Tarl Yarber – Why This Investor Who Hates Real Estate Built a $2M Empire

YouTube

Tarl Yarber is a real estate investor, private lender, and co-creator of the Limitless Expo. Despite completing nearly 700 value-add properties, he openly admits he has never liked the work of real estate—he simply built systems, processes, and teams so he doesn’t have to do it himself. A straight-talking operator focused on financial freedom and education, Tarl also helps raise millions for veteran charities through his events.

Spotify

Get my new book: https://bronsonequity.com/fireyourself

Full Transcript:

Bronson Hill: Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Mailbox Money Show.

I’m super pumped. I am your host, Bronson Hill. I’m excited to be here today.

We’ve got an amazing guest today. We’ve got Tara Yarber, who co-hosts the Limitless Expo, which is happening very soon. And we’re excited to be able to share about the Limitless Expo.

If you haven’t signed up yet, you can sign up using my code Bronson15 and save 15% and get the lowest price. And we’d love to see you at the event. It’s going to be phenomenal.

Also, my amazing co-host today, we’ve got Nate Hambrick, the author of the 18 Laws of Leverage. Nate, talk to me about events. I was just thinking about events and we’re going to talk about events today.

Talk to me about how your life has been transformed by going to amazing events.

Nate Hambrick: I’d say events is probably the… I mean, one of the biggest leverage points in my life. I’ve done over 95 conferences, over 200 paid events.

And my income probably tripled when I first started speaking. Not just because of speaker fees, but because you meet the best people. And one or two connections.

I mean, Bronson, that’s how I met you in California at an event. I forget what the name of it was. But just the connections and the people you meet and the ideas you encounter.

I mean, it’s radically speaking at events has been a game changer for me.

Bronson Hill: Yeah, it’s funny. There’s kind of a trend to how… It’s harder to get people to events, I think.

We run live events. We do our wealth form event every few months with a small handful of people. And it’s hard to get people in the room. Because now you can do things virtually, especially since COVID, it’s become much easier just to kind of stay at home and not go.

But you don’t get those connections. A lot of times the people that do go to events are people that are very serious. Typically, they have means to be able to go and they’re also serious to go.

They take time away to do the investment to be able to go. So on that note, we have our amazing guest today. We’ve got Tarl Yarber.

Great to have you on the show. Tarl, I think it’s your first time on the show. So excited to have you here.

And I know you’re just days away from the time this release of doing the Limitless Expo. And this will be number five. Is that right? The fifth one?

Tarl Yarber: Fifth year. Fifth year and counting. Yep, every single year.

Ken and I created it back at a bar in Laguna, California. I was going to say Laguna, Washington. Laguna, California.

And we just wanted to get a conference together. Him and I are both investors. Some of you guys probably know Ken McElroy.

And we wanted to figure out an event where we can get a bunch of operators together that are actually in the trenches doing things and not just selling things about it. So we can learn what to do with our own money, our own investments, our own time. What to focus on, what to pull back from, and so forth. And five years later, we had no idea that one conversation would lead to now. So here we are.

Bronson Hill: Yeah, it’s amazing. I want to talk for a minute. We’ll get into your bio here in a minute.

But just putting on events, it’s a ton of work. It’s like, you have multiple full-time people doing this. You said the budget was close to $2 million for this year.

It’s a big financial risk to do events like this. And I mean, a lot of people just say, man, I just love going to events because I don’t have to do all the work. But why go through the brain damage of putting on events?

I’m sure you probably get to some point in the year about this time. Maybe it’s like during the event. I don’t know when it is, but like, do you ever get to a point where it’s like, why did I do this?

Or what was like, what do you come back to of like, this is a ton of work. But it helps grow my business? Or what are the things that come out of it for you?

Tarl Yarber: That’s a great question. Like the events company, like it is a company now. It was never supposed to be.

It was just a meetup. Like I had a meetup back in 2017 in Seattle for real estate investors because I used events to find deals. And find partners and find people in Seattle, Washington for our real estate business because we invested in single-family homes in that area. And it just like led over the years to conferences and building bigger events.

But ultimately, every single time, about two weeks before the event, which is right now, I wonder why the heck I’m even doing it to begin with. Because it’s such a pain in the butt. And events are not easy. They aren’t.

And they’re very financially costly, and there’s a lot of risk. It’s actually less risky in my head to invest in single-family real estate or fix-and-flips or even multifamily or anything like that than it is to host a 2,000-person conference that costs nearly $2 million, that you’re not guaranteed that people are going to show up, that vendors are going to show up, or anything like that that costs for marketing. So, yeah, Bronson, why do I do this?

Why don’t you help me figure that out?

Bronson Hill: Let me ask you a little bit more because like there’s obviously a reason you do it. Obviously you can partner with Ken who’s amazing. Ken’s a good friend of mine as well.

He did the forward of my book. We’ve been friends for years. And that’s awesome.

And then of course you get interact with these amazing people. You guys had RFK there last year. I can’t even know who your guest is this year.

You’ve got some amazing. You always have amazing speakers at Chris Voss. You’ve had other people there.

So you get to meet some amazing folks as your business grows from this. Do you get more speaking opportunities? Are you invited into rooms that you would not have been invited into otherwise?

Tarl Yarber: Yes, if you take advantage of them. So for me honestly, like I literally wanted to go to this event. That was the biggest thing.

So like I don’t know if that makes sense or not, but like for whatever reason, for whatever reason, I got good at creating events. But the only events I ever go to are the events that I want to go to, right? So this event or the only event that I create is an event that I want to go to.

And I really wanted to go to this event because we don’t sell from the stage. There’s no sell-ton here. Like there’s a lot of events out there that the only way they make money is to sell from the stage.

We don’t allow that. This is just real operators out there doing it. And I wanted to find out what people in oil and gas and gold and macroeconomic stuff and equities and multifamily commercial, whatever.

I wanted to find out what everybody was doing so I could make better decisions for myself. So honestly, the biggest thing I get out of doing the event is to go to the event. Like so I can, and nobody else was going to create it, but Ken and I, so that’s what we did.

And I think that’s, I do have other businesses that take advantage of it, but trust me, it’s a lot, I have a lending company, for instance. It is a lot easier for me to just do webinars and pay promotion to sell my lending company to is than to run a $2 million event and hope I get a few extra borrowers. That’s absolutely asinine.

Like at that concept, it doesn’t make sense, right? So it’s because I wanted to get through it.

Bronson Hill: Yeah, no, that’s true. And I think that’s great when you create an event that you would go to and a lot of people that create anything, you business things along with this because they create it for themselves because it doesn’t exist. And I agree.

I think the Limitless event and Limitless Expo is the best event. I just keep getting more and more tied in. I’m doing dinner.

I’m in an exhibitor this year. I got all these things that we’re doing is I keep getting more and more tied in. I’m hoping you guys will put me back on stage at some point and once I bring 100 people or whatever. But maybe…

Tarl Yarber: Bring 100 people, we’ll put you on stage.

Bronson Hill: Okay, okay. I think I’m at 25 or something. There you go, nailed it.

You know, who knows? We’ll get up there. Nate, I want to ask you since you’re the king of leverage, what’s the best way to leverage an event like a Limitless Event when you go?

Like why do people go and then what would you do if I’m going to go? I’m going to pay the money because it’s the time away from family. It’s the money to go, the cost of the ticket, the work, whatever, the hotel, all this stuff.

So it’s thousands of dollars and time away. So how do people make the most of events like these?

Nate Hambrick: Go find the biggest badass you can at the event and go solve their challenge at the deepest level for free. That’s the best piece of advice I can give because if I can go to an event and I just listen to people, that is helpful. There’s really helpful content, but also you can watch a webinar or go to TikTok or read a book.

What you can’t do is meet these people. A lot of these people are unreachable, right? Two years ago I met AJ Osborne, the self-storage guy.

I now have AJ Osborne’s phone number, right? I met Brandon Turner, right? You can’t just like go to Google and say, what’s Brandon Turner’s phone number? Like, you can’t do that.

And so, going there for the people, but the reason I phrased it the way I did, Bronson, is a lot of people are just trying to meet people. And then they go ask the most famous person for help, and that’s not the way to do it. You go meet the famous person or the person that you want to be friends with, and then you go figure out what their challenges are, and you go solve them, because when you do that, you become an asset. To the people you want to be in relationship with.

Bronson Hill: I’ll say real quick that’s exactly what I did with a guy in the multifamily space on this investor cruise years ago. I basically went up to him and I said, how can I help you solve in this area? And it led to this partnership. I probably made a million dollars of that conversation and got launched into the sphere.

I know you probably have a question, for I have a question related to this. If somebody comes and approaches you, since you’re leading this thing and you’re a high-value person and you’ve got a business. What’s the best way someone can approach you or a high-value person in a way that doesn’t sound like, “Hey, I want you to mentor me,” or, “Hey, how can I help you?” which is really general?

Tarl Yarber: I can give you all the ways of what not to do.

Bronson Hill: Yes, yes.

Nate Hambrick: Tell us what not to do that would be so entertaining. 

Tarl Yarber: Yeah, I got all sorts of stories. So I would honestly I’ll use Robert Kiyasaki as a speaking point for this, right?

So like we’ve had Robert out every single year all five years to limit list, right? And it’s and I’ll be happy to say that it is his favorite event. He said that publicly multiple times.

You know, big pat on my back. But the reason why I brought him up, though, is that I get a front-row seat to all of the most amazing people that get to come up to Robert. He enjoys talking to them.

And I get a front-row seat to some of the most horrible people I’ve ever met in my entire life trying to talk to this guy. They have no concept whatsoever of personal space, what etiquette is, and what isn’t.

And he’s been known to blow up on people. But after watching him for five years, I’m like, I don’t blame him at times. I’ll give you a quick story.

Two years ago, he’s at Limitless, and he’s in. He finally takes a break. We actually give him a bodyguard. Like, I have all these military buddies of mine, so they come out and they hang out, and they think it’s great. He’s prior military, so he loves it, right? It’s kind of like his favorite thing.

And he gets a break, goes to the bathroom, and you know there’s no private bathroom at these events, right? So he goes to the bathroom, and he’s just at the urinal. And there’s somebody who just B-lines right to him, stands right next to him, and while he’s taking a leak, he’s just like, “Hey, Robert, can I ask you a question?”

And Robert’s like what the heck? Like just like straight up in his face in his space because he finally like trapped him in a urinal, right? So that kind of stuff is, you know, key not to do, right?

For sure. And then also, what I’ve noticed over time is, like, people come up and say, “Hey, I have a question.” Then they’ll go on and spend five, six minutes telling a story. They’re never asking a question at all.

And I’ve seen Ken—Ken’s my favorite guy to watch him do this. He’d be like, “So, what’s your question?” He’ll just, like, interrupt you, right?

There’s certain key things. And one of them is just, like, understand that if it’s, I like what you said, Nate, about solving their problem but also, you don’t know what our problems are, right?

And it is kind of obnoxious to just get berated with questions to try to find our problem. I think the biggest thing is just be you, right? Just be a normal human, right?

And so, you can be grateful. You can ask questions and stuff like that. I would say people that are at an upper level of the game, they actually enjoy answering questions. A lot of them do, right?

And they actually want to hear. And the right ones, if they give you advice and you have a way to follow back up with them, maybe with their assistant or something like that, and say, “Hey, I took your advice and I did X,” that’s actually the ego loves that for a lot of these guys as well, right?

It’s when they meet you again and you said, “Oh, I haven’t done that yet,” then they’re like, “Okay,” and they move on with their lives.

Bronson Hill: It’s a good point because they’re out there to help. And it really is actually in your business when you help someone or somebody gives you advice, whatever. The fact that’s a testimonial. If they write to an email that says, “Hey, Tarl, was the best thing since Swiss cheese,” whatever that, you know, like, “Here’s all the things he’s done in my life,” or “Here’s the thing his business or his things he did for me.” And as long as it’s genuine, right?

Tarl Yarber: Oh, yeah. And also, I’ll give you some more fun faux pas or whatever. Don’t just come up with your camera guy and immediately start interviewing people without their permission, too. So that’s kind of awkward as well. I’ve seen that happen tons of times, trying to get sound bites and clips.

You can just ask. Most of us will say yes and have no problem. Nowadays, people are wearing their AI tags as well, so that’s another thing that a lot of us are aware of, and so we’re watching that, too.

I’m not trying to be a jerk about it, but, like, just be a human. Come say hi. Come, you know, come introduce yourself to Robert and Ken and other people, and ask a great question. And they’ll love it, and everybody likes it.

And then, if you have a way to solve one of their challenges because maybe you know what their challenge is, absolutely, that’s a great way to follow up. But all these, like, “Bronson, I met you at an event,” right? And so I met you at a completely separate event. 

We had mutual acquaintances and stuff like that, and we got to talking. And then we became buddies, right? Like, I have all my friends, like you mentioned, Nate, AJ Osborne, Brandon Turner, the two of my closest friends, right? Met them at events, right?

So, as an example, you can make friends with all these people, right? As long as you’re a cool person to hang out with, right? That’s really what it boils down to. So, anyways.

Nate Hambrick: Step one: be cool. Step two: it’ll be weird. It’s kind of like, it’ll be weird.

Tarl Yarber: And if you are going to be weird, it’ll be weird, right? I mean, you can be weird, but, like, in a cool way.

Nate Hambrick: I was going to ask you, Tarl, because you mentioned it’s a lot more work than just doing a webinar to raise capital and build, get clients for the lending business. If you don’t mind my asking, do you see yourself doing this event for a long time? And if so, what do you see on the horizon as far as how you’re going to add value to others and also how you’re going to scale your own companies?

Tarl Yarber: Yeah, I think that something to consider. Ken and I didn’t create Limitless because we wanted to scale our companies. Like, I just wanted to throw that out there. We created it because we wanted to know what was going on, and we did want to get a room full of people, and we did want to ask these questions ourselves, and nobody else was doing it, right? And so we decided to do it.

That is actually the number one reason why we do it. So now, the ancillary benefits is that we have—sure, Ken has LPs, right? Limited partners. Well, he’s selling them tickets, but he’s really just selling them tickets so that he can talk to them and meet them and engage with them and all that great stuff, too. But he can do that on his own without running a big, huge conference that costs a lot of money and liability.

So, it goes hand in hand as well as his content. Whatever he produces, like, he can get LPs, all that stuff, all day. And on my side, I can get borrowers. I can get people to raise capital from, all in an online fashion, not just hand face-to-face, right?

So, Limitless to us is about financial freedom and education and having a platform for people, like all of us, the three of us, to go to, to where we don’t have to hear BS information, basically, right?

We’re not worried about somebody going on stage to try to convince us one way or another or sell us on one thing or another. We don’t pay a single speaker. There’s not a single speaker at Limitless that we pay. None of them, ever.

And so, they’re just there because they want to be there, too. So, they walk around the crowd. They’re friends. There are people that we become friends with because of that, and they just, they want to also go to the sessions. They want to also— that’s why we created this, so that we can figure that out.

So, long term, yes, we plan on doing this every single year. And do we get some benefits from it as we go?

Yes, but those are ancillary. They’re secondary. They’re tertiary, whatever. And I know it’s easy for me to say that, but you can look at the financials. We’re not doing it for the money, that’s for sure.

Bronson Hill: Yeah, it’s a layer of love. I mean, we’ve done a lot of events. Our Wealth Forum event, we have high-net-worth investors. We’ll typically have between 20 and 35 people come. And I had a story of a lady who said after this event, was like, “I just feel like I trust you.” And then, within a couple months, she invested $800,000 in different deals that we’ve done.

So, it’s amazing how that trust can be built, and sometimes you can’t really get around. So, we invite a lot of our investors to our events, and it is a lot to do. But let’s talk a little bit.

Tarl Yarber: Sorry, Nate and Bronson. Probably the biggest—our other probably our second reason why we do it is we also raise a lot of money for charity at the event.

So, like, the only thing we pitch at the event is charity fundraising. So, there’s two organizations for the last couple years, we’ve been actually three: Travis Mills Foundation, we did for a number of years; America’s Mighty Warriors, we do every year; and then Beyond the Brotherhood is a new one we adopted last year.

Last year, we were able to help Beyond the Brotherhood raise $350,000 for their organization. America’s Mighty Warriors is approaching $1.2 million in raises just from Limitless Expo.

So, we do a lot of that through this event and organization, and we’ll continue to do that. I think we’ve done almost $2.2 million total since the creation of Limitless. So, it’s amazing, and it’s all for the funds, the organizations that Ken and I support.

Bronson Hill: And Tarl, are you a veteran as well?

Tarl Yarber: No but I have a lot of friends that are and so, I’m not

Bronson Hill: Okay, I’m sorry. We support veterans. That’s wonderful. I wanted to shift gears a little bit. This is something I’ve always found fascinating about you.

When we first met, you shared something, and you said something to the effect of, like, “I hate real estate.” And you’re like, “I do.” I feel like it almost sounded to me like when Andre Agassi if you know his story, he has his biography called Open—he’s just saying, like, “I hate tennis.” But he’s, like, one of the best in the world, one of the best in the world at tennis, and he just kind of was forced to do it.

So, tell us a little bit more. Is that true? You hate real estate? And why? And give us more context.

Tarl Yarber: Yeah, no. I’ve been on stage many times saying that I hate real estate. So, I can honestly say I’ve never done real estate because I like it. I’ve done real estate for the money, purely. That’s it.

So, like, I’ve done well over 700 properties, approaching 700 properties, actually. And almost every single one of them, minus some 1031 exchanges, have all been construction or rehab projects of some sort. What we’re doing is some sort of value-add. That sucks, just to say, like, buying messed-up properties and fixing them up, fixing them up, and hoping they’re worth more all the time, and dealing with contractors and operations for it. People that love that have got some screw loose in their head. I’ve done a lot, definitely.

I can relate; I know exactly, whatever. And I joke, and I don’t joke that I’m a martyr for house flippers. Like, I have made every mistake you can imagine. But I think why one of the reasons why I say I hate real estate is that I was interviewed by one of my business coaches a while back, and I told him how much I did not like doing real estate.

And then he said that’s why I was successful at it. It was because I do everything I can to get other people to do it for me. And I built a lot of systems and processes around making it so I don’t have to do it more than once.

Like, if I have to make a scope of work, great. How do I only do it one time, right? If I have to go to the property, great. How can I do that one time, right? And then, if I have to go again, let’s send somebody else. And how do I get them to get the information for me so I can make the decisions without me physically having to be there?

So, all of that was because I didn’t like doing any of it. I only like the money from it. And that’s why. That’s actually probably why the events company started was because I was like, “I need to do something I like.” That’s why the lending company started. I like lending, but the actual day-to-day operations, like, I just worked really hard to get out of them so I didn’t have to do it.

Versus, there’s many people I know that love picking out finishes, love walking properties, love making the deal happen. And that might be one of the reasons why they’re successful, and also might be one of the reasons why they’re held back on scaling.

Bronson Hill: Yeah, I just want to touch base on that, too. Because this is the Mailbox Money Show, where it is more about passive investing, right? A lot of us are business owners. We operate different types of things or businesses, but the idea of systems and scale and who, not how, it sounds like you basically wanted to become more passive than to be the guy who’s out there doing the work.

And that’s what, the challenge with flipping is. It is really very—so the fact of, like, if you can have teams of people that do this and you manage the teams, do you like managing the teams? Or you’d prefer just to be like, “Hey, it just runs, and I don’t even have to hear about it”? Like, you want to be as passive as you can.

Tarl Yarber: There are elements of people I really like on my teams and people that I’ve worked with over the years. But if I can choose making all the money without having to work for it, heck, yeah. Who wouldn’t, right?

But it’s an element of, how do I say it? I tried to build a passive business in a very active field. And I got pretty good at it, but never true. There’s no true passiveness at all on it because you still got to manage the people, right?

So, when the fire happens, because we literally had houses burnt down, like, you’re getting the phone call. That’s just what’s going to happen. So, you’re going to get involved.

And also, at the end of the day, it’s still your money, your risk. You’re signing the guarantees. You’re doing all that kind of stuff.

So, to be truly passive in a value-add-based business, you either have to just be an investor in it, like an LP or something like that, or that’s it.

Nate Hambrick: That was going to be my question. Because obviously, you’ve been very financially successful. Is there a world in which you’re like, “To heck with it. You sell all the properties you have slowly, and then you just become an LP”? Or what does success look like?

Tarl Yarber: Unfortunately, I have quite a few friends that did that in 2020 and 2021 and put them all with syndicators, and then lost most of their money. So, I’ve seen that happen, too.

Because it sounded great when you said, like, “Oh, my properties are worth so much, and then I’m not going to…” For privacy’s sake, but, like, people sold a lot of their assets that they’re making $2, $300, $400 a month on, or whatever, but lots of them. And they take all the equity, and they put it in a syndication that pays an 8% pref, and they’re like, “That 8% pref is better than what I’m getting, so this is fantastic.”

Well, not saying that that’s the future of people investing, but I’m saying that’s what happened, and a lot of them lost their money. I know friends that lost millions over the last couple of years because they took that option.

And I’m not saying not to do that. I think it’s great when people do that. I invest in people’s businesses. I’ve done quite a few of that. I don’t have any syndications that I’m invested in personally, but I am invested in different companies on the operation side as well.

So, I do invest in those because I believe that makes it more of a bet for me on somebody’s ability to operate as a human versus just what they’re investing in. I want to invest in the company more so than just the asset.

So, I do that, and then I have my own passive stuff that I do. I lend my money. Do all that kind of stuff. I do more private lending on that capacity. I’m a huge fan of joint ventures, things like that.

Bronson Hill: So, it seems like a lot of real estate—it’s a cyclical business. If you’re a flipper, you gotta watch out. In 2008, a lot of people got destroyed because they owned all the stuff, and all of a sudden, the market turned. They couldn’t sell it, and they took a bath, or they lost everything. Or there’s all kinds of stories.

A lot of people that are big influencers now, that’s their origin story. They said, “I don’t want that to happen again.” So, for the person that has a lot of things, if somebody is maybe worth $3 million or $5 million or more, and they’ve got a bunch of single-families, or they’ve got something they run themselves, they’re like, “Hey, I want to become more passive,” and maybe they’re in their 50s, maybe they’re in their 60s. They’re like, “Hey, I’m ready to kind of dial it back.”

What do you think? Is it become a private lender, or is it diversify outside of real estate where non-correlated type of things? Do you think there is an answer to that? Do you put it in index funds? Like, what do you do?

Tarl Yarber: Well, as a non-financial planner or licensed person, I would say that a lot of it. If I were in that position, I’d be looking at, what’s my tax obligations as well?

So, like, there’s a lot of factors here. Like, if you’re—I like private lending a lot, but I’m not getting depreciation. I’m not getting any kind of real tax benefits. It’s active income, technically, at the end of the day. It just might be categorized slightly different. And so, I’m going to have to focus on that.

If I wanted to get a 10% ROI on that money, I have to factor tax on that as well. And maybe I need to be charging points or whatever.

Joint ventures is another way to do that if you want to be more passive, where you’re taking equity, not just a—and this is on single-family and maybe smaller multifamily.

But if you really want depreciation, if I was looking for depreciation tax benefits, maybe I’d invest in oil. So, there’s massive benefits there, but there’s also more risk.

But to that 1031, my entire play is buy as many properties as possible, fix them up, and keep them. I don’t flip anymore, so that I can 1031 into more passive assets over time that are stabilized and growing.

Bronson Hill: Would you 1031 multiple properties at a time? Would you sell a portfolio in a city? Would you sell 10 or 20 of these, or would you sell them individually and put them into other things? Or how would you actually go about doing that?

Tarl Yarber: That all depends, man. I’ll tell you, some of my best 1031s that I have are commercial real estate deals that are mixed-use but they’re stabilized.

So, either I fixed them up and stabilized them myself, or did a reverse 1031, or I bought them stabilized and I just had to get some tenants in there for triple-net plus some apartment leases. But those have been my favorite because then I get a property manager in place, and I don’t have to do anything.

But not all. So, to that point, it all depends. Because if you’re taking a single-family home from the Midwest that maybe has—they can sell for $200,000—like, where are you going to put that in a—you could put that in a $4 million commercial property or something like that, but you’re coming down payment with quite a few. So, you kind of have to bundle and package them.

And it’s also, where is that normal? Like, the West Coast, it’s actually not normal to have a bunch of packaged single-families. It’s just not, because cash flow is not king; appreciation is king on the West Coast.

But in the Midwest and different parts of the East Coast, packaged single-family portfolios is a lot more common to find. So, it’s more cap-rate-related in those capacities.

So, to answer your questions, it depends on where I am, what I’m investing in, and what I want to try to do.

But I will say that investing out of state, it doesn’t matter who you are, it’s the same challenges, and it’s harder than investing local. The only benefit to investing out of state is that you have to create people and processes and things in order to be successful at it, versus if it’s local, you could just drive to it, which makes it more active.

So, all those things are stuff to think about: taxes, what you make, retirement, all that stuff.

Bronson Hill: And those are considerations. So, we have a couple more minutes. I just want you to, just based on what you just said about being an out-of-state investor, you said there’s lots of things that you’ve learned, probably mistakes that you’ve made or things that you would do different.

What are, like, if somebody’s going to buy a house or invest out of state in anything, what are some things that you’re like, “Here’s the three things you have to be sure to do,” or the things that I’ve learned? Kind of the best tips to not get hosed.

Tarl Yarber: Absolutely. Confirmation bias is a horrible, horrible thing. What you know in your local market does not mean it’s true in another market.

So, absolutely, each market is unique. Real estate is very local. So, understanding the locality and what’s happening in that local aspect is huge.

When I was in Seattle and I did a ton of real estate in Seattle, we’d have people come from out of state and just assume it was like wherever they were. And I’m like, “This is not—no. This is block by block, street by street, house by house.”

You can have a $2 million house next to an $800,000 house. I mean, like, literally next door, right? It’s the same street, same everything, but one has a better view or whatever, right?

So, very, very local. And so, confirmation bias is bad, right? So, don’t pay attention to that, right?

The other side of it is that your teams are so important. And just know, when you’re an out-of-state investor, there are local people that want to take advantage of the fact that you are an out-of-state investor.

So, there’s also local people that would love to help you and are genuine people that are very good at helping out-of-state people. Just know which one you’re dealing with, right?

So, and I’m a huge fan of what you have to have in place. Like, let’s say that you want to get—you have to have local realtors. You have to have local contractors. And you have to have local title, escrow, attorneys, whatever, right?

I think that finding a good, depending on what state you’re in, a good escrow title company or a good escrow attorney, depending on the state, is crucial. One person, as somebody that actually, like, understands you, knows what you need to do, what kind of documents you need, all that great stuff, is very, very important.

Realtors, I’m a huge fan of a minimum of five to six realtors. When I show up to an area, interview all of them. Find the best ones. Cream rises to the top. Share the deals with all of them, right? Don’t just lock in on one.

And then, over time, you’ll find the ones that you can trust, the ones you get along with, the ones that pick up your phone, and the ones that are comping correctly.

If you send—just because they’re great at talking to and they sound awesome does not mean they know how to pull comps. So, that’s why you gotta cream rises to the top. Trade it out, that kind of stuff.

Contractors, I would never invest in an area ever without having two contractor benches that are people that are going to show up to the property and get me quotes, and also show up and do the job.

Homeowner inspection, like, all these things are just people that you need in place. Because if you’re buying one house, if you live in California and you’re buying a house in Ohio, right, and it’s going to cash flow $200 a month when you’re done, that sounds awesome until you have to fly out one time, right?

And then, see, to fly out one time, you just lost your entire profit. If that doesn’t matter to you, that doesn’t matter to you. But I can tell you that certain Midwest markets aren’t going to have the appreciation, and you’re not going to make that money back.

So, it’s really just more of a matter of, like, your team in place. What’s going to prevent you from having to get on an airplane, and so that you can trust but verify throughout from a distance.

So, I have a lot to say on this, but I’ll leave it at that.

Bronson Hill: Well, it’s all about team, right? It’s all about getting that team going. So, yeah, it’s amazing.

Well, Tarl, I still appreciate you, man. Appreciate your friendship, all the value-add, too, to so many people. You have just a very nonchalant way. I’ve just shown up, and just what you see is what you get, which I so appreciate. Just really a truth-telling guy. You’ve always kind of been that way, which I appreciate.

To hating real estate, but yet to building systems so you don’t have to do it, it’s a pretty good life, right? So, I think that’s awesome.

Well, I just want to honor and appreciate you for creating obviously such great events, creating wonderful businesses, and things that you’ve created. So, thanks for being here. Sit tight for just a minute, and Nate and I’ll just kind of debrief the episode here.

So, Nate, talk to me a quick minute. What was your kind of big takeaway or aha from this interview?

Nate Hambrick: Well, the line you just brought up of Tarl, “I hate real estate,” it reminds me of Grant Cardone’s line, like, “Find the thing everybody hates and then go do that,” because if they hate it, it’s probably profitable.

And so, it’s kind of two sides of one coin there. But that is encouraging, of like, you can hate something at some level and still be really successful and really helpful, and find a way to actually love the niche.

There’s so many areas in my own life and industries I’m not super passionate about, but I find my niche. I find the part of that business I want to be a part of, and not only is it profitable, but I help a lot, a lot of people in the process.

So, how about you, Bronson? What were some of your takeaways?

Bronson Hill: Yeah, so lots of good takeaways. Tarl’s got a lot of good wisdom here.

I think specifically about building teams, I think the idea of not wanting to do certain things, know what you’re good at, being really process-oriented, is really powerful because it really allows you to break things into tasks.

So, I mean, best about anything you’re doing, we think we’re the only ones we can do it. But in that book, Who Not How, instead of saying, “How can I solve this problem?” “Who can do this for me?”

And just really getting more and more into that, believing, leaning into that, and then you get your time back. It’s the whole deal, buying back your time, right?

I mean, you can do all these crazy things, but you’re limited. And so many people get limited because they’re just not—they don’t think in terms of that. So, it’s really changing the way that you think.

That’s one of the biggest things I had to learn going from medical sales, where I controlled everything and I was good at it. But I had to learn, how do I try to just do less and let my team shine, right? And just continue to add more team members that can do it. And there’s a whole process there, too.

But anyway, I thought this was a great interview. And if you’re listening and you’re maybe new to this show, this is what we talk about on the Mailbox Money Show: different ways to grow your wealth passively over time.

If you haven’t joined our investor club, you can check out the link below. We’ve got some amazing deals we’re doing right now in all different spheres. In real estate, oil and gas, we’ve got a debt fund, we’ve got a couple new projects coming up and we’re really excited about in a different sphere that are non-correlated.

So, we’ll share more about that. But appreciate you taking the time to educate yourself. This is how you get better. This is how we get better.

So, thanks for your support. Share this episode if you enjoyed it, and look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Mailbox Money Show.

Outro: You’ve been listening to the Mailbox Money podcast.

For more free resources articles and videos go to bronsonequity.com. There you can download your copy of The Special Report on the Single Best Investment Strategy During and After a Pandemic. None of the information shared here is an offer to buy a specific investment, and this is for educational purposes only.

Consult your financial legal and tax professionals and use your own common sense before making any investment decisions.

Thanks for joining us and be sure to tune in next time for more Mailbox Money!