Dave: Hey everyone, Dave here with another episode of the Philly Tech Connect Podcast. Today I’m speaking with Tim G. Tim is an accomplished realtor serving the Greater Philadelphia area. He co-founded and ran a very successful independent brokerage for a decade, Copper Hill, which also spun out real estate development and title insurance divisions. His partnership recently ended, and he chose to start and lead a team, the Tim Gar Team. He’s got tons of experience founding and running businesses in local areas. Tim is also the founder of our podcast called “Bricks and Risks,” which focuses on real estate, insurance, and entrepreneurship. He co-hosts that with one of his best friends, Sha Money, who’s an insurance expert. So, Tim, how are you doing?
Tim: I’m good, Dave. How about yourself?
Dave: I’m doing great. Yeah, I’m looking forward to this conversation because we’re going to be learning a lot about the partnership, ins and outs of your journey. But before there were multiple parties involved, you were a solo agent and eventually started Copper Hill if I’m not mistaken. So tell us a little bit about that.
Tim: Absolutely. So my journey started when I grew up in suburban Philadelphia and moved to the city when I was 18 for college. I graduated with a marketing degree and did Corporate America for about eight years in the mortgage side of things. I worked for some big companies, got laid off after the Great Recession, and I was newly married, which allowed me to rethink what I wanted to do and the path I wanted, which was entrepreneurship. But I wanted to stay in my industry—mortgages were great, but real estate was where my passion was, really working with people, guiding them through the process. So, I went out, took my classes, and in six weeks, I had a real estate license. I was 30, so I thought, “Okay, let me go out and see if I can get some clients.” I started out as a solo agent with a smaller brokerage because I wanted to learn the ins and outs myself as an agent without being part of a big team at the time. I also wanted to learn the inner workings of a brokerage—why someone would start a smaller brokerage and not join a big company like Real, which is where I am right now.
Tim (cont’d): Doing that for about five years, I learned a ton both as an agent and about what it takes to be a good broker of record and a brokerage owner. My brother Ryan and my friend Andrew decided that they wanted to do that too, and I had a broker’s license, so we started Copper Hill Real Estate from scratch at the end of 2014. We bootstrapped it with our own money, writing checks out of our bank accounts and throwing it into a business account. We figured this would keep us afloat for a year based on the lead expenses we had. During that almost 10-year period, we went from being full-time realtors to being business owners and leaders. We spun off a development division where we were flipping homes and buying buildings, and a title insurance division where we controlled the customer service of the closings. That’s really how it all came to be—from Corporate America to being an entrepreneur, starting a partnership, and growing a company big and fast.
Dave: That’s awesome. I want to dive more into that. Honestly, there are some terms I should know—I’ve bought a house before, but I still don’t quite understand sometimes how this stuff all works. When I think of the agent, I think of the person who knows the market, knows what’s on sale, and can guide you through the buying process, like if something is overvalued or undervalued. Is that correct? And then the broker is who negotiates with the bank to get the loan or something? How does this all work together?
Tim: Yeah, so the best way to explain it is that if you want to help people buy, sell, and rent real estate—which is what you’re referring to—you just need to get what’s called a salesperson’s license. In Pennsylvania, that’s what I started with. Becoming a broker is like getting your master’s degree. If the salesperson’s license is your bachelor’s, getting a broker’s license means you want to further your education, take more classes, and become an expert. When you get your broker’s license, you can do one of two things: you can be an associate broker for a larger company, meaning you have your master’s but work for someone else, or you can become a broker of record and run your own shop. It could be a team of one or a team of a hundred; it depends on how you want to do it.
Tim (cont’d): As the broker of record at Copper Hill, I was the head person in charge of every agent who worked for us. They’re all independent contractors, but if they make a mistake, they come to me. If they don’t do their continuing education, they come to me. If they’re working with a client and there’s a dispute over a deposit or a date, they come to me. My job is really to problem-solve, handle objections, and oversee the company to ensure we’re not making mistakes, that training is high, and that everyone has what they need.
Dave: Very cool. So how does one get leads in this space? I’m curious, since this is tied to a very important life event often. Although maybe not, I’m assuming that’s the common use case. How do you bump into people at the right time here?
Tim: When you start, there are two paths you can go down to start building your business: the cold path or the warm path. The cold path involves making cold phone calls, knocking on doors, sending out postcards—just trying to find opportunities without knowing anyone. The warm path is more about knowing people. Whether you know 10 people or 10,000 people, you want to stay in front of them to let them know you can help them. Even if you only know 10 people, the average person knows about 256 people. So, those 10 people translate to about 2,500 opportunities.
Tim (cont’d): You have to pick a path to grow successfully because if you do both or if you’re all over the place, you won’t do anything well, and you won’t make enough money to live. That’s why the stat exists that in five years or less, 87% of people who get their license will get in and out. In order to be in that 13% after five years, you have to pick a lane. What’s also changing is that a lot of people now choose to join teams, which is what I started when the partnership ended at Copper Hill. A team can go either way: they can feed you leads—cold or warm—or they can teach you how to fish, like how I learned. I took the warm path, starting with content marketing. I wanted to stay in front of people with valuable content so they knew I was an expert and that I cared. When they need to buy or sell, they think of me because I’ve been providing valuable information for years.
Dave: Cool. So it sounds like you chose the warm path.
Tim: I did, and I still do it today, 15 years later.
Dave: Sounds good. I’m a big fan of that approach as well. So, for Copper Hill, I don’t know if you mentioned this, but you partnered up with your brother and a friend, is that right?
Tim: That’s correct.
Dave: Did you have any concerns about going into business with family and a close friend?
Tim: There are always concerns. It’s less about who the people are and more about whether you’re a partnership kind of person or a lone wolf. Being in the same partnership for 10 years and spinning off multiple opportunities, I’d say we were all partnership types. We saw value in banding our resources, capital, relationships, work effort, and ideas. But over time, people grow and change. They start families, get married, move, and their priorities change. COVID also had a big impact. Real estate was traditionally an office model, but the pandemic accelerated the shift to virtual models. Real, the company I’m with now, is more of a virtual, entrepreneurial model that supports people like me who have personal brands. The partnership ended because it made more sense for me to go with my personal brand.
Dave: How did you divide the responsibilities and roles within the brokerage in the early days, especially when it wasn’t as big as it got? Did you ever run into issues with fairness in work and profit sharing?
Tim: Andrew was the finance guy, managing numbers and spreadsheets. Ryan was the creative marketing guy, coming up with ideas to stand out. In the beginning, we just did what needed to be done. As for fairness, we never really had issues because we were all partnership material. We focused on the greater good, combining our resources to make the business greater. The only reason it ended was that people wanted to do different things, and it made sense to move on.
Dave: What was the process of dissolving Copper Hill like? How long did it take? Did people need to be laid off?
Tim: It was very emotional, like losing a child. Most of our agents were independent contractors, so they could choose to stay together, leave the business, or go their separate ways. Emotionally, it was taxing, but once the decision was made, it allowed us to move on. We stopped the operation quickly, informed everyone, and let them decide their next steps.
Dave: Did it ever cross your mind to try to sell the company?
Tim: Yes, a couple of years ago, someone approached us. But we had grown the company to a point where we could have sold, and the impact of COVID changed our perspective on real estate models, making us rethink the partnership. Selling wasn’t the right choice at the time, so dissolving made more sense.
Dave: In the early days of Copper Hill, did you have specific sources for leads? I know you were focused on content marketing, but did you also use Zillow or other lead aggregators?
Tim: We tried many things, including Zillow and Boomtown, but found they didn’t work for us. We focused on the warm path with content marketing, ensuring we provided valuable information to stay in front of people. That approach worked for us, especially since we were selling high-dollar properties.
Dave: Makes sense. Were you in that small subset of agents making a high income, or did you grow into it?
Tim: We grew into it over 15 years, starting small and growing gradually. As long as we worked hard and stayed in front of people, we earned more opportunities and revenue.
Dave: Interesting. Well, it’s been a pleasure talking to you, Tim. I appreciate you taking the time to share your journey with us.
Tim: Thanks, Dave. It was great to be here.
Dave: And that wraps up another episode of the Philly Tech Connect Podcast. Make sure to check out Tim’s podcast, “Bricks and Risks,” for more insights into real estate and entrepreneurship. See you next time!