Negotiating with Joe Exotic and Buying the Exclusive Licensing Rights to “Tiger King”

J:
Welcome to the BiggerPockets Business Podcast, show number 57.

Tim:
I like doing stuff that I spend an intense amount of energy, like drilling an oil well to create a gusher, a revenue stream. And that’s how I look at stuff. And this just happens to be a timely, unique, weird time and culture opportunity.

J:
Welcome to a real world MBA from the school of hard knocks, where entrepreneurs reveal what it really takes to make it. Whether you’re already in business or you’re on your way there, this show is for you. This is BiggerPockets Business.
Hey there everyone. I am J Scott. I’m your cohost for the BiggerPockets Business Podcast. And I am here again this week with Mrs. Carol Scott, the amazing, the wonderful, my beautiful and lovely wife. How are you doing today, Carol?

Carol:
That was about the sweetest intro ever. Thank you, honey. Oh my goodness. Listeners, guess what, today? Like as of one hour ago, literally an hour ago, our boys finished online learning for this year. Oh my gosh, there are no words. I’m so excited. We have so many different things going on anyway. And adding that into the mix, I got to tell you, I’m usually pretty good at juggling and making it all happen, but wow, just adding that little last thing on and it wasn’t little by any stretch. It was a big deal and it’s over, and I’m really excited and everyone’s happy. It’s a great day.

J:
Yeah. And props to everybody out there that voluntarily homeschools your kids. It is not an easy job.

Carol:
That’s right. And of course since we’re on the topic, and thank you to all the amazing teachers out there, we already appreciated you tremendously, but these past couple of months have made you even more of rock stars. Thank you.

J:
Absolutely.

Carol:
[crosstalk 00:01:53] let’s get to the show.

J:
Yeah, let’s get… We have an awesome show today. We’ve got Tim Shiner with us. Tim is… he’s a Renaissance man. He has patents. He has businesses. He’s written books. He’s a big real estate investor and he is going to talk to us about all of that stuff. But the really, really cool thing that I think a lot of you are going to want to hear about is that Tim, as of just last week, has signed for exclusive marketing rights for the Tiger King franchise and Joe Exotic. For any of you that have seen Tiger King on Netflix are familiar with Joe Exotic. This is a really cool episode because Tim walks us through how it came about that he was able to get the marketing, the licensing rights for Tiger King, and how it all works and how he plans to make, hopefully, a whole lot of money doing it.
I’m just going to leave it at that. And we’re going to jump into this episode. If you want to learn more about Tim, if you want to learn more about what Tim has done or is doing, check out our show notes at biggerpockets.com/bizshow57. Again, at biggerpockets.com/bizshow57. Before we jump in, let’s hear a quick word from our sponsors.

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J:
Thanks so much to our awesome sponsors. Now let’s jump into this great episode with Tim Shiner.

Carol:
Okay everybody. Welcome to the show, Tim Shiner. Tim, it is so great to have you today.

Tim:
Or should we say welcome to the jungle?

Carol:
Welcome to the jungle.

J:
How’s it going, Tim?

Tim:
Oh my God. We’re going to have a fun show.

J:
I am so looking forward to this. You and I are like kindred spirits, although you’ve done it so much better than I have. I have people constantly asking me like, we own lots of businesses. We have lots of revenue streams, everything from real estate to we own race horses, and then I look at your bio and your bio is kind of like, you make us look like just… You just blow us out of the water [crosstalk 00:06:37].

Carol:
… and just hang out and go to the spa [crosstalk 00:06:39].

Tim:
I always say, if I was good at one thing, I wouldn’t have to do so many other things.

J:
You have multiple businesses. You have a bunch of patents. You’ve written several books. You do real estate investing. In fact, you were a guest on the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast a year or two ago, episode… I believe it was 221. Everybody go back and check out that because the stuff you’re doing with your real estate is awesome. You do a ton of philanthropy. And something that we’re going to talk about later in this episode, I want to talk about your multiple streams of income, but something that we need to spend some time talking about later in the episode is you’ve recently, from what I’ve heard, acquired the rights, exclusive rights, to Tiger King. Is that correct?

Tim:
To Tiger King and Joe Exotic. I’ve got 22 channels that I’m allowed to have exclusive rights, from t-shirts, to weed, to some moisturizing stuff when you’re intimate.

Carol:
This is fascinating. [crosstalk 00:07:46].

J:
This is going to be awesome. And we’re going to get to that. And I want to talk a whole lot about that, but first, there’s just… your whole story is fascinating, your multiple streams of income is fascinating, how you do it all is fascinating. Let’s start at the beginning. Can you take us back and where did your whole entrepreneurship journey start?

Tim:
To me, it started when I was a little kid. To me, money means freedom. If you didn’t know me, you’d think, okay, cars, houses, all this stuff, but money at the end of the day allows freedom. Our favorite restaurant just opened up last night for the first day, Pappas Steakhouse in Dallas, Texas. Fantastic.
And Crystal, my wife, and I walked in there and we had a 2000 cash and said, “Divide it up amongst everyone that’s here, the back house, the cooks, the waiters, the waitresses, whoever.” And it’s just, if you don’t have money, you can’t do something like that and talk about coming out of the gate strong like that. I’ve always been a scrappy kid. My mom joked that I’m the only kid that could go to the store and come home with money and stuff, legally.
I read a great book on Sam Zell, he’s top 150 richest people in the world. He’s out of Chicago, he’s a real estate guy, commercial real estate guy. And what he calls himself is a professional opportunist. And I’m like, “You know what? I’m going to hijack that,” because we alluded to the Tiger King thing, but did I wake up one day and think, “Hey, I want to be part of this thing?” No, but I’m a professional opportunist and there are opportunities there. And it makes sense because it works with some other things that I have going on with revenue streams. It’s always been there. I was in corporate America for a little while, long enough to realize I didn’t want to be there. I was a sales guy for Honeywell. And about 21 years ago, I started my own business. And we talked about it a little bit off air, but the business I have is a rep firm repping security equipment in the alarm industry, but it’s not a sellable business because it’s typically the owner that has the relationships and then you’ve got a bunch of salespeople.
That’s how I got into real estate. I started taking the profits from that business and parlaying it into high-end single family residences. And then, Carol and I talked about it a little bit, but then from there we allow our renters to leave by tearing up the lease and buying a house from my wife, not our house, but another house. And we talked about that on BiggerPockets 221. But my point is, most people are like, “Oh, I’m just going to be a landlord. And I can’t do anything else.” Or, “Oh, I’m too busy to own real estate.”
Well, I believe you can do it all. We got these rep firms is throwing off cash. We bought 23 high end rent houses, but then we realized people were leaving because they had 750 beacon scores and they shouldn’t have been a renter. Instead of [inaudible 00:10:20] about it, we’re like, how can we be an opportunist? And how can we make a revenue stream from that? And we actively promote. Every holiday, they get some gift on the doorstep and actively promote, “If you buy it from me, you can tear up your lease for free.” That’s a stream within a stream. And that’s just… You’re kind of like, “What’s that movie where Haley Osmund sees dead people, or whatever?” I see a revenue stream. I know you and Carol do too.

J:
Yeah. And it’s funny because I often use that exact same term. I call myself an opportunist. And it’s one of those things that if you open yourself up to opportunities, if you don’t put blinders on too many people, kind of, they say, “This is what I am. I’m a real estate investor.” Or, “I am a restaurateur,” or, “I’m an author,” or whatever it is. And they put those blinders on, and then you miss opportunities. And I like to tell people, don’t call yourself a real estate investor, call yourself an entrepreneur, call yourself a business owner. Because just by using that, that broader vocabulary, you get more opportunities to come in. People here, “He’s an entrepreneur.”
Great. I’m not just going to talk to them about real estate. I’m going to talk to them about businesses. I’m going to talk to them about patents. I’m going to talk to them about books. And when people think of you as a broader business person and an entrepreneur, those opportunities just come into your life. I loved how you said you walked into a restaurant yesterday and you just started throwing cash around. A lot of us think that… I’m sure there are people out there that will listen to that and say, “Oh, he’s just trying to be a big show, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” But I’ve heard your story. I know your story and it’s different. I’m going to guess there are two goals here. One you like to help people. I just [crosstalk 00:11:58] at your background-

Tim:
It’s in my DNA.

J:
Yeah. And the other thing is, there’s also a benefit to you. Let’s not lie. Nobody does anything just for the altruistic factor. There’s a benefit there. People are going to remember you, people are going to think positively about you, and it’s going to help you build your brand. And it’s going to help you in the future. Is that right?

Tim:
It is. But I’ve done every crappy job in a restaurant. I’ve been a cook, a bus boy, an expediter, a waiter, a bartender. I’m sure a lot of people understand that they make very few dollars, waiters and bartenders, hourly. They rely on tips. And then the other thing is I just like the karma of it all. Who knows. Let’s say there’s 50 people and they each got 40 bucks, or 40 people and they each got 50 bucks, who knows what that’s going to do? Is it a bouquet of flowers for someone’s wife or girlfriend? Is it buying a kid something, is it paying a bill? Is it, “Oh my God, I barely had enough gas to get to work.” I don’t know. But I love the energy of that. You throw that out there.

Carol:
Absolutely. And it inspires those people to do it and it, that positive karma, it just travels farther than you ever imagined. That $2,000 stretched much farther than even that original.

Tim:
That’s actually the second restaurant we’ve done it to.

Carol:
That’s really cool.

Tim:
Yeah, we did it to another place that opened up sooner. But back to what you were saying, J, I’ve got this… when I try to explain people what I do, I feel like I’m on an episode of American Greed because I can’t give him a straight answer, but it’s just because there’s so many different ones. I got this metal business card. I know most of the people are listening to audio, but it has my name and phone number on the one side, on the back it has everything that I’m currently into which this is already obsolete. And so to your point, people with that metal business card, they’re going to keep it, they’re going to remember it. And they’re going to realize this guy’s more than just the alarm security rep dude, which I don’t even understand what that really means, and a real estate investor.
Plus, I know you guys were prolific flippers. Everyone just assumes that you’re flipping houses, say you’re a real estate investor. [crosstalk 00:14:01]. I like to spend the next seven minutes explaining what I’m doing. And then the reason why I’m on these real estate podcasts is on the antichrist because I’m not buying a piece of crap house and making a hundred dollar positive. I might be negative, but I’m banking on appreciation. So then they’re like, “Oh, he’s a river boat gambler. He’s a loose cannon. He’s bubble mentality.” So then I get to fight all of that. But I think you probably saw it. I think it was yesterday or a day before, it showed that the median house price in America went up 7%. Well, if you happen to have $13 or $14 million worth of that, which is roughly what I have, that means you just made a million dollars passively.
Whether I made a hundred bucks positive on a house or not, it doesn’t matter to me. Everything’s positive now, but at the beginning it wasn’t. But what I always say, and I think you guys would agree on real estate, there’s a zillion ways to play it. And I don’t begrudge anyone for doing any which way, I just know the way that works best for my personality.

J:
That’s awesome. Let’s go back a little bit. You were growing up and you knew you wanted to do your own thing. Tell us about that first business you started, and how you got started, and what led you in that direction, and give us the origin story of Tim Shiner.

Tim:
Well, some parents’ son invented a pacemaker or some stint or something great to save lives. I invented a koozie to keep people’s beer cold on the golf course. Through the smart people, mom, they can brag at a cocktail party what their son invented. I invented a koozie. I know most people are listening, but basically the to go cup shape this tapered at the bottom a long, long time ago, koozies were big in form and wouldn’t fit in a boat or a golf cart holder or anything like that. And I was golfing in Texas and it was really hot. And the beer cart girl was like, “Excuse me, I’m not going to be back for three or four holes.” And she made this rigged up contraction to ice down another beer while we had a beer. And my thought, that’s my cue, my go-to. When I see something rigged up, I’m like one of two things, there’s a solution I don’t know about, or there’s not a solution.
That’s how I look at things when it’s rigged up, instead of saying, “Man, this is rigged up,” I’m like either I don’t know about it or there’s nothing. And then I was paralyzed by the fact of, “What do I do now? I’ve got this idea in my mind.” And then I was in San Antonio on a sales call and I stopped by a 7-Eleven afterwards. And I saw the first to-go cup at 7-Eleven with the tapered bottom, and I’m like, “Oh my God.” I’m procrastinated. This idea lived in my head, like a lot of us that have ideas, for a year and a half. And now I’m like, “I got to get going.”
I was selling glass break detectors in the security industry, and there’s a gentleman that invented it and he made a lot of money off roll to be selling it. His name is Al Yarborough. I go to Al, and Al’s like my [Guiver 00:16:40]. Al can do anything. If you’re stuck on an island, you want Al to be there because he can get you off. That sounded bad. He can get you off the island. Holy cow. Just foreshadowing the Exotic Joe scenario. [crosstalk 00:16:55]. That’s a little teaser there. And if you’re wondering if I called Carole Scott Baskin yet, yes I did have, off the air.

Carol:
Many times, many times [crosstalk 00:17:07].

Tim:
But anyway, I go to Al and I said, “Hey Al, I got this idea.” And Al was like, “Oh, I can do that.” And he’s real soft spoken, “Yeah, I can get that done. Okay. Yeah.” And he lives about an hour away from me on a lake. And I said, “Okay. When do you think it’d be done?” “Oh, well, come back here next Saturday about the same time.” And sure enough, the first prototype he made was as good as any. It’s basically… do you ever see a boat key chain is that what he… Basically he made a regular koozie, cut it from bottom, dipped it so that it looked like it was one piece. And that was the first Cart Cooly. And that got me going. While I was a sales guy making good money, that was my side business.
And what I realized is now you can ride off carts, and mails, and trips. And all of a sudden, instantly by having a side business my lifestyle went really up fast. When I hear people that have wife and kids and stuff that are wanting to quit a job and start a business from nothing, I’m like, “Tap the brakes, build something on the side. It takes a little while for it to grow.” And because I considered myself a good sales guy, people kept asking me to do shots ads. And because I was such a great sales guy, I kept telling them no for about three years and missed all that revenue because I wanted to sell this obscure unicorn of a product, this koozie, the Cart Cooly. And [inaudible 00:18:19] up, it started selling all the promo stuff and just blew up into a thing called GoLogo which is a large promotional products business.
And because I have a large promotional products business, when my attorney, this representing Exotic Joe… Joe Exotic, I always get that backwards… Joe Exotic had a contract go across his desk, it’ll be three weeks ago today that they wanted to do promotional products. They remembered, like J and Carol said, “Hey, wait a minute, Tim owns a promo company.” It was a lot of different companies. They called me up and said, “Hey man, are you interested in taking on the promo piece of this?” And then it took two weeks. We inked the contract last Friday.
And then I was on a bus to Washington, DC, the Free Joe bus, Monday morning and took my 18 year old son who’s a senior in high school, but since school is COVIDied out he got to see that and what he said… and he owns a social media business, and he’s a little entrepreneur, and he’s supposed to be a millionaire by the time he’s 23, he’s worth about 200 grand at 18, a sharp kid. But I said, “Hey, what did you get out of all this?” He goes, “That things could get big, really, really fast.” And it just opened up his mind to how… And he’s a big thinker. It opened up his mind to how big stuff can be. That was cool.

J:
Can I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt Carol, but I really want to say one thing, because I think this is really important. You mentioned earlier, and I have the same problem, people ask you what you do and you don’t know what to say. Am I a business owner, an entrepreneur, a real estate investor, whatever, but you’ve described yourself a couple times as a sales guy. And what I find is a lot of people who do a lot of different things. They do… I don’t know if you want to call them side hustles, or just multiple businesses, or multiple revenue streams. A lot of the people that do that most successfully are really, really good at sales. Would you agree with that? And what have you done to hone your sales skills?

Tim:
Well, if you think about it, we’re talking about revenue stream. Well, how do you create revenue? Something’s got to be sold. You know what I mean? I was a really lousy sales guy. I was a good bartender. And I thought if I hustled and had some good gab that I could be a good sales guy, and I didn’t realize the old adage, you have two ears and one mouth, use them accordingly. And then I learned the key of asking questions. And I always say, the most valuable investment you have is in yourself. The podcast, the books, the people you surround yourself with. And I’ve constantly invested and still do to this day. School’s never out in trying to learn and trying to be better.
I read a book about the difference between a fact and an opinion. That’s about five years ago. And now every time I listen to something, I think, “Is that an opinion or a fact?” You’ll be amazed at how many things you just take as fact they’re strictly in opinion. And just stuff like that, that’s a key component. I went to curious negotiation school about 12 years ago. And I’m like, “I wish I would have done it 32 years ago,” because you had to role play the other side. I’ve always been a sales guy. I didn’t realize the pressure of a buyer. And they’d give you scenarios like this buyer will get fired if they don’t close the deal, or this buyer last bought something and it cost the company a fortune. You had to play all these different roles. And I think one of the key things in life is empathy and seeing it from the other person’s point of view. And I think that being a good sales guy is bringing value before you ask for money and empathy, trying to understand what they need out of the deal.

Carol:
Great. Bringing value and empathy are two of the big keys there, and two skills that we should always be working on, no matter what our business is, and how many different streams of income we’re trying to produce. It’s awesome.

J:
Yeah. I love it. We’re going to get to the Joe Exotic, but there’s still more of your story that’s just so good. You’ve invented something, you were a bartender, you started a security business, or at least selling to security businesses. You have written a couple books. How do you, I get that you like to do a lot of things, you like the multiple revenue streams, that’s important, but the question I always get, I want to ask you is how do you handle it? How do you do time management? How do you handle having multiple businesses, multiple patents, multiple everything?

Tim:
I feel like you can pretty much put people in one of two camps. You either get energized by having a lot going on, or you get overwhelmed. And if you’re an overwhelmed person, then this probably isn’t going to work, the multiple streams. But real estate still could work because it’s passive. But I get energized, and I gain energy throughout the day. I just… Having all this, being on a call two seconds before this call about a guy in Washington state on the CB… I don’t know how to say it right. The CBD oil… to try to license the Joe Exotic and Tiger King. I had seven minutes before we were going to start, I’m like, “Man, do I have time for this call?” I jumped on it. I’m glad I did that.
Now I know my next step with this person. And now we’re doing a podcast. Someone else might go, “You know what? I better make sure everything’s set for this podcast. That’s the most important thing today.” And it is super important. But I’m like, “If I could sneak in that one little thing, that one last thing, that one more thing.” And then I got another thing I always think about, if I don’t have time to do now, when will I? And I wrote in my book and I’m a huge Rush fan, which makes me a dork and makes me a check repellent, these girls hate Rush. Carol, Rush is a Canadian band [crosstalk 00:23:57].

J:
Oh, Carol knows Rush because she’s married to a huge Rush fan.

Carol:
Oh, yeah. I’m sitting back. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I’m listening to my husband. This is a crazy time.”

Tim:
This was funny, J. I got the perfect follow up gift and I’ll get back to the line and Rush. But when Neil passed, I was just devastated. I made a bunch of t-shirts with the Canadian flag, two drumsticks and with a knuckle that had tattoo purred on it with the 2112 star on the back of it. And all I did, I bought 50 of these. All I did is kept it in the back of my car. And whenever I’d run into someone who’s a Rush fan, I’d just give it to him. You think I gave him a million bucks. That’s my followup gift to you. But if you remember in the song Freewill, and I was very young, I was 15 when I heard the song, there’s a line that goes, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. And I think about all the time, these people who are like, “Oh, well, I’ll get to it,” or, “Oh, I’m not going to do it,” or, “Oh, I’m going to start real estate investing later.” Well, don’t kid yourself. You just chose not to do it.

J:
We are kindred souls. I love that. And I love the fact that you said to yourself, “I’m going to create this thing and I’m just going to give value to people. I meet a Rush fan, here you go, take it. I’m not asking for anything in return. I’m just providing value.” And you saw an opportunity, a niche. And it’s like… and I often use the term you like to plant seeds. And it’s kind of, if you plant a hundred seeds every day, six months from now, even if one or two of them take hold, there’s a couple of new revenue streams. There’s a couple of new relationships. There’s a couple of new partnerships, whatever it is. And constantly planting seeds… And again, not saying I’m just going to plant seeds in the real estate world. I’m going to plant seeds everywhere because that’s where the new opportunities come from. Absolutely love that.

Carol:
Totally. And I want to piggyback on that a little bit and just mention, I think your choice of language around the fact that you are a professional opportunist is so powerful in that, for exactly that reason. Because when you talk about that, people, like you said, they start talking to you about their ideas, about those things that have been sitting in the back of their mind that they haven’t necessarily jumped on and figured out a way to do it. And then once again, that gives you an opportunity to partner with them, to see where another stream of revenue might come from. It really is all about putting that karma out there, putting that energy out there so that it all comes back to you in full circle.

Tim:
Exactly. I look at this stage, I’m 54. At this stage of my life I’m like, I want to spend my time mentoring someone. And we’re in a group called business owners ad, which is just amazing. And we help a lot of business owners. But if you met with someone, that’s a gift that keeps on giving if they can take a couple of things. That’s worthy of your time because you created a stream down the road, like my screen printer, Josh Randall, he came down to Dallas about 10 years ago and he’s a hard worker, he’s always on fire. And I said, “Hey, man, you’re going to be 40 one way or the other. You could even be 40 with a bunch of rentals or you could be 40 without a bunch of rentals.” And now he has over a hundred doors.
And now his son, Joshie, he’s 12 years old, to be 13 in a couple of days. I had options on Caesars Palace because Carl Icahn started taking a big stake in it and I just had a feeling it was going to get bought out, just everything lined up because he owned the Tropicana before that, he likes the casino space. I made a bunch of money on Caesars Palace options. And I took a hundred of that and bought a Ferrari, but I also gave Joshie four grand. And Joshie was like, “I’m going to buy a house.” And I said, “You know what, Joshie, that’s awesome. But at your age, I think you’re better off flipping one.” He’s in the middle of flipping one, we were filming everything, we’re going to call it flip 13. We might have to call it flip 14 by the time we’re done.
But what happened was, the kids at school because his dad does… were starting to hate on and go, “Oh, it’s just your daddy.” And I had Josh call me… I called Josh and said, “Oh, the kids at school give him a hard time because I just sensed that.” And he goes, “Yeah.” I said, “Okay, good. Have Joshie call me.”
And we recorded it. He already had the foreground. But I said, “Joshie,” I said, “I’ll loan you up to $40,000.” I said, “I want no interest, but I want 10% of whatever the profit is.” And that way he had a recording to go to the kids in school and tell them “to suck it”. It’s what he told them. [inaudible 00:28:15] the thing. But you know what it is? Now he’s been working on it, and he’s doing it with his dad. It’s real. He’s going to make probably 20 to 30 grand on this flip out of four grand. But the four grand can, because I call it my good luck charm. Like when a bet on football games and stuff, I’ll cut them in on stuff. I call it my good luck charm.
And the fact that now Joshie understood stock, now he understands stock options, which a lot of people don’t even understand what are options, what they understand is stock. Now he got some money. He was going to do a longterm thing like his dad and I do, but it’s just buy and hold, but instead we said, “Why don’t you flip it? Because you can turn the four into, let’s call it 20, 25,000.” God knows what he’s going to do with that. And God knows what the lessons he’s going to learn from this. I’m just thrilled. And that’s huge at this age. It’s just trying to help the next generation. [crosstalk 00:29:02].

J:
That’s cool. Let me ask a question. What are your thoughts on partners and partnerships? Because I know that can be a polarizing question, but for somebody like you who has all these things going on, where do partners fit in, if at all?

Tim:
It’s funny because my wife and I, Crystal and I, talk about it that we’re not good with partners typically because I got an 80 year old friend that goes, “Hey, partnerships are great as long as you know you’re going to have to do 70% of the work.” That’s his little saying. If you’re going to go into a partnership, just do it.
The other thing, I catch people all the time going, “Hey, my partner and I, we’re going to buy our first house.” I’m like, “Hey, don’t kid yourself. You now own half a house. And you own half a house with your buddy and his wife. And maybe they get divorced, the new wife that you’ve not met or he hasn’t met.” You got to look out for it. But I will say on this Tiger King thing, I did grab someone, Tyler and Lisa Anderson. I grabbed them because they are better at social media than I am. And where we live, their neighborhood has the CEO of Denny’s, 7-Eleven, Yum! Brands, and someone that has one of the biggest Halloween costume.
He has better relationships with those people than me. And I wanted him to have a vested interest in it. Where I say grab partners is if there’s something you’re lacking, whether it’s equity, then you need a partner, expertise, then you need a partner. I don’t have a problem with… most people probably have a better personality for partners than me. I just I’m a do it type of guy and a do it and ask for forgiveness later type of guy.
I’m probably not the best guy to be a partner with, but in this instance they had something. And quite frankly, Tyler, if I tried to cut him out of this thing, he’s so on the Tiger King, he’d be sleeping on my front porch. There’s still a way I could leave him out of it. But the other thing he brought to him is, we’re in talks with Barstool Sports and a couple of times this year they’ve had 1 billion views on something that they’ve created. That’s massive. And because he’s addicted to bar stools and he’s younger than me, it’s right in his demographic and sure enough, we had a call with the licensing guy from Barstool yesterday and what was interesting about him is he worked for Daymond John and FUBU when it was nothing for 21 years, he’s been with Barstool for nine months.
That’s pretty cool, that came out of this. I’m having a call after this. J and Carol you’re number one, but I’m having a call after this with a marketing manager for Dierks Bentley and Luke Bryan because they’ve got the rights to a six series of all the footage on Joe Exotic, when it was Joe Exotic TV, they’re retaking that tape that J.T. Barrett has and creating a whole thing on that. That’s crazy. [crosstalk 00:31:49].

J:
Let’s officially get into it. For anybody out there that’s been living under a rock for the last couple of months, can you tell us what is Tiger King?

Tim:
Okay. Hey, this… probably listeners know better than me. I’ve watched it like everybody else, but we’ve got this exotic homosexual cowboy with a gun, with a mullet, in Oklahoma that raised exotic cats. And then he had a feud with Carole Scott Baskin-

Carol:
Hello there, all your cool cats and kittens.

Tim:
There you go, down to Florida. And then you got to rift and trust me, I love animals as much as anybody. Then you got a rift between Carole Baskin and Florida who allegedly maybe might have lost her husband somewhere forever. I don’t know how to say that without not getting sued. And our whole thing is we’re focusing on the Joe gear. We’ve got the rights to Joe’s likeness, Joe Exotic, and Tiger King. We got the rights to all of that.
And you got just this crazy thing. It was Netflix’s number one show for a while until some people got on a thing and weren’t allowed to have sex. And then that thing went to number one, whatever that show was. It dethroned the Tiger King. I just view it as, I’ve got this promotional business and maybe Joe is seven minutes and it’s 15 minutes of fame, but then Nicolas Cage just signed on to a Ron Howard movie, what they’re going to do is a Joe Exotic movie. Those are two pretty big names.
Maybe this thing will have legs. I don’t know. But I look at it and how all opportunities should look at it. I look at this is my Trojan horse. Will Barstool Sports take my phone call if I said I wanted to print them t-shirts? Probably not. With Denny’s, with 7-Eleven, but all of these people, probably not. You’ve got this unicorn of a thing at a moment in time. You use that to give them a new revenue and hopefully we’ll do like we always do and provide such great service, such great value that after this is done, that hopefully for decades later, we can have business with whoever the Joe Exotic gives us an introduction to.

J:
Okay, but I need to know, how did this come about? How did you get involved? You mentioned that you control certain… and for all the people out there that don’t understand how licensing works, you mentioned that you control certain marketing streams or certain types of products. What was the backstory like? Let’s say, I want to do something like this. Where do I start?

Tim:
I think you got to be really nice to a lot of people for a long time and not realize whether it’s going to come back to you. [crosstalk 00:34:20]. One of my longterm friends for 30 years is… he’s the exact opposite of me. He’s such a wonderful person compared to me. He doesn’t drink. Doesn’t do anything wrong, 56 year old nice attorney. If you come to him with something and it’s on your best interest, he’s just like, “You know what? You’re better off not doing this.” Most people would take the money. He’s just a great human being. And he’s always in shape. He’s played soccer with this guy named Fran, Francisco, and Fran is the guy that’s on Hannity. This is an immigration attorney that literally will say anything to get people going bonkers.
And Francisco Hernandez, he’ll go on Hannity and go, “All right, we need to give all illegal aliens $100,000 and pay for their kids’ college,” and just watch everything blow up. He does it on purpose. You know what I mean? Then we got a guy named Eric Love, AKA big juicy, and he’s this bigger than life Texas guy wearing Texas shirts ripped off sleeves, tatted up, sweetest guy you’d ever want to meet. But like if you judge a book by the cover, there’s no way this guy and I are going to get along, but we are fast friends.
And what he used to be was an investigator in the private security, he was private security for Warren Buffett. And when he resigned from Warren… you would… go in line, look it up. But when Warren Buffett was… when he finally had his last day, Buffett goes, “Hey,” in front of a big group, “what can… I’m going to grant you one wish. What do you want?”
And what Eric Love, Big Juicy, asked for was Warren Buffett’s wallet, not the money in it, not anything. Warren Buffett took the $5 cash that he had in it, his black Amex, his voter card, his ID, and his American Express… oh, sorry, black Amex, sorry I didn’t say it, and gave Eric the wallet. And what Eric said… And he didn’t know this. He’s put on spot, he’s in front of 200 or 300 people.
But what Eric Love said was, “I just like the energy of having the wallet of one of the richest men in the world.” How cool is that? We’ll call him Big Juicy. Big Juicy comes over for breakfast. He gets up way early, cooking breakfast at 7:30, he comes over, we meet each other. And we realized that, “Fran vouch for me, Jim vouched for me.” He’s like, “You’re my guy.” And then we wrote up a contract. We gave them money and Joe’s husband, Dylan, and Joe get a piece of the proceeds. They signed an NDA. I can’t tell you. But they get a handsome [crosstalk 00:36:46].

J:
Joe Exotic and his husband get a piece of the proceeds.

Tim:
Yeah. Absolutely.

J:
Is that who you bought the rights from? You bought it from Joe Exotic. He owned the rights to… he hadn’t already sold it to somebody else.

Tim:
He hasn’t. He owns the rights to himself as likeness. And I wrote an initial check and then there’s a revenue share and perpetuity. I have 22 streams that I thought I’d be good at. But also wrote it, to be fair, that if I don’t create any money from that by November 1st, that that right reverts back to him. I don’t want to squat on something that I’m not performing. And I’m the one that put that in there, because I don’t think it’s fair. But I also have the right to have first right of refusal on any new stream.

J:
Just for the people that don’t know, that haven’t watched the show, Joe Exotic is sitting in prison right now because it alleged, or actually he was convicted of plotting a hit that didn’t go through on somebody, Carole Baskin. And how did you negotiate with him sitting in prison?

Tim:
Here’s the thing. He’s in the Tarrant County prison, might have here. That’s the County that Fort Worth Texas is in, and they’re on lockdown because about 50% of the prison has COVID. And then Joe’s in isolation, which has probably been a godsend because so he won’t catch it. He signed over the power of attorney to Eric Love. What I have on my contract is the old power of attorney, a lady by the name of [Aland 00:38:11] out of the North is, Eric Love, Dylan Passage, and Joe. And we DocuSigned, everything is set for Joe. It had to be delivered to the prison and then delivered back out.

J:
Got it.

Tim:
That’s how that went down. And trust me, I’m not trying to act like an expert about all this, I’m learning all this as I go, but like anything, you just work real hard and you try to be fair and see their side, and then see your side, and you can put a deal together.

Carol:
Well, I’ve got to admit, I was waiting there for you to tell me that somehow you convinced a guard or somebody at the front gate of whatever isolation situation that Joe Exotic is sitting in to go visit him during this COVID crisis. And my mind was completely [crosstalk 00:38:53].

Tim:
You know what? That’s from the charming Francisco Hernandez. This guy, God Almighty, if you ever meet him, J don’t leave Carol in the room alone with him. This guy’s swerved. He can get about anything done. But yeah, he visits with Joe. The other thing that I will say is Joe writes every single person back. If you send him a letter, he’s going to write on the back of your letter a message back, but he’s limited to $10 postage a week. If you send a self addressed envelope, it makes it a little bit easier. That’s cool that he does that. That’s all he’s got.
The other thing I’ll say that people don’t realize, Joe has no clue how big this is. He hasn’t seen any of it. He’s been locked up and hasn’t seen any of it. Everyone’s trying to explain to him how huge this is, no clue. You got a guy that likes the limelight and the time that he got the most of it, he doesn’t even doesn’t even know. He knows, but he can’t comprehend.

J:
That’s crazy. Well, let me ask a question. You promise to a cut of the profits or a cut of the revenue, does that mean that basically this deal was done with no money out of your own pocket?

Tim:
No. I wrote a check.

J:
Okay. You did write a check. Got it. And I’m not even going to ask how much, I know that’s probably…

Tim:
I signed an NDA on the financial terms-

J:
Got it.

Tim:
But it was sizeable, but it wasn’t astronomical. That’s what I’ll say. I’ll leave it at that.

J:
Okay. You mentioned you have the rights to 22… is it marketing streams or how do you find that?

Tim:
Yeah, I wrote things like, I want to visit with the tipsy hell of people, I want Joe’s sweaters, I got Halloween costumes, I got pet costumes, some sexual stuff. We’ll leave that at that because there’s young kids listening, we won’t make them wear ear muffs. [crosstalk 00:40:41].
What else? T-Shirts cut out like this alcohol, weed, oil, I don’t know. A bunch of stuff. But [crosstalk 00:40:52] perfect example, I woke up at slot machines, ding ding ding ding ding, and then I called my old roommate is… works at a big casino in Vegas. And he had a meeting for me, but what I didn’t realize is the Nevada Gaming Commission has to approve any slot machine, whether it’s wheel, or fortune, or whatever. And they’re like, they’re not going to approve a convicted person like this in a casino. But it was a great idea. It wasn’t in my original deal, but like I said, I have the ability to go and… because at the end of the day, they want someone to go out there and shake the trees and make some money for them. And to add another thing, as long as I’m performing, I don’t see that not happening.

J:
What’s the plan? Now you have the rights. This could be the biggest thing you’ve ever done, anybody’s ever done, but you got to make it work before November 1st. What’s the plan?

Tim:
Oh, we’re already selling t-shirts, we already have a web store. I had a bunch of cannabis calls yesterday in the Western states where it’s legal. Like I said, we’ve got Barstool Sports-

J:
Are you reaching out to all these people? Are they reaching out to you? Do people somehow know that you have the right stores?

Tim:
Yeah, because… I’m keeping that quiet because at the end of the day, my main thing is my security business. But I do have salespeople on the t-shirt side. We have 15 inside salespeople that are telemarketing sponsors and a friend of mine does the spirit shops that pop up. And we does all their security. We have phone call into them. But then the… my buddy that does Luke Bryan, he is friends with the spirit shop people too. Things are happening really fast, but every single day it’s just nonstop. It’s just call, after call, after call. But you got to also realize that I’ve only had the rights for seven days now, it’ll be seven days today. When I was on the bus, I was going crazy on calls. [crosstalk 00:42:45].

Carol:
What’s this bus deal about? I keep hearing the bus, the bus. What’s it about the bus?

Tim:
Because Big Juicy is just over the top Texas. And I really honestly think, here’s the prediction, that Netflix will do a series on him. And Dylan was at my partner’s house and Netflix had a crew because Dylan does have a deal already with Netflix to do a series. Tyler who was riding to DC with me, we dropped him off at Nashville so he’d fly back home to meet the Netflix people on that.
This bus is the largest bus on US soil and then Big Juicy’s friend happens to know how to wrap buses and make signs. And so we got this big, please, Donald Trump, pardon Joe Exotic. And on the back of the bus, it’s like a pontoon boat, like this open air area, you know what I mean? We’re hanging out, driving down, driving from Fort Worth to Washington, DC, truckers are honking. And I joke that we either got five fingers or one, people were either waving or flipping us off. That was unique.
We drove this bus to Washington DC to raise awareness of the fact we’re trying to get you apart. TMZ had a film crew on the bus. We had radio and TV people in Nashville and DC. And it’s just really been a crazy thing. Our hashtag is, #help free Joe. We’ve got a petition. At last check, we’ve got 14,000 signatures in less than a week. I don’t know. We’ve got [crosstalk 00:44:20].

J:
Was this part of the agreement with Joe, like you have to work to get him off… I’m sorry, [crosstalk 00:44:25] to get him pardoned?

Carol:
Joshie, put on your ear muffs [crosstalk 00:44:31]. Oh my goodness.

Tim:
No we’re doing that because Francisco is Joe’s attorney. Fran firmly believes… It’s like 22 years for this… there’s a lot of missing stuff. You look at Netflix like any other TV show or even this podcast, there might be a lot of stuff you cut out. The public doesn’t know… we’re here to talk about revenue streams, but just same thing. [crosstalk 00:44:58]. But the public doesn’t know all this stuff. People ask me like, “Tim, do you think he’s guilty?” I’m like, “I truly don’t know. I don’t know. That’s not what I’m doing.” I bought the rights, and I’m trying to create revenue streams out of it, and let the lawyers do what the lawyers do. And I’m not… I know who I believe in politically, but I’m not with these persons that just got obsessed, or I hate you because you’re on the other side of my political beliefs or whatever.
I don’t feel like there’s any money in that. I don’t get all, “Trump doesn’t care what I’m thinking today.” I’m not going to get too worked up about what he’s thinking. You know what I mean? I joke when the Cowboys won the Super Bowl, they didn’t send me a ring. They don’t really care that I’ll eat for them. Back to what we originally talked about, you ink, invest in you, invest in your revenue streams. And I always always say, are you trading dollars for hours? Is it a good use of your time? I like doing stuff that I spend an intense amount of energy, like drilling an oil well. And sometimes there’ll be a dud and you move on and you drill the next well, but I’m going to spend an intense amount of time on something to create a gusher, a revenue stream. And that’s how I look at stuff. And this just happens to be a timely, unique, weird time and culture opportunity. And I’m going to run with it until it doesn’t have any legs.

Carol:
Yeah. You have to jump on that. And it’s just so fun to think about this really all originated by, in your words, not inventing a stent to save people’s lives, but by inventing a beer koozie to keep people’s beverages cold on the golf course, it all snowballed into this, through all those multiple contacts, through all that energy you put out there, through all these different entrepreneurial ventures. Here you are riding that Joe Exotic, Tiger King bus with TMZ. Come on. That’s amazing. Amazing.

Tim:
My wife is the classiest, sweetest fireball. She’s a Southwest flight attendant that doesn’t fly anymore, but just imagine that type of peppy, peppy, peppy, and she’s… always says, “Stay classy, not trashy, classy, not trashy.” If I’ve grabbed one of our kids up here and go, “Hey, what does mom say?” “Trashy, not classy.” I’m sorry, “Classy, not trashy.” You see, I can’t even say that. I always say, and I’m sure you all think this way too, I think some people are transactional and it’s like a checker. You jump their checker, you get their checker. I like to think of being an entrepreneur is chess. It’s more strategic. There’s a few moves down the road. And I don’t care if I make money or… like giving out Rush t-shirts. I don’t care if I made a nickel.
We’ll see if something comes from it really doesn’t matter. But when I told my wife that I wanted to do this, she was like, “Oh my God.” And she was like, “Don’t tell anybody.” And I said, “Hold on.” I go, “Typically there’s a few moves down the road.” I said, “I want to ride this time out so that our promotional products business gets larger after this is done,” or, “I’m going to meet someone along this winding road, that’s going to spring me to another way, another direction.” And then she took a deep breath and she goes, “Okay, well, okay. If you’re looking at it like that,” because she just doesn’t want to be a part of a carnival. I’m more tolerant of that. And I like to have fun.

J:
Let me ask you a question. Along those lines, do you think of yourself as having a personal brand? Is there something that Tim Shiner stands for? And do you work to cultivate that brand or is it, “I’m going to do what I’m doing and I don’t care what anybody thinks?” Because I know, personally, I run into this issue a lot. There’s a lot of things that I wouldn’t probably like to do, but it goes against the J Scott brand that people think about. How do you deal with that?

Tim:
Thank you for asking. That’s a really important question because other than LinkedIn, I’m not on any social media. And my son has a social media company where he third-party sell for people. But the reason being is I want to focus on what I need to get done. And I know it’s a great way. And trust me on the joke’s side, we had 5.5 million views in 48 hours.
It’s been massive, but I own a piece of a technology company that does restoration and stuff like that. We talked about off air, but my guy, Evan Islam said to me, he goes, “Tim,” he goes, “someone’s going to own your name, Tim Shiner. Someone’s going to own it. And it can be you or someone else.”
And that’s about three years ago. And I had to take a deep breath and go, “Okay, I’m going to own it.” And that kind of goes, I like promoting stuff, but there’s a fine line between being a D bag and being a promoter. And you got to ride it the right way. I decided on my personal brand that I was going to control the narrative and do podcasts, give back, talk about the sanctuary I’m trying to build in the woods, talk about my charities, bring value. And that’s how I address it.
And I just try to be transparent and… like on the Joe thing, is that right in my wheelhouse of classiness? No, but it is a way to sell a lot of t-shirts and it’s a way to do a lot of other things. That’s right on the edge of the plate for me. But to answer your question, I dominate you… you google my name, I dominate it. And then you google images, I dominate it. Videos, I dominate it.
Anyone that’s trying to control the narrative, go buy your domain and just dominate. But what people don’t realize, you got to keep adding stuff, you got to keep adding videos, you got to keep adding all that stuff to keep it current and keep it fresh. And like a perfect example, this podcast… it’s one of my goals, is to constantly be working on my brand. And so by doing a podcast with you all today, that’s one more video on my website that might touch somebody and I might make a couple of new friends out of it.

Carol:
I love that. And for whatever it’s worth, it’s not just building your brand. There is so much of this in all of these shows and everything you do that are really, again, helping people, mentoring people, giving back. And we know that’s a big part of who you are. Can you tell us more about your philanthropic efforts, all the other things that you do to give back?

Tim:
Sure. I wrote a book, 50 Things They Didn’t Teach You in School! And the reason being is I never graduated college. I’m a scrappy guy. I’m a street guy, I’m a street smart type of guy. And I just feel like a lot of things aren’t being written about, like writing thank you notes, following up. I’m a huge follow up guy. I just view following up… my visual for that is like rebounding. If you watched The Last Dance, Michael or Rodman’s job was to rebound. It’s a dirty job. And that’s what I view a great revenue stream creator, a great sales person, or a great friend is following up like a maniac. I promise you J’s getting a Rush t-Shirt come hell or high water because I was already thinking how I was going to follow up before I even started this deal.
I made cards this year that said, one of the greatest things about 2020 was meeting you. I had it printed, was ready to roll. I have a hundred of them. I hope I print more on that because I intended on meeting a hundred great people this year. You got to be intentional. You got to follow up on that. But to your question, that book, all the money goes to the Community Storehouse, which is the food bank in Keller, Texas. But more importantly, there’s a lot of food banks. They also have a dignity closet because if you’re the poor person, you’re probably the hungry person, and unfortunately you might be the smelly person. And whenever we have a party at our house, we’ll crack right bottles of wine, but we ask people to bring deodorant… personal hygiene products. That way you don’t have the opulence of great food, great wine, you have the ability of bringing something therein.
I’ve got friends from all walks of life and if you can afford a bar of soap, come on in, if you can afford a case, come on in. That’s the first book and then BiggerPockets, I was in the front yard meeting with Mindy in Denver secretly, because I was trying to sell them t-shirts after I did my podcast, which didn’t happen. They sold me on no, I didn’t sell them on yes, apparently. Anyway, I was sitting in the front yard and I’m like, “How did all this happen?” And Kiyosaki’s books were great. And when I ran out of Kiyosaki’s book, I read Kim, his wife’s book, and I realized, “Oh my God. A female thinks about this investing in a totally different way than a guy does.” And I’m like, “Aw, man.”
I decided because so many people they’ll probably come up to you too and go, “Okay. Hey Tim, I’m on board, but my wife’s not.” Or a wife goes, “Hey, my husband, he doesn’t want to fix a leaky toilet.” You get all this back and forth with a couple that isn’t unified on the mission of owning rental properties. Crystal and I wrote a book where guy perspective, girl’s perspective, guy perspective, girl’s perspective. And it’s My Wife Loves/Hates Rental Properties. And 100% of that money goes to SafeHaven, which is the woman’s shelter in Fort Worth, Texas.
I’m one of these guys that if I wrote a book, hopefully it’ll help you out, but I sure as heck don’t want to make a nickel off of it. I would much rather that money flow through me to the charities to help other people… just keeps on going down the line. I keep thinking that maybe I’m blessed because I’m not a dead end street, that I’m a flow through entity. That if it comes into my life, I’m going to try get it on down the line. And the final thing I’ll say is, don’t take yourself too serious. There’s someone richer or poor. Everything that you have, you can’t leave the planet with it. And if you happen to be on the ladder of life and there’s someone a rung below you, help pull them up. And hopefully someone a rung above you will help pull you up. Just don’t get too crazy about it.

J:
I absolutely loved that message. And that was said absolutely perfectly. Before we jump into the last segment of the show, the Four More segment of the show, I just want to ask, is there anything else in the works that you want to talk about or anything we should be following up with you, or are you basically a full speed ahead on the Joe Exotic right now?

Tim:
No. Nothing will ever be 100% because that’s just not how an ADD person operates. You’re going to have a new shiny thing all the time. A couple of things that are kind of cool, one is I helped raise money and we just got bought out by ADT, it got announced a couple of weeks ago of this [crosstalk 00:55:08] this is a neat deal. I can talk generically in the terms, but basically we got a chunk of money and the investors basically got four times the money, but then we also got a chunk of stock options. Individually did, we have 10 years to exercise. And then we also have a rev share twice a year for a decade.
And my part of it was I wanted to sell to a publicly traded company because yes, I wanted the money, yes I wanted the rev share, but I also wanted the triple play of getting the stock options too. That worked out really good. But what’s neat about this product is when 3G goes away, Carol and you can go to Verizon or AT&T, take your phone in and upgrade and you’re ready to roll. But your alarm panel, your ATM machine, it can’t. You got to roll a truck. Let’s pick on ADT. You got to roll a truck to all of the existing accounts that are already paying you. They think they shouldn’t have to pay you for an upgrade because they’ve been paying you 40 bucks a month or whatever it is already. Instead of selling a new alarm system, creating new revenue, you’re working on yesterday’s challenges for a long, long time, because you have so many of them and scheduling, and are you home, and appointments, and on and on.
What my buddy Mike Lamb invented, and then I got the biggest owners of alarm companies in America to pitch in money because being an opportunist, I knew that they were my customers, and I knew that they would buy the product if they had their money invested in it. And also knew that they had to go back to their private equity people and explain what they’re doing with this wave of 3G going away, how are they addressing it.
It gave them the answer to go back to their money people and also gave them a solution. What we came up with is a thing called Cellbounce, cell bouncing, like a bouncing ball. What Cellbounce does is it’s a mail-out piece that tricks your alarm panel so it thinks is talking 3G to the nearest tower, which is our Cellbounce module, this plugged in, it looks like a Glade plugin. And then when 3G goes down, that app converts it to LTE 4G and 5G. Your panel is still talking to the 3G tower and our device app converts it. And that is a huge, huge thing that we just did. That was a fun deal. I didn’t invent it, but I realized the opportunity and I was instrumental in getting smart money into the deal.

J:
I love that. And I love the fact that we didn’t talk much about your patents, but you also have several patents. You’re an inventor. Again, we didn’t talk much about that, but it’s just so multifaceted.

Tim:
Well, I’ll be giving… I know we got to wrap up, but I’ll give you a couple of things real quick. I invented a gun lock that ties into your alarm system. Whether you’re pro gun or anti gun, everyone agrees that if a little kid’s playing with one, we need to know about it. And basically it’s a little trigger lock with the Cabo code, but it’s got a tilt sensor in it. If your gun moves, you’re going to be texted, or called, emailed, alerted that your gun is moving while you’re at work and your gun’s at home. That’s cool. Then I created a thing called WaterKnuckles. We had three people, for various reasons, that had to move out of their house because they had water damage. One, an air conditioner guy cut the line, it flooded. Two others had leaks, and 28% of our insurance claims are water related.
And my wife, because… anyone that has a bunch of rent houses know that big T thing that you got at the back of your car that’s so big that you never seem to have it when you need it. [crosstalk 00:58:29]. Exactly, exactly. Crystal… we call them The Real Housewives of Westlake, this little area we live in, put bows on these Ts and dropped them off on the porch of… Real Housewives of Leslie, because these ladies sent no clue what this thing is. And their husbands are probably like, maybe they’re not very handy. We did that. I’m sitting there staring at it in my office, day after day, day after day. I’m like, “Why does this thing have to be so big? What do you really need out of it?” Back to if it’s rigged, why is it?
And then all of a sudden I realized you just need leverage. You need leverage. You need the special little U thing that goes on the valve. And then I’m thinking, every kid… I wanted the brass knuckles so bad when I was a little boy. I don’t know why, but I wanted some. And I came up with a thing called WaterKnuckles, which is basically the little brass knuckles with a short throw that could fit in your valve box or a handy guy can actually keep in his tool box. And so WaterKnuckles.
I’m looking to license that to a tool company, or home Depot or Lowe’s. And I just got a utility and a design patent on it, but it turns out one other thing I’m tempted to do, I’m tempted to go on Shark Tank and go $1 contingent on licensing agreement and we own it 50-50, because everyone else goes on Shark Tank and wants to haggle over a billion [crosstalk 00:59:47] 3%. And I know this isn’t going to be my last invention. And what I consider success in life is who’s willing to return your phone call.
If Mark Cuban’s willing to return my phone call because I did something for him back that was a rev share 50-50, that’s priceless. That’s my angle. I’ve threatened to go on Shark Tank and offer for $1. And then the cool thing that I got, that I’m dying to license, is in the security industry, everybody wants a ring doorbell, but your doorbell is different from where my doorbell is. And the tough thing is it’s the number one go back because of connectivity to your wifi, your wifi gets a little bit bad and the doorbell drops off, they blame the alarm company, now they’re all upset.
And the other thing people want is a Z-Wave lock. They want a deadbolt lock that they can remotely open to let somebody in their house. What I did as I could, when you’re inventing, there’s two things you can do. You can make a unicorn, something that’s never been there, like the water knuckle, or you can make a Reese’s peanut butter cup. And that’s when you combine two things and make something new. And that’s my analogy for when I’m like, “Is this a unicorn or a peanut butter cup?” What I combined was a Ring doorbell, style doorbell, with a Z-Wave lock altogether, because your deadbolt is at the same height as my deadbolt. It’s consistent, but more importantly, the camera guts, the Ring camera guts, are already inside the house so the connectivity to the wireless is easier, plus you’re hanging one device instead of two devices.
And I want to license that to Yale or Ring. I’m in the process of communicating with both of them. And that’s an example of I’m better off dropping it in someone else’s funnel than going it alone. That’s the next thing I look at, like on the gun lock, I dropped it into an alarm funnel. So then you got to ask yourself, am I better off forging like William Mac Clark, or am I better off dropping it in someone else’s funnel and letting it come out faster in the masses? Those are a couple of cool inventions that I got going on.

J:
Wow. Everybody’s always asking Carol and me where we find the time, but I want to ask you where you find the time. Just crazy. I love it. Love it. Well, this is the part in the show where we do our final segment that we call the Four More where we’re going to ask you the same four questions that we ask all of our guests. And then we’re going to give you an opportunity to tell our listeners a little bit more about where they can find out about you and the stuff you’re doing. Sound good?

Tim:
Yup.

J:
Okay. I am going to start question number one. What was your very first or your very worst job and what did you take from it that you’re still using today?

Tim:
That’s funny how you asked that because I always ask people what’s the best and worst thing about what they’re doing. And it tells me if they’re a pessimist or an optimist. And if they start out with the negative, I’m like, “Oh boy.” But to me it’s a little read option. Am I getting another pass with this person? I use as a test question.
My first job, I’d lied about my age when I was a bus boy in an Italian restaurant in a suburb of Chicago. And what I loved about it is there was this… let me think, ’70s, mid ’70s, maybe a little bit later ’70s. And there was this girl that drove this VW thing, just this little hippie girl, and she just goes, “Tim, you might not totally suck in life.” And I’m like, “Well, thank you for that.”
And she taught me how to set a table. She taught me that if you’re going to the kitchen, have something in your hands or the back of the house, have something in your hand. If you’re walking out, have something in your hands. If you’re walking out, have a water pitcher or some bread, because there’s going to be a table that needs it. And when you’re walking back pre bus, whether it’s your session or not, grab a glass, grab a plate, grab a whatever.
That was a really important lesson, but what it also taught me is the harder I hustle, the more money I make. In my 50 Things book, I’d like people getting a job where it’s not just hourly, getting a job that’s going to compensate you for hustling. It was really instrumental in my life that I started my life in an industry where I could earn tips. And to me, sales is like the same thing. I’m earning tips. I’m making commissions because I’m adding more value, more hustle than anybody else. I would suggest to any young listener, go get a job in a restaurant where you make tips or get a sales job.

J:
Awesome.

Carol:
Excellent. My question is going to be almost piggybacking on that, but maybe a bit of a different direction. If you had one piece of advice for a small business owner who’s just starting out, maybe they’re not the youngest person in the world, maybe they’ve been around the block a little bit, but they are just starting out their business, what is an excellent piece of advice that you can share with them so maybe they won’t have to learn it the hard way?

Tim:
One of my favorite words is leverage. I love that word because leverage is you do one thing and you can do a lot more, kind of like owning a property rental. You put 20% down, the bank owns 80%, but you own 100% of this property because of the 20% down. As a young business owner, I would look for anything where I could leverage. If I’m having an event, invite 20 people and set a one person. Anything you’re doing try to do exponentially because otherwise it’s going to take a long, long time. Can you imagine someone having to try to save $1,000,000 how long that would take, versus if you could leverage up something. I would say leverage… if I had to give a single answer, look for leverage in everything, whether it’s social media, whether it’s gatherings, whether… anything you can do, you need to do exponentially and do it bigger. And kind of that little 1A, don’t be bashful. You don’t let people know where you’re at.

J:
That’s awesome. I was actually writing about that on social media this morning. Everybody thinks about leverage when it comes to money, but there’s so many other things in this world that we can leverage. Love it. As an entrepreneur, I am guessing you do at least a little bit of reading. What’s your favorite book out there? What should we be reading?

Tim:
Here’s what happens. When I get a book, it’s like I have a buddy, and then when the buddy goes away, I really get depressed for a little while, but it’s like I lost a friend. And it’s so hard for me to pick one, but I think the one I’m going to pick is… I love collecting older people. I love older… You know what? I love older people and younger people. People are in the middle already, because they’re already doing what they’re doing. I really can’t influence them too much. I can learn a lot from old people and I can help a lot of young people. I got a guy named Jay Rogers, R-O-D-G-E-R-S. And his book is Entrepreneurial Endeavors.
And what I love about it, it’s a lot like my book. With 50 Things, there’s 50 quick chapters. I think it’s got about 54 stories of different business things he did. And what I think it’s great for, if you’re a starting out entrepreneur, his book’s probably not for you, but if you’ve already done some things wrong and right, it’s great because all he does is tell stories, story, after story, after story. And I just love it. It’s just more like a PhD or a doctorate in entrepreneurship. It’s just there aren’t that many books that avoid the blocking and tackling and get to some great stories. And that’s what his book did.
And as a follow up on that, when I talk about being intentional over the top, Jay’s hero is… Oh, shit! Who’s the famous cowboy? John Wayne. Jay’s hero is John Wayne. I’d marked up Jay’s book. I had a bunch of question, mutual friend, Jay lives down here. And when I went to go meet Jay… Jay loves drinking good wine. He likes Caymus. When I went to go meet Jay, I ordered off of eBay a John Wayne signed letter from 1973, where he was giving his likeness up for 10% of the revenue.
And there aren’t that many John Wayne business-related memorabilia. I had that. I had a Magnum of Opus wine. I had a $5,000 check for his charity Biz Owner Ed, and I had my smoking hot looking way younger than Jay’s wife. And I showed up and he thought he was going to visit with a 23 year old kid because the guy that introduced me was interning for someone he’s always dragging these knuckleheads in. And instead he had wine muddy, John Wayne, and a pretty girl to look at. And Jay and I have been fast friends since then. And I just love his book. He’s he’s just a great guy.

J:
That’s absolutely awesome. [crosstalk 01:08:01]. There’s just something somebody mentioned about you, somebody that I love and I want to throw out there, is it true that you will walk around with lottery tickets in your pocket and just hand them to people? For [crosstalk 01:08:16] anybody that’s not watching this on YouTube, Tim just pulled out a log stream of lottery tickets.

Tim:
Here’s what sucks. I’ve been doing this every single day of my life since 1991. We’re now in the coronavirus, people are scared to take anything from anyone. You know what I mean?

Carol:
Oh, my gosh!

J:
So you’re handing these to just strangers [crosstalk 01:08:38] or service people?

Tim:
Service people, anyone. I encourage everyone. If you’re going through a drive through, you get someone who wipes down your drink, you’re like, “Man, your attention to detail is amazing. You’re going somewhere. Here you go.” You give somebody a bucket, it sounds weird. You give him a lottery ticket. And then… this is a bad thing if my wife listens to it, but when I was single a long time ago, I always talked about the read option. I was trying to figure out which way to go.
Back in the day, we couldn’t google someone. If someone had a fancy watch or if they had a digital watch, I knew whether to talk high level or detailed just off of that. I’m always looking for a way to read a situation. Hypothetically, I might’ve been in a bar a lot. And hypothetically, I might have gone up to girls a lot and I would give them a lottery ticket. And you could find out everything about them. I’d give them a lottery ticket. If they go, “Oh my God. If I win I’ll give you half.” Then you start talking about habitat for humanity, charity work. If they go, “Now if I win, I don’t have to give you anything,” then it’s Rolex, Lamborghini. And you knew exactly where to go just upon how they answer that one question is people don’t realize what information they’re giving off-

J:
When they take, they take it and say, “Okay, you’re going to buy me a drink now.”

Tim:
Yeah, [crosstalk 01:09:53] take her, take her, take her. “But I’ll split half.” Then you’re like, “This girl’s a good girl.”

Carol:
Okay. Here is my fourth and favorite question. What is something that you have splurged on along the way, at home or in one of your businesses that was totally worth it?

Tim:
I do this all the time because I’m one of these guys that like, okay, I wanted a Lamborghini, but I had to make sure I had 10 houses. I had to make sure my rep firm was doing a million in commission. And my promo business was doing 500,000 in sales. That was a long time ago. And because of that, I did all of that and I was turning 40 years old. And I was like, “Okay, I got to go get the Lamborghini.” And I almost didn’t do it. And I’m like, “Just because I’m a guy that buys huge cars, I’m practical.” I always say that I’m extravagantly practical. And I just almost didn’t do it. But here’s why you got to do it. Because if the sales manager inside of my head promised me a Lamborghini, if I bought 10 houses that would set me up for life and did the right thing on my business. If that sales manager told me I was going to get a Lamborghini, if he doesn’t deliver, then everything else he’s promised to me, he’s full of it.
And I’m a huge fan of set a goal then reward yourself, set a goal, then reward yourself. I mentioned it before, but Josh Randall, his wife is wonderful, but she’s living in the day to day of their a hundred properties and doesn’t see the longterm debt reduction and the fact that their family is going to be set for generations. I go to Josh and I said, “Josh, would you spend five grand more for pretty much every house you’re buying?” He goes, “Yeah.” I said, “Then you need to build that in. And you need to take your family on a vacation every time you buy a house so that it doesn’t become a negative thing that you’re buying houses is oh, yeah, dad bought a house. We get to go to Florida.”
I think it’s super important to build in rewards into your deal. We opened up a six liter bottle of Silver Oak and invited three friends over, socially distant, three couple of friends, socially distant when ADT acquired us a couple of Fridays ago. And I’m like, “You’ve got to celebrate it or otherwise you’ll just add another X amount of money in your bank account and you’re just on a treadmill.” I’d say, “Shoot off the fireworks by the car, drink the wine after you’ve achieved what you’re supposed to do.”

J:
I love it. And it’s just so funny because… What bottle would we open, Carol?

Carol:
2013 Silver Oak all day long.

J:
Absolutely.

Tim:
That’s funny.

Carol:
Oh yeah. That was our wedding wine. So yeah-

Tim:
That’s so funny because we had a humongous, the biggest they make and that’s what we drank on our wedding. It’s so funny, J, because I am adopted, so maybe you’re a brother from another mother or something. I don’t know.

J:
It could be, it could be. Wow. I could keep asking questions all day. [crosstalk 01:12:49]. Tim, I’m going to give you the opportunity now to tell our listeners where they can find out more about you if they want to learn about Tim, if they want to learn about the stuff Tim is doing, or if they want to get in touch with you. How can they do that?

Tim:
Sure. I assure you 98% of the time I’ll return a text, a phone call, email, unless someone’s just-

J:
Don’t be a taker, be a giver.

Tim:
Yeah. Don’t be a taker, and don’t be restraining order where they [crosstalk 01:13:16] a returning effort. But here’s the deal. It’s just a Tim Shiner, like a black eye or the beer, timshiner.com. And I got some free stuff on there like 25 habits of a future millionaire is a poster that you can download for free. I love that for young people. It’s just basically the 50 Things books condensed. All my stuff is there, the books… You’ll just hear the same thing over and over. It’s just pretty much consistently try to help people and try to create revenue streams, leverage things, follow up. But all that’s on timshiner.com.
Like I said, I’m not on Facebook. I am on LinkedIn. And if I can help you with anything… Like I said, if I’m a rung above you and if I can help pull you up, I just created this other thing that’ll be on my website, it’s called a millionaire tree. And it’s got the name… I didn’t want to print it off. But I’ve got names of people that I’ve helped become millionaire. It has their name, has the date when they became a millionaire, and if they think that I contributed, I have them sign it. And that’s the thing going into the silver hair years of my life, that I’ll be the most proud of is how many millionaires I’ve helped create.

J:
I love it. And for anybody that wants to hear Tim’s BiggerPockets Real Estate episode, because we didn’t talk about it here, we don’t talk a lot about real estate on the show, but you’ve got an amazing real estate story as well, check out BiggerPockets Real Estate. I think it was Brandon Turner and Mindy who hosted that one, episode 221. Go back and listen to that one. Tim, this was amazing. We could talk… Honestly, I could talk for hours more, but I know you are busy negotiating some cool Tiger King deals right now so we’re going to let you go. But thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to having [crosstalk 01:15:05]. Yeah, we want to have you back next year and hear about all the new and fun stuff you’re doing.

Carol:
Thank you for sharing and thank you for your expertise.

Tim:
I appreciate you guys. Hey, send me your address and there’ll be a Neil Peart t-shirt for one of you, because I could tell the other one doesn’t like Rush, just like my household.

J:
I don’t know too many women that like Rush.

Tim:
They don’t, it’s women repel it.

J:
I’m sure you’ve been to a Rush concert, there literally zero women.

Tim:
Yeah. And everyone looks like they could fix your computer.

J:
Exactly, exactly.

Tim:
All right guys. [crosstalk 01:15:37]. Thanks. Have a great weekend.

Carol:
Thank you so much, Tim. Have a good one.

Tim:
See you guys.

J:
That was such a fun episode. And I know I’ve said this about other people before, but I think Tim and I are like soulmates. We have the same philosophy on business. We like the same wine. We like the same cars, even though I don’t have one of those. He does everything I want to do, but he’s so much better at it.

Carol:
He was just phenomenal. And I love the fact that he refers to himself as this professional opportunist. And even more importantly for me, I specifically love the fact that just giving back and being a philanthropist and teaching others and helping others is at the core of his being. That is so massively important and speaks so much to his character. Thank you, Tim, for just an amazing episode, we all learned so much and we wish you just so much success in all of your upcoming ventures.

J:
Yeah, absolutely. And hopefully he’ll come back next year or in a few months because I don’t know about you, but I think there were so many more things we could have talked about that we never touched on because we wanted to jump to the Tiger King stuff. But yeah, he’s got a lot of really cool stuff going on.

Carol:
Great. Let’s wrap this up, baby. Let’s do it.

J:
Let’s wrap it up, everybody. Have a great week. Happy Memorial Day. If you’re listening to this the day after Memorial Day, I hope you had a good weekend and everybody stay safe. Stay healthy. We’ll talk to you soon. She’s Carol, I’m J.

Carol:
Go plant some seeds and see what grows today. Huh? That was a good one. Huh?

J:
That was good. Yeah. I liked that.

Carol:
Have a great week, everybody.

J:
Thanks everybody.

Carol:
See you soon.

J:
Bye.