North Star Leaders Podcast

Lindsay Pedersen

The world needs what only your business can bring, and as a leader, it's your job to deliver.

But where do you focus? Where do you direct your time, your team, your budget, and your emotional energy?

We're learning this together on the North Star Leaders Podcast. In this podcast, I talk to purpose-driven leaders about the choices that they make to create audacious economic value while also realizing their distinctive purpose. I'm Lindsay Peterson, brand strategist, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand, and host of the North Star Leaders Podcast. Let's get to it.

Today, I am so happy to be joined by Tushar Garg. Tushar is CEO of Flyhomes, the online real estate platform.

Tushar, welcome to the show.

Tushar Garg

Lindsay, it's good to be with you on the podcast.

Lindsay Pedersen

I'm really glad to have you. What is your favorite thing about what you do?

Tushar Garg

The favorite thing of what I do is that I think home buying is so central to us as humans, and being able to bring solutions that make it easy and much more friction-free, and see the impact of that in a ton of families is very meaningful. We've done that in Seattle for a long time, and every neighborhood now has a story. So every time I drive around, just connecting with those stories is what really gives me a lot of joy.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love how you said that, that buying a home, acquiring a home is a very human thing. Say more about that and the empathetic insight behind Flyhomes.

Tushar Garg

The journey of Flyhomes, I didn't know before I got into this industry that I've learned since a lot of people came into the home buying industry, whatever job they might be doing, from different walks of life. I think we all know how important a home is to each one of us. It's a place that becomes a center point for how people lead their lives.

Family, the culture, also a really great vehicle for investment, both from a diversification standpoint, and a lot of people end up building their wealth through home ownership. So I think everybody understands home buying is super critical, but I never knew that I would be in this area or that would become the mission of my life. I had met my co-founder while doing my MBA at Kellogg, and we started out by trying to simplify the way people, simplify the information around home buying.

We had gotten a license to be a real estate brokerage just so that we can do fun things with the data. At that point, I ended up helping my former boss at Microsoft who was going through a big life situation to help buy a house. It was one of those spontaneous things. Then I thought I'll help 10 families buy a home and got my own real estate license and sort of stepped into that. That sort of really helped me understand what it meant for each person, how many parties were involved in the process. It's one of the largest decisions people make in their lives, both the sellers and the buyers.

So how do you understand what those friction points are, what those pain points are, and solve for those and make them easier?

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. I've heard you talk in other contexts about risk and about our relationship with risk as human beings, that oftentimes our fear is larger than the actual risk, and it's important to separate your fear from that actual risk. You've talked about this when encouraging entrepreneurship.

I'd love to hear more about how you think of risk and how that's informed the way that you make decisions as a leader and as an entrepreneur as well.

Tushar Garg

Thank you for referencing that. As we all go on this journey of entrepreneurship and reflect back on sort of what the driving forces were, some things become more clear in the rear view window than sort of looking ahead. I'll give sort of two answers to this.

One side of this was in the Fly Home's journey, when we were representing the homebuyers and working with the agents on the other side of listing agents initially and sellers, we realized that there's a lot of stake for the seller when they're selling a home. Something has come up in their lives, either they have found a dream home that they want to go buy that's dependent on this home, they're either moving and relocating to another place, sometimes they're acting like death and divorce they're dealing with, that they want to make sure that the home that they're selling is actually going to close. Certainly, speed of closing sort of became a big part of what sellers value in the transaction process.

And the big insight that we found was the buyers had to get financing and they sometimes had a 5% down, 10% down and they were competing with cash buyers. So when a seller were evaluating different offers, if they had a perfectly a cash offer that is going to close in 10 days versus a perfectly well-qualified finance buyer that might take 30 days but has the rest of appraisal or something going on with financial contingencies, sellers would invariably choose the cash offer over price. So what that meant was that the market was actually inefficient.

The sellers had a big fear around something going wrong and that fear was actually totally justified. They had no way to quantify what the actual risk is. So maybe only 5% of the buyers are going to fail, but if the buyer does fail, that can jeopardize the whole sale of the home, that might mean that they can't buy the other home, that might mean that the home gets stigmatized now and the buyers would be like, oh, what happened?

The home came back on the market, so now the buyer's fear centers are working. But we knew who the buyers were, we could do preparation with them upfront, make sure that they can actually get the long-term financing. So we as a company who was working with the buyers directly had a lot more ability to actually work off the risk and not off the fear.

So fundamentally, the idea of cash offer was that this information asymmetry and the stakes that are involved for the centers and the buyers just make the decision-making become much more inefficient and thereby makes it a non-level playing field for the buyers with cash offers. But we know how to go operate off risk and actually reduce the risk by having really good systems and processes. So that's when we came up with the idea of making every buyer be a cash buyer.

But to return it into a credit card swipe for real estate, where if I'm going to buy goods at Walmart, they're not checking, you have the money or not, how much financing do you have?

So in our minds, the sellers and listing agents, by giving them the certainty of closing, we give the buyers the power to win the home. And it's been really meaningful to see people win in that context.

So that is the first iteration of a product and journey, where the understanding of the fear versus risk was core to it. That became even more pronounced in a situation when people want to buy the next home while living in the current home. Now they need proceeds from this current home in order to be able to buy the next home.

So many people would put a contingent offer on the sale of the current home. Now in any market, that's not good. But in a competitive market, where sellers have multiple options, there's almost no chance that they'll take the contingent offer.

And it's just a lot of stress for everybody over a long period of time. So we said, look, we know who our buyers are. We know what the house is going to sell for.

Let's assume a conservative price. And based on that, we qualify the buyers to be able to buy the next home. And now we can front the cash to help them buy the next home before they sell the current home.

So that's the craft of the fear and risk understanding for how we came up with these financial products. And this has become now a category called power buying. And it's fundamentally changed the way the transaction process can work.

And I could talk about how we're putting it in the hands of lots and lots of customers now.

That's the one side of the journey of getting the products from this perspective. I'm also happy to speak to you on the second side, which is as you're creating these products, or you're even choosing to go down the path of entrepreneurship, every founder is having to think about what is their own fear and risk and how to sort of balance that.

So perhaps Dempsey, you're looking at that side of the questions as well. I would love it if you did. Yeah.

So I think the reason I connected the dots there, one is the whole fundamental products have been based on the idea of fear and risk. And then as an entity, we have the ability to evaluate the risk and reduce it. As I was creating those products for everybody else, I had a chance to reflect back on my own decision-making of how I chose a path to be an entrepreneur.

There's no question that the entrepreneurship path comes with risks and the fears are real.

So when I became an entrepreneur, I was a first generation immigrant. I'd spent some years at Microsoft, but then went and did my MBA and used a lot of my savings towards that.

And I had one daughter who was about one year old, and I left my job at McKinsey to basically become a realtor who helped clients buy houses, pre-funded company at that point, very little sort of pre-seed capital that we got as an MBA student, but beyond that, no major financing. So how did I go about making that decision? And it's a thing that I've reflected on later.

So the way I've thought about it is there's two ways you can handle it. One, I've certainly seen a set of entrepreneurs who don't think about the downside or don't see the downside, and they just shoot for the upside. And I think that's a very good thing as well.

But the way I've always looked at it is if I could understand or at least think through what my downside is, and then reconcile with that situation, say, look, I understand what the downside is, and I'm willing to actually accept that, it just frees you up to then shoot for the upside and sort of create and allows you to have the holding bar because there'll invariably be a bunch of stepbacks in your journey. So in my case, specifically, my wife worked for University of Washington in the administration.

Her salary was enough to sort of pay the bills. We had actually bought a house before I left Microsoft. It was a daylight rambler, and we had a two-bedroom unit downstairs that we could rent out that sort of paid for part of the mortgage.

And also, we were in Bellevue at that point, which had a really great public school district. So Chris and I had to have a conscious conversation around if Brahms did not work out, for the next two years, are we okay with that? And the answer for us was very clear.

My heart was in it. I was enjoying every day getting up and doing what I was doing and being with the customers and solving these problems and coming up with new products. So let's just go for it. And we know that if it didn't work out, there will always be an opportunity. We learned a lot along the way, and we can run a household and the kids can go to school. And that's kind of what I cared about.

And that was it. So that really freed me up to be able to go all in, in terms of which part to go pursue. So it's going to be different for everybody.

And I think I encourage the founders to think about what happens if things don't work out.

And once you reconcile with it, I think it just sort of really sets you up to be able to go pursue the journey upon the question.

Lindsay Pedersen

And I love how you use the phrase, frees you up. The idea of the freedom that is at the other side of evaluating that risk with a really cool, stare it in the face, and kind of like the monster under the bed. And then you look and it's actually not really a monster.

It's not completely harmless, but it's not a monster. And by coming to terms with it, almost physiologically getting used to the idea that that might happen, then you actually have this freedom to go for the upside. Or to say, I actually know that risk.

It is a monster or what have you, because you've done a cold calculation. You can actually authentically evaluate that. There's something so powerful and also brave.

It's scary to look at. I don't know why I'm using this monster under the bed analogy, but sometimes you'd rather not look at it and just stay somewhere that at least feels safe. So I think there's something really inspiring about that.

And also very honest. You're not encouraging people to ignore risk or just embrace bravado. In a way, that's kind of coming from the same source as the fear.

You're saying, just look at it with honesty, and then there's a prize at the other end of that.

Tushar Garg

Well said. And I think maybe the monster analogy, I've never thought of it in those terms per se. But in my mind, if you don't see it, then it becomes like a monster in your head. It takes more space than it needs to go take, because often the downside is not that bad and you're actually okay with it. But if you haven't really thought to the downside, it's hard to fully shoot for the upside. And in this journey, I've had a privilege of knowing many entrepreneurs at different, and a lot of them at a fairly deep level and seen their journeys.

I found that there are definitely some entrepreneurs where it doesn't benefit them to necessarily think about the downside. They just shoot for the upside. They're going for it.

And I think it's wonderful if you have that state, but for most other people, I find that if they don't reconcile with it, then it's harder for them to go take the best that they want to go take.

And many people think that all entrepreneurs will need to have the bravado. I find that most entrepreneurs, they want to create a lot of big things in the world, and that's the driving force to them.

But a lot of them are also very nervous about things going wrong. And there's enough of those things to worry about in your business itself, versus having to worry about at a personal level, so you can put all your focus into what you're building and your customers, that I have found this method to be really helpful. And then just having little checkpoints.

I lift my head over in two years and see what's happening. And if something is popping up, if you feel like you're getting, let's continue the monster analogy that this monster is trying to take space in your head, then going back to the same framework of saying, okay, let me reconcile what are the fears that are popping up, make sure I put pen to paper, think through them, and then take the next step forward.

I think it's an important part of the resilience process that I think is also just so core to entrepreneurship and building something big.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love the boundaries idea of two years, X amount of money in the savings account, whatever those boundaries are. I love having something external like that, so that it's almost like a way of combating the cognitive fallacy of overemphasizing risk is to have something external that kind of keeps it like, oh, I haven't gotten to the two-year mark. I told myself at six months, I would think about this. It's only been four months. So I'm going to wait. It's like a way of helping you regulate your nervous system to kind of keep coming back to that.

Tushar Garg

There's a lot of research around this. This is all for me, more of my own experience, but fear is a very dominant emotion and it can really become penalizing in many different ways. So just making it less dominant, just putting different checkpoints, I found it to be very worthwhile.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love the phrase you use of make fear a little bit less dominant. It's not like squash your fear or be fearless. It's like fear is always going to be there.

Can it not always be in the driver's seat? Or can we just kind of like turn down that voice to the wise level of volume?

Tushar Garg

Yeah, I don't know.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love that. What are you working on as a leader right now? What's your leadership growth edge?

Tushar Garg

I think for most folks, particularly like the high growth setup, the company is totally different.

The environment is totally different. Customer problems, the landscape evolves.

So there's a few things that you want to keep at the core. So we have figured out some amazing products that make a difference to thousands of people's lives. We've had an opportunity to serve thousands of families, buy homes, level the playing field, up level.

So from a product market standpoint, we've spent many years building that. We had also scaled the company a lot, which we had to pull back when we had the interest rates go up, our customer acquisitions cost became quite difficult. But one thing we've realized is in that process, that a much more efficient distribution of your products, like once you've created amazing products, you know, they solve a real meaningful problem.

Then really figuring out distribution is a key. So with Flyhomes last year, we realized that we have all of these amazing products, but we were serving them only to the clients who were working with Flyhomes sort of end to end. And that meant that we were constrained the number of markets we could operate, the customers we can offer it.

So we said, why don't we actually put our financial products where everybody could be a cash buyer and everybody can buy the next home before they sell their current home, which is super valuable. Like, you know, you can move once, you don't lose the home that just kind of came on your neighborhood because you weren't prepared to go get it. You get a great offer in the house and get accepted.

So all those advantages that we understand, but instead of keeping it only to our people, we wanted to put this in the hands of industry experts who are having these conversations with their clients, relationships everywhere. So we found that the loan officers were a phenomenal channel and we plugged behind them and said, Hey folks, you're working with your realtors. You're working with your clients.

These are great products that are effectively a credit card swipe for real estate, helping you solve that intermediate problem of financing till the other house is sold, you know, or you can go get your long-term financing. Let's have you have the access. So my big focus now is the next phase has been around distributing our products in a much more scalable way.

And the way I reconcile with sort of what we've been building is that we have come up with great, awesome products. It is our duty to get them in the hands of as many customers as possible and empower the people who are doing that with the customers to be able to bring those great products to them.

Lindsay Pedersen

And what are the things that you do as a leader, as a person to fill your cup, to build your capacity like on a daily or weekly basis? What do you do so that you can really bring all of this intellectual and physical energy to leading fly homes?

Tushar Garg

It's a great question. I think, and many of the founders would resonate with it. You've all gone through lots of different highs and lows.

So there are moments where you're in total war zone, you know, and you have to be a wartime CEO, you know, wanting to go survive. And there are moments where it's more stable and you found the right thing and you want to go fulfill that. And I think the way you handle those two zones have to be different and you have to consciously change yourself.

And I have, with sort of what happened with corporate, many companies were sort of dealing with it. Now it looks super rare view mirror. Then you have, of course, interest rate cycles impacted a lot of companies.

So in my mind, the reactions are different, but in both of these situations, I think the thing that that's helpful that I found is two things. One is make sure you're putting one foot ahead of the other. Sometimes you won't know all the answers and that's totally okay.

But as long as you're just moving forward and having faith that things are going to work out, invariably you will get to a good point. And so again, don't let the hazy view in front of you sometimes paralyze you. That's the one thing that I've done.

And part of the resilience comes from believing in the core mission. You know what you're creating is valuable, which is where most founders start out And then I'll say two other things. One is of course, having a great team, you know, so this journey is really hard and nobody can do this completely by themselves.

So surrounding yourself with awesome people who believe in the mission, who help you up your game, will help you see things clearly when you can't see. So I've been super grateful for leaders and employees in the company and our clients. And sometimes just going to them with like, Hey, here's the confusion.

Here's how I'm thinking about it. What would you do if you were just being able to listen? You still own the decisions and you still have the power to make those decisions, but making sure that you can sort of hear the advice, you know, and open to listening.

And last bit of this is once you've listened, but still you got to trust your intuition and you'll be able to act on that intuition. And in order to do that again, just regular practice that we've talked about, like, you know, trying to optimize the sleep, even if it's hard, you exercise. If you can build a meditation practice, it's phenomenal.

And just like everybody else, continue to build on that journey. You almost wish that you had a stronger foundation before you became a founder. If you're not a founder right now, build those habits so that it will serve you better when you do go on.

But the fun of it is you can always be learning from where you are and kind of building off that foundation.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love that. Thank you. This has been such a great conversation. I have five rapid fire questions for you, kind of like one or two word answers as we finish. Are you ready?

Tushar Garg

All right, let's go for it.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. Are you an introvert or extrovert?

Tushar Garg

I'm an extrovert. I do have an introverted side to me, but I would say I'm a pretty high spectrum of extrovert.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. Index high on extrovert. What time do you usually wake up in the morning?

Tushar Garg

Somewhere between 6 or 7 a.m.

Lindsay Pedersen

Are you a morning person or a night owl?

Tushar Garg

My natural systems are morning. I'm happy if I'm a morning person.

Lindsay Pedersen

What's your favorite season?

Tushar Garg

I love the fact that Seattle has four seasons. I came from India where we had seasons, but not as pronounced as it is in Seattle. I love the fact that Seattle has four seasons.

Every season has something that I really look forward to, so I enjoy that.

Lindsay Pedersen

Awesome. And a memorable splurge purchase that you've made?

Tushar Garg

I don't know. Maybe one I can share right now and see if this works. After COVID, we did a 10th anniversary cruise, but after 12 years, Croatia, which is absolutely wonderful.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, I want to go. Is a cruise the way to do Croatia?

Tushar Garg

Actually, it's not a cruise. It's like a small boat with a small group of boats. It's not a very big cruise.

Maybe cruise is not the right word for it because cruise feels like a big cruise.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's not like a cruise ship, but you're seeing Croatia by boat.

Tushar Garg

Yeah, we went to Croatia. That was fun. I think that I'd really have...Maybe I should do something like that. I bought my house recently. We did not have a splurge, but I've been doing this many years.

I had a ski accident. We got our first anesthesia. Just one on the thumb, like it's surgery.

And got up, came right out of the hospital, went. My dad and my wife were with me and I was just coming off anesthesia, but I went to this house and ended up just buying the house. So it's beautiful.

It's a very nice home. After 10 years of not living in the same house, never having bought a home since starting fly homes. But I wouldn't call it a splurge in any way.

It is a rational good decision in every way.

Lindsay Pedersen

Rational despite the lingering effects of anesthesia.

Tushar Garg

Yeah. I haven't looked back and said, oh gee, what did I just do?

Lindsay Pedersen

You're fortunate. Okay. And what is a song that you like to play to get yourself psyched up?

Tushar Garg

I Have a Tiger is the one that I've always enjoyed. Yeah. I mean, that's the answer there, but if you want to get a little bit more.

When we were having our first baby, my wife and I were in the room and the baby was moving slowly. And I don't know where the idea came up. We decided to play I Have a Tiger in the hospital room. She was like, oh heck, how are you doing?

And it was really funny. And we were starting to squat on the box and move up and down.

And before you know it, like 30 minutes later, everybody was out of the room and the baby was there.

So I Have a Tiger really psyched me up, but also my wife.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, I just got goosebumps. Yeah. It psychs you up and your baby now child also found it motivating.

Tushar Garg

Yeah. Now she's ready to come out and see us in the world.

Lindsay Pedersen

This has been so wonderful. How can people learn more about you online or about Fly Homes?

Tushar Garg

We are here to help all our customers. We love talking to the folks who want to learn about Fly Homes and I'm always available for the entrepreneurial community. A lot of people have made a difference in my journey.

And I find that if somebody wanted to reach out and I could be helpful, then just shoot me a note and you'll be able to hear back from me and we will be able to go either five minutes of something that could be helpful with that. I'll be happy to do that.

Lindsay Pedersen

Awesome. I'll put your LinkedIn link in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me today, Tushar.

Tushar Garg

Thank you, Lindsay. Hopefully this was helpful.

Lindsay Pedersen

Thanks for listening to this episode of North Star Leaders. Make sure you don't miss an episode by subscribing on your favorite podcast app. If you know of a North Star Leader whose insights would be valuable for this community, please message me on ironcladbrandstrategy.com.

Also on that website are show notes, transcripts, and a way to sign up for our monthly newsletter. I hope you join us again for another episode of North Star Leaders.