Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode here on the Daily Grind. In today's episode, I chat with Tim Bratz who is the CEO and founder of C.L.E. Turnkey Real Estate, a real estate investment company that acquires and transforms distressed commercial and apartment buildings into high performance investment assets for their own portfolio. Working in real estate, Tim has learned how to build a passive business and create a residual income that allows him to live the lifestyle of his choice.
He's here to educate and empower others to become financially free through commercial real estate. And that's exactly what you're going to learn today. Be sure as always you have a pen, piece of paper, sit back and enjoy today's interview with Tim Bratz. Today's episode is brought to you by HelloFresh.
With HelloFresh, you get fresh pre-measured ingredients and mouth-watering seasonal recipes delivered right to your door. Skip trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun and affordable. And that is why it is America's number one meal kit. HelloFresh cuts out stressful meal planning and grocery store trips so you can enjoy cooking and get dinner on the table in just about 30 minutes or less.
There's something for everyone to enjoy with all the recipes designed and tested by professional chefs and nutritional experts to ensure deliciousness and simplicity in every single meal. I can tell you we've been using HelloFresh here for the past few months. It is super simple. I don't have to run at the grocery stores.
I don't have to think about what we're going to have for dinner. We get to choose our meals in advance and when we get them in, all the ingredients are fresh. The instructions are super easy to follow and it is delicious. That's the best thing we love about it the most.
It's delicious. It gives us new recipes that we can try and save. So next time we do go to the grocery store, we can use a lot of those same recipes over again. This is absolutely amazing.
HelloFresh is unreal. Now for the Daily Grind audience specifically, you can go to HelloFresh.com slash Daily Grind 14 and use code Daily Grind 14 for up to 14 free meals plus free shipping. Yes, you heard that right. You go to HelloFresh.com slash Daily Grind 14 and use code Daily Grind 14.
You will receive 14 free meals plus free shipping. It is super easy. What a no-brainer. 14 free meals plus free shipping.
Make sure you take advantage of that again. That is HelloFresh.com slash Daily Grind 14 and use code Daily Grind 14 at checkout. Joining us today on the Daily Grind is Tim Bratz. Tim is the CEO and founder of C.L.E.
Turnkey Real Estate, a real estate investment company that acquires and transforms distressed commercial and apartment buildings into high performance investment assets for their own portfolio. Working in real estate, Tim has learned how to build a passive business and create a residual income that allows him to live the lifestyle of his choice. He's here to educate and empower others to become financially free through commercial real estate. And today on the show, Tim shares his amazing entrepreneurial journey with us.
So everyone is always grab a pen, grab a piece of paper, sit back and enjoy today's interview with Mr. Tim Bratz. Will Tim Bratz welcome to the Daily Grind? How are you today?
Doing awesome, Colin. Thanks for having me, man. Thanks so much for being here, Tim. And if you wouldn't mind, just say for some listeners being first introduced to you today, just kind of in your own words, explaining a little bit more of who you are and what you do.
Yeah, so I'm a real estate investor, entrepreneur at Cleveland, Ohio. I've also done work in New York City and Charleston, South Carolina. Started out in the residential game when I was going through college 03-07. Everybody's like, if you want to make money, get involved in real estate.
And it's a motivated, a 21 year old kid back then. So I ended up moving out to New York City and got a job as a real estate broker, brokering retail leases. So I would either represent a business who was looking to open up another location or a landlord. And so, yeah, I got involved in real estate that way and saw, I brought in the first lease I broke, it was 400 square feet in Manhattan.
And it was $10,000 a month with 4% annual escalations and a 12 year lease term. And when I saw that and I did the math on it, I realized that owner was going to make almost $2 million over the course in like 12 years or something he did at one point in time. And I realized I was on the wrong side of the coin. So I decided I wanted to become an investor and said, got into flipping houses and did a lot of the transactional stuff that I think a lot of real estate investors do.
And in order to think that they did a build up cash, like cash stockpiles up cash in order to go and invest in commercial real estate and passive and residual income sources. And so I got in that grind, it was kind of traded my time for money, flipping houses and wholesaling houses and doing that for like an ex-sederate years. And then about a year and a half ago, I just focused on my apartment buildings and realized that majority of my time was not spent on apartments. Only about 10% of my time was spent on apartments and building that part of my portfolio and it created 90% of my wealth.
So about 18 months ago, I pivoted my whole business and said, I'm only buying apartments for myself. I'm not flipping houses. I'm not wholesaling. I'm not doing any of that stuff.
And today I have just shy of $100 million portfolio. We got about right around 1400 units and I have another $1,200 under contract to close the next couple of months. So I'll be close to $200 million in assets in the next couple of months. So yeah, man, that's a fast version of it.
No doubt. Did you always have an interest in real estate growing up? Yeah, my dad had a couple of rental properties, just like a little W-Duplex. And so I remember going out there with that.
But it was not a tougher part of town, but a tougher part of town and working on the house. And then when I was going through college, I had a painting company. So I saw what investors were doing and got interested in the real estate stuff. And then I started reading books like Rich Dad Poor Dad and really was always interested in wealth and was always interested in entrepreneurship.
I didn't realize it was real estate. And just the more I learned about it, I mean, real estate is time tested since the beginning of civilization wealth has been measured in land ownership. And so it made sense to me that it wasn't something that I was going to test out. It wasn't something that wasn't, like, it was always there and it's proven, it's got a track record.
It's not fugazi, fugazi, like, could potentially work kind of thing. It was hard, solid, so many million years have been made, like majority million years have been made by investing in real estate and all the other people who made money in other aspects and other industries ended up taking that money and investing in real estate to maintain their wealth. So that was always a big thing for me. And I realized if other people could do it, I could probably do it myself.
And here we are. Yeah, no doubt. So I mean, growing up, you had mentioned you always had the entrepreneurial bug, right? Yeah, at what point?
So did you end up going to college, university, and, you know, I know you said you were working for someone, but you always had that in the back of your mind? Yeah, I mean, you know, in high school and middle school, I would cut kids' hair, you know, and I had, I cut, like, I don't know, 15 different kids' hair every single month. I was able to have spending cash and high school cutting other people's hair. And then when Napster and all that stuff came out, where you could pirate music and turn it into CDs, I started doing some of that and just figure out ways to, like, you know, make a difference.
And then selling to friends and always had, like, a little bit of a bug on that was always very, like, wealth motivated and understood or paid attention to wealth-centric type things and principles. And so when I got to college, I had a painting company, I worked for a company for a year and then thought I might be able to do it on my own. So I did, again, myself the next year and had, like, 15 people, my buddies working for me each summer and during college. And, you know, just, it kind of resonated with me.
I got into the personal development side of things and just realized I wasn't the type that was cut out to go work for somebody else. And I would rather work harder for me and make less money than make more money and work less for somebody else and build somebody else well. Because I realized eventually that would compound and I'd be building my own. And so, yeah, I mean, it wasn't always an easy ride, you know, after college.
And for the first, I mean, I've been in real estate for the past nine, ten years. And I've only been good at it for really the past, like, 36 months. Interesting. Did you have, like, someone, like, a mentor that kind of helped you through that process?
Or does somebody kind of learn more of trial and error? Yeah, I think it was a lot of trial and error the first six years I was in this business. And then when I finally plugged into a mastermind group, in February 2015, I went out there and got a mentor of mine, a good buddy named Mark Evans. We've gone on vacation together and done a lot of deals together.
And I was having a benefit of this past week. And I was sitting in a mastermind with about 15 other people and just talking about business, talking about life and the collective brain power that's in a room like that, talking about high level business building strategies, and where you can be so open without having to worry about, you know, offending somebody by talking into dollars and decimals like we as entrepreneurs do, it was just like, it was eye opening for me. And, you know, I was a solopreneur at the time working, all doing everything by myself, finding deals by myself, finding money by myself, managing the property by myself, collecting rent, sometimes even swinging the hammer, all aspects of real estate, you know, three, four years ago. And so when I went after that, they were like, you just need to hire an assistant.
And I was, and I couldn't see outside my own box. You know, you see, you see somebody who's in a certain situation. And they can't even like think critically because they're just so consumed with the day to day. And they're like, listen, man, like, I made like $130,000 a year before.
And they said, hey, you just need to hire an assistant. And they cost me like $35,000, $40,000 in Cleveland, Ohio. And I was like, that's, that's, you know, a significant portion of my income. And they said, you can't look at it like that.
You got to look at it like $3,000 a month. And if you can try it out for a month or two, you know, at most you're spending three to $6,000 to just test it out and see if it works for you. And if it doesn't work, then it doesn't work. You keep on, you know, pound your head against the wall.
So I was like, all right, fine. I'll try it. Trust it in the process. Trust it in the people.
And I heard an assistant in March of 2015. And the next 10 months, I made close to $400,000. So I tripled my income by making that investment and getting out of my own way and getting out of my own head. You know, so it was more time, essentially.
Yeah, it took a low level activities off my plate. And I would say at a low level, it's just, it's just the things that are not revenue generating activities, all the stupid stuff that you could staff out that I wasn't staffing out. That was a drainer for me. I can now go focus on things that are more drivers, things that are my unique ability going and doing more deals and finding more opportunities and talking about private lenders.
Because I was able to focus on those things, we were able to scale up pretty significantly. So a lesson in that is the power of human capital is super profound. But you gotta be careful because the next year I over hired, I just kept hiring people because I thought I could staff out every single problem I ever ran into. And then I over hired.
And what I quickly found out is that the reason most business fails for lack of cash flow. And the number one reason for lack of cash flow is for over hiring and having too many people on staff. And so 2016 was a learning curve for me. But I was able to tighten up the processes, got a business obviously, and I was able to tighten up my processes and focus more on being a lean, good company versus just a big company, you know.
So outside of having more time and taking away those slightly mundane activities that didn't move the needle, what behaviors changed for you which allowed you to go from 130 to 400? I would say, again, I focus more on like revenue generating activities. I was doing things that were assuming there's like a Meridian up and down that I was doing activities that were farther and farther away from that middle revenue generating line. And the farther away you get and you're making business cards and that stuff doesn't generate revenue.
You need to stick to the activities in every business has three to five activities that are the revenue generating activities. And in my business, being in real estate, if you're not finding deals, finding motivated sellers, finding motivated buyers, or finding money, those are the only three things that actually produce and generate revenue. And so it got me to doing those things instead of adding up receipts, you know, instead of running errands, instead of doing the things that are easily able to be staffed out, you know, I thought I had to do those things. So that was a big shift in my behavior of focusing on those revenue generating activities.
What do you see as, what do you see allows you to be so focused and driven? Because you can kind of hear it in your voice and with what you do and you've built wealth to this point. What, when you break, when you are able to kind of look back and break it down, would like motivates you to have that drive and fire in your belly? Good question.
I say that. So here's when I take a look at what motivates me and what drives me. First of all, like once you make 50, 75, $100,000 a year and all your basic needs are met, you got to roof over your head and food on the table, close on your back, you know, your family safe, and you can live in a decent neighborhood. Once those basic needs are met, it doesn't matter if you make a million dollars a year or a hundred million dollars a year, like your happiness and your drive, I don't think changes that much or at least your happiness doesn't change that much.
It's more of a decision type process. So for me, once I reached that threshold where I was making six figures and I knew that I could live in a nice house, be in a safe neighborhood, you know, some of my kids about any school they want and provide for my family, it's not necessarily about making money. That's just kind of a way to keep score. It's more about achievement and like self-actualization of like, how big can I build it?
You know, let me, I see a lot of people who compare themselves to others and like, oh, you know, Donald Trump's worth $10 billion and he's got all this property and blah, blah, blah. Well, like, yeah, Donald Trump's also 40 years older than me, you know, so he's had more time and he might have been set up a little bit better with his parents or like something like that. So it's not fair for me or for anybody else to compare themselves and where they are right now to other people. What you need to do is compare yourself to where you were maybe 12 months ago and make sure you're moving the needle forward from where you started to where you are today and make sure that 12 months from now, you are the role model that you hope to be, you know, like, looking at yourself, like, here's the kind of person I want to be here's the kind of person I want to look up to make sure you're putting yourself in that position to become that individual.
And so that's been a big motivator for me. I want to, you know, especially once you have kids too and it really changes your book patience and it's not necessarily about again making a bunch of money. It's more building a lifestyle and being a role model and instead of legacy being like, let me give legacy wealth or let me give a legacy of treasure to my kids. It's more of a mindset for me of being the role model of creating an example in life of showing them what an exceptional life can look like and knowing that my priorities are in line for how I spend my time and making sure that I'm spending more time on relationships because that's more important to me.
It's spending time on my business. And a lot of people ask me like, how do you build your business? How are you able to spend so much time with your family? Because I literally work about 20 hours a week in my business, maybe a little bit more, but I'm in the office probably 20 hours a week.
But I scaled that back over the past 12 months because I had a, an epiphany with my daughter and I'm sitting there, come home after work, we have dinner as a family and I'm sending text message. And my daughter's coming over to tag, you know, tugging on my shirt saying, Hey, daddy, will you come play with me in the playroom? I'm like, yeah, baby, hang on a second. Let me finish up this message.
Daddy, daddy, come play with me. Okay, hang on one second. I'm like, just wrap this up. And then I finished the text.
I look down and she's not there anymore. And she's over there playing in the room in the playroom. And it hit me like a ton of bricks of sitting back and then reflecting on how unimportant this message was that I just sent, how unurgent it was. And thinking, what am I, what am I conveying to my daughter?
What kind of example am I setting? How am I imprinting on her that the man who loves her most in this world? Ignores her because of phone is more important. And then what does that do to set her up to for dating in the future?
Now she's going to date a bunch of jerks who ignore her because she thinks that that's what love is. That's what she associates with love. Or it imprints on her that every time I go to daddy and I want love and affection and hug and kiss, I don't get it. And all of a sudden it's disappointment instead of love and affection.
So then she goes and looks for satisfaction somewhere else, whether that be drugs or sex or something, that none of us want our kids to go into. So for me, it was looking at my priorities and realizing where I was, where's I spending my time? Where do you spend your time as the greatest indicator of your priorities? And we all say that we do the business or building a business for our family But the reality is we don't spend it.
We neglect our family significantly to build a business or for other things. And so for me, it was about building a business that fit into my lifestyle versus the other way around and just like fitting my family into my business life. So I'm very intentional to time block with my kids and my family time. So I don't pick up the phone after 4.35 o'clock.
It's just family time with my wife, with my kids. And then I'm starting to do it in the morning too where I time block time for personal development, meeting, listening to podcasts, listening to audiobooks and working out. And then it allows me to then ask better questions and get better answers on my business itself and say, hey, who do I need to put in place to only being the office 20 hours a week? What processes?
What systems do I need to implement in order for me to be able to build a business around my life? You know what I mean? So it's been pretty profound, pretty powerful over the past 12 months where you start asking yourself better questions and when you reflect on your business, as often as I do, but reflection is like a big deal to me. Like sitting back and taking a day off, you know, at least once a quarter, I try to do once a month, but it doesn't happen as often as I want.
But every time I sit back and I reflect and I take a 20,000 foot view of my business and my life, like profound changes are made. You know, it's really like a lot of powerful stuff to take out of that. I mean, one just hearing it seems like you put a lot of emphasis on self-awareness for yourself and think you're very thoughtful in terms of what actions and what you're doing now, like how that will affect the future, which I think is really important because not a lot of people can see outside of where they're looking right now. Right.
Right. I think I think with entrepreneurship and business and parenthood, I think the more you can kind of take that bird's eye view and sort of hurry up and slow down so to speak. I think a lot of things will start to come to clarity for a lot of people. I think it's more important than booksmarks.
You know, like your IQ, that doesn't matter as much as I mean, how many times do we see people with wasted opportunities or wasted knowledge or wasted talent? You know, it's all over. It's rampant in our society. And the mentors that I look up to and the successful individuals that I meet and they have this EQ, you know, the emotional intelligence where they have that self-awareness and that social awareness in certain circumstances.
And I feel like that takes you even farther. And I think it's a muscle that you can develop as well. I don't think, maybe I don't think I was born with it. Maybe at least enough to realize that it does exist.
But then once you realize that social awareness exists and you can develop this muscle on reading books on how to influence friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie, you know, things like that, right? Profound. I mean, impactful. One of the most impactful books I've ever read just makes you more aware and you can develop that muscle and then you get better at building relationships and you get better at building your network and you know, you get better at building your network because of it too.
Yeah, totally. So for you to have like everything you've experienced, the successes that you've seen, the obstacles you've faced, say you had the chance to go back in time and speak to a younger version of yourself and not necessarily change anything, but maybe just offer a piece of wisdom or a piece of guidance. I'm wondering what that would be for you. Good question.
I'd say I'd make myself aware that resourcefulness is the ultimate resource. I've heard Tony Robbins say that before. And it's so powerful in that a lot of people create, they have negative self-talk, you know, and they say I can't do something. And what that does, it immediately shuts off your brain from thinking critically or thinking proactively.
And instead of saying I can't do something, I tell my younger self, make sure you're asking yourself questions on how can you make something happen? Because when you ask yourself, how can I do that? How can I find the money? How can I find the deal?
How can I build a better life? Then it gets the creative juices flowing in your brain and it promotes more thoughts. Does that make sense? Totally.
And that leads you down a path of asking better questions and getting better answers and you know, you're able to craft a better life when you're able to do that. Yeah, I can agree more. I think a big part of that is that people don't put themselves in uncomfortable situations enough. Like they're not facing adversity enough.
And when you don't, you're kind of being comfortable in your life. And then what happens when you have an obstacle in front of you? What happens when you do have to face this obstacle and be able to think critically in order to get past it? What happens is people shut down because you're not in that situation enough.
Right. 100%. And you take a look at look at the most successful people in the world and the most powerful people in the world. Typically, they're politicians and they're CEOs.
Right. The highest pay, the most powerful, most influential. And the reason they're in those roles is because they can make decisions and they can problem solve and they can think critically. Yeah.
And they are resourceful. And so that tells me that that's a muscle and a skill that you can work on. You can then be super impactful, super influential in your town, you know, be successful from a financial perspective and all other aspects you'd like to. And so I think that is a critical piece of success that I've learned over the years that I wish I would have known earlier for sure.
Yeah, totally. And for you, like, say there's this magic genie out there, okay, whether it be a guy or a girl, but she could come into your life or your business and help you with one thing. I'm wondering what the genie would help you with. The one thing.
That's good question. You got some good questions, Colin. On that one, it would be more of a strategic move. I'm not sure what it would be.
It wouldn't be tactical. I think you can always figure out the tactical things in business. So it would be more of a business strategic move of, you know, here's what it looks like. My thing right now is building out my organization and doing it in the right way.
And so just doing it to say I have 25 employees. I want to make sure that I'm building. I have the right key employees and I'm building business, a legacy kind of business that can run without me being there. And it's really close right now.
And I have a couple of key hires coming online. But if that genie could help me out with saying, Hey, here's here's a couple of pieces and parts that you just need to fill in the gap and you'll be able to 10x your revenue, 10x your lifestyle, 10x, you know, lifestyle of your team. That would make a big difference. So that's one of the things that I'm working on right now.
And I know the answer is out there. I'm working on. I just read a book in the process of rereading a book called The Rockefeller Habits by Vern Harnish. And I read it 10 years ago and had no idea what the hell it was talking about because he wasn't for a long business to understand it.
But it's kind of like the next level after Geno Wickman's book traction, familiar with that one. And it's how to go from that, you know, Geno Wickman and his book traction will help you get from like doing up to a million dollars in revenue in order to get up to like doing five to 10 million dollars in value. And a certain strategies and things you need to put in place to do that. And then Rockefeller Habits takes you to the next level of building a business that's tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars into that ballpark.
And that's kind of where I'm looking to go. And it's, yeah, that's what I'm working on right now. Totally amazing. I know the answers are out there and I'll be able to find them.
But if Geno can help me get there faster, that would be cool. Absolutely. And now Tim, the way we're on the show here is I give you the floor and you have the opportunity today to share with our audience the thought of the day. So one thing or one thought that we can all go home with today.
Another great question. So in this mastermind, I was just in the past couple of days, somebody brought up the concept of legacy and building a legacy business and building legacy wealth and building a legacy portfolio of real estate. And that's cool. It's cool to be able to give that to your family and pass that down and create generational wealth.
But for me, reflecting back on this conversation that we all had, again, it was more about, it seemed like you were giving your kids a fish versus teaching them how to fish. And for me, legacy and passing down knowledge and passing down mindset and passing down personal development strategies and resourceful thinking and being the role model that I want my kids to look up to, that's more of a legacy to me than actually giving them stuff or giving them real estate or giving them cash. And so from a legacy perspective, I mentioned this earlier, but I want to make sure that I'm passing it down the idea of this is what an exceptional life could look like. You can have an awesome marriage, you can have your health dialed in.
And I think you're always going to lead life in one or two aspects of that, whether that be faith, finances, fitness, relationships, family, friends, all those different apps. I think you're going to lead in one or two of those things, but it doesn't mean that you need to neglect the other ones. I want to be an example of where somebody can be like, you know what, if that guy can do it, I know I can do it too. And be able to inspire and help others believe.
And I think that's true legacy. So hopefully that resonates with some folks and hopefully that adds value. You got some great questions on this. I really appreciate it.
Thank you. 100% it will. And now it's the best way our audience can learn more, reach out and connect with you. I appreciate that.
I'm pretty active on social media. I try to give a lot of content on Facebook. So if you want to pull me up and friend me up on Facebook with a lot of connected people there, I do some commercial real estate coaching on how to leverage up. It's not for newbies.
It's more for people who are pretty successful in residential real estate, whether from a private investment standpoint or an active investor. I teach them how to leverage up into commercial real estate and buying apartment buildings and scaling that way and building some real long-term wealth. So that's my program's commercial empire. So commercialinspire.com.
Yeah. And I answer all my messages on Facebook. So if anybody's got messages, they want to hit me up. It's actually me responding to you.
So happy to provide value anyway that I can. God, appreciate everything that you do and all the value you're giving out there and you're making some real difference in the community and people's lives. So I appreciate everything that you're doing. Sam, thank you so much.
And everyone, I will share both those links so you can go ahead and follow Tim on social media, Facebook specifically. And also, if you want to get that coaching, I'll share that website to make it super simple to reach out to Tim and really grow your wealth as an individual and for your family. And as you can see from this interview, everyone's success is driven by passion, hunger, and today's self-awareness and resourceful thinking. Everyone has to overcome obstacles.
Everyone has a story. Start building yours today. Today, we have the chance to speak with the amazing Tim Bratz. Tim, I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule.
Man, I come on the show here with me today. Colin, thanks again. I appreciate everything you're doing. Pleasure is all mine.
Everyone, if you liked today's episode, be sure to hit that subscribe button. Leave us a comment, share it with your friends. Until next time, Colin Morgan signing off. And always remember to keep on writing.