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Show Summary
In this episode, Brian Tibbs shares his journey in real estate, focusing on his unique advantages, niche strategies, and the challenges he faces in the market. He discusses the importance of building a strong support network, personal growth strategies, and overcoming adversity. Brian also outlines his future expansion plans and emphasizes the critical role of relationships in business. Additionally, he introduces his book and community initiatives aimed at helping aspiring investors.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Brian Tibbs (00:00)
I lived overseas for 16 years. I was a missionary.So we did church planting work. You mentioned that your dad was a pastor, so I can throw this in. ⁓ So we did church planting work all over South America. And so I had to grow my portfolio very slowly. It took forever because we didn’t have good income ⁓ and I was 5,000 miles away. So we’ve slowly built our portfolio. And I think that the best part of that adversity of being so far away is I was forced to build a team to do the work without me being there all the time.
Q Edmonds (02:05)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the real estate pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I am super excited to be with you today. Super excited about my guests. Listen, we have someone I listen, I’m gonna tell you what he said. This dude is done chasing squirrels, right? He’s done taking squirrels. And when we say that, I mean, he’s laser focused, right? He knows, he knows his niche. He’s buckled down and he’s mastered in.What he does, he has his skillset set in place and I love what he’s doing and I’m excited for him to tell you all about what he’s doing. So I would love to introduce you all to Mr. Brian Tibbs. Mr. Brian, how you doing today,
Brian Tibbs (02:46)
I am doing so well and so glad to be with you and your audience today. This is gonna be fun.Q Edmonds (02:51)
Yes, it is, sir, man. And thank you. I’m glad you’re here. I know our audience is going to take a ton of nuggets away from you. And so Brian, I’ll be honest, man. I want to dive in. I want you to tell us what your main focus is these days. Tell us what markets you’re operating in. And man, if you want to give us a little bit of an origin story about how you got started, man, we love origin stories. so Brian, the floor is yours,Brian Tibbs (03:16)
Cool. Well, I’ll tell you where I’m at today and then we can backtrack a little bit. But so today I own and operate 50 short-term rentals. We’re in the Boise, Idaho market and the Phoenix, Arizona market. We have one fun project that’s up in the mountains in Idaho as well. ⁓ But all of them are short-term rentals. And that’s kind of what you mentioned at the beginning, chasing squirrels. I just have the personality when I see something new and exciting, I want to go after it andand in the real estate market, you say, I’m investing in real estate. That could mean a thousand things. It took me a while to really figure out, I know how to do short-term rentals. I’m good at it. I know all the things that can go wrong because they have gone wrong. We’ve tried to figure out how to get past that. But now we’ve got our systems in place and more or less dialed in, always making improvements, but pretty much dialed in. That’s what we do. ⁓
busted up homes at a discount from wholesalers off market. we pay cash, we close in five days, 10 days, something like that. And then we send our crews in, we do a significant remodel, we tear everything out that’s outdated and make it brand new the way we want it. And that’s kind of part of the, it’s not just how to build equity, but it’s how to make a short-term rental that’s going to work for what our customers want, right? ⁓
I just feel bad about buying a house that’s like in good shape and tearing out the tile that’s 10 years old and putting in new tile. I just don’t like that. So I feel more comfortable tearing stuff out from the eighties and updating it. So that’s what we do. ⁓ And then we have our own management company. We only manage the properties that we own. ⁓ Where I came from, I grew up in a family. My dad had his own small business, but there wasn’t really any real estate investment.
But I remember overhearing a conversation between my dad and my grandpa about buying a duplex. And I thought, why in the world would you want to do that? You got to pay the bank. What if they don’t pay their rent? What if you can’t find a tenant? What if they call you at 11 o’clock at night to go unplug a toilet? I thought, this is crazy. And they walked me through how they were going to make like a $10,000 investment. And over the course of 10 years or 15 years, that was going to turn into 30 or 40 or $50,000.
And I was like, ⁓ that’s, and they’re going to hire a management company. They’re not going to unclog toilets. And so, was like 17. I was like, okay, that’s what I’m going to do. So in college, when I moved out of the dorms, I had to go find a place to live. I didn’t want to pay rent. I didn’t want to lose rent forever. And I didn’t have enough income to support a mortgage of my own. So I bought a duplex. I was 19. I bought a duplex and I lived in one side. I rented out the other.
put roommates on my side and almost covered my living costs, right? So now we call that a house hack. ⁓ So that’s how I started. And I just said, okay, well, I’m gonna keep doing this and just kept buying more and more units and today we have 50. So that’s the origin story.
Q Edmonds (07:09)
Man, I love it. So, know, so that kind of me what he was talking about a little bit, huh? Yeah, man, that’s the beauty of growing. That’s the beauty of going from a young man to a more adult man. Right. Like we get over the ignorance that we just don’t know, because ignorance is just the things you don’t know. But once that knowledge click, you like, oh, yeah, I see it. That makes all the sense in the world. Right. And so, yeah, I love it. So.Brian Tibbs (07:15)
I didn’t want to admit it, but he did, y’all.Q Edmonds (07:38)
So Brian, wanna ask you, man, I wanna pick your brain on the strategies that you use. And I would love if you don’t mind to answer it two ways. I would love business strategies that you use, that you feel like are really helpful for you. But I would also like to know about some personal strategies. And when I say that, some people have meditation in the morning, some people go to the gym, but I’m realizing with entrepreneurs, they’re too tied together. Your personal strategies and your business strategies.kind of almost go hand in hand. So yeah, I would love to hear some strategies from you,
Brian Tibbs (08:10)
Ah, that’s a really good question. And that’s a, that’s a unique question. haven’t received a question quite like that. I love it. love this question. business strategies, just cold hard business strategies. So our team now we have, I think 13 or 14 people on staff and that’s managing all the properties, right? Taking care of our guests, maintenance crews, cleaning crews, that kind of stuff. And we run EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system from the book traction.Q Edmonds (08:32)
Yeah.Brian Tibbs (08:40)
So that’s our strategy on how to keep everybody aligned, have everybody has a goal every quarter. They receive bonus based on if they get their quarterly goals accomplished, that kind of stuff. So that’s kind of real cold practical strategy on the business side. On the personal side, every morning, religiously, I go to the gym. ⁓ I’m a CrossFitter, so I go and I destroy myself for an hour and then I feel tired for the rest of the day. I mean, that’s basically the… So I do that and I…Q Edmonds (09:06)
Yeah.Brian Tibbs (09:09)
I, if days I don’t do that, feel sluggish. feel like I’ve cheated myself. So I try to go every day of the week to get that started. ⁓ I come from a ⁓ Christian family as well. And so we, we like to take Saturdays or Sundays rather as like no screens, no phones, no technology. Go to church in the morning, play games as a family, read, you know, old school, a physical book with paper, you know. ⁓And I found that, I mean, I kind of maybe was like, we did that so that our kids would have good habits, but now it’s my favorite day of the week. ⁓ just that day where I don’t have text messages blasting me. And I’d tell you, that’s probably the most important strategic thing that we do to reset the week, right. ⁓ be able to hit it, hit it on Monday with full energy. And so I would say those are kind of the main strategies. Now, also I have a rhythm where, along with the company,
Every quarter we set goals. Everybody has their own goals. I set my own goals. We set company goals. And then I have an accountability group that I meet every week on Friday and we hold each other accountable. Did you do anything to get towards your goal for the quarter kind of a thing? And so I would say that mix of stuff is really the strategy that we’ve, and I’m still tweaking it now and then, but it really pretty much works well for me.
Q Edmonds (11:04)
Yeah, man, listen, I so thank you for sharing. Like I am learning and I talk to people, everybody, successful people have something that grounds them. Like has something like when you in the business, you you’re grinding, you’re doing your thing. But there is a routine that brings you back and grounds you and makes you realize what’s my why. I always say, well, you know who you are, you know what to do. You could put a person in any situation.When they know who they are, they know what to do. so just listening to you talk about those personal strategies, lets me know, listen, I know who I am. And when I know who I am, I can stop chasing squirrels, right? I can start understanding who I am. And that it directly ties to the way we do business. And so, man, I appreciate you sharing. I really, did. Really, really did.
Brian Tibbs (11:53)
Thank you. love that question. That’s such a good, and I hope people listening are encouraged by that. And, you know, and people might be listening, thinking, yeah, I don’t want to unclog toilets at 11 PM. And those are the, those are the things that we all think about. But if we can deploy these strategies of staying grounded, staying healthy physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, then you have the, everybody has the ability to solve the unclog the toilet problem.Don’t let that be a deterrence to get started, to get going, right? I haven’t unclogged a toilet in decades. And nor should I, or I can’t continue to grow my business. I need to find other people who strangely enough enjoy that kind of a thing and let them do it.
Q Edmonds (12:41)
man, am so not to detour is too much. And I really wrote that down, solve the unclogged the toilet problem. I wrote that down. So my dad is a pastor. He’s been pastoring for a man 40 plus years at this point. And when he first started out, me and him would be cleaning and unclogging the toilets. And he told me, he said, said, we can’t expect anybody to do somethingBrian Tibbs (12:56)
Okay.You bet.
Q Edmonds (13:10)
that we’re not going to do. Sure. And so I hear you like unsolving the unclogged, the toilet problem is first understanding that you’re not too big to do it. That’s that’s just started there and having that mentality that, hey, if you’re going to build a good ecosystem of people, I mean, hey, you got 14 people on your staff. If you want to build a good ecosystem of people, I got to know what they do. I have to put myself in an empathetic place to understand.what I’m asking them to do and understand, hey, I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I’m not too big to do it, but hey, this is your responsibility now. And one day you’ll pass on the responsibility to somebody else. But right now we all have to solve the unclogged the toilet problem. many great stuff. Yeah.
Brian Tibbs (13:53)
That’s yeah.And I’ve done every job. I think that’s accurate. I’ve done every job that’s in my business so that I know when people are blowing smoke or when they’re being honest, you know? ⁓ so, but, so it is important. It’s, important not to be too big to do those tasks, but it’s also important to have the wisdom to know when it’s time to pass it off to somebody else so that you can grow the company, which is better for everybody on the team.
Q Edmonds (14:20)
Yes, sir. Every successful person I talked to said you had to delegate to elevate. You have to delegate to elevate. And so we’re going to elevate the business. We got to put some delegation in place. So I love that, I’m trying to see where I want to go next. I think I’m going to ask you because I love the way you think. And I want you to help our audience know that there’s a journey to success. We talked about unclogged toilet problem. Have you faced any adversity?why you were building, you know, because there’s people on different parts of their journey and somebody may just be stuck and they may be in something that they never seen coming, blindsided them, something got real. And I just want to hear from you. Have you ever faced some adversity as you were building?
Brian Tibbs (15:48)
Yeah, a percent. Couple big things come to mind. Probably the most recent one was COVID. When in March of 2020, when it hit, you know, our calendar went from 80, 90 % full to 10 % full in a week. That week where they started shutting down embassies and, and, know, everything was going on fire and everything’s, everything’s over, right? Everybody canceled their vacation plans because we’re, you know, nobody knows what’s going to happen.And I was terrified, like, how am going to pay all these mortgages? ⁓ So I started, so that’s when I heard about loan forbearance. So I’m calling the banks and figuring all that out. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do that because things kind of turned around quick enough that I didn’t have to default on anything. But man, I was seriously, I was very concerned. In fact, I, I sold a couple of buildings that, that I was nervous about. ⁓ I wish I still had them now because they’ve doubled or tripled in value since then.
⁓ But yeah, that was a scary time. And if you had real estate during that time, I mean, and there was like, couldn’t evict people. And so, you know, it was a scary time to be in real estate. It turned out okay because we had such crazy appreciation. But I would say another adversity thing is maybe self-imposed. Another part of my story I haven’t even mentioned yet.
I lived overseas for 16 years. I was a missionary.
So we did church planting work. You mentioned that your dad was a pastor, so I can throw this in. ⁓ So we did church planting work all over South America. And so I had to grow my portfolio very slowly. It took forever because we didn’t have good income ⁓ and I was 5,000 miles away. So we’ve slowly built our portfolio. And I think that the best part of that adversity of being so far away is I was forced to build a team to do the work without me being there all the time.
Q Edmonds (17:43)
Yeah.Brian Tibbs (17:44)
cause if I was there, I would have had the tendency to micromanage everything and probably wouldn’t have been able to grow. So I would say that was the positive side of the adversity of being so far away from the team and the slow, the slow growth is better probably too, especially when you’re young and learning. So.Q Edmonds (18:01)
Yeah, man. So, man, you just said something that is a book right now that has me in a chokehold. A book by Mark Batterson. You might have heard of Mark Batterson. He’s a pastor. Well, he’s a pastor in D.C. He’s a national bestseller. He has a book called Gradually, Then Suddenly. I love that. Yup. says success happens two ways. Gradually, then suddenly. Yeah. And bro, that’s what you just said. guess the slow growth.This is where you get all the nutrients. This is where you get the foundations for your business. This is where you learn your self-awareness, who you are. This is where you set your standards and that gradual growth leads to suddenly like when things spark, they spark suddenly, but they spark and really because things have been gradually working. You know what I mean? And so, so yeah, what you said makes total sense, brother. So listen, Brian, you got to tell me, man, what’s the next goal for you, sir?
What are you looking to solve at scale next?
Brian Tibbs (19:00)
Yeah, so we are wanting to expand our portfolio that’s now at 50. We want to expand the 90 units and we want to have those across the Idaho and the Arizona markets. Once we get that done, then we want to add a Northeast market. Maybe we’ll go to Baltimore. I don’t know. We’ll have to study the market. And then a Southeast market as well. I kind of have the Northwest and the Southwest. Then we want to go Northeast and Southeast to have diversity of markets, diversity ofcultures and diversity of climates. know, like here in Arizona, if we have extremely hot summer, we’re going to struggle. In the Southeast, you have a hurricane, you might struggle, but if we’ve got property all over the country, then we’re probably going to do okay every year, is the thinking. And then just the bigger you get, the more high quality professionals you can afford to have on your team, ⁓ which that’s what we want to do. We really want to be a professional operation in the short-term realm space.
Q Edmonds (19:56)
Hmmman, I absolutely love it man. I do your eyes are on the prize You’re growing gradually. I like how you talk about your staff how you talk about the unclogged You know toilet problem. So I want to talk a little bit about relationships It seems to me that relationships are important to you It seems that you value relationships and so I would love to know, you know, how has relationships made a big difference for you?
Brian Tibbs (20:25)
Yeah, I mean, anybody who can’t learn to value relationships, you know, even if you’re not naturally inclined to that, you’re just going to struggle. Because even if you’re a solopreneur, if you’re the only person in your company, you got vendors, right? You got banks you’re dealing with, you got buyers and sellers, you got tenants. I mean, you have to be able to do that. And I’m not I’m not ⁓ going to say I’m the best in the world at at at relationships. But yeah, they’re critical. I mean, they’re absolutely critical.And, we were talking a little bit earlier about an accountability group that I, and those relationships for me are super important because they can tell me, they can tell me things that maybe I don’t want to hear or that I don’t even see, you know, these blind spots that I have and they can call me out and they know that it’s a safe place to do it because I can also do it to them. And that just that iron sharpens iron, I think is one of the most critical parts of relationships. And so if you can find somebody where that’s safe to do, wow, that’s powerful.
Q Edmonds (21:26)
Yeah, yeah. You know that that word accountability, you know, when I hear people drop that word accountability group, accountability, brothers, accountability partners, I know what that anchor is, right? Because a lot of people don’t talk like that, right? Accountability means you’re literally giving people permission to hold accountable, like you’re giving them permission. Like I will submit, hold me accountable to the things because like you said, there’s there’s trust built. And you said, like you said, you know,⁓ orange sharpens iron. I love the, ⁓ the AMPC version of that. says orange sharpens iron through discussions. That’s how we’re having to have those honest discussions. And so I love the way, man, you talk about relationships, building relationships, having people that hold you accountable. And I hope people are getting some nuggets from that and realize just how vitally important and how that could just change your perspective.
when you submit yourself to people that have your best interests at heart, that want to work with you, that want to build community with you, that want you to win. You know, sometimes you got to be able to sit back and just let people just tell you, hey, this, this is what we need to do, or this is how we need to adjust. And so I love that, man. I love that for you. Brian, sir, time has been well spent, man. I feel like I can talk to you for hours if I’m being honest. probably could.
find at least five other questions I probably could ask you sir. But listen man, before we wrap, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing, you have any other things that you’re doing and how can they get in contact with you sir?
Brian Tibbs (23:07)
I wrote a book through my whole experience that talks about my time overseas and building a portfolio and finding financial independence and the fire concept. I hadn’t heard of that until recently, but the fire concept of early financial independence. ⁓ I wrote a book about how I did it and I did it on really limited income. ⁓ Then I started an investor community of young budding investors. If they want advice oraccountability or tools and tactics and tricks. So it’s called the unexpected investor. find me at unexpected investor.com or on all the social media at unexpected investor.
book is the hacker method and every letter is a step that I took to build wealth on limited income. You can get this on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or wherever.
Q Edmonds (24:03)
Man, I love it. Thanks for holding the book up, man. That’s brilliant. I love the cover, man. And I love that every every letter is a step, man. Yeah.Brian Tibbs (24:12)
thatprocess. ⁓ CK is one step. So there’s six letters, there’s five. And so everybody can, can mental mentally understand the steps. They’re not hard. They’re, they’re, they’re, it takes discipline and execution, but they’re all of it’s all simple. There’s nothing rocket science in there.
Q Edmonds (24:18)
I got you. Yeah.Absolutely, Brian man. Thank you so much. This has been time well spent my friend. Thank you so much, man Man, it was it was a pleasure for me. Listen, thank you for your story. Thank you for your time and bro. Most of all Thank you for your perspective. I believe talking to people like you it shifts people mindsets, right? Like and and I love that man. So I really thank you for being a part today
Brian Tibbs (24:56)
You bet. Thanks for the invitation. Love being here.Q Edmonds (24:59)
Absolutely. Well, listen y’all heard Mr. Brian you got the nuggets He’s putting you on to it to his book there so you can dive deeper into the hacking hacker method Listen, go ahead. Definitely check out Mr. Brian, but definitely make sure you are subscribed here I keep telling you we’re gonna bring up and keep bringing up amazing guests just like Mr. Brian So you want to make sure that you’re here want to make sure that you’re subscribed and so Mr. Brian I thank you again and to everyone elseWe’ll see you on the next time.
