From the Air Force to $75M in Real Estate Masterminds with Tyrus Shivers - EP40

Are you an owner-operator or a true investor? 🏗️🛡️

In this episode of The Wealth Clock, host Steven Weinstock sits down with Tyrus Shivers, CEO of Legacy Wealth Capital Group and a U.S. Air Force Veteran. Tyrus shares his incredible journey from growing up on dirt roads in Alabama to building a property management empire that scaled to 200+ units and $1.2M in revenue in just 18 months.

Tyrus breaks down the "Capital Strategist" mindset, explaining how small real estate operators can stop spinning their wheels and start raising millions using the JOBS Act and Reg CF crowdfunding.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• The Identity Shift: Why you must move from "Hard Worker" to "Asset Owner."
• Scaling with VAs: How Tyrus used virtual assistants to buy back his time and manage hundreds of doors.
• Raising Capital: How the JOBS Act leveled the playing field for everyday real estate investors.
• The "Who Not How" Philosophy: Building a team so you can focus on the vision, not the toilets.

Whether you are an accidental landlord with two houses or a syndicator looking to hit a billion-dollar valuation, Tyrus’s systems-driven approach is the roadmap you’ve been looking for.

Connect with Tyrus Shivers:

• Website: LegacyWealthCapitalGroup.com
• Instagram: @LegacyWealthCapitalGroup
• Facebook: Legacy Wealth Capital Group
• LinkedIn: Tyrus Shivers

Sponsored by Cable NOI:

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🎙 About Steven Weinstock
Steven Weinstock is a real estate investor and founder of WeCapital and the Goethals Capital Fund. Since 2001, he has built a diverse portfolio of residential and multifamily assets while helping investors access passive income through strategic real estate opportunities. On this podcast, he shares real-world insights on investing, capital raising, and what it really takes to build and scale in today’s market.

📩 Want to invest or get in touch?
Visit: www.WeCapitalX.com

📱 Connect with Steven:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevenweinstock1

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wecapitalx/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWealthClockPodcast

Transcript

Steven Weinstock (00:00)
Welcome back to another episode of The Wealth Clock with Steven Weinstock, where top operators, founders, and closers share what really work. I am your host, Steven Weinstock. I've been investing in real estate for about 25 years. Like many people, I started with a single family property and over time moved into multifamily investments and larger real estate projects. Today I'm the founder of WeCapital.

and the WE Capital Mortgage Fund. Instead of only buying real estate ourselves, we also operate on the lending side of the business. Our fund provides mortgages to real estate investors, and our investors earn income from the interest that the borrowers pay. In simple terms, we finance experienced real estate operators who are buying or refinancing their property.

Our loans are secured by real estate itself. We hold the mortgage position, firstly. Investors in the funds participate in the interest income that these loans generate. I like this side of the business because it allows us to focus heavily on quality borrowers, quality investors with clear repayment plans. In other words, we like to protect the capital and being on both sides of the real estate business, both as owners.

and lenders, we are truly navigating in the right path. Before I introduce you, I do have a sponsor, Cable NOI. Cable NOI helps multifamily owners unlock hidden revenue from their cable and internet infrastructure. If you own a building that's 20 units plus, reach out to Cable NOI. They will tell you if they can get you income. Doesn't cost a penny.

They will tell you if they can get you income from one of the big cable providers. Strictly for handing out flyers in your leasing office, we're giving it to your tenant. The tenants don't need to call any special number. They call Spectrum, Charter, AT &T. They order cable directly. They pay it directly. There is no middleman. There's no billing. There's no technical expertise. There's no wiring. You simply get a check every quarter.

with some sort of revenue share from the tenants cable. And they'll also pay you a bonus sometimes up to $150 per door. When you start off with the company, the cable companies are the ones that make the payments directly. No mailman. You get, I get checks from charlie communications on a regular basis. It is free money, literally free money, cable and oi.com. Today's episode. Thank you.

We got Tyrus Shivers here. He is the CEO of Legacy Wealth Capital Group. Tyrus is a Capital Strategist who helps founders and operators build investor-ready businesses. Okay, this is going to be fun. He is also a U.S. Air Force veteran. Oh, wow. Okay, we're going to talk about that. And he is a seven-figure entrepreneur who rebuilt his business after experiencing a big loss during the pandemic.

This experience pushed you to develop systems, it helped you overcome, and I'm going to ask you lots of questions about this. Tyrus, welcome to the show.

Tyrus Shivers (03:13)
Thank you, Steven, I appreciate you for having me

Steven Weinstock (03:16)
No problem.

Okay, first, tell us where you're from, how you got into this aspect of the business.

Tyrus Shivers (03:23)
Yeah, I grew up in a small town called Uri in Alabama. It is about an hour north of Mobile, two hours south of Montgomery. It is not a place that you will pass by if you're visiting Alabama. We're off the map. We're talking dirt roads, one street light, no grocery stores. And through that journey of growing up, all of my family members worked extremely hard.

whether it was farm work, factory work. And when I say work hard, I'm talking 12, 15 hour days and still no real wealth being created. So at an early age, I knew that I didn't wanna follow that path of working hard and not having or not owning. And so I'll give you the Campbell suit version because this is a long story, but I'll get to where I am today from that point. From there, as I graduated, I went to college. did what everybody does in college.

I lost my scholarship for what I was pledging. so losing that scholarship, I went to work at UPS and part-time and full-time for my cousin who owned the HVAC company. Needless to say, I did the exact thing I said I wouldn't do, which is work hard because I worked 12 hour days every day of the week doing that work. And as I was trying to figure out life,

My uncle who came from Trinidad, my aunt's husband, dirt poor, tin roofs, no floors, went into the Air Force. And the Air Force was always good to him. That's what he told me. It's always been good to me. I got my degrees there. I worked there. He was probably in at that time about 15 years, and this was 2007. So I went into the Air Force and I said, you know what? I actually like this. This is easy. I do my job. I'm doing great work. I'm gonna do this forever.

20 plus years, become an officer, and then I was diagnosed with a medical condition in 2009. And that medical condition led me to be medically retired.

And so as a quick sidebar for all the listeners, sometimes your long term plans don't come to fruition and you have to be able to pivot, which will lead me further into our conversation. From the Air Force, I went into government contracting because I held a top secret clearance, which I still hold today. And I did clear work in the government and from a system administration and engineering side. And as I was working and making great money, I realized that I wouldn't be wealthy.

I would make great money, have a good living, but I still wouldn't be wealthy. And that's how I got into real estate. So from about 2009 to 2014, I worked and then I decided that I want to go into real estate and I want to take a easy path into real estate. at that time, wholesale was the big thing. Wholesale, other people's money. So what did I do? I started a property management company, managing other people's properties.

I grew that property management company from zero to 1.2 million in about 18 months. That came from just doing what I said I was going to do and taking the worst properties in Baltimore City.

As I moved through that, people wanted to know how I did it, how did you do it so fast, how did you build it, so I got into coaching and consulting, which leads me all the way till today of helping other businesses grow and teaching them operations, and then I met two guys who wanted me to help them grow a course.

And I say, you know, I've built courses. I've helped create masterminds. I've done over 50 million and masterminds for clients. I don't want to help you build a course. They're venture capitalists. I want to get into venture capital, get into real wealth building and have ownership. They took a company public 20 years ago. We're going to take our company public in about five to seven years. So I'll stop there because that story can go. And I left out a lot of parts, but that got me from where I grew up to where I am today.

Steven Weinstock (07:05)
Wow. Wow. Okay. Yes. Wholesaling is an entry point that a lot of people get into, especially if they don't have any money. That's for sure. You are based out of Baltimore. You mentioned?

Tyrus Shivers (07:15)
So I live about 20 minutes south of Baltimore. I'm in between Baltimore and DC and Hanover.

Steven Weinstock (07:21)
Got

it. it. Okay. Wow. Tell us about Legacy Wealth Capital Group. What is it that you're doing today that you want our audience to know about?

Tyrus Shivers (07:30)
Absolutely. So today we're strategic capital advisors so every business can raise capital. Most of the time we don't hear about raising capital from small businesses. We hear from the Elon Musk of the world, Amazons, the Googles. We see them and we hear about AI companies raising billions of dollars. But in 2012 the jobs act was passed and in 2016 it became fully realized which allowed crowdfunding and other

means of raising capital to be available to everyday businesses. So today Legacy Wealth Capital Groups helps businesses understand the process of raising capital, putting the right systems in place so they can actually raise capital and be a fundable, investable business. And then we consult on acquisitions, so acquiring other companies, or if they have a desire to go public, how to go through that pathway.

Steven Weinstock (08:24)
Wow, interesting. What kind of clients are you working with today? Just to give you a little background about me. I started buying single family homes back in 2001. And for the most part, for the first 15 years or so, I was really just an owner operator. I was buying one at a time. Yes, I moved on to two family, three family, and I sort of pivoted away from the single family, but I really stuck with the one to fours and the two to fours.

for a long time and I didn't really work with a lot of people. Yes, I had different mortgage brokers, different lenders over time, but I didn't have partners. I wasn't raising money. I spoke to tons of people, a lot of people, a lot of friends, a lot of referrals of people who were interested. I never needed to bring anybody on. You know, I got into creative financing, so I was able to, you know, a lot of seller financing back in pre-2008, there were second position loans going on all the time.

And I never needed anybody or anything until I moved into larger properties, namely a multifamily and multifamily. And, I learned this really just, you know, step by step, you know, in the thick of it. it's a whole different animal. You are raising capital. you are finding property. You're either managing property or managing the managers of the property. And there's so many different skill sets that are needed.

There's lots of paperwork that's needed as opposed to being on your own with the smaller properties. The lenders on the larger properties, they require lots more communication throughout. It doesn't matter that the loan is paid on time. They still want to be involved every step of the way. Sometimes it could be a nuisance. Sometimes it could be a little overkill. You have the insurance companies that are really on your case as opposed to a two-family house.

But then you also have that whole aspect of investors, investor communication. And it's a tough, it's very tough. mean, you have only so many hours in a day and you're dealing with so many different aspects and to do it by yourself is very tough. And until I brought on another partner to really help me with this aspect of the business, it was not something that I was able to do on my own. But I personally, I'm wearing many, many hats. Yes, I might not be involved in.

every toilet that needs to get replaced in an apartment complex. But I am either on some sort of email chain where it's happening here and there. If it's a larger expense, I have to approve it. But at the same time, I have to raise capital, deal with brokers, deal with insurance compliance. It is so much to go in that needs to be done. And having partners that you could delegate, you could have a capital specialist, you could have a paperwork expert, you could have

someone who's great with communication and to really task that either with good employees or partners is so important, especially in the larger aspect. I follow you on the various social medias. We spoke a little offline. I did some research. Tell me how your company could, and again, it's my podcast, so I'm talking about myself here. How could your company

help people in my situation. We're not an institution. We don't have institutional capital. We have a lot of family and friends, types of investors. Yes, those lead to others. And therefore we get the big checks here and there from investors. But how does a company like yours help somebody who maybe owns and manages 1,000 units through, I don't know,

Tyrus Shivers (11:32)
Mm-hmm.

Steven Weinstock (11:51)
four or five or seven or eight different real estate syndications. I know. I want to hear what you could do for a guy like me.

Tyrus Shivers (11:59)
Yeah, absolutely. I always start with and as I'm mentoring business owners in different cohorts, accelerators, different counties and states, I sit on a lot of panels as a mentor. The very first thing I always start with is the vision.

And that may sound very simple, but until I know where the business or where, for instance, where you want to go, I can't dissect the plan and create it. And so if you want to be a billion dollar company, I have a model for that.

If you wanted to be a hundred million dollar company, I have a model for that. Or if you just want to be 10 million and less, I have a model for that. Once we have the vision of where you want to go, then I will look at all the aspects of what we need in order to get there. Business is very simple, no matter what the industry is. That's why I always say we're industry agnostic because business is only sales and marketing, product, service and delivery and following up.

That's the same thing for investors. We're marketing for investors. We sell them on the calls. We then deliver the product that we say that we're gonna deliver, which is a return on their investment. And then we communicate with them, which is customer success. And so I would look at the functions that you have in the business today and see in these areas, what do we need to strengthen? Of course, my number one thing is to take some hats off your head. I want every one of my owners to think like an investor.

investor doesn't wear all the hats they wear one hat the investor hat they look at a business entirely different than a owner CEO and even a owner operator because everybody tells you don't be an operator in the business be the owner no be the investor because as an owner you still have a mindset of this is my business this is my baby I got to take care of it I got to do all the things and investors looking at the business as an asset one of many assets that

they And so they're going to look at what do I need to put in place to get a return on my investment. So my immediate look into that business once I understand the vision is where do you fall at all of those components in those areas and how can we take hats off of your head? Who do we need? Dan Sullivan, who not how? Who do we need to put in the place so you don't have to figure out how to do something better, more efficient? Because at the end of the day, when I hear owners tell me I'm the best sales person in

Nobody can understand my product. I doubt it. There's a couple billion people on the planet. You're not the best We just need to hire the best So that's the route I take owners through because if you want to sell an asset You can't be in the day-to-day That will get you a lower valuation in the business instead of being 4x 5x 6x now You're 2x because I got to replace you I got to replace and build systems because you never did it so I will take you through a system building process

process to get you set up and out of the day to day.

Steven Weinstock (14:55)
What kind of industries, what kind of founders are you working with? Name some, you know, some of the typical industries that you deal with.

Tyrus Shivers (15:04)
Yeah, we have a lot of real estate and small syndications. They're looking to buy or buy small plots of land and build homes on it. So that's one. We have transportation, couple of trucking trucking company owners, also non-emergency medical transportation. We have behavioral health facilities and other facilities. We have psychologists and teams that we've worked with. We've worked with coaches. We work with consultants. We've worked with grocery. My partners

have worked with telecommunications, they actually, their company was a telecom company and they were the only, or one of the only minority publicly traded utility companies in the country when they went public. So we've ran the gamut on types of business, language, software, SaaS. I own six other companies myself. So we kind of stay in that ecosystem of our bread and butter.

Steven Weinstock (15:57)
Most of our audience is real estate focused. That's personally what interests me. So I'm going to gear this towards real estate and other operators. I guess walk me through, I'm going to give you a potential client that comes to the door. You have somebody who owns two rental properties, maybe a two family and a three family.

They love the business. They use their own money to do a down payment. For whatever reason, their capital is still locked in, but their cash flowing. They want to buy another property or they want to try to buy a larger property and they need some capital. They come across this podcast. They're wearing all the hats in their small little rental portfolio business. They want to expand. Tell me if they were to call you.

Tell me how that phone call would go. What would you be able to offer them? Specifically this avatar, this character that I'm building over here, how would you be able to help them? A lot of our audience are these types of investors.

Tyrus Shivers (16:54)
Yeah.

Absolutely, so if you own one or two single families you're probably either an accidental landlord or you're working full-time and you're trying to get into business and So as you begin to scale that business, I would say until you're roughly at 10 units You can wear all the hats. You don't have to worry about getting out of wearing all the hats You're not making enough money to bring in someone who can operate at a high level

But if you wanted to buy your next one, two, three properties, I would look at a regulation CF crowd fundraise. You can launch a rec CF raise up to $5 million in a year from both accredited and non-credit investors, especially if you're doing community impact. So you're going into an area and you want to revive it and you're adding back and bringing something back to your local community. You can bring in people from your own community, your own network to invest in your

crowd

fundraise and you can use that capital to purchase one, two, three, four properties because at the end of the day you're going to use another debt carrier for the majority of the loan and you'll just be bringing anywhere from 10 to 20 percent, 25 percent depending on the avenue and the loan product that you use. So raising that up to five million, it could be a million, it could be two, you can get into some decent sized products.

Steven Weinstock (18:12)
and your company would assist him, obviously give him the advice to do something like that. Now, obviously this is a smaller company, so I guess there's only so much that you could help him or that you could spend time with him if he's on a smaller level. All right, let me change it up a little. You have somebody who's in it full-time, who's instead of two of these properties, he has 14 of these properties.

And he feels like he's spinning his wheels. He hasn't had like this big cash out yet where really changed, you know, he has some decent equity in all the properties. They're all cash flowing, but he's busy because he's got, you know, 14 different three family houses throughout town and, know, keeping them full are, you know, maybe it's, it's, easy, but there's always a move out and there's always an issue, you know, even with the best landlords and he wants to scale up. Maybe he doesn't know how.

I'm just thinking of myself really like, you know, I wanted to get, I personally, wanted to get into multi-family and larger in like 2012. And I really didn't make the move till about 2017. I wanted to, yes, yes, there was less education online to really help me through it, less research available, but it took me five years of...

Again, I was in the game, I'm doing what I'm doing with the smaller properties, but it took me five years. If I came to you and it's like 2012, what would you have told me then?

Tyrus Shivers (19:44)
Yeah, I'll tell you exactly what my mentor told me in 2014. You don't want to be the operator in this business. Let's structure it from day one where you have a team. And I said, well, I don't have the money for the team. Let's start with virtual assistants.

So I started that property management company with one virtual assistant and then we built the team from there. That virtual assistant team, which was inexpensive at the time, helped me go to that 1.2 million. I was able to train them by recording videos. ⁓

writing SOPs of how I do something day to day. We used software at Folio back then. We started with Bildium and then we moved to Atfolio. More bells and whistles. And so as we went from zero units to ten units to 100 units managed to 200 plus units managed.

the team did that work. I was there only to talk to high level owners and make sure things were smoothed over. But every phone call went through the team. Every work order went through the team. Every communication with contractors. used portals. So I set up a system and my mentor, that's what he taught me. So anybody that came to me today, I'm setting up a system. Now, do you have capital to invest in a system in the beginning? Do you have some money to put in? Because I

Believe in let's try to use as many free tools as we can and get by I believe in okay What do I need to invest in to buy back my time? And so I would educate based on maybe we need some virtual assistance at about 10 to 14 units cash flowing You should be able to bring in one to two high-end High operating virtual assistance to help take all of the day-to-day hats off while you focus on building more and moving to bigger deals

Steven Weinstock (21:30)
And just to tell my audience, because it took me a while to really know what that means, virtual assistant, it doesn't mean a bot. It doesn't necessarily mean some sort of software. A lot of times it is, I mean, it's a person. Typically they are offshore. So, you know, the rate, the paycheck that they need to survive and, you know, give you good hours is a lot less than...

Tyrus Shivers (21:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Steven Weinstock (21:57)
where you get stateside, depending on where you are. But a lot of these virtual assistants, come trained, and some of them you could train. I know there's a lot of these companies that specialize in virtual assistants for the nursing home business, or the real estate business, or e-commerce, or Amazon, or all that type of stuff. So you might pay a little more.

Tyrus Shivers (22:12)
Right.

Steven Weinstock (22:19)
per another dollar or $2 an hour, they'll get somebody who already knows your industry. They may already know your software that you're using. So yes, virtual assistants are a phenomenal tool. And like you said, you can get one great virtual assistant who now could train two other virtual assistants and really work it that way. It's just another way to scale.

It's another way to buy back your time. It's something that you said. I recently started using some sort of Google scripts, automations on some of my emails that come in. And at first it was, hey, I'm saving what, 12 minutes a day? big deal. And then I started thinking, and I spoke to somebody about this. And he says, yeah, but 12 minutes a day, you miss one day, it screws you up somehow or another.

12 minutes a day is an hour a week or whatever it is, and it's tedious, you hate it, you push it off, but you could learn between AI and some sort of script. It could automate it and it might take you a half hour to learn it, maybe 15 minutes to set it up, depending on where you are in the tech spectrum, but you'll buy back that full hour and you could spend your time on higher ROI activities.

Tyrus Shivers (23:37)
Absolutely and to your point going back to the VA for a moment the team that I started with my mentor trained them in real estate wholesaling so they have familiarity with the industry and then from there I took over when he did pass away my mentor I took over that team brought them to property management I've brought them into other businesses and industries and so they had a great foundation and I didn't I did a whole training virtual training on finding hiring

managing training VAs. One of the things that makes all the difference is how you treat them.

they're just like you normal people most people want to treat VA's as just offshore to cheaper I can treat them and do any kind of thing you're not you're building a real team and when you build that team they will support you and help you grow and scale and so it should not look at as this is an outsourced task this is a team member that I'm pouring into that I'm adding value to that I'm treating and I want them to take an ownership mindset there's a great book called

Ownership thinking I use it to train all my clients employees Everybody needs to come in the business thinking like an owner not just a task to do it And if they think like an owner they act like an owner You don't have to do as much Decide clockwork talks about the four D's doing deciding delegating and designing Most small business owners spend their time doing and deciding they were doing the work or they're telling somebody else how to do the work when they should be delegating and

and meaning delegating the full outcome. I tell you to do something, you do it and designing is strategic planning.

Steven Weinstock (25:18)
Wow, okay, words of wisdom over there. I appreciate it, Tyrus. ⁓ Tell our audience how they could reach out to you. Give us all your socials, any phone numbers, websites, emails you want to put out there. It's also going to be in the show notes, so just tell us how everyone could reach you.

Tyrus Shivers (25:33)
Yep on social media just search Legacy Wealth Capital Group. You'll find us all social media and our website is LegacyWealthCapitalGroup.com. That is the best place to go and find everything out about us.

Steven Weinstock (25:47)
appreciate that, Tyrus. Before I let you go, tell me, what do do for fun? You know, you're working a hard day, you're helping ⁓ other businesses get better. When you're unwinding, what are you doing? Are you watching Netflix? Are you camping? Are you scaling mountains? Are you acting, doing stunt work for Tom Cruise and Top Gun? What do you do for fun?

Tyrus Shivers (26:09)
I like to play card games, board games, dominoes. So me and my family, we love to play games. We love to just drive and look. We don't have to do elaborate things, just drive around and look. So I take that time to unwind.

And I do Netflix, but I do Netflix after everything else is done. Most everybody in the house is asleep. I'm watching Netflix at like 11 o'clock at night. So I do have my downtime, my down period, but our life is real simple. We do really simple things and get great enjoyment from it.

Steven Weinstock (26:42)
Tyrus, when you were in the Air Force, did you have to travel at all outside of your DC area?

Tyrus Shivers (26:47)
Yeah, I've been across different states in the US. I was at Fort Wachuga, a wild course station in Florida. I spent almost two years in Korea. So I was just south of Seoul, got to learn a lot there, see how different people in different cultures move and thrive. And so I spent significant time in Korea.

Steven Weinstock (27:08)
Wow, Tyrus, thank you for your service. Thank you for joining the military. It's an all volunteer military that we have here. So everybody is a hero, whether you are, you know, killing, you know, killing bad guys in Venezuela or kidnapping bad guys in Venezuela or bombing nuclear reactors halfway across the world, or whether you're you know, pushing paper, you know,

and some base 20 minutes from your house. It's all volunteer. We appreciate it. I definitely appreciate it. I'm hoping my audience appreciates it. Tyrus, it was great to have you. Thank you very much for coming out.

Tyrus Shivers (27:45)
Thank you, Stephen.

I appreciate it.