The Moonlight Real Estate Side Hustles and Syndications Show

Juggling a Corporate Career and Successfully Retiring Using Real Estate to a Million-Dollar Loss with Zach Zimmer Part: 2 🎙️🏠

• Eric Lindsey • Season 1 • Episode 132

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Balancing a Career and Real Estate: Zach Zimmer's Journey

🎙️ In this episode of the Moonlight Real Estate Syndication Show, we chat with Zach Zimmer, a corporate professional turned real estate investor who built a 66-unit single-family portfolio—all while working a full-time W-2 job. Zach's story is one of grit, resilience, and turning a million-dollar loss into lasting financial freedom.

The Hustle Behind the Success 💼
Zach leveraged his steady income to fund and scale his investments, proving that you can “keep the job” while building wealth.

Key Strategies:

  • Lean Principles in Real Estate 🛠️: Streamlining operations by empowering his team of agents and contractors.
  • Delegation 🤝: Building trust with a skilled team to manage over 70 properties.
  • Resilience 💸: Turning setbacks into stepping stones for growth.

Zach’s Advice for Aspiring Investors:

  1. Use your W-2 income to secure funding and credibility.
  2. Build a trustworthy team and delegate effectively.
  3. Always keep sourcing deals.
  4. Track expenses, cash flow, and KPIs.

Books That Inspired Him:

  • The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone 📖
  • The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson 📘

Free Resource from Zach!
Text TPL to 33777 to access “Top 5 Strategies to Build 7-Figure Passive Income.”

Zach’s journey is proof that with strategy and effort, financial freedom is achievable—even with a full-time job.

🎧 Listen now and take your first step toward independence! 🌟
Visit realzachzimmer.com for more insights.

Click On This Link For Our Free E-Book "An Introduction Into Apartment Syndication: https://moonlightcre.com/ebook_download/
Website: Moonlightcre.com
Click On The Link Below To Schedule A Call With Eric:https://calendly.com/moonlightequitiesgroup/scheduled-conversation
Click On The Link Below For More Information About Eric Lindsey:
https://linktr.ee/ericlindsey

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Moonlight Real Estate Syndication Show hosted by Eric Lindsay. Here at Moonlight, we will show you how to operate and invest in real estate syndications successfully while having W-2 income or another business that you operate on a full-time basis. We will learn from experts all things pertaining to real estate syndications. Here at the Moonlight Real Estate Syndication Show, we choose to focus on financial security, not job security.

Speaker 2:

One thing I would like to go deep on or just touch on briefly before we start wrapping things up within the show, is you built this huge portfolio.

Speaker 2:

You had 66 homes that you built up while you were working. A lot of the listeners that are following me and that listen to these podcasts they've got W-2 income themselves or they either have a business and they're looking to get into real estate on the side or eventually go full-time at it. I always like to try to chat with successful people, find out what worked for them. In order for you to be super busy at work and still be able to accumulate such a huge portfolio. There had to be some kind of method that you were using, something that was working a little bit better than others. Share with the Moonlight audience some things that you were able to do to accumulate this 66-unit single-family residential portfolio. Just give us some high-level details as to how your life was balanced around that, how you were able to structure your family activities while working and still being a great W-2 employee, but also being able to build a portfolio.

Speaker 3:

So the biggest thing is keep the job. That's what I tell everybody. Keep your job. You can't get loans when you quit your job and if you quit your job that means you're living on your investment proceeds, which is horrible. You want to grow that snowball?

Speaker 3:

I think for me it combined as a perfect synergy of the right people, so the right agents. I ended up working, basically bought almost all those houses with two agents. I did not go look at homes after I did one or two with the agents. So my background in the W2 world was continuous improvement, right, black belt, toyota trained, so fortunately right.

Speaker 3:

I look at everything from a way of how to eliminate waste. Right, and it drives my wife nuts because I do the minimum required to accomplish the task. Right, the minimum amount of dishwasher detergent, the minimum amount of everything. Because why would you do more? Right? That is called waste when you do more of something, consume more of something that to achieve a task that could be consumed with less right. That is the issue of lean manufacturing, lean anything, lean, continuous improvement.

Speaker 3:

So what value do I provide going and looking at a house? I don't need to go look at a house. I have to have an agent to let me in. So why can't the agent look at the house? They can send me pictures, they can send me videos. Or, after we did a couple, we know we talk, we know what I do, we know what it needs to look like, we know how much money is going to go into it. Okay, so I don't need to go look at houses anymore. Great, okay. Well, how does the contractor know what to do? Well, the agent can let them in. The agent can show the contractor, the agent can show the contractor, the agent can get the keys to the contractor. Right, I mean, I, I, I don't know, like in hindsight, with what's going on with, uh, the association of realtors now right their commissions and everything where they're getting crushed.

Speaker 3:

And you know I'd love to say that that I knew they were overpaid back then and that's why I kind of pushed them to be doing more. Right for you. For you know, you're going to get this $2,500 for spending two hours of your time. Well, you're going to work with the contractor, let him in, let him see everything, give him some ideas if it was a flip. So, on flips, I didn't want anything to do with it. Agent, you say this is a good flip. You say it's going to sell for $225,000. All right, contractor, right, okay, our budget could be $30,000. Agent, you're picking everything. You're picking the counters, you're picking the paint, you're picking the flooring, because I don't want to hear, ah, zach, I mean we can't get 220 now because, oh, look at the flooring you picked, why did you do that color? Or look at the fixtures. Nope, you're picking it off. You're going to sell it too. So you're going to get a commission on the sell side.

Speaker 3:

But I just put them more accountable, or, if you want to say, empowered instead of saying accountable. But I empowered my realtor, empowered the contractors. I never micromanage my contractors. They hate that. They do not want you, mr White Collar, who's never changed a toilet, installed drywall, put in trim. They do not want you getting involved and that's why my contractor who I mean, he's probably the one who is most responsible for my success One general contractor that I probably did 70 houses with I just stayed out of his way and I started to realize I think there was a post a long time ago that resonated with me, said there's no such thing as a perfect contractor, and I was like, oh well, larry was unbelievable.

Speaker 3:

Well, the one thing that I learned real quick with Larry is you do not put any time requirements on him. He will get things done at his own time. His work was great quality. His cost was just unbelievable. He's such an ethical, integral person, whereas the market rate for doing something might be $500, but it takes three hours of time and he's like no, I can't, he couldn't go to bed charging $125 an hour for his labor. So he would charge me what was fair, and nobody functions like that. Pretty much, I mean, it's very rare to find that. But so finding the right people, empowering them and figuring out how to work with them right. If I would have held him accountable and said Larry, you said you're going to be done Thursday. Why aren't you done Thursday? Right, I would have lost him and I would have struggled, because I struggled until I found him with shady contractors and struggled until I found him with shady contractors and then. But once I found him, he got every house and more in backlogs for years and years. So empowering continuous improvement.

Speaker 3:

My reading at that time really helped and those were two books that made me really put the pedal down and that was Love Him or Hate Him Grant Cardone, 10x and Boba, and I think, anybody who needs more motivation to not stop. I mean, I'm sure there's other great books, but those two for me were the right books at the right time. Because, oh man right, we've got two kids now. We just bought another home for us to live in, we're moving again, I've got 12 engineers, I've got projects, I've got this, I've got an eviction, I've got an empty house, I have a turnover. I already bought a house closing on next week. This house, I'll put it off.

Speaker 3:

It was not stopping because in hindsight you know, if you stop in real estate, right, it's not a process where you can oh, I'm gonna buy another house and tomorrow we'll start the rehab on Friday. No, once you've stopped your funnel right, it can take you months, right, two months to get back started again. And okay, if I didn't have jobs for Larry for two months or my realtors saw, oh well, zach hasn't bought a house in a couple months, I'm going to take this next thing that I see to Jason, right, or to somebody else take you to feed your pipeline again, but how many of your providers and suppliers and contractors found somebody else, somebody else who's not stopping, somebody else who's feeding them more? So those two things the team and the drive really just let everything fall into place between contractors, agents, lenders, the drive, and it was just a house every month for three years. Basically, 36 house in 36 months, pretty much.

Speaker 2:

So it sounds like you put a lot of hustle into it. You were super motivated and you put a ton of effort and a ton of time into it and you were dedicated to feeding your funnel and so it was a lot of work that you put into this. So this wasn't something that you were laying back on and you were just taking it easy while you had the W-2. You actually was working your tail off at your W-2 and at the same time as you built your business up. So, yeah, that's great, and a lot of people they don't want to do that. They're looking for something that is going to be a really laid back process and they'll be able to operate their W-2 and be able to buy some things on the side in their leisure.

Speaker 2:

But a lot of times us W-2 guys like me I'm getting up at 2.30 in the morning In order to be able to generate the funnel and the deal flow and the opportunities. You have to go after it, because nothing's going to fall into your lap, especially while you hold W2. So, yeah, that's great information and I appreciate you sharing that with us and shining a light on how hard you had to work to pull this off, and congratulations. It's helped you to sustain the lifestyle that you're in right now and also help pull you out of a major loss there. So, hey, zach, we've got a portion of the show that we like to call our Moonlight Coaching Round, and typically around this point in time we ask our guests a few questions. If you could hold your response to between one or two minutes per coaching question, that'd be great. The first question I have for you is what do you think every new real estate investor should know before investing in real estate?

Speaker 3:

I think the time requirements depending upon what you're going to do, if you're going to hold properties, you need to understand that that is not a nine to five, it can be a seven in the morning, it can be a 10 o'clock at night, especially when you're growing. And even today I do rent with purchase option and I am the one directly connected with my tenant. I do not have property management, because there is very little management in a rent with purchase option and especially today, with all the rent collection software, everything's pretty easy. But still, if a tree falls on a house in a storm at 10 o'clock at night on a Saturday, I could be getting a call. Somebody could be blowing up my phone.

Speaker 3:

So I think, with anything, if you're going to create something abnormal, it can come with some abnormal requirements. It can come with some abnormal requirements, right, but you, there are still ways to make sure that you get more passive time than active time. And that's the thing. Like I live, right, I have my all my time all week long. But you know, I remember last weekend at a graduation party, um, I had to go take a call, I had to go have a call, right, I had to go have a call and people could be looking at us. There's Zach, oh yeah, he's on calls again. But it's like the 99% of the work week when you're working your job, I'm golfing at my pool, shooting guns, having fun. But yeah, there are times when it's an abnormal time and I need to go take a call.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, there are times when it's an abnormal time and I need to go take a call. Did I have to take take in some calls? But you also have an abnormal lifestyle. You're able to not have a W-2 job. You're not 60 or 65 years old and gray and retired and worked at a W-2 for 30 years, so you're living an abnormal life because you did some abnormal things. So, yeah, definitely good for you on that. The next question I have for you is, knowing what you know now, what kind of advice would you give a person attempting to get where you are within your real estate journey about balancing business and life?

Speaker 3:

So I mean, as you heard from my story, I didn't balance so well. I worked. I was all work and building my businesses from 32 to 39. So in my example, I just did it for a. You could say that's a short period of time to then have complete time, freedom and it's 100% family and friends.

Speaker 3:

Whatever I want to do now, because I spent 7 years, it's probably more like 6. I didn't really start till 2013 into 14. So more like 6 years of full bore. Let's have my job we live off of and let's build the snowball. And then the snowball got to the point where it can't be stopped.

Speaker 3:

So, yeah, I don't know, I guess it depends on your age, right? If you are 40 years old and you have adolescent kids that consume time with sports and just spending time with them, right? You can't. My advice to that person you can't do what I did if you're 40 with a 9 and a 12-year-old, because you're going to miss your last years with them. Right?

Speaker 3:

I did it while my kids it, while my kids through the hard time, while my kids were zero to eight, right? So, yes, they were. You know, the oldest was eight when I no seven. The oldest was seven when I stopped working. So that was just a different time. You know that's a time. Yes, there are some memories. Had I, you know, had I quit my job my job a year or two earlier, I could have quit my job years earlier, but then we wouldn't be set up today like we are, had I quit my job and been able to spend more time with a 5, 6, 5 and 6-year-old and a 3 and 4-year-old. They're a year apart. But to somebody like I said, to somebody who's in their 40s, you're going to have to figure out that balance because you don't want to miss those years.

Speaker 2:

Next question I have is if a person had minimal amounts of time, no money or no experience, but they wanted to start a business like yours, what steps would you recommend for them to take to start and scale a business like yours? What steps would you recommend for them to take to start and scale a business like yours?

Speaker 3:

So one of the things I came up with a couple of years ago when I was speaking to Malone University MBA students and I'm a right-brained analytic right, you can't tell from continuous improvement and data and business right, I have very little left brain creativity, but I did come up with an original thought that I was really excited about. It's one of the few original creative thoughts I've had, and I was speaking to this client and I said guys, today more than ever and today we can even say that more than 4 years ago, I think it was 3 or 4 years ago I spoke to him. Today more than ever, it is easy to become a one percenter because everything is online. You can read about ways to make money in 10,000 different ways, from YouTube to TikTok to Instagram. I mean, there's a lot of cheesy, fake stuff, but there's still a lot of good content. Like I mean, there is way more than a degree in an MBA worth of education that's out there for free. It's also easier than ever to lose your life to the garbage online. Right, you can use social media or social media can use you. And you know, up until this last year, right, social media was pretty much a user of me. I didn't do anything conducting for business or anything on there. I just, yeah, oh, look what my friends are doing. Let's comment, uh, here's what my family's doing. Oh, look at these reels. That they know what you want to see in reels. And it knows what I want to see and it keeps showing me these reels and so I was losing my time and now, with teaching and coaching and real estate and things I'm doing, did some different things on there, but you mean.

Speaker 3:

So my answer is really you got to consume content from the right sources and it's out there for free and you can learn from all these people who have already done it. And then the next thing if you need more, then get into coaching, and that's going to be. You know, that can be trickier because there are so many fake coaches. One of my lawsuits was against a guy who is now a coach, so he failed in doing, but now he's going to coach and this is his second round, after he screwed all his students through his first round of coaching. But so you know, you've got to be careful there in coaching and you know, especially if it's one of these with like big signups, so you're already out of pocket three, four, five, six, seven, grand, but find, you know, do your homework to find, hopefully, a local or just a real coach who has really achieved those things, and it's not someone whose tax return shows 90% of their income coming from coaching. It's all active income from coaching versus doing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you definitely want someone that's actually doing what they're teaching you to do, Because without that, they don't really have a finger on the pulse to be able to identify exactly what it is that you're trying to learn from them. So last question I have for you, Zach, is what is the greatest coaching advice you could give to a new person about knowing their numbers, whether that's KPIs, taxes, knowing your income, knowing your expenses? What kind of coaching advice would you give about knowing your numbers?

Speaker 3:

Well, yeah, this came from, yeah, from data world and W2, right, you can't manage what you don't measure, right? So you have to measure things, and I have a beautiful dashboard in Excel with pivot table charts and you know. So, I know my numbers intimately and it started from the first house of right, just, what are all my costs? What are my rents? What's my cap rate? What's my monthly cash flow? Okay, I've got debt service on it. Now, what's that principal pay down? You know, I do that all for every property. It rolls up into a dashboard and I'm in that dashboard every day, even though there's not much to do. It's just, I don't know. It's one of my main screens on my computer monitors here and I need to. You know I got to update things when rents go up.

Speaker 3:

But, yeah, if you're not measuring it, yeah, you have no idea what the standard is. And if you have no standard, then you're always in an abnormal condition and people don't really know what that means. But like right, when you don't really know what that means. But like right when, when you don't set a standard, how do you know when you need to improve something? Right? How do you know when something it needs addressed, and so that's where you all you gotta.

Speaker 3:

Just, you know, if you're a flipper, okay, what are my margin numbers? Right, what am I? You know, I'm looking at duration and this is what I'm gonna be sitting down with my one high volume flipper buddy, like he's, he's gonna flip 140 houses this year, but he has no life, he's on his phone all day, right, you can't get, I don't even ask, I don't even want to go golfing with him and he doesn't get the invite because he's just going to be on his phone all day and you know so. But, like, I want to sit down with them and say, okay, can we do like an 80-20 rule, the Pareto principle, right? Can we see if there's certain properties that, yeah, okay, yeah, you did make $15,000, but no, like, that wasn't worth it, right, you're flipping 140, the majority of yours are $30,000 profit rips.

Speaker 3:

We've got to look and see, ok, what are these ones that you should just be kicking up wholesaling and making five grand and saving yourself 150 text messages for that flip? Or, you know, I bet we could look and see what his average flip takes, how many text messages takes, how much mental thinking, right, because he's got to manage all these crews and deal with all these problems, and so you know you really got to look as granular as you can to understand where your time is being spent, where the margins are at, to know when you can pull different levers to get your time back.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're right on the money with that. Without being able to identify KPIs, you don't really even know where to put your focus or your time into, and you're not able to identify what's working and what's not working. And so it's all about being a professional, and you need to know exactly what's taking place within your business, within your business. So, hey, zach, great answers to each one of those questions. Before I let you go, could you share a great business book?

Speaker 3:

or either a personal development book with the Moonlight Audit, and so I mentioned a couple earlier. So for anybody who really needs to get a kick in the butt, it's Grant Cardone's 10X or Boba Be obsessed or be average. But if you're asking for my favorite book, that's going to relate to continuous improvement and that's going to be Slight Edge. Slight Edge by Jeff Olson and what he talks about. He has a great parable in there of a plane going from New York to LA. If it is 1% off track, right. 1%, it's going to land like 120 miles away from LA, right.

Speaker 3:

And so what the parable is there is think about your health, think about your faith, your fitness, your relationship with your wife, your relationship with your friends. If you are not pushing 1% into those a day, right. If you are neglecting those by 1% a day, where do they end up at the end of the year? Right, they're just horrible at the end of the year, right, they're just horrible, they just get crushed. Versus if you are focusing on your fitness, on your faith, on your marriage, on your friendships, by 1% a day, that's 365% at the end of the year. You're fostering, you're growing those things, and so that's where the slight edge with Jeff Olson. You know a great book about continuous improvement, daily focus really comes into play and I just love it.

Speaker 2:

Okay, that's a great suggestion there, zach. The Slight Edge I have heard of it, but I've never actually read it myself. I actually had a coach of mine that suggested the book, but I'll definitely have to look into that. Zach, thanks for coming on to the show. You've been a wealth of knowledge. You loaned us your time and a person of your caliber. I'm super excited to have learned from you myself and also to have our Moonlight audience be able to learn from you and hear your treasure chest of experience If someone wanted to reach out to you and connect. Do you have a preferred method?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so we've got a couple of things for you folks. So one is my website and that is realzachzimmercom R-E-A-L, realzachzimmercom, and that's Z-A-C-H-Z-I-M-M-E-R, and then we have a freebie. Right, I'm going to give out my top five strategies to seven-figure passive income and to get that, they can text TPL for the Passive Life, text TPL to 33777. 33777. And I'm on Facebook as well. But, yeah, you can find all my different links and my podcast, my interviews on realzachzimmercom.

Speaker 2:

Zach, well, we once again appreciate you coming on to the show. I could tell that you are a really giving person because you just gave tons and tons of information out. You got vulnerable with some personal issues within your investing career that a ton of guys just wouldn't have shared, but we definitely appreciate that. We'd love to have you back on the show anytime, Zach.

Speaker 3:

All right, thanks, it's been a great talk and yeah hope all your listeners got some benefit.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning in to the Moonlight Real Estate Syndication Show. Please make sure to give us a five-star review. Subscribe to this channel and please share this podcast with someone else. Until next time, let's keep pursuing financial security, not job security. We'll catch you in the next episode. You.