Episode 102: Investing to Learn or Learning to Invest? How Not to Be a Dinosaur With Mike Zlotnik
The Profit First REI Podcast
August 8, 2022
David Richter
Summary:
Mike Zlotnik has always wanted to invest in real estate. For over 22 years, Mike has been a debt and equity investor. He is a member of several mastermind groups and has taken on the role of CEO of Tempo Funding, LLC.
Mike jam-packs this episode with practical opportunities to improve efficiency and profitability in the REI realm.
Key Takeaways:
[1:35] Mike’s real estate journey
[3:13] Where is he on his real estate journey as of now?
[7:22] How does he source and manage his deals?
[11:00] Mike explains the difference between closed and open-ended funds.
[14:03] When is the right time to start a fund?
[18:39] Who are the most important and paramount people to have in their team?
[20:45] What philosophies around money have stuck with him throughout the years?
Quotes:
[22:03] “Money is essentially a commodity; it’s fungible. You basically have to have it, but you also have to invest in it. “
[25:24] “Life is all about growth. The moment you stop learning, you’re a dinosaur. And if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. “
Links:
Big Mike Fund-http://bigmikefund.com
Tired of living deal to deal?
If you are a real estate investor or business owner who is tired of living deal to deal, and want to double your profits, head over here to book your no-obligation discovery call with me. Either myself or someone from my team will hop on a short call with you to get clear on your business goals, remove any obstacles holding you back, and map out a game plan to help you finally start keeping more of the money you work so hard to make. – David
Transcript:
Mike Zlotnik:
The journey has been learning how to invest rather than how to, and the more progress you have in your investment journey and your evolution, the more important it to learn to invest rather than how to earn money.
Intro:
Welcome to the Profit First REI podcast, where real estate investors, master financial management, eradicate entrepreneurial poverty, and learn to be profitable from day one. Now for your host David Richter.
David Richter:
Hey everyone. Thanks for listening to the Profit First REI podcast. Again, have another great episode here with Mike Zlotnik. I’ve known Mike for years now. We met at a mastermind years ago and have kept in touch with different projects and things. And he’s someone that’s very well respected in the industry. If you have any interest in funds or starting funds, this is the expert. Mike has done a lot in the real estate world and especially around creating funds and actually has several right now. I’ll have him talk about that, but he has been in the real estate world for a long time. And just gonna hear about his wisdom and hear about what he’s been doing. So, Mike, thanks for joining us today on the proper first podcast.
Mike Zlotnik:
Thank you David. Very much for having me happy to be. Yeah,
David Richter:
Really glad that you’re on here today. So Mike let’s, let’s go to the beginning. Where did it all start? Why real estate and why did you get into real estate? And when did, when did that start?
Mike Zlotnik:
Sure. My real estate journey started in the year of 2000. When I bought my first apartment here in New York city, it was my primary residence. I got married and we need a place to to live so nice. I bought an apartment and that’s the start of the journey and continue to buy here in New York for a number of years passively as a essentially technology professional. And then I went to real estate full time in 2009 starting a family of funds, but my, my journey has been passive 2000 to 2009. And then as a professional, 2009, and beyond that, we’ve done a lot of things, but just kind of big picture.
David Richter:
Huh? So two nine, that’s an interesting time to get started full time, right? That was just around the crash when everything started, correct?
Mike Zlotnik:
Yeah, it was good time and no question about incidental. I, I was burn out from the technology industry actually had a successful career as technology executive, but I was tired and I really loved real estate. So little estate became a passion and learning enough as a passive investor and being tired of the a little burnout from the te college world. I went full time. 2009 was not specifically timed by the crash of 2008. It’s just, it just worked out in my life.
David Richter:
Okay. Well, no, that, that’s awesome. So I’m glad you got into real estate. That’s your passion love that you stated that because I mean, if it’s not your passion, probably not gonna state in, in it very long, cuz it can get hard in real estate. So from where you were in two, tell us your journey to where you are now in two we’re recording.
Mike Zlotnik:
Sure. So I’ve done a number of things. Started family of funds. Actually the very first fund was not even founded by me by my good friend. He asked me to he started the fund and asked me to run it. And then I, I launched a family of funds. So we did a fund that originally financed short sales flips. Many of you are familiar with the concept. People are buying distressed properties with a short sale approval in front of the bank. So we’re financed a bunch of flips. Literally it was called transactional funding who did it for a couple of years. 2011, things got sort of slower and then transactional funding banks didn’t allow it. So we start essentially lending we’ll call it extended funding or hard money loans. So we started financing these flips, but people had to hold them 90 days, 120 days to renovations.
Mike Zlotnik:
So that whole business continued and we’ve done. The hard money funding continued to do it today. So that continued in essence until now, but on the way we’ve added a number of institutional sort of funds focused on commercial real estate. So 2017 we launched temp opportunity fund. I actually have some fixed and flip S and other businesses in Jacksonville, Florida kind of come there in 2015 on the wholesaling rentals fixed and flips, but separately the family of funds expanded quite a bit in 2017 will launch them opportunity fund our first commercial fund which is doing great today. It’s a growth and income fund and invests in broad range of multifamily storage industrial office shopping plazas. We have some niche investments such as land getting PTED for cultivation and number of really interesting other sort of niche investments.
Mike Zlotnik:
So that fund is well diversified, broad mandate, both growth and income. And then since then we’ve launched two other funds focused in on a single strategy. So we’ve launched tempo growth fund that was beginning of 2020 almost pre COVID, but it was a master blessing because we’ve gotten into a lot of projects during COVID that are just phenomenal deals as they were trading at a discount after the initial panic. So that’s the tempo grow fund. That’s our primary grow fund is closed. Then it’ll close to new subscriptions by then of this year. And then we recently launched tempo income fund in the middle of this year, focused, purely on the income strategy. The reason there separated these strategies is because in a combined manner, the growth creates a yield drag on the income. So growth has a ton of benefits.
Mike Zlotnik:
Income has the time of benefits you can do both or you can do them separately. So we have currently essentially three different funds. We’ve also done number of one off deals, indications. So commercial syndications last year again we we’ve gotten into a great deal in, in Indianapolis, almost a thousand doors, just a massive home run deal. Also during COVID this one area opportunity that we’re really picked up on is hotel conversions to multi-family that’s been a phenomenal journey. So that whole, if you, if you’re gonna ask me where the journey continues, that that still continues, even though COVID is sort of the hotels of recovered quite a bit, but still ton of opportunities we’ve seen in the space and that’s it. So we have family funds that we do one off deals. We just closed another one off deal. So it’s both funds and one of mostly commercial, we still do some hard money loans, but it’s sort of a legacy business. We do it as a relationship with all clients rather than a new thing.
David Richter:
Okay. No, I, I like that a lot. So how do you source the deals then? Do you have brokers? Do you have professional people on your team? Just actively looking all the time for that next? Like you said, you got the thousand, you know, doors in Indianapolis with thousand units. It’s like, do those just come across your desk and you’re analyzing those and from brokers or like where does a lot of that deal flow come from?
Mike Zlotnik:
Yeah, it’s a great question that I I’d say that absolutely not the brokers. We are actually trying to do some deals with the brokers, but it’s incredibly hard. The market is brutally competitive
David Richter:
Mm-Hmm
Mike Zlotnik:
<Affirmative> so I don’t recommend that my experience, you have to have a lot of money and you have to be pretty aggressive in your assumptions to pick up the deals that are listed on the market. A lot of the deal flow comes from relationships we have with sponsors and operators, years of relationships building. So the deal in Indianapolis the sponsor we’ve done business with in the past, and we’ve since done multiple other deals with same sponsor. He’s a specialist in Midwest. He markets, he finds these assets in certain cities. He’s a massive footprint and Indy. So he literally finds the projects he wants to buy. And he, you know, courts the owners until they’re ready to sell. It’s a very different approach for just, Hey, let’s see, what’s on the market today. If you approach the, the tire sellers and, and you give him a, a great offer avoiding marketing the property, this sounds, you know, you could, you could pick up a better deal for this versus a highly marketed property.
Mike Zlotnik:
So on the sales side, yeah, you typically try to market it through the channels, but on the buy side, you, you definitely wanna look for the off market deals through the special relationships. And that’s most of the buying that we’ve, you know, we’ve invested in and realize around a family of funds that is called essentially funds of funds. We are sometimes an operator, but we more often, we’re not an operator. What we do is we identify the active operators, we’ll partner with them. We’ll do GP & LP coaching. So we, we are mostly investors with the specialists in whatever they do. It may be multifamily conversion of hotel to multifamily storage, as I mentioned, land permitting for cultivation and so on and so forth. That’s the whole focus is to, is to basically identify the best operators and be programmatic and systematic capital provider for them.
David Richter:
Awesome. I love that. So you’ve used some terminology. I wanna make sure that I understand and that people are listening to understand what’s a sponsor and what’s a subscriber. I heard you use a couple different terms there, like a sponsor and then subscriber to the fund.
Mike Zlotnik:
Yeah. So the sponsor is typically the operator. Anytime you do a project, you, you find a multi-family deal. You raise capital, you are the operator or the sponsor that’s, it’s a, us is a synonym subscribers, typically a passive investor. So I, I’m not sure how else I mentioned this, but yeah. Subscribers to a syndication or a fund, the investors in a fund, just another, another term to use it.
David Richter:
Okay. So then you had mentioned as well, too, in that same sentence, that one of the funds was you were winding down on subscribers and there wasn’t many slots left for subscribers. So is, does that mean that you’re basically funded it to where you want to get the fund up to, and then it’s just gonna be like, okay, there’s no more room for passive investors in that fund.
Mike Zlotnik:
Yeah. Great. So, great question. So the temp growth fund specifically is a closed-ended fund just to differentiate temp opportunities and open ended or evergreen fund tempo income also launched as an open-ended fund. And tempo Grove is launched was launched as a closed-ended fund. What the difference, the difference is open-ended funds. They just do business, quarterly subscriber, investors, distribute income on quarterly basis, and they keep running forward. And then the the closed-ended funds they do not do quarterly process. They do quarterly statements and quarterly adjustments, but they basically have three phases. One phase is called subscription phase subscription phases. While the investors come in and then subscribe, then you have what is known as the investment phase and subscription phase often overlaps with the investment phase. So as subscriptions come in, we identify in investments for the fund and we call in the capital.
Mike Zlotnik:
So closed end ended fund works on subscriptions, which is basically I’m ready to invest a million dollars with you, but you, the fund manager don’t need the money today. So the money doesn’t go in until there’s a deal. So there’s a deal. We call in the money and then that’s when the money goes to work. And that’s when the prep starts. So the the subscriptions, when the capital is committed or pledged the capital calls is when the capital is pulled in and goes to work in deals. The reason we’re closing the fund is because the fund has maximum cap pledge period, the, the basically subscription period of two years. So we’re running out of time. Instead of extending the fund, we will close the fund to new subscribers continue to invest the capital throughout the investment period, which is another year.
Mike Zlotnik:
And that point after that, the fund starts essentially winding down any money that comes back from projects as a result of cash flow result of refinancing or sale starts going back to investors. That’s a normal, natural life cycle of a closed-ended fund. And the fund is right now is a phenomenal investment opportunity because it’s cut assets that were acquired a year ago. You almost can get into the fund as crazy as it sounds today at a prices of last year, which is not a common scenario because fund investment period was two years. There is a differentiation between old people and new people, but it’s 8% per year. It’s the pre, so the fund has institutional pre 8% cumulative prep. And then there’s a split, let us get 80% of the app site. We get 20% as a fund manager, if they write a million dollar check, and if they write a smaller check, it’s 70, 30 split.
David Richter:
Okay. That makes sense. So then the subscribers in there, are they accredited investors or do they have to be certain types of investors to be subscribers in the funds?
Mike Zlotnik:
Yeah, there are absolute credit investors. We do not take any non credit investors. We appreciate the interest if you’re not accredited but we cannot take non credit investors.
David Richter:
Okay. So then cuz there’s a lot of people, especially in the world that I’m in with the real estate investing, you know, all the time they’re thinking, should I start a fund? You know, like, I don’t know, I’ve got so many deals or so much opportunity and I need, you know, and I keep using private lenders when in your opinion is the right time for someone to start a fund.
Mike Zlotnik:
Yeah. It’s another great question. The, the answer is not binary. It depends. That’s the right answer. Of course it’s an individual circumstances and I’ve actually coached quite a number of people on starting their funds or changing or even modifying funds or setting up syndications. So I’m happy to do coaching. I’m not a ship date <laugh> so people are interested. They can reach out, I’ll give the information, but in general the fund is a vehicle. So a few use case scenarios where you, you could start a fund one you have enough one-off deals and you feel that basically the fund would be a good option to acquire small portfolio. It’d be easier for you to operate that as a portfolio. So the fund helps from diversification perspective, it’s moves the journey for investors. It reduces the risk of a single project.
Mike Zlotnik:
When is the right time when you feel like you’ve must sort of one of deals you’ve done, no one of deals starting a specialty fund. So what I’m referring to right now is a specialty fund such as sell storage fund or multi-family fund. The specialty funds require enough experience in a single project. And then the fund becomes just an easy entry point to split the journey for investors. The alternative to that is if you operate sort of the way I operate, you love multiple investment investments and you have enough knowledge in many asset classes that you want to have a fund to diversify across many strategies. Then you need a fund that that’s that’s the vehicle. Again, it is really a function of who do you envision raising capital from and for what a type of purposes people set up a fund, and then they have struggles raising capital.
Mike Zlotnik:
One of the reasons is because you haven’t thought through who you’re gonna raise capital from, if you know, who is your audience first, and you’ve talked to them and you’ve run the idea of a fund and they love the idea because they, they really trust you as the fund manager. Then it’s a consideration to raise a fund. The big difference between a fund and a single deal is a single deal as a whole lot easier to explain. So single deal you’re investing typically in the operator sponsor, which is your most, you know, important. Obviously if you invest with media, don’t mess it up. But sponsor operator number two, the single deal you are actually investing in a deal specific characteristics, right? You can explain this is a property in Memphis, Tennessee, or Orlando, Florida, or so on. So forth. You can actually explain what the property is all about.
Mike Zlotnik:
And then you have the performer, the economics, and then you have individual waterfall and individual investor economics. You could really explain what happens to the investor. You could show them worse-case scenarios. You can, you control projections and that’s easier to sell just to be very clear. One ordeal is easier to sell than a fund. Usually there are exceptions to that. The fund, typically the sales processes, you’re selling yourself as the fund manager and your team, whoever is your team, what is your track record? What your experience will, what results you’ve achieved and so on. So for some folks, and I’ve seen very successful fund operators who don’t sell one of investments because they won all. They want all the investments to go into the funds and then they just manage the money. It’s easier to manage the money for a fund manager.
Mike Zlotnik:
You don’t have to have a less minute rush. Can I raise enough capital the capital sit in a fund and you have that benefit. So if you want control of the decisions where the money goes, the fund is a really elegant vehicle, but the capital raising for the fund is a little bit harder because you are just selling, Hey, it’s sent a certain percent annual return or 12 to 18 or whatever the number and I’m that rate. I know what I’m doing. And here is the PPM that describes what what’s what’s in the box, but it could be a pretty broad box. Does that make sense?
David Richter:
Yes. Makes total sense. So I appreciate that. And just, I think that all spark some interest in conversation with people listening of like, okay, is this time to start a phone or not? And like you said, if you wanna work with an expert, who’s not a cheap date. You’ll Michael give his contact info of how to reach him at the end here. Cause it that’s, I love non cheap dates cuz then they’re worth their waiting gold of what you need to do. And when it’s this type of information that they help with. So, but I, I love that too, Mike, so then I will have one more question on a phone. Who do you say is paramount and super important to have on your team when you have a fund or like when you, you know, like, is it, you know, the processors, the people that you work with, like who all makes up that team and who would you say, like you have to have these people in place if you’re going to start a fund?
Mike Zlotnik:
Sure. So we, we outsourced a lot of our back office work and, and we use a third party administrator in my view, having a good administrator is very important when you’re starting a fund. Some point when you scale up and you get bigger, you could bring that administration work, essentially accounting and investor relations and investor statements into the house. But, but without it, you do need third party administrator. I think it’s a requirement. At least part of the planning. You should have one. In addition, obviously you need to have staff members that can help you source deals and under ideals. So you, you just wanna start a fund because it sounds cool. It’s a little rough. Where are you gonna find the deal flow? So it’s more important to actually identify the sources of the deal flow. It’s either your own relationships where you need a competent let’s just call ’em asset acquisition, executive who has the deals, or has the relationships where to get the deals.
Mike Zlotnik:
And the, on the other side, you need investor relations. So as the fund grows, but you don’t need it from day one day one, you manage to investor relations. But over time as the fund grows, you’ll need to have pretty strong executive in that area. Because when you’re running a fund, what are you doing? People ask me, what do I do? And you marry money, an opportunity. That’s the way to put it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> right. So you need to be good on both sides. You need the opportunities and you need the capital and you need both strengths of both sides. And then you need the operating team in the middle, let and run actual mechanics of the fund.
David Richter:
Awesome. Well, thank you. I think that’s provided a lot of, a lot of good info on funds I’ve got, since this is the Profit First II podcast. Wanna talk about money a little bit. And one of the questions I like to ask is where did you learn about money or like what philosophies around money have stuck with you, you know, like over the years as you’ve, you know, grown and as you’ve learned more, so where did you learn about it and kind of like, what philosophies do you just have about money in general since we’re talking about it?
Mike Zlotnik:
Yeah. I mean, it’s a journey. It’s really not a one day thing. I’m kind of, you know, I grew up in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States in 89 and there was very different journey obviously, but I started learning about money through my own hard work and kind of saving and investing. And then at some point I, I came across, obviously everyone that has read Robert Kiyosaki and, and Rich Dad, Poor Dad. That kind of got me thinking, and then this really not single single source, but being in New York and observing kind of what happens here that, that find real estate here is as long as the there’s some, some lessons I’ve learned really observing real estate and investing in real estate myself and then a series of books. I mean read obviously a lot of stuff that to stock, he put out, but many other books, there’s not a single, the journey started journey continues.
Mike Zlotnik:
I just think of kind of money as a so lemme take a step back. So money is essentially a commodity money. Money is is fungible. Money is, is something that is just, it, it, you basically have to have it, but you also have to invest it. So having money itself is really meaningless. You need to have wealth, that’s a better way to put it. So what I’ve learned about money is that essentially is you, you earn capital as you grow capital. You have to invest if, to learn how to invest. It’s more, it’s more important learning how to invest then than just having money. If you have a lot of money, it doesn’t mean anything. You just gotta be able to deploy it. Cash in the bank is a whole burning a hole in a pocket in, in a pocket that needs to be deployed. So I don’t know if I answered your question, but it’s sort of the journey has been learning how to invest rather than how to in the more progress you have in your investment journey and your evolution, the more important it to learn to invest rather than how to earn money.
David Richter:
I love that. No, I love what you said too. You look as money as a commodity. It is just a tool, a tool to build the wealth. And it’s basically showing you that scorecard, you know, like, are we helping? Are we providing that value? Are we matching opportunities with the money? You know, like with the capital and making sure that those are happening. So it’s like, that’s how I love that. Because then, like you said, it’s about investing it and doing the right thing with the right people and making sure that, you know, it is the win-win in that cycle and money is just a commodity. So I love that. I love what you gave there. Then as far as just in general, we’re winding down here, just a couple ask questions. What’s some general advice you would give to the real estate investing community, you know, either around their money or around their, you know, it could be any general advice whatsoever, but you’ve got a wealth wealth of knowledge. What would you give us some last minute advice to the listeners here?
Mike Zlotnik:
Sure. So we live in an inflationary environment. Inflation is your friend. And the kind of rule of thumb in general is that if a rate of appreciation of the property exceeds the cost of debt on the mortgage, you’ll always wind up ahead. So we live in unique times that the accelerate inflation actually accelerates the growth of the equity and devalues the, the debt. So in this, in this environment, continue to consider investments into equity, more than debt. Even though we do hard money loans and we lend money but generally returns a higher in this environment, in the equity space pick the right risk adjusted returns. And that’s the whole grail of investing. These are the, the terms that the hedge fund managers, the most experienced guys say risk adjusted return. Don’t always focused on a top line. Don’t always focus on the exciting shiny objects.
Mike Zlotnik:
Look behind the scenes and, and try to understand what are the risks investing. It’s all about the risks you could, you could be promised a great number, but if you’re taking enormous amount of risk, you’re not getting compensated for the risk, then you’re not taking the right risk adjusted return. So always look at the risks associated with whatever project and, and kind of look at the, the good, the bad, the, a ugly scenarios. What could happen if things turn now, it’s not a perfect game. It’s just, it’s a game of, of, of learning. It’s just continuously evolving your own playbook and your own rules and improving. It’s a continuous improvement like life is, is, is all about growth. The moment you stop learning, you’re a dinosaur and, and if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards. So the other thing that I wanted to say, and I’m gonna crack this phrase, I just feel like this phrase and most people don’t don’t understand, but it’s a very clever phrase because it, it, it, it summarizes the essence of thinking when you invest.
Mike Zlotnik:
So the question is to the audience, are you investing to learn or learning to invest? Hmm, you’re always doing both, right? If you’re not doing both at the same time you are either old, you get too much money and you don’t need to learn anything else, which is, which is fine. And so if you are investing to learn to get better, that, that you, you expect to, to have some lessons from, from your investments, if things go perfectly, you learn very little things, go a little choppy, you you’ll learn something from that. And then the other one is obviously learning to invest means that you will practice some plan and measure seven times before you’re gonna cut once. Otherwise it’s very easy to write a check and then get stuck in it, in the wrong deal. So that, that means that my thoughts on the subject.
David Richter:
Awesome. Well, that was, there was a lot of knowledge drop there. So make sure you go back, listen to that, listen, that little clip there. He gave a lot of great information and listen to this, this whole thing again, listen about when to start a fund, the people to have on your team. There was just some really good information there when, you know, the types of funds that he’s working with right now, and the types of funds to set up, but all that information. Now, Mike, we wanna know what the cheap date is. How do we get in touch with you, you know, the non chief date. So how do we get, how do people get in touch with you? How do our listeners provide value back to you and, you know, reach back out to you.
Mike Zlotnik:
Thank you, David. So it’s fairly easy. We do have obviously a primary corporate site, TempoFunding.com, but the easy one to remember I’m known as the Big Mike and so it’s BigMikeFund.com. That’s actually the name of my podcast, but you can go to BigMikeFund.com or you can navigate from there. And if you misspell it and you forget the D at the end, so BigMikeFund.com. I promise it’s not a kinky site.
David Richter:
<Laugh> oh man, there we go. We got cheap non cheap dates and kinky sites. So here you go. So it’s,
Mike Zlotnik:
<Laugh>
David Richter:
Non kinky. Okay, good. So it’s BigMikeFundund.com and then we’ve got TempoFunding.com. If you wanna go there, we’ll make sure to put those in the show notes, if you wanna have your non chief date with Mike reach out to him. And I know that he has been, he’s done a lot of great things as you can hear here in the, on this podcast episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for listening to the Profit First REI podcast and for being another great listening and to another episode here, Mike, thanks for being on. Thank you for just sharing your knowledge about funds, about investing and what you’ve seen, and then your thoughts around money too, and an awesome episode. Thank you so much for being on today.
Mike Zlotnik:
Thank you David, for having,
David Richter:
Thank you so much for listening to today’s show. If you found this episode valuable, could you do me a quick favor? Could you give us an honest rating within iTunes and be honest, you could say whether you liked it or not. And obviously with iTunes, the more reviews and ratings we have, the better it is for other people that are searching for Profit First and a podcast. So we’d love to be ranked on there and that’s thanks to your help. So we would really appreciate that if you would like to go give us a rating. Also, if you’re looking to connect with us further, I would highly recommend checking out our Facebook group Profit First for real estate investors. And that’s literally what it’s called. So you can type in Profit First for real estate investors, and you’ll be able to find <laugh>, you’ll be able to find our Facebook group right there.
David Richter:
So come join active real estate investors who are supporting each other and growing their businesses and profits together. That’s what that group is all about. The link should be in the description below. And if you’re interested in working with us in implementing Profit First in your real estate business, we offer coaching and guidance. So if you wanna work with someone who’s actually Profit First certified and who works right now currently with real estate businesses, you can actually go start your application process by going to simpleCFO.com/apply, or just go right to simpleCFO.com. And there’s an apply button right on there. If you, you wanna actually start your Profit First journey with someone who can actually walk you through those step by step and help, you know, and grow your cash flow. Thanks again for joining us for another episode of the private first REI podcast. See you next episode.
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