[00:00:00] Intro: This is the Texas Land Guys podcast, hosted by brothers Tim Dosh and Tom Dosh. With their partners David Marshall and Tripp Rich, they have built DMRE, the leading land brokerage in Texas. With decades of experience brokering deals between landowners and real estate developers, they take you inside the deals that move the market

 

[00:00:28] Tom Dosch: Welcome to the Texas Land Guys podcast. Tim, how are you doing this morning? 

 

[00:00:31] Tim Dosch: I’m doing great. How are you doing, Tom? 

 

[00:00:33] Tom Dosch: I’m good. We have, uh, Ally with us, our producer today, joining us in the Dallas studio. Ally? 

 

[00:00:39] Ally McElheney: Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. 

 

[00:00:41] Tom Dosch: Yeah, we’re excited to have you joining us. You were recently on the podcast helping us out, answer questions from our audience.

 

[00:00:47] Ally McElheney: Yeah, just the voice in the background. 

 

[00:00:50] Tom Dosch: That’s right. So you will continue to be the voice in the background. We’re gonna be going through some fun and interesting questions today, and so you’re gonna help us with that, which we’re looking forward to. Tim, before we dive into that, what have you and the family been up to?

 

[00:01:02] Tim Dosch: Well, I was gonna tell you, we had Luke’s first, uh, football game last night. He’s a freshman in high school. He’s on the JV team. He’s a quarterback, and so, um, there’s three main quarterbacks right now that are freshmen- But he got the first start, uh, behind, like, the guy who’s the, the starting quarterback, and, um, he had a 65-yard touchdown pass, so it was, it was pretty cool.

 

[00:01:22] Tim Dosch: Wow, that’s awesome. It, it was the only touchdown we scored in the game, and, uh, it was pretty cool ’cause it was a busted play. He rolled out to the left. He was holding the ball for, like, I mean, it was probably, like, three or four seconds, which is a long time, and I was like, “Man, there’s no one open.” And then he threw it downfield, and he was on 35 and got a receiver, like, around the 20, and then, you know, the, the guy scored, so it totally shocked the other team.

 

[00:01:46] Tim Dosch: It was… He was pretty excited, you know, for his first high school start. 

 

[00:01:49] Tom Dosch: Yeah. That’s awesome. 

 

[00:01:50] Tom Dosch: It’s, uh, it’s pretty exciting to get a big, big touchdown like that. So when, uh… Is that, was that, like, a preseason game, or was that their actual first game? 

 

[00:01:58] Tim Dosch: It was a scrimmage. Yeah. Okay. They’re… I mean, it was like to get real game, but it was more of, like, a scrimmage.

 

[00:02:03] Tim Dosch: It didn’t count. Uh, and then they have one next week, and then I think they start after that with their, you know, re- regular season games. 

 

[00:02:09] Tom Dosch: Yeah. It’s been so hot. I know he’s been practicing a ton, but it’s been so hot out there. 

 

[00:02:14] Tim Dosch: Yeah. It’s really hot out there. What about you, though? What, what have you been up to?

 

[00:02:17] Tom Dosch: Well, we’re… I haven’t told you this. We’re planning a, um, pretty excited about this. We’re planning an adventure trip, uh, like, with m- with my two boys. And so a friend of mine, Jesse, who was on the podcast not too long ago, that, that has the camp out in Medina, Deer Creek, we were talking about doing something fun with our boys, so we’re gonna do a canoe trip, like, overnight, long weekend here in a couple weeks.

 

[00:02:39] Tim Dosch: Nice. Uh, 

 

[00:02:39] Tom Dosch: and so the boys are excited. They’re, they were asking me last night if they could sleep on the floor so they can get used to- … you know, not, not sleeping in their beds. And, uh- Get used to 

 

[00:02:47] Tim Dosch: roughing it … 

 

[00:02:48] Tom Dosch: so it’ll be fun. We’re gonna be on the Brazos River. We’ll be, like, you know, canoeing downriver during the day, and then we’ll be just pulling off and camping overnight for a couple nights, so it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be really fun.

 

[00:02:59] Tom Dosch: I’m, I’m really excited to do… I’ve done stuff like that, but not with the boys, and so we thought it’d be fun to do, like, a, a boys’ trip, and we wanna try to make it more of, like, an annual thing. And we’re gonna, like, read scripture, have the boys memorize some scripture, and then really try to be intentional and make it, like, a memory and something they look forward to.

 

[00:03:16] Tom Dosch: He’s got two boys the same age as my two boys, and then I’ve invited a couple other friends that have boys the same age, too, so it’ll be pretty cool. 

 

[00:03:24] Tim Dosch: That’s awesome. Yeah, he’s a great guy to do it with. That’ll be really fun. 

 

[00:03:27] Tom Dosch: Yeah. Yeah. We’re excited. I think it’ll be a pretty cool trip. Well, why don’t we get into it?

 

[00:03:32] Tom Dosch: Ally, do you want to ask us the first question you have for us today? 

 

[00:03:36] Ally McElheney: Yeah. Absolutely. So I’d lo- love for y’all to take us back to year one for you guys. Um, what did land brokerage look like for you before DMRE existed, and was there anything along the way that almost made you quit? 

 

[00:03:50] Tom Dosch: Tim, do you wanna answer that one first?

 

[00:03:51] Tom Dosch: ‘Cause you were around before I was, so. 

 

[00:03:53] Tim Dosch: Sure. Well, there’s almost two parts to it because, you know, we… When we started the company, it was in 2017, so a little bit over nine years ago. But I started in the business back in ’04, and, um, you know, for me, the first couple of years of land business was good, but then we hit the Great Recession.

 

[00:04:09] Tim Dosch: So, you know, the land business is in an incredible transition point when I started. You know, there were a lot of brokers who weren’t even using email. You know, a lot of the successful older guys with their secretary would use email, but they wouldn’t. And so, you know, this is not, like, pre-internet, but, you know, the way we did things back then was just…

 

[00:04:26] Tim Dosch: It’s a, like, a different world. Like, to show sites, we would have to print out all the HVAC maps and cut them, and then, like, literally tape them together, you know, to, to like, to… And then we’d use, like, a highlighter to, like, highlight the site. It was crazy, you know. And then, uh, actually, when I first started, probably, like, two years in, we actually got LandVision.

 

[00:04:46] Tim Dosch: It was actually a technology that I w- I researched and found, and we started using, and which, which was, like, a total, like, game changer. It was like a different world. You could actually go pull up sites and outline them and print them out and, you know, draw polygons and mark stuff up. And so I was at a time where things really changed, you know, from literally guys faxing offers over and doing things super old school.

 

[00:05:08] Tim Dosch: You know, guys were remembering clients’ numbers and didn’t even have them written down. You know, didn’t… There, there wasn’t, like, a CRM or something. People just kinda had, like, numbers jotted on pages or notebooks and so a very old school way of doing things. And then things really changed in the early 2000s, again into 2010.

 

[00:05:27] Tim Dosch: But for me, I think what, what could have made me quit was the Great Recession because a lot of the guys who are my age who went through the Great Recession did quit the land business because it was so hard and nothing was closing. You know, we had… I think our… 2009 was our toughest year. I think we closed two deals that year, and, uh, we actually had a really big pipeline going into it, maybe 12 or 14 deals.

 

[00:05:48] Tim Dosch: Uh, Dave and I had just become partners. I’d actually just gotten married, and so everything fell out. Like, every single one of our deals fell out, and it was brutal. And, uh, I’d actually never really thought about quitting. I had people, you know, kinda close to me questioning, like, “Should you be doing this?

 

[00:06:03] Tim Dosch: Should you do something else? You know, this seems like it’s just not, not working.” And I just, you know, for some reason was like, “I’m not gonna quit. I’m gonna keep, keep going, and I believe in this long term. I think it’s gonna come back.” And, uh, we were very blessed to get some really good business from Compass Bank, uh, selling all their REO properties across the state selling notes for them, uh, across the Southwest.

 

[00:06:26] Tim Dosch: And so that really carried us through and allowed us to be, you know, fairly profitable going through. And then, you know, we had the Great Recession, and then Tom, you came on pretty clo- soon after that. And then we had the oil downturn in 2015 and 2016, which was pretty brutal in Houston. I think people may kind of forget about that, but that was…

 

[00:06:45] Tim Dosch: It wasn’t as bad as the Great Recession, but it was really tough. Then we started our company in 2017. So I think when we started our company, things were pretty good. We had a really good run in ’17 through ’19, but then COVID was a real reset, I think, for our company and just, you know, for the business.

 

[00:07:02] Tim Dosch: Everything shut down for maybe three or four months, and it was really tough, and then things kind of took off again. But fortunately, that’s when we… That’s the time when you moved to Dallas and we started Austin with Tripp and, you know, DMRE actually grew, you know, through that time 

 

[00:07:17] Tom Dosch: Yeah, I remember, Tim, when I interned at ARA back in 2010 when I was still in college.

 

[00:07:22] Tom Dosch: So you and David were working on land, but I was on the apartment side. And, uh, I remember there was, like, these books that you had. I don’t remember… know if you remember these. I, I don’t know if it was the same thing as, like, 

 

[00:07:33] Tim Dosch: Landiscore. Like KeyMaps or something or… 

 

[00:07:36] Tom Dosch: Yeah, it was kind of like the Landiscore wall map that we have in our office that’s, like, huge, but it was like a book.

 

[00:07:41] Tim Dosch: Yeah. 

 

[00:07:42] Tom Dosch: And you flipped it, and it, it… every page had a different aerial, like a satellite aerial. And yeah, it was like a KeyMap thing. So you would, like, look at that instead of be- you know, going on Google- 

 

[00:07:51] Tim Dosch: Yeah … 

 

[00:07:52] Tom Dosch: or going on, on LandVision. So we g- I think technol- I know you went almost, like, straight to technology.

 

[00:07:58] Tom Dosch: I think technology is what’s probably changed the most- 

 

[00:08:00] Tim Dosch: Yeah … 

 

[00:08:01] Tom Dosch: uh, uh, just in that amount of time, and that was even 2010. And then I started with you guys in 2012, and in 2012, we weren’t using any kind of CRM in 2012, and there, you know, e- everything was different, like, a technology standpoint. There was LandVision.

 

[00:08:16] Tom Dosch: There wasn’t any consistent way to track really opportunities. And so I remember getting in PowerPoint and taking, like, a snippet of, like, Google and then, like, drawing boundaries of sites in PowerPoint to try to show, like, this is what’s happening in the Washington corridor. Yeah. So this is all kind of pre having something like the Factor that we started developing, you know, in 2020, which enabled us to basically sh- save all of the research, all of the work we’re doing into this integrated database.

 

[00:08:44] Tom Dosch: Yeah, technology has to be probably the biggest change on the land side. 

 

[00:08:48] Tim Dosch: I mean, it’s almost just like a radical change. I mean, think about the way we used to do things, how hard it was to show people sites, you know. And even back then, and I guess th- today we’re a little bit lazier, we don’t drive as much, which we need to drive more, but you had to go drive everything all the time.

 

[00:09:03] Tim Dosch: Yeah. And we would go… I think you remember this. We’d have clients come in town, and you’d drive the whole market. You’d drive the entire day. From the morning till night, you’d be driving Sugar Land and Clear Lake and Woodlands, and if anybody knows Houston, like, I mean, th- those are so far apart, hitting Katy.

 

[00:09:19] Tim Dosch: I mean, it would just be a really long day trying to see everything and then, you know, trying to follow up and send people sites was, was so much more difficult. Than it is today 

 

[00:09:28] Tom Dosch: I remember, I, I s- I sound like an old broker now and, but I’m not like that old. I’ve been doing it 15 years. But I remember driving, like, a couple hundred miles a day with clients- Yeah

 

[00:09:37] Tom Dosch: all around the, the market. And I do think I’m a way better broker because I did that. Yeah. And so for the guys that aren’t doing that, because you don’t really have to anymore, I actually think you are kinda missing out. Yeah. Now, you know, a lot of times now, because you don’t need to do it, some of the people that want you to go drive the market with them, it’s not a great use of time ’cause they just don’t, they don’t know the market at all.

 

[00:09:58] Tom Dosch: And our… A lot of our- Yeah … really good clients and just the, the clients that we’re working with and doing deals with, they don’t, they don’t need to drive the market. It’s just not a need anymore, ’cause you can get on, you can get on a satellite and see things so easily. I remember just the types of questions I would get on those drives from clients.

 

[00:10:14] Tom Dosch: First of all, you get to know the client a lot better ’cause you’re with them so long, but also the questions you’d be getting around, like cap rates and construction costs and things that… Like rents. Like, “What’s that that we dr- just drove past?” Yeah. “What, what’s happening there?” So I would get up early in the morning before a drive like that and then for a couple hours at the office.

 

[00:10:31] Tom Dosch: You know, I’d get into the office at, like, 5:30, and from, like, 5:30 to 7:30 I would just be studying the whole drive I was gonna do. Also, like, this was, like, kind of around the time where, like, you weren’t, like, using GPS, and you didn’t have, like, a screen in your car. Yeah. So you had to kinda like know where you were going.

 

[00:10:46] Tom Dosch: Yeah. And so I would be… But I’d be memorizing, like, I would memorize the land comps. So any apartments we’re gonna drive by, what did people pay for that land? And then I’d memorize what rents were at the… And then also all the sites we would drive past, I would memorize, like, what are they asking? How many acres is it?

 

[00:11:02] Tom Dosch: I remember some clients being like, “How do you remember all this stuff?” But I was doing these drives with so many people. It’d be, like, several a week- Yeah … that I would be doing, and I’d be going up… You remember when I started, it was the Exxon announced at the Woodlands campus. Yeah. And so that was- 

 

[00:11:16] Tim Dosch: Springwoods.

 

[00:11:17] Tim Dosch: Yeah … 

 

[00:11:17] Tom Dosch: and the Grand Parkway was getting built at the exact same time, and so I kinda just focused on that area for quite a while. And so a lot of my drives were just up 45, you know, going across, driving Spring, driving the Woodlands, driving the Exxon stuff and Just start trying to know that as much as I could.

 

[00:11:34] Tom Dosch: But it is crazy. We do it very, very differently now and, uh- I think it’s a good- … especially 

 

[00:11:41] Tim Dosch: going forward … a good point you’re making, though, that there’s so much today that’s virtual. I mean, even when you think about virtual meetings, I mean, how m- it used to be back then you would never have a virtual meeting.

 

[00:11:50] Tim Dosch: Everything was in person. I mean, almost everything is virtual. We still meet people, but it’s just, you know, it’s so m- easy now to connect virtually. And th- now you’re, you’re talking about driving versus just sitting in the office looking at aerials, and I think that we are missing a lot as we go further and further into technology and AI, and things become more virtual, and, uh, we don’t feel like we need to go have physical contact with people or, you know, go s- actually see something.

 

[00:12:17] Tim Dosch: We can see a video of it or a picture of it or we can look at it from the sky. And I do think that there’s something you miss, ’cause I think you’re right. I mean, it’s incredible to me how you could study something so closely sitting at your, at your computer, and we have so much information now on these sites.

 

[00:12:32] Tim Dosch: I mean, I can look at these areas and it… I can look at everything. But then when I go drive it, it’s just a totally different experience, and you see it so differently. And I think especially when you’ve been in the business for a really long time, you’ve done a lot of these drives, you’ve done a lot of deals, there’s things that kinda click when you drive.

 

[00:12:48] Tim Dosch: You know, like I’ll, I’ll go drive them, like, wow, that… there’s a deal there. Like, I didn’t see that from the, from the aerial, but I’m seeing this and there’s a deal here. You know? And I just have that, like, kinda gut feeling when I drive it. Or I’ll drive and be like, “Oh wow, that’s not good. That’s not a deal.”

 

[00:13:02] Tim Dosch: You know? Like- Yeah … I thought that looked interesting, but that’s not a deal. And so, um, I think you’re right. That’s a good part of development for a young person in the business, but also if you’re someone that’s, you know, been doing it a long time and it’s amazing how the city’s changed. You know, I go drive around now and it’s like all these deals we did that got built, it kinda blows your mind.

 

[00:13:21] Tim Dosch: You know, ’cause we’ve done, you know, hundreds of deals in the infill market and hundreds of deals in the suburban market in Houston, and then I drive around and I see all of them and I see all this change in the city and it’s like, man, some of these areas, like, they’re changing much more than you think when you’re just looking at an aerial and not, not actually seeing it on the ground.

 

[00:13:38] Tom Dosch: Yeah. I was up in, uh, Salina the other day ’cause I s- I was up at Spencer’s house for his birthday, and he lives up there. And I, well, I… We drove up and I… then I came back a different way from the way I went up, and I just hadn’t driven this part of Salina probably in, like, a couple years because, you know…

 

[00:13:55] Tom Dosch: And again, the market’s massive, so it’s like you can’t really drive everything all the time anyways. But I hadn’t driven this part of Salina in a while. And I was blown away. Like, I knew that all this new retail had come in. I’d seen it on an aerial, but I also remembered what this looked like two years ago when it was literally fields.

 

[00:14:14] Tim Dosch: Yeah. 

 

[00:14:14] Tom Dosch: And, and I remember driving it and it was all fields, and today it’s like a massive Lowe’s. It was like if you can picture a couple hundred acres of just farmland on both sides of the street, and now picture full development. Costco on the left, two apartment projects on the left. 

 

[00:14:31] Tim Dosch: Wow. 

 

[00:14:31] Tom Dosch: Lowe’s, apartments.

 

[00:14:33] Tom Dosch: I mean, unbelievable. You had… It, it’s hard to even, like, explain the rapid growth that’s happening and the development that’s happening. Yeah. And so I think you’re right. Like, seeing it all in person was, was so different. But to answer the second part of that question before we get to the next one, I would say probably the hardest time for me in the business was probably COVID, just because, um, the oil downturn was tough because, uh, you know, we had, we had a lot of deals that fell out of contract.

 

[00:15:00] Tom Dosch: I remember tracking hundreds of, uh, multifamily sites that fell out of contract, and we would show that list to our multifamily developers. Like, “Here’s all the deals that fell out of contract-” I remember that … “at the beginning of 2015.” Yeah. You know, and then we were putting a lot of them back under contract.

 

[00:15:13] Tom Dosch: But we worked so hard. But I think it was cumulative for me because it was hearing about the Great Recession, not being a part of that, but then it was the oil downturn. That was challenging. Then Hurricane Harvey was really tough. Yeah. Because we had, we had just started our company, and it was like, “What’s gonna happen?”

 

[00:15:29] Tom Dosch: It ended up actually being a boom for the business because there was a need to go rebuild, and there was a lot of money that came in, but it was really a difficult, like, emotional time. We had a lot of friends’ houses that flooded. We… Nobody could really work for a while. And it was like, and this is a Houston thing, like we had had flooding, like three or four major floods in a short amount of time, and then COVID happened and oil went negative, and so it was just kind of cumulative.

 

[00:15:51] Tom Dosch: Yeah. It was like Houston’s such a hard place to live because it’s so cyclical from a business standpoint. So I never thought about, like, getting out of the land business, but obviously that’s when I decided to move to Dallas. So- You got out of 

 

[00:16:03] Tim Dosch: Houston. 

 

[00:16:03] Tom Dosch: I guess I got out of Houston. I love Houston, but it’s just such a difficult place- Yeah

 

[00:16:08] Tom Dosch: to work because it was like, it was storms, it was oil and gas, and then it was a, you know, a virus. And obviously o- other places were impacted too, but Houston was impacted just kind of every couple years. And so Dallas and Austin were on this upward trajectory after the Great Recession. They almost had, like, no impact until COVID, and then COVID was, like, a six-month impact, and then they skyrocketed until interest rates went up.

 

[00:16:31] Tom Dosch: But Houston was like four or five downturns during that- Yeah … same, same time period. So it was just so, you know, so choppy. 

 

[00:16:38] Tim Dosch: It is interesting that Houston has been much more cyclical. And Dallas really… I mean, ’cause even Austin, you know, has had more of a downturn, I think, than Dallas. But Dallas is so big now.

 

[00:16:48] Tim Dosch: And I know that there, it’s, it’s tougher, you know, because of interest rates and there’s… The whole market is, to some extent, corrected in the last four years. But- Even with that, Dallas has still had a lot of momentum, a lot of really positive things being announced. Yeah, I d- I think Houston and it’s, it’s just, I’m glad we’re in three markets because they’re all just so different and they have different, different drivers, and I think it gives us some, some diversification and balance for our business.

 

[00:17:13] Tom Dosch: Well, if we answer questions this, this long-winded- … we’ll only get through a couple. But that was good. That was fun. Yeah. That was a good one. So… 

 

[00:17:20] Ally McElheney: That’s awesome, y’all Okay, next one is what is one belief about money that you personally had to unlearn when DMRE was first taking off? 

 

[00:17:31] Tom Dosch: Yeah. So this makes me think of, uh, we used to listen to Donald Miller’s podcast a lot.

 

[00:17:37] Tom Dosch: Stor- I think it was called StoryBrand when we were first listening. I, because I know he’s changed the name of it, you know, a couple times, but, or he was pretty formative early on when we were building DMRE from like a marketing standpoint, and I remember he would have, he would have different authors on his podcast and he would talk to guys like Bob Goff and different authors about the books they’re writing, and it would…

 

[00:17:57] Tom Dosch: So it’d be topics that were really wide-ranging. But he would talk a lot about not having a scarcity mindset because he grew up, like, food stamps, single parent home, just like barely getting by. And so as he was very successful later in life as an author, and now he’s an author and kind of coach and does some business stuff, he still had a hard time not having that scarcity mindset.

 

[00:18:19] Tom Dosch: I remember him having Bob Goff on his podcast, who is, is like the opposite, you know- Yeah … of somebody with a scarcity mindset, and, uh, talking about like the importance of, uh, trying to have an abundance mindset. Yeah. And I think that, uh, you and I have talked a lot about this because I think our upbringing, being from such a big family, there were seven of us, and being taught from a very young age like you need to work, you need to save your money, you’re gonna go to college.

 

[00:18:42] Tom Dosch: It was like, so there was expectations. Like you’re gonna go to college, but then you’re gonna have to, you’re gonna have to like pay for your college, you know? Yeah. So it was like, it was both sides. It was like, we’re not, you’re not gonna go to college and, and then that’s gonna be given to you. So we had to learn very young, like the importance of hard work and all these really important characteristics, but it also is hard not to have a little bit of a scarcity mindset, so it was like, well- Yeah

 

[00:19:01] Tom Dosch: I’m so worried about not being able to pay for college or getting in debt, that there’s not gonna be enough, and maybe I won’t be successful, and so just having the wrong view of that. And uh, I remember when I left investment banking to go into real estate to work with you and David, we had a conversation and you told me that…

 

[00:19:22] Tom Dosch: I can’t remember exactly why we were even talking about this, but it w- it was basically about tithing, and it was about giving back. Yeah. And you, you were like, “Tom, if you don’t start doing it now, like you’re not gonna do it. Like you wanna start doing it when it’s hard.” It was something to that effect.

 

[00:19:37] Tom Dosch: Like you wanna start doing it when it’s hard, and God’s gonna bless you if you put him first and if you, if you do it. You know, it’s just, it’s the, it’s the right thing to do. It’s what we’re called to do, and there’s a lot of joy from giving back. And so we started doing that. This is years before we started our company.

 

[00:19:52] Tom Dosch: But then when we started our company, a big part of, big part of starting the company too was like why don’t we start a company where- The success we have, ’cause we had all these big visions for growing the company. It wasn’t because we just wanted it to stay Yumi and David and just make enough money to kinda do whatever we wanted to do, but we actually cared about, like, growing a bigger company, having employees.

 

[00:20:13] Tom Dosch: We wanted to be in other markets, and then we also wanted to be able to give back and support the community and give to friends and different organizations and ministries that we were connected to. So that was all, like, a really big shift though, that we could have that kind of a mindset, more of an abundance mindset, and not look at money as, like, there’s not enough of it, and instead look at I know you’ve talked about this a lot.

 

[00:20:33] Tom Dosch: Like hiring someone is an investment, so it’s not like there’s not enough money to hire someone. I remember talking to some, some friends- Yeah … in brokerage that were like, “We’re not gonna hire anybody. It was just the two of us. We’re happy. It’s just…” And you and I were like, we, at that point we probably had, you know, 10 employees, and we were like, “It’s amazing.”

 

[00:20:50] Tom Dosch: Like the employees you have, like getting to have them first of all, but also seeing them be able to support their families. And then at the same time, like they’re an investment. Yeah. They actually add to the company. They’re not just a cost. So tho- that’s kinda what comes to mind for me with that. 

 

[00:21:03] Tim Dosch: Yeah. I think I’m similar.

 

[00:21:04] Tim Dosch: I mean, I, you know, I’ve been working since I was 14. And so like you said, so I’m growing up and, you know, paying for college, and I never really had extra money, you know, ’cause I went through college with not very much money and trying to get by with that. And, you know, I actually was able to graduate with very little college debt ’cause I made enough money to pay for most of it going through.

 

[00:21:23] Tim Dosch: But then getting into a commission-based business, you know, and, and basically trying to survive. Like the first three to four years I feel like, um, I was just really trying to make it in the business, learn the business, get deals done, and I had success, but I wasn’t making like a ton of money, you know.

 

[00:21:40] Tim Dosch: And then the Great Recession hit. And so then it was like washing everybody out, you know. And so I had this long period of trying to make it and I think, um, the Great Recession was actually very helpful because if I had actually had all that big pipeline of deals close, you know, when, when I was 25 or 26 and made a ton of money and not experienced the Great Recession, I probably would’ve been a little bit foolish with the way I saw things.

 

[00:22:04] Tim Dosch: ‘Cause I just, y- you know, you have this, uh, that thinking of like it’s always going up, it’s never going down. And so I think that the, the cyclical nature of Houston has probably been, been very good for me in some ways. But I think also, I would say the thing that I’ve learned and the thing that I struggle with, to answer Ally’s question, is more of, you know, being too conservative.

 

[00:22:24] Tim Dosch: And I think we’ve always, uh, we’ve done everything all cash with our business. D.R.E. has always been all cash. There’s never been debt, even in ascent. You know, when we buy land we buy all cash. You know, so we’re very conservative, but we also have a lot of cash on the sidelines. We’ve always kept, you know, ample cash reserves in case there’s a big downturn, in case there’s a need to invest in the company or if there’s, you know, just whatever the needs are.

 

[00:22:47] Tim Dosch: And we’ve probably always gone a little bit too much to that side to be too conservative be- just because of how difficult we’ve seen, seen things. I mean, especially for me with the Great Recession, like I’ve seen it turn off when you just can’t do anything for 18 months to two years. And so I think that can, that can kinda scar you a little bit in a way that maybe is, is helpful but can be a little bit negative, too.

 

[00:23:09] Tim Dosch: And I, I think that what I’ve learned is it’s very important to be invested and- There’s always reasons why something bad could happen in the future. I mean, especially right now, you look at all these geopolitical factors and societal things and it’s like there’s a lot of reasons why things could be bad, but then there’s also a lot of reasons why things could be a lot better than you’re expecting too.

 

[00:23:29] Tim Dosch: And so I think being smart with your money, you know, doing things all cash, not getting way out ahead of ourselves and using debt, you know, and not having cash reserves. But then also like just being invested. Like, like you said, people are always the best investment. I mean, I think we’ve learned that time and time again.

 

[00:23:46] Tim Dosch: You know, inv- getting the right people on the team and even in times like I remember during COVID hiring a couple people that we felt like we don’t have the money to hire these people. We shouldn’t be hiring people right now. Like the, our, our whole pipeline just fell out. You know, there’s a global pandemic.

 

[00:24:00] Tim Dosch: Everything’s shut down, but we’re gonna go hire people because these are some of the best people we’ve ever seen and those people are still with us and they’re leaders in our company now and they’re doing an amazing job. And so sometimes having to, to kind of stretch a little bit and, and go invest money when you didn’t feel good about it, but then it pays off.

 

[00:24:17] Tim Dosch: And I think it’s been the same thing, you know, sometimes buying deals, you know, on the Ascent side when we felt a little bit nervous about the market or investing in general when it just, you know, things are a little bit scary. Sometimes that’s the best time to invest. And so I think I’ve learned over time the secret to abundance sometimes is, is taking some risk and making a sacrifice to, to, you know, to, to do something you believe in, uh, when there, there could be a consequence if you’re, if you’re wrong.

 

[00:24:43] Tom Dosch: Well, I’m thinking, Tim, as you’re talking about, uh, just the, what you learned and what I saw from you ’cause you’re eight years older. So, you know, when you were working and out, like, when you got your first job, uh, in Montana, I think I was probably, like, uh- Yeah … six. You know? So I, I was a lot- Yeah … younger, and we were sharing a room, and I remember you talking about, like, saving for college, and so I was already thinking about it at that time just ’cause you were doing it.

 

[00:25:04] Tom Dosch: And, uh, I mean, some of the jobs you had… Do you wanna list off some of the jobs you were doing? ‘Cause I mean- Yeah … you were working a, a lot of different jobs, but these were not, like, strike it rich, entrepreneurial… Like, these were just, like, hourly jobs, you know, that you were working long hours. 

 

[00:25:20] Tim Dosch: I was very blessed because I did get jobs where I, I was paid better than probably what you would’ve been paid in the ’90s.

 

[00:25:27] Tim Dosch: I remember my first job, uh, minimum wage was 4.75 an hour, so that’s what I got paid. But, uh, I started out, uh, bussing tables at a country club, uh, and then eventually worked my way into being a waiter and did some bartending there, and then, uh, was a lifeguard and then became a head lifeguard. And, uh, I was very fortunate.

 

[00:25:45] Tim Dosch: I worked a lot of hours. Like, during the summertime I would work overtime, so I would work, like, 50 or 60 hours a week. And I worked in the winter a lot, too. You know, through school. Uh, I’d work after school. And so I did, I got, I actually made pretty good money, you know, for the ’90s. I was probably making, like, 20,000 a year, you know, which for being a high school kid was, was really good.

 

[00:26:04] Tim Dosch: And then I was also… I worked at a sporting goods store and, you know, sold shoes, and I worked at a, uh, I worked at Dillard’s and sold suits and learned how to, you know, measure people for suits and all that kinda stuff. And so I, I just… You know, I did whatever I could to make, make money. I did yard work.

 

[00:26:20] Tim Dosch: And I think I learned a lot through that. I mean, I really think the service experience, working at a country club and, you know, being around people with money and learning it, you had to serve them in a certain way and, you know, speak in front of people. You know, as a waiter, you’re having to speak in front of people all the time.

 

[00:26:36] Tim Dosch: And, um, just be, be professional. You know, be dressed up and, um, you know, work, work really hard. I mean, those, those kind of jobs, like you’re working… You know, I’d work 12-hour days, you know, 14-hour days, and it’s, it’s physical work, it’s mental work. You have to remember a lot of stuff. And, um, there’s just so much value in that, and I, I think it’s, you know, I think one of the best things kids can do, uh, in high school and college is, is work.

 

[00:27:00] Tim Dosch: I mean, I, I did work in college. I worked at, at country clubs, you know, when I could, or lifeguarded when I could. And, you know, you just… Y- I had this mindset of I have to, like you were saying, I have to pay for everything. So I got to pay to support myself. I’m buying my groceries. I’m paying my rent. You know, I’m paying my tuition.

 

[00:27:15] Tim Dosch: I’m buying my books. All that stuff. Any, any extra money to go out or do anything fun or go on a trip, I’m gonna pay for it. And so, you know, I had that, that kind of mindset, you know, of just going and, and making it happen. I think that gave me a lot of confidence coming out of school. You know, it’s like I’m just gonna go do the same thing again.

 

[00:27:31] Tim Dosch: I’m gonna go find a job, and I’m gonna go, go support myself. And I was comfortable not having a lot, you know, and, and, and just getting by. And that, that was a good mindset where I didn’t get scared when I went through hard times in the business. You know, I was used to saving my money and not just spending money on things I didn’t need, and then having times where I just didn’t have a lot and being, being content with that, you know?

 

[00:27:55] Tom Dosch: Yeah, I remember the drive that you had and all the, those different jobs that you worked. And, uh, I can only imagine all that you were learning, being that young. And we didn’t come from a, a family where like… Uh, ’cause I know you said country club a couple times. Yeah. But like our, our family’s never been a member of a country club.

 

[00:28:11] Tom Dosch: Like that’s not the 

 

[00:28:12] Tim Dosch: kind of fam- We lived in a country club area. We didn’t join it. 

 

[00:28:15] Tom Dosch: Yeah, that’s right. We had a… Our dad had a good job, like did really well. We were part of a really big family, so we just weren’t spending money, you know, like a lot of other families are able to just ’cause we were a big family.

 

[00:28:26] Tom Dosch: But what our parents really I think taught us early age was like, “You’re gonna work. You know, w- and start working whenever you can.” So I think my first job was when I was probably 10 years old, just, you know, weeding for a neighbor, watching their house when they were out of town, walking their dogs, babysitting when I was 10.

 

[00:28:43] Tom Dosch: All the things you could do, and then the yard work before, you know, when I was 14 and I got my first job as a lifeguard. But it was like, “You’re just, you’re gonna work.” Yeah. And I think, I’m glad for that. I think w- uh, fortunately, I didn’t like, uh, I didn’t really have a problem with it. I think I liked making money because I knew it was gonna be important to be able to make money to be able to pay for college, you know?

 

[00:29:03] Tom Dosch: Yeah. And so that was, there was a goal there. ‘Cause a lot of the, a lot of the other young kids that were also working, or lifeguarding, or were doing whatever I was doing were… They were doing it, like, for extra money. It was like, “I wanna have R- uh, Rockets tickets.” You know? Yeah. Or, “I wanna do, like, shopping.”

 

[00:29:16] Tom Dosch: A lot of it was for shopping and, uh, but for us it was like, you’re, you know, you’re gonna do this for college. And then also we were, you know, we were also expected to, if we wanted to buy things, we were expected to use our own money to buy it. So- Yeah … I think we learned a lot from that, for sure. 

 

[00:29:31] Tim Dosch: Yeah. I remember, uh, and you also did property management in college, right?

 

[00:29:34] Tim Dosch: So you got a taste of the real estate business, you know, pretty early. 

 

[00:29:37] Tom Dosch: Yeah. My first job within real estate was actually for Caldwell, which is funny because that was where, you know, you were there before. That’s 

 

[00:29:44] Tim Dosch: where I started, yeah. 

 

[00:29:45] Tom Dosch: ARA, yeah. But I worked at our, uh, neighborhood fitness center, and I did property management and leasing.

 

[00:29:51] Tom Dosch: So I would lease out the event space, and then I would work in the fitness center. It was actually a really interesting job because I would do everything from, like, cleaning to, like, uh, you know, fingerprinting people, giving them- Wow … getting them access cards. And then people would come and rent it for birthday parties and weddings, and so I would tour them around and show them.

 

[00:30:08] Tom Dosch: That was… I loved that job compared to lifeguarding. Because lifeguarding you’re, you’re outside and it’s like, people are mad at you because you’re yelling at them and blowing whistles at them. And- Yeah … I never really liked the, like, corrective part of lifeguarding. Yeah, 

 

[00:30:20] Tim Dosch: yeah. 

 

[00:30:20] Tom Dosch: But getting to sit in the air conditioning in the fitness center, I liked that.

 

[00:30:24] Tom Dosch: That was fun. And getting to just interact with people more from like a business standpoint, that was actually really fun. And then in college, yeah, I did leasing in college, so. And got to do a little bit of property, uh, maintenance, too. So, so learned there. 

 

[00:30:36] Tim Dosch: Yeah. That’s awesome. 

 

[00:30:38] Ally McElheney: Next question is, if you had to name a moment that you stopped being a broker that was chasing commissions and started being one that was trusted, uh, in the community and by the industry, when do you think that was?

 

[00:30:52] Tim Dosch: I think for me, you know, I, uh, I remember my first year at Caldwell that I was a broker. I did 30 deals. You know, they… unfortunately, they were not big deals, but I was doing a lot of volume and, you know, j- these were the deals where you had to… you know, they were smaller clients. Had to order all the surveys for them and review title for them and do environmental and, you know, most of the deals we work on are more institutional deals now.

 

[00:31:13] Tim Dosch: So our clients are doing most of that work. They’re actually easier deals. But, you know, those first couple years, I made decent money, but I wasn’t, wasn’t killing it. And then when I hit the recession, it was really about survival. I mean, it, it’s a little hard to explain, you know, what that was, what that was like.

 

[00:31:29] Tim Dosch: But you really felt like, like, you know, my days could be, could be numbered. You know what I mean? Like I, I don’t know what the future is. Is this gonna be like a five-year thing or is it never coming back, and is my business just obsolete? And so we were literally just every deal mattered so much, you know.

 

[00:31:46] Tim Dosch: And I don’t know if anybody’s ever seen the, the show Alone, you know, where these people are out in the wild and they’re trying to like survive and they’re trying to… you know, they get a fish or whatever and it’s like every single thing is so meaningful just to give them a little more time. That’s kinda how we, we felt, you know, doing these deals.

 

[00:32:00] Tim Dosch: We were doing deals down in the Valley with people that were like, you know, former c- uh, cartel people or kinda dubious, maybe still part of the cartel and like crazy stuff that we were involved in. You know, so getting through that was just getting deals done and just trying to survive and, um, just trying to get through each, each year.

 

[00:32:16] Tim Dosch: And then I would say probably, um, you know, once we got past that and once you get a little bit of money… I remember Rotan and Ofc, I always used to call it FU money, ’cause once you get a certain amount of money, you don’t… you just didn’t care. You know, you, you didn’t care about if someone’s treating you bad or whatever.

 

[00:32:31] Tim Dosch: You just don’t, you don’t work on that deal. You know, I think we’ve always had the, the values and the integrity. We want to do the best thing for our client, and we want to help them and we want them to be successful. And so I think once we got past that feeling of like, I just have to be able to, you know, pay my mortgage and pay just, you know, last in the business, you know, be here next year in the business, you know, we were able to focus more on, on the client and, you know, being successful for them.

 

[00:32:58] Tim Dosch: And I think we always had a really good reputation for that, even in the early days. You know, people would come to us and they knew that we’d treat them right and, uh, we had worked for a great company, uh, w- at ARA with, um, David Ofc, Matt Rotan and David Wiley and David Mitchell, all those guys. They were really good guys and everybody always treat everybody right and so, uh, our clients just had that expectation.

 

[00:33:18] Tim Dosch: And I think once you have that, that kinda margin to know like, “Hey, if this deal doesn’t happen…” I remember what my first couple deals was like, “If this deal closes, I get to buy my house that’s under contract. If it doesn’t close, I have to drop the contract.” So, like there’s… when that kinda stuff’s happening, that’s pretty stressful.

 

[00:33:33] Tim Dosch: But once you get past that and you get a little bit extra money, then it’s like, you know what? If this doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen, you know. And I, I think a big part of that is just trusting the Lord. I mean, when you go through something like the Great Recession and you have everything’s just getting wiped out You know, we had our whole pipeline getting wiped out.

 

[00:33:50] Tim Dosch: You start to really hold things loosely and just trust the Lord and be like, “I’m just gonna pray about this, and it, you know, I, I literally can’t control it. I, I, you know, we can put it in our contract, and we will do everything we can do, but we don’t know if it’s gonna close.” And so when you get past that, and it does become something that grows your faith.

 

[00:34:07] Tim Dosch: And, um, I remember in the early days, Dave and I would pray a lot together about our deals ’cause we just, that was just all we, all we could do 

 

[00:34:14] Tom Dosch: Yeah, that’s good, Tim. I, I didn’t obviously have the experience of the Great Recession, so for… But I can remember, this is an interesting question, ’cause I can actually kinda like still picture where I was when I kinda had this thought.

 

[00:34:26] Tom Dosch: And I, I remember I was in the break room at ARA. If you remember that kinda like big break room where we had- Yeah … those like massive printers back there. Yeah. So I’d be back there a lot, like with the printers, and we’d be like binding books in the back, ’cause we had all the binding equipment in the back to do, uh, all of our proposals and prente- presentations.

 

[00:34:42] Tom Dosch: But this was probably like 2013. Uh, so I’ve been in the business like 18 months, and I was really fortunate ’cause one of the reasons I came over and left the job I had in investment banking was you guys were like, “Tom, the market’s coming back. Like, we really think it’s… You know, we’re starting to see things change.”

 

[00:35:00] Tom Dosch: This is right on the, the heels of the Great Recession. And so the market really started to come back, like as soon as I started in the business. And so there were deals that were happening, and I was really blessed because there was a deal I got to be a part of with a guy named Mr. Smith up in- Yeah … The Woodlands area.

 

[00:35:15] Tom Dosch: And I just really connected with him really well. He was in his 80s. He was a former World War II veteran, bomber pilot, just incredible man, uh, really strong Christian, had lived there for like 50 years, and his property had been surrounded by The Woodlands, and he wouldn’t sell it to Howard Hughes. And I’d…

 

[00:35:33] Tom Dosch: I remember one of those site drives we were talking about. I was driving, driving that area, and I was like, “Wow, what is this site? This is incredible. 50 acres, like right in the middle of The Woodlands.” And so just started trying to call this guy, and ended up, uh, you know, getting him on the phone finally.

 

[00:35:47] Tom Dosch: And just, like, I’ve always been good at follow-up, but… Or just, you know, consistent, but I’ve always been really big on not being like, not pestering people, just being super respectful, ’cause I, I also wouldn’t just wanna be like called all the time and, and like pushed around. And so he really appreciated just the way that I was like really respectful, I would check in.

 

[00:36:07] Tom Dosch: I wasn’t pushy at all. I would offer to come out and meet him, and finally he was willing to meet. And anyways, fast-forward, we ended up doing this deal with him, and it ended up being a really big deal, and big deal for me personally. And around the same time, it’s funny, ’cause this is a site drive too, you and I were driving.

 

[00:36:22] Tom Dosch: It was like one of the first site drives I’d ever been on, and you were showing me, you were like, “Yeah, so when we, you know, when we drive in Houston, there’s no zoning.” And I’m like learning the business. You’re like, “So you just kinda look around, and like if something looks run down…” And this is simplification, but like, “If it looks run down, that could be a, that could be a good, a good site.”

 

[00:36:38] Tom Dosch: So we’re over by Costco in Greenway Plaza, and there’s this like really run-down building across the street. It was like one or two stories. And you were like, “You know, look at the coverage. It’s low coverage. It’s old, so that probably means like the improvements aren’t worth very much.” So I called on the guy, and it was a graphics company, and he was open to selling.

 

[00:36:56] Tom Dosch: And so now, today, that’s a big, you know, office mixed-use high-rise. 

 

[00:37:00] Outro: Yeah. 

 

[00:37:00] Tom Dosch: But both those deals happened around the same time. And so- I closed a couple deals, and then I remember Rotan gave me a book. And do you remember this book? It was like- 

 

[00:37:11] Tim Dosch: He had like four or five, like The E-Myth was one of them and, 

 

[00:37:15] Tom Dosch: uh- It’s a really famous one on like negotiation.

 

[00:37:17] Tom Dosch: Yeah, 

 

[00:37:17] Tim Dosch: I, I know which 

 

[00:37:17] Tom Dosch: one you’re talking about. It’s like a true story about a guy from like the ’70s. 

 

[00:37:19] Tim Dosch: Yeah. 

 

[00:37:20] Tom Dosch: We’ll, we’ll have to find it and include it in the show 

 

[00:37:22] Tim Dosch: notes, but- That’s a great book. Yeah, that’s an old school book. Yeah. 

 

[00:37:24] Tom Dosch: It’s like the guy built his business, you know, like flying all over the place.

 

[00:37:28] Tom Dosch: He’d like hire temporary secretaries to come with him just to like type on typewriters while he’s in meetings just to make him look important. And Yeah. But he, but he, he talked about like the game of negotiation and how people are just… It’s a game. It’s like people want something from you, and Rotan used to talk about this a lot.

 

[00:37:45] Tim Dosch: This is the like want your chips. The guy- Yeah … everybody wants your chips, but one guy acts like he does, one guy doesn’t act like he does. Yes. Yeah, remember that? Yeah. 

 

[00:37:52] Tom Dosch: Yeah, it’s like the three different types, types of people: the person that wants your chips and they tell you, the person that wants your chips and they act like they don’t.

 

[00:37:59] Tom Dosch: You know, and, and so… But I learned through that, like people’s perspective of brokers a lot of times is they kind of put us and stereotype us as like a little bit like a less than. Maybe that’s how, just how we feel as brokers. It’s like, well, you’re not- Yeah … developers. You’re not principals. I know you’ve heard a lot, and I have too.

 

[00:38:16] Tom Dosch: It’s like, “I wanna move from being a broker to being a principal.” Yeah. Kinda like being a, a broker is like less than. And so anyways, all this… I’m in the, in that, uh, break room at ARA and I’m on like a call with somebody, and I’m just getting treated bad by this guy. So it’s like, it’s reminding me of Rotan’s book.

 

[00:38:34] Tom Dosch: He wants my chips clearly, and he’s telling me that he wants, wants my chips. And then it’s also like I’m getting the stereotypical like broker treatment. You know? Yeah. Or just like, “You know, you’re a broker and I can treat you however I want.” But I’ve had success and I’ve gotten to meet people like Mr.

 

[00:38:49] Tom Dosch: Smith. You know, they’re like incredibly quality people, and he was approached by tons… Like Howard Hughes personally. Yeah. That’s incredible. You know? And- 

 

[00:38:57] Tim Dosch: Yeah … 

 

[00:38:57] Tom Dosch: and said no. That was a lot of the validation that I needed to be like, “You know- God’s gonna provide for me. Like, if I’m not that worried about this deal that I’m on the phone with this guy, I’m not gonna let him do this to me.

 

[00:39:09] Tom Dosch: And so I kinda just did more of, like, a takeaway, but it was, like, a real takeaway. It wasn’t, um- Yeah … I was actually okay if the deal didn’t happen, and I think I said something like that. Like, “I understand, like, if it’s not gonna work out, like, I, I under- I understand,” or something. And then the funny thing was, like, the deal happened because- Yeah, he 

 

[00:39:25] Tim Dosch: probably totally, like, snapped and backed around

 

[00:39:26] Tom Dosch: the guy… Yeah, ’cause he was playing games. But, like- Yeah … I wasn’t playing games. That’s actually how I felt, and I’ll never forget that because… And I’ve told some of our younger guys that there is this survival period, but if you can, you know, if you can get beyond that and you can be more focused on what’s best for the deal and the client and not be caught up emotionally- 

 

[00:39:45] Tim Dosch: Yeah

 

[00:39:46] Tom Dosch: and not be so tied to, like, “I…” ‘Cause, ’cause you make bad decisions if it, if you have to make the money. It just puts you in a very difficult position- 

 

[00:39:54] Tim Dosch: Yeah … 

 

[00:39:54] Tom Dosch: um, you know, mentally and emotionally. 

 

[00:39:56] Tim Dosch: That’s such a good point. I think, you know, when, when you actually don’t need the deal, and, and there are some people, like the guy, the c- type of person you’re describing, there’s people that need to be told no.

 

[00:40:07] Tim Dosch: And that that’s the- Yeah … the best thing for the deal is someone needs to tell them no. Like, “This isn’t gonna work this way. You can’t do that.” Like, “We’re not paying that price. We’re not doing those terms,” what- whatever it is, and be willing to walk away. And then once they know that there’s that boundary, they are so much easier to work with.

 

[00:40:22] Tim Dosch: And I, I’ve had so many people like that, that I’ve actually been able to work with them pretty well even though they were super difficult because I was just like, “Here’s how we’re gonna do it. If you wanna do this deal, like, this is how we’re gonna do it, and if you get off at all, we’ll just walk the deal and we won’t do it.”

 

[00:40:38] Tim Dosch: And it just gets them right in position to just do exactly what needs to be done for the deal. But I know that in our, our time we’ve also seen a lot of people that were pretty much just unworkable. Uh, and so I think what you’re talking about actually also protects you from just wasting a lot of time.

 

[00:40:52] Tim Dosch: Mm-hmm. ‘Cause there are certain people that just will waste your time and just suck suck all the value out of everything, and you don’t make any money. And as a broker, you know, we can… As much as sometimes people are like, “Oh, you didn’t work very hard in that and you made all this money,” 90% of the time you’re working really hard and you’re not getting paid or it takes three years to get paid, you know?

 

[00:41:11] Tim Dosch: And so especially for young brokers, people will take advantage of you and just waste your time, and they’re just… They’re… You’re never gonna get a deal done. And so when you have that kind of mentality of like, “I don’t need this deal. I’m gonna do a deal that makes sense and I’m gonna do the right thing for my client,” that can protect you from and actually help you say no to the people that you need to be saying no to.

 

[00:41:31] Ally McElheney: That’s so cool to hear about, guys. Kind of in the same vein of, like, learning things early on, uh, what’s something that a mentor told you early on in your career that you might have rejected at the time, but now you live by? 

 

[00:41:47] Tim Dosch: Man, so I would say something that I need to live by more, and it’s, I think I have lived by to some extent, but going off what we just said, I remember very early in, in the business, uh, Fred Caldwell told me, uh, “Your success will be defined by what you say no to.”

 

[00:42:01] Tim Dosch: Which I think is really interesting, ’cause I think everybody’s always thinking about, you know, what you achieved, what you said yes to, or what you worked on. But, you know, th- there are so many things in this business that can derail you, and you can waste time, and you can have a very lackluster performance ’cause you’re just spending…

 

[00:42:16] Tim Dosch: You’re working really hard, and maybe you’re working harder than a lot of other people, but you’re working on the wrong things. Especially starting out. I mean, we, there were so many things we worked on that, you know, we thought was a, a good deal or a real deal, and then it wasn’t. You know, someone was just completely wasting our time.

 

[00:42:32] Tim Dosch: So I think really being, being smart and being strategic and being willing to say no, and there’s been, um, several, you know, kinda key decisions throughout my career, maybe it’s a listing opportunity or a buyer opportunity where we’ve just said no. Like, I, it doesn’t fit, either from a… I know f- you, Tom, you have some from a character standpoint where you felt like, “Hey, I just don’t feel like this aligns with my values.”

 

[00:42:52] Tim Dosch: But, you know, there’s been times where we’re like, “This just isn’t the right use of time.” And most of the time, those are really good decisions that saved our team a lot of just wasted, wasted time. So I think that’s one of them. Then also, early on, Jason Baker, I had asked him, like, “What’s the secret to your success?

 

[00:43:08] Tim Dosch: You know, you, you’ve been so successful.” And, um, it was really simple. It was like, you know, show up on time, you know, say please and thank you, follow through, do what you say you’re gonna do. Just, you know, kinda like just basic, kinda obvious things, but when you think about the things that no one does, you know.

 

[00:43:25] Tim Dosch: Uh, very few people actually follow through and actually do what they say they’re gonna do. Really, you know, actually treat people, people right. And I think, um, one thing I’ve learned in this business is it’s definitely a marathon, and, uh, when you do it for decades, I’ve seen so many people come and go.

 

[00:43:41] Tim Dosch: You know, people that came and did really well, you know, maybe did a lot of deals, but they end up being like a flash in the pan. They’re gone. Or they’re, maybe they’re still around, but they’re kinda mediocre. They’re not respected. The market doesn’t respect them. And, you know, your character is the one thing that takes a long time to build, but you can lose pretty quickly.

 

[00:43:59] Tim Dosch: And, uh, you know, we’ve tried to always do things w- in, that align with our values that we thought were the right thing to do and try to work hard and, and treat people right, and I think that just pays off, and it pays dividends, you know, over time. 

 

[00:44:12] Tom Dosch: Those are good. That first one from F- Fred Caldwell, I know you’ve shared that one with me Over the years, we’ve talked about that one several times, but that one I think is so true.

 

[00:44:21] Tom Dosch: Yeah. It just, being willing to say no. It’s also can be difficult. I- i- in brokerage, it’s hard not to be a people pleaser- Yeah … because of the situations that we get put in, where we’re constantly being asked, you know, to help in different situations, and so it can be really hard to say, uh, to say no, or to, to give, maybe to give advice that is, you know they’re not gonna wanna hear, but it, it’s gonna be best for both of you.

 

[00:44:45] Tom Dosch: Like you said, so you don’t waste time. Like, maybe now’s not the time to sell your property. 

 

[00:44:49] Tim Dosch: Yeah. 

 

[00:44:49] Tom Dosch: You know? And they, they may not wanna hear that. They may go hire someone else. But it’s, it’s the right thing to do, ’cause if you say like, “Well, we’ll go sell it for you,” and then you waste a lot of your own time, and then it’s not good for them, it’s just bad overall.

 

[00:45:01] Tom Dosch: So I think that’s such good advice. Um- We need to send this episode to Matt Rotan ’cause I, he keep… I, I think he’s been brought up, like, four times. Right. 

 

[00:45:10] Tim Dosch: Yeah. So 

 

[00:45:11] Tom Dosch: I, I came… You let me shadow you a little bit when I was probably, I think I was in college. So m- it, it was college or high school. I came by the office when you were at ARA.

 

[00:45:20] Tom Dosch: I think Rotan was kinda like, you know, doing one of his, like, flyby. He’d just, like, fly through the office, you know? And so we, we caught him, and you were like, you know, you introduced me to him, and he was always, he was always, like, so kind and was willing to talk. He’d just talk really fast and have something, you know, to share very quickly.

 

[00:45:38] Tom Dosch: And so I think he w- he wanted to give me some advice because, you know, I’m, I’m, like, a high school or college kid, however old I was. And, uh, it was basically, it was like, you know, as you’re thinking about what you wanna do, ’cause I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was a finance major at A&M, and so I was definitely interested in real estate.

 

[00:45:53] Tom Dosch: It ends up I ended up going into investment banking, but I was interested in real estate. And he- his advice was like the most important thing is who you go work for. 

 

[00:46:02] Outro: Mm. 

 

[00:46:03] Tom Dosch: Because whoever you go work for, that’s the reputation you’re gonna bring on yourself. 

 

[00:46:07] Outro: Yeah. 

 

[00:46:07] Tom Dosch: Because p- you know, you’re gonna be some junior person there, and then people are gonna say, “Oh, so you work for such and such a company.”

 

[00:46:13] Tom Dosch: And if they don’t have… If they’re not high character, or if they don’t have a good reputation, that’s gonna be a lot more important as you’re starting out in the career than, like, how much money you’re making or, you know, where you’re officing or any of those other, other aspects. And so I wouldn’t say that I, uh, disregarded that.

 

[00:46:30] Tom Dosch: I definitely remember that, and it’s something that I’ll tell guys all the time. Like, that’s, to your point, Tim, that’s who we… We know we make mistakes, but that’s who we want to be- Yeah … as a company. The, the type of place where, like, when, when people would refer to DMRE or Ascent, then their reputation would be a good reputation.

 

[00:46:48] Tom Dosch: Yeah. You know, again, not that we haven’t made a mistake, not that there aren’t people out there that maybe… You know, you’re always gonna have people that maybe don’t like you. But, like, we try really hard to do the right thing and be, be people of high character. And so that’s a big one. And then I think you’ve always told me something similar, and it was when I left investment banking to go into, uh, real estate.

 

[00:47:09] Tom Dosch: It was a, it was, like, a 50%, uh, pay cut. You and David paid me a salary, which is not, not really, like, normal getting into brokerage. But it was still, like, a 50% pay cut just ’cause of what I was making in investment banking. But I remember you told me, you’re like, “Don’t worry about what you’re making starting out.

 

[00:47:25] Tom Dosch: Like, i- it’s more about getting in the right position with the right people and learning, and it’s gonna take care of itself.” And that’s definitely what happened. But I think that’s also just such good advice because so many people just are naturally, especially coming out of school, just thinking about This is more how I was, like, coming out when I took the investment banking job.

 

[00:47:44] Tom Dosch: It was, you know, which job’s gonna pay me the most money more so than it was, like, what do I actually wanna do? Yeah. ‘Cause it ended up I didn’t wanna do investment banking. It wasn’t really about, like… It wasn’t that it wasn’t a good job and there weren’t good people that were there, it was more that I just, that’s not what I wanted to do, and I took the job because it paid good money.

 

[00:48:02] Tim Dosch: Yeah. Or like you said, the character side of things where people are like, “Well, where are the splits?” You know, “I want the highest splits,” but there’s no… They get over somewhere and they’re isolated and they’re kind of on their own. They’re not learning. There’s, there’s poor character with other people in the office or with the l- the head of the company.

 

[00:48:17] Tim Dosch: And, you know, it, it’s crazy to me. We could just go down the list of all the people that have been, like, competitive brokers with us over the years are just gone. I mean, I, I’m sure you’re seeing that in Dallas, too, but I’ve seen that a lot in Houston through my career, and so much of it was because they put themselves in a bad place, you know, whether with they aligned themselves with the wrong company or they made decisions that weren’t the best decisions and were shortsighted and maybe made them a lot of money short term, but then long term just took them out, you know?

 

[00:48:48] Tim Dosch: And so I think, you’re right, as a young person, like, having more of a long view and thinking of, like, pacing yourself, like, well, what if this is more like a marathon than a sprint? And so, you know, learning from people that are quality people, and I’m just thinking we’re sitting here in, we call this the Rotan Conference Room here in Houston.

 

[00:49:03] Tim Dosch: Like, there’s these people that have had just a huge impact on our, our lives, on our career, on the way we see the business, uh, and it wasn’t that they spent, you know, half of the workweek with us for 10 years. It was, like you said, it was these, these short periods where they intentionally spoke into our lives and we were willing to listen to them.

 

[00:49:21] Tim Dosch: You know, and they had things that were very valuable to say. They were people that had character, and they w- obviously, they weren’t perfect. They have flaws, but they were very successful, and they were the right people to align ourselves with, and we were very blessed to have them. 

 

[00:49:34] Tom Dosch: We need to get Rotan on the podcast.

 

[00:49:36] Tom Dosch: That would be, that’d be fun to get him on. 

 

[00:49:38] Tim Dosch: Yeah, he’d be great. He’s incredible. 

 

[00:49:40] Tom Dosch: Yeah. 

 

[00:49:40] Tim Dosch: Yeah. 

 

[00:49:41] Tom Dosch: All right. Well, why don’t we stop it there? This has been a really good conversation. Uh, it’s going a little bit longer, I think, than we expected, so we’re gonna cut this into two parts. You’ll be able to hear the second half of this conversation that Tim and I had next week, and, uh, please, in the meantime, check out our, uh, other episodes we’ve launched.

 

[00:49:59] Tom Dosch: We’re over 80 episodes in now of Texas Land Guys. You can find us on YouTube. You can find us on LinkedIn. Please subscribe wherever you listen. 

 

[00:50:08] Outro: Thank you for listening to our podcast today. If you have questions about land you own in Texas, send us an email at texaslandguys@dmre.com, and follow us on LinkedIn to stay updated.