Tyler Joas on Building vs. Buying a Twin Cities Small Business
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🎙️ About the TCREI Hosts
Adam Tafel – Investor, Realtor, and host of Twin Cities Real Estate Investing. Adam has helped hundreds of clients buy, sell, and analyze investment properties across the metro. He works daily with local investors and is passionate about building wealth through smart real estate strategies.
📩 adam@UpsidePropertySales.com
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📩 tim@timswierczek.com
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Tyler Joas grew up working on job sites with his dad, a home builder, and always had an interest in construction. After graduating from the University of St. Thomas, he originally planned to go into development—but with COVID hitting during his senior year, the job market dried up fast. Instead, Tyler started a general contracting business from scratch, taking on small jobs with friends and hustling for work through forums and Facebook groups. His first deck project was such a frustrating experience that he told himself he’d never build another one.
Fast forward to today, and Tyler is the founder of Northern Craft Building, a company on track to build around 200 decks this year alone. Even though Tyler isn’t a traditional real estate investor, this episode is packed with insight for Twin Cities investors—especially anyone renovating, managing contractors, or trying to scale projects. We get into what actually makes a contractor reliable (and what “cheap” really costs), how specialization leads to better outcomes and tighter execution, and how to think about construction through the lens of systems, margins, and repeatability. Tyler also shares how private equity is changing the trades, what they often get wrong operationally, and how he’s building his company with a clear exit strategy in mind—something every investor can learn from.