We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
We Are Selling is a weekly podcast about real estate, business and tackling life's challenges. Hosted by renowned real estate industry coach, Lee Woodward, learn from experts in their field and maximise your life.
We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
165 - Walking Down the Hallway of Life - Charles Tarbey
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What if the secret to extraordinary success isn't knowing exactly where you're headed but simply having the courage to start walking?
Charles Tarbey, the real estate mogul who built an empire starting in his twenties, joins us to share his transformative "Hallway of Life" philosophy, which guided his journey from cleaning flats to owning Century 21 Australasia and Better Homes and Gardens and expanding into India and Dubai.
With refreshing authenticity, Charles reveals how conversations with his son about career uncertainty led to this powerful metaphor: most of us stand in a room looking down a hallway of opportunity doors, but few ever leave that room due to fear or overthinking. Drawing from his experiences as a competitive weightlifter, musician, and business leader, he illustrates how seemingly unrelated skills created the foundation for his success in unexpected ways.
The most liberating insight? Charles never planned his extraordinary path. While others waited for perfect information and guaranteed outcomes, he walked forward, discovering opportunities that would have remained invisible had he stayed still. "So many people tiptoe through life to make it safely to death," he observes, challenging listeners to stop analysing and start moving.
Whether you're contemplating a career change, business venture, or personal transformation, this episode strips away the pressure of knowing the result before taking the first step. Charles's wisdom will inspire you to walk down your hallway of life, where the most significant opportunities are waiting behind doors you can't yet see. Listen now and discover why the difference between extraordinary achievement and mediocrity often isn't intelligence or even hard work—it's simply being "there when it happened."
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Hello and welcome back to the podcast we Are Selling. My name's Lee Woodward, the author of the Complete Salesperson Course. Today's podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, nexar. Nexar is a dedicated real estate platform specializing in lead generation and database management of the entire real estate company For BDMs and agents. Working as one platform to generate opportunity. Nexar seamlessly integrates into your business systems, allowing you to have an extended solution. Let's get started with this week's episode. Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Over the last 100 weeks I've been producing and working the top 100 business stories and life lessons of Mr Charles Tarby, which is the leadership version of the sales program you are listening to today. Charles Tarby is a real estate leadership success story From a very young age. In his 20s he purchased his first real estate business and then started his own real estate group and franchise company. He then went on to purchase the rights to Century 21, australasia and Better Homes and Gardens, and of late has just purchased India and Dubai. Now that the top 100 business stories and life lessons of Charles Tarby is complete, a book will be released of the same title. The podcast has so many leadership moments, business training sessions and then just some great life stories of how this incredible leader from a very young age reached the pinnacle of his career and still continues to do what he does in today's business workplace.
Speaker 1:For me personally, the podcast has been a game changer, as I got the opportunity to sit in the studio and listen to these incredible leadership lessons, and, for anyone growing a business, opening a business, leading a group or a franchise, I urge you to click on the show notes of that podcast and give yourself your own master's degree in leadership of real life stories and events that happened that shaped the Australian real estate industry. And Charles is going stronger than ever, with great plans, great future leaders coming through and some vision for his global business. As part of we Are Selling and the celebration of the top 100 business stories and life lessons of Charles Tarby, he joins us today to share some of those insights. Charles, firstly, congratulations on completing the top 100 and welcome to we Are Selling, the Program to share some of those insights.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, lee, and thank you for your commitment to this. I do really mean that, mate. I know that this is part of a process that you and I discussed a couple of years ago when I was writing these stories, and your commitment to it has been amazing. Being able to get it out to your network has been extraordinary for me and I really do hope that the stories that are taken they're not meant to offend anybody politically incorrect being one of them. They're not meant to tell people what they should or shouldn't do. These are things that have just happened. People can take out of them what they want. I'm not asking or telling anybody to take any of this information and change their lives unless they feel it sits with them and they're ready for change. But your commitment to it has been extraordinary and thank you for that.
Speaker 1:Charles, during the Top 100, you discussed the hallway of life. Take us into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, lee. I was speaking to my son one day and chatting about conversations that led him to saying that he wasn't sure what he wanted to do in his life, both personally and professionally. And he had some ideas, but he just wasn't sure. And so I said to him look, you know what, if you go backwards? We all sort of remember when we ask family members which is sometimes the worst thing to do is ask a family member what do they think, because a lot of family members often will tell you the wrong thing because they don't want you to have a go, just in case you fail. They feel responsible for your failure, and so a lot of people go down that path of not doing things because they've spoken to family and friends. And I said to Joseph, when I went to a careers advisor at school, I said to Joe that what really struck me was when I was telling the career advisor what I wanted to do and it was about music the first thing he said to me was well, you'll need something to fall back on. So what do you think that's going to be? And I think, wow, you know, when I think back at that, here's a person advising me on my career, telling me not to focus on what was in my heart but to have something to fall back on in case I failed. I mean, what a stage to set for somebody and for me it was about the hallway of life. And we all get this opportunity to stand at the end of a hallway this is how I perceive it anyway and you look down that hallway and there's all these doors of opportunities down there. But in this room that everybody gathers in to look down the hallway of life, so many people never leave that room. They look down there and they go. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Some people and I've put this somewhere in the story some people think that they've got a contract to live forever and so they don't even perceive that down that hallway is an opportunity, and so many of the opportunities that I've had in business have come from a completely different direction.
Speaker 2:I went down to Sydney to study at university. I end up cleaning flats in Marigville and I end up being in real estate. How the hell does that happen? So I think the hallway of life is there for you to walk down, and sometimes the door's slightly ajar. You can have a look in. You don't like what you see. Sometimes you think, oh, maybe it's not for me, but I'll go in and have a look, and it takes you somewhere else, whereas most people don't even start. That, for me, is the biggest problem. You know, I had some idea of being a rock star, like every other kid in the street. You too, lee, right, correct? Yeah, yeah, okay, and you were. You were a rock star. You were on television. I was on television talking business. You were on television playing the drums. So you know, you've done very, very well from that perspective.
Speaker 2:But, luckily for me, at that time, when people were saying don't do this, don't do that, I found a mentor and I spoke about that earlier in the form of my weightlifting trainer, and he just believed. He just said just do what you want to do, do it, and you find your path there. I had no idea. I was competitive. I had absolutely no idea. So I went down that hallway of life and before you knew it, I was somewhere else and I was breaking record because somebody said to me hey, come on, let's go for a walk down this hallway. Weightlifting was never something I ever saw as a career, but it helped me in so many other ways, building foundations. So I said to Joseph you've got to go down that hallway of life. If you go down there you'll see things. It's dark, it's scary, but you'll find some great opportunities. And you turn around, you look back and there's all these people still standing in that same room because they're too scared to move forward. I think that when I said to him that I said you can do whatever you want in your life and I had again had no idea what that might be but if you just start with anything, eventually you'll find out what it is that makes you feel good and productive. But just make sure to start. And I think that's the key for me to the whole way of life.
Speaker 2:When speaking to my son, joseph, I reflected on this message and I looked at how I ended up, what I was doing today, which back then I could only have imagined as being impossible. So I said to him just think of it this way You're standing at the start of the hallway. You can't see what's down there. You'll only find out by going and walking. So just start walking. And that was the big thing for me to get him to move forward, and it's helped him tremendously in his life Now he's done a lot of things that I would have liked to have done, because he has a voice and he's been on stage, he's been in shows and I just love sitting down and playing.
Speaker 2:I play a little bit of piano and guitar and he comes over we pour a cognac he's in his 30s now and we pick songs and I play and he sings. And he said to me one day that I would never have imagined that this would happen to me. But I put together a band of some mates just a few years ago professional musicians, so they made me sound good and my son got to stand up and do a half dozen songs and he said to me that was his first ever live gig in front of people with a professional band and he's never, ever stopped thanking me for that opportunity. That, to me, is the whole way of life. You're just walking down there and you keep having a crack at something rather than doing nothing at all.
Speaker 1:Charles, it's fascinating for me to be part of this program because you have so much business and leadership success. You've reached an incredible point of your life, not just in wealth but in business achievements. But you draw upon all your other skills, be it from weightlifting, documenting your passion for music, which makes you an entertainer, and I think being an entertainer has really helped you enormously in influence of situations in the business world. How do you feel that's impacted the opportunity that's come to you when you're in front of big business leaders?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that is a good question. Because, lee, when I was weightlifting or when I was doing the gymnastics or so on, it was in front of people. So you're on stage from a very early age without even realizing it, and so you develop a certain level of confidence. You have no choice. I mean you've got somebody saying, right, your turn out, you go, boom, and there's all these people standing there watching you. So those sorts of things.
Speaker 2:Because I remember when, in my very first office at the age I think it would have been 22 or 23, we were struggling with getting buyers for the real estate office, most agents had plenty of listings but no buyers. And so I said to the team what do we do? One of the guys came up with a great idea. He said why don't we have a home buyer seminar? Get 100 people into the room and we'll show them how they can buy a house. And we ended up getting over 1,000 people into this room. That's a totally different story. But there I am on stage at 23-odd years of age, with 1,000 people in front of me introducing my speakers and so on. Now I don't think I would have been able to have done that had I not 10 years earlier been in front of people lifting weights or doing a gymnastics demonstration somewhere. So I think those things really define you, and you talked about it earlier. Who you are today is based on a series of events that might have occurred in your life that had absolutely nothing to do with where you are today. So for me, as a speaker, it's easy for me to get up on stage. Most people would rather die than get on stage. Some people, I know you've got to shoot the bastards to get them off, but nonetheless, no, you've got to shoot the bastards to get them off, but nonetheless you get up on stage.
Speaker 2:I spoke in Poland at the Polish Federation of Real Estate Agents' first ever conference after coming out of communism. I spoke through an interpreter, which I found very, very interesting. I got invited back. I've been back three times now and my second book, listing Rich, is being produced over there for the Polish real estate industry. I've spoken in Portugal and Spain to the Century 21 folk from Europe, and so there were seven interpreters, because there were people from Russia, people from Portugal, people from Spain, people from France, france, and so you learn after a while that everything you do at that time is a culmination of a series of events that have happened previously. So if you don't put yourself out there, if you don't go down that hallway of life, if you don't start, you will never, ever realize your full potential. And there are so many people that tiptoe through life in order to make it safely to death.
Speaker 1:How powerful. You don't expect to know the exact answer, whereas everybody else is trying to get every metric, every proof, point, everything to get it right. And this is where we're going to be, whereas you're thinking anything could happen and we'll probably end up in something far better than we're even heading down. But you've got to have faith in the process and take the steps you do.
Speaker 2:It's really that simple. So many people I know that have worked a lot harder than me, that haven't achieved what they wanted to achieve, because they just work and they wouldn't just move forward. And then a lot of people I know that have been incredibly successful were there when it happened. Were there when it happened, and that's the difference, you know. And a lot of people look at those people and go, oh, what did they do? How did they do that? Gee, I'm smarter than that. Gee, I had that idea. Well, you know what? Get off your backside and just start walking forward. You don't know where it's going to take you. I had no idea. As I said, I was going to be an architect, not a real estate agent.
Speaker 1:Charles Tarby. Thank you for joining us on we Are Selling. And that concludes another edition of our program. And, as mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, the top 100 business stories and life lessons of Charles Tarby have been absolutely life-changing, not only to myself but to the 12,000 followers of that program in 26 countries, and it was great to feature Charles on our podcast today. So that's it from me. I will be back next week and again I look forward to meeting you at the Complete Salesperson course. Thank you for joining us.