The Agent Podcast - Episode 78 - Tyler Gibson - Decide What You Want
[00:00:00] Tyler Gibson: And at that point I had you know, by the time I was seriously looking at it, I had started working at a job where I was traveling a lot, so I'd have to do something virtual. And I just, I told myself I couldn't do it. I told myself I could not learn online; I wouldn't be successful. And so I just put off getting a real estate license for a long time probably about seven years.
[00:00:19] Tyler Gibson: And it wasn't until my wife was pregnant with our daughter, I had transitioned into a new role where I wasn't traveling anymore. I actually had a little bit of downtime throughout my workday that I told my wife, you know, I, I think I'm going to go ahead and try to pass this to get this license
[00:00:51] Ray Sjolseth: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Agent Podcast. Today I'm with Tyler Gibson out of Orlando, Florida. Tyler, welcome to the show.
[00:00:58] Tyler Gibson: Hey, thanks for having me.
Tyler. Why real estate? Oh, so many reasons. There's lots of different ways to answer that for me, but I think ultimately it was the desire to have time freedom so that as my daughter got older, I could participate in all the things.
[00:01:16] Ray Sjolseth: I love it. It's a number one best reason,
[00:01:19] Tyler Gibson: right? right? Yeah. Number one motivator. Yeah.
[00:01:22] Ray Sjolseth: So I love it. So Tyler, you run a team of agents out of. XP organization, right?
[00:01:30] Tyler Gibson: Yep, yep
[00:01:31] Ray Sjolseth: give a little bit of background, gimme a little color. Gimme some contrast. How you got
[00:01:35] Ray Sjolseth: there.
[00:01:36] Tyler Gibson: Yeah. So I started in real estate.
[00:01:38] Tyler Gibson: So my initial introduction to real estate was really as an investor as a homeowner and an investor. My wife and I bought our first home you know, right before we got married. And then shortly after getting married we bought a rental property. And you know, my impetus for that was my dad bought real estate when we grew up, you know, growing up when he could, when we moved somewhere, he'd buy a house, and if he could, he would keep it and keep it as a rental.
[00:01:58] Tyler Gibson: And I, you know, I had heard [00:02:00] him talk at times of the benefits of doing that. And so we chose to do that. And once I started getting rent as a source of income, I was hooked. I, it was like, this is the best money I've ever made. How do I do more of this? And so I really started digging in and learning a lot about analyzing rental properties and trying to find them.
[00:02:23] Tyler Gibson: And stumbled across a big online community called Bigger pockets.com. Some listeners may be familiar with it. They also have a successful podcast and, you know, they're like the number one real estate investing website in the world. And so I stumbled across that and started to learn more, and we acquired a few more units over the years.
[00:02:42] Tyler Gibson: But, you know, back to that time when, when we first got married, I was working doing sprinkler repair here in Florida. It's a hot and sticky and wet business because we were out walking around in the sun Rainer rain or shine in the Florida summer. And it gets hot. So, I was doing that at the time.
[00:03:02] Tyler Gibson: And. You know, my dad said something about getting a real estate license and flipping houses, and my wife was like, you'd be good at that. And I was like, Yeah, okay. But I saw it, I looked into it, and it took like 63 hours of coursework and then you had to pass this test. And I had this real limiting belief that I wasn't a good student, and I didn't think I'd be able to do it kind of virtually.
[00:03:26] Tyler Gibson: And at that point I had you know, by the time I was seriously looking at it, I had started working at a job where I was traveling a lot, so I'd have to do something virtual. And I just, I told myself I couldn't do it. I told myself I could not learn online; I wouldn't be successful. And so I just put off getting a real estate license for a long time probably about seven years.
[00:03:44] Tyler Gibson: And it wasn't until my wife was pregnant with our daughter, I had transitioned into a new role where I wasn't traveling anymore. I actually had a little bit of downtime throughout my workday that I told my wife, You know, I, I think I'm going to go [00:04:00] ahead and try to pass this to get this license and I'll just do it virtually.
[00:04:05] Tyler Gibson: And it was a struggle, but I had a lot of motivation at that point because my daughter was coming, and I didn't want to trade my time for money forever which is what I was doing. And I had, you know, gotten into this idea of having a financial free life or, or at least controlling my own time. And so we just put her head down and pushed through.
[00:04:23] Tyler Gibson: And I passed my state test and was signed on with a broker about three weeks after my daughter was born. Which for anybody that's thinking about getting a real estate license, getting involved in the real estate, Right when you have a brand new baby may not be the best choice because your time is already spread thin.
[00:04:42] Tyler Gibson: But that was kind of our journey and because I had been plugged into the bigger pockets community as I got licensed, I was, I kind of had a built in audience that I could reach out to and connect with. And so I just started to offer to help people that were interested in Florida and knowing [00:05:00] my market because I knew it well by that point.
[00:05:02] Tyler Gibson: We had seven rental units and just started helping out-of-state investors that were interested buying in our area. And did about 12 deals in year one in year. And I was fully employed for the nine to five job at the time. And then in year two things got a little crazy. I got connected with a hedge fund, Flipp.
[00:05:18] Tyler Gibson: That ended up doing 12 transactions in 2021 alone by themselves. And as things got busier and busier with that, I ended up bringing on my wife as a transaction coordinator because I was telling her I was going to quit my job and she didn't like the idea of me leaving that stable, safe salary and benefits.
[00:05:36] Tyler Gibson: And so she took over some transaction coordination work for us. And that really helped a lot. But then things continued to get busy. And so I ended up bringing on a team member. And I think the reason I wanted to bring on a team member is I had done enough transactions and I was starting to think about, I didn't want to necessarily do a ton of transactions myself.
[00:05:55] Tyler Gibson: I wanted to have balance and I wanted to build a business that would continue running even when I wasn't there. And so started learning about building a team. And I moved to a brokerage where a broker basically gave me her team contract and kind of walked me through how I brought on my first team member and then actually recruited my first team member for me.
[00:06:13] Tyler Gibson: It was a guy that spent in the business for a long time and had taken some time apart you know, away from the business to try to take care of some family stuff and now he is getting back into the business. And my, my broker at the time said, you should talk to Tyler. Don't go buy leads. Go talk to Tyler.
[00:06:28] Tyler Gibson: He's, you know, he's busy and he's been looking for a new team member. And so we created a really unique team structure because I still had a full-time job. The team structure was this, any deal that you close you know, that you close whether it's my lead or your lead, which I had lots of opportunities at the.
[00:06:42] Tyler Gibson: We would do a 60/40 split, but if I had a deal under contract and I couldn't be there for an inspection or a final walkthrough, I, I just couldn't physically be in a place where I needed to be for that deal to go through. If they would be willing to go and help me with that, I'd give them 20% of the deal.
[00:06:56] Tyler Gibson: So it was a unique situation because I was busy, I [00:07:00] had a lot of deals going on, but I couldn't necessarily be there all the time. I needed somebody that not only had the ability to go work business and help clients on their own but would be flexible enough to just help me make sure that we were doing all the things to close the deals that I already had in the pipeline and we would all mutually benefit from it.
[00:07:16] Tyler Gibson: And so we did that like in June of 2021. And in October of 2021, I had closed about well the end of September. I had closed 25 deals already. My team member had done two or three already. And I. Looked up and said, Okay, now, now I really do have to make a choice because was starting to see that my full-time job was suffering because I was paying a lot of attention to my real estate business.
[00:07:38] Tyler Gibson: But I also realized that if I let up the gas and paid less attention to my real estate business, it would suffer. And so we had to make a decision. And so we decided to make the jump. So October 1st, 2021 became a full-time real estate invest, real estate investor in realtor with one person on my team.
[00:07:55] Tyler Gibson: And we added one more person at the end of 2021 and [00:08:00] then added two more people in Q1 of 2022. And yeah, we ended up finish hanging out year number two with just a little over $13 million in volume across 37 transactions as a team.
[00:08:12] Ray Sjolseth: Okay, so that's a whole lot to unpack. Yeah, let's, let's back up where we'll start to some of that.
[00:08:19] Ray Sjolseth: Yeah. Like I didn't even have a, a good place to interrupt you during all of that.
[00:08:22] Tyler Gibson: Sorry. Sorry.
[00:08:23] Ray Sjolseth: Let's back up a little bit and talk about that first team member. Is he still with you today?
[00:08:30] Tyler Gibson: Yes. Leonard O'Connor. He's, he's a rock. It, the beautiful thing was I was so busy. I, I really didn't have time to onboard somebody.
[00:08:40] Tyler Gibson: And I didn't like, I think my most recent team member has gotten the best experience out of everybody. Everyone gets a little bit better experience.
[00:08:49] Ray Sjolseth: It's natural progression.
[00:08:50] Tyler Gibson: Yeah, I mean, we just kind of, we, we kind of had a handshake deal at first you know, a verbal agreement. We documented some stuff a little bit later on.
[00:08:58] Tyler Gibson: But almost immediately I had people for him to work with and put him in front of, and so. It was, it was a good collaboration. And yeah, he's still here today. He's a big part of my team. Just had two listings that he had come up and, and now those are already under contracts. The market's crazy.
[00:09:16] Tyler Gibson: But yeah, huge part of my team. Very different from me, but
[00:09:21] Ray Sjolseth: so it makes it a good team.
[00:09:23] Tyler Gibson: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:09:24] Ray Sjolseth: The original structure you said was simple, right? 60,/40, and then 20% on anything that he just kind of pitches in. How is your team structure today? Do you mind sharing that, like how you have that set up?
[00:09:36] Tyler Gibson: Yeah, so we're still a 60 40 and I think part of it's the unique nature of the business that we're generating and kind of how it comes through what we do because we do work with investors I spend a significant amount of time, have spent a significant amount of time building the relationship and the trust with these folks.
[00:09:53] Tyler Gibson: And so we're at a 60 40 split on those. We recently proposed an opportunity and currently only one of my team members is elected to do this, but we do 50 50 on any of those investor leads. Where I've generated the business, I've already talked to them in person and now I'm just, now all they must do is go execute.
[00:10:10] Tyler Gibson: But if they ha if they can generate their own business where I'm not necessarily involved in the process then we'll do 75 25. My commitment to them, even in that case is if you have a lead gen strategy, we'll try to go execute and it requires some sort of financial backing. I'll do that for you as long as we have some sort of accountability set in place to measure like, is what we're doing working?
[00:10:33] Tyler Gibson: Are you working it? Are we seeing results? And they can continue to get 75% of that deal. As long as it doesn't occupy a ton of my time I'm happy to help contribute and brainstorm. But if I'm having to pound the phones for the least that you're generating, then that's, that's not going to work for me.
[00:10:50] Tyler Gibson: Because time is my most valuable commodity. And that's kind of where the team comes in. It allows me to have more time to do what I feel like is my responsibility, which is create as many opportunities for them as possible. And that's my role today.
[00:11:06] Ray Sjolseth: So let's talk about that. That's a good segue to lead gen.
[00:11:08] Ray Sjolseth: You, I know a little bit about what you're doing and kind of how you got there. Let's talk about your lead gen strategy and how it's different than what everybody else is doing now. I mean, you're in Orlando, so you're in a hot market as it is. Yeah. But that doesn't always matter, right? At the end of the day, like you still need a lead gen strategy.
[00:11:27] Ray Sjolseth: And what I'd like about what you're doing. is that it is significantly different than anything that I've seen out there before. So can you dive into that a little bit about where it came from how organic it is and you know, what it looks like on a daily basis for you?
[00:11:43] Tyler Gibson: Yeah, so Leg Legion begins with bigger pockets.com.
[00:11:48] Tyler Gibson: It's the, the, the Real Estate Investing forum. And website. I you know, I spent a lot of time on there and, and listened to their podcasts a lot when I was, you know, getting into investing and learning about that. And so I was [00:12:00] fairly active on the forums. And, you know, I have keyword alerts, so I know when people are talking about Orlando or Central Florida or any of the cities in the region, we've got, you know, Probably 30 or 40 different keywords set up so that we know when people are talking about our market or when they're using a word that could be our market.
[00:12:19] Tyler Gibson: And we jump into the forums and we, we want to interact with those people or reach out to them via, you know, an instant message or something like that. But it's really about adding value. My position has always been adding value. I spent a year dedicated to posting on the forums at least once a day.
[00:12:36] Tyler Gibson: And it wasn't me posting questions, it was me posting answers to somebody else's questions. And sometimes I was just going into the area where there's unanswered questions where people have posted and, you know, they, no one's responded to them. Oftentimes I'd go look for like a really, you know, a post that was multiple weeks so old and just try to help those people out with an answer, or at least find the answer on the forms and point them in that direction.
[00:12:59] Tyler Gibson: But it [00:13:00] was all about. I just want to help you. What can I do to help and positioning myself in that way? And once I got licensed, the, the forum, the platform was developing an agent lead gen and partnership program. And so I was asked to participate in that as a beta tester. And that was great, but at the end of the day you know, I think our real value comes from just trying to add value to folks answering their questions, helping them.
[00:13:23] Tyler Gibson: Even today, if I do like a cold outreach, which is like the most salesy thing I do it's, Hey, I saw you posted about this in the forums. And you know, me and my team, we work here in the area with, out-of-state investors and, and I get real specific on what we do because we're niche, right? We help out-of-state investors looking for long term buy and hold cash flowing rental properties, or Disney short-term rentals.
[00:13:50] Tyler Gibson: If you have any questions about the area, I'd be more than happy to answer any questions that you have. Let me know if I can help in any way.
[00:13:56] Ray Sjolseth: Okay. Can I pause you right there? Yeah. Most people in general [00:14:00] have a very hard time figuring out who their audience is, let alone breaking down a one sentence or even a paragraph on who and what they serve for their avatar. How did you come to that?
[00:14:13] Tyler Gibson: It just kind of happened. , and it was the realization, right? I, the world that I knew was rental properties. So originally it wasn't even short term rentals in the Disney area, it was just long-term rental properties that I would help people find because that's the world that I knew and I understood.
[00:14:29] Tyler Gibson: It wasn't until somebody actually reached out to me through the forums and said, Could you help me find a Disney property that I said Well, I've not done that before, but I know some people in the space, so I, you know, I'd be happy to help. And they said, Okay, great. I was honest about what I didn't, didn't know
[00:14:43] Tyler Gibson: And I was fortunate to connect with the short term rental property manager in the area that was willing to kind of give me the inside track on what will and won't work, what areas do and don't work, and kind of educate, help educate me on that space. And then we just ha [00:15:00] started having more and more people ask us about that specific, service or servicing that specific asset type.
[00:15:07] Tyler Gibson: And so we just kind of moved into it. But over the years we've just, it was just a realization and really it was about knowing what I like what I'm into, what I understand. and really just being an expert at this one thing, right? And I can help somebody buy a house, but it's not where my marketing dollars go.
[00:15:28] Tyler Gibson: My marketing dollars are spent on people that are looking to invest. And sometimes that investment is buying a home. Sometimes that investment is, you know, renting out the other bedrooms and we call that a house hack, but everybody that I generally market to thinks from a perspective of growing their wealth, becoming financially free and investing in real estate.
[00:15:54] Tyler Gibson: And it was just, it's what I like. It's what I'm into. And I think there's [00:16:00] something so powerful about building a business around something that you're passionate about, something that you enjoy, that you like. For a long time I wanted to be my own boss, and I just never had an idea. Or a thing that I felt like I would be excited about on Monday morning.
[00:16:16] Tyler Gibson: And so I just continued to work in corporate America or whatever job I could get until we finally found it. And then now it's easy. Mondays are great. I'm excited about Monday. So yeah, we, we kind of developed it and some of it's been intentional, I think what we, what we say now and what we say we specialize in, that's just something that's come, that's started to be crafted over time as we kind of honed in on who we were talking to and we got better at articulating exactly what it is that we do.
[00:16:48] Ray Sjolseth: Okay. I love it. Let's dive into the bigger pockets a little bit. Yeah. What is your formula for success? It's a kind of high level overview of how it works, what you do, how [00:17:00] that applies to your daily business. That kind of good stuff.
[00:17:04] Tyler Gibson: So the foundation of it was really in the attitude of giving back and providing value to other people.
[00:17:10] Tyler Gibson: Like I said, jumping into the forums and participating at a high level making sure that I participate on any forum where somebody's talking about Orlando. Even if it's just to say, Hey, that's a great idea, or you might want to connect with so and so because in this business, you want people to know, like, and trust you.
[00:17:26] Tyler Gibson: The more they interact with you, see your face, hear what you talk about the easier that is. And so when people are doing research on these forums about Orlando, and many of these folks are going to read the entire forum thread. It could be 10, 12 pages, they'll read every response, right? But I want them to make, I want to be sure that they see my face somewhere while they go through that.
[00:17:50] Tyler Gibson: There's a. Find an agent tool on the website, which is part of our lead gem strategy. And we pay for this privilege, but people can say, find an agent, [00:18:00] they say where they're looking, and then the, the program will show them a list of featured agents in the area. Featured agents are paying for that opportunity.
[00:18:08] Tyler Gibson: We're buying leads through the program at this point. We do really well because we've established some systems to handle those leads when they come in. And I can talk a little bit about that. But more importantly, we've built instant credibility by being so active in the forum that when they go and look at the four agents that are available and they see somebody that's posted twice on the forums, doesn't have any deals listed, no reviews, they've see somebody that's done, you know, 20 or 30 posts, couple of deals uploaded, You know, one review and then they'll see my profile with 900 posts, 900 votes 47 deals, 35, 5 star reviews.
[00:18:49] Tyler Gibson: Who are you going to pick? Right? Somebody the other day said something I wouldn't expect, I'd actually pick the guy that's somewhere in the middle cuz he probably got more time for me. And I was like, actually that's a good [00:19:00] point.
[00:19:00] Ray Sjolseth: I always say give people three options. That's right, that's right.
[00:19:03] Ray Sjolseth: People usually pick the one in the middle. But from, from your standpoint to, to ask you a question about that, you didn't start there right? Like this, it took you a while to build up the profile that you have today. It just didn't happen over. .
[00:19:17] Tyler Gibson: Yeah, it didn't happen overnight. It, it did take a long time. I mean, I've been active on the forms now for over seven years.
[00:19:23] Tyler Gibson: So, you know, we've been active and, and there have been times in my life where I'm more active, more active than others. Lately I've been slacking a little bit because there's just a lot of things going on, right? But we, we always go back to the basics and interacting there. And, you know, I get plenty of free leads just because I'm so active, right?
[00:19:42] Tyler Gibson: They'll reach out to me directly or go to my website and fill out a forum versus going through the find agent tool. But it all goes back to adding value, right? And, and today even the paid leads, the people that haven't necessarily interacted with me on the forums when they come in, [00:20:00] They get routed through the system and we have it systemized.
[00:20:04] Tyler Gibson: So as soon as they reach out, we're sending an email back that's inviting them to book some time on our calendar to talk with us. And there's a calendar link in there. They can pick a time that's convenient to them. It's somewhat low pressure. Hey, thanks for reaching out. Would love to connect. Here's, you know, pick up time that works for you.
[00:20:23] Tyler Gibson: And if they don't, then we have a follow up text message that says, Hey, I sent you an email yesterday. I just wanted to see if you still wanted to connect. Here's a link. And we have a super high conversion rate from the people that reach out to the people that actually book phone calls, but they book under our calendar.
[00:20:39] Tyler Gibson: We are not calling them, we are not bothering them. We are not soliciting.
[00:20:42] Ray Sjolseth: They're inviting you.
[00:20:43] Tyler Gibson: We are, yeah. We invite them to come and ask us any questions and when they get on the phone. It's how can I help? Hey, thanks for the opportunity. Love to learn about what you're trying to do and how I might be able to help If I'm the right guy, great.
[00:20:58] Tyler Gibson: And if not, then I want [00:21:00] to connect you with the right person. And we just, our whole position is how can I help you achieve whatever your goal is? I may or may not be the right person. And because we are so niche and we do know who we want to work with, we say no to people or we, you know, if a, if somebody wants to do flips, I don't do flips.
[00:21:19] Tyler Gibson: So I may know somebody else, I may give you some pointers on ways that you might market to, to potential sellers yourself to try to find a good deal. But we don't, we don't chase objects. We, we don't chase opportunities that may not fit into what we do. We, we focus and I was. At a conference not that long ago, and they talked about the importance of being an inch, an inch wide and a mile deep in what you do.
[00:21:44] Tyler Gibson: And so we really try to do that. And of course we want to, we want to be involved in the residential real estate market for buyers and sellers and, and get listings. But we continue to focus on the area where we feel like we can add the most value to folks and, and be experts and have them reach out to [00:22:00] us and just respond in kind as an expert.
[00:22:02] Tyler Gibson: And it puts you on a totally different playing field with the consumer at that point. When, when they are coming to you, looking to you for that advice, that, that consultation. I don't have to sell. I don't really like sales. I mean, I'm in sales, but I don't, like sales and I've done, hardcore sales.
[00:22:20] Tyler Gibson: I've done some of that stuff. You know, in high school I was a telemarketer for MCI WorldCom. If anybody knows what that is, . Anyway, so but so, so I've had some hardcore sales jobs and, you know, I think I have some skills related that are relatable, but I don't like it. I don't like doing sales. I like helping people.
[00:22:36] Tyler Gibson: And so we've been able to position ourselves in such a way that that's who we are. We're a resource for folks and we want to help them. We're not here to sell them anything. We're here to help them execute on whatever their goal is.
[00:22:47] Ray Sjolseth: Okay. So today you have, your wife is a transaction coordinator behind the business. You have four team members. Yes. And your main lead gen tool is bigger pockets. Yeah. [00:23:00] What is your day to day look like in your business?
[00:23:04] Ray Sjolseth: So let's start with how you lead.
[00:23:06] Ray Sjolseth: I don't care whether you have one person or, I mean, look, if you're waking up and making decisions in the morning, you're leading yourself, right?
[00:23:12] Ray Sjolseth: Right. So now how are you leading other people is the question.
[00:23:14] Tyler Gibson: So I, I've been fortunate to have some great leaders and some not so great leaders in my career. And for me, I always, I always wanted somebody that would help me wherever I needed, but also just let me do my job. And so that's really how I try to position myself.
[00:23:34] Tyler Gibson: Everybody that's on my team is a business partner. You're my business partner and I want to make you wealthy. . That's it. Like, that's my position. And so I'm constantly going to them asking, How can I help you? What do you want to do? What are your goals? You know, how are we going to get there? Where do you want to be in five years?
[00:23:54] Tyler Gibson: I don't tell people what they have to go do. I'll tell them what it is that I do, but, I [00:24:00] firmly believe that we are at our best when we play to our strengths. It's, it's actually what I was doing prior to, you know, it's what my full-time job was prior to this, was actually coaching large organizations around the benefits of every employee leaning into their strengths, the activities that they enjoy doing and that they're good at leaning into them and developing those and, and so it's what I've tried to bring to our team.
[00:24:29] Tyler Gibson: We have some personality assessment type stuff that we do for everybody that comes on board. And this is not, this is not it, it's different because it's not what do I think of myself? How do I perceive myself? This is a situational judgment test where you're put in a position and what would you do?
[00:24:44] Tyler Gibson: And it. Defines your, your top two strength roles. But that's not where we stop. Every one of my team members, after they do the assessment, they, they get an hour long coaching call with a certified coach that will do a debrief of that report with them and help to [00:25:00] understand it, and internalize it.
[00:25:01] Ray Sjolseth: What assessment is that? What do you what assessment?
[00:25:03] Tyler Gibson: So it's called the Standout Strengths Assessment. It was written by Marcus Buckingham who helped write the definitions for strength finders. If you're familiar with Clifton and strengths and strength finders,
[00:25:13] Ray Sjolseth: I am very much, I've done that. I love it.
[00:25:16] Tyler Gibson: So it is a it is a derivative. I, I would call it a derivative of strength finders in what it does. The assessment is different. The date, the research, and the data behind it is, Impactful. But Marcus's approach is that we are at our best when we play to our strengths. And so I, I internalized that, right?
[00:25:34] Tyler Gibson: I went to this company and the only reason I quit this job literally was because I couldn't do the job justice anymore, because I didn't want to let my real estate business fail. And, but I, you know, the people that I worked with were great, and the philosophies that they, they taught, the approach that they taught really opened my mindset.
[00:25:54] Tyler Gibson: Because I always used to think, I'm not good at this. I'm not good at that. You know, there's, there's so many things that I [00:26:00] don't like doing. I just don't like them. It's not that I can't do them, but they bring me no joy. And now I realize that , I shouldn't do those things, right? I should pay somebody else to do them, or I should bring on a partner that wants to do those things.
[00:26:13] Tyler Gibson: But playing to my strengths playing to our strengths, I think is such a critical component, not only in just overall joy in life, but our effectiveness in whatever it is that we're, that we're doing. So I want to bring that out in my team members. I want them to, to add that same perspective and look at their strengths and understand where their strengths are.
[00:26:35] Ray Sjolseth: I just made some notes to check out the standout strength assessment.
[00:26:38] Tyler Gibson: You can buy the book Stand Out 2.0 and that comes with a free assessment. Or if you go to Marcus bookham.com/the Gift of Standout you can take it for free there.
[00:26:47] Ray Sjolseth: But I'll drop that to show notes everyone.
[00:26:51] Tyler Gibson: I meet with my team members on, in, in a one-on-one scenario. We don't really have group meetings. I've had one or two, but they're not very [00:27:00] often unless there's like a piece of information I need to disseminate to everyone.
[00:27:03] Tyler Gibson: But I can also do that via email. So I like to meet with my team members one on one. And Hey, how's it going? What do you need? You know, And, and it's their time. It's, it's not for me is not for me to tell them what they're doing. And, and if I'm honest with myself, and there's probably some team leaders that would cringe, but I don't even know what their numbers are.
[00:27:24] Tyler Gibson: I don't know how many people they're talking to. Like, we don't have those systems set up. We're literally building this airplane as we fly it.
[00:27:31] Ray Sjolseth: But my favorite way to build an airplane
[00:27:34] Tyler Gibson: so, you know, I, I, there's still a long way to go in what we're doing as a team. My position as a leader in the way that I see myself is I, I should be your biggest champion, your biggest, you know, your biggest cheerleader.
[00:27:47] Tyler Gibson: And my job is to create a bunch of opportunities for you. And my ultimate goal for every single person that's a part of my team is I hope that they figure out a way to generate their own business and they outgrow me. And [00:28:00] that seems like a counterintuitive thing to say. But it's really what I want for people.
[00:28:04] Tyler Gibson: I just want to help people. And there's some benefit in it for me while we're doing it together. And because of the ex p model, there's some benefit for me. Yeah. When we, when we're not doing it together, . Right. Right. So, so I am, I'm incentivized to help them make a lot of money for themselves.
[00:28:23] Tyler Gibson: Yeah. And drive success. That's why, that's why ultimately we moved to e p as a team. Was because we all saw that as, as an opportunity to, to help other people and to help ourselves.
[00:28:37] Ray Sjolseth: I love it, man. It's beautiful and rare. So congratulations to you and your lucky team members, . Thanks. Gimme a couple things that you've failed at during this journey.
[00:28:47] Tyler Gibson: I lost my hedge fund client because I, I failed to recognize what their motivations were early. And you know, I've, I spent a lot of money on lead gen [00:29:00] that wasn't successful. And I think a lot of it was I was getting outside of my niche. I was getting outside of my comfort zone, and I was lying to myself about the type of follow up I would do.
[00:29:12] Tyler Gibson: Don't lie to yourself about what you will or won't do. Right? If you hate calling internet leads, don't buy internet leads because you'll find reasons not to do it. And that goes back to my strengths. I, I don't like that. It makes me feel a certain kind of way. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with calling internet leads, but I just don't enjoy it.
[00:29:33] Tyler Gibson: It reminds me of my time at selling long distance service when long distance service was starting to phase out because of cell phones. And it's just not great for me. But I do like talking to people.
[00:29:46] Ray Sjolseth: Let me ask you a question about that, because I have felt sometimes actually just had this experience where I took a project on and immediately felt like I was going backwards.[00:30:00]
[00:30:00] Ray Sjolseth: And when I feel like I'm going backwards, , I don't want anything to do with whatever that is. Mm-hmm. , I don't care if it's fixing sprinklers, or if it's consulting or a creative project. So I stayed on this project for a month and I was absolutely miserable. I found myself super anxious, very depressed.
[00:30:21] Ray Sjolseth: I just turned kind of instantly negative and I felt like I was in a situation that I was in like 10 plus years ago. And it just was so familiar that it made me cringe. And needless to say it is, it did not move forward. I shut it down, but like, it was something I felt, you know, this would be really be nice right now.
[00:30:43] Ray Sjolseth: It would help me make progress for what I'm trying to do on this other thing. But it wasn't worth it, man. I feel like I just instantly lost myself. All the progress that I had made. I just felt like I went backwards.
[00:30:56] Tyler Gibson: Yeah, you know, it, I think [00:31:00] it's so incredibly powerful when you, when you understand where, what your strengths are and the activities that, you're really going to thrive at.
[00:31:10] Tyler Gibson: And it's hard I think, a lot of times for us to identify what those things are and, and there's a very good reason for why it's hard to identify those things. It's because we do that thing effortlessly without thinking generally. Right. We just kind of go into it and it just kind of happens. And when it's over, we feel great about it and we kind of look back and go, Wow, I just spent four hours on whatever that thing was.
[00:31:34] Tyler Gibson: Like, I can't believe that. Just, you know and so we just don't register. We don't log it. And I think, I think that's what people need to do more of. We need to be more conscious of those activities that we do on a daily basis that feel so easy and effortless. That bring us joy or that we're look for, or that we're looking forward to, and log that stuff.
[00:31:57] Tyler Gibson: Because that's the stuff that if you can turn it into an income producing activity, you won't be stopped because it won't be hard. Now, some days it'll be harder than others, but it won't be hard. Right. I some days I'm not necessarily motivated to hold my new client intake calls. But I do it because first of all, I know that it's a cornerstone of what we do.
[00:32:24] Tyler Gibson: Mm-hmm. . And second of all, I don't hate it. I, and usually by the time I get on the phone, I'm actually super excited to talk to that person. Right. And it's a great conversation and I, and, and afterwards I feel good about the fact that I did it even though I didn't necessarily feel like it. And that's discipline, if you're disciplined to do that thing. You don't hate you'll have some success as long as you keep doing it.
[00:32:48] Ray Sjolseth: Steve Harvey talks about that. You know, he says you need to ask yourself what is that one thing that you do that's just easy that you don't think about, and that's what you should be doing.
[00:32:58] Tyler Gibson: Yes, a [00:33:00] hundred percent. And it is challenging to find that. And I mean, it took me 35 years to, to figure out that I was a pretty good real estate agent. I was a pretty good salesperson. I just didn't know what that was going to look like until I found it.
[00:33:17] Ray Sjolseth: We look against ourselves as human. Right? Like you said, you put it off for seven years because you thought this other and we complicate it.
[00:33:25] Tyler Gibson: Yeah. And, and I think that's the other thing that I've learned through these last two years in this business, is that what we tell ourselves is the truth regardless of what it is. You know, I used to think you know, when I got the license, I was just going to use it for myself.
[00:33:40] Tyler Gibson: And if I helped a friend sell one or two, then great. But it wasn't really a plan to build a business right away. And once we started, started doing it, it was like, Oh, okay. All right. And then after year one, I told myself I wanted to do 25 deals. And, you know, in year two I wanted to do 25 deals which was double what we had done the year before.[00:34:00]
[00:34:00] Tyler Gibson: And I think some of my friends thought that I was crazy. Also, I didn't tell a lot of my friends because some people just don't understand what you're trying to do. Right. They're not, they're not in the same place. Right.
[00:34:11] Ray Sjolseth: It's top percent accurate. .
[00:34:12] Tyler Gibson: And, and that was the other thing that, that I've discovered over these last two years is if you're going to be a team leader, if you're going to build a business, then you're going to have friends there.
[00:34:24] Tyler Gibson: There are going to be people in your life that will doubt you or will think that what you're doing is crazy or that just won't get it. And that's okay, but you have to be intentional about finding people that will understand what you're trying to do, that will speak life into what you're doing that will speak hope and, and just, you know, speak words of encouragement to you.
[00:34:48] Tyler Gibson: You know, you're better off if those people are more successful than you are because they will try to coach you and, and bring you up. Some people are collaborative and some people aren't.
[00:34:58] Ray Sjolseth: And that's okay. There's a place [00:35:00] for them and a place for you.
[00:35:01] Tyler Gibson: Right, Right.
[00:35:05] Tyler Gibson: Sure. So,
[00:35:07] Ray Sjolseth: Right. So on bigger pockets, I see some member awards here for you. One is the calculator Grand Master. Why don't you tell me about that?
[00:35:14] Tyler Gibson: So I actually can't take much credit for that. So, there's some calculator tools with the paid versions of the website.
[00:35:23] Tyler Gibson: Because you can pay for their calculator tools, which nobody needs them. The, the math is pretty easy. You can build an Excel spreadsheet. But they're pretty so I actually have an assistant I have a, so a member of my team that I didn't talk about earlier. I actually have a virtual assistant in the Philippines that she's on salary.
[00:35:39] Tyler Gibson: One of her jobs is to analyze deals. We have some, we have some property searches set up with some criteria of where we might find an opportunity for rentals. And her job is to go in and work through that list and run them through the calculator on a day-to-day basis.
[00:35:52] Tyler Gibson: And she puts them in a spreadsheet and highlights the ones in green that may have positive cash flow and everything else is read. And so the calculator Grand Master is an attribution to her and the work that she's doing on a weekly and daily basis. I've used the calculators quite a bit, but I use an Excel spreadsheet on my computer more often.
[00:36:10] Tyler Gibson: But yeah. What, what are some of the other ones? I didn't even know I had that, to be honest with you.
[00:36:16] Ray Sjolseth: Oh yeah. A lot of bullets here. Yeah, that's news. All right. 500 Vote Club calculator Master a hundred Post club calculator Hero. Calculator champion addict. We should probably talk about that one. Offline. A calculator. Repeater. Fanatic. Yeah, just stuff like, it's just because it's cool how using tools, it shows that you're involved, right? Like you're participating in the community and people are recognizing that. That's awesome.
[00:36:39] Tyler Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. We and I'm a, I'm a co-host of a local investor meetup and I have gotten business out of it.
[00:36:47] Tyler Gibson: I don't sell anything at the meetup. It's really, we're just there to connect with people and We have people in our group that are doing multimillion dollar small multifamily deals in syndication land development deals, build [00:37:00] to rent deals. And then we've got people that are wholesaling, flipping house hacking, trying to get into these things.
[00:37:06] Tyler Gibson: And we get together once a month and sometimes we have special speakers. And every quarter we do a quarterly check-in where we just, Hey, where are you at with your goals? What do you need to do this next quarter to get there?
[00:37:16] Ray Sjolseth: That's awesome. I think that's special. That's cool.
[00:37:19] Tyler Gibson: Yeah, it's different.
[00:37:20] Tyler Gibson: It's not your regular you know, Central Florida Real Estate investors which is part of like a national real estate investor group. But it's, it's fun. And it's fun to build relationships and we have a giant group chat slack channel that we all communicate with, and so anybody got a contractor for this or that?
[00:37:41] Tyler Gibson: And so it's, it's fun and it's collaborative. It's a little bit different, but I was doing that prior to getting a real estate license. We've been plugged into that community for over seven years. So and really that was just a way for me to learn more about real estate and continue to grow and make, make connections.
[00:37:57] Tyler Gibson: And we've got some great relationships out of it that are just relationships and they're people that'll pour into you and share with you and build you up. So good stuff. I love it. So I would encourage anyone that's listening, if you want to get involved in real estate investing, find a local meetup.
[00:38:14] Tyler Gibson: Go meet with people because as you say all the time this business is about people and partnerships and that's where you're going to meet. Both are, are at those local events. So
[00:38:24] Ray Sjolseth: What if someone can take one thing away from our conversation, what would that one thing be that we could pay forward?
[00:38:31] Tyler Gibson: The ability to come from position of service and help where, your only goal is to add value to the other person sitting across from you will get you a lot farther than any other positioning. Now, it may, it's probably not going to be instantaneous, right? It won't give you the instant result that you're looking for, but it will put you in a position where it will create opportunities down the road.
[00:38:56] Tyler Gibson: Because I. You know whether you like to believe it or not, people are, a lot of people are very intuitive and they will sniff out whatever your motivation is relatively quickly. So, you know, and it, it's just a great way to be. I think it's a great way to exist where your only, your only goal is to help the person that's sitting across from you.
[00:39:17] Tyler Gibson: So yeah.
[00:39:18] Tyler Gibson: Love it. I love it. Tyler, where can people find you if they want to check out investments in Florida by Disney property? Join your team. Yeah.
[00:39:27] Tyler Gibson: Which quick plug. We would love to talk to you if you're interested in real estate investing in your market and how we might be able to help drive investor buyers to you.
[00:39:35] Tyler Gibson: So you can find me on Instagram and on Facebook. These are my personal accounts, but please come connect real underscore Tyler Gibson. And yeah. We, I'd love to talk to you all about it and see how I can help you.
[00:39:50] Ray Sjolseth: I love it. Tyler, this was fun, man. Thank you.
[00:39:52] Tyler Gibson: Yeah, thanks Tyler.
