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On this episode of The Millionaire Choice Show, Tony talks with Timothy Lyons of Cityside Capital. Timothy and Cityside capital are a real estate investment group working with investors to build a diversified real estate portfolio as part of their investment strategy.
About Timothy Lyons
Tim is a 15 year veteran of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) and currently serves as a lieutenant in the borough of Queens. Until recently, he also worked part-time as an emergency room RN at a level 1 trauma center. He brings years of real world management and leadership experience to his real estate investment career.
Tim’s initial goal with real estate was to create passive income and in turn, be able to spend more time with his wife and three little girls. After partnering on a multifamily property he saw first-hand the power of real estate investing as an opportunity to create passive income and build wealth for his family.
He started Cityside Capital with the goal of not only growing his own portfolio but also to help others realize the power that real estate investing can have on creating passive income and building wealth.
Cityside Capital has $45 million of assets under management including 335 multifamily units. Tim has also invested as a limited partner in 256 multifamily units in Texas and in a large retail super center in Tennessee.
He graduated from Providence College in 2005 and can often be spotted in the crowd when the Friars play in Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Learn more about Timothy Lyons and Cityside Capital, https://citysidecap.com
Take advantage of Complimentary Life and Money Mentor Session with Tony or Downloand FREE eBooks.
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Transcript
Intro (00:01):
Is money slipping through your fingers. Are you missing your opportunity to become a millionaire? Welcome to the millionaire choice where we talk to millionaires and future millionaires about how to build wealth and what to do with it. Once you have it, we're here to help you do two things, make your millionaire choice and create your own millionaire plan. Here's your host speaker wealth coach and author of the millionaire choice. He made his choice and he created his millionaire plan at age 25. Now it's your turn. Welcome your host Bradshaw.
Tony (00:44):
Welcome back to the millionaire choice show. We are gonna be talking with a great guy today. You're gonna learn a little bit about real estate and honestly, an angle on real estate that I'm not that familiar with. And we'll let him tell you more about it, but we're talking with Timothy Lyons of Cityside capital. He's the managing partner, and co-owner a Cityside and, just a little bit of trivia, which I'm sure he'll share a little bit more about his life, but he's a New York city fire department, Lieutenant and former ER nurse. So we're gonna be hearing some, some great stories, from Timothy and his journey to become a millionaire. Timothy, welcome to the show.
Timothy Lyons (01:17):
Tony, thank you so much for having me on today. It's a pleasure.
Tony Bradshaw (01:20):
Yeah. Thanks for sharing so much of, you know, your background and where you come from. I think one of the things I love about doing this show is, not just talking to millionaires, but talking to future millionaires, like you who have made what I call the millionaire choice and decided they wanted to, you know, kind of not live the way that they were kind of set up to live. Right. So I think a lot of people kind of feel like they're stuck right in the, in the class that they're born in. I was, I wouldn't say I felt like I was stuck. I just didn't know any better as a young guy that, uh, that life could be any different than what you grew up in. And, and I, and it's interesting to hear a little bit about your story, but tell the, tell the audience and the future millionaires listening, kinda how you grew up and you know, how you broke free from that.
Timothy Lyons (01:57):
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for setting that up. So, you know, I'm the youngest of three boys and my parents were divorced when I was three years old. My dad didn't live too far away, couple towns over. But you know what, I realized very quickly that money was always kind of an issue in our family. It was paycheck to paycheck, you know, both parents worked full time, and you know, kind of when you grew up in that kind of household, I guess, you know, we, we never really longed for anything. I always had a baseball glove and cleats and, you know, my sports activities were paid for and stuff like that, but there was really nothing left over, per se. And I knew that when I became an adult and a father, I just didn't wanna have that same type of maybe stress or upbringing for my kids.
Timothy Lyons (02:44): And I just wanted to be, do and have more and, have that optionality, that money would provide, I didn't exactly know how that was going to happen. But that's what I kinda, I kinda held it in my, in my core. That's what I, you know, would like to have happen. As it turned out, I, kind of went down the traditional path, right. They tell you to get good grades, go to school, get more good grades, you know,
um, go find a job. That's gonna pay you every two weeks with, a couple weeks vacation, you know, with a nice retirement plan. And then someday you'll be able to retire. And, you know, although that sounded kind of lame to me, that's kind of what I did anyway. Right. So, um, I joke I was pre-med for about 15 minutes in college before I joined the fraternity.
Timothy Lyons (03:29):
And,, the wheels kind of fell off for a little bit there, but, you know, got myself back on track. You know, nine 11 happened in college for me and my uncle was a New York city fire captain. And he was very badly injured in nine 11, buried under tower two spent about six weeks in the ICU in Jersey city, and he's still with us to this day, but I remember I made a, I made a commitment to be a New York city firefighter, shortly thereafter. So, um, graduated college weeks later, I'm in the academy and I'm living the dream, right. I'm a New York city firefighter. Um, you know, having fun every day is a new adventure. And you know, what I found was, um, that a lot of guys and girls, um, that were on the job, they had second careers or third careers, because of our schedule and the flexibility of the schedule, you know, we work 24 hours on, then we might have three or four days off, uh, before our next 24 hour shift.
Timothy Lyons (04:27):
A lot of people were contractors and, you know, I mean, people work in all different sorts of jobs. It's insane. Um, but there was a couple guys who were nurses in my first firehouse and they had the nice call, their wives didn't work. So they convinced me to go back to nursing school. Uh, so that's what I did. I went back to nursing school and I, became an ER nurse. And again, I like to work. I like to be in these jobs, that's, you know, action packed and adrenaline, you know, not every day is where every minute is like gunshot victim coming through the door and like, you know, TV scenes, but you know what, it, it provided me a way to, you know, really, you know, put into practice what I had, what I had learned, whether it was medicine in the ER, or, you know, putting a fire out.
Timothy Lyons (05:16):
Like, I just really liked what I was doing in the process. I had three little girls who were now 10 and, you know, when they were little and I was working a lot because, you know, the more I worked, the more money I made, right. So I was trading my time for money. And at the time I knew that I was working a lot, but I didn't really have any other choices. Right. Or I didn't, I, I didn't know at the time that I had any other choices. So in the beginning when they were little, they didn't say anything, you know, so listen, the bills got paid, maxed out. My retirement accounts, took a vacation or two per year and life was good. but then when I got old, older, you know, they'd be, you know, tearful when I left for work or if I wasn't home for two or three days, cause I was doing some sort of marathon at work, you know, getting text messages and phone calls.
Timothy Lyons (06:06): It started to wear on me, my wife, my kids. And I started to feel really trapped and stuck in the W2 grind, even though I really liked my jobs. So it's a little bit of like a rock and a hard place. And ever since college, I've been like a finance buff. I've been reading the wall street journal, uh, since college, personal finance books, you know, different types of programs, you know, really kind of being on the, but I was on the periphery. I never really took action. I, I was kind of stuck in that education phase. You know, let me go read one more book. Let me go listen to one more audio book. Let me take in one more podcast. And the application of that knowledge really kinda Eva me for a while. That's that, that is up until I read VI dad, pour dad by Robert Kiyosaki, the summer of 19 on the beach, family vacation.
Timothy Lyons (06:57):
And I couldn't put the, a book down for like a day and a half. And once I slammed the book shut and I finished it, I just, you know, leaned over to my wife, my lovely wife, Christina. I said, babe, I said, I'm gonna be a real estate investor. And she said, sure, you Arton. You know, and she's, she's awesome. She's been super supportive, no matter what I've kind of done in life. She wanted no material participation in the, in the real estate business, but she knew that if I put my mind to it, you know, with my kind of money mindset, I'm, I've been described as cheap. Tony, I know it's kind of hard to believe, but, um, you know, I just don't like to lose any money. I don't like frugal frugal. Yes that's you know, so, she totally supported me and that's when, you know, basically I went on this real estate journey, and we can dive more into that, but you know, in a matter of, you know, I guess just under two years, we're approaching nearly 400 million of assets acquired, you know, obviously with partners, and more than like 2 2400 doors, multifamily doors.
Timothy Lyons (08:04):
So, I'd love to unpack any of that. So I'll throw the ball back to you and see what you wanna talk about.
Tony Bradshaw (08:09):
Yeah. I love your story, man. I think, like you said, a, a, you can learn all you want, but if you never apply it, the, the learning is useless and, I commend you for, you know, building up, but probably a lot of what you learned over all the, those years now that you're, you, you finally turn the, you know, the key on the car, right. You're being able to apply like that, that stuff. And it's probably coming back and serving you well, but I love what you did. Cause a lot of times when I talk to people about money, they think either they're, they're too old, they're past their prime. They can't do it. Which by the way, how old are you?
Timothy Lyons (08:39): I'm yeah, 39.
Tony Bradshaw (08:41):
So for a lot of people, they would be saying, oh, I missed my opportunity. And I think our brains are wired that way to, to make excuses on why we haven't built wealth or why we're not building wealth. And, uh, and it's, I think our, our minds and our psychology are playing tricks on us just to make us feel better. Right. Oh, I missed my opportunity. I can't do it. And, and that really puts people in, in action, but, but you're actually putting it into action. And what I love about it is as you're, you know, you're still a future millionaire, so you're on your way, but you've got a path and I'm sure you've learned like when you started, you've probably grown so much just since you made, since you shut that book on the beach that rich dad, poor dad book on the beach and said, I'm gonna, you know, go be a real estate investor and your wife probably smirked at you a little bit, but that you've grown a lot since just that moment. Right. You could probably look back over that time. And you said, was it the, the summer of
Timothy Lyons (09:34): It was July of the 19. Yep. And you know, four short months later, I'm closing on a three family rental property. You know, people are blown away by that, but you know, it's that application, it's that action, right? If we needed a PhD, Tony, every time you had to take action, nobody would ever do a thing in life. You know, and I think a lot of people want the blueprint, the roadmap to kind of be, you know, it out in front of 'em, but there's simply no such roadmap or blueprint that someone's gonna come and save you. Uh, and once I, once I realized that, and I knew that I just had to take the action that I knew enough to
get started. And I'd kind of build the parachute on the way down as people talk about, um, I was willing to do that because I hadn't made a choice.
Timothy Lyons (10:13):
And, that's why I, you know, the name of the, your show, the millionaire choice is so near and dear to my heart because it wasn't in it wasn't until I'd made that choice, uh, with three kids with two jobs, you know, and people kind of tell me, sometimes I would say the skeptical people in my life will be like, why are you doing all this? You know, you, you're New York city firefighters, the isn't that enough. Um, you know, you're a Lieutenant, you know, you know, you, you used to work in an ER, you know, you had steady work, you have a pension to look forward to. And, you know, I think that thinking, you know, served a lot of people, well, probably, you know, in my mom and dad's kind of age bracket, um, you know, the pension, but you know, less than one in 10 jobs in 2021 here are, are still having the benefits of a defined benefit plan, like a pension.
Timothy Lyons (11:06):
And it might even be less than 10% at this point. Right. So yes, I'm like, yeah, I guess I could have been ordinary and I could have been living my life the way I was, and I could have been very happy and, you know, but I wanted to be, do and have more. And I just knew I was able to do that. And it wasn't until I made the choice, but also, you know, it wasn't until I started surrounding myself with people, that were smarter than me, people that were doing the thing that I wanted to be doing. You know, it wasn't until I decided to do that, that things really kind of took off. Yeah.
Tony Bradshaw (11:39):
I love what you're saying. There, that's a principle of, you know, surround yourself with people that are kind of going where you wanna go. And, and I think unfortunately for a lot of us, the people we grow up with aren't going anywhere and we, we continue to hang out with them and, and they're holding us back and we don't realize that, you know, I've got several people in my life that I would say that about, but, I was very fortunate to not hang on too tightly to the people that I grew up with and, uh, decided to kinda, you know, step forward and, you know, embrace new people, right. So, you know, it's no, no, secret that I worked with the Ramsey organization for fifteen years and, you know, you can't help, but be around Dave Ramsey and go somewhere. So he, he is always a, like a perpetual motion machine, always moving forward.
Tony Bradshaw (12:20):
But I was fortunate to spend that time there. Now this newer part of my career, life journey, you know, being 51 now, gone from that organization for five years, it's trying to rebuild that group of people that's going where I wanna get next. Right. And it, you know, my first goal was to become a millionaire by age 40, The next one is, you know, how can I get to 10 million or a hundred million? Cause the reality is, you know, if you look around, the more you meet people, you're like, man, that guy's not any smarter than me. That guy's not any, he's not any more intelligent. It's not like what's he doing differently than what I'm doing? Because the reality is we all have, you know, pretty much the same hours a day available to us is what we choose to do with that time.
Tony Bradshaw (12:59): That determines where we end up and where we're gonna go. Right. You can spend your time, like you said, you had a great job. You had a great pension. You had, you know, working as an ER nurse, that's
the system that you were in, but now you're choosing to just, all you're really doing is saying, I, you know, that's a great system. I'm just choosing to use a different system. And this different system is gonna take me to a different place in the future, same amount of hours. Right. You're investing the same amount of time. You're just choosing to invest it differently. And you're gonna end up with, with very, very different results. And I find that very exciting, cuz you're, you're at the beginning of that journey, you're only two years in like, wow. Right, right. Eight years from now, when you look back, you're gonna go, whoa, man.
Tony Bradshaw (13:39):
That was that day on that beach with that book in my hand was like, it was a turning point for my, my life, my wife, my family, my, and your, your three girls. How old are your girls? Uh, they're 10, eight and two. Yeah. So really young. Yeah. And what I love about at, you know, my kids are, 10 up to 21 and I would say my, my older boys probably, uh, did not get as much of my time as they should have. I'm trying to do better with, you know, my younger three children who are ages 13 to 10, but my oldest three, probably I wasn't as focused on them as I needed to be as a dad. So I'm trying to, you know, you, you learn, live and learn and thankfully I may able make some corrections, but what, you know, encouraging the people that are listening.
Tony Bradshaw (14:20):
Cause I love your lifestyle. Cause you see it. I'm sure you see it already is the amount of freedom you have to spend with your family now with your new mindset versus your old mindset, you know, that you were, you were programmed into. And I think that's the thing. That's the most revolutionary for me because I've been, you know, free to do pretty much whatever I wanted for the last five years. And I'm like, man, I can't imagine going back and working a job and not being able to spend the time with my family. Like whenever I want, like to do whatever I want and that that's, you know, I watched my parents, my mom, some sometimes worked a hundred hours a week. And I remember, I remember seeing her like literally on the verge of a nervous breakdown because she just had the employees quit on her like crazy.
Tony Bradshaw (15:04):
She was in a tough industry where turnover was extremely, extremely high and she was the one left filling in the gas. But you know, I didn't suffer for that. Maybe my sister did a little bit, cause I was a little bit older when we went through that phase. But seeing you realized that and going, you know what, my, my daughters were crying when I was going to work for three days, but a lot of dads don't, don't wake up and see that. Is that kinda like even in your environment, cause your buddies are still working fire department, right?
Timothy Lyons (15:30): Well, yeah, so I mean I'm, I'm still in the fire department now. but I retired from the hospital pretty much as soon as I decided to be a real estate investor without having any success without having any rental income coming in. I said to myself, you know, I'm gonna divorce myself of the time required to be an ER nurse, you know, and work those 12 and a half 13 hour shifts. And then commute home, right? So it's maybe a 13 and a half hour day. And then be exhausted by the time I get home. And then maybe to go to the firehouse for a 24 the next day. So I really needed to create that time to get myself educated and you know, to take that action. So, but what I realized and what I wanted to stack on top of what you just said was that I realized, you know, several years ago that I couldn't save my way to wealth, right.
Timothy Lyons (16:19):
Interest rates were coming down. Stock market is up and down, right. I always kind of tell people, you have a hundred thousand dollars in stock market. It goes down by 10% on Monday, right? You have $90,000 left on Tuesday. It goes out back up by 10. And how much do you have in your account? You have 99,000, right? What happened to that extra thousand dollars? You know, so as I started, you know, looking at some of this stuff, I realized that, you know, as much as I didn't wanna incur debt, that there was a big difference between consumer debt and, you know, proper business leverage such as the leverage that we use in real estate. So I really wanted to understand that process and understand how to properly use that debt. Because at the end of the day, I mean there's a, a billion ways to make money.
Timothy Lyons (17:05):
But it also has to do with your risk and what you're comfortable with you know, what kind of risk are you comfortable with? And, you know, the antidote to fear is education. And then it's the application of that education that can, can we, it as success. So once I figured all that out, I just had to put the pieces together and real estate was the thing that made sense to me. And as I started to, you know, not listen to any more music in the car, you know, my university on wheels that I, I like to call it. I started listening to the guests and I'm hearing everyday people, cops, firemen, teachers, waitresses, you know, engineers, doctors, nurses, whoever, and they're all, you know, buying real estate, whether it was single families or condos or, you know, small multis, big multis, bur method, like all, all these different, you know, ways to make money in real estate.
Timothy Lyons (17:55):
And I'm saying to myself, and you said it before, if this person can do it, then, then why can't I, you know, are they that much smarter than me? Are they, you know, gifted. If they can do it, why can't I, so once I was defiantly committed to, to making that happen and, and basically putting the PE to people in the right chairs around me, you know, and part of that was paying for a coach and paying for mentorship, which I swore to myself I would never do. Right. Um, just a
Tony Bradshaw (18:26): Few, never, never say never.
Timothy Lyons (18:28):
Yeah, just a few. Yeah. A few short years ago, if you would've talked to the old Tim, they would've, you know, thought you should be committed to a, insane asylum if, to think that I was ever gonna part ways with that, that much money, for coaching, but you know, it made a ton of sense and I wouldn't be where I am today without that coaching. So, so yeah, I mean, it was really kind of just getting clear, on I wanted and, and understanding what the pieces were, mindset wise, as well as tactically. And then, then just going after it.
Tony Bradshaw (18:58): Yeah. I love what you said there. I think the big thing there is like, just get started because I think a lot of people are afraid to get started. And, you know, even for me at 25, I didn't know anything about finance, but I'm like, man, I, the one thing I did is I got started and it got moving in the right direction, which is what I hear from your stories. You're like, you know what, I don't know much about real estate, but I know enough to get started. And through over the journey you're gonna learn. I think some people are so afraid of making mistakes and what they need to realize, you know, future millionaires, listen to the
show is that the mistakes you can get to stack experience on top of that, odds are, you're not gonna repeat the same mistake twice.
Tony Bradshaw (19:33):
You're gonna make it once and then you're gonna move on and that's gonna be a learning key, which when you look down the road and you actually reach a level of success, you're gonna look back like all the other guys that got successful and said, yeah, it was all my mistakes that I built, you know, 99 mistakes I made and built on top of each one until I finally got something that worked and, and made it right. You know, every business leader kind of says that, and they get comfortable making mistakes. And, and I think the trick is to make non-fatal mistakes. Right? What does a, what does a fatal mistake look like? You know, some people would, you know, close down a business or start a business, close their business. Oh, that's a fatal mistake. Well, that's not a fatal mistake cause you're still alive and you can, you know, start the second business, right.
Tony Bradshaw (20:11):
Sometimes maybe you have two or three businesses before you actually did it. Right. But, the other thing there, I think for wisdom is, I'm guilty of this too. Like I did learn from magazines and books and things like that when I was on my financial journey. But what I didn't do is go find a money mentor until I, you know, I came across Dave Ramsey and, and Dave and I were pretty much doing the same stuff already. I was already in lock step with him. I was a no debt guy. Dave's no debt guy. I was, investing in mutual funds and stocks. There's a couple differences there, but when you attach yourself to somebody else, which you know, like you've done, you learn from others, you're gonna be two blessings out of that. One is you're gonna make better decisions overall, but you're also gonna make fewer mistakes because you're not gonna odds are, you're not gonna repeat the mistakes they made because they're telling you and guiding you through that and that, and that's gonna allow you to move even faster and reach success at a, you know, a higher level more quickly.
Tony Bradshaw (21:04):
Have you seen that to be true, just in know your two years of doing this,
Timothy Lyons (21:08):
100%. If people say, you know, if I lost everything, what would be the first thing I would do? And I would find, $20,000 and go join, you know, that program again, because it was being around those people that really made all the difference. It was getting the education that they had that made all the difference. It's a relationship business. It's a, it's a business. You need to know the X's and O's for sure. But it's also a relationship business. And when you build out good relationships around you, it only serves to propel you forward that much more, quickly. So, you know, regarding real estate, you knows so many people have done it. It's been a proven asset class for millennia. Right. Um,
Tony Bradshaw (21:53):
Let me, lemme park on that, just you, you just said that, I wanna say that one more time for how long
Timothy Lyons (21:59): Millennia that's
Tony Bradshaw (22:01):
Thousands of years. That's critical. We're gonna come back to that just a minute, keep going, Tim.
Timothy Lyons (22:06):
So, you know, I, and people say, well, what we, you know, what does that mean, Tim? I, well, listen in the kingdoms and the surfs, right. You know, you had, you know, war and surfs and, you know, what do you think they were doing? They were doing real estate back then, you know? But up until present day. And I think, you know, where a lot of my, you know, uh, you know, a lot of people, my cohort, I should say, might read articles on the, about, you know, oh, if I invested $4,000 in Ethereum, you know, two years ago, I'd, I'd have 4 million today. And then they, you know, get stuck on that. Um, oh, I missed a boat, you know, dang, you know, well guess what, like, yeah, you could do crypto, you could do stocks and bonds. You could day trade, swing, trade.
Timothy Lyons (22:49):
But whatever you do, you gotta go in, you know, a hundred percent. It can't just be for three months. And then all of a sudden you lose some money say, well, this sucks. I'm, I'm out. You know, and I hear that sometimes from real estate investors, they'll say, you know, you know, my uncle Charlie did real estate one time, he lost a boatload of money, so, real estate's risky. So I'm out. And I'm like, okay, you know, like, so it's really, you know, it's my passion. It's, it's my, it's something that I love to do is talk to investors and, you know, whether they invest with Cityside capital or not, it's really kinda, what is it? What is it, you know, important to you? What do you know about real estate? How can I support you on your journey? Um, do you wanna be active? Do you wanna be passive? You know, and we were talking offline before, there's a billion ways to make, money in real estate. And it's really just getting clear on which one, what, what path you wanna choose. Yeah.
Tony Bradshaw (23:39):
I love what you said there, like you missed the boat. You know, certain people looked at, you know, crypto or whatever the investment type is. You go, I missed the boat. Well guess what the good news is. There's another boat leaving. Are you gonna get on it? There's are you gonna get always another boat? There's always another boat. Right? So I love that, that analogy, because I think that's what I hear. When I talk to people about personal finance, they, they wanna make excuses on why they're not doing anything now. It's cause I missed the opportunity. You know what I missed opportunity 2011, if I stuck $10,000 in, at coin, I'd have like 160 million now. At any point I've done the math, right? At any point, you know, it would've been 400, 500, sometimes 50000% returns on that money. That's OK. I missed that boat.
Tony Bradshaw (24:17):
I'm in it. Now I'm doing it now because you know, it's time, but real estate, I think, going back to what we said earlier, you know, I've, I've kind of come with this mindset, you know, we're real, what's real money and real wealth versus what's kind of play money or fake money or fake wealth, you know? And, and, and let's talk about that just for a minute. Cuz you mentioned specifically, real estate, real estate has been, uh, when you look at, you know, go back 5,000 years, what's been real wealth. Well, it's been small business, it's been business, right? That produces income. It's a system that produces money and income it's real estate that produces money and income. It's a real thing that exists in the physical world, you know, in golden silver, you know, some people are a diss on golden silver today.
Tony Bradshaw (24:59):
Others, realize it's an asset, but it's been money, you know, back to the Roman empire. It's, it's been money before the Roman empire it's been money. When you get to the dollar, the us dollar or the Mexican, what is it, the peso or the Russian ruble, that's all fake money. It's all Fiat currency. It's fake money. Cause it comes and goes. The average Fiat currency lasts about 75 years. I think the us dollar is like 200 years in. And uh, you know, if you look at what's going on with the us economy today, uh there's lot of people believe it's about to go under the us dollars about to go under. And I would, I would tend to agree with them, right? You got a government that's 30 trillion in debt for all. If you do the balance sheet on the us government versus the household budget, uh, the us government's bankrupt, you know, seven times over.
Tony Bradshaw (25:42):
And so it's unsustainable where we're at financially now as a country. So what are you gonna do when the, when the dollar goes under? Now I will say that, but then you got, you know, Warren buffet, who's got 140 or 150 billion in cash that in an account, um, I think he's waiting to buy something. That's gonna go on sale. Um, apple stocks, our Apple's got 200 billion plus. So you see all this money in these different places. And like you mentioned, the stock market, um, you know, it's gonna sound weird to a lot of people, but a lot of people got a hundred percent of their wealth or at least 90% of their wealth tied up in the stock market, you know, through a 401k or IRA. And that's what we've been trained. You know, the system's trained and programmed our financial advisors to, uh, to go that route.
Tony Bradshaw (26:22):
And it's, you know, honestly, it's its kind of a Ponzi scheme when you look at it, like you said, it goes up, goes drops 10 and then comes back up 10%. You're you're still a thousand dollars short. You're not back to where you were the day before. And so I think it's a dangerous thing. Robert Kiyosaki who you mentioned, obviously we talked about him a lot on this show. Great guy. You know, I've, I've got, friends that have done leverage and lost and messed up in the 2008, 2009 crisis. They just missed the risk, right? They didn't risk assess properly, but he only invests in from what I understand, gold, silver, Bitcoin and real estate and somebody else told me he'd invest in and guns and firearms now. So obviously you're following his model and, and teaching other people how to do that as well.
Timothy Lyons (27:11):
Well, I just wanted to stack on top of what you just said. I mean, there's so much, there's so much value with what you just said and on the surface it can sound, you know, almost overwhelming like, well Tony, what the heck is Fiat currency and what do you mean by that? And what do you mean gold is money. Isn't my dollar bill money. And I highly encourage your listeners to, you know, understand what it is like what's a real asset versus a fake asset, uh, what holds value and what does not. Right. And you know, I ended up getting turned onto a book called the creep from Jack island, um, which is basically the story of the federal banks, uh, the federal reserve and how money is created. And it blew my mind, right. It blew my mind that how is money lent into existence and the velocity of money.
Timothy Lyons (28:01): And, you know, you said the average currency will last, you know, X amount of years. I mean, we've been through this game, right? It's been, it's been up and down and up and down and up and down. And the idea is to find out where we are right now. Um, so the reason I'm so bullish on real estate and real assets is, you know, you, you said before, it's a cash flowing asset, right? Gold is an asset, but doesn't pay you any cash at the end of the very, very every month. And right now when we are in a, uh, uh,
consumer, uh, price inflation, uh, environment of 6.2% as of last month, you know, if you're not earning 6.2% on your money, that's sitting on a, in a checking account, uh, or a savings account that's yielding, you know, I don't know, 10 basis points, you know, your, your money's losing its power.
Timothy Lyons (28:47):
And so how do you, how do you take that money and, and start to, and start to leverage that, that capital, you already have to create more money and to stay ahead of the game. Um, and that's why our real estate, because you can actually short the dollar by tying in long term fixed rate debt with a bank that's willing to you, 70, 80% LTV on a real asset, that's gonna be paying you with the tenant's money. You know, it pays all your bills. It pays you cashflow and, you know, hopefully there's appreciation on the backend if you do your, your, your underwriting correctly. So, you know, whether you're buying one unit or a hundred units, it's just a case of moving somewhere, zeros around the spreadsheet. Um, but it's, once you understand the way the game is played, it becomes much more easy to, um, take, take those risks and to invest your money.
Timothy Lyons (29:41):
You know, another thing you said is, you know, the, the money about losing value, you know, once a once, if you've been paying, paying attention to any of the macro trends in the last 18 months, you'll know that, you know, 40 up to people say up to 40% of our, uh, currency in, in our economy right now was created in the last 18. I mean, we're talking about 5.1 trillion, you know, that's, that's just sloshing around the economy looking for a place to land. And where does that, where does that money land? Where's the weight of that money gonna land? It's gonna land in, you know, assets, whether it's stock market, uh, there's a reason why we hit while we see all time highs, but pretty much on a week. There's a reason why real estate values are going up. Um, you know, so, um, it's getting, you know, your financial education and then, you know, applying that financial education to kinda stay ahead of the game.
Tony Bradshaw (30:32):
Yeah. I love that. Yeah, we could, we could dissect things all the time or all the way. It's just like one, hour's not enough for this, but, uh, I do wanna encourage you future millionaire. We talked about that show before, the creature from Jack island, but I highly recommend you read it. Um, when you wanna, like you said, play the game, play the system, you, the more understanding you have of the system, the more equipped you are to win at the system or in the system and, and reading the, the creature from Jack island, is a great, a great way to do that. Uh, you know, it's, it's a book, the founding of the, the federal reserve bank and the whole history of central banking and, how it came to be. And I've still gotta finish that book it sitting on my desk and I've gotten into it, but it's just a very fascinating reading for me. Let's turn the corner for a minute, Tim, and talk about your motto because you know, a lot of people go, I can't get into real estate. I can't afford it. I need too much money and there's a lot conceptions cuz there are, you know, dozens of ways to become a real estate investor. And so let's talk about the way that you do that.
Timothy Lyons (31:29): Yeah. So simply, you know, Cityside capital the company that I own with my brother, we offer opportunities to, pass it investors that wanna have a, uh, part of their portfolio in real estate, but they don't wanna deal with what we call the three Ts toilets, termites and tenants. Uh, but they wanna have the cash flow. They wanna have the tax benefits. They wanna be able to shorten the dollar using, you
know, leverage, you know, so they wanna be able to do all those things, but they don't wanna, you know, spend the time to get educated on a market and go look at property and get the financing and then answer the calls. Right. Everyone always wants talk about the leaking 2:00 AM. I don't get those calls, you know? So, if you're worried about that, you know, you shouldn't be. But what we do is basically, you know, we help passive investors get into deals in the multifamily and self storage space.
Timothy Lyons (32:24):
And the reason why we like multifamily is because instead of having a hundred, you know, single family houses, uh, spread out, uh, you know, over, you know, I don't know, 10 square miles, we have a hundred units, 200 units under one roof. Um, so you can very quickly create economies of scale. also in multifamily, you know, they're not valued by the comparable sales of, you know, comparable type buildings, like a, a one to four family unit would be, it's really driven by what's called the net operating income. So once you understand how you can, you know, drive net ready, income up, whether it's through, burning off, you know, some of the vacancy or, raising rents or renovating and raising rents or decreasing expenses, you can very quickly, you know, force appreciation in a commercial asset. So, you know, there's a life cycle to the deals that we do. It's usually between two and five years. And you know, we do either monthly or quarterly distributions and then we do a payout at the end when we sell the property. But it gives people a way to, you know, get into real estate without having to, you know, be the landlord, but also take part in, you know, all the benefits that owning real estate, entails. Yeah.
Tony Bradshaw (33:38):
And it sounds like that model would be lowering your risk quite a bit too, because you don't have the knowledge of the wisdom you just have to, or the experience you just have to go, Hey, this is my amount of money that I have available. And, and that, what I love about that is like, even when you look at like direct sales or some other models out there, you don't have to build a lot of expertise and it doesn't have to take away from your, you know, your daily work activities or your family. When you work under a model, you're really just putting your money aside to, to, you know, use Cityside capital or, you know, other people that do this model and, manage it. It also lets you get into bigger properties and see potential upside with, less investment. What's the, what's the minimum investment with you,
Timothy Lyons (34:15):
It's usually $50,000. Some deals that we have for accredited investors could be as, as low as 25,000. And I can go over a credited versus non-accredited if you'd like for your listeners, uh, or if they already know then, uh, it's all good. Uh, but yeah, so usually it's 50,000, um, and we take, you know, investments, obviously in cash, but also if you have a self-directed IRA or solo 401k, or E Q R P, we can take investments through as well. Cause people by and large don't know that they can take their role over IRAs and, and put 'em in a self-directed, IRA and use that for something other than, you know, something in the stock market. But that's what I do all day. I talk to investors about some of their options and what their goals are and, see if they're a good fit.
Tony Bradshaw (35:00): Yeah. And I'll love what you're saying. There it's one thing that, you know, after I, kinda moved on from my previous employment started learning about which was a self-directed IRAs. And, and I did move quite a bit of my money around in some of that. I've got, kinda liquidated, a lot of my mutual funds and went for some more riskier investments. I was just in a place in life where I could do that. I, you know, I was ready to not play it as safe. And, uh, you questionable whether or not safer is the real, real, word,
but yeah, I went into some, VI, some BC stuff for, tech startup, which is, is definitely higher risk than the mutual fund for sure. But you can also do that with real estate. And that's what Tim's talking about. Future million millionaires, listen to the show is that, you know, if you could look at what's in your IRA, if you wanna diversify a little bit, like we talked about, if you, if you, if 90% of your investments are in a, stock stock market, then that, to me, for me, my, my personal self that would look like high risk to me, that would feel very, I would feel very vulnerable with my finances and my wealth, if that was my case.
Tony Bradshaw (35:59):
Today I would say 90, 95% of my wealth is, uh, in real estate, not in the stock market or even in crypto. Right. Um, and so you can, you know, play around with that and they would call that like a, you know, a portfolio or allocation, like how's your, you know, your finances allocated and people have different model that they, they use. If you talk to a financial advisor. As matter of fact, I talked to a financial advisor before I moved some money around and I had never bought gold silver before, but they were saying, Hey, you should look at owning, you know, 5% of your portfolio and gold silver, but then I wanted to talk about crypto and he's like, oh, well, we don't do crypto here. And, and it's because they're, you know, they're under restrictions from the home office on what they can, or, or can't talk about, which is unfortunate because you know, there's a lot of opportunities and different investments that your financial advisor will not have available for you just because of the nature of the business. And so that's gonna be up to you to explore things like, you know, Cityside capital and the model that they use a financial advisor would not typically point at you towards a Cityside capital. Well, the, the que the next question is why, let me ask you that, Tim, why would they not do that? So
Timothy Lyons (37:06):
Really interesting. I'm gonna answer your question first it's cause they can't get paid, right? So they, the financial advisor is really incentivized to, you know, put you into, uh, investment vehicles that they could earn commission on, and commission structures are different for all different types of, you know, investments, annuities, mutual funds, whatever. But you know, Greg and I, through Cityside capital since, you know, we are, uh, affiliated with a broker dealer because we have our series 82 and 63 licenses. You know, we started opening up stations with those, um, registered investment advisors, IRAs, um, and also, other broker dealers. Because, you know, when you ask a bank, Robert, why do you, why do you Rob a bank? And he'll say, well, that's where the money is stupid, right? Well, when we're raising capital for deals, you know, where's all the money and it's with people's finance into advisors, but they're not incentivized to point you in the direction of a syndication in multifamily.
Timothy Lyons (38:07):
So we're trying to change the narrative. And right now, Greg and I are talking to several, um, ho you know, home, home offices, like you were just talking about several broker dealers, Andia firms, uh, because now that we're licensed, we split the commissions with, with them. So now all of a sudden they want to have these conversations because they, they realize that the only way they can put their investors in a real estate vehicle is through a reap, uh, real estate investment trust. Uh, but having a direct participation, in real estate is attractive to a lot of people. So that's kind of what we're working on next. Yeah.
Tony Bradshaw (38:43): I love that. And that gives you some options and that's, I think you're the first, real estate best trust guy, or, you know, real estate syndication guy. I've talked to that, that has actually, done that, that extra
work. Now, do you, when you do that, you're not, you're obviously working with independents under that model, right. You're not working with like Edward Jones or some of those guys, cuz they're gonna have to, they're gonna be more restricted on what they do. They don't have the flexibility to work with you, right?
Timothy Lyons (39:09):
Yeah. So a lot of them, I'm probably not at Liberty to start naming the names that are companies, but ones like, like you mentioned, the bigger firms are harder to get approved on their platform. Um, but right now we're in several 45 day due diligence, um, clearing periods, I would say, um, with other smaller type investment firms, um, looking for two models they're looking to do, um, direct participation, just, you know, sending one of their investors towards us. But they're also looking at setting, setting up a five or a 10 million fund, um, to kind of pool resources together. And then as we come up with an opportunity, they could do basically a fund to fund, or a special purpose vehicle. So it's a, it's an interesting time. And the that's kind of what we're, you know, jump starting for 2022, um, along with talking with different pension funds. But yeah, I mean, so we, we, we work with retail investors who, individual investors, family offices we, work with and now, you know, RIAs and other broker dealers.
Tony Bradshaw (40:14):
That's awesome. Well, Tim, really appreciate you being on this. So sharing your knowledge and wisdom around that and especially your story, man, I wish you the best on your future millionaire journey have. Now my question to you is like, do you have a date? Do you have a date when you, you think you're gonna cross that millionaire threshold?
Timothy Lyons (40:30):
Um, yeah. I mean, I would say maybe in the next 24 months, um, but I'm a conservative guy, so we'll see
what happens. It could be before
Tony Bradshaw (40:39):
That. Yeah. That's, that's awesome. Yeah. I hope things go well for you man. And, and it, it really is. It's what I love about that is, you know, once you set the date, it kind of tends to happen. I think that's what happened for me. You know, you go from being some broke kid, east Nashville to, and I say kid kid lightly, I was 25, but to believe in you can do something pretty incredible honestly. And what I love about your journey is, and you'll see it when you get there is like, that's just the first step, the first milestone. Once you unlock that first milestone, you go, okay, what's next? And, and, and then you start dreaming a little bit bigger and, I love that. Yeah. I love that. And especially because as you reach those, you know, you're gonna see doors unlock.
Tony Bradshaw (41:18): You know, if you, I think that the world for your three girls, cause I'm kind of there now with my boys and my kids. I'm like, how do I get them to go on this wealth journey on their own and, and not wait until they're 25 years old to start thinking that way, can they, you know, yes. And, my 10 year old, he's already kind of there. He's like, you know, I'm gonna figure this out my 13 year old. And, it's, it's fun to see the light bulbs come on, man. But how can people find more about Cityside capital get in touch with you, Tim, if they wanna learn more about real estate syndication and opportunities you provide.
Timothy Lyons (41:45):
Yeah. Just, head on over to our website, which is Cityside cap.com. My email is Tim that Cityside cap.com also on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram. Uh, although my Instagram game isn't really that tight. So, I always took more to the LinkedIn or Facebook or something.
Tony Bradshaw (42:01):
Yeah. My, my Instagram, needs, some work as well, so, well, Hey man, I hope you have a great week.
Timothy Lyons (42:06):
Absolutely. Likewise, thank you so much for the opportunity to come on your shop.
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