The Real Estate CEO Who Got Rejected 50 Times Before Building a $1B Empire

0:00Tim's company Homeward will buy over a billion dollars worth of real estate this year. And not a fake billion, that is a real billion dollars worth of real estate. I must have interviewed at like 50 different companies. Did not get a single job offer. If you call people, then some of them say no and some of them say yes. And the ones that say yes are all the ones that they're the only ones I care about.
Welcome back to the Be Wealthy podcast with Brett Tanner, the show where we deep dive into the strategies, mindsets, and real world tactics that unlock true financial freedom and abundance in your life. Today, we're joined by my good friend and CEO of Homeward, Tim Heyl. For those that don't know Tim, I'm sure most of you do. Tim's company Homeward will buy over a billion dollars worth of real estate this year. That's right, not sold not selling it. He's bought over a billion dollars. I've known Tim now for nearly 20 years. We jump into how we met, the struggles of being an entrepreneur, how to balance all that with having a big life. We go through

1:03our lessons because we've both spent so much time privately with Gary Keller, the founder of Keller Williams. And we dig into the mindset, the throught the thought process, and really how to figure out as an entrepreneur if you're winning or losing every single day in your business. Without further ado, I can't wait to share with you this episode. Let's jump in jump in and talk to my good buddy, Tim Heyl. Tim, welcome to the Be Wealthy show.
Thanks for having me. Good to see everybody. Glad to be here.
So, Tim is CEO founder of Homeward, real estate mogul who today Homeward is right now buying a billion dollars worth of real estate on an annual basis. No, that's not a mistake. My spreadsheet's not inaccurate. It's not wrong. And not a fake billion, that is a real billion dollars worth of real estate. Tim runs the one of the largest home buying if not the largest home buying businesses in the country among other things that he does and other businesses. But Tim, I knew you probably longer than most

2:06folks. Um you and I would have met in 2008 or 9-ish.
Yeah.
And so I know you as Tim the the cool dude. Which you're you're so many things but most importantly you're a cool dude. So welcome to the show man. I'm so glad you're here.
Thanks Brad. It's fun to be on this. You know, I'm I'm anytime to have a conversation with you is a good time.
So Tim and I have spent time on his I think when he first bought his pontoon. What was your your boat? We would go out and we did
Yeah, it was a double-decker pontoon boat cost cheap cheap as you can get but fun as you can get too.
I will tell you it was we probably spent six hours We have done the stories Tim that we could tell if they got on the internet I think would be shocking. And we'll get into that but I want to go back I mean Tim you're you are beyond at the top of the mountain today. And I always like to start on our show is go back to Tim at 10 years old. And you're in your parents' household and they're talking about money. It comes up. Wealth. And you know, was it is was the mindset

3:08around it scarce or abundant?
You know, that's a great question. It was really split between my mom and my dad. With my mom the mindset was definitely scarce. You know, she came from It's funny. I just got back from Indianapolis for a wedding where she grew up and I drove by her old house that she grew up in and the Redfin value on that house today is $55,000. So you know, I I think that gave me some perspective on where the scarcity came from with my mom. You know,
So the Redfin value today?
Today. Present value.
Okay, I just So I just want this just misunderstood that.
Yeah, present value. So you know, my mom grew up in in a household where everything it was scarce and everything was about saving. My dad grew up in a household less so, and and my dad's a a big idea guy, a big picture guy, and and so, you know, it was kind of opposite ends of the spectrum. Um but you know what? My I I learned good things from both of them. My mom, when we were growing up, we had to do our chores and our different things, and

4:09we'd get an allowance, and we'd get $10, and I think it was like once a month we'd get 10 bucks, and we put we had these envelopes, and one was called saving, and one of them was called tithing. And we had to take a dollar of the 10 and put it in saving, and a dollar of the 10 and put it in tithing, which is to give away, and then and then the $8 we could keep. And I was like it was I still remember like walking back to her closet and like pulling out my envelopes and putting my dollars in. Like she would give us the 10, and then we'd have to go through this motion.
So, what was the positive, what's the negative?
Yeah, so positive side was I just developed a natural instinct towards save taking whenever I got money, taking that and right off the top giving some away, saving some. The negative side was I never really learned anything about investing. My parents didn't talk about investment. They I don't know that they did a ton of. They They My My dad did some real estate investing, but we I didn't really learn anything about investing capital in those early days, really even into my adulthood. But from a from a saving and giving standpoint, I still remember in college I got my real

5:11estate license, and I sold a property while I was in college. I made $15,000, and I remember the first thing I did is I gave $1,500 away, and then I and then I put another $1,500 into savings, and then I looked at it and I go, "Okay, I've got 1,200 bucks, or $12,000." Um and it was just like a natural it was just a natural instinct. So, that really stuck with me, that stayed with me, that was great, but it took me some time into my adulthood to really learn about what investing means.
So, you're the first person I've interviewed where you had parents that one parent big thinker, abundance, everything's possible in the world, and then you've got another parent who hey, is a little more, you know, conservative. Hey, we got to save the money. It actually is kind of beautiful though. That's kind of a great cuz it's either one of like if everything's possible and we you know I mean like it could be a little you need I think there's a good balance of both. So that actually is knowing so much about you, it's interesting to hear you say that framework.
You know, it's really funny. It makes me think about when when I was a kid we'd go skiing. And I remember we went to we would stay in that like my dad would book the trips

6:15but my mom would do everything else. So my dad my dad would book ski in ski out on the mountain just like, you know, best best just just probably super expensive amazing. And then my mom would like prepare everything. So she would go to the dollar store and she would buy us 99 cent snow boots. She got these she had eight we had six kids in my family. So she would get eight trash can lids so that we could use them as like like to slide down the mountains like like like saucers or whatever. So like we're we're literally taking trash can lids on the airplane to go stay in a ski in ski out, you know, so my my parents were just like kind of opposite ends of the spectrum how they thought about you know, thought about things and and you know, learned good things from both of those from both of those sides.
So you grew up there and then you grew up with Did you grow up in Texas? Where did you grow up?
Austin Texas, yeah.
And so now you've you've got this background. You go to college. Where do you go to college at?
So I went to Texas A&M. It's just a couple hours away. I was a finance major and you know, I didn't really know what

7:16I wanted to do. I I worked you know, I had a job since I was 16, you know, never really a job that I loved. I was a lifeguard. I worked at a retail store. I was a banquet staff, a waiter, you know, things that you know, I honestly hated. You know, it's funny there's a Chris Rock stand up that you have to watch if you can stand how crass he is but he's hilarious and he he talks about the difference between a job and a career. And I won't go into the details, but uh you know, a job is where you're like looking at the clock and it's not moving. And a career is like, you know, that you look at the clock and the day's gone, you have no time left. And you know, I definitely had a lot of jobs. And all the way through college as well, you know, I I didn't really understand entrepreneurially entrepreneurism, I didn't really understand sales. I had never, you know, throughout even until the end of college, none of that stuff really clicked for me.
So, you go to Texas A&M, you got these random collection of of jobs. Uh you got a finance degree. When when

8:18do you go find the real estate bug? Is there things that happened now, or did you come right out of college and then get into real estate?
You know, I So, I got my license when I was in college cuz I thought it'd be fun to have on the side. My dad was in real estate. My My dad owns a home building company. Actually, two of my brothers are partners with him today. So, I thought, you know, it'd be fun to get my license. I'd start kind of playing around with it, but my real intention was to go get a finance job in New York or, you know, somewhere else. And man, the the the economy just totally tanked, the global financial crisis my senior year in college. And, you know, I must've interviewed at like 50 different companies, did not get a single job offer. So, I moved back to Austin. I had like almost no money to my name. And I had to move back in with my parents. Um I was still interviewing for jobs. And I finally just said, you know, "Dad, what brokerage what what what brokerage should I join? Where do I go? Like, I got to do something." And so, he connected me with a real estate agent that he knew. Her name's Alfia Osborne. She was like one of the first KW agents back in the like the

9:20early '80s. And and she introduced me to Keller Williams. She introduced me to real estate, really. And and, you know, I said, "Okay, well, I'll do this while I until I get a real job." And the rest is history. You know, never
What year was this? What year was this that you got your like your you joined Keller Williams? So, what year were we in in this? I'm interviewing
End of '08, early '09. Yeah. Early '09.
And you know what's crazy looking back and I'm curious your take. When I look back that probably would have been the greatest time ever. May not have felt like it.
Well,
Do me.
I used to say it was the worst time. I used to say I got so screwed. I graduated at the bottom of the market, all this stuff. In retrospect and now having gone through tornado in real estate man, what a blessing to be able to be able to get in after when you're at the bottom. You know, there's nothing better than not knowing how great things used to be and just thinking that like this is the default. The average days on market in

10:22Austin was 185 when I started in real estate. 185 days. The average days on market in Austin in the peak in like '21 or '22, I don't even know what it was, but it was probably single digits. I mean, it was like
No.
It was like Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, the difference when when you when when the average time it takes a home to sell is 6 months is a whole different world and that's just that's just that's all I knew. And so, that that was the the start when you start your career that way, I actually was very lucky because every year I got a little bit smarter, I got a little bit better, the economy got better, everything got better, right? The housing market got better. So, as I got better, the externals got better. It was just a you know, it was a long trajectory of kind of up and to the right.
Yeah, I had the exact opposite experience, Tim. As you know, I was flipping homes and I got licensed in 2005 in the euphoria. And I remember selling a home in 2005 and people being they were making so much money. This is a real story. The buyer would buy it and like they would go like, "Hey, I want to leave you this gift basket

11:24behind and I'm going to pay I want my landscaper who's been landscaping this property for 10 years. I pay for the first month. I want you to take you know, just to care of my home. Like people loved it. Fast forward 4 years, people were tearing their ceiling fans out of the home and stripping it of wire. So, Tim, I got to have like you know, you were getting in in in 2000, late '06, early '07, I was looking to leave the business cuz I was like, this is hard, this sucks. But, so you got in '08. Um you get going and how does your first year, right? You you meet Alfie Osborne who's couldn't be a more beautiful person. What's the first year like cuz you're you're you got a finance degree, not a real estate degree.
Right.
And which still helps. I mean, it's learning the math the language of business, but real estate school, as you and I both know, prepares you to do absolutely nothing in real estate. Um
Well, and I never had a sales job in my life, either. So, I didn't even know, you know, I didn't really know I was getting into sales. I didn't know I was getting into I actually went when I met

12:26with Alfie, I was wearing a suit cuz I thought she was interviewing me for a job where she would pay me money. Um but then I found out that that's that's not really how this works. So, you know, the first honestly, the first 6 months, man, I was coming into a KW office and just sort of floating around. I was pulling up an Excel spreadsheet and building my database. But I honestly, I didn't do I I I was going on home tours. I was I was doing all of like I I didn't know what to do. So, I just sort of did the things that I thought other people were doing and I made no money. And then about 6 months in, I went to a sales seminar and the sales seminar honestly like forced me to get on the phone and make some phone calls. It kind of And And honestly, that was probably that was probably the key because what happened was being forced to get on phone calls, um you know, first couple calls don't go anywhere, but I actually had some early success and somebody invited me to their house to talk about listing their home and it clicked for me. I'm like, okay, well, if you call people, then some of them say no and some of them say yes,

13:29and the ones that say yes are all the ones that the only ones I care about. And so, I just like something clicked for me and I realized, okay, this is just this is surely a numbers game, and I just got to figure out what those numbers are.
So, do you remember the seminar? Who taught it back then? Do you remember who it was?
Yeah, it was it was called bold Diana Kokoszka in 2009. And it was just it was just it was just honestly like it was for 1 hour once a week, we'd have to take a lead list, go out, and make phone calls. And that was like the the forcing function of having to come back in and report your numbers. How many calls did you make? How many people did you talk to? How many leads did you get? You know, that was a forcing function for me to be able to actually do it and then to realize that oh, something can actually come from this.
I I love that and by the way, when you say lead list, I just want to get everyone on the same page here. These were back then sheets of paper, right? You'd have sheets of this is my lead lists.
It was sheets of paper.
Your call Yeah, it was I got I remember or you know, that back in those days, I would have my sales team racks of paper with numbers on it.
Yeah.

14:31
And we would all go make calls and that was just, you know, we had a CRM, but they weren't like today. I mean, it was like you could store some stuff kind of and it wouldn't work.
That's right. That's right.
Yeah. So, you go that you you have this experience. Now you got the skill of I just got to make calls and and when does it catch, you know, so now you're what? 2009 or 10?
Yes. So, I So, I ran and I said, okay, I want to make 100,000 bucks. So, I backed my way in. Okay, that's probably 12 deals or 15 deal, whatever the number was. And so, I said, okay, I probably need to go on twice as many appointments. I probably need to set twice as many appointments as I need to go on. I probably need to, you know, have however many leads. I just made up numbers and I created my own funnel that I felt like was probably reasonable. And it came down to like I needed to I think it was like I needed to talk to 20 people a day or I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was I had to talk to some amount of people a day that would generate me some amount of leads, some amount of appointments, some amount of signings, some amount of closings. And so I have my numbers and I thought I'm going to make 100 grand. I'm going to go do this. And I And I did it and I

15:32was I was super consistent. I actually I printed out my own pieces of paper, which was like a little chart, and I had one for every day, and it would have a check box for every call I made, every person I talked to, every lead I got, every appointment I set, and I would literally manually just like check it off throughout the day, and I could only if I had certain check boxes that I had to get if I wanted to check off the box at the top of the page, which was count this as a day worked. And so I I I was like, I'm going to work I'm going to have a 250 days worked check boxes with and I knew what that meant to myself. So I had a stack of papers. Monday through Friday I'd fill them out and then at the end of the week I'd input I'd take the five sheets and I'd input it into a spreadsheet and then I'd throw them away. And the the idea was if I worked 250 days, then I'll make this amount of calls and I'll hit these numbers. And at the end of 250 days, I was super diligent about it, and I think I I think I sold like I don't know. I I I can't remember the numbers, but I think I sold like eight houses or something. I I I fell way short. I probably made 50 grand. I fell way short of my $100,000 but what kept me going was every time I got a lead, somebody who said, "Yes, we

16:36want to sell our house, but not now, but you can call us back at this at this time." I put them into this CRM, and I just like put their name, their phone number, a little note about what we talked about, and a follow-up date. And I knew I would pull that up and I would see this list of like hundreds and hundreds of sellers in my city who I knew nobody else is talking to them. I know when they want to sell. They've told me to call them back. We had a pleasant conversation. And so to me, that that gave me the sort of the energy to go again another year. And I went again another year, and in year two, I think I sold I think I I can't I still can't remember the numbers, but I think it was like 65 or 70 houses in year two, and I blew past whatever I think I made like half a million bucks or something. It just like blew past what I what I thought I was going to do. And then and then and then that really kept me going for year three. I was like, man, this is building on itself. And in year three, I think I sold like 150, 160 homes. And it it just the numbers were just like, they were it was just this exponential thing. And you know, the rest is history. Like now I was like, I was fully bought in at that time and I just I and I knew what my

17:38numbers were, too. So, I because I knew my numbers, I just knew, okay, well, here's the deal. If I want to Now I can set whatever targets I want to set. And I and it all comes down to how many conversations do I need to have every day. And that's what got me to then starting to think about, okay, I need more than me. If I want to hit the If I want to keep hitting these bigger numbers, how do I expand that? And that's when I my one of one of my very first hires was getting somebody else to come, put a headset on, and make calls all day next to me so I could double down on what I was doing. And that and things just continued to to take off.
Well, I want to break that down cuz I think what there's so much genius in what you just said. And you know, you you you run a massive organization. I spend a lot of my days coaching entrepreneurs, agents, and investors. And one of the questions I always ask them is, what's the math that you know if you won or lost today? Based only on your effort, not the scoreboard.
Yeah.
Cuz sometimes the scoreboard in life is wrong for a minute. Like in other words, that first year, your math was right, the scoreboard was wrong. You're just early.
That's right.
Right? And so the second year, the math was the same, meaning you're winning

18:41every day. I'm I'm checking my box, I'm doing the thing, but I get a residual benefit for the work I did before.
That's exactly
So, I just everyone watching or listening to this needs to go back in in your business, how do you know if you win or lose the day, not based on the scoreboard, based on your effort. And so yours was, I got to talk to 20 people. 20 people, you know, equals X amount of appointments, equals X amount of whatever. And that could be I don't care if you're selling a a SaaS software product or you know, dentistry or whatever. At number one, everyone's selling things, and there's basic numbers in your business you need to understand. But, yes, we're always going to measure results, and we're going to do all that, but I can't go get a sale today a lot of times, right? I've got There's a lot of things that happen before that. So, I just love that you have You got the scoreboard and realizing, okay, I can also change my math, right? If I'm I'm calling 20 people a day and talking to them, and I make 50, I know that if I do call 40, most likely I'm going to make 100.
All right, if you've been listening to the show for any period of time, you

19:42know I run a a high-end mastermind for entrepreneurs that are looking to create a different outcome and create more freedom in their life as it relates to their wealth and their money, and that's what I want to offer you a risk-free opportunity to come check it out. We have two seats available at our upcoming mastermind. You can book a call with my team over at bewealthy.com, navigate to the mastermind section, and book a call. We would love to have you at the event and check it out and see what it's all about.
And and and And you have And you have to focus your day one, I love what you said, on the things that are in your control fully. Like early on, I remember talking to the top agent in our office, and I said, "What do you What's a day one for you?" And he said He said, "Oh, I go on an appointment every day. If I don't go on an appointment, then he's That's my job is to go on an appointment." And I thought, "Well, I can't do that. Like, there's no way I could say I that I could say that it's it's only a day one if I go on an appointment." Cuz I didn't have any I didn't have any There was no way to get an appointment every day at that point. So, that's why I made it all about conversations, but I got to a point where I where I I changed the game on

20:45myself, and I said, "It's an appointment every day. If I don't If I don't get an appointment every day, it's not it's not a day worked." And I I upped the ante for myself when I had the ability to, because I had the funnel, I had the things there. And that that ante continued to get upped over time and change and evolve over time, but you got to You have to always focus it around the things that you know are in your control.
It just there's so much genius there, and everyone needs to understand, you know, the kit the critical math that drives their business. So, that would take us to the moment where you and I met. So, you're now at at I guess that'd be 2010-ish. You're now doing what do you say? 130, 150 homes a year, or something like that?
Yeah, but I I guess probably probably 2011, something. I can't remember exactly, but yeah, it was it was like 150 homes, give or take. And I had like an assistant. I I was I had a showing agent. And I had like a transaction manager. This was just a very small, basically like they were just supporting what I was doing, and I was just It was me kind of generating everything, making it happen at that time.
So, well, I want to go So, your first

21:47hire though, So, you've got You were doing the work, you're doing the thing. You're on the phone. By the way, I was having the same journey as you. I just was before you a little bit, cuz I I know it doesn't show up on camera right now, but I'm older than Tim. You could see that white hair. But, so your first hire, most people go hire administrative help, because they're like, "I need somebody to help with all the paperwork."
Well, to be fair to be fair, my first hire was a part-time administrative help. So, what I did is I There was a There was There was an agent in the office. There was an agent in the office who was not really producing, and therefore not making any money. And so, I did not have the guts to go make a real full-time hire. Um I didn't feel like I had the money. I'd never made one before. I was like 22 years old, you know? And so, what I did is I made an agreement. I said, "Hey, I'll pay you. No commitment. Like, you're not leaving your job. There's no no stress here, but I'm going to pay you 10 bucks an hour, whatever it was. Um and you come in and you do these things for me, and let's just see how it goes. And you can keep selling real estate or doing whatever you do." And that actually worked out really really well. It took a bunch of crap off

22:49of my plate. It helped me get organized. It helped me, you know? So, that that was prob That was the first the first deal, but very shortly after, it was just double down on lead generation, get somebody else on the phone with me.
So, you hire this salesperson. you're making calls yourself, you're doing it, and you just bring them beside What's it like? You're like, "Hey, I'm I'm saying these things, these you know, we're going to call them scripts or I'm saying these things on this lead list. You should just say the things on the lead list and
Yeah.
we'll, you know, we'll make it happen." Is that kind of what it was like?
We literally sat next to each other. We were both on headsets. We were both making the calls. We were literally high-fiving each other in between calls. It was great. It was great. And and and honestly, we I don't know how long we did that for, 6 months or a year, but I woke up one day and I went, "Well, if I just hired one more, then I could stop making these calls, and then I'd have two people making these calls all day, and then I would have 40 hours a week back." Cuz I was spending the majority of my time doing that. And that was just like a lightbulb moment for me. I like, "Wait a minute. What would I do

23:52if I had 40 hours a week back?" And And that's what I did. I went and hired a second person. And by the way, like the productivity of those two people was was less than my personal productivity, but it didn't matter because now now I knew my numbers, I knew what the number should be, I knew how to make it, you know, you could just It's all It's again, like you said earlier, it's just math, and you just figure out, "Okay, here's how I'm going to pay him. Here's what If I need four instead of two." It started to become a different game. At first, it was all sales, and then it became, "Well, this is this is kind of my first entrance into business, right? Succeeding through other people, which was really cool."
And I think the mistake people make, Tim, is they don't have the math, right? For If you don't know how many calls you make, you're like, "You You hire people and like, "Dude, make calls." They're not getting results. "Well, make more." Like, "Well, how many?" "Just more."
Well, and that is I mean, more like you you have no idea. Are they failing? Was my expectations Were my expectations off? Was it It's so difficult. And even today, I've got to hire people into roles that I don't know how to do, and it's very difficult. The The best way The easiest way is when you've already done something really well yourself, you know what the numbers are. And when you

24:54know what the numbers are, you it's just so much easier to know is somebody succeeding, failing, do they need to be coached, do they need to be replaced, do they you know, what's what's the problem? It it's very very difficult to go hire somebody into a job like that when you've never done it and you don't know what those numbers are.
It's So now we're in the in 2010 or 11, you and I meet and because of that success you've had now you're, you know, in Keller Williams, we're both with the same firm and back then they had this mastermind, which is ran by Gary Keller, you know, the oracle, you know, the stash. You and I are in that room and 2011 was where I was kind of at the peak of my game, right at that point in time. I was three in KW at that moment, nine in the country. And I remember you were in there. How old were you? So you'd have been how old in 2010?
Early 20s, my early 20s. 01, 2007.
So I don't know if this is your version of it, this is mine. I remember us going to the and we're in the learning center, which is like seats 200 people and this is the top agents in the entire country

25:56come to this room call it every quarter to sit there and to be trained personally by Gary Keller, right? And it was just it was the it was the greatest Everybody asked me what's the best mastermind you're ever a part of and I was like, well, it was and you've been in both of them. Uh the first one was like, I'm not going to call it a mastermind but that room. Just being in the room with 200 people achieving at that level and then he selected what I'm going to call 12 of us to be the quote pirate group and I would said that the the the pirate group was the best mastermind I was ever a part of and you couldn't pay any amount of money to join it. Your success alone was an entry fee because it wasn't just success. He wanted other things and a different personalities and different thought processes. But uh we we took a break back before that. You and I I we were in the learning center, there's this little cafe off to the side and you were kind of sitting it was I think it was your first time in in the room, right? I think. And you were sitting off in the back by yourself and I was like, I wonder what that guy is doing over there. So I kind of went sat by you and I'm like, "All right, friend. How do you, you know, create your business?" And you were you said "Dude, there's nothing cool about what I

26:58do. I hammer the phones." I was like, "Well, that's all we do." So, I had And then you and I kind of hit it off and is that your version of it? That's my version.
Yeah, for sure. And I I I remember I remember side brainstorms, side masterminds with you, with you and Brian. We just multiple times that we were able to go sit down in a room. You know, that that room I got invited to, it was a one-off at first because you know, I got to I I literally was doing everything I could to follow the MREA model. Basically, everything that I would hear Gary Keller preach, I was just implementing. And I got a call one day and it was Gary Keller and he was like, "Hey, you I just read this Austin Business Journal that you're on the front cover of. You're like the number one agent in Austin and you're in my company and I don't even know who you are. Like, what what's going on? What are you doing?" And we had a fun conversation and he invited me. He said, "Why don't you I'm having this mastermind. Why don't you come tag along?" So, I my production wasn't even at the level to be in there, I don't think. I was just I was tagging along and my mind was blown, man. I I learned so much and and and was able to keep going somehow from there.

28:02
So, you go from there, you you keep building this the Heyl Group, right? Now you keep adding people. But along the way, you're also investing in real estate. So, because you're selling, at what point do you start realizing I kind of want to invest in this thing I'm selling. When does that start for you?
Well, you know, the first thing that I did was when I was able to move out of my parents' house, I would what I did was I moved in with my old college roommate. My old college roommate had borrowed money from his parents to he was a home builder and he borrowed money from his parents, he bought a lot, he bought a teardown in the city and he tore it down, he built himself a house and and I think he was in it for like 300k and the value, I knew the value as a real estate agent was like 800k. And I moved in with him and we got I got to live in this brand new house with him and pay really cheap rent. And my mind was just blown on how he pulled this off and the wealth that he created for himself by doing it. So I copied him. As soon as I had enough money for a down payment,

29:04I bought a teardown in the city. I paid 300k for it and those lots now are worth like a million and a half, but I paid 300k for it and I I I hired his company to build me a custom home and I was in it for I want to say I was in it for 800k and the value overnight was like 1.6. And that was the first that was the first deal that I did and it was By the way, I was like I didn't need to be when I did it, I didn't need to be buying an $800,000 house, but I was doing it because I literally was copying what he had just done and and it not only was it so successful, then I went and I did three other spec homes in the same neighborhood where I bought the land, tore it down. By the way, I found all these pieces of land through my normal cold calling. I just, you know, just focused on the area that I was looking for, bought the teardowns, hired the builder, sold the houses specs and, you know, honestly in those days made a killing on on that. That was That was kind of my first, you know, outside of selling real estate, my first real estate investment strategy and you know, I had the the great fortune of a market

30:06that was rising and Austin was starting to boom and all of those things, but but honestly like just thinking about wealth, like well, I'm sure we'll get into this, but one of the biggest things when I look back about my adult life so far, all of the success, all of the abundance that's been created in my life has come from come from a relationship in some way, shape or form. And I look back at that and I'm like I wouldn't have known I I would have never even gotten into that at all had it not been for my college roommate that I ended up going and living with, seeing what he did first hand and figuring out how to go copy it. Um and so it's like I kind of lucked into that, but you know, who you surround yourself with, you know, I I by the way, I had a lot of other college friends. The one I The one I stayed close to and and and spent the most amount of time with was the one who was making things happen and I wanted to be close to and learn from. And so, you know, that was, you know, that was a a big big turning point for me in thinking about how to how to make money work.
Well, there there's a couple lessons that I want to, you know, break apart

31:08there. One is every one of us had lots of college friends. You could have went and hang out with your friends that was getting drunk at the bar every night. And if you spend a lot of time doing that, maybe you could have got really good at getting drunk at the bar. And a lot of people have that skill. You know what they're really good at Tim is wasting time, sleeping in, eating like crap and getting drunk at the bar. And they're world-class at it. And you wake up 20 years later and that's the skill you have. Instead, you had a college roommate that you had lots of friends, but this person you're like, "Hey, this person's on a different journey. I'm on this journey. I'm going here." Secondly, right? Most people's first deal is not going to be buying an $800,000 teardown. Um, right? However, you've got someone who's done it again and again. You've seen the math. They've got a proven model. It's worked endless amount of time. But the part that So, the relationship part's all you. The luck part, you know, I always hear successful people they go, "Oh, it was just, you know, a lot of this was luck." There's no luck in picking up the phone and calling a certain area to acquire the teardowns that, you know, work. That's just that's the work, right? And what are the

32:11What are the things this show? So, we have, you know, our audience is real estate investors and business owners. And so, I'll always get the question Tim of, "Well, hey man, I want to make investments. I'm successful now. I'm going to go put my money I'm a dentist. I'm going to go put my money in crypto." And I'm like, "Okay, maybe. Why don't you invest in your own business? Like, are you leasing machines? Is there some sort of Could you buy your building? What about your other friends that are dentists? Do they lease the machines? Could you buy the machines for them? Or could you buy their building, or could you provide some service to them? Like investing your capital where you have an unfair advantage. Not illegally like the stock market, right? That would be illegal. But in private business, you know, you took your "Hey, I know how to sell this. I know if I could buy it for this and I could sell it for Y and it costs this much to build it. This is my profit." You knew all those numbers. And so, you, while some people might be listening to this go, "Oh my gosh, that was crazy risky." Not if I'd seen someone do a 20 times and I knew all the math myself and then I'm hiring them to do the building part, which is the part I'm not a pro at. It's just it there's so many models there, but you like two things you said.

33:12Number one, you've got to go figure out where you have an unfair advantage. And number two, spending time with people that ultimately are doing the things you want to do or are living the life that you want to live
Yeah.
can change your life forever.
And And by the way, you said where you have an unfair advantage. What I learned from him was that in Central Austin at that time, if you could get a teardown for a certain price, it was a no-brainer make make tons of money. It was just a no-brainer if you could get a teardown at a certain price, which was a big if. They weren't just sitting on the market at low prices. And so, what I realized is well, my unfair advantage is I'm talking to homeowners every single day. If I narrow that into the area where I'm focused on, I can create an unfair advantage there. And I did. You know, and and and so, I learned the numbers from him. I learned the opportunity from him, but then I connected it with where I had an unfair advantage and that's what made it That's what made it click.
So, now you've got Now you're in the greatest spot ever, which is I've got this business that's churning out cash.

34:14It's making profits. I'm growing it.
Yep.
I've got a way to take the cash, put it in an investment that's cranking out more cash. So, take us through the next steps of the journey and and kind of the years we're in here.
The next steps are are kind of a low part in my journey, to be honest, which is I've lots of lots of highs, lots of lows. My my my life is you know, my wife knew when she married me that it was going to be a roller coaster and she reminds me of that regularly. It continues to be a roller coaster. Lots of lots of ups, lots of downs. Um
Well, and then hold on and before we go further Tim, talk about an up. I mean, you're filming this literally from the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars. Behind you This is what happens guys when you look behind you. You can see what it looks like from on the screen. Guys, Tim is got he's so successful now. He's literally in the stars. He's beaming down to us. It's incredible. It looks like this glasswork behind you looks like you're in in Star Wars. It's incredible.
Well,
So
So so so so at at this time in my career, I was I had just gotten off of going on listing appointments, meaning I

35:17brought a listing agent in and so now I wasn't on the phones and I wasn't going on listing appointments. I was just managing the business and so I had had some success deploying capital in the home building stuff. I had had some success in doing some other things and so I started to think of myself as a serial entrepreneur. And I I thought, well, I can do anything. I can whatever business, you know, I want to start, I can, you know, and and I was thinking strategically, where's my unfair advantage and and and so I I was doing I was thinking about some of the things in the right way. Um And so what I did is I went, okay, well, I'm closing, you know, hundreds of deals every month at the same title company or every year whatever it was. I was closing high volume with the same title company, with the same mortgage lender, with the same home insurance agency, with the same, you know, And and so I was like, I'm going to create joint ventures. So I went around and I tried to create joint ventures and none of these providers that I was working with wanted to do a joint venture. They just wanted to keep getting my business and, you know, not having any kind of other relationship around it other than being

36:20a consumer of all my business. So I went, okay, I'm going to go start all these businesses on my own. And I did. And they I'll call them mediocre successes at best. One was actually pretty solid success. Mo- most were mediocre and some were failures. And the reason for that is because what I did was I went and I got in busine- I was not going to run any of these businesses, right? Because I'm a business guy now. I'm an entrepreneur. And so I just went and I hired somebody and I said, "Let's go start a title company." And I hired somebody and I said, "Let's go start a home insurance agency. I've got all the deal flow. You run it. Let's go." And I was not a professional hirer, you know? I had clearly not mastered the skill of ensuring that I was getting into business with the right people. And, you know, I've had a number of failures, even if they were mediocre successes, I would just call them generally failures, of not really building great businesses because I was very quick about who I got into business

37:23with and really what they became was time sucks and disasters of my schedule and pulled me away from my core business that I was still managing and running, by the way, at the time. And I remember maybe 2016, 2017, somewhere around that time, I remember waking up in the morning and not knowing what even how to even prioritize my time. I had fires in the title business and the insurance business and my core real estate business and my investing and my fires everywhere. And I remember not even not even being able to think of how to prioritize my time. And my goal became, "How do I consolidate and shut all this crap down so I can focus?" And even that felt like a mountain to climb because I had I had created so many different things. And so it was a big lesson for me at the time around focus, number one, around getting into business with the right people and starting slow and making sure that they are the right people before you just start ramping something up, um number two. And and I went through a period of consolidation where I where I just was like unwinding, pulling back and and by maybe by 2017 or 2018 I had successfully

38:27unwound and pulled things back and narrowed the focus in, but it was a it was a few years of just like, you know, me getting myself into way too many things because I just I had this like good vision of of the ability to start lots of businesses, but very poor execution and there was a lot to learn still that I had yet to learn at the time.
Yeah, it's you know, it's interesting today you I hear people go, you know, like you'll see people that are early in their journey, they're having some early success and they'll go, Brett, my goal is to create, you know, multiple streams of income. You don't understand rich people, they've got 10 flows of income. And I'm like, which rich person are you talking to? Yeah, the extremely wealthy today have incredible streams of income cuz they already have all the money.
Right.
In the beginning, that's what people I go on your part of your journey, you need like one stream of income like your thing until your thing runs without you in it day-to-day where you're just overseeing and managing, you shouldn't be starting more things cuz more if you can't get this thing to run on its own, the next thing all it

39:29does is fractionalize your effort and all of it kind of goes like this. Is that a fair
I think that's the key. I think that's the key is like when your business is still running on you, even if you're not making the calls or going on the appointments, if you're the one managing and running the business day-to-day, it's probably running on you and if it's running on you, you know, one of the the worst thing you can do for your core business is go get distracted with a bunch of other things and that was a big lesson learned for me. And and and and quite frankly, I went back, consolidated, focused, got the business to a place where it didn't need to be run on me and was able to pull somebody in and this time I made a very good decision, I pulled somebody in that had worked with me for 7 years, maybe 8 years at the time to come in and take over and by the time he took over, it was almost like a formality. Like he had already basically been running everything by the time that I, you know, officially handed him the baton. And that is when, you know, what we call it at at at Keller Williams seventh

40:31level, you know, getting to that seventh level spot, that was a time where it truly made sense to go, "Okay, now how do you go figure out what's next, what that next thing is?" And it's still got to be strategic, and it's still got to be your unfair advantage, and still got to be focused and all those things, but at least I was able to pull myself out of that spot. When I was in that spot trying to create all the just because you have opportunity doesn't mean that it that you should go chase it right right then at that point. And I had I I ran the numbers. Like I had the title closing numbers to like make a bunch of money in title. I didn't have the time. I didn't have the right person. There were so many things I was lacking that I that I did not see clearly. And so, you know, big lesson learned during that time.
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41:34subscribe. I I I think people need to hear that like there's 9 million ways to make an extra $100,000 a year. There's not 9 million ways to make $5 million plus a year.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, right like like it just you can hustle. And the other lesson I mean I had to learn in my own life, Tim, is that hustle didn't scale. Cuz I was a hustler. And I I tried to scale hustle. I tried to scale my time. Unfortunately, there's only 24 hours in a day is what I beat my head against the wall for years and realizing that I wasn't going to be wildly successful and accomplish my goals on just by running as fast and as hard as I could, I was going to need to learn people. And I was going to need to learn being a manager and being a leader not by being the leader by saying, "Hi everybody, I'm the leader." That's actually not what leadership is. And how do you get people to stick with you and how do you hire them and how do you advance their careers and how do you help them accomplish what they want in their life and how is their life better because you're a part of the organization? That's all the stuff I didn't know. I

42:37mean, I did There's not a book that you can teach you that one.
Plus one to all of that and strategy. Like what what I what I would say is I love that you said that because it's been big on my mind lately. You know, thinking that hard work is the key to success is totally flawed. Hard work is a requirement of success. It's like a constraint. It's like you're going to have to work hard. That is not
It's an entry fee.
It's Yeah, it's like an entry It's an entry fee. That that is that is so far from the key. I've got friends who work three jobs, who make sub 100k a year working three jobs, you know, up at 5:00 a.m. and home at at 9:00 p.m. You know, I I truly have friends that work their tails off, but their cap is so low and you know, it's an entry fee. And that and that's that's something that honestly like I still have to remind some some people that I'm in business with about because the strategy that you're taking, the direction that you're moving in, the things that you're working on, the thing that's the things that you're doing hard work on, um you

43:41know, that matters. And then the other piece is what you said around around leadership. Man, that that was one of the hardest changes for me going from the guy who was converting all the business cuz hustle By the way, when you're in sales, hustle is maybe the key to success, right? Like when you're like directly in the sales job, you know, the the more you hustle, the more deals you do. And and and I I was just like you. I was like, "Dude, I'll I'll out hustle everybody. I don't That to me this is that's like I feel like I'm playing football again. I'm like I'm back in the game, you know, I'll hustle my ass off. But but yeah, go when I when all of a sudden I handed the calls off and then I handed the appointments off and now I'm managing and I'm showing up and for 2 hours no one else is in all that's happening with my hustle energy is I'm getting angry. Where is everybody? I'm just like getting angry and I'm like just give me the phone, I'll do it myself, you know, like like and and I remember I went through a period where I was so frustrated with my team, I was literally just give it back to me, I'll just go do it. And honestly like a lot of my team in those early days just just went went away because I was I

44:44was not leading well. What I was doing was I was still thinking that I'm going to I'm going to out hustle and I'm going to win because I'm going to hustle and man, that was totally flawed. That when you're in an individual contributor role, that can be true. When you step in and you say I'm going to get to the next level through leverage, so totally different skill set and you know, if you haven't learned it and if you don't understand what that looks like, you're going to be in for a a rude awakening, which I was.
You know, Tim, I always think there's like three different, you know, kind of buckets of skills you've got to develop if you want to get to the top of the mountain, right? The first one is you've just got to learn how to sell stuff and optimize and hustle, right? Just get in there and make it happen, right? It's just you, it's will, it's developing your skills, working on the most valuable 6 inches worth of real estate in the world, you you know, the two the 6 inches between your two temples. And you got to get your income going. And those skills are great. Then you've got to learn what it's like to be a manager and a leader. And and sadly, I wish this were different, I found almost none of those skills translated. Right? Being a hustler and a great salesperson

45:46will not make you a great manager in and of itself. Absolutely not. It's a totally different language. You've got and always you know, I'll get a question on Brett, what makes a great leader? And my definition is how many brutally awkward conversations have you had to have? Not yelling and screaming, just having a sit down with someone and looking them in the eyes when they're doing the best they can do and you have to let them go because the economics of your business can't support their role. To me, that's the hardest part of business, right? That's a brutally awkward tough conversation. And then the third bucket of skills you got to develop to get to the max level is you've got to understand the language of wealth and money and what it actually is. And those are three distinct journeys that we all have to go on, right? Like And none of the skills translate, sadly.
Yep.
Do you agree with that?
Agree with that 100%. 100%. And, you know, people learn people learn differently, they come from different backgrounds, but what came naturally to me you mentioned those in like three phases. Almost like it's an I do it and it's about hustle, it's you know, you do it

46:49and it's about leadership, and it's my money does it for me and it's about understanding the the rules and the principles of of money. And the one that came the most naturally for me was the first one. And I was able to just like lean in and crush that early on. What came much less naturally for me was the second one. And what didn't come naturally at all for me was the third one. And and it still is, I'm still learning, you know, but it but it's like you sort of get to this place when you are successful at something that you start to feel like you can be successful at everything. And that can that can become a trap, you know, it can become a big time trap. And and, you know, when I when I've been at my highs, my lows are around the corner because I'm about to get myself into something, you know, get over my skis in some way.
Oh, we've I got to tell you, Tim, you and I know we've got the battle scars. I mean, I've started more businesses than you can imagine. I mean, I I Like you said, I I would say that early on I was a serial entrepreneur. That's definitely would have been the definition. So, you're you're having now you've you've consolidated, you you go into the real estate team, you've got

47:50a partner in there who's literally driving it, running it, you know the numbers. You've got some time back now. So, where do you apply that focus? So, you've got this business crushing it.
Yep.
You consolidated the the outside businesses that don't make sense. You've sold them off, shut them down, whatever. Now, what do you do?
So, I moved into seventh level for the for this real estate business and I and I I gave the business
Which those who don't know what that mean, that just means you're not in the day-to-day. You're you're having meetings with the leader. You're running the numbers. They've got to hit certain numbers and you're still strategy, coaching, leadership. But, day-to-day decision, this person's pissed, this client's suing us, that stuff's not getting to you.
Exactly. And so, it freed up all my time to think about strategy, to think about how do we go to the next level. And the big question was our business had become heavier buy-side focused. The agents were telling me our message doesn't resonate anymore. The message that we had was all about how aggressive we would help somebody sell their house,

48:52um our aggressive marketing plan for you know, all these things. But, like people's houses are selling in 2 seconds and nobody cares. And so, I had to take a step back and go our listing business is dying. Our message is not resonating and I want to scale this business nationwide. You know, something's got to something's got to happen differently. It's not all about how hard work. We're not just going to hire 100 more people to do all the same stuff. We got to What's the strategy? What's the different approach that that we could take to scale to the next level? That became my question to go answer in my new job. And I had all my time back to think about how to answer that. And at the time, I had seen a company called OpenDoor come out on the scene and doing the iBuying thing. And I felt like, man, they are kicking all of our butts in real estate with generating seller traffic. Sellers are just magnetic to their website to get a cash offer on their home. This is the most powerful message in real estate. Um this is the attraction of of of of a seller, you know, and and I and so, I tried I actually called up OpenDoor. I tried to create a partnership and they told me no, we're we want to take you out. We're

49:54we're we're At the time, they were very anti-agent, and and there was no partnership to be made. And so, I took a step
This is in the early days. How far How far is OpenDoor been going now?
I don't know, a few years. This was probably 2018, somewhere around that time.
And you don't know, like for you know, for the listeners, there's another big influencer online who will remain nameless that says he was the first agent at OpenDoor. And I know one thing that that's a complete lie, just cuz I absolutely know who the first agent with OpenDoor was, because of me. Yeah, so you and I we I think we talked about this a little bit, but like OpenDoor when it started, you know, it was the three founders. They were looking for an agent. I was doing all the buying for these huge hedge funds, and they came in and said, "Hey, could you help us acquire all these properties, and could you manage the construction?" And I was like, "Sure, I could do all that." And so, I was in there day zero when OpenDoor is you know, just there's I don't know how many there's four founders, and and I remember it was wild. And I did that for, I mean, a couple years. But early they were that model of, you know, look Mr. buyer, seller, homeowner, if you

50:58want to sell your home, you know, fill in your address, click a button, they'll come out, it's all cash, they'll let you live there for 30 days or whatever if you need to, and you're on your way. You don't have to have showings if you got dogs or you know, you're you don't want to fix anything, here's a cash offer. It was just a It was the first time someone had gone at that scale. So, you looked at their model and you're like, I like it.
Well, what I what I like it what I like is if we want to get listings, we want to get sellers calling us saying, "Can you come over to my house?" That's the message. And so, we it it clicked for me that if we can change our message, we can change our destiny. So, we're going to change our message. Okay, well, how do we deliver on the message? And so, I went through a whole journey of of kind of working through that, figuring that out, and it ultimately led me to starting Homeward. And and the reason I started Homeward instead of running this under the Heyl Group is because Matt came to me and he said, "Tim, you're going to completely screw up everything we've built here at the Heyl Group." And I said, "Well, what do you mean?" He said, "Because every all of your key objectives that you need to do to go run this and build this, they're like not they're nothing to do

52:00with the things that I need to do to get the team executing on So, it's this constant battle. There's this book called The Innovator's Dilemma. And the Innovator's The Innovator's Dilemma, we read it in that mastermind together 10, 15 years ago, however many years ago. And the core premise of that book is the things that will drive success today are going to hurt you long-term. And the things that are going to drive success long-term are are completely going to hurt your business today. And so, it's a dilemma. That's why they call it the dilemma. It's like, you know, and you got to battle and build, but how do you battle and build without screwing everything up? And so, Matt and I shook hands and and he and and I said, "You go focus here. I'm going to go I'm going to go build something no strings attached. And we're going to figure out how to make this work. Um we're I'm going to build this so that you can use it, but I'm going to go I'm going to go build it." And so, I went and I started Homeward, and and the idea was to bring a message to the market that would allow my agents at the Heyl Group to be able to go use it as their calling card, whether it was in marketing, in prospecting, in database working, whatever it was, I want them to have a

53:03message that's powerful enough that people are going to be talking about it when they're having dinner with their friends, and they're going to ultimately reach out to us because of it. And so, the very first message we rolled out was buy before you sell. And the the the the whole focus there was people are everybody who's trying to move, they know their house can sell in 2 seconds, but they, you know, they they don't want to put it on the market and and sell it without having a house secured where they know where they're going. And so, we launched this product that allowed an existing homeowner to use our money. I had to go raise a bunch of capital to do this, but to use our capital to go buy whatever house they want to buy and move into it before they even list their existing house. And we call it buy before you sell, and that that took off. And then, a couple years later, the market heated up, it got really, really hot, and all the first-time home buyers were basically losing offer after offer after offer, and we looked at our product and we said, "Well, if we chop off half of this product, we can take the cash offer part of it and allow first-time home buyers to use our money to make all cash offers and go buy go win a property and then they can close on close with us after

54:05they get their mortgage." And so, we launched our second product, we call buy with cash, and and that took off, and and so, we were like, you know, I was on cloud nine, man. 2019, 2020, 2021, these were these were the best years of for many of us in real estate, but it was just like I nothing nothing could lose. Everything was just, you know, we were we'd roll out another product and boom, it would resonate, and boom, we were and the whole focus was I started with The Heyl Group, and The Heyl Group deployed these strategies to grow its business. The Heyl Group grew when I handed Matt the keys, we did 7 million in gross commission income um and by 2021 or 2022, we did over $20 million in gross commission income at The Heyl Group.
But people so, there you know, but hold on, you're using the lower number, which is why I have so much respect for you. You're using commission income. Where the industry, what OpenDoor would report or Redfin or Zillow or insert name, they would insert the sales volume. 7 million in commission income is what? 253 million dollars of sales.
Yeah, yeah.
And you're you're selling like it's a quarter of a billion, which is 7 million in commission income.

55:07But like, people don't realize like those are those are well, 7 million in commission income at any point is beyond massive. 20 million I mean, it's Herculean. I mean, that's you're top 10 in the country out of 1.7 million realtors. I mean, these are I just want to set the framework for everyone listening this. This isn't like kind I know you rolled over it like, well, we went from 7 to 20 7 was already huge. 20 puts you one of the top agents in the history of of Earth.
Yeah. Well, thank thank you for saying that. It was but it was truly the the market was hot, the market was good, but the but the company was deploying these strategies to attract customers. So, instead of having to outbound try and find everybody, we had buyers and sellers coming to us at a rate that we never would have otherwise. And and things took off. But what we did at Homeward was we said, "Well, let's go deploy this for other real estate teams and other real estate brokerages and let's let's figure out how to how to how to allow Really the the strategy was all the iBuyers and other companies in the in the space, they were all trying to

56:09eliminate the real estate agent. And so, my thought was, "Well, let's go the other way. Let's let's let the real estate agent go compete with better products and better better offerings." And and and man, things just boomed and boomed. And then in in late '22, interest rates moved really fast and all of a sudden multiple offer situation, at least in the markets we were in, multiple offer situations vanished. So, this buy with cash product for first-time homebuyers you know, and and
It's not needed now.
It's not needed. And then and then buy before you sell did not poof, but it started declining. Transactions declined by 35% and the majority of the transaction decline was the move-up buyer. Most people who had a home had a 2% mortgage. And so, why would they go and get an 8% mortgage? Oh, they'll just stay put. And so, the move-up buyer just just fell off a cliff and buy before you sell was fully focused on that. And so, I went through another journey in '23 where, you know, our revenue fell off a cliff. To your point from earlier, you know, it's like you know, it's not that you're doing

57:10something wrong, but you can't keep working here because I don't have the money to pay you. You know, it was it was it was just like it was such a dramatic change for us. It's not like we were working with all types of buyers and sellers and the market only declined 35% for us. We were working with the types of buyers and sellers that went to zero or were on their way to zero really fast. And and that was really tough. And so, I went through a a series of of layoffs that were honestly some of the brutal most brutal moments of my career. And so the first thing I did was just going back to the the the the Gary Keller wrote another book called Shift. And in Shift, it taught one of the one of the one of the key principles is to re-margin your business. And re-margining the business for me meant like cutting 70% of my costs, which meant hundreds of people and getting out of technology contracts and all kinds of crap. I mean, it was a 6-month period of absolute pain just to get down to a lower cost basis. But I looked up and I went, "Well, that's not going to be enough. I have to figure out how to get revenue moving the other direction cuz this direction's not
[0:58:12]
This direction's
We can only cut so far.
Yeah, exactly. You can only cut so far. So So I looked at the market and and really what had happened was the iBuyers went from making full price offers on homes to making what looked more like wholesale offers, you know, very very very low bids. And so as the market as days on market elongated and uncertainty in the market rose, the demand for a cash offer skyrocketed. But at the same time, the supply for any reasonable cash offer fell off a cliff. And that's when when I when I felt like this is the moment for us to get in to get into the sell side of the business. And so we launched our third product we call sell before you list or sell to HomeWell. And the whole idea with this is we're going to give any seller can come in, request a cash offer just like they could with an iBuyer or wholesaler or whomever. Our offer is going to be low. We're it's not going to be full price market offer. It's going to be low cuz we got to protect our, you know, volatility of pricing in the market and and market movement. But what we're going to do is we're going to charge a a flat fee to be able to cash the seller out and remodel their home and go sell it. And then all

59:16of the upside profits from the resale, we're going to give back to the seller. So it's kind of a best of both worlds where you can sell your home and cash out and go get all of your upside once we resell it on the open market. You know, when you sell your when you trade your car in, you'll you know you're taking a discount on it versus if you sold it yourself, but it may be 5,000 bucks or 3,000 bucks. It's not a big deal. But when you trade your house in, it's a big deal. It could be $50,000, it could be $100,000. It could be a big chunk of money. And so so what we did is we said, "Well, we don't need to make $100,000 on every house. We want to make We want to make 10 or 20,000 bucks on a house. And so let's charge a flat fee and let's just make sure that the seller is able to cash out, get what they need up front, skip the market, not have to deal with any of that, but know that they're going to still get their upside from the full market sale." And we launched that in '23 and we've just grown it exponentially over the last over the last few years. So we still do all of these products, buy before you sell, buy with cash, and and sell before you list, but but but in this market today, the one that has has really resonated and really taken off is sell before you list. And so we've partnered with folks like

1:00:18honestly, a lot of wholesalers have have really loved partnering with us because they're already in the business of meeting with sellers every single day who want a cash offer on their home. And sometimes the wholesale offers that they're able to bring to the table are really low and don't convert. And a Homeward offer, it also might be low, but because the seller is going to get all their upside, it can convert at such a higher level. So our whole business is partnering with, you know, real estate teams and wholesalers and folks that are out there meeting with sellers who want cash offers every day and we would we just want to be their partner. And it's worked really well.
So Tim, I want to I want to break some of that down. I mean, number one, you you know, you hit this euphoric high in '21, '22, which we all hit, right? I remember there was a point in time in I can't remember it was '21 or '22, probably the end of '21. And you remember those times like where every month it I don't care what business you had if you were in real estate, every month is a new record, record profit, record sale. I remember coming home to my wife one day and I was a little just like, you know, just kind of sitting around the table just thinking. My head was kind of down. She's like, "What's wrong?"

1:01:19So we We had our best month ever for the fifth month in a row. Like record-setting. And like it's not like we're beating it by a little, you know, it's like this month and then it's like kaboom. She goes, "What's wrong?" I said, "We're not that good." We're just not. And I look into my team and I said, "Um my biggest fear is they believe we are because I still have the scars from I had the scars from last time. I've been around this I I'd heard this band play once before.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, and I'm like it just doesn't work forever. One comment my father-in-law made in 2005 or 6 as he said, "Brett, when everyone I know who's a complete loser is making the most money in millions in something, it's the time to get out." And I went, "You don't know. It's 2005. You're just you know, you're you're old now. You don't get it." And but he couldn't have been more right. So, when I saw 2021 22, I thought to myself, like, "Hey, that record, yeah, it's cool that we're having records, but we're not that good. The market's giving us all the lift and my people believe we're that good." Now, you know, you translate that to this moment right now, what I tell my team is, "Hey, we're

1:02:22doing all the things we're better than the market. Like we're getting a result here, but our company is performing up here." And when that changes, we're going to get all that benefit and lift. But so, you went through that, you had to make these massive changes as we all did. Anybody that was playing big in 21 or 22, it tells me they haven't made an adjustment in those 2 years. It we all know that that's not true. Second thing you did that I think's just genius is you look at all the cash buyers are pulling out large part of them. They're making these low offers. And so, there's this gap of opportunity. Mind you, this gap isn't like with little small players. You're talking about you see the flaw in some of the biggest companies in real estate in the country. I mean, these aren't like you're watching it's the Opendoor, it's the Offerpad. And you're seeing with the biggest players. And then you go figure this out. I mean, that's the genius that's you, Tim, to look at that and go, "Everybody's running this way." Right? What's the opportunity? And I just think that I just want to pause for a minute and say, "I don't think people are looking at their business that way."

1:03:24And they need to be listening to this or watching it and thinking that way.
Yeah. Well, and the other thing is also don't listen too much to well, jury's still out. I mean, we'll we'll see how thing how things land, but you know, going against the grain sometimes is the right thing to do. And you know, for for us at the time when the iBuyers started pulling back, the narrative became "iBuying doesn't work. It'll never work. It's going to It's going to go to zero." And what I knew to be true is iBuying in the form that that has been happening, I know that that doesn't work. I've known that that didn't work since you know, before I started Homeward, which is why we didn't start with that. But the things that do work are sellers want certainty. Sellers want to skip the process. Sellers want all these things. They're willing to trade money for it. And and so what happened was when we launched this product, even my own board said, "What the hell are you doing? Like Like iBuying iBuying used to be cool. It's not cool anymore." And you know, I I felt like this is the opportunity right now. We're going to

1:04:25seize the moment. And we went completely against the grain at that time. And and it hadn't been easy. It's been hard for sure, but it's been something that's resonated really really well. And you know, I I just just thinking back Brett about something you were saying a second ago is you know, I I I somebody must have told me this at some point for it to be in my head, but you know, it I think about this a lot that nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. And you know, when things are good
Are you feeding my own line back to me?
May May May Are you the one who told me that?
You probably don't My My quote My quote is nothing is ever as good or as bad as we make it in our minds. Is the
There it is. And that And it And it's And it's so so true. You know, when things are good, you got to keep going with like humility and caution. You know, when things are bad, you got to know the the answers are there, you just got to focus on finding them. When things seem mediocre, middle of the road, you got to you got to know that there's so much more, you got to go seek it out. But, yeah, like especially for somebody like me, I I have like an

1:05:28obsessive personality, and I can get really, really obsessed, particularly when things are bad, with like how bad I think they are and how bad I feel they are. And, you know, if you don't have people feeding you and and there's been times even Brett for you I've you and I have sat down and I've just been my head's been in the dumps, just, you know, you and I have spent more time in the last, you know, few years than we did when times were good. And to have people like you who are able to like feed the right things into my own mind, that help me get my own head in order, is so important. And and because it you just have to always be reminded that like in 2023, when I felt like super down in the dumps, it wasn't as bad as it as it as I felt as at the time. Um and in 2021, when I was like on cloud nine, it wasn't as good, just to your point. It wasn't like we weren't as good It wasn't as good. And to keep a level head like that, like to deeply be able to like like wrap your mind around that in those moments, I think is so important and something that I've been working on, for sure.

1:06:29
Well, it definitely works, Tim, because I don't think it's a just random chance you get a you know, you'll this year you'll you'll buy a billion dollars worth of real estate. I don't think there's very many people very few people could ever say that they'd even scratch the surface of that. So, congrats to that. What I I want to switch gears a little, Tim. And I want to talk about you've had this incredible career, and I think one thing you and I share, many things we share, actually, is we've got to spend more time probably with Gary Keller privately than I might say anybody, but we'll just say most, right? We're in that inner world, and we've got to see be trained publicly, you know, in groups with him, be individual. When you think back at lessons you've learned from him, and and I'll chime in, too, what do you think are some of those lessons he he taught you? Cuz I mean, I could I I took my notes, by the way, recently, and I typed up just because I Each time I go, I write notes, I put them in a old folder, and then I had, you know, 7,000 notebooks. I recently typed them all up and organized them by theme. Oh, this is about people. This is about being a father. This is about being a

1:07:30kid. This is about running a business. This is about strategy. This is about lead generation. This is about capital management.
Sell that to all of us. We will all pay you money for that.
Well, and I'm working on a book around those ideas. So, who knows if that'll ever get the time to actually do it, but I've got it organized. But, when you look at it, what are some of those lessons that you would just, you know, that pop up, and they don't need to be relating to anything specific, but what do you think are some of those lessons as you've applied it to your life?
You know, one that pops to mind for me, I'll try I'll try and repeat it exactly. I don't know if I can repeat it exactly how he said it, but it was something along the lines of don't force growth for success. Oh my gosh, I'm not going to remember it exactly. The The point of what he's saying He's saying that you need to force your business to be doing the right things so that it will, over time, succeed versus forcing growth to drive success. And, you know, it it it replayed so many times in my in

1:08:33my world, but I I think when I first heard it, what resonated for me was oh, what I'm doing is I'm adding as many agents as I can add so that the top line grows, and I'm being very successful at that. But, my business is not getting better. My profit is not getting better. The The actual Right. And so, it it was a it was a reframing for me of like, this is not all about growth. It's not What was it? Don't Don't force growth for achievement for I I can't I can't remember. I'll I'll find it and I'll send it to you. But but
And I'll put it in the show notes, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So, but anyway, the point the point was don't chase growth, chase doing the right things, chase making the business healthier and stronger, and what will happen is the right growth will come from that. And I and I've I've tripped over myself multiple times around getting caught in the growth the growth flywheel. But particularly when I was running my real estate team, it was very clear. I was like, "Hold on. Generating high-quality leads and and forcing the right conversion on that is what drives this business.

1:09:36Adding a bunch of agents drives revenue growth, but it's not what drives the success of this business. And it was a total reframe for me, and it caused me to completely go back to my original roots um back at that time. That was that was a big one. But man, Gary Keller, I'll share just one more high-level, and then I want to hear from you. But one more high-level is just that book that he wrote, The One Thing, encapsulates 90% of I mean, he has taught us so much, and so much, you know, deeper clicks in there. But that book really changed my life because it taught me about it taught me about how to have a successful morning. It taught me how to um uh how to how to visualize and dream and pull that back into actionable steps. It taught me how to It taught me how to focus. Like, you know, what one of the biggest problems that I have with focus is something he calls in the book, the fear of chaos. The fear of chaos is like, "If I if I go so deep on this one thing, all this other crap's going to pile up and going to crush me." And and

1:10:39it it and and he taught us about how all that other crap in the end isn't going to matter, and and it's one thing to say it, but it's another thing to hear his stories and to be able to understand how he's lived some of that, and then and then turn around and go apply that. You know, I I've learned so much from Gary, you know.
Well, that book, you know, it's fine people talk about The One Thing, and you and I got to live this, you know, he was working on that material in the room with us. Right? So, when our book came out and I read it, I went
It was all out.
Oh, and then this is this is all my notes. Oh, I've got that drawing on that page. You know, one of my I'll tell you he's got some just so many one-liners. The one that just as you were talking there, it's like you don't month profits made by managing the expenses on the revenue you already have. You know, I think about all the time. He's like, "That's where profits made." It's not by doing more revenue, because more revenue might not equal more profit. Profits is actually made by And so, another one like you think about getting in the details. This isn't something was in the room, but I was walking around, you know, the the KWI building and we were coming up and down the staircase and you he's showing me this thing and that. And his level of

1:11:42detail, right? Cuz I always see leaders they get so far, you know, I'm I'm a visionary. I'm up here. And I remember walking by and he's like, "I'm sorry, Brett. Can I just have a moment?" And he walks over and these like desks are being built. And this is on some like random side area. There's, you know, the there's there's two people building desks. He's like, "Is this desk the one I ordered? It doesn't feel like it's the right size."

And I'm like out of corner of his eye. And they're like, "Oh, no, no, no. These aren't the desks that we're getting, sir. These are we're just seeing that these won't fit." And you look and you realize and you realize that like they've 100% ordered the wrong desk, but he knew like you talk about someone who knows details. Now, he's got people running the business, but he is paying attention to the Austin Business Journal who's the top agent. What's going on? I mean, you walk the ranch with him. You walk his property. I mean, every he knows the order of everything. I also would say he taught You talk about a guy that's good that understands leverage in his life and understands how to two

1:12:46things, get the most out of people and how to leverage to where he is what he he is the most present person I would say I've ever been with. Like, you know when you if I go to dinner with my friends, right? Someone's going to go on their phone and you know, be doing a lot of this. I've been with Gary probably for 4 hours and he's engaged with you. His phone's not dinging, banging, zapping, you know, it's just that level I mean, he's just present.
Cool. And what's what's cool about what's cool about Gary is not only has he built a big business, but he's built a business that's generated hundreds of millions of dollars of bottom-line profit. Maybe I I don't know.
Annually?
Yeah, annually. I don't know the full of the details, but I know extreme levels of profit. And has a very successful personal life. Very His relationship with his wife, his relationship with his son, all of those things. And And so when you look at more of that full picture and what, you know, I was at his house one time and just a similar similar story, you know, I've learned a lot about leverage from Gary.

1:13:48And I went so obsessed so so extreme on leverage and I had told my wife like I'm not going to do anything like like you don't have to like I'll never want you to do anything that I'm not going to do. So like anything that you don't want to do just tell me and I'll leverage it out, too. Like like that was my mindset. And I remember being at his house and he's taking out the garbage. And I went, "What are you doing?" I was like, "You you what You should have like a maid here doing all this for you or somebody. Like, why are you doing this?" And he said he's he said, "There are some things that Mary wants to see me do and there's there's things that that I know make my wife feel like I'm contributing and that we're in this together and all this stuff." And it just like blew my mind. I was like, that resonated for me because I knew that that was true at my own home and I knew that this whole like like this this whole extreme that I had taken to on leverage cuz I learned so much so much so many positive things about leverage with Gary, but there was an another side where that I hadn't heard him talk about where he's like, "Yeah, of course I leverage everything, but I'm not going to leverage things that are going to make my wife feel like I'm not involved, engaged, whatever. And And that was a

1:14:50That was a big lesson, too.
I think what's so cool is I I am impressed by people that have all the levels of success, right? Which are money is one of them, right? I love people that are financially successful. Like if I'm But if they only have financial success, I don't find that that impressive because anyone could trade everything for money and I don't think that's cool. But the person that's got a beautiful relationship with their spouse, a wonderful relationship with their kids, they've got the success, the health, they're giving, and they've got this wonderful wheel of life experience, those are the people that I think are are admirable and you should follow in all areas of your life as a mentor. And what I think's cool about you, Tim, is for someone of your success, you do an incredible job with your family and your kids, and you're doing epic experiences, and you're pouring in in all those things. I think that's such a it's a missed thing cuz someone could look at you and go, "Yeah, but Tim's doing a billion in sales, but he's not, you know, there." And I know I've cuz I, you know, you and I spend time privately, you're home. You are home

1:15:52with the kids. You're You're in it, and I just think it's it's so cool that you've been able to have this level of success, remain who you are, and even now like the humility, it's so cool.
Thanks, man. Thanks for saying that. Well, the one The one thing that I will just want to close with is you and I have been very fortunate to be able to spend as much time as we have with Gary. The people that we spend the most amount of time with, it reflects on what our life ends up looking like. And so, if I could just leave with with with one with one just like call out is like to write down who are the top five people that you are spending time with, and what are What's What are those people's lives like? And are they kind of where you want to be? Are they not where you want to be at all? Are they like beyond where you want to be? Because honestly, when I go back and look at my life in every area of my life, where I have developed in the ways that I've wanted to develop, it's because I spent so much time with the guy who was already doing it. And so, you know, whether that was Gary or or somebody else. And so, I just think that it's so important who you spend your time with. Honestly, like probably the biggest principle around building wealth, when if I look back at at my own

1:16:56experiences, it's been it's been absorbing from the people that are already along the path, far further way further along in the journey than I am. I think it's just it's critical.
I love that. Tim, as we're wrapping up here, I ask every guest three questions.
All right.
And then we'll wrap this. So, number one, the top three books that you read that most influenced your life.
Well, we've already talked about two of them. MREA was the first one that influenced
Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Keller.
Yeah.
And then The One Thing was the second one. It taught me The first one taught me how to build a business, the second one taught me how to actually like run a purposeful life. I'll give two more. What one is called The Intentional Father, and it's one it's a short book, but it's it's just about talks about four different types of of dads that you can be, and like level three is like the involved dad, which is definitely where I resonate resonated with. And then like the fourth one is The Intentional Father. And and The Intentional Father is just about what does it look like to really raise your kid It's meant for a father with a son, but it's like what does it mean to like actually develop

1:17:58your son into a man and be intentional. So, that one was is a big one for my current stage of life. And then another one I'll just say is The Four Agreements. The Four Agreements talks about It's a great book. Be impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, always do your best. That was a That was just a big one for me around um honestly more than anything around building personal confidence. And something that I want to work on with my kids cuz I think confidence is such an important thing that I lacked as a kid, and I don't want my kids to lack. I think that book Four Agreements is just a game changer there.
All right, if you've been listening to our show for a bit, you've likely heard that I run a wealth-building mastermind largely around some of the same concepts and content that we talk about here on the podcast. We have an upcoming mastermind. We've got two seats left for it. If you want to come shadow our mastermind, take a look at what it's like, get an actual feel for what it feels like to be with a tribe of people that are on the same journey as you, we've got a completely risk-free way to do so. Just go to bewealthy.com, navigate over to our mastermind, and book a call with one of my team members

1:19:00to learn more about our mastermind and you can get how you can come completely risk-free and check it out.
I I love I love all of those. Uh all right, Tim, second question, best purchase under $200 that's most improved your life in the last 12 months. It can be anything. It can be goofy, you know, under 200 bucks.
Mad- Madden 2026. You know, what what I used to play I used to play football video games as a kid way too much, and I haven't played video games in two decades, probably. And my son my son and I play Madden 2026 together and have the absolute best time in the world. Playing playing that game with my 6-year-old son has just been It's been one of the coolest things in the world.
I I I love that one. All right, last thing before we wrap, Tim, you can go back and talk to 21-year-old Tim right now. You got 60 seconds. What do you tell him?
I would tell him the thing that we talked about earlier, which is nothing is as good or as bad as it seems in your mind. That that honestly, like I have needed that My again, like every 2

1:20:04years, I'm here, and then 2 years later, I'm here, and then 2 years later, I'm here. I go on the If I go back and talk and look at the last 16 years of my adult life, it it would be I've it's it's marked by major highs and major lows, and and they've impacted me in ways that, you know, if I could go back, it if in if in those high moments, I knew I'm not this good. It's not this good. Things are going going In those major lows, I knew that hey, this is going to pass. This is a season. You're going to get out. If I knew those things with confidence in those moments, I don't know if I would have done things differently, but I would have felt differently. And and and and and especially in the lows. Um and so I think that, you know, I'm I've been telling myself that a lot in 2023 when I was feeling like I was at a big time low. And you know, as things are as things start to improve, I'm just reminding myself and reminding myself. So I that's honestly what I would do is I would say, "Hey, you're going to have an amazing life far beyond what you think it what you think you're headed for, way far beyond." But you got to

1:21:07remember at the highs, you got to remember that at the lows.
I I love your advice. Your 21-year-old self is something I told you. I think that's incredible. And where if people want to get more Tim, where can they go to reach out? Is it Are you on social? Is it homeward.com? Is it
Just email me. Tim@homeward.com. I'm on homeward.com. I'm I'm pretty quick with my email. Would love to connect.
All right, Tim. You are first of all, a very crazy successful business guy, but most importantly, you're a cool dude. Thanks for being here. Appreciate you, dude. We'll chat soon.
Thanks for having me, Brett. Great talking.
See you. Bye.