Tax Sale Investing: The Last Real Estate Goldmine for Off-Market Property Deals

Jim Tannehill (00:00)
that’s the key today. ⁓ I hear people get discouraged. They’ll look at a property that doesn’t actually cash flow in a certain market. But I really think that they’re still out there if you find a problem to solve. You’d be surprised at how many markets in just a normal suburb after you factor in your ⁓ financing cost and your insurance and…

maintenance and management and everything, there might be $200 left, right? That’s not enough. That’s not worth ⁓ the headache or the risk factor alone, right?

Micah Johnson (02:12)
Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m joined by Jim, who’s been making some serious moves in real estate now since 2013. Jim, welcome in man, glad to have you.

Jim Tannehill (02:23)
Thanks for having me.

Micah Johnson (02:25)
Absolutely,

I’m excited for you to be here today. You’ve you you work in a particular niche of real estate that I want folks to learn more about and understand how it actually works. Again, it’s what I strive for on this show, like the nuts and bolts. And you’ve got some good stuff to share. So I’m excited to dive in. So for those who aren’t familiar with you yet, you know, let us know a little bit more about yourself and what your main focus is right now.

Jim Tannehill (02:49)
So

we basically started with our own capital and our own properties, and then that led to a syndication route. And so each year we do a syndication and we’re regulation D compliant, and we have ⁓ equity partners and we use those funds each year to purchase off market properties through local tax sales. So real estate backed tax liens.

⁓ In my opinion, it’s one of the last gold mines, certainly in real estate, left today. And so that’s what we do every year. We raise this money, we’ll purchase off market properties, and then we actually add some value and transform those into low income housing. And so we’ll do class C rentals, ⁓ we do some private tenants as well as Section 8. And the returns are really good because

of our very unique acquisition strategy combined with the self-management on the renovation side and the rental side. So those three are key, the renovation keys and the self-management on the rental plus a very unique acquisition strategy.

Micah Johnson (04:01)
And it’s that vertical integration as you go along, right? You found that well to start digging in your gold mine, however it is, you started digging through that vein, you found it, and then you built the machine that gets it out of the ground and up to the surface and deployed and over and over again. that’s really what I’ve learned most from high level operators in real estate is it’s hoping a strategy.

It’s a machine. build a machine that trades in the commodity that you want. Really, that’s how it works. And really the nuts and bolts of it kind of spread mostly across business. It’s the performance parts that really niche it down to that particular thing. Okay, Jim, so

how’d you get here today, man? Why real estate?

Why’d end up in the industry?

Jim Tannehill (04:47)
So my

back in the day had a small portfolio of rentals. And so he planted that seed at a very young age. ⁓ And then, you know, my career path was actually completely different. So I used to work in healthcare. I got a master’s degree in healthcare. I’m doing medical sales and I’m planning on just having a retirement package. And I’m thinking I’m going to, you know, save my money, put it away.

and I’ll buy a couple of short sales and have a nice little retirement for my family in one day. And then it really jump started because that was around just post the GFC. So around 2009, 10, 11, one short sale turned into two or three very quickly. One REO became five. And then before you knew it, I had discovered the tax sales. So one thing really led to another.

I had 20 properties much quicker than I could have ever thought. think within the first about a year and a half, maybe two years, I had about 10 rentals and that was a pretty good launching path. And ultimately I switched career paths a little early. I should have kept the earned income longer than I did, but I did switch career paths around 2014.

Micah Johnson (06:03)
why do you say that? What lessons learned there? feel like there’s something we could unpack for folks out there.

Jim Tannehill (06:09)
There

is a there’s a huge learning lesson and if I can help one person ⁓ know the difference between earned income and residual income and don’t give up earned income too soon. Because the earned income allowed me to get that first group of properties so quickly and it really set the foundation for the whole operation. ⁓ But ultimately you know that the earned income for as long as you can is a huge tool.

And it really does not take away from the assets it only adds to it. know, we’re this idea that, you know, I want to go to my passion full time, you know, it’s sometimes it’s better to pay your dues, you know, do a great job at whatever you’re doing, lock in that earned income and then slowly build assets over time. ultimately it worked out, but it worked out well for me. But in hindsight,

⁓ It could have expedited things ⁓ quite a bit. And that was 10 years ago. So in today’s market with where pricing is and how the general economics are even more so, get the earned income first, then acquire those assets over time.

Micah Johnson (07:23)
There

a coach I worked with in the past. name was Dr. Jeff Spencer and he had this concept he called stable planet. And he said, okay, look, reality is you have to have somewhere to come home to. can go wherever you want in the universe, but you have to have somewhere to come home to that is stable. Cause if you don’t have one of those, the idea that put your back against the wall and just go,

isn’t effective. Okay. Like we get quote unquote success, but you have no idea what it could have been like had you not burn the boats. Like I know people love to talk about that quote and the thing, but it’s like, look guys, that was a war strategy

zero. Okay.

times have changed.

Life is different now. We are not fighting for our lives. You want to keep a bunch of guys from retreating, you burn the ships. Okay. I get it. I it. I would do it too, but we’re not doing that. That’s not what we’re doing. We’re actually trying to create the life you want. That’s what I’m trying to do. And I learned it the hard way too, man. You want to, you want to. Rapidly increase your time at failing. Go into early.

put pressure on a dream, especially financial pressure on a dream too early, because as humans, that one is not one-sided. That has an emotional pull on us. There’s an energy to it. It’s not just the, it’s not just money. It represents so much to us in the way we have to live our lives that when you add that strain, unfortunately, it’s why a lot of marriages end.

It’s why a lot of dreams don’t come true. It’s why a lot of things happen. So I appreciate you sharing that because if you are listening or watching in and you feel like you want to go in awesome, awesome. I love it. I’m so for it. The time to do it will be obvious. It’s obvious when to do it. If you if you just keep doing what you’re doing, it becomes overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly obvious that I need to go full time because now

Your time doing the business makes way more than what it was and it’s on repeat. Like you said, it’s not the residuals actually working and you can create earned inside of it too. That’s typically what happens.

Jim Tannehill (09:43)
absolutely.

And you look much better to banks as well, right? Especially the early years, not so much after you built up stabilized operation, very different, but those early years with the earned income and a traditional tax return, ⁓ banks are much more likely to lend and that can scale much faster than going full-time too early.

Micah Johnson (10:54)
And

story I hear most often, I’ve gotten to hang out in some really high level real estate rooms. It’s not the back against the wall one. That story is usually one of their businesses that I call the graveyard. It’s one they tried and didn’t work. ⁓ That’s usually the one you hear about where you put yourself in a position that I either hit a home run or I lose. And man, statistically, you’re going to lose way, way, way more often than that home run.

And so again, if you’re out there listening and watching in, don’t buy into the pressure that you just need to go do something like one, find folks like Jim around you, people that have done it. Here’s one thing I’ve learned about people that have actually done it. You’re willing to share. You’re willing to share the scars like the story you just told us. I I can’t tell you how much time and money that could save someone if they listen for

Jim Tannehill (11:43)
sure. Yeah, for sure.

Micah Johnson (11:46)
so then we’re let’s plug back in. You go full time. You started with the short sales foreclosure route. I got into real estate in 2014 on a foreclosure team. So that was absolute heyday during that time period. Then you get into the tax strategy.

This is where the part of your story starts to

from like buying houses to build the machine. So take us through what that experience was like.

Jim Tannehill (12:15)
So I got the experience with renovations, rentals, figured out that I had to self-manage, figured out how to contain the costs with maintenance and everything that’s involved in the management side first. But once the tax lien started coming in and that really accelerated things, I ultimately had college buddies that basically called and said, I don’t care what you do, you got to get us into this. I want some of these real estate deals.

⁓ You’ve already figured out the path. You’ve already put your money down and learned the lessons. And now you’ve got this tax sale thing where you’re purchasing properties at deep discounts, mortgage free, by the way, ⁓ totally off market, get us in. And so at that point, I figured out how to do a limited partnership and restructured some things, ⁓ learned all the compliance parts of it. And at that point, then I could basically go with

partners which accelerated it even faster because now it wasn’t just my own money. Now I figured out a way to ⁓ gain a little bit more power in the acquisitions. And ⁓ so then it really took off and still under the same umbrella where we’re purchasing the tax liens, renovating them, self-managing them and holding them ultimately in low-income housing. ⁓ And if you know much about low-income housing, ⁓

The situation is it can be extremely profitable or it can be extremely time consuming. And the whole nature of the opportunity is the fact that it does require self-management. It does require some lessons, requires a little bit of persistence and it requires adapting what you think is gonna work at first. Everyone thinks it will, it doesn’t, you adjust, you evolve. And ⁓ that’s the nature of this.

Classy housing, but today you really have to have a niche. You really have to have something that not everyone wants to do, can do, wants to stick with it. That’s what you really have to have today. It’s not gonna be something that is super attractive and sexy. you see a marketing brochure with a big pool and a nice apartment building. And then you look at the cap rates and the numbers, then it’s vastly overstated and still.

not very impressive or worth your time. So that’s the key today is find a niche and stick it out.

Micah Johnson (14:42)
man, and that’s most people don’t stay in the same one. They got in with that’s the reality because you’re constantly

In my career from 2014, I’ve done many different kinds of real estate from moving tons of houses to hedge funds to own in a mobile home as a rental to working on a project now in the land home package world where you, you, you find yourself in the process and we live, we live in a cyclical environment. So you figure out, okay, what’s, what’s the product? How am I going to do it? How am I going to operate in the world? That’s delivered to me,

right? Like we’re, we’re all playing in the game or.

It has the rules, we’re playing in it. ADHD got me. What were we talking about right before that?

Jim Tannehill (15:24)
markets.

Right

that. ⁓ Your experience with

home parks and everything else that you’ve done.

Micah Johnson (15:30)
I know,

was a reason though. What were you saying?

Jim Tannehill (15:32)
Well,

was saying that we have to have a niche.

Micah Johnson (15:35)
there it is bingo thank you sir and we were growing along the way i always make it back man i just wander on trails

but that’s just the

is is finding that thing that fits you that that you want to do and it’s going to be it’s going to be hard everything you want on the other side of hard but if you’re willing to learn that particular process for that particular niche you will be as successful as you want to be ⁓

That’s where there’s truly no competition in my opinion. Cause when you start to niche down, you realize this pie is huge y’all. It’s huge. Like it’s unfathomably big. You know, you want to mess with some or see if someone’s really in real estate. When you ask, if you ask them, say, you know, what do you do? I’m in real estate. Ask them what kind and see how good they do with that question. And if they don’t answer it really well, they’re not in real estate.

So big.

take us into your experience on your particular niche. So why you said you learn that you got to self manage. Yep.

us through that. if someone’s interested in that,

in that niche, what do they need to expect? What kind of, what kind of potholes could you warn them about?

Jim Tannehill (16:44)
well, the first thing, originally I wanted to be a wholesaler and it’s very important to ascertain your own path and all the good deals I was keeping, I’m thinking, I don’t want to just flip these for five grand, I want to keep them, right? So that was the first pivot to get into rentals. Well, then I loved the idea of owning rentals, but it was a little bit of a surprise.

The management side because it’s not as simple as everyone makes it out to be just find a property management group. Not that simple. Okay, especially in class C housing, especially if you’re in in the market that we’re in with low income housing. So most of the property management companies that are established have a minimum of 1000 doors minimum ⁓ and they’re not really expanding that much more. A lot of them are.

connected with a realtor and they don’t actually have a huge background in property management. They have a background in real estate sales, right? Right. So, ⁓ okay, then you have that issue. The other issue is that a lot of the incentives are not totally aligned and a lot of the things worked out yet from a business perspective. So for example, ⁓ a property manager leases a house for you and the tenant moves out before the year, they get another leasing fee. So, ⁓

There’s not a huge incentive for cost containment. They get their leasing fee, they get their monthly management fee. And what happens when, you know, most of the wrenches go out the door for repairs and, you know, other problems. Of course, everyone is going to say one thing. And I’m sure that an ethical business person is going to do their best. We’re not talking about someone’s ethics, but in addition to ethics, you have to have the incentives as well.

Even when you have someone that’s determined to try for cost containment, you have to align incentives to put everyone on the same playing field. And this is a big issue that I’ve noticed with property management. these are just some of the things that out of the gate, I realized, if it’s one thing, if I just want to say, here’s 15 properties, these are for retirement. Okay, I’ll see them in 20, 30 years.

And that’s a whole different story. I wanted to scale and really launch a ⁓ legitimate business. And I realized that the management is critical and it’s way more than just the investing piece, which I always thought was the easier part. I thought the investing piece was the fun and easy part, but ⁓ ultimately it comes down to how those assets are going to be sustained. So yeah, we had to self-manage by necessity.

And when I say self-manage, that doesn’t mean that I’m taking tenant phone calls, but that means that we have our own team, we have our own processes, we have our own reporting structure, and we have our own oversight. So I don’t take tenant calls, ⁓ but our team is well-designed and our structure is fully set up by us.

Micah Johnson (20:22)
create an internal property management company is what you’ve done. Like that’s the reality. And you’re right, man. So many things get said about having rentals, whatever class you’re in, just real estate’s not that passive. It takes a long time to get to passive. So

can’t be in a rush to get to what that actually looks

And then like you’re saying, as you get into your actual niche,

you’re gonna learn what actually makes success because it’s not just buy good houses. That’s step one, like you’re experiencing. Especially if you’re gonna hold rentals, you’re delivering an experience. Not as crazy as one that you need to deliver in an STR obviously, but the people interacting with the house, the people in your team that have to interact with it, this whole thing, like it’s way bigger than just buy house, good house, get money at end of month, right?

That’s not what has to happen. And I love that you’re sharing that because you’ve got to pay attention to it. And it’s one thing I’ve noticed for high performers. It’s so easy for us just to do more because we can. But if you’re going to build a legitimate business, you have to think top down out of the gate. You got to start thinking who, not how, as Dr. Ben Hardy says, because it’s just, it gets only more and more complicated as you quote unquote scale and

you get that backwards again. You see a lot of businesses gone out of business past couple years in real estate because scaling ain’t easy. You’re not ready for it. I say this to a lot of people, you you can get in with the dream to own a thousand units. I’m fine with that. My question is, are you willing to become the person who owns a thousand units? That’s what real estate is going to ask of you.

Jim Tannehill (22:08)
You know what you get you get five to eight rock star property managers that were just for you full-time and Probably, you know five six rock star maintenance guys plus some other specialized, you know licensed electricians whatnot, etc ⁓ That’s a possible recipe

Micah Johnson (22:30)
It

And look what you have to be. You got to know how to lead people. Well, you have to know how to have a team, you know, you know, have to know how to put systems, not processes inside your business. Cause you just named three different companies that need to work. Right. You’ve got your investment company, your property management company, your maintenance company. Like you’ve got multiple things that have to work right. And

you’re saying, even incentivized correctly

even deeper than that, like people are the hardest part of business.

Building a good team, having a strong person, because someone will only do something so long for money.

Jim Tannehill (23:04)
So

can tell you the other huge breakthrough that will probably help a lot of your listeners as far as cost containment goes with rentals. This

the other kind of, after the self-management,

other really big part that ⁓ I still go back and I credit to kind of where we are at this point. We were doing really well on the collection side, but not so much on the cost containment side, right? And, ⁓ you know, one repair that is, you know,

doesn’t seem like a big deal adds up. And then when you have so many properties, plus with duplexes, single family, those are a little bit more expensive by nature as well. So anyway, what I did was I created a maintenance position where we find a person that is really good, that meshes well with our team and culture and that our tenants like, that’s reliable. And we say, look, we got to come up with a fee schedule. So instead of going out,

you know something that’s going to take you 3045 minutes a gasket, a wax ring, a leak, a door, a window. We gotta get we gotta get a fee schedule or a favorable hourly rate. Now to make this work as with so many other things in business, you have to find a way to meet their needs too. It’s gotta it has to benefit them as well. And so I said, OK, on the first of the month, I tell you what, no matter what, I don’t care if you get

five service calls or 50, I’m giving you a $400 out of pocket every single month. And obviously that was back then. It’s a lot higher today, you know, with the more properties and whatnot. But that’s one thing that a lot of investors, they hear that, hey, wait, you’re just going to give them a $400 stipend every month, regardless of how much work is done. said, absolutely. Why would you not? Why would you not want to do that?

to stabilize the entire operation and that it did wonders. So every single month at the first of the month, I get invoices for all the maintenance. And this is not heavier stuff. We’re not talking about roofing. I’m not talking about, you know, secondary inspections to some degree. I’m talking about routine. know, the whole- What is the phrase? A small leak will sink a big ship, right? Okay, so-

Micah Johnson (25:14)
normal stuff.

Jim Tannehill (25:20)
With this many properties, you’ve got to have a way to knock out these routine, not so big of a deal service calls and having to be fast for the tenants and then have it not cost an arm and a leg. so basically the idea is you can adjust that monthly stipend and bonus however you want, depending on the size of the portfolio and you can set the fee schedule. ⁓ but that did wonders for us and that really stabilized in the early years.

Micah Johnson (25:49)
And

400 bucks, what is that? $4,800 a year? Like you’re not taught to buy that kind of peace of mind and to install a process that again, knows your product is being taken care of.

Jim Tannehill (26:02)
And let’s say you don’t have enough properties for a full-time maintenance person. The 400 is not designed to be his full-time. That’s just a bonus. Now,

you have enough properties, different story,

scenario, right? But this structure, I think, can apply to whatever size the portfolio is.

Micah Johnson (26:23)
Well, it lines up with a quote that I love that if you don’t have resources, be resourceful, right? Based on wherever you are, how, you know, there’s a way to solve that problem that gets you what you need. Right. And it’s, it’s an out of the box way to do it. And it just goes with real estate is a team sport. We can’t do it all alone. You cannot do anything in real estate alone at all. can’t even buy a house by yourself. How many people do you need? what? Eight people just to buy a house. Like it’s a lot of folks involved.

So learning to work well with

is critical in this industry, especially inside your own team. Cause that I’ve always liked to encourage it, think myself and encourage other business owners to think of your, employees. That’s your first customer. You treat them right. They treat the one that pays you right. Right. That’s that’s that mindset that shifts and where, me ask you this, when you scaled into a business and started taking it up, cause you came from medical sales where

It’s Maverick life, baby. I worked in the medical field. You came and saw me a lot. Right. So it’s just knowing how it works and how it bounces around. That’s way different than what you have set up right now. What were some learning curves, just like leadership wise and team building wise that you went through to get to that point?

Jim Tannehill (27:40)
it’s kind of funny because I think of the first story when coming from medical sales, ⁓ after work, I’d go check on a project and show up in my tie and nice car and ⁓ my gosh, it was just a different world. And I really had to get out of that because a lot of times in medical sales, it’s what? Customers always ride, suck up, nothing wrong with that. ⁓

Totally different needs when you switch over to major projects and contractors and it’s it’s a completely different type of leadership and ⁓ Yeah, it’s really about establishing boundaries and rules and filtering and credibility from day one And then once you get those top people like you said treat them well So my my preferred strategy has always been

Instead of having a whole lot of employees and a whole lot of contractors, I would rather consolidate

and make sure that their pipelines are full. Obviously make sure our work is getting done. But if you have the higher quality ones, they can actually accomplish just what two or three would do to match one. Right now, because I’ve eliminated those two to three that it would normally take to get the same amount of work done. Now I can pay this one.

better and even more. So that’s my philosophy is you consolidate but you raise the standards and then you pay them more.

Micah Johnson (29:51)
it’s really so have you ever heard of the Pareto principle or the 80 20 principle?

Jim Tannehill (29:55)
⁓ yeah,

Micah Johnson (29:57)
And it’s it’s

that’s what it reminded me of as you talk about it, because that’s really what you do. It’s consolidation and reallocation over and over and over again. It’s refinement. ⁓

Capitalism in a nutshell is optimizing to efficiency over and over and over again. That’s why it’s an unending process. It takes it and it repeats it. Okay, now that we’ve done that, how do we do this? And that’s what you’re, that’s that environment that you’re living in.

Jim Tannehill (30:23)
Right, Yeah, that’s a very good example. The 80-20 rule.

Micah Johnson (30:28)
and if you’re not familiar with that out there, it basically, it came from the 1700s, it was either a French or an Italian study, but what they showed was, it was originally a economic divide study, but it quickly sprouted in this reality that 20 % of what you’re doing is creating 80 % of your results. And if you’ll refine it, if you’ll eliminate the 80, focus on the 20 and then repeat.

you’ll notice 20 % of those are creating 80 % of those results. And it’s just this way to literally optimize to efficiency over and over and over again. And when it’s doing well.

Jim Tannehill (31:04)
too. Not only does that work with your team, that works on the properties that you’re acquiring and deciding to hold for a term.

Micah Johnson (31:11)
And that’s where it’s such an interesting principle because it’s really universal. It’s a personal development principle if you want it to be. It’s how you buy houses, how you perform routine maintenance on your business is how I guess I’d say it. I’ve talked to a few guys recently that are heavily right now getting rid of headaches.

been in business about six to seven years and it’s like,

well,

It makes sense. One, how the market cycles and you’ve been in this long enough to know what a headache is. Now you get it.

it up and then expand. Cause

at least you have a headache. You didn’t have it the first time you started. You’re fixing to a bunch of capital for it. And what are you going to do? You’re going to go buy a better deal and it just over and over and over.

Jim Tannehill (31:56)
Right. Yep.

Micah Johnson (31:57)
So what are you excited for this year, man? What’s lightening you up in your world?

Jim Tannehill (32:01)
this year we’re cranking out all the renovations. And so the way that the tax sale works is whatever we purchase, say in 2026, in Indiana, Indiana is what’s called a tax lien state. So we have to wait 12 months for the county to issue paperwork and time for the person on the record to pay the back taxes and redeem. It actually doesn’t matter if the…

person has passed away, if the owner on record is a hedge fund that’s out of business or whatever, it really doesn’t matter. The same amount of time has to pass. And so our goal is not, we’re only going after properties we can add value on that have been abandoned. We’re not looking ⁓ for any other properties that are occupied. And most of those don’t actually get lost today in this market, frankly.

but we’re not looking for anything like that. We’re looking for the ones that are abandoned that we can restore. And so what’s next for this year is just to complete those renovations. And once we actually finish the process and get those tax deeds, so we essentially have this mortgage-free property, know, ⁓ pennies on the dollar. That’s a lot more pennies today than it used to be, you know, 10 years ago.

Even the textile prices are a lot more pennies, it’s still a huge, huge discount. ⁓ but we’ve got to do this massive renovation. So we’ve got all of our crews lined up and ready to crank those out. And that’s what we’re working on this year.

Micah Johnson (33:33)
I love it. I love it. I really appreciate you sharing your story today. You dropped some just some really good nuggets out there for folks of one, just across the board, what it looks like to put a real estate career together requires openness and just ability to shift and adjust.

You’ll be willing to accept

Jim Tannehill (33:50)
Absolutely.

Micah Johnson (33:53)
kind you do, right? It’s easy to want to do what your friends do, but what kind do you actually like to do? You don’t need any other justification than that.

Right. What kind do you like go solve the problem? A lot of people are going to hate it most actually because that’s why it’s called a niche.

Jim Tannehill (34:10)
that’s the key today. ⁓ I hear people get discouraged. They’ll look at a property that doesn’t actually cash flow in a certain market. But I really think that they’re still out there if you find a problem to solve. You’d be surprised at how many markets in just a normal suburb after you factor in your ⁓ financing cost and your insurance and…

maintenance and management and everything, there might be $200 left, right? That’s not enough. That’s not worth ⁓ the headache or the risk factor alone, right?

Granted that the appreciation, depending on what part of the cycle you’re in, is a factor too. But essentially, for it to be worth it today, you really have to find a problem to solve. But the good news is, if you do that, it’s worth even more.

So.

Micah Johnson (35:08)
⁓ we got to jump on that before we finish because I want folks to really understand what what’s being said. So I love I love to liken this to Amazon. Amazon only sold us books for nine years and everybody.

They sell us everything now, but they

only allowed to do that in our minds because we believed them when they would said we’re the fastest shipper of books because they proved it for a long time. And another quote in business where if everyone is your customer, no one is your customer.

And you get afraid, it’s like almost counterintuitive to niche down, once you get deep enough in the weeds, it’s like the whole world opens up. You see the opportunity because you can’t, you can’t before then, it’s too much. It’s just, you don’t know how to process all that information. So I’m glad you said that. So if you’re out there, don’t feel like you need to do it all. If you’re going to wholesale, wholesale, focus on it. Nail it down until it’s as reliable as the sunrise. Just get it.

then add that second thing to it, what’s gonna come next. Because that’s how you’re actually successful.

again, it’s why I like to bring folks like

on the show, man. I like people to hear what it’s really like. In the day-to-day trenches of real estate. Most of the time we love it, sometimes it’s super hard and annoying, and that’s okay too, because we just wanna know about it, we’re choosing it. It’s why I like, it’s one reason I like this book so much, if y’all have never read it out there.

Jim Tannehill (36:30)
Okay.

Micah Johnson (36:31)
And what basically what he talks about is whatever, whatever you do in life, there’s going to be hard parts. You choose them, you’re choosing them because that’s the thing. Like if you’re going to choose it, just it’s okay. That’s, that’s what he’s talking about in that, you know, the subtle art of it is it’s okay that it’s hard. That’s okay. I chose all this because look how much goods in it and look at what this does. And one thing my mentor pointed out is he reflects on his life and says, my highlight reel.

came from my low light reel. That’s the thing is that’s where it comes from. And you start talking to folks who are really successful in this business. They have what you’re talking about. They can buy at a discount. You can dig into the market, especially in the current market environment and most markets across the nation. You know exactly where it’s going. You have a strategy that you can deploy. Boom, boom, boom, boom. The machine is running and you’re leading the team well.

Those three things, right? You get the culture and the leadership right. You get your niche right. You get the process right. And now you’re actually creating the life you want, which was the goal to begin with y’all not a high paid job, not a high paid job. Jim, if want to learn more about you, see what you have going on, what’s the best way for them to find you?

Jim Tannehill (37:38)
Right.

So our YouTube that actually just got recently established is Tax Sale Titan, not Titans with an S, that’s a different one. We’re Tax Sale Titan, singular. And our website is ⁓ jhtrealestate.com. so, but basically, yeah, you know, some of the principles that we talked about today. ⁓

Consolidate both on properties and on employees. Same thing with tenants, even if you’re in a market where you have the luxury to do that and qualify everything. ⁓ And then basically, make sure that your product or your situation is difficult to replace. So you’re raising the standards, but you’re also raising the value that you’re giving.

Micah Johnson (38:30)
Bingo. Bingo. You’re building it to be anti-fragile, man. Love that. Thanks for dropping that. So folks, if you’re listening out there today, watching in, check the show notes. We’ll have all Jim’s links there, like you hear me say all the time. Go check it out. Go follow along with people that are actually doing the business. If you’re in the Indiana area, you have a deal, you have questions, something, reach out, talk. That is what’s amazing about high level operators is they’re willing to talk. They’re willing to answer questions.

Reach out, learn from folks who are actually doing it. It’s the most important thing. Jim, again, thanks for being here today. I appreciate your time, your story, your perspective. Absolutely. think we need more folks out there like yourself building a real business in the industry, man. So thank you so much. And everybody out there watching and listening, thank you for being with us. If you got value added to today’s episode, please like and share this episode. If you feel like someone else could get value out of it, send it to them. And if you’re not a subscriber yet, you know what to do.

Jim Tannehill (39:04)
Appreciate it. Thanks for having

Micah Johnson (39:25)
Click the button, follow along. We’ve got more operators, more conversations with operators coming up with folks just like Jim, people out there building a real business in the industry. Thanks for being with us today. We’ll see you all in the next episode.