BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 100: From Financial Disaster to Real Estate Master with Brandon Turner

Episode Date: November 25, 2019

You probably know Brandon Turner from the BiggerPockets Real Estate Investing podcast. On that show, he sounds like he’s got his life all together. But before he discovered the RIGHT way to do real estate, he made mistakes. LOTS of mistakes. Today, Brandon shares everything he did wrong - from financing rehabs with a credit card to accumulating six figures in debt on properties he couldn’t sell. But the most important thing Brandon did was learn from his mistakes. He read Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and put the lessons learned from that book into action, paid off his debt and started living the life he truly wanted. The episode is for people who’ve made mistakes, who are in debt or struggling to find a path to financial freedom. Brandon shows you that it’s OK to make mistakes, you CAN recover, and the life you want is within your reach. In This Episode We Cover: Brandon's journey with money How to learned negotiating from his mother The reason his mom bought him a book on how to handle money His financial position after college How he got a No-Doc loan Bought properties to flip and turned them into rental properties What hard money loan is His rock bottom experience Read a hundred books on real estate The reason he got into buying rentals How he convinced his wife to invest in rental properties Started saving money by doing the cash envelope system What seller financing is How he bought his 24-unit apartment The importance of building integrity How they met Josh Dorkin His balance sheet when he retired Brandon's advice on investing Links: BiggerPockets BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast BiggerPockets Business Podcast BiggerPockets Forums The BiggerPockets Book Store BiggerPockets Money Podcast 42: How to Invest in Real Estate with Joshua Dorkin & Brandon Turner Rental Property Calculator from BiggerPockets The Dave Ramsey Show Podcast Movement Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 100 with Brandon Turner from BiggerPockets.com. I don't put money to 401K. I don't put money in a 401k. I don't put money to self-directed I-O-K. I don't put money into life insurance. I don't put money into anything. I believe 100% in putting all my eggs in one basket.

This is not popular advice. No. But I believe me personally in putting all my eggs in. one basket. And what I mean by that is one asset class. It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation. You're in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more. This is the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How's going everybody? I'm Scott Trench. I'm here with

Mindy Jensen, my co-host. How you doing today, Mindy? Scott, I am having a fantastic day and I'm so excited for this episode. First of all, hooray, 100 episodes. Congratulations, Scott. That's kind of a big deal. That's right. Congratulations, Mindy. When we were at podcast, when I was a podcast movement earlier, I think they said that most shows never get past 10. So 100 is 10x. Oh, look, we're 10xing. But it's just a really nice accomplishment. And I'm very excited that we have gotten to show 100. So congratulations. And then I am doubly excited because we have, have Brandon Turner on and he's telling, of course there's real estate involved in this story, but this is the story that you haven't heard of Brandon's past. This is how he started off with money,

how he royally screwed up his money, and how he figured it out and is now rolling in the dough. Is that an accurate portrayal of his story? Yeah, I mean, this is just a hilarious, fun, crazy story with incredible highs where he's living on a beach in Hawaii now, an incredible lows with six-figure credit card debt. This guy has been through it all and just had an extraordinary experience. So he started at minimum wage, racked up, again, six figures in credit card debt, built his way out of that problem. So, I mean, this is a wild ride.

It's really informative. It's very fun. He brings a lot of energy to the table, and I think you're going to love it. I also think you're going to love it because you're right. He does bring a lot of energy to this story. And there's, you know, coming from the Bigger Pockets space, he is the co-host of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. He is the host of the webinars. He's all over. He's written like, I don't know, 97 books or something on real estate. And you look at him and you think, oh, he's got his act together. Oh, ho, ho. You should listen to this show because he does not have his act together, at least not in the beginning. And it's, It's nice to see. First of all, it's nice to hear that he's not perfect because in the bigger pocket space, he definitely has this like aura of perfection. He can do no wrong or maybe that's just me thinking that he's so amazing. But I mean, he invest in real estate and he makes lots and lots of money. But he really, really, really started off not doing anything right. So it's nice to

hear that you can turn it around. It's nice to hear that, you know, he didn't start from a place of advantage. He did not have much advantage over anything. And I guess the moral of this whole story is you should play monopoly every single day for a year. I agree. I think that is the exactly the outcome there. That will lead to great wealth. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going. And more importantly, where your tax refunds, can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward, it's to actually make

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If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over 10 years. kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP Money. Okay, huge thanks to the sponsor of today's show. Brandon Turner, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast by yourself this time. You don't have any hangers on Josh Dorkin like on episode 42. This is the All-Branden show.

So I'm so excited to have you talking about your money story. We're not going to even get into your real estate. If you do want to hear about Brandon's real estate adventures, you can go listen to his podcast, a little show called The Bigger Pockets Real Estate Investing Podcast, but we're not here to talk about that today. We want to talk about you and all the financial disaster stories that you have about yourself and what a mess you were.

All right. That was the nicest intro I've ever had ever. I've never heard you so enthusiastic to talk to me. This is great. I like podcast Mindy. This is awesome. I love talking to Brandon Turner. Usually it's this way.

It's like, oh, he's here. And then I roll and then I go and talk to Scott. So Mindy, this is great. That's patently not true. I drove to the airport to pick you up. That's true. And you're like, you're like clown car. It was awesome.

Yes. For those of you who don't know, Brandon Turner is 47 feet tall. And I picked him up in my Accura NSX, which is a little teeny tiny sports car. I was literally bigger than the car. Well, I had my arms at that car. Yeah, we had arms out each side of the car. My head was sticking out the moon roof. It feels great. Sunroof? Yeah, it was awesome. Anyway, hi guys.

Anyway, so Brandon, I wouldn't know about your money story. Everybody has heard your real estate story, how you started investing in one property and then you met now. What do you have like $150,000 or something? I don't know, $230. I don't know, something like that. Whatever. I don't want to brag. You're just $23 as of this morning. I'm just kidding. It probably is, but we're not here to talk about that. We don't care about that part. Whatever. We want to know about your finances. I know that you grew up playing Monopoly. Like I have, I've listened to so many of your shows and, you know, little bits get involved in every single thing. And I know you played Monopoly like every day one summer. I did a lot of Monopoly growing up.

So I was raised in a very, very rich family. So my dad gave me a small loan when I got started of $7 million. And because of, I'm just kidding. That didn't happen. Wait, Mindy, you're muted. I don't hear you. Mindy's muted. It's actually a great.

I was going to say, Ann, thank you, Brandon. That was Brandon Turner from the Bigger Pockets Money, from the Bigger Pockets Real Estate Podcasts from episode 100. Thanks, bye. No, tell me the real story. All right. All right. So I was raised in a Midwest house with Midwest parents

who ate steak and potatoes and corn on the cob every night. For those of you in the Midwest, you know what I'm talking about. And my dad's a meat cutter. My mom did in-home daycare. So we are very blue-collar, middle-class, like lower middle-class family. And I got obsessed with Monopoly when I, I was in high school. My friend Boone Greenlee, what's up, Boone? And I would play every day for like a solid year. We played almost every day, at least the summer. I mean, every single

day of the summer to the point where we could play an entire game in like under 30 minutes, entire thing wrapped around. It was, it was wild. We were good. What was your parents' relationship with money? My parents, actually, so I love my parents. My parents did not really invest other than 401K stuff. They believed that you can't take it with you. So enjoy the money when you have it. In other words, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean that in a, what can you take with? What will, what will last? And it's memories. So vacations, trips. So we did a lot of, I mean, at least a couple times a year we'd go on a big epic trip. And it wasn't a rich trip. It was everyone pal in the minivan and go look at South Dakota and go see the Mount Rushmore,

things like that. And it was an incredible way to be raised. In fact, I still abide by that today. I'd rather have memories than money. And so they abide by that. Now, they weren't irresponsible. I mean, they, you know, saved their money and tried to do a good job, but they weren't trying to, like, build an empire. Got it. So how did that kind of translate in maybe like middle and high school years with your relationship with money? Aside from spending money on buying a monopoly set, it sounds like, what was your relationship with money in those years? My, I like to say my mom was a garage sale mom. So a lot of you guys know what I'm talking about when you have garage, you had garage sale moms. It means every Saturday, all the four kids get piles into the minivan. And we would drive from house to house to house to house going garage sailing. So everything we'd be. about growing up always was used. Everything was handed down from other people or given to us for free or bought it at a grad sale. So what I learned was that one, you can be happy in any situation. I mean, again, we weren't like dirt poor, like, you know, like scraping food from the bottom

of a dumpster. But everything was grader cell stuff. But I also learned in that about like negotiation and discussion in that no price is actually the price. That was a big lesson my parents taught me. It's like everything can be talked down, everything can be negotiated. And so we definitely negotiated. Awesome. Did you work at all in high school or what was your, how did you? Yeah, I started with a small loan from my father. I'm just kidding. No, we, I was going to keep bringing that back. No, we, I did work. I worked as a carryout boy at a Nelson's Market, which no longer exists. Nelson's market, I carried out groceries for people and I bagged them and I was a pretty good bagger. I did not win the statewide bagging competition, however. That honor went to Pete Johnson. So shout out

to Pete Johnson for winning the statewide bagging competition. I'm a little jealous as of right now. So I might enter that again soon. We'll see. But yeah, it worked and I save money. So when you earn that money, did you go further garage sailing?

Or did you sock it away? Did you invest it? I think I socked it away. I put it in my piggy bank. You know, like even like when I got into, when you get into high school, like you making a few hundred bucks a month

from a part-time job making $5.25 an hour, I think that all went to like gas and, you know, movie tickets and whatever else. I tried to save a little bit. My mom once gave me. Here's a good story. My mom, when I was in high school, I had some change, like, you know, pennies and dimes in my hand. And at the end of the day, you'll pull your pocket. And I took it and threw it in the garbage. I was like, these are pennies. Like, what do I care about pennies? And I think there was maybe Nicola and dime in there. My mom found that and freaked out on me. I mean, she freaked out of me. And she, I remember her crying and scolding me and having a long, you know, parent discussions, right? And then the way that my mom generally would communicate truth to me, which when I think about it now, how much this impacted me, is she would buy me a book.

And so she bought me a book on how to handle your money. And I don't know if I actually ever read the book, but I remember that making an impact on me. And to this day, if I see a penny or two, I feel like I need to pick it up and make sure I put it somewhere because I can't throw away money. So there's that. My dad was also the, you know, you leave the room,

you shut the light off. And he basically, my dad's entire life was walking around the house, grumbling about the lights being on. I'm like, kids leaving the lights on in this room again. You know what this is costing me? Even today with LED lights, I'm like, Dad, it's like literally three cents a year for this LED light to be on. Just leave it on. It's not worth me getting up.

And he shut that. That's three cents that I had to work for. But it makes sense because my dad had a crappy hard job that he had to stand up all day long cutting meat for people. And so like every dollar was like a valuable dollar. Like every penny was a valuable penny. And my mom was the same way. And so that's how the money story started. We also did not talk about money at all.

I never know what my parents made. We didn't talk about at the dinner table. Money is kind of not a taboo subject, but being in a spiritual, religious, faith-based household as a kid, you know, there's the money is a rule of all evil, even though that's a mistranslation of the verse, but they say money is the real of all evil, so let's not talk about it.

So that's where I go is kind of raised in. Yeah, that's a very unusual dad thing to talk about making sure you turn off the lights when you leave the room or it's a very unusual. I'm pretty sure when I go to like your house, Scott, you're like, turn off the lights. For sure. I know exactly what I'm going to turn out to be like. So, okay, so this is awesome. So how did that kind of carry through to college and post high school? Oh, let me tell you.

So I actually, you know, because of all these lessons, I'm really, I was naturally really good with money. So, of course, the first time I get out on my own, I go off to college and I go to a Macy's and I'm buying a shirt. And the shirt is $22. And I can save 10% if I open up a Macy's credit card. Hell yes, I will open up that Macy's credit card and save $2.20. I'm a college kid. And it's amazing they give me a $500 credit limit on my Macy's card. I mean, these people clearly know what they're doing.

So, of course, I buy $500 with a Macy's clothes because I needed clothes for school. And that started a very fun relationship with credit cards that lasted a good like five or six or seven years. because credits there, it's free money. I mean, why not use it? That's what I always say. Wow. Was the clothing pretty cool? Did you look pretty fly?

No, I looked pretty fly for an awkward, tall, you know, college kid. Can we give you any pictures? In the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash money show 100. I am going to show you just how fly Brandon looked. Was this pre or post black mullet? This was during black. mow it. I was fly.

No, you were not. I was pretty fly. But this is interesting because you are Brandon Turner, you are so good with money. You're this real estate master. But were you paying off your credit cards at the end of every month? Or were you paying the minimum balance? Yeah, minimum balance. Who pays off their credit cards?

I mean, that's like if you have $100 to spend on a credit card to pay it off or you can go to dinner, like 23 year old, 22 year old, 21 year old Brandon, 18, 17 was go to dinner or go to a movie or whatever. That's how you do it. And so. And charge it. Okay. So you're in college. You're charging up a storm like a crazy person and you get to the end of college. What does your debt look like? So my parents, this was a rule for my family. We were required to go to college, first of all. We all had to go to college. That was a requirement. But they would only pay for the first year. So the first year was paid for. Everything else was on me. So I actually ended up going to five different colleges because this is actually me being thrifty or antisocial, one of the two.

So I went to five different colleges, including like a year in high school, and then I jumped from another community college, another community college, did some distance ed through somebody, and ended up graduating when I had enough, like, combined credits that I brought it to a school. And I was like, and I did my final year there. And I was like, I think I have enough. And then they mailed me a diploma later on. So that was my college.

But I did have a strategy? Was that like a calculated approach to this? I think in the back of my head, there was always a, I don't want to graduate with a ton of student loan debt, but I still ended up with like 25 or 30 grand. So I had a bunch of student loan debt, but I think it was also like I just didn't want to go to college. So like, I mean, this is literally how I chose my major was I got like after like three years of a bunch of random classes I had taken at different colleges. I called the final college.

The one I ended up graduating from, it's called Northwestern College, not university. It's like a smaller school in Minnesota. I was talking to the advisor beforehand. And I was like, well, here's all my classes I've taken. They're like, well, you know, if you went with a history degree, you'd get out a semester earlier, I'll take it. So I literally chose my major based entirely and solely upon how quickly I could get out of college. So during college, I sold, during that last year then, I sold plasma. Anybody ever sold plasma?

You ever do that? No, I've heard it's really painful. No, it's so good. It's so good. This is like an audience participation. Anyone in the audience, the two of you? This is what is. So no, this is the greatest thing.

So let me tell you how great life was. So in college, in that last year, a year and a half, my wife and I both lived in Minnesota. She lived with my sister. That was a nightmare. I live with one of my best friends. That was okay. And we were basically broke college kids. So this place would sell plasma. And here's how they do it. They take a needle that's like the size of like a pen.

And they shove it in your, yeah, it's large. And they put it right in your elbow in the inside of your elbow. And then they suck out like a half a gallon of blood. And then they run it through the machine, pull out the plasma, and put the blood back into you. and they do this for about an hour. It takes about an hour, hour and a half of you sitting there. And this is before we had just cell phones to scroll through.

So you would bring a book or a little DVD player and you'd watch it. And you would get, for an hour and a half of work, $20 for doing this. That was $20. And then the second time, if you can do it two times a week. The second time you'd get $30. So you could do a max of $50 a week. And for those math geniuses out there, that's $200 a month. So my wife and I both did it

$400. $400 a month for selling our plasma during college. And it was the greatest thing. No, it's not. No, it was great until like Heather started passing out every time she'd go and then she couldn't donate because of their blood over the money.

It was a really great way to make money. That's called hustle. And to this day, you can't see it right now, but I can definitely see it. You can see it on this video. I have scars on my, yeah. So people know, people now when I show them this, They asked me how I got clean and they wonder how I got out of that lifestyle of drug abuse.

So that's how I cannot wait to see you again so I can see your track marks. I thought you were going to say, and to this day I donate plasma for 200 bucks a week. No, but whenever I go home to Minnesota, I drive by the place and I see it and I'm like, good memories there. No, I mean, honestly, like, it's good. It sounds silly, right? And it's funny story. But like, in college, I did what I had to do to pay the bills.

And so, like, I was willing to, and like, we didn't, like, that was fun money. So, like, all of my job, I had an overnight job. I got to actually sleep at work. It was great. It was like, I worked at a home for developmentally disabled adults. So I would stay up from like, I got there 8 o'clock. I'd stay up until 10, 10.30, sleep from 10.30 to 5. And then from 5 to 7, I'd have to, like, get them ready for the day.

And then off to wherever they go for the day. So all that money went to paying rent and the car payment and or I think I had a car payment, gas, I don't know, whatever. And plasma money was fun money. There you go. So lesson learned. If you want money, sell your body. That's a bloody insane story that you just gave that. Stuck. That's awful. Oh my God. Anyways.

I want to talk one more second. This is painful, right? This plasma thing, that's painful. I mean, sticking the needle the size of like my left foot into my arm isn't always fun. But it's, you get used to it. Here's the worst part was that over time, you do it twice a week. It builds up and it has to do the same spot every time. So you build up scar. tissue right over that spot, hence the wound, that, you know, the permanent scar that have there. And you have to repuncture that every time, the same spot. So every time it gets a little harder just to get in there. So moving on. Were there any other sources of income that you had in college? Um, oh, I don't know. I mean, no. I mean, the job, just the overnight, just the

overnight job that I had. And so I did that up until I graduated. I graduated at some point. Again, I didn't go to the graduation. They just sent me a diploma at some point in the mail like a six months later when I called and asked them. And I moved to Washington State at that point. Awesome. So you graduate and what's your financial position? What's your balance sheet look like when you graduate college? 30 grand in debt, zero net worth. How much of that is credit card debt? And how much of that is? It's probably like five grand credit card debt, probably 25 in student loans. So not as bad as some. I mean, I know some that I have hundreds of thousands in student loan debt. But like, you know, 25. It sucked. I mean, it's like two or $300 a month in payment. So you get

bye, you survive, you get through it. That's what I did. You said my wife. Did you get married while you were in college? No, we were not married yet. We were still just, we were just, you know, good boyfriend, girlfriend, cute couple. Okay.

So when did you get married? Macy's clothes? Yes, we both wore Macy's clothes because that's where we had the credit card. Oh, don't worry, I got the Paxon card. I got the J.C. Penny's card. We got all the cards because it just makes sense. I mean, though, when you can save $2 on some clothing, like I would do anything. for that. I mean, I would sell my blood for $2.

So, anyway, we got married about a year later. I moved out to Washington State, and I rented an apartment. I remember this, so, this is my first venture into house hacking. I rented an apartment, a four-bedroom apartment. I moved out there with four buddies. We all moved to Washington, and we rented a four-bedroom apartment, and I rented out the other three rooms to my friends,

and we all split the cost four ways. And then one of my buddies left, the other buddy left, the other buddy left. And as they left, I would bring in just random roommates. I just advertised at the college on Craigslist for roommates. And then I realized after a while that if I rented out my bedroom, I could live for free. So I pulled a Craig Curl up and I lived in the living room while I rented out my bedroom so I could live for free. And so I literally slept on the couch and rented out all four rooms in this apartment and I live for free.

Now I'm thinking back, I should have charged more. I could have made money for doing that. But at least I got to live for free. So when you were doing this, when you moved out, it was this immediate, the first place you moved to was this four-bedroom apartment, and this is the first place you lived in Washington State. That was the first place I lived in Washington State, yeah. And what were you doing for work at that time? Coldstone Creamery.

Singing for tips. You ever went to a Coldstone? World's best ice cream. I have not. Oh, my gosh. Oh, you guys have never been to a Coldstone? Do they really? What's your problem?

Yes. I don't know if they still do. They did back then. I think they might still. Coldstone cream place where I got paid minimum wage. But I'd get like $8 or $10 an hour extra for tips because whenever somebody would tip, you would ding a bell. and then everybody in the line serving ice cream,

five, ten people would all sing a song. You'd start, be like, thank you for your dollar, listen to us holler. No, no, no, no, no, no. Thank you. And then they would, you ever would clap and cheer? Anyway, also, coincidentally that year, whenever you worked, you get a free ice cream.

And their ice cream sizes are like it, love it, got to have it. And like it is like, you know, 12 pounds, and love it is like 30 pounds, and got to have it, they just back a pickup truck to your house and unload it. And so I would, get a got-a-have-at-size every single time I work, which is like six days a week.

So not only did I gain some debt that year, a little bit more of the JC-Penny's Macy stuff, I also gained 40 pounds in one year. So that's how that works. Wow. But with the house hacking concept, okay, so even with the house hacking and the job and the tips. I still spent money on stupid stuff.

Okay, so when was the kind of the next inflection point where maybe we started to change your trajectory with your finances. Yeah, so let me fast forward the next couple years. So wife and I got married, about a year later or so, I don't know, somewhere in that we got married. And at the time, I bought a house. So after the four-bed of apartment thing, after I graduated college, and after all those things happened, I finally settled down in Grace Harbor, Washington, it's like the armpit of Washington state. Beautiful, just very low, low prices and no jobs and rough people. And I was talking to a friend who, her sister, who was there, is a real estate agent. And I was saying, I was looking for a

house to rent. And she said, well, why don't you just buy a house? It's cheaper than renting. And I was like, there's no way that's true. And she's like, no, it is. And so I looked at the numbers and I called up a lender and they're like, I mean, this is essentially how the conversation went. It was like, so what's your credit like? Oh, I don't really have any credit other than, you know, some massive credit card debt. I mean, for a 21 year old or 22 year old, 10 the credit card debt. Like, okay, well, you know, what's your income like? I make minimum wage. Okay, and, you know, what else you got going in life? Like really nothing whatsoever. How much savings do you have nothing? Okay, great. You're approved for $300,000 loan. This was.

2007, the glory days of real estate. They're like, we'll just do a no doc alone and say that you're a doctor. Perfect. Let's do that. And so we did that and we bought a house. Now, luckily, this bring back the garage sale mom. What did I learn from my mom was that like everything like buy bargain stuff. You can buy you, you can buy, you know, junky stuff. You can fix it up even.

And so I bought the cheap. I just asked my agent, what's the cheapest house in town? And it was an $89,000 little rambler house. And I was like, all right, let's get that one. And so we put an offer. We bought the house. And then I went to Home Depot and bought a book called One, Two, Three Home Depot. And I went to three Home Depot.

And I learned how to, like, do stuff. And I fixed it up a little bit. And we sold it, like a year later. Like, after we got married, wife moved in, roommates all moved out. So I was house hacking there as well. Roommates moved out. Wife moved in. We sold the house.

Then we made $25,000. And it was enough to really like pay off. the car that my wife had bought and pay for our wedding. We got married and pay off the wedding that we'd put on credit card. And now we were adults at that point. And everything was smooth sailing since then. Thank you, guys. You were horrible with the money.

Why are you on this show? That was so bad. Let me tell you what to change. We'll bring up to the modern a little bit more. So we started flipping houses because I just thought there'd be a fun business. So I was watching the flipping TV shows with flip houses. that was in 07 and 08. We all remember how great the real estate market was in 07 and 08.

And so I would buy properties and the market just dropped more and more and more. And I couldn't sell them. So I ended up on the few houses that I couldn't sell. Turn them into rental properties. And of course, I mean, as any genius would do, I put all the repairs on credit cards for those early houses. Because, I mean, come on. All the books said to do that because you're just going to sell the house and pay it off anyway.

Who cares? So now at that point, I probably had 80,000 in credit card debt, I'm thinking, after that, and I own some rental properties, which is great. And they weren't good rental properties. So I'm glad I shouldn't be saying this to you guys because you guys think that I'm like good at giving advice here. This is how I started. Yeah, I'm thinking of myself. Wait, when does he start being good with money? Because he's horrible.

So that brings me up to last week. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's just go back a little bit here. So you sell, you buy your first house. You buy one, two, three, home and fix it up. One day, one, a day. I still have that book to this day, the same copy. Yeah, you fix it up yourself. You sell it for $25,000.

You pay off the car and get a wedding. And now you're back to broke. Are you, right? Yes. Are you making minimum wage still? At that point, I had moved up to a new job. I worked today. Well, actually, no, I had no job for a little while.

I was trying to flip houses. When that kind of all crashed around me, I couldn't do it. I had to get a loan on those houses. Couldn't get a loan without a job. So I went back and got a job at a bank. Now I was making $13 an hour. The most money I'd ever made in my entire life. And I was rolling in it. How old were you at this point? 23, I think at that point, 23, 24? I'm 23. So you're broke, but you're not in debt because of the house situation.

Oh, yeah, I still had, now I had the credit card debt from all the flips. So we sell the credit card debt. Okay, fair enough. Lots of that. Before you got to the first flip, after you sold the house, how did you get into the next property? Hard money. Hard money. Hard money lenders for all those. So if those who don't know hard money,

they're companies who will actually lend flippers money to buy a house. So they would lend me the money to buy the house. I'd put the repairs on credit card, and then I would do the work myself. Now, in a perfect world, that's fine. I mean, I'd pay out the credit cards when the house sells, everybody wins, and I get some good miles out of the credit cards.

But when the house doesn't sell, and you have to go and refinance it, it means go to a bank and get a normal loan on it, I couldn't get enough of a normal loan to pay off all that credit card usually. And so I did this like three or four times. I had to refinance all these properties. And then I just ended up with like, yeah, almost $100,000 that they got one point in credit cards, credit card debt, which was great.

So some of our users are not totally familiar with this concept or some of our listeners, right? So a hard money loan, you're going to a private individual or a private bank and you're borrowing at like 12, 15% interest rate, right? Yes. Yeah, I think it was 12% interest. that I'm paying the hard money lender and 12 and no, no, no. It was 10 and 10% interest, so it sounds bad,

and 10% fee on whatever it is that I borrowed. So if I borrowed 100 grand, it was a $10,000 fee plus 10% interest per year, paid monthly. So it's really like 20% if you kept it for a year. So we need a deal. I can do those loans for you anytime you want, Brandon. I bet you can. And then you're financing the repairs with a credit card.

What is the interest rate? Oh, yeah, I'm sure high 20s because this was like mostly Home Depot cards. So I think I have, still to the day, I never canceled any of them. I think I have five Home Depot cards that I would just max out because Home Depot is cool

because they'd give you six months of no interest, no payments. But if you didn't pay it off in six months, it would retroactively go out on 29% interest from the beginning. And I never paid any of them off in the six months because I never sold any of those properties. So I ended up just with just tons of credit card debt.

So you're borrowing at, rates of between 20 and 30% annually to finance flips, which are then going down in value, even after you're improving them because of the market conditions, right? Yes. Yeah. And not knowing what I was doing and doing all the work myself and having no time for a job. I mean, you know, I had to finally get that job and stop flipping because it was a rough time. What was a rough time?

What was rock bottom from this exploit here? So we sold one of our house. We turned most of our house and the rentals. I flipped one. I bought this house. I flipped it. I couldn't sell it. so I moved into it. Finally was able to sell it and broke even on it. Just one of my other

flips. And I'm like, this is bad. I don't know where to, now where am I going to live? I got to go find a rental. And at that time, somebody was like, well, hey, like this guy I know, his my, basically my real estate mentor. He said, my church has a parsonage. So parsonage is like a house next door to a church where the pastor or the priest lives. We have a parsonage that we is currently vacant because they didn't have a pastor at the time. They were looking for a new one. And it's a complete rehab. It needs to be fixed up. Do you want to live for free there in exchange for you do the work to fix it up and they'll buy materials. I said, that sounds like a great solution. So I moved in there and I did all the work. And at that point, I remember, I don't remember how

I got connected with it. I think I actually might have watched a YouTube video from Dave Ramsey. So this is, I mean, this is like low point, right? Like, I'm still owning rent. I'm still buying rentals at this point. I think I have at this point, half a dozen. I even had a dozen rentals at this point. And you're not doing them because you want to buy rentals. You're doing them because you can't sell them. I couldn't sell them. Yeah, a couple of more. And you could refinance them. Yeah, a couple of them were actually like rentals that I actually wanted. Because at this point, I realized, so here's what I remember about when I bought my, I bought a duplex early on.

And I lived in half of it and I rented the other half out. And I remember my tenants walking over and handing me $650 in rent. And I remember holding that money. Now I don't take money in cash anymore. That's silly. But I would hold this, I held this money and I'm like, this $650, my mortgage is $620. And I remember like I at that duplex living for free. And I remember this thing just hitting me like, oh my gosh.

I'm living for free. And if I move out of here, which I did, now anything above that is just pure profit. And if I just own like a hundred of these, or I think at the time, I was like, if I own 30 of these, I could retire. I could like just quit my job. And that's when I really jumped in like to buy rentals because I was like, I set a goal. I'm going to buy 30 units. And so you discovered that concept in that moment. Or was there a book or other? There are many books. Yeah, many books. But I remember that one, that's when it became real. I mean, when I got into real estate the very first time, very first house, I read 100 books. I went to the local library and I got every single book they had over the course of a summer.

And that's all I did all summer long was read 100 books on real estate. Every book in the entire library system, like all the other libraries in the area, they would ship their books in because I would just reserve them. And I read 100 books on real estate in one summer because I was obsessed. And it was that before or after you had that concept happen? That would have been before that concept happened. Okay. So I knew in my head how that worked, but it wasn't until I held that money that I was like,

oh, this is like, and most of the books I read were on flipping. Because at the time, like, I feel like flipping was like all the rage. There was like 400 shows on flipping. Like all it was was flipping, flipping, flipping, flipping. So that's what made me think I'm going to just buy rentals. And that's when I got in the rental world. I want to know how you convinced your new wife to continue to allow you to buy these properties that you can't sell. You've got $100,000 in credit card debt.

I love real estate. I have always loved real estate. I will always love real estate. I would not have let you, Brandon Turner, be my husband and continue to buy all this with $100,000 in credit card debt and houses you can't sell that are worth less than you bought them for after you put more money into them. So not to be judgy, but how did you convince her? Yeah. The short answer is my wife has unwavering faith in me. So that's one thing. Here's actually. Here's actually, how in the same way I communicate to a lot of people on how to convince your spouse to do anything money related, because money is a hard thing with spouses. I believe that media is probably one of the best ways to convince somebody, because if you tell somebody something like your spouse,

like, hey, we're going to go buy rental properties or we need to save more money. They're going to be like, you know, whatever, I'm not going to do that. You're just telling me what to do. Don't tell me what to do. So I asked her to read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. That was one of the first books I read. It made a big impact on me. And so I had to read that. So at least we're in the same mindset. It changed her mind the same way it's changed millions of people's mindsets over the years. It's reading rich that I poured out, I think, helped a lot. But still, like, and I just trusted, and both of us trusted the process. We knew that the process worked by acquiring assets that produced positive cash flow. And then over time, those properties

would go up and value and the mortgage be paid down. We knew that if we just trusted that long enough to hang on, we would get through it. And now every month, every month, every day, I'd be like, this is not working. But I trusted the process that someday it would work. And I really believe that. And it worked. I mean, it did over time. It takes a lot longer than people think.

It's been 14 years now. And now those properties produce really nice cash flow and they're worth hundreds of thousands of dollars more than I paid for them. But it's taking me 13 or 14 years now. And some of them still are worth what I paid for them. Some of them have not gone up at all because I bought in crap areas. But some of them have. So with this, you had this inflection point when you held that money in your hand.

What about your behavior or strategy changed in the months following that inflection point, if anything? I think it just became a matter of, we're going to buy more of these. I think that's the biggest thing. I just said, I'm going to buy rental properties because I realized if I just had, this is my math in my head, if I had 30 units that each profited $100 per month per unit, so that could be a four-plex making $400 and $8,000, $800, it didn't matter. If I could just make a profit after all the bills have been paid of $100,000,

I just needed 30 of them to be able to quit my job and retire. Because $3,000 a month was enough to at least live in a cheap area and pay my bill. I call that level one financial freedom. It's like I can pay my bills and survive on my cash flow. Level two financial freedom is like I can buy a private jet and move to Hawaii. Level three is like I can buy the New York Jets and that's a good level to get to as well. That's why I'm aiming. That's a big jump.

The New York Jets though. They're not very good. Not very big. Not very good. It's a big goal. I don't want that. I'm just saying that's level three. Like Gary Vaynerchuk,

because that's his goal, right, to buy the jets and like his goal, that's like he wants that level three financial freedom. I feel like I'm at like level like two right now. We're like I could buy, not a private jet,

but I can at least buy like a nice house in Hawaii and kind of do whatever I want. But level three is like I can like really like I could own it. I could own like a kingdom. And that sounds fun. I won't get there. Anyway, so I got another story though.

If you want to be throwing like the next inflection point. Because you asked me, like, where it was Rock Bottom? That wasn't the money. Rock bottom was when I was living in that parsonage. And I watched a YouTube video on Dave Ramsey. And I mean, every, I mean, we were struggling. We were putting food on credit. I mean, we were living for free. And we were putting food on credit cards and putting, like, going to restaurants and putting it on credit card, because we couldn't pay it. And we'd get a hit with a medical thing. Or our dog would get sick or a cat, I think of the time. And that's like $800 for the cat. And that goes on credit card. And like, we could.

just could not get ahead. And I couldn't figure out why. And it really like, I couldn't figure out why. So finally I watched this video from Dave Ramsey. I was like, oh, that guy looks interesting. So I read Total Money Makeover from Dave Ramsey and like my head exploded, like just everywhere. And I was like, I need to have a budget. Like, I don't even know what I'm spending. And so I downloaded my bank statement and all my spending and I categorized everything. And then I looked at all my income, because the time at, at, at, at, at, at, I wasn't making that much. Anyway, I looked at everything,

and I was spending $1,000 a month more than I was making. And I was always making like $3,000 a month. I think I was spending four and making three. So I was 25% over what, and I was like, no wonder, no wonder I'm barely hanging on here. And I was living for free. So it just shows to show you that house hacking, even if you're living for free, doesn't solve everything.

Because, like, there's still a heart issue there. There's still an envy, agree. I need to have this because I want it. thing. I'm going to go out to dinner because I want it because I deserve it. And here's the shocking thing. That day, we made a plan. We made a budget. We went hardcore. We went and got envelopes. Like my wife, I had to read it as well because, again, I think reading is one. We went and bought this big envelope packet and had like slots for like 30 envelopes. And we set a budget. And we canceled all. Like we, I don't have to cancel, but we got rid of every credit card we had.

Like put them in a safe and said, we're never going to use another piece of plastic until we're out of this mess. When I get my paycheck, I go take it all in Canada. And I go take it all in cash and we would divide up the money into these little envelopes based on what we had that month and everything got paid cash. And like it's drastic, right? I mean, even Dave Ramsey had suggested this, but it's super drastic, but drastic times call for drastic measures, right? And here's the remarkable thing is that as soon as I did that, I didn't notice a change at all in my lifestyle. Nothing, except all of a sudden I was making an extra $1,000 a month instead of losing. Instead of losing an extra thousands. All of a sudden, I was spending like two grand instead of four.

But where did that two grand go? I have no idea. To this day, it doesn't make any sense. Logically, that makes no sense. But just spending cash subconsciously made me spend less money and seeing what I was spending. So somehow I just spent thousands of dollars a month less than I was before. And we had traction again. And we could start saving and we can start paying off debt. And that's when everything changed. Awesome. So you start saving. And what is the first thing you do with the surplus? Like what was kind of the action plan. Did you follow the baby steps? We did follow. I mean, for the most part, we followed the baby steps in that we went and got, I think, emergency fund first. We saved up a thousand bucks for an

emergency fund, took and started paying off the lowest, like the lowest credit card debt. Now, I didn't have a hundred granted credit card debt just by saving a thousand dollars a month. Like, that would have taken me forever. What I did was I got better at business. I got better at the flipping houses thing. Not significantly better, but enough that we started flipping a few houses a year, making $15, $20, $25,000 on these flips. And over the course about three years, we paid off all of that credit card debt, mostly using flips and a few burrs in there,

a few which we call burrs where you, it's like you flip a property, but instead of selling it, you just hold onto it, and you go to a bank and get a new loan. So you kind of just pay off the old loan. Anyway, that's how I paid it all off. So during this process,

you hit rock bottom, you start saving, you're still working at the bank at this time? Yes, the bank was during this time, yeah. And do you work in the bank the whole time while you start flipping two or three houses a year? It was around. I only worked at the bank for, I think, 18 months or something like that. So I quit at some point. Here's why I quit because in that process of the flipping and the paying off the credit card debt.

So we were still in quite a bit of credit card debt. I would guess, if I had to guess, 50 grand, still in credit card debt, when you do what any 24-year-old, I think it was 24 at the time, what any 24-year-old with 50 grand of credit card debt does is I went out and about a 24-unit apartment building. And I did the whole thing for no money down. Like basically no money out of pocket. I bought this 24 unit.

but what that did, and I can go into detail if you want to know how I did it, but I used a variety of creative strategies, but I bought this and all of a sudden, I had an extra like $3,000 a month coming in or $2,400 a month because it was about $100 per unit in income. And combine that with the other rentals now that were producing a little bit of cash flow, I now had $3,000 a month in actual revenue coming in, and I was still only spending about $2,000. So I said, all right, I did it, level one financial freedom. And I was able to quit my job in there. Yeah. Okay. I don't want to derail this, but I do want to derail this. Like, your story sucks. You're horrible with money.

I have $100,000 in credit card debt and I don't know how I'm going to pay it off. So why did I just go buy another house that is it worth anything? There yeah. So knowing the end, it's a really incredible story. But what made 23-year-old Brandon think that he could possibly buy a 24-unit apartment complex? Not 24-year-old. Mindy right now doesn't feel like I could go out and buy a 24 unit apartment complex by myself with no money down just because why did you? Fortune favors the bold, Mindy. I guess, but like I mean, I know you personally. I don't want to say you're cocky because that implies, I mean, you're not cocky. Coffee is a jerk. I'm confident.

You're very confident. But you just had these little ones and twos. How could you go from that to 24? 24 units is a big. It's not a small multifamily. That's a medium at the very smallest. I mean, that's still, that's a big jump. Where did you find it?

How did you discover it? I do want to go into that a little bit. All right. So the short answer was I read a book called the ABCs of Real Estate investing by a guy named Ken McElroy. So Ken, I had the privilege of meeting him for the first time. In fact, I got to introduce him on stage and it was such like at a cool moment. I had a conference last year.

And I read this book and I was like, it's all about apartment complexes. And I was like, shoot, that's what I want to do. I want to go apartment. I'm going to go larger multifamily. I'm going to get into that. So I read that entire book. And then there's a sequel called the Advanced Guide to Real Estate Investing. It's also about apartments.

I read that same day. Two books, one day was obsessed with this. I went to church the next morning. I tell this old couple there. I just read this a really amazing. They kind of had been following me, not mentoring, but like they've been talking to me every week about how I've been doing and what I'm doing in real estate and stuff. because they were kind of interested in it, just in the topic.

So I told them, I want to buy an apartment complex. That's what I'm going to do. And they looked at me kind of funny. And I had no idea that they were real estate investors at all. Like, I just never asked them. And they said, well, that's funny because we actually have an apartment that we want to sell. And so they ended up selling that entire 24 unit to me using what we call seller financing. So seller financing is where it's kind of like you were to sell your car to your brother

and your brother didn't have money. He like, you give him the keys and you say, okay, it's your car now. but you've got to pay me $100 a month until the total amount's paid off. That, you know, the car is. It's five grand for the car. So pay me $100 for the next 50 months and you can have, then it's, you know, yours. Same thing with the building. So I started paying them a mortgage payment every single month, but I took over.

And it was not passive. This is not passive income. This was me working at the property doing all maintenance, all management, all repairs, everything. I was there every single day fixing this property up and working it. and that became essentially my full-time job. I mean, that's all I did was work in this apartment for about a year or a year and a half. Wow. That's it.

So what was your, no, I mean, it's just gathering up all these things. Like, I have a thousand questions for you. What was your mortgage payment to them and what were you bringing in? Sure. So originally, I mean, I'm going to have to guess on some of these numbers. I don't remember it's been a while. But they were super nice because they, so it wasn't that they were just nice. Yes, they were super nice.

But let's go in their shoes. They're 72 years old. They have this apartment. They don't want to manage. They don't want to deal with this apartment building. But if they sell it, they owe a ton in taxes to sell it. Plus, when you sell a property, they do a lot of mess. Or they got to go buy something new.

Or how are they going to make income? They're trying to retire. They want to travel around the country. They have a big RV. So their problem was we can't travel because we have this big property. And if we just sell it, we have no money coming in now. So what they did is, they sold it to me, knowing that they could trust me. And this is just an important lesson about like everything I had done up to that point didn't

make a ton of money. But what I was doing, I was building my own confidence in that I knew what I was doing. I was building education. Like I understood how real estate worked. I was building work ethic. Like no matter what, I would not let a property go bad. I would not let. And like these people saw this over years of time.

They saw that I was building really integrity. Integrity is just doing what you say you're going to do. And I prove myself as somebody who would just do and do what they say they're going to do no matter what. And so they built that trust with me. So they sold it to me. And I took over and owned that property for, I think we owned it for another, we just sold like two years ago or two and half years ago. And it was a great property while we owned it. Took a lot of work. But yeah, it's great. And so when you got that property, what was kind of the trajectory following that? Was that the real like boost? Yeah. So somewhere in there, I mean, we kept acquiring like little deals here and there.

Like I went back to about a duplex. We flipped up like maybe one or two houses a year, made a little bit of money that way. And kind of once the thing got stabilized, I was bringing in consistently then from all the rental properties and everything and then maybe the flips, probably 30. I was going to say from the rentals, $30,000, $40,000 a year and then maybe an extra 20 from the flips. But that was still paying off credit card debt and just kind of trying to wipe that out. So we just slowly started kind of not doing anything. And I remember when I was 27 is where I officially said, all right, I'm like done. And I kind of just, I say I retired. And it's a bad. It's kind of a bad phrase because you never really retire when you own rental properties

and you're actively involved in them. But what I mean about that is like I said, I'm done for a while. I'm not going to buy any more. I'm just, I'm not going to go get another job anywhere. I'm just going to relax and just sit on the couch for a while. So I did that for a while because at that point, again, we're living on a budget now. We actually got that under control and was making, again, more money than we were that was going out.

And we were paying off credit card debt with these flips. And we were just about out at that point. So that's when I said I'm stable, I'm good, I feel good about my future, and that's when I became friends with this guy named Josh Dorkin, who was around that time. Josh Dorkin was the founder of BiggerPockets.com. And we became friends and he wrote a thing on his Facebook page that said, I'm looking for somebody to help me manage blog posts. And I said, I could manage blog posts.

Can I do it from Washington State? And he's like, okay. So that's how that started. I was senior editor of the Bigger Pockets blog, very first employee ever. I was making, I don't know if I'm supposed to say this, but I was making $40,000 a year. And my whole retirement lasted a total of like three months, I think.

And I started making money from bigger pockets. So I think that's interesting. Your whole retirement, even at age 27 when you could literally do nothing, your whole retirement lasted three months because you don't. Nobody who can retire will retire. I'm a firm believer in that. I know who can. Yes.

No, absolutely. I 100% agree with you. So you start on at this little known website. Little known website. I mean, there was still like 100,000 members. I mean, what are we today? 1.4, 1.5, something like that. So like 1.6, really?

Wow. So crazy. We, I started on like, yeah, we had just crossed the 100,000 mark. I think I was actually remember. I didn't say this earlier. I found bigger pockets when I was 21, I think. Very, like before I bought any rentals before anything. And I found it because I typed into Google.

or dog pile. I think it was dog pile all the time. What to do when tenants don't pay rent. So that's when I found bigger pockets. I think I remember number like 8,000 or something like that from early on. Something like that, maybe 10. That was early. Anyway, so yeah, I started helping out Josh.

And I remember just thinking, I mean, this is so funny. I remember just thinking, like, he's going to pay me $40,000 a year. Like, and I'm already financially free. Like, I already have enough money to live. I'm so rich right now. Like, I remember just thinking I'm like me and, okay, actually, this is true story. So I hope Josh doesn't listen to this. So maybe it's okay he does at this point. I remember in negotiation, I think he first offered me like 35 maybe and I was like, oh my gosh,

$35,000. But I got to negotiate. And so like I wrote back. So I wrote an email to my wife and said, Josh has offered 35. And I'm going to push back and ask for like 42. And I sent it. And then I realized I didn't send it to my wife. I sent it to Josh Dorkin. And so like I literally, told him in an email how excited I was about like this. And I never talked about. He never brought it up. And I have not brought it up to him to this day. It's, I don't know if he just is being gracious to me and not making me feel like a complete moron.

I have never said this out loud to anybody other than my wife. And now I'm saying it's ever be listening. That was the worst negotiation of my entire life. So anyway. You got a terrible deal. Yeah, terrible deal. No, this brings up. Okay, so this brings up.

So I'm thinking 40, and here the Josh's pitch to me was. Well, I made about that on the conference, the first conference. I got about $40,000 that I can put towards a salary. So if you don't make back more than this this year, you're out of a job 12 months from now. Like, that was the pitch. I'm like, all right. Wow. That's when we started the podcast.

I'm like, let's start a podcast and see if we can make money that way, which never happens. But that was the whole idea. And so, yeah. I was, okay, let me say. them before you jump in. Sorry, Scott. I'm rooting your question here. But I want to actually give you props here because of something you defined is one, like, this is in your set for life book. It's like once you achieve that like level one financial freedom or whatever, like, you can now take risks that other people can't do. And I never thought this at the time,

but you said this later in your book and it perfectly illustrated why. Most people out there could not have just gone and taken a risky job at a startup with one employee, like being the first employee making 40K a year unless they had already like because I was already like financially free. I'm not saying nobody else could have done it, but I was able to make that risk. Yeah, great, I'll do it. And I was excited about it because that was just extra money for me so I could take that risk. So once you have that financial freedom, you can take bigger risks to go and do bigger things and impact the world in bigger ways that if you're consumed about money, that you wouldn't do. 100%. That's the whole like point of what everything that I like to do here

with financial freedom is, you know, your retirement's going to last three months. Sorry, guys, we use that as the carrot. We try to, you know, margaritas in the beach is a big thing. Brandon, you know, has some margaritas in the beach, but he works just as hard as ever. You know, it's really, if you achieve financial freedom or some semblance of it early in life and get that control or, you know, before retirement age, you have a chance to go on and make a huge downstream impact on the world like Brandon here. Like me.

I can, yeah. It's true, though, like, I, you know, it's true. though like a and it never was even early on the drive for financial freedom was never about getting rich i never wanted to swim in that like you know tank of uh gold coins with scrooge mcduck financial freedom for me was always about two things you want to buy the new york jets i wanted it was always about two things number one i wanted to make sure that when i was a dad because i love kids i knew when i was going to be a father someday i wanted to be there for every soccer game, every dance recital, every scrape knee on the playground, whatever. Like my, I mean, my dad,

I love my dad, but he worked 50, 60, 70 hours a week all growing up. And he had to because that's what people do. And I'm not faulting him for it. Like, I love my dad and he worked incredibly hard. But I said that there has to be another way. And so my drive was that someday I would be a parent who could be present when I needed to be in the life of my kid. Not that I don't want to work. I knew I would never stop working, really. But I wanted to be there. That's what drove me there. How many hours a week did you work at this period when you were driving towards getting to this point, this inflection point? Like in the buildup years.

You know, working at the bank and flipping houses. My wife and I talk about this actually a lot is there were so many nights where we would be working at 2 a.m. At a rental property, painting the walls, finishing the culk lines because we had a tenant moving in at 7 a.m. the next morning. And I know people are listening to this right now, especially those real estate people out there, but any business people are like, you should have hired that out and done something different. But here's the thing.

I believe the reason that I am where I am today is because I was willing to paint walls at two in the morning and then wake up four hours later and sign a lease with a tenant because you do what has to get done. That's that integrity piece that like if you say you're going to do something, you do it and you just don't deviate from that. So yeah, easily putting in like 100 hour work weeks, especially when we were both working jobs.

My wife worked Starbucks through this whole thing. Up until we were 27, when she finally, 28 maybe, was able to quit Starbucks. Like, we would just work our jobs and we'd then flip houses and then we'd go take over rental properties. And you just, life was about hustle. And how many hours of self-education did you put in in those early years as well? I mean, like constant when it came to reading and networking, especially like bigger pocket stuff.

Like I was on there all the time on the forums. You can go back and read my early forum stuff. Like, it's humiliating. But like, I'm thinking about buying this 24 unit apartment building and people are like, you're a moron. And I'm like, okay. But I'm still going to do it. And like I don't, it's funny.

Like I, when I look at my story, yeah, like I did so many things stupid. And I spent money in frivolous ways and I did stuff that I would not necessarily recommend. And I flipped houses on credit cards and I bought houses on credit cards and I bought. I don't regret a bit of it. I don't regret a bit of it because every single thing got me to where I am. Now, would I tell my kid to go do it? know, but I don't regret doing those things. They got me to where I am.

Maybe lucky, maybe just like supernatural blessing. I don't know. Like for whatever reason, it worked. But I am who I am because of that. So I don't know. That counts for something. You know, I'm really glad to hear you say this because people who are just discovering bigger pockets now are seeing Brandon Turner, the Uber success story.

Brandon Turner knows everything there is to know about real estate. Brandon Turner can do no wrong. Little do they know. And this is a great episode. I'm going to bookmark this on my dashboard. So I can go back and when people are like, oh, Brandon's the best ever, I'll be like, hey, hey, hey, you should listen to his early stories because he didn't know squat. You can title this from moron to millionaire right there. There I'll claim that.

I'll claim that. I like my original title from financial disaster to real estate master because you were a financial disaster. I didn't realize what a disaster. What a disaster. Well, I'm trying to come up with a word that isn't a bad word, but you were terrible with money. I was not good with money, but you know what's funny? In all those years, I missed one credit card payment my entire life was ever late, and it was because I was on my honeymoon. Literally, I just forgot to pay it when I was in Mexico for my honeymoon.

The only time I've ever been late on a payment ever, except for, no, I did have a private lender one time who I could not, month after month after month, could not figure out how to send them the proper amount at the right day, Mindy. At one point, I don't remember that. But other than that, and the credit card thing, yeah, there was a period where Mindy was my private lender. And every month, there was some issue somehow with getting you the right amount in the right day. But other than that, yeah, like, we caught up. We made this, we figured it out.

Like, I was literally, like, have to send Mindy, like, a 30-minute video of, like, on a whiteboard, like, okay, so this money went here, and I paid two payments here, and I actually sent a third. It was all, like, trying to automate it. It was like, okay, my bank sent me. three payments here for some reason. And so we didn't pay for two months because of that. But anyway, it was a disaster.

I am not very organized. I think two loans were the same amount. Yeah, exactly. Or whatever. It all worked out. Yeah, it was. But this is really helpful to hear this because Brandon Turner on the real estate podcast right now on episode 370 or whatever you're up to,

you're perfect. You're, I mean, not, you know, perfect is a big stretch. But you're doing. a lot of things that people want to be. You are somebody that they aspire to. And when you first, your first interaction with Brandon is this, you know, I have 5,000 units. You're like, oh, wow, he must be really amazing. And it's nice to hear that you also made mistakes and you were able to fix them. And you have come out ahead and you've learned. And, you know, one of the big things that I see on the Bigger Pockets forums all the time is people are like, oh, I don't know how to get started.

Yeah. Just get started. Yeah. I mean, don't just buy like, whatever house, but you started because it was cheaper to buy than to rent. That's the case in a lot of places. That's the case right now in my place. Yeah. No, that's not the case. I don't know where I'm going with that. Never mind.

You know, to interrupt, like, I really believe, like, it's more important that you make a decision than that you make the right decision. And what I mean by that is, like, people perseviate. I don't know the word. I'm bad at words. they persevereate about decisions. Like, oh, should I flip a house? Should I rent it?

Should I start this business? Should I do this thing? And they do that for years and never actually take action. So what I like to teach real estate people? And I would teach any business owner in any way, any entrepreneur, any side hustle. You are never going to get rich off your first deal. The point of the early stuff is not to get rich. The point is to hang on and get some education without losing.

Like, that's really the point. So in real estate, the point of the first deal is not to make millions of dollars out that first deal. So I don't care. People are like, well, you know, Brandon says to buy a property that makes $200 in cash flow. And this one is only going to make $87. So I'm not going to do it. And I'm like, yeah, but who cares? It's $120 difference or whatever.

Like just get the deal done. Again, I don't want to tell people to think I'm saying buy a bad deal. Don't do that. But don't feel like you have to measure your level one with my level nine because what I do today is exactly what you do. It's more important that you make a decision and just start taking action than you're trying to get the perfect action or the perfect next step. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, because you are going to learn a lot on the bigger pockets forums, but you're going to learn so much more actually doing it, dealing with the tenants and dealing with, you know, the sob stories.

And you're like, oh, I really want to rent you even though you have 76 evictions. Don't do it. But you know what? Go ahead and do it and see what happens. Oh, number 78. Like it's just, now you know, oh, I'm not going to fall for that sobs store anymore. I'm not going to take cash. I'm not going to take a personal check. I'm not going to, you know, all these different things. You just have to sometimes experience it. And when you're doing a flip, yes, absolutely don't buy a bad deal.

But when you're doing a flip, if you make a dollar profit on your first flip, that is a home run flip. Agreed. Agreed. Of course, because I'm right. You're right. Tax season is one of the only. only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little

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I have a couple of kind of just general observations about your story here. One, your time at this going over this was relative, like, and I'll just, you know, this is maybe mean, but I'll just say anyways, it was not very valuable, right? You're making minimum wage at Coldstone Creamery and then at Wells Fargo, right? Or whatever it was, I think it was Wells Fargo. Was it? US Bank. US Bank. Okay.

Great. Right. So you leveraged your time to work on these properties and get a huge spread over time and capitalize on those early days, right? And I suspect you have a very different value on your time today where you have a very different approach to how you leverage that at this point in time, right? What drives me now sometimes is like people look at certain tasks like that's below me or I'm not going to do that. And we maybe mask it inside this idea of like, well, my best dollar per hour is actually doing, you know, whatever. And maybe that's true.

But in the beginning, like I had to do what I had to do. I had to do any work at all whatsoever. But there is a certain degree of like if I'm watching. watching TV, that is zero dollars per hour. So I watch very little TV. And I always have, I mean, if it's 9 o'clock at night, we will watch Netflix and Game of Thrones or whatever. But, like, I don't sit around watching dancing with the stars every night and waiting.

You know, like, I'm always trying to figure out like, how can I get some more value out of this time? And if that means spending time with my family, great. But anyway, so there you go. I wanted to observe that because if you were in a job that was paying $100,000 a year, You might have had a different approach to some of that early real estate investing, I'm sure, right? Yeah. Maybe.

Yeah. I think at the time when I'm earning almost no money that real estate was a great approach. And like you and I, you and I have talked about this a lot. If you're making $100, $150, $200,000 a year, in fact, I generally tell people not to go into real estate specifically. And here's what I mean by that is in anything you start, anything you start, it's like a curve, right? It's like what's the exponential growth curve? Maybe it's called it's called an exponential growth curve.

And that's it. At the bottom of the curve, like you're at the bottom and you're not making any money. Your dollar per hour is crap. It's a struggle. And you start learning more and more and more and more. And then it starts to go up and goes higher and higher and higher until your value, like your value in that business is really high. So then people who have spent 20 years and now they're way high in that curve,

curve in their consulting business, in their meat cutting business. I don't care. All of a sudden they're going, I'm going to go start real estate and make it rich there. And I'm generally like, I mean, that's fine. But if you're on that part of the curve, you're way better off finding a way to maximize those skills that you're starting up high than trying to start back at zero with a real estate career. Unless you absolutely love the idea.

No, I'm not saying don't invest in real estate. Just give your money like buy something simple, buy something small like you're doing. Like buy one deal a year. But don't go say, I'm going to go flip houses now as a job when you have no skill or ability to flip houses. Yeah, I love that. I think there's an easier way to financial freedom in a similar period of time than what you went through for someone who's earning a high income. Yes.

Yeah. And the second observation I would have is, well, a question, I guess. What was your balance sheet? What was your net worth? Was you kind of peg it at in the ballpark of it in terms of the equity you had when you quote-unquote retired? Yeah. I mean, if I had a guess a couple hundred grand probably, I didn't cross.

I crossed a million dollar net worth when I was 30. And I remember sitting at a Starbucks and I was I found out a loan application. I was doing all like one of my properties worth. What do I owe? And I'm going through this and I got to the bottom. It was like 1.03 million. And I was like, oh weird.

I'm a millionaire. And then I went back to drinking my peppermint hot chocolate. And it was like, it was a cool moment. But like I expected like somebody to like ring a bell. And it didn't happen. And that was a weird moment. But very few people would be comfortable with the concept of retiring with a balance sheet of just a few hundred grand.

It sounds like two or three hundred thousand. thousand dollars and that's because most people follow the crap and I know you guys are make fun of me for this but like what's it called the 4% rule or whatever what do you call it like yeah yeah a percent garbage exactly so like four percent right like they're like oh if I had a million dollars earning four percent return I would be able to live on whatever that is a year and I'm like I don't believe in a 4 percent return I mean if I'm getting less than a 15 percent return there's something wrong and the only way to do that though is being very active and being really good at what you do with real estate or with anything

I mean, I'm sure you could get a 15% return owning a Tupperware, door-to-door salesman business. Fine. But that's what I would rather choose than passive investments in the stock market at 4%. And again, I know, like, everybody listened to that things. I'm an idiot right now, but that's fine. Well, you got the 4% rule wrong. You're not getting a 4% return.

You're taking out 4% of your total. So, yeah, so you have a million dollars in the bank, then you're taking out 4%, which is 40,000. So, but I mean, if that doesn't work for you, you, then don't hang your hat on it. Yeah. That's where like people think they need millions of dollars to retire. You don't.

Like at least like, sure, it'd be nice to have. But I'd also take just cash flow in rental properties and that would work for me as well. I don't care how much equity. I could have negative equity. But if I have cash flow and rental properties, then I'm doing fine. I can retire on zero net worth. Well, but you retired with a couple hundred thousand dollars and enough cash coming in to cover all of your expenses.

Yeah, it's the cash flow that matters, not net worth in my mind. In terms of level one, financial freedom is all about, in my mind, level one financial freedom is a cash flow game, not a net worth game. Later on, net worth matters, and it matters a lot. And I care a lot more about that today. But yeah, who cares if I'm, if I own a property, let's say I own a million dollars of property today and it was worth a million dollars. I have zero net worth.

But it's producing a hundred grand a year in a hundred percent passive income. Do I care that I have no net worth? Not at all. all I care about is the fact that I'm making cash flow. Now, that's an absurd example. Like, nobody's making that. But there you go. Love it.

So I think that it's just extremely telling between those, like those are just two things that I picked up on where how you leveraged your time and what I picked up as a spread between the value of your time and the activities you were doing, right? It was not, you could not pay people more than you were earning, less than you were earning to do the work that you need to do on those properties, most likely, right? Probably, yes. You retired with a balance sheet that would be crazy for most of the listeners in the show, yet made perfect sense for you. And the third thing is asset allocation, right? So where was almost all of your

net worth was in real estate, I presume, right? Yes. Yes. Did that change after you joined bigger pockets, you'd retired and joined bigger pockets? Did you begin investing other asset classes over the years, or do you still almost entirely put your money into real estate? I have one other investment, and I believe, you tell me, I think we have a 401k offered at bigger pockets, maybe. Yes, we automatically contribute to your 401k. You might put money into it. If you receive a salary from bigger pockets. So you have somebody in there.

So I have an investment somewhere. I have zero idea how much is in there. I have never put a dime in there. You don't invest in your 401K? Why would I? I canceled this whole recording. So here, I'm going to give some really unpopular advice. Let me tell you what I don't do.

I don't put money in a 401k. I don't put money in a IRA. I don't put money to self-directed I-OK. I don't put money in a solo 401k. I don't put money into life insurance. I don't put money into anything. I believe 100% in putting all my eggs in one basket. This is not popular advice.

No. But I believe me personally in putting all my eggs in one basket. And what I mean by that is one asset class because I cannot be good at what I'm doing with real estate if I'm also trying to be good at figuring out what the hell a solo 401k does for me and what a Roth...

Now, I'm my... Granted, I just sent over an email this morning to my assistant and said, well, you set me up a 401K, a solo 401K, and he's going to do that. But my mind is a very small glass of water. It is not very big.

And it can only fit so much in it. It's half full. It is... No, it is. It is a half cup that is fully full. And if everything I put in there, something has to come out. So I would not be where I am in real estate today if I tried to be good at anything else. I'm pretty convinced of that.

Because to be good at anything else, it would require a mental bandwidth that I don't have. And I know that's unpopular advice and I'm not saying everyone needs to follow that. But I'm all about diversification within one asset class, not multiple asset classes. Okay. I'm glad to use the diversification word because, and I do know that you don't just invest in single family homes. I mean, you're everywhere. But why don't you invest in something like an index fund? In the personal finance space, the index fund is the darling of the community.

And you just set it and forget it. And you put your money in. You put it into VTSAX and you never look at it again. And then you're a betrillionaire. Why don't you follow that? Have you, you've heard that? Index funds? You've heard that.

So I've heard that if I would have. Yeah, if I were to put in, you know, $1,000 a month into my index fund and hold it for 45 years, I will be the richest guy in the graveyard. And I'm really excited about that about being the richest guy in the graveyard because all those other corpses are going to look at me and be like, man, that guy's got it. I am so glad you are not, you should be so glad you're not here right now. I would punch you. No, you don't put $1,000 in. Scott, what were we just talking about?

We were talking about who we wanted the bigger pocket. It's Money podcast to be for and what we wanted to do. And we want to encourage people to put large sums of money, to invest large sums of money from a position of financial strength so that they can grow their finances. They're growing their finances and like saving for retirement and all of that. So you don't put anything in index funds. It's not $1,000. It's like $25,000 a year.

That'll grow a little faster than your $1,000 a year. Not that your $1,000 a year is piddly, but it is. because I don't know, if I put it into an index fund, I have no idea. And this is my personal. I just have no idea what that's going to do. And I know on average is probably going to do 7 to 8% over time. But I also know that I will not buy a real estate deal that doesn't give me 12% cash on cash return. I just won't do it.

So in my mind, I would rather say, if you want to do some extrapolation of numbers, 25 grand a year at 7% interest or 25 grand a year at 12% interest. Put that out 30 years and show me the difference. It's hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes, but can you invest in real estate for $25,000 a year? I mean, I put a half a million in last year. I'll put a half a million in. No, you put a half a million in.

Can you buy anything for $25,000? I'm saying people who don't have a half a million just sitting around to put into real estate, what are you going to get for $25,000 versus putting that into index funds? You put that in now. And I mean, there's probably going to be a market correction. I'm not predicting anything. But I'll predict it. It's coming.

It's coming. What day? What day is that? What time is it going to crash? I don't know. I just say it's coming at some way. I'm going to predict it knows. So,

you know, what kind of real estate? And I'm just playing devil's advocate because I believe in real estate. I think this is such a powerful discussion. Can you buy for $25,000 a year? Yeah. I mean, you could buy plenty of real estate. I mean, pretty much anything in between Western,

Eastern Washington and Western New York State. And everything in between there, you can put $25,000 down for a down payment on $100,000 property. Pretty much anything in the Midwest you can find for $100,000. Not in Denver, not in Austin, Texas, but pretty much everywhere else. So it's doable.

I 100% agree. And to Mindy's point, we were talking about, the goal here, if you want to move toward financial freedom, you need to accumulate a material, a meaningful amount of capital every year. in more and more rapid succession, right? So if you're saving $5,000 a year, that's a good start. No one's laughing at it.

But you really got to be accumulating $25, $50, $100,000 a year over time and accelerating towards that goal, right? And there's a number of different ways to do that. If you're on the lower end of the income spectrum, real estate's probably a really good way to go ahead and start learning. Read some books, leverage that, you know, buy some of these properties, figure out how to explore that time. Or if you're at the higher end, buying,

bigger real estate can also make sense. But if you're at the higher end of the spectrum, making $200,000 a year, you know, maybe then it makes sense to like work your 70 hours a week that you're probably working to make $200,000 a year and plow it into an index fund, burning 7 or 8% a year,

and you're going to be financially free within five to 10 years just on that. Or you put your money into a real estate investment fund like Brandon Turner's and get a 15% IRA. Something like that would also be... I don't know where we're going on that one with this fund plug here. I don't know what you talk about. What are you talking about?

plug. Anyway, keep going. But yeah, like, I think that's the point here is you have to accumulate that cash, that capital in some manner, or you have to create it the way you did, right, in order to get started here. And once you've got it, it's all about that long-term allocation. There's no wrong answer to that, except for, you know, Brandon says, just you should probably just it all in real estate. And I don't care about, I don't even care about real estate. I really don't. And I'm not saying that you should not put money in real estate or you should put money in real estate. It doesn't matter. Here's why I put money in real estate, though, is because One, it fires me up. I love it and I'm willing to become the best at it.

You should put all your money into whatever fires you up and you can be the best at. You know what actually the best investment in the world is? It's not real estate. It's not stocks. It's not index funds. It's people. What I mean by that is like I, in fact, this year I'm hiring five. I have five people now, well, four people that I'm paying like to run my real estate business. Because every one of those people, I might pay them 100 grand, should make me a million dollars in revenue. Like people, I think, is one of the best investments you can make.

So at some level, some of you guys have businesses out there. Your best investment is not sticking $25 grand in an index fund. It's hiring a person for $25,000 to manage your inbox so you can go out there and earn another $100,000 doing what you do best. I love it. I think I would agree completely with you conceptually here, right? Like, how do you get to the point where you've accumulated enough to get to that point where Brandon felt at 27 where I am retired?

I can do whatever. And then this world of opportunity that you can see on like the bigger pockets business podcast or in bigger pockets real estate podcast. Like those become accessible to you in an incredible way. And you can kind of play that whole next game. It's like if you're played cash flow for rich dad or dad. I'm just thinking about that. Yeah. There's like two tracks, right?

It's like the first track is he's like spin your wheel. You go around. Did you like have an income? You have expenses. You have a baby. You have a do dad, whatever. And you're stuck. It's a rat race.

Once you get out of the rat race, it's like, oh, buy it. 24 unit apartment complex. Meet the mayor. Meet Ken McElroy and introduce me at a conference. You know, fly, you know, whatever it is. And that's the game, right? And this, like, what we're talking about here, this money story is how to get out of that game. So you can play the next game, the big game.

A hundred percent. And this is why it's so dependent upon your, like, what you do and where you're at. Because if you're, like, a teacher already in $30,000 a year, It's a very different strategy to get financial freedom than what Scott Trench is doing or Mindy is doing or I'm doing. Like if you're earning a $150,000 a year at a job that you absolutely love, then you should not leave that job and go flip houses. If you're a teacher, you should consider flipping houses because it will bring in mass amounts of money that you can then dump into other things. And you can't find with, if you're a car salesman though and you like being a car salesman, I'd spend all my time learning how to be a better car salesman. And I'd take my income from 100 a year to 800 a year because you're aren't.

party on that curve. So it's just knowing where you're at right now and knowing what the best path is for you. That's why podcasts like this are so fun because you get to hear all different perspectives of what's optional. But yeah, we can't just give someone advice like don't do real estate or do real estate. I don't know. But this is what works for me. Love it. That's a good place to end. Yeah, this has been an amazing discussion here. That was my mic drop right there. Anything else you want to add before we get to the famous four? I think that's it. By real estate. It's fun. By real estate. It's fun. Okay. Perfect. It's time for the famous four questions, Brandon. These are the same four questions we ask of all of our guests. Are you ready?

I'm ready. I hope they're different than my famous four questions. They're so different. Okay. What is your favorite finance book? Can I give three? Of course. This is your show, Brandon. Anything you want. All right. So the first one's called The Book on Rental Property. I'm so good. That's my book. No, I'm going to go with the first book that changed my life, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, followed by the second book that changed my life, which was Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover, followed by the third book.

I don't if I'd call this, changed my life, but I really liked it a lot, was The Richest Man in Babylon. I'm sure all those have been said before, but they're all good books. Richest Man in Babylon is my favorite. Oh, fourth book.

I'm going to give one more because it's really good. And it is personal finance in a way, and it's a very financial freedom book. It's called Life and Air. Have you guys read that one yet? I know Scott's you read it. Oh, I love that book. It's like a millionaire,

but instead of the word million, replace it with life. So life an air. It's a tremendous book about what true financial freedom is and how to obtain it. That's very cool. Awesome, awesome list. You should read all of those books. Okay, so what was your biggest money mistake?

Everything? The first hour of this show? What's the one piece of advice? I'll go. I got a good one. So I flipped a house one time. I found this awesome house. I was watching all these flipping shows early on my career.

Really wanted to flip this property. I was excited about it. And so I bought it. It was a duplex. I turned it into a single family house, did all the work myself alongside my wife. We literally, like, ripped out the staircase and put a whole new staircase right up the middle of the house, like this grand staircase. I mean, I built it with my bare hands.

Replaced all the windows, paint, carpet, like cherry hardwood floors, granite countertops. I mean, it was, like, unbelievable house. And we sold it. We listed it at $170,000, dropped it to $160,000, dropped it to $1.50, dropped it to $1,000. Finally sold it for 120 after like a year of owning it, over a year of owning it. I broke even on that property after everything's said and done. When I ran the numbers, this is not a plug, but this is true story, when I ran the numbers afterwards on the newly built Bigger Pockets rental property calculator

that I'd built at that time, I realized that had I kept it as a duplex, I would have been making $1,100 a month in cash flow. And it would have taken me two weeks to get it rent ready for a duplex. But instead, I wanted to flip that. house because that's what people do and that was cool at the time and I was greeting wanted money but that was a big money mistake don't do that wow that's a great one what separates successful people from those to give up fail or never oh wait that's not I said that all day long I got a hundred answers to that one it's integrity but keep

going other what's your real question Scott I think minnie's got this one okay Mindy what is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out starting out in life breathe next started out with their finances or starting out like out of college their financial journey towards financial journey towards financial independence always do what you say you're going to do david osborne gave this advice at the bp con 2019 where he said integrity is not just doing what you say you're going to do for other people it's do you say do you do you do what you say you're going to do to yourself for yourself. How many times do we say I'm going to go and go to the gym and then not go or I'm going to save $100 and not save the $100. You are aligned to

yourself and you are the most important person in your life. So if you can't hold a promise to yourself and hold that integrity, you're never going to be able to make it anything in this life. So build trust with yourself. Be integrityful. I made that word up, but I like it. Integrityful. That's a terrible word. It sounds like a good book. It's a great piece of advice. It's a great piece of advice and a great word. You're going to start using it now. Integrityful. You're going to type that in there. Be integrity full.

Be integrity full. Make that a tweet. We know that you're not very funny. Have you prepared a joke? Do you have what is your favorite joke to tell at parties? If somebody said this joke before stop me, this is voted the funniest joke of all time on Reddit. So somebody may have said this. But there's two guys, have you heard this one?

There's two guys out hunting in the woods. And one of the guys falls over and he's not breathing. breathing. And so the hunter who's still standing calls 911 and says, and they say, 911, what's your emergency? And they say, or he says, my friend, he's just dropped over. I think he's dead. And the woman on the 911 said, well, calm down, sir. The first thing we do is make sure he's, to make sure he's actually dead. And so all of a sudden, she hears a gunshot. And he says, now what? Yeah, that was voted the funniest joke of all time. I think of like, that's a great way to come up With a joke.

I know right there. Let me recite the funniest one of all time. We've never heard that one on the show before. That is funny. That is a funny joke. The other one I use at parties or on stage is the classic, I just flew in from New York. Boy, are my arms tired? But I get it.

I flew in from. Oh, I got it. Very nice. You asked me for a dad joke earlier, Mindy, so that's my dad joke. Oh, yeah, that's a bad joke, not a dad joke. The last question or command is, well, phrases a question this time is, do you have any like published works or places online

where people can follow what you're doing or kind of a recluse or you in general? Scott, he's not a published author like you and I are. Yeah, I'm trying to be. I keep putting submissions into Katie, but she doesn't want my underwater basket weaving book. So I'm going to just keep trying. Well, the integrity full, Brandon.

I'm going to, that's my new book. It's going to be called. The integrity full. You know what? I know Katie and I will get that push through for you. Be integrity full. All right. You heard it here first, folks. You can follow me on Instagram. I'm like a 13 year old girl when it comes to Instagram. I'm in a current race to get to 100,000 followers with investor girl Brit. So don't follow her. Follow me. And how would they follow you, Brandon? On Instagram? You didn't give your Instagram handle. Oh, geez. Mindy, you saved my life. I know. Beardie Brandon. Beard with a Y. Brandon. And you can find my

books, wherever, books are sold, except for airports. What are those books called? There's too many in the name. I just keep writing them. The book of real estate investing. The book on rental, rental property investing. Oh, whatever. That's the book.

I just called it the blue book. The blue book, the yellow book, the black book, and the journals. And a couple others. Yes. Brandon's published works, the entire collection of Brandon's published works can be found at biggerpockets.com slash store. The show notes or. Search, sorry, search Amazon for Brandon Turner or Audible, and you will find not only my books, but there is a Brandon Turner who is a narrator of erotica.

So, win-win. There you go. You can find Brandon's books at biggerpockets.com slash store, Brandon. Or Audible, where you can listen to. Not Brandon. Not Brandon Turner. Talk about things you may not necessarily want to listen with your children. Don't listen with your kids in the car.

Yeah, gross. Okay. All of these links can be found at our show notes, which are at biggerpockets.com slash money show 100. 100. Brandon, I really appreciate you taking time out of your oh-so-busy life of surfing and living in Hawaii, having a baby. Yeah.

Oh, I'm really glad you took time out of your life of having a baby. No, you don't understand how hard it is, Mindy. Oh, I don't know how hard. But let me tell you, let me give myself a pat on the back real quick right here. Just real quick. I'm not going to do it. And talk about how great I've been lately. So my wife is doing a month, but she is the baby's coming early, like very early.

And they're trying to keep it in. So they've kind of put her on basically bed rest, not quite bed rest, but basically bed rest. They don't want to do anything physically active that might pop out a baby. So what that means is I have been in charge for the past week of cooking and and cleaning. And let me tell you, it's amazing. Like, I literally, like, make breakfast, do the dishes, and it's noon. And I'm like, now it's time to make lunch. And I do lunch, and then I do the dishes, and it's dinner time. And I don't understand how my wife did that before, because all she, all you have time for is cooking and cleaning and taking the dogs out. And that's it. So I have a new

found respect for all stay-at-home moms who are also trying to run businesses. It's in jobs. It's amazing. I don't know how you guys do it. So now I just go to dinner like three nights a week or five nights a week, which is great. finances. I just put it on credit card. We're all good.

Okay, great. Back full circle. Put it on credit cards at the beginning. Put it on credit cards at the end. We'll pay it off with the next slip. We'll pay it off with the next slip. There's always money in the banana stand. All right.

There is always money in the banana stand. Brandon, this was a lot of fun. Thank you. I don't know that much of this. I have not heard much of this story. I try to keep it under wrap, so we're going to not publish this episode. So thanks. Oh, totally.

Yeah, we're totally not going to publish this episode at biggerpockets.com slash money show 100. Okay, so well, thank you. I'm going to let you go in case she's, you know, birth and a baby now. Yeah. Can't wait to see pictures. Thanks. I can't wait too.

Thank you, Brandon. Okay, thank you. Bye. All right. That was Brandon Turner from biggerpast.com. Mindy, what did you think? I love his story. I mean, I hate his story.

He is a total disaster when it comes to money in his 20s. Didn't he have, oh, no, it was real estate. I was going to say, didn't he have a website called Money in your 20s, and it's real estate at your 20s? There's a lot of rhyming in this show today, which I don't mean to do. But he was a disaster with money in his 20s, and it's nice to hear that he has changed his life. He has turned his financial situation around and is now level two retired or level two

financially independent. Yeah, you know, it's amazing that he was so bad and then came so far from that, right? And it makes you wonder, you know, because he read Rich Dad Porte, he read all these books, he took a lot of action. You know, it's kind of like, it kind of makes you wonder, can anyone do this? Like, what is the worst possible position that you can think of someone finding themselves in financially from this? and it's making minimum wage and $100,000 in credit card debt, right? That's the worst position I've ever heard of. He's definitely really low on the totem pole when we come to, you know,

hooray success stories on this show. But he took action to change his financial life. He didn't just sit back and say, whoop, found myself in six-figure credit card debt. I guess I suck with money. I'll just declare bankruptcy and never do anything else again. He continued buying rental properties, which I don't necessarily agree with, but clearly was the right thing to do. And it's a great story of how taking action and moving forward in a positive way will yield success, will help you grow wealth, will grow massive wealth.

100%. And I keep coming back to that I don't think we've had a guest in the entirety of this show who some people have had more debt. but it's like, oh, I had $200,000 in educational debt because I got me, I was getting an advanced degree to make $80,000 a year or something like that, right? Nobody had, nobody's had close to six-figure or six-figure debt and had $15, $13 an hour wages. He was making $5 an hour at Coldstone Creamery or $5.25 or something. I mean, it's just astonishing how bad he was with money and how far he's come. And I really, really am excited that he shared it with us today. Yeah, it was a wonderful story.

I hope that you guys enjoyed as much as we did. And I hope everyone learned something from it that they can take away a little nugget that maybe will help them throw their financial positions. I hope so too. And I am surprised that he doesn't invest anything in the stock market. And I was arguing with him about that. But clearly he has discovered the secret for him to build his wealth. And that secret for him is real estate.

And he wholeheartedly believes it. And he's really good at it. So why should he diversify? Well, he should diversify because you diversify. So it'll put all your eggs in one basket. But this is Brandon Turner holding his basket of real estate eggs. I think they're not going to break. Yep.

I agree. I can't argue with his logic for him. Correct. Correct. He has the, like you pointed out, he has the education. He's self-educated over a long period of time. and he's optimized every resource that he has. Awesome.

Well, should we get out of here, Mindy? We should. I don't have any clever exits lines today. So I will just say from episode 100 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, he is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen and we are leaving.