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 exactly the same. Jump in with us as we dive into techniques, strategies, and mindset for achieving investing success!
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 exactly the same. Jump in with us as we dive into techniques, strategies, and mindset for achieving investing success!
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 conversations 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.
Resources Metioned:
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
About Our Guest
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.
Steven Pesavento 00:05
This is the Investor Mindset podcast and I'm Steven 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 each episode we explore lessons on motivation and mindset for the most successful real estate investors and entrepreneurs in the nation.
Steven Pesavento 00:27
What does it take to go find deals direct to seller for commercial multifamily, so many people believe it's not possible to do but today's guest Tim brought is an absolute expert. This has bought hundreds and now 1000s 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.
Steven Pesavento 01:03
Alright, guys, welcome back to the Investor Mindset Podcast. I'm excited today I've got Tim broths in the studio. How you doing today, Tim?
Tim Bratz 01:11
Awesome, man, Steven, excited to be here, buddy.
Steven Pesavento 01:14
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 it 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. So I'm excited to dive into that. Are you ready to get into things, Tim? Let's rock and roll, buddy. 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?
Tim Bratz 02:06
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 just going through school, you know, I was wanting to like be a doctor be whatever that looked like. And then I realized how long he had to go to school for. And although I was a good student, I just didn't want to go to school that long. So but my parents are always like you do whatever you want to do. And my dad although is a cop, he had a side business. And a side business was like personnel security for different apartment buildings and factories and foundries and stuff and in the Cleveland area. And he made a couple times more in 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 need to be an entrepreneur. And I was always very entrepreneurial. I was like, you know, making burning CDs and selling them by friends cutting people's hair or whatever, in high school and in college. And so when, when I when I went to college, I started a painting company and then I worked for a big homebuilder as an intern, and just realize there's a lot of money in real estate is like you want to make money get bought real estate. That's what motivated me. So I moved out 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 but I fell into like a commercial brokerage. So I did retail leasing. And
Steven Pesavento 03:33
so when you're 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 when you did you realize that like entrepreneurship was the path that you need to take?
Tim Bratz 03:56
Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, we didn't we weren't rich, but we I never knew need right. There was always food on the table. We always had a warm home. Yeah, I was like 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, that he was in his full time job. And he was always burning the, you know, insane work ethic, like always working. I remember some some Christmases, he had to like, go out and somebody didn't show up and he had to go and fill in or whatever that looked like. 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 through high school, and it just anthropology and it just didn't resonate with me. Somebody else barking at me telling me what to do. I'm gonna I'm an adult who to tell me when I go to the bathroom, you can tell me what I can eat lunch. You can, like, get the hell out of here. Like, oh, kind of okay, I'm not a sheep. I'm not gonna 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 what the vehicle, I guess would be. And, again, when I was going through college was, oh 3207. So everybody's making money in real estate during that timeframe. And that's what motivated a 20 year old kid. So I'm like, Dude, I want to go and do real estate. I got involved, like I said, the construction side than an intern. And then when I was 21, moved up to New York City and got my real estate license. And so that's really what what resonated with me. And I remember, you know, like, you go around, and you're in I was in Manhattan, and I would go and just kind of canvass neighborhoods and try to find vacant retail space or try to talk to business owners that wanted to set up a second location. And I remember like 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, they can't all be in like food bed, like we're going to the evenings or something or me, like, I was like, There's something that somebody knows that I don't know. And that's what I'd read, like Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And I started getting into like, these other books that talked about residual income and passive income and doing something once and get paid on it over and over again. And then a broker the first lease in Manhattan, and it was a 400 square foot retail space. And we signed a 12 year lease, with 4% annual increases starting at $10,000 a month, and you do the math on that man, you're like, dude, this landlord awful 14 square feet is gonna make almost 2 million bucks over the next 12 years for doing something one time, I was like, Dude, I'm on the wrong side of the coin entity owning real estate, not not brokering it. And so I got bit by that residual bug, and I was like, I need to own real estate. But then I think I fell into the trap that a lot of real estate investors do have to get, I gotta go stockpile my own cash, right, I gotta go do transactional stuff, to make enough money to then roll it into these passive income producing assets. And I thought that for sure, it is not true, right. And so you don't have to do that. But I that's, that's how where I was. So I mean, you did it, I did it. And 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 and people that will invest in your projects right out of the gate. So, you know, I got into residential sort of flipping houses is 2008. Now. So for 2008 I started educating myself on it in 2009, I bought my first investment property and so flip 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 bandwidth to take on more projects. I don't have the knowledge, the expertise that you have, but I got some money. And so I started raising my prop. Like, I got my first private money lenders at 2324 years old, they started putting up the money, I did all the work. And then we ended up splitting it or I paid them a fixed return or whatever the deal ended up being, depending on the project. And so that's 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 moved to Charleston, South Carolina for about five years. 2012 moved back up back up to Cleveland, Ohio, and got my first apartment building that's like, you know, that was at the base at that at the bottom of the trough of what everything was. And you know, I bought an eight unit apartment building for $30,000 in a C class area, like how do you not I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. But I can't lose on this thing. I know I can at least sell it for what I'm into it for I do I got it all renovated, fixed up. And I was all in for 80 grand $10,000 A unit. And it rented for the net income on it was $27,000 per year. And so my cap rate was 33%. And I'm like, I don't want to do it. Just do it again. Do it again. I just And it resonated with me. I liked apartments because it just met my level of ambition at met like it, it made sense because of the scale. And it made sense because 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 going and looking at one foundation set of eight, my contractor one location says eight, right. And so I really liked that aspect of it. And I just thought it was it resonated more with what my goals, what my ambitions were and what I wanted to accomplish in real estate. So that's what I ended up focusing on.
Steven Pesavento 09:25
And so tell us what's your primary focus now from the investment front,
Tim Bratz 09:30
just apart overall, I would say 90% 95% 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 got two facilities right now we're investing in another one closing another one next month. And that'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 and understand the operations well so I find phenomenal operators and that I bring money of the cat to the to the deal, sometimes sponsored loan. And otherwise, you know, that's about my extent of being involved in that. But we're learning a lot more every single deal that we do. So I think pretty soon we will be able to operate and some of those things on our own. We got some great management companies and kind of hand things off to them too. But the multifamily side, that's what I grew up in. And that's what I know, inside. Now, I know a busy dude, I was doing everything from finding deals off market deals, negotiating them, closing on them, renovating them, overseeing contractors, sometimes swinging the hammer myself, collecting rent myself, handling maintenance calls myself, like picking up space heaters the middle of the night in the wintertime, because all the pipes froze and taking much of the properties myself, right. So I've done everything, including the exit side of things, selling them and refinancing them at 1031 exchanges and all that stuff. And I've done all of it in the multifamily side. So it's very hard to have a wool pulled over my eyes and any multifamily deal. So we own it operate manage all those ourselves. And so you know, my portfolios, a little over $330 million. And I would say 90, I'd say everybody 90% of that is multifamily, maybe 95%
Steven Pesavento 11:07
of it. Well, those are all pretty large multifamily. Now, your focus strictly on commercial buildings, like 100 Plus units are kind of what 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?
Tim Bratz 11:27
Yeah, I mean, I still have buildings, my portfolio that are 1050, or this one, um, my office building right now is a nag unit. And so I own it, I rent out, I've switched to the spaces for myself, and then rent out the other seven, to other tenants, entrepreneurs and stuff. That's my smallest building, I have other buildings that are in the in the 1424 30 units range as well. But we're actually trying to sell a lot of those. Right now, the only things that we look at are 100 units of bigger. And the reason because it for that is because we can have onsite management, on site leasing, on site maintenance, and all that stuff is there's a lot there's layers of efficiencies that come with getting bigger profit, ideally, I'd like to be 200 units, 300 units or bigger on a per location basis. Those are just harder to find.
Steven Pesavento 12:12
Yeah, it's a huge, 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 wholesale over 200 properties. So I've been super focused on going direct to 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 multifamily 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 I literally love to dive into, you know, what is your process for going out and finding great multifamily deals?
Tim Bratz 12:49
Yeah, I think that's a great question. It's a question I get a lot of times is, how do you find deals, right? Everybody thinks, here's the thing, commercial real estate is a very old school mentality. It's a lot of 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 a deal, you close onto the broker, you listen to the broker, right. And that's, that's standard operating procedure. What you need to understand is there's not as much red tape and regulation and commercial real estate as it wasn't residential, right. And residential, if you're a real estate agent, you get a listing, you have to put that on the MLS within 72 hours, right, that's to protect the little old lady who inherited property. And so some big bank real estate or or investor can take advantage over a 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. And so there's not as many like safeguards in place for for owners and investors. So when you give a listing to an agent, they don't go and put it on the MLS or loop net or costar or whatever, what they end up doing is the shopping around to the top buyers in town, so that way they can earn both sides of the commission. So it doesn't get the most exposure. And you're not going to get the top price point because it's only getting shopped around to a couple 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 that's listed on on LoopNet. And so what you need to understand is like 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 in that network that that commercial real estate network. So dude, I just came I'm a guy from the residential realm and I was flipping houses. I was Wholesaling Houses. And I thought if this is how I'm finding deals by doing all these off market direct to seller marketing strategies, and it works in residential, why wouldn't it work in multifamily and commercial and it's going to do it man, I just, 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 You find deals on the single family side, probably direct mail, right direct mail, just like residential homeowners have a mailbox. So to commercial real estate owners, right. So you can send direct mail, you can drive for dollars, just like there's houses with tall grass boarded up windows, there's apartment buildings with tall grass and pull 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 interested in renting your apartment. We're interested in buying the whole place. Do you have any interest in selling got deals that way? There's a good one Google reviews. Right? So just jump on Google. And you're in California, right?
Steven Pesavento 15:37
I live in Denver, Colorado. Oh, Colorado,
Tim Bratz 15:39
it's like you just Google Search Denver, Colorado, apartment buildings or whatever. City, you know, municipality, what is the order you want to buy. And it's Google Search apartment buildings, and look for the worst Google reviews. That means the tenants are angry, because the landlords probably not taking care of the property. So it's probably the 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 bras buys apartment buildings. And it was not a secret when I left when I when I scaled from residential into only apartment, but I told everybody, I'm looking to buy apartments, I'm looking to buy apartments, I'm looking to buy apartments, send me your apartment buildings. And what ended up happening was, I became was like, I became known as like 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 them away, it's discarded. And me staying top of mind, now they have some sort of way to monetize that lead, they can send it over to Tim's team of Tim buys, it helps to pay them a fee a commission, or give them some equity even in the deal. And so I have like 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 it, because they don't know what to do with it or whatever they send it to me, we buy it. And we we kick them a fee or kick up some equity in the project.
Steven Pesavento 17:25
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 mind, 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 their direct mail, dialing for dollars, what are the differences in the conversations or the types of letters or communication that you're giving to a apartment owner versus 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.
Tim Bratz 18:12
Well, I mean, the what you need to understand is, it's not an emotional conversation, right? And somebody who inherited the property, they grew up that property, and, you know, their, their wife just went into the nursing home, and they can't handle the property, they need to go into nursing. That's an emotional situation, right? Somebody who inherited the property, or their parents passed away, and they grew up in that house, that's an emotional situation, or they're selling their 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, hey, I'm in this distressed situation, I have cancer or I got divorced, I had 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 what the economy is, here's what properties are trading, there's what your occupancy is, let's be realistic. And here's the value of the property's 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 forever, never reinvested any of the money back and just sucked all the cash flow out of it. And that you do that for 2030 years, dude, literally the property falls apart. And so they backed themselves into a corner where they're not financeable, they're, you know, and they they're not collecting any money. Tenants are upset City's upset, and they got to sell it. I think I sell it at a deep discount. They understand that and they just walk away for it, you know, for pennies on the dollar. So that's number one. Number two is smart entrepreneurs actually buy most of my properties for this category. smart entrepreneurs making millions of dollars in their traditional business, that then they deploy their excess cash and invested into apartment buildings, but they're not educated. They don't have a joint venture partner who is educated. They just did it. They 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 residual. Residual and passive are two very different things, right, like residuals, doing something once and getting paid on it over and over and over again. But you still have to maintain it. Right, you still have to have maintenance yourself to the leasing, you still have to have operations like it residual, yeah, there's money that comes in every month, but it's not passive. Passive is I lend somebody money, and they pat, they pay me every single month, right? It's very different. So a lot of people think they can just go and buy apartments, and it runs itself. That'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 act as boots on the ground, they haven't interviewed a management company, that management company ends up robbing them or whatever. And they end up losing a whole bunch of money in the property, taking their eye off the ball, their primary business, and trying to keep this thing afloat. And what ends up happening, dude, is that they need to let something go up before everything collapses, they let the real estate go go back to their primary business, and they just sell it for a fraction of the price because they just got to get rid of it. Otherwise, their whole, their whole world collapses.
Steven Pesavento 21:16
Yeah, I mean, that's a huge distinction there just understanding that these are smart entrepreneurs, that they're just not able to focus all the effort and 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.
Tim Bratz 21:34
Imagine if you were I want to go and open up a restaurant or a bar, right? Just because I 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 and dump your money in real estate? Yeah, you do. But you need to make sure that your partner was somebody make sure that somebody is paying attention to it full time, because it's a new business, you got to understand that this is a real business that needs real functioning people and processes and everything in place.
Steven Pesavento 22:03
And 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 in a very large area. When you think about it from a larger perspective, what 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?
Tim Bratz 22:42
Yeah, great question. The reason I buy I think I'm 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 of that. So that's why I invest in certain communities, or certain 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, Charleston, South Carolina. My team is headquartered in Cleveland. But most of my properties are in South Carolina, and Georgia. And so we do a lot of buying of not buying up traffic, but we extract landlord contact information. And we do 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 from landlords and a couple communities. Obviously, these meet our size criteria, these are location type criteria, we might say, hey, they got to own the property for at least 10 years or longer. So that way, we know there's some equity built up in it. If it's owned in a personal name, instead of an LLC, that's probably maybe an older a very long time, or they're not that sophisticated. You know, there's a lot of different categories like that, that we're gonna go in and reduce the list to and that will reach out we typically do either outbound calls, or text messages, we get a really, really good response rate for text messages. So that's one of the things that we're that we're doing on top of just you know, I do 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 for them to bite off on their own, then they bring it up to me, though, I'll joint venture, I'll partner with them, as long as they're competent, and they know what the heck they're doing, will bring the money, I'll even sponsor the loan will help do some of the asset management side of things too. And then they can kind of run the operations to kind of be boots on the ground partner. So that's how I've been able to build up a lot of my operation is we're really good at the administrative side, the asset management side, the fundraising side, and I have a big balance sheet so I get sponsored loans. So we take care of all that stuff. And and that's a certain type of personality, right? And then another personality is I just want to go out and, you know, knock over tables and kick tables, get contractors do what They're supposed to be doing make sure management's doing what they're supposed to do and leasings doing what they're supposed to be doing maintenance, all that stuff. And there's there's just two different behavioral and mindset types, right? But you need both of them in order to run a very good business. It's like having a Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak was very business minded, the other ones very technical and tactical in their operations. So you need both of that you need that complementary type effort. So we're really good at this side of things. We can do the side too. So you know, things 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.
Steven Pesavento 25:38
And from a roll pay play perspective, what 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 them?
Tim Bratz 25:51
Here's, here's the thing, my school of thought is that you cannot say the wrong thing to the right person, you cannot say the right thing to the wrong person. And what I mean by that is, if they're 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're not a motivated seller, 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 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, these business owners, 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 own some stuff in the area just bought, you know, 123 Main Street, and we're sitting, expand the portfolio, I'm 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 100 units in 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 neighborhood, I'm already familiar with your property. And then what is the benefit to them, I have money, I'm sitting on some cash, I need to deploy it, I'm going to buy somebody's building, it's gonna be yours or somebody, somebody else's, hit me up, if you have any interest in selling, sometimes I'll even put in there that that we're, 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 3040 years old, I'm not going anywhere for a while, hopefully, right? 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 gonna want to pass it on, they're gonna want to sell it, they're gonna want they're gonna pass away, you know, and so he's gonna inherit it, I want to be first to their, you know, in mind, for them to sell their portfolio. Like my goal right now, real estate's not a get rich quick to get wealthy slow, right. So I want to be first in mind where they're ready to sell their 13,000 unit portfolio Tim's the guy that they reach out to, because I'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 1000s, 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.
Steven Pesavento 28:50
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 having this stuff actually work. But when you think about it, from a long perspective, like Tim does, you know, you too, can go out and find deals direct and bring a lot of value to other people have been doing this a long time, add 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?
Tim Bratz 29:29
Oh, man, I would say that success? That's a great question. By the way, I would say that success is happiness for me. You know, I mean, a lot of people at first, especially when I first started, that was making money, right? And then all of a sudden you make money and you buy something you're like and that, you know, for me, it's being able to do whatever I want whenever I want wherever I want to with whoever I want to do with 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 his impact, I think the more people you can impact the more successful you are. And that's, that's really been a driver of mine that like, once the money was there, and once, you know, 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 getting the messages and getting the letters and that kind of stuff of saying, do you just open up my eyes to this and that, here's I just bought this other project, increase my net worth by two and a half million dollars. Oh, my gosh, that, uh, like, that kind of stuff really, is what feeds my soul today.
Steven Pesavento 30:42
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 the success?
Tim Bratz 30:51
Yeah, I think being aware of your time, I think a lot of people aren't aware of our of their time, and they think they gotta save money just to go and by doing 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 am I 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 was and you'll realize how much time you're actually wasting. And what actually generates generates revenue, and what doesn't, and what makes you happy, and what does it and I just started focusing on the things that generated revenue and the things that made me happy. And then everything else ended up being the job description for my assistant that I ended up firing, all the stuff I didn't want to do. Also that didn't make money. That's your That's your job. And I hired somebody to do that. For what, I don't know, 2500 $3,000 a month, and how much time that brought me back 40 hours a week, dude, that's a lot of time, right. And now I don't I still do that. And I say, if I want to be doing this, I have to be doing at least a $10,000 per hour activity, or spending time with my family, which is worth infinite amounts of money, you know, and if it's not one of those two things get staffed out, it's pushed over to somebody else, or a direct them to a podcast or some sort of like online type thing where I can come in, and I can I can be on your podcast one time, but it can be seen hundreds of times 1000s of times, right. And and I like the idea of not managing my time, but scaling my time, right and putting efficiencies in place.
Steven Pesavento 32:43
Yeah, that's such a big idea, right? They're such a big thing for people to underline for sure. What's a book that's impact your life the most or one you're excited about right now?
Tim Bratz 32:52
Man 12 pillars by Jim Rohn is a big one. It's about generating and living a good life. My good buddy Mark Evans just came out with a book called magician versus mule. And it's a little bit of kind of what we've been 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. And so that's a 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 Buell, by Mark Evans,
Steven Pesavento 33:26
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?
Tim Bratz 33:35
I think I think it's I think it's everything really. I've had good mentors and bad mentors. And the thing is, everybody 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, right, and 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, and what's made a huge impact is joining a mastermind I got a new a mastermind in February of 20 2015, was my first mastermind that ever went to, and that is actually when my growth started going like crazy. And I took quantum leaps forward every time I got out of a mastermind event. But what's important about masterminds, it's not just one mentor, right? Like they're going to a group of 10 2050 different people. And you're going to 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 other people who have more of a refined smaller business, but they have an amazing quality of life with their family, with their kids with their spouse, you go to them for more relationship type balanced advice. There's other people who were like, just totally tone and trim and cut. They, they they look the part and they have a great business like dude, tell me how do you do that? How do you balance Once 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 not just person who's leading the group that you can get information and get get insights and expertise from. So I love masterminds dude, I run one and I'm a member of five different other ones. So that's how much I believe in them.
Steven Pesavento 35:18
I think I think masterminds are so critical to my own success. I know that soon as I joined, what I had a lot of limiting beliefs about spending money on coaching or masterminds or, or community, 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 awesome. I appreciate you sharing that. And finally, finishing on this purpose, what drives you to live your best life every day?
Tim Bratz 35:51
I would go back to impact. You know, I think impact is the biggest thing like all my businesses are called Legacy something legacy Well, Holdings is my investment holdings, my legacy wealth fund is my investment fund, legacy wealth education is by education brand. And so I'm all about legacy and legacy is not, you know, passing down treasure and passing down property and passing down estate, and money. It's passing that education, right and making an impact and some of these mindset, so that way, they can then impact future generations as well to create a ripple effect. And so that's that'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 giving them property, right, they're going to get a little bit but I'm gonna give most of it away. And then and then doing the same for other people, you know, like, like my kids gonna be alright, but what about other people? I think, dude, I posted on this yesterday, and we're filming this the day after Memorial Day. And we're sitting here I'm sitting in back, watching the kids play, got a bonfire going, get some family and friends over having a couple cocktails and just, you know, food is abundant, and all this stuff. And I'm thinking 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 way in order to get fresh water. There's other there's countries where women cannot vote, they have to cover the face all the time, right? Like there's, there's people who don't have shoes, right? We're complaining about how our, our feet hurt, or there's people who don't have legs. Yeah, there's like, like, think about some of that stuff. And think about being born in the United States and being dealt the hand that you've been dealt compared to what other hands you could have been dealt. And like, if you took your your your bingo ball, and you put it back into the bucket of 7 billion different other bingo balls, who would do that, I know, I wouldn't want to take my bingo ball, right? I'm gonna take this. And, and I think we've already won the lottery, to be born in this age, in this country, with the 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 have been an influencer in your life, you realize being born one, and then being born under these circumstances is a one in 400 trillion chance. One in 400, for you to be you, like you've already won the lottery dude, 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 have a sense of responsibility now to make sure other people have insight and have wisdom and have knowledge and have mindset have resources, all these different things to make an impact. And so that's, that's really the big driver for me now.
Steven Pesavento 38:41
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 multifamily deals, and so, so much more. Where can people find out more about you or get in touch?
Tim Bratz 38:54
Yeah, man, I appreciate it. Yeah, just connect with me on social media. I'm real active on Facebook, shoot me a Facebook friend request. And I'm also real active on Instagram, too. So send me connected me on Instagram could be on Facebook, LinkedIn a little bit, but mostly the other two. And it shoot me a message. You guys got questions, I answer all my messages. So there's anything that I can help you out with or point you in the right direction, whatever, I'm happy to do that. So dude, thank you so much for having me and us some amazing questions. And I appreciate all the content, the value that you put out there. But so thank you again,
Steven Pesavento 39:24
that means a lot. We'll link to all that in the show notes, guys. So please do make sure you go follow Tim barotz on all those social medias. And I'll leave you guys as I always leave you. And that's what the 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.
Tim Bratz 39:57
Thanks, buddy.
Steven Pesavento 40:02
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