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In today’s episode, Allan welcomes Tyler Blair. Tyler is the Founder and CEO of the Legacy Real Estate Team, which started in 2016. Tyler was recently honored with the 2023 WeServ Young Professionals Network 40 Under 40 Award. Allan and Tyler discuss the importance of having a receptive attitude toward learning new things and allowing time to work in your favor. In addition, start-up entrepreneurs must focus on one solid business and give it their all, because more opportunities will naturally come as a result of hard work and dedication.
Guest Links:
https://www.instagram.com/thetylerblair/
480-291-4478
Listwithtyler@gmail.com
https://legacyrealestateteam.com/
Allan has started and grown several multimillion dollar businesses. His mission is to help you do the same. Welcome to The Business Growth Pod, building the future, one entrepreneur at a time.
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Business Growth Pod. I’m your host, Allan Draper. I’m very excited about our guest today. He’s a local Arizona in and entrepreneur after my own heart. And we’re going to learn a lot about entrepreneurship and get into some of the struggles that is common in entrepreneurship and starting a business. Before we get there, make sure that if this episode has helped you in some way, make sure that you share it with somebody that’s the best way that you could say thank you to me, share it on social media, or you can even just, you know, send a text message somebody telling them about this episode and how it helped you. My guest today is Tyler Blair. Tyler is the founder and CEO of the Legacy Real Estate Team, which started in 2016. He also owns Blue Agave construction, and Legacy Property Solutions. Through the years he has been awarded with many top production volume and sells awards, and was most recently honored with the 2023. We serve Young Professionals Network 40, under 40 award, very well recognized. Welcome to the show. Tyler, glad to have you.
Thank you appreciate it. I’m excited to be here. Really. I appreciate you given the time.
Absolutely, man. You know, it sounds like you’ve done a few things on the real estate side. You know, you have a construction company. Where did you get your start? Let’s kind of rewind a little bit. Tell us about how you got your start. And were this you know, this desire to own a business came from?
Yeah, so you know, my wife was going to school in Tucson, I was going to school just because I followed her into Tucson, I had a couple jobs and it was going to school, she had a job was going to school and and we needed to pay our rent. And she came to me and there was on the bus that said, Hey, if you work for the apartment complex, you can get free rent. And she was like, Hey, I’m gonna go do that. And I said, No, no, I’m gonna go do that you focus on your degree. And so I went and applied there, I got that job. And in about six months of leasing up the complex, they wanted to hire me to manage all the listing agents for the apartment complex. So the cool thing was that paid for our rent and really was my way into real estate. And I we did that for about a year and a half, until she was done with school. And then we had a decision to make, do we move back up to Mesa? Or do we, you know, stay in Tucson area and start our lives down there. And so we decided to move up. And then that’s when I started managing an apartment complex in Mesa. I managed part of that. And that was a lot of fun. It was these investors from Canada would come in and they would they would remodel these apartment complexes, they get out all the riffraff they’d buy like a C type property. And then they would remodel it and I would get in new tenants and then they would sell it as an a property, they would make a lot of money. So that interests me a ton of Wow, there’s so many different ways in real estate to make money. So long story short, I ended up not being happy, Callie saw that I wasn’t happy. And she’s like, well, you should go get your real estate license, like you’ve talked about. And I said, You know what, I think I am going to go do that. And I started out in property management in that as well. So I managed 150 rentals all over the valley. I learned a lot of good stuff. I learned how to be that punching bag in the middle. I didn’t make a lot of money. But I learned a lot. I was a sponge, with everybody that was around me because these were successful investors. They were these were successful business owners. So when I talked to them on the phone about their property, I would also ask them things about their business, because I was just curious, and I knew that they had what I wanted. So I just decided to ask as many questions as possible. So that was kind of my into real estate. And then Callie decided to get pregnant wasn’t my decision. Now I’m just kidding. But she was pregnant. And at that point, we decided that we wanted her to be a stay at home mom and that’s what she wanted. I didn’t have that growing up. Neither did she. So we decided that that’s what we wanted for free. Emily, so I had to go into the buy sell side of real estate in order to make enough money. So we restarted and that was the middle of 2015. My wife was pregnant with our second child. And we had our first as well. I just worked. I just cold called Open House lead gen. That’s all I did. I talked to everybody I knew I was sleeping, living, breathing, real estate. That was my passion. That’s what I needed in order for my family to succeed. So that’s what we did. And I grinded for probably about a year of hard grind, I’m talking 15 hours a day. And then I hired my first agent. And three months in, he sent me a text message that said, long story short, it was like, Hey, man, you help changed my life. And for me, it was like, Whoa, he just sent me this message. He’s only been on the team three months, he’s made more money than he thought he ever could. And now he’s sending me this message that I helped change his life. And so that’s when it kind of clicked for me of, hey, this is much bigger than me just buying and selling homes. Right. And so that’s when we started bringing on friends and family and people who just found out that we were doing business. And so now we have about 53 agents that span all across all of the valley. And then we have Tucson in Show Low, as well as a smaller team in San Diego. And then what was cool is once I focused on that, and that was my main focus once it got going other opportunities arised because people saw that, hey, what I was doing was working, I worked really hard. I cared about people I cared about my family, I didn’t let my family life go in shambles because of what I was doing it, they were part of it. And I think that’s the hardest thing in real estate is when I first got in people say like, are you going to be married to real estate, you’re going to be married to your wife? And I said, Well, I’m going to be married to both. Why can’t I be married to both I found her when, which is long as she has her when I’m happy. But long story short, that’s when the other businesses would start to come arises when Oh, this guy needed capital because his partner didn’t know how to spend money, or I own two hearing aid shops as well. That I’m more of a silent partner in those. I just say hearing aids. Yeah, so I own a couple hearing aid shop. And that just came from my brother’s friend that needed help. And I know the back end part. So he knew how to sell hearing aids. I’m not your hearing aid guy. But hey, on the back end part, I can help you with marketing and all of that stuff. So I kind of help with the business part of that. And he sells the hearing aids. So it’s just like, we found people that needed holes plugged in their boat. And our boat aligned with air. Yeah, if that makes sense.
Yeah. 100%. Yeah. And I’ve done some similar things where, you know, some of my businesses, people are like, wait, what? You know, like, yeah, and I get approached a lot, because people see that I do a few different things in different industries. And I think you hit the nail on the head, when you talked about when you mentioned that, you had one really solid business up and running, that was established that was, you know, there were systems in place and things like that. And a lot of people come to me, and they think they can start like three or four businesses at the same time be if someone comes to you, and they’re like, Hey, I have an idea. You know, just the other day someone’s like, Hey, I’m going to start a pest control company. I’m going to start this consulting agency, and I’m going to do this marketing thing. Wow. I was like, well, you should stop. You should choose one go for that. What would you say to somebody like that?
Yeah, I mean, the same exact lines. It didn’t take off for me until that one thing was my focus. That was my one thing. And I made sure that I was obsessed about it. And the other opportunities came up like a property management company, right? Like we’re starting a property management company, we knew that we would always do that. It’s just not the right time. Timing is everything. And if you don’t have enough time to give a certain business, you shouldn’t start another.
So how long did you do the real estate team before your next
move? It was about three and a half years at least.
Okay? Where that was everything. One thing that entrepreneurs struggle with is a little bit of the you know, shiny object syndrome. We love ideas. We love diversity, like mixing our day up like you know and I yeah, look it I am the number one offender with this. I own 29 businesses now. So many industries from credit monitoring to real estate Yep. To you know, bug companies and And but your first one you have to be obsessed with you do you need that. And I had that foundational Company, which was a pest control company. And I built with awesome partners, I’ve built everything else on top of that. And I had this guy, I’ve told this story before, Tyler, but I had this guy that he’s scheduled a consulting appointment with me. And he shows up in my office, and he has this huge binder. And this binder was full of business ideas. And he’s like, Hey, I’m gonna run through some of these ideas. And I want you to tell me which ones to start, right, which ones to pursue. And I was like, well, first of all, before looking at the ideas, it’s going to be which idea to pursue, then I told them, Well, you know, most of it, I’ll let you know my thoughts. But most of it’s going to be you because I’m sure. You know, there’s, in that book, you probably have some decent ideas, you probably have some bad ones, but most of them are going to be just regular ideas where it’s all about the execution. It’s not really the idea anyway. And we went through some and I told him, I’m like, Hey, I liked this one. I liked that one, maybe pursue a couple of those. Again, ultimately, it’s up to you. But here’s the kicker, here’s the advice that you really need. It’s not about which business idea to pursue, the advice that you really need to hear is, once you choose one, you don’t necessarily burn that book. But you put it on a really high shelf. Yeah. And you go really hard after that idea. Like it is your only option. I see entrepreneurs spread themselves too thin, because they tried to do a little bit of everything. Yep. As opposed to go, I need several years of you doing one thing hyperfocused and getting it to operate itself. Before moving on.
I love that you also have to prove yourself, like starting four businesses doesn’t mean anything if none of them are successful, right? Like, find the one thing that you love, and make a business out of it. You know, I’m sure in that book, he had ideas that he loved weighed more than others, like, obviously, those should be at the top of your list, because you’re going to be more excited about those. If you’re not excited about waking up in the morning, and doing your business. There’s no way that you’re succeed. And that’s just my opinion, I’m sure there’s people out there that can separate from business to passion. But in I’m a just a firm believer, if you don’t believe in your product, you don’t believe in your service, or whatever it is that you do.
People feel it 100%. Let’s turn back the clock a little bit. You mentioned that when you were managing some properties for investors, and you were kind of the middleman, right and helping them with that. And your mind started to open and expand and you started to learn all these things. Let’s talk about that. What are some things if you can kind of put yourself back in that situation? I know sometimes it’s it’s difficult to remember where we were before we learn something because our minds change. And it’s like, Man, I yeah, I really used to think that way. But what were some of those things? What were were they tangible things like you take this property? This is how you analyze it, or were they more intangible like, Hey, this is how high net worth individual slash investor thinks.
Yeah, it was more of the latter, right? They were more of mindset about time and patience, that it was time and patience, I would argue was the most thing that I heard from any investor that I talked to, because time is everything when it comes to money. And patience, in my opinion, is even more important than time. I mean, it’s kind of the same thing, but it’s just lined out a little bit different. But that was the biggest thing is intangible that they would say they didn’t really like have the time to go over deals with me or things like that, because I was more saying, Hey, I’m calling. I found you a tenant. I got you 75 more dollars a month in rent. Are you okay? Renting these people? Hey, why Gotcha. Let me ask you a question. Right. It was more of like that, because I figured when I bombarded them with questions, they were annoyed. And I figured whenever someone bombarded me, I would be annoyed. So I tried to put myself in their shoes as a hey, here’s a quick question. And then boom, the next one, but a lot of them I would say it was time was the biggest thing for investing. It was invest yesterday. Doesn’t matter if it’s this little property or not. Or another thing that was pretty cool, is they were talking about investments with your own houses. Right? Like we all live in a house. Imagine moving every two years and just keeping the house that you’d had in 10 years, you now have five houses. Well, the cool thing is when you rent those out, you get massive tax benefits. But more importantly, once you have one, the first one’s the hardest twist tablished the banks, it’s much easier to lend to you. So yeah, 100% That was the biggest thing is that it was like, buy as many as you can smart, right? Like, you can’t have someone who’s making 120 grand a year, buying 10 homes right off the bat, like, that’s not realistic. That’s not the smart thing to do. But in time, right, like, Hey, I’m gonna buy a property over the next two years. Awesome. What does that look like? So that was the biggest thing is it was just investing in time.
Yeah, I was just at the gym about an hour ago. And I got stopped by one of my buddies that works there. And we’re talking about one of my properties in Florida. And he’s telling me that he wants to get involved in real estate. But he’s nervous because of where the market is, right now, high interest rates in Arizona stuff is kind of cool. But it’s not like, you know, and there’s no fire cells. And I told him that one of the most important things that I’ve learned with real estate, is that if you have a long term perspective, 10 plus years, you will not lose. And so I told him, I’m like, don’t, because you were always going to have an excuse, there’s always going to be a reason not to invest, the interest rates were low than the market would be stuff would be moving faster than there wouldn’t be as many, you know, inventory would be lower, whatever it is, right. And so I love this idea of being patient. I think this idea of being patient, and letting time work in your favor, is a principle that’s applicable to businesses across the board. And, you know, I bought two properties in Idaho in 2007, about the worst possible time. Uh huh. Yeah. And I still have those properties. And I went to law school, and I had both of those properties. And I was thinking about, you know, short selling. And I’m like, you know, what, I promised the bank, I’d pay him back, I’m just gonna pay him back. And that was kind of my perspective, it wasn’t this, Hey, someday, I’m going to absolutely crush it with these properties. And then 510 years go by, and, you know, those are two of the best investments I’ve ever made. Because of time. Exactly. At the moment, they were really dumb purchases. But if you separate yourself via time, with real estate, especially, it’s really hard to lose. And, you know, I’m, I don’t know if I’m nervous. I think there’s some things happening in the economy, especially this year and 2023. I was just listening to a podcast. Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, this morning talking about what 2023 is going to look like in terms of the financial markets and things like that. And I wanted to get your take. What are you seeing so far? I mean, we’re, you know, we just finished the first quarter of 2023. Yeah. What are you seeing so far with where the real estate market is? At least in your neck of the woods here in Arizona? Yeah. And what are you kind of looking forward to for this year?
Yeah. So I look at it completely different, because I’m just literally in it all day long. I talked to economists, like it’s my business, right. So I need to know. I think
we’re through the bad
part of the real estate market. You know, we had 28 flips in the summer of last year. Well, all of a sudden, the buyers quit buying in July. And we had a decrease in price in literally it was 12% in a month. So everyone else is feeling the effects of what we already went through. There was a buyer’s market for four weeks, it’s already turned back to a seller’s market because inventory is low. We’re at 13,000 homes. We’re losing about 100 homes a day almost in inventory. So like that crunch, yes, interest rates are high. But there’s still buyers out there buying because they’re buying down with concessions. There’s two one buy downs, there’s three one buy downs, they’re talking about a 40 year mortgage. Like there’s a lot of yeah, there’s a lot of stuff that they’re trying to do to fix the market when it has a lot to do with inflation all at the same time. Right? I think they’re gonna drop rates come towards the later part of the year. They were talking first quarter obviously, that didn’t happen yet did a little bit but not enough to affect but then FHA came out with a decrease in their mortgage insurance that saved people $100 a month. So that’s the thing is there’s these small little changes that are happening that actually are affecting the buyers drastically, like $100 a month is 20 grand and your purchase price. So it’s little things like that, in his understanding, kind of to your point of this is a long term play like interest rates will drop in the future. So you get a deal on a house now You’re going to pay a couple $100 more a month for the next six, eight months a year. But then when you refi, now you got the house at a discount and a lower rate. So it in my opinion just depends on how you look at it from the economists that that I’m talking to. They’re saying we’re going to see an appreciation this year. Because at the latter part of last year is when we got hit. December was our like, bottom, January it started peeking. And then January and February, there was a 60% increase, month over month in under contract homes. And then it happened again in March. And then just to give you an idea, like we have, I don’t know, 9192 pendings as a company right now. And that’s insane. Last year, our largest month was 52 or 58 homes, we closed 71 in March. But it’s because we’re in here working every single day, we’re finding the people that actually need our help. And that’s just a numbers game, you just have to go through more people to find the actual people that are ready. And the cool thing is you’re building your pipeline. So when the market does turn back to a normal market, at some point, someday, you know what has to happen. Now, our agents have a list of people that are ready to go. So it’s just preparing for right now. But also preparing for the future. That’s how agents are making it right
now. Yeah, I think it’s interesting that you talked about how buyers are finding kind of creative ways to get those deals through either concessions or whatever. We’re closing on a couple of townhomes in Utah in just a couple of weeks. And there’s a program through a bank that I have a relationship with that they’re doing investor deals for 10% down and no mortgage insurance.
Is it a dcr? Loan?
I actually don’t know the name of it. I don’t.
That’s probably Yeah, it’s like an investor loan. They’re awesome. And they’re coming out to like, offset everything that’s going on, because investors can’t buy with interest rates at 7%. Exactly.
Yeah. So it’s interesting how you know, you can you have these opportunities to just get creative with deals, I think it really speaks to the mentality of an entrepreneur, a business owner, a real estate investor, investor of any sort, where it’s like, you know, go find the opportunity. More millionaires are made in the United States during a recession than any other period. And it’s natural for human beings to and it happens to me too, sometimes, well, I’ll get nervous. I’ll hear the news or whatever. Oh, yeah. And it’s like, okay, I need to like free spending, like, right, hoard cash, which we’re learning is a terrible idea. Yeah. And so the, you know, during these, quote, unquote, tough times, the rich get richer, right? Because they find these opportunities. And I think the main way for them to do that is to first start with the idea that there’s something out there even when they don’t have all of the answers. And so I’ve tried to change how I think, to where it’s like, okay, if inflation is crazy high, it’s got to create an opportunity somewhere. And I’m going to go find it, versus the mentality of Oh, no, I’m scared. I don’t know what’s gonna happen this year, people have been talking about recession, the interest rates are crazy high. I’m gonna like hunker down. And, you know, tell me a little bit about why that mentality is kind of a difference maker for somebody that’s trying to develop and build significant wealth.
Yeah, so I think of like the way Americans are trained, right? Like, we were trained to go to school, go to college, get a degree, go get a job, right like that. And now people are figuring out that that might not be the best for them. Right? And that’s okay. So there’s so many different ways to go about making money. And I think there’s no wrong way. I think the problem is everyone goes in Judges when it’s not their way, when at the end of the day, the problem is the judging you’re doing, if that makes sense. So I think right now, it’s just a matter of figuring out what you want as a person. And understanding that there’s going to be people out there that don’t like it. There’s going to be people out there that love it. Find those people that love it, find your tribe, and talk to them about it. And that’s how you get through the tough times. Like, I mean, we had 28 flips, and 12% dropped on every one of those. Like, it was like, Oh, crap, we’re in serious trouble. So what did we do? We started talking about a pivot. How do we figure this out? Do we need to Airbnb these do we need to owner finance some of these do we need to dump some of these and lose money, right? It’s the pivot that an entrepreneur will do because I’ve firmly believe there’s two types of people, there’s the people that are going to fight their way through it. And then there’s the people that are going to run. And you want to make sure that in your tribe, it’s the people that are going to hunker down and help you win. I think that’s the biggest thing is your tribe. And because you’re talking about a pivot, and as an entrepreneur, how do I find that? I think it’s talking to people, I think it’s being vulnerable about what you’re going through, right. Like, a lot of people are going to talk about money they lost in the middle of last year, I have no problem talking about it. Because that’s what that’s how I learned. And I found an amazing opportunity through the pivot.
Yeah, I mean, if that makes sense, I hope that’s No, it does. And, you know, you mentioned, I’ve picked up bits and pieces as we’ve had this conversation, as we’re wrapping up here. And you’ve talked about your tribe, you’ve mentioned tribal law, you’ve talked about the people that you spend time with, you talked about those mentors that you had, that you actually worked for, that weren’t the traditional mentor. And I see this a lot where people, they feel like they need to schedule this one on one session with a mentor. And the mentor just goes through this long lesson or whatever, when what they should be doing is one surrounding themselves, and figuring out how to surround themselves with really successful people, people that they want to be like, and to adding value to somebody that you want to mentor you. And not think of it as just a one way street, this person is my mentor, the only thing that passes is their information from me, and I don’t reciprocate. I think that’s the old way of doing things. I had somebody just recently reach out to me, and I’ve known him for probably 10 years or so haven’t heard from him for, you know, for maybe nine years reaches out to me tells me, you know, you want to discuss potential business ideas, which obviously, I’m going to be interested in. And then, you know, I find out that he wants to use my network to sell insurance to. And I was like, I was upset, and I was more upset for him. And I gave him some free advice that I taught that he is not taking to heart. And I told him, one don’t do the bait and switch. I called him out. I’m like, Dude, I thought you wanted to talk about some businesses. And he’s like, Well, yeah, I want to talk about my business. I literally got a text message, it’s always said, and two, I told him, I’m like, what do I get out of, you know, you accessing my network? What do I get out of it? Because what I’m going to have to do in order to allow you to access my network, is I’m gonna have to vet you, I’m going to have to vet what you’re offering, so that I don’t go to my network and say, Hey, listen to this guy. And it ends up being a bad move for them. So I think it’s really cool. And it’s kind of this underlying theme of our conversation is, you know, for the listener, correct. Take note of that take note of how he learned, he took every opportunity to learn, it didn’t have to be this formal setting. And there was value when he was talking about, you know, Tyler, when you were talking about the investors, those conversations, you were like, hey, you know, I found out a way to get another $75 a month out from this tenant raise rents like you were having the conversation where you were adding value to them. And then you slipped in that question. It wasn’t all about. And right now we’re kind of going through this era, where it like, to me it feels like it has to be all about the mentee. Exactly. And it’s like, find a way and I’ve talked about this before, find a way to add value to somebody correct, because what you’ll be doing is you’ll not just be learning, if you find a way to add value to somebody you will be learning and more importantly, you’ll be creating a relationship with somebody.
Exactly. I mean, do it’s that simple. Come genuine, the most genuine person, you know, and care about others. And then the third thing is what I’ve been working on so hard is coming out of curiosity. When someone asks me a question, I’m like, please tell me more. I want to know for me, I’m not judging you. I just want to know for me, why did you make that decision? What prompted it? Right? Just to understand how that person thinks, because then I can help that person, if I understand better how they think, if that makes sense.
No. 100% Well, that’s been awesome. Tyler, thanks for Yeah, take you where can people reach out to you if they have a question about investing in real estate if they’re, you know, interested in getting a real estate license, anything like that?
Sure. So I just give people my cell phone number. It’s 480-291-4478 my emails is listwithtyler@gmail.com and my Instagram handle is the Tyler Blair.
Love it.
Thanks so much for joining us today, man.
Hey, thank you. Appreciate it, guys. Appreciate it.
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