Welcome to “Tarl's Weekly Insights," my take on real estate today. 

Hey there,

Welcome to Tarl’s Weekly Insights, my take on real estate today.

In these newsletters, we'll dive deep into the real estate world, share valuable investment strategies, and explore the craziness that life has thrown my way. Whether it's my struggle and journey of overcoming flipping, deciphering the insanity of the market, successful strategies being used in REI, or just me making fun of social media real estate investors.

I can't wait to share it all with you...

Join me in Austin Texas March 8th and 9th, along with other addicted house flippers and recovering house flippers. I am hosting a workshop and meetup with our group Flippers Anonymous.

The First Step to Scaling and Systemizing Your Real Estate Investment Business

Over the years I have been asked by many investors how to systemize and scale a real estate business. Specifically, how to systemize one that allows the owner to have more freedom in their lives and not be constantly involved in every aspect of the business.

When I ask the question though "What is your number one challenge in your business right now?" More often than not I get responses like:

• "There aren't enough deals out there" and/or "I can't find any good deals"
• "Money is so hard to get right now" and/or "capital constraints"
• "I can't find any good people (or the right people) to join my team"
• "Contractors and rehab require so much of my time" and/or "all contractors suck..."
• "I can't get out of my business...I am needed everywhere...I am the only one that can do X..."

No matter the answer, I have found that it's never the real root cause of their business challenges. The answer most people give tends to be whatever the loudest problem is that is in their face constantly, or gives them the most stress. Sure, we can solve each and every one of these problems, but typically we are just curing the symptom of a greater root cause.

In order to start scaling and systemizing a real estate business, especially one that doesn't create a prison for the owner (it sucks your freedom away, instead of creating more freedom), we have to go back to the foundation and start from the beginning. I personally believe there are SIX (6) stages of a typical investment real estate business that you need to systemize in order to truly grow and scale the business.

These six stages (in order) are:

1. Business Strategy
2. Acquisitions
3. Funding and Transaction Coordination
4. Planning
5. Rehab/Construction
6. Stabilization/Disposition

There are plenty of subcategories and niches for each one of these stages you can add, BUT all investment real estate businesses that succeed at scale MUST process out these six stages in order to thrive long term.

Throughout all my years though, I have found that MOST investors gloss over and/or skip altogether the FOUNDATION of the entire business, and that's the "Business Strategy" stage.

Taking the time to build out the purpose, vision, and strategy of YOUR business creates a strong map and guide to build your business with.

Many of us wake up one day and decide to get into real estate. We want more money, more freedom, extra retirement funds, a place to put capital, to quit our job, whatever! So many reasons to start, yet most of us just start DOING the business without a real plan for our direction. If we are lucky, one day we wake up and we have achieved some success in real estate, yet it is not really what we wanted for some reason...

In order to start scaling and systemizing your business, I believe the first step is sitting down and answering some questions about what YOU WANT PERSONALLY from the business as well as your involvement in it.

Here are some questions to start with when planning out your business strategy, these questions are ALL ABOUT YOU:

• Will I be Active and/or Passive in this business?
• Will I be an Operator and/or Investor only?
• What does winning look like to me?
• Why am I doing this? What's The end goal?
• What is my risk tolerance?
• What will I do personally in this business?
• What will I not do personally in this business?
• What am I best at?

These are just a few questions to start with, there are SO many more when it comes to the actual business structure (such as buy box, geography, acquisitions process, staffing, tech, etc etc etc) yet none of those questions really matter unless you first know what YOU want out of the business and your involvement in it.

Answering these personal questions also SET RULES for yourself from day one.

To give you an example, when I ask myself the question "What will I not do personally in this business" in regard to my real estate business. One of my answers is "I will NEVER NEED to EVER drive a property and physically need to be at a property." What does this do for my business strategy if I make this hard rule for myself? It FORCES me to think differently and create processes and teams that allow me to NEVER go to a property. It's simple, if the answer to a problem in the business is "Tarl needs to go to the property" then the answer is WRONG! It forces us to start coming up with systems and processes that allow me to never be at a property.

I can write books on this (maybe one day I will but highly doubt it)...for now though, take a step back and re-look at your business today. Think about WHAT YOU WANT from your business, what rules do you need to begin to put in place for yourself? If you already have a business, changing it overnight will be a challenge and you will have to work towards making changes in order to accommodate new your personal rules/role in the company. If you are just starting, great! Start correctly and your future self will thank you.

Let's stay connected! Find me on social media at @tarlyarber and stay updated with additional videos and content.

That's it for this edition of Tarl's Weekly Insights! Stay tuned for more each week!

Talk Soon,

Tarl Yarber