CRE SHARKEYE SHOW WITH TOMMY BRANT AND YISHAI BRESLAUER
Audio
TRANSCRIPTION
Yishai Breslauer: Hey, guys, how are you? This is Yishai Breslauer your host of The CRE Sharkeye Show. Today we have Tommy Brant. Tommy, thank you so much for being with us.
Tommy Brant: Thank you, Yishai. It’s a huge pleasure to be here. I’m excited and humbled to be on the show. You’ve interviewed a lot of successful people and a lot of talent and so thank you.
Yishai Breslauer: Awesome. So I’m going to tell you guys, you’re going to hear a lot of times we have people who are from the angle of the general partner of the sponsor, and a few times we had people from the private equity side or from the syndication side. But it’s very important to have that because you might want to choose that side. And I’ve been in both, so I know exactly what it is. And Tommy is going to tell us all about it and it’s very exciting. Thank you so much, Tommy. Again, here, before we start digging into your story and the exciting stuff, just tell us what you guys do, like a two-minute elevator pitch, what your business does there.
Tommy Brant: Sure, yeah. So I very recently retired from my W2 job to pursue real estate investing full time. So I’m focused on syndicating value add multifamily deals in the Southeast. So primarily Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. I live in the Nashville MSA, so those are my markets. And so I add value to general partnerships via raising capital, investor relations, finding deals, and boots on the ground. And so, I’m here today to talk to you about how W2 experience could translate to the real estate industry. We’re in an interesting time of the workforce and so any other things along the way that may add value to your listeners.
Yishai Breslauer: Tell me something beautiful. I’m looking forward. It already sounds exciting. Tell me something. I looked at your profile on LinkedIn and it looked like you were in electrical engineering. It’s interesting to me also because my son-in-law is now studying electrical engineering. Tell me something, let’s talk about that for a second because it’s somewhat related to real estate, obviously. Talk about this for a little bit about that career.
Tommy Brant: Sure, yeah. So, electrical engineer, as a kid, I was fascinated by simple things. So the fact that you could turn it on, flip a switch and it completely illuminates the room. You can see after flipping on a switch. So understanding what went into that, the infrastructure, the architecture, and then also just kind of voltage, current power fundamentals like that was kind of fascinating to me. And so, I was very kind of gifted in math and sciences and so that into a lot of what was needed. I graduated from Georgia Tech with an electrical engineer, not really publicized much, but also a data scientist specialization from Johns Hopkins University. So very math and science related, which I hope will help me in my underwriting.
Yishai Breslauer: He’s a man of many talents. Soon we’re going to find out that you’re a pilot also or something like that. Very cool. Love it. I love it. So tell me something. What happens to a guy, you called it a W2 job and you have some W2 jobs that you got to run away from, some W2 jobs are fantastic, and it sounds like you had a fantastic job. Why go away from that to what you do today before we dig into what you do today?
Tommy Brant: Sure. I love that question. So the company I was working for was amazing. The people I was working for were amazing. Right. So on the surface, the question is valid. Like, why leave that? And so for me, I was entrenched in getting to personal financial freedom. And so I find that you’re talking about money was something I was interested in. Having very open conversations about that type of stuff was fulfilling to me. It fed my soul. And so whenever we talked about the W2 side of things, I was in various capacities. I was in product support, I was in marketing, and I was in sales. And I would say that the majority of my time was spent either customer facing or in sales in some capacity but I couldn’t tie what I was doing to my financial freedom. If I’m looking at what I’m doing working for an intellectual distribution manufacturer, we’re servicing every industry on the planet from healthcare to data centers, everything you could think of, because everyone needs the power to operate. The only way I could even think to line that up with financial freedom via real estate or just financial freedom, in general, is maybe day trading, like stock trading and stuff like that, because I have an end. I know what projects some customers are trying to build. I’m very in tune with the bidding process and so I know who’s wanting to build what before they actually build it. So that was the only angle I could see myself having as it pertains to financial freedom. And I was kind of living two lives because I didn’t want to do that. I learned early on is like, if I’m doing anything in the stock markets, I’m not going to do much fast index funds probably. It’s too many PNLs to keep up with it’s too much, trying to hedge values and get ahead of the curves and stuff like that but real estate was easier for me to understand. It’s trying to lift two lives, and I was struggling with that.
Yishai Breslauer: You know something, for some people you know what, I look at it, the challenge is to really understand the numbers, to get to know the numbers, to understand and to read a proforma, what’s IR for you was probably more of a walk in the park compared to other people because of everything else that you do. So you have to just learn what it is, and bam, you know it, and no problem.
But going back to the story behind it, okay, how did it happen, and what inspired you to actually do that? Tell us a little bit about the fun stuff. How did it happen?
Tommy Brant: Sure, sure. Yeah. And I guess I’ll go a little bit further back, but we talked about my W2 history, but I’ll go back to just me growing up and just kind of the foundation of it.
Yishai Breslauer: Yes, go ahead. The juicier the better.
Tommy Brant: For sure, yeah! So I grew up playing sports. I started at the age of five, and sold me competitively. So as a result, growing up, I was very accustomed to hard work at a very early age, and so the result was a work ethic where I knew the results that I was going to get out of something were directly proportional to the effort I was putting in. So it helps that I had a big brother that is a little bit more than a year older than me, and I wanted to be his peer. I wanted to be on par with him. So he was the white rabbit I was chasing. So that’s a little bit as far as the background and of my upbringing, I had amazing parents along the way, and they supported me, and they were great. My first exposure to real estate was actually in my college years, so I was working odd jobs for a summer. I worked for a contractor who serviced mobile homes, and so that repairs landscaping, making them rent-ready. We service several houses in Middle Georgia. So Macon and Warner Robins, if you’re familiar. So it’s a lot of cutting grass and the summer heat in Georgia. If you’re not familiar, it’s hot.
Yishai Breslauer: I am familiar. We used to live in Memphis.
Tommy Brant: Okay, you’re there.
Yishai Breslauer: Don’t tell me, hot. Go ahead.
Tommy Brant: And so there are a lot of cleaning units that are post eviction. So there are mountains of trash. There are used diapers, there are hypodermic needles, there’s rotten everything in the fridge. As a result, I get into real estate, and I’m not scared of anything that I see on the MLS at that point. I’m like, this doesn’t compare to X that I saw, or this doesn’t compare that time that this other thing I saw. Fast forward to 2011. I bought a house. It was my first house via short sale. It was a four bed, two bath. To keep it brief, it needed work. It needs, like, every square inch needed updating. There was a pool in the back that was just a black lagoon, and I saw nothing but the finished product. I was like, this is going to be an amazing bachelor pad, and it’s going to be great. So it was a slow live and flip. I rented a room to a co-worker. I had it paid off in eight years, and I sold it in 2020 and so there’s a bit of a funny story as to why we sold it but my fiance, now wife at the time, we sold some things just to make, like, the rip-off the Band Aid for the final payment, just because I wanted to say, I don’t have any debt. I have zero debt. That was going to be a major milestone for me and so we paid off the house in October 2019, and before the end of November, my fiance said, I found the perfect house on Redfin or on Zillow. She’s like it’s. Got it. Got this and this and this. It’s perfect. We can have guests over. And I said you couldn’t let us be debt free for a month. We couldn’t even go 30 days being debt free. You just wanted to pile it back up again. So that’s my fun story of how we got there but we sold that house, liquidated it, and then we used the capital as down payments to three single-family homes.
They were base hits. I bought them off the MLS.They were retailed, but they cash flowed. And that was in 2020 and the start of 2021. So I found that I thoroughly enjoyed the business aspect of real estate. So managing the portfolio, creating the LLC to hold the properties, analyzing the projections versus the actual moving money around, et cetera. I got a kick out of it. After these three units, I took a pause to kind of reflect on what I’ve done so far .And it’s like I could have used more capital to buy more single-family homes. You know, 200, I could pay $ 200,000 a door for renting for 1400. Those are base hits in my market. And then maybe rely on the compound effect to take hold and all that stuff or I could buy something IE Apartments. That’s $75,000 per door has the same amount of cash flow, the same amount of principal, pays down a reduced risk profile, et cetera. Since then, I’ve been focused on the multifamily ecosystem where I could play there.
Yishai Breslauer: Tell me something. It’s I love that story. Let’s focus for a second on the part of you know what, let’s first of all, just clarify the story, okay? When was the point from this whole thing where you actually quit your job to do what you do today?
Tommy Brant: Sure. So I quit my job eleven days ago.
Yishai Breslauer: Wow.
Tommy Brant: So pretty recent.
Yishai Breslauer: All right, all right, all right. Sounds awesome. Sounds awesome.
Tommy Brant: I put in my 100-day notice on my 35th birthday.
Yishai Breslauer: So my how old are you?
Tommy Brant: I’m 35.
Yishai Breslauer: 35. All right. Good age. Excellent age. Excellent age.
Tommy Brant: For sure.
Yishai Breslauer: Tell me something. Let’s dwell a little bit into the into the strategies, okay? This is interesting. Before we go into the whole nitty greedy multifamily acquisition strategy, I want just to take it back to your story because you started with a single-family home, going to three single-family homes, and then boom, shifting into multifamily. And you told us pretty much, but I just want to make the emphasis and everybody who’s watching or listening to just sort of a pause. Sometimes in life, you have to like and I’m big with that. I’m like, I’m not anti. Some people make a lot of money from single family homes and do it their whole life and great, awesome. And it’s for them, it’s great. But I’m always preaching why commercial real estate much better than single-family homes and stuff and bviously multifamily falls into that criteria. Tell us a little bit about what happened in your head, and let’s go over it piece by piece with numbering, processing, psychology, with everything of why single-family homes became multifamily.
For sure, yeah and I had the opportunity to go to DealmakerLive in Texas a couple of weeks ago. That’s where I met Brandon Turner, and I got a selfish selfie with him there. And it’s funny, everyone else is on a similar journey. It’s fine, right? They could have 100 single-family homes. They could have 1000 single-family homes.They could have one single-family home. But eventually, people come to the same conclusion that multifamily is the best way to scale. You can scale your business, operate effectively, and then also you can scale the investment. So you’re scaling both ends of the spectrum, and so the ability to grow is greatly accelerated.
Yishai Breslauer: Amazing. So once you got into multifamily, you said, okay, I have three single-family homes. What’s the size? How many units? You said I’m going to go after?
Tommy Brant: Yeah, that’s been an evolution. I’ll say, yeah, yeah, for sure. And I’ll preface it with I’m a lifelong learner. So last year I read 60 books. This year I’ve already read 30. So I’m a large consumer and advocate of knowledge. And one of the tips I have on here at the end, which I’m happy to share, is learning how to learn. So kind of brain training your brain. I think that’s worth investing some time in, but we’ll talk about that later. And so I’m reading all these books in the single-family real estate, right? I started out stocks and rich dad poor dad, and then I got a fire under my tush in real estate. And I was like, this is very evident to me that you can add value in real estate in a way that you can’t do with any other asset class. I read all the books that you probably could on single family, and then I just hit a wall .And then I started reading about raising capital, multifamily million, and I eventually got a hold of JoeFerrillus’s best effort book, which is like, the master blueprint of all things, syndicating apartment deals. And then also, the more I learned about it, the more I realized it’s a team sport, right? So I don’t have to do everything alone. I could do one part of it and add value to the deal. And so just that aspect of not having to own everything from soup to nuts was very appealing to me, and that allowed me to go back to being able to scale, right? I could start slow, or I could start fast. I could start at whatever speed I’m comfortable with and still grow if I’m getting 1% better every day.
Yishai Breslauer: Okay, great but about the amount of units, meaning obviously, what was the first deal that you went after? How many units?
Tommy Brant: I haven’t been a coach on any multifamily deals today, but for the ones I’m investing in as a limited partner, there’s 100-plus units in Kentucky right now. I would say before that, I had a very immature mindset. I was like, I need to start small. I need to look at an eight unit, a 16 unit, and just get comfortable with it. But that was when I also had the mindset of that I needed to do everything myself.
Yishai Breslauer: Exactly.
Tommy Brant: So whenever you start realizing you can play a very dedicated role, a much needed role, and still participate in a deal that I was like, why can’t I operate in a three to $5 million deal? It’s my first one, right? You know, 50 units, 50 to 100 units. I shy away from the 150 plus because you start getting into corporate money. But why couldn’t I start with the 55 units? If I’m partnering with an asset manager, if I’m partnering with a loan sponsor, and I’m bringing some capital to the deal, why can’t I do that? And my conclusion was that there’s no reason you can.
Yishai Breslauer: You know something? This is so interesting because you are to me, you’re bit of a different animal, as we call it, because you have the talent to get your hands dirty. You have the knowledge. You have the experience. Let’s call it experience. That’s the best word because when you went back to your first story, you said that you started going into and you saw all the diapers and all these graphic things and whatever, and you said, I’m not scared. And then you went into the single-family homes, which is a completely different type of deal, where you have to do everything yourself, pretty much, and you have to become a very handy type of a person. Which is by the way, for those who want to be hands on, this way to go. Obviously, for those who are not greatly not so handy, like this guy here, okay? The best way to go is multifamily, obviously. But for you, you could have done things yourself. What caused you to say and become humble and say, listen, I don’t have to be the big hunch. I can be the guy who brings the capital. I can be the syndicator and actually make money and I don’t have to do all that stuff, even though I can, even though I’m capable of learning it, even though I’m capable of getting into the details and going to see what I have to do within the property. How was that?
Tommy Brant: Yeah, happy to talk through that. In real estate and syndication in general, I found that my skill set that I developed in my W2 job could have translated to the full spectrum of syndication. I could have managed the managers, been a good okay, asset manager. I worked in spreadsheets way too much in my last role, so underwriting was probably a short putt for me. Investor relations is probably best suited my to marketing and sales experience. I feel like I could have done well in any arena, and the focus is where I needed the most help. But to answer your question of, coming from a long line of getting my hands dirty, so to speak? How did I come to the conclusion of I don’t need to do that anymore? I learned that actually in the single-family houses. So I got some bruises early on where I closed on two houses on the same day, and I was like, I’ve read all these books.I’m going to be a landlord. It’s going to be great. I had to let the inquiries bubble up over lunch and get to them in the evenings. I was just taking a new role at the time, and I was like, this isn’t sustainable for me. So really early on, I hired property manager, and that alleviated a lot. Before that, I was making the units ready, so I was like, I’m looking forward to working with my hands. I’m going to change out some fluorescent tube lighting with recessed lighting. It’s going to be nice. I’ll patch some drywall, and then it’ll be beautiful. But I’m still managing that same thing where I’m trying to perform this new role with excellence. And I’m probably working 50 to 60 hours a week is the norm, so finding time after work is a challenge. Finding time on the weekends, it’s like, all right, let’s go to Home Depot, get the part. Oh, crap, we got the wrong part. Oh, crap, it’s pandemic. I can only get it online. So it took me about a month and a half to do what was what should have been a simple make a unit rent ready with just some touch up and paint. And that’s when I realized I’m working in my business, I’m not working on my business. And so going into multifamily syndication, I’m trying to be really it’s like, tension. I’m trying to be really mindful of activities where it’s like, is this a low dollar per hour item that I’m working on, or am I working on? Whatever adds the most value to my business. So I ask myself all the time to maintain priority and focus on what I need to do to build my business.
Yishai Breslauer: Tell me something strategy wise. This is everything you say makes so much sense. Strategy wise, going into multifamily, which we do right now, you’re getting into a deal requires having investors, right? You have to be able to bring investors in.That’s the beauty of syndication. At the same time, this is the challenge of syndication. Tell me something, how do you do that? How did you find the investor base? How do you create people to come around? You are still doing it or you’re still creating it? Tell us a little bit about this learning process that you’re going through.Went through everything. This is very interesting.
Tommy Brant: For sure, Yeah. So I think on anyone’s first deal, you’re going to be leaning heavily on your friends and family. But they’ve got to be prepared for that type of discussion, right? It’s one thing for your mom to be like, hey, honey, I’ll support you in anything that you do. I’m an accredited investor. But it’s another thing for her to understand, okay, mom, this is a five year holding period. These are your types of returns and walking you through like, a sample deal package. This is an example of a property. These are your ranges of returns. Here’s your annualized, here’s your IRR, here’s your cash on cash, and then here’s your total return on investment. So being deliberate and being prepared for those discussions is kind of what you need to do before you even have those discussions with your family. Once you do a rollout to your family, I highly suggest using it as a way to build your list. So just kind of like an introduction email that says, hey, everyone, this is what I’ve been up to for the past five years. Oh, by the way, I built a business for myself. I stopped working full time, and I’m now syndicating real estate deals .I usually just kind of pause there and I ask, do you want to keep up with what’s going on in my life? And that’s like their mechanism to subscribe. So that’s kind of what I would say as far as the introduction and letting your family and friends know, outside of your family and friends, I think the question is, how do you raise money? How do you find investors? That’s like, probably the more sexy question that a lot of people are drawn to because they’re like, yeah, I get it. Friends and family next. And so with that one, it really is just talking to everyone at your job, letting them know what you do. If I was smart, I would have started more focusing on capital raising. While I was at my W2 job, my customer avatar is a 35 to 65 year old working professional. By then, if you’re 35, you should have with that dollar range for the minimum amount on most deal.In your 401K, you can have a custodian transferred over and still roll it into real estate. And so really comes down to you want to be aggressively networking as much as possible. If you want to do it well, you can do it slower or fast, however you want. But letting everyone, you know, work with, that what you’re doing and what you’re interested in, and that you’re trying to establish financial freedom for yourself, I think that alone will generate curiosity. You can’t shove it down anyone’s throat as far, say, hey, I know how to make money. Give me your money, I’ll make it work for you.That’s not going to work. Right? It’s got to be a discussion. It’s got to be a dialogue, and interests have to align outside of your job. There’s, like, what I’ll call the creative networking groups, right?Y ou can go to car shows, and shoot horseback riding. There are high net worth activities if you want to get focused directly on that. But even like, going to the gym, do things that you would do, but just be open and vocal about it.
Yishai Breslauer: Tell me something. These are great tips, by the way. Excellent tips. I love it. When you’re going and you’re becoming a syndicator. You’re becoming a guy who’s looking for deals. Before we get to the sponsors’ issue, which we’re going to get let’s hold on with that for a second because that’s the whole topic of its own. In terms of your deal strategy, you have to sort of come take a pen and paper and write down, okay, what am I going for? Retail, triple net lead. You know, like what type of office buildings, hotels, multifamily 200 plus core plus value add. What did you do? Meaning, what was your decision? What type of deals you’re going after? What is your, you know, here’s what I’m going after.A nd you tell everybody about find me those sponsors who have those deals. We’re going to talk about the sponsors, as I said, in a second. So what type of deals?
Tommy Brant: Sure. Yeah. So I’m focused on any value add opportunities for the B or C asset class under 100 units. I’ll just say a few places, but anywhere between Louisville and Huntsville. So that’s Louisville, Bowling Green, Clarksville, Nashville, Columbia, Huntsville are kind of the major tertiary markets and primary markets.
Yishai Breslauer: Why is it there?
Tommy Brant: That is all along the interstate that takes you from Alabama to Louisville, and those are either great primary markets or they’re growing second tertiary markets.
Yishai Breslauer: So you decided these are the location I’m going to go for. I’m going to go for up to 100 units. I’m assuming anywhere between 2030 to 100. Right? Ballpark.Okay, great. And I’m going to go to a value add B, C class. Beautiful.Excellent. Great. Now you have to find sponsors that have those deals. So what are your criteria as per what type of sponsors you want to find and work with? Because you have to come to your investors and say, hey guys, here’s my partner. Okay. Who is it?
Tommy Brant: For sure. Yeah. And so I guess maybe it’s approach that I could put out there. But the best way that I find people early on at least has been,I went on a lot of the daily podcasters. So Joe Ferrillus does a daily podcast, and Whitney School also does a daily podcast and stuff.
Yishai Breslauer: Excellent.
Tommy Brant: Yeah, they have the daily podcast. And so with that, they have daily guests. Right. They have high volume of guests on there, so they’re pretty short. So I would just go on there and listen.And then if I like the message or I liked the skill set that they had, whether it’s content creation or managing assets or finding deals off the market, stuff like that, I would find out how I like them and then add them on LinkedIn, say, thank you for your story. And then eventually, I’d come across people that overlap with my market. So I know two operators in Kentucky. I know one very well-known one here in in Murphysboro, Tennessee, which is where I’m at. And through that and the local multifamily meetups, I’ve met some other sponsors as well, as some other full stack syndicators. So I’ll probably have about three total in Tennessee. And then I guess there’s also that services Huntsville but they are not local to Huntsville.
Yishai Breslauer: Awesome. What are your criteria for sponsors?They have to be like this, like that many. What do you decide in terms of who you’re going after?
Tommy Brant: For sure, I would like them to have some asset management experience and maybe that’s part of it. Because I would say in terms of an asset manager, I do want multiple years of experience or multiple deals. I know one gentleman who has two to three years of experience as an asset manager, which will say is low, but he’s got double-digit number of deals. Right. So I would say that easily compensates for the little time spent as an asset manager. In terms of what I like to see, I’m getting the to point where I’m getting savvy on the underwriting and I can call BS on some people’s numbers. And so we’re getting to the point where it’s like I’m scrutinizing their numbers and their pitch decks .I try to reverse engineer with my syndicated deal analyzer and see if I can come close to their raise or their types of returns based on their expenses, et cetera. There was one that I met from a reputable resource where the numbers in the pitch deck just didn’t make sense. We’re set to connect here in a little bit and you can believe that’s going to be one of the things I asked about. But it seemed like an actual math error that made it to a pitch deck and I was like, I don’t know .But I’m also not in a position where I can claim that either compared to his experience.
Yishai Breslauer: I can add to that. First of all, I love what you say because I can add to that and say that I was sitting on both chairs, on the chair of the GP, on the sponsor, and on the chair of the LP. And as the LP, when you check on the GP, the sponsor, you want to make sure that they know what they’re doing and they have the right experience, they have the right track record, they know what they’re doing, et cetera, et cetera. But having said all that, let’s say you’ve done all that, you’ve done the due diligence on the sponsor, you know that they know what they’re doing, meaning you have a pretty good picture of it. You’ve found out that they are not crazy and they’re human beings and these are future good partners, et cetera, all these things that you look for in a sponsor, then comes the deal, and exactly like you said, you look in the underwriting and you’re saying, is it working? Is it not working? Does it make sense? Doesn’t it make sense? And from my experience, and I’m throwing it in, meaning to sort of strengthen what you said, that when you come to that, you can’t just rely on their underwriting. You have to make sure that you’re obviously getting it from them. You don’t have to do it from scratch, but you have to look at it as if as you’re doing it from scratch and take all their numbers not for granted. And it sounds a little rough, it sounds a little like harsh for people who are just getting into it. I want to be this guy’s partner. I’m telling him, get me in, I’ll get your money. And then I’m like the sort of telling him, oh, you’re wrong, you’re not doing your job right and all that stuff. The answer is no. Don’t be scared because eventually enough been there. If you’re doing the job right and you’re looking at the underwriting, you’re looking at the numbers and details, at the end of the day they’re going to thank you because you might find things that they didn’t. Maybe his analyst did not see something that you might see. So it’s very, very important that you’ll be able to come back and say, I found something. Tell me what you think about it. I’m not saying that you’re wrong or right, I just want to make sure and if you’re wrong, it’s all good. I just want to make sure that we are on the right track. That gives you a better position as a shotgun. Do you agree with that?
Tommy Brant: Absolutely.
Yishai Breslauer: Did you have a feeling when you spoke to your sponsor, meaning the potential sponsors, that kind of conversation, how did that go?
Tommy Brant: Sure. It’s something that ran past a couple of other people first. The example was in a ten year hold, the IRR was higher than the AAR, and I was like, well, for that long to hold, I would expect the AAR to be lower.And I’ve edited it out a couple of people offline. But I’ll be bringing it to the sponsors’ attention later this week and we’ll see if we can get back. My fear is, if I’m primarily a capital racer and I’m leveraging other people’s deals, I still have to know that the numbers make sense.I can’t just be like, hey, I like the guy and he’s got a decent track rate, let’s go with him. Because we’re in an interesting time where you may come across some individuals that are just making deals for the acquisition fees. And that terrifies me.If I’m trying to bring other people’s money to that type of deal, that’s what I want to avoid. I want it to be a good deal. I want to split them on a good basis. My strategy is to buy a discount because it’s mismanaged and stuff like that. Leave it there.
Yishai Breslauer: Love that thought. When you come to GPLP strategies, tell me how you like it. It doesn’t have to be this deal. But how would you like to see the splits and the logic that you learned meaning from all the books that you’ve read and all the people that you’ve spoken with in terms of the logic of what type offers you’re willing to take or what matters to you, what matters to you less and all that stuff? We must have somewhat of a philosophy. Can you share that with us?
Tommy Brant: For sure, yeah. I guess fundamentally, I would say that there needs to be some interest alignment between the operators and the investors.Right.So and maybe I’m biased, but I don’t see having an issue with acquisition fees and disposition fees, and asset management fees. Because you’re committed to driving the close of acquiring the asset or the close of disposing the asset or refinance or what have you. So I’m seeing a couple of instances where some people are waiving that, at least maybe from an investor’s perspective, they’re like, yeah, it’s less fees. But from my perspective, I’m like, what? They have, like, no incentive. There is a deal. I watched yesterday where there were zero acquisition fees and zero disposition fees, and the only thing they were charging was as they managed it. And I wanted to tap them on the shoulder after the meeting, like, how are you doing this? How does this make sense? You just have five people on a webinar and they’re all doing it for free. I don’t know if it’s somewhere else in the deal or what have you, but that’s a red flag to me. Whenever someone’s like, we’re not charging any fees, it’s like that tells me you’re not motivated. I’ll leave that at that. As far as the fees go in terms of partnership structures and who gets what percentage, the dream would be if there was a deal finder and asset manager, and a capital eraser, right? That would be 33%. I’m more or less down the middle for everyone. But what I would love for people to come to the deal with is the mindset that I’m going to contribute more than 33% to earn that 33%. I don’t want to build a team that’s doing the bare minimum. I want people that are problem solvers. I want a team that is willing to go further than is required to get the deal done and take care of the investors that are funding this.
Yishai Breslauer: I love that. Tell me something, now that we are getting into close, I love your thoughts. I love your thought process. I love your motivation. It’s great. Tell me something. How can people find you? Whether they are sponsors or they are potential investors who want to consider working with you, you. How can they find you?
Tommy Brant: For sure, yeah. There’s going to be two great places to find me. One is on LinkedIn. That’s Tommy Brant. T-O-M-M-Y B as in Boy, R-A-N-T, T as in Tommy. So Tommy Brant on LinkedIn. I also got a platform @tbcapgrp.com, there are no vowel in group so its tbcapgrp.com. Feel free to sign up on the subscriber’s list if you want to keep in touch and get newsletters and articles that are coming out.
Yishai Breslauer: You guys are listening to Tommy, right now. Look at the links above and below, wherever you are watching. If you are listening to the podcast, look at the text and find the links, click on them to find Tommy and to work with him and to find ways to do business with him.
Tommy, your story is inspiring and I love it. It’s great! I wish you all the best and of course, will keep in touch and will see what can we do together. To you guys listening, thank you so much for listening to us today and I’ll see you guys on the next show. Thank you, Tommy.
Tommy Brant: Thank you!