The Personal Finance Podcast - He Built A BILLION DOLLAR Real Estate Portfolio (Here's How!) with Brandon Turner

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

In this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to talk to Brandon Turner about how he built a billion dollar Real Estate portfolio. How Andrew Can Help You:  Don't let another year pass by without making significant strides toward your dreams. "Master Your Money Goals" is your pathway to a future where your aspirations are not just wishes but realities. Enroll now and make this year count! Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Learn to invest by joining  Index Fund Pro! This is Andrew’s course teaching you how to invest!  Watch The Master Money Youtube Channel! , Ask Andrew a question on Instagram or TikTok.  Learn how to get out of Debt by joining our Free Course  Leave Feedback or Episode Requests here.  Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors for supporting The Personal Finance Podcast. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at  shopify.com/pfp Monarch Money: Get an extended 30 day free trial at monarchmoney/pfp Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate going to fundrise.com/pfp Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/personalfinance Thanks to Policy Genius for Sponsoring the show! Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ Delete Me: Use Promo Code PFP for 20% off!  Credit Card: Southwest® Rapid Rewards® Premier Business Credit Card Southwest® Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Credit Card  Links Mentioned in This Episode:  From House Hacking to Future Millionaire with John Eringham (Johnefinance) Connect with Brandon Turner: Instagram Youtube Twitter Tiktok Facebook Connect With Andrew on Social Media:  Instagram  TikTok Twitter  Master Money Website  Master Money Youtube Channel   Free Guides:   The Stairway to Wealth: The Order of Operations for your Money  How to Negotiate Your Salary  The 75 Day Money Challenge  Get out Of Debt Fast  Take the Money Personality Quiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. He built a billion dollar real estate portfolio, and we're going to show you how. This one is with Brandon Turner. What's up, everybody, and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew founder of mastermoney.com. And today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to talk to Brandon Turner about how he built a billion dollar real estate portfolio. If you guys have any questions, make sure to reach out to us via the Master Money newsletter

by going to mastermoney.co slash newsletter. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player as well. Now, today I am so incredibly excited to welcome Brandon Turner to the show. Brandon had a huge influence on me early on when I was learning how to invest in real estate. In fact, longtime listeners will know that I used to use Brandon's book

on managing rental properties that him and his wife, Heather, wrote. And I used that thing when I got my first renter property as literally my Bible for rental properties. I would even use the lease inside of that book as the original lease that I used as well. It gives you the exact systems they utilize in order to manage their properties. But he's written a ton of other books. He used to be the host of Bigger Pockets. Now he's moved on to a bunch of new things as well. And so really excited to welcome Brandon on the show. Today, what we're going to be talking about is first, Brandon's humble beginnings in how he started getting investing in real estate. And we're going to talk about

some of his early deals and some things that he did in order to be able to scale up and build wealth. Then we're going to actually talk about how he designed his life in order to have more time with his family and his wife and the exact system that he used to build his billion dollar real estate portfolio that he now has and he has a massive fund that is growing every single year. He has over 13,000 real estate units overall. And he is still pretty young. So this is absolutely amazing what Brandon has done over time. And you'll see exactly how he did it.

We're going to talk about systems. We're going to talk about time management. We're going to talk about some of his favorite books that he has also read. So this is an action-packed episode. Really excited to welcome Brandon to the show. So without further ado, let's welcome Brandon to the Personal Finance Podcast. So Brandon, welcome to the Personal Finance podcast. Dude, thank you for having me.

I'm super excited about this. I'm like a personal finance and nerds. So anytime I can talk about money, real estate, et cetera, I just makes my day. Well, I'm super pumped to have you here as I was kind of telling you before the show as well. You've been a big influence in my life just to get interested in real estate investing. And, you know, way back in the day, you were the host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. And now you do so much more, which we'll talk about today. But you are one of the guys that I think is just a huge, huge influence of my life for real estate investing. But for those who who don't know who you are, can you kind of talk through just yourself and what you do? sure man i'll go way back i mean i was born midwest minnesota uh dad's meat cutter mom did a daycare in my

house so very blue collar roots i went to college met a girl uh fell in love got married um and uh decided i was going to go to law school started pursuing that and then took the l sat the test to get in and then i started reading like john grisham books you know like fiction books about being a lawyer and And I was like, being a lawyer sounds terrible. Like work for 50 years, you know, go through seven marriages and, you know, all your kids hate you. And then you can retire rich. And I'm like, I don't know. That doesn't seem like the right playbook.

And so I kind of started looking around, bought a house, started buying more houses. And today I've got 13,000-ish units, about a billion dollars in real estate, wrote a bunch of books. And there's beginning, middle, and end. But we can jump in anywhere in that. You want to dive in. And that's what I'm so excited to kind of talk about because your journey really did start off. Just kind of starting with, you know, single family, multifamily houses and just kind of starting slowly and then building it up to where you are now. And you did it in a very systematic way.

So I'd love, we're going to talk through all that today. But tell me why you kind of chose real estate over all other investing vehicles and kind of how you got started there. Yeah, you know, it's a great question. I mean, part of it. So early on, I remember we go to the library and I got a book on day trading. It was like day trading for dummies. And then I got a book on real estate. And I read maybe six pages of day trading for dummies.

And I was like, this is the most boring thing I've ever experienced. And I read a book on stock investing. I mean, I read like a few pages of it. And I was like, this is so unbelievably boring. And then I read a real estate book. And I read the entire thing front to back. And I was like, this is the best thing ever. So I don't know why real estate just made sense in here.

But it just did. Right. Some people just wake up and there was like, oh my gosh, day trading. That sounds great. Or stocks or, you know, whatever. Plumbing companies. I don't know. Whatever.

Like I just, it just happened to resists. resonate in my soul, but also because it doesn't require a whole lot of intelligence. You know, like, it's like buy a house, like make sure it makes more money than what it costs. Hold on to it. It goes up in value. I make money. Like, it's not a super complex thing. And so I can figure it out. I also, I like to get in my hands dirty. I like being involved. And so like even from the beginning, I mean, I was out there doing all my own work at the first many years, maybe the first decade. I was out there fixing toilets and crawling under houses and, you know, there's lessons to be learning that. Not everyone has to do it that way, but I like the fact that I could compensate for my

lack of cash. This is maybe the biggest reason, too, to invest in real estate. I can compensate for my lack of cash with effort. That's a lot harder to do with the stock market. If you make 40K a year and you live on 37 of it, it's like, okay, you can put three grand a year into the stock market or into some other investment vehicle. And sure, by the time you're 75, you're going to be the richest person in the graveyard. But like, if you don't have money, it's It's hard to force it with just like sheer will and determination in anything other than, you know, business like entrepreneurship or real estate. And real estate's just so much more assured than business.

And so that's what fired me up about it. And one thing I love about that is early in your journey, you were really scrappy in how you got properties and kind of alluded to it shortly there where you were actually utilizing your effort instead of, you know, having a bunch of cash on hand. And I think a lot of people think that you have to have a ton of money available in order to invest in real estate. But you actually proved that you did not. even wrote a book on how you kind of acquired some of these properties early on. So can you kind of

talk through some of your scrappiest deals that you had early on? Sure. Yeah. I mean, it really starts with, I mean, if I want to go way back to the very first deal I ever did, I bought the single family house that it was like a 3% down mortgage. I mean, you can still get those today, FHA, three and a half percent down. So I put down like the 3% but I didn't even have that. And my house was only 80 grand. So like the down payment was like $2,500. Like it was like nothing, right? And I didn't even have that. So I remember calling up my dad. I'm like, hey, can I borrow a $25, 500 bucks and he's like, he's like, okay. And so he lent me the money. And so like obviously, it's like a silly like early version of creative finance, but that's what creative finance is.

Somebody brings the money. Somebody brings the deal. And I did that over and over and over. I mean, one of my favorite stories of buying real estate with almost no money down, there's this triplex that comes for sale. There's a couple years in. There's three unit properties, three houses on one lot. They're all pretty nasty. One needs a new roof. One's got the foundation sinking a little bit. You know, it needs some work. But I knew it was a cash count. I knew it was going to be good, but I needed probably 30 grand total for the down payment and some rehab costs. And so most people at that point, we just give up, be like, yeah, it's not going to work out. But I'm like, no, how am I going to make this work out?

So I talked to a buddy who I actually knew from church and I just said, hey, and I knew he had some money. I knew he had good credit. He had a great job. He's like a bank's best friend, right? And I was not a bank's best friend. I had no money, no job, no income. So I went to him and I just said, hey, I got this amazing real estate deal and I'm looking for a partner. do you know anybody who would be interested in that? I didn't even flat out ask them because I didn't

like getting rejected. So he's like, well, you know, I might be. Tell me about it. And so we ended up partnering on it. He put that down payment down in the repairs. I managed the deal, fixed it up, did everything. And we split every year, we split about 10 grand in profit. You know, it's not a ton of money. But every year, him and his wife would go on a cruise with their money and they'd go take their half of the 10 grand of profit. They'd go on a nice fancy vacation. And I would take mine and go do something fun with it. We did that for 10 years. And then after 10 years, we sold it and we each made over 100 grand. And so, like, it's just a fun, like, that's how creative finance works. It's like somebody brings the money, somebody brings a deal, and you work it out. Exactly. That's what I love about it.

Your book is fantastic. And if people haven't read it yet, it is one that I think is one of the best out there on just that subject. And it was one that I read very early on in my journey. And I was like, it's so cool how creative you can get with real estate. And it's kind of open my eyes to some of the things that you can truly do, and it's joint venture partners, you can find different ways to find funding. There's just so many cool things that you can do, which I love. Now, one big thing is you talked through a few concepts that I think are really popularized now, but I think you're the originator of some of these terms. And correct me if I'm wrong, but we talk about, you know, house hacking, I think is the term that you came up with or maybe you and some of the bigger pockets team did,

the Burr method and then the stack. Can you kind of go through each one of those and how powerful they can be to building wealth? Yeah, man. I think I'm the first one to coin those terms. And that was on purpose. But I've also written, like I've coined a hundred, I've written 100, 200 other terms that just never caught on, right? So I'm just a big believer. And anything that takes more than about one sentence to explain, just put a word to it and it becomes like easy to understand.

And so as I'm teaching the stuff, I was talking about how I really got started in real estate. Like even before I bought that first house, I rented an apartment. I rented out the bedroom so I could live for free. And then I bought the house and I rented out the bedroom so I could also live for free. And then I bought a duplex and I rented out the other half. and I lived for free.

And so I did this numerous times. I mean, technically today, I live in a $4 million house in Maui, and I'm doing it still. I still rent out one of my other units to help pay over half the mortgage. And so I'm a big fan of this concept. Anyway, I explained it in a blog post and it was called How to Hack Your Housing and Get Paid to Live for Free. People in Google, and they can find the original article,

How to Hack Your Housing Get Paid to Live for Free. And then we just call that house hacking at Bigger Pockets from that article, and it caught on. So that was the one thing. The Burr Strategy, I was trying to teach. this concept of what I've been doing for years also, which was I'd buy a property and then I'd fix it up and make it look really nice. But I'd use like a hard money loan to buy it. So there's lenders out there for those unaware called hard money lenders and they lend to house flippers,

people who buy a house, fix it up and sell it. And they charge high rates, high fees, but you know, you just work it into your math and if it works out, it works out. So I would buy with hard money, I'd fix it up. But instead of selling it, I would just go to put a really good tenant in there and I go to a bank and say, hey, I got this house that's worth way more than what I on it. Can I just get a new loan? And they would give me a nice 30 year fixed, you know, at the time, like 3% loan on it, which would get me pay, I'd pay off the hard me lender and I'd have just a new loan. And the beauty of that is I could get all my cash back or most of it. And so I'm really like recycling capital. So I was trying to explain that in a blog post how I did that. And I was like,

you basically buy, you rehab, you rent, you refinance, and then you repeat. So BRRR, R. And I remember putting some picture of like a snowman. And I said something like, we're going to, call this the Burr strategy. And I think it's funny because it's, it doesn't mean anything. It's just a silly word that's funny to say. But because of that, it caught on. And now Burr is like, I mean, that's a, that's a thing. And it works. I mean, it not only, not only does it, is it easier remember. It actually works. And we do it today with, you know, $70 million apartment complexes. And I do it with single family houses that are $100,000. You can do it with anything in between. Oh, and then the stack is the last one. The stack is fun. I basically, I remember back in the day, I used to listen to or

watch this show called Income Property with a guy named Scott McGilvery. It was on HGTV. It was on HGTV. I mean, he was like, he was a Canadian guy, but it was on HGTV. And he basically would go into a unit and fix it up and rent it out. And it would be like a duplex. He would turn somebody's attic into another unit or a basement into another unit. I loved this show.

Earlier on, it was like my favorite TV show. At the beginning of every episode, they would introduce Scott. You know, it was like the intro music or whatever. And they would be like, Scott has. And it would say, a hundred properties. And I remember thinking every time I heard that, like, that's insane. How does a person buy a hundred properties? This guy must, I mean, he's young too. He was like 40. I'm like, how does a 40 year old buy a hundred properties? It takes me like a whole year to buy one house and fix it up and rent it out. How does somebody do 100? It would take 100 years. And that's when I realized if you get into multifamily, you can start growing exponentially. So let's say you buy a single family and then next time you buy a duplex and then maybe you buy a fourplex, then maybe a 10 units. and then maybe a 20 unit and then a 40 unit. And oh my gosh, you're at 100 units, like just like that.

Like, it really does add up quickly when you start getting into multifamily. So the stack is simply a way I teach to people to be less overwhelmed by the sheer number of units you might want to acquire to get financial freedom. And it's like, hey, just focus on whatever level you're at. Like, just focus on the first deal. And if you've already got that, then maybe branch into something a little bigger, get into a little bit bigger multifamily or maybe a larger property. And before you know it, I mean, four, five, six purchases, you can be at 100 units, which is wild. Exactly. And these are just such powerful ways that you can really truly build wealth. And if, you know, long-time listeners will remember, like house hacking is one of the first episodes we did because I just love the way that you can really just get into a property and live for free if you want to. And then Burr is typically how I buy real estate. Like if I do buy it is usually using the Burr method, which is really cool. Speaking of the Burr method, one big thing that you kind of talk about, and I'll tell a story about this after I asked this question before we dive into. it is there's a phrase that you say all the time. And it is, instead of, you know, utilizing the

word I can't, you say, how can I? And I think this is such a powerful mindset shift that a lot of people can think through. And the story that I have on this is there was a property that we had from someone off market that sent over to us. And we were going to utilize the burr method for it. So this had a tenant in there who was, you know, someone who was sitting in the house. We had to get the tenant out and kind of do this whole thing. It was a struggling landlord. But we were going to burrow this property. But with this exact deal, we had to find the funding, you know, that afternoon. So literally in one afternoon, I had to find the funding. And I said to myself, typically, I would say to myself, you know, I just can't find

the funding that quickly, you know, it was one of those deals that, you know, it's just not enough time. But I said to myself, how can I? And how can I led me to call 45 different people that I know in real estate investing? Finally, on the 45th call, I found someone. And if I didn't have that mindset shift just from, you know, you kind of stating that, I don't think I would have ever been able to find that deal. But we found the deal within the time frame of the next couple of hours because of that. So can you kind of talk through where that mindset shift came from you and how powerful that is in your life?

Yeah, man, I totally stole. I love that story, by the way. Sometimes it just takes 45 phone calls, you know? It does. And the vast majority of people will never do more than two. Exactly. It didn't work. I did two calls.

It didn't work. But I remember reading it in rich dad, poor dad. And he's phrased it a little differently, but he said in there, poor people say, I can't afford it. And rich people ask, how do I afford it? And I remember just my mind exploding when I heard that. I'm like that my entire life before that point had always been we can't afford it. We can't afford it.

I can't afford it. And I never once heard anybody say like, well, what if you shifted the way you think? Like just the idea of mindset. And I define mindset as like the way that you solve problems. So like your mindset when it comes to buying a real estate deal, most people, I mean, I had a post go viral a few weeks ago on TikTok and it's got millions of views now. And in it, the reason it went viral is because people hate it so much. because all I did is I explained how if you buy your kid a property like at a young age and you can pay it off over 15 years, it'll basically cover their college.

And people are just melting down with the idea of like you can't. If you've got young kids, you're probably not rich yet because you're young. There's no way you could buy real estate for your kid. Like yeah, I bought my kid a mansion. I bought my kid a pony. Like everyone's making fun of like me must have a rich guy. And I'm like, y'all just have a really toxic mindset. I mean just thousands of comments of people just like absurdly offended at the idea that somebody could buy real estate without a lot of money and being wealthy already.

So yeah, just that concept from Rich Dad Porte out of how do I afford it? And you translate that to anything. Not I can't do it, but how do I do it? How do I find that deal? How do I find that business partner? How do I find that lender? How do I find that deal? All of it.

It's just how is the most important word in the English language. and majority of people will never ask it. They just shut down because it's easier and safer and more comfortable to say, can't be done and go back to scrolling TikTok than to, you know, put in the work to make 45 phone calls. And that's what it kind of leads you to do is asking how can I lead you to the next action because there's always another action that you can take, you know, you can actually go forward on. And that's what it allows you to do, which I think is so powerful once you start thinking that way.

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Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on Amazon. Acids, ginger tea and milk. Habaniero, more like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. There's a lot of people who listen to this podcast who are interested in financial independence and retiring early. That's just a big thing that people like on this show. And you reach financial independence actually really early with real estate. But I remember you talking through and saying, you kind of got bored. Like you got to the point where you could kind of hit your bare bones expenses. You could cover those expenses, but it just really wasn't that fulfilling to you. So what kind of led you to kind of want to grow personally and what kind of led you to to want to grow your

portfolio as well and why did you want to do that? Yeah, you know, I think some people out there probably could like if they won the lottery or something had a million dollars or was getting 10K a month and income from something, they could be really happy just reading every day and watching TV and going on vacations. Like I'm sure there are people that would be happy like that. But almost everybody that I know, myself included, who was able to retire early, cannot return. tire early. Like our mindset doesn't work that way. We cannot just do nothing and be lazy. Sometimes I wish I could. So like, if I get more than like a few hours of like nothing to do, I'm like, I got to start a business. I got to do something. Because it largely it's a game.

You know, like it's a game that has real stakes, but it is a game. It's like, oh, I wonder if I can do something even bigger. So yeah, I at 27, I was making, it wasn't a ton of money. It was like four grand, maybe three to four thousand a month. I am like 30-ish rental units. And we just kind of maintaining of myself, a couple hours a week of, you know, fixing a toilet here and there. But even that, mostly I had outsourced to property managers and to contractors. So I sat on a couch and I watched law and order for like six months. Like I watched a lot of law and order. And I just was like, what am I doing with my life?

And so I started reading other books on like internet marketing a little bit because I thought, well, that's an interesting thing. What if I taught this stuff online? And that kind of led me to the bigger pockets world and then starting the podcast. And then at some point, I even, I remember I was on stage at this conference. And I'm teaching this, I'm at this conference. There's a thousand people in the audience. They're high level multifamily syndicators.

Like, these are like the top investors in the country. And I'm on stage and I realize like, dude, like I'm like the least qualified person to be in this room. Like I am playing it safe. I've got my 30 little units and I feel real good about that. But I was like, I want to deserve to be back in this room. Like I came face to face with my potential. potential and I didn't like where I was. And I think that the point in every, maybe every man's life and woman's life where they're like, oh, that's possible. That's potential. I went to turn, I think

maybe it was Tony Robbins or Ed Milette say that hell is when you die and you meet the person you could have become. And I thought that was an interesting phrase. It's like, imagine meeting the person you could have become. And so I met the person I could become. I'm like, I could be the people in this room. So I went home there and I was like, yeah, I'm going to double down. And so that's when I grew from the 30-ish units. I bought a 50 unit. And then I I bought another 13,000 units and I just kept going because I'm like, I know I can do more. So, yeah, get financial freedom, of course. Get to that point where you don't have to worry about the bills.

But then you get to play a bigger game and you get to focus not on survival, but on thriving and thriving and thriving and building and generating wealth and jobs for people and taking care of families and knowing that you're the one putting food on their table because you took the risk to start a business or to grow a, real estate empire, dude, that's such a great feeling. And you can never top that mountain. It just always gets better. Exactly. And that's where I found almost, you know, getting to that financial freedom point, it kind of just reduces that stress and that anxiety. That's, you know, it's removed. And then all of a sudden you can think clearly. And when you start to think clearly, I'm the same way as you were like, I just always want to start businesses. We have a bunch of different businesses that we run. And like all the time, it just wants to, you know, I want more all the time. But it's just kind of how I'm wired. But when that stress and anxiety is gone, you can think more

clearly to kind of think through some of those possibilities and assess the risk tolerance and all that kind of stuff, which is pretty cool. Yeah, very much. You built up this massive portfolio. And you built, what I love about this is that you built a systematic plan to build up basically this billion dollar portfolio. And it is very, very systematic on how you do this, but it's also simplistic in how you can explain it.

So can you kind of explain how you did this and how you went that route? Yeah, man. So, I mean, there's a few things in here. And I'll acknowledge a lot of, you know, I was in the right place at the right time. and I had the right connections. And so I'm not saying everyone else can go build a billion dollar business, but I'm also not saying you can't.

I literally, I started with a vision. So I said, hey, what do I actually want? And that's a powerful question. I would encourage people to ask themselves, what do you really want? Not like what's expected of you or what you read in a book or what somebody else has,

but like what would be amazing? If you were a painter, painting your future, like what would you paint? What sounds awesome? And I said, you know what? Having a team of like a dozen people, maybe like, you know,

half a dozen to a dozen people, with that I'm working with owning mobile home parks. Not that mobile home parks were the best investment in the world. They were a good one. And it was more important that I make a decision than exactly what decision I make. So I was like, okay, what sounds cool? Mobile home parks. How much do I want?

Well, if I want, you know, six, seven, eight, ten people working with me. I'm going to have to buy a lot because we're going to make enough money. So, you know, probably 50 million. So I defined I wanted $50 million of real estate in three years in mobile home parks. I was going to raise the money. And I just, I laid out a very clear. vision. And then I just went out and did exactly what I said I was going to do in the vision. Now, the vision didn't say how I was going to get there. So I had to figure it out all in the way.

But what I did is something kind of unique is that I built the business largely from the top down. Most people build a business and most businesses I've started in the past have been from the bottom up, which is where you are everything. And then you outsource the person, the lowest paid job in the company, you outsource. So you're like, oh, well, I'm tired of doing cleaning toilets. So I'm going to hire a janitor to clean the toilet. You know, and know, I'm tired of bookkeeping. I'm going to hire a bookkeeper. You slowly elevate yourself to being the leader of a company. I would guess 90% of people do that when they're building a business. I instead, I was like, well, what if I just hire someone really good from day one to just run the

thing? And I didn't have the money to hire someone in the beginning. Like, I didn't really make that much again. It was, so I was like, well, what if I just gave them equity? So I basically gave equity to a partner and I said, hey, I got the ability to raise some capital because people know who I am. You run the company. I'll raise the capital. You just run all the business and, you know, I'll show up once a week to talk on a medium with you. And that's kind of what we did. Now, I ended up being a lot more work than that. But generally speaking, I built it from the top down.

And so I've only done a few interviews ever in my entire life. I have 150 employees right now and I've maybe done three interviews ever because I hire from the top down and then they built out the company. And then the last thing I'll say is, you know, a phrase that I say all the time. Like I run this thing, the Better Life Tribe and it's like our keystone like phrase. You get the results of what you repeatedly do. Another way to look at that in business, we talk about lead measures and lag measures. A lead measure is an action that you take that leads to the result, the leg.

So the calories that I consume is a lead measure. The scale shows me my leg measure, my weight. And so a lead measure is things that I can control and I can act on. And because we get the results of what we repeated they do, I sat with my team and I'm like, all right, what does it take to buy $50 million of real estate? Well, we got to make a certain number of offers. We got to analyze a certain number of deals. We have to get a certain amount of funding and we have to do certain actions. So we literally just set goals and then we work backwards to find out what actions to do and we just did them. And shockingly, just like a diet, when you stick to it, it works. And when you don't stick to it, it doesn't. And so we literally just follow this playbook and it got us where we wanted to. That said, we didn't buy $50 million of real estate in that time period. We bought $300 million of real estate in that time period. and now we're at over a billion. And the simple reason is, like, when you actually align everyone's goals together and the right habits and you have the right vision, like, you're going to blow right past where you're going because business is actually easier, I think, than people think, when they get those things right, when they get the vision, they get the team, and they get the system or the actions all lined up together.

It's like having a sports car where everything is just dialed. It's just going to run better. And that's what I love about what you did is basically, you did. is basically you did the opposite of what most people do. Most people start with, you know, some of the lower level employees and they start to hire at that point in time. You started from the top down. And by doing so, that kind of helped you remove yourself from being all the way in operations day to day and have a little bit more freedom and flexibility, which is so incredibly powerful. And it did cost me. I only won 42% of open door capital. 58% is my employees. Because in

the beginning, I just gave equity instead of salaries because I didn't have it. But you know what? Like, would I trade half of my future wealth for not having to, but for having complete rock stars to guide it along the way? Of course I would. Especially knowing that I'm probably going to do 10 or 100 times more with them than I would do without them. So who cares if you're giving away 50, 70, 80 percent of your company if it means you get to grow 10, 20, 50 times bigger and have way more fun along the way.

Exactly. And that's the cool part. Having that freedom and flexibility is just so incredibly valuable, you know, and on a lifelong run, which I think is so cool. And so this may be a silly question, but you started investing in your own real estate and then you started the fund. How did you know even how to start a fund? Yeah. No, that's not a silly question at all. I had no idea how to start a fund. It was one of those like, you know, if you're like, you know that phrase the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

It's like, or another way to phrase is I often tell the story of like I used to live in the Pacific Northwest out in Washington State. And it's foggy like every morning, every single morning. It's just dense fog. And so when I'm getting in the car, driving to the gym, and it's six in the morning, I can't see a mile down the road. I can't see if there's a deer or the road, the bridge is out or if there's, you know, a car car. I can't see anything up there a mile ahead. I know generally where I'm going. All I can see is about 10 feet in front of my car. And I call that like the zone of clarity.

You have a zone of clarity around you. Now, most people, when they see the fog, they're like, well, I can't see. I mean, there might be a deer. There might be a deer up there. So I'm going to pull over to the side of the road and wait for the fog to come. clear. But surprise, the fog never clears. There's never a clear path there. So what's the answer? How do we drive through fog? Slowly, carefully. And we're always just getting that next 10 feet. And so in my building a fund, it was like, well, I don't know how to start a fund, but I know how to drive 10 feet.

So I was like, well, I know lawyers. I know a lawyer. So I was like, let me call Maricio and just say, hey, what do I do? And it was like, I get on a phone call. Like, although I don't know how to start a fund, I know how to dial a phone. Like I know how to schedule a meeting. So I did that. And then he explained a few things. Like, oh, yeah, you're going to want to do this and this and this. I'm like, all right. So now what do I do?

And you just constantly move forward. And the pace at which you do this is the pace at which you succeed. I call it your MINS, M-I-N-S, your most important next step. And if you can get in the habit of always saying, what is my most important next step by minns? And I'm not talking about like, I mean, let's do a real example, right? Like, I was on a podcast one time with a guy and he's like, hey, I really want to get married someday, but I don't even have a girlfriend.

I would love to have kids. Like end result is he wants kids. Now that's a mile down the road. And I'm like, well, what's your most important next step? He's like, well, I need to get a girlfriend. And I'm like, well, get more granular. What's your next like 10 foot step? And he's like, well, I mean, I got to update my dating profile on my Tinder or whatever.

I'm like, all right, well, you got to do that great. But more specific, what are you got to do in the next, like, right now? And he's like, well, I don't want to do a picture on my Tinder until I get a haircut. I'm like, okay, so what's your next step? What's your men's? I got to schedule a haircut. I'm like, how long does that take? 30 seconds to pull up an app and schedule a haircut.

That's it. So in other words, his dream life of having kids and a wife and family and all that stuff all comes down to a 30 second task of scheduling a haircut. And this simple concept applies to everything we do in life. It's just boil it down to what is the 30 second task or two-minute task or five-minute task

that's directly in front of me. And imagine a world in which you did that every single day, every hour maybe with your goals, how fast you would get that done. Like reading a book, if you read one page of a book every day, it would take you, what, a year to finish a book? But if you read one page an hour, it would take you a few weeks. If you read one page a minute,

you'd be done in a couple hours, right? The speed and consistency at which we do these minns is a direct correlation to the speed, speed and level of success we get with our goals. And I love that. Just breaking it down to these small chunks all the way down to getting really granular to where you need to go. Because that's how you take that next step in action instead of just scrolling on your phone or doing whatever else you would be doing.

It's taking those small steps every single day that allows you to kind of break this down. It also helps reduce like fear and anxiety. It's like if you had to carry a pile of bricks across a field, right? And like you're looking at this pile of bricks. You're like, that's 10,000 pounds. I can never do that. Like you get all anxiety ridden and then you just don't do anything. But if you're just like, oh, it's a brick.

It weighs one pound. Like I can pick up one brick and I can move it across the field. And you stop worrying about the pile and start worrying about the brick. Anxiety drops, fear drops, action moves forward. You build up confidence. Yeah, everything gets better. Just move the bricks. Just move those small bricks.

Exactly. I absolutely love that. I love the concept of men's as well. I think people just need to kind of repeat that in their head all the time when they're trying to accomplish big, big goals like that. Now, you've been able to build a massive business, but also one thing I love about this is you're also a very present father and you're a very present husband, which is very difficult to do for some people. So can you kind of talk about how you tactically made that happen? Yeah, a few things there. One, I track a lot of habits. So I have this whole like goal system, habit tracking, like whole thing. That's the whole better life tribe is what my goals, goals and habits system is. And the basic idea is this. Every quarter, I define like, what are the top three goals that I want to work on?

There's always either a marriage or a parenting one in there. Like, I want to be a better dad and a better husband all the time. So I kind of rotate between them. One's always a business one. And then one's usually a fitness one. So, I mean, I'll give you an example. So like this quarter, I just did my quarterly goals. I said, I really want to focus on my kids this quarter and being a better dad.

Well, what are the actions, right? We get the results of what we repeatedly do. So what are the regular actions that I can do that would make me a better dad? And I say, I'm like, okay, well, let's just write down a few. If I play with my kids every day, like just like uninterrupted, no phone playing something they wanted to play for at least 15 minutes. That's not a lot. Would that make me a better dad?

Yeah. If I did that every single day, I played with them for 15 minutes on the floor, like minimum, that would make me a better dad. Would going on dedicated dates every week where I take each kid out separately for at least an hour, would that make me a better dad? Yes. So those go in my habit tracker, which is literally right here. And so like, I put it in my tracker and I say, did I do a kid?

kid dad date. Did I play 15 minutes with the kids? I've also got things like, did I do a cardio workout? Did I get my 8,000 steps? Did I read for 15 minutes? Did I meet with my C-O? Did I call one of my family members? Because I realize I want to be a better like brother and son. So I'm like, what's the best way to do that? Call mom, right? Call my sister. So by tracking those things, I am instantly 10 times more likely to accomplish them because now I know if I'm doing it or not. So I kind of recap, I identify what it is I want to improve in my life. I want to be a better dad. I want to be more in shape.

Identify what actions would lead to that. I then document those actions and I track them on a daily basis. Did I do it or did I not? And then magically it works, just like a diet. Like when you track your calories and your macros and you stick to it and you actually do it, it works 100% of the time. Like it's not like diets don't work because the diet's wrong. No, you just don't stick with them, right?

So it's like, yeah, that's how I, that's how I, it's a very formulaic way, maybe like, I don't say cold, but like I need it. Like, it's like, if it's important to me to be a good dad, then yes, I'm going to define the actions, I'm going to track it. And I'm not going to rely on my willpower or my in the moment, how I'm feeling to define my relationship with my kids and my wife. So. And I love that about, you know, the systematic tracking because we have this goal setting

workshop that we do for like personal finance at the beginning of every single year. And when we kind of talk through some of those things, you know, we'll teach people how to set these goals and kind of review your goals. And we had one person come through and say, hey, I got to schedule a time to review my goals every single week. I can't do this because I got to put it on my calendar. I go, that's what it takes. Like it takes systematic operations to be able to kind of accomplish some of these things. And so I love the way that you do that and how you just kind of think through that day in and day out. And really, that's how you're going to accomplish some of this stuff. Like people may say, well, that's kind of, you know, why would I track some of this stuff? That is how you

actually get to that goal. is to be able to, you know, to systematically do this. Speaking of goals, you and your wife have a pretty cool ritual that you do every year. I think it's around the beginning of the year. Maybe it's the end of the year where you do a goal setting system. Can you kind of talk about that and how that helps you, you know, throughout your life? Yeah, yeah, I would love to. We started this process back, I mean, probably a decade ago.

And it started just by like we had a date on January 1st. Before kids, we just like went out to the beach, this little restaurant. and we had dinner and we just talked about, what do we want in our future? And we decided, why don't we just write them down? So, I mean, this is like early goal setting for me. So I was like, I would love to have a house in Hawaii someday. And I would love to have kids.

And I would love to be a millionaire. You know, it was like these things. I was like, I would love this. And it was the first time I ever really like with her sat down and together planned our future. You know, most of us listening to this podcast and doing these podcasts, like we're all fairly goal-oriented people usually. but most couples are not goal-oriented couples. People are usually, it's an individual thing.

It's a private thing. But my wife and I decided to make our goals a couple thing, at least like a portion of them. So now every year, around the first, we get together. We spend, you know, we used to be a whole day and it turned into like a weekend and then we had kids that it turned into like a two-hour date. Whatever, it gets done.

And we just go through this process of like, what do we want? And that really led to all the goal setting stuff that I then later developed and then built into what I do today with the tribe and all that. It was based on the early stuff with Heather. We still do it every single year. I'll tell you, like, almost nothing can improve a relationship better than when you're fighting for your spouse's goals.

And my wife, like, her goals are not to make a million dollars or to, you know, whatever. Her goal is like to drink more water and to be a better mom. And she wants to, you know, have more time to read. So I'm like, great. So I support her. I know that's a goal of hers. And then I encourage her.

Hey, what can we do to get you more water? Hey, why don't I take the kids for a while? You can sit down and read because I know that's a goal of hers. I know that matters to her. Now I can build like actions in my life and even add them to my habit tracker. That help her. And man, that improves a marriage so much. Exactly.

Because you're working together towards your goals. You actually know what they want, which is another big thing. I think a lot of people just don't know what their, you know, their spouse wants. And I think that's really, really powerful just to understand that and have that conversation. It just allows you to kind of get everything out that everybody wants. can start to work and progress towards that goal. So I love that idea. And I think it's just such an incredibly powerful thing that people can do with their spouse. My wife and I do the same exact thing. And I think it's just, it's just so cool what you can do there as well. Now, I want to shift gears because

you're doing something very, very cool here, which is you have a goal of donating a billion dollars to fight human trafficking. And I think that is a huge thing for us here as well. We're a huge into the Tim Tebow Foundation. And we can talk through this. But you have this incredible mission to do, you know, to really fight against human trafficking. Can you talk about, you know, what you're doing and how you're kind of thinking through this? Yeah. You know, it started after I left Bigger Pockets because, you know,

I love the podcast because, you know, it's not mine. Bigger Pockets is a company. They're amazing. I love them. But like they're owned, you know, it's private equity owned. It's kind of corporate. You know, like it's just not my vibe, right? I don't do well with board meetings and corporate stuff.

So and also, and there became a time where I was like, you know, I could probably do more on my own than I can do, you know, as part of a huge organization. So that's when I left. And I wanted to travel with my family, when took five months and went around the country and went over to Europe and traveled. So it was a good time.

But I left there and I got done with the traveling. And I was like, well, what am I going to do next? And I'm like, well, I love teaching real estate. So I'm going to make, and I love goals studying and habits and all the stuff we've been talking about today. So I'm like, I'm going to make a, like, some kind of mastermind or course or tribe. I'm going to charge hundreds of dollars a month,

maybe thousands of dollars a month, and get a bunch of people in it. and I'm going to make millions and millions and millions of dollars, and I'm going to buy a private jet. So I start putting together plans a little bit in my head of what this is going to look like. And I end up going to this Christian mastermind called the Wellspring. It's a good group of people. And I'm in this group and I'm up in the mountains of Colorado at this event.

And there's a private jet broker there. Like she actually, that's her job. And she broker is like private jet sales. So I'm sitting meeting with her going, hey, I don't have the money for a jet yet. But I should within, you know, six months from now when I launch this thing, I should be able to buy a jet. And so we're shopping.

for Jets, talking about the options, what I can do. And that night, as a guest speaker, Tim Tebow comes up the mountain. And for two hours, just tell stories of, like, human trafficking and the horrors of, like, what he calls the most vulnerable people. And man, there was not a dry eye in that room. And I ended that night, like, with, like, this distinct, like, feeling, you know, and I'm a Christian guy, so I'm like, from, like, I feel like God told me, like in my brain, like, this next business isn't for you. It's for me. It's for them, really. And so I said, all right, so I went from that day from shopping for a private jet to going, I'm going to build this business and then give away all that money to fight human trafficking.

So that's what we did. So, yeah, last year we gave away a little over half a million. I hope we can do more than that this year. I mean, it's hard work to build a business, but it's fun to be able to know that, like, I don't even take a salary. All the money goes towards the fighting against human trafficking. And if you want to be, like, fired up and never have to like need motivation to get out of bed, It's like go build a business that fights for somebody else. Like that's a cool feeling.

I'll benefit. Like I don't want to act like I'm like just all like St. Brandon here. Like I'm going to, I have a mortgage company. Like what do you think people in the tribe are going to do when they need a mortgage? They're going to come to me. I've got a high end mastermind only for like millionaire real estate investors

called the 50. That thing's 50 grand a year. So like I got a bunch people in that. So I make money in roundabout ways. So again, it's not just St. But that's the cool thing about doing good is like now I understand why celebrities, like a lot of celebrities have their own charities and foundations and they go to the

gala's and all that because it's really, really cool as a networking thing and as a building your business thing to have a charity component. So not that that's why I did it, but it's an interesting side result. Exactly. And I think it's just such a powerful movement to, like you said, fight for other people who can't fight for themselves. And I think the Tim Tebow Foundation, like, you know, if you do your research on them, they just do some amazing, amazing stuff. So that's one that we're big to long-time listeners will know that and it's just one that's absolutely huge and why is it so important for people to kind of build giving into their financial plan this is one thing that we kind of you know we'll talk about giving a lot on this show and a lot of people will push back

and they'll say you know why would I even do that is there a purpose for you for giving and do you have any any thoughts on that yeah I mean there's one of like hey I've been I've been given a lot so you give back but I don't think for most people that up like that doesn't it isn't enough to encourage them so I'm going to give a selfish reason why giving is important is they've done these studies, and I wish I had the exact date in front of me, but they've done these studies, like New York Times did it a few years ago where it's like, people who give make more. And it's not people who make more give. It's the other way around. There's a statistical, scientific proof that the more money you give away, the more money you then as a result make.

I don't know why that is other than that. My guess is that it releases your belief and hold on money being a scarce resource and it transforms you into a person willing to take more risk because you know that it's a never-ending waterfall of money in the world. And so when you have that abundant mentality because you're giving so much, you then make more as a result. I'm guessing that's probably the scientific reason why, but whatever reason why, maybe it's just flat out because God said if you give, you're going to receive. I don't know, but it definitely works. And if anybody wants to see a great example of what Brandon's talking about, there's a book and I can't remember his name at the point in time. But it's the founder of Hopper.

Bobby Lobby wrote this book on they give away like 50% of their income or the revenue or something like that. And it kind of shows just how fast this company grew once they started to give that money away. And it's really, really cool and interesting book. So, but that's a great one for sure. Now, I'm going to shift gears into a bunch of questions that we have. And we ask, you know, this is kind of similar to the old Bigger Pocket's Famous for the Fire Round and all that kind of stuff as well. So we'll go through a bunch of these and then we'll be able to finish up there. So the first one is what are some of your favorite books that you have read?

Oh, yes, there's so many, but I'll give three that I really made a big impact on me, non-real estate ones, so they applied anybody. The one thing from Gary Keller and Jay Papazan, the idea of just doing, like really honing on what actually moves the needle in life and business and then doing more of that. So the one thing, the book, The Compound Effect from Darren Hardy is all about doing the right thing repeatedly over and over for a long time. Like, you know, you get the results of what you repeatedly do. So I love that concept.

And I'll give, I don't know, why don't I do this one, a obscure one, a little more obscure. It's 80-20 sales and marketing from Perry Marshall. I love that book. It just really emphasized the need for like a virtual assistant in my life, emphasize the need of like how, what he calls racking the shotgun.

In other words, if you're going to go market for anything, you're going to go raise capital, you're going to go build a business. Like how do identify your ideal customers using the 80-20 rule and how that 80-20 really, can control and drive your business in such a powerful way. So I loved that book. That's amazing.

And I know you read a ton. You read like a book a week all the time. Is there a way that you kind of fit that reading time in or is it just small chunks like you do with everything else? Yeah. I mean, it's small chunks. It's literally on my habit tracker. It says, did I read 15 minutes today? So like 15 minutes a day is enough to finish like, you know, probably a book a month, maybe two books a month. So I do that for sure. And then I sometimes will just sit down and read for an hour or two. I'll oftentimes listen to audio books when I'm jogging or going to the gym. So yeah, you just you just fit it in. Like I'm not a big believer in listening to like talk radio or I don't watch sports because those things don't really improve my life. I listen to music, but I'm a

musician. So like that improves my life. But yeah, it's either music, some good old punk rock or it's a listen to an audiobook. Awesome. I love it. What part of your worker life makes you come alive? I love strategy around marketing. So like when you're solving a big problem, like we got to raise $50 million or we got to, you know, get somebody to sign up for the Better Life tribe or we got to figure how to grow our podcast. I love like just sitting in a room with a whiteboard and be like, what are we going to do? And then it's just actually, it's full circle goes back to that idea of like, how can I? Right. It's not like, like, oh, we can't grow the podcast.

We can't grow our social media. It's how do we grow social media. And then brainstorming 50 ideas. No, I am not the kind of guy that's going to go execute on those ideas. That I have other people for it. Like, I'm an idea guy and then I'm a, like, I'm not very consistent with stuff. And so I hire people to be consistent and I can be the visionary. I love that.

What is your biggest fear when it comes to money? I lived in one of my early properties was a duplex, like the first multifamily I bought with a duplex. I lived in the alleyway, like the house that was in the alley. And it was a 400 square foot house. My fear is having to live in an alleyway at a 4. square foot house again. It's like, yeah, it's like I always have that like I just can't go back to the alley. So, you know, it's part of me like has this weird like, and I think a lot of successful people that are financially well off have this kind of dream of like losing it all just to prove that

I could I can make it back again. I don't want to lose it all, but I'm not that scared of that. Yeah, but yeah, the thing that would, yeah, I don't, I don't want to have to like look at the grocery store and be like, oh, I can't buy that meat because it's. too expensive. I better buy this meat that's lower quality. And yeah, I don't like, I don't want to do that again. That's one, a big one of mine as well. It's always in the back of my head. It's just like if you had to go all the way back and start all over, you know, how tough that would be. The next one is how do you plan to level up your finances this year? You've talked about a number of different things you're doing. Is there one that you're really honing in on this year? Yeah, I'm working on, I'm a big believer in

like, this is not true for everyone. So I'm not trying to give us advice here. But for me, I'm good at making money out of nothing. Like I'm just good at generating ideas for making income and building businesses. Most people should start by like eliminating expenses and, you know, cutting their avocado toast and all that. I think that's good advice generally. But I'd rather like, like, I mean, I'd rather, yeah, I'd rather have the avocado toast and then figure out how to make more money. And so like I'm, I'm launching a couple of things. I mean, I got a mortgage company, like I said, that we're continuing how to grow. I've got a program called like my first deal and it's like literally just going to be for newbies to learn how to buy their very first property ever. I think that's going to be stupid,

like stupid successful because I'm just basically going to guarantee it like, hey, you get your money back if you don't buy a property. So it's like me like pretty, pretty easy way to get people to sign up and then actually change their life, which will be fun. And then I make some money in the process. So I'm excited for for that. So I'm going to try to generate a few more dollars this year to my monthly budget. I love it. If you could tell your younger self one thing about money, what would it be? Great question. I would say this. No matter how much money you make,

you will always spend more if you're not aware of your spending. Like, I know people making millions of dollars a year that are broke all the time. And I know people that are making $30,000 a year that are living more wealthy than the people making millions. You know, like, yes, you can live better with bigger things and cooler cars and houses

if you have more money, but more money doesn't make you more financially free. Yep. That is so powerful to understand if you can understand that early on and I think a lot of people need to. And then the last one is my favorite one. And it is what does wealth mean to you? Man, wealth is the freedom to do what I want, where I want, when I want, how I want with whoever I want. And so if that means money, which helps with that, that's huge. But if my health sucks, then I can't do what I want where I want when I want, when I want how I want with whoever I want. So health is a piece of that. It's all a piece of that. If my relationship with my wife sucks, well, then I can't do what. whatever I want, wherever I want, with whoever I want. So, yeah, wealth is the freedom to do what I want, where I want, when I want, how I want, with who I want. That's a fantastic definition, and it shows that you modeled your life around that too, systematically, which I absolutely love.

So thank you so much, Brandon, for coming on today. This has been absolutely amazing. Can you tell people where they can find you and more about what you have going on? Yeah, man. Yeah, I mean, I'm on Instagram. That's probably the best way. Beardy Brandon, beard with a Y at the end of it. Beardy Brandon, I have a 10.

and I have a text message newsletter I send out every single week with whatever book I'm reading and what I'm learning from it. Plus, I always just try to write like a lesson. Like, yeah, today I actually wrote about my son Wilder, we on a boat. And I didn't want to jump out in the water. And he's like begging me, jump in the water, dad, come in the water with me. And he didn't want to jump in unless I did. And for like an hour, I refuse. I was like, it's too cold.

I'm not getting in the water. Then finally I realize he will not jump in unless I do. So I jump in the water. It's freezing cold. I got used to it. He jumps in. We had a great moment, just a beautiful moment of where we were swimming and playing. He did some hard things out there.

And he grew. Everything got better. And I almost missed out because I wasn't willing to get out of the boat. Right. I was trying to be comfortable rather than being a good father. So that was a lesson I wrote today. I was like, where in your life do you need to get out of the boat for your kids or for your future self? So it's like, that's like an example.

So I put that in my text message newsletter. You can get that at beardybrandin.com. And it's, uh, that's probably the best place to find it. Awesome. Absolutely amazing. Well, I subscribe to your text newsletter as well. I can attest it's awesome. I love reading it every single week.

And thank you again for coming on. I know everyone's going to love this one. Awesome. Thank you, man. I appreciate you. You're a great host. I can tell you you've done this before. Thank you.

I appreciate it. We'll talk soon. All right, thanks.