From Farmer to Family Officer with Tim Williams

 Josh
 Hey, good day, fellow dealmakers. Welcome to the deal scout on today's show. We're going to have a conversation with a guy who does a lot of work with MSA tertiary markets, real estate kind of conversation. If you're involved in real estate, you're going to want to listen in Mr. Tim. Welcome to the show. 

 Tim
 Thank you, Josh. It's my pleasure to be here with you today. I'm looking forward to our conversation. 

 Josh
 Well, me too. All right, so you and I are hanging out in the coffee shop or bar depending on time of day and someone walks up and they go, Hey, I'm Bob or whatever. Who are you? What you do. That's how guys typically introduce themselves. How do you respond to, 

 Tim
 I respond usually with my name's Tim Williams, nice to meet you. I do this a little less. I can get away with. Usually that's how I answer. I it's tough to pin down. I used to be able to answer that question very directly. I was a fourth generation farmer in Florida. I still farm in Florida, but that's, doesn't really encompass what I'm all about nowadays. I wear a lot of different hats. 

 Josh
 Yeah. I love hats on my back wall. We have a whole list of hats. I've been an entrepreneur through and through for a very long time. And entrepreneurs do wear many hats. Let's start taking a look at the hats that you wear on a day-to-day basis or, a deal to deal basis. What, what kind of hats do you wear in terms of, the entrepreneurial journey that you do on a day-to-day basis? 

 Tim
 The core of our business that faces outwards, right? Cause w we also own and operate, family office where we manage investments and mostly real estate based, but our outward facing, persona to the world and work core of our work is really providing real estate investment services and advice to clients. Primarily those engaged in 10 31 exchange processes often segwaying from, vacant real estate, vacant land sales, supporting agricultural businesses and uses to commercial double net and triple net properties where you're able to kind of trade very high capital process through agriculture, where you make a very slow return, very low two to 3% to triple nine, double net real estate investment with credit rated tenants, where you swap that return very low return for what I would consider, especially in today's times, a very good high return of, five to as much as 9% if you're comfortable with leverage. 

 Tim
 So, so we assist people through a 10 31 exchange processes. That's really the core of our business. We provide a service that's different. We have a very small number of repeat customers. I call it the friends and family plan. Of course we always are growing both friends and family, so that's good, but w we provide kind of a boutique service in that regard and that's the core of our public facing business. 

 Josh
 Okay. With the family office, is that, how did that evolve? How did you get involved into that field? I love talking, triple net, 10 30 ones, commercial real estate, love talking about that stuff, but let's kind of go origin story. How'd you get your start in the family office biz? 

 Tim
 Sure. In 1984, I started farming with my family. We've worked together for 10 solid years, 10 great years learned a lot, took over different aspects of crop management and had various responsibilities. I started on my own then farming with my dad. We incorporated and started our own company in 1994. We actually increased the size of our farm so that it was the same size as the farm that I farm with my uncle and his kids, my larger family. We worked that together, packed through the packing house that we had established, which was actually, I was the third generation fourth generation, sorry to be a grower packer shipper in, the Tertia the outside outskirts of Miami, which is a fantastic place to live at that time. W w what happened was were kind of in a squeeze play between the Everglades national park and this cane national park and the urban wave. 

 Tim
 Those three, very different, but very demanding processes are always ongoing, right? Any, when you farm on the fringe, right, the fringe of urban area, you're always faced with the similar pressures. In reaction to that, they had some great ideas that were great for their, individual focus, but were very adverse and could adversely affect our ability to continue farming, and also would have dramatically eroded if not completely unraveled land value. And we, most farmers in the United States of America today rely on land values to borrow the money, to put their crop in. That was a key component of our business structure, both as a participant in my larger family operation and of course on our own. Those things started happening, I had to react. It wasn't a choice. Couldn't just, lay down on the tracks and kind of, squeal and expect somebody to come save you from the oncoming train you had to, how to take action. 

 Tim
 So I did that. I partnered with a guy who owned the most land in that area. And, you know, were already farming together. He and I, and my dad with our company. So, we had the most, we felt like we had the most to lose and the most to gain by kind of steering, jumping up in the train and kind of at least trying to, make, have a meaningful impact on their process. So, yeah, so we did that successfully, and I actually started a company which was kind of the birth of the family office, where we became consultants to the developers. We, we kind of selected a particular developer that we felt, shared our concepts about increasing value and delivering a, a very forward-looking product that could have the chance of changing the way development occurred in our area. Now that was of course, Landstar development corporation partner. 

 Tim
 Of course, they're doing that again now in west Palm beach area, in Loxahatchee of all places, of course, with the wildly successful, tremendously planned and well executed project. I got to work with them and their business partners for over 10 years, really longer as about 12 years through the last development cycle and became the actual applicant for what turned out to be about 7,000 single family homes, multi-family single family homes and about 450 acres of commercial development, including the first new hospital will be built in Miami-Dade county and about 30 years. The homestead hospital homestead Baptist health systems hospital is on a piece of dirt that we planned for that youth. I used to farm beans on, and actually of potatoes one, one corner of wow. So, so that's how our family office came to be, our farmland was not something that I purchased, but our final problem was houses and shopping centers. 

 Tim
 Getting those things through the entitlement process is, something that you can't really fully appreciate, unless you have been a participant in it. One of the cool things we did at that time was with the help of last star with their full support on their time and with their professional team, they agreed with my concept and we annexed 650 acres from Miami-Dade county into the city of homestead, which actually served as a foundation to save them from state financial oversight. So, so in the course of our development, we actually saved the city from financial insolvency, which is pretty cool. I, I'm very proud of that process and really enjoyed working with the Landstar guys and, to have a role in that was quite spectacular. 

 Josh
 Explain the, explain what was the situation that was going on, where annex of the property solved the problem? What problem were they having? They were insolvent, but what was the, what did you see as the core issue of that problem? 

 Tim
 Hurricane Andrew came through and took out, a lot of tax base. It took out a lot of the people that were pulling the community cart forward. We lost our senior management, so to speak command structure at the homestead or reserve base because the BX went away. We lost a lot of the people that stayed in south Florida and participate in the community. After that, we lost a lot of good people. If the people could leave after that, they tended to leave. We were in a terrible spot and, city government has to go on, you need your place, you need your, development services, you need the parks and rec, even if there's, no tax base to support that you still have a lot of outgoing money. That's really when the grants and the extra funds and all of the, the FEMA supplementals and state assistance kind of dried up. 

 Tim
 It wasn't very many years before the city was in a pretty dark, dark place financially. Of course, annexation, that's a brand new tax basis, new taxes that come in to tend to a city. Of course the benefit for a developer is, which is, without that it's not going to happen having one government to control all of your project so that you don't have to be accountable to two separate, entitlement systems, could you imagine having to make a zoning application and the county, and then another one in the city? And what if they don't agree? What if, the codes can be different, the philosophies can be different. You can be tragic and, and not, not even a testable, I'm not sure if that's a word, but you could even try that if, if you didn't have uniformity of government. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Solving government money issues is it seems to be, there's a lot of issues there. You guys were able to do that through annex in the 600 acres, she said, and in some nice. 

 Tim
 Biscayne drive down to Campbell drive. I forget the number numerical equivalent for Biscayne, but down to Southwest three 12th street and over to one 37th avenue and up to Biscayne drive. 

 Josh
 August 16th, 1992, hurricane Andrew Miles through south Florida, I was in Broward county. I lived, I lived down south. It was wherever you were in that area. You were homestead area. Right? 

 Tim
 I actually had a condo in lake shore village, which was on the second floor on the point of a lake, a great place for the wind to really ramp up and hit from all sides. That I was about two miles from our packing house at the time, which of course was also destroyed. The exterior was destroyed. The packing line was still intact. My condo, I came when I came back after hurricane Andrew, I came back to a water bed, a concrete floor and a dishwasher. That was it. The no walls, no roof, nothing. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Wow. 

 Tim
 Quite quite something. 

 Josh
 We were north of you in sunrise. And we lost our fence. We saw like our neighbors, like place it, get them flown away. It was, it was pretty, my sister, I was 10 or 11 at the time. My sister slept through the whole thing. She, she did. Yeah. I was outside fixing fences with my dad, my afterwards, my father in construction. We went down south to homestead and we helped rebuild a lot of the homes were in construction at the time. 

 Tim
 It was cool. 

 Josh
 Yeah, man. It was so our paths might've crossed. I was only a 10 or 11, so I didn't have gray hair at that point. Hurricane Andrew gave a lot of people, gray hair. Why did you decide to stick? Right. Cause a lot of people exited you stuck. Why. 

 Tim
 Our, our complete and total, multi-generational asset-based was there. I was fully invested in, returning to farming and growing a crop. Those were the things in front of us. I couldn't imagine, not w doing that facing challenges, having been a farmer is a little different than I think facing challenges as maybe in any other business. So, so I really, didn't never considered the option of leaving. It was really, wasn't a, a concept that made sense to me because I still wanted the farm. Right. I wanted to farm. And you can't move the land. Once you have land in Florida, that's really an issue that's faced with all of our growing cities in Florida, that land that's around them. Of it is the most productive farmland in the country. People are like, what are you going to do? Well, you can't transport that land. You can't make new land and you can't take it with you. 

 Tim
 So, so for me, it wasn't, there was no choice, but to say, dig into the trenches and pull the card. 

 Josh
 Yeah. We've, we fast forward to where you're at now, we're back at the coffee shop and, you got your family office operating. Do you guys make your own investments? Do you guys manage other, do co work with other family offices? How does what's your structure there? 

 Tim
 Yeah, we actually formed a limited liability company at the time, but it was a limited family partnership, which is of a different structure. Florida has great laws that allow for limited liability companies, LLCs it's very popular format for business and structure. W we have LLCs that we use now, but we've created a limited family partnership, which allowed for tremendous savings for capital gains taxes. Right. We kind of saw on the horizon that some of the things that were happening were not sustainable, right. Things that were outside of our control. You remember, I mentioned before, the two parks kind of competing for the area in the middle and where all of our farmland was there in order to best manage the timing and quality of water flows to the environmental system, both in the Everglades and in Biscayne national park, they needed to raise the subterranean water table so that more water flowed under the ground into those two natural areas. 

 Tim
 Well, that's fine if you're, in a parking lot and, a couple of times when it rains, you get three or four inches of water in the parking lot, your car, like they don't, the car doesn't care. Maybe you get your shoes wet going to your car when you're farming potatoes, which are grown under the ground, three or four inches of increased water table rise under the ground was catastrophic. We lost the ability to manage rainfall, right? We could get six inch rain. If our fields were set up correctly, which of course ours were, we designed them so that they would shed that water quickly, still retain water for the potato plants. The balance of the stormwater was it exit into the existing storm water system. When you take three or four inches out of that over, a 12,000 acre area, that's a lot of reduced capacity. 

 Tim
 We've really re literally lost the ability to continue farming our crop. We kind of saw this happening right? As I started to engage and share information with the government entities that were involved with those processes, I quickly realized that, there are things you can do, and there are things you can't do and changing the plan, the general plan and the individual plans that all lined up to the same, ended up with the same result was not something that was possible, not by one person, certainly not by our potato growers association, not by the various entities that were engaged with, advocacy groups like farm bureau and vegetable associate, vegetable association with nursery growers association, all of those groups are fantastic and they're important, but you just can't change some things. We pretty quickly realized that at some point we would have to sell the land. In fact, my cousins, what catalyzed, the whole concept of development for us was my cousins put some land up for sale. 

 Tim
 They, they, we're planning for their future and they listed some land for sale. That's really what kind of sparked that process. So we had to react to that. By forming the limited family partnership, were able to not incur capital gains, even though were selling property. It's a pretty elaborate process, Kaufman rosin, some of the best CPAs in Florida, they have a big firm in Miami-Dade county downtown, actually near the bay. They're all going back to work soon after COVID, but they're brilliant tax advisors. I strongly recommend them, Kaufman rosin and associates. They're just phenomenal. W we had been working with them and continue to this day, still work with them. They pioneered that process with some other guys for around the country. It's, it's unique to our circumstance and others in the similar circumstance. It requires a lot of management and it's a little fairly awkward, but it worked for us, and farmers also don't tend to plan, for a farmer. 

 Tim
 The future is, well, I need to buy that land when it comes available for sale. If you have multiple generations that have done that maybe instead of investing in, 401ks, or if, retirement planning, they may be dependent upon liquidation in order to survive, in retirement. 

 Josh
 Sure. Yeah. You kind of saw that coming too. You saw what was going on with the two parks encroaching in on you. You saw what was going on in the government and trying to move water tables and increase water flow. You started to see that and you reacted by setting up a, a family limited liability partnership, and essentially your family office, you sold some property, you didn't have to pay a heavy load of capital tax on that. Now you had some capital in hand. What was the next action plan for you? 

 Tim
 Well, at the time, while I was still engaged us a lead consultant for the same entity providing consulting services, were the applicants and registered lobbyists for, Landstar, Elon, our pride prime, local homes. To a ton of different participants in the processes going on, and those builders who were involved in our master plan projects. So, so my focus was really on providing that service and doing a good job with that. At the same time, were, we did have to plan for the future. Yeah, we've invested money that came from some of those sales. We we've through 10 31 exchanges purchased a property. A lot of that was making land, but we also did some real, investing in real estate investment trusts and just general stock market investing. In our core business now for our personal home office is, owning and operating and managing real estate related assets and also, funds that are managed, thank heavens by investment advisors for the most part, but still take a lot of daily work, not daily, but frequent, we have to keep your eye on all the balls. 

 Tim
 It's like, 

 Josh
 What, what tools or things. Let's just say, someone's, a couple of steps behind you. What, what tools do you recommend for managing all those balls up in the air, managing the different funds that you guys invest in managing the properties? What, what tools do you like to use? 

 Tim
 I forget it, get a great attorney. If your core business is real estate, centric attorney, if you're, business something else, where you have a lot of labor issues or whatever, focus on that. Yeah, how have a great attorney that, you talk to him and tell him, look, we want to do this, whatever that is. I explained to them, your plans, make sure that they're a good fit for you and either engage them on an, with annual retainer or a, bring them into your projects. There are a lot, I know, attorneys that make good partners, there are attorneys that don't make good partners, but, if you find the right one, you can have an attorney that's a real estate investment partner with you. Sometimes yes, you still have to pay, right? Because title insurance gets written on every transaction, hopefully was, so there's still revenue sources in the deals, but, you can find that you can reduce your out-of-pocket expenses and, increase your chances of making a good deal and having a deal by having attorneys involved, either directly working for you or engaged as part of the process in a day, as partners in the bin, whatever you're attempting. 

 Tim
 Yeah. That's one thing, tax advice, a CPA, a great CPA is, not every CPA is an expert at everything, I guess I'm not, sharing a secret cause certainly people who pay taxes know that. Mostly PAs, may reluctantly admit that too. Like w when we dealt with Kauffman Roslyn, we dealt with the trust specialist in there from a guy that we knew personally, we knew his family. We knew him, John and Sevino phenomenal, just, just a great guy. It was really, feel like he was part of the family really, but Kaufman horizon has depth. They have depth in every kind of practice area that you can imagine for taxes. That's a good plus to you find a good CPA that you like, and maybe it's not, just a single mom and pop, although that works great too. If you find a CPA with a firm that has depth, that assistance is more readily available and probably at a lower cost. 

 Tim
 Those are the first two things, beyond that, again, following the same thing, get good professional advice. If you have an investment advisor, you can't always do everything on, what's the Reddit version of trading your own stocks. That just, it just by the market. Yeah. Day trade apps, 

 Josh
 Swing trading, Robin hood, 

 Tim
 Robin hood, that's it? Yeah. So, there's only so much that you can do on that. At least if you're me, right. And you have other things going on. The more the busier you are, the more you should rely in my experience on professional advice. So, hire someone who's a certified financial planner, they can work for, fill in the blank. Raymond, James, what's the Jones, Edward Jones, it really just fill in the blank. There's a lot of Merrill Lynch. All of those entities have people on staff that work in your area, no matter where you are in the world who are certified financial planners, they generally get the idea. Yes, it costs something. The bigger you are, the less it costs you can drive, you can negotiate better deals, and if you're a good person and you find a good person and they don't mind working with you, it's really not work. 

 Tim
 You know, that can be fun too. You know? I, I find myself, helping some of our professional advisors that are rely on for advice, after 10 years or so, working with them, if they have a question about real estate or something agricultural related, I'm certainly available to help them as well. 

 Josh
 Sure. Tim going from farmer, right. I'm just assuming right. Overalls in a plot and a plow. Right. You know, that kind of thing. 

 Tim
 Oh yeah. I've planted every acre of our potatoes every year that I've farmed a data. 

 Josh
 Oh, that's super cool. Super cool. You got your hands are probably super strong and you'd probably have some major callouses built up on those hands. 

 Tim
 Still, still today. That's true. 

 Josh
 That is hard work. I grew up in construction, digging in photos and such like that. 

 Tim
 Well, you know, it. 

 Josh
 In Florida, it gets pretty hot. Yeah. But, but going from plowing, being from farmer to family office, what was the mindset shift or a personal development thing that you had to increase in to take on different types of responsibilities and well, what happened in your world that had to change? 

 Tim
 I married a fantastic woman who became my wife and has been, my right hand really, since then, ? So, so even again, follow us a variation on theme, right? Having support, we have four kids, there's a lot that goes on with that, having a partner to help with that thought process. She was one of the first employees for Florida power and light corporation to receive a computer, a personal computer. You're not talking, this is not that long ago. Right? Like she, I think she was 17. Maybe she was 18 years old and she's 55 now. This is, you're not talking about a long time ago. She was the first person at Florida at Turkey point nuclear power plant to receive a personal computer to, for her work for Florida power and light. So, and I'm married her a few years after that. She brought a skill set to our farm that we didn't have before. 

 Tim
 Of course we made good use of that quick to adopt all of those, applications that are just easier on a computer. So, so there was already some mind expansion happening. I would say the other thing that helped was our association with production credit, farm credit of Florida and Florida farm bureau. They all have, those are all advocacy organizations, of course, farm credit, loans, money to farmers. It's a part, that's a cooperative. That's a little structure that's not available to a lot of other, but it is available to agricultural producers. So we took advantage of that. The, the, our bankers, had boards and groups, the local chamber of commerce, by exposing yourself and engaging in those types of things, right? Advocacy organizations, community organizations, you would be, I picked up a lot, and I kinda my mind expanded. I was able to consider some other things. 

 Tim
 I think that's true, no matter what business you're in, no matter what you have going on, if you get out in the community, you will be exposed to other ideas. Other concepts, you'll see what works and what doesn't on a different kind of level. That definitely helps helped me with my business and in our family. 

 Josh
 Yeah. So in your wheelhouse, right? Like fourth generation farmers, like you get agriculture, right? Like you get the ag industry, you get it. If you haven't learned it in poor generations, definitely not gonna pick it up. You know that in real estate, did you ever venture, especially like late nineties, early two thousands, you know, we saw a lot of tech companies come up. Now, you guys are a family office. You guys have of capital. Did you take any forays into the.com stuff or any tech investments early on? 

 Tim
 No, not really. We w the, it's funny because farming is gamble, right? It's a version of gambling. There's no way other way to describe it, because you're the risks that you have is usually disproportionate to the gain and anything can go wrong. Many things are outside of your personal control as a farmer, things could go wrong and, you lose it all. Are the private side of farming, not, the actual borrow money and farm and PLOwed into the ground and hope it comes up and you get a return, tends to leave people more on the conservative side when it comes to personal investment, right. Whatever we take away from our farms, generally, we don't want, that's the risk, right? We don't want to personally risk a lot. Fortunately, or unfortunately, no, we did not do a lot of that type of investment. Matter of fact, some of the investment that we did was based on what we learned in working with our development partners, all of our communities had community development districts, which are tax increment financing districts, not quite like the one that our governor just unraveled for Disney, but it's the same idea, right? 

 Tim
 Reedy Creek improvement district is a special tax industry. They collect money and spend it on infrastructure for Disney, that case. Well, for our developments, the paving drainage, water, sewer, all the maintenance and upkeep for, 2000 unit development. The ability to deliver that when the first house goes in is based on bond financing. We would buy some of the bonds that were available in projects that we knew everything about from the start. So, so, and they were paying quite well. You were getting five, six, almost 7% when we started on some of those early CDD community development district bond packages. That's pretty mainstream, pretty, no risk. Yeah. There were municipals too. They didn't even have taxes that, associated with the payments from those. Their tax-free municipal bonds from that perspective. 

 Josh
 Super cool. Yeah. How, how old are you? 10. 

 Tim
 I am 54. 

 Josh
 Okay. 54 years old, looking back, what was your best deal ever? Were steel ever? 

 Tim
 Oh, I would have to category, I'd have to bifurcate the categories like, okay. Go for the best deal ever was my consulting agreement with Landstar on the first Waterstone phase one, because that basically taught me a whole new trade. And, we spent the next 12 years doing a similar consulting work for Landstar and all of the subsequent builders in those projects. While that was not extremely lucrative financially, I can't measure what I learned through that process and was able to accomplish, so that was probably the best deal, the best financial deal working with gene Garcia CIP group, when we did a small project on Campbell drive crystal lake, and also in homestead that had the best financial reward and timing played a lot, had a lot to do with that, the design and what we created there, we paid some of the highest prices to ever be paid for real estate in that area, to our seller, who was also an agricultural partner of ours, Bob Plyler, and his family grew to how to tree farm. 

 Tim
 We actually worked with them for 20 years before that pioneered a process that allowed him to pay a lower rent, but then paid a little fee per tree. When he, when he harvested his trees, which worked for him work for us. When we bought his property, we paid them, gosh, it was over $180,000 acre, which was the highest land price, that area to date, not, the odd commercials, single tenant, retail out parcel fully, at a pad ready, tapped out, ready and build, but, vacant unimproved, agricultural land. When we started the process, were at about 22 to $25,000, an acre for agricultural land. Within, a six to eight year period, we got, had the opportunity to pay Bob 180 plus thousand per acre. So that was very exciting, right, Bob. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and look at him, he's even passed away, but I'm sure that's still working for his family and his kids and their kids. 

 Tim
 So, but then were able to, plan and entitle a development and make sure that it would work. Those, the value of that being ready to begin construction, we get paid on a per door basis for the unit count that we could support and then some factor in, for the commercial part of the project as well. It was financially rewarding to fully entitled that and then sell that property to pride homes actually as a group that bought it. I've still worked with pride homes. Even today. We still do some things. I have done some things in the state in the last five years. So. 

 Josh
 Super cool, worst deal, ever, 

 Tim
 Worst deal ever. I may never see the return on this investment financially. That's why I wanted to bifurcated financially buying 120 acres here in Swanee county that abuts my home. We paid a premium for that property from folks who are developers in their own, right. They planned a flag lot project. Jim Jane has a kind of a program and a can for taking large tracks of agricultural land. It proximity to developed centers, small cities and, not inside an urban development area or an urban boundary urban service area, but close enough to where, you could, you don't have to drive more than an hour to get to the grocery store or whatever. Jim Jane sells those through a telephone system. They do culvert and a drive in, and there's your, you get your five acres or 10 acres, right? Yeah. Those are flagged lots making use of the existing paved frontage, usually, maybe not developed ever, but someone's idea about, someday I'm going to build a house in Florida, but often, with older mobile homes, not, I mean, that's a great, that's a cheap way to live. 

 Tim
 I'm all for that, but I may not want to put my house next to it. You follow me. They had a flag lot development plan for the 120 acres just beside the house that I had just bought on another 120 acres. I, I, it was now or never right there, we're going to do that. And, and they had been doing that with some other properties that were going to be successful at that. It's allowed by the code, if I ever wanted to control who, what happened on the property next to mine, that was the time. That was the peak of the market that was like late 2007, ? Oh, yeah. 

 Josh
 Yeah. 

 Tim
 So, I mean, I've sold timber off of it. I've had a tree nursery, operating there for the last couple of years. I'm not even close. I've never, I'm not, my kids maybe we'll get some return from that investment, but I mean, it's great, right. It's there. It prevents, we go all the way out to the paved road now for our property where I live. So. 

 Josh
 The best way to control your neighbors is to buy by everything around you. Right. 

 Tim
 So currently, so yeah. 

 Josh
 Oh man. 2007, that was a tough year, in the real estate industry, construction industry. I w I built with partners and investors, 40 something spec homes, right. 2006 and seven yet. Yeah. That wasn't fun during that time, right. There was that dip, like, how did you, what was your focus? What was your focus during that time? Were you gobbling up more land afterwards where you going on acquisition mode, are you going into, less pull back mode? Like what was going through your mind? 

 Tim
 Well, looking with hindsight, of course, I can tell you what I should have been doing. It's easy to figure that out, but I really, I was still working until 2012. Right. I was engaged as a consultant, doing development, entitlements, working through processes that were, maybe a concept in a four, put together an oh five, funded in oh six and, make application oh seven. There was a lot of that still to do until about 2012. I was flying back and forth for north Florida to south Florida, appearing at hearings. We had a hearings once or twice a month, and then meetings, most of the days spreading between I was trying to cut back and do a four day work week, but there was still a lot of work to do. Yeah. So, so for me, I never, I know that the market came apart. Right. Because there was the pipeline stopped having incoming work. 

 Tim
 Right. But, but the sense of it didn't really manifest until probably about 2010 in 2010, I looked around and I was like, oh my gosh, there's no work to do. There's no money to be made. Like we will look at deals and there was no way to make that work. Like it's just stuff that nothing you can do with that. 

 Josh
 So. 

 Tim
 I feel fortunate. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Well, you said, I know what I should have done if you could go back and just one small tweak back in oh 7 0 8 or during the temporary, what would you have done? 

 Tim
 I would have amassed more cash. I would have cashed out of some of our not real estate related, but not high growth stuff. And, and I, I would have probably assemble, have more cash on hand, probably would have sold some dirt, that we didn't need and had no like, oh, I'll get to that. You know? Cause we had bought some things to make other deals happen. And when, so we'll get to that. Right. We'll do that later. Well, not if there's no market, right. I would have had more cash and I would've waited and bought, I would've bought more. I would've bought more houses, single family home to know the rental market really started to crank up 2013, 2014 and 1516. I mean, that would have been a great time to have purchased a, 20 or 30 single-family homes to take advantage of the, the collapse in price. 

 Tim
 I could have, we could have put them inventory, rented them out. Then, in the last three years, started selling those off. I would probably, I made an a, I would never leave my house. Maybe after that. I don't know. I dunno, travel. I'd probably just be traveling. 

 Josh
 Cool. I'll let you decide. W w we've got time left in this chat you mentioned, now you spend a lot of your brain power and mind power doing some real estate deals, triple net, double net, you do 10 31 exchanges. You, you work with real estate funds and REITs. What, what, w what is the topic within that you feel excited about talking about you also do political working with governments and agencies. What is the topic that you want to dive into? We can kind of round out the back end of this interview. 

 Tim
 Okay. I can tell you something that I'm pretty excited about an area of the market that seems to hold a lot of opportunities. Still. I think a lot of the money that was being left on the table the last year and a half, two years, even three years in this particular niche of the commercial real estate market has been, carved off and put on one plate or another. I still think there's a lot of opportunity there, medical marijuana dispensary's in Florida. Yeah. This there's nothing that really compares from a simple cash on cash return perspective. The cap rates on those are excellent compared to most, every other type of, commercial real estate, especially single tenant retail. So I'm excited about that. We're actually working currently with a customer, a friend and client to acquire a medical marijuana dispensary. We, I think I, I voted this way. 

 Tim
 I don't know of any other medical marijuana dispensaries in Florida that have been purchased with a purchase money mortgage through a financial institution in Florida, a bank in Florida, w we may be the first people to do that. And I'm very excited about that. I, maybe follow up with me in 60 days and maybe I'll give you a, a report on how that went and that information would be helpful. I think, to a lot of investors. 

 Josh
 We've worked with, we work with a group that does investments into the cannabis industry. They're a VC group and they are super excited with what's going on politically in, in this realm and the opportunity there, they are super excited. I I'm happy to do some introductions after this interview. But yeah, I agree with you. I think, I think that that is an area that Florida's paying attention to and there's going to be a good opportunity there. I really do know. 

 Tim
 Yeah, for sure. Look, I mean, from a personal perspective, I've never served in the military, but I have a lot of friends who have being a farmer. I know a lot of older farmers and, it's a rough lot of construction industry. You're been in the construction industry. How many people do we know that are in the construction industry that live in pain every single day, ? I don't want those guys to have to, or girls to have to deal with, opiates as an option. That's certainly not a good option. I, I would love to see marijuana legalized nationally. I think probably we're on the way to seeing that happen. I hope, but regardless of that, Florida has its own thing going with that and the real estate part of it, right? You, can't the way it's set up in Florida. You cannot actually own a, you can't be affiliated with a license. 

 Tim
 You can't, manufacturer sell some other lists of things you can't do to actually own the dispensary real estate, unless you're actually, the licensee or something it's complicated. For us, it's great for investors to, that's a way to participate in that new business and get a decent return. Yeah. 

 Josh
 I'm in, I'm excited about it where our group is participating. So yeah, I'm excited. You and I will definitely have some follow up. Well, the purpose and mission of this show is to put people in deals together, deals and deal makers. Right? That's what I love about my job and getting, get an opportunity to meet great people like you doing some cool stuff. Let me ask you, w Tim, during this interview, we'll give you a chance to give people, how to connect with you and such like that later on. What questions should, I've asked you during this interview that I screwed up and you're like, he'll stood and read in front of you, Josh, you missed it. What should I have asked? 

 Tim
 My, my mind doesn't really work that way. I react. If there's a specific goal that I'm looking for it, I do too much research behind that. No more than the people I'm going to see in this case, I just kind of float along. I don't know that you didn't ask any particular question. Yeah. I thought you did a great job. 

 Josh
 Thank you. I thought you did a great job as well together. Sounds good. So, Hey, Tim, for people out in the industry who might want to do a deal with you, connect with you and, have a conversation what's a good way for people to find your business. Some of the things you're working on. 

 Tim
 W we have not done a good job of keeping our website up to date, but it's being worked on. CBRE associates.com, S E B E R a associates.com. We'll be up and running soon, but our email and telephone is the best way to get us. My telephone number is (386) 590-9015. That's 3 8 6 5 9 0 1 5. Yeah, that's probably the best way that the email is a kind of a throwback. It's been my email since I was farming. It's F L potato rivh for Florida, and then P O T a T o@prodigy.net. Also a dinosaur there, prodigy product prodigy done them. 

 Josh
 Awesome. Awesome, awesome fellow dealmakers, listening in as always reach out to our guests. If, if they're working on a deal that seems interesting too, or that you could participate in some way, reach out to them and say, Hey, heard you on the deal scout show. I want to figure out a way to do some deals together, all their contact information, what they provided will be in the show notes. If you're running, jogging, watching a movie, whatever, you can always come back later on to the show notes, click it, connect directly to our guests. If you would like to come on the show yourself, talk about a deal. Talk about some of the things that you've learned that we could collectively learn from your successes or failures, head on over to the deal. Scout.com. Fill out a quick form. Maybe get you on the show next till then talk to you all on the next episode. 

 Josh
 See everybody.