Real estate investor, Syndicator and educator, Best Selling author. Tim Kelly is an active duty Chief Petty Officer in the United States Navy and has been serving his country for 14 years. Now stationed on shore duty in Pensacola, Florida, he is fully pursuing his dream of owning and operating multi-family real estate and helping others realize their financial freedom goals! Tim has been investing in real estate since 2011 where he purchased his first house-hack, and he quickly learned the benefits of long-term buy and hold real estate were much more aligned with his goals. Through analyzing hundreds of multi-family properties, Tim has built an incredible network of real estate professionals, owns, controls, or has directly been involved in over 1,000 income producing units and looks forward to acquiring 5,000 multi-family units within the next three years. As the Financial Freedom and Syndication Chief on the incredible platform, Active Duty Passive Income (ADPI), Tim is helping active, veteran, reserve, and other military affiliated personnel realize their financial freedom goals through real estate investing. Tim is now a Senior Managing Partner of both Kelly Housing Group and ADPI Capital where he and his partners invest in and syndicate multi family property in the affordable and workforce housing spaces with a focus on apartment communities and mobile home communities. Tim also loves playing shows and drumming with his band, seeing live music and concerts, scuba diving and traveling the world!
Takeaways
-Started with a seabag of books on personal finance, personal wealth, and mindset: Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey; Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and Bigger Pockets books
-Started with a SFH house-hack in 2011; started delving into the real estate investing world in 2015-2016 and by 2017 had his first quad. 6 months later, Tim bought a 42 unit syndicating with a partner.
-Learn->Network->Take Action
-Get to know your potential partner by handing out with them and really, truly getting to know them
-Partnerships are like marriages: you are stuck for life
-Keys to forming the perfect Partnership: know your strengths and weaknesses then find others to fill those gaps
Snapshot Round:
- What is the number one thing you need as a new investor to get started? Know your why. Peel back 10 layers deep and know your why in your soul. Having a compass will get you through the rough times.
- What is one nugget of investing knowledge you want to give us? Grow every single day.
- What is your dream? Living it now. Doing ADPI and investing full time. Make babies and spend time with the family.
Contact Tim:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thetimothykelly/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetimothykelly/
Website: https://www.activedutypassiveincome.com/
Phone number: 897-910-9161
Transcription:
Hey, guys. Welcome to another episode of the Lessons and Real Estate Show, I’m your host, Anthony Pinto. We’re thrilled to have you here today. You’ll get a lot of great value from our hour down here today. Our guest today, he has already provided a tremendous amount of value in my life already. So real estate investor, syndicated educator and bestselling author Tim Kelly is an active duty officer in the United States Navy and has been serving his country for 14 years now, stationed on shore duty in Pensacola, Florida.
He is fully pursuing his dream of owning and operating multifamily real estate and helping others realize their financial freedom goals and investing in real estate. Since 2011, when he purchased his first house and he quickly learned the benefits of long term buy and hold real estate, which is more aligned with his goals through analyzing hundreds of multifamily properties, tend to build an incredible network of real estate professionals. I don’t think controls or has directly been involved in over a thousand income producing units at four point five thousand multifamily units within the next three years. As the Financial Freedom and Syndication Chief on the incredible platform, active duty, passive income families helping active duty veteran reserve and other military affiliate personnel realize their financial freedom goals. The Real Estate Investing Time is now a senior managing partner at the Kelley Housing Group and API Capital when he and his partners invest and syndicate multifamily property and the Affordable and House Sorry workforce housing spaces with a focus on apartment communities and mobile home visits, and also loves playing shows and jamming with his band, singing on music and concerts and scuba diving while traveling the world. Tim, welcome to the show.
Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Glad to be here.
So that was a pretty long. And did I miss anything?
No. And that’s I think that elaborate enough for the guests to kind of understand my background and dive in and let’s have some fun.
Perfect. Perfect. All right, man. So we’ve been in such a long time since I really got investing. So I know a lot about your background. But tell the listeners about how you got into real estate in the first place. It seems like you’ve been in for, what, almost ten years already. Tell us a little bit about what you do and how you got into it.
Yeah, so, man, I’ve always had a fascination for just personal finance and building wealth, and I was never OK with just giving my money to a financial adviser. I just had I don’t know if it’s a control problem, but I just wanted to be able to build and control my own wealth and my own financial future and so on.
One of my last deployments, I just stacked my seabag with some books and most of those books had to do with just personal finance and building wealth and different strategies. And the more I read on that deployment about just building wealth and financial education, the more I came across real estate investing as something that is available to everybody and that really creates more millionaires and billionaires and more financial freedom than any other investment vehicle. And it’s literally accessible to anybody. So I got off that deployment.
I had a little bit more free time and then I just kind of just literally just engulf myself and consumed every book. Podcast wants to meet us when the conversation is just about the real estate investing niche. And that’s where I got my education, spent thousands of dollars on an education and coaching and mentorship and all that.
And then kind of fast forward, I honed specifically a kind of what initially went horizontal across all the different ways you make money in real estate.
And then I chose multifamily and is one of vertical and then from that point, I made that decision just to focus on multifamily. And then I did a couple of short years ago as I made that, made that commitment. And then six months later, I bought a four plex. Then a few months later, after that, I bought a 42 unit apartment deal with syndicated that was my friends. And then after that was a mobile home park. And it was just off to the races from that point. And, you know, fast forward again, we actually the team just clothes and apartment community yesterday, an 80 unit up in Indiana.
And then we’re about to close a mobile home community next week as well. Super excited about that. And I love being able to show other people how to do it, especially the military community, because we all know there’s a significant lack of financial education in our society. But it’s even worse in the military.
But, yes, it’s pretty much sums it up.
Awesome, awesome. All right, so it’s a Star House hack, and now it’s 2011, so how quickly to go from a house at two o’clock to 40 to your name and so on and so forth?
Yeah, when I when I bought the single family home in 2011, that was no intentions of investing.
That was just to use my VA loan. And without even realizing what house hacking was, I was house hacking. I had it was just my wife and I and in a nice, nice home in the Hampton Roads area and we had a nice big guest bedroom with its own on suites, own bathroom and everything. So we’re like, look, there’s a lot of space. We don’t need all space. It’s just us. Let’s run this out. And we were very particular about who we who we allowed to to move in with us. But we have the fact that and that was in 2011 and then the deployment that I went on where I really kind of started diving and more was in 2014. But then 2015, like the light bulb kind of went off. And then twenty sixteen is when I’m like, all right, I want to actually focus and grow my financial intelligence specific to real estate. And then twenty, seventeen, early twenty seventeen bought the four plex right when I moved to Pensacola. So I pretty much moved to Pensacola that same month. I close on a four plex and then six months later bought a forty two unit and kind of from that point it was off to the races.
Wow. That’s, that’s a really quick transition going from single family home and just kind of realizing that multifamily was the way to go. And then let’s see what six years later went into the closet and then forty two. And so it just it just goes to show you, like when you have a true passion for real estate, you just kind of get the ball rolling.
Just things just build up and build up and just kind of step away from that now, you know, going from a quad to forty two units and six months is incredible right now. A lot of people, it takes years just to get to a quad and then a few more years to even get to a forty two. And even if they, even if they get that in their mind that they want to do that. Yeah. That’s incredible that you are able to do through that so quickly. And I really think it’s a testament to your drive and your dedication to being financially free and you want to help others and get to the same point as well.
So going back to when you all the books, if you’re reading. So you said you had a Holsey bag full of books. So where were some of those books that you took with you?
One of the first ones that kind of helped me understand just kind of the basics, because I was a command financial specialist in the Navy and it was pretty cool.
I had the opportunity to kind of stream sailors and Marines on my last deployment and help them understand about their personal finances. And so one of the books I actually picked up was Dave Ramsay’s Total Money Makeover.
And, you know, at that point, I was a big fan and I followed what he said.
But now that I kind of opened my mind up a little bit and increase my financial education and my financial I.Q., I realized I only agree with up to the point where he has baby steps for which is great, because I got no there’s no financial education. And he has baby steps that help you understand, look, this is how you get out of debt. This is what you should save. But then, like up to the point where you have no debt, you have three to six months of investment, of liquid cash sitting in an emergency fund. You know, at that point you need to decide, OK, let’s not pay off my home as fast as I can and not put everything I can into a 401k or IRA for us TSP. Let’s actually stack that capital up while we understand how to control our own wealth and build our own wealth instead of just putting all that money into your home, which is not an asset, it’s not paying you. There’s no return on equity at all. One of the dumbest things you could do is pay your home off early one. The mortgage itself is thirty years. You get leverage to get the same low interest, low mortgage payment and you can leverage that for a long time. If they offered one hundred year mortgage, I would take it in a heartbeat.
But debt is not bad and I think a lot of your listeners probably understand that. So I don’t want to work focused too much on that. There’s good debt and there’s bad debt. So the total money makeover was actually one, you know, and then and then I realized kind of opened my mind up, came across the rich dad poured out of the cash flow quadrant the ABC’s the real estate investing explored that whole the whole rich the rich dad advisor book like the loopholes, a real estate, a game changer, tax free wealth. Game changer Tom Lehrer carried sudden Robert Kusaka. And of course, they’ve all been on our podcast. We’ve had the pleasure to interview them. And then from that I stumbled across bigger pockets and every single interview on Bigger Pockets has another book recommendation. And so I counted as one across all those books that they recommended. And I kind of explore like, look, I got addicted to. I got addicted to self education because I learned, like, I can do this and I don’t need a degree and I don’t need any kind of credentials or become an agent in order to invest and realize I need to educate myself and take action once I’m in the right network of people, once I surround myself with the right people.
So on that note, so how long do you think it took you to find that group of people?
I guess we always see an adage like you are the sum of the five people that you associate with. Right. So it goes by. People are constantly put you down. You’re not going to go anywhere. Right. So how long did it take you to kind of build that that network in that that framework of support to continue building your real estate career?
Well, it’s constantly changing.
I mean, the minute I realized listening to podcasts and just reading and I thought that there’s a such thing as a real a real estate investment association, I’m like, well, if I could hang out with people because I realized, like, look, I’m probably one of the only people in my work center in my department, probably one of the only people on my ship in my command that had this thought process that, like our thinking outside the box, want to say we want to build my own wealth.
I want to invest in real estate. I’m like, I got to find that same group of people where I live. And I realized, wow, there’s a REIA in every major city or whatever. So I joined the REIA immediately, the one in Atheros Trig. And so I join that. And once a month I kind of network with those people. And then obviously I’m bigger pockets. I was able to network with some people and kind of learn that I had to spend more time in the forums and at the REIA and hanging out with those people and taking people out to lunch and for coffee or whatever that had that investment mindset and mindset. And but it’s constantly changing.
And then I had I had a couple of partnerships and we had some success and we were working through some deals. And then it it changed because, you know, partnerships work out and you can always you always want to expect the best but plan for the worst things maybe might change. Goals might change. You know, geography might change and criteria might change. But then you just got to shift and adapt to it. And that’s one of the greatest things about the military. That’s one of the things they instill in us. And they kind of treat us as embedded in our DNA. But now I realize and right now I kind of had a couple more partnerships in between then. It’s kind of like, you know what? But now I’m with the API crew, the active duty passive income, the core guys. And we were this is like everything that we’ve learned through all of what we’ve experienced in real estate. Now we’re working together as a team.
Not only are we investing as a team and we’re able to take down deals as a team, but now we’re able to show a whole community of military members how to do it, what we’re doing, and that you can do this even when you’re active duty, regardless of what anybody is telling us about even what you’re telling yourself. So it’s constantly changing. I’m not going to put a time on it because it’s just how bad you want it. You have to assume that the first couple of partnerships won’t work out. The first couple of people that you work with will work out the first agent that you work with, the first broker, maybe the first pass investors, contractors. If they don’t work out, that’s normal. It’s just part of part of business. You got to find the people that you really mesh with and you’re going to have to sift through a couple no’s before you get to a yes sales one on one, too. So it’s constantly changing, but it’s really, really important that you’re running yourself with those engines instead of those anchors, like you said.
Now, well, well, well said for sure. So going back to what you’re talking about, what kind of vetting, vetting your partner.
So I just talked with David Palmer last episode and he kind of talked about doing due diligence on other people, as well as doing due diligence on the properties itself.
So when you’re like looking for partners or people to work with, they’re going to be partners or even limited partners. How do you go about actually vetting those people to make sure that you’re going to be a good fit?
Just spending as much time with them, and I know a lot of times right now, a lot of people are working remotely so using technology, leveraging technology, and it’s going to take it might take months or longer to really get to know somebody to the point where you’re going to want to do business with them.
So and we’re all wired differently. We have different personalities. I have a tendency to see the absolute best in people, but I just really want to get to know them, like to their core. So I like having one on one conversations with people before I even remotely get involved. You could do so much research, you could do research on Facebook and LinkedIn and like you could use the social network platforms to really get a feel of like what they’re all about, what their priorities are, how they treat their family, how they treat their spouse, what really what their goals are. But like just sitting there talking to them face to face over a beer or a cup of coffee or something and saying, tell me about yourself. What are your goals? What do you have planned? Why are you involved in real estate? Why do you want to invest? What are your biggest mistake? Just really getting to know someone, being genuinely interested in them as a person.
Is probably the best way to do it, and I think I think that’s the key to the relationships and building those partnerships because, I mean, for anybody listening, if you think you could do this on your own, you need to stop right now and you need to find people and surround yourself with people and you have to know how to work together with people. Another great thing about the military, they like embed teamwork and leadership into us. And that’s why I think investors who are in the military or who did time in the military and the longer you did and the military makes you a breakthrough. But I think it just really, really pours over very well into business and translates to nothing but success in business.
So, yeah, the answer to question and answer and then.
Yeah, I think that’s I definitely agree with you.
I think the military is really prepared me for this transition to real estate and investing in general and like building partnerships and building teams, building teams, especially outside of the general partners, the limited partners in finding capital that is building your core team of people, whether that’s the partners that you’re actually going to partner with as partners or the brokers you’re working with, the property managers or contractors, your whole your whole team, all your whole boots on the ground team without you with that, if you had that one weak link within that chain, it’s all going to kind of fall apart. So, you know, making sure that the whole team is on the same page, making sure that everyone has an alignment of interest and is on as ready to do what needs to be done to get to that angle, whether that’s closing on a unit or whether that’s completing the mission if selling military. So I think that’s absolutely right on that. And I love hearing that. And I heard from other people that many partners and getting into a partnership is just like a marriage. You’ve got to you’ve got to really kind of date.
You got to get to know the individual because you get into a deal, you get into a multimillion dollar deal and you’re kind of set with those people, you know, and unless something and you end up selling the property or any and after that, you’re set with those people for the life of that property. Right. And whether you see them do well and do bad like that really kind of affects how the whole property is going to do and really just takes that one person who is like, OK, I want to get into this and you get into it. And now they realize that this is the worst mistake of their lives and now they want to get out of it. And it opens up a whole bunch of legal aspects and stress that is just you don’t need when you’re already dealing with the stress of real estate deal or asset or whatever you’re dealing with. So, yeah, I definitely agree. And getting to know your people before you kind of really get into a deal with that. And I think it’s absolutely vital.
I mean, just to go a little bit more granular, granular with that, I love talking about this stuff. This is actually my one of my good friends and partners, Jay Helms.
Him and I were on the Bigger Pockets podcast a couple of years ago, and we talked about how to perfect, how to form the perfect partnership and how to create the perfect partnership. And a couple of things for people. This is it took me a while to learn. But number one, you have to know your strengths and weaknesses. We’re all programmed differently. We all have different strengths and different weaknesses, different likes and different dislikes. Understanding yourself and what your strengths and weaknesses are is crucial. And you can easily do that by taking a self-assessment like a disk profile disk, disk profile or like a free Myers Briggs profile. And take that like 20, 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes, taking an assessment, an assessment. You’ll probably learn some stuff about yourself that you may not have known. And a lot of us are either going to be predominantly left brained or predominantly right brain. The left brain are going to people who are more analytical, data driven. They like numbers, they like statistics. They like to be the underwriter. They’d rather be in the back office crunching numbers than out there. Someone like me, far right brain or creative, kind of obnoxious, more of a visionary. Some like me. I’m a musician. People are musicians and just more of the visionary and not afraid to go public, speak in front of thousands of people or promote or sell, but like a left brain and right brain are together, is a really good team and a really good partnership. So if you kind of could figure out which one you are, a lot of CEOs and a lot of very successful people are like a nice blend of both.
So understanding which one you are, you might that might help you, like, really form the perfect partnership and the key after you know who you are, what your strengths and weaknesses are, understand the big picture and what the gaps are. And then when you’re getting to know other people because you’re always genuinely interested in other people, when you’re networking, all you care about is what they have going on. They don’t care about you. Just ask them about them. So then they’ll tell you what their strengths and weaknesses are. And then once you realize, look, this is a person that can fill all these gaps to form the perfect partnership, that’s one. Now, the only other thing is, do you have the same goals and vision? Are you both looking at multifamily or maybe one wants to do flipping. One wants to be multifamily or. One want to do like a long term buy and hold, or one wants to just do value add, take the cash and head out and reposition it in a matter of 20 months. So once you know the personality traits of yourself and your partners or potential partners, make sure you guys are on the same page and get it in writing through a partnership agreement. And worst case scenario happens. How is it going to be resolved? And you both sign it. You’re both on the same page. So when that thing happens, worst case scenario takes place. There’s no questions or gray areas. It’s already kind of decided upon how you’re going to move forward.
Perfect. Yeah, I like I like that a partnership agreement, I think that is absolutely vital, both in terms of the legal aspect of that, but like almost like a spoking kind of relationship agreement between the two of you.
So, you know, what gaps you’re feeling. So in terms of like a legal partnership agreement, how do you typically kind of solidify that?
Yeah, so I mean I mean, I have a template I can share with you, and it’s just kind of bullet points of it’s like, well, probably like two pages, very, very simple.
Cut and dry when we form this partnership. These are the duties that I’m going to have. Bullet points. Bam, bam, bam, bam. These are the duties. These are the duties this person is going to have. Bam, bam, bam, bam. And then as if there is whatever a conflict, of course, there’s a lot more legal jargon and always have an attorney. This is something that you don’t really probably need an attorney. It’s not really legally binding. It can be. So just work with the attorney if you have any questions. But it’s really just instead of like just talking about the agreement and handshake, you just have bullet points of the duties and responsibilities of each person. And obviously it’s always going to change because when you come across certain situations, things are going to be dynamic, things are going to change, and you’re going to come up with a maybe a role that really isn’t well, who’s going to do it. That’s where you just have to have open communication and maybe just change or make create an addendum to add. Well, these are the different things that now weren’t on the initial agreement. This is who’s going to do what. And then you say worst case scenario, if things we no longer want to be a partner, these are this is the next course of action. This is how it will be resolved. And then, of course, the partnership, however many shares, if you guys are sharing an LLC or if it’s your own entity sharing one LLC. So it’s just, you know, and things like I said, things are going to constantly change, but it’s really, really a good idea to have that kind of in writing before you even start working towards it. And, you know, this might sound like it might be some negativity, but I would assume that partnership is not going to work out straight up. So then there’s no surprises. Obviously, you want to hope for the best, right. And plan for the worst and just assume it’s not going to work out. And so you need that contract. You need that agreement in writing.
Yeah, absolutely, and I think that’s key for even looking at deals to just take a deal and assume the worst is going to happen soon, that you you’re not going to be able to get the rent. You’re going to get you’ll be conservative in your underwriting.
Just think about everything.
And with that kind of call it a black lams, I guess, rather than the rosy glasses. Is that what could go wrong? Could happen. And can you still make money off of that? Can you still get through that with the partnership? Right. And if that does happen, what is the way out towards that? Right. What is the next step? What is the operating protocol to get yourself out of that? Right. Yeah, that’s I think it’s absolutely key. So, yeah, that’s great. So, OK, so let’s get to some of your deals here, because you talked a lot about partnerships. So I want to hear about how you got into some of your deals. Tell us about what’s your best and your worst deal was and how what you learned from that.
They’ve all been the best, and I wouldn’t change anything about any of them because they are they kind of shaped who I am today and I’m constantly learning every single, every single detail and every single thing that you do, whether you think it’s a struggle or a failure, you guys don’t understand that you either succeed or you learn. So I’m not going to say, well, this deal went bad. It was one of my worst deals. But I would say probably my first mobile home community purchase. We are getting ready to sell it right now. It’s we repositioned it and it was just a lot of a lot of steps during the due diligence process that we just were kind of naive to. And we didn’t get everything in writing. Again, there was a verbal agreement that was made between us and the sellers, and it didn’t end up panning out because it wasn’t in writing. There was nothing that we didn’t have anything to stand on. We didn’t inspect all the park owned home units. We knew what we were getting into in terms of the utilities and all that. But I think we were we weren’t as conservative as we were. Luckily, we got a ridiculous deal on the on the park and we’re going to definitely sell it for a profit.
But it wasn’t cash flowing along the way like we thought it was going to do to all the capital injection that needed to take place with repairs and maintenance and stuff.
And but so I would say, you know, my work got worse deal, but it wasn’t my worth. Again, I learned so much and it got me into the mobile home park space. And I love it. And we’re about to close on another one. And I’ll always be looking for mobile parks, but it’ll probably be probably that one.
Solid. So, OK, so you do not have to start with and then a lot of people just kind of stick with one asset class, whether that’s a family name or that family commercial side.
And it’s interesting that you went and you’re still doing both multifamily mobile home park. So how did you go from doing multifamily to the mobile home park? Yeah.
So when we were looking at apartment complexes cap rate you were still able to buy at like nine, 10 caps, especially in the market back in twenty, sixteen, seventeen. And then then as we were continuing to look at a lot of people that I was around, even some of my mentors were like, man, catbird’s are getting tie. The deals are harder and harder to find. I’m like, screw that. No, they’re not. They’re fine. You just got to dig a little deeper. You just got to make be friends and build relationships with the right brokers to hook you up with the pocket listings. And so, like, then I realized, like, look, it’s maybe they’re right. And so I we were still looking at deals and analyzing deals, but they weren’t shaking out like we thought they were like, all right, well, what can what does make sense? And I love I love the housing. I love affordable housing. I’m like, then I just the more people I was talking to in, the more I was educating myself. I came across a mobile home park space. I’m like, I don’t even ever consider investing in mobile home parks. And then I’m like, well, that’s the most affordable type of living. You can’t get any better than that. An affordable housing crisis, which is one of the driving factors. Why I love apartment complexes, because we have we are undergoing an affordable housing crisis right now. For every ten people that need affordable housing in the US, maybe like two point five people have it provided to them. So if you could provide clean, safe, functional and affordable housing in a market that has a desirable path of progress and population growth and employment, you’re going to be you’re going to have a successful asset.
So I’m like, well, some of my partners and I, we’re still looking at apartments, but let me start analyzing mobile home park. Let me learn and educate myself a mobile home parks. And then I found a couple of partners and that’s all we focused on. And so I dove into that and got a got a couple of deals done. And now it’s like I said, our API capital. We’re about to close another one here next week and super excited about that. And there’s so many benefits to mobile home communities. And I think more and more people are getting into the space. But the main reason is because carriers are getting a little tired. The deals weren’t as good and interest rates were going up. So that arbitrage, the spread between that interest rate and that cap rate always for about three percent. That’s really a rule of thumb for the best returns to your investors in your IRR. And we weren’t finding that. So that three percent spread, that arbitrage was easily you could easily find it in mobile, in the mobile home park space. You can still buy a mobile home parks that have certain market. So that was probably the reason why just helped me. I’m like, well, I’m not going to stop. I just want to figure out, let’s go to the next best option. And it came across my home apartment.
Wow, that’s incredible. Yet I never really thought about transitioning to mobile home parks. I’m kind of saying the same thing in my market cap rates are ridiculous.
Know brokers are providing deals that they know they’re kind of fishing for, that there’s people that are willing to spend two million dollars more. And it’s actually worth asking. It’s just getting harder and harder with everything that’s going on in the market. And yeah, I guess little home park would definitely be a good transition to get to get into that space. So we have to make money at the cap rates that you would expect to buy good properties at four multifamily home.
So, so, so when you the mall or when you get into a mobile home park, so you find a mentor, do you not talking from experience of mobile home parks, like, do you analyze them the same way? Do you have someone kind of walk you through, had to look at them like you have a mentor, have that process go for you?
Yeah. So I mean, it really started with the cool thing.
Like when you learn and understand how to analyze multifamily property, you have the foundational knowledge to really analyze any kind of commercial real estate period.
It’s income minus expenses.
You’re now you’re analyzing, divided by your cap rate as your offer price, like the most, you know, ten thousand foot view level. That’s kind of what it is. Obviously, there’s going to be different things for each to take into consideration in every different commercial asset. So I kind of just started reading books, listening to podcasts, and then I found other partners who are more the analytical, you know, the best partnerships that I had. They are the more left behind or the more analytical ones that know the numbers that they really like. They get high from being able to crunch numbers and they love being in the back office and crunching the spreadsheets. So I understand and I’ve always understood how to analyze the deals in the concept behind it. But it’s not one of my strengths because I just don’t enjoy numbers as much as possible. But I understand what makes for a good deal and what the red flags are on the spreadsheet and all that. So, you know, and I just I’m still I’m still learning. And one of the one of the most robust modules and in the multifamily academy that I put together is the mobile home park module. And I’m super excited. It’s awesome. One of my good friends and one of my mentors, Charles Dart, him and I recorded it together. And he’s got he has over 50 million in transactions, all mobile home parks, about 20 pads that he’s had under ownership and under management. And he was one of my mentors. And now I have a couple other mentors in the space and just educating myself still and just bye podcast and books gives you enough confidence to start taking action. And I think that’s that really helped me get to where I’m at is that I’m not I’m not that person that has to go, like, ready.
Aim, fire. I’m OK with, like, ready fire and then kind of aim and figure it out along the way, you know, I’m OK with taking risks, but they’re calculated and I’m surround myself with the right group of people and I’m never going to give up and I’m just super committed.
So.
Yeah, man, that’s pretty much that perfect. Perfect. All right, man, I appreciate that. So you don’t get into the Snapchat around the house. Do it. All right. Here we go.
Ted, what is the number one thing you need as a new investor to get started?
A why.
Or expand upon that a little bit?
Yeah, man, abso-frickin-lutely.
And so I mean.
You know, a lot of people have different. Everyone has a different reason why they want to get involved in real estate. A lot of people just aren’t satisfied. There’s no fulfillment in their current job. Whatever they’re doing. And then I got to find another way to create streams of income and create revenue to satisfy my living expenses so that it could be like maybe sort of that might work out well for you if it’s all about all about money. Most likely will not, though. There has to be a deep, deeper rooted y like, really, why do you want to get into real estate? Why don’t you like your job? Why don’t why do you want to have financial freedom? And if you haven’t done it yet, you have to go at least seven, eight, sometimes 10 layers deep to really understand. Well, why do you want financial freedom? Well, so I could create a better life for my kids and I have well, y and well, because of this and this and this and it’s got to it’s got to be rooted here to your core and there has to be some emotion tied to it in order for you to pursue and persevere through failure and struggle, because that’s going to happen and it’s just part of the process.
So knowing your why and part of that is just learning more and more and being a forever student and educating yourself on like, why all these why people get into roles and why more millionaires and billionaires are made in real estate and and work in real estate investing provides you and your family and your financial future and your legacy and maybe just understanding that will help solidify your while I know I can do that, I didn’t know I could do it without any money. I can get into the game, which is knowledge and ambition and so solidify your why just so you’re confident enough that regardless of what happens, you’re just going to keep moving forward. And that’s, I think, one of the keys to success and really, really like a distinction between people who achieve level success regardless of the industry they’re in versus people who struggle or give up. And you don’t achieve success is that gritty and successful people know that failure is part of the process, but they have a why there’s ambition for a reason and they have a strong life.
Perfect nanny, I have to confess, I think is absolutely vital, whether that’s you’re sticking with the real estate business or in the military or WTO or whatever that is, you haven’t come to something is absolutely vital. All right. So next question. Here we go. What is one nugget of investing knowledge you want to give us grow what you’ve already said?
You grow every single day, every single day, grow as a person. And I think one of the coolest parts about being becoming an awesome investor in real estate. If you if you become a great investor, chances are you’re just going to become a better human.
And I think that the minute I realize that, that’s when I became I got this addiction to education and growth. And when you grow as a person, I’m talking about like when you learn how to manage your time better, when you learn how to decrease your stress levels better, when you learn how to increase your energy levels, better, when you learn how to have a better relationship with your spouse or your boyfriend or girlfriend, when you when you have an idea how the how to become an better investor and become a better subject matter expert, learn how to be a better community leader and philanthropist, learn how to be a better leader at your job, whether you’re military or not. Always grow every day in every way, become one percent better than the person that was yesterday and you’ll just become a better investor. And the reason for that is because when you grow and grow and grow, you can give more value to people and to our world and what you give and value you will receive in abundance. And that’s why the the people who are paid the most, whether you’re in the military or a top rank officer or whether you’re a CEO of a company, you have the most influence because you have grown and you’ve proven that you could deliver the most value to people and you could influence the most amount of people. So now that the result of that is you get more abundance.
Awesome. Wow. I said, all right. Every day I love it, I love it. And then it’s the last question. What is your dream, Tim?
I’m living it.
I mean, continue to and, you know, I’m actually I’m still active duty, but I’m going into the reserves in less than a year now and I’ll be able to do a full time investing full time and don’t have any kids yet.
One of the reasons why I’m leaving active duty so I could my wife and I could start having babies and I could spend every minute with her while she’s pregnant and every minute with them when they’re born and experience everything I possibly can and not go on deployment and not leave them for a nine to five job that I hate and definitely one of my wives. But the dream would be to just go around the world from the time of their born till the time they’re old enough to really start traveling, whether it’s by from a yacht that we own or whether it’s a private aircraft that we fly. I want to be able to go around the world and homeschool my kids and to show them the experiences that that public school a lot of times can afford our kids, but be able to just travel the world, educate them on what I think they need to know during the day, and go experience world wide cultures for the rest of the day and just, you know, travel and experience other countries and show my kids and my my family tree like, look, you could add value could help. The more the more financial freedom that you have and the more wealth that you build, the more people you could help. And I can’t wait to just write a check for a million bucks to I think probably you’re going to write a check to the US. I’m a big fan of the USO, the military organization, the USO. I want to write a million dollar check to the USO. I’ll probably do that here in the next couple of years. But yeah, man, that’s kind of what I see happening when we start having kids is traveling the world and showing them all the different cultures around the world, then, yeah, I think it’s absolutely awesome and it’s kind of along the lines of my life is as well.
So that’s great. I didn’t realize that you’re going in the reserves, but here how far are you, what, six years away from retirement?
Yeah, I just have 14 to say 14 years and I’ll be at 15 next year.
And it was either it was either reenlist, active duty and go to either a ship or a squadron and leave my wife while we’re about to start having kids or get out and really pretty much keep doing what I don’t really enjoy doing. My heart is no longer in the field that I’m in the Navy for. I love being a chief. Never, never break away from the Chiefs mess. It’s kind of just a worldwide fraternity. But I don’t actually like I enjoy what I’m doing. So it’s either do that and or have a lot more freedom and be able to help more people build financial freedom and help more people around the world with whatever I decide to do with my wealth and be with my family and my wife while we’re short, while we have kids and be there. So it’s kind of and it was a kind of an easy decision, but it’s because I created options and it’s because I’ve got involved in investing. I have multiple streams of income that could take care of us instead of me just getting out of the Navy without a plan. I would never do that if I didn’t have if I didn’t build what I built over the last couple of years. So I just I’m blessed that I have options to do that.
A lot of man loved to do big things, I would imagine big things, so, hey, Tim, I appreciate you coming on today. Working people to learn more about you.
Yeah, definitely. I’m very active on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Both handles are at the Timothy Kelley and then go to active duty passive income.
If you’re if you haven’t heard about what we’re doing and what we’re all about, if you’re military affiliated whatsoever, you’re active, you’re a vet, a reservist or a family member or even your dad or your mom was in the military. And you’re interested in anything that we just talked about. This is all we do.
And when we inspire and teach and coach and mentor and educate military members on how to achieve financial freedom through real estate, and we teach people how to be a better person, add more value to the world. And a lot of it is real estate investing concentrated. We have a best selling book right now that is free on our website. It’s called The Military House Hacking. Most vets have no idea how to use their VA loan. So we teach you how you can house with your VA loan. We have a free VA loan mastery course on our website and we have a Facebook group that just has six thousand members that’s growing rapidly every single week. It’s people just like us that are taking our active duty to our vets and we’re helping each other out because the key is just learn network and take action. That’s one of our mottos and that’s really the recipe for success.
So, yeah, awesome. Tune into the podcast and find me on Facebook. I’m interacting every day in that group.
And then you can also go to the Timothy Kelley Dotcom. Pretty much everything that I’m involved in is on there. And if you’re listening, I’m going to just have you shoot me a text. I’ll give you my personal cell phone number, and I’ll I’ll offer you like a three thirty minute kind of strategy coaching session if whatever you’re trying to do, whatever your goals are shared with me, I’d love to help you. You can text me or call me anytime. Eight four seven nine one zero nine one six one.
Terrific. And we’ll put all that in the show notes as well. Sounds good. Awesome.
All right. Well, Tim, I appreciate you coming on honestly, like you’ve been a true inspiration to me over these past few months. And I’ve loved watching you guys transition with the API after the passive income that the whole the whole gang and you. And so congrats on the 80 unit. That’s that’s friggin awesome. I guess that time is actually a couple of months passed and we’ll see how everything’s working out for you. But it has been an incredible journey watching you guys go and the way you’ve done the past few years. So we’ll have to see how you work on the future and definitely love have you on board.
I think we learned a lot and I have a lot of notes here that I’m definitely going to take to heart myself moving forward just every day, growing every day. I love that ground every day. I got to improve yourself every day. So.
Well, I appreciate you coming on here today, Tim, and I hope you have an awesome one. I do. How are you and about what you’re doing bigger and bigger. Thanks, Devin.
Awesome is, as always, a pleasure to chat. Is honored to be asked to be on the show and thank you for the kind words and we’ll definitely speak soon.
I’ll see you in the API Facebook group and probably today or tomorrow you got to take care man.
