BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 786: Brandon Turner on Crash Prophecies, Hawaii House Hacks, and Nickelback Bets

Episode Date: July 2, 2023

Brandon Turner is back! That’s right, live from the Sea Shed are your beloved BiggerPockets hosts, Brandon and David! Can you feel the bromance brewing through your speakers, or is it just us? David... flew out to attend one of Brandon’s recent events and conduct a two-part interview with one of the most popular property investors on the planet! And boy, oh boy, has Brandon been busy! In this episode, David puts Brandon in the hot seat, going through a fire round of top-asked questions to get Brandon’s input on not just real estate but life. You’ll hear Brandon talk about housing market crash prophecies and whether or not he thinks they’ll come true, the struggles he’s facing with today’s intense competition, an unflattering tattoo that may or may not be part of a bet gone wrong, and why humiliation is one of the BEST ways to get you in the zone to WIN. But that’s not all; you’ll hear about how Brandon used social media to build his entire real estate business, why NOW is the time to lock down good debt (and invest!), and why you need to STOP trying to survive and start looking to thrive! Tune in as we take a nostalgic walk down metaphor lane with Brandon and David! In This Episode We Cover: Finding financial freedom and why the everyday struggle to survive is NOT enough Investing in 2023 and whether or not the housing market could be headed for a crash Using social media to raise private capital, find employees, and grow your business Facing humiliation and transforming negative emotions into the fire that propels you forward Why you can’t buy happiness, but you CAN buy an “environment” that makes you happy  An update on Brandon’s bet with InvestorGirlBritt over who will get an embarrassing new tattoo  And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Agent Find a Lender BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch BPCON2023 Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area David's BiggerPockets Profile David's Instagram David’s YouTube Channel Work with David BiggerPokets Real Estate Podcast 92 with Brandon BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast 365 with Jocko Willink BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast 401 with Jordan Harbinger Books Mentioned in the Show: Brandon’s Collection BRRRR by David Greene  Set for Life by Scott Trench Connect with Brandon: Brandon's BiggerPockets Profile Brandon's Instagram Brandon's Podcast Brandon's TikTok Brandon's Website Click here to listen to the full episode: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-786 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 786. Oftentimes we look at the moving the wall. We look at some big project. Like, I got to do this big thing. I got to get good at real estate. I got to build financial freedom. And it's a big wall. It's a lot of rocks there.
Starting point is 00:00:14 It looks heavy. But the fact is, it's not heavy. It's 20-pound rocks. Anybody can do it. So maybe people need to focus a little bit less on the wall and more on the rock. What's the next rock in front of you? What's the little, the 20-pound rock? It's not light.
Starting point is 00:00:28 20 pounds is still a little lift. But anybody can do it. A kid can do it. You just move the rock across the field. Before you know it, you got a wall over there. You got a new fence. What's going on, everyone? This is David Green,
Starting point is 00:00:38 your host of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast here today with a special Seeing Green episode for you. If you haven't listened to one of these before, these are episodes where we take questions from you, our listener base, our fan base, the people that are trying to build wealthy real estate. And I answer them for you based on my experience or the perspective that I have with real estate.
Starting point is 00:00:56 Well, sometimes I bring in help. And today is one of those shows. I've got my best friend, Brandon Turner with me, former host of this same podcast you're listening to right now that really helped me get started in the space. And he's going to help me tackle the questions that our listeners have asked. This is going to be a fascinating show. I'm excited to bring it to you guys today. Now, I don't want to give away any secrets from today's show because it was really fun.
Starting point is 00:01:19 But I will tell you, I'm about to teleport myself to Hawaii and bring this show to you live from the C-Shed. So I'll see you in a minute. Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments, chasing approvals across multiple properties, and maybe a few HOAs, all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident. One delay can throw everything off, and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress. That's why hundreds of property managers rely on bill to streamline their finances.
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Starting point is 00:03:20 and lets you post listings to multiple sites. Check it out at rentready.com slash bigger pockets. That's rent, r-E-D-I-com slash bigger pockets. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Fundrise flagship fund.
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Starting point is 00:04:26 This and other information can be found in the fund's perspectives at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. From flannel to full-time flip-flops, DIYer to visionary, hot chocolate only to coffee connoisseur. He's traded cold climates and ice cream every night for sun surfing and triathlons. Please welcome none other than my brother from another mother and best friend, Tandon Burner. That was the most ridiculous introduction. ever had. I loved it. Thank you. That's not bad. That's really good. Did you write that or Eric write that? Eric wrote that. Did Eric write that or did AI write that? Uh, that's a better
Starting point is 00:05:01 question, which we probably shouldn't get into on this episode right now because we talk about for the whole time. Brandon and I are staunchly opposed on opposite ends of the AI spectrum. He loves it. I hate it. Uh, he thinks that it's going to be cute and fun. I think it's going to be the terminator that takes up the world. No, I think both. Skynet is Genesis. You hear to hear it here to hear first. Take over. Take over, man. So before we get into the show, can I tell you a funny story? I don't know if I've already told you this, but we're going to do on the podcast. Okay. somebody DM'd me asking for marriage advice because he was going through divorce and he wanted to know how can I make sure that my wife doesn't get all the assets? And I'm like,
Starting point is 00:05:33 that's not really a question of my answer for you. But you need a lawyer and I don't feel comfortable telling you how to screw over your ex-wife. So instead I said, well, what can you do to save the marriage? Just talk about that. That might be a little bit better. Marriage is sort of under attack in our country. And I'd rather see couples stay together than get divorced. And he didn't want to get into that conversation, but I'm like, well, you know, I've been through a rough breakup. And I thought at the time that I could handle it, it was actually much harder than what I thought. You might want to really think about this because sometimes when you're frustrated, you're emotional in your mind, you see a situation working out differently than how it actually works. Like, have you ever quit a job based on impulse?
Starting point is 00:06:04 Probably not you, but people have. And then wake up the next day like, why did I do that? I don't have another job. There's nothing lined up. And his reply was so not like I would expect this guy to answer that I asked him, did you send that from chat GPT? And the answer was yes. He gave me a computer-generated answer about me pouring my heart out in an Instagram DM. And I'm like, this is why I do not like AI because that's what people are going to do.
Starting point is 00:06:32 They're like, okay, how do I say something to my wife on our anniversary that's going to really make her happy? And you're going to go to chat GPT and say, say something really sweet for my wife and then you're going to hand it to her. I may or may not have done that recently on our, what was it, my wife's birthday. And I needed a nice birthday message for her on Facebook to be like, hey, this is my wife. So I went on to chat GBT, and I put in all my thoughts. And I said, can you make this sound better? And it made it sound better. At least you put your thoughts in.
Starting point is 00:06:57 I'll give you that. Other people are using it to save time so they don't have to think, which is what scares me. And it's a sickness of the highest order. I don't like it at all. Well, why don't we not talk about it then, man, because you don't want to talk about it. No, I want to talk about you. We're back in Hawaii. We're doing our thing.
Starting point is 00:07:13 I've got my AI disclaimer out of the way. So there will come a point where you and I will be pitted against each other. like celebrity death match on MTV over this AI thing and we'll see how that works out. But in today's episode, Brandon Turner and I have, what's the word I'm looking for when you come back in contact with someone, reconnected? Reconnected. That's not the word I was looking for. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:07:33 We'll call it that. Sorry. A joyous reunion? Yeah, something like that. Like it's a reunion. Chat, GPT. Open AI. What is another word for?
Starting point is 00:07:41 Watch this. What is another word for reunion? Another word for reunion is gathering. more. Here are some more. Meeting, get together, gathering, rendezvous, assembly, and homecoming.
Starting point is 00:07:54 Thank you, Chad, GBT. See how fast that was? Yeah, it probably was as fast as we could have just figured out without having to type. But until Jad ChbD is inside of our brains through a neuralink,
Starting point is 00:08:03 we still have to think a little bit. Give it a year or two. So I'm back with Brandon in the seashed and we are talking in today's episode. We are going to get into like a fire round of questions that people want to know about us. That sounds good.
Starting point is 00:08:17 We are going to get into to a, as an ode to the old BP style, a fire round, where I'm going to fire questions at you, many of them from some of our listener base and see what you have to say. So question number one. That should be the new sound effect. You'd be like, like, fire round. Poo, pew, pew, pew, pew. It was something kind of like that was like explosions.
Starting point is 00:08:33 Yeah, but I'm thinking like the little pew, pew, pews. I don't know that that's still cool, brother. I think that's like a nine-year-old meme. It was very funny at the time, though, especially working in law enforcement. There's like pew memes going around all over the point. Question for you. Okay, here we go. What happens when you fart in church?
Starting point is 00:08:50 Oh, geez. What? Yeah. Is that a joke or is that a question? No, that's a joke. Oh, okay. What happens? They make you sit in the pew.
Starting point is 00:08:58 All right. Getting into our eyes. Did you make that up or did you hear that? I heard it sometime a long time ago, but you brought it back. That's a good joke, your punis. I'm going to list off the types of my boats in my armada. What is your favorite and how would you rank them in order of importance? You've got the friendship, the relationship, the partnership, and the partnership.
Starting point is 00:09:17 friendship. Friendship, meaning what do I care more about, friendship? Which is most influential in someone's life, friendship, relationship, or partnership. How are they different? Well, I don't know. You explained to me. I would think they're different. Like, are you...
Starting point is 00:09:29 I'm best friends with my wife. I have relationship with my wife and my partner. So you and I are friends. We're a relationship. But we don't... Business partner. Okay, so this would be a romantic relationship. Okay, so romantic relationship.
Starting point is 00:09:41 Friendship, partnership, business partnership. Okay, so business partnership, romantic relationship. and friendship, bro, romance. Yes. Most influential in someone's life. What's the big rock they want to get right first? Though romantic all day long. You cannot, you cannot grow beyond, maybe you can,
Starting point is 00:10:00 but it's exceptionally hard to grow beyond the person you pick to spend your land with. If that's wrong, there's a great quote, who said that? Oh, no, Pete Vargas. He's a speaking coach kind of guy, the big company. He once told me that his dad. I would always say, was it Pete? I think it was Pete that said this. I'm going to give him credit anyway.
Starting point is 00:10:20 I'm just glad to giving credit to someone else for a thing. A wise man one said. It actually might have been Daniel Grothy, who wrote a great book called The Power of Place. But either way, the quote was they were together. That's why the three of us were together when I heard this. They said, when everything's right at 1, 2, 3 Main Street, like their house, everything's right. When everything's right at home, everything else is right. When everything's wrong at home, everything else is wrong.
Starting point is 00:10:42 So therefore romantic partner number one most important thing. Get that right. That takes up so much real estate in your head, right? It takes up so much real estate. When things are wrong in your relationship, you're not working out. You're not thinking about real estate. You're not doing a lot of things. You're in survival mode.
Starting point is 00:10:56 You're in survival mode. That's it. Yeah. So that's where I go. That's really good. Jay Papazana at your Better Life Conference kind of seconded that when he was talking about, I am a husband first, then a father, then a business person. If I get those first two right, all the other dominoes tend to fall in line.
Starting point is 00:11:11 So that's very good. Okay, after romantic relationship, friendships or business partnerships, most influential. I can't separate them. I don't have friends that are business partners. Your friends become your business partners and your business life are your friends. That's a great point. I'm not sure I have any friends that I don't do some kind of business with. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:29 No, I'm sure I do. I like, there's some people from like church, for example. I've never thought about that. Do you have a lot of friends that aren't business related? This is a, I have a hard time. I mean, let's be real. I have a hard time connecting with people that aren't in my world of business. It doesn't mean they do what I do, but they're at the same mind.
Starting point is 00:11:46 Because your business is so tied to your mission. That's why. For you to have a friend outside of your business means they're also kind of outside of your mission and life. That's so important to you. Yeah. When you get around people and you've been around people like, man, my boss just won't give me that raise. And I've been working like 40 hours a week and they're not giving me a raise. It's so stupid.
Starting point is 00:12:02 Like, how do I even like, how do I resonate with that? I can. Like we don't, we're operating at very different frequencies. Yeah. Right. And so and I don't want to, I don't want to be in that frequency, right? So I almost don't want to be around. Now, there are people I'm friends with, I guess that I'm not in any kind of business thing. However, they are in some kind of business thing usually. Yeah. So they're operating at a similar frequency. We're all, we're all running on the same frequency. Yeah. That's a great point. All right. Our first question is going to come from the new co-host, Rob Abasolo in the H. This is what the new people in Houston refer. It used to be called H-town. They thought they were cool to call. call it that. H-town kind of became cheesy. So now they call it the H. How do I not know that? I thought it was in California. He used to be in L.A. for a time, but he's in Houston. But he's one of those guys that bounces around like wherever he's investing. He wants to go live there. But he's in
Starting point is 00:12:52 Houston now. He's investing in Houston? I believe he is. I'm buying. You are too. I got two huge apartments right now that I'm buying. Yeah. So Rob, if you ever need a place to live, hit up right. I have thousands. He can probably get on that rent. Rob's question. How has raising funds in the recent months changed for you. What are some tips that you may have for vetting operators? It is the hardest time in the history of me being in real estate in 20 years almost of raising money, raising capital. And I would include that being like 07. Not that I was doing a lot in 0708, but man, it is tough. It is tough right now. What makes it tough? A couple things. Number one, the news makes things tough, right? Consumer confidence is what drives a lot of this.
Starting point is 00:13:31 The news has made it very scary. Recession's coming. Recession's coming. The Real estate is going to crash, even though there's almost no data that supports a real estate's going to crash. But everyone, the news likes to say that. There's very little that, like, that would. Why is it going to crash? Because it happened before. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:13:46 Like, people cannot think outside of what happened before. Yeah. That's all they can think is, did this before. Humans need patterns. Yep. Right? Because our brain. To feel safe.
Starting point is 00:13:53 They need patterns. So the way that we do. Especially when 80% of the real estate in our brain is not safe. Yes. We look for the comfort in the pattern. Yes. And we miss what is actually happening. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:14:02 There's a whole, books have been written on this. topic of humans have to categorize things and find patterns and find meaning in things. Oh, for sure. Have you ever dated somebody who like their father left their family when they were younger? I guess no, because you've only dated one person in their entire life. But this will come up with somebody who like another one of my best friends, Kyle, he lost a job out of nowhere. He just got married. He started a job with another coach. That coach committed a moral indiscretion and was fired from the job, which meant Kyle was fired with him even though he did nothing wrong. And it set this pattern in his life of you can't ever feel safe. At any minute the hammer is going to drop on you,
Starting point is 00:14:35 right? Or someone who was left by a romantic partner, they were left by a parent, they have this belief that people always leave. And what's crazy is they now find a way to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's it. They push people away to say, well, I wanted to hurt you before you hurt me or I wanted to leave you before you left me. And then they end up using that as confirmation bias to support a see, everyone leaves. See, you'll never, like that person won't commit to a job. That's not the case in Kyle's case. But that's because we've talked. about it a ton. He easily could have been in, I'm going to quit this job before I lose it. And I think the same thing happens with the real estate stuff. It happened before. It's going
Starting point is 00:15:07 to happen again. And so they don't go invest in real estate. Meanwhile, when I look at the market, I don't know if you think the same. But we very well could be going into a recession. I think we're probably in a recession, but inflation masked that a lot of the time. But all the money is flooding into real estate. It is the safest place to put your money right now. Yeah, let's also remember because again, people have bad memories. And maybe they don't know the data. But I think it's like seven out of the last eight recessions. Real estate went up. It was only the 0708 Because that recession was based on. That was a real estate recession. Yes. So when people think recession, they think real estate recession. Yes. Because that's the most recent. Because that's in their
Starting point is 00:15:39 memory. And that's all we can remember. Right. So the fact, most recessions, almost all of them in American history have been good for real estate investors. That said, I love the point you made. I'm going to bring it even broader. Sometimes if you focus so much on that, like you said, the self-fulfilling prophecy comes through, we could see a real estate recession. And we're going to make it happen to ourselves because we're all freaked out. Now, I don't believe that's going to happen because I I think there's so many people waiting right now because of the bigger pockets effect. I mean, we change America in terms of real estate. There are millions of people looking for deals.
Starting point is 00:16:09 The second there's a deal, people are going to fill that gap. And so we've got a long time before I think we're going to see a collapse. So there's two points I'd make there. It is very true that it could happen because we do it to ourselves. And that makes me think about, well, if it does happen, it won't last forever. Yep. Right. Makes me think about there are times where just by pure sheer, sheer,
Starting point is 00:16:30 forced, you can hold a beach ball underneath the ocean. Yeah. But at certain point, your arms get tired. What happens when you let go? Yep. Shooting right back up. And the further down you pushed it, the faster and the higher it comes right back up. We need an analogy button.
Starting point is 00:16:41 Just boom. Boom. Yeah. So when you do see something like all the investors get scared and so they all sell their real estate and that floods the market with supply like what we saw in 2010, yes, that can happen. But at some point, people like investors realize, oh, my God, this thing, cash flow is so easy. Let's go buy it.
Starting point is 00:16:56 Yeah. It turns around just as fast as it went bad. It goes shooting right back up. other thing. My opinion, I can't prove this, but I think real estate has always been from a financial perspective, not from an easy perspective. It's probably a more difficult asset class to invest in compared to stocks or other things you can just go by. But it's always been the best. And it reminds me of jujitsu. Jiu Jitsu was always around. Karate was always around. Sumo wrestling was always around. Wrestling was always around. Taito was always around.
Starting point is 00:17:23 But you didn't know which one was the best because whoever you talked to was a sensee in that thing and they always thought theirs was the best. And then the ultimate fighting championship came around and we actually pitted all of the different martial arts against each other. And it became very clear that this little guy doing jiu-jitsu is beating all of the big guys doing other things. And we had objective evidence to see it was better. And then the popularity of jihitsu exploded. Bigger pocket sort of function like the UFC.
Starting point is 00:17:45 We started to see everyone's learning this tool now. Everyone's learning jiu-jitsu. It's going all over the place. And then as they start comparing their investing vehicle versus the other people's, real estate's blowing everyone away. Now everyone wants to train jiu-jitsu. It used to be a secret. If you knew that, you could beat up the big guy.
Starting point is 00:18:01 Well, now the big guy knows it too. And Blackstone, in this case, is the big guy who's going to go in there and buy it all up. So what I've been telling people is I am more worried that you will not take action, that there's not enough urgency about how valuable buying real estate is and you will miss out on an opportunity to buy it, period, while they're waiting for this huge crash that's going to come so that they can get it even better. I don't want to get too far off our questions, but do you think that I'm being a little too greedy in my perspective that real estate is more likely to become too expensive for people to buy than it is to crash and become more affordable and people should wait to jump in.
Starting point is 00:18:35 No, I agree. I think it's, I think given a long enough horizon, real estate's always going to be more expensive. And so now I also think rents are going to go up. And you made the brilliant point this weekend we were talking that 30 years ago, a house was 20 grand, you know, in some areas. And now it's 200 grand. Yeah. So that means if today, if it's 200 grand, it might be $2 million in 30 years now.
Starting point is 00:18:54 Logically, it would be. Yeah, or even more because all the money is pretty. getting more money. So at the same time, rents that were $200 a month are not $2,000 a month, and they're going to be $20,000 a month, potentially. And so it flows together. It's like, you know, when I was a kid, you could buy a house for $12 and a pack of smokes. It's like, yep. And yeah, and everyone thought that was crazy. That house would be $1,000. When I was a kid, you'd buy a house for $200,000. Exactly. Exactly. And so the more we can lock in debt today, the more we can lock in good debt, even at 7 or 8 percent. I don't care. As long as you can
Starting point is 00:19:27 like in good debt. Yeah. It's good stuff though. Yeah. It's really going to be thinking that way. You notice in our position as people who are teaching real estate to have to pay attention to it, there's certain facts that people like to grab a hold of and there's other ones that are uncomfortable and they dismiss it.
Starting point is 00:19:40 So you'll often hear it said cash flow is guaranteed, but appreciation is just icing on the cake. It's probably not going to happen. But you look back over 30 years, was appreciation just it happened to happen or was it pretty predictable? And then when you try to live off your cash flow as someone like us that's done it before, It's actually wildly unpredictable. You never know when the thing's going to break. The tenant's going to leave.
Starting point is 00:19:59 The problem's going to occur. And then everyone accepts that appreciation could happen for the price, but we never think about the fact that it happens for rents too. Appreciation applies to rents. Rents go up over time while the mortgage stays the same. That's what makes real estate makes sense. Your loan balance stays the same. Your value of your home goes up.
Starting point is 00:20:19 Your mortgage stays the same. Your rent goes up. Over time, this always happens. Yet there's this consent. assistant message of, well, don't bank on that, don't bet on that. And we're not telling people to go out there and get yourself in the whole two grand a month buying a property that you can't afford. No one would say that. But just let's quit pretending like appreciation in rents and prices and stuff is an accident that just happened. Like it's not predictable that that's going to continue.
Starting point is 00:20:42 Yeah, agreed, man. Agreed. But to continue the topic real quick about raising capital, yes, it's hard right now. But this is where my mind goes with that. Let's just say half as many people are willing to invest in, let's say, open-door capital right now. Like, we're doing a big raise right now. Let's say half as many people are interested. And out of those people, let's say they're only investing half as much. Okay. So now it's literally four times harder to raise capital than it was before, which is probably
Starting point is 00:21:06 about where we're at. Okay. So we have two options. You can shut down and you can say, I'm not going to, I'm not going to raise much capital. I'm going to lower my goals. My buddy in high school, Corey, would always say, if you can't reach your goals, lower your standards. You can do that.
Starting point is 00:21:19 Not good advice. That's funny. Yeah. Like, he was talking about that in terms of hitting on girls. I had a friend that had the same thing with Hitting Girls and he used to say, what do you always say? He said something like lower your average, lower your standards, raise your average. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:34 So you can choose to do that if you want to. But instead, I just said, ask the question, how do I get in front of four times many people? And so we started advertising on Facebook and Google and YouTube. And I went and I started going on more podcasts. And I started, instead, I took a problem. identified the problem, and then I asked, how do I overcome that problem? Let's really look at it and dissect it that way. And so somebody's trying to raise capital right now, whether it's you trying to find one hard money lender to fund your flip. And there's half as many hard money
Starting point is 00:22:02 lenders and they're turning you down twice as much. It's four times harder to get hard money. Okay, apply for four times as many hard money loans. If you're trying to raise money from a family or friends or you're trying to get a bank to finance your deal or an FHA loan to house hack, I don't care. And it's harder. Don't wish you were easier, wish you were better. Right? That's a famous quote as well. The weights get lighter when you lift them.
Starting point is 00:22:25 Yeah. No. No. Well, wait, what? They feel lighter, but the weights aren't actually becoming lighter. You're becoming strong. Yes, that's it. I'm like, so that's raising capital right now.
Starting point is 00:22:36 That's important. On the LP side, let me just speak to those people who are who have money right now and are thinking about investing it, but you're nervous because it is, it's a scary time, quote unquote right now. first of all, it's always a scary time. There has never been a time. Even when it was easier to raise capital, everyone's like, oh, yeah, but a recession's coming anytime.
Starting point is 00:22:54 They've been sent that for eight years. You remember a podcast? We interviewed a guy years ago, not to call him out, I won't even say his name, but years ago who, I mean, this is like 2011, maybe. And he was like talking about the musical chairs. And he's like, look, like, we're going to go into another recession probably. I don't need it. It's like the real estate's a game of musical chairs.
Starting point is 00:23:12 And everyone's dancing and having a good time right now. But you know what? Chairs are being pulled away. and the music's just going, but there's fewer and fewer chairs. So you know what? I don't have to be the last one to get a chair. I'm going to sit down right now and I'm going to just watch the people dance. And then the night's going to come on, the music is going to stop.
Starting point is 00:23:29 Everyone's going to scramble for a chair and a bunch of people are going to lose. But I'm going to just sit down and watch. That was 2011. What did this guy miss out on? Like we didn't see a double dip. He missed out on 10 years. Maybe he got back into it. I don't even know the story.
Starting point is 00:23:42 No, but theoretically, if he followed his own advice. Yes. He missed out on more, the biggest run we've ever seen in housing prices because of all the money that was printed. Correct. And so he, again, we make the best decisions with the data that we have. I understand that. But we are, there is never going to be a time that you're going to feel good about investing in real estate. Right. Like there's never going to be a time that there's not a question of fear coming around the corner. Oh, 100%. Right. It's always something scary coming around the corner. Always. I've been in this since 2007. There's always. been somebody shouting from the rooftop, usually Robert Kiyosaki, that the world's going to fall, right? That's going to collapse. And it's comforting to hear that. Yep. Because it affirms our fear. Yes. Yeah. But the reality is we don't know. So the best you can do is you can find a good horse and bet on the bet on the best jockey and the best horse you can find and maybe spread the risk a
Starting point is 00:24:36 little bit among multiple deals or multiple people. Yeah. But if you're going to invest in something, I like investing in real estate the most because if my stock portfolio dips, if my crypto dips, if my NFTs dip, if whatever I put my money in goes down, I'm not getting rent paid. They can weather that storm so that I can bounce back. Yeah. Real estate ends up being the best offensively and defensively when you look at it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:58 And what about real estate is it's not going to go to zero. It's, I mean, almost for sure, not going to go zero. And so business could, stocks could. You invest in your brother and a lot of startup. It's going to go zero almost for sure. All this can go to zero. But real estate, it just as long as you can hold it long enough. So this is the final tip I have for everybody right now in this economy right now,
Starting point is 00:25:14 whether you're raising capital, whether you're thinking about investing in somebody else's deal, whatever. The debt matters now more than ever before. That's where you're going to lose is with bad debt. And really, it's any market. The way you lose is bad debt. And what I mean by a bad debt, I mean is loans that are maybe riskier, that are adjustable rate and a level you can't handle that are short term. There's going to be a massive problem in the coming years. There's a whole different conversation.
Starting point is 00:25:36 But with all the bridge debt, which is short term debt that went on commercial real estate over the past five, six years. It's all come and do. Those people can't refinance. they're in trouble. The debt is what's going to sink people. Dave Ramsey's been preaching this for years. Now, his answer is no debt. Mine is be very cognizant of the debt that you're doing
Starting point is 00:25:53 or that the investor that you're investing with is doing. So, yeah, pay attention to the length of time. Like, the more time you have, the less risky it is. You get a 30-year loan, it's really hard to screw that up. You get a 30-year loan with some cash flow. It's really hard to screw that up. Right. Avoid a cocaine addiction and you're probably going to be okay.
Starting point is 00:26:12 Yeah, you're going to be fine. So like real estate's, it's given enough time, you're going to be fine. In fact, we just recently changed our whole model at Open Door Capital, where almost every deal we do now is what we call a generational wealth fund. Because we were looking at the market, we're like, I don't like the risk. Let's just pull back and say every deal we buy now, generally speaking, we will do some one-offs that aren't this way. We're going to hold forever, like forever.
Starting point is 00:26:33 There's no end date. There's no idea. And we just tell our investors, hey, invest with us. We're going to, you get all the cash flow, all the cash flow until you get 100% of your money back through refinances. at that point we split everything not 50 50 50 like we give more than we usually give 70 30 so they get like 70% so in other words you get all the cash flow until we refinance it someday until like get your money back and then you stay in the deal for the rest of your life forever we don't sell we don't plan infinite return at that point right and we get the longest debt we can get we try to get 30 year debt all day long there's no it just takes all the risk down and is the return less than if we were to like go flip apartments every six months sure if we want to flip apartments get really really risky low debt that, you know, are really risky high leverage debt that we have one year to get a property and turn around and flip it, that you're going to get a better return, guaranteed.
Starting point is 00:27:23 And so, you know, there are people doing that. If that's your game, go do it. What I want is I want consistency. I want low risk. So I want really good, solid, stable debt for the long haul. And that's my advice for anybody in realtor right now is look for the long, play the long game. The rise of the tech savvy investors here. You don't need a huge team or tons of overhead to manage rental problems.
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Starting point is 00:30:54 If getting rentals organized and filled fast is on the list this year, start with Avail. Sign up for free at Avail.co. slash Bigger Pockets. That's A-V-A-I-L-C-O-Bigger pockets. All right. Next question here. Brendan, you're an expert and relentless marketer, podcast video content all around you and you help build a foundation of what bigger pockets is today. You also grew your own brand and several social accounts along the way. What is the status of the competition that you had with Investor Girl Britt to get to 300,000 followers? Is there a winner? Have
Starting point is 00:31:25 debts been paid and are there new bets to be made? Great question. So by the way, so we did investor girl Britt and I raised to 100,000 originally. She won. Then we raised a 200,000. She won. Today. Oh, and then we said the bet, but we didn't set it at 300, actually. So the bet is 500,000. We wanted more time to build up here. And I don't want to lose again. So this time she is at 259,000 followers. And I am at more than that, 330, something like that. But you didn't win because you didn't set the milestone at 300. You said it at 500. Correct. I would have set it advantage and actually. So what's the $300,000 milestone in your life, David, that, uh,
Starting point is 00:32:05 You should be setting instead. You were afraid. And so you. I don't try and shallow metrics like followers. So I don't know. I would track them if I was good at it. I meant like 150, like half of you. There you go.
Starting point is 00:32:15 Well, let's talk. Let's talk to this for a minute. I think this is a very interesting point you just brought up. Shallow metric. Doors. Number of doors. Well, no, that's not where I was going, but maybe that is. Instagram.
Starting point is 00:32:27 People might think social media is a vanity metric. Followers is a vanity metric. Oh, I see. It's not in our business. It is very tied. to how much capital I can raise is the number of people who know like and trust me. How does somebody know like and trust me? They have to see you over and over and over and over.
Starting point is 00:32:43 And they have to see patterns of consistency in your message and over and over and over life. So show me a way to do that at scale other than social media. And I'll go do that, but it doesn't exist. Social media TV. That's it. But we own. Currency of the future is attention. It's even more important than dollars because dollars can be inflated.
Starting point is 00:32:58 It's very difficult to inflate attention. Yeah. I don't know. If I had to guess, I'd spend half a million dollars a year on my team, like the team members that run like everything from video to social to all that stuff. We probably spend a good chunk of money on that. Why? Because I'm trying to buy $10 billion of real estate.
Starting point is 00:33:13 By the time the episode airs a week, I'll be just on the edge of a billion dollars of real estate. Like I got 10 times more to go. So what does that mean? I need 10 times more people to know like and trust me. I need to consistently find, you know, good deals. And this is the other thing with social media is actually the number one reason to have social media is not to raise capital.
Starting point is 00:33:30 It's to raise people, right? Like the best people I have, all my top people, I'm a who not how guy, all my top people came from social media. They followed, they found me. I mean, they listened to the podcast, which I would include in social media, but they found me on the podcast or they read my book maybe, but then they followed me on social media. They saw a pattern over time and now they are working for me. Now people might be saying, like, yeah, that's easy when you have 330.
Starting point is 00:33:55 I didn't five years ago. I didn't 10 years ago. I started with zero, just like you would, just like everyone does. We all start with zero, and I've been working it for a long time. And so it goes back to the idea that Jordan Harbinger told us on the podcast when we interviewed him back a few years ago. I don't know what episode that was, but he used that line, dig your well before you're thirsty. Look, I don't care if you're raising capital right now, but someday you may want to raise capital. Someday you may want to bring an employee.
Starting point is 00:34:20 Some day may want whatever. Maybe now at the time to start focusing a little bit more on your social media. Well, I'm glad you're focusing on it because my best people come from you. So please continue. Now, remind me, what was the bet? that you had with Brittany. What does the loser have to do? Nickelback tattoo on the lower back.
Starting point is 00:34:37 Now, was it a coincidence that you kind of look like the nickel back guy? So like Brittany's going to have to get a tattoo that looks like you. This is how you remind me. You sound like him too. I do sound like him. We've talked with this before. Might as well do on the podcast.
Starting point is 00:34:50 Is nickel back as the reputation? No, dude. Okay. So I was working out with Jerry back like a year ago. He's our jiu-jitsu instructor. Yeah. And we're working out and he's like, what music I want to listen to you?
Starting point is 00:34:58 I was like, let's put on nickel back. That'll be funny. Right? So we play it. And we're like, working out. And I'm like, this song's awesome. I was like, I forgot about this song.
Starting point is 00:35:05 And then next song comes on and we're like, this song great. Next song come up for an hour and a half. Didn't repeat just song after song. Everyone was a freaking hit and everyone was amazing. It's like the Taylor Swift of Rock. And I'm like, do we hate them because they're bad or do we hate them because they're good? That's deep. So what's the nickel back in your life?
Starting point is 00:35:24 What's the nickel back in your life? Who are you looking down on because they're more successful? Because at the end of the day, you are jealous. whether you want to admit it or not, you're jealous of their success, so you're looking down in them. Is anybody out there listening to this going, I don't really like Brandon? Probably. Maybe you don't like my beard.
Starting point is 00:35:39 Maybe you don't like my voice. That's very possible. But I know that for me, when I look at people and I don't like them, it's almost always rooted in a- It exposes something, a hole in me that I'm, that makes me feel like the bad guy. And a wise man once said, no one wants to be the villain in their own story. Or what opinions have you formed? because everybody else was saying it and you were lazy and listen to it yourself.
Starting point is 00:36:04 Yep. Dude, that's a question right there. Like, oh, this doesn't work. Burr doesn't work. How second doesn't work. Subject two doesn't work. Or subject two works, Burr works. There's going to be another recession.
Starting point is 00:36:13 There's going to be another recession. Yeah. We love to take these shortcuts. It's easier to rip on Nickelback because, yeah, nickelback is an incredible band. I was, I was a little scared to say that out loud because I thought there might be the answer for why everybody hates them. But I couldn't understand why they're so hated.
Starting point is 00:36:26 Paramore was another one. People were just ripping on Paramore and how bad their music was. and I'm not a huge like that type of music fan, but they don't sound bad to me when I hear it. There is one small thing that has been known to plague you from early on in life about personal hygiene. Can you share what that is and if you have found a solution for it yet? Oh my gosh, bringing back from a long time ago. I had a youth pastor when I was like in sixth grade.
Starting point is 00:36:50 Jody DeYoung, shout out to Jody. She said, hey guys, you realize that nobody ever cleans the middle of their back? And I was like, because you can't reach. There's like a one inch spot. It's like that part of the windshield, the little triangle. Yes. That the windshield wipers. So there is a one.
Starting point is 00:37:07 Yes, that's exactly. There's a little. There's this little triangle angled spot on the back of you as well that has never seen soap a day in its life. Even with your arms. Yes. I've got some arms, but I cannot reach that one little spot right there. So, I mean, yeah, you could let the soap drip down, drip down. You could take a towel and maybe do this, but none of us do.
Starting point is 00:37:26 Instead, we're all just gross. And don't let me lick your back. back, it's disgusting. At least not that spot. Not that spot. Look the rest of it. I wonder if massage therapists know that and they avoid it. Like, they just like take a detour around it every single time they get there. Yeah, the question I have for you though is what is that little spot in your life? Where in your real estate? Have you just been avoiding? Again, if you guys have ever wanted to know what it's like to be best friends with brain sugar, it's that question on repeat every single time that you try to in your business. There is something that you just, you've been doing everything. You have these
Starting point is 00:37:55 patterns in your life. You do the same thing every time you get in and you just do your thing. But there's one thing you've been avoiding. And that's the part that's starting to stink, man. It's the part that you need to focus on because right now is the time to focus on that spot on your back. The bacterial dilemma. The bacterial dilemma by David Green. That's the new book. All right. Well, we've got nowhere in this show. I hope you guys are enjoying the nowhere run that where. I mean, Seinfeld was a show about nothing and it did really well, right? It's a show about nothing, too. But I guarantee you by the end of the show, you will be financially free or your money back. That's exactly right. All that money that you paid us. You'll get it at your stuff. All that money you paid us
Starting point is 00:38:29 day to listen to this show. Next question. Where did our obsession with jujitsu, which we've already mentioned once, unfortunately, begin? And who was responsible for the hundreds of mentions that our audience now has to endure? So episode number 300 and I like 365. Oh, I like that. Jock was on episode 365. And you know, I've listened to Joe Rogan. I've listened to other people talking about Jiu Jitsu, Tim Kennedy and others. And it was always one of those like, yeah, that's a cool kind of neat thing to be fun and they say, you know, there's a lot of reasons to like Jiu-Jitsu and Jocco did it and I like Jocco. And he gets on the podcast and I said to him, yeah, man, I would love to someday. Big mistake.
Starting point is 00:39:10 Do Jujitsu. Yeah. And as any good friend does, not that I can call Jock a friend though. He was a friend to you. He was a friend to me. Who is my neighbor and the story of the Good Samaritan is who do you choose to be a neighbor too? Yep.
Starting point is 00:39:20 You know why? Because he said to me, someday. What day? And I'm like, uh, Monday. You is what he did. I got to watch it in real time. I'm like, I'm going to go Monday. He's like, okay, here's what I want you to do.
Starting point is 00:39:34 I want you to go on Monday. I want you to text me on Tuesday and let me know that you went. So I show up on Monday. I've told the story before. I'm going to tell it real briefly now. I show up on Monday. I googled. I'm like, okay, I know there's one of my talents.
Starting point is 00:39:44 I googled, uh, jiu-jitsu and Kihei. And there's a place. I'm like, okay, great. So I drive over there during the day to go check it out. And it's out of business. And I'm like, oh, no. So I go back home, I Google again. where's another one. It's like 40 minutes for my house. I'm like, shoot. So I go there and I'm late that night. Because it was like Monday. It's like I go there and I'm like late. Nothing better than being the white guy in Hawaii that walks in late on their first day of a jujitsu. That's like a- This was in Wailuku. This is in like this is in like this is the local area. Meaning like this is not where Tallinnkee Brandon shows up to Jiu-Jitsu. You're walking in the wolf's den. Oh, and everyone's in a ghee and I'm not. And I walk in there and I'm five minutes late. And there's a woman at the front desk sitting there. And there's a woman at the front desk sitting there.
Starting point is 00:40:24 And there's 30 men looking strong and talking and doing like some warm up stuff. And they're on the mat. And I'm like, hi. And she's like, can I help you? And I'm like, yeah, I'd like to do jiujitsu. She goes, today? Yeah, she goes like here. And I was like, yeah.
Starting point is 00:40:40 And she goes, what, did you Google it or something? And I'm like, yeah. She goes, she looks at me. She's like, I don't. Um, like, I, like, you want to like, you want to like do this? And I'm like, yes. Like, uh, well, I don't, I don't, I mean, uh, just go sit over there. And she points to this bench. And on this bench is three, six year old kids, maybe five or six year old kids. And they're all just sitting there like playing video games on their iPads. So I just go sit over there. So I literally walk over there all six foot five of me. And I sit down on this little kid bench. There's one kid to my left, two kids to my right. I never heard the detail of this. Oh, and I sit there for an hour and a half. And I just watch these guys roll. The bench of shame. Yeah, the bench of shame. And I was so. mortified every second.
Starting point is 00:41:27 But you know what? That's what accountability does. I was so scared to walk in. I was so scared to go there. New place. Didn't know what was going on. Out of place. Didn't know what jujitsu was.
Starting point is 00:41:38 Didn't have my ghee. Didn't know what a ghee was. And I'm sitting on the bench feeling like a moron. But I knew I was going to have to report back to Jocko. That's why I'm such a fanatical about accountability. Because when I tell something to myself, I will lie to myself all day long. When I tell something to somebody I respect, that I'm going to do something, I am going to do that thing.
Starting point is 00:41:58 And this is why, you know, in the Better Life tribe we have, we have like pods, right? Gobundance has the same thing. Pods. Hold each other accountable in a pod. Whether you're in my group, whether you're in David's group, because you got them, you got accountability, I got accountability. Build accountability in your life if you want to see tremendous growth. So the story goes on.
Starting point is 00:42:15 I leave quickly as soon as the end, I ran out. And I was like, I, that was terrible. But now I at least done a little bit, right? It's like the newbie going into real estate. And you go in. and you're like, hey, I'm going to look like a moron. And you make an offer on a property that's completely like stupid. Or maybe you go to an open house and you don't even know what you're doing.
Starting point is 00:42:32 And you walk out and you're like, that was dumb. I'm never going to do it again. And most people never go back. But you know, I got home and I'm like, all right, can't be worse than that. So I Google it again. I find another place. I was like, I'm going to go to that one anymore. That was too awkward.
Starting point is 00:42:43 So I go to the other place. I Google it. And two days later, I go to that one. I walk in. This time I walked in a little early. There's like, four guys staying around. I'm like, hey, what's up, everyone? can we help you?
Starting point is 00:42:55 And I'm like, yeah, I was hoping to do some jiu-jitsu. And they're like, literally said, what did you Google it or something? And I'm like, yes, I googled it. I'm like, what do I do? And I'm not kidding. The instructor points to the bench. And he says, yeah, just go sit over there. And I go sit down again.
Starting point is 00:43:11 And I watched the entire thing. I just sat there and watched. But at some point, at the very end, he's like, yeah, come over here and a stretch with us. And at the very end, I went and did the ending stretch with them. And I showed up the next day. And that time I got to do the beginning stretch. stretch and then I got to watch them roll. And the next time I did a little more.
Starting point is 00:43:28 And next time I did a little more. And before long, I was in jiu-jitsu. So long story short, there's such a great metaphor for life here in terms of a real estate. People want to get into real estate and they get scared and they don't show up
Starting point is 00:43:39 or they get scared and they do show up and they do something stupid or they make a mistake and then they quit. But as Tony Horton from P90X fame would say at the end of every single episode of P90X, every single video, he'd say, hey, just keep push and play. No matter what you feel,
Starting point is 00:43:54 no matter what you're doing, you show up tomorrow and just press play. And that's my advice for people today. Even Brandon Turner did not eat the whole thing in one bite. You had to split into several small bites and kept showing up and went through some embarrassment, went through some shame, went through some humiliation, which is funny because they didn't directly humiliate you, but being told to sit on a bench with a bunch of six-year-olds, why you watch everybody else get to be cool. And then the real embarrassment starts when you actually go out there and start having to do it.
Starting point is 00:44:18 Yes. Then you really get embarrassed. But then you're on the mat. Like, then you're there. I'll give one more. Actually, two more quick, very quick stories. I know people are tired of jujitsu analogies. I'm walking through Costco.
Starting point is 00:44:27 I've told this on the show before, but I'm walking through Costco. And I meet this guy who recognizes me from bigger pockets. Shout out to you if you're listening right now. And he says, hey, man, I heard you doing jujitsu. I'm a black belt. I'm like, oh, cool, man.
Starting point is 00:44:36 Yeah, I've been doing it for about, you know, six months now. I'm just a white belt. And he stops me. He goes, hey, man, you're not just a white belt. You're not just a white belt. He said, you know what? The white belt is the hardest belt to get. Now, for those who don't know,
Starting point is 00:44:48 the white belt is the one they give you for showing up. Yeah. Like that's the beginner belt. And he said, 99% of people will never earn their white belt. Earned their white belt. Right. They give you the white belt, but you got to show up. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:02 How many other people listening to this are looking at you, the black belt investor? I'm going to own a billion dollars of real estate. And they're comparing themselves to you. And it's how we feel when we look at a black belt. I will never, ever, ever be them. And you know what the next thought is? So why show up? Yep.
Starting point is 00:45:16 Why even try? Because they get to be them versus looking backwards and saying, Look at all the people who don't know anything about real estate, who have no money saved up, who are actually in massive debt, who don't know any path out of where they are other than just working that same job and hoping something external just magically finds them and changes their life that have no plan to find financial freedom. But they're listening to this podcast and that's starting to be developed, right? There's some people that are listening like the you on the bench with the six-year-olds that are watching what it looks like to do jujitsu and the neurons are being rearranged in their brain as they're starting to figure out what this thing looks like. that is progress. You don't have to be buying 700 doors a year for it to be considered progress. You know, there's a man in Ireland back in the day who wanted to move a rock fence.
Starting point is 00:45:57 You ever been to Ireland? They have these like rock fences. They're like not mortar or anything. Just piles of rocks and they make the whole fence. And they had to move the fence from this side of the field to another side of the field. And so he goes over there, he grabs a rock, but you know, probably 20 pounds, let's say. And he takes the rock and he walks across the field and he sets the rock down. Then he walks back, grabs another rock, moves across the field, sets it down.
Starting point is 00:46:16 And each of these rocks, let's say, weigh 20 pounds. And over the course of the day, he moves, we'll call it 10 rocks. Did that man move 200 pounds? Yes. Did he move 200 pounds at one time? No, he never had to move more than 20 pounds. And so oftentimes we look at the moving the wall. We look at some big project.
Starting point is 00:46:35 Like, I got to do this big thing. I got to get good at real estate. I got to build financial freedom. Let's take it back to the FF. I got to build the financial freedom. And it's a big wall. It's a lot of rocks there. It looks heavy.
Starting point is 00:46:48 But the fact is, it's not heavy. It's 20-pound rocks. Anybody can do it. So maybe people need to focus a little bit less on the wall and more on the rock. What's the next rock in front of you? What's the little, the 20-pound rock? It's not light. 20 pounds is still a little lift, but anybody can do it.
Starting point is 00:47:03 A kid could do it. You just move the rock across the field. Before you know it, you got a wall over there. You got a new fence. It's a great example. You're not too bad at those. Thanks, man. Next question.
Starting point is 00:47:13 We know that time with your family has always been a driving motivator. What's something else that real estate has afforded you? Ooh, real estate has afforded me a luxury, ridiculously nice property where I live. You know, I talk a lot about these 10 categories of life. It's like, you know, your spirituality, your finance, your career, your relationship. But one of them out of the 10, and we do like this little project, the wheel of life. But one of them is I call environment.
Starting point is 00:47:42 Environment is the physical world around you. It's the car you drive, the house you live, and the office you go to work. to every day. It's the physical world, the things you touch, see, here, feel all that every single day. And now, happiness is not derived purely from your environment. You can be happy and living in the middle of nowhere and a terrible house and driving a terrible car and perfectly happy. However, the more of your life categories that are on a scale of 1 to 10, closer to 10, the general better happiness I feel, the more fulfilled I feel. So real estate has allowed me to maximize my environment in a way that allows me more, again, doesn't just alone bring me happiness.
Starting point is 00:48:18 But my environment brings me a lot of peace and enjoyment. I'm able to host people here all the time. I'm able to take my kids in the pool. I'm able to do a lot of things that I could not do when I lived in the reign of Grace Harbor because of real estate investing. And I'm not talking about the money of real estate. I'm talking about I'm house hacking this house. I'm living in Hawaii for cheaper than people live in Ohio.
Starting point is 00:48:40 And that's the fact of the matter. I'm living in a $4 million house in Hawaii, cheaper than people live in Ohio because of real estate investing. So hashtag house hacking. Such a great point. I love it. Because you ask the question, how do I do it? Not can I do it.
Starting point is 00:48:55 Technically, you ask the question, how can you do it? And then I answer to you. Yeah, but you already knew it. Yeah, but you helped me understand that. Again, the power of accountability and friends that challenge you. So thank you. You pushed me to my house. My pleasure, man.
Starting point is 00:49:06 Thanks for putting me in the position where I was able to talk to you. Wouldn't be on the podcast right now, even having those real estate. conversations if it wasn't for you. And again, I'm also enjoying this $4 million house in Maui that I don't own myself. So please keep doing what you're doing because it definitely benefits me. I feel like we're shutting now, but we still have the famous four, don't we? Is that still a thing? Yeah, we're heading to that. Oh, okay. Good. Famous Four. All right, famous four. I get to ask you these questions. Question number one, what is your current favorite real estate book that is not your own? All right. This is a book,
Starting point is 00:49:36 and I know you ask the business book one next, but it's a business book, but there's a chapter on real estate. The book is called, shoot, Keith Cunningham, The Road Less Stupid. And I've been told by multiple people to read it. Chapter 10 in the Road Less Stupid is probably the single greatest chapter of any book I've ever read in terms of real estate. Because what he read a lot of books. I read a lot of books. Here's what happened. He went bankrupt back in the 80s, the whole real estate thing just like Dave Ramsey had the trouble. Like is that whole world of real estate changed in late 80s and a lot of people went bankrupt. So what he had been, All his buddies were all millionaires that all went bankrupt, sat down and said, let's make a list of every single lesson we learned. And they just wrote a list. He just took that list. That's good.
Starting point is 00:50:19 The whole chapter is simply, it's like a hundred lessons of somebody who had come just out of a collapse. And so reading this, I was taking a pen and approach every single line I underlined as like, oh, I need to know this. This is great. It's all concentrated wisdom. Concentrated wisdom from multiple people in real estate. It was fantastic. And it's all common sense stuff, but it's stuff that you. you need to hear. Just stuff about being greedy, going too fast. But that's what fundamentals are.
Starting point is 00:50:45 Yeah, it's fundamentals. And you have to be reminded of fundamentals all the time. Yeah, it was a really good chapter. I read it at a really good time. Something I like about you, you do put the fun and fun. I put the fun. Because you're entertaining. I would say I put the fun and fund. Yes, you do. Open Door Capital. We put the fun and fun. All right. Question number two, what is your favorite business book? Business book. Man, favorite's a hard one. I'm going to go with, I think I will go with the one thing. I really like the one thing. I've been hanging out with, you know, Jay Papazan here in Hawaii because he was a keynote
Starting point is 00:51:18 for the Better Life Real estate Investing Summit. But I really like the one thing. When I read that book, I don't know if I've talked about this. I probably have. But when I read that book, first of all, was the only book I've ever read where I finished page, you know, whatever, 250, whatever, the last pages. And then I went and turned back to page one and I read it again. I read it twice in a row.
Starting point is 00:51:37 And then I had this epiphany. I said the idea of the one thing is like, What's the one thing you can do that if you just did that, everything else becomes easier and not, you know, like not needed basically? And I said, if I could just get this concept and the concept in this book in this book into my thick skull, if I could just really internalize this, my life would be completely different. Everything else would be easier. In fact, the book, the one thing is the one thing. And so I said, instead of reading 20 books this year or 30 books this year, I'm going to read one book 20 times. And I went and read the one thing, I think 20 times. I put it on Audible and this for the rest of the year, the whole year, that's pretty much all I read was. the one thing. I'd go for walks. It was when I was running a lot. So I'd just go for a run and I just listened to an hour of the one thing every day. And I just kept listening over and over and over. I told that to Jay and he probably thought it was a stalker. But, and then I look at where I'm at today and I'm like, so many of the lessons in that book. In fact, just sitting with Jay at a table this weekend, I was like talking and just, we're just b-assing and telling stories. And they were
Starting point is 00:52:31 like three different times where I was like, wait, I think that story wasn't the one thing. And he's like laugh, yeah. So like, so much of what I do and say and teach just came from that book. So the one thing, Jay Papazan and Gary Keller. There's a verse in the Bible that talks about that same principle about read the word, meditate on the word, like drill it into your forehead to make it so it's like so ingrained in who you are that you don't have to think to try to remember. It is a part of you. That sounds like exactly what you did with the one thing. And when it comes to wisdom, that is a really good idea. It acts as a compass that guides you when you feel lost when you get confused.
Starting point is 00:53:02 You're less likely to stray away from the path, so to speak, when you've got that software downloaded into you. There's a great quote from Bruce Lee that says, I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. That quote is in Burr. Is it? Yep. What does that mean to you?
Starting point is 00:53:22 It's a repetition. It creates mastery. That's the way that I use. That's why I talked about Bruce Lee so many times. You don't get good at anything doing it once or twice a year or once every three or four years, which is how most people buy real estate. You have to do it a lot if you want to be good at it just like anything else. And so there's always a new shiny thing.
Starting point is 00:53:40 It's nice to say, I know 10,000 different kicks, look what I can do. But to do one kick 10,000 times is how you become a master of it, which makes you a more feared opponent. Moving on. Question number three, what is one habit or trait you have picked up lately? That's like my question. I don't even know. Tennis. I'm going to go to tennis.
Starting point is 00:53:59 And I've actually kind of stopped the last few months as I got in the gym instead. But for the last year, I did a lot. I got a tennis membership and started playing tennis. Why? because I wanted something I could do with my wife. And she had friends that were playing tennis. I said, okay, let's do tennis. So we started playing together.
Starting point is 00:54:13 And it was fun. We were having a good time. I'm going to likely switch over to pickleball and try that. I've not played yet. Such a follower. I know. People just say, here's my problem with pickleball. It's always been, I never saw somebody have a sweat playing pickleball.
Starting point is 00:54:25 No one has a sweat playing pickleball. It's always like, oh, boop. Yeah. But then I met an actual, like, professional pickleball player. He's like, pickleballer? Pickle baller. I met a professional pickleballer. And he's like super in shape.
Starting point is 00:54:37 And he's like, dude, no, pickleball is like intense. It's like racquetball. But you can play it outside anywhere you want. I mean, all over the place. And that's what convinced me because I'm a racquetball player through and through. I love racquetball with all my heart, soul and mind. I love it. Yeah, you've always loved it.
Starting point is 00:54:50 Always loved it. There's just, there's one place on the island to do it. In fact, I'm building. I'm going to build a coworking spot in Maui. We're actually working on it right now. We're going to buy land. We're going to build a big coworking spot. I'm going to put a pickleball.
Starting point is 00:55:01 I mean, I put a racquetball court in it because there's nothing else. So I'm going to house hack my racquetball court. And if you're a member of the co-working spot, you can therefore use the racquetball court. And this will be interesting you. I'm going to put the bottom, bottom, the, you know, like racquetball courts are made up of all those like four by eight panels all over. The bottom whole level, I'm going to have on hinges that swing up. And inside will be mats. And then you're going to roll them out and you have a jitzu gym as well.
Starting point is 00:55:26 So I can rent it out to jiu jiu jitsu academies or have one hosted there. And then we can just roll it back up and back to a racquetball course. So you can reserve the court for either racquetball or a jiu-jitsu martial arts. The Brandon Turner idea right there. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm literally house hacking an office because I need an office. I need a better studio than this. And I'm like, I don't want to pay for it. So we're doing a $16 million development project right now.
Starting point is 00:55:47 We're going to raise capital for it. We're going to do the whole thing. And it's going to be so I can have an office. But the returns are actually stupid because there's a big need for that here. Awesome, man. Anyway, so that's something to hear that working on. All right. Question number four.
Starting point is 00:55:58 What is one of your favorite things about me? About you? That is not a question. What the producer put in there. That's, oh, that's, okay. Your analogies are pretty great. You show up when I ask you to. And when I ask for a favor, you have never said no ever.
Starting point is 00:56:16 You encourage me a lot and other people. You're very good at encouraging. That is maybe a gift you have, which is you see the best in people, and then you call it on them. But you also see room for improvement and call that out on them. And that's what a true friend does. So thanks, man. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:56:34 Not bad at all. Appreciate that. Not my hair, huh? I'm going to say the beard's looking pretty nice. Dude, it's harder to grow longer than I thought it's taking. I just thought it would like sprout right out. It's got to this point and then stopped. You got to eat more carrots or something.
Starting point is 00:56:48 We got to talk about that. I was wondering if it was like a beard oil thing. Question number five. Tell us where people can find out more about you. I am an Instagram nerd. So beardy Brandon, Beard with a Y. Beardy what?
Starting point is 00:56:59 But I always I say beardy Brandon, and beer with a Y. People like, okay, that's B-Y R. I'm like, beard, Y. Think Spanish. Like, Beard E, Brandon. It's like Beard E, Brandon. It's like Beard and Brandon. Beard E. Brandon on Instagram, TikTok, all that stuff. The podcast is a better life with Brandon Turner. We hit number 40 of all podcasts in the world when we launched.
Starting point is 00:57:19 That was awesome. It's not there now, but it was. We have a traveling podcast. So I travel around the country and I record people. And that's been a wild adventure to do that. We'll like fly into a city and record. seven podcasts at one time over a three-day period with no sleep and we go out with the guests afterwards and it's been an adventure. But man, it's been fun. So that's it. That's it. A Better Life
Starting point is 00:57:41 of Ben Tender goes to listen to the podcast and you were on it. So go listen to that episode, everyone. It was actually, I heard multiple people say that when you and I were chatting on, we did a live podcast recording, then we followed it up with a little interview after. But when we did the live one, almost everybody I talked to said that was the best part of the entire conference that I held and that it was the best thing that you and I have done together. People thought it was one of the best things you know. Now, I think this interview might, uh, was pretty darn awesome, but go listen. All right. You got a lot going on, man. You've not been resting on your laurels. That's for sure. Very cool to see this and cool to see that the vision is still firing even faster than it was.
Starting point is 00:58:16 Poo, pew, pew. We're doing our stuff together. That's right. Thanks for joining us, everybody. Please go check out Brandon all over the place and, uh, send him a message. Let me know what you thought about this show. I let you get out of here because you've been sitting down for a long time. This is David Green for beardy Pugh-Pew Brandon. Signing out. All right. That was the first half of my conversation with Brandon Turner. We're about to get into another conversation that isn't seeing Green style, but it's still
Starting point is 00:58:44 going to be fascinating. We're going to talk about the five episodes on Bigger Pockets that had the biggest impact on both of us. You don't want to miss it. So check out that episode next. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Starting point is 00:59:25 I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K. Copywriting is by Calicoe content. And editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own.
Starting point is 00:59:45 Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. BiggerPockets LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.

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