The 20/20 Podcast — AboutMyEyes.com

Todd Talbot is the host of Love It or List It Vancouver, a long-time real estate investor, and all-round fun(ny) guy!

In this interview, Todd shared some incredible insights into his career in acting and real estate investing His path has been anything but predictable and Todd explains how being flexible and accepting opportunities helped him succeed. You can also watch this episode at YouTube.com/HarbirSianOD.

Connect with Harbir and Todd:

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Todd Talbot Discusses The Value In Being Flexible On Your Path And Leaving A Good Impression On Others

Hello and welcome to The 20/20 Podcast. We are bringing clarity to business, entrepreneurship and life. I have an incredible guest with me. Before I introduce him, if you're watching this on your phone, please take a screenshot, post it on your Instagram story or Facebook story. Tag me in it @HarbirSian.od. Let me know what you thought. You can also tag our guest. I'll give you his handle information later. Please give us a rating on the podcast app. Give us a review. Let me know what you think so we can make the show better. Thank you so much. Many of you probably have already recognized our guest. He's a long-time host of Love It or List It, Vancouver, overall TV personality, emcee, stage theater actor and super charismatic fun guy. Mr. Todd Talbot, thank you so much for doing this and for being here. I know you have a busy schedule.

Thanks for having me.

It’s my pleasure. As always, what I'd like to start off with is, where did you grow up? What was your childhood like? What were you interested in as a young person?

I moved around a lot when I was little. I was born in Vancouver. Shortly after I was born, we moved to a couple of different places in Victoria. My parents built a house and moved to Salt Spring Island. My dad commuted back to Victoria every day, which didn't work so great as a family. He took a job up in Tumbler Ridge. We all moved up there, which is a Northern mining town. It was being built at that time. We lived there for two and a half years. We then moved back to North Burnaby, which we're filming at Metrotown now. I remember when Metrotown was built. We used to come here before school, shopping and all that stuff. Driving out to come here was a little bit of a reminder of my childhood.

If anybody wants to know how old Todd is, look up when Metrotown was built and you'll get an idea. On that note, before we go forward, I want to say a big thank you to Dr. Gurnek Rai whose office we are in here in Metropolis Eyecare in Metrotown. He has very graciously offered his space up to us. I wanted to put that in there. Dr. Rai, thank you. You moved around to different places. Did you spend most of your childhood in North Burnaby?

I spent my high school years in Burnaby North.

What was interesting to you as a kid? You're an actor now, did that start when you were young?

I did get involved in the entertainment business when I was young, but I was mostly focused on sports. I love playing hockey. Like a lot of young kids when I was growing up, we all wanted to play in the NHL. Clearly, that didn't pan out. I didn't grow tall until I was 15 or 16. I was getting rocked out there on the ice. We're a big ski family. I skied and raced and loved winter sports.

The whole performing acting thing, my mom volunteered me to do a fashion show at my elementary school in grade seven. I was like, “This is fun.” I got to pick one of the things that I was wearing for free. I don't know if I've made this up in my mind, but I said to my mom, “Do people get paid to do this?” We had a very close friend of ours who was a professional actor. We didn't know anything about the industry. My parents reached out to him. Harvey Miller ran the theater department at UVic. He connected me with an agent. I started to get involved in the business that way.

Did your family see that at home that you had this knack?

I don't think so. The thing that my family saw most was my obsession with talking. My nickname was Motor Mouth. They've made a shirt about it. I don't think anyone talked about monetizing those personal skills as people do now. I love to talk to people. I didn't like going to bed. I like to stay up and talk to my parents. It grew over time. My whole career has been unpredictable. It's been something where I've put a lot of focus and I tried to follow my passion but at the same time, not be too strict about where things lead. It zigged and zagged all over the place. It ended me up talking with you and coming to a situation that I would definitely not have predicted.

I don't think too many people put a podcast interview with an optometrist on their list of things that have a potential outcome. One thing I do talk to people about is flexibility. In my personal experience as a father, we had our second baby, we went into it like whatever happens, happens. That's a super important way to approach most things in life. Can you elaborate a little bit on what that meant for you going through those earlier years?

You have to be committed to a certain discipline to be successful, but there's also a combination of letting go of a certain idea and if something presents itself as an opportunity. I had a coach who said, “Todd, why don't you try saying yes to everything as opposed to analyzing it right up-front? At some point, if it's not working out or you don't like the feel of it, you can always say no.” I went to a theater school in England. I was a little hesitant about making that choice. I thought, “I'm going to say yes. I can go for a year. If I don't like it, I can always come home.”

I ended up finishing the program. I’ve been there for three years. Accepting those things that present themselves is one key component. The other one is being able to see them when they present themselves. If you're not open to what people are suggesting or opportunities that are in front of you, you miss them. There's an awareness factor. There's a willingness to jump in. The third component is the commitment side. When I choose to do something, I'm 100% committed to it. It may or may not work out. There are lots of times that it doesn't work out. As long as I feel like I've done everything I can and know what to do in order to make it successful and preferably surrounding myself with people who also have that same attitude.

That's what keeps you moving forward, and then something else presents itself. All of a sudden, you're over here, and then you're over there. You look back on that journey and you think, "There's no way I could have charted that path." My journey is a little bit different from a lot of people because I don't have a traditional career choice. There's no right or wrong way to do the industry that I'm in, which is part entertainment, we got into real estate. There are all kinds of different things going on. Part of that drive to move forward is also out of the necessity of being self-employed. When you're single, the pressure is a little bit lower. As you get into a relationship and you start having kids, you start to evaluate different things from different perspectives.

Good Impression: You have to be committed to a certain discipline to be successful. But there's also a combination of letting go of a certain idea and grabbing something if it presents itself as an opportunity.

There's a lot in there that I wanted to unpack a bit. That's all excellent. To acknowledge that when you're single, you can do things much more freely with a lot less pressure. Once the family comes into it, all of a sudden, you're like, "Something's got to work from here.” Being self-employed lights a fire under your ass. You're not guaranteed to have work next month or next week. If we could diverge from the acting or the screen stuff, but the real estate stuff is what I wanted to ask you about as well. That's very important. There's a huge business aspect to what you do there in real estate. Can you tell me about when you got started and what you had to learn in the beginning? Do you have any background in real estate, to begin with?

No. I started a long time ago but the real estate piece was a function of being self-employed. Why that grew was because I looked at older people in the industry, theater actors and other actors, self-employed people who were working in their late 60s and 70s. It’s not necessarily because they wanted to do it but because they had to do it. I thought to myself, “I want to have some flexibility and not have that pressure.” The first thing that got me into real estate was when I moved back to Vancouver, I moved back with my parents. I was working so they charged me rent. I was like, “If I'm going to be charged rent, I might as well move out as much as I love you, guys.”

That got me into the market, first and foremost. I went out looking for a rental with a buddy of mine. I couldn't find anything. I had some money saved up. That allowed me to get into the market. It's a slight divergence from your question but one of the things that surprise me now is people's lack of creativity about how to get into the market. I love the conversation around young people and young families and how they can navigate a super expensive market like Vancouver or any major city in Canada. One of the things is to have realistic expectations. I rented the second bedroom to my buddy for the first three years to offset the cost of the mortgage, maintenance, property taxes and all that stuff.

It worked out beautifully. I got into the market that way. I learned about refinancing, I started investing in real estate. I'd always had this idea that I wanted to buy older homes and renovate them. I don't know where that came from. My parents built their own homes. I went down that path, never intending it to be a business where I worked with somebody else. It was designed to create a financial foundation that allowed me to do the thing that I was doing full-time, which was acting in theater. It wasn't a super high-paying job but I also wanted the ability to be able to say no. I didn't want to be at the mercy of having to get that next gig.

That freed me up. Two things happen. Number one is you don't have that sense of desperation. You feel more comfortable in it. The other thing is that desperation is the world's worst thing when you're applying for a job or you're auditioning for something. You can smell desperation a mile away. It doesn't work in dating. It doesn't work professionally. It's a destructive force. If you can create something that allows you to breathe easy and be able to control your own destiny, that is what real estate represented to me. That's always been my focus. I started doing real estate workshops for the acting community, which started to put me out there in the world as a guy who was knowledgeable in this realm. One thing led to another and ultimately, led to a phone call about doing a show on HGTV. There’s a lot of stuff in between.

I didn't know that path. I was eventually going to ask you about HGTV and Love It or List It. You took that step yourself to look into real estate and to invest. This starving actor or artist narrative is too common but you took it upon yourself to make sure that wasn't your story.

I looked at it and thought, “Why do we have that narrative?” Number one, it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Number two, sometimes artists feel that if they're not struggling, they're not legitimate. I'm not sure that those two ideas have to live together. Why couldn't we have some financial foundation and still create great TV shows, theater or whatever your chosen path is? That was my idea. I never meant for it to be something that was involved somebody else. I never wanted it to be a business for somebody else.

I'll add one more thing. The irony of pursuing things when you're not trying to develop a business or trying to make money, that being the primary focus is that the money normally follows in a greater way. It's that initial motivation. If your values and your passion are aligned, not to be too altruistic about it, but if you lead with that, the money follows quickly behind that. If you lead with the money, that's when it gets diluted and sometimes a little bit sleazy. It's a different motivation.

That's a very valuable point you made there. The desperation and the drive of making money are what leads a lot of people. Social media being our primary platform where we're seeing a lot of people coming up, you could see that it doesn't feel right.

There’s something weird about it.

There's something off. Maybe you can't pinpoint it, but I find that's often what it is. People will stress and get more desperate. They don't get to where they want to be. I assume this is what you're saying. You can let go of the stress about the money and genuinely do what you want to do with real love and passion in it.

Whether it's optometry, acting or whatever it is, if that's your primary focus and you're putting everything you have into that, chances are the money will follow. When the formula is reversed, that's when it can get a little bit sketchy. At least that's my experience.

It may not be a straight line of like, “I'm doing this job and then the money came in that straight line.” In your experience here, it could be something completely random and you didn't even envision it being an opportunity.

You never know where that money is going to come from like the television show. It's interesting because I'm primarily a real estate investor. That's my driving force behind the real estate piece. On the educational side of things, I'm interested in how people are managing, getting into the market, what we're building, why we're building, and where we're looking at. When I did the TV show, most people looked at something like that and go, “What a great opportunity from a financial standpoint.” We've been filming for years. In the first six years of that, I stopped investing because I got completely sidetracked and invested in doing this show and all the things that surround that.

If I'd had stayed on the exact same track that I was on with investing in real estate and bought one property per year in that timeframe, if you look at it from a financial perspective, I would have eclipsed the money that I made doing that other path exponentially. You can't always make decisions based on that financial outcome. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I’ll follow my nose and hope that it aligns with what I believe in and my values. If my gut feels right about it, I normally keep going. If it doesn't, I try and shift paths.

Good Impression: It is time to end the stigma that artists have to be struggling for them to be considered legitimate.

You trust your gut and your intuition enough that you can make those changes.

It's not always easy because your gut sometimes tells you things that you don't want to hear and that's tricky. It tells you something that the public doesn't necessarily understand. Being in the public eye, you have a little bit of that pressure where people question why you do things or why aren't you doing X, Y, or Z. Some of those more value-based decisions are tough to explain.

It's excellent that you're able to stick to your guns and go with them at least most of the time.

No one is perfect, for sure.

I’m not any kind of financial or real estate expert, but I would love if you're willing to share 1 or 2 small pieces of advice with the young people out there who are maybe earlier in their career and they want to start investing. We can use Vancouver as an example, where you're comfortable speaking about it.

First of all, investing what you know is my mantra until you're extremely experienced. If you live in Vancouver, don't look at buying property in Vegas or a suburb of Toronto. You don't have enough information about that. You're going to have to rely on somebody else. First of all, invest in what you know. If it's your primary residence at the beginning of your real estate journey, look at it as an investment first. I see a lot of young people try and buy something that resembles a dream home. I hate that term. Early on, chances are you're going to stay there for 3 to 5 years. Prioritize location and capital appreciation. How can you add value to this property, whether it's a condo or a detached home?

Looking at it from that perspective and thinking about yourself as the tenant. Wear two hats. “I'm buying this as an investment, and I'm going to be my tenant.” The last piece would be to have an end goal in mind. Try and scope back and look at where you think you might be in 3 to 5 years and understand, “What are the options for this piece of property?” The more options, the better. Can you rent it out? I find a lot of young people buy a building that doesn't allow rentals. All of a sudden, their job changes. They're handcuffed about what they can do. They're getting married and they have a young family, and that space doesn't work for them anymore.

They can't rent it out and they have to sell. Now you're at the mercy of the market. You want to keep your options open. Make sure it's rentable. I'm a huge fan of sweat equity. I still do it before I was here. I was at a rental property. We're developing the basement part of it. I still do that. Be willing to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. You can save a ton of money. Ultimately, this is probably going to be one of the biggest investments you make in your life. You want to position the first one correctly.

Thank you very much. I wasn't expecting to talk about real estate advice but I appreciate that.

I'll talk about real estate all day long. I love it.

I'm not the best and most knowledgeable, but I'm always happy to hear the advice. Why don't we use that as we transition over to Love It or List It?

We finished season five. We shoot 26 episodes a season. That’s a lot of episodes.

Does all the filming happen in a certain timeframe?

Traditionally, we shoot all year round. In the first four years, we dovetailed season 1 into season 2, season 2 into season 3. We kept rolling that way. We don't work every day. The schedule was all over the map but it's an all-encompassing thing from a schedule perspective. Not all shows are shot that way. Most shows would have a chunk of time where you can go and do something else. This is why you see lots of other people either on HGTV or on other channels where they can do multiple shows. If you're doing the format that we do, it's very difficult.

What would you say is a lesson that you've learned from being on television and in the public eye? A couple of things, if you wouldn't mind sharing.

Good Impression: You want to keep your options open in real estate. Make sure your property is rentable.

One of the greatest things, and sometimes I forget it, is the fact that people enjoy themselves watching the show. If they have a laugh and you can give someone a respite from their everyday life, they have a little moment whether they're watching with their spouse or their kids. It's hard when you're on television because you don't get to experience that. You only get to know that if someone tells you. Sometimes, you don't always necessarily believe what people tell you on social media and interact with people in the public. When people say they love the show and they have a good laugh or get entertained through it, that's one thing that I have to remind myself that it brings value to people. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it's entertainment. We're not curing cancer.

The other thing is more philosophically, being involved in watching these people with the same requests over and over again. The end product that we end up doing is very similar across the board. I've also watched people, especially families, who struggled to be in an expensive city. It made me ask myself questions about, “Is the model that we aspire to is what's most important?” We sold our big house and we shifted our focus back into the city. It’s more from a lifestyle connectivity standpoint, smaller space and exploring the benefits of that choice in terms of how it affects us as a family, happiness and some of these types of things.

What I've noticed is that some people get very obsessed with the end goal of how a house looks or the statistics of it on paper. They gun for that and then try and build their lifestyle to fit into that idea instead of identifying what their lifestyle is and what brings them joy, happiness, fulfillment, and functionality. Trying to find a space that fits into that. It’s reversing the model.

If we go back to your flexibility, I feel like maybe a more flexible approach.

Flexibility also is about money. If you're carrying a massive mortgage and you're feeling burdened by that type of pressure, your flexibility of being able to do other things is limited. It's hard to invest in your business, travel as a family, and spend time with friends and family. It's tricky.

That was important that you went on that little bit of that philosophical tangent there because it's something that we don't speak about enough. We get caught up in the dream. Everybody tries to keep fulfilling that. From your experience, having moved from that bigger house to a smaller house and doing your own work within the house, would you feel that that's been a good move overall for yourself in the family?

One hundred percent. I don't think we've got the formula perfect. It changes all the time. That's the thing about this dream home concept. More people have certain ideas that life is fluid. Things are changing all the time, financially, the size of family, people get divorced, people move out and move in, kids are born. There are many dynamics that are going on that you cannot predict. What you think is going to happen right now is going to be a very different 1, 2, 3 or 5 years from now. You want to build some of that flexibility into the formula of where you're living. There's no question about it.

One of the things is that we oversimplify the idea of where we want to live. We forget some of the other elements that get affected. Connectivity with your community is a big part of it, travel time, the sustainability piece, which is becoming more prevalent in terms of conversation. The housing industry is lagging way behind in that conversation. A smaller footprint allows us to be a little bit more nimble. Quality is another thing. We see big houses being slapped together, not necessarily high-quality construction. Therefore it doesn't have longevity, which then impacts future value, your investment, sustainability, environment, all of those things play into it. It's a complicated conversation about where you are going to live and what you're going to live in, and how you're going to renovate it. The world is ready for a more intelligent conversation about it.

I'm glad that that conversation started here on The 20/20. I wanted to talk a little bit about your charitable endeavors. I know you do a lot of work with Covenant House Vancouver. I'd love for you to explain what you do, what they do, and how you operate.

One of the great things about being in the position that I'm in is that I can bring focus to things. We work with all kinds of different charities all throughout the year. The one that I put most of my time and energy behind is Covenant House. I started doing the Executive Sleep Out, which is an event that's held every year across North America. On the same night, executives from across Canada and the United States sleep out on the street. You get a sleeping bag and a piece of cardboard. It's not meant to replicate the experience but it is meant to make you think.

There are two pieces to the evening. You go in and you meet with youth who are either in the program at Covenant House or have graduated from it, and you get to hear their stories. I defy anyone to listen to those young people and the journey that they've gone on and have it not affect you. It keeps you coming back year after year. You go outside and you sleep out for the night, rain or shine. At 3:00 in the morning, when you're cold lying there uncomfortable, you start to consider what this might be like. It gives you a little glimpse into the life of some young person.

Covenant House focuses on youth. Most of us have to go to work the next day. You immediately feel the impact of that. You can extrapolate what happens if you were trying to hold down a job and you didn't have a place to live. That's the cornerstone from my perspective. It brought together the ideas and the realm that I play in, which is in the real estate realm, house and home, and also as a dad. You meet young people whose story is not that different from how you grew up. There are circumstances that happen. There are influences that happen that are outside of their control.

The thing that you realize quickly is that no one chooses that path. If you've ever thought when you see someone on the side of the street asking for money, “Why don't they have a job? Why did they choose that?” I can tell you wholeheartedly that it is not their choice. No one chooses to be in that position. That's the impetus behind it. They do amazing work. In order to raise money, everyone commits to raising a minimum of $15,000 who sleeps out. This is not a token gesture to show up and say, “I support you.” I started doing a fundraiser every year, which you've been to. We changed the theme every year. We're hosting it on October 17th, 2021. If you're reading this before October 17th, you can buy tickets and come and be a part of it.

Where do they buy tickets?

They can go to my Instagram feed, @ToddTalbot. That’s the easiest way. Email me. I'll send you a link. You can ask me any questions. Every penny from that fundraiser goes to Covenant House because I rely on the donations of people that I know in order to come and do all the food, drinks and entertainment. I leveraged those connections in order to then pass on every penny. That's excellent.

Good Impression: If you're carrying a massive mortgage and feeling burdened by that type of pressure, your flexibility to do other things is limited.

That's an often undervalued and underestimated how powerful it can be for you to leverage your connections and your influence on others to bring in and put on this nice and beautiful event. The Potty Time was awesome. That draws in people and they're willing to contribute. $15,000 is a lot of money. It's an incredible contribution.

We'll go way above that.

I'm sure you went well above it. That’s an amazing contribution on the part of all the executives who do this. What an incredible initiative to sleep outside because it's November.

It’s in mid-November.

Vancouver is generally a milder climate but November is not warm.

Nor is it dry.

By the time you get to October, it's raining most of the time. To sleep outside is incredible. Good for you and everybody else who participates. To wrap up, I have two final questions for you. This is why I'm so happy that you did this because I love all the information that you have to share. Number one, if you can imagine stepping back into a time machine and traveling to a specific place in time when you were going through a difficult time. If you want to explain when that time is, that's fine. If not, tell us. If you don't mind, what you might share with younger Todd, as far as the wisdom and knowledge that you have at this stage.

I don't know if I'm hardwired this way. I generally have an optimistic view of life. I don't look back and beat myself up too much about choices that I've made or choices that I didn't make. I truly believe that all of those are a function of where I'm at now. The thing that I would go back and maybe tell my younger self would be to potentially relax a little bit more and have more fun and enjoy at the moment. It's a thing that I'm challenged by now. I look back and I've had some incredible opportunities and awesome adventures. Sometimes I am too critical of where I'm at in that moment in time, which then kills the joy and experience it fully. Sometimes, I look back now and I go, “That was so great. Why didn't I enjoy it more?” That's always a constant battle. It's that balance of keeping driving forward. I have a lot of intrinsic drive and search in me. Wrestling with that, I'm constantly in that battle.

The final question is with everything you've achieved to date, all your success being on TV and the real estate, how much of that is due to luck and how much is due to hard work?

It depends on what your definition of luck is. We can sometimes ignore or underestimate some of the things that we're fortunate for, which is being born in Canada, the family that you get born into, the parents, the circumstances, all of those types of things, which can create an opportunity for people. I consider myself lucky in terms of that. I'm obsessive about hard work, maybe to a fault. I think that success and achievement are a function of the commitment and hard work that you're willing to put in. Striking a balance in there is sometimes tricky.

When you get asked to answer some of these questions, it does force you to look back and go, “I wonder how that managed to happen.” A combination of hard work and the impression that you leave on people is the magic formula, at least for me. I don't think I'm the most talented actor in the world, television host, real estate investor, husband or father, but people can rely on me. They can trust me. They know that I'm going to give them 100%. At the end of the day, that's what keeps that engine moving forward. I would weigh more on the hard work side as opposed to the luck. Luck is one of those foundational components.

I feel the same way about being born in this country as an extremely lucky thing.

There are lots of things to be grateful for in Vancouver. I've never met anyone who has the success that isn't an extremely hard worker. They might not show it. Some people like to show hard work. It's very popular these days to say, “I'm so busy, I'm working so hard.” I try and defend against that because no one likes to hear that. Either they show it or they don't but it's in there.

Thank you so much. The last thing that I'd like you to share is how people can contact you. You already mentioned your Instagram handle, @ToddTalbot. Any other way, email or Facebook?

I'm easy to find. Hopefully, you can't find my cell phone number. I do get random calls like, “How did you get this number?” My website is ToddTalbot.ca. You can email me through there. I still manage all of my social media channels. I try to answer everyone's questions.

If you don't follow Todd already, please do. As I mentioned, he’s a super fun and charismatic guy. There's always something to learn from him, whether it's real estate or interior design. It's all there. Thank you again, sir. I very much appreciate this. Thank you to you all. Let us know how you liked this. I'll see you in the next episode.

Important Links

About Todd Talbot

As a theatre professional for twenty-plus years, Todd is at home on stage and in front of an audience. He travels throughout the U.S. and Canada performing as MC and speaking at a home shows, corporate and charity events. Love it or List It Vancouver, as well as other W network programs Who Lives Here and Game of Homes , mark Todd’s return to the small screen. Some fans remember Todd’s start as Matt Walker on the hit Nickelodeon series, Fifteen.

An entrepreneur from a young age, Todd’s company currently owns and manages multiple residential properties as well as several real estate ventures in renovation, marketing & design. Todd also leads an experienced team helping clients buy and sell homes.