What does it take to find and make deals “direct to seller” for multifamily? Many people believe it's not possible but our special guest this week, Tim Bratz, is a proven expert at this. He's bought thousands of units directly from sellers and in this episode Tim tells us how he's generated such success using this method and how you can do the exactly the same. Jump in with us as we dive into techniques, strategies and mindset for achieving investing success!
Tim Bratz, founder of Legacy Wealth Holdings, was drawn to real estate because he saw the long term benefits of a solid investment. Tim began his career in the competitive New York City real estate market working as a broker leasing ground floor retail units. Here, he saw the true potential of real estate to transform lives.
Although Tim was limited in means, he spent his time reading, attending workshops, and networking with accomplished entrepreneurs learning that being resourceful was the ultimate path to becoming successful. Today, Tim still uses this formula for success, which all starts with being resourceful and having the right mindset.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. You can find deals by contacting sellers via direct mail, dialing for dollars and face to face.
2. Commercial real estate avoids emotional conversation you might have with single family.
3. Don't try to force a deal. If people want to sell, they will sell.
4. Find deals with owners who really need to sell: Smart entrepreneurs and mature owners.
5. Success boils down to happiness and, more importantly, helping others achieve success.
BOOKS
Twelve Pillars by Jim Rohn - https://amzn.to/2Yb0oRN
Magician Vs. Mule: The Ultimate Guide to Lifestyle, Wealth, and Freedom by Mark Evans - https://amzn.to/2Y9VJiG
LINKS
https://www.facebook.com/CommercialEmpire/
https://www.instagram.com/timbratz
Title: E126: Buying Directly from Seller in Commercial Multifamily
Duration: 00:41:12
Interviewer: Steven Pesavento
Interviewee: Tim Bratz
[00:00:03] Steven:
Our operating partners in the commercial multi-family space have agreed to invite new investors in, as some of our future deals. We are proud to bring these institutional style opportunities to investors, within our community, in order to have access to these investments. You have to sign up at the investormindset.com/invest and we have thousands of people who listen to the podcast and, we typically only allow 50 people to invest in each deal. So, make sure you head over there right now, because once we send out the email announcing our next deal, it will likely be sold out and oversubscribed. So, get started at the investormindset.com/invest. And, I look forward to seeing you on the inside.
This is the Investor Mindset podcast and I'm Stephen PesaVento. For as long as I can remember, I've been obsessed with understanding how we can think better, how we can be better, and how we can do better. And, on each episode, we explore lessons on motivation and mindset for the most successful real estate investors and entrepreneurs in the nation. What does it take to go find deals direct to seller for commercial multi-family? So many people believe it's not possible to do but today's guest, Tim Bratz, is an absolute expert. He’s bought hundreds, and now thousands, of units directly from sellers across the southeast. We get into how he goes about doing it. And most importantly, the mindset that it takes to succeed at going down this path. You're not going to want to miss, even a moment of, this episode. Let's get to it!
All right, guys, welcome back to the Investor Mindset podcast, I'm excited today. I've got Tim Bratz in the studio. How are you doing today, Tim?
[00:01:53] Tim:Awesome man. Stephen’s nice to be here, buddy!
[00:01:56]: Steven:
I am excited to have you. And you guys know, Tim is the CEO and founder of Legacy Wealth Holdings, a real estate investment company that acquires and transforms distressed apartment buildings, into high yield assets for their own portfolio. And working in real estate, Tim has built a passive business and has created a residual income that allows him to live the lifestyle that he chooses and he's here to educate and empower others to do exactly the same thing. He's doing some amazing things on going direct to seller acquiring properties in a way that's fairly unique, I would say, within the commercial real estate space, I'm excited to dive into that. Are you ready to get into things, Tim?
[00:02:37] Tim:
Let's rock and roll, buddy!
[00:02:40] Steven:
All right. So why don't we start out by taking a look back at earlier in your life. What events or influences from your childhood shaped who you are today?
[00:02:50] Tim:
Listen, man, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. My dad was a cop, my mom was in the education industry. and so, I'm as blue collar as they come from the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. So, you can just go through school. You always wanted to, like, be a doctor, be whatever that looked like. And then I realized how long I had to go to school for. Although I was a good student, I didn’t want to go to school for that long. So, my parents are always “I can do whatever you want to do. And my dad, although he's a cop, he had a side business and the side business was like personnel security for different apartment buildings and factories and foundries and stuff in the Cleveland area. And he made a couple times more at his part time business than he did in his full-time job. And he always told me, go to school, get good grades, get a good job. And I was like, it's counterintuitive to what I'm seeing, though, Dad, and making more money in your part time business. I did be an entrepreneur and I was always very entrepreneurial. I was like, well, you making money burring, c.D, selling my friend, cutting people's hair or whatever in high school and college. And so, when I went to college, I started a painting company and I worked for a big homebuilder as an intern and just realized there's a lot of money in real estate. And it was like if you to make money, get bought real estate. That's what motivated me. So, I moved up to New York City. I graduated college in 2007 and I thought you got involved in real estate by becoming a real estate agent. And so, I got my real estate license and started it. But I fell into a commercial brokerage. So, I did retail leasing.
[00:04:15] Steven:
And so when you were a kid, though, specifically, it sounds like you had grown up in this blue collar family where you know, your dad was a cop and, you know, money wasn't just flowing out of every single direction. You know, at what point did you realize that, like, entrepreneurship was the path that you need to take?
[00:04:39] Tim:
Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, we weren't rich, but we, I never knew need. Right. There was always food on the table. We always had a warm home, always had clothes on my back. That kind of stuff. So, you know, I just again, I guess it was just watching my dad and seeing him again, making more money on a part time business in the cracks of his schedule, than he was in his full time job. And he was always burned. You know, an insane work ethic, like always working. I remember some Christmases he had to, like, go out. Somebody hadn’t to show up and he had to go and fill in or whatever that looked like. And so, I didn't like that aspect of it. But I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I knew I didn't like working for other people. I had some jobs and stuff through high school and just after college. And it just didn't resonate with me. Somebody else barking at me, telling me what to do. I'm an adult you didn't tell me when I can go to the bathroom, tell me what to watch. You going to talk? Get the hell out of here. Oh, well, kind of. Because I'm not a sheep. I'm not going to go and do that. So, you know, for me, early on, I just, it just never resonated for me to go and work for somebody else.
So, I always wanted to do my own thing. I just didn't know what the vehicle, I guess, would be. And again, when I went to colleges, 03 to 07, so everybody is making money in real estate during that time frame. And that's what motivated a 20 year old kid. So I'm like, dude, I want to do real estate. I got involved, like I said, in the construction site as an intern. And then when I was 21, we got to New York City and I got a real estate license. So that's really what resonated with me and I remember, you know, if you go around and you're in. I was in Manhattan and I would go and just kind of canvas neighbourhoods and try to find vacant retail space or try to talk to business owners that want to set up a second location.
I remember walking down the street, going past one of the parks that wasn't one of the main parks. It was like one of the kind of off the beaten track kind of parks. And they were like so many people there in the middle of the day on a Tuesday. I'm like, how the hell is it possible that this many people are not at work right now? And I was like, it can't all be like food bed, like going in the evenings or something or having it up. I was like, there's something that somebody knows that I don't know. And that's when I read, like rich dad poor dad. I started getting in like these other books that talked about residual income and a passive income and doing something wants to get paid out over and over again. And then it brokered the first lease in Manhattan and it was a 400 square foot retail space. And we signed a twelve year lease with four percent annual increases starting at ten thousand dollars a month. And you do the math on that man. You relate to this landlord, all four-square feet can take almost two million bucks for the next twelve years for doing something one time I was like, dude, I'm on the wrong side of the coin to be owning real estate, not brokering it. And so, I got bit by that residual bug and I was like, I need to go on real estate. But then I think I fell into the trap that a lot of real estate investors do. I got to go start my own cash, right? I got to go and do transactional stuff to make enough money. So then roll it into these passive income producing assets.
[00:07:38]: Steven:
I thought that for sure
[00:07:40] Tim:
It is not true. Right? And so, you don't have to do that. But I don't, that's where I was. So, I mean, you did it, I did it. I'm not saying it's like the wrong path. I'm just saying you don't have to do that.
It's a self-limiting belief. There's a lot of private money out there of people that will invest in your projects, right out of the gate. So, you know, I got the residential sort of flipping houses. It's 2008 now. So in 2008, I started educating myself on it. In 2009, I bought my first investment property. And so, flipped that, made a few bucks. Got into wholesaling made some money there. But more importantly, I met people who saw that I knew how to find a good deal and saw my work ethic. And they're like, listen, kid, I might not have the time. I don't have the battle to take out more projects. I don’t have the knowledge or the expertise that you have. But I got some money. And so I started raising my property. I got my first private money lenders at 23,24 years old. They are putting up the money, I did all the work and then we ended up splitting it. I pay those fixed return or whatever, to the deal and depending on the project. And so that's really what kind of got me into buying and holding small residential single-family portfolios.
And then in 2012, I ended up moving back to Cleveland, Ohio. I was moving to Charleston, South Carolina, for about five years until 2012, I moved back up to Cleveland, Ohio, and got my first apartment building. That's like, you know, I was at the base at the bottom of the trough of everything and, you know, I bought an eight unit apartment building for thirty thousand dollars, in a C class here. And I’m like I don’t know what I’m doing but I can't lose on this thing. I know I can sell it for what I got it for, you know, I got it all renovated, fixed up. I was all in for 80 grand. Ten thousand dollars a unit and it rented for the net income on, it was twenty-seven thousand dollars per year. And so, my capital was thirty three percent. And I'm like, I don’t know what I’m doing but I’ll just do it again, do it again and it resonated with me. I like apartments because it just meant my level of ambition. It made sense because of the scale and it made sense because of the efficiencies of going and collecting rent from one location instead of eight locations. I like the idea of looking at one roof instead of eight roofs and going in and looking at one foundation instead of 8. Right? And so, I really like that aspect of it. And I just thought, it was, it resonated more with what my goals, what my ambitions were and what I want to accomplish in real estate. So that's what I had to focus on.
[00:10:07] Steven:
And so, tell us, what's your primary focus now from the investment front?
[00:10:14] Tim:
Just a part? Well, I would say 90 percent. Ninety five percent is apartments. I do a little bit of dabbling into not dabbling, but investing in awesome operators on the self storage facility side of things. So, I’ve got two facilities right now. We're investing in another one, closing another one next month, and it's a big one and we have another three or four of them in the pipeline. So, I just invest in those because I don't really know or understand the operations well. So, I find the phenomenal operators and then I bring money for the cap to the deal. Sometimes I'll sponsor the loan and otherwise, you know, that's about my extent of being involved with that.
But we're learning a lot more with every single deal that we do. So, I think pretty soon, we will be able to operate at some of those things on our own. We have some great management companies and kind of enhancing things up to them, too. But the multifamily side, that's what I grew up in. And that's what I know inside and out, I know a-z dude.
I was doing everything from finding deals off market deals then, closing on them, renovating them, overseeing contractors, sometimes swinging the hammer myself, collecting rent myself and meetings, calls myself like picking like space heaters the middle of the night in the wintertime as all the pipes froze and taking much of the properties myself. Right. So, I've done everything, including the exit side of things, selling and refinancing and 31 changes all that I've done all of it in the multi-family side. So it's very hard to have the wool pulled over my eyes in any multifamily deal. So we own it, operate, manage all those ourselves. And so, you know, my portfolio is little over three hundred thirty million dollars. And I would say every bit of that is multi-family. 80, 95 percent of it.
[00:11:51] Steven:
Those are all pretty large multi-family. Now you're focused strictly on commercial buildings like hundred plus units or kind of. What's the, what's the smallest type of unit that you'd be interested in purchasing kind of today? Just to put in perspective for listeners before we dive deep into how you're going about finding these deals.
[00:12:10] Tim:
Yeah, I mean, I still have buildings, in my portfolio that are ten fifty or….This one, my office building right now is a nine unit and I own it. I rent out two what to the spaces for myself and then rent out the other seven to other tenant entrepreneurs and stuff. That's my smallest building. I have other buildings that are in the 14, 24 -30 unit range as well. But we're actually trying to sell a lot of those right now. And the only things that we look at are 100 units bigger. And the reason for that is because we can have onsite management, onsite leasing, onsite maintenance and all that stuff there's a lot, there's layers of efficiencies that come with getting bigger profit. Ideally, I'd like to be 2,3 hundred units bigger per location basis. Those are just harder to find.
[00:12:55] Steven:
Yeah. It's a huge difference when you're starting to look at bigger units. And so, I'm really curious, Right? I've been in the single family game, you know, for three years, you know, flipped or wholesaled over 200 properties. So, I've been super focused on going direct to the seller. And now I've made this transition into, you know, working with experienced operators and bringing a lot of value to the world. But, you know, what I hear so often in multi-family is that there's only one way to find a deal, and that's through a broker. And I believe that you're finding it in a lot of different ways. And that's why I'd really love to dive into, you know, what is your process for going out and finding great multi-family deals?
[00:13:32] Tim:
Yeah, yeah. That's a great question. This question I get a lot of times is, how do you find deals? Right. And everybody thinks..here's a thing. Commercial real estate is a very old school mentality. It's a lot of the older generation, people who've been doing it the exact same way for the past 50 years. And that's, go through a broker, broker brings you a deal, you close up through the broker, you listen through the broker, right? And that's standard operating procedure. What you need to understand is, there's not as much red tape and regulation in commercial real estate as there was in residential. If you're a real estate agent, you get a listing. You have to put it on the MLS within 72 hours, right? That's to protect the little old lady who inherited the property so some big bank realtor or investor can't take advantage of it.
In commercial real estate, you're buying and owning property because you're doing it for investment purposes. So, you're assumed to be more sophisticated. So, there's not as many like safeguards in place for owners and investors. So, when you give a listing to an agent, they don't go and put it on the MLS or LoopNet or co-star or whatever. What they end up doing is, they shop it around to the top buyers in town so that we make it for both sides of the commission so it doesn't get the most exposure. And you're not gonna get the top price point because it's only getting shopped around a couple of people. And if you're not one of those top 10 buyers in town, you're not going to see it. So that's when you get the scraps of all the garbage just listed on the internet. What you need to understand is, dude, I didn't come from a big commercial real estate family and go to the Wharton School of Finance and Real Estate. I didn't, you know, I'm not a real estate agent, so I'm not in that network that commercial real estate network. So, I just came. I'm a guy from the residential run that’s flipping houses, I was wholesaling houses and I thought, this is how I'm finding deals by doing all these off market direct seller marketing strategies and it works in residential. Why wouldn't it work in multifamily and commercial? And that's what I ended up doing, man. It's a breath of fresh air for sellers because they're talking to the actual buyer, not some broker. And at the same time, I'm not getting into bidding wars with all these different other buyers. So, yeah, I mean I mean, it's one of the ways that you find deals on a single family site, probably direct mail, right?
Direct mail just like residential homeowners have a mailbox, so do commercial real estate owners. Right. So, you can send direct mail. You can drive for dollars just like there's houses with tall, aggressive, boarded up windows, there's apartment buildings with tall grass and boarded up windows. You can dial for dollars and make phone calls instead of calling for sale by owners. We call for rent by owners and say, hey, I'm not renting an apartment. We're instead buying the whole place. Do you have any interest in selling deals that way? There's a good one, Google reviews. Right. So just jump on Google and you're in California, right?
[00:16:20] Steven:
I live in Denver, Colorado.
[00:16:22] Tim:
Oh, Colorado. That's a Google search. Denver, Colorado. Apartment buildings or whatever, no city, no municipality. Or you want to buy and google search apartment buildings and look for the worst Google reviews. That means the tenants are angry because the landlord is probably not taking care of the property. So, it's probably signs of distress, management, financial distress, physical distress, whatever that ends up being. And you can reach out to the owner, reach out to the manager and typically find some decent deals. The other way that I get a lot of deals, and we're friends on Facebook, is you see me posting about buying apartment buildings all the time. It's not a secret that Tim bought an apartment and it was not a secret, when I scaled from residential into apartment because I told everybody I'm looking to buy apartments. Send me your apartment buildings. And what ended up happening was, I became known as the apartment buyer. I'm not the biggest buyer in Cleveland, Ohio, but I'm probably one of the best known. Because, I'm telling people every single week on social media and I'm telling all the residential investors, wholesalers, flippers, brokers that I'm buying apartment buildings. And what I found is that they come across apartment buildings, but they don't know what to do with those leads. So, they just throw away, just discard them. And me saying top of mind, now they have some sort of way to monetize that. They can send it over to Tim's team, Tim buys it to pay them a fee, a commission, or give them some equity, even in the deal. And so, I have this army of people out there looking for deals. And when they come across a deal that they can't take down themselves or, you know, they can't broker because they don't know what to do with it or whatever, they send it to me. We buy it and we give them a fee or kick up equity in the project.
[00:18:10] Steven:
Yeah, that's huge. I mean, the fact that you're going out there letting everybody know this is what I'm doing. This is what I'm looking for. If you find anything like that, I can add value to your world, you can add value to mine. It can be, you know, really a great connection between each other. So, if we look specifically at, you know, some of the key things you said there, direct mail dialling for dollars. What are the differences in the conversations or the types of letters or communication that you're giving to an apartment owner vs. a single family? And I think this is a really big thing because I imagine a lot of it's similar. But there's probably a couple things that you do differently when you're speaking to somebody that's a little bit more sophisticated.
[00:18:55] Tim:
Well, I mean, what you need to understand is, it's not an emotional conversation, right? It's somebody who probably grew up on that property. And, you know, their wife just went into the nursing home and they can't handle the property. They need to go in a nursing home. That's an emotional situation. Right. So, you inherited the property where the parents passed away? They grew up in that house. That's an emotional situation. Or they're selling their home because they're being foreclosed on. That's extremely emotional, right? In commercial real estate, it’s dollars and cents. You don't have to deal with all the emotions. So, it's straight, let's get to the facts. Now, there's definitely some, I mean, in this distressed situation. I have cancer or I got divorced. I’ve got to liquidate my assets. And so, there's a little bit of that. But a lot of it is just dollars and cents. A lot of it's like, hey, listen, here's where the economy is. Here's where property trading is, what your occupancy is. Let's be realistic and here's the value of the properties worth and for me to come in and buy it, I'll take it off your hands. I buy a lot of properties, one of two categories of people.
One is Mom and Pop owned it forever, never reinvested any of the money back and just sucked all the cash flow out of it. And that you do have a 20, 30 years eventually, the property falls apart and so they backed themselves into a corner where they're not financeable, you know, and they're not collecting any money. Tenants are upset, city’s upset and they got to sell it. They got to sell at a deep discount. They understand that. And they just walk away from it for pennies on the dollar. So that's number one.
Number two is, smart entrepreneurs. I actually buy most of my properties from this category. Smart entrepreneurs making millions of dollars in their traditional business, then they deploy their excess cash and invest into apartment buildings. But they're not educated. They don't have a joint venture partner who is educated. They just don't know how to interview management companies. They just go and throw money at something and they think it's going to run itself because everybody thinks real estate's a passive income investment or a residual. Residual and passive are two very different things, right? Like residual’s doing something once you're getting paid out and over, and over, and over again but, you still have to maintain it, right? You still have to have maintenance, you still have to do the leasing, you still have to have operations like the residual. Yeah, there's money that comes in every month but it's not a passive. Passive is, I lend somebody money and they pay me every single month. Right. It's very different. So, a lot of people think they can just go and buy an apartment and it runs itself. It's not the case. So, these entrepreneurs deploy money into apartments. They don't have all those, they're not educated, they don't have a joint venture partner; they don't have somebody who's local that can access boots on the ground, they haven't interviewed a management company and the management company ends up robbing them or whatever. And they end up losing a whole bunch of money on the property. Taking their eye off the ball in their primary business and trying to keep this thing afloat. And what ends up happening, dude, is that they need to let something go before everything collapses. They let the real estate go, going back to their primary business and they just sell it for a fraction of the price because they've just got to get rid of it. Otherwise, their whole world collapses.
[00:22:58] Steven:
Yeah, I mean, that's a huge distinction. They are just understanding that these are smart entrepreneurs, that they're just not able to focus all the effort energy here because they're not an expert in real estate. And so, you can treat them like that, that, you know, hey, these are people that know what's going on in the world, but they just didn't run this business so well.
[00:22:16] Tim:
Imagine if you or I want to go and open up a restaurant or a bar. Right. Just cause I eat and drink in a bar and I eat in a restaurant doesn't mean I know anything about how to run it. Right? And so, I think that's a lot of the mindset of, oh, you just go in dump money in Real Estate. Yeah, you do. But you need to make sure that your partner with somebody, make sure that somebody is paying attention to it full time because this is a real business. You’ve got to understand that this is a real business that needs real functioning people and processes and everything in place.
[00:22:46] Steven:
So, when you're going about putting together the people to go and target what goes into the decisions on the types of properties that you're going to target, because from my understanding, you're buying all over the country. So, you know, obviously you can do this in a very targeted area. You can do it in a very large area when you think about it from a larger perspective. What are the key things that you're looking for in a property when you're thinking, hey, these people might have some kind of distress? I want to start opening up this conversation? Or is it more of, like, blanket marketing? I'm going to reach out to everybody who's an apartment owner above this size.
[00:23:25] Tim:
Yes, great question. The reason I buy homes in 10 states right now is because I had a local operator that brought me a deal and they were awesome and I wanted to partner up with them and they handle the local operations. So that's why I invest in certain communities or serve a whole bunch of different states nationwide. If I'm not already in that marketplace, I'm not deploying any marketing into the marketplace. I like the Southeast a lot. I split my time between Cleveland, Ohio and Charleston, South Carolina. My team is headquartered in Cleveland, but most of my properties are in South Carolina, Georgia. And so we do a lot of buying, not buying traffic, but we extract landlord contact information and we do outbound reaching out to them via text messages and stuff.
That's really the only paid advertising we really do right now. So we'll extract contact information for landlords and a couple of communities. Obviously, this will meet our size criteria and this will meet our location type criteria. We might say, hey, they got on the property for at least 10 years or longer. So that way we know there's equity built up in it. If it's owned in a personal name instead of an LLC that's probably under a very long time or they're not that sophisticated. You know, there's a lot of different categories like that that we're going to go in and reduce the list to and we will reach out. We typically do either outbound calls or text messages. We got a really, really good response rate from text messages. So that's one of the things that we're doing on top of just doing a little bit of education and consulting type stuff where I'm really active on social media, where people just know that I'm buying apartments. So, if they come across something that's just too much for them to buy it off on their own, then they bring it to me. An all joint venture, I’ll partner with them. As long as they're competent and they know what the heck they're doing. We'll bring them money, I'll even sponsor the loan. We'll help do some of the asset management side of things, too. And then they can kind of run the operations. Could be boots on the ground partner.
So, that's how we've been able to build up a lot of my operation. We're really good at the administrative side, the asset management side, the fundraising side, and a big balance sheet like sponsoring loans. So we take care of all that stuff and that's a certain type of personality right? And another, personally, is I just want to go out and, you know, knock over tables and kick tables, get contractor do what they're supposed to be doing and make sure managements do what they're supposed to do and leasing to do what they're supposed to be doing, maintenance, all that stuff. And there's just two different behavioral and mindset types. Right. Would you be both of them in order to run a very good business? It's like having a Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. One’s very business minded the other one's very technical and tactical in their operations. So, you need both to do that complementary type effort. So, we're really good at this side of things. We can do this side, too. So, you know if it’s locally, we handle all the operations in-house, but if it's outside of our network and our resources, then we usually partner up with somebody who can act as boots on the ground.
[00:26.21] Steven:
And from a role play perspective. What is that opening conversation that you're having with somebody, whether that's via text message or, you know, your first initial phone call to the.
[00:26:32] Tim:
Here’s the thing. My school of thought is that you cannot say the wrong thing to the right person. Yeah, you can't say the right thing to the wrong person. What I mean by that is, is there a motivated seller? I don't care how much you stutter and trip over your words, they will still want to sell you their property. And at the same time, I don't care how perfectly you craft the conversation and articulate whatever. if they don’t want to sell they have no interest in selling, they're not going to sell to you right Now, is there a gray area in between where maybe, sometimes, yes. But we're more, my team, is in the sorting business. We're not in the business of trying to convince somebody to sell us their building if they don't really want to sell because we're not really going to get a good deal. We get the best deals by sorting very quickly past bad deals in order to find the best ones. And so our conversation is, hey, it's very straight to the point, right? Like, these are business owners and they're busy. And they don't want to have fluff. They want straight to the point, bullet points. What's going on? And so, we just reach out, say, hey, listen, we want some stuff in the area. Just bottom, you know, one, two, three, Main Street. And we're starting to expand the portfolio, sitting on some cash. Not sure if you have any interest in selling, but if you do, please keep me posted. We're looking to deploy our money in the next six months. I'm looking to pick up a couple hundred units the next 90 days so, just just reach out to me. So usually it's something along the lines of I'm already in the neighbourhood, I'm already familiar with your property. And then what is the benefit to that? I have money. I'm sitting on some cash, I'd need to deploy it. I'm going to buy somebody’s building. It could be yours is to be somebody else's. Hit me up if you have any interest in selling. Sometimes I'll put in there that we might even invest in a property that they're acquiring as well. But at least give me a call.
What I'm looking to do is build relationships. Right. Some people are not selling right now, but eventually they will be a seller. And I want them thinking of me like I'm 34 years old. I'm not going anywhere for awhile, hopefully. Hopefully I'm around for a long time, investing for a long time. And there's a lot of people, like I said at the beginning of our conversation, there's a lot of people who are just, you know, not only our parents age, but maybe our grandparents age who still own real estate. And eventually they're going to want to pass it on. They're going to want to sell it. They're going to want to pass away. You know, someone is going to inherit it. I want to be first in mind for them to sell portfolio. But my goal right now in real real estate's not a get rich quick it’s a wealthy slow. So, I want to be first in line where they're ready to sell their 13,000 unit portfolio. Tim's the guy that they reach out to because they've already built a relationship with them. Right. I'm not trying to do this deal right now. I'm trying to do hundreds, if not thousands of deals with them over the course of the next decade, two decades. So that's always been my approach, is having a long term vision, long term mindset.
[00:29:33] Steven:
That's huge. I mean, this is such good advice because it's a different way of thinking about going and finding commercial deals. A lot of folks within the community have a limited mindset about how this stuff actually works. But when you think about it from a long perspective, like Tim does, you know, you two can go and find deals directly and bring a lot of value to other people who've been doing this a long time and a lot of value to your own portfolio. And most importantly, add a lot of value to the investors because obviously you're buying something at a great deal. Well, we've made it to the growth rapid fire round where the questions are quick, but your answers don't need to be. Tell me, Tim, how would you define success and what is success to you?
[00:30:13] Tim:
I would say it's a set. It's a great question, by the way. I would say that success is happiness for me. You know, I mean, a lot of people first, especially when I got started, it was making money, right? And then all of a sudden, you’ve got big money and you buy something you're like. And then, you know, for me, it's being able to do whatever I want, whenever I want, wherever I want to, whoever I want to do it right. And that to me is like true success and you don't need to be wildly wealthy or wildly rich in order to do that. I think that is definitely one pillar of success in my mind. Another one is impact. I think the more people you can impact, the more successful you are. And that's really been a driver of my life. Once the money was there, once I had all those basic needs taken care of and I got a beach house now and all that stuff now it's more about just like how many other people can I help? And like, really just impact and help impact their future generations, their family tree and just change things and, you know, getting the messages and getting the letters and that kind of stuff, saying, dude thanks for opening my eyes to this and that. Hey, I just bought this other project that increased my net worth by two and a half million dollars. Oh my gosh. That what I like, that kind of stuff really is what feeds my soul today.
[00:31:24] Steven:
Huge. I love that definition. What are some of your keystone habits, the things you do on a daily or weekly basis, that have led to some of your success?
[00:31:32] Tim:
Yeah, I think being aware of your time. I think a lot of people aren't aware of their time and think they got to save money just to go and do some activity. And the reality is, you can always make more money, You can't make more time. And so for me, I'm very conscious about how I’m spending my time. Who am I spending my time with? What am I spending my time on? And I think a lot of people can do this and just become aware of what they're doing with their time just by cataloguing their time. So like I remember a couple years ago, I just sat back and I took a piece of paper and I just wrote down every 15 minutes what I did for an entire week. And you realize how much time you actually waste and what actually generates revenue and what doesn't, and what makes you happy and what doesn't. And I just started focusing on the things that generate revenue and the things that made me happy. Then everything else ended up being a job description for my assistant that I ended up hiring.
All the stuff I didn't want to do, all the stuff, that didn't make money, that's your job. And I hired somebody to do that for what. Twenty-five hundred and three thousand dollars a month. And how much time that bought me back, forty hours a week. That's a lot of time. Right. And now I still do that. And I'd say if I want to be doing this, I can be doing at least a ten thousand dollar per hour activity or spending time with my family, which is worth infinite amounts of money. You know, if it's not one of those two things get stepped out. It's pushed over to somebody else or direct them to a podcast or some sort of like an online type thing where I can come in and I can be on your podcast one time, but it can be seen hundreds of times. Thousands of times. Right. And I like the idea of not managing my time but scaling my time, right? And putting efficiencies in place.
[00:33:24] Steven:
That's such a big idea. Right. There is such a big thing for people to underline for sure. What's a book that's impacted your life the most or one you're excited about right now?
[00:33:33] Tim:
Twelve pillars by Jim Rohn is a pretty one. And so that's about generating and living a good life. My good buddy Mark just came out with a book called Magician versus Mule. It's a little bit of what we're talking about, how to get outside of you doing all that work yourself and kind of acting more as a magician and putting the right people and processes and things in place to build your business. So that's really, really good. He actually just launched it and all the proceeds go to go to nonprofit organizations and stuff. So, it's a really good book. Magician versus Mule by Mark Evans.
[00:34:09] Steven:
Have to check that out. Inspiration. What impacts have mentors made on your life and how do you recommend others go about finding great mentors?
[00:34:17] Tim:
I think it's everything and really, I think good mentors and mentors. And the thing is, anybody wants to stay away from the bad mentors. I've learned just as much from bad mentors as I did from good mentors about who I didn't want to be, like how I didn't want to come across in business writing, how I didn't want to live my life, which is just as important as how you do want to live your life. Right. So, you know, I mean, mentors have been critical from early stages. And what's made a huge impact is joining a mastermind. I've got to do a masterminded February of 20, 2015 was my first mass that ever went to. And that is actually what Mike Rhodes started going like crazy. And I took quantum leaps forward every time I got out of a mastermind. Then what's important about masterminds is, it’s not just one mentor. Like there are a group of 10, 20, 50 different people. And you're gonna resonate with some people in that group based on what's going on in your life. And some people might be amazing at running a business and running a big business. And you want to go to them for business advice. There's people who have more refined, smaller businesses, but they have amazing quality of life with their family, with their kids or their spouse. You go to them for more relationship type balance advice. There's other people who are just totally tone and trim and cut. They look the part and they have a great business like to tell me. How do you do that? How you balance those things out. And so, there's a lot of different personalities and a mastermind group and a lot of people that you can resonate with, not just a person who's leading the group that you can get information and get insights and expertise from. So, I love mastermind's. I run one and I am a member of five different other ones. So that's how much I believe them.
[00:36:00] Steven:
I think masterminds are so critical to my own success. I know that as soon as I joined one, I had a lot of limiting beliefs about spending money on coaching or mastermind's. But it's that power of being surrounded by other people who are doing what you want to do. And you get almost more value from the members than the people who are organizing it. But the people organizing it help kind of create that community. That can be amazing. So that's also I appreciate you sharing that. And finally finishing on this, purpose. What drives you to live your best life every day?
[00:36:33] Tim:
I would go back to impact. You know, I think impact is the biggest thing. Like, all my businesses are called Legacy something. Legacy Holdings. My investment holdings. My Legacy Wealth Fund is my investment fund. Legacy, wealth. Education is my education, right? And so, I'm all about legacy. And legacy is not passing down treasure, invested down property, passing down estate and money. It's passing down education. Right. And making an impact on someone’s mindset. So that way they can then impact future generations as well. Create a ripple effect. And so what's really been a driving factor for me is, you know, passing down the insights and the knowledge and the mindset to my kids, not just give me the property, right? They're going to get a little bit, but I got to give most of it away. And then and then doing the same for other people, you know, like my kid's going to be alright. Well, what about other people? I think that I posted this yesterday and we're filming this the day after Memorial Day. And we're sitting here. I'm sitting back watching the kids play, got a bonfire going, I’ve got some family and friends over, having a couple of cocktails and just, you know, food is abundant and all the stuff. And I'm thinking and sitting back and thinking, like how grateful I am for what we have. And you think about what we have versus what other people don't have. You realize other people have to walk two miles each day to get fresh water. There's countries where women cannot vote and cover their face all the time, right? Like, there are people who don't have shoes, right? We're complaining about how our feet hurt. There's people who don't have legs. You know, there's like think about some of that stuff and think about being born in the United States and, being dealt the hand you've been dealt compared to what other hands you could have been dealt in life if you took your bingo ball and you put it back into the bucket of seven billion different other bingo balls? Who would do that? I don't, I wouldn't play my bingo. All right. I'm going to take it. And I think we've already won the lottery to be born in this age, in this country with the mindset that you have and the resources that you've been born into and the parents that you had and all these different people who've been an influencer in your life. If you realize being born one and then being born under these circumstances is a one in 100 trillion chance one in order to continue to be you? You've already won the lottery. You know? And sharing that insight with people and making sure that they know that and then and then also feeling a sense of obligation to pay that forward. Like, I already won a lottery I can fight. I have a sense of responsibility now to make sure other people have the insight and wisdom and have knowledge and mindset, every source, all these different things to make an impact. So that's really a big driver for me now.
[00:39:22] Steven:
I love that. That's huge. Well, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for sharing a little bit of your mindset. I'm going out and finding multi-family deals and saw so much more where people can find out more about you or get in touch.
[00:39:36] Tim:
Yeah. I appreciate they can connect with me on social media. I'm real active on Facebook. Shoot me a Facebook friend request and also real active on Instagram too. So, connect with me on Instagram, connect with me on Facebook, linked in a little bit, but mostly the other two. And shoot me a message if you guys have questions? I answer all my messages. So, if there's anything that I can help you out with that point in the right direction, whatever. I'll be happy to do that. So, dude thank you so much for having me. You have some amazing questions and I appreciate all the content and value you put out there. Thank you again.
[00:40:06] Steven:
That means a lot. We'll link to all of that. The show notes, guys. So please do make sure you go follow Tim Bratt's on all of those social media and I'll leave you guys as I always leave you. And that's with a reminder to live a life worth inspiring others. And you can do so today by setting yourself up to reach some true financial freedom, to be able to go out and find deals direct to seller, to be able to go out and set yourself up and your family and your investors and the whole community to really go and do amazing things. So, thank you so much, Tim and I look forward to seeing you on the other side. Thanks, buddy.
[00:40:44] Narrator:
Thank you for listening. The Investor Mindset podcast, if you like what you heard, make sure to read reviews, subscribe and share with a friend. Head over to the investormindset.com. To join the insider club where we share tools and strategies from the top investors and entrepreneurs and how to take it to the next level.