EP 453 – Business, Barbecue, And Bullshit with Tim Herriage

This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host, CEO of We Close notes, Scott Carson.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closure show. As always, Scott Carson, your host, excited to be here today and even more excited to have our very special guest. A very self proclaimed crazy person, as he says in his bio. A buddy of mine that I've known for years respected, just absolutely does an amazing job and a very, very, very self proclaimed project starter and entrepreneur. Our good buddy Tim Herridge who is now the host of the Rockin podcast Barbecue in Business. You can check it on itunes but not very few great stuff out there. But this guy, one of the best real estate minds in the country, has got his hand in the pulse. Always looking to do something, always looking to leverage his position and really take advantage of what's going on the market. So we are honored and we're going to give Tim.

A clap for me.

To start off because we're excited to have you there, bud. What's going on this afternoon?

Not much, man, just it's a rainy day up here in Dallas. I'm happy to be indoors.

It's three o' clock here in Austin, but it actually looks like it's 9 o' clock at night outside right now. So I wouldn't be surprised if we get some hail. And it is dark, dark. It's even darker than it usually is at 9 o' clock right now. I had to turn on extra lights in here for the video to be kicking in. So if we hear a train engine you see me run, it's because the tornado's rolling through.

I'll let everyone know.

There you go. But so for those that don't know who you are because we've got quite an audience across the country on here of our notenation out there. Take a couple minutes. Tim, share who you are, a little about your background, why it's important to listen to this episode today.

Yeah man. So of course, as always, thanks for having me on. Start off, I'm 40 years old. The gray here is really mainly because of my children and the stress I put myself through. I went to the Marine Corps out of high school because I come from a family that just didn't have the money or the resources to send Me to college. After five years in the Marine Corps and a lot of accelerated maturity, I got tired of making $1,810 a month and an extra 150 when we went to combat. I fell into life insurance sales straight out of the Marine Corps. And I'll just never forget the first week that I got a $6,000 check. Because it was addicting, right? Because for the first time my direct effort and accomplishments influenced my direct compensation. And, you know, I just kind of told myself I'd never work for someone. I'd never let someone else tell me what I was worth again. I put my resume out. I found a job as a construction manager for a house flipper. Did that for a year, then got recruited by another house flipper, then went out on my own, then met my wife. Then we were the largest homevestors franchise in the nation when the Great Recession happened. So lost millions of dollars in 08 and 09. Made some great decisions, made some bad decisions, fought our way out of that. In 2010, on the way out of the recession, we started the REI Expo. That's actually how you and I met. Built that to be the largest national trade show there was. Sold that off to the folks over at Think Realty. They're doing a great job with it. Then I met Blackstone through that and started B2R Finance and did a billion dollars worth of loans. And my W2 was one of those things out of a movie. And I quit one day because I was bored and tired of running someone else's company. That's a whole story in itself how I started to immediately start thinking like a W2 person of salary and bonus. Like after a year of that world. Started the 2020 REI group. Made a ton of great decisions with a multiple of that of bad decisions, kind of just entrepreneurial decision after decision after decision. Tried things didn't work. Tried things didn't work. Started a lending company that's been sold. Now that was a good transaction. Started a fund management company. We're shutting that down because I am not a good manager of other people's money because I don't like to answer question, not even to my wife, much less some investor that I'm making money for. Right man. And then we started an insurance company. The insurance company's going really well. We're in some talks right now to sell that. Built a bunch of owner finance mortgages. Sold those last year because I'd kind of reached that 10 year curve where I'd sucked all the interest out and there were banks that would pay par for them. We were all about that. Got a bunch of rent houses. I flip houses, wholesale houses, do all those events. And I think that's kind of. You start to identify yourself as the business. And now after doing all this, I'm trying to recreate myself, I would say, as an entrepreneur, because that's really what I am. I mean, I'm definitely not a lender yet. I've made more money lending than I have anything else. A real estate investor, but that's more of a what I want to retire with one day. It's not what I get up in the morning and I'm excited about. There's just nothing exciting about leaving my house, driving 45 minutes to sit with some old lady smoking in her living room, only to either piss her off or get the house at such a price where I know I could have paid her more. Right. It's like on my deathbed, I'm not going to say I wish I'd bought more houses, right. So I'm really just trying to focus more these days on having just kind of more of what I want, which is eating a lot of barbecue and just kicking it with my family. I'm actually in a home office now. This time last year, I had 9,000 square feet on the 11th floor of a Dallas office tower. I'd never forget the day I walked in. It was before Christmas of 17. And I looked around and I didn't want to be there. And neither did anyone that worked for me. And I just decided. I said, what am I doing this? And so I sold everything. I shut down the things that weren't worth selling. And I'm excited about podcasting because I feel like I have a lot of experience, good and bad, that I can share with people. And it's fun to create something that you think is going to be helpful for someone.

That's the truth. Because you've definitely got a few battle scars. You've come a long way. I would make sure you put your coffee down. You come a long way from this young kid in the Marine Corps out there. For those that don't know.

I think.

You had sent this to us a while back, years ago, and I'm like, I'm going to save that for a good point. I think you have more hair in your chin right now than you have on your top of your head there. But the lessons that you could go back and tell that kid, whether you're 20 in that picture, 18 in that.

Photo, probably 18 to 20.

Yeah, yeah. Thinking going back and lessons, you could tell that 18 year old now, don't you have, don't you got a son is that same age right now?

I have an 18 year old son that's about to go play football at Trinity University. Yeah, well, it's funny, that kid right there, the most common thing that his superiors in the Marine Corps used to tell him was good initiative, bad judgment and you know, that's probably still been the number one area I struggle with, is I'm very action oriented, right. And I see something that either needs to be done or be done differently and I do it. And I just, I don't really think it out. You know, I'm kind of one of those that I'm gonna fix the problem and I've been lucky that almost half the time it worked out. But I'm not gun shy for sure.

No, that's definitely the truth. You're definitely not gun shy out there to take action and get rocking and rolling as you go. Next time I see you, I'll have one of these for you for your show. Okay, buddy?

Oh, I'll bring the one that my nine year old has. All sorts of sounds that would not be appropriate for the show.

Oh yeah, yeah. I've got one in 16 different ways to say the F word too. But we won't be using that one today. You've seen different trends come and go and like you've mentioned about being up and being down doing a lot of owner financing, selling the notes off an insurance company. I'm going to ask this right out of the book. So I got somebody that texted me, if you had a crystal ball, you'd be in Vegas right now. But if you had a crystal ball, where do you kind of see the market going in the next 12 to 18, maybe 24 months?

Tim, I think I can answer that by what I've done in my real estate business in the last 90 days. We used to assign properties a lot, right? Never take title to them, just assign them. We don't do that anymore now we only close on the assets and sell them on mls. My hat is all kinds of crooked here. Sell them on mls, we get more money out of it. And the investor, we've noticed that the investors buying off assignments have gotten a little gun shy. So we stopped doing that. We started wholetailing more, you know, just cleaning out the house, putting some paint and carpet on it. And we found that we're making more than if we were to fix the house all the way up retail profit because we're at that part of the market where everything's artificially high. You buy a house in Plano and you have to spend $60,000 over rehabbing the house to get a comp that I think it's worth. When you can just spend 20 and sell it for 40 grand less and you realize your profit a lot quicker. There's less margin for error and it's easier to execute because it's lipstick on a pig. Instead of what wall do we move? Do we have to hire a designer and all that? And then also, you would be proud of me. I bought a couple of distressed notes last month. It was a seller that called me about buying her houses and she had some horrible notes. They were just God awful. She had downloaded a one page form and owner financed them to two houses on one form, two different borrowers. So the good news is we got $80,000 worth of unpaid principal balance at 2.9% interest. You know, she was really killing it on the interest rate. We bought them for 15 grand and Scott Horn up here in Dallas helped me bring them in, reclose them and all that. It's a 30 something percent return. I've started taking some of my less conforming houses. Like I love three, two, two brick houses. And to me that's that perfect rent house because it's always going to have this demand in comparison with apartments. But right now I have this three bedroom, two bath corner lot with Jupiter Road, which is a major street in Dallas. I looked at it, I bought it for like 100 grand and I figured it'd be worth 170 fixed up. Well, we own or financed it as is for 140. It's almost like a true as is valuation. Right. We took the 180arv minus the 40in work. Owner financed it for 140. They get a great deal. We move an asset that doesn't really fit our traditional portfolio and then one of the things we do now is we set up first and seconds. That way we can sell the first, keep the second. Well, right, because your down payment offsets your equity basis in the house. The first repays your underlying debt and the second's an infinite return, right? Yep, I'm doing some of that. I think the market, I don't think we crashed this year. I mean, I think things just get a little wavy. Last night Bernie Sanders said something about letting felons vote from prison. Obviously there's going to be a lot of distraction in the next 18 months, which is good because that means I don't think the politicians will do anything to screw things up. But next year after the election. I don't know. I mean that's kind of what I've always written down as 2020 was kind of the year that I felt like we may hit a bump. I think this bump will be a little bit more like the dot bomb bump. Not the subprime bump which you know, I would just say that anybody asking or want to know find someone in your local market or your industry that lived through that dot bomb and say hey, where were the opportunities? And just sit on cash. I think cash is king right now for me. It's one of the reasons I've exited most of my companies in large and I've structured. Everything I've done is almost like a second lien. Scott. I've structured an ongoing interest in the operation where I financially benefiting from their continued success. But the liability and the capital basis kind of was returned the liabilities off me and the capital was returned to me.

That's awesome man. Definitely leveraging yourself smartly. They're getting your get your principal back in but keeping the upside and the cash flow for returns. Basically. That's good stuff. You were one of the first guys and I don't know if they've done a second one of creating a rental backed security. It was sold off to. Weren't you we.

The mortgage backed security that was actually the income was justified by the rents on the house. Now Blackstone did the first rent house security. They've all went public now. They're all performing great. Actually. It's kind of funny. It may have been five years ago this week that we did the first securitization. Yeah. Yeah. The first one. It was in the April 20th. Yeah. So it's been five years since that went out the door. Is a $250 million transaction. I think it added some liquidity to the rental market that will benefit us all during the next period of economic uncertainty. Because that bond liquidity on the bond market on the securitization market. It's just one of those things that when the small banks dry up they'll either get gobbled up by this bond market or at least we'll all have a place to go to get our financing when there's great deals.

Mm. Totally agree with you on that aspect of thing. We're starting to see what's kind of funny is the phone's ringing off the hook a little bit more. The emails are coming in from asset managers which is kind of Interesting. Not just in Texas. I mean last couple days I'm doing some research, checking out the different Texas market. One of the things I check for is I always like to see if there's an increase in short sales.

Right.

Because that's a great thing in Dallas. You know, we got eight total here in the greater MLS area. San Antonio's got 25, DFW's got like 135. Houston's got 227. Primarily due to the fact that it's a lot. It's past 12 months past the hurricane. Banks are tired of waiting. Now they've been nice for a year. Insurance companies are either paying or they're not paying. So they're starting that foreclosure process.

One of the things that I watch. You watch short sales, right? Because that's your note business. I watch seller paid contributions on MLS because like to me, when I go back to what happened in 06 and 07, right, as prices were going up, they started to level off, but real dollars started to go down as seller paid contributions increased. And then it was one of those things that once those got to the 6 to 8% mark, then prices flatlined. And then if you really look at the curve, they stayed 6 to 8% as prices went down. But at the trough when you knew you were getting near the bottom was when all the seller paid disappeared. And then it got to be you were paying the price was the price. And so like it's one of those things is the next cautionary period hits. That's what I'll be watching for on the retail market because I think that's a great leading indicator of how strong the market is.

I agree with you there. That too. What's also funny is too we've been tracking the amount of lenders that are popping up, not just banks, but lenders popping up, doing the non prime niche or the hundred percent financing donated down payment platforms that are out there with subprime FICUs, 520, 500 foreclosure bailout loans, you know, day out of bankruptcy loans. Those things are starting to pop up left and right as some of the guys that left the industry a few years ago bought real estate cash out, the real estate portfolios are now back on the lending side, leveraging their money to do that aspect again and waiting to gobble up. And you know there's another lender that pops almost every day that falls into that. So I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm going to pull some cash out of the market. Put it in here. So when the thing does hit the fan, I got plenty of money for great deals.

That's probably the most painful part of my business is as I drive around neighborhoods right now I'm running comps and it's like, you know, 123 Main street in Mesquite is worth 180,000. And I drive past that down the street and I'm like, I sold that house for 60. You know, it's like, dang. That was actually the reason we decided to sell our owner finance mortgages. And I think it's something people have to watch is so we started doing that when I was 30. And so obviously if you're 30 years old and you do 30 year loans by the time you're 60, you don't have any assets left. Well, I was doing my personal financials in October of 17 and I got really happy. Like I ran down the hall, my Jennifer, look at this. You know, it's like because we ran CMAs on everything and the houses were worth so much money. And then I said, wait, nevermind, I'll be back. Those are notes. And so then I like had to go figure out what the payoffs were. So I pulled up my latest lender statement and my net worth went down by over $2 million. And I went to Jennifer and I said, okay, we're selling all the notes. Of course at that time, remember we were talking about me going crazy in one direction or another. We're never owner financing again, right?

Never.

And the most painful was a house in Richardson, Texas that literally had an estimated value of about 280. And I bought it for 74 and I'd owner financed it I think for like 120 and they only owed me like $78,000. Then I was in this position of I either had to go to bed at night praying someone like, you know, had a medical emergency or a family crisis, or I just needed to get out of those. But as I look at them now, it's more of an income stream and a yield curve. And if you can get past the 12 month mark and then you can sell that income stream off for a premium, that's probably the better way or at least hold it for five years. I mean, you know, on a 30 year note, the first five years is pretty much all juice, right? I mean I've now a year later decided that owner financing is not the devil. You know, I told Jennifer all, she's like, well now we're not gonna start owner financing everything, are we? I was like, no, I'm measured half.

Well, I love it. Like you joke about it, you buy some distressed assets, there's plenty of people doing stupid stuff out there on the owner financing side. You can pick up some distressed assets at relatively cheap price. Especially when you say somebody's writing a loan at 2.9% interest rate. That's smoking crack there.

Well, I ballparked her on the phone at like 50% of the UPB. I was thinking, if this lady will take that, that's great. And so she sends me all the paperwork and I take it to Scott and I'm like, yeah, does that say 2.9? He's like, surely that's a typo. I was like, yeah, that's gonna be 12.9 or something. But I don't know. It was 2.9 on a 10 year RAM. And now the good news is if they did default, we end up having $250,000 worth of properties for $30,000 total all in because it was 15 per parcel. So we're below lot value in our basis. And so it's like, it's fantastic for us, especially in Dallas. Right. I mean it may not be great in Gary, Indiana, but well, but the.

Same thing is you're pulling in a double digit return based off just a cash flow alone on that aspect of it. And yeah, you've got that equity that if they do okay, great, you're gonna get paid off definitely. Either you by foreclosing and selling the auction based on the equity position or if you can cash your keys deed and look that you're capturing all that equity and rinse and repeating which is phenomenal thing for you.

I think that's another thing I started looking at. So there was this gentleman from London that recruited me into the Blackstone thing. He always said when they started the house buying army, it started, they were in California and he ended up getting a flat tire on his Uber or limo or whatever and he ends up in this neighborhood with all these vacant houses. And somebody came up and said, oh, are you trying to buy that house? Yeah, they're gonna sell it for 200. And the guy was looking at it like gotta cost more than 200,000 to build. And so what I've really been looking a lot at on my portfolio and the way I kind of run numbers isn't really ARV based, it's replacement cost. Is it a decent asset construction wise and could you build that same thing for what your basis is going to be in it? Especially on a brick house, maybe Not a frame house. You may want to make an adjustment there. But if you've got a brick house and you can buy it for 10, 15% less than you could build that thing for right now, that's one thing. Building cost and labor, it will never go down again.

That is the truth. That only gets more and more expensive as time goes on with different things. And then also your building supplies often will change depending on what's going on in other areas of the country too. For you as well too. Like we see that in parts of Michigan right now, Detroit's booming, so it's hard to get labor without having to overpay for labor. For areas like around Ann Arbor, Flint, some of those areas, Pontiac and things like that, people just don't want to drive the extra 30 minutes for a project where they wait around and get another job five minutes away.

Right.

And Dallas, such a big, huge market spread out. Dallas or DFW or Fort Worth by itself and a lot of investors, oh, I'm just going to stay on this side of Dallas. I'm not going to go the other side. And vice versa. Can be a little picky on stuff like that. But when you're in smaller metroplexes or smaller markets, you've really got to look at that aspect of repair costs not only for what you're buying it and what your strategy is. I love buying on performing. Keep cash flow for 12, resell your position off or keep it for cash flow for the first 16 months is a real desirable play to be in. But it all depends what your money costs are and your expectations of your investors or if you're not using your own money.

Right, right. That's another thing that we've been looking at is I've done a development or two, we've built some new houses. Dallas, there was an article of the day. There's like a million new people that live here that didn't live here five years ago. And the home building and the remodeling industries took off so much. We had just a severe labor shortage. And every now and then I may go to the day labor center with a wad of cash and try to get a good deal, you know, from someone that needs to work for the day. It was when I stopped flipping houses for my fund because the whole model was buy, fix all the way up and sell. And I went to the day labor center. It was like 10 o' clock in the morning. I was like, all right, a hundred bucks and I'll pay for lunch. And they all just Looked at me and I was like, okay, 120. Anyway, I had to pay 150 bucks to get a couple people from the day labor center in my truck for less than eight hours of work. And that's kind of when I just decided I was like, you know, this labor markets, it made it where you had to pay too much to rehab houses that then you couldn't adjust your buying criteria down. There was so much competition and sometimes, you know, it's just okay to sit back on the bench and let someone else go strike out. We've gone outside of the core areas into like Royce City and Greenville, even like, you know, 20, 30 miles out, where at least someone can still get a house for 12 to 1500 bucks a month.

Yeah, we see that taking place here in Austin as well. A lot of people buying and a lot of investors aren't buying in the Austin Metroplex. We're buying outside Round Rock, Pflugerville, other areas, because that's where affordable is. People rather drive 30 minutes for a decent house they can afford versus a 900 square foot condo or a property that is overpriced their budget. They're willing to sit in traffic for an hour to two hours a day.

Well, you know, so my son's going to play football down at Trinity in San Antonio. And my dream has always been to own a ranch kind of in Lampas and a condo downtown Austin and a condo up here and then just kind of bounce back and forth. But now I started really looking at San Antonio for like Airbnbs and things like that. I like that San Antonio has this Airbnb ordinance. They've embraced it. They're gonna regulate it, but they've embraced it. I mean, city of Arlington over by the Cowboys yesterday banned all short term rental. And I mean, you got people who really went full boat around Cowboys stadium to do that.

Yeah.

So then I start looking at houses in San Antonio, and I'm fortunate right now we have a lot of access to capital. You can still get a house down there for. If you're in it for 150,000, you can rent it for 1500. And that 12% gross yield, even with the high Texas tax base, if you apply a modest amount of leverage, it's still an excellent return.

Yep.

And so I've told Jennifer that I want to start looking down in San Antonio more. And I mean, there's a possibility I could relocate my acquisitions business down there next year, specifically because I know my wife's going to be down there a lot anyway. I might as well have the write off and, you know, make her time work while she's down there.

Now, you're not gonna be selling the new ranch you bought, obviously, huh?

I sold it. Oh, you did?

Oh, my gosh.

So I'll tell you a story. This is how crazy I am. Anyone that knows me knows I always wanted a ranch. You know, I love to hunt, I love to fish. I never take time. So I bought it and I owned it a little over a year, and deer season was wrapping up last spring. And one of the neighbors, like, pulls through the gate and comes up. I'm loading my tractor and he says, hey, want to buy your ranch? I said, well, it's not for sale. He goes, well, I know what you paid for it. I said, great. He goes, well, I'll pay you 50 grand more. I said, it's yours. You know, everything's always for sale, Scott. But that was a lesson in entrepreneurism, right? Because that's one of those things. I never would have taken what he offered if I wasn't so busy at work, and a lot of what I was busy with at work. And that was actually one of the final things that made me decide, kind of forget building a big company. It's time to keep it small and keep it all. Have less of what I don't need and more of what I want. I actually decided to sell it because I never had enough time to get down there and finish anything and to have those unfinished products or projects waiting there. It drove me nuts. It became a constant distraction. I couldn't focus on where I was because I was worried about where I wanted to be. And when I sold it, then I sold the tractors and the four wheelers and all the stuff I bought for the ranch. And then I turned 40 the next month, right? So it's like this, you know, roller coaster of emotions. I said, you know what? I'm done with this. And that's when I just shut the brokerage down. The next week, I put the lending company up for sale. I told the fund investors, no more money. We're going to cascade this thing out. You know, the insurance business was going well, but. And now we've been blessed to have some suitors on that. That's a cash flow business, though. That's just. I mean, people sign up online and you get checks, right? So I don't really want to sell that, but I will. But, you know, now I'm lucky. I mean, I'm in a position that my buddy Randy called me this morning and Said, hey, what are you doing? It was about 10:30. I said, I'm just getting ready to get my day started. And he just like hung up on me. I mean, he's just mad. I mean, but a year and a half ago, I was the boss, I was the CEO, it was my company. I created it all. I mean, I had to be at the office by 8 to manage my 20 something employees. And then I had to be at the office after six to make sure that they actually did their work. And I created all of these problems for myself. That probably had more to do with ego than if you listen to this week's podcast. I went through Eat that Frog, the Brian Tracy book, and the steps to the first step in his seven step system is write down exactly what you want.

Yeah.

And if I would have revisited that 18 months ago, not a single thing I was doing daily had anything to do with what I wanted. It was all just what we do. It was just residual decisions after decisions without going through the actual process. I went through the process and I just eliminated it all.

That's such a good thing. Our good buddy Aaron Young, who has a program called the Unshackled Owner.

I love that episode.

Yep. And Aaron and I are such great friends. You'll get a chance to meet him at some point, I'm for sure. Just absolutely talks about that how a lot of times the things that we work on become the handcuffs to be doing in life. I've experienced that. I know you've experienced that, like you just mentioned in a couple different ways. And I think a lot of people that are listening out there, they feel that same way too. They're out there in the. Maybe not the enjoyment of real estate anymore, they're in the business of it or the job of it, or they're working their full time job and not enjoying it and not on the path where they want to go. And so the biggest thing I like to tell people, like, listen, you exactly said it right. Like he says, eat the frog, take some time, write out what you would love your ideal life to be like. And for many of us, that's not what we're doing on a day in, day out basis. I went through this a few years ago when I was traveling and speaking all across the country and stuff like that. Like, this is not funny. It was fun for a couple years, don't get me wrong, a few extra pounds sponsored by brown royal and rib eyes. But after a time you get the ego goes away and you're like, this is not Quality of life. I mean, you've got kids that are growing. You're a passionate father. And we can see that on a Friday night or Saturday morning after on your Facebook. And Trinity is a great school. Actually got recruited there out of high school as well. That's a long time, 20 some odd years ago. But great place. He's gonna do well there. And that's the thing you want to enjoy. You don't work so damn hard anymore. And I know Jennifer are now celebrating how many years. 20 some odd years of marriage?

No, 15. Math.

Double digits.

We'll just play double digits. Yes. Well over a decade, Scott. Well over a decade. 14 years. Thanks.

That's almost when my dad used to say, oh, yeah, we've been married 15 years. Yeah, we together for like a mortgage. 15 on my side, 15 on her side. You're almost there.

Well, and I've enjoyed watching you and Steph travel more. I think we're both getting into that season of our life that your corporate banking was just like my Marine Corps. Right. And then we both went through these 20s and early 30s or 30s of just massive success and growth. Probably a lot of growth. Maybe not as much success if we were to redefine it. Now, Jennifer used to always tell me, she'd say, tim, you're the only person I know that could work 10 hours a week and make half a million dollars a year and refuses to do so. I used to tell her, well, it's because, you know, my purpose is this and I want to build this. And I'm old. I'm an old man now, right? And it was all ego. It was just more, more, more. And that's kind of what I've done with barbecue. I'm not a barbecue expert. Right. I can cook like a steak and I can smoke a brisket. But it definitely wouldn't win a competition.

Well, I follow them on Facebook. You'll see some of the photos. They look pretty damn good. That beef tanner one you had the other night looked pretty damn good.

Yeah, but I love to eat it. And we get so busy doing this crap. We don't want to do that. We don't even take time to do things that we enjoy. I can't tell you how many times I've flown through Austin on business. And when, I mean, say, flown, I mean on the bypass, going 95 miles an hour and not stopped in Lockhart to go to Smitty's or Kreit's Market or not swung over to Terry Blacks or to Hays county or to Valentina's. I mean, Austin's the best barber in the world, and I love barbecue, but I wouldn't take the time to do it because I was busy. And I don't know. I mean, it's just maybe it's perspective of old age. I know people listen to this that are in their 50s or 60s are hearing me at 40, like, shut up, you know, But I don't know. I mean, it's. It's a bit of perspective. It's a bit of being blessed to have got done some things at the right time. But I think there's also a lot of ways that we can help people with what you do. If someone were to just resolve to buy one note a year from the first time that they started thinking about it, and if they don't feel comfortable, loan some money to someone already doing it and at least start that passive income clock, it's just amazing how quick it all adds up. And when you look back at the 20 years I've been chasing my tail around the industry, if I had just selected one quality house a year and sold a couple less and lived a little bit more modestly and not gotten distracted with the Expo and da da da da, da, da da da da, I'd probably be sitting on a $10 million portfolio at 40.

But that's the thing. Success often leads to doors opening that we wouldn't otherwise had. And you did a great job. The REI Expo started in Dallas. Did an amazing job. Great event. I think the best expo in the country. We were excited to be a part of it. And then you sold it off. Great thing for you and stuff like that. It wasn't quite what it was in new hands, but that's okay. Often it doesn't have the same driving factors, the same people behind it, the same passion behind it that you had. And that happens whenever you see somebody take over something like that. But I think we all look for projects, especially us, that are entrepreneurs. It's totally the E Myth right there. We get excited. We don't want to be bored. We're looking for something that's going to invigorate our minds on a regular basis. And then we talk a lot of bullshit for ourselves, thinking that we're bigger than we are and can take on more than we really can handle.

Right. Or more than we should. I mean, you know, it's. I look back at the Expo, right, I probably would have never sold it if I just made it. Just the Dallas event that was doubling every year, that was the most fun thing I've ever done in business because most people listening haven't been in front of a crowd of 1800 people. You know, once you have, it's jazzy, especially when you're getting the feedback that we always got at those events of how it was changing people's lives and helping them have more of what they want. And I still love events. But, you know, I tell you, you're one of the reasons I've sworn off events. I had my event in January this year and you were like, yeah, dude, I don't pay to go to events anymore and it's just not my thing. I was like, what is Scott doing? But I started looking at it, right? I mean, you have the same effect. You're in essence like just ahead of me. You have the same effect by providing this online digital content from the comfort of your office that I've heard you talk about it right by your house and right by where you like to eat and right by the gym. And you know, you said that and I was like, huh, that makes a lot of sense. I could do that in my pajamas with a T shirt. And that's more of what I want, right? I mean, it's. So I got gigabit Internet at the house and I just decided to shut down the office. I don't know. I mean, I think all road everything happens for a reason. These people I've sold businesses to, I wouldn't have met if I hadn't done some of the other things I did. And I'm not saying that people shouldn't be ambitious. It's just, you know, I'd say only get into what you really, really want or something that's a direct contributor to what really, really want.

That such wise, wise words there. Definitely. If it's a step on the ladder to the actual. You posted an image. Make sure you're climbing the right ladder on the right wall the other day. Or was that yesterday?

You posted that yesterday? Yeah, yeah, I pay attention.

I pay attention. I have a great, amazing social media staff that does most of the posting for me. But I take a look at and different things. But that's the thing. We find ourselves going down one path where we think it's going to lead. It leads to something completely different. Sometimes it's good, sometimes that's bad because you have to kind of take a step back, bring yourself down a rung or two to jump over and shoot some ladders and go some different direction. But as entrepreneurs, I think that's one of the biggest things is separates those that are successful from those that aren't successful. You're not afraid to say yes. You're not afraid to make mistakes. And I think that's where a lot of people are scared of making a mistake. They're scared of going and buying that first asset or buying that first note or going out to the expo and going up and shaking hands or even sitting marketing afterwards. And we've talked about a few of the different shapes. When you think back of the last 10 years, what would you say is probably one of the biggest mistakes that you've made that stood out the most to you?

When you think back, other than that night, you and I were at the bar. Now, Baltimore, Maryland, too much. You know, this is going to sound super cheesy, but I'm a bit nostalgic that now, 25 days from today, my oldest son will graduate high school. And there was a period when he was in his early teens that I was the busiest. And that B2R business, you know, being on the plane four, five, six days a week, I never missed one of his football games. I'd fly home on a Thursday night and fly back to New York on a Friday. I never missed the important stuff, but I think I missed a lot of stuff that was important that I just. That didn't have a label to it. If I had a regret, it would be all the traveling I did for Blackstone, because other than money, that didn't really do anything for me. It taught me a lot, but I haven't really benefited from that except for money. I mean, I made a lot of money and I got to meet a lot of cool people and flew around, you know, first class everywhere and all that, but I actually became one of those lifeless souls in seat 4B that, like, one time I would not trade seats with someone that was separated from, like, their wife or I can't remember, because I needed to work on the plane and I was in the seat that I always sit in, and I need my right arm free, and I need to be, you know, And I remember about an hour in the flight, I was like, you are an A hole. And I got up. But that's probably the biggest mistake I made is I sold out to my original conviction of never letting someone tell me what my time was worth or tell me where to be when. Other than that, it would be not keeping enough houses when I could have one less vacation. Some of my vacations are, you know, three, $4,000 day vacation. We traveled nice. There's been some trips to vail that could have paid for a rent house, that when you look back you're like, yeah, maybe I shouldn't have done that. I think it's just being a good steward and really looking at what's the most important thing in your life instead of what's important in your business.

That's the biggest thing, is setting your priorities correctly, taking the time to make the memories. That's one thing that instilled in me. I can hear my father, William Milton Carson, telling me, he goes, hey, take some time to make some memories because that's what you're going to take with you more than anything else. You can have all the houses and all the money and that's great. It does lead some great memories. But it's like you said, sometimes the little things are what really kind of keeps us going, gets us rocking and rolling and we learn more from those things that we miss sometimes than what we're out trying to do on that hamster wheel that we often put ourselves because we're all guilty of that. You know what I mean?

So you know Brad Somerock, right? I sent him a text the other day. I said, isn't it funny that you talk about the rat race? And I said, all of us expo guys, we create our own damn rat races. I mean it's, we all escape the rat race, but then we create these rat races for ourselves. I mean, if you ever told me, Tim, it's your life's dream to start a company that has $80,000 a month overhead that you have to make sure gets paid. And you have 23 full time employees and you're doing 3 million a month a year in revenue and you're building it to sell it one day and you're there 12 hours a day. I would have told you you got the wrong Tim, but that's what I built at 2020. Well, that. You brought up the E myth, right? Those entrepreneurial seizures take a pill, right? Don't keep having seizures. And I just kept having seizures and I built something that was crazy, stupid big.

What's the thing you're excited about Most the next 12 months? I mean, I know you're excited about podcasts. Excited to see that too. You're going to be taking some good barbecue. Hopefully you're not suffering from acid reflux.

I'll get a sponsor from Tums. What I'm excited about the most in the next 12 months is. This is going to sound awful is my 18 year old moving out. I'm so proud that he made the decisions he's made. He chose Trinity, a Division 3 football team, over Division 1 football offers, because he chose academics over athletics, like we had told him. And I'm just really excited to see him grow into his own man. Outside of. Jennifer and I are very helicopter parents. Like, more like attack helicopter parents. Right. Like, we're not just hovering around. Right. We're coming. We're coming in hot. And then my youngest, he's nine now. Everything he does is about measuring up to Bubba. I'm excited to see him kind of become his own. You know, that age 9 through 13 was just the best with Alex. Unfortunately, I was gone most of the time, but I'm excited to enjoy that with my youngest and watch him kind of become his own little person. I'm going to do some traveling. I'm really excited about flushing out my understanding and appreciation for barbecue. You remember Sam Sadler. We're going to do a couple barbecue road trips and go meet with some pit masters. When we come down to Austin, we'll invite you to come with us for the day. We've already talked to some of them, and we're gonna go in and just look at what they do. And it's like I told you on podcasting, and this has always been my approach, and this is something I'm really good at. The first month, I've done five episodes now. Really four. And then a bonus kind of top 10 episode. I've done four weekly episodes.

Places in Dallas, actually.

Right?

Yep.

I've done it on my own. All on my own. I bought Adobe Audition, and I've done it all on my own because I'm one of those people, I have to understand the real nuts and bolts behind everything. But I've also done it on my own, just enough to where if you read Eat that frog, it's time to delegate it and eliminate some of it. One of your buddies, I reached out to him today and I set up a call for Monday because I have enough understanding and I think I know the direction I want it to go. I want to do some interviews. Right. That's why the first thing we got on the call, I started asking you, wait, which zoom is this? And all, you know, because I do want to do some interviews. I want to continue to share what motivates me and impacts me on a weekly basis. You used to do a lot more of that, and you need to start doing more. You would come on with, like, accountability. It just say Facebook Live accountability. Right. And you would just kind of ramble for 30 minutes. And I loved it. Like, I loved it because those of us that have businesses that are, I wouldn't even say successful, they're active. If we're perceptive enough, we learn so much every day that could help someone and to have a platform to share it and then to have someone to help me do it, though, I'm really looking forward to that. So if I put it in order, it's watching my oldest become his own man, watching my youngest become a little man, eating more barbecue and experimenting with new business things that really do juice me up.

Well, I'll tell you this, you're definitely going to enjoy the podcasting aspect because it is like sitting in front of an audience of 500 to 1200 to 3000 people from time to time. And it's the feedback that I'm sure you're going to get is definitely gonna be awesome, if not already on different things. Loving the episodes. You're on a great, great path for things. And the thing is it's gonna evolve as you go, which is great too. You're in good hands with Tom and then the folks over at Pottitize. And I know Sam, he's gonna do a great job filming some of the stuff, those live episodes for it. Looking forward to that as well up there. But what's the best way for people that like a little more information on what's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Tim, just timherridge.com if you Google me, if anybody needs any help on real estate, just go to YouTube and type in my name. Last time I counted, there's like 5, 500 videos from all the trainings to the old expos? To. I've just put it all out there public. So there's just a ton on YouTube. Heritage is super hard to spell, but it's just like carriage but has an H E. But TimHerRidge.com is the easiest way to get in touch with me.

Yeah, definitely. And then of course, everybody, if you're listening, go check out the business and barbecue podcast out there. Subscribe. Leave them a review. We love those things, especially getting started. Hey, sometimes we feel like we're speaking on microphone.

Hello?

Bueller.

Bueller.

Is anybody listening?

Can I tell you something real quick? My wife literally put a. Went to one of those. My kid bought one of those stupid alien blow up things that shenanigans. Yeah, one of those with the tickets at one of the little game arcade places and they put it over here behind the microphone. So I had someone to talk to. It's the ugliest thing you ever seen in your life.

You know what? Get her on. I'm sure your audience would love to hear some of her comments and back.

And forth she said she would go on, but that conversation has not progressed yet.

Same thing with Stephanie, too. Well, hey, Tim, thanks for taking time on your busy day there. Congratulations. All the things you've learned since that flat top kid in the Marine Corps got started rocking and rolling.

Well, man, thanks for having me on. You know, I just, I love what you're doing. You're definitely someone that I think entrepreneur, not just note people entrepreneurs can look up to because you've always been a really fun guy to be around. I love the way you take care of veterans and, you know, I think you've got a great message to share, so I'm going to enjoy continuing to follow you, of course.

Same here, brother. Same here. Definitely get together for some barbecue and some brew. Definitely sooner than later than what we should be doing, right?

Absolutely, man.

All right, man. Well, take care. All right, everybody. Hey, that's going to wrap it up for this episode of the Nook show. Like I said, check out business and barbecues. It's on anywhere you would download your podcast, itunes, stitcher, all that good stuff. Take a second, subscribe to it, leave a review. Great stuff there. Anything you're gonna get the top, especially the most recent one, the most top 10 DFW barbecue joints. Because that's what I always think when you're traveling an area. Where should I go eat at? And Tim tells you right there, his favorite spots out there. So stay tuned for more information. Once again, check him out. Timheridge.com it's H E R-R-I a G E dot com as well out there for you. But otherwise, go out, take some action. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. You're not living the life that you want to live. Start changing, start getting rid of the things, the distractions, the handcuffs that hold us back from really, truly living. You know, become the entrepreneur and the person that you want to be later in life. So go out, take action, and we'll see you all at the top, everybody. Bye.