one. And he had like 10 or 15 stories of apartments above it. So I quickly realized I need to be on that side of the coin, not, not brokering real estate.

So I moved down to Charleston, South Carolina. And there were a few people from the Southeast here, which is where I live today. Um, and, uh, again. 2008, the summer of 2008, I moved down there and went through the analysis phase of joining all the groups and attending all the courses, reading all the books. And, um, I show up to the party, ready to jump in and start buying real estate.

And all of a sudden, October of 2008 happens and the whole economy collapses. The global financial crisis occurs and everybody says, run from real estate. I just got to the party. What are you talking about? And, uh, uh, you know, so I ended up, um, in a position very different from today, today, a lot of money out there, not a lot of opportunity or deals, you know, back in 2008.

deals everywhere and nobody would lend money, at least not to a 23-year-old punk kid who had never done a deal before. Um, and, and with all the headlines saying how the sky is falling, the economy’s collapsing, nobody was going to take a risk on me. So, you know, I think some people say I can’t do it and the brain shuts down.

I always have. Try to ask me a question. I think asking yourself good questions stimulates better ideas and stimulates better questions or stimulates better answers. And I said, how can I, right? Who’s giving me money right now? How could I afford this? And, um, and the only person giving me money at the time was MasterCard and I called him up, and asked him to increase my limit.

They went to a point where they gave me 15, 000 and I found the cheapest house on the MLS. Slot that on my credit card, and physically did all the work to it. And I sold a pig. It was just a pig with lipstick on it to one of the neighbors, uh, who ended up leveling the house and turning it into a parking lot.

That was the highest and best use and how renovated this property was. So, um, but I made the biggest check of my life up until that point, right? It was 13, 000 in profit. And I was like, I don’t know what I’m saying, run from real estate. And this is the biggest check I’ve ever made, which taught me that.

It’s not about the economy, right? It’s about your economy. What’s my economy look like? You know, it’s not about what’s happening in the news. What are your business models? I knew people who were worth tens of millions of dollars that went bankrupt in the last downturn. And I know people who were tens of millions of dollars that are now worth hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars.

And I’m like, how is the same economy? Happened to everybody. And the difference is it’s like, it’s like sailing a boat, right? The same wind blows on us all. If we’re sailing a boat, how does somebody win a boat race? And if they’re sailing a boat, when that’s the same wind, it’s not the set. It’s not the, it’s not the wind that’s blowing.

It’s the set of the sale, right? It’s based on the business model. It’s based on your, uh, mindset. It’s based on how you structure your deals. And your business acumen and how you can navigate different situations and pivot when things happen. That’s the differentiator, right? So work harder on yourself than you do on your business kind of thing.

The whole Jim Rohn mindset. And that’s, that’s what I ended up doing, man. I just focused on how I can keep on calling in. Me and making me better and dialing in my processes and dialing in my business model and dialing in my strategy. And, um, and that’s what kind of led me to start to buy, buy and hold type properties.

It wasn’t a sexy thing. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t the HGTV flips, but it was like C class. Rentals that I could buy for 10, 20 or 20, 30, 50, 000 when the market tank would rent for 600 to 800 a month. How do you lose on that? You don’t. And I built up a small portfolio that way, got enough, um, hanging out in circles like this, right?

Like I commend you for putting a group like this there are some players in this room as people are introducing themselves. I’m like, man, some people doing some big things. And, um, I didn’t know that these groups even existed. Right. I plugged into the real estate investors association. And that’s almost like the blind leading the blind in most of those.

But there are a few players in the back who stand against the wall like this, who are out there doing deals. And I go and meet them and try to source deals from them, try to raise capital from them. I wholesale projects to them. And do just create the momentum, right? Being in the right rooms, showing people you have a work ethic, showing people you do the right thing.

All of a sudden, that stuff compounds your character. Compounds and your reputation compounds to the point where people say, Hey, I don’t have the bandwidth. I don’t have the time, but I have capital or I have access to capital. How about I put the money with you, Tim, and then you go out and do the work and let’s come up with some.

And that’s how I got my first private money lender on some sort of equity split. So um, that’s kind of the, the, the fast track. And then, you know, you let that stuff compound and all of a sudden, you know, pick your head up after doing that for 10, 15 years. And you’re like, Holy shit, you got a big portfolio.

Tim Mai: Yeah. That’s awesome. So I want to touch on something you mentioned first, I mean, starting you and you know, for you too. To. To think, look at it from the perspective of how can I who’s giving out money right now? Uh, you know, the economy is not my economy. Those kinds of mindset as you know, I love to hear where you got that mindset?

Because most people starting in real estate and business don’t have that kind of mindset. So how, how, how did you come about picking those things up? 

Tim Bratz: Here’s the thing. I joined a network marketing company. I got asked out to a home meeting at a network marketing company when I was like 20, 22, or 23 years old.

And I was, and I was like, Oh man, I can go and get rich in this other network marketing company. Thinking that like that they had residual income and products and all this other stuff. And it aligned very well with real estate. And, um, uh, here’s the thing. It didn’t make any money. I was in the top 1% and I made like 30 grand a year.

Um, but the benefit was the way that they keep you is they pour into you from a personal development standpoint. So I met teachers like Tony Robbins and Jim Rohn and, uh, these thought leaders and dude, I just turned off the radio and I started listening to it. You know, CDs and audiobooks and, and I started like, I pretty much, I had a 4.

0, but I cheated my way through high school, you know, like, like I only read one book in all of high school and college. And then all of a sudden I read 12 books, the year after college and it was all, you know, think and grow rich, how to win friends and influence the richest man in Babylon. Um, rich dad, poor dad, and it, and I got an MBA by personal of, of in personal development, um, and those insights from.

The things that I did outside of traditional education. And so I, um, dude, I think when you realize that 80% of this game is all up here, uh, you know, it gives you the staying power and you realize, you know, you work harder on yourself than you even do in your business because that stuff compounds. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome.

Um, and then, um, what was, so in your transitioning into the commercial side, uh, into the multifamily side, how, how many units was your first deal?

Tim Bratz: Oh, man. Um, yeah, so I started in a single-family world, right? I was, I was wholesaling. I was fixing flipping. I got into single-family rentals. And then I came across a deal in 2012, that was an eight-unit apartment building and, um, and it was at a price that was so stupid that I had to offer on it and I had to buy it, you know, three out of eight units were occupied.

It needed some work, but I bought it for 30 grand, you know, in a C class, C minus area of Cleveland, Ohio. And I put another 50 into it, but still, I was into it. 10 grand a unit, you know, 80, 000 and the NOI was 27 grand. So if you’re familiar with cap rates, that’s about 30%, uh, or more than that. Um, 35, 33% NOI.

And so, or cap rate, right? That’s pretty good. Um, but I was self-managing it and, you know, all this other stuff. So here’s, here’s the real aha moment for me though, is I drove to one location instead of eight locations. I looked at one room. I looked at one foundation instead of eight foundations. I negotiated with one seller instead of eight.

I raised money on one deal instead of eight deals. I was able to go and collect the rent. I was able to go and meet a contractor at one location instead of eight. I had one tax bill, one utility, and one water bill instead of eight. Right. And so the scale of getting into multifamily resonated with this sense of efficiency that I’ve always kind of had inside of me.

And I was like, this, this is where I want to be. And I ended up selling off. Um, any single family, uh, properties that I own. And I did like, you know, I just kept on trading up and I did 1031 exchanges into an eight-unit to another eight-unit to an, you know, about a 14-unit. I rolled those into 23 units and about 31 units.

And then all of a sudden you pick your head up and you’re sitting on like 140 doors in a couple of years. Um, and those 140 and, and you know, between that 140 that I was holding, plus probably transacted another a hundred doors on top of that. So those 240, 250 doors, the first ones that I had, I had exclusive partners and I gave them 67% ownership in all the deals that we did.

They brought the money. Wow. I did a hundred percent of the work for a third of the equity and I didn’t take any fees. Right. I didn’t make any money, no asset management. I had a $ 3,000-a-month salary and that was it. Um, that’s what I valued myself at. Back then. And, um, but here’s, I think a lot of people get caught up on the first couple of deals.

Well, you know, I bought them, I bought the deal, and in my wholesale deals. If I find the deal and you find the buyer, we split it 50-50 so I found the deal I want 50% of the equity was like dude. Who’s going to asset manage this thing for the next 30 years? If you spent 90 days finding the deal like somebody has to project manage a property, manage assets, manage who’s raising the money, and who’s sponsoring the loan.

There are a lot of other players involved when you’re buying and holding property, instead of just. Transacting it. Um, and that was, that was, you know, part of the thing. So anyways, a lot of people come to me and they’re like, Hey man, what’s a fair, something like this. And I, and I explained, there’s a lot of moving parts, right?

Depends on the deal. Depends on who’s doing what depends on the exit strategy. But at the end of the day, it’s like. Who cares how much equity you got? Right? Like, like, it’s not about this deal, right? It’s about what does this deal do to set you up for future deals? This one deal will set you up to take down the next 10.

The next 10 deals are going to set you up to take down the next 100. And all of a sudden you’re going to pick your head like dude, you can build up your equity and have way more equity in future deals. After you’ve already gotten punched in the gut and slapped in the face, um, going through the learning curves on the smaller deals, like who cares anyways, right?

And as you build up, your, uh, your cash flow, right?.? and your cash reserves and your reputation, you can start sponsoring loans yourself. Then you start getting into more equity future deals that also have more upside and less downside risk because you’ve been in the game longer. So. You know, it’s very short-sighted, I think , to focus on how much equity I get in this deal right now.

I’d always be looking, I would, the way that I got to where I am is I for went for gone, whatever the word is, um, short term gains for long term wealth building. Like I was always my play. I would always forgo the upfront fees and more equity to build my balance sheet. I knew it built my portfolio. I knew it built my reputation.

I knew I could meet the people. Right. And I was getting paid essentially in building up equity, uh, as I was getting educated in the process. So, uh, you know, I see a lot of people trying to transition into multifamily and that’s usually one of the biggest hurdles that they’re facing. 

Tim Mai: Wow. Okay. That’s good.

So this partner that you took on, how many of you guys did 140 units together? How many deals is that? 

Tim Bratz: Uh, it was a lot smaller and I, and I did some single-family and duplex complexes and some other stuff, but, uh, I don’t, I mean, my portfolio today, 4, 000 doors is like 60 buildings. No. So it’s not working that hard.

It’s working smarter, and more efficiently. Um, so it’s, it’s some people who flip three, four, 500 houses a year. They work a hell of a lot harder than I, you know, but somehow I show up and I have a bigger net worth and I have more cash and I have a better lifestyle than they do. Um, because you’re just doing bigger deals.

Right. The size of your success is not dependent on education, gender, race, socioeconomic background, or any of that garbage about where you went to school, the size of your success is directly correlated to the size of your thinking. Do you have the balls to just go and do big deals? And if you, if you do, if you play around with thousands of dollars, you’ll make thousands of dollars.

If you play around with millions of dollars, you will make millions of dollars. And the same goes with tens of millions and hundreds of millions, right? Getting into bigger transactions and bigger deals allows you to make more money. 

Tim Mai: Right. So, so far, you know, for people getting started and Looking for a potential partner like the one that you have, was that partner hard to find?

Um, or how would you go about, you know, someone starting? How would you, how, how would you recommend they go about finding someone like that?

Tim Bratz: Yeah, I don’t like getting married in business. I like partnering on a deal-by-deal basis because that partnership, which was in place for about three years, ended up folding.

I became more valuable, right? And then they didn’t bring any more money and they wanted all this equity and they wanted more equity and more return on their money. And I thought that was greedy and they thought there are two sides to every story, right? Somewhere in the middle. Is it probably true or fair?

And at the end of the day, though, it didn’t work out. Life happens. And we ended up going our separate ways. And it was very stressful and it wasn’t fun. And I had to liquidate the entire portfolio. That took me three years of my life to build. And I had to press the reset button again in 2015, 2016. So I built my entire portfolio over the past five to six years.

But that wasn’t fun. Part of my business. So I wouldn’t suggest anybody getting married to other people, other than their spouse. However, I love doing joint ventures. I like doing some joint venture deals with the right partners, right? You can bring in somebody who might have a skill or a strength that offsets yours.

And say, Hey, they’re good at raising money. I’m good at operations or, uh, vice versa. You know, it could, or I’m good at marketing and finding deals. They’re good at the day-to-day, uh, activity, and partnering up with somebody who offsets your skills without stepping on your toes or dancing on your strengths is a great way to test out doing a deal.

And the beautiful part is you go and buy 123 Main Street, you create an LLC that’s 123 Main Street LLC that owns that single deal, and you have an operating agreement that’s a Purpose entity just for that one deal. And if that deal works out great, you go and do another deal with that person. If it doesn’t, you’re only stuck with one deal.

You don’t have to partner with them on all the other different projects, you know? So it keeps you open to different kinds of dates. And if you want to keep on doing deals with somebody great, you’re in it because you love them, not because you have to be, uh, committed to them as an exclusive partnership across every project that you do.

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. So, after your partnership ended you sold off that portfolio. Now you have to rebuild your portfolio all over again. And you mentioned it was like the last six years. And, so what starting on your own where did you immediately go into syndication? Or did you, uh, did you do like a joint venture partner type?

Tim Bratz: I don’t like traditional syndicators. Um, I come from the single-family world, I was flipping, I had a turnkey business. When that partnership folded in 1516, I started flipping houses because I, you know, didn’t have access to my cash.

As we were liquidating these properties I opened up, you know, made a couple of bucks, but, um, I started flipping and so we flipped 80 to 100 turnkey houses in Cleveland. So we buy a single-family house, fix it up, and put a tenant in place. If it’s sold great, if not, we hold on to it for our own portfolio and cash flow.

And I had a lot of single-family investors or private money lenders on those deals, give them a promissory note. And, um. Uh, did it that way? And then I also had a lot of people who were buying these turnkey deals from me, right? They didn’t want to do any of the work they wanted equity upside. They want a predictable cash flow.

Think about a syndication investor, somebody who invests as an LP as a limited partner in syndication. Dude, they don’t want to do any work, right? They want it to be completely passive. They want a predictable return on their money and they want equity upside. Dude, it was, it was an easy conversation for me to have.

With these turnkey buyers saying, Hey, instead of you throwing a hundred grand into this single-family house and trying to get 8% with equity. Under one of my deals, I’ll pay you 10%. You do no work. You have no liability, no risk, and you still have equity upside. Um, and so it was an easy conversation for me to have.

And just like, and then, uh, you know, on the other side, the hard money lenders who were, I was paying 15, 18% to, I realized that just like I was going through transitions and graduating through different levels in my real estate. Career broker, wholesaler, single flipper, single family buys and holds investors, multi-family, small multi-family, larger multi-family, right?

You’re going through these graduated steps, more sophisticated as an investor. I realized there are a lot of transactional hard money lenders who are missing out on the long-term wealth building of owning and holding assets and the tax benefits that come with that, right? Like You’re a hard money lender, you’re getting taxed as an earned income tax bracket on all the dividends and gains you get.

And so I quickly realized that a lot of them were tired of underwriting the next deal to get paid again, you know, and, um, and I transitioned them into a lower preferred return. So I moved them to 10% instead of 18, like, why would they ever do that? You’ll also kick off cash flow and depreciation and equity upside.

And so the gains from refi cash-out refis and the gains from sales of these properties exceeded those 18% returns in most scenarios. So it made a lot of sense for them and to convert them into limited partners in my syndication deals. So I essentially do the burr method by renovating, renting, and refinance.

Rinse and repeat for apartments because I come from a single family. So I never, dude, I never took a class on this stuff. I never, um, read a book on it. I don’t have a CCIM designation or any of this other, I don’t, which I don’t even know stands for, um, you know, like I come from the residential world. I don’t.

And so I liken everything to a residential, um, level and how I. Bought these, these smaller multifamily deals with my investors is I’d say, Hey, you lend the money. I’ll give you a 10%, 10% return. And, um, and then I’ll kick you 20% of the equity forever. And I plan to refinance in two to three years and give you all your money back.

You take all your chips off the table, and then you still own 20 or 30% of the equity forever. And that allowed me to keep 70 or 80% of the equity. And that’s how I did the first, I don’t know, three, four or 500 doors that I, that I’ve no shit. The first. The first 1500 doors that I did was that way. And still, I structure it similarly.

We buy some more stabilized kind of stuff now. And I think. Listen, guys, there are a thousand different ways that you can deal based on the exit strategy, the cost of capital, and everything else. And if I was buying a skyscraper that was a 400 million deal and one person was willing to write the check and they wanted 90% of the equity, but I could get some fees on it and it was stable and I didn’t have to do anything and I get on 10% of a 400 million skyscraper.

I would still do that deal, you know, and at the same time, if I’m building something new construction and I and my team are working our asses off for the next on this project, and we’re the ones creating the value add or we find something that’s heavily distressed. And we’re repositioning it from a management perspective and construction perspective.

And guess what, if I’m creating all the value, then the operator deserves a little bit more equity. And I say this. Because I am the operator, right? So I can, I can say that from a standpoint of, Oh, well, it makes sense for you, Tim. But guess what? I also invest my money with different operators, with the same structure.

So I, uh, uh, I preach this and I do it myself. So it’s not like I’m one-sided in the way that I structure my deals. If it’s a heavy-value add a deal and the operators are competent rockstars, and they’re going to be working their tail off for the next two years, they deserve more equity. You know, I’m not big into taking fees though.

Like I don’t take any fees. I get paid when the investor gets the money back. Right. And I just started taking some acquisition fees, one, 2%. Uh, but I don’t take asset management fees. I don’t take fundraising fees. I don’t take capital events fees. I don’t take, um, uh, loan sponsorship fees. I don’t take disposition fees.

So I get paid. The same way the investor gets paid, right? They will, they, they make, they get paid regardless of the property’s performance. I only get paid once they get their money back and the property’s performing, you know? So I think that allows you to be in the same boat rowing in the same direction in a position where, um, Interests are aligned, you know, in a way that traditional syndication, not always, that’s not always the case.

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. So in terms of the legal structure of it, I know you said it’s not the traditional syndication, but is the legal structure a typical PPM? Uh, is it like a common tenant or not, so it’s okay.

Tim Bratz: We, we do, uh, you know, five Oh six B is what we started with. It was all friends and family and people we’ve already done business with.

And now we only do five Oh six. You know, you got eyeballs on you. And, um, I’m seeing, you know, I have a pretty big social media following. And so, uh, With all the eyeballs, you want to be able to talk about your deals and raise money and talk about it on social media. So we just do 506 C now. And, um, and that’s the same paperwork, right?

There’s a term sheet. There’s a private placement memorandum. They have to fill out the, you know, investor suitability questionnaire. And, uh, what else am I missing in there? Yeah. And a subscription agreement, right? And so it’s all the same stuff. And we have a, um, Um, an SEC registered investment for every deal that we do, and everyone is its own.

Um, but most of our deals are structured the same way. Again, we’re kind of in the middle now, right? The climate’s changing. Uh, I don’t want to take on heavy-value ad deals because… The labor force is skewed. Um, the supply chain is still all over the place and uh, thankfully the eviction moratoriums have been lifted, but that’s still, you know, kind of a political thing in some communities.

So we’re not doing heavy value-added anymore. We are doing some new construction. Because that’s a lot more predictable and we are buying some stabilized stuff. So with the stabilized stuff, it’s not as much work for me and my team. So guess what? We’re giving up a little bit more equity in those projects.

Maybe we do a 50-50 split with the investors and, um, and we structure it that way. There are a lot of people that you and I know who made more money last year and this year than professionals and they need depreciation. So that’s a cool way where you could say, Hey, what if we do a cost seg study, accelerate all the depreciation?

I give it all to the limited partners because maybe you and I don’t need it. And that offsets a lot of their tax liability at the end of the year. And maybe they don’t need a preferred return. So now you’ve got 20% of the money at 0%. Uh, rate of, you know, of a preferred return or interest rate on it, you know, and then really you can go and pay a retail price for a deal because you’re only paying five, five and a half percent on the other 80% of the, of the bank money that you got on that deal.

So it’s like, dude, it’s, I think who’s going to win over the next 24 months is people who can raise money and people who can creatively finance deals. If you can do those two things, I think you’re going to clean up over the next two. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. So I like to circle back into five, your transition from 506 B to 506 C.

At what point did you make that transition? Was it the number of units? Was it the amount of asset management? Was it, you know, once you got big in social media, at which point did you make that decision?

Tim Bratz: It was more of the social media thing. It was, I had, I had events and I had 200 people in the audience and I wanted to be able to talk about deals without dancing on my words, you know, um, or tiptoeing on my words.

And so, uh, it just lowered our liability of being able to talk about deals, current deals, past deals, and all that stuff where I just didn’t, I was talking about.

And then it just created liability for me. And I was like, it’s, it’s cleaner if I don’t, you know, do a five or six B anymore. So, um, but you know, what’s cool is, is there still the, um, the sec came out with something where you can start as a five or six B. And then transition it into 506 C. So if you have investors early on, or you have some friends and family who are not accredited, you can open up the initial offering to them.

They can come in and commit to a certain number of units. If you don’t fill the whole thing up, you can transition it to a 506 C. Which then you can mass market it. But from that point forward, you can’t take any more 506B non-accredited investors. So there’s some cool stuff that you can do. I, you know, I see Grant Cardone’s doing like, uh, non-accredited, small increments, reggae type stuff, which I’ve never gotten into.

I never played around with it. Um, that’s another way, you know, I saw somebody in here is doing a tokenized, um, way to do it. The limitation with that is. You’re not allowed to sell your equity in an investment in the first 12 months that you own it. So you have to raise the money, but it creates an amazing opportunity for people to liquidate and create liquidity in an otherwise illiquid investment typically, like being able to tokenize it after or sell portions of those tokens after that 12-month mark. So there’s a lot of ways to skin the cat and, um, you know, being on, on, on, you know, discussions like this and learning different strategies, knowing that there’s not one size fits all, um, the more quivers you have in, or the more arrows you have in your quiver.

Like the more dynamic you’re going to be on, on, and, uh, competitive, you’re going to be able to raise money and structure deals creatively in the next 24 to 36 months. 

Tim Mai: So I know you have raised over a hundred million dollars by now. What would you say are your top three ways of raising money? Attracting investors.

Tim Bratz: Yeah, man. Great. Uh, great question. And that, and listen, guys, I’ve never done institutional equity, right? The only way I’ve ever raised money is by individuals, people like you and me, um, who have a hundred grand, 200 grand, 2 million. Um, I think that my biggest investor has four or 5 million with me.

And I have a few people in the seven figures, I don’t know, maybe a dozen people in the seven figures. And then, um, a lot of people from a hundred thousand Uh, hundreds of investors in that realm. So, uh, I’ve raised about, I don’t know, 110, 115 million that way. And, um, what I would say is like the simpler you can make it the better, you know, when you’re talking about waterfall structures and you’re talking, dude, you’re going to lose 90% of the population.

As soon as you hit, you talk about that, right? If you say, Hey, I’m going to pay you an 8% return. They can conceptualize that. You know, and when I get your money back in the next 36 to 60 months, you’re going to maintain your equity forever. And I’m going to kick you a 1% equity, which might not seem like a lot, but it’s a 15 million deal.

And let me show you what that looks like. It pays off cash flow, you get depreciation which offsets a lot of the cash flow, and you have equity growth as the property appreciates, and as we pay down principal. And by the way. Another deal with me and another deal. And my goal is over the next 20 years when you’re ready to retire, you’re in four or five, 10 different deals with me paying you these, these, these pops of cash flow every month.

And these big pops of refi proceeds or sales proceeds every couple of years, too. Does that sound? Exciting. Yeah, dude, that’s so easy for somebody to conceptualize, right? As opposed to like, well, I think, uh, you know, let’s, let’s get your calculator out and, and look at waterfall structures, and after you get this prep and then there’s this, this IRR hurdle.

We do what, what are you talking about? I’ve made 400 million or more. I’ve done probably 600 million deals and I still don’t understand that shit, you know? So it’s like, how is somebody who’s not in the industry going to understand that the simpler you can make it? Having a beer with somebody at, you know, at, at the pool or, um, meeting somebody at, at the kids’ baseball game and trying to explain to them what this looks like dude, just keep it stupid, simple.

So, uh, that’s, that’s, I think a big key of taking complex shit and making it simple is one of the things that I’ve been pretty good at. Um, and I think I’ve been able to attract a lot of, a lot of investors and students because of that, um, because I simplify complex thoughts, um, or at least. I try to. Um, so I think that’s, that’s number one.

The second thing is there’s money everywhere. It is frigging everywhere. You need to be talking about it. How are people, people aren’t going to raise their hand and come to you and say, do you take money for your investments? They don’t even know if you are doing these investments, you have to be talking about it.

You have to be sharing it on social media. It’s a free marketing tool and it is the most powerful marketing tool this world has ever seen. It’s free to have 5, 000 friends on Facebook. You guys realize that free, you know, who all my investors are. Entrepreneurs, almost all of them are entrepreneurs who are not real, real estate professionals.

I have a lot of real estate. I don’t know, 20%, 15% that is real estate that is real estate professionals, but about the math, the vast majority are traditional business owners who are good at making money. And usually not as good at saving it and bad at multiplying it. So. Like, I’m in e-commerce.

Mastermind. I don’t know anything about e-commerce. I’ve never done e-commerce, but I’m in there because I’m the only guy who knows how to multiply money. And all of them are good at making money. And they don’t know what to do, they’re all, they’re fearful. They’re afraid of what to do with it. So they just stockpile it and they sit on it.

And as soon as you can educate them and be seen as the resource, all of a sudden, all of them put their money with me, you know, and they all tell all their money because nobody knows how to multiply. Like we are very. Hot commodity. Like, like think about the market right now, guys think about what’s happened to stock portfolios down 30% on average, you know, tech down 50%.

On average, you got crypto portfolios, just obliterated for the most part, you know, down 70 to 80%, guess what’s not gone down real estate, rental real estate portfolios. Nothing rises with inflation and tracks inflation. No metric in the economy tracks inflation better than rental rates. If the economy is up by, or inflation increases by, you know, 10%, 11%, guess what, you can expect rents to increase by 11%.

There’s nothing better that tracks that. And, not only are you getting a better return than the stock market in crypto, but you’re not losing your principle, right? No, not only like. You’re not only getting a better return, but, and it’s a tax advantage. It’s like, we have an opportunity and I think a responsibility to go and share what we do with as many people as humanly possible because they’re just getting crushed in their retirement portfolios, in their cash positions right now.

And we have something better. It’s like, like you can see how passionate I am because like, I believe in it. If there was something that made more money, that was a better tax advantage, that paid dividends, that had long-term equity growth. And depreciation and principal paydown backed by a tangible asset.

I’d be doing it. I promise you. I’m a lifelong student of personal finance. There’s nothing better than commercial real estate. And we must take this to people and show them what we do and how we do it. And, uh, let them know that there are places where they can put their money. So that’s the other thing that I would say is you gotta talk to people.

Go and friend up every entrepreneur you can find on social media and get to 5, 000 friends on Facebook. Fred them all up. All of a sudden, when you post, they’re going to start seeing your stuff. And it might take a year. It might take three years. It might take 10 years. And then all of a sudden they sell there, they sell their business.

Boom, sitting on 15 million. They got to deploy it. Boom. I’ve been watching you, Tim, for the past five years. Hey, this is the first you’ve ever reached out to me. Yeah. Like, Hey, I just sold my business. I want to put about two, 3 million and play with you. Uh, do you have any deals? I don’t even know who you are now, but I’ve been watching you for three, four, five years.

I see you’re a family man. I see you got good values. I like who you are. I know what you stand for. I feel good putting 2 million with you. We live in a voyeuristic society where everybody’s watching, they might not engage. They might, might not like, they might not comment. Right. But they are watching and they’re, they’re watching what you do.

And so you gotta be out there educating, inspiring people on social media, go and interview your, your, your CPA, talk about doing real estate deals, talk about syndicating, talk about what returns look like, right? Go and interview your real estate attorney. Talk about real estate stuff, anything, you know, uh, mortgages, syndication, uh, how to secure your investment with a promissory note, like whatever, go and interview your property manager, go and interview your contractor, go and interview your, uh, uh, whoever, whoever else, one of your vendors, one of your suppliers, like go and talk to other, let them create the content.

But you being the medium that gets conveyed to your audience, gives you the trust and respect to your audience. Even though you’re not even bringing the value, you know, it’s powerful stuff. So you got to be talking about it. You got to be talking about it all the time and in front of everybody. So social media is where I get a lot of money.

Um, and then, and then masterminds, right? I talked to you about the e-commerce mastermind. I also, I mean, I’m probably in five different masterminds and there’s a lot of people who sell businesses or, you know, um, you know, obviously real estate entrepreneurs are pretty. Entrepreneurial, a lot of times have their hands on different things.

I got a buddy who’s in this ERC stuff right now, like the emergency relief credit or whatever it is. Um, that, that dude, he’s, he’s pulling down 20 million a year, something stupid over the past 12 months. Now it might not last, but the dude’s got 10 million bucks to deploy, you know? Wow. So it’s like. You never know.

You just hang out with resourceful people, who are looking for an edge. I let them go and pursue getting rich quickly in crypto, selling e-commerce stores, and doing ERC tax credits. I let them kind of like, uh, you guys ever seen the men who built America? Yep. And that’s America. Only a few of you guys go.

And I think it’s free on the history network or you can buy it for 4. Um, on, uh, on Amazon, on the prime. It is unbelievable. They interview Rockefeller and Carnegie or not interview them, but they essentially share their stories and they interview present-day Titans, right? Like Donald Trump, and Steve Wynn. Um, Donnie Deutsch, uh, Carly Fiorini, like all these different titans of the industry today, Jack Welch, um, and talk to them about, you know, correlations in business from 100 years ago, 150 years ago to today.

And unbelievable business insights. It’s like a master’s degree and it’s so entertaining too. But one of the things they talk about is that John D Rockefeller was an oil man. But you know, he didn’t, he didn’t dig for oil. He thought gamblers dug for oil. He let them dig for oil. He said, businessmen refine oil, let the gamblers go dig.

And then they’ll bring the oil to him. He then refines it and sells it. He doesn’t have the risk. He has predictability. So I do that same thing in my business. I let other people go out and make money, get rich quick in crypto, get rich quick in e-commerce stores, get rich quick in, uh, ERC tax credits, get rich quick.

I feel like there’s a baseball card stint where people were making a hundred grand a month that I knew were selling baseball cards, like crazy stuff. And, uh, I let them go do that. I don’t go and chase shiny objects. I refine oil, right? I let them go make their money and then they bring it to me to then deploy it.

So that’s staying inside your lane and staying focused. 

Tim Mai: Awesome. Wow. I’ve never even, um, I, and I’ve, I’ve seen Titan. I’ve seen all those shows, but never thought of it that way either. That’s super, super powerful. Yeah. Now I know you, I mean, You, you intentionally put yourself out there as an influencer as a mentor.

So, it’s easy for others to see you as the expert as an authority right so how do you recommend your listeners who are listening, and perhaps right now they don’t have that? You know, uh, that love of influence. They’re not positioning themselves as an educator, or a mentor. Uh, what, what would you recommend them to do, to begin that?

Tim Bratz: Yeah. I mean, I wasn’t either. Right. I truly believe that wealth is like sunshine, right? Like if you and I go outside, Tim, you getting sunshine takes no sunshine away from me and me educating you and teaching you, you know, how to go and build wealth. Right. And just go buy some rental real estate. Love doesn’t adversely affect me at all.

A lot of people, well, you’re training your competition and you must do all yours. I make 90, 90 plus percent of my money from doing deals, not from coaching. Right. Like it’s like, less than 10% of my wealth, excuse me, comes from coaching. And so it’s like, I go and educate people, not because I’m recruiting competitors, I’m creating collaborators.

They’re going to go out and find a deal. And they’re going to be like, you know, I don’t, I don’t feel comfortable taking this down by myself. Let me hit up Tim. And maybe I’ll, I’ll joint venture with him or maybe I’ll sell it to him and he’ll kick me some equity and I can just kind of ride his coattails on this deal.

And instead of me, you know, paying money to get educated or me, um, losing time or losing money, getting punched in the face, trying to take this deal down on my own. I can make money by linking arms with somebody who’s been there and done that and can teach me, and help me fast track. On how to build this.

And so, uh, and the same thing was, is, is with, uh, uh, sourcing deals and then also in raising money by me being on shows like this and me talking on social media about how I do what I do and educating people. I’m seen as an authority, and I didn’t. I didn’t try to go out seeking that. I just tried to like to help people.

Cause I saw all these broke-ass people and all my friends who are trading their time for money and at a job. And I’m like, dude, just go and buy a rental property. Like I got a really good friend who bought a townhouse in DC and lived in it. And then the one up next door came up for sale, right? He works for the government.

He’s got a full-time job. When he retires, he gets paid 40% of his highest salary. All right. So he makes like 180 a year right now. He’s pretty high up in the government. And, um, but he’ll make like 70 grand or whatever the hell he told me. It’s like 70, 000 a year in pension after he works for 25 years for the government.

Okay. He bought the townhouse that he lived in. And the one next to it, right? And then, and then he bought another one just now. And so now he owns his own home and then he’s got these two townhouses. Let’s not even include his own home. These two townhouses’ cash flow is almost a thousand dollars a month each, and they’re paying down principal and they’re appreciating over time.

They’re each worth about seven 50 right now. Okay. Over the next 25 years, they will be worth at least one and a half million dollars each. I’d say that since 2000 property values have at least doubled, right? Maybe more. Okay. We’ll say they just double. This dude now has two townhouses, which he fell into backwards by accident, right?

He didn’t intentionally go out and try to be a real estate entrepreneur. He fell into two deals, and those two deals are going to be paid off, and it’s gonna be 3 million worth of assets that he’s gonna own 20, 25 years from now. That both kick off probably I’d say about $4,000 a month in poss. No, I mean, that’s what they’re renting for right now.

They’re probably gonna be bringing in $8,000 a month each at that time, you know? So you’re talking about like 16 Gs times 12 months? That’s 180 thousand, almost $200,000 a year in cash flow. Let’s take out operating expenses and stuff. Let’s say he nets one 50. You know, one 40, that’s double, double. A part-time side opportunity that he spends an hour a week on is gonna give him 3 million to pass down to his kid.

Mm. Give him a double. He works his dick off for 25 years for the government and when he dies, his family doesn’t get anything. They don’t give a lump sum. Right? Think about that. Think about how powerful real estate is. So like me, understanding or me, like realizing that I was like more people just need to buy a property, right?

Just buy one. And I started talking about it on social media. And as I was talking about it on social media, all of a sudden people would raise their hand and say, Hey, can I sell you a deal? Can I buy a deal from you? Can we join a venture on a deal? Can I lend you private money, Tim? Or Yeah. Do you coach?

Do you mentor? Can I pay you to coach me? You start hearing that enough times. You’re like, all right, let me put 15 people in a room and just kind of like share some ideas and strategies. And it just started snowballing, right? It started, uh, you know, just rolling down the hill and it started compounding over and over and over again.

And then essentially a branding company, a publishing company reached out to me and said, Hey man, let’s make you the face. We’ll put all the dollars behind it. You just, you know, train and educate and that kind of, you know, created a commercial empire. So that allowed me to go out and kind of put me on a platform when COVID hit.

Um, I was able to buy my brand out from that publishing company and now I own it myself. So I was able to, you know, I don’t have as much overhead as they do. So I dropped the price and, and, you know, tried to get more value and all that stuff. So my point is, I didn’t. Try to become a guru, right? All I try to do is help other people.

And I think that was conveyed genuinely. It was authentic. This guy cares. He gives a shit about wanting people to do more, be more, have more, give more. Right. And so it’ll, it allowed me to, you know, be in a position where I just helped other people. And then it just.

Turned into deals, turned into money, turned into opportunity, turned into coaching income and consulting income. So it’s, um, but it never was, it wasn’t intended that way. It was just trying to go out and educate people. And I promise you guys, you guys will do the same thing. It’ll open up doors of opportunity for you.

Deal flow, money flow, which is all that matters. I have people who even want to come and work for me for free, you know, just to learn and be around us. So it’s like the only three things that matter in this business are deal flow, money flow. and refining your operations and social media and having an influence on that, uh, opens you up and you don’t need a big following.

You need a thousand tribe members and you can accomplish anything. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. I love that. And just that mindset of just being out there helping others educate others. I mean, that’s very doable, right? Even if that education is like what I’m doing right now, where you interview an expert or, you know, share with them an article.

Uh, it’s, it’s very doable. So I love that. Um, in terms of maintaining these, you know, so you build these relationships through social media, uh, what, what is your way of maintaining that relationship, keeping them, I guess, in the loop of all the deals that you have? Do you do a newsletter? Do you do, you know, any direct mail?

Is it all email? What are some of your strategies there around that?

Tim Bratz: Of just capital management, you’re saying? Like, keeping investors in the loop? 

Tim Mai: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both existing investors and also potential investors. 

Tim Bratz: Yeah, so I’m like, I’ll, I’ll post on social media that I have an upcoming deal. It’s 506c.

If you’re interested, here’s the registration link. Hop on a webinar. Um, I’m a big believer in one too many activities. You know, one on one phone calls are not gonna, you’re not gonna raise hundreds of millions of dollars. You have to figure out how you can Answer all the investors’ questions. Um, you do a couple of deals and it’s all the same questions, right?

Like what’s the asset? What’s the return on investment? What’s the exit strategy? Tell me more about you. Why should I invest with you? Like that’s, that’s about it. Um, and so if you can answer those questions, how am I secured? What are the tax ramifications of this? Do I get a K one at the end of the year or 10 99?

Like it’s just you, you end up getting the same questions and you ask a frequently asked question. You know, think PDF together or you address it in a webinar. So typically what I do is I have an email list. Everybody who’s ever said that they want to invest, anybody who I’ve ever done a deal with, anybody who I think has money and I haven’t, I’m an, I have them on an email list.

I’ll send an email out. Very, very simple. Couple of sentences with some bullet points on the deal. If you’re interested, check out the attachment. The attachments are like a two or three-page offering kind of memorandum. Very simple. Again, the first page is about the deal with some pictures. The second page is about the returns and, uh, and that’s about it.

And then in the email, also, if you’re interested after you take a look at this investment summary, hop on the webinar, it’ll be a 45-minute webinar. Tim will go through everything and I answer all those questions on the webinar. Who is Tim Bratz and his team? Like, why would I trust him? And why would I, why is he a competent person that I should invest with?

Right? That’s a very important question to answer. Number two is what the asset is talking about in the deal. Here’s where it is. Here are some metrics around it. Here’s the current occupancy. Here’s the upside that we see. And then most importantly how do I get paid? Like, what does it end up looking like for me as an investor?

So if I bring you a hundred grand, What are the ways and I break it down, you get paid a preferred return plus cash flow plus depreciation plus equity growth. And here’s what that all looks like from a cash-on-cash standpoint. And then when you get your cash back here’s what the equity growth looks like and the equity value.

If we’re refinancing it or selling it or whatever. So, um, that’s, that’s how I do it. So it’s a high-level email, with some bullet points. If they like that, they can get into the offering memorandum. If they like that, they can hop on the webinar. And if they still want to go beyond that, then we’ll hop on a one-on-one phone call.

And it’s not usually me. It’s usually my chief investment officer who’s way more detail-oriented than I am. And, um, he gives them a level of confidence, an attorney and stuff. So he gives them a level of confidence that uh, that we’re, uh, very professional and have all of our stuff together. So that’s how we attract the money.

And usually, we have enough people on the webinar, um, and enough excitement. It fills up pretty quickly. So we’ll fill it up within a webinar. Um, we typically oversubscribe by about 25% because, you know, 25% usually falls off and, uh, and then we can fund the deal. And then once we take down the deal, we make preferred distributions on them, on their preferred returns every quarter.

So within 30 days of the end of every quarter. So in April, July, October, and then January, we make distributions to all the investors. Uh, and along with that comes an email update or a video update. And we typically include something like a PowerPoint presentation that just goes boom, boom, boom. Here’s the current occupancy.

Here’s the percentage of construction that’s done. Here’s where we are with rents and here’s the link to the pictures and, you know, just letting them know where we’re at. And sometimes I’ll put a video in there. Um, And, uh, go that route. And so we, yeah, we keep it simple. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. Um, what’s, um, is there, what, what software do you use to manage that?

Tim Bratz: We use invest next. Which is, I mean, we’ve looked at probably, I don’t know, six or eight of them. And, uh, we just like that one the best. They’re, they’re a small enough company. I think they’re headquartered out of Michigan. They’re a small enough company where we have a lot of influence with them. And they, every time we need something changed or added or edited, um, they do that, but they’re big enough where, um, you know, they can, they have access to capital and they can, they have the bandwidth to make those, those updates and changes. So, um, yeah, they do, they do a great job. 

Tim Mai: Do you have any other tools or resources that you like a lot?

Tim Bratz: Dude, I’m, I’m a simple guy, man. My, my, my email list for my investors is an Excel spreadsheet. Like I have their name. The first name, last name, phone number, email address, and some notes of my disc.

Like there are people with fancier CRMs and I think if they get caught up in that stuff though, you know, it’s like, what matters? Like guys, there are only a couple of metrics that matter. You know, the two most important metrics that you can be focused on right now are several offers you’re making daily.

You can’t control if deals close. The one thing you can control is how many offers you make. And eventually, the more offers you make, the ratio will appear to how many deals close, right? There are going to be deals that fall off and don’t make it through due diligence. There’s going to be deals that, um, have title issues.

There’s going to be deals that blow up or financing comes back on terms that you can’t agree with. Um, and for some reason, the seller goes crazy or whatever, and that all happens. What you can control is the number of offers you make daily. We’re making offers all the time without ever seeing a property.

Right. We know what it takes to renovate a unit. We know what the metrics will look like. We know how we can increase income, and how we can decrease expenses. And we can do all of that remotely from anywhere in the world. And so we look at a deal, we underwrite it, we make an offer. If we’re in the ballpark, then we’ll submit a letter of intent.

Um, and that’s what I mean by an offer. An offer to me is like just any way of swinging the bat. Meaning if you can have a verbal conversation, Hey, you know, you’re asking 2 million, I’d be in one five range. Is it worth continuing the conversation? That to me is at least swinging the bat, at least getting the conversation.

No, go and fly a kite. Okay. I will, you know, I’ll come back in six months when it’s still listed at 2 million. Um, Or yeah, Hey, totally worth an offer. I’ll present anything like bring it to me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So like that to me is an offer. Also, an email having that conversation is an offer.

It doesn’t have to be a letter of intent. It doesn’t have to be a formal purchase and sale agreement. It’s just swinging the bat, getting the conversations going off, um, you know, are we in the same neighborhood? Numbers-wise, if they say yes, then we put a formal letter of intent together, submit it, and go back and forth on terms.

Once that gets executed, then I go out to the property. I’m not wasting my time, dude. I’m, I’m in the game of sifting through deals, right? I don’t go and try to make a deal work. I try to sift through deals faster than anybody else, so that way I can, I can snag up the good deals right first. So that’s my mentality.

We don’t get caught up on a certain deal or anything like that. We just rip through. Deal after deal after deal. We make offers. We let them know we’re very serious, very qualified buyers. And if the terms don’t make sense, then they don’t. I will say, with the change in the market and interest rates, we’re making two offers right now.

So right now we make an offer at us coming in, buying them out. And, bringing the full capital stack, meaning, uh, we catch what we get alone and we raise all the money and they’re out and it’s typically a lower offer. It’s typically like 70-75% of what they’re asking for, or we offer two offers, though the second offer is us bringing 70 or 80% of the deal, and then carrying back 20 to 30% as in like either an equity position or a seller carry note that’s unsecured.

And so that allows me if. If I’m willing to give them their price, they’ll possibly do it on my terms. So it allows me now to go get 70% of the money at a 5% interest rate, and then get them to carry back the other 30% of the money at 2, 4%, maybe a 0% interest rate. Maybe I don’t give them any prep or any equity.

Um, and I just pay them all principal payments. Or maybe I say, Hey, I’ll give you this price point. There’s no preferred return, but I’ll give you 20% of the equity upside. In the deal. And now you gave up 20% equity to the seller. They now have future growth. They got their price point. They have a little bit of a note that will pay them in the future, plus 20% of any gains above and beyond that.

And your blended cost of capital is lower because you got them to carry back 30% at a 0% interest rate. You know, so we make, and that’s a higher price point, but it allows us to make an offer. That’s an offer instead of a yes or no offer. Does that make sense? Yep. 

Tim Mai: Yeah. And I love how you incorporate that creative financing kind of structure on the single-family over to this multi-family every time.

That’s awesome. Um, and, uh, so I know you, you started in the last market crash right before the last market crash. Where do you see this market going? 

Tim Bratz: Um, yeah, I was in the trades. Kind of. I had a painting company. I was an intern and a broker and stuff from 05 to 09. I bought my first investment property in 09.

I bought my first apartment in 2012. And, um, you know, obviously been through COVID and a lot of other stuff. You know, nobody’s got a crystal ball. Nobody saw COVID happening. Nobody saw the rise in rents. And, um, this, this boom that happened over the past two years, either like, so, you know, all these, all these economists who are predicting the future, who knows, but I think, I think there’s a few pretty clear things.

And the first is that prices have been very inflated. I don’t know if they can go any higher, um, without the feds, you know, increasing interest rate, trying to soften some things. So that’s happening. Um, it has spooked a lot of sellers, but the sellers haven’t come off their price. I read two articles this weekend on the gap between sellers and buyers now.

Right. And then, and it. Sellers aren’t coming down. Buyers aren’t going up. So it’s been a very slow go throughout the past couple of months. That’s why I think if you can get in there and make it attractive for the sellers, by carrying back the seller financing on that gap, it gets them their price point on your terms.

And you can get into a lot of deals that way. So I think that’s going to be a big deal. I mentioned that nothing tracks inflation better than rental rates. And I think rent rates are going to skyrocket, you know, and I don’t think the biggest driver of inflation is energy costs and energy costs are through the roof.

Right. It’s too much red tape for, um, A lot of the oil companies are up to dig here. And so, uh, Biden, you know, kind of put a constraint on that. And, uh, they say two to three years before any oil prices start coming down. So that means we’re going to see two to three years of inflation. Um, if that happens, then rents are going to continue increasing by eight to 10% a year.

Over that time frame. So I love that I can get fixed rate financing right now at 5%, 5 and a quarter percent. Um, and, and I know that rent growth is going to keep on happening that much, and that stuff’s going to compound. Um, you know, you take a look at what happens when. When inflation occurs. So quick, quick backstory, From 1960 to 1990, the American government came off of the gold standard, right?

And so 1 in 1960 was 4 in 1990. Okay, so it devalued by 75% in 30 years. Wow. From 1990. Throughout the, um, the.com bubble burst, the global financial crisis, and covid until, well, up until 2020. Before Covid, I’m sorry, before Covid hit 1990 and 2020, it was devalued by another 50%. So a basket of goods that cost a dollar and 1960, cost $4 and 1990, cost $8 in 2020.

And then the government printed 40% of the monetary supply in the past 24 months. What do you think that’s going to do to them, to the devaluation of the dollar and how long does it take? Asset prices don’t increase. But kind of they do because the dollar devalues and it takes more dollars to buy that asset.

Does that make sense? Right. Yep. So, what took 30 years for values to double is probably going to happen in the next 10 to 15 based on printing 40% of the monetary supply in two years. So I don’t think there’s any way not to get around that. And. My final point would be, dude, I don’t think the government gives a rat’s ass about printing money, any further and about playing with interest rates anymore.

And I don’t care who the president is, whether it’s Republican or Democrat, I think it’s proven that nobody wants the economy to collapse on their watch and they will just keep on playing with interest rates and keep on printing money in the future. And so I think we’re going to see more of what we’re seeing right now of printing of capital.

And or as soon as the regime changes in 2024, um, if things get shaken up enough over the next 24 months, I think interest rates are going to drop substantially again. So I think it’s a good, good buying time right now. And I think low-interest rates, I mean, I guys, I think six or 7% money is free money anyways.

So like, I’m not stopping buying because I have good buying criteria. And I continue doing good deals. Um, I’m not timing the market. I’m not trying to hit home runs. I’m not trying to hit grand slams. You know, what wins baseball games, base hits. Base it after base hit, after base hit, after base hit, after base hit.

And all of a sudden, more runs are scored off of more base hits than going up to the plate in the bottom of the nine, hoping to hit a grand slam to get a win, right? I’d rather see you guys do a good deal after a good deal after a good deal after a good deal after a good deal. Like, you’re gonna go to the market?

Like, who are you, Nostradamus? You’re gonna go and, perfectly, every time I try to time the market, I got my ass handed to me, right? Like, just go out and do good deals. And if you go and do good deals, they’re going to compound. You’re going to find yourself sitting on a portfolio of hundreds if not thousands of doors.

And when the right opportunities and the right buying criteria do come along, you’re going to look like you got lucky because you did the footwork and you did, uh, the things that you had to do to just build the portfolio. And you were positioned. With the private money lenders with the resources to find these deals to get the first crack at the, at, at these opportunities to get a seat at the table because you’re well respected in the community because you’ve done a bunch of deals, right?

You have a reputation for taking down deals. That is more important than getting better deals than trying to time the market. Hmm. And it’s more predictable. 

Tim Mai: That’s awesome. I love it. All right. Now I like to hear about your passion projects. I know you have a couple of different ones to share with us at this point in your life.

You know, what’s important to you? What are you passionate about?

Tim Bratz: Yeah, man. I, uh, that’s a good question. I, you know, I’m at a point in my life where I wanted to hit a billion dollars in portfolio value and then go beyond that. And then all of a sudden, like, that’s important when you don’t have money, you know, and then all of a sudden I have money.

My life, I live on the ocean. I have a ridiculous mountain house. I have a, I own an Island, right? I have an amazing lifestyle. I have amazing time freedom. I have amazing kids and a wife and family and friends. And it’s like my lifestyle wouldn’t change if I quadrupled my portfolio. So now it’s more about the impact for me.

Um, and, and, you know, in a, in a self, um, preservation kind of a way, it’s like it, you. Uh, the more you impact people, the more it comes full circle too, you know, so it’s like, it’s, it’s cool when you can lead with value. And, um, and that’s what I’m focused on. So, you know, we’ve done some stuff like I have the kids’ books, little legacy library, uh, little legacy library.

com. It essentially takes those classic personal development books, like Think and grow rich and How to win friends and influence people. And the richest man in Babylon creates children’s versions of those books. So if you’ve got kids, Four to 10 years old, uh, they’re really powerful, really cool books. Um, I’m partnered up with my wife and one of our best friends who wrote the stories.

So I can tell you how good they are because I didn’t write them. Uh, I just gave, you know, feedback and insights on it. And, uh, they’re just powerful. You know, it’s like, like you asked me, Hey, how’d you, how’d you get in this personal development, this mindset game? I had to go through it all on my own because traditional education didn’t teach it to me.

And I had to do it throughout my twenties and my thirties to retrain my brain. And I’m like, what if you’re just programmed the right way? Early on, you know, and so that was like, that was a big impetus of this. So that’s kind of a passion project, is the kid’s books, little legacy library. Um, another one is, legacy wealth holding, or I’m sorry, legacy wealth Academy that we just launched.

And, um, it’s essentially like my mastermind has a couple hundred people in it. They’re rock stars in all asset classes in the commercial real estate world. Um, Not just multifamily. It’s some of the best, most amazing people you’ve ever met. And they’re amazing at what they do, um, in their different asset classes.

And I thought, you know, it’d be cool where I don’t, I don’t, I’m not an expert on other asset classes. I’m an expert on multifamily. I’ve done a lot of short-term rentals. I’ve done some, um, I’ve owned, I don’t know, three different. Self-storage facilities and office buildings, some other stuff. But like some people do a lot more of that in my mind.

I thought maybe they want to increase their influence. I can create a platform for them to coach and create kind of like a master class for other people, um, and educate, you know, and, uh, and so that’s what we ended up doing. So we have like 20 different master classes in real estate and wealth building.

Um, Topics across the board, raising private money, getting your first 10 rentals, scaling into multifamily mobile home parks, self-storage facilities, Airbnb, all that stuff. And, um, like legitimately, I could sell it for 1, 000 a month. And I was like, I want it to be available to these badass kids on Instagram who hit me up over like 16 years old.

In their mom’s house, they want to learn how to do real estate. And I was like, how do I make it accessible for them? And I thought, um, yeah, maybe I’ll price it from light to like, I don’t know, 79 or 200. And I was like, you know what, let’s make it like 50 bucks. And I was like, if I make it 50 bucks, let’s just make it 10.

You know, so it’s 10 a month for all these masterclasses. And it’s like so much frigging value and it’s open to the masses. And so like we launched it. Last month we got over 200 people already on it and just amazing reviews. And so like, that’s a cool piece where I can say, Hey, I don’t, I don’t make money off of this anyways.

It’s just like, all the dollars that we get go back into marketing, which isn’t that much, right? I make 2, 000 a month. That just goes back into marketing. And, um, to expose it to more, more people and, um, make a bigger influence. So, uh, if you guys are looking for something, check out legacy wealth Academy, you can learn a lot more about a lot of different asset classes and how other people find off-market deals.

How they raise money on those deals and how they operate and what their exit strategy is and how they structure the funding, financing, and all that stuff. Um, for all these different assets, academy. com. And it’s like I said, it’s 10 a month or you could pay for it for a year in advance for 100. So it’s like, it’s just a cool resource with a ton of value and, um, and, and so that’s what I’m looking forward to doing, man.

I just, I’m pouring, that’s awesome. Cool. On the fire, on the social media side, trying to give as much value as possible, on YouTube. Uh, so check out Legacy Wealth on YouTube and there’s a lot of value. Um, we’ll drop two videos a week on there and, um, but yeah, man, I just, you know, that’s, that’s really where I’m at right now.

You know, if I buy 50 to a hundred million dollars a year, great. Um, I got the portfolio that I currently own and, um, You know, just helping my team now. I’m like, you know, vesting them into equity, which is kind of cool. They’re building some long-term wealth and it’s, um, practicing what I preach.

Tim Mai: I love it. And I, yeah, I mean, I love how you always, always like to go the extra mile to deliver a ton of value to, to other people. Uh, yeah, I love that. Um, so If you can go back to your younger self, uh, what is the one lesson you would, uh, teach or share with your younger self? 

Tim Bratz: I think, I think young people, especially with social media and stuff today, can be extremely insecure, you know?

Um, it was like that when I was a kid. And, um, although… Uh, you know, I, I don’t know, like I wasn’t, I wasn’t a nerdy kid, but I wasn’t like the most popular kid either, like always had, uh, I played sports. I was friends with the nerds. I was friends with the, with the jocks, you know, I was friends with the kids in the honors classes.

I was friends with the kids in the, um, you know, special education or like, special needs time type of classes, you know? So it’s like, I kind of ran in all different circles. Um, And I think, but I think the confidence piece is a, is a big, um, hold back from a lot of people, you know, having, having the confidence to go on social media and who cared, like not giving a shit about what other people do.

As soon as I got to this point, probably my late twenties, 30 years old, um, which is sad. It took me that long. Right. And there’s, that’s. You know, there are still people who are paralyzed by what other people think about them who are way older than me. Um, but I got to this point when I was like 30-32 years old and I was like Why do I give a shit what other people think about me, right?

Like and as soon as I reached this point of not caring what other people thought about me They ended up liking me more. It’s like, Oh, this guy’s genuine. He doesn’t care what other people like. He’s just trying to speak from the heart. He’s trying to be a good human being, you know, like knowing what your values are, and that to me, I think is a big deal of not caring what other people think about you.

And that comes with confidence, right? And confidence comes with winning little victories. That compounds over time. You know what confidence is. Confidence is the memory of winning, write that down. Confidence is the memory of winning, not one time, but many times over and over and over again. And if you can build confidence, I didn’t know how to build confidence.

And if you can teach your younger self or a younger generation how to build confidence by getting little victories, don’t go after a hundred, you go by one, then by a duplex, by a quadplex, get into an eight-unit, then keep on doubling in your portfolio. Do those little victories. Raising money on a 200, 000 deal before you have to raise it on a 2-million deal builds confidence, you know, it’s little victories and I’d rather see somebody do that.

They’re going to have a lot more staying power than the person who falls into a 300-unit portfolio right out of the gate. To develop the confidence if you develop the confidence. And then roll in, roll that into your influence, right? And, then, the two key characteristics, this is guys, I’m giving you gold.

I hope you, hopefully, you guys are taking this in and understanding this because it changed everything for me. Having influence is what’s needed to raise money. It’s what’s needed for people to want to pay you consulting fees. It’s what’s needed for people to want to sell you a deal or partner with you on a project.

You have to have influence. Influence comes from two things, respect, and trust in your audience, right? And the people that you’re influencing, they have to respect you. They got to trust you. And, and this is, since this is a money-raising panel, I’ll give you an example. My dad. Is like a million or next to his work, like 2 million bucks.

He was a police officer who had a part-time security business and made three times as much money in his security business than he ever did working a policeman job. And, um, so he’s, he’s, he’s got some cash, right? House is paid off, sitting on a little bit of liquidity, uh, some money in the stock market, getting pummeled in the stock market.

And when I’m, I’m, you know, and this is 2008, nine, 10, 11, right? Uh, I’m, I’m in real estate. And I asked my dad for money. My dad respects me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Back up. My dad trusts me because I’m his son. Right? A car breaks down. He knows he can call me. I’d be there for him. I’d fall on a sword. I’d jump in front of a bullet for my dad.

You know, I love him to death. He loves me to death. And the trust is there. Do you know what wasn’t there though? Respect. My dad didn’t respect me. Have you guys ever run into this? Anybody ever goes to somebody who’s in there, in their family, in their circle of influence, their buddies that they’ve known for a long time, who know you from getting hammered drunk or getting arrested, underage drinking when you were in college or toilet papering houses and getting arrested when you were in high school or, you know, failing in business for many years before you were successful.

The trust is there, but the respect isn’t there. So my dad, my dad did not invest with me until 24 months ago. I know a hundred thousand dollar minimum investment. He was only willing to bring 50

grand importance of having both trust and respect. And at the same time, guess what? I could run an ad and I could pound my chest on Instagram and Facebook and tell everybody how great I am and how many doors I own. And they might respect me. They don’t trust me. Who’s this? A dickhead, like an arrogant asshole.

Like who cares about this guy? Like they trust me or they respect me, but they don’t trust me. You need both to have influence and you need both to raise money. You need influence to raise money, right? So how can you do that? The way that you do it guys is by educating and inspiring, educating people.

It builds respect. You inspire people. It builds trust. You educate, you inspire, and you’re always posting about those two things. If you follow me on social, follow me on Instagram, follow me on Facebook, follow me on YouTube. I’m always trying to do those two things. I’m trying to educate people and I’m trying to inspire them.

Right. That, that this, this, whatever life they thought they had to lead isn’t right. 700, 000.

Multifamily properties alone, not including all the other asset classes, just multifamily five units and bigger. 700, 000. Do you know how many I own? 60. And I have a ridiculous lifestyle, right? You don’t have to light the world on fire. You just got to go and do some deals. Put your head down. Don’t look left.

Don’t look right. Work for five to seven years of your life. Of your life and you will live like people only dream for the rest of it. 

Tim Mai: Love it. Love it. All right. So for the listeners that want to, uh, reach out to you and, you know, further connect with you, get into your funnel. Um, where do you want to send them? How should I, how should they go about doing that? 

Tim Bratz: Social media is the best and, uh, Paul, dude, Legacy Weld Academy is ten dollars, bro. Come on. Like, you’re asking for a coupon code. I’m messing with you, man. No, I’m, I’m sorry. I always ask. Yeah, you must be from New York, man. I know. I live there. I’m the same way.

And, um, no, I’m a big believer in, uh, in always asking, but yeah, it’s dude, it’s 10. You pay for it for a year in full. You get 20% off or something like that. So, um, no, listen, guys, I’m, I’m on social media. I’m here to just provide value. I’m here because Tim asked me to be here and he’s somebody that I respect and has a ton of influence in this space.

And, um, I want to do more with them, you know, and so, uh, I like supporting the good guys. And if there’s any way that I can support you guys and help you out pointing you in the right direction, I answer my messages, hit me up on Instagram, and hit me up on Facebook. If you’ve got a question, I’ll point you in the right direction.

Uh, if I have a resource or a YouTube video or something like that to it. And if you’re interested in, you know, connecting or coaching or partnering up on stuff, just shoot me a message and we’ll figure out what that looks like. But, you know, I’m here to provide value. I’m not, you know, I believe so heavily in legacy wealth Academy.

I think everybody should check that out because it’s such a low price point. And if you don’t like it after a month, cancel, you know, it’s like. 10 dollars. So, um, but yeah, I appreciate you, man. I love you. I appreciate you having me here. 

Tim Mai: I mean, gosh, I appreciate you so much. It’s been a wealth of information.

And I know we even went over time here because of all the questions I wanted to ask you and all the things you, you know, I wanted to learn from you and Your answers have been phenomenal. Very, you know, I mean, yeah, like very high level, you know, very inspiring and like eye-opening. So I appreciate you.

Thank you so much for being on the show with us today. 

Tim Bratz: I appreciate you guys too. So, um, I have to drop off because I have Uh, some dinner reservations. So, um, but I, I appreciate you guys. If there are any other questions that you guys have again, don’t hesitate to hit me up or we’ll, uh, well, we’ll jump on some messenger back and forth or something.

And Tim would love to do more together, man. So if there’s any way that I can continue to support or ways that we can collaborate, don’t hesitate to reach out, man. I appreciate everything that you’re doing and have a ton of respect for, uh, the impact that you make in people’s lives. So thank you. 

Tim Mai: Awesome. Thank you. Thanks, Tim. Bye, brother. See you later. Thanks.