From Operations to Growth: Mastering Business with Thomas Talbert

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Show Summary

In this conversation, Thomas Talbert discusses his journey as a single-family property manager in Austin, Texas, focusing on growth, education, and the importance of providing value to clients. He shares insights on transitioning from operations to sales, the significance of continuous learning, and the need for accountability in management. Talbert emphasizes the importance of a servant mindset in business and the necessity of narrowing one’s focus to achieve success.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Austin Property Management Website
    • Prime Properties ATX Facebook
    • Thomas Talbert on LinkedIn
    • Prime Properties Austin’s Email Address: [email protected]
    • Thomas Talbert’s Phone: (512) 991-0337

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Thomas Talbert (00:00)
  the only way to sharpen the knife and to

  Also just be able to provide value. If you haven’t educated yourself, you’re not worth listening to.

  Quentin Edmonds (01:39)
  Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. And if you’ve been watching me, you know I’m gonna say. I’m excited to be here. I have another fantastic guest ⁓ that’s here that’s gonna tell us about what he do. And what I love about him is that he wants to provide value. That’s what he wanted to do for people. He wanted to provide value for people. He wants to educate people. And this is what he’s all about. And for me, that shows his service art.

  that he really want to serve the people that he come in contact with. And so I am so excited to introduce you guys to Mr. Thomas Talbert.

  How are you doing today? Welcome. How you feeling?

  Thomas Talbert (02:17)
  I’m doing fantastic, Quentin. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Or Q, I think is what you just said. Is that right?

  Quentin Edmonds (02:22)
  I’ll go by both. I’ll go Quentin and Q. So feel free, whichever one you want to call, I’ll answer the both. But yeah, man, so glad to have you here. And I’ll be honest, Thomas, I kind of just want to dive in. I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. If you want to give us a little bit of an origin story about how you got into real estate, we’d love that too. And then tell them what part of the world you’re in, what market you’re operating in. So I know I hit you with like three questions in one, but sir, you got the floor, man.

  Thomas Talbert (02:49)
  Well, good, I’ll try and go through them in order here. I am a single family property manager here in Austin, Texas. I got into real estate initially, but after it was during the pandemic, I graduated college and so I became a commercial real estate broker and was placing commercial tenants and commercial properties. ⁓ I have a goal of owning 100 real units by the time I’m 50. And when ⁓

  My father buys and sells companies for a living. A broker happened to approach him. A business broker approached him with a company like, Hey, there’s this property management company. Like, are you interested in my dad? I went no, but my son might. And it just seemed like a good avenue into trying to get to that 100 doors while I’m 50. So I took the leap and dove on it. And man, it’s been drinking from a fire hose ever since, but I’m starting to be able to come up for air now. What I’m focusing on.

  ⁓ here come 2026 is growth and education for me and for ⁓ everyone ⁓ hopefully that comes within your shot up.

  Quentin Edmonds (03:57)
  Yeah, yeah, I absolutely love it. Now, if you don’t mind telling us what part of the world you in, do mind telling us?

  Thomas Talbert (04:02)
  Yeah, I’m in Austin, Texas.

  Quentin Edmonds (04:04)
  Love it, love it. Awesome, Texas. Well, man, hats off to dad with the handoff. I mean, I absolutely love that dad said, listen, I may not be interested, but my son, and so that’s a beautiful handoff, beautiful intro into real estate. I would love to pick your brain a little bit about strategies, right? I would love to know some of the core business strategies that you use, but I also would love to know some core personal value, personal strategies that you use, you know.

  I know some people, they may meditate in the morning. They may read a lot of books. They may go for a new cold plunge. But I know sometimes there are core personal strategies that we use to ground us. So I would love to know about those and also core business strategies that you have found that help you along the way.

  Thomas Talbert (05:35)
  Of course. So man, to keep me focused on and on point, I read a ton of books. I mean, the little bookshelf behind me is that’s only what I have physically. If you were to take a look at my Spotify or my audio book, I mean, I think I probably read upwards of 40 books this year. There’s always more to learn and constantly educating yourself is

  the only way to sharpen the knife and to

  Also just be able to provide value. If you haven’t educated yourself, you’re not worth listening to.

  But man, what keeps me grounded, quite frankly, is getting in the Bible and also my wife. I can feel like a robot a lot of times thinking all about business operations and reading all these books. I come home with talking about revenue per unit and the, what’s my cack and all these crazy things. And then

  my wife and my relationship with God brings me back down the earth of like, okay, I’m not a robot. I’m the same person who can have other thoughts other than it’s kind of my alter ego. call them Mr. Business Pants is my alter ego where I’m way too focused on work and I can’t shut up about it. And then I transitioned into being a normal guy with all of those two.

  Quentin Edmonds (06:54)
  I love that. I love that. Any core business strategies that you use or is that the business strategy that you use or they kind of run it together, but are there any business strategies?

  Thomas Talbert (07:03)
  Man, no business strategies. But if we’re going into the books, I like to read a buy back your time is a book that I read and I take that a lot to heart. ⁓ You know, there are certain things as a business owner that I am innately better at doing. And this is a Batman quote. It’s not mine. But you got to be what the business needs, not what you want. And so there’s a lot of time. Like, for example, I’ve stepped away from the operations of the company recently.

  you know, doing the day in day out work, even though for several years focusing on that full time and nailing down our systems and processes was important. That’s not what my business needs now. And so I have, you know, bought back my time, hired someone to do the operations and I’m now focusing full time on sales so that I can grow the company where our operations are at a good place, our revenue and profits at a good place. It’s not perfect, but good enough is a motto.

  I like to go by and so bought back my time so I can focus on what the business needs, which is needs growth.

  Quentin Edmonds (08:06)
  Absolutely. Now, I appreciate you sharing ⁓ so many ⁓ parallel things that you said. You know, Spotify, my audio book, I’m with you. You know, I love to read. I’m just now getting back into actual physical books. Like I’ve been on audio and Spotify for so long, but now I’m like getting, you know, the actual book in my hand now, you know, back to reading that. And I’m with you, God and my wife.

  Definitely keep me grounded. So I definitely, definitely get you on that sir. And, ⁓ and talking about, you know, buying back your time, getting your time that, you know, for so many years, I leveraged my time, you know, I would work, work, work and get paid, you know, once now I’m trying to work once and get paid, get paid, get paid. And so I love that you’re talking about like, you know, buying back your time. think that is so important. So your core strategies really, really hit home for me. So I really, really thank you for sharing that. ⁓

  I want to ask, man, as you have built your company, built your business, built your processes, your systems, have you ran into any adversity? Like, you know, sometimes, you know, deals go sideways, we have to pivot fast. So as you was building, have you ran into any adverse times?

  Thomas Talbert (09:17)
  boy, have I. ⁓ You know, yes, and everyone runs into these little pitfalls. And I think the important thing in those situations is to own the outcome, be extremely accountable, regardless of what the situation is, even if it’s not you that physically did it. You know, I held a lot of resentment for a BDM, a sales guy that I hired initially because he just wasn’t doing it right. Well, I didn’t have a formal system in place.

  I barely had the strength to train him. And then I had hired this company to basically place him and train him a little bit. ⁓ my expectations were like, sweet, like I have delegated and elevated someone’s going to take care of that. And magically, boom, my company is going to grow.

  But that wasn’t the case. And it took a long stare in the mirror for me to realize of like, okay, he might not be a great fit, but that was also a poor management decision on my part.

  I can’t coach this person and help them improve, then I have no business having a sales function. Like if I can’t comment on it and be able to have my own system and just know what works, like that makes me a bad manager. So a lot of my struggles have been really figuring out where I have fallen short because I can’t train somebody and then obsessing.

  over whatever that is so I know about it and so when now I can train the next person on it. ⁓ You know, you don’t have to be perfect, but you got to know enough to be dangerous. And ⁓ that was really what I why I’m switching into the sales side of things is because I didn’t know a lot about it. And ⁓ if I’m going to train anyone to take to know to buy back my time at some point in the future and put some of my position, I better be able to.

  train them well and have, and that way I can actually have a good expectation of what I want them to do. Like they weren’t hitting their numbers and I was just like, make more calls. You know, it’s, it’s just not that simple. and, ⁓ that’s through any pitfall, always taking the blame on myself, regardless if it was me or someone else that actually happened to and going, okay, how could have I coach that better? Do I even know much about this?

  area of expertise. If I don’t, well, let’s read a book. Let’s listen to a podcast. You know, there’s different ways to educate yourself. I mean, you know, hiring the BDM, that BDM hires is one and then man the accounting, you know, I’ve had two accountants since I’ve started. again, part of that was like, I don’t know if I could have articulated to them exactly what I wanted. But I knew when I had to let them go, I was like, I know that’s not it.

  And yeah, I need to I need to educate myself on what my expectations should be.

  Quentin Edmonds (12:42)
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, man, I absolutely love it. I love how you use the word accountability. You know, holding yourself accountable is I’m be honest with you. Everybody can do that. And so I’m glad that you’re self aware enough to hold yourself accountable and really to confront whatever it is that’s in front of you. Like, hey, you know, I got to be better here. If I’m going to tell somebody how to do that job, I better know how to do it myself. And so and I love how you said no enough to be dangerous. I mean, I absolutely love that.

  put that down as a quote, no one up to be dangerous. And so I love everything you just said. I absolutely love. ⁓ Let me ask you, what do you feel like is the next real goal? Like, what are you looking to solve or scale next?

  Thomas Talbert (13:24)
  Man, in the business, I’m really looking to grow the company, it is, you don’t grow a company by not being able to serve other people. Having a servant mindset of, you know, educating my core audience. My core audience is people who own houses, who are either investors or become accidental landlords through one version of another. I need to be able to educate them on their current situation.

  And regardless if they use me or not to be able to say, are your options. This is what it’s going to cost. These are the things that you can do to mitigate risk. And if you want an exit strategy, these are the four or five things you should consider. I need to be able to articulate all that and educate more people and provide more value by giving more. The selfish part of that is you’ll receive more.

  but you gotta give first. You gotta give value first before you get anything in return. that’s gotta be the real, you have to just be okay with that. There’s, know, so that’s a long winded saying of I need to grow. ⁓

  Quentin Edmonds (14:36)
  And I think that was beautiful. And I think that was, it was said well, is that the next goal, if you want to grow, you got to educate yourself. And so I hear you loud and clear that you’re growing your education. Like, you know, that we, and I borrowed this from somebody, his name is Myron Golden, but he says, you know, we are human beings, not human doings. And so if you want to be, if you want to do more, you got to be more.

  I love how you talk about Growing your education that you grow in who you are you’re growing your capacity that way when you are more you can now do more because you have really changed your identity by the knowledge and the education that you wanted to yourself and so it’s like hey if I’m going to affect somebody else I’m going to educate somebody else. I’m educating me therefore I can educate you and therefore we can grow so I Love I love your approach. I think

  It’s phenomenal. Again, the education part that you talk about, that that’s a core value of yours. So I absolutely love it, Thomas. ⁓ Now you talk about educating people, connecting with people. So I want to get your opinion on relationships. How do you view relationships?

  Thomas Talbert (16:24)
  They’ve become increasingly more important to me as I’ve owned the business, know, like a ⁓ sad reality of focusing on operations. I mentioned to you in the green room, just of like just feeling like a robot of it is like, what is the most ⁓ efficient use of like efficient thing, efficient way to do something and just doing it.

  rather than what does a client want? What does someone actually want out of this process? And so sitting in a sales seat has been a very odd switch. Now I’ve been sitting in the operations mindset here recently of, what do I want as a company owner to just have operations run as smoothly and as profitably as possible? And then turning and then now that I’m sitting in the sales seat and really looking at my audience is what do they want?

  And that and there is a big difference in what I want and what and what an owner wants. And that’s really how I’m educating myself on ⁓ what I should be doing is getting those relationships with my core audience, meeting people. mean, I’ve been working Facebook and and ⁓ bigger pockets, which are big real estate platforms for us to be able to, you know, real estate people to be able to connect and

  educate each other and going to events and providing value and it’s and seriously not selling. Like the first thing about selling is don’t sell, just educate and people will start coming to you and building that relationship first without actually selling anything has become really important to me because then that’s when people will actually tell me an issue and I can, I might be able to solve or something or I go, huh.

  You know, that’s an interesting point, Mr. Ms. Property Owner. You know, I can actually build something to alleviate that. That’s how you get in touch with the market. It’s not asking for the sale and hearing, no, no, no, no. It’s building that relationship and being able for them to tell you what’s on their mind and what’s troubling them. And then that way you can potentially build a solution.

  Quentin Edmonds (18:37)
  Absolutely. Nope. I love it. I love it. Listen, is there anything else that hasn’t been said that you want to say? Like, did you come in here with maybe a thought, a thought that can motivate, educate, inspire somebody? Like, is there anything that has not been said up until now that you feel like our viewers could benefit from?

  Thomas Talbert (18:57)
  Man, ⁓ from something, it’s something a punk kid like me can inspire everyone on. You know, a core value of mine is just continuous education, of, ⁓ continuous education and narrowing down your niche, really. Narrowing down your niche in terms of the clients you service, but also realizing personally in yourself, like there’s only a handful of things you’re ever gonna get really good at.

  love the outdoors, I love hunting, I love fishing. Like if I’m not doing Mr. Business Pants related things, I’m usually focused on something like that, or I’m focused on God and working in my Bible. And there’s only, you know, that probably means I’m not going to be the best guitar player in the world or something that also interests me. But, you know, like there’s only so many things I want to be like, you can be really good at and you got a ⁓ lot, a lot of time for them. So

  Continuous education in, you know, niching down to what you actually want to be good at because in business and in life, you’re only ever going to be good at a handful of things. like just own that you might not be the best guitar player. You might not be the best, ⁓ whatever a bike rider, whatever the heck it may be. ⁓ but, but know what you really like and know what you want to get good at, narrow that focus and you will get.

  narrow that focus and educate yourself on it and you’ll get much faster and better results by doing.

  Quentin Edmonds (20:28)
  Absolutely man, I absolutely love I love the messaging that you are bringing. I love your consent consistent through line of education. I think you know the message that you gave our audience today is one that they really can grab a hold to it can really help them kind of move forward within their journey. And so thank you for giving people to meet for the journey man. Listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you connect with you collaborate with you learn more about what you’re doing.

  How can they get in contact with your son?

  Thomas Talbert (20:57)
  Of course they could connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, I’m fairly, or bigger pockets. I’m fairly active on all those platforms. My email is thomas, [email protected]. I apologize for the really long URL ⁓ and phone numbers 512-991-0337. I’d be happy to collaborate with anybody. And if for anything else, you know, everyone knows something I doubt and I’ll love connecting with people to.

  let them tell me something that I don’t know because it’s most conversations I learned something new.

  Quentin Edmonds (21:31)
  Absolutely. But there he is, sir. Thank you so much, Mr. Thomas. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your story. Definitely thank you for your perspective, the way you think. I think you’ve given just enough info, just enough nuggets that somebody possibly has had a mind shift and been able to grab a hold to something that you said that’s really going to help them again on their journey. So again, I thank you so much for being here today. Cheers.

  Thomas Talbert (21:54)
  Well, thanks,

  Q, for having me. I really appreciate it.

  Quentin Edmonds (21:56)
  Absolutely, absolutely. So listen, you can’t tell me you didn’t get the value. You’ve heard Mr. Thomas, you’ve heard him. He’s given value, added value to our platform, to your life, to your business. So all I ask you now is to subscribe. That way, when we keep bringing these incredible people up, just like Mr. Thomas, you can just come on in and get the value. So Mr. Thomas, I thank you again. And to everyone else, we will see you on the next time.