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Business, Barbecue, And Bullshit with Tim Herriage
I’m excited to be here and even more excited to have our special guest, a self-proclaimed crazy person and a buddy of mine that I’ve known for years. He does an amazing job and a self-proclaimed project starter and entrepreneur, our good buddy Tim Herriage, the host of the rocking podcast, Business and BBQ. You can check it on iTunes. This guy is one of the best real estate minds in the country and he’s got his hand in the pulse. He’s always looking to do something, always looking to leverage his position and take advantage of what’s going on in the market. We’re excited to have you. For those that don’t know who you are because we’ve got quite an audience across the country of our Note Nation out there, share who you are, a little bit about your background and why it’s important to read this episode.
Thanks for having me on. To start off, I’m 40 years old. The gray hair is mainly because of my children and the stress I put myself through. I went to the Marine Corps out of high school because I come from a family that didn’t have the money or the resources to send me to college. After a few years in the Marine Corps and a lot of accelerated maturity, I got tired of making $1,810 a month and an extra $150 when we went to combat. I fell into life insurance sales straight out of the Marine Corps. I’ll never forget the first week that I got a $6,000 check because it was addicting because for the first time, my direct effort and accomplishments influenced my direct compensation. I’d never let someone else tell me what I was worth again. I put my resume out. I found a job as a construction manager for a house flipper. I did that for a year then got recruited by another house flipper then I went out on my own. I met my wife then we were the largest home investors franchise in the nation when the great recession happened. I lost millions of dollars in 2008 and 2009. I made some great decisions. I made some bad decisions. I fought our way out of that and 2010 on the way out of the recession, we started the REI Expo. That’s how you and I met. I built that to be the largest national trade show there was. I sold that off to the folks over at Think Realty. They’re doing a great job with it.
I met Blackstone through that and started B2R Finance and did $1 billion worth of loans and my W-2 was one of those things out of a movie. I quit one day because I was bored and tired of running someone else’s company. That’s a whole story in itself how I started to immediately start thinking like a W-2 person of salary and bonus after a year of that role. I started the 2020 REI Group. I made a ton of great decisions with a multiple of bad decisions and entrepreneurial decision after decision. I tried things, it didn’t work. I started a lending company that’s been sold. That was a good transaction. I started a fund management company. We’re shutting that down because I am not a good manager of other people’s money because I don’t like to answer questions, not even to my wife much less some investor that I’m making money for.
We started an insurance company. The insurance company is going well. We’re in some talks to sell that. I built a bunch of owner finance mortgages. I sold those because I had reached that ten-year curve where I’d sucked all the interest out and there were banks that would pay par for them. We were all about that. I got a bunch of rent houses. I flip houses. I wholesale houses. I used to do all those events and you start to identify yourself as the business. After doing all of this, I’m trying to recreate myself as an entrepreneur because that’s what I am. I’m definitely not a lender yet I’ve made more money in lending than anything else. I’m a real estate investor but that’s more of what I want to retire with one day. It’s not what I get up in the morning and I’m excited about. There’s nothing exciting about leaving my house, driving 45 minutes to sit with some old lady smoking in her living room. It’s only to either annoy her or get the house at such a price where I know I could have paid her more. It’s not on my deathbed, I’m not going to say, “I wish I’d bought more houses.”
I’m trying to focus more these days on having more of what I want which is eating a lot of barbecues and kicking it with my family. I’m in the home office. In 2018, I had 9,000 square feet on the 11th floor of a Dallas office tower. I’ll never forget the day I walked in. It was before Christmas of 2017. I looked around and I didn’t want to be there and neither did anyone that worked for me. I decided, I said, “Why am I doing this? I sold everything. I shut down the things that weren’t worth selling. I’m excited about podcasting because I feel like I have a lot of experience, good and bad, that I can share with people. It’s fun to create something that you think is going to be helpful to someone.
That’s the truth because you’ve definitely got a few battle scars. You’ve come a long way from this young kid in the Marine Corps out there. The lessons that you could go back and tell that eighteen-year-old. Don’t you have a son that’s that same age?
Business And Barbecue: Focus more on having more of what you want.
I have an eighteen-year-old son that’s about to go play football at Trinity University. That kid, the most common thing that his superiors in the Marine Corps used to tell him was a good initiative, bad judgment and that’s probably still the number one area I struggle with because I’m action-oriented. I see something that either needs to be done or be done differently and I do it. I don’t think it out. I’m one of those that I’m going to fix the problem and I’ve been lucky that almost half the time it worked out but I’m not gun shy for sure.
You’re definitely not gun shy out there. You take action and get rocking and rolling as you go. You’ve seen different trends come and go, being up and being down, doing a lot of owner financing, selling the notes off, started an insurance company. If you had a crystal ball, where do you see the market going in the next several to many months?
I can answer that by what I’ve done in my real estate business in the last few months. We used to assign properties a lot. I never take title to them, I assign them. We don’t do that anymore. We only close on the assets and sell them on MLS. We get more money out of it and we’ve noticed that the investors buying off assignments have gotten a little gun shy. We stopped doing that. We started wholesaling more, cleaning out the house, putting some paint and carpet on it and we found that we’re making more than if we were to fix the house all the way up to retail, profits. We’re at that part of the market where everything is artificially high. You buy a house in Plano and you have to spend $60,000 over rehabbing the house to get a comp that’s over what it’s worth. When you can spend $20,000 and sell it for $40,000 or less and you realize your profit a lot quicker, there’s less margin for error and it’s easier to execute. It’s lipstick on a pig instead of what wall do we move, do we have to hire a designer and all of that. I bought a couple of distressed notes. It was a seller that called me about buying her houses and she had some horrible notes. They were awful. She downloaded a one-page form and owner-financed two houses on one form, two different borrowers.
The good news is we got $80,000 worth of unpaid principal balance at 2.9% interest. She was killing it on the interest rate. We bought them for $15,000. Scott Horn up here in Dallas helped me bring them in and reclose them and all that. It’s a 30% something return. I’ve started taking some of my less conforming houses. I love 3/2/2 brick houses. That’s that perfect rent house because it’s always going to have this demand in comparison with apartments. I have this three-bedroom, two-bath corner lot with Jupiter Road which is a major street in Dallas. I bought it for $100,000 and I figured it would be worth $170,000 fixed up. We owner finance it as-is for $140,000. It’s a true as-is valuation. We took the 180 ARV minus the $40,000 in work. They owner finance it for $140,000. They get a great deal. We moved an asset that doesn’t fit our traditional portfolio and then one of the things we do is we set up first and seconds that way we can sell the first ‘and keep the second.
We’re right because your down payment offsets your equity basis in the house. The first repay your underlying debt and the second is an infinite return. I’m doing some of that. I don’t think we crashed. Things get a little wavy. Bernie Sanders said something about letting felons vote from prison. There’s going to be a lot of distraction in the next several months, which is good because that means I don’t think the politicians will do anything to screw things up. In 2020, after the election, I don’t know. That’s what I’ve always written down as 2020 was the year that I feel we may hit a bump. This bump will be a little bit more like the dot-bomb bump and not the subprime bump, which I would say that anybody asking or want to know, find someone in your local market or your industry that lived through that dot-bomb and say, “Where were the opportunities?” Cash is king for me. It’s one of the reasons I’ve exited most of my companies in large and I’ve structured everything I’ve done almost like a second lien. I’ve structured an ongoing interest in the operation where I’m financially benefiting from their continued success but the liability and the capital base is what was returned. The liability is off me and the capital is returned to me.
You’re definitely leveraging yourself smartly there and getting your principal back in but keeping the upside and the cashflow for returns. You are one of the first of creating rental-backed security that was sold off to.
We did the mortgage-backed security that was the income was justified by the rents on the house. Blackstone did the first rent house security and they’ve all been public, they’re all performing great. It may have been a few years ago that we did the first securitization. The first one, it was in the April 20th. It’s been a few years since that went out the door. It’s a $250 million transaction. It added some liquidity to the rental market that will benefit us all during the next period of economic uncertainty. That bond liquidity on the bond market and securitization market, it’s one of those things that when the small banks dry up they’ll either get gobbled up by this bond market or at least we all have a place to go to get our financing when there are great deals.
The phone’s ringing off the hook a little bit more. The emails are coming in from asset managers who are interesting. I’ve been doing some research checking out the different Texas market. One of the things I checked for because I always like to see if there’s an increase in short sales because that’s a great thing and Dallas. We’ve got eight total here in the greater MLS area. San Antonio’s got 25. DFW has got 135 and Houston’s got 227 primarily due to the fact that it’s a lot. It’s past twelve months past the hurricane. Banks are tired of waiting. They’ve been nice for a year. Insurance can be either paying or not paying and they’re starting that foreclosure process.
Business And Barbecue: The most painful part of the business is driving around neighborhoods and running comps
One of the things that I watch, you watch short sales because that’s your note business. I watch seller-paid contributions on MLS. When I go back to what happened in 2006 and 2007, as prices were going up they started to level off but real dollars started to go down as seller-paid contributions increased. It was one of those things that once those got to the 6% to 8% mark, then the prices flat-lined. If you look at the curve, they stayed 6% to 8% as prices went down but at the trough when you knew you were getting near the bottom was when all the seller paids disappeared. It got to be when you were paying the price was the price. It’s one of the things as the next cautionary period hits. That’s what I’ll be watching for in the retail market because that’s a great leading indicator of how strong the market is.
We’ve been tracking the number of lenders popping up, not just banks, doing the non-prime niche, the 100% financing or donated down payment platforms out there with subprime FICOs 520, 500 foreclosure bailout loans. They had bankruptcy loans. Those things are starting to pop up left and right as some of the guys that left the industry a few years ago bought real estate cash to other real estate portfolios. They’re now back on the lending side leveraging their money to do that aspect again and waiting to gobble up. Another lender pops up almost every day that falls into that. I’m like, “I’m going to pull some cash out of the market, put it in here and when the thing does hit the fan, I got plenty of money for great new deals.”
That’s probably the most painful part of my business is that I drive around neighborhoods, I’m running comps and it’s like 123 Main Street in Mesquite is worth $180,000. I drive past down the street and I sold that house for $60,000. That was the reason we decided to sell our owner-financed mortgages. Something people have to watch is we started doing that when I was 30. If you’re 30 years old and you do 30-year loans, by the time you’re 60, you don’t have any assets left. I was doing my personal financials in October 2017 and I got happy. I ran down the hall I’m like, “Jennifer, look at this.” We ran CMAs on everything and the houses were worth so much money. I said, “Wait, never mind. I’ll be back. Those are notes.” I had to go figure out what the payoffs were. I pulled up my latest lender statement and my net worth went down by over $2 million.
I went to Jennifer and I said, “We’re selling all the notes.” At that time, me going crazy in one direction or another, “We’re never owner-financing again.” The most painful was a house in Richardson, Texas that literally had an estimated value of about $280,000, I bought it for $74,000 and I’d owner finance it for $120,000. They only owed me $78,000. I was in this position of I either had to go to bed at night praying someone had a medical emergency or a family crisis or I needed to get out of those. As I look at them, it’s more of a stream and a yield curve. If you can get past the twelve-bump mark and then you can sell that income stream off for a premium, that’s probably the better way. At least hold it for five years. On a 30-year note, the first five years is all juice. I’ve now decided that owner-financing is not the devil. I told Jennifer about it. She’s like, “We’re not going to start owner-financing everything are we?” I was like, “I’m measured half.”
You’re buying some distressed asset and there are plenty of people doing stupid stuff out there on the owner-financing side that you can pick up some distressed assets at a relatively low price. Especially when you say somebody’s writing a loan at 2.9% interest rate, that’s smoking crack there.
I’d ballparked her on the phone at 50% of the UPB. I was thinking, “If this lady will take that, that’s great.” She sends me all the paperwork. I take it to Scott and like, “Does that say 2.9%?” He’s like, “That’s a typo.” I’m like, “That’s got to be 12.9% or something but I don’t know.” It was 2.9% on a ten-year Am but the good news is if they did default, we end up having $250,000 worth of properties for $30,000 total all-in because it was $15,000 per parcel. We’re below lot value in our basis and it’s fantastic for us especially in Dallas. It may not be great in Gary, Indiana.
This is the same thing as you’re pulling in a double-digit return based off a cashflow alone on that aspect of it and you’ve got that equity that if they do, great. You’re going to get paid off definitely either by foreclosing and selling them to the auction based on the equity position. If you can Cash for Keys, deed in lieu, then you’re capturing all that equity and rinse and repeating which is a phenomenal thing for you.
That’s another thing I started looking at. There was this gentleman from London that recruited me into the Blackstone thing. He always said when they started the house buying arm, they were in California and he ended up getting a flat tire on his Uber or limo or whatever. He ends up in this neighborhood with all these vacant houses and somebody came up and said, “Are you’re trying to buy that house? They’re going to sell it for $200,000.” The guy was looking at it like, “That’s got to cost more than $200,000 to build.” What I’ve been looking a lot at on my portfolio and the way I run numbers isn’t ARV-based. It’s the replacement cost. Is it a decent asset construction-wise? Could you build that same thing for what your basis is going to be in, especially on a brick house? Maybe not a frame house. You may want to make an adjustment there but if you’ve got a brick house and you can buy it for 10% or 15% less than you could build that thing for, that’s one thing. The building cost and labor will never go down again.
Business And Barbecue: Sometimes it’s okay to sit back on the bench and let someone else go strikeout.
That only gets more and more expensive as time goes on with different things. You’re building supplies off and will change depending on what’s going on in other areas of the country too for you as well too. We see that in parts of Michigan. Detroit is booming, it’s hard to get labor. I haven’t overpaid for labor for areas around Detroit, Ann Arbor, Flint, Pontiac and some of those areas. People don’t want to drive the extra 30 minutes for a project, wait around and get another job five minutes away. In Dallas, you’ve got such a huge market spread out Dallas or DFW or Fort Worth by itself. A lot of investors are going to stay on this side of Dallas. They’re not going to go to the other side and vice versa. It can be a little picky on stuff like that but when you’re in smaller metroplexes or smaller markets, you’ve got to look at that aspect of repair costs not only for what you’re buying it and what your strategy is. I love buying nonperforming, keep cashflow for twelve, resell your position off or keep it for cashflow for the first 60 months is a desirable play to be in. It all depends what your money costs are and your expectations of your investors or if you’re not using your own money.
That’s another thing that we’ve been looking at is I’ve done development or two. We’ve built some new houses. In Dallas, there are a million new people that live here that didn’t live here a few years ago. The home building and the remodeling industry took off so much. We had a severe labor shortage and every now and then I may go to the day labor center with a lot of cash and try to get a good deal from someone that needs to work for the day. It was when I stopped flipping houses for my fund because the whole model was I’d fix all the way up and sell. I went to the day labor center at 10:00 AM. I was like, “$100 and I’ll pay for lunch,” and they all looked at me. I had to pay $150 to get a couple of people from the day labor center in my truck for less than eight hours of work. That’s when I decided, “This labor market made it where you had to pay too much to rehab houses that then you couldn’t adjust your buying criteria down because there was so much competition.” Sometimes it’s okay to sit back on the bench and let someone else strikeout. We’ve gone outside of the core areas and into Royse City and Greenville even, 20 to 30 miles out where at least someone can still get a house for $1,200 to $1,500 a month.
We see that taking place here in Austin as well. A lot of people buying and a lot of investors aren’t buying in the Austin Metroplex. They were buying outside of Round Rock, Pflugerville and other areas because that’s where affordable is. People would rather drive 30 minutes for a decent house they can afford versus a 900-square foot condo or a property that is overpriced their budget. They’re willing to sit in traffic for an hour to two hours a day.
My son’s going to play football down at Trinity in San Antonio and my dream has always been to own a ranch, inland passes and a condo downtown Austin or a condo up here and then bounce back and forth. I’ve started looking at San Antonio for Airbnb and things like that. I like that San Antonio has this Airbnb ordinance. They’re going to regulate it but they’ve embraced it. The City of Arlington owned by the Cowboys banned all short-term rentals. You got people who went full-boat around Cowboys Stadium to do that. I started looking at houses in San Antonio and I’m fortunate. We have a lot of access to capital. You can still get a house down there if you’re in it for $150,000, you can rent it for $1,500 and that 12% gross yield. Even with the high Texas tax base, if you apply a modest amount of leverage, it’s still an excellent return. I’ve told Jennifer that I want to start looking down in San Antonio more and there’s a possibility I could relocate my acquisitions business down there in 2020 specifically because I know my wife’s going to be down there a lot anyway. I might as well have to write-off and make her time work while she’s down there.
You’re not going to be selling the new ranch you bought?
I sold it. I’ll tell you the story. This is how crazy I am. Anyone that knows me knows I always wanted a ranch. I love to hunt, I love to fish but never take time. I bought it and I owned it a little over a year. Deer season was wrapping up last spring and one of the neighbors pulls through the gate and comes up, I’m loading my tractor and he says, “I want to buy your ranch.” I said, “It’s not for sale.” He goes, “I know what you paid for it.” I said, “Great.” He goes, “I’ll pay you $50,000 more.” I said, “It’s yours.” Everything’s always for sale, but that was a lesson in entrepreneurism because that’s one of those things. I would never have taken what he offered if I wasn’t busy at work. A lot of what I was busy with at work and that was one of the final things that made me decide to forget building a big company. It’s time to keep it small, keep it all, have less of what I don’t need and more of what I want. I decided to sell it because I never had enough time to get down there and finish anything. Having those unfinished products or projects waiting there, it drove me nuts. It became a constant distraction. I couldn’t focus on where I was because I was worried about where I wanted to be. When I sold it and then I sold the tractors and the four wheelers and all this stuff I bought for the ranch, then I turned 40 the next month. It’s this roller coaster of emotions.
I said, “I’m done with this,” and that’s when I shut the brokerage down. I put the lending company up for sale. I told the fund investors, “No more money, we’re going to cascade this thing out.” The insurance business was going well but we’ve been blessed to have some suitors on that. That’s a cashflow business though. People sign up online and you get checks. I don’t want to sell that, but I will. Now I’m lucky. My buddy Randy called me and said, “What are you doing?” It was about 10:30. I said, “I’m getting ready to get my day started,” and he hung up on me and he’s mad. A year-and-a-half ago I was the boss. I was the CEO. It was my company. I created it all. I had to be at the office by 8:00 to manage my twenty-something employees and then I had to be at the office after 6:00 to make sure that they did their work. I created all of these problems for myself that probably had more to do with ego. If you listen to this week’s podcast, I went through Eat That Frog!, the Brian Tracy book. The first step in his seven-step system is to write down exactly what you want. If I would have revisited that several months ago, not a single thing I was doing daily had anything to do with what I wanted. It was all that we do. It was residual decisions after decisions. Without going through the actual process, I went through the process and I eliminated it all.
Aaron Young has a program called The Unshackled Owner. Aaron and I are great friends. He talks about how a lot of times the things that we work on become the handcuffs to what we want to get to be doing in life. I’ve experienced that. I know you’ve experienced that in a couple of different ways. A lot of people that are reading this, they feel that same way too. They’re out there in maybe not the enjoyment of real estate anymore or they’re in the business of it or the job of it. They’re working in their full-time job and not enjoying it and not on the path where they want to go. The biggest thing I like to tell people is, like he says, “Eat the frog.” Take some time. Write out what you would love your ideal life to be like and for many of us that is not what we’re doing on a day in, day out basis. I went through this a few years ago when I was traveling and speaking all across the country and stuff like that. It was fun for a couple of years. After a time the ego goes away and you’re like, “This is not quality of life.” You’ve got kids that are growing, you’re a passionate father and you see that on a Friday night or Saturday morning on your Facebook. Trinity is a great school. I got recruited there out of high school as well. That’s a long time, but a great place. He’s going to do well there. That’s the thing, you want to enjoy it, you don’t work so hard anymore. You and Jennifer are celebrating how many years?
Business And Barbecue: We all escape the rat race, but then we create these freaking rat races for ourselves.
It’s well over a decade. I’ve enjoyed watching you and Steph travel more and we’re both getting into that season of our life that your corporate banking was like my Marine Corps. We both went through these 20s and early 30s or 30s of massive success and growth. Probably a lot of growth maybe not as much success if we were to redefine it now. Jennifer used always to tell me, she’d say, “Tim, you’re the only person I know that could work ten hours a week, make $500,000 a year and refuses to do so.” I used to tell her it’s because my purpose is this and I want to build this. I’m an old man now and it was all ego. It was more and that’s what I’ve done with barbeque. I’m not a barbeque expert. I can cook a steak and I could smoke a brisket, but it definitely wouldn’t win a competition, but I love to eat. We get busy doing this stuff we don’t want to do that we don’t even take time to do things that we enjoy. I can tell you how many times I’ve flown through Austin on business and not stopped in Lockhart to go to Smitty’s or Kreuz Market or not swung over to Terry Blacks, the Hays County or the Valentina’s.
Austin is the best barbeque in the world and I love barbeque but I wouldn’t take the time to do it because I was busy. Maybe it’s perspective of old age. I know people reading this, they’re in their 50s or 60s and hearing me at 40 like, “Shut up.” It’s a bit of perspective. It’s a bit of being blessed to have done some things at the right time but there’s also a lot of ways that we can help people like with what you do. If someone were to resolve to buy one note a year from the first time that they started thinking about it. If they don’t feel comfortable, loan some money to someone already doing it and at least start that passive income clot. It’s amazing how quickly it all adds up and when you look back at the many years I’ve been chasing my tail around the industry. If I had selected one quality house a year, sold a couple less, lived a little more modestly and not gotten distracted with the expo, I’d probably be sitting on a $10 million portfolio at 40.
Success often leads to doors opening that we wouldn’t otherwise have and you did a great job. You started in Dallas and did an amazing job. It’s a great event. It’s the best expo in the country. We’re excited to be a part of it and then you sold it off, a great thing for you and stuff like that. It wasn’t quite what it was in new hands but that’s okay. Often, it doesn’t have the same driving factor, the same people behind it, the same passion behind it that you had and it happens whenever you’ve seen somebody take over or something like that. We all look for projects especially the entrepreneurs. It’s totally the E-Myth right there. We get excited. We don’t want to be bored. We’re looking for something that’s going to invigorate our minds on a regular basis and then we talk a lot of BS for ourselves thinking that we’re bigger than we are and can take on more than we can handle.
More than we should. I look back at the expo and I probably would’ve never sold it if I made it a Dallas event that was doubling every year. That was the most fun thing I’ve ever done in business because most people reading hasn’t been in front of a crowd of 1,800 people. Once you have, it’s jazzy, especially when you’re getting the feedback that we always got at those events of how it was changing people’s lives and helping them have more of what they want. I still love events but you’re one of the reasons I’ve sworn off events. I had my event in January of 2019 and you were like, “I don’t pay to go to events anymore and it’s not my thing.” I was like, “What is Scott doing?” I started looking at it. You have the same effect. You in essence are ahead of me. You had the same effect by providing this online digital content from the comfort of your office that I’ve heard you talk about it right by your house and right by where you like to eat and right by the gym. You said that and I was like, “That makes a lot of sense. I could do that in my pajamas with a T-shirt.” That’s more of what I want. I got a gigabit internet at the house and I decided to shut down the office. Everything happens for a reason. These people have sold businesses too. I wouldn’t have met if I hadn’t done some of the other things I did and I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be ambitious. I would say only get into what you want or something that’s a direct contributor to what you want.
That’s such wise words there definitely. You posted an image, “Make sure you’re climbing the right ladder on the right wall.” I have an amazing social media staff that does most of the posting for me but I take a look at different things but that’s the thing. We find ourselves going down one path where we think it’s going to lead to something completely different. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes that’s bad because you have to take to step back or bring yourself down a rung or two to jump over and shoot some ladders and go some different direction. As entrepreneurs, that’s one of the biggest things that separate those that are successful from those that aren’t successful.
You’re not afraid to say yes, you’re not afraid to make mistakes and they think that’s where a lot of people are scared of making a mistake. You’re scared of going and buying that first asset, buying that first note, going out to the expo, going up and shaking hands or even marketing afterward. We’ve talked about a few different issues but when you think back over the last several years, what would you say is probably one of the biggest mistakes that you’ve made that stood out the most to you when you think back?
This is going to sound super cheesy but I’m a bit nostalgic that my oldest son will graduate high school and there was a period when he was in his early teens that I was the busiest. In that B2R business, being on the plane a few days a week, I never missed one of his football games. I’d fly home on a Thursday night and fly back to New York on a Friday, but I never missed the important stuff but I missed a lot of stuff that was important that didn’t have a label to it. if I had a regret, it would be all the traveling I did for Blackstone. Other than money, that didn’t do anything for me. It taught me a lot but I haven’t benefited from that except for money. I made a lot of money and I got to meet a lot of cool people and flew around first class everywhere and all that. I became one of those lifeless souls in seat 4B.
One time I would not trade seats with someone that was separated from their wife or I can’t remember. I needed to work on the plane and I was in the seat that I always sit in and I need my right arm free. I remember about an hour in the flight I was like, “You are an A-hole.” That’s probably the biggest mistake I made is I sold out to my original conviction of never letting someone tell me what my time was worth or tell me where to be when. Other than that, it would be not keeping enough houses when I could have. One less vacation or some of my vacations are $3,000 or $4,000 a day vacations. We travel nice but there have been some trips to Vale that could have paid for a rent house that when you look back you’re like, “Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.” It’s being a good steward and looking at what’s the most important thing in your life instead of what’s important in your business.
That’s the biggest thing, setting your priorities correctly, taking the time to make the memories. That’s one thing that is instilled in me and I can hear my father, William Milton Carson telling me, “Take some time to make some memories because that’s what you’re going to take with you more than anything else.” You can have all the houses and all the money and that’s great. It does leave some great memories, but sometimes the little things are what keeps us going, gets us rocking and rolling. We learn more from those things that we miss some times than what we’re out trying to do on that hamster wheel that we often put ourselves because we’re all guilty of that.
You know Brad. I sent him a text, I said, “All of us expo guys, we create our own damn rat races. We all escape the rat race but then we create these freaking rat races for ourselves.” If you ever told me, “Tim, it’s your life’s dream to start a company that has an $80,000 a month overhead that you have to make sure it gets paid, you have 23 full-time employees and you’re doing $3 million a year in revenue. You’re building it to sell it one day and you’re there twelve hours a day.” I would have told you that you got the wrong Tim, but that’s what I built in 2020 because that’s that snowball. You brought up the E-Myth, those entrepreneurial seizures. Take a pill. Don’t keep having seizures. I kept having seizures and I built something that was crazy and stupid big.
What’s the thing you’re excited about most in the next several months? I know you’re excited about podcasts, excited to see that too. You’re going to be taking some good barbecue.
What I’m excited about the most in the next several months and this is going to sound awful, is my eighteen-year-old moving out. I’m proud that he made the decisions he’s made. He chose Trinity, a Division III football team over Division I football offers because he chose academics over athletics as we had told him. I’m excited to see him grow into his own man. Jennifer and I are attack helicopter parents. We’re not hovering around. We’re coming in hot. My youngest, he’s nine and everything he does is about measuring up to Bubba. I’m excited to see him become his own. That age nine through thirteen was the best with Alex. Unfortunately, I was gone most of the time but I’m excited to enjoy that with my youngest and watch him become his own little person. I’m going to do some traveling and I’m excited about flushing out my understanding and appreciation for barbecue. Do you remember Sam Sadler? We’re going to do a couple a barbecue road trips and go meet with some pit masters. When we come down to Austin, we’ll invite you to come with us for the day.
We’ve already talked to some of them. We’re going to go in and look at what they do. This has always been my approach and it’s something I’m good at. The first month I’ve done five episodes now, really four and then a bonus top ten episode. I’ve done four weekly episodes. I’ve done it all on my own. I bought Adobe Audition. I’ve done it all on my own because I’m one of those people that have to understand the real nuts and bolts behind everything. I’ve also done it on my own enough to where if you eat that frog, it’s time to delegate it and eliminate some of it. One of your buddies, I reached out to him and I set up a call because I have enough understanding and I know the direction I want it to go. I want to do some interviews. That’s why the first thing we got on the call, I started asking, “Which Zoom is this,” because I do want to do some interviews. I want to continue to share what motivates me and impacts me on a weekly basis.
You used to do a lot more of that and you need to start doing more. You would come on with accountability, say Facebook Live accountability, and you would ramble for 30 minutes. I loved it because those of us that have businesses that I wouldn’t say successful, that are active. If we’re perceptive enough, we learn so much every day that could help someone and to have a platform to share it and then have someone to help me do it though, I’m looking forward to that. If I put it in order, it’s watching my oldest become his own man, watching my youngest become a little man, eating more barbecue and experimenting with new business things that do juice me up.
You’re definitely going to enjoy the podcasting aspect because it is like talking in front of an audience of 500 to 1,200 to 3,000 people from time to time. It’s the feedback that I’m sure you’re going to get is definitely going to be awesome, if not already on different things. I love the episodes. You’re on a great path of things. It’s going to evolve as you go, which is great too. You’re in good hands with Tom and the folks over at Podetize. I understand he’s going to do a great job filming some of that stuff that’s live episodes for you. I’m looking forward to those as well. What’s the best way for people who would like to get a little more information on? What’s the best way for them to reach out to you, Tim?
It’s TimHerriage.com. If you Google me, if anybody needs any help on the real state, go to YouTube and type in my name. Last time I counted, there are 500 videos from all the training to the old expos. I’ve put it all out there public. There’s a ton on YouTube. TimHerriage.com is the easiest way to get in touch with me.
Everybody, if you’re reading, check out the Business and BBQ podcast out there. Subscribe, leave a review. We love those things especially getting started. Sometimes we feel like we’re speaking on a microphone, “Do you know where anybody is reading?” Tim, thanks for taking time out of your busy day there. Congratulations on all the things you’ve learned since that flat top kid in the Marine Corps got started rocking and rolling.
Thanks for having me on and on. I love what you’re doing. You’re definitely someone that I think entrepreneurs, not just note people, can look up to because you’ve always been a fun guy to be around. I love the way you take care of veterans and you’ve got a great message to share. I’m going to enjoy continuing to follow you.
Take care. That’s going to wrap it up for this episode of the show. Check out Business and BBQ. It’s on anywhere you would download your podcast, iTunes, Stitcher, all that good stuff. Take a second and subscribe to it. Leave a review. It’s great stuff there. You’re going to get the latest one, the top ten DFW Barbecue Joints because that’s where all of those things. When you’re traveling an area, “Where should I go eat at?” and Tim tells you right there his favorite spots out there. Stay tuned for more information. Check him out at TimHerriage.com. Go out, take some action and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. If you’re not living the life that you want to live, start changing. Start getting rid of the things, the distractions and the handcuffs that holds us back from truly living and become the entrepreneur and the person that you want to be later in life. Go out, take action and we’ll see you at the top.
Important Links:
- Tim Herriage
- Business and BBQ
- iTunes – Business and BBQ
- REI Expo
- Think Realty
- Blackstone
- B2R Finance
- 2020 REI Group
- MLS
- Scott Horn
- Airbnb
- Podcast – past episode of Business and BBQ
- Eat That Frog!
- The Unshackled Owner
- E-Myth
- Sam Sadler
- Podetize
- Stitcher – Business and BBQ
- YouTube – Tim Herriage
- www.TimHerriage.com
About Tim Herriage
Tim Herriage is an Entrepreneur with a focus on the real estate investment ecosystem. For nearly two decades Tim has been on the leading edge of the Real Estate Investor (REI) space. This includes being the Founder of 2020 REI Group, Founder and Managing Director of Blackstone’s B2R Finance, Founder of the REI Expo, and a Franchisee and Development Agent for HomeVestors® of America. Tim has completed well over $1 Billion in real estate investment transactions, including the acquisition of more than 1,500 houses in his seventeen-year career.