Dwayne Zimmerman and TJ Weiler started out trying to wholesale houses after watching TikTok, and ended up with 70 rental doors, a lumber business doing $50K+ a month, and a 30-unit ground-up development in the works, all in just four years. In this episode, they break down how two childhood friends built multiple businesses from scratch, survived a house fire, and why mastering one thing before scaling is the only move that makes sense.
Episode 13: Scaling Fast and Fixing Mistakes with Dwayne Zimmerman and Tristan (TJ) Weiler
What happens when you go all-in on real estate… learn some hard lessons… and build a second business along the way? Let’s find out in this episode, where hosts Mike Seidl and Zach Richards chat with young entrepreneurs Dwayne Zimmerman and Tristan (TJ) Weiler, who scaled from zero to around seventy properties in just a few years. They also launched a lumber business on the side.
Dwayne and TJ share what’s worked, what hasn’t, and the real-world moments that forced them to level up fast. From house fires to insurance claims to tightening up their buying strategy, this conversation is about learning by doing, even if that’s sometimes the hard way.
We also get into how they structure their businesses, why masterminds have been a game-changer, and how they’re now thinking bigger with development projects and multiple business locations.
“We bought everything that came across the table… and that taught us what we don’t like.”
“Most people pay for insurance and never think about it until something happens.”
“We marked the lumber up 100% and were still cheaper than the big stores. That’s how I knew there was real money there.”
Dwayne Zimmerman and Tristan (TJ) Weiler are entrepreneurs. They started in the construction industry as W2 earners. At ages 19 and 18, they bought their first house to flip. By age 23, they have amassed 70-plus houses and own a 2-million-dollar-a-year lumber business.
Find Tristan (TJ) Weiler on Facebook
Find Dwayne Zimmerman on Facebook
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[00:00.1]
We'll sell anything. They just, they just pay. The delivery's an extra fee per mile. So, like, if you want us to drive to California, we will, but it's going to be, you know, 10, 10,000 bucks. I'm thinking you might want to get paid for that delivery up front. Just saying you don't want to get there and have them say, gee, we changed our mind on the further ones like that.
[00:21.0]
We do normally require them to pay the delivery cost up front. Most people think saving money is the answer, but the truth is saving only gets you to join Mike and Zach as they flip the script from saving to earning from zero to unlimited potential.
[00:40.2]
Welcome to Save to Zero. Welcome Everybody, to episode 13 of the Save to Zero podcast. Mike and Zach here with Duane Zimmerman and TJ Wyler out of upstate New York. They're real estate investors that also started a lumber business, sort of on the fly.
[01:00.4]
We'll get into that. But welcome to, the show, guys. Thanks for having us on. Glad to be here. Yeah, thanks for having us on, Mike and Zach. Glad to be here. So you guys are real, estate investors? Like I said, business partners. Why don't you just give us a quick overview for how you two met and, what made you guys decide to go into business together?
[01:22.3]
We met in second grade in school, actually. Wow. Wow, really? And then I actually, we went to separate school, for a little, and then, we went to church together, growing up and everything. But in the beginning, he says he hated me, so we didn't always get along. Is that true?
[01:42.9]
Well, I can understand that. Dwayne, I still hate you. How long did it take you to get over it? T.J. till we were quick going to school together. He was a genius in school, and so he was always looking for, the teacher to give us more busy work stuff. And I was the type of guy that once I got done with the work that was assigned to me, I wanted to go mess around, do my own thing, not just wait a minute.
[02:05.7]
He actually asked the teacher for more work? Yeah, pretty much. Come on. Oh, now I see why you hate him. I would have to.
[02:15.0]
That's good. So, Dwayne, what was it? What type? What subjects do you like most? I actually did really good at math. Okay, that doesn't surprise me. Now, in your business right now you handle the administrative, so I take it you handle the math side. Yeah.
[02:32.7]
Okay, I got to jump into this because I know you did the post recently. What is one of the biggest things that a real estate investor needs to be concerned with when it comes to a property that could cost them $150,000, give or take. Yeah, insurance probably is one thing.
[02:51.4]
And then cost overruns on your bud, on your budget, for sure. No, I got you. I know you guys had a little, a small house fire at one of your properties. So just because I know that a lot of people, that we're going to be appealing, to in this podcast that we appeal to are insurance.
[03:08.1]
And as lenders, it's something that we try and point, out to our borrowers as well. What's real important about the insurance? What level do you need to get? Do you get just enough for the loan or for the property itself when it's done? I mean, it depends on what your risk tolerance is.
[03:28.4]
While we were under construction, we had always done, just the cost of the coverage of the loan. And then once we refinanced out, we would go with, replacement costs. But in that holding period there, we, had one burned down and that costed us a little bit.
[03:45.4]
So now going forward, are you still going to get actual, cash value or acv, or are you going to get rcv, which is a replacement cost going forward? I think we will probably still go with ACV on the beginning, but then as we, as we will pay attention as we, do more and more work to the property, some of it, like one we're quoting right now, we're buying it for 25,000 bucks and we're going to put 100 grand into it.
[04:13.6]
They won't even insure it for more than 100 than what the loan amount is going to be. So they won't insure it for the 100,000. They'll insure it for 100 quarter, but they won't insure it for like, 200,000. Like it'd be once it's done, you know. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
[04:30.1]
But if you're buying it for, for 25 and you're putting 100 into it, then wouldn't it be okay to insure it for a buck and a quarter? Because that buck and a quarter, you don't have to insure the land. So, yeah, we'll insure it for the buck and a quarter when we buy it. Gotcha. All right, I gotcha.
[04:47.3]
So tell us how you went from real estate. Well, actually, let's continue on the real estate. What made you guys pick real estate? We got into, TikTok and that type of thing, and a lot of the guys on there were doing wholesaling at that time, and. And that was the big bang that everybody was making.
[05:03.4]
Becoming a millionaire doing that. And so we're like, oh, we'll become wholesalers and we'll have jets by the end of the year, we'll be up. Did that work? Did you have jets by the end of the year? We're still waiting somewhere.
[05:20.8]
So tell me, T.J. tell me, how many properties did you wholesale the first year? Two. Well, I didn't wholesale anything, but Dwayne, I think we ended up selling two to his boss. Okay, so you did two, and when. How long did you wholesale for before you went into the, buy and hold?
[05:39.2]
Not even a year. Within. Within a couple months. We're like, dude, nobody wants to buy anything. We're just going to buy it ourselves. And so. All right, so you had a switch. So then you went. You started to buy and then hold.
[05:54.3]
And how many properties do you have now? 70ish. Somewhere in that range. That's amazing. And how long a period of time? October of 2021, we bought the. Is when we closed on the first one. Okay, so that's five years.
[06:11.0]
That's a little less than. Well, it's less than 20 a year. Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's fantastic, though. Holy cow. Now, do you buy in a specific box, like a 3 and 2? 2 in one. Is there a land amount that you're looking for as far as acreage or square footage or.
[06:26.8]
What is your buying criteria, Dwayne? It's gotten away this year. We've sharpened the pencil considerably. But, up until 2026, we bought everything that came across the table pretty well, so we didn't care what it was.
[06:46.4]
Gotcha. So did you. Have you gotten rid of any of the less desirable properties or do you still have them all? We still have everything, but that's part of the plan of this year, is to clean the portfolio up a little bit, sell some off. And who's handling the property management?
[07:03.7]
All of us, but my assistant is more and more so. And then Tristan handles, like, the maintenance and stuff. So, Tristan, how many guys do you have in your crew? I understand that Dwayne does the office stuff. You're outside of the office, in the field. How many guys do you have in the field with you that are in house?
[07:20.5]
Employees vs subs full time is currently 6. 6. Interesting. Now, do they cover all the trades? For the most part, yeah. The heating H vac is currently the only thing we would have a designated sub for. Okay.
[07:37.2]
And what about the plumbing and the electrical. The plumbing and electrical. Plumbing I currently do most of where I have a part time guy that just started. He's going to be doing a bunch of the plumbing and I have a Mexican guy that's trained up to do basic electric and so he does all that.
[07:56.7]
Gotcha. Interesting. How big an area do you cover? Like how far away is it like within 30 minutes of your office or how far will you go for a property? We used to go two hours until we got done with the property we're working at currently. And then I think once we get that off our plate we'll right now it back down a little bit.
[08:17.7]
The farthest one away we have right now is like three hours. But that one, it's looking really good. Like I think we'll be all in at like 3:20, comps are shown. It's a 600k so we should get 550 out of it.
[08:35.2]
So it'll be a good rip. But I would say an hour which we try to stay within an hour. Now most of the stuff's within a half hour though of the office. Gotcha. So when somebody calls at 2 o' clock in the morning and they have a leaky toilet or something, who's running out there?
[08:54.6]
We don't really get those calls actually. Okay. But normally at this, at the current time it's Tristan. Unless like if it's a major issue and we're out of town, like I got a couple, we got a couple guys that will send out there.
[09:12.3]
Tristan's normally handles most of the maintenance though. So we talked about the insurance thing a little bit at the beginning. But I think the loss you guys had, I mean a lot of people can learn some stuff from like what happened and how you guys went through it. Because most people, they buy insurance, they pay for it every year and they never make a claim.
[09:29.3]
So can you guys just talk a little bit about, you know, what happened with the fire and then the process with the insurance company and just kind of take people through how that worked out for you guys? Not, I mean we already talked about obviously the insurance amount. Not, not that, just the, the you know, experience that you guys went through.
[09:49.1]
Basically we were just wrapping up renovations on a property and we had a wood stove or wood. Yeah, pellet stove in the house that we were gonna get rid of. But our red heater quit that day and we decided we'll just light up the pellet stove real quick for the day.
[10:08.7]
And, yeah, we packed up about an hour before the day was over and checked everything. Everything looked good. We took off and we had two guys there finishing up roof. And, they were just getting ready to leave, and, they gave me a call and were like, hey, backside of the house is on fire. And. Oh, man.
[10:28.7]
Yeah, I was like, well, can we throw some water on it or something? And they. Yeah, they were, like, it's ripping too good. So they called the fire department, and, yeah, he was cooking. Well, the downside was we didn't have heat there, so we had never connected the well and had water.
[10:48.7]
So we didn't have any water either. Like, there was no oh, man. Or anything. Wow. So did you head back as soon as they. I mean, you. Well, you called the fire department, right, T.J. no, it was. Somebody had stopped on the side of the road and actually called it in. So when you.
[11:05.7]
I assume you headed back to the property as soon as you heard? No, we, I had a couple guys with me, and we were about 30 minutes away. And, the fire, lieutenant or whatever called shortly after, and he's like, well, you're not hardly going to be able to get back to the property.
[11:24.8]
They had all the roads shut down and stuff. And so I was like, well, yeah, we were leaving. Not sure where. I forget where we were headed. Utah in the morning. And so I was like, well, we're not gonna be able to do anything till we get back anyway, so I guess we're gonna have to. Yeah.
[11:42.7]
So did you do anything before you left? Yeah. Yeah. Good mindset. Indeed. Crossed our fingers and hoped it didn't burn down because, I mean, the pictures we got there was only melted siding or like, it was just a siding on fire, basically.
[11:58.5]
And so we figured, well, the fire company gets there, they'll put it out, and we're going to have to change a section of roof and, yeah, some interior water damage. We underestimated fire companies by the law.
[12:15.6]
You underestimated their skill set or how much water they were going to use. Combination. We underestimated that. Fire departments aren't real estate investors. We're there to put the fire out. Oh, yeah. They're very good at making a mess of your property and just leaving.
[12:35.0]
Oh, yeah. I'm not sure if I brought this up at breakfast the other day, but when I have my restoration company, if you had two pumpers show up, they have a contest to see who can empty the truck first. And they are going to empty that water out of that truck, and that's it.
[12:53.5]
And it doesn't matter if your truck shows up. My truck shows up, we're emptying those suckers out. I don't care. And they just go. Which was a restoration contractor I was fine with. I wanted them to refill them and go back again. There's a lot of money in water restoration, especially in a fire, because you got to close it up and. Oh, yeah.
[13:13.7]
Nah, I was all about that. Go ahead, boys. Here you go. Here's some more water. Yeah, most of the time, the water does more damage than the fire did they let the fire burn on this one? They didn't. They didn't. They waited to put the water on. Oh, did they really? Interesting. Well, later, they tore the whole roof off in the process of putting it out, so I'm not sure. I mean.
[13:37.8]
Yeah, who knows? They could have been at. I mean, I'm sure they were putting water on the whole time, but. Yeah, well, they had to make sure that it hadn't spread. Oh, yeah. See, I'm just getting excited here. And I'm. Even on the restoration. It's taking you back, Mike. There might be some fire in there. Go rip that puppy out. Go check it.
[13:54.6]
Absolutely. Couple more trusses you got left. Go for it. Go ahead. We'll have to pull the whole roof off. Go ahead, boys. Absolutely. The only thing that stopped them was the, garage was attached, but it was built after, and so stopped at the garage.
[14:11.7]
But they got everything up to the garage. So the fire. Wait a minute. Let me understand. So the way the garage was attached, it stopped the fire. Yeah, or the wall stopped the fire. Or it stopped at the garage. The garage is 100% fine. Okay.
[14:29.6]
Newer garage, they probably had, what, fire block on it, or they did two. Two sheets of drywall? I don't think so. I think it was just. They managed to. Or maybe they just decided that at that point they'll stop ripping roof off. I don't know. Okay, Dwayne, what was it like dealing with the insurance company?
[14:49.1]
It was actually, super seamless. We had flew out the next day. My assistant was down there in the morning, called insurance, and they were out, I think the same day, if not the next day. And they interrogated us, obviously, to make sure we weren't.
[15:05.8]
Didn't commit arson or anything, and then they wrapped it up pretty. I think it was within two, three weeks. We got the check. Like the check's been deposited already. It was Pretty fast. Okay. And they gave us 105% of the policy, so they gave us like 5% extra. But.
[15:26.8]
So what are you doing with the property now? Are you selling it? We're going to, we're going to put it on market and see if it, if we get 50 grand for it, I'm just going to dump it. We, we got like free and clear that lenders paid off. We got a 30k check from the loan amount was 125, but we hadn't gotten all the construction for all.
[15:48.4]
So the actual payoff was like 97,000 bucks or something. So I want to put it on market, see if we get 50 grand for it and we'll dump it. If we don't get 50 grand, we'll just sit on it for now, maybe put a house on it eventually down the line.
[16:04.5]
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. So what are your long term plans? I know that, when you were in Nashville last week that you went to speak with a developer on how he does stuff. Is that where you guys are ultimately moving? That's. We've been working on a project around here for, it's over a year now, I think, with Josh, the developer there.
[16:27.7]
It's 30 units, all townhomes. If that really works out. Well, that's definitely what we're thinking long term, do stuff like that instead of all these single family stuff. So let me understand. You guys are in the process of, ground up construction on 30 units? Yeah.
[16:46.5]
That's fantastic. And what is he doing? Is he partnering with you so that he can walk you through the process? Yeah, he's partnering and then he'll be like the GC and he'll run the whole project, line up all the subs and everything. Interesting. So how much involvement will you guys have with that?
[17:03.6]
We have to bring the mine to the table, and then we'll take it once it's done. We might actually like our team might do some of the construction work. We'll see. But then after construction will handle the lease up and everything and manage it.
[17:22.6]
Okay, so you're going to hang on to it and will he be your partner going forward? That's not set in stone. He's neutral. Either way, we can either buy him out or he'll stay home. So how do you see. I guess I'm trying to understand how do you see the learning process going with him?
[17:38.1]
Are you guys going to be involved in it so you know how to build the next one on your own or Will he come in with the next one as well? He would like us, to manage the contractors and whatnot and so that he can just kind of. We don't have to actually come up to the property.
[17:53.3]
Right. And just kind of give us pointers and stuff on how to do it is the plan. I'm, just seeing it as a great learning opportunity. If you've got somebody with all that experience, if you're over their shoulder during the whole process, then the next one, you're not going to need them nearly as much.
[18:09.1]
Because ultimately building a, building a house, Building a house, Building a project is building a project. You just adding, you know, a couple zeros. And it requires a little bit more coordination. But they're going to frame it up. I mean, they're going to, you're going to do the dirt work for the whole thing at the same time.
[18:27.5]
I suspect you'll lay the foundations all at the same time. Am I right? Yeah, yeah. So you get that all done and then it's just a matter of framing it up. I mean, it's just like building single family homes. You just put them together, you know what I mean? It's not rocket science. One of the hardest parts was all the, paperwork up front.
[18:45.5]
Like we got a tax abatement that's been approved and everything on the front end. So that was a lot of work. But you can figure that out going forward. It's going to be beneficial. So what size are these going to be? Are they like three and twos? Are they going to have garages? There'll be some three twos and then there'll be, some two twos, but no garages.
[19:05.2]
It'll be like 12, 1100-1300 square foot. It's just small stuff. Gotcha. So do you see yourself getting away from the rehabs and just going strictly, strictly into development down the line? Yeah, if it works, if this really works out for sure, we're, we're ready.
[19:23.9]
I mean, this year we haven't, we've only bought one house so far this year, like we're, we dialed it back a bunch. We're going to take on really good stuff. Not all the trash we took on last year. Well, I think part of it is the excitement.
[19:38.9]
You know what I mean? You buy one and it becomes addicting. Okay, can we buy more? Can we buy more? How many can we do per month? And then you get addicted to it. And then you get to the end, you're like, okay, it's like eating a Piece of cake. Gee, it tastes good. And you just eat the whole thing and you feel like crap afterwards. Exactly.
[19:55.8]
I like what we like. If I would go back, I would still do what we did because, like, we learned what we don't like. We learned what we like the deals we like. Like, I like what we did. Absolutely. Oh, no, I agree 100%. But it's good that you've come out the other side. I suspect that going to development will be considerably more appealing than doing, fix and flips or buying holds, to build, you know, build to rent.
[20:22.2]
I think that is a sweet model. Yeah. It's literally the same process. Like, some of these projects. We're doing full renovations anyways. Like, it's not much more work to build a brand new one. Yeah, it just can be a lot of work up front with the permitting and all the engineering and stuff. If you got to build roads and do all that, that's a lot of work and upfront cost.
[20:38.9]
But once you get all that stuff approved, you just stamp them out when you actually get to building. So now, T.J. are you going to be involved? I know Dwayne's in the office, and a lot of stuff he's doing on the, build, I assume is. It's paper. How closely are you going to be involved on the construction side, on the development?
[20:57.7]
I'm not sure yet. That's yet to be determined. It really depends on what the, bids are coming back on, on some of our, on the construction costs. And so because, like, especially, like, the electrical, like, in New York, there's not many electricians.
[21:13.9]
And so some of the bids we're getting, we have been getting for electrical work. We could do it and save ourselves, like, 300 GS. So if that's the case, like, then we might do that, you know, do the electric work ourselves. Yeah. Now, 300.
[21:29.0]
300 G's is not driving around looking for 10 cents on a gallon. No, it is not. 300 G's is a nice chunk of cash, so that's cool. Good for you guys. Yeah. Let's switch gears a little bit from the real estate stuff and tell us about the lumber business.
[21:45.0]
I know you guys kind of started it, you know, weren't really set out to do that. So how. How did that come about? What happened? My uncle is, out of Pennsylvania. He does kind of the same thing or the, sells, like, Tongue and Groove and Shiplap.
[22:01.1]
And, we bought a house that was. We wanted to make a log Cabin. And, so we're like, hey. Well, he was pushing us to get started. So we like, hey, we'll buy a trailer load of it and see if we can move any of it. And, yeah, we bought a trailer load of it and we sold it listed up on Marketplace.
[22:23.4]
And we sold most of it, I would say, within that week. And part of, part of it was he, kept sending us his monthly sales report. He was showing us, like, he was making like 50 grand and 60 grand a month. And he kept saying, like, dude, you guys could sell wood. And he's like, you'll quit doing real estate at some point. So.
[22:41.7]
So you just started with extra, extra lumber and had to do something with it and get rid of it. Actually, the lumber we were going to use for our project, we sold that. But then, okay, but then after that, obviously you guys, maybe you thought you were onto something or what made you then, you know, take it from there.
[23:00.5]
Well, we bought it, for the price we were buying it for. We marked it up 100% and we were still selling it for almost 30 to 40% less than like the box stores. And when I look at numbers like that, I'm like, there's a lot of room to make money. So. Sure.
[23:19.5]
Yeah. I bet you, TJ that you're glad that Dwayne wanted all that extra math work now. Aren't you in school?
[23:31.2]
That's cool. So now I understand that, Dwayne is your brother running the lumber business. I would say for the most part. Like, he handles all incoming calls and all of that stuff. I mean, I still handle all the inventory ordering and everything like that. But he handles a lot of the front facing customers and everything. Gotcha.
[23:51.2]
How many SKUs do you guys have now? It's up to, 80 to 100 somewhere in that range. And that's mainly because of all the different sizes, like, of actual different products. It's probably like 20, 25. Gotcha. And where are you storing everything?
[24:07.8]
I know warehouse. It's right here where I live. Okay, how many square feet are we talking? I'm trying to get a sense for the size of it. There's about 60,000 square foot of warehouse here. We're currently using about 35 of it.
[24:25.0]
35,000 square feet. Oh, you're gonna have to fill out with more product. We have plenty of products to fill it. The problem is Tristan's, uncle, or I'm not sure Tristan, great uncle. Great uncle. My dad's uncle owns the joint.
[24:41.5]
And he's got all his stuff in here and he doesn't. We gotta really push him out. Okay, well, how old is he? Late 60s. I mean, mid-60s, probably something in that range, I think. And he's your great uncle? I think so, yeah. Okay.
[24:57.5]
I was gonna say if he was in his 80s or 90s, just wait a little while, he'll get the whole thing, then we'll go to his children. Then we won't get our chance to buy it. That's funny. So now how far do you guys deliver with the lumber? We'll deliver anywhere, really.
[25:14.2]
But normally we charge delivery fees. And so, like, it depends on the order size, if people are willing to pay the delivery. But Mike, my brother was just in Connecticut, this week, so. And then we'll get out to Ohio. Yeah.
[25:31.2]
How far a drive is? Was like six, seven hours. Yeah. That's a delivery. Wow. Yeah, but if you're selling it for 40, 30 to 40% less than the box stores, you're still saving them a lot of money, Right? Especially if they get a bigger order. Like they can afford to pay for the extra, you know, the delivery.
[25:47.8]
The extra delivery cost. Yeah, absolutely. Now, do you have a minimum that you'll sell for that far away? No, we'll sell anything. They just. They just pay. The delivery's an extra fee per mile. So, like, if you want us to drive to California, we will. But it's going to be, you know, 10,000 bucks.
[26:07.0]
I'm thinking you might want to get paid for that delivery up front. Just saying you don't want to get there and have them say, gee, we changed our mind on the further ones like that. We do normally require them to pay the delivery cost up front. Smart. Okay, good man.
[26:22.3]
This is not your first rodeo, I know that, I know that. The problem is. Yeah. You get out there and then they're like, this is not what I was looking for. Well, it's here. He paid the delivery fee. There you go.
[26:39.8]
That's funny. So I know that you guys are in a number of masterminds. How many are you in all together? Me and Tristan are in two together. We're in Legacy family. And then the dm and then, I'm in the Blue collar millionaire. So three.
[26:57.4]
I'm in the third one. I know. So tell me what it is that you get out of each one that you want to be in three Legacy. I would say the biggest connection we've got out of that one is the builder. Okay. That's how you met the builder for the development.
[27:13.0]
Nice. Now how big a mastermind is that? How many other people are in there? There had been around 150. I don't know what it is exactly at the moment. Somewhere in that range. We joined both of them at the same time. So like we joined Tim's group and Mark's group at the same time.
[27:28.9]
And what are your long term plans? Are you getting out of both of them? That it's financially worth your while to go and your. I would say from the relationships we've built, like we have a, in legacy family. We have quite a few lenders we use as well.
[27:45.3]
That would not. Like yourself. They would not lend in New York normally, but they're lending to us.
[27:53.8]
And so like just right there, like there's. To me it's not so much about what am I getting out of it daily as much as if I leave. What does that show to, you know, like the relationship long term, matters more to me.
[28:11.0]
Sure, absolutely. And how about blue collar millionaire? You guys looking to buy another business? No, I'm not looking to buy any businesses. The main reason I had originally joined is because they, Kevin and Chris both have like multiple locations and like that's our goal with the lumber business is multiple locations eventually.
[28:31.4]
And they said hey, they could help, help out anymore. The main reason I'm staying in there is like next week, not next week, but the following week we're going down to Tampa to the event and a meeting with my lumber broker in Tampa.
[28:53.1]
He's just local. He's gonna, he's gonna come over and local. So like we've got. I don't get as much value out of the weekly calls out of that one, but I get a decent amount of value out of the, the events. Gotcha. So you, are you in there, higher level event or higher level mastermind?
[29:12.2]
Because they have two levels, don't they? I'm. I believe I'm in the high level, but I'm not 100 sure on that. Okay. Because I know they have some free calls if I'm not mistaken, and they have the paid. So I guess it's not. Yeah. Okay, gotcha.
[29:29.0]
How many people are in that mastermind? There's not many. There's only like 20 or something like that. Okay. Well I think sometimes the smaller ones you can go deeper with people and if you have good quality people. I know Zach and I are in a couple of masterminds in terms of social media because we're trying to up our game considerably in social media.
[29:50.7]
And one of them, there's only 15 people in it, and we just went to Atlanta and some people came with their spouses. So I guess if the spouses weren't there, it was a total of, five different entities or companies that were, represented.
[30:09.8]
And, the leader of it was able to dive deep with each person. So he went around the table in the beginning after quick intros and asked each person what their biggest obstacle was for social media. And he would sit there for 15 minutes to a half hour explaining what you needed to do in order to solve what your roadblock was.
[30:32.0]
So I think that's ideal when you get into these larger groups, as you guys know from Mark's group, and I'm sure the same thing in, Tim's group, it's sometimes hard to get your question answered just because it's so big and they can only go so deep with the answers, you know, And I know for me, sometimes you get on the calls and I have to put it on mute because I'm yelling at the screen and telling people to let him answer the question.
[31:00.4]
You know, he'll start answering the question and they start going on to something else. He's like, okay, he didn't answer the first question. Now you're asking a second question. Yeah. And then they just go, I'm just like, you people get, let him answer the question. And then you get the others that want to hear themselves talk, and they just go, so tell us, you know, you're new.
[31:21.8]
Tell us what you do. Boom. And it's like, okay, this is not a 15 minute intro on a one hour call. Get to the point. Let's move on. Yeah, so I've, I have to, I'll listen to what Mark has to say and then I have to mute it. And then many times I just have to drop off because I can't sit there anymore.
[31:40.7]
It's just painful. So the smaller groups, I think can be much better because you get the one on one. You know, I was gonna say the last time I was at one of the blue collar millionaire, meetups, there was a guy there that's got his own.
[31:57.3]
He just recently bought his own mill in Colorado. And so, like, we've, since then we've had multiple conversations about how we can potentially work together. So, like, just if something would come out of that, like, just. That is worth it. Absolutely.
[32:13.0]
And what I find is if you play the long game, then it can definitely be very Valuable to be in a group, assuming, there's got to be people there that you can work with. But the larger it is, the higher the probability you'll find somebody to make it worth your while.
[32:30.6]
But yeah, I think you play the long game because you never know what's going to happen. It can come around in the future. I had a guy who I was in a mastermind with. I met him and three years later and we struck up a friendship. We just never had an opportunity to work together.
[32:46.8]
He was doing large, multifamily. I lend a lot on single, or Zach and I lend a lot on single. And he needed $2 million one time in eight hours because he had a borrower. A lender was, unable to perform because. Or an investor because they were, they had a 1031, I'm sorry, a sale that didn't happen.
[33:08.2]
So, the guy had $4 million that was pledged and he was going to put in and he was unable to do it. So he ended up, you know, having a dial for dollars that night. And the next day he contacted me and three years later, I made him, a $2 million loan in six hours.
[33:24.6]
Is that the long game or what? That's a long game. But it saved him a million dollars because he had a million dollars that went hard. And if, they didn't close by 5 o', clock, it wasn't going to happen because the seller had another buyer in line to buy it for more than what my buddy was paying for it.
[33:44.9]
Plus he already made the million dollars that had gone hard. So he was hoping that he wasn't going to be able to raise the money. He was already counting that money and spending it, I'm sure. Like there's no way he's going to raise $4 million in 24 hours. Too bad. You couldn't have been a fly on the wall of that to see the seller when they were like, oh, shit, they actually pulled it off.
[34:04.3]
Son of a bitch.
[34:09.3]
In situations like that, I, you know, I'd have to wonder, wait a minute, the guy with the $4 million, did he set this up with me and the guy who. I'm buying it. Yeah, right, the 500,000 each. Yeah.
[34:25.9]
So you had mentioned opening, looking at other locations for the lumber company. What's, you know, either stopping you guys from doing it or what, like considerations are you guys thinking about when you're looking at maybe locations or places to do to open one, how you guys think about that?
[34:43.3]
The biggest thing is we want to make sure we got our first location extremely dialed in. That way we're not just scaling chaos when we open multiple ones. And what do you mean by that? Like, dialed in? Want to have all our SOPs in place, make sure we have everything.
[35:01.4]
And on top of that, originally we were going to shoot for opening a location probably by Q2 of this year, but we pushed that back because I think we can take our current location to 7 million a year.
[35:16.5]
And if we can do that, we're better off focusing in on that than having two $3 million a year locations, is my opinion. I agree 100%. You only have one set of overhead, as opposed to two. So a $7 million location, because your economies of scale are going to be fantastic. As opposed.
[35:36.2]
Because now you'd have two buildings and you're going to have a manager in the other place, et cetera. So. Yeah. That's brilliant. I think it's very smart. Plus, I want to find where the cap is and, like, figure out where the cap is in a market. Yes. So that I know. You know, basically I want to run one location, like, to what I think is the cap so that I can actually know, like, what the actual.
[35:59.9]
When I open another location, like what we're actually looking at. Yeah. And where to do it. Right. You're not going to open the other location across the street. So if you open it far away. Right. You're not going to be there as much. You can't. You're not going to be there as much. So you got to manage the. That the staff over there and. Yeah.
[36:15.1]
Figure out how big you can make your current location. I think that makes a ton of sense. We already know where we're putting the next one. It's just about everything. So when you run the second location, will you have all the administration in your home office and then that one would be more of just straight deliveries.
[36:32.6]
That's the goal. Yeah. Yeah. Well, then you get the economies for that as well. That's one of the things that people do when they roll up businesses. They centralize administration. Because administration payroll can be done anywhere, bills can be paid. AP, AR can all be done from the same place.
[36:49.5]
Now, the lumber's got to be in a specific spot to be delivered. So that makes sense that you have a warehouse for that. But administration in one spot. Very smart. Save a lot of money that way. Absolutely. That's cool. So let me ask, is there an industry association that can tell you, based on the number of rooftops, how much wood is Sold in the, in a specific area.
[37:14.2]
Not from what I can tell. I spent a lot of time on chat GPT trying to figure out like what wood moves. And like you can, I can tell like board footage sold like, I can't pinpoint it down to like markets specifically.
[37:30.6]
And neither can my broker give me real good data either. Yeah. But I'm wondering if you could reverse engineer it. I would think somebody in the industry can has got it figured out. I'm sure they do. But I'm wondering if you could reverse engineer it for example, if the average.
[37:48.6]
And I'm totally making this up off the top of my head, so bear with me here. If the average Home Depot and this number information's got to be public. If the average Home Depot sells X amount of lumber in a year and they're in a market with X number of people, rooftops, and you find out how many Home Depots they put in, then how many lows they put in.
[38:17.5]
And then if your average local lumber supplier sells X amount of lumber and these are all just averages and you find out that they have a Home Depot, a Lowe's and four local. So now you are six suppliers in the market knowing that Home Depot and Lowe's will have the majority of the market.
[38:37.0]
And you say, okay, well this is how many they have. This is what the average store sells. Okay then based on our territory or the territory we want to go to, if there are X number of roofs and there are only three and there should be five based on our research, we should be able to sell a fair amount of lumber there because these guys are selling it.
[39:00.3]
We should be able to take some profit share and other people may be getting it from outside the market or whatever the case may be to meet the need. So I think, I think it can be reverse engineered relatively easily. Takes some work.
[39:15.6]
But yeah, I don't think it's that hard because Home Depot knows how many rooftops they need and how much lumber they're going to sell. The only, you know, you've got certain. Yours wouldn't matter. Actually that's not true. You'd have to see how many new builds are going on, how many reconstructions are going on.
[39:33.7]
Is there enough land for re for new builds or is it going to be predominantly reconstruction and rehab? So rehab is going to use less lumber because obviously you have the shell is already built. True. And rehabs are not generally major and rehabs don't do a lot of additions, do a lot of lumber but rehabs generally don't.
[39:54.2]
And I understand you guys don't go anywhere near drywall. Correct. We stay away from it a little bit. We still, will repair stuff. And do accent wall or, you know, have some walls.
[40:09.2]
Drywall. But if there's damaged drywall, we tend to, cover it up. Since we've started in our portfolio, we've. Our crews have, personally hung about six sheets of drywall.
[40:24.6]
I love that. Yeah. But see, they say if you've got somebody who does it, that's who you want to learn from. So my point is, if you guys are putting wood in a lumber wood in all of your properties, then that tells people that you really believe in it. Yeah.
[40:43.2]
You know what I mean? Definitely. And do you find. And obviously when you have your, your, move outs, your repairs have to be much less than somebody who has drywall. Right. That's. We just had a move out. Where. Yeah. Any drywall that was left that we tried to save got holes punched in it and all the wood was.
[41:03.0]
Absolutely. And I mean, if they mess up the wood, you just sand it out or something and then that's it. We haven't met the guy that could yet.
[41:13.4]
Oh, you just messed with, with karma there, tj you opened up the door there. That sounds like a challenge to me. Yeah. The universe is going to get you now. That's funny. Okay, so how long before you guys get your, plane.
[41:29.0]
I know you, you were on one that you went down to. Where was it to, Salt Lake. So maybe when you start doing. Developing. What size, jet are you going to get? Probably start with a small Cessna or something. Okay. I like you thinking we're only going to start with a small Cessna. There you go.
[41:46.1]
Now you have. You guys have a lot of open land up there, right where you are. Depends. I mean, we're in farmland territory. Okay. Why didn't you didn't know if you're going to have your own Runway in your backyard, There's a guy local to us that's got his own. And, he built his own airport, so. Interesting.
[42:03.6]
Is it just for him or does he let other people land there as well? Him and like two, three other business owners in there. Interesting. When I was, in Alaska on vacation, we went to this place. We did an Airbnb, and it was at a private airport.
[42:18.7]
That's cool. And right under. We were staying upstairs and downstairs and. No, I'm sorry, we're staying upstairs to the left of us. Owners stayed downstairs. We stayed upstairs. To the left was their airplane hangar, and they actually.
[42:34.2]
They pulled out of their airplane hangar, went right down the road, and they were behind cars, and they go right down the road. Then they had to pull in to actually get to the Runway. That's awesome. And they just took off. I watched them do it one day. I see them pulling out. I'm like, okay, how are they gonna get to the Runway?
[42:50.1]
The trees are in the way, and the guy just waves at me, and they go driving down the street, and they pull into their Runway and they take off. That's awesome. Zach, you got anything else, bud? I don't. Yeah, Guys, so we're pretty much out of time here. If people want to get in touch with you or get a hold of you, how can they do that?
[43:08.5]
TJ Wyler on Facebook. Dwayne Zimmerman. On Facebook and Instagram, I believe it's the Zimmerman empire. The Zimmerman empire. Okay. Love it.
[43:25.6]
Yeah, we'll put that in the, show notes. Thanks for coming on, guys. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having us on.