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Show Summary
In this episode, Tyler Williams, founder of Essential Capital TW, shares his journey from investor to private money broker, focusing on single-family fix and flips, and his vision for scaling a comprehensive real estate funding brokerage. Discover insights on market opportunities, rigorous homework processes, and strategic growth plans.
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Tyler Williams (00:00)
Well, I would say pay very close attention to the underwriting of each property that you’re trying to invest in because the underwriting process is very key. And looking into not necessarily falling in love with a property because I see a lot of investors that try to make deals work that don’t necessarily work. And they’ll look for any way possible to make it work.
Scott Bursey (01:54)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. And today we’re talking with a true mover in the investment space. We are thrilled to have Tyler Williams, the founder of Essential Capital TW, joining us. Tyler, thanks for coming on the show.
Tyler Williams (01:55)
Excellent.
And thanks very much, Scott, for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to come and talk to your audience as well as mine. And I really look forward to what we have to speak about today.
Scott Bursey (02:19)
absolutely, this is gonna be exciting. And if you could paint us a picture of your entry point of your career and what is your main focus today, Tyler?
Tyler Williams (02:28)
So my entry point was actually on the investor side of things. I kind of got interested in the investor side of things. And that actually led me to different contacts and situations and networking that brought me into the private money brokering space. So here we are today. I have my own brokerage and looking to scale that business quickly and efficiently. And yeah, I’m really looking forward to what the future has.
Scott Bursey (02:57)
Absolutely, and I’m excited for you. And I got to ask you this, Tyler, Essential Capital TW has established itself with a targeted approach. Can you share what specific niche or asset class you focus on and what led you to specialize in that area?
Tyler Williams (03:13)
Yeah, so we are currently focusing on single family fix and flips right now. We’re targeting that area because there is a lot of need for capital in that area, especially with ⁓ interest rates the way they are and the way that conventional financing is treating investors that are trying to scale their businesses. And we also do… go ahead, sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.
Scott Bursey (03:35)
Absolutely.
Sure.
no problem at all. I just going to concur on that and please, please elaborate.
Tyler Williams (03:41)
I was just saying.
Yeah, I was just saying that we do focus on other things as well, but that’s our primary focus right now. The reason, like I was saying, the reason that is is because there’s a large amount of individuals that are seeking funding for those types of projects. We also do other things. We are trying to scale on the commercial side of things as well. So retail space, retail office, and multifamily.
Scott Bursey (04:11)
That clarity of focusing is so critical. Tell me, what is your long game plan?
Tyler Williams (04:18)
So our long game plan is to have a large brokerage that helps investors from single family fix and flips all the way to the commercial side of things. Like I was just explaining the office, retail and the multifamily space. I know that there’s a lot of need for that types of those types of capital products, bridge loans, et cetera, know, ground up construction funding and things of that nature. And there’s a lot of lenders out there with a large appetite of that. So I’m looking to take advantage of that.
and help both sides out along with myself.
Scott Bursey (04:49)
Thank you for diving deeper into your scaling ⁓ vision, Tyler. Much appreciated. What does the rigorous homework process look like for essential capital before you decide to move forward on a major acquisition from your lens?
Tyler Williams (05:53)
Well, we tend to focus on the borrower. ⁓ that’s the first thing that you know, vetting a borrower is very important and that starts right away. So, you you kind of look for things like not necessarily willing to share documents and things of that nature and just kind of slow at operations. And you can also kind of, you can also kind of tell where they are in their investor cycle as well when you’re asking for certain things.
But that’s definitely where the majority of the homework starts. And then also the property itself is a big thing too. You know, the properties that don’t pencil, you can kind of tell right away. you know, doing this for long periods of times, you start to learn markets and things of that nature. And if something sticks out, that’s either too good to be true or it looks way off, then, you know, we got to dig deeply into that right away. So that’s a big thing.
Scott Bursey (06:44)
preparation doing your homework as you put it is so critical. know Tyler every business has its ups and downs. You mind sharing a point that you have struggled in as far as your business is concerned?
Tyler Williams (06:59)
Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve struggled with finding ⁓ well-motivated individuals that are looking to get into the brokerage business. That can be difficult on a few different aspects just based on whether or not they work well with us, whether or not they’re self-motivated, whether or not they’re willing to learn, are they teachable?
You know that the big one is definitely do they work well with me and my team as well as just others in general and, and investors. Cause you could be the, you could be the smartest individual and know everything about a subject, but not be able to handle a conversation when it comes to speaking about the business. So that’s, that’s definitely a something that we’ve struggled with, I guess, at the, at the beginning stages of this scaling process.
Scott Bursey (07:50)
And I think a lot of our listeners can relate to those very same growing pains that you just alluded to. That’s great advice on adapting your structure as you expand, you know, finding the right people, the positive people. And…
Looking ahead, what is one piece of essential actionable advice you would give a real estate investor who are aiming not to just survive, I guess, but to truly thrive, Tyler, over the next, well, let’s say 12 to 18 months.
Tyler Williams (08:21)
Well, I would say pay very close attention to the underwriting of each property that you’re trying to invest in because the underwriting process is very key. And looking into not necessarily falling in love with a property because I see a lot of investors that try to make deals work that don’t necessarily work. And they’ll look for any way possible to make it work.
But when you’re working on such close tolerances, there’s so much room for failure.
You know, if you want to be able to succeed, I think you really have to stick to your guns when it comes to that type of investing.
Scott Bursey (08:55)
Great advice. Now let’s switch gears here a little bit and talk about opportunities. What do you feel the company’s biggest opportunity is right now? This could be like a market shift or new offering or just something that your business is about ready to double down on.
Tyler Williams (09:11)
So I definitely see an opportunity here because I see a lot of businesses that are tending to pull back their advertising, their employees, and just their scaling in general. And I’m actually taking the exact opposite approach. I’m trying to scale and I’m trying to market and trying to talk to people as much as I can. And I’m looking to grow very much so in this atmosphere.
Scott Bursey (09:33)
That is awesome. And what’s your strategy to grow? And I want to say, it sounds like you want to grow aggressively. Can you take us on your vision over the next maybe decade or so and how you would like to grow aggressively?
Tyler Williams (10:23)
Absolutely. Yeah. So the ideal growth and scale is in the next 10 years, I’d like to have a hundred brokers under the brokerage of essential capital TW trying to help investors. Like I said, from each individual point of real estate investing, from groups that can focus on fix and flips, groups that can focus on ground up construction, the BRRR process, DSCR loans and things of that nature.
You know, when you have groups, we have groups focusing on individual projects and processes, it makes it a lot easier for that, for scaling essentially.
Scott Bursey (11:00)
Thank you for taking us a notch or two deeper into that. Certainly appreciate it. Any challenges you’re watching closely right now, and that could be market risk, competition, access to deals or capital, that sort of thing.
Tyler Williams (11:13)
Yeah, I think that things that I’m paying closely to right now is the amount of documents needed for conventional funding and the amount of pushback a lot of investors and a lot of home buyers are getting right now. Since we are focusing on single family fix and flips, a lot of people understand that there is many challenges in that atmosphere right now. And, you know, our clients are really feeling that and it’s actually
⁓ pushing them towards finding other capital sources, like essential capital, TW. So we’re looking to, you know, we’re paying very close attention to that type of atmosphere. And we’re also trying to help out the investors in that way, because, you know, as they grow, we grow as well. So we look forward to, we actually take on challenges.
Scott Bursey (12:01)
You embrace them, it sounds like, and take the ball and run with it. And Tyler, I know that you’re going to get that ball into the end zone for the winning score. That is awesome. Any key takeaways that you would like to provide for our audience? Any golden nuggets for our listeners here today regarding Essential Capital TW?
Tyler Williams (12:21)
Absolutely. So ⁓ at Essential Capital TW, we actually strive to guide and help investors along the process, depending on, it doesn’t matter where you are in your cycle. You could be at the very beginning, unseasoned investor looking to try to get your first fix and flip to your well-seasoned investor who has a thousand units in multifamily space. So we offer a large amount of different types of
products for any type of investors. That’s like one of our biggest things. A lot of people can only go to one or two different lenders and I only have access to capital from a few different spaces. But as essential capital’s advantage is we have funding from all different types of capital essentially through this.
United States of America. And we also focus on the entire country and not just one.
Scott Bursey (13:14)
That’s awesome. That is really some good broad vision. And Tyler, we love fostering connections here at Real Estate Pros. For the listeners who want to follow your journey or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you?
Tyler Williams (13:27)
So the best way is to reach out to us on our social media accounts, Essential Capital TW, like Facebook, our website as well. It’s www.essentialcapitaltw.com. On there, there’s forms and there’s contact information and all sorts of different ways.
Scott Bursey (13:45)
Tyler, thank you for being on the show today. This has been truly a pleasure.
Tyler Williams (13:51)
Thank you, Scott. really appreciate the opportunity to be on such a prestigious show.
Scott Bursey (13:55)
It is our pleasure and you’re welcome back at any time, Tyler and excited to hear how your journey progresses. And for our listeners, we appreciate you. If you got value out of today’s episode, please subscribe. We have more conversations coming up with exceptional operators, just like Tyler until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.
