Developing Good Money Habits with Neil Timmins

Episode 122: Developing Good Money Habits with Neil Timmins

The Profit First REI Podcast

October 20, 2022

David Richter

Summary:

Neil Timmins is the CEO of Legacy Impact Partners, a company that invests in residential, commercial, and even medical real estate. He has been in the industry for 18 years, starting as a realtor, moving on to flipping houses, investment, and even coaching and mentoring.

Neil has since built up quite a portfolio and extensive experience. He gives us insight into money and people management, developing the right habits, and the lessons he learned that have since helped him build his success in the industry.

Key Takeaways:
[00:46] Neil Timmins and His Background

[03:01] Real Estate Investing and Making an Impact

[05:38] On Spending and Investing

[07:10] Struggles With Money and Hiring the Wrong People 

[10:57] On Applying More Control and Finding Unicorns

[14:37] On Developing Good Money Habits

[22:18] On Personal Finances and Family

[24:57] Neil Timmins’ Key to Success

[27:07] Connect With Neil

Quotes:

[12:14] “[Success] requires bringing on the right people.”

[20:45] “We are what we habitually do. And so it’s imperative that if you want to be financially successful, you do what financially successful people do.”

[25:25] “Find a determination that is second to none.”

Links:

Connect with Neil – legacyimpactpartners.com 

Piece on uncovering commercial real estate/cheat sheet – legacyimpactpartners.com/gift

Unicorn Hunting for Real Estate Investment Companies: How to Easily Attract, Screen, and Land a Unicorn – The Complete Hiring Funnel: Website, Amazon

Profit First Real Estate Investors FB Group – https://m.facebook.com/groups/ProfitFirstREI/ 

Simple CFO – https://simplecfo.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:

Neil Timmins:

We are what we habitually do. And so it’s imperative that if you wanna be financially successful, you do what financially successful people do. And the Profit First outlines that for exactly what to do to be able to have a totally different outcome. If you’re down a path right now that just frankly isn’t getting you where to where you wanna be,

Intro:

If you’re a real estate investor who’s sick and tired of living, deal to deal, then welcome home. Hear from everyday real estate investors just like you, and discover how they’ve completely transformed their business by taking a profit First approach. This is the Profit First for REI podcast, where we believe revenue is vanity, Profit is sanity. It’s time to start making profit a habit in your business. So here’s your host, David Richter.

David Richter:

Hey, hey, hey, it is David Richter with the Profit First r I Podcast. Have another great guest today, Neil Timmons, who you want to listen to this one because he goes in deep emotionally about how he lost lots of money by making the wrong hire and what controls he put in place to stop that bleeding and never have him again. And honestly how it got him amazing A players in the future. But he also talks about how he’s paying himself now and through Profit First and how he has that mindset and the habits that were instilled with him from a young age that have helped him this whole time. And this is a great episode if you want to learn about what you can do in order to stop the bleeding or stop living deal to deal, or if you want to actually gain more money in your pocket.

Neil’s a high earner as well too, has been for a long time. So he can help you in a lot of different areas. And he gives some great nuggets here in this one and some of the people that he studied along the way too, that have helped him become a successful real estate investor in this, in the single family and multi-family commercial space. So let’s get ready for the podcast episode with Neil Timmons. Hey everyone, we’ve got Neil Timmons here. He’s here in the flesh, well at least on the recording here with us. And super excited to have him because I’ve now met Neil at a couple different masterminds and he’s genuine, as genuine can be. Everyone speaks of him very highly. And Neil, super excited to have you on the podcast today.

Neil Timmins:

I’m excited to see you here David. Thanks so much for having me on. It’s good. It’s good to see you here on, on in Zoom land, right?

David Richter:

Yeah. And and really excited to have you share with the investors too, cuz you’ve had quite the background. You’ve been a realtor investor, you coach, mentor, partner in helping a lot of people in the real estate investing space. And how long have you been in the real estate investing world?

Neil Timmins:

Oh, well, I got my first step in the industry as a realtor 18 years ago, and then bought my first, maybe 10 years ago or so, bought my first fix and flip. Had did that for a little bit, but it was about five and a half years ago that I actually picked up a piece of property that I retained as a rental.

David Richter:

Awesome. Very cool. So then what would you say a, because we’ll go a deeper question at the beginning here and then go go, you know, kind of back into it, But what excites you the most about real estate investing since you’ve had a, a career here in it for the last decade or

Neil Timmins:

So? Yeah, I mean the, the most exciting piece to me is the ability to make an impact and the impact in, in, in the lives of my family in the lives of, of my, my team, right? Our ability, especially when it comes to, to buy and hold property, the ability to do work now and get paid forever is pretty exciting to me. And is, you can grow that over a period of time. The level of impact we can make on others grows as well.

David Richter:

I absolutely love that, the impact that you can make, because I think a lot of people don’t think about that when they first get started. It’s usually like, let’s get outta the rat race, Let’s get outta, you know, like where we are right now. And it’s sometimes difficult to remember that, you know, you can make an impact on other people as well too. And all those people that you help, right? As a realtor or as an investor. It’s like you, the ripple effect is pretty large since real estate matters to everyone that someone’s gotta live, everyone’s gotta live somewhere.

Neil Timmins:

You’re totally right about that. You hit it on the head. This, it wasn’t, it wasn’t something I, this came to light over a period of time about when I was 40 a couple years ago that I, that I sat down and was like, Where, where am I going? What am I doing? What is my legacy? And that’s, that’s really what it came down to as my legacy has to be not the dollars and cents I leave behind, but the impact I make on others through my contributions in their life.

David Richter:

I love that. I don’t, I don’t think we talk about legacy enough. I think that’s something that we, you know, if we had that end in mind of where we’re going, I don’t know if you agree with this, but that’s kind of like your north star. That’s where you’re always, all the decisions are made around your legacy or what you’re planning to do. Or, you know, like what are you really wanting to leave behind? Have you seen that true for you in the decisions you’ve made since you made that decision?

Neil Timmins:

Totally spot on. You’ll appreciate this. You know, for me, coming from your background, you understand culture’s very important to hiring, to fire to everything else, right? That becomes your north star. And for me, the culture is, it’s everything which we have here at the, at our office. Yeah. And then, you know, my personal contribution to this, to this world, if you will, becomes, alright, well how can I, what impact am I making? What is my legacy? And again, it, you know, very often in this industry when one refers the legacy they’re talking about, you know, what do I leave? What are all the dollars and cents, Right? I’m building wealth for generations and I’m cool with that. It’s what do you get beyond the wealth? Like what, what is the money? What do you do with the money, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because money in and of itself, idly means zero. It’s what do you do with that? How does it get employed? Who can you impact and who can you fact,

David Richter:

Right? Yeah. It’s so true. So do you mind me asking you, what do you do with the money? What do you do with, you know, like besides gaining that wealth or whatnot, what do you either invest in other people or, you know, your growth or what do you

Neil Timmins:

Do? Yeah, no, it’s a great question. For me, it is largely team focused right now, how can we grow and how can I continue to employ people and pay people above, above what the going market rate is for whatever their role happens to be. And I know that, and that it’s becoming as, as my personal business is morphing largely out of single families and more into commercial properties. It is, how can I create opportunities for those who are on my team to be, to be partners with me, to invest with me, and how can I do that with other, other folks?

David Richter:

I love that. I, I feel like number one, that just breeds a better culture, like you said. And then number two, it gets ’em more invested with you of like, this person actually cares about me and what we’re doing and they don’t have to be the business owner. Cuz I feel like a lot of people are scared to take that step to actually go out there and do it. And it’s like you give them that opportunity right there. And I love what you said, paying them above market needs. I talk about this all the time. It’s like, if you want good people, you have to pay them, you know? Correct. You have to pay for good people. And I love, I absolutely love that focus. So I love that’s what it goes to for you. And it sounds like you are making an impact just in that world right there. And, and with that mindset that you have with the team. I absolutely love that. So it’s probably not always been like that though. Sure. Where you had the abundance of money. So let’s talk, let’s get real a little bit here. Yeah. What money struggles have you faced in your life or business up to this point where you’re like, what the heck is going on?

Neil Timmins:

Yeah. Well, you know, the biggest struggle is what, what do you do and how do you, how do you get your head wrapped around all of it? How do you get a proper p and l in place? So when I was in my twenties, I was 24 years old when I got into this industry, I became the number one Remax agent when I was 29 years old in, in this number one agent in the state of Iowa. And so candid, I was making really good money in my twenties, that my counterparts of my friends didn’t, you know, weren’t, weren’t quite the case. But that, I mean, there was some, there are some challenges that come with that. How do you get everything your head wrapped around everything? My mindset that I possessed at the time was not that which I possessed today, today has become way more team focused way more how do we do this together with people and through people instead of, you know, how do they, you know, how do they serve me, if you will, from a, from a team leader standpoint.

So it’s become very different. That, and, you know, along the way, I made some really terrible hires that dramatically impacted the dollars and cents associated with, with with the business one. I, I mean, I, and I wrote a book on this about how to hire properly. And I, and I wrote inside the book about, I mean, the worst hire I’ve ever had. I mean, stole literally tremendous amounts of money from me controlled too many things, the one enough checks of balances. So I had to address a whole bunch of things. I mean, you’ve never, you don’t know what world you’re really in when you think, I just hire people. I’m a small business until this happens to you. And literally you’re in the, you’re in across the table from an FBI agent at their headquarters here in town having these conversations and talking about what, what charges look like and what, what recourse looks like.

David Richter:

Wow. That’s I think that might be a lot of business owners, you know, one of their big fears is, you know, like, Oh, I’m gonna hire these people and then they’re gonna steal or whatnot. So you said there weren’t controls or whatnot, so did this person just have their hand in all the different, you know, like trying to, to take the hats off of you and, you know, like,

Neil Timmins:

Too, too many Yeah, you’re exactly right. Too many things inside of a small business. You know, in a small business we wear lots of hats, don’t we? Yeah, we do. And I always say in my business, you know, there’s no place to hide, right? We, we, we all wear hats and there’s no place to hide. And so you’re exactly right. Too many, too many hands. Meaning, meaning wearing too many hats in too many places, not enough controls from my standpoint, to, to have the checks and balances, not enough controls from an external standpoint. Today we’ve got accountants and bookkeepers both internally and externally. So there’s a lot of eyes and a lot of things today that just didn’t, candidly did not exist back then. And, and for, from an owner’s perspective, I can tell you, I probably, there was probably a little fear from that early on in my twenties and into my thirties about all these people are gonna steal from me.

They’re gonna, you know, not just money, but I think about, it’s from sales guys. They’re gonna steal leads. They’re gonna go do a deal. Right? Right. Yeah. and I can tell you, you know, going through and just evolving over a period of time, always constantly focused going, you know, and challenging one’s thoughts, what’s, what are my limiting beliefs? How can I get better? Yeah. Where, where do, where do I think I absolutely stand on this position? And what’s the counter to that? How can I have an argument almost with myself or go to these masterminds to get challenged with, here’s my stance and here’s why. And I want somebody to convince me I, I’m wrong on this and I’m always trying to improve what I’m doing. And that’s, you know, you can imagine having, being in my shoes, having, having tremendous dollars and cents taken from you never largely to never see again. Right. One could get real sour and higher than anybody ever again. Right.

David Richter:

Yeah, exactly. So from that, it sounds like some of the controls you put in place were hiring the right people to what manage the money. And what, you also wrote a book, it’s almost sounds like from this experience on how to hire, right? So did you also beef up your hiring process as well too? Or like, what, what controls did you put in place after that?

Neil Timmins:

Yeah, exactly Right. So from a, from a dollar and cents control standpoint, yes, there’s multiple people looking at what’s going on at any given transaction. So there’s some things that are being done there with limited controls and who’s got access to right. Dollars and cents, who’s got, who’s got access to transfer out, Right? All the things that you talk about that you do so well, David, and, and help business owners do all these things that need to be in place. And, and then yes, hiring correctly. So, you know, I was at a point where I literally when, when this incident took place, I was in the, I had multiple businesses, but I wasn’t in the investment business. I was largely in the brokerage business and brokerage related services business. And so when I morphed my business and finally evolved into investing, specifically, I knew the only way to get to up was gonna be to hire and, and get it through, get through people, right?

So I had to swallow the pill and go, All right, cool, if I’m gonna do this again. It requires bringing on the right people. And so we put over a period of time, I, I have, there’s been multiple iterations of how do we hire, how do we screen correctly, what are the questions we ask? You know, Gary, Gary Harper, big influence in my life Gary and Austin was in town. I, I brought Austin out to, to, to help put in, you know, what are our values and how do we, how do we just a lot of internal looking to go, What are our lines? What do we hire and fire for past, you know are you ethical or not ethical? It goes past that. Yeah.

And then, and then eventually, yes, after getting three, four, five, really what I call unicorns, unicorn employees in place and hitting on all cylinders in a business, seeing multiple x growth, I was going, You know what, let’s, let me put a little, let me put a little book together. It’s really a, it’s really a love piece to go this industry and all the people you and I are surrounded with have been so good to me. It’s been so deeply impactful that I just wanted to give something back of value to go, Here’s what I’m doing, here’s what works for me. And I know it works consistently, so I’m certain it’s gonna work for you.

David Richter:

Have they, can you find that on Amazon? Or where can you find that little Yeah, little

Neil Timmins:

Piece. There you go. Unicorn hunting for real estate investment companies. How to easily attract screen and land at Unicorn. It’s a complete hiring funnel. You can find this in two places. You can find it on Amazon. Well, before I tell you that, David, do you know what the cost of a wrong hire is?

David Richter:

<Laugh>? A lot.

Neil Timmins:

A lot. Well, the national average is just over $15,000. Wow. The cost of a wrong hire. And so the book on Amazon, if you can imagine, you know, $15,000 cost of wrong hire the book on Amazon’s 50 bucks to get, but for your audience, I wanted to do something special. So, you know, just, just pay the shipping. I’ll send it to you guys for free and you can, you can pick that up on the website, www.landaunicorn.com,

David Richter:

Land a unicorn.com. I love that. That’s a great url. Really. we’ll make sure that’s in the show notes. But man, that’s, that’s a great one. Especially, I’ve got a five year old daughter, she’s going through kind of like the mermaid unicorn phase. So I’m like, I just see that and just okay. Just all the images in my head, but <laugh>. Yeah, exactly. Right. So no, I absolutely love that. But through that process as well too, of, you know, like this whole time period where, you know, it probably was pretty some dark times. Did you ever struggle either during that time or any time in your business to pay yourself?

Neil Timmins:

Oh, you know what? Paying myself, you, you won’t believe this. Maybe you will. Cuz you talked to a lot of business owners. It was not until maybe even eight or 10 months ago that I ever paid myself on a monthly basis.

David Richter:

Wow.

Neil Timmins:

And I’ve never done. Okay.

David Richter:

Yeah. Oh, there you go. So what did you do before? Did you take out draws randomly? Or like, what was the,

Neil Timmins:

What was the process? Yeah, I just take out draws randomly.

David Richter:

Okay. Yeah. Well then I’m glad you glad we fixed that about eight to 10 months ago, but Yeah.

Neil Timmins:

Yeah. I just, I just never did. I was always in a position, you know, where I’m candidly, I mean, I’m, I’m a high producer. Our business is high production, Right. And so, you know, like the dollars and cents that I even draw on today, like part of this is, it, it, it’s more so that there’s objectivity and I’m holding the business accountable versus Neil, I need money to live off of. If that makes sense. Yeah. Cause there’s enough, there’s enough draws and enough owner distribution at another point in time where I read a long time ago that really wealthy, successful people make money in chunks. And so I’ve always kept that in the back of my mind. And we see that in our transactions. It doesn’t mean, it doesn’t necessarily mean we individually, which you would advocate, we get paid in chunks, but oftentimes the revenue stream of our business means it comes in chunks.

David Richter:

Yeah, exactly. And that, I like how you put it, you know, more putting that controls in place for the business, making sure that it’s, you know, like that it works with the business and you’ve got, you know, now you’ve got a system to make sure that yes, you are paid, but that it, it flows with the business as it grows and as it as it scales as well too. So that leads me to a question because since you’ve always been a high producer, always a high earner, why maybe on the other end, why do you think a lot of investors, or a lot of ’em, you know, live deal to deal a lot of ’em, do, you know, like maybe paycheck to paycheck? What do you think is one of the big reasons that they might not be able to pay themselves consistently?

Neil Timmins:

Oh, why? That’s a good question. You know, well, one of the, I’ll answer this a little differently. One of the reasons they struggle is cuz they never suck any money away. One of the reasons I think I’ve done this isn’t the whole reason, but you know, a component about me is I just don’t spend that much money. I spend money in certain areas of my life, but like, I, I’ve been in the same, you know what the house I live in, I bought as a short sale 12 years ago. I’ve been in the same house ever since. I’ve never bought a new car in my life. I mean, there’s just a bunch. I don’t, I don’t wear a watch. I mean, there’s just a bunch of my, my ring is silicone that cost $2 at Walgreens, <laugh>. Nice. but there’s other, there’s other aspects of my life coaching, mentoring various things that I meant where I spend a tremendous amount of money, right? Because I books, I mean, I spend, I mean, there’s a pretty good budget for books that I, that it possess and that certainly are, or office possesses. So part of that is, you know, I’m just cognizant of if I’m, if I’m spending money, my goal is is for it to ultimately lead to an impact, improve me, improve our team, improve something else, try to be a good steward of it, and try to look at it as an investment.

David Richter:

Yeah. Sounds like you had some good habits before you became a business business owner too, or that, or you’ve, or you got very serious about those habits early on of saving money and not spending frivolously, you know, just on the thing, you know, on the things as you, as you were that high earner, high producer. Because it’s not like you ha you’re not making money, you’re making money and it’s like you still don’t have the, the new car, the watch or whatever, you know, the, the stuff of the day. So would you say that’s contributed a lot to it, that you had some good habits early on and that’s transferred to your business too?

Neil Timmins:

Y you’re spot on. Yes. I had some very good habits and, and largely, you know, I was influenced in, in a big way. I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, and that’s where I live now. Yeah. But I went to school at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, so right in the middle of Omaha and who’s from Omaha, none other than Warren Buffet, right? Yes. So for three and a half years, that’s how long I was there before I graduated every day after school I drove by Warren Buffet’s personal house.

David Richter:

Wow.

Neil Timmins:

I studied Buffet, read everything about him. And it, as you can imagine, being just a handful of blocks away in the business school that, I mean, his name was conversed about every single day there. Right? Sure. <Laugh>, I mean, so his fingers are all over the whole, his thumbprint’s all over the whole city. And so in a very big way early on that became a, you know, a mentor, you know, a re you know, not directly, but indirectly, Right. To go, Wow, what are his habits? What, what, what are people like him, What do they do? How do they do it? And he’s a very good steward of, of, of financial resources.

David Richter:

And I, we haven’t even said the word profit first, but we’ve been talking about the concepts here the whole time because it’s like on knocking away the money, not spending on the previous things, like knowing where your money’s actually going. Like when you went through that time and got a better financial team to help you with those controls. So you’re a big profit first fan as well too. That’s one of the books that you’ve invested in. So can you give it just a little bit about that, that whole mindset, did that fit in with the habits that you had and like the Warren Buffet style, you know, like of, of really studying him and like, well how did that connect with you when you first might

Neil Timmins:

Have gotten Yeah. And then there’s one on top of it. The cherry is put money in different financial institutions, get money in different locations to where you don’t get your hands on it. And I think going back to, you know, the person who’s working, doing deals, getting deal flow, but they don’t ever seem to have any money. Part of that is they have too much access to it. There’s not that separation there. Yeah.

David Richter:

And

Neil Timmins:

So, and I think that’s, I think that’s a huge one.

David Richter:

It is, it is. I love that cuz with that answer to that question of why do people live deal to deals because they have too much access to the money that they create inside of their business. I think that’s a great answer to that question. So No, I love that. And that’s what Private First is all about, making sure that you, you build those proper habits and then you actually keep those habits and not just constantly raid those accounts and get them to you know, down to zero. So,

Neil Timmins:

Well you are, you hit it on the head, you are a reflection of your habits, right? Yep. I mean, w we are what we are habitually do. And so it’s imperative that if you wanna be financially successful, you do what financially successful people do. And, the Proffers outlines that for exactly what to do to be able to have a totally different outcome if you’re down a path right now that just frankly isn’t getting you where to where you wanna be.

David Richter:

Right? Yeah. It’s, that’s why, that’s why this message, that’s why this podcast and I love having guests like you who, who understand it and who have had those habits. Cuz now as I’m exploring that background, it sounds like you’ve had a lot of those habits and one of ’em was just by studying someone who was very, very frugal his whole life and had good habits his whole life. So some, if you’re listening to this podcast right now as the listener, it’s not always gonna just be one book. It’s gonna be those compilation of like the different things that you see, those patterns of success everywhere. Profit First fits in with what he is talking about with Warren Buffet and everything. I just, I absolutely love this Neil, this is great stuff. I love it. So all

Neil Timmins:

Those, all those guys have some really good habits, but then you read a lot about ’em, especially Buffet. I mean, you’re reading about outcomes. Yes. And what you, what you do is implementation of habits so that one can get to an outcome.

David Richter:

Exactly. Yeah. So they don’t, so they’re not the statistic of, you know, going outta business cuz they ran outta money and then actually having the money to do what they want to do cuz so that’s great. So I, with what you’ve done up to this point and have you been able to see the fruits of those outcomes, of those habits of like, hey, now, now without, you know, with those controls in place, I actually get to spend the money and I get to do the things that I want to do. For you, it sounds like it’s a lot of your education, but what do you do for fun with your money? Like since you don’t take cars since you don’t do Yeah,

Neil Timmins:

Bill, that’s a good question. Yeah. You just, as I said, everybody’s got different different things that trigger them, right? Yeah. And so I just alluded to, to houses and watches or cars just aren’t my thing, you know, I love to travel. Awesome. I love to spend time with family. So this summer is my wife and I, it’s our 20th anniversary. So we’re going to Europe, we’re going to Italy, and then we’re going to Greece. We’re gonna spend about 10 days. My children, you know, my children are, as you can imagine are are a big thing. And so my daughter’s, my daughter’s really creative, really artistic. So I’ve got her in this summer. She’s just headed to high school here in the fall. Yeah. So she’s going to a three week performing arts camp.

David Richter:

Nice.

Neil Timmins:

So, there’s some ability and as you can imagine, you know, if you reflect back to your child at all those things you like, wish you could, you had or wish that were that existed. And for me, as as a parent, it’s not giving them everything cuz you know, and I wanna manage ’em to a point where they don’t have motivation, but it’s giving ’em opportunities to, to find their passion, to find, you know, really why are they here in this world? What is it that’s special about them that they should be doing? And help guide them along a path and for that meetings get ’em creating and putting ’em in an opportunity position that, you know, I just wasn’t, did not have the opportunity to

David Richter:

Do. Yeah, no, that’s awesome. I love that you mentioned that cuz one of the questions I like to ask is what lesson about money do you want to pass onto to your children? So obviously not just handing them everything, but do you have a specific lesson that you are wanting to pass onto them or one that you could grab out of thin air here?

Neil Timmins:

Yeah. Yeah, good question. So I had my kids read The Richest Man in Babylon. Mm.

David Richter:

Great book.

Neil Timmins:

Yeah. So I had ’em read that and then I had ’em write me a two page book report. And so one of ’em was, and I just remember, you know, a piece that stuck out is what percentage of your income due safe, Right. What percentage of your income due safe. Right. And that’s, that’s in there and it’s obviously in profit first. Yeah. It’s just, it’s directly in line with that. So my, you know, I, one of the things I, I educated that my kids about through that process of reading that book and providing a birth report is the, the richest man of Babylon. I, I forget the exact percentage, but I, you know, I said the greater percentage that you can save the wealthy, you’re gonna be the fast you are. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a pretty simplistic process is you gotta sock money away to invest those who invest end up being wealthy.

David Richter:

Yeah. It’s

Neil Timmins:

Just educate him through that process. You know, part of this comes from a rich dad, poor dad, you know, there’s dua sections out of there. Right. it’s, it’s really to be a proper steward of, of money.

David Richter:

Awesome. Now I absolutely love that. Neil, I’ve only got a couple last questions here to ask you. So I wanna ask, you’ve seen, you’ve had a lot of different success, you’ve had success in, it’s as in the personal life and helping your children and you know, like doing the fun things with your wife and your family. You’ve also been doing the things, you know, like in your real estate investing journey. So what would you say is one key to the success over all this time period that you would say, this is, there’s one thing I could leave everyone else on this podcast, this is what I would wanna tell ’em.

Neil Timmins:

Oh, find, find a determination that is, that is second to none. I grew up playing sports. I’ve got three younger brothers and all of us just, you know my poor parents, you know, all of us just beat each other up playing everything you possibly imagine. It, it is a, it is a determination to better yourself. It’s, it’s really my, you know, my, my mom was saying, I never, I never thought you’d be this successful. And so occasionally in my mind I’m like thanks. Having me having a, a, you know, internally having a standard that is above and beyond as a standard anyone sets for you. Yeah. That’s really what it comes down. How do you, how do you improve yourself? How do you be the best version of you, you know, tomorrow I wanna be a little better than today.

David Richter:

Yeah, no, I think, and I think if you have that your whole life, I mean, it, it just gets better from there. Even if you go through the hard times, it’s that grit and determination that keeps you going. Cause it sounds like you’ve had some pretty difficult times in business too with the raw hires and what we’ve talked about here on the podcast and sounds like some pretty awesome times in your business as well too. So

Neil Timmins:

Those hard times are where you grow the most. They are you. It requires having the proper mindset, the proper perspective. Cuz early on in one’s career it was like, oh my god, you know, you can get really down, you can fall into depression, you can fall into a whole bunch of things that just leads you down a tough, tough path. But having that mindset of going okay, it just is, it is what it is. There’s a bunch of things in my life I just cannot control the outcome of, or can’t control what’s taking place, but I can control how I, how I react. I can control how I feel. I can control what I learn. Well the questions I ask myself to learn something from this in order to move forward into, to a greater, greater height.

David Richter:

Yeah, exactly. No, that’s good stuff. That’s really good stuff. So you provided a ton of value on this podcast today. Oh good. And I wanted to, I wanna always ask at the end for only the people that provide value, just kidding. I wanna make sure that I make that I ask you, how can the listeners provide value back to you because you provide a ton of value here. What do you have working, what do you have going on? Share it with the world here.

Neil Timmins:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you can, you can connect with me in a couple of different ways. You know, what I’m working on largely is transitioning our single family business into, into commercial. We have been buying commercial assets for the last three and a half years, plus or minus. Yeah. And so we’re, we’re in the process of, of making a greater transition to, to focus on that really, really full time. And help folks along the way do the same thing cuz we’ve had tremendous success become financially free as a result of commercial real estate. And so I’ve tremendous success buying assets, managing assets and just all the benefits that come along with commercial real estate tax ands, but cash being a pretty big one. So if, if folks, you know, for me it’s, if folks wanna learn about the first entry point in the commercial real estate, it’s, it’s really how do you uncover an off market deal? You know, I wrote this piece uncovering, uncovering off market commercial deals. The who, the where, and the how. They can get that on my website. It’s legacy impact partners.com/gift gif ft.

David Richter:

There you go. That’s how you can connect with Neil, get that awesome tool there. And this has been incredible. If he, from where he first started, his ability to make an impact, if you just got that piece right there and that was your focus, I think that, if you’re a listening, this will help you right away. Where is your ability to make that impact? All the way to where he said find the determination that’s second to none. Cuz then you can be make the biggest impact you can because nothing will deter you from that. And we talked about some great stuff here. The team, how he’s team focused, culture focused, wants to pay above market rate. Like I love the mindset of I want to help other people get where they need to be and pay and overpay them what the market says.

So that way they know that I value them, that I appreciate them. I absolutely love that. Also, love too with the controls you put in place to stop that bleeding of the stealing and all that. I’m sure that might, that might right there save a lot of heartache from the listers that are listening right now. So thank you so much for sharing that too. And I really, there was just so much good, good nuggets here and really appreciate you being on. So thank you so much Neil for being on here today and providing all that wisdom.

Neil Timmins:

Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate you taking the time and I appreciate your work. You know, we talked about this, this is where, you know, I you really resonate with me is, is on an impact cuz I know the impact you make in, in folks from what you do and it’s life changing.

David Richter:

Awesome. I really appreciate that, Neil. And if you’re listening to this as a real estate investor and you are not paying yourself just like Neil wasn’t until eight or 10 months ago, or if you have, don’t have those controls in place from that perspective, or you wanna double your profits head over to simple CFO solutions.com, you can click the get scheduled on a call with us button so that way we could see if we’re the right fit. And if not, I promise we’ve got someone in our network that we can connect you to. So you don’t have to have those headaches that Neil went through with the whole hiring and whatnot and get good people into the financial team in your department there. So, and I just wanna remind you with this one last statement, make sure that you’re making profit a habit in your business and not just an event. Thank you so much.

Outro:

This episode of the Profit First for REI podcast is over, but there are plenty more where that came from. Are you ready to learn how David and his team can help implement the Profit First system in your business? Schedule a discovery call @ simplecfo.com right now. We’ll see you next time on The Profit First for REI podcast with David Richter.