Why Your Personal Brand Matters More Than Your Brokerage in Real Estate

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (00:00)
Honestly, the the main thing that makes my business grow, Michelle, is relationships. And that term gets thrown around pretty loosely, not only in business, but also in real estate, where people are like, you got to have good relationships, like make sure you don’t worry about the transaction about the relationship. I look at relationships, though, as really strategically aligning yourself with someone who is just like you.

Michelle Kesil (01:58)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Tim Garrity, who is a real estate agent and also part of a team of homo flippers. So excited to have you here today, Tim.

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (02:19)
Thanks for having me today, Michelle. I greatly appreciate it.

Michelle Kesil (02:23)
Let’s dive in. First off, for those not familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is?

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (02:31)
Yeah, so primarily I run a residential focused real estate team. ⁓ I’m the lead producer, but I have a couple other agents who also produce and that’s built on my personal brand, my name. It’s called the Tim Garrity team. And then, as you mentioned, ⁓ my second venture, let’s call it, is ⁓ with the development team. There’s four of us and we’ve been in business together for about five years.

We flip anywhere between five, six homes a year and we buy buildings that we can reimagine through adaptive reuse and turn into multifamily residential.

Michelle Kesil (03:11)
Awesome, and what markets do you operate in?

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (03:14)
So greater Philadelphia, ⁓ probably about two thirds of my business is within the city of Philadelphia itself. That’s actually, I didn’t grow up in the city. I grew up in the suburbs, but I lived in the city for half my life over 20 years. And that’s where I built my real estate business from scratch. So have a ton of relationships in the city. I know the city backwards and forwards. So that’s where most of my knowledge is, but I did grow up in the suburbs and I live in the suburbs now.

and a lot of my friends and family and clients also live in the suburbs. So I go where the relationship takes me. If they’re doing a deal in the burbs and I feel confident about it, I take it. Otherwise, the city is a lot of what I do.

Michelle Kesil (03:58)
Awesome. And so how did you get into real estate and become an investor?

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (04:05)
Yeah, so I went to school locally, LaSalle University, marketing major, Go Explorers. And, ⁓ you know, I was always interested in business, but primarily I was just really very interested in like, like people, let’s say, like getting to know people. I’ve always been a good listener. I’m very patient. So I think for me, like getting to know people in college and networking.

I realized that was like a strength of mine just because I had a passion for like meeting new people. Now you meet plenty of bad people too, but you know, I just met so many good people just because I would take the time to listen or like introduce myself or spend 30 minutes on the phone, whatever it is. So when I got out of college, I actually started as a full commission loan officer in the mortgage business. My dad was a loan officer for over 40 years. So I kind of started working alongside him, although we were separate.

And I cut my teeth in sales, making good money, 100 % commission,

was getting confident, taking all the skills I had from growing up and from college. And then I ended up taking a management position when I was 24 with a large builder, Pulte Homes, one of the top builders in the country. And I rode that all the way until the financial crisis hit. And when it hit, I lost my job. So that allowed me to kind of…

think about what I wanted to do in my career, because I’m a career guy, I’m a commitment guy, consistent guy. And it just made sense to me to like kind of get into business for myself at the age of 30. And that was through a real estate license. And since I got that real estate license 16 years ago, I grew a successful solo agent business. I also grew a successful residential real estate focus brokerage. It was an independent company called Copper Hill.

And ⁓ last half decade, been working on investment through flips and adaptive reuse of bigger buildings. And that’s kind of turned into like a second company, second opportunity for me in my career.

Michelle Kesil (06:54)
Amazing. And so what do you feel have been some of the main keys that have allowed your business to grow and run successfully?

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (07:03)
Honestly, the the main thing that makes my business grow, Michelle, is relationships. And that term gets thrown around pretty loosely, not only in business, but also in real estate, where people are like, you got to have good relationships, like make sure you don’t worry about the transaction about the relationship. I look at relationships, though, as really strategically aligning yourself with someone who is just like

meaning.

they have the same mindset. I’m an abundance guy. I’m an optimistic guy. I’m about greater good, like trying to help as many people as I can so that they get to where they’re going. But I also get a transaction or like a commission out of it, let’s say. And honestly, the reason relationships really work for me, that’s how I got into ⁓ real estate development as well. It was through one of my better relationships who was a past client and just one day said, I think we should do this.

together, why don’t we develop real estate together? So we did. And I think for me, it’s like just talking about relationships in general, you’re looking at it more long term, you want to really help good people get to where they’re going with whatever they’re doing. And then the byproduct, the end product of that is usually a sale or a commission or a development deal, or just a strategic partnership to help more people.

And that’s like a really organic way to look at your business. It kind of grows naturally because if you help someone get to where they’re going and you truly care about them, you really want to help them out. They’re just going to go tell five or 10 other people how great you are. And then the opportunities just start rolling in in lots of different ways. So that’s why that’s always worked for

Michelle Kesil (08:48)
Yeah, absolutely. Can you share a bit about what your team looks like when it comes to the home flipping?

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (08:57)
Yeah, so our home flipping team is four of us. It’s myself and my brother, as well as a father son team that we’ve known for years. And collectively, we have an architect, a general contractor, a finance guy, and I’m more or less the sales guy, the boots on the ground, residential real estate guy. And it’s really because we all have different skill sets. They’re all heavily complementary, meaning.

We can find something and figure out how to pay for it. Then we can figure out how to design it ourselves. Then we can figure out how to build it or rehab it. And then I take care of the sales or the leasing. So we’re, we’re a very like ground up, you know, top to bottom team where everything else is outsourced. Yeah. We have a good commercial lender, you know, we have attorneys for zoning and for subdivision.

⁓ You know, we have ⁓ other people, engineers or subcontractors or whoever we’re looking for to just kind of execute on the project. But the four of us as a whole, we run a very lean, nimble development team because each one of us brings something unique to the table and that allows us to execute.

Michelle Kesil (10:46)
Yeah, amazing. And what does your role look like in the team?

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (10:52)
So

I’m probably more like the deal guy. I’m constantly looking for opportunities. I’m also the guy that, you know, can, ⁓ you know, bring confidence to the value. So my brother Ryan runs the numbers. He’s the finance guy. He can run circles around me. He’s amazing. But for me, it’s like, I have such a good feel of like neighborhoods and towns and markets and where things are headed.

So I rely on a lot of my gut to understand whether something is a good project or not. But then I also back it up with the data to show, hey, here’s what things are renting for or selling for so that when we execute on this deal, on this project, like we can confidently say this is going to happen even if the market dips a little bit. So I’m kind of like the leader of like finding opportunities and then also making sure those opportunities are.

you know, sound from a sales or leasing standpoint. And then once I find the opportunity and do what I have to do, that’s when all the other pieces fall into place. That’s when we start designing or coming up with a construction budget or understanding the numbers in a commercial lending sense or raising capital. Like for the two big buildings that we’ve done, they’re each ⁓ about 16 units. One’s commercial, one’s residential. ⁓ We’ve had to raise capital through friends and family for both of them.

So for us, this is also where the relationships come in. There’s no way you’re gonna raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, let alone over a million we did on our last project. If you don’t have trust with your relationships, they’re just not gonna do it. They’re just gonna go syndicate with someone nationally or internationally. It doesn’t make sense to invest locally. But we’ve never had a problem raising capital because people know that we’re very good at what we do and that we’re very…

We’re very conservative in the fact that if we’re going to take money from you, our number one job is to be a steward of that money, to protect that money, that you can trust us that not only are we going to give all of this back to you at some point, but you’re going to make a lot of money through us. One, on the cash flow side, that’s what people want. Hey, what are my dividends? How often do I get paid? But then two, on an equity standpoint, if you sell this thing or refinance this thing at any point,

What do I stand to gain being an owner of the property, being a silent partner of the limited partnership?

Michelle Kesil (13:24)
Yeah, that’s amazing. And I love how their relationship ⁓ keeps getting tied back to things. I think that’s such an important distinction and opportunity to develop in this space.

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (13:38)
Thank you.

Michelle Kesil (13:39)
what have been some of the biggest obstacles that you’ve overcome in this journey.

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (13:45)
Some of the biggest obstacles that I’ve overcome. So like if I started my professional career at the age of 22 in the mortgage business is really in the fact that I can be too nice and too trusting, which is a good thing. I I give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they give me a reason not to trust them anymore. And I’ve had my trust betrayed by very good relationships in my life multiple times.

But rather than dwell on those and say, hey, you know what, I’m not going to do that again. I’m not going to partner with anyone again, or I’m not going to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. I’ve used those as learning lessons to get better with my relationships moving forward. And even recently in the last like year or so, some relationships that, you know, didn’t do too well from a business standpoint, mostly because I trusted them and they just didn’t deliver on what they were doing.

I’ve kind of like reached back out to me and like, hey, Tim, I think we should get together. I think we should reconnect and talk business again. And I I’m again, I’m a polite guy. Went through the Catholic school system. Great parents, you know, one of four kids used to sharing, used to being patient. And I very politely told them like, no, thank you. You know, I appreciate you reaching out, but I don’t think this is a good fit moving

So I think for me, it’s it’s really in getting burned so many times in my life.

but not using that as an opportunity to say, woe is me and go crawl in a corner. It’s an opportunity to say, well, why did I get burned? And what I have learned through that, Michelle, is just looking at myself in the mirror and understanding why I got burned, but using that to get smarter, to get better, get a little bit thicker skin moving forward.

Michelle Kesil (16:12)
Yeah, definitely. It’s important to know how to take these obstacles and grow from them, especially when you’re in this industry for the long term game.

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (16:23)
Yep, exactly.

Michelle Kesil (16:26)
What are you most focused on solving or scaling to next?

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (16:31)
What I’m most focused on right now solving scaling, let’s call it, is my personal brand. So ⁓ after running a residential real estate focused brokerage for almost 10 years, that brand was the company. The company we started, the partners that we had, all the agents we had, that was what I was focused on for the better part of a decade. Now that I’ve ⁓ kind of separated, I have my smaller, more nimble team. I’m very focused on what I’m doing.

I’m building that more on my name. A couple of reasons why I’m doing that. I’m from this area my entire life. I’m going to be 47 in a month. And for me, like your name is everything if you operate with integrity, because people don’t really remember what company you work for, but they’ll always remember your name and how and how you’ve treated them or how you make them feel as a person, whether they’re a friend or a client or a family member or whoever.

So for me, ⁓ the partnership ended and I broke off a couple years ago, I really doubled down on my name and I do that in a few ways. One, I do that with my agent focused business. It’s called the Tim Garrity team. ⁓ Two, I do that with my development business. mean, most of the opportunities we get from a rehab and hold standpoint have come through word of mouth. They’ve come through our network and that is proof of my name.

that I treat people right, I do what I say and I deliver. And then three, what I’ve been working on, you can see right here is my own business podcast called Bricks and Risk. I do that with my partner, Sean Mooney, who’s a childhood friend of mine. Shout out to Mooney. And, ⁓ you know, that’s also built on my name. That’s built on his name, it’s built on my name. And while we have a catchy name to let people know like what we’re talking about, what we’re focused on, it really all centers

back around like who I am, what I know, how I operate, and who I’m looking to help. So that’s really what I’m focused on.

Michelle Kesil (18:34)
Yeah, that’s amazing. And so what goals do you have for this year with anything like thing that you want to get to within your business or personal brand?

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (18:47)
Yeah, goals for this year, I have a volume goal for my agent team. That’s usually based on me as a producer and then a couple of the agents I have. don’t really have volume goals for them, but I have a sense of what I feel like they could do in a year. So I do have a volume goal, which leads to an income goal for my residential real estate business. ⁓ For the development business, same thing. Like we want to do X amount of flips and we’re always looking for new buildings. So those are some goals for development.

And then let’s call it from like a podcast standpoint. One of our big goals with the podcast is to build a community around it. And that that has also happened organically because, you know, we produce this thing in a studio. We do all the marketing ourselves. We do all the outreach. You know, the content is ours. And I think with the podcast itself, because it’s organically like formed into a community locally.

we wanna keep growing that community. One handshake at a time, one listener watcher at a time, one more relationship at a time because when people wanna be a part of the bricks and risks community, they’re really doing it because they believe in us and they’re like-minded or the things we talk about or the guests we have or our perspectives on business and life. And I wanna continue to build that community.

Because that’s just helping a ton of people, like people who want to get better in business are going to listen to Bricks and Risk. Like that’s why they’re doing it. You know, I have family and friends that aren’t in business and they’re doing it more to support me and you know what I’m doing. But the high majority of people are there to get value out of it. And then when they get value out of it, then they want to be a part of the community because we connect people, we meet every six months, you know, we’re dropping episodes every week. We do workshops, so things like that. That’s that’s the goal for the podcast.

Michelle Kesil (20:43)
Yeah, that’s awesome. And so in building this community, is it meant to provide like education or kind of like what’s like the goal and where are these people kind of meant to funnel into, if that makes sense?

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (20:58)
Yeah, no, totally makes sense. ⁓ It is. It’s meant it’s meant for probably like two purposes. I’d say education being number one, like when we do an episode and it’s just Sean and I were really talking about business topics that we’re either very well versed on or it’s like our philosophies or how we’ve built our businesses and then bringing in guests. You we want to have thoughtful guests and we get some guests that are crazy and they’re like way different than us. And that’s that’s good, too.

But everyone centers around the same kind of focus in business, which is really like building it through relationships and customer service and treating people right. So the education piece is probably number one with the community. We just want to continue to educate people because, you know, whether you’re a real estate agent building your solo agent business or I always say whether you’re a pizza shop owner and you’re trying to sling more pies and make more money.

the foundational principles of what we talk about are just gonna help you with your business moving forward. So they’re gonna give you a different perspective on what you’re doing. Maybe it’s marketing tips, maybe it’s lead gen, maybe it’s ⁓ scaling it, the speed of which you wanna scale it. So education, definitely number one, but number two is something that Sean and I really excel at, which is in connecting people.

So we both have really great networks of business people because again, we both grew up here our whole lives and we’ve both been in business for a couple of decades. So when we network, when we either do a workshop or we do a happy hour or we do a small get together, what we wanna do is we wanna invite people from our networks as well as the people through the Brickstomers community and we wanna introduce people to one another. Like, hey, I want you to meet my mortgage lender.

because you might wanna refinance or you might wanna buy a house or you might want a vacation home or maybe you’re an agent and you’re just looking for a better connection to run your business. And here’s my tried and true connection. So for us, it’s really the education first and foremost, like wanna help as many people as we can, which again, feeds into our businesses. So we do make money as we get more business.

But also in the connecting sense, because I think, you know, it’s very much like golden rule, like treat others as you want to be treated. So if you’re really helping someone like get to where they’re going, you make a strategic connection for them. Chances are in a month or a year or 10 years, they’re probably going to reciprocate and say, hey, Tim, you you introduced me to Bill or Sally. I want you to meet this person because I just think it’s really good for you, for your business. It’s good for them like a win win. So that’s where we go with the connections.

Michelle Kesil (23:38)
Yeah, absolutely, that’s awesome. Well, before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you?

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (23:49)
Yeah, a couple of ways. Go to TimGarrityTeam.com. can find me very easily. That kind of has like my story, you know, my business, link to my podcast, link to my blog, you know, neighborhood pages if you’re from greater Philadelphia. But find me on either Instagram or LinkedIn if you’re into social media. Instagram is @RealEstateinPHL for Philly. And my LinkedIn is just going to be my name.

And for me, it’s like those are two great spots because I put out the majority of my content on Instagram. And then I also do a lot of connecting networking on LinkedIn. So if you want to dive into my ecosystem and build a relationship, those are great places to find me.

Michelle Kesil (24:34)
We’ll appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

Tim Garrity | @realestateinphl (24:38)
Yeah,

thanks for having me, Michelle. Greatly appreciate you guys asking me.

Michelle Kesil (24:42)
course. And for those tuning in, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Tim who are building real businesses. We’ll see you on our next episode.